Please help Links stay afloat. Donate what you can!
Click on Links masthead to clear previous query from search box
Syndicate
Recent comments
- GLW on Malaysian Socialists' conference
17 hours 22 min ago - The few decide for the many...
23 hours 52 min ago - URL for original (Spanish) version.
1 day 16 hours ago - UK Guardian obit for Miriam Makeba
1 day 17 hours ago - New Straits Times on Malaysian left
2 days 6 hours ago - Pilger on Obama
3 days 6 hours ago - Traiq Ali on Obama: Rhetoric Alone Is Not Enough
3 days 6 hours ago - Socialist Worker (US) roundtable on Obama
3 days 6 hours ago - Walden Bello: How to Spend Obama's Honeymoon
3 days 6 hours ago - Roundtable on Obama: Mamdani; Pilger; Tariq Ali; Ali Abunimah
3 days 6 hours ago
Bolivia's vice-president on the course of revolution
By Álvaro García Linera, vice-president of Bolivia
Translation, notes and introduction by Richard Fidler
The following article, based on a speech given in December 2007 but only recently transcribed and published in Spanish by Bolpress on May 12, 2008, is an important statement by a leading member of Bolivian President Evo Morales’ government on the political situation in that country in the wake of the Constituent Assembly’s vote on a draft political constitution. The draft constitution is to be put to a popular vote for adoption later this year.
Álvaro García Linera, Bolivia’s vice-president, is a former leader of the Tupac Katarí guerrilla army. He was subsequently employed as a university sociologist. He is also a prominent Latin American Marxist, strongly influenced by post-World War II European non-Stalinist Marxist currents inspired by the ideas of the Italian communist leader and political theorist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci, who died in 1937, was an innovative Marxist thinker who wrote extensively on the concept of cultural hegemony and its role as an ideological mainstay of capitalist societies.
Some readers may be surprised by García Linera’s frequent invocation of
Gramscian ``hegemony’’ in the Bolivian context, as that concept is often
associated primarily with Marxist attempts to explain the particular problems
of mass consciousness as they arise in the complex class societies of the
imperialist countries. However, there is a long line of thinking among Latin
American Marxists influenced by Gramsci; it goes back to José Carlos Mariátegui,
the Peruvian communist who lived in
García Linera’s title, in the original Spanish, is ``Empate catastrófico y punto de bifurcatión’’. He attributes the expression ``empate
catastrófico’’ to Gramsci. The ``empate’’ (blockage, standoff, deadlock or
impasse), as García Linera uses the concept, appears to refer to Gramsci’s use
of the concept of ``equilibrium’’, often conjoined with the adjective
``catastrophic’’, in his Prison Notebooks;
it denotes a sort of stasis in the configuration of the class struggle, when
neither of the major contending class blocs has the ability to establish its
hegemony over the other, a situation that can endure (as García Linera says)
for months or even years. See also the interview with García Linera in the
Argentine on-line periodical Renacer,
http://tinyurl.com/5jwxb9: ``
Suggestions for further reading: ``Neo-liberalism and the New Socialism
– Speech by Alvaro Garcia Linera’’, Political
Affairs (see first comment at the end of this article), January-February 2007, http://politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/4683/1/234/;
and
``Marxism and Indigenism in
* * *
Catastrophic equilibrium and point of bifurcation
By
Álvaro García Linera, vice-president
of
Presentation
in the Escuela de Pensamiento Comuna,
I
will provide a short explanatory outline of some events of recent years in this
country that, I believe, will help to link and give some sort of intellectual
coherence to these events, which are infinitely more complicated than what can
be processed by our thinking. It is possible to define at least three major
stages (perhaps a fourth, ultimately) in a process of state crisis that is transforming
the organisation of the state in its content, its social nature and its
institutionalisation.
The state crisis and our ability to
visualise it
A
number of Comuna comrades have been working
for some time on the idea of the crisis of the state. In various writings in
2000 or 2001 we characterised what was going on in
We
were beginning to experience this crisis of the state in 2000. The correlation
of forces with decision-making capacity was beginning to come apart. The
dominant ideas of the business bloc that is linked to foreign investment
interests, the agro-export industry, banking and the political elite formed
around them were losing the capacity to define the public policies of our
country in a stable and straightforward way.
That
was also the year in which we entered a crisis and the dominant ideas that
present foreign investment as the engine of the economy, globalisation and
exports as an unassailable horizon for our modernity, and the coalitions of
political parties as a condition sine qua
non in defining governability, understood as the common sense of politics, were
no longer attractive to the whole of the society. The same thing was occurring
in the institutions. The parliament was no longer a place for political debate,
which had been expropriated by the executive power. The executive, in turn, was
being expropriated by the foreign business lobbies and hard-line political
elements. And in turn this intransigent core was finding itself expropriated by
foreign investment and a pair of embassies that were defining the situation in
the country. An initial stage in the state crisis, in 2000, was its visibility.
A
state crisis does not necessarily lead to a new state; there may be internal
adjustments in forces, alliances and policies and there may be a reconstitution
of the old state. For example, the national revolutionary state of 1952 had
stages of internal mutation and reconfiguration that enabled it to survive a
bit longer, amidst the military authoritarianism of the nationalist state. It
was the same nationalist state, with only a few adjustments, internal linkages
and partial changes in content.
Catastrophic equilibrium and
construction of hegemony
Any
state crisis, then, may be reversible, or it may continue. If the crisis
continues, a subsequent stage is the catastrophic equilibrium. Lenin spoke of a
revolutionary situation, Gramsci of catastrophic equilibrium, both referring to
the same phenomenon albeit in distinct languages. The catastrophic equilibrium
is a phase in the state crisis, if you wish, a second structural moment that is
characterised by three things: a confrontation of two national political projects
for the country, two perspectives for the country, each with a capacity for
mobilisation, attraction and seduction of social forces; a confrontation in the
institutional sphere — it might be the parliamentary arena or the social sphere
— of two social blocs shaped by a will and ambition for power, the dominant
bloc and the ascendant social bloc; and, thirdly, a paralysis of the upper
echelons of the state and a failure to overcome this paralysis. This
equilibrium might last weeks, months, years; but a moment will come when a
breakthrough, a way out, is achieved.
The
way out of the catastrophic equilibrium or deadlock would be the third step in
the state crisis, which we will call ascendant hegemonic construction. This is
characterised by unrest and, generally speaking, upsurge. Marx’s writings on
the political crisis of 1848 and 1849 are highly illustrative of this idea of
waves of unrest that come and go: stability, unrest, stability, unrest.
This
ascendant hegemonic construction, in turn, will have three stages and four
other sub-stages. The first is the preponderance or partial victory of a
national political project with a capacity for attraction and social mobilisation.
In the case of
This
crisis, of necessity, must end at some moment; no society can live permanently
in mobilisation (as the anarchists hold) or permanently in stability (as
Christians believe). There may be instability, struggles, but at some point an
orderly structure must be consolidated, which will continue to experience
internal conflicts, of course, but later it will be possible to say: ``From
this moment on, we have a reconstituted neoliberalism or we have a national, indigenous,
popular, revolutionary state.’’
We
have termed this historical, precise, datable moment the point of bifurcation.
The
point of bifurcation means that either there is a successful counterrevolution
and a return to the old state in new conditions, or a new state is
consolidated, with conflicts still but in the context of its stabilisation. The
counterrevolution, to obtain international support or a collapse of the command
structure and leadership of the revolutionary bloc, will require a hegemonic re-articulation
of regional resistances with a capacity for regional or national expansion.
I
would illustrate this idea of the point of bifurcation with the crisis of the latifundist mining state, which actually
began in 1944 or 1945; the Movimiento Nactionalista Revolutionario (MNR) won
the elections in 1951, but its point of bifurcation is not in that year but in
1952. The April insurrection is the moment of bifurcation in that the state,
with the characteristics and qualities of the worker, productivism, homogenisation,
was consolidated and was to enjoy a relative stabilisation until a time of
internal renewal, internal metamorphosis, with the presence of the military.
But the nationalist state lasted until 1985.
A
second moment of point of bifurcation may have been in 1986. The
national-popular state went into a crisis in 1977. Coup d’état, elections, coup
d’état, elections, elections, coup d’état, democratic government, problems,
early elections. The right wing won the elections in 1985, but the point of
bifurcation occurred in 1986, with the March for Life[2], when the nucleus of
the old state, the social nucleus and the social thinking of the old state
collapsed, surrendered, in the face of the force, the vitality, the discourse
and the coercive and cohesive capacity of the new neoliberal state.
The
points of bifurcation may be insurrectional, they may be a display of force or
(as a working hypothesis) they may be resolved democratically. In any case, the
idea of the point of bifurcation is the following: first, it is a moment of
resolution of the stabilisation of the structure of the new state; secondly, a
point of bifurcation is inevitably a moment of force; and thirdly, it is a
moment in which politics actually becomes the continuation of the war by other
means. It is a moment in which Nietzsche and Foucault are right.
A
point of bifurcation is, basically, an act of force in the practical mediation
of things. It is an act of leadership, of hegemony in the Gramscian meaning of
the word, of moral leadership over the rest of society. Thus, if the Indigenous
peoples want to consolidate themselves as a nucleus of the state, they have to
demonstrate that they are capable of handling and advancing the interests of
the middle class, of the Bolivian business world, and isolating a very few, the
implacable ones, but depriving them of their social base. To do this, it is
important to talk with the adversaries; the Indigenous were required to talk
with them.
In
the case of
Society’s
proposal to the society mediated by the state is the new political constitution,
and the response of the bloc of the displaced, now coming not from the state
but from a part of the society, is the autonomy statute. It may appear to be
the same thing, but the location of the social subjects has altered by 180
degrees.
Theoretically, then, we must be approaching the point of bifurcation. In the last 100 years, the primary experience with a point of bifurcation has been armed insurrection. The second experience of a point of bifurcation, the March for Life, was not an armed experience, but an exhibition and a measurement of political, military and moral forces between the contending blocs and, without firing a single shot, the point of bifurcation was consolidated, a new state was stabilised.
Third form of point of bifurcation
In
actuality, the government is betting on another, a third form of point of
bifurcation, which would be a sort of democratic resolution through a form of
iteration, that is, of successive approximation. The idea is that through
various democratic actions the tensions between contending forces will be
resolved. This is one of the possibilities that has opened up and the one that
the government will be trying to promote. The idea is that the point of
bifurcation will be resolved neither through insurrection (the hypothesis of
civil war, which is always latent) nor through a show of force and the
political and moral defeat of the adversary, but through the repeated manifestation
of the sovereign power based on the relocation of powers, of local and regional
forces, and the use of surpluses.
A
referendum will determine how many prefects [governors] remain, or a referendum
will determine whether the president and the vice-president continue to govern.
A referendum will determine the viability of the new political constitution,
which is reorganising the state. Another referendum will determine the type of
autonomy that will be implemented in the country. In other words, the three
moments of force — how to resolve the state architecture between the national
and sub-national levels, how resources are to be redistributed, and how the
institutional level of the state is organised — will have to be determined
through electoral action, if it comes to that.
Now
basically I would say that this is a time of truce that may be broken when the
time comes to implement the Renta
Dignidad, which redistributes the 60% of the IDH [Impuesto directo a los Hidrocarburos – direct tax on hydrocarbons]
from the prefecturas [departmental
governments]. Or, depending on the particular strategy of the right wing, it
may not be until the referendum on autonomy, on their autonomy statute, is
held. That referendum must go to the parliament and if parliament amends or
rejects it, they are going to try to hold a referendum for a decision by their
regional autonomous assembly and if this happens, they are going to want to
apply their statute, and in trying to apply it without the corresponding
legality, they are going to come into confrontation with the structure of the
state. That may be another moment.
What
else can happen in the days to come? A territorial counter-offensive in two
dimensions, which is already happening in fact. The central government with the
departments, and the confrontation between the departmental level and the sub-departmental,
regional and municipal levels which, under the new political constitution, have
the right to a type of autonomy in which resources and powers will be
subordinate to the Departmental Council.
The
Indigenous peoples will therefore look for their powers to the central government
and will have to draw on it for their resources, while the regional and
provincial autonomies will have to derive their resources and powers within the
departmental limits. Hence there is going to be rising tension from regional
forces and local elites that will extend to the prefecturas and, in turn, to
the central government. So there will be rising tension among the territorial
levels of the state.
In
some of these moments, the deterrent capacity of the new social power bloc will
probably be put to the test, and this will illustrate its ability to make
decisions based on its capacity for social mobilisation at the national,
departmental and fundamentally regional levels, which in turn will reveal its
capacity to maintain command, control and compliance with the structures of
legitimate coercion in the hands of the state, that is, the national police and
armed forces.
That
is more or less the panorama for the months to come. I am sure this initial
reading will be modified week by week, because this is a time in which politics
has again assumed a condensed form, and the correlation of forces is changing
to a large degree within a very short timeline. Again, there is a condensation
of politics in space and time, and this will oblige us to modify our modes of
interpretation.
New political constitution of the state
The
reading Raúl Prada has made of the Constituent Assembly as a social project and
a collective myth[3] should really be fully incorporated here. But I include
what I say, simply situating it at a merely instrumental level of
objectification of the new programming of forces. In its own way, this new constitution
provides for an Indigenous popular nucleus, but it adds other sectors as well.
The concerns of the middle class. Will I or will I not be able to send my son
to private school? I can. Will I be entitled to hold my religious beliefs? I
have that right. Can I inherit? I can. Can I invest in the country without the
risk of being nationalised? If I pay taxes and comply with the rules, I have
that right and no one should expropriate me.
The
businessperson, too, can feel he or she is recognised in the new constitution.
This sector may have preferred the old constitution and the old bloc, when, in
order to negotiate a line of credit, there was no need to wait six months to
have a meeting with Evo Morales. In the past, deals were settled over a weekend
coffee or in a tennis game; now this is no longer the case, because Evo Morales
never goes to tennis games or the embassies and he does not do deals in that
way. But this constitution incorporates them, as well.
I
think this is a demonstration of the possibility of exercising moral and
intellectual leadership over the rest of society. As Raúl Prada says, it is a constitution
of transition that has had to be adaptable, that has had to incorporate other
things without which it would be a constitution solely for the poorest of the Indigenous
and without appeal to the average Indigenous person. To be a constitution for
the mestizos, the middle classes, the businesspeople, as well, and not for only
one group, it had to be adjusted accordingly.
What
group is not incorporated here, in the decisive referendum? The referendum
question says: Do you agree that the extent of the lands be 5000 or 10,000
hectares? Who own more than 5000 hectares: 8000 families. But only 400 families
have upwards of 10,000 hectares. It is a powerful blow against the large landowners;
clearly there is not much to negotiate with these gentlemen so let’s proceed
with the referendum. I am sure the option of not extending it to more than five
thousand hectares will be adopted, defining the irreducible core that will not
be renegotiated.
It
is possible that by the time the referendum is called, the Congress will
negotiate 5000 or 10,000, but it is clear that there is a core of major
landholdings that have been defined in isolation from the rest of society.
However, attempts were made to dialogue with them, because politically one
should exhaust all channels for dialogue before making a tough decision. As any
military strategist will say, take all possible steps, and once they are
exhausted, the next step is justified. And here we have had to try again and
again, not out of weakness but because we are obliged to dialogue and to
listen, and in the worst of cases, after having exhausted all options, it is
possible to define things by another route. That is why we have to dialogue.
Nationalisation of natural resources
protected
On
the subject of natural resources, we have given constitutional protection to
the nationalisation of hydrocarbons. This means that no one can legally
re-privatise above- or below-ground gas and petroleum, the refineries or the
ability to make decisions, to market and to set the price of hydrocarbons; this
is now under lock and key. [Former Bolivian president] Sánchez de Lozada, with
the old constitution, which declared that the deposits (but nothing else) belonged
to the state, privatised everything. With that experience, we say here: the gas
and oil in the deposits and in any of the states where they are found belong to
Bolivians through the national state.
The
state determines the volumes, the marketing, the prices and terms of export. No
one can adopt a re-privatisation law without changing the constitution, which
would take 15 years. So if Sánchez de Lozada were to return in 2010, God
forbid, but if he were to return, it would take 15 years to go back to privatising
the resources. It cannot be done instantaneously, as he did. And the same
applies to the forests, water and minerals. Concerning the protection of
national resources, the constitution is very strong.
Applying
the new political constitution of the state to the fight against corruption, we
establish for the first time that the law is retroactive, that not only is
there no limitation period on prosecutions for stealing from the state but such
prosecutions can go back in time. No one is immune, all the presidents,
vice-presidents and ministers preceding the new constitution are subject to
investigation and, if subsequently convicted, are subject to imprisonment for
their corruption.
So
no one is immune now from prosecution and incarceration for stealing a fountain
pen, or a million dollars, from the state. I think this is the only legislation
in
Missing
from this analysis are the nature and characteristics of the consolidation and
articulation of the new right-wing forces in the country that have now displaced
Podemos as a project and that have new leaderships such as Branco Marinkovic,
Mario Cossio, Rubén Costas[4], as well as the civic committees, a nucleus of
mass mobilisation and a youth strike force that we have to get to understand.
This is not explained in this outline. It would require an analysis of the new
right in its capacity for social mobilisation, but I think that in general terms
the chessboard is moving in that way.
In
any case, looking at this from the government’s point of view, the following
steps have to be taken in its ability to articulate social mobilisation around
very concrete objectives such as, for example, the new constitution, and the
ability to maintain control over the structures of legitimate coercion in the
hands of the state: justice, police, armed forces. And it also depends on what
moves the right wing makes. Whatever the case, either this point of bifurcation
is resolved through public support and its pressure in the voting and the
referendums that settle the consolidation of the new state, or there will be
some type of confrontation and a test of forces for which, I hope, we are
prepared.
* * *
Notes
[1]
October agenda: The main demands of the social movements arising from the
October 2003 rebellion that removed Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada from the
presidency: nationalisation of gas, a constituent assembly and trial for those
responsible for the massacre of over 60 civilians during the uprising.
[2]
In 1986 the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) sponsored a mass ``March for Life’’
to frustrate government plans to restructure Comibol, the nationalised mining
company, and to halt mass firings and raise salaries. A deal under which the
government conceded many of the COB’s demands subsequently collapsed, the
mining sector was restructured and the radical labour leaders were ousted at a
COB convention.
[3]
Raúl Prada is a sociologist and professor at the Universidad Autónoma Gabriela
René Moreno and the Universidad Mayor Real. He is also a Movement Towards Socialism (MAS)
delegate to the Constituent Assembly from
[4]
Respectively, president of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee, prefect of the
department of Tarija, and prefect of the department of
Comments
Marxism and Indigenism in Bolivia: Dialogue and Conflict
April 25, 2005 By Álvaro García Linera
and Jeffery R. Webber
On Sunday morning, April 10, 2005 I sat in the book-lined living room of Ãlvaro Garcia Linera's modest La Paz apartment and talked to the former guerrilla and political prisoner - now a mathematician and sociologist - about the Bolivian traditions of Marxism, indigenism, and the contemporary state of the Left and popular movements in the country.
JRW: I'm here in La Paz with Ãlvaro GarcÃa Linera. First, what was your personal political formation like? How did you become an intellectual on the side of popular movements?
AGL: I belong to a generation that lived through the last moments of the dictatorships in Latin America. In Bolivia there were dictatorships until 1982, military dictatorships. I was 14, 16, 17 years old. These last moments touched me and therefore I was influenced by these experiences of childhood, of adolescence. However, it also touched me to see, in the struggle against the dictatorships and the re-conquest of democracy, two grand social actors of this epoch.
On the one hand, the miners of the great mines that were the centre of the Bolivian Workers' Central (COB), revindicating democracy. And it effected me to see, between 1979 and 1980 - I was living in La Paz - the emergence of the Aymara Indians that made their first road blockade in 1979, and left isolated the city of La Paz. They fought against the military. And this had a massive impact on me. This was an actor that I didn't know, an actor that was very distant for me. During the blockade of '79 I was 15 or 16 years old. And this, for me, was going to be very, very important.
I had a lot of enthusiasm. My exposure and learning initially was not through practice but through reading, books, or political theory, reading on indigenous history. Who were these actors that had blockaded the city, demanding democracy, talking in a language that I didn't know, with flags that I didn't understand? Who is this? And so, history, the reading of history.
Five or six years after this encounter in my adolescence, and after I'd been to Mexico to study, I had a closer encounter with the leaders of the indigenous movements. From then, 1985, until today, I've read, learned more, looked more closely, I've been learning more. And I found my particular intellectual perceptions, trying to understand this historical experience through my mental schemas and through my practical experience with the sector that is not available in books. But through this intent to understand it through the tools of books and the intent to invent tools that were not in books but came out of these movements' own history.
JRW: You wrote an article recently in Barataria on Marxism and Indigenism in Bolivian history. Can you describe, historically and contemporaneously, what are the contradictions between Indigenism and Marxism, and what are the possibilities of a union between the two?
AGL: Here in Bolivia, Marxism as an ideology is about 60 or 70 years old, with a presence in intellectual circles. In the first period, a very marginal Marxism, whose referent was Tristan Marof, was present in the 1920s. He was very similar to José Mariátegui in Peru toward Indians. According to some historians they were planning an uprising in Sucre, the indigenous people, Tristan Marof, and his four lawyers. It's a very interesting historical presence. And this, this first encounter between Marxism - small, marginal, a few intellectuals - and the practical indigenous movement was broken in the 1940s when two big currents, already much more consolidated, installed themselves here in Bolivia: the Trostkyists and the Stalinists.
They were already political currents with an organizational structure. They had more people, were more inclusive. And they abandoned whatever close connection with Indians, and dedicated themselves to working strictly with workers. That is, if the revolution was to be from the workers, and socialism was what was coming, the task was to look for workers, and the Indians didn't exist, or were petty bourgeoisies, or were slaves who had to be liberated by the workers.
A very primitive reading of the indigenous population, and in this way it broke a fruitful, very beautiful, relationship between Indians and Marxists, opting for another type of Marxism better connected to the workers' sectors. It was an extremely primitive Marxism because it couldn't be a conveyor of critical tools that could help the theory adapt itself to a reality that wasn't Europe, that wasn't Russia, a reality where there were indigenous people, other languages, other cultures, and where workers were a tiny part of the population. In sum, it couldn't succeed.
This distance between indigenous people and Marxism easily lasted until the 1980s. And in these years, during the 1970s, the indigenous movement and its leaders surged forward once again. And these manual Marxists, primitive Marxists, simply saw the Indians as reactionaries because they wanted to talk about historical themes that weren't relevant to social revolution, or they were petty bourgeois, or they were racists. This Marxism lasted from the 1940s until the 1980s, and couldn't get closer to, it didn't read correctly, the indigenous movements, and so the social facts collided. And therefore here the indigenous movement of the 1970s and 1980s rose up in confrontation with Marxism, not only in confrontation with liberal ideologies. No, they also rose up against Marxists because the Marxists considered them to be counterrevolutionaries and racists. As a result, one of the slogans of the indigenists of the1980s was "ni Marx ni menos" or "neither Marx nor less," because there had been a confrontation between them, not recognition.
In the 1980s this confrontation between the two would attenuate because there was a defeat of the Left in Bolivia. These Marxists lost influence in the mines that were closing, lost influence in the factories that were closing, and lost historical legitimacy because of the failure of administration of the UDP (Democratic Popular Union) government (in power from 1982-1985). They became a marginal sector. And the indigenists who had been rising up with force would quickly be coopted by NGOs (non-governmental organizations), or by the state that started a series of reforms under multicultural neoliberalism.
Therefore, in the 1980s and 1990s, to talk of active indianisms and marxisms isn't relevant, because what was prevalent was a debate of modernizing ideologies between liberals. However, small, marginal groups like us, were looking for, continue looking for - very much at the margins, very isolated - an articulation between Indianism and Marxism. Something we did in the 1980s, was an effort to give body to the ethnic demand through a reading of the role of national identities in revolutionary processes, the role of agrarian communities and the possible transformation of capitalism, a study that was detailed, but in these moments was without influence.
We tried to give body to the theme of revindicating nationalities, to transcend mere description of ethnicity and its politicization, like the national identity demand. We tried to transcend mere ethnic discourse to a discourse of indigenous nationalism.
We tried in the 1980s, but without much influence. But these things we worked on in the 1980s - in the distinct scenario of the 2000s, in a scenario of political crisis, in a scenario of the weakening of neoliberal ideologies, and the weakness of the traditional Marxists - were going to find more fertile ground, between certain ideas that we had worked on from the margins, of some Marxists who wanted to dialogue with Indianism. Since 2000 these ideas have had more force. They've succeeded in expanding themselves to other intellectuals, to the level of social movement leaders. And there is a revitalizing of Indianism. But already this was not an Indianism in confrontation with Marxists because the Marxists of the old epoch, who had been enemies, had disappeared.
So, now we are in an interesting process, a new open dialogue not seen since the 1920s, a new dialogue still with reticence, still with a certain distance, and certain skepticism. But a new open dialogue between Marxist intellectuals who critique the primitive Marxism of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and who approach Indianism not with the intention to control it but to offer tools of analysis, tools of interpretation, to offer tools of comprehension of indigenous social movement. I think we're in a new historic effort after almost 100 years, of a much more fruitful dialogue between the two grand readings of the transformation of Bolivia, that is Indianism and Marxism.
JRW: The uprising of October, 2003 was a very important conjuncture here in Bolivia. From your perspective, who were the principal actors of the insurrection, and what were the most important discourses and demands?
AGL: There were multiple actors. One of the first actors were the Aymara Indians of the countryside, organized in communities, under the form of unions. But the unions (sindicatos), as you know Jeff, aren't workers' unions. It's the historic name of a traditional, communal structure here in Bolivia.
The first actors who mobilized, marched, participated in a hunger strike, then a blockade of the roads in the Lago Titicaca region, were the Aymara indigenous. There was a military intervention with 8 deaths, and these 8 deaths would begin to expand a sentiment of cohesive ethnic identity. Initially they were the first national actor, the Aymara indigenous, around the city of La Paz.
Then, this actor would be accompanied by other urban actors in the city of El Alto. (Ex-president) Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada fell from power on October 17. From the 7th or 8th of October the movement started to incorporate urban actors with a complex, combined identity. They are actors that mobilize themselves under a neighbourhood identity, the federations of united neighbours (in El Alto this refers to FEJUVE), but it depends on their geographic relationships, and their social condition of labour. They are actors who, through this idea of neighbour, recuperate discourses and organizational forms that are more worker-oriented - this is the case for example in the El alto neighbourhood Santiago 2, a neighbourhood of ex -miners - or if you go more toward the zone that exits towards the lake (Lake Titicaca), they are actors that are going to revindicate or mobilize cultural repertoires, some mobilizational repertoires and discourses that are more indigenous.
Something like this is the base of the neighbourhood identity, but with multiple gradations, some more worker, others more indigenous, peasant, or more commercial. This is interesting. Therefore, there was no single actor when they mobilized themselves, or a single identity that mobilized itself in El Alto. Although there is no doubt that El Alto is the most indigenous city in Bolivia. According to the last census close to 80 percent self-identified as indigenous.
But this doesn't mean much in itself. In some cases "indigenous" becomes the identity in discourse, in symbols, and in other cases its "worker", and in other cases "neighbour", and in other cases small business people. These become the mobilized identities.
So, I think El Alto is an interesting mix between a type of indigenous migrant identity of the first generation with a worker-indigenous identity - which is not contradictory, the worker indigenized - and an identity more towards worker-mestizo. There are distinct variations depending to which zone of the city you go.
(Talking again about the central actors of October.) And then of course there is the presence of other actors of more classical workers, coming from Oruro, from the Huanuni mine, from the Concidi (?) mine, and the cooperativsts (also miners). And you have the presence of other peasants, strictly peasants in the classical sense, in Cochabamba. And finally small sectors of the urban middle class that in the end entered a hunger strike, maybe 50-100 people.
So, this is a mobilization that articulated itself in functions of time and geography. There are multiple actors, and multiple identities, flexible identities, porous identities.
JRW: What is the role of natural resources, especially gas and water, in the contemporary struggles?
AGL: The theme of water has been a detonating theme of social mobilization. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bolivia suffered processes of privatization of state public resources. In the middle of a crisis of Left thought, the cooptation of indigenous leaders by the state, a hunger for modernization, the way of the free market, privatizations - and this happened almost without resistance, almost without resistance. Don't forget, Jeff, that between the 1980s and the 1990s the three big parties that had free market proposals obtained 70 percent of the national electorate. There was a cultural and ideological hegemony in Bolivia, of liberalization and modernization.
But there was a moment when this was going to break apart, first it was going to be because there was so much promised with very few results. This was going to be the first symptom that would generate certain malaise at the end of the 1990s.
However the detonator of the mobilization that would convert this malaise into collective action was when the state wanted to begin privatizing non-state public resources, like water. Water in Bolivia is a non-state public resource in the countryside, with systems of traditional administration going back 700, 800, 900 years. The water of the rivers, the lakes, from the summits, is regulated by public communal systems. They are very complicated. The system of water in the agricultural zones is more complicated than the system of land. At the end of the 1990s, in 1999 the intent was to privatize in a manner mediated through concessions.
Land and water are basic, fundamental elements of the reproduction of peasant communities. There is a memory, their histories, their dead, their future. And when it started to be privatized it produced some of the articulations of social mobilization that caused the Water War in Cochabamba in 2000. It wasn't only urban residents but peasant irrigators of the urban periphery. And from here, the rural zones, would be mobilized the most important urban-rural alliance since 1952 (the year of the national revolution).
Then, the second large mobilization based here in the high-plains (altiplano) in October 2000 when, opposing a parliamentary law, the so-called law of water, the Aymara Indians blockaded the city of La Paz for 20 days. And from here surged a leadership, and from there begins this story (of the water struggle).
Water played a role in articulating rural forces, indigenous and peasant, and forces from the urban periphery, and in some case urban sectors, like in Cochabamba, for the defense of the social function, of the value of use over the value of changing this resource. And this would be a unifying, mobilizing, politicizing factor in local structures of daily life that assumed the defense of this resource, and from here the demands would be amplified the horizons of politicization of society: Indigenous, popular, urban.
Hydrocarbons (of which natural gas is the most important) would be the second unifying factor of this society in October, 2003. I think that through hydrocarbons various things were articulated. As in the situation with water, there was an articulation of historical memory, and a condition of autonomy in the reproduction of indigenous communities.
And hydrocarbons articulated another historical memory connected to two things. The Indians were those who died in the Chaco War (1932-1935) to defend petroleum that was supposedly in Tarija. 50,000 people died in this war, and at that time we had a country of about 1.5 or 2 million people. 50,000 is a lot of people! A lot! And the majority of the dead were Indians. To die in lands unknown to them. They were able to die for petroleum - that turned out not to be there - but they went to die. And there's not a peasant family in El Alto, the altiplano, that doesn't have a dead or mutilated grandfather, or a survivor of the Chaco War. This is important, very important. One starts to see the stories of contemporary adolescents who weren't in the Chaco War but who remember that their father went, that their grandfather went. So, there's this.
But also in this theme, the theme of hydrocarbons, there is a species of collective intuition, that the debates over hydrocarbons are playing with the destiny of this country, a country accustomed with having a lot of natural resources but always being poor, always seeing the natural resources serve to enrich others. And I think the people understand it, beyond all the technical debates, beyond all of this. There is a reflection. This is a natural resource. And we've had silver, we've had tin, we've had rubber, and we've always been poor. Enough, I want to say no. With this other natural resource we don't want to be poor! We want it to serve us, to come to our houses (domestic access to natural gas). I want to cook with gas in place of animal waste, or that my son, my daughter can have a job. This is the second historic element.
And a third element, I believe, is that the theme of gas permitted the channeling of a rejection of the free market economic model that served very few of the people. Gas was a pretext. Through the defence of gas, its recuperation, this is a rejection of privatizations, a rejection of foreign investment, as the only factors of economic modernization.
So, I think there are three articulated memories: a memory of the 1930s, a memory that dates back to when Pizarro arrived here, and a memory that is more immediate, resistance to a free market economic model that in the last 20 years has not provided for the welfare of the people. These three things functioned as articulators, politicizers, and mobilizers of social expectations.
JRW: Last question: What are the weaknesses and strengths in this historical conjuncture for the Left, and for popular movements in general?
AGL: It's a moment that we have to view through a historical perspective, with ups and downs, the construction of identities, of force, of discourse. One has to see it in the long historical cycles of the reconstitution of the popular.
Now it's under indigenous leaders, for the last 80 years it was under the leadership of the workers. And it's a process that had more than 10 years of articulation. This process is going to have possibly a cycle of 20 or 30 years more, with highs and lows, failures, and some victories.
At the same time this process of reconstitution is situated in a very particular historical moment: the rupture of conservative ideologies, and the projects of modernization and of power. Lamentably, it has found the popular indigenous movement in its first periods of formation, not in its moment of advanced consolidation. This brings to light many weaknesses. It's almost to wish that the crisis happened at a later time because the indigenous popular movement hasn't had time for the long period of maturation in many areas, and this has weakened its capacity to resolve this crisis.
But history is like that and you can't hope that all the conditions will align in a propitious manner. So, seen through a historical perspective we have 30 years to mature, but seen through a more concrete perspective there are a series of challenges, and weaknesses of the movement to respond to these challenges, so that I'm sure if they can respond. Let's go through them.
The unification of forces is necessary, not under the old vertical form of the COB that was top-down, but a more horizontal formation. Because here no sector wants to dilute itself in another, no sector accepts the leadership of another. This is good, it seems to me. But it's very risky when it paralyzes and prevents the unification of forces.
How do we invent systems of horizontal articulation, thematic, temporary, that don't dissolve the identity of one in the leadership of another? This is a great challenge, and an urgent one, because if they could overcome this challenge now, the indigenous and the popular sectors could easily govern this country. However, they're not prepared for this crisis of the dominant powers. This is the first weakness. They need a capacity of articulation that is much more serious, much more solid, thematic, that breaks with corporatism.
A second weakness is in the following area: to have the capacity to create political structures that permit an alliance with the popular urban social sectors that aren't unionized. When Evo Morales (leader of the political party Movement Toward Socialism, MAS), or Quispe (peasant leader Felipe Quispe) call for actions they can articulate "the popular." But there are large urbanized sectors that are not organized in federations of neighbours or unions... they're individual, and very influential.
The middle class and the ascending part of the popular class that have influence. They are the ones that buy newspapers, that listen to the radio, that appear on television, that drive taxis. And they're influential. This is where there are limitations to bring in our social and popular movements, and political leadership.
It's not enough to mobilize and conquer the unions to govern Bolivia. This also requires the disorganized popular sectors, who constitute the majority at the urban level. This is a second element that the movements have as a challenge; it's a contemporary weakness and a challenge.
A third element is a better clarity of their projects of emancipation. What is possible? What is desirable? What is imaginable today in terms of change? There's a certain ambiguity. And this ambiguity can weaken the movement's relationship to its own base and, what's more, with urban supporters. You're not going to have the capacity to establish hegemony without the city. And what project do the Indians offer to the workers of the giant corporation, who don't identify as indigenous, who don't want to be indigenous, but who are as equally impoverished as the indigenous? What discourse?
What discourse do they have to give to the impoverished middle classes, beyond the recognition of rights, that the indigenous legitimately have conquered? What project for the country? Which projects could be more hegemonic for the country, with the capacity to articulate the indigenous and the popular, not exclusively indigenous, also the people. The idea of hegemony is still weak, I think, in our movements. There have been very vital movements to resist, to oppose, but to lead - which they can do - here there are many limitations, in structure, in discourse, in the clarity of projects.
And a fourth element, but one that is much more in the longer term, is the reconstitution of the proletariat in Bolivia. There are many workers in Bolivia, but the working class is divided into other identities, fragmented, diluted...a working class that identifies as neighbours not as workers, that identify as students, not as workers. There is no autonomous construction of an identity and mobilizing force of workers. There are a few unions here, in Cochabamba, that echo an older epoch. Unions on the defence, tiny, the last of the privileged, preoccupied with defending their work, incapable of looking forward. This is important. We don't have this. We don't have this. To articulate our workers, our adolescents, that are students, are teachers, others that work in small workshops. Thousands, and thousands, and thousands. I did a study in 1999, and I arrived at the conclusion that only 8 percent of Bolivian workers are organized. 8 percent! The rest no. And the rest identify as indigenous, as neighbours, as artisans, as nothing, they don't have unions, they don't have security, they don't have identity, they don't have formation. To reconstruct this workers' fabric is the plank for another type of modernization, through work, that compliments the indigenous project which is more agrarian. This includes their urban force, which is still related to the countryside. This the great challenge that we have here in Bolivia to construct forces of emancipation.
But the working classes, in the sense of mobilized actors, construct themselves in decades, not in a week, nor in three years. They construct themselves in 20 years? If there was a strong articulated workers' movement under the contemporary material characteristics, with the indigenous movement, maybe we would be in much more propitious moments to make massive structural changes in the country.
For the moment, I think we are before changes - using the old language - democratic. That is to say, the decolonization of the state, the construction of equality, the appearance of collective rights, that for Bolivia are a gigantic revolution. For 500 years the indigenous here had been considered animals without rights. This already is gigantic. Seen in the perspective of the world, it's not a big thing, but for Bolivia it's a lot. And the possibility of large transformations more structural in nature, that will irradiate in a historic summation of workers' forces with indigenous-peasant forces. With this... maybe we'll be here discussing things beyond democracy, or capitalism with better distribution, that represent the limited horizon that represents today's reality.
Jeffery R. Webber is a member of the Toronto branch of the New Socialist Group and a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is currently in Bolivia. Thanks to Susan Spronk for helpful editorial comments.
Post new comment