Socialist Voice

By Federico Fuentes. Having captured the imagination of progressives across the globe with scenes of indigenous uprisings confronting right-wing governments and multinationals, Bolivia has become a key focal point of discussion within the left regarding strategies for change.

Unfortunately, starry-eyed notions and schemas rather than reality have influenced the views of some left commentators on the revolutionary process unfolding in South America’s poorest nation.

At the centre of this debate is the role of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), led by indigenous President Evo Morales, and its strategy for refounding Bolivia.

After three years of the Morales government it is possible to draw some tentative conclusions about this social experiment, which embodies the desire of Bolivia’s oppressed indigenous majority to take power in order to bring about real change — unlike the Mexican Zapatista’s “change the world without taking power” strategy or the practice of Brazil’s Workers’ Party, which combines power with as little change as possible.

Reformist MAS, revolutionary bases?

Two prominent figures who have consistently attacked the strategy of the MAS leadership are U.S. intellectual James Petras and Canadian socialist Jeffery R. Webber.

For Petras, the situation in Bolivia is defined by the division between “a revolutionary impoverished peasant mass base and [the] electoral-reformist petit bourgeois leadership” of Morales. Petras argues that the MAS has channelled the revolutionary base towards “electoral politics culminating in [Morales’s] successful electoral campaign for the presidency” and is derailing a “revolutionary” outcome to the nation’s political and social crisis. (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21015.htm)

Webber has argued that Bolivian social movements face the choice between MAS’s “populist reformism” or “a turn toward indigenous liberation and a transition to socialism.” (http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/577)

However, the MAS government and strategy can only be understood in the context of the intertwined and complex relationship between Morales, the MAS and the social movements.

Social explosions

The social explosions of 2000 were only the first visible explosions of growing discontent with neoliberalism in Bolivia. Since 1985, successive Bolivian governments had turned the country into a laboratory for neoliberal shock therapy. Privatization of mines, labour casualization and market deregulation led to a massive fragmentation and dispersal of the militant miners’ movement, shattering any real resistance in the urban areas to the plundering of the country’s economy and resources.

In the early 1990s, indigenous communities from the east marched in defence of their land and for a new constituent assembly to found a new, inclusive Bolivia, heralding a revitalization of the country’s indigenous movements.

Many ex-miners and Aymara indigenous people, who in the ’80s turned to growing coca following mine privatizations and droughts in the west of the country, found new political homes in the powerful cocalero unions.

Militant union traditions and indigenous communitarian organizing, combined with increased militarization in the coca-growing regions, led to the emergence of the militantly anti-imperialist cocaleros. Acting more as organs of local power than simple unions, the unions took on roles traditionally assigned to the state.

As disaffection with the neoliberal parties grew, so did the idea that a new political vehicle was needed.

The cocaleros, together with the peasant movement, predominantly based in the west, and the indigenous movement of the east, forged their own political organization: the Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (IPSP) — today more commonly known by its legally registered name, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). Ignored or downplayed by much of the urban left, the MAS-IPSP began to accumulate forces, attempting to reach out into the cities.

Even today, these organizations (particularly the cocaleros) make up the heart and organizational structure of the MAS, and it is with them that Morales continues to discuss and debate the next steps forward.

Elections and insurrection

Through a strategy of mobilization, alliance-building and the construction of a national project for change, the indigenous peasant movement burst onto the political scene in the 2002 national elections, when Morales came a close second with 21% of the vote.

While reflecting its still predominantly rural base, the vote marked the first time that large numbers of indigenous people had voted for one of their own. Together with Felipe Quispe’s Pachakutik Indigenous Movement, indigenous parties controlled one third of the parliament.

This led to a strengthened belief in the possibility of winning elections in order to use parliament as a tool for transforming Bolivia.

This, in part, explains the limited role played by MAS and the cocaleros in the 2003 uprising against then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. They restricted themselves to mobilizations and roadblocks in the Chapare, while the militant neighbourhood organizations of El Alto led the protests.

Divisions between the various leaders of the regional corporative social movements, each of which mobilized independently around its respective sectoral demands, also explain why Morales did not play a central role in these events.

The MAS, and particularly Morales, were much more prominent in the 2005 uprising against then-President Carlos Mesa. While originally raising a more moderate proposal regarding gas nationalizations than other, more “radical” social movements, the MAS listened to the ranks it had mobilized in large numbers and shifted its demands to the left.

Morales’s call for mobilizations to block the swearing-in of the next two in line to assume the presidency following Mesa’s resignation was crucial to opening the path towards early elections.

All the social movements — including the “radicals” — supported that outcome.

With no contending alternative project on the left, the MAS won the 2005 election with over 90% support in the Chapare, 80% in the impoverished Aymara city of El Alto, a clean sweep of the middle-class areas in La Paz, and 30% in the eastern department of Santa Cruz.

Indigenous nationalism

This emergence of a militant indigenous nationalism, expressed in the vote for Morales, whose vision involves promoting inclusion and power distribution for the indigenous majority, acts as a cohering force that has drawn around it important sections of the white and  mestizo population.

Some of the social movements have proposed more radical actions or demands — reflected in the divisions that exist within MAS over whether to use dialogue or to directly confront the oligarchy. However, there is no real movement proposing a radically different project for change, let alone for socialism.

Instead today, with the unity pact that exists between the National Coalition for Change (CONALCAM,  the largest indigenous, peasant and urban social movements) and the Bolivian Workers Central (COB), the movements are more united than ever behind “their” government.

What makes this national movement different from previous nationalist experiences is that for the first time, it is not sections of the middle class or military, but indigenous plebeian sectors that are leading the forces of change.

The Morales government has focussed on modernization of the country, promotion of industrialization, increased state intervention in the economy, social and cultural inclusion, and a more democratic redistribution of revenues from natural resources through various social programs.

In a country where only a few years ago the president spoke Spanish with a strong U.S. accent, the rise of the first indigenous president marks a new era. The Morales government has made real the possibility of achieving the indigenous majority’s desire for a new constitution.

Right-wing counter-offensive

That project of change met resistance from the old elites, who see in these changes Bolivia’s version of the Bolshevik revolution. They violently oppose any steps towards a new constitution that, far from representing idealistic wishes of the social movements, was always aimed at institutionalizing and deepening the gains of the MAS government.

The focal point of the elites’ resistance has been the state of Santa Cruz, the origin of 30% of national GDP and more than 50% of tax revenue and food production, and also the home to 47.6% of foreign investment.

Together with the business elites from the “half moon” — the eastern states of Pando, Beni and Tarija — they unleashed a virulent campaign against the government, culminating in an open attempt to overthrow the government in September.

In response, the social movements — both those that are integral parts of the MAS and those that remain outside it, all of whom maintain a relationship with Morales that is characterised by a contradictory mix of autonomy and acceptance of his leadership — mobilized to defeat the coup-plotters.

The outcome was that the Congress, despite opposition control of the Senate, approved a modified text that, while including temporary retreats on some aspects of land reform, maintained the essence of the constitutional text — a plurinational state with greater indigenous rights and state control of natural resources — which the opposition had vowed to oppose to the death.

Demoralized and divided, the opposition has split over whether to support the new constitution. On the other side, MAS and the social movements have closed ranks around the new text and are campaigning to ensure a massive vote in support of the new constitution on January 25. They hope their momentum will lead to complete control of parliament in the national elections scheduled for next December.

Challenges

But important challenges remain.

The opposition will undoubtedly begin to regroup and plan its next offensive. Conflict has re-emerged as the government has made clear its intention to study the validity of large landholdings in order to redistribute illegally owned land.

The world economic crisis, which has resulted in declining mineral prices, also poses a challenge.

Moreover, the Bolivian state that MAS has inherited is still dominated by right-wing elements who actively work against the process. This is a major barrier — something Morales has emphasized, arguing that winning the elections did not signify taking power.

Yet the biggest challenge will undoubtedly come from within.

Acting more like a federation of unions and social organizations than a political party, MAS is riven by sectoral self-interest. The lack of political cadres has led to reliance on urban intellectuals and NGO leaders, without a framework for discussion of different perspectives.

The MAS also faces the challenge of preventing its transformation into a “traditional” political party. It appears that the future of the MAS will be greatly influenced by the rise of the broader CONALCAM.

But there remains a lack of organic spaces for the elaboration of policies and a program to drive the process forward.

Federico Fuentes edits Bolivia Rising. An earlier version of this article was published in Green Left Weekly.

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