The Rise of Evo Morales and the MAS

Sven Harten

• Verlag: Zed Books
• Jahr: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781780321325
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Politics & International Relations
• Thema: Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism

Evo Morales is one of the world's most controversial political leaders. His story is extraordinary: poor shepherd-boy, persecuted coca grower, self-professed admirer of Ché Guevara, hero of the anti-globalization movement, and first indigenous president of modern Latin America. The story of the social movement turned political party he is a part of -- the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) -- is also exceptional: originally founded as a splinter of an ultra-right party, it was given as a gift for the coca growers after they had been banned several times for spurious reasons to register their own party, and went on to become an irresistible force for indigenous rights in Bolivia. In this insightful and revealing book, Sven Harten explains the success of the MAS and its wider consequences, showing how Morales has become the symbol for a new political consciousness that has entailed de-stigmatizing indigenous identities. In many ways, the analysis of Morales's political trajectory serves as a mirror for democracy in Bolivia. It reveals the challenge of squaring the rupture with a discredited past with the continuity of democracy and the aim of representing an entire society.

PART I

CHAPTER 1

Bolivia’s political history

Crisis of representation in Bolivia

What do we need to know about Bolivia’s history in order to understand the rise of Evo Morales and the MAS? The most obvious answer is: everything! Only a holistic exploration into the depths of politics, economics, culture and foreign relations will give us the full picture. However, we do not have the time for such an academic exercise and so this section will concentrate on what is most relevant, namely the failure of political parties to represent more than just the interests of a tiny elite.

What are the functions political parties are assumed to fulfil? Put simply, they recruit political leaders, propose (alternative) policies, structure political competition and simplify electoral choices for voters (Dix, 1992). By looking at the functions parties perform, political scientists such as Dalton and Wattenberg (2000) classify them into three broad categories: first, ‘parties in the electorate’ reduce information costs, make complex political decisions easier, educate citizens by providing political information and mobilize them, at least for electoral purposes. Second, ‘parties as organizations’ recruit and train political leadership, and provide structured access to positions of government for elected representatives. By aggregating, articulating, and mediating the interests of the population, parties make the political spectrum more stable and predictable. Third, ‘parties in government’ create parliamentary majorities, implement policies and frame alternatives, organize the government as well as opposition to it, ensure that responsibility is taken for government actions, control government administration, and enhance stability in government.

However, this emphasis on functions has been criticized for rationalizing the patterns of behaviour of Western parties, and for using this generalization as a yardstick. Indeed, Bolivian political parties, aside from contesting elections and forming coalitions in Congress to elect the president, have historically fulfilled few of the functions theoretically attributed to them. The failure of most parties to develop stable roots in society (exceptions are the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario, or MNR, and MAS) has meant that they have failed to structure political preferences over time, leading to somewhat erratic voting behaviour.

The disconnectedness of parties from society means that we have to look at their relation to the state in order to understand them. This observation, derived from advanced industrialized countries, helps us to see that parties are also a part of the state bureaucracy. Parties have their own interest in surviving and they use the state as a reliable structure of support. This does not necessarily mean that they are corrupt and misuse state resources. The relation can be harmless inasmuch as they support policies that are in their interest, and they would under normal conditions avoid anything that could threaten their existence (Katz and Mair, 1997). Indeed, it is useful to keep in mind that the main rationale for the existence of most political parties in Bolivia is not to represent certain interests but to obtain state resources in the form of public-sector jobs.

Despite some important advances, the return to democracy did not resolve this long-standing problem of the political elite treating the state as their private property while maintaining structural barriers, including more recently ‘glass ceilings’, to exclude especially the indigenous population. This resulted in citizens no longer believing that they were well represented by the existing political parties. In political science terms, there was a ‘crisis of representation’ (Mainwaring et al., 2006). The main political parties were perceived as not acting in the interests of those they purported to represent, or for the common good, but rather for the exclusive benefit of a privileged few. This crisis manifested itself in the rise of political outsiders attacking the establishment, electoral volatility, declining confidence in political parties, and the inability of two democratically elected presidents to finish their terms. In Bolivia the failure of the main parties to fulfil their representative functions was one of the reasons for the crisis of representation and the waves of popular protest since 2000.

From revolution to dictatorship to transition: 1952–78

In Bolivian history political parties play a paradoxical role. On the one hand, they are integral to a well-functioning democracy, an essential element of which is the provision of structured means for political participation through interest aggregation and representation. On the other hand, parties have not fulfilled their potential and have sometimes even obstructed moves towards a more democratic political system. Since the beginning of Bolivia’s history of party politics in the 1880s, political parties have functioned according to a ‘patrimonial dynamic’. They have not represented a particular ideology or political project, but rather existed as vehicles to distribute patronage for the middle class. Another good characterization, originally coined for African countries, is politique du ventre (Bayart, 1999), where control over the government meant principally the ability to distribute resources to followers. Not surprisingly, corruption has been singled out by many authors as the main problem in Bolivia.¹ This was probably the major cause of popular disenchantment prior to 2005 and has been the only constant in the many different forms of government in Bolivia.

The 1952 revolution was one of the most important events in Bolivian history. It fundamentally altered how Bolivians saw the power relations in their country: that is, those whom they regarded as able to achieve political power and as suitable to hold high office. The reason for this was that under the bourgeois leadership of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, an armed proletariat defeated the oligarchic state of the Rosca (clique) of the Barones de Estaño (tin barons). This was not so different to what happened in 2005, where in the popular imagination complete outsiders, previously depicted as unfit to govern, displaced the establishment. After the revolution, the MNR devised a cogobierno (co-government) with the national workers’ union (Central Obrera Boliviana, COB), intending to mobilize and control the popular masses through corporatism. The 1952 revolution brought universal rights, and freed peasants from social bondage. To this end, the indigenous population of indios were rebaptized campesinos in the official discourse.² Although the significance of introducing political participation to the indigenous population through universal suffrage should not be underestimated, the revolution meant there would no longer be political competition. An electoral system based on party lists served quite effectively to control candidate selection and political participation, subordinating all candidates to the clientelistic logic of the MNR. This system remained until the 1990s a convenient means for all political parties to control entry to the official political arena. Another key factor was the Agrarian Reform (1953), which gave small plots to peasants in a relatively egalitarian fashion in the highlands. In the sparsely populated tropical zone in the East, the reform favoured landed elites, who did little more than simply rename their haciendas empresas agropecuarias (commercial farms). There was no plan to encourage development of indigenous communities, thereby prolonging the existing stark economic inequalities and limiting the participation of the poor. The 1952 revolution merely replaced outright discrimination against and exclusion of the indigenous and peasant population by more subtle forms.

The MNR was marked by internal contradictions. With its aim of forming an alliance of different classes and constructing a Bolivian nation-state, the MNR was able to attract a range of different, and at times incompatible, interests. Yet Bolivia’s indigenous population has never identified itself with a particular ‘class’ and the idea of a class alliance remained more of a theory, while in practice the MNR had a bourgeois leadership. Furthermore, the MNR closed its eyes and ears to the Weltanschauung of its indigenous allies and was highly paternalistic with its goal of assimilating the indios into a Bolivian nation in order to liberate them and remove them as an obstacle to Bolivian development. The MNR nationalized the mines on the demand of the COB, but did not eliminate the influence of foreign capital; and indeed it arranged indemnification for larger companies (Mayorga and Gorman, 1978: 97–9). The MNR’s state capitalist model³ used state intervention in such a manner that the elites benefited disproportionately (Healy, 2001: 43). The clientelism that determined the selection of candidates increased conflict within the party and with the COB, which resisted the economic reforms and was subsequently excluded from power by the MNR. As a consequence of the open opposition of the workers to the government, policymaking became ineffectual and could be overcome only by the use of presidential decrees. Clientelistic, top-down practices let to increased factionalism within the MNR, which in turn hindered consistent voting behaviour in Congress and further contributed to decision-making by presidential decree.

The USA successfully adopted a policy of subtle influence and of exploiting the internal contradictions within the MNR. This steered the MNR to an increasingly orthodox, supply-oriented economic policy with austerity measures, which ultimately ended the fragile class alliance with the COB (Zunes, 2001). Bolivia’s dependence on US aid came at the price of the 1956 stabilization and economic liberalization plan. The open opposition of the workers and internal party factionalism meant that effective policymaking was possible only through the use of presidential decrees. This in turn contributed to clientelistic, top-down practices and obstructed approval of government proposals in Congress. Hence we find that some problems of the contemporary style of politics emerged with the first post-1952 governments. This is hardly surprising given that revolutionary nationalism had been the dominant influence within Bolivian politics over the past fifty years.

Bolivian nationalism: a brief history

In order to understand contemporary politics, but especially everything that refers to the Bolivian nation or ‘plurinationalism’ of MAS, we have to examine first the nationalist ideas of the MNR (the so-called modelo asimilacionalista). The MNR was part of Latin America’s ‘national-popular’ wave of the 1940s and 1950s, when populist movements raised the issues of social transformation and economic development in terms of the relationship between class dynamics and the nation. The articulation by the MNR of a ‘national popular’ political imaginary is a useful instance of the relationship between populism and nationalism, because it shows how a nationalist discourse can be articulated according to a populist logic.

Origins of Bolivian nationalism

The Chaco War with Paraguay (1932–35) created for the first time a sort of national consciousness with revolutionary characteristics. It destroyed the old feudal order, because it showed the ‘poor organization of the country and the irresponsibility of its leaders, in a time when it was possible for Bolivians of different classes and regions to meet as brothers’ (Rolón Anaya, 1999: 196). Unsettling as it was, the loss of the war provided the basis for the creation of a sense of a shared nationhood since it ‘galvanized a process of rethinking and recreating new political projects concerned with nation-building’ (Domingo, 2003: 368). It was articulated as an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983) of all ex-combatants and their relatives who had come into contact with others from similar rural-indigenous origins through the mobilization of the war. Furthermore, the war created a shared sense of despair, defeat and humiliation among the population.

This was the starting point for a collective recognition of being equal with a shared frustration at socio-economic marginalization and political subjugation. At the time, nationalism was the discourse of the leftist opposition, of mainly middle-class intellectuals, to what they described as the ‘oligarchic’ state of the La Rosca (clique) of Barones del Estaño (tin barons). However, the first nationalist governments of David Torro (1936–37) and German Busch (an ex-Chaco War combatant, 1937–39), who nationalized the Standard Oil Company, were rather short-lived.

The 1952 revolution and nacionalismo revolucionario⁴

The high tide of Bolivian nationalism was the period of the MNR governments between 1952 and 1964, although its legacy is still felt today. The MNR (founded in 1942) put into practice its nacionalismo revolucionario with the 1952 revolution, which was defined as the ‘national, anti-feudal and anti-colonial’ vehicle to transform national society. As Whitehead (2003: 41–2) argues, the 1952 revolution was a social ‘dialectical process’ that ‘reordered Bolivia’s collective understandings of relations of power’ and ‘expressed a clash of ideas about fundamental issue of national identity’. It developed a hold on the popular imagination, and elements of its discourse remain in evidence still. These include the construction of a basic antagonism between ‘nationalism and colonialism’ (Montenegro, 1990), also articulated as nationalists versus imperialists.

The title of the first manifesto of the MNR was unequivocal in its construction of an antagonism: Nosotros frente a los traidores, ‘Us against the traitors’ (in Arze Cuadros, 2002: Annex 3). Similarly, MNR co-founder Augusto Céspedes (1956) stated: there are ‘two sides of the barricades’ – the oligarchy and latifundistas (La Rosca) on one side, and the oppressed, popular classes on the other. The MNR wanted to liberate the ‘oppressed majority’ from ‘slavery’ that was sustained by a system of ‘internal’ and ‘external colonialism’ (Bases y Principios del MNR, 1942; in Arze Cuadros, 2002: 604–43). For MNR’s founders such as Montenegro, Céspedes and Paz Estenssorro, the MNR tried to unite many different interests in a ‘national front of oppressed classes’ against the ‘common enemy’ of the ‘anti-national’, ‘mining and latifundista oligarchy’ (Céspedes, 1956) by constructing a ‘multi-class alliance’ (Paz Estenssorro, 1955).

Remarkably, the MNR articulated its aim as recuperar la nación (‘refound the nation’), which is now a centrepiece of MAS’s rhetoric, albeit directed against the nation constructed by the MNR. The parallels do not end here: both discourses endeavour to refound the nation in order to end a system of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ colonialism. Agents of internal colonialism are in either ‘the oligarchy’ or the ‘oligarchic traditional parties’ (Bases y Principios del MNR, 1942; in Arze Cuadros, 2002: 629) and both parties present themselves as broad movements of victims of internal colonialism. With respect to external actors, both discourses attack ‘imperialism’ and ‘internal financial consortiums/instituti...