The Movement Toward Socialism and Bolivia’s Future: Upcoming Elections and the “Crisis of Democracy”
By Jeffery R. Webber
On December 4, 2005 Bolivia will be holding a presidential and congressional election, called in the wake of the massive popular mobilizations this past May and June that brought down ex-president Carlos Mesa Gisbert. The three central contenders for the Bolivian presidency are Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, Samuel Doria Medina and Evo Morales. The first two candidates represent competing elements of the divided Right, while Evo Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party represent the largest electoral force on the Left. The MAS, it must be said, becomes less leftist by the day.
In the most recent polls Morales led in popular opinion with 27 percent support. Simply because the MAS is leading at this point does not mean that they will form the next government, however. The constitution stipulates that when no single candidate for the presidency wins a majority of the popular vote the President must be chosen by Congress from the leading candidates. This means that even in a case where Morales won a plurality – the most votes of any candidate, but less than 50 percent – Quiroga and Doria Medina could form a pact between their parties in Congress and ensure that one of them becomes the next President.
The ruling class has effectively used the new election cycle to dry up the social movement activity that had reached historic heights in October 2003 and May-June 2005 and to focus demands from the Indigenous poor toward electoral, representative “democracy” and away from building alternative forms of revolutionary power based on their already well-advanced patterns of self-organization in parts of the countryside and some urban areas. The MAS, meanwhile, has played along willingly with this ruling class strategy and no independent political “instrument” on the Left has emerged outside the MAS.
The key now is to understand the political and social landscape as it exists today. To do so, we should have a closer look at the MAS, as well as the social movements, as everyone anticipates the elections. After that, I offer some guesses on what the near future.
The MAS grew out of and maintains its strongest constituency in the geographical region called the Chapare in the department (province or state) of Cochabamba. During the 1980s, the Bolivian state, in addition to carrying through neoliberal economic restructuring, initiated its “war on drugs” which very obviously was in response to a directive from Washington.
Cocaleros, or coca growers, bore the brunt of the militarized assault on coca growing in the Chapare region. Through their struggles to maintain their source of livelihood, organized mainly through rural coca growing unions, these peasants – a mix of re-located ex-miners of the altiplano and longstanding Indigenous peasants from the region – developed a strong ideological mix of Marxism, eclectic Indigenous activism and anti-imperialism directed overwhelmingly at the United States.
Out of this courageous but relatively localized resistance would eventually be born the MAS in 1996, with noted cocalero leader Evo Morales as its head. For much of its early history the MAS was an incredibly vital and democratic political party which served as the vanguard of considerable sections of the Left. Its primary focus was on extra-parliamentary activism rather than electoral politics.
One key turning point in the sad recent history of the party was the 2002 elections when Evo Morales came second by a hair to Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. With this major electoral gain, the party started to shift dramatically toward winning over the “middle class,” which has turned now into a fanatical faith in a non-existent progressive national bourgeoisie.
The turn after 2002 was poignantly demonstrated by the absence of a mobilized MAS on the side of social movements in the key junctures of October 2003 and May-June 2005. In October, the MAS was central to facilitating the acceptance of a constitutional exit from the situation, allowing Sánchez de Lozada’s neoliberal vice-president Carlos Mesa Gisbert to come to power. The MAS then accepted a truce with Mesa, supporting him through the first few months of 2005, until he decided he’d had enough with the pact.
In May and June of this year, the nationalization of gas emerged again as a key popular demand. Evo Morales refused to take a clear position in favour of this, and indeed frequently came out against it, instead proposing that only 50 percent of royalties go to the state. The MAS also demanded a constitutionally acceptable exit when the masses were, at various points in May and June, organizing for control of state power even if this project from below was never clearly articulated or sustained long enough to make it feasible.
Since the elections were called in July the metamorphosis of the MAS was made complete. It first dallied with the idea of an electoral coalition with the Movement Without Fear (MSM) party, a deplorable political instrument led by La Paz Mayor Juan del Granado, who effectively was arguing for neoliberalism with a human face.
These dealings fell apart, however, and it was eventually decided that prominent left intellectual and former guerrilla, Álvaro García Linera, would be the new vice-presidential candidate. This raised the profile of the MAS considerably, with the explicit tactical role of the white/urban García Linera to bring in the “middle class.”
He has since been on television constantly talking about the necessity of being friendly with the completely and unalterably reactionary capitalist class of the Santa Cruz department. He also announced – in a gross invocation of the crude and Eurocentric idea that history is a series of stages that correspond with the development of capitalist Europe – that socialism is impossible in Bolivia, except perhaps after hundreds of years, when the country will have industrialized through “Andean capitalism.” Until then, apparently, socialism is but a utopian dream.
Possible Futures
Speculation on anything but the immediate future in politics is always difficult. But here are some potential scenarios. If either of the two Right wing candidates win, it is likely that the social movements will take to blockades and mass marches almost immediately after the elections. Both Quiroga and Doria Medina are likely to use force, perhaps substantial force, in repressing these developments. This may lead to further radicalization and social movement advance, or could wipe out social movement activity as we’ve known it for the last five years. Either of these two candidates would have the support of American imperialism, though the Empire prefers Quiroga.
If Evo Morales and Álvaro García Linera win I see two broad possible scenarios. The first, and worse scenario, is a sort of Brazilian exit from the revolutionary process. In Brazil, Lula effectively abandoned the working class, socialist roots of the Workers Party (PT) and has continued with force the neoliberal project that preceded him.
Social movements would likely react to the Brazilian exit by mobilizing to enforce their demands. The MAS would lose all legitimacy if it used force to repress these movements. At this point a military coup and the re-establishment of a far-right regime supported by the American state would not be difficult to imagine. To speculate even more wildly, actual invasion by the Americans in the case of a revolutionary situation is not out of the question, especially as they have recently established a military base in Paraguay within 200 kilometres of the Bolivian border.
The occupation of Iraq, however, limits this possibility.
The other scenario is more positive, but the threat of a coup would remain a possibility. This is the Venezuelan exit. When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez first came to power there was no talk of socialism. While the Chavista project still has its limits, it is clearly the most interesting new regime in Latin America in terms of the possibilities for a future of radicalized socialization and the deepening of radical and popular democracy, including a growth in self-organization from below. We can hope that despite the completely instrumental and pathetic electoral politics of the MAS over the last few years, once in power they would be incapable of avoiding at least substantial reforms due to the advanced self-organization of the Bolivian social movements. They may be able to buy the compliance of some sectors of the movements with clientelist hand-outs, but many social movements are showing signs of independence from the MAS already.
Postscript
It is now unclear whether the December elections will actually take place. Two challenges to the constitutionality of the elections were recently brought before the Constitutional Court. One ruling has already passed which declares the upcoming elections to be unconstitutional. Under the constitution, the 130 seats in the lower house of Congress are to be distributed between each of the country’s nine departments according to demographic shifts, as documented in the latest census.
The results of the latest census in 2001 dictate that seats be taken from the departments of La Paz and Potosí (the heart of Indigenous-popular struggle) and added to the department of Santa Cruz (the centre of counter-revolution).
The future is now even more unpredictable. What is fairly evident is that deep right-wing political and economic interests are behind the recent legal tactics of constitutional challenges, orchestrated to avoid what could be a MAS victory in December. President Rodríguez is still promising elections. He is wise to fear the social explosion that could erupt if they do not take place.
