Bolivia passes land from rich to poor

Sat Mar 14, 2009

La Paz (Reuters) - Emboldened by a new leftist constitution, Bolivia President Evo Morales on Saturday handed over ownership of farmland seized by the state from wealthy estate holders to poor indigenous people.

Morales handed out around 94,000 acres of lands recently confiscated from five big ranches in Bolivia's wealthy eastern lowlands, a stronghold of his conservative political opponents. The ranchers have been accused of employing workers in conditions of semi-slavery.

"Private property will always be respected but we want people who are not interested in equality to change their thinking and focus more on country than currency," said Morales, flanked by military and police personnel.

Among those who lost land was U.S. cattleman Ronald Larsen, who has emerged as a key opponent of the Morales government's land reforms, which are designed to distribute more of the nation's riches to poor indigenous peoples.

Larsen and other ranchers who had threatened to block the handover of their lands can still appeal the expropriations before agrarian courts.

An Aymara Indian and former leader of coca-leaf farmers, Morales is Bolivia's first indigenous president. He has governed the resource-rich nation for three years.

He is especially popular among the poor and Aymara, Quechua, and Guarani indigenous groups that suffered centuries of discrimination in South America's poorest country.

"Today, from here, we are beginning to put an end to the giant landholdings of Bolivia," Morales said.

The land transfer came six weeks after Morales celebrated the approval of a new leftist constitution that aims to give Bolivia's indigenous majority more power, lets him run for re-election and hands him tighter control over the economy.

The constitution also sets limits on single farm tracts to 12,400 acres and states that farms must meet certain economic and social conditions.

"It is not that these lands were not in production, but that they were the site of human rights violations against the Guarani, who will now be their new owners," Morales said.

(Reporting by Carlos Alberto Quiroga; Writing by Pav Jordan; Editing by Alan Elsner)

Bolivia: `More of the same’? Or a break with `traditions’? The MAS: a paradoxical case of democratisation

Hervé Do Alto

The Santos Ramirez affaire marked, undoubtedly, a shift in the social perception of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). [In February, Santos Ramirez, a former head of the state energy company YPFB, and former head of the Senate from 2006-2007, was charged with corruption and faces a lengthy prison sentence of up to eight years.]

As several researchers of the “political instrument” have highlighted, including Moira Zuazo, the credibility of the party created by Evo Morales in 1999 was largely constructed on bases of ethical politics.[1]

This "ethical principle", symbolised by the implementation of the Austerity Law at the beginning of the Morales administration in 2006, played a fundamental role in establishing the dichotomy between, on the one hand, the so-called traditional parties (members of the "agreed democracy") and, on the other, movements that raised the slogan of the moral reform of the discredited Bolivian politics.

Among them were urban middle-class organisations that struggled against corruption and the authentic transparency of electoral mobilisation – such as the Movement Without Fear (MSM), which repeatedly criticised the “partydocracy” – and movements, such as the MAS, that insisted in rejecting the label of "party" in favour of “instrument" – emphasising, also, its close links to the popular organisations (trade unions, local committees ...) which led the period of protest that rocked the Bolivian political system beginning with the "water war" of 2000.

Ethics as `symbolic principle’

In light of the scandal which seriously affects the public image of the "honest" party which benefited the MAS so far, it begs asking a simple question, frequently debated in the Bolivian media by the generators of opinion – with the vast majority linked to the neoliberal ancien régime – that have access to newspapers columns with greater circulation, or to the screens of television channels with more diffusion: is the MAS not just more of the same? Does not the “Ramirez case” illustrate, perhaps, the failure of the MAS in its effort to renovate political practices – including the classic “cronyist” vision of public administration – and democratisation of political life?

By the very fact of having erected the "honesty" in symbolic principle, i.e., in the form of authority in front of the rest of the parties that structure the institutional political sphere, the leaders of the MAS are in a paradoxical situation: all observers and rivals alike demand from them a permanent demonstration of political ethics in their daily practice, including those, that in the years of the “agreed democracy”, were able to assume public office in times when "cronyism", the "quota" and the extensive use of the famous reserved expenses were seen as part of the routine exercise of power. In other words, the MAS was not allowed any stumble in ethical order, less by those who, yesterday, were stigmatised for not having respected these principles.

In that way it can be understood how a case of relatively “mild” corruption – the sale of guarantees in January 2007 – in which a few thousand dollars circulated in exchange for state positions could unleash a media scandal of an enormous scale, without giving the slightest attention to the sociological dynamics which permits one to understand the "why" of the facts. This is not to apologise for objectively questionable attitudes (such as the acceptance of bribes or the imposition of clientelistic practices in the selection process of public staff), but to see how, precisely in a party that includes ethics and honesty as a component of its political identity, its own militants arrive at such paths.

The peasant matrix

Founded in January 1999 on the initiative of Evo Morales and his followers, the MAS-IPSP [Instrument for the Sovereignty of the People] was initially presented as a sort of “extension” of rural trade unionism within the institutional political sphere. In this sense, political militancy was presented as the logical continuation of a rural militant trajectory – a tendency reinforced by the gradual hegemony of Morales over the entire peasant movement, having managed to marginalise his rivals Felipe Quispe and Alejo Veliz – and not as a parallel activity to the trade union activity, as was often the case in the COBista unionism. And this "genetic letter" will have a decisive influence on the constitution of the party later.

The unexpected arrival of Evo Morales in second place in the 2002 presidential elections would generate an expectation among the popular sectors that would begin to build a MAS party apparatus genuinely urban, with a view to the 2004 municipal elections. Likewise, a strict link does not exists between the popular-urban mobilisations of 2000-2005 and the growth of MAS-IPSP in the cities: in fact, in a city with a strong MAS vote today such as El Alto, the days of October 2003 did not play a fundamental role in the implementation of the MAS, but rather the disaffiliation of El Alto people from the traditional parties. The perspectives of victory created within the party such as MAS that could be characterised as “peasant” then led to a process of “forced implantation”: building the party becomes a necessity, but carries with it the risk of a “distortion” of what is the “instrument”.

From there the distinction between urban and rural areas within it, is reproduced in all areas where it acts. In parliament, tensions regularly arise between uninominal and plurinominal deputies in the period 2002-2005. The first, with a peasant trade union profile, elected by their bases, repeatedly denounced the attempts of the second, with a middle-class profile (intellectuals, NGOists and/or ex-militants from left), of driving the activities of the bench, in a institutional space in which the latter reveal themselves much more comfortably. Here, unlike the “principled militant” – understood as knowledge accumulated over time – among urban and rural areas is to emphasise the difficulty for peasants to adapt to the new sphere, as well as changes in the party for the incursion into the institutional space, whose centre of decision-making is no longer the National Directorate, but the bench. In a sense, the presence of the MAS in the national institutional enclosures creates the possibility of the reproduction of domination, structural in Bolivian society, of the peasants within their own emancipatory tool.

In response to this process at the institutional level, peasant leaders will aim to consolidate their domination in the party apparatus, before the urban militants that are converted into second rank: likewise, the access to “work” -- that becomes an incitement to militancy of great importance after the victory of Morales in 2005 -- is growing and tightly controlled by union leaders. And there are few cases of “compañero” peasants whose entry into public office translates into an experience of symbolic violence that is particularly hard, that often ends in the desertion of the job post.

Being a popular-urban militant in the MAS, therefore, requires recourse to a wide range of strategies to legitimise to the rest of a party that, while there is diversification from a sociological point of view, remains configured by its peasant matrix. To be able to obtain “work” through the militancy within the MAS, it is necessary, therefore, to gradually forge a series of alliances with rural leaders who, subsequently, consolidate the legitimacy of the "urban" militant in front of their rivals who are in competition for “work”.

Such situations, of course, leads to internal conflicts if these same urban sections are not adequately channelled through by the rural leaders. Thus, in 2006, the divisions between campesinos in departments such as La Paz or Beni have led to the utilisation of the urban section as "cannon fodder", as each campesino fraction demands from the cities an absolute loyalty to it. This led, in the cities, a reproduction of the divisions that govern the sphere of rural organisations.

The ambiguous attraction to the state

It would be easy to draw from this analysis the conclusion that, within the MAS, there is a "peasant tyranny" underway towards the urban sectors, a desirable myth to give validity to the prejudices according to which the peasant movement does not demonstrate nothing but contempt to the exercise of representative democracy.

Such a conclusion would deny two fundamental problems. First, the symbolic structural domination suffered by peasants and indigenous peoples in Bolivian society, against which the MAS was constructed as a political project. While it is true that the history of colonisation has been a history of mixed races and the building of mutual loyalty, a history of which campesinos have been active subjects – illustrating up to some extent what could be a process of “voluntary servitude” [2] – there is no doubt that the configuration of Bolivian society has been constructing on the establishment of unequal and asymmetrical relations between “colonisers” and “colonised”, structuring also an exclusive society based on an often blatant racism.

This structural dominance has not stopped in staining the most ambitious projects of emancipation that Bolivia has known, as the National Revolution of 1952, or even the left-wing parties that reduced the “peasant compañero” to a strategic ally devoid of any political initiative worthy of being taken into account. In some ways, the permanent struggle conducted by the peasant leaders for preservation of the monopoly of power within the MAS – a party built by them and for them – is a struggle for preservation of the originality of a political project that, for the first time, consecrates the autonomy of the peasants as political subjects. In that sense, although the extension of the party to the cities, in a country highly urbanised, imposed an obligation to decisively consolidate a hegemony at a national level, it becomes even more necessary to contain any danger of professionals and other “white-collar” people who take ownership, tomorrow, of the “instrument”, beyond asking if, in case the situation presents itself, the continuation of the MAS as a party would still have some meaning.

To this socio-historical matrix specific to the peasant movement, it should be added as another key part of the analysis, above all to understand the permanence of clientelistic practices within it: the Bolivian state. Indeed, this was, in large part, an essential component of the structural domination suffered by rural trade unionism. As Max Weber sensed by observing the incipient German social-democratic movement, the risk of a party is not so much penetrating the state, but being penetrated by it and by its operational logic.

Paradoxically, although the peasant movement has been marginalised throughout many years in the institutional political sphere, there is no doubt that the latter exercised upon him a principled influence. The relationship established by the revolutionary State (1952-1964), then the military regimes until the slaughter of Tolata (1964-1974) with the National Confederation of Rural Peasants of Bolivia (CNTCB), was based on the use of co-optation, resulting in systematically instrumentalising the movement [3]. And the state as a loot, which can be accessed as a kind of “lesser evil” compared to the structural dominance, other potential sources of revenue were added with the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s: NGOs and international cooperation. Without a doubt, to break with a vision both of the state as with international cooperation as "baby bottles" will not depend solely on the ethics of the leaders, but also on the structural changes carried out by the government in order to put an end to the “NGOist projector” [4] and generate a renewed model of development in which the state (and its “work”) do not appear as the main channel of social ascent that the country's economy can provide for the most humble sectors of Bolivian society.

Upon massively penetrating the institutional political sphere beginning from 2002, the peasant leaders were faced with another challenge, even more important. In a strict continuity with its previous approaches, the MAS would continue, in each of its electoral appearances, emphasising “honesty” as part their political identity, which would be illustrated systematically by a rejection of public financing of their campaigns. Likewise, all candidates nominated by the MAS have an obligation to self-finance their campaigns – which implies the possession of sufficient financial resources – leading some of them into debt, sometimes significantly, to be able to compete with the possibilities of being elected.

In the 2005 elections, that “honesty” was translated into a key demand: the “institutionalisation” of the state, understood as a break with the traditional practice of the total renewal of state personnel with the arrival of each new government, emphasising also the intrinsic quality of public officials, whose presence in the administration no longer depended on partisan affiliation. The demands completed two objective strategies: on the one hand, it was about conserving those public officials with the abilities of management of which the vast majority of the MAS militants lacked – the spectrum of a scenario “do it as the UDP [Popular and Democratic Unity]” obsessed then some of the MAS cadre – and, on the other hand, to reassure the Bolivian middle class which stigmatises the “inexperience” of Evo Morales and his party.

If the MAS comes to fulfilling its promise in its first year of government, with the replacement of public officials limited to no more than 5% [5], the pressure by the “cronyists” exercised by the “bases” – fundamentally the urban sections – illustrated by the repeated questioning of their leaders in many public events, led the ruling party to proceed to a gradual, but significant, opening of public positions to its militants.

In this particular context, which combines a tremendous shortage of available positions accessible to the militants due to external causes (a reduced neoliberal state) and internal (the promise of the party to institutionalise the public service) and an exasperation of these against an organisation that does not comply with the traditional role attributed to a political party in Bolivia (the granting of a public position against the participation in the electoral mobilisation) which gives the scandal of the sale of guarantees in the Departmental Directorate of the MAS in La Paz, in January 2007.

It should be noted here that the practice of “guarantees”, existent since the National Revolution, is generalised as a means of regulation of access to the public service since the1990s, when the neoliberal reforms severely affected the ability of the governments effort to satisfy “work” for its militants. In a sense, the circulation of guarantees is again, since the beginning of that period, a common practice within the parties who control the state apparatus.

The scandal, the first major blow to the “honesty” of the MAS, will involve some prominent leaders, both of a local and national level, but will be soon forgotten. However, it is significant, that among the Bolivian opinion makers, to have not only reproached the party of Morales for the sale of guarantees, a case of corruption reprehensible in itself, but also the deed of having resorted to that method of selection, precisely when dealing with a widespread practice whose use arises in the proper structure of the national political institutions, as with the militant praxis common to all Bolivian political parties.

More of the same?

To evaluate the contribution of the MAS to the democratisation of the Bolivian political life in light of the recent cases of corruption that has been shaking the government of Evo Morales has little sustenance for now, and this for several reasons. Among them, the “individual” character of these, which does not reveal any system of systematic corruption within the party, as seen with the mensalão scandal that brought to light a system of buying votes from Brazilian parliamentarians, in 2005, by the ruling Workers Party. However, there is no doubt that the “Ramirez case” will be a litmus test for the government of the MAS if it intends to preserve its “ethical principle” in the future. This case, indeed, is showing a lack of control that may currently exist in the ruling party over its own leaders in the performance of their duties. But beyond the individual dispositions of the protagonists in facilitating these events, it should be emphasised the role of the Bolivian political structure that permits the expression of these types of dispositions with ease, and the difficulty the government has to remove them. Combined with the difficulty of replacing the debilitated neoliberal institution – including the judiciary apparatus – with a new institutional framework in line with the new post-liberal and decolonised principles.

From there should we draw the conclusion that the MAS is, finally, more of the same? Many of the criticisms formulated these days against the government party on the basis of this scandal are fuelled by the caricature vision that many of the editorialists maintain on this, as combined with the Bolivian popular organisations.

It is not about denying here that this latest evidence shows, frequently, many dark faces. Clientelism, the lack of internal democracy, verticalism and authoritarian practices, without physical violence, are some of the facets of these movements that undermine its credibility before the middle classes. But do these characteristics have anything to do with the criminal practices observed in the Ramirez case?

The challenge consists in trying to understand where these characteristics come from that are so stigmatised by the middle class: perhaps clientelism which is so criticised does not come directly from practices imposed by the rulers of yesterday, who did not hesitate to use them to benefit their own interests? Perhaps the use of physical violence is not the result of a long history of bloody confrontations with the repressive state, as occurred in El Alto in the days of October 2003, or, more recently, during the slaughter of El Porvenir on September 11, 2008?

Undoubtedly, a lot remains to be done in the Bolivian popular movement and the MAS to meet the heights of the political, economic and moral reforms which the majority of Bolivians expect, and that is in many areas. But to evaluate their commitment to democracy in light of their more obvious defects lacks intellectual honesty. In fact, the French political scientist Dominique Colas, studying the case of the communist parties of Western Europe, noted a curious phenomenon: despite the obvious lack of internal democracy within their organisations, the Communist militants, to develop in a democratic environment, began to internalise democratic practices such as voting or contradictory debate, and show a commitment to the rules of democracy, such as multiparty competition.

But at the same time, these parties extended the democratic game to workers and to the popular sectors previously excluded. And it is precisely what we observe in Bolivia in the case of the MAS: although one can observe a deficient internal democracy, authoritarian attitudes or psychological pressure, the MAS contributes decisively to entrenching democratic practices in a profound manner in the emerging militants in sectors hitherto marginalised from the institutional political sphere.

Moreover: having won a series of elections, representative democracy won validity before the popular movement as a whole. What better way to illustrate the manner of which has resolved the political crisis that crossed the country in recent years: both in the "gas war" as in the days of May-June 2005, the constitutional avenue was imposed by the will of the popular movements. Is this democratisation paradoxical? Perhaps. But it is real, without a doubt.

Hervé Do Alto is a political scientist (IEP Aix-en-Provence. France). He is co-author, with Paul Stefanoni, of Evo Morales: from coca farmer to the presidential palace (Malatesta, La Paz, 2006).

Translated for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal by Gonzalo Villanueva with Do Alto’s permission. It was first published in Le Monde diplomatique (Bolivian edition) Febrero 2009, nº 11, pp. 6-8.

Notes

[1] Moira Zuazo, ¿Cómo nació el MAS? La ruralización de la política en Bolivia, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, La Paz, 2008.

[2] Sinclair Thomson, Cuando sólo reinasen los indios; La política aymara en la era de la insurgencia, Muela del Diablo/Aruwiyiri, La Paz, 2006.

[3] Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Oprimidos pero no vencidos; Luchas del campesinado aymaray qwechwa 1900-1980, Aruwiyiri/Yachaywasi, La Paz, 2003 [1984].

[4] Antonio Rodríguez-Carmona, El Proyectorado, Bolivia tras 20 años de ayuda externa, Intermón-Oxfam, Barcelona, 2008.

[5] Conferencia de Álvaro García Linera, Washington D.C., EE.UU, 21 de julio de 2006.

Evo Morales in NYT: Let Me Chew My Coca Leaves

Evo Morales Ayma, March 14, 2009

THIS week in Vienna, a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs took place that will help shape international antidrug efforts for the next 10 years. I attended the meeting to reaffirm Bolivia’s commitment to this struggle but also to call for the reversal of a mistake made 48 years ago.

In 1961, the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs placed the coca leaf in the same category with cocaine — thus promoting the false notion that the coca leaf is a narcotic — and ordered that “coca leaf chewing must be abolished within 25 years from the coming into force of this convention.” Bolivia signed the convention in 1976, during the brutal dictatorship of Col. Hugo Banzer, and the 25-year deadline expired in 2001.

So for the past eight years, the millions of us who maintain the traditional practice of chewing coca have been, according to the convention, criminals who violate international law. This is an unacceptable and absurd state of affairs for Bolivians and other Andean peoples.

Many plants have small quantities of various chemical compounds called alkaloids. One common alkaloid is caffeine, which is found in more than 50 varieties of plants, from coffee to cacao, and even in the flowers of orange and lemon trees. Excessive use of caffeine can cause nervousness, elevated pulse, insomnia and other unwanted effects.

Another common alkaloid is nicotine, found in the tobacco plant. Its consumption can lead to addiction, high blood pressure and cancer; smoking causes one in five deaths in the United States. Some alkaloids have important medicinal qualities. Quinine, for example, the first known treatment for malaria, was discovered by the Quechua Indians of Peru in the bark of the cinchona tree.

The coca leaf also has alkaloids; the one that concerns antidrug officials is the cocaine alkaloid, which amounts to less than one-tenth of a percent of the leaf. But as the above examples show, that a plant, leaf or flower contains a minimal amount of alkaloids does not make it a narcotic. To be made into a narcotic, alkaloids must typically be extracted, concentrated and in many cases processed chemically. What is absurd about the 1961 convention is that it considers the coca leaf in its natural, unaltered state to be a narcotic. The paste or the concentrate that is extracted from the coca leaf, commonly known as cocaine, is indeed a narcotic, but the plant itself is not.

Why is Bolivia so concerned with the coca leaf? Because it is an important symbol of the history and identity of the indigenous cultures of the Andes.

The custom of chewing coca leaves has existed in the Andean region of South America since at least 3000 B.C. It helps mitigate the sensation of hunger, offers energy during long days of labor and helps counter altitude sickness. Unlike nicotine or caffeine, it causes no harm to human health nor addiction or altered state, and it is effective in the struggle against obesity, a major problem in many modern societies.

Today, millions of people chew coca in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and northern Argentina and Chile. The coca leaf continues to have ritual, religious and cultural significance that transcends indigenous cultures and encompasses the mestizo population.

Mistakes are an unavoidable part of human history, but sometimes we have the opportunity to correct them. It is time for the international community to reverse its misguided policy toward the coca leaf.

Evo Morales Ayma is the president of Bolivia. Republished from NYT

Bolivia’s Morales Asks UN to Recognize Legal Coca Use in Letter

Jonathan J. Levin

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales asked the United Nations to recognize traditional uses of the coca leaf, the raw ingredient in cocaine, in a letter addressed today to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

“Chewing coca leaves is a thousand-year-old practice of the indigenous communities in the Andes mountains that can’t and shouldn’t be prohibited,” Morales wrote, according to a copy of the letter e-mailed by the Foreign Ministry.

Morales has encouraged the industrialization and possible exportation of coca products such as teas and liqueurs since taking office in 2006. Bolivia is the third-biggest producer of coca in the world after Colombia and Peru, and total production was about 28,900 hectares (71,413 acres) in 2007, more than double the 12,000 hectares allowed under Bolivian law, according to the most recent United Nations drug report.

The president, an Aymara Indian and former coca farmer, said in the letter that the leaf is harmless and non-addictive, containing only trace amounts of the alkaloid cocaine.

Morales chewed the leaves at a UN conference on drug policy in Vienna, Austria, yesterday as he asked the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to reverse its 48-year-old decision to qualify the coca leaf as a narcotic, according to official state news agency ABI. The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs said chewing of the coca leaf must be abolished within 25 years.

The coca policies “established by the UN in 1961 constitute a threat to the rights of indigenous communities,” Morales wrote.

Morales’s popularity has grown amid a surge in Bolivian nationalism that glorifies indigenous culture and demonizes the U.S. for its coca eradication programs. A new constitution approved in January for the first time protects coca as a cultural heritage and a “factor in social cohesion.”

The Bolivian leader says the problem of drug trafficking should be stopped by curbing consumption in major markets like the United States and Europe.

Bolivia Expels Second U.S. Diplomat

Associated Press

LA PAZ , Bolivia -- President Evo Morales on Monday ordered a U.S. diplomat to leave the country, alleging he was conspiring with opposition groups. The leftist leader already had expelled the U.S. ambassador six months earlier.

Mr. Morales said that "deep investigations" had determined the U.S. Embassy's second secretary, Francisco Martinez, "was in permanent contact with opposition groups."

The U.S. government had no immediate comment, though an embassy official said Mr. Martinez was a career diplomat whose portfolio was political affairs. The official was not authorized to discuss the expulsion and thus spoke on condition of anonymity.

Last week, Mr. Morales publicly accused Mr. Martinez of "coordinating contacts" with a Bolivian police officer he accused of infiltrating the state oil company on behalf of the CIA. The oil company has been plagued by a corruption scandal that landed its president, a close Morales ally, in jail.

The U.S. government last week called Mr. Morales' accusation about alleged CIA infiltration of the company baseless and accused him of using the United States as a scapegoat in domestic politics.

"We can't understand how the president can assure us that he wants better relations with the United States and at the same time continue to make false accusations," Denise Urs, an embassy spokeswoman, said last week in a statement.

In September, Morales expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, alleging he was inciting the political opposition. The move followed bloody rioting between Morales supporters and pro-autonomy activists in Bolivia's wealthier, unabashedly capitalist eastern lowlands.

Mr. Morales later kicked out the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, accusing it of espionage and of funding "criminal groups" seeking to undermine his government. He alleged intrigue that he did not detail.

A former coca-growers union leader, Mr. Morales is Bolivia's first indigenous president and is seeking to "refound" the country on behalf of its long-suppressed native majority.

In promoting a socialist agenda, Mr. Morales nationalized control of Bolivia's natural gas reserves in mid-2006, alienating many foreign investors and further polarizing South America's poorest nation.

Mr. Morales is a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who kicked out the U.S. ambassador in September in solidarity with Morales,

In 2005, Mr. Chavez suspended his country's cooperation with the DEA, similarly accusing its agents of espionage.

BOLIVIA: Fears for safety of pro-indigenous rights NGO director

Amnesty International campaign regarding fear for safety Miguel Esteben González Bonilla (m), regional director of the Centre for Legal Studies and Social Research (Centro de Estudios Jurídicos e Investigación Social, CEJIS)

05 March 2009

On 27 February, a work vehicle being driven by Miguel González was shot at by two men on a motorcycle. The shot narrowly missed him. Amnesty International is seriously concerned for his safety.

Miguel González works for the Centro de Estudios Jurídicos e Investigación Social (CEJIS), which promotes the rights of Indigenous and peasant communities, including assisting communities in claiming their communal land rights. Miguel González is the regional director of the CEJIS office in the town of Trinidad, capital of Beni department, in the north of Bolivia.

Miguel González had been followed three days earlier on 24 February. He was followed first by a red and silver van with tinted windows and then a motorcycle. As he drove towards his house on the outskirts of the town, he noticed the van following him. The van flashed at him as if he wanted to overtake. However, when he stopped to let the van pass, it stayed behind him. The van then made a turn in front of Miguel González who turned in the opposite direction and noticed he was still being followed by a motorcycle. When the motorcycle had to give up the pursuit due to the difficult terrain the rider shouted insults at him.

On several occasions unidentified individuals have called at Miguel González’ home asking his family members for his whereabouts. Following the recent attack Miguel González filed a complaint with both the police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Trinidad. However, so far no protection has been provided. Fearing for their safety, he and his family have left their home in Trinidad to go into hiding.

The latest attack comes after a series of acts of intimidation against CEJIS staff in Trinidad. In August 2008 armed motorcyclists turned up at the CEJIS offices waiting for staff members to arrive. Fortunately, staff were warned by a neighbour. Days later, at the beginning of September 2008, members of the opposition Union of Beni Youth (Unión Juvenil Benianista), attempted to seize CEJIS’ offices in Trinidad during a campaign of seizures of government and private institutions. However, on this occasion the gangs of youths were unable to locate the CEJIS offices or members of staff. During this period of violence CEJIS staff worked from home in fear for their safety. Numerous staff members have also reported receiving threats and insults as a result of their work. Following this incident, in September, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures ordering the protection of CEJIS members of staff in Trinidad. However, no protection was provided by the authorities and it was not until January 2009 that the police visited the CEJIS offices to follow up on their security situation.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Attacks against CEJIS have threatened their work for many years. Other CEJIS offices have also been subjected to threats and harassment as a result of their work. On 9 September 2008, in the city of Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia, the CEJIS headquarters were seized and looted by university students and members of the opposition Union of Santa Cruz Youth. Their offices were broken into, equipment and furniture destroyed and 30 years of CEJIS records and files looted and burnt. Two other NGOs that promote the rights of indigenous and peasant communities, local branches of government offices and two media outlets were also targeted.

Racially-motivated attacks on organizations and individuals working for the rights of Bolivia’s Indigenous Peoples and peasant farmers (campesinos) and advocates of land reform have been common in Bolivia. In a recent report the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples expressed concern about persistent racism in Bolivia. He observed that racist discourse, employed by some political parties, regional government officials and civic committee pressure groups and disseminated by some media outlets, was affecting Indigenous Peoples at all levels of society. Among the articles of the new constitution are provisions to enhance the political rights of Bolivia’s Indigenous Peoples who have been excluded from effective decision-making. As well as guaranteeing the sanctity of private and state property it also guarantees communal property.

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in Spanish or your own language:
- expressing concern for the safety of Miguel González and other members of CEJIS;
- urging the authorities to take immediate and effective action to protect Miguel González and members of CEJIS, in line with the precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, so that they can perform their legitimate work without fear of attack or harassment;
- calling for a full and impartial investigation into the attack against Miguel González, with the results made public and those responsible brought to justice.

APPEALS TO:
Beni District Public Prosecutor
Ministerio Público
Fiscalía de Distrito de Beni
Dr. Gilberto Adad Suárez
Fiscal de Distrito
La Paz N° 131, Trinidad, Departamento de Beni, Bolivia.
Fax: + 591 3 4622420
Salutation: Sr. Fiscal Distrital / Dear District Prosecutor

Beni Authority

Sr. Prefecto del Departamento del Beni
Ernesto Suárez
Plaza Ballivián acera Sur s/n, Trinidad, Departamento de Beni, Bolivia.
Fax: +591 3 4652157 / 4620200 / 4627069 / 4624830
Salutation: Sr. Prefecto / Dear Prefect

COPIES TO:
NGO
CEJIS - Trinidad
Avenida Dorado, No. 88,
Trinidad, departamento de Beni, Bolivia
Fax: + 591 3 4622976 (if someone answers say ‘tono de fax por favor’, a request to be put through to the tax tone)

and to diplomatic representatives of Bolivia accredited to your country.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the International Secretariat, or your section office, if sending appeals after 16 April.

Joanna Bernie
Campaigner/Encargada de campañas
South America team/Equipo de América del Sur
Americas Programme/ Programa Regional para América
Amnesty International, International Secretariat

tel: +44 (0)20 7413 5537
email: jbernie@amnesty.org

Social Housing in Bolivia: Challenges & Contradictions

Emily P. Achtenberg

Bolivia's Vice Minister for Housing, Ramiro Rivera, had been on the job only two weeks last March when his office was occupied by 100 angry members of the Ponchos Rojos (Red Ponchos), a militant Aymara peasant group. Three weeks later, wheelbarrow porters from the Abastos market in Santa Cruz staged a similar protest. Both groups were demanding that the MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) government, headed by indigenous president Evo Morales, make good on its promise to deliver low-cost housing to their constituencies.

As befits a self-proclaimed "government of the social movements," the MAS has articulated a strong commitment to a progressive, non-market vision of social housing, epitomized by the slogan: "Vivienda Digna Para Vivir Bien: Evo Cumple! (Decent Housing for a Good Life: Evo Delivers!)." Meeting with our visiting group of US housing and neighborhood activists last summer, Rivera traced the social housing concept back to the ayllu, the traditional socio-political organization in Bolivia's rural indigenous communities, where every family's right to the land is protected. "We don't believe in making a market commodity out of Pachamama (Mother Earth)," he told us.

Yet, the reality is more complex. During our visit, we gained perspective on the challenges and contradictions facing the MAS government as it seeks to implement a progressive social housing agenda within the constraints of a mixed economy, a politically divided society, and a state bureaucracy undermined by 20 years of neoliberal restructuring.

The Social Housing Program: PVSS

The MAS' ambitious $90M Program for Social & Solidarity Housing (PVSS) was launched with significant fanfare in April 2007, promising to provide at least 14,500 new units by the end of the year. Bolivia's 300,000 unit "quantitative" housing deficit (unlivable or overcrowded units) would be reduced by 5%, and totally eliminated in 10-20 years. The program would also generate 73,000 new jobs, reduce unemployment and emigration, promote investment, and provide a major stimulus to the national economy.

In important respects, PVSS represents a departure from Bolivia's discredited housing programs of the past, which gave stable middle-income workers better access to private mortgage credit--often to buy a second home. Under PVSS, the government provides direct loans on favorable terms to enable renters with limited means to build or buy their first new homes in urban or peripheral areas. In rural communities, beneficiaries receive direct grants.

In the urban program, 20-year government loans are available for 100% of land and construction costs. Interest rates are 0% for houses in the lowest price categories ($2,500 to $8,000 initially, indexed to inflation), and 3% for houses costing $8,001 to $15,000. (The interest rate on a typical private bank loan, for which few families in Bolivia qualify, is at least 10%.)

In rural areas, the government directly subsidizes up to 60% of construction costs (initially capped at around $3,600/unit), while families contribute 40% through self-help labor or donated materials. Departments, municipalities, and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are encouraged to offset one-third of the national government's cost. Similar grants are available for remodeling, upgrading, and expansion of rural housing, with an initial target of 26,600 units.

With these financing terms, an urban family earning the minimum wage of $83 per month can afford a new $5,000 house with a monthly payment of around $21, at 25% of income. The smallest loan of $2,500 can benefit a family earning as little as $42 per month.

Moreover, although PVSS funding is derived from mandatory housing benefit contributions paid by salaried public and private sector workers and employers, for the first time in Bolivia's history these funds will also benefit informal sector workers. (Only the 3% loan program is limited to salaried workers.) Informal sector workers--with tremendous variation in earnings--now constitute an estimated 80% of Bolivia's workforce and are an important MAS constituency. This initially controversial PVSS feature has become a hallmark of the MAS government's approach to social programs, resurfacing in a recent dispute over proposed pension fund legislation which caused a rift between the government and the national trade union federation.

Despite these novel features, PVSS also represents a continuity with the past, reflecting the political, economic, and institutional constraints under which the MAS government operates. Like previous programs, the emphasis is on new construction, which has high political visibility.

While PVSS projects are typically targeted to social sectors such as unions, neighborhood organizations, and indigenous groups, the program is largely private sector-driven, subject to government regulation. For example, the financieras who review credit applications, disburse government funds, and collect loan repayments are primarily established cooperative banks and other financial institutions. The constructoras who develop and build the housing are typically private or cooperative construction companies.

Major materials producers like SOBOCE, the largest cement company in Bolivia--owned by Samuel Doria Medina, head of the center-right National Unity (UN) party--have committed discounted materials to the program, and some are participating as builders. According to Doria Medina, whose company's production capacity stands to double from government construction projects, "SOBOCE's business philosophy is to support the country's development.”

As a result of this pragmatic design, the launching of PVSS was greeted enthusiastically across the political spectrum—an unusual event in Bolivia. The program even received a strong editorial endorsement from Bolivia's newspaper of record La Razon, a consistent MAS critic.

Experience to Date: A Mixed Record

During the first year, PVSS experienced major start-up difficulties. By the end of 2007, despite significant demand, only 8,000 units had been approved and funded with scant evidence of actual construction. In his January 2008, State of the Union address, Morales lamented the government's disappointing performance while pledging at least another 14,500 units for 2008.

Over the past year, the program's pace has accelerated considerably. As of August 31, funds were committed for approximately 27,600 units in 200 projects, and all available PVSS resources were exhausted. Approved projects, located in 52 of Bolivia's 112 provinces, were widely disbursed throughout the country. More than 90% of the units were new construction.

Interestingly, the distribution of program benefits has not favored the western, heavily indigenous, and poorer regions--MAS' political base. On the contrary, the eastern "Media Luna" Departments (and allied Chuquisaca) have received a disproportionate share of units (55%) and funds committed (64%), relative to their share of total population (40%). Agrobusiness elites in these resource-rich regions have been waging a violent "autonomy" campaign in opposition to the Morales government, although outside the provincial capitals the MAS maintains strong support.

On the whole, the housing approved by PVSS to date appears to be relatively affordable. Approximately half the units funded are in the rural program, aimed at the lowest population strata. In the urban program, three-quarters of units are in the $5,001 to $8,000 price range.

From MAS' perspective, PVSS has surpassed its original goal, achieving in just 17 months what it had promised to accomplish in 2 years. Still, in terms of tangible results, fewer than 4,000 units have actually been completed (with another 1,000 anticipated to be delivered by year end).

To be sure, substantial time lags from project initiation to funding and completion are typical of all government housing programs. But with more than 86,000 credit applicants approved or in processing, the government appears to be creating its own credibility gap. As one MAS representative has noted: "Bolivia as a state has great economic limitations. We've got a program for social housing which has generated a lot of expectation...but...expectation mustn't exceed reality!"

Many problems encountered in the PVSS program appear to be systemic in nature. Materials costs have doubled over the past year, a predicament not unique to Bolivia. Some labor cost increases have been induced by internal shortages, e.g. as skilled bricklayers migrate to take advantage of new opportunities in Bolivia's mining sector, and abroad.

In the cities, rising land costs--due in part to PVSS-generated demand--are a significant problem. A prominent bank participating in the program is under investigation for allegedly inflating land costs through straw purchases at several sites. This is the third financiera to be relieved of its PVSS responsibilities for suspected irregularities, a factor which has contributed to program delays. Still another prevalent problem is the inability of prospective purchasers to secure clear land title, a prerequisite for PVSS loans which require mortgage security.

Delays have also resulted from administrative shortcomings, related in part to Bolivia's centralized governmental structure which is a controversial political issue today. Popular frustration with centralized government has been manipulated by regional elites to fuel the autonomy conflicts that brought the country to the brink of civil war last September. The weakened capacity of public sector institutions is a legacy of 20 years of neoliberal retrenchment, compounded by the new MAS bureaucracy’s inexperience and persistent corruption allegations. In its less than two-year life, the PVSS program has had four housing vice-ministers (Ramiro Rivera was replaced last October).

Nor has PVSS been immune from partisan conflict. Funding commitments have often appeared to be politically motivated, especially during the August 2008 recall referendum campaign (a plebiscite vote on Morales' government) when significant awards were made to projects in the embattled Departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, and Chuquisaca. The government has also used PVSS funds to settle political disputes with rebellious social movement organizations, such as the transport workers' union.

Most dramatically, in October 2008, following Morales' strong (67%) referendum victory and successful negotiation in the Congress to bring the new Constitution to a popular vote, the municipality of Santa Cruz (headquarters of the regional opposition) destroyed 100 PVSS houses constructed for a local indigenous group. While the immediate cause of this conflict was a jurisdictional dispute between two municipalities, the episode had broader political overtones. As ex-minister Rivera noted, "The anti-MAS municipalities don't want PVSS to succeed." The government is pursuing legal remedies for restitution, as well as punishment of the offending officials.

The 386-unit "Integration of the Americas" project in the municipality of La Guardia, Santa Cruz, illustrates many of PVSS' contradictions and challenges. Built for the wheelbarrow porters union (which had previously occupied government offices to protest construction delays), the houses were nearly completed but not yet occupied when we visited last August.

The units feature a utilitarian design and are densely packed across the site, but at a total cost of $5,000 (including land) they are extremely affordable. While some residents have criticized the quality of construction and are demanding an investigation of their financiera's possible role in land speculation, owners interviewed in a recent news account--all former renters—welcomed the reduced costs, increased security of tenure, and accessible location of their new homes. Said Miriam Sánchez, a single mother of five: "What hurt me most, living as a tenant, was that having children seemed to be a sin...a barrier to finding a place to live. The dream of having my own home seemed impossible to realize, until now."

The NGO Perspective

An alternative approach to social housing is offered by RENASEH (the National Network of Human Settlements), a coalition of 11 NGOs that combine housing advocacy, development, and organizing and have led the struggle for housing rights in Bolivia. To date, NGOs have not played a significant role in the PVSS program, although Habitat for Humanity has participated from the start as a financiera.

In RENASEH's view, social housing (urban as well as rural) should emphasize incremental construction and remodeling of units with reliance on individual and collective self-help, progressive microcredit loans, and other forms of creative, non-mortgage financing. This is the dominant shelter strategy that poor Bolivian families have used for generations. For households with unstable sources of income, it is easier to borrow small amounts and upgrade living space incrementally as family needs expand. Focusing on rehab, RENASEH maintains, will stretch scarce public resources further. Arguably, Bolivia's "qualitative deficit" of 600,000 - 900,000 units (lacking basic services or in poor condition) is more pressing than its quantitative housing needs.

Moreover, self-help and community financing strategies build solidarity, empower communities, and foster a collective, participatory stake in housing. This approach, RENASEH believes, is more consistent with social housing objectives than is reliance on market-oriented strategies that encourage households to spend beyond their means. Says architect Guillermo Bazoberry: "For most Bolivians, housing is a form of social security, not an investment. The government should be helping people and communities directly, to make the informal housing economy work better."

Over the past 15 years, RENASEH's member NGOs have helped families built 10,000 new homes and renovate 30,000 units, utilizing incremental and self-help building and financing strategies. Their 15,000 micro-credit loans have a repayment failure rate substantially lower than that of traditional banks.

Critics argue that families with the most pressing housing needs (including female-headed households) may lack the time and skills for individual or collective self-help, and point to the public and private costs of uncompensated labor. In addition to the loss of construction jobs and economic stimulus, creating a decent unit takes longer, and quality may be compromised. The critical supportive services provided by the NGOs (including architectural, construction management, and organizational assistance) are labor-intensive and may be difficult to replicate on a larger scale.

Still, successful examples, such as the Maria Auxiliadora community we visited in Cochabamba, are inspirational. Founded by a group of domestically-abused women, the community has worked with several NGOs to build and renovate approximately 100 houses in nine years. The majority of members are female-headed households (divorced, widowed, or with husbands working abroad). The land is owned cooperatively--unusual in Bolivia--and the houses individually, similar to the US community land trust model. Houses cannot be rented or sold, and revert to community use if vacated.

To finance the housing, the community uses a traditional collective savings system called pasanaku in which members' personal funds are pooled and redistributed, as needed, to each family in turn. Progressive microcredit loans of $1,000 - $3,000 are made by the NGOs to individual households, but are guaranteed collectively (with no mortgage security). Mutual-help construction is a community obligation. The community has developed its own water, sewer, and irrigation systems. The pasanaku system is also used to finance family and community enterprises (such as catering, sewing, and construction materials).

The community has approached PVSS for funding to build additional units. The cooperative form of land ownership poses a challenge, but this may be ameliorated by the new Constitution.

Social Housing and the Constitution

RENASEH was instrumental in securing the right to housing in Bolivia's new Constitution, now scheduled for a referendum vote in January 2009 (and widely anticipated to be approved). Its members organized a petition campaign, formed alliances with health, education, and labor sectors by demonstrating the importance of social housing to their agendas, and promoted community input on housing during the drafting process.

Article 19 of the new Constitution establishes every Bolivian's right to a decent, adequate home and living environment, that dignifies family and community life. It requires all levels of government to promote social housing programs--including adequate financing--based on principles of solidarity and equity, and with preference to groups having the least resources and greatest need. (An unanticipated benefit of the autonomy conflict, notes RENASEH, is that all levels of government now want to take credit for social housing.)

Article 56 guarantees both private and collective ownership of property, provided that its use is not harmful to the collective good. The original draft explicitly allowed the government to expropriate surplus urban land not serving a social function, to be reused for social housing. This anti-speculation provision was removed in a compromise with Samuel Doria Medina, to prevent his UN party from joining the opposition boycott of the Constituent Assembly vote. The final Constitution negotiated between MAS and the opposition parties in Congress emphasizes that urban real estate is not subject to confiscation.

Looking Ahead

With the new Constitution about to be ratified, Bolivia has resolved, for the moment, its political tensions. The MAS government now faces the real (and perhaps more difficult) challenge of delivering on its promises.

In November, the government announced that resources had been found to fund another 26,000 units of social housing in 2009. In line with the new decentralization trend, satellite program offices have been established in several Departments with the goal of more delegated decision-making. The government is considering allocating funds to each Department on the basis of population, with projects to be selected jointly by the Departments, municipalities, and popular organizations. An agreement has been signed with the National Federation of Neighborhood Boards (CONALJUVE) to promote participatory decision-making in housing design and construction.

To contain costs, the government has announced plans to develop a state cement company with loans from Iran and Venezuela. This is widely seen as an attempt to outmaneuver Doria Medina, a potential rival to Evo Morales in the next election. Measures to curb land speculation are also being considered. All projects are being audited for irregularities in land costs and acquisition practices--an issue which has cast a cloud over the entire PVSS program.

Finally, RENASEH hopes to work with the Housing Ministry to develop a program for urban housing remodeling, expansion, and upgrading based on its successful community experience. Habitat for Humanity is now acting as a constructora for several projects. Whether the incremental building and financing approach can be "scaled up" and made compatible with the political and institutional requirements of a national housing program remains to be seen.

In many respects the PVSS program illustrates the larger challenges and contradictions of the government's efforts to bring about "revolutionary" change through democratic reform. As with other MAS initiatives (such as gas nationalization and agrarian reform), ambitious social goals have been constrained by underlying economic and market forces and the need to accommodate opposing political interests. The weakness of existing government institutions and bureaucracies is an obstacle to the achievement of MAS' redistributive agenda across the board. Tensions between the consolidation of state power and popular demands for more democratic and community-oriented practices are characteristic of relations between the social movements and the MAS government today.

As it evolves in the future, the social housing program will likely continue to provide a revealing window on Bolivia's radical process of social transformation.

Emily Achtenberg is an urban planner and affordable housing consultant and activist based in Boston, MA. She has been researching social housing and urban social movements in Bolivia and last visited Bolivia in August 2008. She can be reached at ejpa@aol.com.

Republished from Progressive Planning: The Magazine of Planners’ Network, #178, Winter 2009

Changing face of Bolivia

Jeremy Corbyn, British Parliament MP

February 24, 2009

To understand the enormous political and social changes happening in Bolivia, one has to have some understanding of the history of the country.

It was created by Simon Bolivar at the end of the independence movement for Latin America and its iconic status represents the zenith of his achievements, although it lost huge tracts of land to Chile, Peru, Brazil and Paraguay in a series of 19th and 20th century wars. It has the largest non-Spanish-speaking indigenous community of any Latin American country and also has one of the greatest gaps between rich and poor.

The modern political history of Bolivia stems in part from the 1952 revolution, in which the nationalist government sought to bring the main sources of the country’s wealth into public ownership. But when the government encountered political intransigence within Bolivia and fluctuating prices for commodities such as silver and tin, it was forced to rely increasingly on international aid and support from the United States.

This support eventually became a millstone and degenerated into oppressive economic thinking and a series of military governments. Indeed, Che Guevara’s death in Vallegrande in 1967 is the most well-known example of the defeat that the left forces suffered in Bolivia. In reality, his death stemmed in part from the political disconnect between the campesino opposition to the military government and the urban industrial opposition to the same forces.

The 1980s saw Bolivian governments on a par with that of Pinochet’s in Chile and Galtieri’s in Argentina, which imprisoned people at will. Such political debate as there was largely took place between rival military factions. Many Bolivians were forced into exile by politics and poverty.

As Latin America eventually came out of the long night of military rule, the economic arguments developed into disputes about public spending and privatisation and, in Bolivia, the rights of indigenous people to speak their own language, occupy their own lands and grow the coca leaf, which is a benign product in its raw form.

To their eternal credit, the British National Union of Mineworkers always supported the Bolivian miners in their desperate hours of need and attempted to throw off the military occupation of the mines in order to present legitimate trade union activity. People in this country should never underestimate the importance of symbolic acts of solidarity.

There was a great battle over water privatisation in Cochabamba when the plan to sell off the water supply to international companies was defeated. The growing strength of the coca growers’ federation eventually propelled Evo Morales into the presidency, the first elected indigenous president in Latin America. Morales’s election was accompanied by a majority in the lower house of mass deputies for Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) and huge changes in the country. His government has nationalised a number of services and, crucially, it has nationalised hydrocarbon and mineral deposits.

The new constitution that was recently approved by over 61 per cent in a national referendum has granted equal status to all indigenous languages, land rights to traditional indigenous communities and some degree of self-government to nine provinces of Bolivia.

The debate about the constitution has been fierce and a special constitutional assembly was chaired by the redoubtable Silvia Lazarte, a self-taught indigenous woman and an extremely important and revered political figure in Bolivia. She epitomises the changes that MAS has brought about.

There is enormous opposition to the new constitution and to the Morales government from a number of provinces, particularly Santa Cruz, which has the largest known deposits of gas and oil in the country. The debate centres around the question of who owns these resources.

Some 4,000 metres above sea level, in the poor but militant barrio of El Alto, I met representatives of the popular communities that have traditionally been the most oppressed by previous military governments. They are now the most enthusiastic - but not uncritical - supporters of the Morales government. They described their hopes and fears, their determination to achieve a better society and their aim to share Bolivia’s wealth with the poor of the infertile and inhospitable Altiplano. The following day, I met the prefects of Santa Cruz in an air-conditioned office, away from the sweltering heat of the province’s relatively wealthy capital city. They told me of their concerns about Bolivia’s change of direction and their fears over land reform and indigenous rights within the new constitution.

The new constitution is, like all such documents, a compromise.

The land reform limits new ownership to 5,000 hectares per individual, but it leaves intact the dozen or so mega-landowners who own hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, largely in the east of the country.

There are, however, reserve powers which allow the state to take over unproductive or unused land and redistribute it. There are also indigenous people’s rights to occupy their own lands and use them in a traditional way for agriculture or stock-raising or managing sustainable forests.

Aside from Haiti, Bolivia has the largest proportion of poor people of any county in the Americas. And it faces the biggest challenges. It’s short of capital to invest in exploration and processing of its rich mineral resources. Generations of poverty and depression have led to more than a quarter of Bolivians moving abroad to Argentina, the US, Spain or the rest of Europe to seek a better life and still send remittances home. The Bolivian people’s hopes rest on the new constitution and on the elections that are to take place later this year.

The potential for the richest provinces to break away from the rest of Bolivia is what excites the world’s media. Undoubtedly, this is a huge issue, but most political leaders talk in terms of a different pattern of wealth-sharing rather than a complete breakaway and the poorest people talk much more in terms of education, health, housing and hope in the world.

Change of seismic proportions is taking place in Bolivia. With the Morales election, the poor throughout the rest of the continent have seen a glimpse of a future based not on oppression and military government but based on democracy, accountability and the sharing of wealth.

Republished from Jeremy Corbyn’s website