Indigenous revolution brings hope to Bolivia
August 18, 2006
Judy Rebick

As devastation rains down on Lebanon and the world seems closer to disaster, I find myself in a place of extraordinary hope. What is happening in Bolivia is without precedence in modern history. An indigenous government has taken power and is attempting, with some success so far, to implement policies based on ancient indigenous practices and values.

Much of the left has been judging the Evo Morales government with the same measuring stick as other left-wing governments in South America. While they identify on the left and see these governments, especially Cuba and Venezuela as allies, their ideas are quite different.

The first thing to understand is that this is a profoundly democratic revolution where an oppressed and marginalized majority is taking power. There are similarities with the victory of the ANC in South Africa.

Rooted in centuries-old traditions of communitarian socialism, reciprocity and a oneness with the earth, combined with decades of radical and militant trade union and indigenous struggles, the MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) took power under the leadership of Evo Morales six months ago. Evo, as everyone here calls him, is not only the first indigenous leader in the Americas in more than 500 years, he is also a campesino (peasant) and leader of the cocalaros (coca growers), one of the most militant groups in the country.

Could it be that the ancient Andean philosophies and values provide us with a framework that could save the earth and save humanity. Evo thinks so.

“The indigenous communities have historically lived in community, in collectivity, in harmony not only with each other as human beings but with mother earth and nature and we have to recover that. If we think about life as equality and justice, if we think of humanity, the model of the West, industrialization and neo-liberalism is destroying the planet earth, which for me is the great Pachamama [the supreme goddess of Aymara/Quechua who are the largest groups of indigenous peoples here]. The model that concentrates capital in the hands of the few, this neo-liberal model, this capitalist model is destroying the planet earth. And it's heading towards destroying humanity. It really can do that. And from Bolivia we can make a modest contribution to defend life, to save humanity. That's our responsibility.”

Of course, not everyone in the MAS government comes from this tradition. Many of the current ministers are from a deep Marxist tradition that emerged as a mass movement with the founding of the COB (Las Central Obrera Boliviana — the trade union federation) in 1953 calling for a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism through a worker/peasant alliance.

Rafael Puente is, like many Marxists in the MAS, a Trotskyist. Now he finds himself in the awkward position of being Vice-Minister (Deputy Minister) of the Interior. He describes the success of the MAS this way:

“The platform of the MAS comes out of the struggles of indigenous people against U.S. intervention around coca and against colonialism. There have been indigenous parties before but they had a vision of indigenous versus white. The MAS combined national sovereignty, indigenous identity and the struggle against poverty and this is what explains their rapid rise to power…In addition, when Evo was first elected to Parliament, the U.S. tried to get him expelled from the Parliament because he was a militant leader of the coca growers. This consolidated his popularity.”

According to Puente and others, the traditional Left parties failed to win the support of the massive indigenous movement because they focused solely on class and underestimated the importance of the questions of nationality and identity. Certainly this is a criticism that could be made of the Left in almost every country. The difference is that in Bolivia the indigenous peoples are a majority and when neo-liberalism hit and the militant miners were decimated, indigenous campesinos stepped into leadership of the mass movement.

The MAS is not a political party in the traditional sense. When I ask what the relationship is between the social organizations and the party, no one here even knows what I am talking about. For them it is the same. The MAS is the political instrument of the unions, the women's federations and the campesino and indigenous communities.

Juan de la Cruz Villca, the first indigenous secretary of the trade union federation here and a co-founder of the MAS explains “a political party is a European construct. It doesn't work here in Bolivia. Separating the union and the party is not part of our culture.”

Villca and others express concern that the social movements have been decapitated by the entry into government of so many leaders but their concern is more that the mass movement will turn against the MAS if material changes do not come quickly organizing the famous bloqueos (road blockades that have brought down several governments).

For Evo, the supreme authority is what they call here the social organizations. When he was deciding policy on the Constituent Assembly, he called together the heads of the various campesino and indigenous organizations to discuss what rules he should propose to the Assembly and who should be President.

When the Senate refused to pass the measures to expropriate unproductive land, Evo told a mass rally of indigenous campesinos on August 2: “If we don't improve this country by expropriating this land, then we have to ask, what use is Parliament? Maybe Parliament should close. Parliament has to answer to demands of the campesino movement.”

At the nationally televised ceremony installing the Constituent Assembly on Bolivian independence day, August 6, Evo told the “Assembleistas,” that they held ultimate power in the country, “more power than Evo Morales, more power than Parliament,” and that they held a great responsibility to continue the progress created by the social movements. It is possible that Morales will use the Constituent Assembly to override Parliament in the matter of land reform or other programs key to his agenda of change. If he goes ahead with this plan it could create a strange kind of dual power in the country.

The Constituent Assembly will, in Evo's words, put an end to colonialism and neo-liberalism and refound the country on the basis of recognition of the 36 indigenous peoples and the communitarian economy. It is hard to understand how a Constituent Assembly could transform the economy. The only one who has been able to explain it to me is one of Evo's mentors, and a former leader of the miners, Filemon Escobar. He is now on the outs with the MAS leader and quite critical of what the MAS is doing.

“The happiness of Aymara or Quechua members of the community depends on everybody having (what they need). Then there is happiness in the community… In Western society, to have means that you can command everybody, like Bill Gates. In communitarian societies the 'to be' has more importance than the 'to have.' As long as the members of the community, the people who live with you (100 or 200 people) have enough to eat, then you are fine. It's the human being who has value. So that the economy of reciprocity is first of all an economy of solidarity and it has an internal mechanism, which is extraordinary and which returns you to human values. And what do these human values consist of? Reciprocity and redistribution. And what does this consist of? In giving, receiving and returning. So the economy of reciprocity is not an economy of accumulation. The economy of reciprocity benefits all the members of the community. And in that sense this economy recovers the human values that have been lost by the Western economy.”

These are the values that Escobar believes should be included in the new Constitution. To symbolize these values, Evo cut his own salary and the salaries of all elected officials and government managers by 50 per cent. He explained that when he was a campesino he lived on 1,000 ($125 US) Bolivianos a month so he doesn't know why he and other government officials can't live on 10,000. The money saved went to hire 3,000 new teachers. Other initiatives early in his mandate include:

-Raising the minimum wage by 50 per cent;

-What they call Nationalizing the hydrocarbon industry that is actually the state buying 51 per cent of it from private companies;

-A massive literacy campaign;

-Free health care with the help of thousands of Cuban doctors;

-Opposing the FTAA and proposing trade among peoples as an alternative.

Probably the most ambitious program so far is what they call the mechanized Agrarian Revolution. They call it a revolution because previous land reforms have left peasants with tiny plots of land or in the case of the Santa Cruz area with no land at all and consolidated the power of the Latifundia (big landowners). Most importantly, they did not respect the campesino method of organizing collectives and gave individual campesino men title to their land.

The new land reform will provide land, and tractors to the collectives not to the individuals and land title will also be in the women's name. They are also planning to provide 8,000 tractors to these communities. Most of the campesinos still farm with hand tools. In addition, they are pledging to respect biodiversity in their farming.

Although the top leadership is currently almost entirely male, the MAS has taken some important steps. Four of the cabinet members are women and they hold key positions. The President of the Constituent Assembly is a Quechua woman and she was Evo's nominee. At the Assembly inauguration, she gave a barnburner of a speech calling on the whole country to support the equality of women. The campesino women's federation is proposing that 50 per cent of all positions in government — elected, hired and appointed — be held by women.

Another fascinating part of the Andean philosophy is the balance of opposites. This is a fundamental philosophical difference from the Left's concept of confrontation. Here David Choquehuanka, the new Foreign Minister explains:

“In (representative) democracy, you have the concept of submission of the minority to the majority. But submission is not to live well. And that's why we make our decisions by consensus and not by democracy. And to arrive at consensus, we have a process that includes up to five stages to arrive at equilibrium that does not exclude anybody. And for that reason we use the Wiphala (flag), made out of little squares. The little squares say that all of us are the same size. That nobody is either superior or inferior. And more than that, it says that all of us have to participate. A Wiphala cannot be without even one little square. And in addition, it's square. That means that we are looking for a society that's balanced and equal.”

A further explanation is provided by Filemon Escobar:

“The Andean culture is the complementarity of opposites. And here the MAS is falling into a serious error. They should be proposing their economic program within the theory of the complementarity of opposites but they are operating with the Western mentality of the one. If you are not with me, I am going to defeat you.”

Here it is very difficult to understand how such principles can work in the modern world but Escobar thinks that it is the only way things can work. He points to the Middle East as an example of what happens when you polarize instead of respecting that opposites can co-exist in balance. No one should be permitted to exploit, he says, but capitalism can co-exist with Andean reciprocity and communitarianism.

When it comes to relations with the United States, the strategy sounds very naïve. David Choquehanke again:

“We want to get along well with all countries. We want to construct a brotherhood of nations with other neighbours and beyond that. There's an Aymara word 'Latama' that signifies the great family. All human beings belong to the great family and there's another principle which is the Tumpa. Tumpa signifies the social control that must exist between all of us. Now the social control that must exist between all of us doesn't exist. It doesn't exist.

“They've divided us with anthems and flags. The great family is dispersed, we're divided, we're fighting. We can't go on like this. We must have good relations. We need positive relations. We need constructive relations with the United States. We're in a process of change. We want them to understand us”

When asked if they had had a response yet from the United States, he answers, “Look, the United States still doesn't understand. And it's only recently that we've started. It's been 500 years of disorder. So we're not going to recover … It's only been six months. I think the world will understand. And we need in this first stage the cooperation of the world.”

But with this approach, the MAS has managed to increase its support among the middle classes in the cities. Despite their plans for some fairly radical changes, opposition is nowhere near as fierce as in Venezuela. In fact, a recent poll puts Evo Morales at 81 per cent, the most popular leader in South America, if not the world.

The challenges are formidable but so is the energy and spirit of the people. For more than 500 years they have waited for this moment and now it is theirs.

Judy Rebick, publisher of rabble.ca, where this article first appeared, is in Bolivia working on a book about new paths to social and political change. You can read more about her journey at her blog, A Better World.

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