The 1952 Revolution, in Brief
Bolivian politics, like everything else in Bolivia, are complicated. For all practical purposes, the history that we care about began in 1952 with the Bolivian revolution. One of the major groups behind the revolution were the miners, but there was also a call by peasants (many of whom were indigenous) for land reform. Thus, Bolivia initiated land reform in 1953, breaking up its haciendas and distributing the land to those who worked on them. At this time, most of the population lived in the Altiplano, Yungas, and the Valleys, and so that's where the land reform primarily occurred.
At the time, the U.S. decided that the revolutionary government was not Communist and thus wanted to help it to prevent any future move toward Communism. There was a decline in food availability following the land reform. Some say this is due to inefficiency of small peasant farming but I tend to believe that a bigger factor is that the peasants were eating the food they grew. It's also possible that they grew less food not because of inefficiency but because they had no desire to grow more than they needed, and they left unneeded land fallow instead of cultivating it to grow excess to sell.
At any rate, during this time, the general "Green Revolution" mentality was one that considered hunger a risk factor of Communism, and the U.S. and the Bolivian government both wanted Bolivia to be able to produce enough rice and sugar to feed its population. These are both urban luxury goods that peasants do not eat. Meanwhile, the U.S. was sending tons of wheat to Bolivia as food aid under PL 480. Bolivia began following a U.S. plan for development called the Bohan Plan, establishing large scale agriculture in the previously sparsely populated tropical lowlands in the East. We will cover this in greater detail when we talk about the eastern department of Santa Cruz.
The revolutionary government, led by the party the MNR (Movimiento Nationalista Revolucionario), did not last very long. For most of the 1970s, Bolivia was taken over by a military dictator, Hugo Banzer. (As Bolivia likes to recycle its presidents, even the bad ones, Banzer was later elected to the presidency from 1997 to 2001.) Still, the land reform and the establishment of industrial agricultural in the east left a lasting mark on Bolivian politics to this day.
1985: Bolivia's Shock Therapy
In the early 1980s, Bolivia experienced hyperinflation. The 1985 election was Hugo Banzer vs. Angel Victor Paz Estenssoro, who was the first president of the revolutionary government in 1952. The election was close and ultimately, the Congress got to decide. Before the decision was made, Banzer brought in then-Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, who drew up an orthodox neoliberal economic plan of "shock therapy." This means opening markets, deregulating industry, and cutting social spending. But somehow, once everything shook out, Bolivia ended up with Paz Estenssoro as President - AND Sachs' plan of shock therapy.
An important component of the shock therapy was the selling off of state mining companies and the firing of some 30,000 miners. Many of the fired miners went to the Chapare (in Cochabamba) to grow coca. Remember that they were one of the radical elements behind the 1952 revolution? Well, they remained radical and continued to be a political force as cocaleros in Chapare, as we will see below.
One of the most influential members of the 1985 Paz cabinet was Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (Goni), who later served as President from 1993-1997 and 2002-2003. Several major political parties, including the once-revolutionary MNR, became uniformly neoliberal during this period.
2000-2005: Bolivia's Revolutionary Epoch
In 2000, Bolivia was still firmly in the grasp of neoliberalismo, but the tide began to change with the Water Wars of Cochabamba. This is actually a subject I do not have much information about, but the short version is below. From Wikipedia:
According to The Ecologist in 2000, the World Bank declared it would not "renew" a 25 million USD loan to Bolivia unless it privatized its water services. According to Jim Shultz, executive director of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba, the World Bank believed that "poor governments are often too plagued by local corruption and too ill equipped to run public water systems efficiently. ...[and that the use of private corporations] opens the door to needed investment and skilled management."
We met with the Democracy Center in Cochabamba, although we talked about their current efforts on the climate crisis instead of their past work on the Water Wars.
The Banzer government gave the contract for Cochabamba's water to "Aguas del Tunari," named for a mountain that is an icon of Cochabamba. Actually, of course, it was Bechtel in disguise. Bechtel raised the rates on water, among other things, and protesting ensued. The government sent in law enforcement from other parts of the country to crack down on the protesters. When protest leaders went to negotiate with the government, they were arrested. Honestly, the Wikipedia article on this doesn't seem great, but there is a chapter in a book called Dignity and Defiance (by the Democracy Center) that has been recommended to me as a source for more information.
This event set off a period in Bolivia's history known as a "Revolutionary Epoch." As I understand it, that is a period in which the conditions are ripe for a revolution, but a revolution doesn't actually have to occur. And, in Bolivia, it didn't.
In 2003, massive protests led to the resignation of Goni. His vice president, Carlos Mesa, assumed the presidency until protests got rid of him too. This ultimately led to the 2005 election of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president in Bolivian history.
1992-1999: Formation of MAS
The party of Evo Morales, Movimiento a Socialismo, is known as MAS. This is a great party name as "mas" is the Spanish word for "more." According to Jeffrey R. Webber, "The party originated as the anti-imperialist and anti-neolibearl arm of an indigenous-peasant movement in the department of Cochabamba in the mid-1990s." (From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation, and the Politics of Evo Morales, p. 44.) The original base of MAS were radical cocaleros, many who were came from the group of radical miners who played a role in the 1952 revolution and then lost their jobs in 1985. They were in direct conflict with U.S. coca eradication efforts, literally fighting for their livelihoods against the state and its policies. Webber says:
Ideological convergence and mutual transformation quickly congealed a coalition of social forces in the newly volatile, semitropical setting of Chapare, where the Marxist ideas and organization strategies brought to the area by migrant miners melded with those visions and tactics of the preexisting networks of indigenous and peasant union and community structures. - p. 58-59
He traces this as far back as 1992. In 1995, this movement formed a political party, the Asamblea por la Soberania de los Pueblos (Assembly for the Sovereignty of the Peoples, ASP). At this point, Morales was not the party's leader or its candidate. It ran in 1995 and 1997 elections jointly with the party Izquierda Unida (United Left, IU). In 1998, the group fractured due to disputes between its three main leaders, Felipe Quispe, Alejo Veliz, and Evo Morales. (p. 60)
Two parties emerged in its place - Movimiento Indigena Pachakuti (Pachakuti Indigenous Movement, MIP) and Instrumento Politico por la Soberania de los Pueblos (Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples, IPSP). (Pachakuti refers to the indigenous belief that a bad "pachakuti" - a period of 500 years - will be followed by a good one, and vice versa. The Spanish ushered in the bad one, so the good one should start any time now.)
IPSP was led by Morales. However, due to technicalities, IPSP was unable to become an official political party, so they took on the name of an "officially registered but defunct political party," MAS. (p. 60) Today in Bolivia, you will occasionally see MAS signs that say MAS-IPSP. MAS initially ran in municipal elections in 1999, winning 10 mayoral elections and 79 municipal council seats, but only 3.27% of the vote (p. 60)
During this time, however, the MAS party was not only acting through electoral politics. They were also very active in protests and civil disobedience. Webber says that at this time they were a political instrument, and not just a political party. That is, if elections did not give them the policies they were after, they were all too willing to work through other means.
Bio of Evo Morales
Evo Morales (Juan Evo Morales Ayma) was born to an Aymara family in the Altiplano department of Oruro in 1959. "Four of his seven Aymara indigenous siblings died from illnesses related to poverty and absence of sufficient health infrastructure in the region." (p. 62) In the early 1980s, they moved to Chapare because of a massive drought in the Altiplano. As Cochabamba is primarily Quechua, Evo learned to speak fluent Quechua and lost some of his fluency in Aymara. In Chapare, he moved up through the ranks of cocalero peasant unions, ultimately becoming its leader in 1988, and the leader of MAS in 1998.
2002: MAS Moves to the Center
In 2002, Evo Morales ran for president against GONI, winning 20.9% to Goni's 22.5%. This brought about a major change in MAS, as the party saw that it had a serious shot at winning the presidency in the next elections. Webber says:
The sights were set on contesting the 2007 presidential elections. Parliamentary strategies were privileged over protest politics, as witnessed most dramatically in the relative absence of the MAS in the October 2003 rebellions [which led to the resignation of Goni]. The party began moderating its economic demands in an effort to attract urban middle-class voters, a moderation captured in party officials' constant refrain, "de la protesta a la propuesta" (from protest to proposal). There was an explicit effort made to extend from the cocalero region and ... base to a wider, cross-regional, and cross-class constituency that would incorporate other indigenous movements, peasant movements, the urban poor, and the urban working class; however, the thrust of the new trajectory was to win over urban intellectuals and the urban middle class. p. 63
2005-Beyond: Evo Takes the Presidency but Allows the Right to Gain Power
In 2005, Evo Morales won the presidency with a majority of > 50% of the vote. This is UNHEARD OF in Bolivia, where numerous parties usually compete and no one comes out with more than 50%. In the presidential race, Morales won 53.7% of the vote. Additionally, turnout was unusually HIGH.... 84.5% of eligible voters, compared with 12.5% in 2002.
The next three runners up were all neoliberal parties, PODEMOS with 28.5%, UN with 7.8%, and the MNR with 6.4%. Remember that the MNR was once the revolutionary party. PODEMOS means "Yes We Can" (hello, Obama), which is very close to Goni's previous slogan "Si Se Puede" (Yes It's Possible). Goni was advised by several top U.S. Democratic Party consultants. PODEMOS was a coalition created for that election and I don't think it exists anymore. UN stands for Unidad Nacional (National Unity). Behind the neoliberal parties was the other leftist party, Movimiento Indigena Pachakuti, with only 2.1% of the vote.
MAS also won one house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies. But it lost the Senate, with 12 seats to PODEMOS' 13 - and the other 2 seats were occupied by the other 2 neoliberal parties.
Also interesting is the outcome of departmental prefecture elections, as it shows the political leanings of different parts of Bolivia.
First, there's the Altiplano departments of La Paz, Oruro, and Potosi. Oruro and Potosi went to MAS, whereas La Paz went to PODEMOS. This is odd, as the massive voting force of El Alto is a reliable vote for the left in La Paz. PODEMOS got 37.9% to MAS' 33.8%. A third party, FREPAB, took 11.9%, and MIP took 5.4%. This is not a mandate for PODEMOS and neoliberalism.
Next, the valley departments of Chuquisaca and Cochabamba. Chuquisaca went to MAS, and Cochabamba went to a rightwing asshole named Manfred Reyes Villa who garnered 47.6% of the vote to MAS' 43.1%. Manfred's now a hated figure in Cochabamba, if the graffiti is to be believed.
Then there are the lowland "Media Luna" departments - the Bolivian version of Red States: Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, and Tarija. Think of Santa Cruz as Texas. MAS took 6.0%, 6.7%, 24.2%, and 20.4% of the vote, respectively, in those four departments. Remember the Bohan plan from the 1950's? This is now paying its dividends in Bolivian politics, as the large industrial farming landholders of the Media Luna want a continuation of neoliberalism and are strongly opposed to nationalization of gas and mining. (Most of the fossil fuels are located in the Media Luna department of Tarija, and I believe there is some in Santa Cruz too.)
Without going into too much detail, the end of this story is that MAS turned into a reformist party, not a radical one. They are to the left of the neoliberal parties but that isn't say much (just like it means little to say that the Dems are to the left of the Republicans in the U.S.) Evo has increased state revenues from gas extraction during his time in office, but he has not nationalized either gas or mining, despite the clear mandate he has for both from the peasant majority in Bolivia.
He has also left a lot of room for the right to regain power after the thumping it took in the 2005 elections. Morales has remained very popular, but he set up a process of rewriting Bolivia's constitution in such a way that the right had a lot of control over the contents of the new constitution. At the same time, the rightwing bases in the four Media Luna departments have all voted for departmental authority, by which they mean in large part that they want to keep and control their own tax revenue, among other things. And since these are the departments with the natural gas, the agribusiness, and a huge percent of the country's exports and wealth, that's a big deal.
Evo and Obama
I see a comparison between Evo and Obama, aside from the fact that they are each a racial first in their countries (first indigenous president & first African-American president). Both came in with a lot of change and hope from the populist left, but both turned out to basically be centrists. Of course, the center in Bolivia is to the left of the center in the U.S., so the U.S. still sees Evo as a leftist.
Both Evo & Obama left room for the right to gain a lot of power, and lost the ability to do some of what they wanted to do, even though it wasn't very far to the left anyway. They've each done some good - Obama passing healthcare, and Evo increasing state revenues from gas extraction, for example - but have not gone as far as the left in their respective countries wanted (i.e. single payor or a public option, and nationalization of gas and mining).
In each country, these leaders have been given somewhat of a grace period by many on the left, deferring to the party against their own wishes in some cases, waiting to give Evo and Obama a chance before judging them harshly. This has often led to disagreements among the left in each country, as some want to fight the party in power, and some want to defer to their leadership.
However, the social movements in Bolivia are stronger than those in the U.S. Evo has a true challenge from the left, whereas Obama does not. While I was in Bolivia this last time, there were blockades around the country as well as an indigenous march in protest of various government policies. And these all came from the left.
The next two diaries will go deeper into two current issues in Bolivia: GMOs, and a highway that is planned to cut through a protected area (for environmental reasons) that is also an indigenous territory (TIPNIS), which is being massively protested by the indigenous. |
