Particularly controversial has been the issue of land reform. Bolivia has one of the most unequal rates of land ownership in the world, with one per cent of landowners owning two-thirds of the country’s farm land. It is no surprise, then, that Morales’s proposed reforms have provoked the ire of Bolivia’s landed elites. In the richer provinces, these elites began orchestrating violence against indigenous people in alliance with crypto-fascist paramilitary youth mobs. Among their demands are regional autonomy and a greater share of oil and gas profits – concessions that Morales is unwilling to give. At the time of writing, the worst of the violence seems to have subsided and talks between the government and opposition have resulted in Bolivia’s Congress approving a referendum on a new constitution early next year. But the underlying conflict is unlikely to be easily resolved and could flare up again at any time.

Conflict of interests

In Civil War is not a Stupid Thing, the political economist Christopher Cramer critically reflects upon the prevailing ideology surrounding conflict in the ‘third world’. He argues that historically the west has looked upon conflict in these places as a ‘deviant aberration from a more normal world of liberal peace, best exemplified by Northern prosperity and stability’. For Cramer, in the past few years this prejudice has been integrated into a neoliberal analysis that emphasises the immediate economic costs to societies of conflict, with these two assumptions combining to support the notion that conflict is ‘development in reverse’.

A cursory look at the British media’s reporting of the crisis in Bolivia supports Cramer’s thesis. Both the Guardian and the Independent observed that Bolivia was beginning to resemble a ‘failed state’. The Daily Telegraph’s Daniel Hannan chided the Bolivian government for placing ideology before compromise, accusing ‘Morales’s palaeo-socialism’ of ‘shrinking the economy’, thereby having the effect that ‘Bolivians are poorer, angrier and more violent than I have ever known them – they deserve better than this’. The Financial Times, meanwhile, harboured doubts about the ability of ‘increasingly politicised institutions to support entrepreneurialism and economic growth’. The message is clear: conflict is antiquated, a distraction from the more civilised business of money making.

It woould be ironic if the west’s detached attitude to events in Latin America were to be explained in part by neoliberal notions, given that the current global neoliberal order had its bloody birth in Latin America – in Chile in 1973. In the wake of the US-sponsored coup that overthrew Salvador Allende’s democratically-elected government, economists from Milton Friedman’s Chicago School rammed through radical neoliberal reforms. Chile served as a laboratory for radical ideas that would later be adopted by the west, with Margaret Thatcher an infamous admirer of the military dictator General Pinochet’s ‘restructuring’ of Chilean society.

There are, in fact, close parallels between the modern histories of Britain and Bolivia. The post-war era in both countries was shaped by popular democratic governments that vastly expanded the public realm. In Britain, the Labour government of Clement Atlee nationalised Britain’s major industries and founded the NHS. In 1952 in Bolivia, the left-wing National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) of Victor Paz Estenssoro nationalised the mines and established national education and healthcare systems. In both countries these reforms remained largely unchanged until the mid-1980s.

Bolivia embraced neoliberal changes in 1985, following the re-election of the MNR – once again headed by Paz. This time, Paz promptly reversed the reforms of 1952, floating the peso, cutting public sector salaries and eliminating food subsidies, price controls and restrictions on foreign commerce. As in Britain, the neoliberal revolution continued through the 1990s with the privatisation of the oil, gas, tin, telecommunications and railway industries.

War on democracy

In Bolivia, the manner in which these reforms were instituted was profoundly undemocratic. Paz had run on a mandate of fiscal responsibility and an allegiance to his ‘nationalist revolutionary’ past. Once in power, though, the New Economic Policy (NEP) was instituted as a presidential decree. The idea was to pass the reforms before trade union and civil and peasant groups had a chance to react. React they did, however, just as the British unions did in response to Thatcher’s reforms, calling a general strike. As Naomi Klein has noted, Paz’s response ‘made Thatcher’s treatment of the miners seem tame’. He declared a state of emergency and rounded up the top 200 union leaders, loaded them on to planes and flew them to remote jails in the Amazon.

The turn to neoliberalism has been a common theme of the past 30 years in much of the world – to the extent that we can now speak of a neoliberal global economic order. In large measure this global revolution has relied upon circumventing national democratic processes. ‘Privatisation’ and ‘liberalisation’, in reality, amount to technical terms for removing critical economic decisions from the realm of public accountability. Democracy is further undermined when national democratic decisions can be vetoed by capital flight as a consequence of international free trade. This is something John Maynard Keynes recognised when he warned that ‘nothing less than the democratic experiment in self-government [is] endangered by the threat of global financial forces.’

In Bolivia, neoliberalism was initially hailed as an enormous success. Prior to Paz’s reforms, inflation had skyrocketed to over 14,000 per cent. Within two years of the reforms it had been brought down to 10 per cent. But as inflation came down, unemployment went up. Bolivia experienced massive lay offs, including 22,000 from the state mines alone, rising to 45,000 by 1991.

Unemployment took its heaviest toll on Bolivia’s fragile industrial sector. Without state backing, factory closures led to 35,000 people losing their jobs. Those that remained in employment did not fare much better, with real wages dropping by 40 per cent. Not only did neoliberalism fail to create jobs, but the dismantling of the central bureaucracy undermined the government’s ability to respond to the damaging effects of joblessness. Many who lost jobs migrated to the east of the country to grow coca, which by the 1980s was Bolivia’s most profitable export.

While ultimate responsibility for the NEP lies with Paz and his ‘emergency team’ of technocrats and business leaders, the reforms were also largely a product of the aggressive influence of international financial institutions, particularly the IMF and World Bank. The NEP was largely designed to court their approval, while the waves of privatisations in the 1990s were on the explicit instructions of the IMF – in fact, the IMF was so impressed with the results that Bolivia was held up as a model for less developed countries around the world.

The Bolivian government’s pandering to the demands of the IMF in the 1990s can be interpreted as a consequence of the devastation wrought on Bolivia’s democracy by the NEP. Having been shut out of the sphere of governance, the public had limited means with which to press the government to act in its interests. The result was a return to an imperial arrangement whereby Bolivia’s elites auctioned off their country’s land and resources to the highest foreign bidders.

The looting of Bolivia reached its nadir in 2000 when the World Bank facilitated the privatisation of the water supply in the city of Cochambamba to a foreign multinational consortium led by London-based International Water Limited (IWL). In exchange Bolivia would receive $600 million of debt relief. The consortium immediately raised water rates by 35 per cent, and in the drive for profit maximisation a law was even briefly passed prohibiting people from collecting rainwater. For the majority of Bolivians, their patience had run out.

Democracy returns

In voting for Morales and his party in 2005, the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), Bolivians voted for democracy. Morales was elected on a platform of facilitating popular participation in the running of the country and the economy through the widening of the public sphere, the representation of social movements in executive office and the introduction of indigenous rights. Nationalisation of key industries ensured that profits stayed in Bolivia and the government had the capacity to govern.

As left historians Forrest Hylton and Trevor Sinclair elegantly put it in their book Revolutionary Horizons: ‘The election of Evo Morales did not bring about a revolution. It was a revolution that brought about the government of Evo Morales.’

Prior to the 2005 election, popular mobilisation had already brought down two presidents and vetoed the accession of a third. The toppling of these governments was not led by MAS; rather the MAS leadership trailed a popular mobilisation led by indigenous groups, trade unions and federations of coca growers.

It was out of this coalition that the proposals for nationalisation, constitutional reform and economic and political restructuring emerged. MAS itself was a political organisation founded by civil groups in the 1990s to articulate popular demands. In his inauguration speech Morales appealed to these groups saying ‘Control me. If I can’t advance, push me, brothers and sisters. Correct me constantly, because I may err.’

Morales was reliant on these groups during the crisis. That Morales’s supporters continue to resist the opposition’s campaign of violence is testament to their overwhelming national support and ability to mobilise to defend the government’s legitimacy.

While the British media openly discussed the possibility of a civil war, Morales’s popularity has risen since the 2005 election, including in the richer provinces. It is this support that pressured opposition members in Congress to ratify a new draft of the Bolivian constitution on 21 October. A national referendum on whether or not to make the document official is scheduled for 25 January next year.

It is significant that Bolivia’s latest crisis coincided with the 35th anniversary of the coup in Chile. It is also worth reminding ourselves that it is doubtful whether the Chile coup would have succeeded without international complicity. The parallels have not gone unnoticed in Latin America as neighbouring countries have queued up to pledge support to Morales and condemn the violence. Argentine president Christina Kirchner warned: ‘If we don’t act now, in 30 years we may be watching documentaries [about Bolivia] like those we see today about Salvador Allende.’ Her statement contained a veiled reference to the US government, whose shadow looms large over the crisis. In September, relations between the US and Bolivia became openly hostile when Morales expelled the US ambassador, accusing him of subverting Bolivia’s democracy by colluding with opposition groups.

A revolution without borders

In the 1980s, the US waged a war against a democratic revolution in Nicaragua. During the revolution, Tomas Borge, a founding member of the Sandinistas, stated his desire for a ‘revolution without borders’. What he meant was that he hoped the revolution could serve as a model for other societies. In the context of the cold war, the US government and its backers in the media did not need to resort to a sophisticated neoliberal analysis to distort the meaning of Borge’s words; it was enough to report that Nicaragua was intent on spreading a permanent ‘Soviet-style’ revolution across the western hemisphere.

The reality is that the distortion was intended to conceal something far more threatening – what Oxfam rather shrewdly described at the time as ‘the threat of the good example’. Bolivia’s experiment with democracy is an example for all of us. At a time in which neoliberalism has hollowed out our democracy while simultaneously propelling us down a path of economic and ecological disaster, the stakes could not be higher. Showing solidarity with Bolivia at this time is undoubtedly important for the people there. It might be just as important for us. n

The Bolivian elections have been postponed until 18 December 2005 by presidential decree. They were due two weeks earlier, until president Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze stepped in to cut the knot of a political stalemate which had lasted for five weeks.

The constitutional crisis began at the end of September, when the Supreme Court ordered a readjustment in parliamentary seat allocations to reflect the results of the 2001 census. This readjustment would have benefited the Eastern provinces of Cochabamba and, more importantly, Santa Cruz, home of the most conservative elements within the Bolivian political landscape, including major landowners and businessmen who make no secret of their intention to leave Bolivia and declare an autonomous state if matters get “out of hand”. In this way, the technical question of seat allocation soon became a matter of regional pride: none of the provinces which were to lose seats wanted to give way, and Santa Cruz stood firm in its claims, fuelling separatist feelings.

But other major issues have been largely excluded from the campaign. The issue of the nationalisation of natural resources and the creation of a Constitutional assembly, two essential demands of the indigenous, citizens’ and social movements since the so-called Gas War in October 2003, have been largely absent from the main political debate. Not even Evo Morales and his MAS running-mate Alvaro Garcia have managed (or, some say, wanted) to challenge this and put forward clear proposals to contest the strictly neoliberal programme of Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, the main candidate of the right-wing elites which have been controlling Bolivia ever since independence from Spain in the 1820s.

Social movements

“We’re expectant,” says A., a young, radical aymara indigenous activist from El Alto who prefers not to be named in full. “If Morales wins but doesn’t respect his word and doesn’t nationalise natural gas and doesn’t call the Constitutional assembly, we will give him three months, then we’ll rebel again.” Needless to say, those three months will be much less in case of a Tuto Quiroga victory.

El Alto was the core of the social protests which forced president Gonzalo Sanchez De Lozada to flee the country in October 2003, and Carlos Mesa to step down in June this year. The city of 800,000 people controls the main airports and highway to La Paz. When El Alto moves, La Paz gets strangled: no fuel, no food, no links with the rest of the country and the world. A considerable veto power which the movements, aymara and social alike have learned to use.

“Now it’s time to move forward,” claims Pablo Mamani, director of the sociology department of El Alto Autonomous University, “the clandestine nation humiliated through centuries of white and mestizos’ dominance, is getting ready to take its role in the running of the country.” This is the basic rationale behind the demand for a Constitutional Assembly – which would aim to disperse the power concentrated with a handful of families, not more than 120, who have been running the country for generations.

It is a claim that reflects and tries to overcome the deep running divisions which tear Bolivia apart: indigenous (60-70% of the population) versus whites and mestizos; mountain versus plains; West versus East; cities versus countryside.

“It is the structure of the state that we have to challenge,” says Roberto Rodriguez, professor of economics at the Cochabamba University. “Bolivia is still a colonial state, we are providers of raw materials and cheap labour, and the economic structure is still a semi feudal one, though dressed up with a neoliberal cloak.” Rodriguez is rather skeptical about the chances that Evo Morales will stick to his promises: “I do not think that he can change this, since one of the steps to be taken is to de-power parties and party controls on the insitutions, to empower citizens and social organizations.”

Alongside him stands Oscar Olivera, spokeperson of the Coordinadora en defensa del agua y de la vida (the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life), the movement which in the year 2000 led the famous Water War in Cochabamba and forced the US multinational Bechtel to quit the country and abandon the water facility privatisation scheme. He is one Bolivia’s most influential social leaders, and his opinion differs from Rodriguez’s. Asked whether he’s going to vote, he says: “Yes, and I’ll vote Morales, because we cannot afford Tuto Quiroga to win. But we have big differences with the MAS. When we speak about nationalization of natural resources we do not think about going back to the old, corrupted and inefficient state managment, dominated by parties. We rather think of social control and citizens’ participation in the decision making process. We do not want to trade an elite for another elite, albeit indigenous and left-oriented. We want power to be shared, spread and dispersed among citizens and social organizations”.

This political goal coincides with the desires of the aymara indigenous, who want a political and institutional system that is far more accountable to the community. “The aymara model of community control is highly interesting, but specific to the aymara”, says Roberto Rodriguez, “I do not think it can be implemented the same way in non-aymara communities, but it is something we have to think about and try to integrate in a different state architecture”.

In order to overcome doubts and criticisms, Evo Morales’ vice president-to-be took a rabbit from his marxist hat: according to him, Bolivia needs a “process of primitive accumulation” and industrialisation which enables the construction of an “Andean socialism”. This can be interpreted in two ways: as “yes, we are going to nationalize and increase the state intervention in the economy to improve living conditions,” or as “don’t worry to much, you landlords and enterpeneurs, you’re going to continue to make money and be safe behind your gated villas”.

Consequently, both sides remain to be convinced. The rich elites of southern La Paz and the separatist landlords of Santa Cruz prefer to rely on Tuto Quiroga and (according to some reports) are gathering arms to respond to what they understand as a “worst case scenario.” On the other hand, the social movements, young aymaras and their community leaders demand a different relation with the resources of the Pachamama, Mother Earth, and not just industrial exploitation. They fear state-run monopolies which would give further space to corruption and political patronage without changing the basic framework of the state.

A difficult context

Nontheless, everybody seems to be willing to give Evo a chance. He plays his cards, relying on the support of peasants and miners organizations in his home province, Cochabamba, and on his allure among the vast masses of the Bolivian poor. But he knows, as everybody else does, that the possibility of changing Bolivia cannot ignore the geopolitics of Latin America. Will the US, in need of Bolivian gas (and oil) resources, let Bolivians decide? Will Brazil and Argentina, both interested in Bolivian gas and so close to its borders, let Bolivians decide? Will the army, split into at least two different factions, let Bolivians decide?

The landlords of Santa Cruz are not the only ones gathering arms. In the aymara heartland of Achacachi, on the shores of Titicaca lake, everybody talks about the “Indigenous Barracks of Qala Chaca,” home of the indigenous and elusive aymara army. Equipped with old 1950s mauser rifles but with an unmatched knowledge of the area, they are also expectant. The whole country is holding its breath. At least until 18 December. The mistrust towards politicians of all kind finds its way into the songs of a leading rock band, Los Atajo. Playing live in El Alto in a ceremony to remember the tens of victims of the Gas War, their singer Pachi Maldonado, explains: “Our presidente is a short guy from El Alto, so short that people call him Pulga [flee].” Then the ellectric guitars and the accordion come in: “Todo bien, Pulga presidente&.”. “You see, neither Evo nor Tuto,” clarifies A.

But as Oscar Olivera – a key figure in the Bolivian movement – tells it, the struggle is not so much against corporations or politicians as it is for public control of decisions affecting everyday life. ‘People can change things,’ says Olivera. And a seemingly unstoppable public momentum is building around this simple realization.

This momentum got a huge boost in 2000 when the people of Olivera’s hometown of Cochabamba de-privatized their water system to world-wide acclaim from all those opposing the power of global capitalism. It was one of democracy’s more dramatic moments in this era of globalization.

The people of Cochabamba discovered control of their water system was in the hands of a multinational consortium spearheaded by U.S.-based Bechtel Corporation. Bolivia ‘s government had granted the consortium, under the name Aguas del Tunari, 40 year concession to run the city’s water system. The deal guaranteed the company 16% annual profits, while the city’s people, many near the brink of survival, suffered water price hikes averaging 51%. A Bolivian water law that coincided with the privatization compounded the conflict, serving to restrict access to water people had always used.

After a dramatic five month struggle Aguas del Tunari withdrew and the Bolivian government handed over the city’s water system to a public board. The government passed a new water law that helps keep common water sources in common hands, as Olivera puts it.

Olivera is spokesperson for Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida , the organization that headed the struggle. He says the new water board is engaged in the difficult task of improving a troubled water system in a dry region. Prices are back to previous levels, but he says the challenges are considerable.

For Olivera the victory was one for local control of decisions that impact daily life. He says the people recovered not only their water but ‘their capacity to decide’ and their voice. It was an important step toward building a de-corporatized society, a process that has only become more intense since the water conflict.

Crude politics

Olivera, a shoe factory worker by trade, says oil and gas are vital to the sort of country the people are creating. ‘We want a different country,’ he says, ‘and for that we need an economic base.’ He sees Bolivia ‘s oil and gas reserves, which are second only to Venezuela ‘s on the continent, as the obvious economic foundation. But currently Bolivia ‘s oil is controlled by foreign powers and revenues pour out of the country.

For most of a century Bolivia has vacillated between nationalized and privatized control of its oil. In 1996 president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada signed privatization deals with various oil companies. Now, Olivera says, for every $100 of oil extracted in the country, $18 stays in Bolivia and $82 goes to the companies.

In 2003 Sánchez de Lozada, purportedly Bolivia ‘s second richest man, said Bolivia would sell gas to California . The people, seeing more of their national birthright siphoned off, said ‘no.’ And they said so forcefully. The government responded with its own force. In the end more than 60 people were dead and hundreds injured. Sánchez de Lozada ended up resigning and retreating to Miami .

Arising largely from continued public momentum, the Bolivian government is now debating a draft Hydrocarbons Law that could nationalize management of the resource and ensure greater industry benefits for the country as a whole. The high-stakes parliamentary debate on the law continues (it began November 3), as do pro-nationalization protests. The current president is caught between prevailing international oil interests and a people proven capable of toppling a president.

To Olivera the oil and gas issue is a matter of ‘life and death’ for his homeland. It could be an historic step toward realizing the vision of the people, or it could bring two powerful forces into direct conflict. Olivera says he fears violence if parliament defies the people. His hopeful eyes betray deep concern.

It is not clear when Bolivia will see a final version of the Hydrocarbons Law.

In the meantime, the city of El Alto is on the verge of its own ‘water war’, with civil society groups demanding the authorities return the city’s water system, currently run by a company controlled by French water giant Suez, to public control. This comes as Bechtel has finally dropped its US$25 million suit against Bolivia for cancelling its Cochabamba contract.

Bolivia ‘s increasingly intense political dynamics also played out in the December 5 municipal elections. The Movimiento Al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism), which aligns itself with the popular movements garnered significant popular support though not enough to unseat incumbent mayors in the major cities. Nonetheless the election marked a significant shift away from the traditional parties and toward MAS, which is a force both inside and outside the electoral system. Indigenous peoples, who make up 60% of Bolivia ‘s 8.6 million people are proving to be a growing force in the country.

‘ La gente’

Olivera says the ‘neoliberal’ template has been applied particularly directly and brutally in Bolivia . Water and gas are examples of the particularly rampant privatization which Bolivian people have been told is the only way to go. But the promises ring hollow. Bolivia is the poorest nation in South America and one of the most unequal societies on earth. Neo-liberalism hasn’t remedied this. Olivera emphasizes the uniqueness of the people’s response to this failure. They have rallied around a positive, participatory vision. People know what they want.

As I listen to Olivera one phrase rises above the others: ‘la gente.’ Translated directly, it simply means ‘the people.’ But punctuated with a history of struggle and the taste of an inevitably better future, as it is when Olivera says it, ‘la gente’ carries meaning beyond its English rendering. There seems to be the confidence of a David spreading amongst the people; a modest momentum that is slowly shifting the locus of power away from national electoral politics. Getting the right guy in power is less and less important, as power increasingly lies elsewhere. This is not electoral reform, but a bottoms-up reclaiming of democracy.

Olivera distils the issues of globalization and democracy into a single question: ‘Who decides?’ Increasingly in Bolivia , the common people-with their blemishes, hopes and montage of interests-are deciding.Will Braun is a writer from Winnipeg, Canada. He has lived and travelled in Latin America .