[R-G] The Battle in Bolivia: Evo Morales versus the Oligarchy

[Anthony Fenton]

December 1, 2007
Evo Morales versus the Oligarchy
The Battle in Bolivia
http://counterpunch.org/burbach12012007.html

By ROGER BURBACH

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.

Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas  
(CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International  
Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is co-author with Jim  
Tarbell of "Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of  
Empire," His latest book is: "The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism  
and Global Justice."