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"A
more powerful, more pragmatic, and more successful figure than
they had hoped or feared."
Evo Morales' First Year
Reuters/David
Mercado
Bolivia's President Evo Morales stands in front
of a 'whiphala' (indigenous flag) in Achacahi in Omasuyos province
in the Bolivian highlands some 90 km (55 miles) north of La Paz,
January 23, 2007.
By Newton Garver
Justice and equality must prevail, and must do so in the context
of growing national prosperity. That is the underlying motive
and force behind the what is called the left-leaning surge in
Latin America. Naturally there is powerful opposition to this
movement, an opposition that one sees most clearly in the virulent
opposition to Castro in Cuba, to Ortega in Nicaragua, and to Chavez
in Venezuela. A particularly worrisome variety of this resistance
to change flared when General Augusto Pinochet died in Chile and
tens of thousands lined the streets to view his casket and honor
the man who suspended democracy in 1973 and terrorized the country
for decades. Not surprisingly, this resistance to change has turned
vicious in Bolivia as well.
Evo Morales was elected President of Bolivia in
December, 2005, an avowed socialist and the first fully indigenous
president ever in South America. January 18 marks the anniversary
of his first full year in office. His election was the first in
recent Bolivian history to be achieved by popular vote rather
than referred to the legislature for deciding among top candidates,
and thereby Morales completely by-passed the old elite. In office,
therefore, he was not bound by commitments to other parties, and
he announced determination to go ahead with his platform promises
of capturing far greater profits from oil and gas, of land appropriation
and redistribution in the eastern departments, of constitutional
reform, of increased GNP, and of improved amenities and opportunities
(especially health and education) for the indigenous peoples of
Bolivia. An ambitious program indeed.
The opposition initially remained subdued. Part
of the reason may have been that the program was fraught with
so many inherent obstacles that practical consequences seemed
too remote to fear. Furthermore, Morales’s flair for unconventional
publicity, as evident in his famous striped alpaca sweater and
his waving a coca leaf at the UN, probably made him look a bit
flaky. The elite relaxed again on May 1, 2006, when Morales announced
a six-month deadline by which oil companies must renegotiate their
contracts with Bolivia or face forfeiture of their infrastructure,
new contracts that would award the lion’s share of profits
to Bolivia rather than to the companies. The pundits and industry
analysts agreed that Bolivia had bitten off more than it could
chew and that in the long run the companies must prevail. It would
teach Morales a lesson. No doubt the lesson it would teach was
more or less the lesson the NY Times had in mind when it editorialized
that the peasants in Bolivia needed to overcome their economic
ignorance.
At the end of October, however, the companies
capitulated, handing Morales not only billions in much needed
revenue but also substantial political capital. With the revenue
he announced an increase of 10% in teachers’ salaries, and
with the political capital he stepped up the campaign of land
reform. Now the elite really does feel threatened, and the counterrevolution
has become more vociferous and more adamant -- and more violent.
The violence began in late November when Morales’s limousine
was stoned as he attempted to attend a meeting of business leaders
in Santa Cruz (Bolpress 11/25/06), two days after a pro-business
group announced it was mobilizing against the “dictatorship”
of Morales and his party. In mid-January, the week before the
anniversary of his inauguration, Morales returned from the inauguration
of Daniel Ortega to face the aftermath of a violent clash in Cochabamba
that left two dead and dozens hospitalized.
With respect to land reform, the legislature has
passed a revision of the Land Reform Act of 1952, a component
of the first Bolivian revolution under the leadership of Victor
Paz Estenssoro in 1952. The revision allows confiscation of latifundios,
large tracts of land —we are talking about hundreds of square
miles, not hundreds of acres — that are unused, potentially
productive, and with dubious titles. These lands are all located
in the two largest departments, Santa Cruz and Beni, where some
80% of the land (more than 12,000 square miles, or nearly 8,000,000
acres) is held by 14 families, many not resident in Bolivia. Apart
from the provisions of the new law, the government also challenges
the validity of many of the titles to the land, contending they
were conferred as favors by previous presidents who had no right
to do so. The government has also said that it will not confiscate
any land being used productively, because one of its aims is to
increase GDP.
Naturally the right-wing elite does not trust
the left-wing government, so there are fears that all the best
productive land will be confiscated. Such fears were publicized
by the NY Times in a story (12/21/06) about a successful Mennonite
farming community in Santa Cruz Department. The community fled
persecution in Europe and has been comfortable as well as successful
in Bolivia, contributing to the export of soybeans while retaining
their distinctive customs and their German language. They are,
of course, far from panic or violence and they hold clear title
to their land, but their fear may well be real, however ill-founded.
The story in the Times said nothing about the government’s
intention to limit confiscation to large unproductive holdings
to which there is dubious title. It is absurd to put the productive
Mennonite farms in the same category as the huge latifundios.
The story is slick anti-Morales propaganda, with the fears of
the Mennonites no doubt fanned by the elite to try to nudge the
Mennonites into becoming part of their confrontation against Morales.
A second contentious issue is regional autonomy.
Four departments that form a kind of half moon from north to east
to south — Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, and Tarija — are
campaigning for autonomy that will prevent them from having to
share their wealth with the rest of the nation. They are the departments
that contain not only the huge latifundios but also most of the
mineral and hydrocarbon deposits. The government has nationalized
the hydrocarbon deposits and intends to nationalize mineral deposits
as well, so those with claims hope that the regional autonomy
will make it easier to retain their claims. In Santa Cruz there
is considerable industrial production, whose owners favor the
sort of neocon globalization that Morales resists, and the elite
there also fears that the land reform could tip the population
mix away from right-wing industry-friendly policies. Tarija has
the principal deposits of oil and natural gas, Beni has large
latifundios, and both Pando and Beni have significant mineral
deposits. The government believes that the wealth of these departments
is important to increasing the national GDP and intends to use
royalties and tax revenues for national projects.
Another matter of contention is the Constitutional
Convention. The idea for it goes back several years, but the members
were not chosen until after the election of Evo Morales as President.
The goal of the convention is to give more formal power to the
indigenous majority, which means less power for the wealthy elite.
As in the legislature, Morales’s party, MAS (acronym of
“Movement Toward Socialism”), enjoys a comfortable
majority but lacks the two-thirds needed to force its provisions
into the Constitution. The basic rule governing the convention
is that its text needs to be ratified by two-thirds of the representatives
before going to a referendum. The right-wing has insisted that
this means that each provision must separately attain a two-thirds
majority, and the left that that special majority applies only
to the full text. The dispute over this procedural point has for
six months and prevented the Convention from considering any matter
of substance. Morales’s Vice-President, Alvaro García
Linera, broke the deadlock last week by announcing that MAS will
agree to the two-thirds rule for each provision, with the reservation
of taking other steps if nothing of substance is achieved in the
coming six months.
Like La Paz and Santa Cruz, Cochabamba is the
name of both a city and a department. The city is the third largest
urban center in Bolivia and one of the most vibrant. Its elevation
is about 8,000 feet above sea level, and its people give strong
support to the government. They are now confronting Manfred Reyes
Villa, the governor of the department, one of the traditional
political elite, and a rival candidate in the last presidential
election, who retains lively ambitions for the next election.
Thousands of peasants, who naturally support President Morales,
gathered around the Governor’s mansion in Cochabamba demanding
that Reyes Villa resign. The issue was the governor’s support
of the call of the “half-moon” departments for autonomy.
The Department of Cochabamba lacks the economic interests that
band the other four departments together in their call for autonomy,
and it has a greater concentration of Indians (mostly Quechua).
The support of Reyes Villa for autonomy is therefore mostly political,
and perhaps partly ethnic or social. As one of the powerful up-coming
leaders of the right and of the old elite, he no doubt felt that
his rightful place in this debate is in opposition to Evo Morales
and to the determination of Indians to achieve a greater measure
of equality in Bolivia.
The initial demonstrations in Cochabamba were
not altogether peaceful. Streets were blockaded and windows were
broken, but the damage was confined to property. After several
days, however, things changed. What were described as “shock
troops” in support of Reyes Villa entered the fray with
bricks and baseball bats. Blood was shed, killing two of the demonstrators
(a union member and a student) and sending dozens of people to
the hospital. Reyes Villa was in La Paz meeting with the “half-moon”
governors and did not return to take charge. So Morales returned
from Nicaragua, sent federal troops to restore order, and asked
his supporters to suspend the demonstrations for a time. Nonetheless,
the deaths and injuries raised not only the stakes but also the
indignation of the indigenous people of Cochabamba. Evo Morales
is urging the legislature to pass a law allowing for recall referenda
for governors and judges, so that the protesters in Cochabamba
have an alternative and more democratic way of venting their anger.
The
events in Cochabamba again show Morales as striving to avoid confrontations,
especially bloody ones, and as moving toward democracy together
with law and order.
The events also show how significant regional autonomy is, and
how sharp and volatile the divisions are within the country, sharpened
on the one side by increasingly realistic hopes and on the other
by increasing awareness of the competence and flexibility of the
President. The autonomy being proposed would allow continuation
or even increase of the disparity between the rich and the poor,
wealth being retained in the provinces and controlled by the elite.
The indigenous peoples are not, as the NY Times supposes, ignorant
of basic economics. On the contrary, they realize full well that
the whole point of autonomy, in the context of Bolivia today,
is to keep them from sharing in the increasing GDP of the country.
Thus the events in Cochabamba in mid-January are
a continuation of the drama that inaugurated a brand new act of
the Bolivian drama at the end of October. When Evo Morales achieved
the terms he had demanded from the oil and gas producers, and
from Argentina as a long-term purchaser, everyone saw that he
is a more powerful, more pragmatic, and more successful figure
than they had hoped or feared. Not formidable internationally,
Bolivia being so poor, but formidable indeed on the national scene,
and far more formidable than anyone in Bolivia since Victor Paz
Estenssoro.
In
writing about these affairs, I speak of drama rather than confrontation.
Violent confrontation would suit the rich elite, for they are
rich enough to win a show of force. Violent confrontations also
stall the economy, and if there is to be greater equality in Bolivia
it must come from greater wealth, not through dividing existing
wealth. It is vital for the overall program of Evo Morales and
MAS that the Bolivian GDP increase dramatically. It is therefore
important to avoid confrontations that impede productivity. Providing
alternatives to violent confrontations is one of the challenges
before the Constitutional Convention, as well as the legislature,
and constitutes one of the quieter scenes of the drama —
important despite its lack of glamor. The drama is complex as
well as intense. One scene in the drama that receives comment
in the Bolivian press nearly every week is conversations with
Chile over trading natural gas (Chile has no internal energy supply
other than water power) for access to the sea — a matter
that the elite have no way to hinder and whose success would vastly
increase Morales’s standing. Though this whole drama lacks
significance on the world stage, its outcome will mean a great
deal to this small country.
Newton
Garver
is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
at University at Buffalo. His most recent book is Limits of Power:
Some Friendly Reminders (Center Working Papers 2005).Petroleumworld
does not necessarily share these views.
Editor's Note: This commentary was originally published by CounterPunch,
January 20/21, 2007. Petroleumworld reprint this article in the
interest of our readers.
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Petroleumworld
News 02/04/07
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© 2006 Newton Garver.
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