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The president, the IMF, and the new social movements

A hyperactive new left

by Walter Chavez 

Bolivia’s general elections of June 2002 unexpectedly shook up the entrenched political order. Even though the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) came first, it won only 22% of the vote and two indigenous Aymaran leaders earned record scores : Evo Morales’s Movement for Socialism (MAS) took 20.9% of the vote while Felipe Quispe’s Pachacuti Indigenous Movement (MIP) won 6%.

According to the Bolivian constitution, the president is elected by direct universal suffrage with a clear majority of the vote. If there is no majority, Congress then decides between the two leading candidates, with the winner determined according to shifting political trends or alliances. Recently the traditional parties, heedful of IMF decrees, formed a coalition to block Morales, ensuring the election of MNR leader, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. His term should expire in August 2007.

But the two opposition parties’ greatest feat was electing 41 parliamentarians from indigenous and farmers’ groups. These launched culture-related demands, to ask for official recognition for indigenous languages such as Aymara, Quechua and Guarani. The MNR was forced to concede this symbolic victory to the new left.

The MAS was created by farmers’ groups in Chapare and Cochabamba, which have borne the brunt of police repression, financed and assisted by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and other US-based organisations. Both regions are coca-growing centres, and 250 farmers have died in the past 15 years defending their rights.

In the early 1980s migrant farmers from the altiplano (Bolivian Andes) began moving into Chapare. In 1985 Victor Paz Estenssoro’s government issued decree 21060, transforming the state-controlled mixed economy into an orthodox, hardline neoliberal regime. State-run companies were dismantled, including the Bolivian Mining Corporation, throwing more than 20,000 tin miners out of work. Many moved to Chapare and did the only thing they could, grow coca. Other agricultural (...)

Full article: 973 words.

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Walter Chavez

Translated by Luke Sandford

* Walter Chavez is a journalist and co-director of the Bolivian edition of Le Monde diplomatique

(1According to the most recent census (2000), 2.5 million Bolivians claim Aymaran roots, out of a total population of 8.2 million.

(2In 1989 the MIR joined forces with National Democratic Action (AND), led by former general Hugo Banzer, who had supervised the torture of MIR activists under the military dictatorship. This temporary alliance handed the presidency to the MIR leader, Jaime Paz Zamora. Similar manouevring happened in 1997 when Banzer became president.

(3The ruling coalition includes the MNR, MIR, UCS (Civic Solidarity Union) and the MBL (Free Bolivia Movement). The leader of the water activists, Oscar Olivera, said “We, the Bolivian people, have defeated the forces of globalised capit alism for the first time in world history.”

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