Freedom Socialist • Vol. 29, No. 4 • August-September 2008

Bolivia: rightwing separatism on the rise
Compromises by Morales government only strengthen country's former rulers

by Steve Hoffman

June 4: a road blockade in Yucumo, in Beni province, against the autonomy referendum of eastern landowners and industrialists. Credit CMI Cochabamba Click here to open a PDF with a map of Bolivia.

The notorious racism of Bolivia's right wing recently showed its ugly face in the eastern city of Sucre. On May 25 about 50 indigenous leaders and supporters of the national government were attacked by fascist thugs and then taken to the town square, where they were forced to remove their shirts and kneel while their flags and indigenous ponchos were burned.

Condemnation from throughout Bolivia and the world did not faze local leaders, who are part of an elitist opposition to the central government of President Evo Morales that is seemingly intent on fomenting civil war. This opposition represents large landowners and industrial capitalists who control the governments in the eastern four provinces of the country, referred to as the Crescent.

The racist incident in Sucre followed an opposition victory on May 4, when an autonomy referendum considered illegal by the national government passed in the province of Santa Cruz.
In June, similar referendums passed in the provinces of Beni, Pando, and Tarija. If implemented, these statutes will give the provinces the right to negotiate their own oil and gas deals with multinationals and to form separate legislatures and even police forces.

The secessionists hold sway in the eastern lowlands, where a ruling class of European ancestry has long repressed the indigenous population and controlled most of the country's fertile land, as well as oil and gas deposits. The main support for the central government is in the poorer and more indigenous western highlands.

Ready to fight. Workers and indigenous peoples are not standing around while the old oligarchy threatens to tear the country apart and torpedo any chance of achieving lasting progressive gains.

The reactionary autonomy vote in Santa Cruz sparked mass demonstrations in many cities, with a half million turning out in Cochabamba and El Alto. And the supposedly 85 percent "yes" vote was hardly legitimate, since there was widespread fraud in the unsupervised voting process and at least 40 percent of voters boycotted the sham. In many rural areas 70 percent of the electorate abstained, and in some places voting centers were burned to the ground.

Abstention rates were also high in the other three provinces.

Peasants and workers know that the autonomy votes are not really about "self-determination." Clearly the former rulers of Bolivia want to protect their landed estates and keep all the oil and gas profits for themselves, with an eye toward eventually restoring their reign over the whole country.

Comeback criminals. It is astonishing to see the oligarchy flexing its muscles, considering how not so long ago it was swept from power by an angry populace. In 2003, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was given the boot by mass mobilizations of workers and peasants fighting to stop the privatization of natural gas and end government coca eradication programs that threaten their survival. A 2005 uprising over oil and gas privatization sent another bourgeois government fleeing the capital.
Pushing on to a socialist revolution would have been the only way to guarantee that the gains of the struggle were defended and extended. But the leadership for that was not forthcoming, so the door was open for the reformist Evo Morales and his party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).

Morales was able to channel the energy of the masses into the electoral arena and away from independent mobilizations. Many promises were made to the rebellious toilers, and in December 2005 the people of the country, 70 percent of them indigenous, elected Morales, their first indigenous president.

But Morales was quick to reassure the ruling class by promising to respect private property and even sign a new free trade deal with the U.S. The old ruling elite returned the favor by adamantly opposing any move by the new government to meet the needs of the working class and peasantry. In every instance, the Morales government accommodated them.

So while the nation's main labor federation, the radical Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), demanded the complete nationalization of gas, oil, and mining without compensation to the exploiters, the government's "nationalization" of the oil industry instead retained it as a capitalist enterprise with only a slim shareholder majority and higher royalties for the government. And so it went over issues of land reform, increases in the minimum wage, pensions, etc.

Constitutional fixes. The main vehicle Morales has put forward as a way for the masses to achieve their aspirations has been the writing of a new constitution by a constituent assembly. Here too the government has compromised with the right.

Even though MAS won an absolute majority of assembly seats, Morales agreed to a two-thirds majority requirement for passage of articles, effectively giving the right wing veto power. Negotiations in the assembly dragged on throughout 2007, and finally a new draft constitution was approved in December — with the rightists boycotting the process at the end.

The old elite is enraged because the new constitution, still to be approved by a national referendum, legitimizes the power of the central government. They also strongly oppose the document's territorial autonomy provisions for indigenous communities.

But, in reality, reforms to empower the toiling classes are modest. Proposed state control over natural resources is limited to measures already taken. And the emphasis on a mixed economy means that major industries will not be expropriated and operated under workers' control.

The government's continuous vacillations and compromises have had two main consequences: to disorient and demobilize the workers and peasants, and to embolden the oligarchy in its drive to take back power.

The situation is made even more dangerous by U.S. support for the secessionists.

Over the past year, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has spent at least $93 million on programs to bolster the resistance to the government. For example, USAID has financed Juan Carlos Urenda, an adviser to the rightwing Civic Committee in Santa Cruz and author of the plan for the province's secession.

No middle ground. A referendum is planned for August on the legitimacy of both the national and provincial governments. This will delay a vote on the new constitution until next year. Morales may hope to buy time and shore up support for his government, but his opponents are eager for the showdown.

The Morales government has utterly failed in its attempt to referee the battle between the workers and peasants on one side and the oligarchy and its imperialist allies on the other. The right will not stop until they have overthrown the government and crushed the fighting capacity of the mass movements.

But Bolivia's radical history, combined with the militant battle against neoliberalism raging throughout Latin America, sets the stage for a different outcome. Should the exploited of Bolivia hit the streets again with mass mobilizations, they very well might find the support they need to push on to a revolutionary solution — one that would put an end to the grinding poverty and racism in this poorest of South American nations.

Steve Hoffman, a delegate for the Washington State Federation of Employees Local 304 to the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council, can be reached at stevhoff@earthlink.net.