[Marxism] Roger Burbach on Bolivia

[Louis Proyect]

> The Battle in Bolivia: 'New Left' President Evo Morales Faces Opposition to New 
> Constitution
> 
> New America Media, News Analysis, Roger Burbach, Posted: Dec 01, 2007
> 
> Editor's Note: While both Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian 
> President Evo Morales are trying to transform their countries, the upheaval in 
> Bolivia is very different from Venezuela?s in that it is led by the Indian 
> majority against the historically dominant "k?aras," meaning whites and 
> mestizos. A current showdown over efforts to draft a new constitution is 
> exemplary of this divide. Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study 
> of the Americas (CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, 
> Berkeley.
> 
> While international attention is focusing on President Hugo Chavez and the 
> Sunday referendum on the Venezuelan constitution, a conflict that is just as 
> profound is shaking Bolivia. Evo Morales, the first Indian president of the 
> country, is forcing a showdown with the oligarchy and the right wing political 
> parties that have stymied efforts to draft a new constitution to transform the 
> nation. He declares, ?Dead or alive I will have a new constitution for the 
> country by December 14,? the mandated date for the specially elected Constituent 
> Assembly to present a constitution for the country to vote on by popular referendum.
> 
> A violent conflict that left three dead and hundreds injured erupted over the 
> past weekend in the city of Sucre where the Constituent Assembly has been 
> meeting. After more than a year of obstructionism by the right wing parties, 
> Morales? Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and its allied parties that control 60 
> percent of the Assembly?s vote, approved the broad outlines of a new 
> constitution designed to alleviate economic inequalities, codify a new agrarian 
> reform program and end the apartheid system that the indigenous population has 
> lived under for centuries.
> 
> The ?New Left? presidents that have emerged in Latin America in recent years 
> reflect a social insurgence that is challenging the old political leadership and 
> demanding an economic alternative to the neo-liberal policies of Washington that 
> favor foreign interests and the multinational corporations. Brazil, Argentina, 
> Uruguay, Ecuador and even Chilean leaders are carrying out social and economic 
> reforms, although with the possible exception of Ecuador under President Rafael 
> Correa, these reforms are taking place with little or no defiance of their 
> country?s dominant business and financial interests. Upheavals verging on a 
> revolution are taking place in Venezuela and Bolivia.
> 
> In Bolivia the upheaval is very different from Venezuela?s in that it is lead by 
> the Indian majority against the historically dominant ?k?aras,? meaning whites 
> and mestizos. The opposition to Morales is lead by the eastern city of Santa 
> Cruz where the business elites and the right wing parties exercise political and 
> economic control. In Sucre and some of the other major departmental (state) 
> capitals where the whites and lighter-skinned peoples tend to concentrate, Santa 
> Cruz has recruited allies, particularly among young university students who are 
> acting as shock troops to confront indigenous organizations and members of the 
> Constituent Assembly.
> 
> In Sucre, the opposition demanded that the new constitution move the executive 
> and congressional branches of government from La Paz to Sucre, which used to be 
> the center of government until the late 19th century. This was clearly a spoiler 
> strategy that plays heavily to racist sentiments ? as La Paz and its nearby 
> sister city of El Alto are at the heart of the country?s majority Indian 
> population that supports Morales and mobilized in 2003 to topple a ?k?aras? 
> president in La Paz who murdered Indian demonstrators in the streets.
> 
> When the Assembly passed a draft of the new constitution last weekend, the 
> opposition violently took over the streets and all the major public buildings in 
> Sucre using dynamite and Molotov cocktails, demanding the resignation of ?the 
> shitty Indian Morales.? Parts of the city were in flames as the Assembly members 
> fled, followed by the police a day later, who had been ordered not to use live 
> ammunition against the mobs.
> 
> The right wing and the business organizations in Santa Cruz and allied cities 
> are threatening to declare autonomy and even talking of secession. A special 
> assembly convoked by the Santa Cruz Civic Committee declared that it would only 
> recognize Sucre as the ?location of all the powers of the state.? Branko 
> Marinkovic, a major business magnate and the head of the Santa Cruz committee, 
> declares, ?The fight has begun for our autonomy and liberty?. ? Along with Santa 
> Cruz, civic committees in five other major departmental capitals are calling for 
> an economic boycott to withhold basic consumer commodities from the market and 
> sow economic chaos. A move is afoot by the Civic Committees to ?declare de facto 
> autonomy? on December 14.
> 
> A massive mobilization of the Indian population in La Paz and the western 
> highlands is taking place in support of Morales and the new constitution. Even 
> in the eastern departments where the opposition controls the major cities, rural 
> indigenous organizations are on the move, including in the department of Santa 
> Cruz. The leader of Bolivia?s largest peasant workers confederation, Isaác 
> Ávalos, is calling for a blockade of the cities, declaring, ?we will seize their 
> lands ?if they impose de facto autonomy.?
> 
> ?We are at a national impasse,? says Miguel Urisote, a political analyst and 
> director of the Land Foundation, an independent research center in La Paz. ?The 
> right wing led by the Santa Cruz oligarchy is in open rebellion, but Morales, 
> the Movement Towards Socialism and the popular movements will not back down. The 
> military is supporting the president.
> 
> The radical upsurges in Venezuela and Bolivia have very different roots. In 
> Venezuela, where over 80 percent of the population lives in the cities, it is 
> primarily an urban upheaval that predates the rise of Hugo Chavez. In 1989, 
> the ?Caracazo? threw the existing political order into crisis when tens of 
> thousands of people from the outlying slums of Caracas descended on the center 
> of the city where the rich lived. The social and economic transformations of the 
> past eight years under the presidency of Chavez have been carried out in tandem 
> with the popular classes. The main battle has centered over the control and 
> distribution of oil revenues, while in Bolivia the struggle over land and the 
> right of the Indians to grow coca plants are major areas of conflict.
> 
> While a close rapport exists between Chavez and Morales, the transformations in 
> each country will assume distinct trajectories. They are part of the broader 
> process of social change occurring at different paces and intensities throughout 
> Latin America as the old models of the 20th century