One
Year Of Evo: Economic Boom,
The Threat Of Balkanisation
And The Role Of The Military
By Alberto Cruz
27 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org
On
January 22, Evo Morales celebrated his first year as Bolivia's president.
No one can deny that in this time, despite the problems he has had to
confront, there has been a clear improvement in the majority of principal
economic indicators, possible thanks to the fact that one of the first
measures of his government was ending the relationship with the International
Monetary Fund. By allowing the agreement with the IMF to expire it has
given the government of Morales a certain liberty to push forward with
new economic and development policies.
One of the first measures
put in march by the government of Evo Morales was to increase its control
over hydrocarbons. The high prices on the international market and the
increase in taxes for petroleum companies demonstrated to Bolivians
that the changes could reach their pockets in beneficial way, along
with the social plans that have reached even the most distant and abandoned
places: literacy programs, soft credit loans for the purchasing of tractors
by agricultural cooperatives, extension of healthcare thanks to the
2000 Cuban doctors and other improvements.
With a starts, and criticism
for what has been considered a timid policy at the time of putting into
practice the nationalisation of hydrocarbons, what is certain is that
it has allowed the country to have a growth rate –talking always
in macroeconomic terms – of 4.1% this year, a percentage not seen
in Bolivia during the 20 years that the country was subject to the dictates
of the IMF and World Bank.
Nevertheless, the critics
are not without reason. Although it is true that their exists is an
anti-imperialist position, one of independence from the IMF and World
Bank, everything possible has been done to preserve macroeconomic stability.
"Evaluating the contracts [with the multinationals such as the
Spanish Repsol, Brazilian Petrobras, British BG or French Total] and
its reaches in working in the interest of national development, it is
worrying to verify that we continue to prioritise responding to the
interest of the companies who have found in the new terms of the contracts,
terms not only acceptable, but moreover, conditions favorable to their
transnational character: they conserve their strategic role in the hydrocarbon
industry in the country and are obtaining large profits as they further
consolidate the role they have consigned to us in their international
strategy, that of a primary exporting country" reads one of the
specialised reports published at the end of 2006. It continues, saying
something even more disturbing: "the possibility of Bolivian initiatives
to industrialise gas and petroleum, are possible but overall they do
not promise to be of great impact; in large part because the economic
resources that should be destined for YPFB are, if not omitted, frankly
reduced for a decent time. What is certain is that under the new conditions
we have taken on, the interrogation over which resources will be capitalised
on by YPFB to assume the strategic challenge of industrialisation remains
without answer. Industrialisation within the nation territory and through
YPFB loses viability because the new contractual terms opt for ratifying
YPFB as a supervisory company and administrator of contracts; renouncing
the taking of operative control of the industry and becoming an effective
manager of its development." [1]
The government of Morales
has maintained a more pragmatic behaviour and has not given the state
company, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales de Bolivia (YPFB), the predominant
role that, for example, Venezuela's PDVSA has been playing, to push
forward a drastic change in the improvement of the living conditions
of the great majority of the population. A lost opportunity, where one
has to point out the important role that Lula's Brazil has played in
"moderating" the application of the nationalisation. Regardless
of this, it is not just a few voices who are asking for a "refoundation"
of YPFB so that production and exploitation of hydrocarbons is really
in the hands of this state institution.
The oligarchy's game
plan
The moderate nationalisation of hydrocarbons did not expressly disturb
the oligarchy (according to the polls 90% of the Bolivian population
supported the nationalisation), but what did was the passing of the
new agrarian reform law which if applied to the full extent would suppose
the redistribution to campesinos of some 123,000 kilometres squared
of idle and unproductive land, a size equivalent to two countries, Austria
and Switzerland put together. For now, only 11% of the idle land in
the hands of large landowners has been handed over to campesinos. It
is not a frontal attack on the large landowners, nor less so, but it
is a measure that the oligarchy considered a vital threat to its status
quo, given it is where their power is situated: the actual Episcopal
Conference of Bolivia considers that 90% of productive land in Bolivia
is in the hands of 50,000 people.
Since then the attempts to
overthrow the Morales government have been continuous, only changing
in form, amongst which the latest is the demand of "autonomy"
from a series of departments: Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and Tarija. The
oligarchy's proposal for regional autonomy only won in these departments,
and was abruptly defeated in the rest of the country, but the US ambassador
in this Andean country, Phillip Goldberg, is playing a crucial role
in the plans for what is now occurring. This man has occupied important
positions in the US diplomatic missions in ex-Yugoslavia and in Kosovo,
which is why his naming was not coincidental, given it occurred only
months after the failure in the referendum on autonomy pushed by the
oligarchy. In Bolivia the trajectory of this ambassador has been followed
in great detail and they speak openly of the dangers of the "balkanisation"
of the east of the country [2].
Since that moment, the objective
has been to overthrow Morales. The so-called opposition and the economic
elite consider that the reforms put in march are a threat to their way
of life and they are using all the means possible to impede them being
consolidated. It is also a racist struggle: "if us cambas [white,
majority inhabitants of these departments] don't unite, the collas [indigenous
peoples] will want to ruin us, given that unfortunately we have an indigenous
president" [3]. It could be said louder, but not clearer than this.
Following the partial failure
at that moment to impede the passing of the agrarian reform law –
and although it is moving forward very slowly – the oligarchy
has opted to agitate around the banners of autonomy for what in Bolivia
is know as the "half moon", the most eastern departments which
hold the largest reserves of gas in the country and where the most fertile
lands exist. During the months of November and December, the oligarchy
launched various ultimatums warning the government that if it did not
attend to its demands it would declare "de facto" autonomy,
to which Morales responded with a call to the armed forces to defend
national unity.
Campesino-military
alliance
Although the separatist pretensions are not likely to succeed in the
immediate future, it is worth looking at the role that the government
of Evo Morales has given to the army and recall what the president of
Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, did after winning the 1998 elections: rely on
the army as the only institution implanted across the whole territory.
One of Morales' first objectives
after winning the election was to neutralise the army, which was a hypothetical
obstacle for his government. The Bolivian Army has always been classist,
strongly influences by the National Security Doctrine that the US sponsored,
which in synthesis considered the army as the guarantor of internal
security, that is to say, controlled social mobilisations. Morales wanted
to convert the army into his ally and, following the Venezuelan model,
"guarantee the democratic revolution". For this he took advantage
of the "missile crisis" – the sending of Chinese missiles
in the hands of the Bolivian army to the US during the term of the preceding
executive – to put into retirement 28 generals, promoting people
in intermediary posts such as colonels, opened the military academy
to indigenous cadets (vetoed from entering until that moment) and thereby
gained a greater fidelity on the part of the new military estate.
The change in the army, carried
out not without fears given that the oligarchy counts on important ties
with the estate which have always being faithful to them, was visualised
on May 1, 2006, when Evo Morales decreed the nationalisation of hydrocarbons
and the army occupied the gas fields and refineries of the multinationals,
provoking a undisguised malaise in the European Union, expressed to
Morales via the European commissar on energy, Andris Piebalgs and the
Austrian minister of the same branch, Martin Bartenstein (at the time
Austria held the presidency of the EU). Half a year later the same operation
was carried out with the nationalisation of minerals, symbolised in
the take over by the state of the Vinto tin smelter plant in Oruro last
February 9. Here again members of the army were used and Morales announced
that it would be this institution which was to be put in charge of controlling
25 technological centres where future technicians in the field of minerals
would be trained up.
At the same time, Evo Morales
gave the armed forces of Bolivia the mission of extending social development
to all parts of the country in front of the incapacity of the state
to guarantee its presence in all the territory and guarantee attention
to the basic necessities of the population. That is why it is not uncommon
to see a soldier carrying out tasks in eliminating parasites, vaccination
programs, teaching literacy – in collaboration with the Ministry
of Education and Culture – or building roadways. The army has
also carried forward the "Free Surgery Campaign" in separated
zones, covering aspects that the Cuban doctors, in charge of the preventive
medicine, do not.
And this in a moment in which
Morales has decided to accelerate the campesino-military alliance by
giving military status to the "red ponchos", Aymara campesino
soldiers with a long combative tradition in Bolivia, who he entrusted
with defending territorial integrity "together with the armed forces"
[4].
The oligarchy has seen in
this a real threat and considers them "illegal armed groups",
threatens a civil war and affirms that the popular vote of the departments
who accepted the autonomy proposal has to be respected. Here we have
an example of the manipulation of information, much liked by the defenders
of liberty, and in the footsteps of Globovision in Venezuela: "the
government [of Evo Morales] is promoting violence, the exclusion of
minorities, racism, sectarianism, it deepens differences of ethnicity,
social class, campesinos and city dwellers, rich and poor and is dangerously
polarising the country into regions. It does not have the vision to
accept that the "half moon" wants autonomy, that they won
the vote. It wants to centralise, taking power and control of the state
institutions, and lacks a program of government. The election of the
judges to the Supreme Court by appointment, signifies the buying of
justice" [5].
This is the universal discourse
of the oligarchy when it sees its privileges in danger, valid in any
country in the world. The first year of Evo Morales has bright and dark
spots, but it is necessary to support an experience that has rescued
the sovereignty and dignity of Bolivia, at the same time as pushing
forward a multicultural and participative democracy never before seen
in this Andean country, even despite the rejection of the oligarchy
and US. Maybe more and better things could have been done, but what
has been done until now is nothing small.
Alberto Cruz
is an analyst at the Center of Political Studies for International Relations
and Development. Translated from Rebelion
Endnotes
[1] Bolivia Press nº
12, 3 de diciembre de 2006.
[2] CEDIB, 15 de enero de
2007.
[3] Declarations made by
David Torrico, president of the Comité Cívico de Pando
to La Razón el 4 de julio de 2006.
[4] La Razón, January
24, 2007.
[5] La Razón, January
25, 2007.