One Year of Evo: economic boom, the threat of balkanisation and the role of the military

Alberto Cruz

On January 22, Evo Morales celebrated his first year as Bolivia’s president. No one can deny that in this time, despite the problems he has had to confront, there has been a clear improvement in the majority of principal economic indicators, possible thanks to the fact that one of the first measures of his government was ending the relationship with the International Monetary Fund. By allowing the agreement with the IMF to expire it has given the government of Morales a certain liberty to push forward with new economic and development policies.

One of the first measures put in march by the government of Evo Morales was to increase its control over hydrocarbons. The high prices on the international market and the increase in taxes for petroleum companies demonstrated to Bolivians that the changes could reach their pockets in beneficial way, along with the social plans that have reached even the most distant and abandoned places: literacy programs, soft credit loans for the purchasing of tractors by agricultural cooperatives, extension of healthcare thanks to the 2000 Cuban doctors and other improvements.

With a starts, and criticism for what has been considered a timid policy at the time of putting into practice the nationalisation of hydrocarbons, what is certain is that it has allowed the country to have a growth rate –talking always in macroeconomic terms – of 4.1% this year, a percentage not seen in Bolivia during the 20 years that the country was subject to the dictates of the IMF and World Bank.

Nevertheless, the critics are not without reason. Although it is true that their exists is an anti-imperialist position, one of independence from the IMF and World Bank, everything possible has been done to preserve macroeconomic stability. “Evaluating the contracts [with the multinationals such as the Spanish Repsol, Brazilian Petrobras, British BG or French Total] and its reaches in working in the interest of national development, it is worrying to verify that we continue to prioritise responding to the interest of the companies who have found in the new terms of the contracts, terms not only acceptable, but moreover, conditions favorable to their transnational character: they conserve their strategic role in the hydrocarbon industry in the country and are obtaining large profits as they further consolidate the role they have consigned to us in their international strategy, that of a primary exporting country” reads one of the specialised reports published at the end of 2006. It continues, saying something even more disturbing: “the possibility of Bolivian initiatives to industrialise gas and petroleum, are possible but overall they do not promise to be of great impact; in large part because the economic resources that should be destined for YPFB are, if not omitted, frankly reduced for a decent time. What is certain is that under the new conditions we have taken on, the interrogation over which resources will be capitalised on by YPFB to assume the strategic challenge of industrialisation remains without answer. Industrialisation within the nation territory and through YPFB loses viability because the new contractual terms opt for ratifying YPFB as a supervisory company and administrator of contracts; renouncing the taking of operative control of the industry and becoming an effective manager of its development.” [1]

The government of Morales has maintained a more pragmatic behaviour and has not given the state company, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales de Bolivia (YPFB), the predominant role that, for example, Venezuela’s PDVSA has been playing, to push forward a drastic change in the improvement of the living conditions of the great majority of the population. A lost opportunity, where one has to point out the important role that Lula’s Brazil has played in “moderating” the application of the nationalisation. Regardless of this, it is not just a few voices who are asking for a “refoundation” of YPFB so that production and exploitation of hydrocarbons is really in the hands of this state institution.

The oligarchy's game plan

The moderate nationalisation of hydrocarbons did not expressly disturb the oligarchy (according to the polls 90% of the Bolivian population supported the nationalisation), but what did was the passing of the new agrarian reform law which if applied to the full extent would suppose the redistribution to campesinos of some 123,000 kilometres squared of idle and unproductive land, a size equivalent to two countries, Austria and Switzerland put together. For now, only 11% of the idle land in the hands of large landowners has been handed over to campesinos. It is not a frontal attack on the large landowners, nor less so, but it is a measure that the oligarchy considered a vital threat to its status quo, given it is where their power is situated: the actual Episcopal Conference of Bolivia considers that 90% of productive land in Bolivia is in the hands of 50,000 people.

Since then the attempts to overthrow the Morales government have been continuous, only changing in form, amongst which the latest is the demand of “autonomy” from a series of departments: Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and Tarija. The oligarchy’s proposal for regional autonomy only won in these departments, and was abruptly defeated in the rest of the country, but the US ambassador in this Andean country, Phillip Goldberg, is playing a crucial role in the plans for what is now occurring. This man has occupied important positions in the US diplomatic missions in ex-Yugoslavia and in Kosovo, which is why his naming was not coincidental, given it occurred only months after the failure in the referendum on autonomy pushed by the oligarchy. In Bolivia the trajectory of this ambassador has been followed in great detail and they speak openly of the dangers of the “balkanisation” of the east of the country [2].

Since that moment, the objective has been to overthrow Morales. The so-called opposition and the economic elite consider that the reforms put in march are a threat to their way of life and they are using all the means possible to impede them being consolidated. It is also a racist struggle: “if us cambas [white, majority inhabitants of these departments] don’t unite, the collas [indigenous peoples] will want to ruin us, given that unfortunately we have an indigenous president” [3]. It could be said louder, but not clearer than this.

Following the partial failure at that moment to impede the passing of the agrarian reform law – and although it is moving forward very slowly – the oligarchy has opted to agitate around the banners of autonomy for what in Bolivia is know as the “half moon”, the most eastern departments which hold the largest reserves of gas in the country and where the most fertile lands exist. During the months of November and December, the oligarchy launched various ultimatums warning the government that if it did not attend to its demands it would declare “de facto” autonomy, to which Morales responded with a call to the armed forces to defend national unity.

Campesino-military alliance

Although the separatist pretensions are not likely to succeed in the immediate future, it is worth looking at the role that the government of Evo Morales has given to the army and recall what the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, did after winning the 1998 elections: rely on the army as the only institution implanted across the whole territory.

One of Morales’ first objectives after winning the election was to neutralise the army, which was a hypothetical obstacle for his government. The Bolivian Army has always been classist, strongly influences by the National Security Doctrine that the US sponsored, which in synthesis considered the army as the guarantor of internal security, that is to say, controlled social mobilisations. Morales wanted to convert the army into his ally and, following the Venezuelan model, “guarantee the democratic revolution”. For this he took advantage of the “missile crisis” – the sending of Chinese missiles in the hands of the Bolivian army to the US during the term of the preceding executive – to put into retirement 28 generals, promoting people in intermediary posts such as colonels, opened the military academy to indigenous cadets (vetoed from entering until that moment) and thereby gained a greater fidelity on the part of the new military estate.

The change in the army, carried out not without fears given that the oligarchy counts on important ties with the estate which have always being faithful to them, was visualised on May 1, 2006, when Evo Morales decreed the nationalisation of hydrocarbons and the army occupied the gas fields and refineries of the multinationals, provoking a undisguised malaise in the European Union, expressed to Morales via the European commissar on energy, Andris Piebalgs and the Austrian minister of the same branch, Martin Bartenstein (at the time Austria held the presidency of the EU). Half a year later the same operation was carried out with the nationalisation of minerals, symbolised in the take over by the state of the Vinto tin smelter plant in Oruro last February 9. Here again members of the army were used and Morales announced that it would be this institution which was to be put in charge of controlling 25 technological centres where future technicians in the field of minerals would be trained up.

At the same time, Evo Morales gave the armed forces of Bolivia the mission of extending social development to all parts of the country in front of the incapacity of the state to guarantee its presence in all the territory and guarantee attention to the basic necessities of the population. That is why it is not uncommon to see a soldier carrying out tasks in eliminating parasites, vaccination programs, teaching literacy – in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Culture – or building roadways. The army has also carried forward the “Free Surgery Campaign” in separated zones, covering aspects that the Cuban doctors, in charge of the preventive medicine, do not.

And this in a moment in which Morales has decided to accelerate the campesino-military alliance by giving military status to the “red ponchos”, Aymara campesino soldiers with a long combative tradition in Bolivia, who he entrusted with defending territorial integrity “together with the armed forces” [4].

The oligarchy has seen in this a real threat and considers them “illegal armed groups”, threatens a civil war and affirms that the popular vote of the departments who accepted the autonomy proposal has to be respected. Here we have an example of the manipulation of information, much liked by the defenders of liberty, and in the footsteps of Globovision in Venezuela: “the government [of Evo Morales] is promoting violence, the exclusion of minorities, racism, sectarianism, it deepens differences of ethnicity, social class, campesinos and city dwellers, rich and poor and is dangerously polarising the country into regions. It does not have the vision to accept that the “half moon” wants autonomy, that they won the vote. It wants to centralise, taking power and control of the state institutions, and lacks a program of government. The election of the judges to the Supreme Court by appointment, signifies the buying of justice” [5].

This is the universal discourse of the oligarchy when it sees its privileges in danger, valid in any country in the world. The first year of Evo Morales has bright and dark spots, but it is necessary to support an experience that has rescued the sovereignty and dignity of Bolivia, at the same time as pushing forward a multicultural and participative democracy never before seen in this Andean country, even despite the rejection of the oligarchy and US. Maybe more and better things could have been done, but what has been done until now is nothing small.

Alberto Cruz is an analyst at the Center of Political Studies for International Relations and Development. Translated from Rebelion

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Endnotes

[1] Bolivia Press nº 12, 3 de diciembre de 2006.

[2] CEDIB, 15 de enero de 2007.

[3] Declarations made by David Torrico, president of the Comité Cívico de Pando to La Razón el 4 de julio de 2006.

[4] La Razón, January 24, 2007.

[5] La Razón, January 25, 2007.

Venezuela Rivals U.S. in Aid to Bolivia

Simon Romero, February 23

LA PAZ, Bolivia — To understand Venezuela’s growing influence here, consider that more than two dozen ambassadors are in this capital city, including those of Bolivia’s leading trading partners like Brazil, the United States and Argentina. Yet none enjoy the direct conduit that the Venezuelan ambassador, Julio Montes, has established with President Evo Morales.

Mr. Montes often accompanies Mr. Morales on domestic and international trips on executive jets provided by Venezuela’s national oil company, say officials who have seen them traveling together. On many days Mr. Montes, who arrived in La Paz a year ago, can be found at the presidential palace huddled in meetings with Mr. Morales or the president’s top aides.

Since Mr. Morales became president little more than a year ago, Venezuela has quickly come to rival the United States as Bolivia’s main patron. It has provided assistance for the army, cattle ranches, soybean cultivation, microfinance projects, urban sanitation companies and the oil industry.

Perhaps most important to Washington, despite its opposition, Venezuelan financial assistance has helped Bolivia push ahead with plans to increase exports of its industrial production of coca, the main ingredient in cocaine.

The coca financing plan has helped Venezuela accomplish one of its foreign policy goals: limiting the regional influence of the United States, which for years has provided Bolivia with millions of dollars in aid in an effort to curb coca production. The United States recently cut its drug enforcement aid to Bolivia by about 25 percent, to $33.8 million, after Mr. Morales acknowledged that the size of the country’s coca-growing areas were about double official estimates.

A senior American official here, speaking anonymously out of concern that Bolivia’s already fragile relations with the United States could erode further, said it was difficult to know the exact amount of Venezuelan aid because many of the agreements between Venezuela and Bolivia were not made public.

Citing Mr. Morales’s efforts to assert greater government control over the energy industry and to rush a military agreement with Venezuela through the Bolivian Congress, the American official said, “It is clear that Venezuela has strongly influenced policy in Bolivia.”

Analysts who have reviewed the various Venezuelan assistance projects say the total may surpass the $120 million in antidrug and humanitarian assistance from the United States, which made Bolivia one of the largest recipients in the world of aid from Washington per capita.

[A report in the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional over the weekend of Feb. 17-18 said President Hugo Chávez had approved a $100 million assistance fund for Bolivia, though it was not clear whether that included assistance for military or petroleum projects.

[“What we are doing in Bolivia is the same that Cuba has done in Venezuela,” Mr. Montes told El Nacional, referring to the thousands of Cuban doctors and social workers who had been sent to Venezuela. “The difference is that the greatest resource of the Cubans is their human capital. We have the possibility to help our Bolivian brothers with economic resources.”]

Not all are pleased with Venezuela’s new role. “We’ve become a client state of Venezuela, in what is a new form of imperialism,” said Óscar Ortiz, an opposition senator with the Podemos Party who has publicly criticized Bolivia’s relationship with Venezuela.

Mr. Ortiz and other opposition legislators have been particularly critical of Venezuelan ambitions that they believe may conflict with Bolivia’s interests.

For instance, even as Venezuela advises Y.P.F.B., Bolivia’s national energy company, in its efforts to assert greater control over ventures with foreign energy companies, Venezuela has moved forward with its own plans to build a pipeline that would export gas to Brazil, currently the main customer for Bolivian gas.

Political supporters of Mr. Morales argue that the alliance with Venezuela has allowed Bolivia to avoid some of the potentially detrimental effects of United States trade and drug policies in Latin America.

“Our comrades in Venezuela are rescuing our way of life,” said Jerónimo Meneces Mollo, director of coca industrialization for Bolivia’s government, which is receiving $250,000 in financing from Venezuela to build two coca-processing plants that will produce coca tea for exclusive export to the Venezuelan market. “No one but Hugo Chávez is brave enough to do this.”

Others point to a prospective trade agreement between Colombia and the United States that could ease the entry of American soybean exports to Colombia and potentially deprive Bolivian farmers of one of their key markets.

In a boon to Mr. Morales’s government, Venezuela answered the threat by announcing that it would purchase a large portion of Bolivia’s soybean crop. Venezuela also says it plans to import 300 tons of Bolivian beef to meet demand in its domestic market, along with as much as 7,500 tons of beans and poultry.

Though much of Venezuela’s aid is related to agriculture, like the donation of more than 300 tractors produced by a joint Venezuelan-Iranian venture, its military assistance has attracted the most scrutiny.

Opposition legislators are trying to overturn a military agreement reached last year that could provide Bolivia with as much as $47 million in assistance intended, among other things, to strengthen the government’s presence in the eastern lowlands, where separatist sentiment runs strong.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British research group, said in a recent report that Venezuela, which is undertaking a rapid armaments buildup, could be providing Bolivia with weapons and financing for new military bases.

Officials from both countries minimized the report, saying any military assistance was intended to assist Mr. Morales by lending him helicopters and flight crews to travel throughout Bolivia. [Citing military officials, the Bolivian newspaper La Razón reported on Feb. 19 that Venezuela was giving Bolivia two SuperPuma helicopters in a good-will gesture.]

“Bolivia is a tremendously poor country,” said Gustavo Torrico, a leading supporter of Mr. Morales in Congress. “Any help we can get is positive.”

Not least, the Venezuelan aid has given Bolivia a source of assistance outside the International Monetary Fund, whose policies are widely criticized in much of Latin America as not having helped the poor. It has also given Mr. Morales the breathing space to carry out popular social welfare programs.

“The direct relationship with Chávez hasn’t been problematic for Evo Morales so far,” said Jim Shultz, executive director of the Democracy Center, a nonprofit institute in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. “The I.M.F. is a banker without clients in parts of Latin America.”

Republished from New York Times

No Smooth Sailing for Bolivia’s Morales

This analysis was prepared by Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) Research Associate Nicki Mokhtari, February 23rd, 2007

As Bolivia’s President Evo Morales celebrated his first anniversary in office on January 22, mounting tensions in the city of Cochabamba led to violent confrontations between two groups—government supporters and those opposed to his authority. The anti-Morales forces rallied in support of former opposition presidential candidate and Cochabamba governor Manfred Reyes Villa. As a result, two were killed and 150 wounded in the strife stemming from seemingly irreconcilable divisions between wealthy anti-government elites and Bolivia’s poor and indigenous who overwhelmingly back Morales.

Villa sparked the Cochabamba protests with his announcement that he would overturn the July 2006 election results in which Bolivian voters rejected the autonomy referendum which would have decentralized four of Bolivia’s nine districts. While the wealthier and more European-like districts in the east pushed for greater self-rule from the central government, Morales fought back by instituting an agrarian reform program in favor of the poor and the indigenous, which would redistribute land that previously was held by the country’s elite. In taking this action, the Morales administration will now have to expect a growing challenge that could eliminate the ties between the two sides, leaving a genuine class struggle likely to plague Bolivia for months, if not years to come.

Class Conflict

Tensions between supporters of Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) and a fractious opposition have existed since his inauguration. After triumphing in the December 2005 presidential elections, Morales defended coca farmers’ rights and flaunted his status as Bolivia’s first indigenous president. At the same time, he thrust hydrocarbon nationalization and land redistribution programs into the spotlight of his socialist movement, as well as toyed with the advanced design of the nation’s new constitution. The new organic document, at last being worked upon by the constituent assembly, will include the revival of the previous 1996 Agrarian Reform Law that was never enacted. This law was intended to redistribute land not presently serving a social or economic function to the poor. On March 6, 2006, the Bolivian Congress approved legislation to create an assembly to draft a new constitution that would include

Morales’ agrarian reform measures

Although the guidelines for change were ambiguous, elections in July 2006 allowed voters to directly select candidates for the Constituent Assembly, with 255 members having approximately one year from the following August, to rewrite the constitution. However, due to the Assembly’s attempt at creating a diversified and representative body that would guarantee seats to minority parties, the necessary two-thirds’ ratification formula for achieving the new constitution consequentially became all but impossible to achieve. Podemos, the country’s leading opposition group holds 24 percent of the seats, while other minority parties have 3 percent or less, and the ruling MAS dominates with 54 percent. With no political party controlling a two-thirds majority of the seats, the drafting process up to now has been frustrated with scant forward motion being registered.

A democratic and representative constitution protecting the rights of Bolivia’s geographically, ethnically and economically diverse population is crucial to the country’s cohesion. This is especially true in relation to the nation’s historically under-represented indigenous communities that normally make up about 62 percent of the total population of Bolivia. Already a few months into what has turned out to be an unusually arduous process, opposition in the Assembly, particularly to specific constitutional changes is more ferocious than anticipated. Not only is there a crippling lack of consensus being demonstrated there, but (as was quickly seen) fierce street fighting eventually materialize between Cochabamba’s poor and indigenous and its euro-elites.

Civil Disobedience

Cochabamba was a divided city on January 11 as coca farmers, many of them members of a Morales-led coca growers union, and various indigenous campesinos occupied the city’s colonial central plaza in opposition to the eastern departments’ autonomy demands. Morales loyalists demanded Governor Villa’s resignation as they were surrounded by mainly middle-class Villa supporters who had blocked off nearby streets. Villa, accused of corruption and the theft of public property, has become identified in the public’s mind as perhaps the most outspoken critic of the central government. He is credited with sparking the protests that began to mushroom in Cochabamba after he announced that he would attempt to repeal referendum results which rejected the idea of eastern autonomy. Armed with rocks and sticks, the campesinos marched around the departmental government building, and, even after being gassed, managed to set the building’s front doors ablaze. Calling themselves “Youths for Democracy,” the ultra right-wing pro-autonomists resembled paramilitary gangs as they beat protesting indigenous with two-by-four planks after the crowds had been gassed by the authorities. The ensuing violence reveals that Bolivia may be rapidly moving towards a militarization of the class conflict that could ignite a civil war between the prosperous eastern and the impoverished western portions of the country.

East vs. West

During the same July 2006 elections, Bolivians had voted on a departmental autonomy referendum that was called for by the secession-minded eastern provinces. The eastern lowland area historically has been estranged from the western highlands due to geopolitical, socioeconomic, and ethnic differences. While the eastern region— profoundly influenced by the presence of the nation’s oil and natural gas deposits, the western provinces typically consist of a subsistent income population. Currently, the constitution grants the department minimal autonomous authority. The central government fears that the four eastern departments are in fact striving for independence, while a majority of the nation has rejected increasing the country’s autonomy. The terms of autonomy and the relative degree of decentralization, (with negotiations being shrouded in obscurity) are supposed to be spelled out in detail by the Constituent Assembly. Yet, the inability to agree on the technicalities of the voting procedure—specifically the dispute over the two-thirds majority vote rule—has frozen the process while pressure mounts from both the opposition as well as pro-government forces to make some concessions to resolve the problem.

The Slippery Slope

These protests are budding beyond Cochabamba’s departmental borders to other regions—more recently to La Paz— where protestors demanded that Villa-backer Governor Jose Luis Paredes resign. Ultimately, the demonstrations previously held on January11 and 22 were unsuccessful in catapulting the pro-Morales group Fejuve (Federación de Juntas Vecinales) into ascendancy because they were unable to force Paredes or Villa to step down from office. Despite the failure of the pro-Morales militants, they have refused to call off their efforts and continue to advocate street action as the means to achieving the desired revolutionary changes.

In the aftermath of the bitter protests in Cochabamba, it became clear that Morales was losing much of his original support among Bolivia’s middle class at the same time that his own constituency—largely composed of the indigenous and working-class— is becoming more radicalized. The middle-class’ deepening opposition to the government’s proclaimed socialist initiatives pose a significant challenge to the forward thrust of the left-leaning Pink Tide movement that connects Morales with such other political notables as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa. The fundamentally class-based confrontation at Cochabamba was representative of the destructive socio-economic divisions that tenaciously prevail in South America’s poorest country, where 65 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Indigenous representatives recognize that regional autonomy would further segregate the country, and with it, intensify their poverty. Their fight for unity in the face of eastern Bolivia’s drive for sovereignty, and perhaps later independence, is motivated by well-ingrained traditions of socioeconomic divides.

Civil War?

Although there has been speculation that a civil war could develop from the escalating tension in the country, some argue that left-wing protestors must resort to more constitutional ways to reform the political system in their favor if they wish to achieve their goals. The coca farmers, who set up a revolutionary committee on January 16 to replace Villa, had hoped for the central government’s speedy credentialing of its mission. Morales, however, denied them the sought-after recognition and insisted that a dialogue be carried out between the factions in order to more easily resolve the issue. Morales’ inability to satisfy his supporters through more effective ways of dealing with their extreme demands demonstrates the challenges he must juggle in order to maintain accord, please his constituents, and check the opposition’s growing momentum in favor of eastern autonomy.

Tug-O-War

For the time being, prospects for a civil war have fizzled. Although Villa has returned to Cochabamba where he will attempt to resume his rule there, the sensitive class divisions are deeply embedded in different parts of the country. As persistent frictions have prevailed since Morales’ election, the current congressional stalemate has created a grey area in which refulgent rhetoric projects a false image of efficacy, while in actuality, few tangible results beyond utter confusion are to be seen. Cochabamba points to breaking point for the traditional system’s growing irrelevance that has been constantly communicated throughout Bolivia’s modern era. Today, both sides are entrenched in positions that don’t allow for easy compromise.
The president is in a political bind. As he attempts to keep the indigenous population reasonably content, he must also avoid simply placating the opposition too egregiously, while he strives to attract at least some of them to adopt his platform. At the same time, and in order to prevent further street unrest, Morales has proposed a recall referendum where unpopular mayors and prefects—or even presidents—who have not won at least 50 percent of the vote, will have to be reelected by a popular vote in order to keep their seats. Governor Villa will be the first official to have to submit himself to a recall because of his 47.5 percent voters’ approval, whereas Morales’ 53 percent in the December 2005 elections exempts him from the process.

Two-Thirds

Morales’ inability to satisfy the country’s indigenous communities is a prime example of the current crisis that he has attempted to downplay by announcing that it would never experience a civil war. However, Morales’ tacit acknowledgment that the concept of civil turmoil in his country cannot be ruled out is admission enough that dangerous internal divisions exist in the country and could erupt with devastating consequences. The protracted incapacity of Bolivia’s Constituent Assembly to reach an agreement on the necessary voting procedures for rewriting the constitution showed that Bolivia’s divisions go at least as deep as the oil beneath its soil.

Victory at Last

The Constituent Assembly finally achieved a two-thirds majority with its ‘article 70’ provision that was signed on February 6 by MAS and the opposition group National Unity (UN). This tentative settlement has enabled the drafting process to begin anew after being on hold since the assembly’s initiation last August. The deal has so far been the first step towards actual progress in Morales’ otherwise stagnant reform process. The slippery slope of political dissent, however, is an issue that even a two-thirds vote cannot resolve. Morales’ primary support is from the indigenous activists and after their failures in Cochabamba and La Paz, many of them believe that the president has not gone far enough to meet their needs. The commission of the Continental Indigenous Encounter expressed dissatisfaction over the adequacy of indigenous representation in the constitutional assembly, and demanded that a separate native people’s legislative body be formed. They also argue that the constitutional assembly represents political parties as opposed to social movements, and therefore undermines the integrity of Morales’ movimiento. The President’s decision to deploy the nation’s armed forces to take control of Bolivia’s oil and gas fields in Camiri, which had previously been taken over by protestors demanding proper renationalization of the energy industry, as decreed on May 1, 2006, illuminates the problem of Morales’s diminishing power over the radicals within his own support base. Protestors blockading the main roads leading into Argentina and Paraguay—through which 85 percent of the country’s trade is transported — reveal that the socialist movement possesses a limited thrust at this time.

Crisis for Morales

With his popularity at 59 percent, Morales still holds a relatively high level of support in Bolivia. During his anniversary speech on January 22, he reinforced his confidence in the current regime by reminding Bolivians that “some thought [they] would be a government without a future… [while] others asked how a campesino could end up being president.” Morales has promoted numerous achievements in the first 12 months of his rule: reducing the salary of high government officials, including cutting his own by 57 percent, reducing energy rates for the poor, raising teachers’ and doctors’ salaries, instituting literacy programs, bringing in thousands of Cuban volunteer doctors to provide free medical care, and endeavoring to nationalize the country’s natural gas resources are just a few of them. Such successes are indicative of Morales’ pledge to give the indigenous Bolivians a voice in their society that they previously had lacked.

However, one must also question the long term prospects of his reforms and see the threats to them as illustrated by the recent combative but inconclusive protests against the government. The question still very much remains: Is Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo really a bona fide 21st century movement like Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution or does it have another, slower-moving agenda, which is ultimately influenced by U.S. desiderata? Despite his efforts to legalize the coca plant and make the product’s legal use available in various manufactured products, there is much to be done if this important goal is to be realized.

The central government has yet to agree on its coca eradication objectives for 2007, fully nationalize its hydrocarbons, or negotiate the control of many strategic multinationals now operating within Bolivia. Vice-minister for coca and development Felix Barra told the local press that as of January 31 the president was considering a proposed reduction of 4,000 hectares in coca cultivation, yet he promised the coca-growers union that he intended to increase the legal plantings from 12,000 hectares to 20,000 hectares. These contradictory commitments prompted one to wonder whether Morales is yielding to U.S. drug-policy pressures to reduce the existing 30,000 “illegal” hectares of coca (according to U.S. estimates), or if he truly feels honor bound to protect the cocaleros rights.

Revolución Boliviana?

Winning the presidential race on a campaign promise to reject unwarranted U.S. exploitation in Bolivia along with his pledge to revamp the constitution for it to display more accountability, from Morales’ point of view, represent the voiceless cocaleros, indigenous and poor, Morales has thus far moved at a pace slow enough to create some doubts over his resolve to serve the people who elected him. Although Morales has been criticized for relying on the guidance provided by his close relationships with Chávez and ailing Cuban president Fidel Castro, his past year in office has shown relatively little for it to compare with the past 12 months of Chávez’s rule. The relatively slow pace of change now being witnessed in Bolivia might run counter to the tempo of Venezuela’s blistering revolutionary-guided agenda. Their difference in pace further helps differentiate the two leftist leaders, yet it is difficult and almost a misuse of time to compare the two left-wing leaders with their dissimilar constituencies and the potential for political polarization that is at least as volatile in Bolivia as is the case with Venezuela.

Surpassing Sectionalism

Bolivia has experienced both the forward movements and setbacks that have affected the Morales administrations this past year. That could have been predicted. Throughout its history, Bolivia has experienced turmoil that appeared to make it unmanageable. In spite of recent upheavals, this Andean nation will most likely not disintegrate as a result of sectionalism. Yet, it seems that the eastern conservatives and the western indigenous could very well perpetuate the country’s historical legacy of unequal wealth, power and privilege, at least for a while. A constitutional drafting process may prove to be an irrefutable prerequisite to mend the political polarization gripping the country and a necessary pre-condition to instill trust among Bolivians. It is hopeful that Bolivian delegates to the Assembly will supersede given political affiliations and act in their nation’s best interest.

Republished from COHA

Morales: No Compensation for Glencore

Dan Keane, Associated Press Writer, Feb 22

La Paz, Bolivia — The government will not pay Swiss mining giant Glencore International AG for nationalizing its Bolivian tin smelter earlier this month because the company illegally purchased the plant and failed to invest in its upkeep, President Evo Morales said Thursday.

Glencore has threatened to seek international arbitration to recover its investment in the Vinto smelter, located on a high Andean plain 110 miles southeast of the capital of La Paz.

Morales nationalized the plant Feb. 9 and has refused to reimburse its former owners, saying Glencore should instead pay Bolivia for failing to upgrade the smelter's furnaces and other machinery.

"If they can document indisputably that they have invested in modernizing the plant, that they spent money on modernization beyond just the purchase price, then we'll have to pay," Morales said at a Thursday news conference in La Paz. "But if they can't show that investment, they'll have to reimburse us."

Glencore officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Previously, Glencore has said it based its demands for compensation on a 1991 bilateral treaty between Switzerland and Bolivia, which it said forbids the seizure of Swiss companies' assets unless accompanied by adequate payments.

The Swiss government said it recognized Bolivia's right to determine its own economic policy within the framework of international treaties, but expected it to meet "in full" its obligations under the treaty.

Built in the 1970s under military dictator Hugo Banzer, Vinto is Bolivia's only mineral smelter and has strong symbolic value. After its 1996 privatization, the plant was eventually bought by Comsur, a private mining company whose largest stockholder at the time was former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

Lozada fled Bolivia in October, 2003 during protests and riots against his administration that left 60 people dead.

Glencore bought the plant from Comsur in 2004 for $14 million, but the Bolivian government claims the plant is worth as much as $95 million.

"Not only the Bolivian people but also the international community and the financial experts know of the shady dealings that the Swiss company conducted with Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada," Morales said. "There should be justice for this swindle."

Morales nationalized his country's natural gas reserves on May 1, granting the state a greater share of revenues and control over operations. But the complex structure of Bolivia's mining industry presents a unique challenge.

Nearly all of Bolivia's extensive mineral deposits are already owned by the government, though state mining company Comibol works only a few. The rest are mined through private concessions split between independent Bolivian miners' cooperatives and giant international companies, including Glencore and U.S.-based companies Coeur d'Alene Mines and Apex Silver Mines Ltd.

Administration officials said initially that the mining nationalization would affect only concessions left idle or lacking investment. Since the Vinto takeover, however, the government has said it may include properties that were sold illegally.

Rising international metal prices doubled the value of Bolivia's mineral exports to more than $1 billion last year from $547 million in 2005. The metals _ mostly zinc, silver, gold and tin _ are Bolivia's largest export after natural gas.

Morales has said he aims to dramatically increase the $45.5 million in mining taxes collected last year by greater state control over the industry.

Republished from Houston Chronicle

Introduction to The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia

Benjamin Dangl

New social movements have emerged in Bolivia over the "price of fire"—access to basic elements of survival like water, gas, land, coca, employment, and other resources. From the first moments of Spanish colonization to today's headlines, The Price of Fire offers a gripping account of clashes in Bolivia between corporate and people's power, contextualizing them regionally, culturally, and historically. Read the introduction below…

***

It was supposed to be a day of celebration for the Virgin of Rosario, the patron saint of miners. Yet events in Huanuni, Bolivia delayed the festival interminably. In place of the celebration, the archbishop presided over a mass for 16 people killed in a two-day conflict between miners over access to tin deposits. As an uneasy peace returned to the town, a nearby soccer field turned battlefield was still carved up by craters from dynamite explosions and stained red with the blood of miners.(1) The desperation that led the miners of Huanuni to turn their sticks of dynamite into weapons is the product of economic policies that have pitted the poor against the poor, leading Bolivian Vice President Alvaro García Linera to describe Huanuni’s tin as "something that should have been a blessing for the country [and] has been turned into a curse."(2)

The clash in Huanuni in October 2006 was but one of many resource conflicts, which continue to ravage Latin America. In the last six years, new struggles and protest movements have emerged in Bolivia over what I have called the "price of fire," access to basic elements of survival—gas, water, land, coca, employment, and other resources. While national and international business and political elites have worked to open Bolivian markets and sell public services to the lowest bidder, the majority of citizens have found that the price of fire has risen beyond their means. In the face of unresponsive government ministers and corporate executives, excluded sectors have often decided to take matters into their own hands. This book looks at these struggles, in which everyday people have risen up against the privatization of survival.

The trajectory of the book uncovers the larger story of a region in revolt, beginning with indigenous uprisings against Spanish rule, focusing in on social movements in the last six years and ending with reports from the first year of the administration of indigenous president Evo Morales. The following chapters view Latin America through the lens of Bolivian protest movements, traveling beyond the landlocked country’s borders to make comparisons between similar resource struggles. These narratives also document the recent transition of Latin American leftist movements from the streets into the political office.

Bolivia has been a longtime lab rat for neoliberalism, an economic system that promised increased freedoms, better standards of living and economic prosperity, but in many cases resulted in increased poverty and weakened public services. When the system failed and people resisted, governments applied these policies through the barrel of a gun. Popular social movements emerged in response to this economic and military violence, leading neoliberalism to dig its own grave in Latin America. The Price of Fire tells the story of the successful movements that developed in the wake of these failed military and economic models.

The first chapter is designed to create a political, social and economic context through which the reader can see Bolivian and Latin American resource conflicts as a continuation of past clashes. This includes not only an introduction to the history of Bolivian indigenous, mining, and farmer movements, but also a primer on neoliberal economic policies and imperial strategies in Washington’s "backyard."

Bolivian cocaleros (coca farmers) organized unions to defend their right to grow coca leaves and resist the military repression of the US War on Drugs. In the second chapter, I address the failures of US-funded anti-coca policies and military activities in Bolivia, and present a history of how one of the country’s most powerful social movements grew in the face of repression, transformed itself into a political party and put cocalero Evo Morales into the presidential palace.

Though Bolivian social movements have always been strong in the face of corporate robbery, the Cochabamba Water War in 2000 brought international attention to Bolivia from the "anti-globalization" activist community. The residents of Cochabamba rose up when the multinational Bechtel Corporation bought their public and communal water systems. In a classic example of the failure of the privatization of a basic resource, the company’s rate hikes and exclusive water rights sparked a revolt that continues to rock the country’s social and political landscape. In chapter three I discuss the disastrous effects of corporate control of water, as well as the lasting impacts the 2000 uprising had on Bolivia and the limited success of the subsequently public-controlled water system.

Much of Latin American economics in the last 50 years has been dictated by the forceful advice of financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. In 2003, Bolivian police took up arms against a government that wanted to slash their pay in an IMF-backed income tax increase. In chapter four, I look at this conflict through the eyes of a soldier turned hip-hop artist and a policeman involved in the street battles, while linking the crisis to Argentina’s IMF-inspired crash just two years earlier. Both conflicts exhibit the disparity between what IMF officials advocate and how these policies play out on the ground.

Governments and economies that favor corporations and wealthy elites have created such an unequal distribution of wealth in Latin America that many people are left without the means to survive.(3) In many cases, the much-needed jobs, land or public space are unoccupied, but off limits. This situation has given rise to social movements which have occupied, defended, and put to use these spaces in order to support themselves, their families, and their communities. In chapter five, I describe common threads between struggles over land in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil and the occupation of factories and businesses by unemployed Argentine workers. I also tell the story of former detainees taking over a jail in Venezuela and transforming it into a community radio station. Each of these occupations was based on the slogan "occupy, resist, produce," a strategy which typifies the larger people’s struggle against corporate exploitation and neoliberal displacement.

The history of Latin America has been one of expropriation. Governments and companies first in Europe, and then in the United States, saw these countries as a source of free raw material and open markets for manufactured goods. Resources, and with them workers’ rights and public services, have been squashed in a post-colonial free for all. In chapter six, I discuss how Bolivians want their gas reserves used for national development, and how Venezuela has used oil profits for social change. The history of Bolivian gas industrialization and nationalization offers insights into ongoing conflicts over the resource. Though the current nationalization process in Venezuela could be applied to Bolivia, policies in both countries have their faults. Here, I explain how one of the countries with the most wealth in its subsoil can be one of the poorest above ground, and how Bolivians tried to change this resource curse through the Gas War, a popular uprising in 2003 that reversed corporate policies and ousted a president.

Better worlds—some that have lasted, some no more than euphoric glimpses—have been forged by Bolivian community organizations and mobilizations where people created their own infrastructure and banded together to demand necessary changes. In Bolivia, where state rule exerts a historically weak hegemony over the country, power is decidedly in the hands of the people. In the city of El Alto, the indigenous and union roots of rural and mining migrants have created a country within a country. These neighborhood organizations have filled the void of the state to build and maintain public infrastructure, make political and economic decisions, and represent residents. In chapter seven, I discuss the history of this self-made city, its capacity for mobilization and how these grassroots strengths were put to use in the 2003 Gas War.

Next to the social organizations and unions, political artistic movements have flowered in Bolivia, creating change in their own way. Chapter eight looks at three social organizations that do more than protest and lobby government officials. Teatro Trono, in El Alto, is a theater troupe of homeless and at-risk children that uses the stage to grapple with difficult social issues and to transform the lives of young actors. The feminist-anarchist group, Mujeres Creando, seeks to change the world without taking power, and fights against gender inequality and machismo in Bolivia. A growing hip-hop movement in Bolivia is using lyrics in Spanish as well as Quechua and Aymara, the languages of the two largest indigenous groups in Bolivia, as "instruments of struggle." These three groups have collectively built their paradises outside the realm of state and corporate power, widening the capacity for broader social change in Bolivia.

While social movements can oust governments and corporations, they also take their toll on stability and transitions between political leaders. Chapter nine deals with the tightrope walk of Bolivian President Carlos Mesa over a country in turmoil. Conflicts regarding water and gas nationalization re-emerged during his time in office, leading the country once again into a national uprising. In this chapter, I also look at other worker and political gains and challenges in Argentina and Uruguay, where along with Bolivia, people-powered movements gained momentum both in the street and the government palace.

At Evo Morales’ traditional inauguration in the ancient Aymaran ruins of Tiwanaku in January 2006, hope was enough to carry the day. Morales, a self-described anti-imperialist, promised radical changes for his impoverished nation, pledging to nationalize gas reserves, expand legal coca markets, redistribute land to poor farmers and organize an assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution. While social movements dance with Morales to the music of globalization, the chains of previous neoliberal policies and right-wing governments still hold the country down.

At the time of this writing, Morales’ campaign promises are in jeopardy and many wonder if his administration has done all it can to formalize and protect the victories forged in street mobilizations. My analysis of the dynamic Bolivian social movements that have emerged in the past few decades illustrates how organized citizens paved the way to the Morales victory. In the last chapter, the lens widens to include Morales’ first several months in office and his place in the current leftist shift sweeping the continent.

This book is a people’s account of re-colonization and resistance, with dispatches from the streets, coca farms, mines, and government palaces. It is based on interviews with activists, factory workers, hip-hop artists, Evo Morales, street vendors, policemen, right-wing business owners, and community radio producers. The similarities and differences between the people, movements, and conflicts discussed here have much to teach. They present a range of creative strategies for resisting global neoliberalism in urban and rural settings. They also manifest an affirmation that these struggles are not isolated events, but part of the battle for vital resources in an ever more populated and corporate world.

At best, this book is but one representation of a vast and complex region. My aim is to make complicated issues more accessible and give a human face to the looting and struggles of a continent. Within that goal and scope, there are many important issues and inspiring Latin American movements that time and narrative do not permit me to discuss in the depth they deserve, or at all. I hope, however, that the accounts presented here will be of use to students and workers, activists and academics, travelers and homebodies, and any combination. In that light, this book provides a colorful introduction to Latin American social movements and resource conflicts, with a focus on Bolivia, as well as new perspectives and insights for experts and longtime observers of a region where corporate globalization has met its match.

Benjamin Dangl

Cochabamba, Bolivia

November 7, 2006

The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia is now available for ordering from AK Press and Amazon. Check out BoliviaBook.com for information on the upcoming book tour.

(Endnotes)

1 "Los sectores mineros de Huanuni declaran una tregua," Especiales/Guerra del estaño. La Razón (October 7, 2006). Also "Bolivia deploys 700 police to quell deadly miners' conflict," The Associated Press (October 5, 2006).

2 For more information on this conflict, see April Howard and Benjamin Dangl, "Tin War in Bolivia: Conflict Between Miners Leaves 17 Dead," Upside Down World, (October 11, 2006), http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/455/1/.

3 Nearly half of the people living in Latin America and the Caribbean are poor, and nearly 20 percent live in extreme poverty. For more information, see Latin America & the Caribbean, United Nations Population Fund, http://www.unfpa.org/latinamerica/.

Republished From Upside Down World

Morales: `Job is to take care of poor'

In an exclusive interview, Bolivian President Evo Morales spoke of his focus on the poor, his admiration for Fidel Castro and also signaled respect for private investment.

Tyler Bridges, February 19, 2007

La Paz - Bolivian President Evo Morales spoke fondly of Cuba's Fidel Castro, expressed gratitude for the support of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and vowed to continue what he called his ''peaceful, democratic revolution,'' in an exclusive interview with The Miami Herald on Sunday.

Morales also rejected the view of many analysts that he has shifted to the left at the behest of Castro and Chávez.

''I'm here to resolve problems,'' he told The Miami Herald during an hour-long interview at the presidential residence. ``Those who say I've moved left or I've moved right have it wrong. My job is to take care of the poor.''

Bolivia is South America's poorest nation, with nine million residents. But Morales has attracted outsized interest abroad because he is the first self-identified Indian to lead Bolivia since it became a nation 200 years ago.

He has also provoked concern among U.S. policymakers by aligning with Cuba and Venezuela -- he noted dismissively Sunday that some analysts call it the ''axis of evil'' -- while bad-mouthing President Bush from time to time, although he did not do so Sunday.

The recent nationalization of a Swiss mining company has also prompted dismay in Europe.

Taking office a year ago, Morales has filled his Cabinet and key senior posts with Indians previously shut out of power, begun expropriating ''unproductive'' land from big landholders to give to thousands of landless families and carried out a so-called nationalization of the crucial gas sector that forced foreign companies to accept substantially higher taxes.

On Sunday, he said foreign mining companies should expect to begin paying higher taxes soon as well.

''We'll respect private investment,'' he said, ``but we have private mining companies that don't pay any taxes. They'll have to begin to pay.''

Morales, 47, seemed weary Sunday afternoon as he entered the French room at the presidential residence, dressed in a short-sleeve shirt, slacks and sandals, but quickly said, in response to a question, ''I'm never tired.'' (Later, he would go play racquetball.)

Morales had spent Saturday at Bolivia's most celebrated carnaval, in the highland mining town of Oruro. He kept leaving his seat in the stands to dance with the colorfully dressed women but laughed as he said, ``I didn't flirt with anybody.''

Morales grew animated as he discussed the outpouring of support he received there, leaning forward as he said he left earlier than planned to avoid the bigger nighttime crowds.

Shrewd politician

Polls have shown him consistently with more than 50 percent support, with his strongest backing coming from poor, rural Indians. (About 60 percent of Bolivians live on $2 a day or less.)

Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida International University professor originally from Bolivia, said by telephone Sunday that Morales has governed shrewdly by making the Indian majority identify with him.

''He's empowered people who felt excluded by the political system,'' Gamarra said. ``Evo is very popular because they see him as one of them.''

Morales has suffered setbacks, however.

A clash between competing groups of miners in the town of Huanuni in October left 16 dead. Critics said his government failed to broker a peaceful resolution.

Regional rifts

Morales' efforts to give Indians a bigger role in government and a greater share of the economic pie have exacerbated tensions between the light-skinned descendants of the Spanish elite and inflamed regional tensions between the free market-oriented east and the socialist tendencies of western Bolivia.

Cayetano Llobet, a political analyst in La Paz, questioned whether the assembly meeting in Sucre to write a new constitution for Bolivia will be able to devise a plan that satisfies both the highland Indians in the west and the lowland residents of the east.

Llobet also said Morales' anti-globalization views could lead to Bolivia becoming ``an island in the middle of a globalizing world.''

Morales proudly noted that Bolivia has record foreign reserves of $3 billion and had a budget surplus in 2006 (of 5.9 percent) for the first time since records were kept in 1970. ''We're no longer a beggar nation,'' he said.

But Gonzalo Chávez, an economic analyst at the Catholic University in La Paz, said high international prices for mining and soybeans are driving Bolivia's strong economy.

Chávez also noted that, ironically, Morales has mostly followed the orthodox policies recommended by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to limit government spending and increase reserves.

Morales spoke effusively of Fidel Castro, saying, ``In all the meetings we've had, he never talks to me about socialism, communism or ideology. He only talks about healthcare, education and natural resources. I'm convinced that Fidel is the No. 1 doctor in the world, the No. 1 humanist in the world.''

Cuba has sent dozens of doctors to Bolivia to treat people free of charge and flown nearly 70,000 Bolivians to Cuba for eye treatments.

Venezuela has also spent millions of dollars in aid.

Morales said he shares a lot of Hugo Chavéz's dreams about establishing a unified South America and said of the Venezuelan leader, ``We have a lot of the same ideas.''

First published in the Miami Herald

Conflicts between oligarchy and social movements: Is Bolivia headed for a showdown?

February 23, 2007

Sarah Hines and Karl Swinehart report from Bolivia on the state of the struggle one year after Evo Morales took power.

AS BOLIVIA’S first indigenous President Evo Morales celebrated his first year in office in January, increasing tensions and confrontations that threatened to shatter the balancing act his government has tried to maintain between the social movements that put him in power and the country’s right-wing oligarchy.

The electoral success of Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party came in the wake of the toppling of two elected presidents--by mass mobilizations of Bolivia’s many social movements against the government’s neoliberal policies, especially regarding natural resources.

Morales was elected with 54 percent of the vote in December 2005, promising to fulfill the social movements’ demands for land reform, nationalization of the country’s natural resources, increased funding for education and health care, a doubling of the minimum wage, respect for coca production, and a Constituent Assembly that would rewrite the country’s constitution.

To the extent that Morales has tried to fulfill these promises, he has faced a relentless campaign of obstruction by right-wing parties that represent the oligarchy of petroleum, mining and land interests. These parties want to prevent any change to the status quo, and to push the Morales government and the social movements on the defensive.

Hoping to placate the right without alienating its base, the Morales government has used radical rhetoric while keeping its reforms moderate and making a series of concessions.

Now, at the same time that the government is faced with stepped-up opposition from the right, it is also beginning to face a challenge from social movements to push reforms further.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MORALES’ POPULARITY surged to 80 percent last May when he announced the nationalization of natural gas--long a major rallying cry of social movements that want the revenues used to develop this impoverished nation, rather than line the coffers of multinational corporations.

Morales’ nationalization decree reversed the formula agreed to by ousted President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. Under the new arrangement, Bolivia will receive 82 percent of gas revenues--resulting, according to the government, in an increase in payments from multinationals from $240 million a year to $1.6 billion.

The government is using the increased proceeds to open new health clinics and hospitals, provide a subsidy to families with school children, increase education funding, embark on a literacy campaign and provide tractors to poor farmers.

But the nationalization affects subsoil resources only--it leaves untouched energy refineries and other installations, which continue to be owned and controlled by foreign companies. Thus, Morales could say, “We are exercising as Bolivians our property rights over our natural resources, without expelling or confiscating anything from anyone.”

The nationalization was supposed to establish the state-owned oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), all but broken by privatizations during the 1990s, as the majority shareholder at all installations.

But according to a recent study by a Bolivian social science research group, the petroleum giants continue to operate with exclusive rights to explore and exploit gas reserves, and control gas operations overall.

The contradictions between the rhetoric and reality of nationalization came to a head at the beginning of February when the residents of the town of Camiri in the gas-rich Chaco region went on strike, blockading a main regional highway and occupying the Transredes refinery, whose primary owner is the multinational Royal Dutch Shell.

The Chaco region is estimated to possess 1.6 billion cubic tons of natural gas, but the strikers contend that economic benefits aren’t reaching the area’s impoverished population. They ultimately demanded full nationalization, with expropriation of all property of the petroleum companies, and with the YPFB actually operating the gas industry, as opposed to playing an administrative role.

The government responded by sending in troops, causing a confrontation that left eight people wounded. “We regret what has happened in Camiri,” Morales said. “Our compañeros have occupied the plants, and the plants already belong to the Bolivians. When a plant is occupied, the company doesn’t lose, Bolivia loses.”

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THE GOVERNMENT has been careful to proceed with nationalizations and other reforms through legal channels.

Yet as has become increasingly clear, the right wing isn’t interested in compromise. It will go to any length to prevent reform--no matter how moderate--and weaken the government and social movements.

The Constituent Assembly, charged with rewriting the country’s constitution, has been stalled for the last six months by the right’s insistence on two-thirds approval for each article. The MAS has offered to compromise--to the point of practically accepting the right-wing’s proposals--only to be rebuffed, showing that the “two-thirds is democracy” cry of the right is, in reality, only a means to stall the assembly until its mandate expires.

After a huge march of the indigenous in November, Congress passed changes to the Agrarian Law that challenge the interests of the country’s latifundistas (large landholders)--in what Morales has called an “agrarian revolution.” In fact, while the new provisions threaten to redistribute unproductive land, they include concessions to the latifundistas and provide time to make unused land productive.

The government has announced that 2007 will see the nationalization of the mining sector and the reactivation of the state-owned mining corporation COMIBOL. The government currently receives only 1.5 percent of the value of mining exports and is proposing that at least half the value of exports be paid in taxes.

Last month, the government announced that it would nationalize without compensation the Vinto mineral processing plant--owned by ousted President Sánchez de Lozada, having been illegally slated for privatization in 1994 when he was still in office.

However, the government has assured private and “cooperative” mining companies that the property of firms “that respect Bolivian law, that don’t rob from the Bolivian people, will be respected.”

Thus, “nationalization” will mean adding state-sector jobs where possible, and seizing assets only where laws have been broken.

Evo is also beginning to see opposition from his own base--the coca growers he used to lead.

Coca growers in both the Chapare and Yunga regions are protesting the government’s “voluntary eradication” plan that would limit coca growing to one cato (equivalent to about 175 square yards or about one-third the size of a football field) per family.

According to both Bolivian and U.S. authorities, the MAS government seized 26 percent more cocaine base and cocaine hydrochloride in its first nine months of office than were seized in the same period in 2005. Nevertheless, the U.S. has still refused to renew its trade with Bolivia and continues to claim that coca production has increased.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE GOVERNMENT’S concessions have not mollified the right.

In December, state officials and “civic committees” of the eastern departments of Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and Tarija--which make up the Media Luna (Half Moon) region, so-called for its half-moon shape--mobilized hundreds of thousands to rally in support of an autonomy arrangement that would allow the elites of these departments to control oil and gas contracts and revenues, independent of the government.

When Cochabamba’s ultra-right-wing Gov. Manfred Reyes Villa jumped on the autonomy bandwagon in December, MAS supporters from around the department converged on the city of Cochabamba to demand his resignation.

The MAS government’s attempts to demobilize the protests once they threatened to escape its control left protesters without leadership or a strategy to push the struggle forward. So while the right came out of the confrontations in Cochabamba more organized, the social movements were demoralized by their failure to remove Reyes from office.

Threats of “civil war” are part of a general strategy of fear-mongering and destabilization by the right wing. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that the new U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, is an experienced “balkanizer”--having played a key role in the breakup of ex-Yugoslavia.

The MAS, unfortunately, adheres to the mistaken idea that confronting the right will only antagonize them further.

As MAS Sen. Antonio Peredo Leigue wrote after the events in Cochabamba, “The leadership of Evo Morales has reined in, once again, the danger of a national confrontation. It is necessary that this leadership be recognized in order to halt provocations. In this context, the process of change will advance more decisively, and the right will be left isolated.”

In reality, the government’s concessions are giving the right room to build momentum--and demobilizing the very base that could defend and advance the government’s program.

Morales continues to enjoy strong popularity after his first year--a January poll showed 59 percent support in major cities and an even higher rate in rural areas. But it will take a further revival and mobilization of the country’s social movements to defend the government against the right--and push for more fundamental social change.

As Eusebio Merlo, a leader of the Federation of Neighborhood Councils in El Alto, put it, “We know that the struggle is long. It doesn’t end with Evo Morales--the struggle continues. It’s a process.

“So, as leaders, we don’t just speak, but we listen to the regions...they want a profound change. We really want for the indigenous to learn how to administer natural resources and learn how to run our country. That’s our vision, the vision of our neighbors and of our leaders.”

First published in Socialist Worker (US)

Bolivia Before Evo - The Gas War

Nationalization Blues in Bolivia, Rock and Roll in Venezuela

Written by April Howard, Tuesday, 13 February 2007

Evo Morales was arguably elected on the platform of nationalization. A country-wide protest deposed president Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada in 2003, and then kicked former vice-president Carlos Mesa out of the Presidential Palace in 2005. Protesters demanded the nationalization of the 48 trillion cubic feet of natural gas estimated to be in Bolivian reserves, the second largest reserves in South America after Venezuela's. However, the road since Morales’ presidential upset last January, 2006 has been anything but smooth. Morales supposedly "nationalized" Bolivian gas in a highly dramatized ceremony on May 1, 2006, but the process has been slow and complicated, and has left many citizens unsatisfied. Under the new policy, the state energy company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) would pay foreign companies for their services, offering near 50 percent of the value of production in smaller fields, and 18 percent in the largest fields. Social sector leaders complain that this plan is not a true nationalization, though the state company has little funding of its own with which to develop infrastructure. The renegotiation of contracts with companies was left until the 12th hour, and did not show much organization or finesse on the part of the Morales administration. Two energy ministers have resigned since the "nationalization," and now the renegotiated contracts have been suspended indefinitely in the face of lack of funds and infrastructure in YPFB. The first weeks of February have seen continued drama in Bolivia’s struggle over the nationalization of natural resources in the mining and gas sectors. Beginning in the last days of January, protesters blockaded the main highway and took control of a gas pumping plant outside Camiri, a city 520 Km south-east of the capitol city of La Paz, forcing pipeline operating Transredes employees to shut off gas flow to Bolivia’s largest cities of La Paz and Santa Cruz. Protesters demanded that President Evo Morales expand nationalization of the country’s petroleum reserves and expand state petroleum operations in the south. Specifically, protesters demanded that YPFB build a local headquarters in their town. The project was in the planning stages before Morales took office, but was cancelled as the administration reorganized the state company. Protesters also pressured Morales to expropriate two Brazilian-owned Petrobras refineries, as he announced he would do last September, but retracted due to international criticism. On February 6, the eighth day of the protest, after 12 demonstrators were injured in clashes with security forces and $500,000 in losses to fuel suppliers, a government commission and the Civic Committee of Camiri came to an agreement to open a new YPFB headquarters and a gas separation plant in the town, as well as expand nationalization in southern regions. The next day, February 7, Morales was forced to meet with representatives of mining cooperatives (private ventures which sell to the state company COMIBOL, as well as other companies) who demanded the repeal of a new mining tax proposed by the government. Conflicts between cooperative (private) and state miners lead to 16 deaths last October in the mining town of Huanuni. The concept of nationalization is complicated in the mining sector, where cooperatives resulting from the collapse of the state industry have gained power and numbers in the last 20 years. Mining is dangerous and often terminal work in both cooperative and state ventures, and when talk of nationalization comes up, it has set miners against each other rather than empowering either sector. In this case, the cooperative miners marched into La Paz, tossing dynamite - as is usual in mining protests. According to the miners, the new tax would have created increases of between 50 and 160 percent to miners’ costs, without figuring in the different circumstances of small undertakings and large mining companies, nor another tax that cooperative miners pay. The agreement made with Morales stated that the new tax would not be applied to cooperatives and that the government would grant 10 million dollars in funds to the 536 Bolivian mining cooperatives (which contain 55,000 independent miners). Also, the cooperatives will be given a third of the six seats on the board of directors of the state mining company, COMIBOL. The week wasn’t over, however. On February 9, Morales sent 200 soldiers to occupy the Swiss-owned Vinto Smelting complex. Morales signed a decree to nationalize the smelting complex, with no plans in the near future to compensate the company. "The Vinto Metallurgical Complex returns to the control of the Bolivian state with all its current shares, allowing the [state] Vinto Metallurgical Company to assume immediate administrative, technical, legal and financial control," the decree read. Glencore International AG, the former owners of the smelter, purchased the smelter from former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to Compañía Minera del Sur (COMSUR) for a value of $100 million. Morales’ plans are counting on $10 million from Venezuela in order to create infrastructure in COMIBOL. Nationalization has caught the news in Venezuela too, as president Hugo Chavez has directed a smoother nationalization of Venezuela's largest private electric company by buying a controlling stake in Electricidad de Caracas (EDC) on February 8. The EDC stake was bought from US-based owner, AES Corp., for $USD 739 million. Possibly up for future nationalization shifts are smaller companies in the electrical sector, oil projects (think Chevron and Exxon Mobil), as well as the country's largest telephone company, CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela, CANTV, 28.5 percent-owned by New York-based Verizon Communications Incorporated. While these countries struggle to renegotiate the meaning of "nationalization," often with limited resources as a result of years of pillaging by foreign companies, Washington's opinion of these projects is expressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who accused Chavez of "destroying his own country'' economically and politically. Chavez is operating from a situation of wealthy and developed industries, which might account for his more successful nationalization projects. Meanwhile, Bolivian gas and mining industries suffer from a historic lack of infrastructure and investment. Morales can be criticized for his lack of expertise in nationalization projects, but with so few successful precedents, and a consistently conflictive social situation, he can be recognized for efforts so far. Of course, he well knows what happened to the last president who refused to fully nationalize. April Howard is an editor at UpsideDownWorld.org, a website uncovering activism and politics in Latin America. She can be contacted at April.m.Howard (at) gmail.com First published at Upside Down World

The March of Bolivia's indigenous peoples

Bolivia – in the midst of the tensions, a new opposition?

José Pinto, 07/02/2007

La Paz.- Between December last year what has passed of February, the government of Evo Morales has traversed through the most difficult period of its term, characterised by an intensification of demands and mobilisation that have obliged it to go back and fix up some decisions linked, for instance, with the refoundation of Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) and with tax increases on mining activities

The traditional parties, at least in a direct form, have not been the key protagonists in these last events as they maintain themselves entrenched behind their slogans related to autonomies, the system of voting in the Constituent Assembly and the media mobilisation regarding the presence of a foreign advisor in the presidency of the republic.

Clearly, it can be appreciated that there are two parallel scenarios in the opposition to the government. The first comes from the official opposition lead by the traditional parties, accompanied by some prefectures and civic committees, The second is concentrated in other actors such as the Camiri Civic Committee and organisations of a corporative economic character such as the Federation of Cooperative Miners.

New opposition?

In the case of Camiri in particular, it represents a radical left opposition that is seeking to reproach the government for a "non revolutionary" character, putting forward demands for expropriation that, certainly do not figure in the designs of nationalisation being pushed by the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). "There is no nationalisation whilst they don't expropriate. The government should make sure it is not mistaken in trying to convince the population of something that is not really nationalisation" affirmed the vice president of the Camireño strike committee.

What I have outlined is nothing new in the social processes that Latin America has lived through and, without going too far, has similarities with what occurred in Bolivia itself during the government of the UDP and in Peru – almost forty years ago – when the government of Velasco Alvarado was confronting the tenacious opposition of the oligarchy, whilst the majority of the organisations of the radical left classified it as bourgeois reformist.

Certainly the Bolivian government had to negotiate with the radical leadership of Camiri, backed by the people, and concede the principal demands contained in the log of claims. The situation with the blockade of the road from Santa Cruz towards Argentina and the take over of the installations of a transnational demanded it. Consequently a new social actor has empowered itself and - it is useful to play with this hypothesis - the existence of a new will that will try to overcome its local vision and convert itself into a political force.

Of course it is difficult to predict the future projections of such a hypothesis, however what was previously the initiatives of just a few personalities who integrated themselves and contributed political content to the economic demands, could come to signify a pole of attraction to other radical sectors trying similar initiatives.

In this way, the Federation of Cooperative Miners has entrusted itself with putting forward another grand challenge to the MAS government. The mining cooperatives emerged as a result of the structural adjustment policy that provoked the closure of the Bolivian state mining company and the unemployment of tens of thousands of workers which until then had worked for COMIBOL. The abandonment of the mines motivated the beginnings of artisan activities of exploration and, later on, the formation of cooperative that, with the passing of years and the increase in the international price of minerals, have converted themselves in the majority of cases into rentable companies which count on a large mass of hired workers.

The cooperative miners supported MAS and were one of its bulwarks in the electoral campaign, but a few months ago they took their distance from the government when Evo Morales made changes to the Ministry of Mining which stems from the quarries, as a result of an attempt to take over a mine with the lamentable result of a number of deaths.

But now, when the government is looking to increase its income by imposing a complementary tax on minerals, the cooperative miners have returned to take over the centre of the city of La Paz. There is no agreement in regards to the numbers mobilised, but all indications are that they are more than 10,000 who, carrying sticks of dynamite, have forced the government to negotiate.

In an extremely tense environment, the negotiation – at the time of writing this article – is underway, headed by the president of the republic. The threats of confrontations with the police remain and the most probable and desirable outcome is that an agreement will be reached; but, no matter what the result is, the implications of the governmental management will cost dearly and will oblige them to redesign their strategies of relations between the social and political.

There remains the future possibility of a political "encounter" between cooperative miners, camireños civicos and other radical sectors, but – for the moment – this is no more than pure speculation.

From the balcony

The traditional parties, after having removed MAS from the presidency of the Senate chambers, can see – with disguised pleasure and forced seriousness - the predicaments of the government. Some spokespeople have not vacillated in affirming that "all of this is MAS' problem" and that "now the social movements are passing on the bill", forgetting – speaking of the spokespeople of previous governments and independent observers – that it was their political organisations which pushed forward the measures of destruction of the mining industry.

In the Constituent Assembly an agreement is on the verge of emerging and it is well known that the opposition does not constitute a solid group, this even includes the mentioned "disassociation" of some members of the PODEMOS grouping. It is to be expected that once the conflict is overcome with the cooperative miners, this opposition will attempt to once again become the main protagonists, but it will be very difficult for them to succeed in initiating mobilisations such as those that have been seen in the last few weeks. What is most probable is that it will continue being restricted to its regional scenarios.

Some characteristics to understand the strategies under way

a) The opportunity: international events such as the Summit of Presidents in Cochabamba and its coinciding with the anniversary of the MAS government, were attempted to be used by the initiating forces behind the demands in order to give them greater resonance.

b) The localisation: although the international story tends to present the conflicts as impacting on all of Bolivia, the reality continues to demonstrate that they have still not reached a national dimension. Except for the unresolved decision on the regulations of the Constituent Assembly, the totality of the tensions continue to territorially involve local or regional actors, such as in the case of Cochabamba, Camiri and the cooperative miners or functionally as with the political forces of the opposition, for the elections of the head of the senate.

c) The rearticulation of the opposition: the biggest achievement was reached in the senate chambers where an agreement between PODEMOS, MNR and UN allowed for the only senator of this force to occupy the presidency of the senate, displacing the MAS candidate.

d) The direct social mobilisation against the opposition: Cochabamba with relative success and El Alto, with adjoining limitations in its failure, were the contexts in which the social movements decided to openly confront the prefects aligned to the autonomist current lead by the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz.

e) The emergence of a radical left opposition: the radical sectors of the left which until now had remained in an almost marginal situation have managed, for the first time, to become active protagonists, politically leading the demands of the people of Camiri which – after eight days of shutting down and blockading the main roadways which unite Santa Cruz with Argentina – have been accepted in their essences by the government.

f) The media reiteration effect: The majority of the mass media continues exercising its influence which converts them into successful spokespeople of the opposition.