The making of Bolivian history does a funny thing to journalists. Those who are in Bolivia spend most of their time in the streets, with furtive trips home or to the nearest internet cafe, to send off the latest story or update. And those of us outside of Bolivia often end up spending more time at the computer and on the phone than usual, trying to keep up with the rapid development of events, forwarding news coming live from the streets, and piecing together what we can from the hundreds of reports circling the globe on thin copper wires (or, more and more, bouncing around in wave form, but I must admit that I really like copper wire).
Narco News, as usual, is at the forefront of the reporting, and hundreds, if not thousands of people are going to the website for the first time, having heard rumors of the democracy-from-below that is flourishing in Bolivia in these weeks, and hungry for more information. Many of these readers may not know much about the context in which current events unfold, or the people doing the unfolding. For that reason I am posting an article I wrote in late April – ancient history when it comes to Bolivia – which is an attempt to look a little closer at the movers and shakers and history makers of Bolivia. Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone doing reporting, translation, webmastering, and everything else that allows these stories from below to emerge and propagate.

Bolivia’s Laboratory of Dual Power
by Jennifer Whitney
from Left Turn Magazine

A tremor ran through the international business community last January as Bolivians forcefully ejected another transnational water corporation from their country. The people of El Alto — the poorest and fastest growing city in South America — refused to accept the prohibitively high rates being charged by Aguas de Illimani, a subsidiary of French corporation Suez. Outraged at the new costs of installing a water line to private residences (as much as six months’ salary), people took to the streets, blockaded main arterials, occupied the transnational’s headquarters, and marched on the capitol in La Paz.

After weeks of mounting pressure, the corporate functionaries fled and soon after, Bolivia’s president formally banned Aguas de Illimani from further operations. Celebrations in El Alto were brief, as people began running the water system themselves. In doing so, they join fellow water-warriors of Cochabamba, who threw out water-privatizing Bechtel in the spring of 2000. Together, these social movements are writing a new history for Bolivia — a history that gives local needs priority over foreign shareholders’ profits.

After Haiti, Bolivia is Latin America’s most impoverished nation even though it is resource rich. It is also the most indigenous, with about 70 percent of its population belonging to one of at least 37 original nations. Throughout its history, foreign invaders made off with vast deposits of silver, saltpeter, and tin. The US-imposed “war on drugs” has also ravaged the Chapare, where coca leaf — from which cocaine can be extracted — has been grown for traditional use for millennia. Now, the world has its eyes on Bolivia’s natural gas, the extraction of which counts among the cheapest in the world.

Bolivian social movements and leftist political parties have won striking victories in recent years. Though often at odds with each other, their combined efforts result in a powerful example of dual power, where people resist on multiple fronts — taking direct action and challenging the state through overt confrontations while simultaneously constructing new ways and means of governance that compete with and supplant those already in existence.

Popular power

“The long march of the social movements has now begun; we must reclaim what is ours as we always have — by fighting for it.”
—Declaration of Popular Assembly on Gas Nationalization in Cochabamba, June, 2004

Bolivian social movements are used to “fighting for it.” Since 2000, they have been at the forefront of all substantive improvements in daily life. Though spread across the country, it is the indigenous Aymara who, according to political analyst and sociologist Alvaro Garcia Linares, tend to steer any sort of uprising. “Every time the confederation decides to have blockades, it’s because of the Aymara. The principal mobilizing force in the entire country is that of the Aymara of the altiplano.”

Much of that force is brought together by Felipe Quispe, the charismatic Aymara leader of the Confederation of Unions of Bolivian Farmers and Workers. Quispe has a vision of an Aymara nation, uniting the indigenous from the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes region. In the presidential elections of 2002, he won six percent of the vote. However, in an apparent rejection of electoral politics, Quispe recently resigned from his congressional position and is organizing full-time among the Aymara. Also known as El Mallku — the traditional leader of the Aymara — he has called for a general armed insurrection.

So far, it hasn’t come to that. Along with the water wars in Cochabamba and El Alto, peoples’ movements have won numerous struggles through other means.

In February of 2003, protests erupted in La Paz and El Alto against IMF-imposed taxes and cuts to social benefits. High school students attacked the Presidential Palace with stones, while others set fire to government buildings and corporate headquarters, eventually occupying the bottling plants of Coke and Pepsi. The crackdown orchestrated by President Sánchez de Lozada resulted in 18 dead and over 100 wounded, but eventually the government capitulated and rolled back the neoliberal policies.

Things heated up again in October of the same year, when tens of thousands took to the streets of El Alto, demanding a halt to government plans to export natural gas to the US via Chile, Bolivia’s historic enemy. The resistance in the “gas war” was by and large organized by FEJUVE, a federation of neighborhood assemblies. The government responded with a brutal massacre, killing 80 people. Eventually, Sánchez de Lozada heeded the demands from the streets and resigned, leaving his vice president, Carlos Mesa, at the helm.

Direct action

In early April 2004, people of Las Yungas — a coca-growing region near La Paz whose crops had recently been targeted for eradication — won a great victory against the eradicators. Upon learning of a proposed US military base nearby, they blockaded highways to La Paz until the project was cancelled.

The referendum on gas came a few months later, and with it, a great challenge for the social movements. Despite President Mesa referring to it as a “vote on nationalization,” there was nothing on the ballot establishing that. Many called for a boycott, and some threatened to blockade roads and burn ballots. Although there were few blockades, and no attacks on polling stations, abstention was high — particularly in El Alto, where Quispe’s influence kept over 50 percent from the polls — despite the fact that in Bolivia, voting is mandatory and punishable by a fine equivalent to two to four weeks of an average salary.
At the time of this writing, Congress was still debating the new gas law, and so for the moment this issue is in limbo. Meanwhile, an association of family members of victims of the “gas war” — who recently suffered through the reopening of the graves of their murdered kin — has tirelessly and successfully campaigned to bring ex-president Sánchez de Lozada to trial.

And there is more still to come, according to Doña Maria, who works at the FEJUVE headquarters. “El Alto is on its feet and now we’re going to get rid of Electropaz [the electric company owned by the Spanish Iberdrola corporation] and win every one of our demands.”
Each of these struggles resulted in tangible changes — improved daily life and higher wages for the majority poor. The social movements of Bolivia are constantly in motion; having learned that patience will get them nowhere — they take direct action and, time after time, they win. As Juan Galdín, a university student in El Alto, makes clear — they continue fighting for social justice. “We alteños have given our lives for nationalization. Still, we continue struggling for our dignity. We demand an end to immunity of those in power. We are prepared for whatever comes next. We are a time bomb waiting to explode.”

Somos MAS

“Somos el pueblo, somos MAS. We have entered [the National Congress] to struggle against the system. We are parliamentarians of the system, but it’s a very different thing to be parliamentarians of the economic model, which we are not. We are the opposition from within Congress, and when they don’t respond to our parliamentary proposals, we use the streets.”
—Evo Morales, former coca farmer and leader of the political party Movement Towards Socialism (MAS, in Spanish)
The MAS was founded (though not under that name) in the Chapare in 1988 as a covergence of campesinos and cocaleros (coca farmers) who defended themselves against widespread atrocities committed by the Bolivian military while carrying out US-imposed eradication of the coca plant. Out of these origins grew a political party, formally registered in 1999. In 2002, Morales ran for president, taking second place by a margin of just one and a half percent.
In the wake of his near-victory, the Bolivian National Congress was irrevocably changed — the MAS now counts with 30 percent of the senators and 21 percent of the representatives in a Congress divided between five political parties. Other changes are visible as well. Some MAS legislators in La Paz are also traditional community leaders at home, and — unusually for congresspeople — their votes are truly representative of the will of their communities.
Some indigenous legislators wear their traditional clothing to work. One representative, Faustino Auca, in accordance with the Aymara tradition of his region, has refused to take decisions alone as an individual — a local council approves his positions before they are submitted. It is this sort of plurality that has allowed the MAS to expand beyond its traditional support base in the lowlands of the Chapare.
Villa Tunari is the gateway town of the tropical Chapare region — where the MAS dominates all politics. Its dusty streets are lined with palm and banana trees. Its humid air is filled with swooping hummingbirds. Its people — mostly Quechua — are often to be found with a bundle of coca leaf tucked neatly in the cheek. Coca is a part of everyday life here, and, thanks to the MAS, it now can be grown and purchased legally.
According to Felipe Casares, the mayor of Villa Tunari for the last nine years, “The social movements in the Chapare are tools to wield political power... As mayor, I only execute decisions, I don’t make them myself.” He adds that the government here has been operating in a participatory manner since the early 1990s. Nearly everyone in the region is organized into small groups of about 25 families. Called “syndicates” though unrelated to labor unions, they are the region’s basic decision-making bodies.

Community power

Feliciano Mamani Quispe, leader of his syndicate for 16 years (and no relation to El Mallku), explains that such a system is virtually foolproof, and viable for the entire country. “Our mayor guides and controls expenditures, but ultimately they are decided by the bases, the syndicates. All our officials are accountable to us and must provide us information on their actions. If they refuse, they are replaced immediately, and are unable to name their successor. This model is what we are pursuing at a national level.”
The party still reflects its remarkable beginnings, with diverse political tendencies operating under the umbrella of the MAS. However, though it continues growing in rural areas and small cities, it has failed to take hold in large urban centers. To combat this in preparation for the presidential elections in 2007, the MAS is developing a unified, more moderate party line.
Running the risk of alienating its traditional base, the MAS is strategically attempting to court the middle class, which, according to Garcia Linares, has great power in proportion to its actual size — “The middle class is very small, but it has a huge influence on elections, because the journalists and the commentarians come from the middle class, and so does the fear... So its small electoral base has a huge cultural influence.”
The near-presidency of the MAS in 2002 on a national scale has led to a major overhaul of the party, as well as the national Congress. Soon after his defeat, Morales announced that his party was moving “from protest to proposal” — marking a new strategy with an eye keenly focused on the long-term goal of taking the presidency. So far, this is paying off in terms of electoral politics. The MAS won significant gains in last December’s municipal elections, taking 327 mayoralties. Although legislatively they have accomplished very little in terms of substantive policy changes, President Mesa’s administration must contend with them in order to govern. This has led to a few victories, such as the legalization of coca cultivation in the Chapare.
The MAS played a role in the proposed trial of Sánchez de Lozada. But Bolivian justice works in mysterious ways, and the initiative stalled in a labyrinth of bureaucratic maneuvers by the current administration. It was only rescued by heavy pressure from the streets outside, and from the MAS within — a classic example of the collaboration destined to become more common between the two forces.

Experts on change

“Maybe the president isn’t ours, but the future will belong to us.”
—Oscar Olivera

The MAS is walking a fine line between rebellion and “respectability.” It is a truly interesting phenomenon, yet its victories are extremely limited, and at this point, largely intangible. Evo Morales has repeatedly taken positions that more resemble those of Mesa than those of his constituents back in the Chapare, such as his support for Mesa’s referendum. The party seems to be thriving despite of, or perhaps because of, the tension between the two poles. As the MAS fixes its gaze on the presidential elections of 2007, those conflicts may erupt with greater frequency.
This tension may not necessarily be a bad thing. When multiple players have more or less equal mobilizing capacity, they become harder to co-opt, to absorb, to buy off.
Charismatic and popular though they are, Quispe, Olivera, and Morales are not the same as their bases. The principal experimenters in the grand laboratory of dual power in Bolivia are the people — in their syndicates, neighborhood associations, unions, and public utility organizations. And through the crucible of struggle, Bolivians have developed a keen sense of the pragmatic. Garcia Linares says that people are flexible in order to get results, “The power of Quispe is not the power of elections. It’s the power of uprisings. Yet the ideas that move the radicals are Quispe’s ideas of indigenism. So you can imagine a person who will vote for Evo, against Quispe, but then will go and join a blockade called for by Quispe.”
Many issues still remain on the table in Bolivia. The trial of Sánchez de Lozada is currently scheduled for March 2005, although it’s likely to be postponed — it took thirty years to begin proceedings against General Pinochet. There is a Constituents’ Assembly to rewrite the Constitution that was originally set for August but is currently threatened with postponement by Congress. A referendum on “autonomy” has also been promised in response to the wealthy city of Santa Cruz demanding the right to secede from Bolivia — taking the majority of the natural gas fields with them. And there is still the question of gas nationalization, which could set off the El Alto “timebomb” at any moment.
With every move, with every step, the movements are adapting, learning, growing. Their power is the power of the swarm, the power to respond flexibly to changing circumstances, the power to open up spaces where people can debate and develop both protests and proposals together, the power to learn. Olivera puts it best, “We spend so much time with experts that we become experts ourselves. This is what happened with the water, and now it has happened with the gas... This is our culture — to provide space where people can come together, not only for hours or days, but for years.... Real change never happens at the ballot box, only reformist neoliberal change. Change always happens with a fight.”