Pubdate: Sat, 07 Jan 2006
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2006 Independent Media Institute
Contact:  http://www.alternet.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1451
Author: Daphne Eviatar, TheNation com.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Evo+Morales
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bolivia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

BOLIVIA'S HOME-GROWN PRESIDENT

Evo Morales May Have Won at the Polls, but Bolivia Is Still Far From A
Victory.

On its face, the election of Evo Morales to the presidency of Bolivia
would seem like an enormous victory for the left -- another domino in
the line of Latin American nations turning away from Washington
Consensus-style economics to forge a path of its own. But the question
remains whether the first indigenous president in Bolivia's history
will be allowed -- by the Bolivian Congress or by the larger
international financial and legal system -- to live up to his promises
and fulfill the enormous expectations of his supporters. If not,
Bolivia could face an even more unstable future.

The symbolic value of a Morales victory cannot be overstated in a
country where symbols represent the passions of a people mobilized to
change what they see as 500 years of state oppression. Thus the
wiphala -- the checkered rainbow flag of indigenous resistance -- flew
from every Morales campaign vehicle; technocratic economic policy
proposals about how the nation should manage its natural gas industry
became symbols of Bolivian "independence" and "self-governance"; and
politicians called for the defense of Pachamama (Mother Earth) as they
pressed their home-grown solutions for this cash-poor but
resource-rich country, urging the rejection of the North American
capitalistas.

Massive support for that rejection fueled widespread protests last
summer, when hundreds of thousands of Bolivians filled the streets of
El Alto and La Paz, blocking roads, burning tires and throwing
dynamite until then-President Carlos Mesa finally resigned -- the
second president forced out of office in as many years.

So for the popular former coca growers' union president to have won
the presidency by an overwhelming and closely monitored vote suggests
the vitality of Bolivian democracy and development of a new Latin
American consensus.

But will Evo Morales be able to live up to his promises?

Evo's campaign slogans promised "nationalization" of oil and gas
reserves, "recuperation" of natural resources for Bolivians and a
renewed respect for campesinos and workers around the country. "We
will nationalize all of Bolivia's natural resources," the charismatic
candidate told hundreds of Quechua farmers who crowded into the main
square in the town of Cliza, showering him with confetti and draping
wreaths of locally grown produce and flowers around his neck. "We
cannot give away what was given to us by Pachamama."

Those sorts of promises went over well in the small farming pueblos,
where women in their colorful 18th-century-style peasant skirts and
shawls literally danced in the streets and waved their broad-brimmed
straw hats as Morales rode by in his campaign caravan, the villagers
eagerly reaching for the campaign fliers he left in his path. After
all, Evo's supporters -- poor indigenous farmers and laborers, who
sell their goods for a pittance in local markets and make up the 40
percent of the country the World Bank labels "extremely poor" -- have
little other faith left to hold on to.

Years of Washington Consensus-style economic policies, first adopted
in the mid-1980s under the label "shock therapy" and expanded in the
mid-1990s, when the country privatized its oil, gas, electric and
other major industries, have done little to help Bolivia's people,
more than 65 percent of whom are still stuck below the poverty line.
In fact, despite being the testing ground for much of neoliberal
economic policy in the past 20 years, the average Bolivian is now
poorer than his grandparents were 50 years ago. The privatization
schemes, rather than bringing prosperity as promised, have provoked a
wave of anger against international financial institutions and the
United States, which was on display all over Bolivia in this
presidential election.

And while the U.S. government has expressed deep fears about a Morales
presidency, in many ways it's the United States that has put Morales
in the position he is in today.

In Bolivia the United States is not only a symbol of foreign capital
but of the bitter "war on drugs" that strong-armed Bolivia into
accepting a U.S.-financed coca eradication campaign that even the
World Bank has admitted bears responsibility for Bolivia's continued
poverty.

Like everything else in Bolivia, the coca leaf is a symbol -- of a
locally grown crop, of sacred rituals, of a way of life that allowed
Bolivia's peasants, by chewing on the bitter leaves that give energy
and stave off hunger, to endure the harsh conditions of the silver and
tin mines where they worked as slaves to the Spanish for some 300
years and where many still labor under perilous conditions today.

As indigenous culture increasingly becomes a point of pride rather
than a mark of shame in Bolivia, and across South America the
symbolism of the coca leaf has gained even more importance -- and the
ongoing U.S. war against it has stoked Morales' popularity. But the
most potent symbol in this election for most Bolivians was natural
gas, an ever-more coveted resource as the international price of oil
skyrockets. And the foreign oil companies that produce it -- the
transnacionales, as they call them here, almost spitting out the word
- -- represent to many just the latest form of foreign exploitation of
Bolivia and its people.

Thus every candidate in this election had to promise to "nationalize"
the natural gas industry -- a word that suggests expropriation of
private company property and sets off alarm bells with foreign
investors, but which actually means a range of different things in
this ideologically charged political culture.

For the right-wing candidate, Jorge Quiroga, it meant respecting
existing oil and gas contracts but "nationalizing the benefits" of the
industry -- that is, spending more of its revenue to pacify the
population. But for Morales, it has meant forcing a conversion of
existing gas contracts into ones where the state gets 50 percent of
the profits and retains control over how, to whom and at what price
Bolivian gas is sold. Although that's not what's usually meant by
expropriation, his plan still has foreign energy companies panicking.

Under their current contracts and the 1996 hydrocarbons law that
privatized the industry, private companies had virtually complete
control over the production and sale of oil and gas, and paid only 18
percent royalties and no taxes -- a deal that even government and
industry insiders who helped write the law and negotiate the contracts
now privately admit is a bad deal for Bolivia.

Still, almost every major oil company -- including Spain's Repsol,
British Gas, ExxonMobil and Texas-based Vintage Oil -- has already
threatened to bring a claim in international arbitration against
Bolivia. And if Morales nationalizes the industry, under the terms of
the bilateral investment treaties between Bolivia and the companies'
home countries, they could sue -- in private, closed-door arbitration,
without the safeguards normally provided by publicly appointed judges
in an international court -- for not only the approximately $3.5
billion private companies have already invested in the natural gas
industry here but also for the loss of expected profits, which could
total tens of billions of dollars.

For a country like Bolivia, whose annual revenues are only a little
more than $2 billion a year, that's no small threat.

It's for that reason -- and a host of other ways in which the United
States, the World Bank, the IMF and the Inter-American Development
Bank can threaten to pull the noose tight around Bolivia's highly
indebted neck -- that an Evo Morales presidency may well remain
largely a symbolic victory.

The threat of lawsuits by up to 30 major oil companies will thwart any
new government's ability to significantly change the current system.
Nor can Morales do much to address the plight of coca farmers:
Although he has said he'll campaign to decriminalize the coca leaf on
an international level, he knows he can do little to change the system
at home.

A refusal to continue the coca eradication campaign would require the
United States, under U.S. law, to vote against any Bolivian
application for loans or grants from the World Bank, IMF or
Inter-American Development Bank -- all critical to Bolivia's ability
to finance its debt and fuel its economy.

In effect, any attempt by the newly elected president to do exactly
what Bolivians just elected him to do would marshal the forces of the
international financial community against the Bolivian government and
doom the country's already-precarious financial stability.

"It's OK, there are plenty of other countries, like China, that will
be willing to help us," Morales told me on a rare break from
campaigning shortly before the election.

Countries like China and Venezuela may be exactly where he
turns.

But many on the left in Bolivia think he's not likely to buck the
American and international business pressure and will stick with a
modestly reformed version of the status quo. That won't satisfy many
of the more radical Aymara activists, who are intent on breathing real
life into the powerful symbols of the indigenous movement.

"The identity of people and of communities has become a very important
issue in the country," Pablo Mamani, a sociologist who teaches at the
public universities in El Alto and La Paz, said. "The Aymara will all
vote for Evo, because we want to see an Aymara in the presidency. But
if he is not really allowed to govern, the militant social
organizations can create a scenario of very severe conflict between
the people and the state."

The nation's right-wing movements, particularly those concentrated in
Santa Cruz, Bolivia's wealthiest province, where the energy and
agricultural export businesses are based, may well encourage that.
"Bolivia is facing a big problem," Carlos Rojas, the burly president
of an association of agriculture producers, told me from his Santa
Cruz office. "We don't accept Mr. Morales' policy about land," he
said, referring to Morales' support for redistribution of large idle
estates, most of which are concentrated in Santa Cruz. "We will have a
conflict with him. The only way for the country to move up and get out
of poverty is by working, every day and all the time. If the social
movements go and block the roads, we cannot work. We believe it's
important to give Mr. Morales the opportunity to work for this
country. But if he's not effective, he's going to be out -- probably
before the end of his term."

In fact, some Bolivians are already planning on that. "We believe MAS
(The Movement Towards Socialism, Morales' party) won't change
anything," said Abraham Delgado Mancilla, a soft-spoken and serious
28-year-old law student and Aymara Indian who helped organize the
massive protests that ultimately brought down the last two Bolivian
presidents. "The state doesn't serve us with this system," he told me
as we walked through the packed streets of El Alto, an impoverished,
makeshift city of homemade brick buildings built high into the Andes
that rise above La Paz, where Mancilla lives and continues to organize
students and neighbors. "So we must move forward.

What happens in Bolivia is 20 years of reforms, and nothing
changes.

We're still poor. The only road to solving poverty is by
nationalization and radical redistribution of land," he said, growing
more animated. "Evo will not be able to do what he says. His programs
will change nothing.

We're waiting for him to fail. And if he does, the people will come
out with even more force," he said. I asked him what that would mean.
"I think what's going to happen is there will be a civil war."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake