Bolivia’s cogent responses to recent provocations from the Empire

LA PAZ — Washington’s refusal to allow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to over-fly its colony of Puerto Rico, September 19, attracted little attention in the North American and European media.

But in Latin America this arrogant gesture drew immediate outrage. It recalled the July 2 denial by four European countries — France, Italy, Spain and Portugal — of landing and refueling rights and passage through their airspace to Bolivia’s president Evo Morales while he was returning home from a trip to Moscow. This unprecedented attack on Bolivia’s sovereignty, clearly at Washington’s behest, had been defended on the fallacious grounds that Morales’ plane harboured US espionage whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Evo Morales was quick to take the lead in the Latin American response to this latest incident involving Venezuela’s Maduro. Initially, he called on the presidents of countries in ALBA and UNASUR[1] to boycott the current session of the United Nations General Assembly to protest the US “aggression.” However, discussions with his counterparts resulted in an agreement instead to attend in force the UN meetings in order to raise their objections. (Maduro deferred on the grounds of an alleged plot to kill him if he went to New York, the UN headquarters.)

Morales also proposed to the other Latin American presidents that they consider collectively expelling US ambassadors from their countries, as Bolivia did a few years ago to protest Washington’s interference in its internal affairs. And he proposed that they discuss the possibility of launching international legal proceedings against Barack Obama for his repeated violations of international law and diplomacy.

In his UN address on September 25, Morales called for establishment of a people’s tribunal, with support from international human rights organizations, to try Obama for offences of “lèse-humanité.” As examples of Obama’s crimes against humanity he cited the aerial bombing of Libya, events in Iraq and the US world-wide interventionism aimed at seizing possession of “our natural resources.”

Since the death of Hugo Chávez earlier this year, Morales has emerged as the Latin American leader most engaged in exposing the crimes of the US and other imperialist powers and projecting an alternative anti-capitalist approach on a continental and global scale.

He was quick to turn the act of air piracy on July 2 into a mobilizer of official and popular anti-imperialist action. Following an emergency summit in early July of a number of Latin American presidents to protest this incident, the Bolivian government, along with Bolivian social organizations grouped in the Pacto de Unidad, proceeded to organize a people’s international summit in opposition to imperialism and colonialism.

Held in Cochabamba July 31-August 2, the summit was attended by some 1,200 persons representing 90 organizations in Latin America and Europe. During the three days, a formal declaration drafted by the Bolivians was debated, amended and supplemented by six mesas or workshops. Originally, five mesa topics were planned: on Political Sovereignty, Economic Sovereignty, Decolonization and Anti-Imperialism, International Human Rights Treaties and Espionage. At the initiative of some delegations, including Venezuela’s, a sixth was added: Communications Counter-offensive.

On the final day, August 2 — exactly one month after the July 2 incident — participants joined in a massive closing rally and march through Cochabamba that was addressed by Evo Morales. Estimates of the number of those demonstrating ranged up to a million.

“We have to form an alliance,” Morales told the rally, “we have to unite our anti-imperialist social movements, political parties and governments of Latin America and the Caribbean with those in Europe to liberate ourselves from North American imperialism. This August 2, for me, is the day of Anti-Imperialism….” He called for building “a world movement for sovereignty and for the liberation of the peoples.”

The final declaration, as amended by the mesas, was read out at the rally. In addition, many websites published as well the full text of the resolutions adopted by the mesas. To my knowledge there is no English translation of the full text of the declaration or the resolutions. Below I have translated large excerpts of the declaration, along with a summary of some sections while noting the addition of some further demands adopted by the relevant mesas. Taken together, these statements provide an insight into the major themes and perspectives of the left today in Latin America in particular.

­­­-- Richard Fidler

AGAINST IMPERIALISM AND COLONIZATION: SIX STRATEGIES FOR SOVEREIGNTY, DIGNITY AND THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLES

An Anti-Imperialist and Anticolonialist Summit of the Peoples of Latin America and the world has been held in Bolivia at a time of imperial counter-offensive aimed at silencing the voice of rebelliousness of the people struggling for another possible world in which we will have achieved the emancipation of human beings and Mother Earth.

Therefore, assembled in Cochabamba from July 31 to August 2, 2013, we declare as follows:

The current crisis of capitalism is a crisis of multiple dimensions: a crisis of finance, production, the climate, food, energy, politics and ideology. In short, a crisis of civilization that threatens the life of capitalism as such, but also of humanity and the planet . However, faced with this crisis, and in desperate attempts to revive and strengthen this system, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist governments are promoting further privatizations, the pillage of Mother Earth, the destruction of social rights, and the plunder of natural resources.

Amidst this crisis, the wars and coups promoted by the Empire are aimed at installing puppet governments and capturing strategic natural resources. Invasions of countries and sabotage of processes of change are the Empire’s responses to the crisis of the capitalist system.

The imperial counter-offensive began with the NATO intervention in the dismemberment of many of the countries of the socialist camp and the former Yugoslavia, where it launched a territorial fragmentation strategy that imperialism has since been trying to use in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador.

The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were another aspect of this historical period as the Empire sought to seize their natural resources and deploy a range of geopolitical strategies aimed at maintaining the pattern of North-South relations and preventing reinforcement of South-South relations.

Likewise, starting after 2008 with the administration of Barack Obama, imperialism has taken the path of a major military offensive aimed at overcoming the crisis of capitalism. Libya became the first victim and now the focus is on Syria and Iran with the complicity of the United Nations, whose Security Council has been virtually kidnapped by the United States, England and France.

The transnational military arm of the United States is called NATO. Its new strategic concept has made the planet a global theatre for its operations. Latin America now finds itself threatened by Colombia’s request to become a co-operative partner of NATO.

Another manifestation of the global counter-offensive of imperialism is the violation of the international conventions and treaties that emerged after World War II. Since the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and its European partners in NATO have made it more than clear that their geopolitical interests in commandeering the world’s natural resources prevail over the international order.

One of the latest violations of that international order is the kidnapping of President Evo Morales last July 2, when four European countries denied him the right to refuel and the use of airspace, putting his life in jeopardy. Clearly there is a before and after since July 2, 2013. Nor is it accidental that the only country that allowed the landing was Austria, which is not a member of NATO.

The world capitalist counteroffensive is expressed in Latin America with the opening of more military bases on our continent: the implementation of Plan Colombia, the Mérida Initiative,[2] the Andean Initiative[3] and the Caribbean Basin Initiative[4]; the failed and defeated coups against Chávez in Venezuela (2002), Morales in Bolivia (2008) and Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2010); the military coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (2009), and the activation of the Fourth Fleet (to control the ocean through the possibility of rapid deployment).

Following the defeat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) at Mar del Plata in 2005, imperialism has rearmed politically and economically, promoting the Pacific Alliance as a bloc of pro-free trade countries that is intended to counter politically, economically and ideologically the integration processes in the region; it is aimed especially at reconfiguring the geopolitical balance of forces and acting as a counterweight to the growing influence of ALBA, which relies instead on strengthening UNASUR and CELAC. The Pacific Alliance represents an attempt to replicate the neocolonial model of the FTAA.

Imperialism and colonialism are using the media as the most appropriate instruments to disorient our peoples and to undermine social support for our progressive governments. They are also developing sophisticated technological networks as part of the intrusion and interference of U.S. imperialism in our countries.

To confront this very difficult context, the movements and peoples of the world gathered in Cochabamba have agreed to oppose imperialism and colonialism by implementing six strategies for sovereignty and the dignity and life of our peoples.

[From here on, I summarize the contents of this lengthy document. – RF]

STRATEGY 1

STRENGTHENING THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE WORLD’S PEOPLES BY FIGHTING THE IMPERIAL AND MILITARISTIC INSTRUMENTS OF DOMINATION LIKE NATO

The introduction to this section recounts the formation of NATO in 1949 as the primary imperialist alliance during the Cold War, and its use since the fall of the Soviet Union as an instrument to uphold the worldwide geopolitical and economic interests of the US and other imperialist powers and to keep the world safe for capitalism.

The document calls on the peoples and countries of the South to mobilize in opposition to NATO and related imperialist alliances and to oppose invasions of sovereign countries and the plunder of natural resources. “Without nationalization of natural resources there is no sovereignty,” it says. And it calls for the creation of an “Observatory of the Neo-coupism and Military Interventionism of the United States and its Armed Wing, NATO.”

Among the efforts it recommends to free the peoples of the world from colonialism it calls for sustained campaigning against the US blockade of Cuba and its revolution, “a revolution of all the world’s peoples,” and for the return of the Malvinas (a.k.a. the Falkland Islands) to Argentina. And it calls for international mobilization to modify the composition of the UN Security Council and to “democratize” it by increasing the representation of the “developing countries” on the Council.

The workshop on this topic adopted a number of proposals that were not included in the final text. Among these:

· Establish July 2 as an International Day Against Imperialism, to represent emancipation of peoples and especially of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, in rejection of the attack on President Evo Morales;

· Hold the second Anti-imperialist, Anticapitalist and Anticolonialist Summit for the Sovereignty of the Peoples and Security of Human Rights in Venezuela on March 5, 2014, in homage to the memory of Hugo Chávez; and

· Participate in the World Youth and Student Festival in Quito, Ecuador, December 7-13, 2013.

STRATEGY 2

ALLIANCE AND MOBILIZATION OF THE PEOPLES TO PREVENT THE RESTORATION OF NEOLIBERALISM AND THE FTAA

This section singles out the Pacific Alliance as an instrument for the restoration of privatization of services and natural resource development based on so-called free trade and investment agreements, an attempt to recreate the frustrated Free Trade Area of the Americas and to counter the efforts toward unification and political unity in Latin America through such alliances as ALBA, MERCOSUR, UNASUR and CELAC.

Among the specific actions it proposes are “the promotion and recognition of development models defined in sovereignty by the peoples of the world based on solidarity, complementarity, vivir bien, and harmony with Mother Earth….” It calls for “alternative economic projects that recognize, respect and strengthen the communitarian, indigenous and ancestral structures of our peoples, and that promote socialism, the economy of vivir bien distinct from capitalism.”

The capitalist model, it says, should be countered by building along socialist lines, “based on socially-owned enterprises and recognition of the plural, state and communitarian social economy.” This entails “state support for a productive sector based on associated small and micro enterprises, communitarian social associations, and a solidaristic and cooperative social economy” – all of which, it says, are major job creators – along with “state enterprises committed to the sovereignty and dignity of the peoples and the democratization of wealth.”

To fight “consumerism and commercialization [mercantilismo],” it is fundamental to “consume our own products, our own safe and healthy foods.”

Technological sovereignty, the statement says, involves developing knowledge and innovation in a framework of a dialogue between ancient communal indigenous and peasant knowledges and modern learning and technologies.

It urges support for the people of Bolivia in that landlocked country’s fight to regain the access to the Pacific that it lost to Chile in the War of the Pacific in the 1870s. This can best be achieved, it says, through creation of a Trinational Coordinating Committee of the Peoples between Bolivia, Peru and Chile that can secure this demand in a context of justice and solidarity.

Finally, the statement calls for building “an instrument of political action of the social movements to discuss actions in defence of those governments advancing progressive options for Latin America, and in support of the struggles of other progressive revolutionary processes.”

The workshop on this topic adopted a number of proposals not included in the final declaration. Among these:

· To solve the problem of the land and to recognize the right of the indigenous peasants to administer their own lands, the development of comprehensive agrarian reform processes is key to guaranteeing food sovereignty. Sale of land must be prohibited, and the economic function of the land must be recognized.

· Monetary sovereignty. Colonization also proceeds through monetary policy, hence the imposition of the dollar. Rescue the Sucre as our regional currency and move toward monetary integration, making the Sucre currency of common use.

· Strengthen the Bank of the South (Banco del Sur) so that it can finance undertakings to achieve food sovereignty, freeing us from transgenic seeds and preventing Monsanto from invading our territories.

· Create an ALBA parliament.

· Create a continental coordination of the peoples between Peru, Chile and Bolivia to help achieve Bolivian access to the sea.

STRATEGY 3

DECOLONIZATION AND ANTI-IMPERIALISM

“It is not possible to speak of national liberation and to recover economic and political sovereignty,” states the preamble to this section, “without posing the need to build an alternative vision to unfettered, extractivist and plundering capitalism.” This involves “strengthening our diversity and interculturalism to achieve a sovereignty of thinking and consciousness, recovering the ancestral knowledges of our peoples.”

Among the specific steps proposed in order to promote decolonization and anti-imperialism are:

· the greater involvement of anticapitalist and anti-imperialist social movements within formal and informal international alliances and councils;

· the establishment of Constituent Assemblies in all Latin American countries as well as on other continents in order to found Plurinational States, the models here obviously being Bolivia and Ecuador;

· creating social movement media on a Latin American scale, with headquarters in Bolivia, to report on the various experiences in their struggles;

· holding annual International Anti-imperialist and Anticolonial Summits, preferably on July 28 to commemorate the birth date of Hugo Chávez; and

· the creation of a University of the Peoples of ALBA to “decolonize educational, institutional and mental structures and develop our own Latin American projects and programs capable of developing the region with its sovereignty, dignity, equity and identity.”

This section also calls for demanding that imperialism pay its ecological debt; supporting the peace process in Colombia, and supporting Puerto Rico’s independence. The workshop (mesa) on this topic added a call for the withdrawal of Minustah[5] from Haiti.

STRATEGY 4

STRENGTHENING HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE PEOPLES

“Human rights from imperialism’s perspective,” says the preamble to this section, “are a means of consolidating a model of society that is individualistic, privatized, hierarchical and in which the market has control and domination over our peoples.” This is the outlook that has been incubated in the OAS’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and in other international bodies. “But the international actions taken recently against Evo Morales are not only an infringement of international law by the states involved, they also demonstrate the decadence of the European societies.”

The new vision of human rights must reflect the thinking of the social movements, and states must be accountable to those movements for their exercise of these rights. Human rights must be based on anti-imperialist criteria and respect our cultures and our indigenous and Afro-descendant identities. The new vision of human rights has to be based on three pillars: universal recognition of the rights of Mother Earth; effective recognition of the individual and collective rights of the peoples; and full enforcement of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights.

In terms of specific actions, the statement calls for discussion of a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, recovering the cosmovision of our aboriginal rights as the basis of the civilizing horizon of Vivir Bien; creation of an intercontinental organ of social movements parallel to the United Nations; promotion and strengthening of basic services as a human right; and “highlighting the importance of the human rights of women and the need to struggle to eradicate femicide in our region.”

And it calls for the immediate and unconditional end to the inhuman economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba and for its exclusion from the list of state sponsors of international terrorism; the freeing of the four Cuban heroes unjustly imprisoned in the United States; and the definitive closure of the centres of violation of human rights installed in Latin America by the United States, such as the Guantánamo prison.

The workshop on this topic added a call for independence of Puerto Rico.

STRATEGY 5

FIGHT AGAINST EXPIONAGE AND INTERFERENCE, TO FREE THE PEOPLES FROM THE DOMINATION OF IMPERIALIST TERROR

The introduction to this section analogizes the US counteroffensive in Latin America to “low-intensity warfare.” In addition to the “international espionage” of the CIA, well-documented in many countries, the recent revelations of Edward Snowden have shed light on the extensive global network of digital spying “in violation of the privacy and sovereignty of the progressive countries.”

To combat this imperialist espionage, the declaration recommends the following actions, among others, to strengthen popular and state sovereignty:

· the prompt creation of an ALBA communications infrastructure to serve as an alternative and independent internet network, linking the Latin American and Caribbean countries through fibre optics technology;

· the construction of a Latin American civilian and military intelligence and counter-intelligence centre, as part of the ALBA Defence Doctrine, that can “train revolutionaries to confront the imperialist espionage”; and

· the achievement of computer sovereignty by nationalizing and developing state-controlled national telecommunications firms and developing continental computer technology networks using their own free software.

The workshop on this topic also call for monitoring foreign NGOs in countries of the South, to ensure that they do not service imperialism in their activities.

STRATEGY 6

TO COUNTER THE COLONIALISM OF DISINFORMATION, PEOPLE’S CONTROL OVER THE COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA

Most of the private media in Latin America, notes the preamble, are hostile to the anti-imperialist, anticolonialist and anticapitalist positions of the progressive governments. They work constantly to create social unrest. Examples cited are the “media coup d’état perpetrated in Venezuela against Hugo Chávez in 2002, the systematic media campaign in Bolivia in opposition to the process of change led by Evo Morales…, and the political and media opposition in Ecuador to Rafael Correa,” who has initiated legislation to undermine the private media dictatorship in that country.

There is a great need, the declaration says, to promote a system of independent communications spaces through the establishment of alternative community media, using networks of popular communications. Among the steps that can be taken, it adds, are:

· extending the TeleSUR and Radio del Sur broadcasting networks throughout Latin America and the Caribbean;

· establishing and strengthening popular communications networks (radio, television, social media networks) in collaboration with the social movements and the communications media that already exist; and

· establishing access to a state and community media satellite network that “integrates radio and television stations of the various social movements in our countries, broadcasts content related to the liberation struggles of our peoples, and promotes the design of communications content in native languages.”

The workshop on this topic proposed in addition that strategic proposals along these lines be taken to the Second World Summit on Indigenous Communications, to be held October 13-17 in Oaxaca, Mexico.

STRENGTHENING THE EMANCIPATORY POTENTIAL OF THE PEOPLES

This final section notes “the legacy of the Cuban revolution,” which “opened the way” to all of today’s “people’s governments and defenders of the social majorities.” And it recognizes “the legacy of Chavismo, which allowed the development of a political project of Latin American integration with socialism as its horizon,” adding that this is a communitarian socialism born from our own peoples – indigenous and workers – whose long memory and wisdom reaffirms for us not only the need but the real possibility to construct a social order outside of the logics of capital.”

“Latin America is experiencing one of the most extraordinary cycles in its entire history,” the declaration says.

“The peoples of Abya Yala,[6] in terms of both their position as a class and their position as originary campesino indigenous peoples, have risen up and are moving toward their final and full independence. This possibility of achieving emancipation, more than 500 years after the European invasion and 200 years after achieving state independence, has never before been presented with the force that it now has in the present conditions: a rise in the degree of organization and consciousness of the peoples, revolutionary and progressive governments, leaders with a great historical dimension, and the emergence of initiatives of Latin American unity and integration.”

But added to the structural problems, which are simply the unpleasant residues of the old colonialism, are other challenges in confronting the problems of the new colonialism. One is the need to recover popular control over natural resources. Another is the need to further “relations of collaboration, cooperation, solidarity and complementarity between peoples and states.” And still another is to “develop technology to change our productive matrix without affecting Mother Earth.”

To strengthen the emancipatory potential of our peoples, the statement says, there must be a permanent solidarity among them, expressed in concrete actions aimed against all forms of oppression and domination; respect for the self-determination of the peoples, national and popular sovereignty, etc., to build a society that is more inclusive, more participatory, more democratic, more complementary and solidaristic – one that allows us to live in harmony with Mother Earth.

---

[1] ALBA, the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América; UNASUR, the Unión Suramericana de Naciones.

[2] The Mérida Initiative (also called Plan Mexico by critics) is a security cooperation agreement between the United States and the government of Mexico and the countries of Central America, with the declared aim of combating the threats of drug trafficking, transnational organized crime and money laundering. The assistance includes training, equipment and intelligence. (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9rida_Initiative)

[3] The Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI) is a program operated within the US State Department that is responsible for supporting anti-drug initiatives in Colombia and other South American countries. ACI grew out of a controversial legislation, Plan Colombia, which supported various drug wars in South America. The program seeks to eradicate coca and induce local farmers to plant alternative crops. But for all the money that has been spent towards stemming the flow of illegal drugs into the United States from South America, little progress has been made in reaching this goal. (http://tinyurl.com/ks6qb6nhttp://tinyurl.com/ks6qb6n )

[4] The Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) was a unilateral and temporary United States program initiated by the 1983 “Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act” (CBERA). The CBI came into effect on January 1, 1984 and aimed to provide several tariff and trade benefits to many Central American and Caribbean countries. It arose in the context of a U.S. desire to respond with aid and trade to leftist movements that were active in some countries of the region, such as the guerrillas in El Salvador and the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Provisions in the CBERA prevented the U.S. from extending preferences to CBI countries that it judged to be under the influence of Communists or that had expropriated American property. (Wikipedia, http://tinyurl.com/k6h58ez)

[5] The United Nations Stabilisation Mission In Haiti (MINUSTAH) is a United Nations “peacekeeping” mission (actually occupation force) in Haiti that has been in operation since 2004, following the overthrow by France, the US and Canada of the elected government headed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The mission's military component is led by the Brazilian Army and the force commander is Brazilian. The force is composed of 8,940 military personnel (including a small contingent from Bolivia) and 3,711 police.

[6] Abya Yala is the name used by many indigenous peoples to refer to the American continent since before the arrival of Columbus.

Chile: Allende’s foreign policy was a forerunner for today’s Latin America

Salvador Allende.

By Jorge Magasich, translated for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal by Richard Fidler

September 10, 2013 – When Salvador Allende took office in November 1970, Chile was aligned with the United States. The foreign policy of his Popular Unity (UP – Unidad Popular) government, a coalition of almost all the left parties,[1] broke sharply from this Cold War bloc.

It was based on self-determination of peoples, non-interference in other countries, disarmament and the adoption of Third World causes such as the struggle against colonialism and the search for an international order with greater justice for “developing” countries. With Allende, Chile joined the Non-Aligned Movement, making it an exception in Latin America, while his government promoted alliances aimed at “advocating our rights and defending raw materials prices through collective action.”[2]

Ideological pluralism

Abandoning Chile’s strict adherence to ideological frontiers, Allende’s government displayed greater pluralism. It traded with all countries irrespective of their internal political regime. And the new government opened diplomatic relations with two Latin American countries, seven in Africa, three in Europe and seven in Asia.[3] It broke with none.

In August 1971, Washington announced an end to the convertibility of the US dollar to gold, increased import taxes by 10%, reduced its foreign aid by 10%, devalued the US dollar and launched major bond issues to finance the war in Vietnam, the space race and investments in Europe, Canada and Japan. These measures damaged many countries in the global South, devaluing their reserve funds held in dollars.

The Latin American countries met the following month in Buenos Aires to analyse the situation. Even the dictatorships participated in this meeting of the Special Committee for Latin American Co-ordination (CECLA).[4] In Buenos Aires, Gonzalo Martner, Chile’s minister of planning, outlined his proposals for a new international monetary system. A first step was to protect national currencies against dollar devaluations by breaking their link to the international monetary system. Second, he proposed that a way be found to engage the developing countries in the major decisions in international monetary policy. Finally, he called for an international conference with representation of all the economic interests on the planet. This conference would undertake to reform the monetary system, and be provided with greater resources for the developing countries that they could use at their discretion.

A new role for the UNCTAD

In his opening speech at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Santiago, Chile, in April 1972, Allende — presciently! — warned the 3000 delegates and observers from 131 countries against the policy of the United States, Japan and the European Economic Community (forerunner of today’s European Union) which would gradually dismantle the obstacles to free trade. Free trade, he said, would “at one stroke wipe out the advantages that the system of generalised preferences[5] contributes to the developing countries”.

But the main threat for the Third World, Allende went on to say, lay in the fact “that the three major economic powers claim they are establishing this policy not through the UNCTAD but through the GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, forerunner of the World Trade Organization]”. However, the GATT was not subject to the principles of the United Nations, as its composition was not at all representative and the organisation had demonstrated a special concern with protecting the interests of the dominant countries.

Allende launched an appeal for the defence of the UNCTAD, the most representative forum of the international community since it provided for negotiation of economic and trade issues on an equal legal footing: the peoples of the Third World, “unable to speak at Bretton Woods” or in other founding conferences of the international financial system, needed an effective tool to defend their interests, he argued. He therefore proposed to transform the UNCTAD into a permanent institution that could become “the principal and most effective of the instruments that the Third World has to negotiate with the developed nations”.

From this perspective, the UNCTAD would back four major missions. First, to think about “a new monetary system studied, prepared and managed by the international community as a whole, which would look to funding development in the Third World countries as well as expanding international trade”. Second, in view of the fact that the external debt “constitutes one of the principal obstacles to progress”, Allende proposed that the UNCTAD undertake to “audit” it (he spoke of a “critical study of the way in which the Third World has contracted its external debt”).

The third mission would consist of developing media under the supervision of the UN to compensate for the concentration of information and advertising in the hands of consortiums that “simply increase our dependency and are now destroying our cultural values”. Finally, Allende suggested that the UNCTAD study a “disarmament plan that would assign a large percentage of the costs linked to arms production and war to a homogeneous human development fund that, among other things, would grant long-term loans to businesses and countries in the Third World”.

A few months later, addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1972, Allende warned against the increasing power of the multinational corporations that evade democratic control: “We are faced with a veritable frontal conflict between multinational corporations and states. Their fundamental decisions — political, economic and military — are influenced by global organisations not dependent on any state and with none of their activities accountable to any parliament.”

Latin American integration

Between 1970 and 1973 the Latin American political landscape was rather adverse to the UP government. Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia (after August 1971) were under the yoke of military dictatorships, soon to be joined by Uruguay. Colombia was governed by a conservative, Misael Pastrana, and Venezuela by a social Christian, Rafael Caldera. Only the “reformist” Peruvian military officers looked with sympathy on the Chilean socialist experiment, as did the president of Mexico, Luis Echeverría.

Allende’s Chile engaged in careful diplomacy. It managed to submit the delicate border disputes with Argentina to British arbitration. And prior to the 1971 coup in Bolivia, it negotiated reestablishment of diplomatic relations with La Paz, taking a favourable approach to Bolivia’s demand for access to the Pacific.[6] At the same time, Chile granted asylum to thousands of political exiles from the countries of the Latin American dictatorships.

Allende’s government rejected Pan-Americanism — a bloc of the whole of America, with the United States pre-eminent — and its political arm, the Organization of American States (OAS), headquartered in Washington. A community of interests between weak economies and the major power is impossible, said Allende, and he proposed that the OAS become a place of dialogue between the United States and Latin America.

The UP’s diplomacy advocated the formation of a “Latin American system” that would “integrate and complement our economies in the framework of the Latin American free-trade association and the common market of the Andean countries”.[7] It encouraged the development of the common market between the countries of the “Andean Pact”[8] [now the Andean Community] and strongly supported its “Decision 24” which regulated foreign investments, limited competition between its member countries, and established a 14% ceiling on repatriation of capital by foreign firms.

These ideas were spelled out in the Latin American Economic and Social Council, meeting in Panama in September 1971. Gonzalo Martner made four proposals of an integrationist nature: (1) to ask the United States for a moratorium on the external debt for a decade, in order to assign these sums to development policies; (2) create a Latin American central bank to “invest Latin America’s reserves, 70% of which are in the United States,” to receive “the region’s deposits and assets” and coordinate the operations of the central banks in order to protect the region from financial turbulence; (3) promote the creation of a world technologies fund for development that would be financed from mandatory contributions in licences, industrial procedures and other funds slated for research so as to limit the abuses associated with technological property; and (4) and create a Latin American organisation for the development of science and technology appropriate to the region.

Six weeks before the coup of September 11, 1973, the minister of foreign affairs Orlando Letelier[9] noted that the use of the US dollar was an important obstacle to trade among the countries of the Andean Pact. He proposed to avoid it by looking for other instruments of exchange: “It may be necessary to design a special independent means of payment.”[10]

Although almost none of these ideas, articulated 40 years ago, could actually be implemented, they continue to be of striking actuality. The re-establishment of relations between Chile and Bolivia still entails consideration of Bolivia’s request for access to the sea. Most of the Latin American governments have rejected a new version of pan-Americanism, presented by Washington in the form of a free-trade area from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego,[11] opting instead for their own organisation that excludes the United States: the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). And the idea of a regional financial system funded with the reserves of the central banks is gradually gaining ground,[12] as is the thinking about the political weight of the media,[13] the economic weight of the dollar or the legitimacy of the external debt burden.[14]

[A French version of this article appeared in the September 2013 issue of Le Monde diplomatique. Jorge Magasich is a historian, lecturer at L’Institut des hautes études des communications in Brussels and author of Los que dijeron No: Historia del movimiento de los marinos antigolpistas de 1973 (Santiago, Chile: LOM, 2008).]

Notes

[1] Communists, Socialists (at the time, more left than the Communist Party), Radicals (secularists), MAPU (Left Christians who had become Marxists) and IC (Christian Left). The Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR – Movement of the Revolutionary Left), inspired by the Cuban revolution, gave critical support from outside the coalition.

[2] Allende’s speech at the opening sessions of UNCTAD III, Santiago, April 1972.

[3] Latin America: Cuba and Guyana. Africa: Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zaire. Europe: Albania, German Democratic Republic and Hungary. Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, North Korea, China, Mongolia, South Vietnam (the provisional government) and North Vietnam.

[4] The CECLA was created in 1964 at the initiative of 19 Latin American countries meeting in Alta Gracia, Argentina, to prepare the first meeting of the UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. It denounced the discriminatory character of international trade and proposed the creation of an International Fund to finance food supplies under the UN system.

[5] Preferential customs duties for the developing countries established in 1968; certain products were allowed to enter the countries of the “North” with few or no customs duties, free of reciprocity requirements.

[6] Bolivia was deprived of its maritime province in 1883, when it was annexed by Chile after the “saltpeter war” [a.k.a. “War of the Pacific”]. Since then almost all Bolivian governments have asked for access to the sea. The two countries had no diplomatic relations because of this issue.

[7] Speech to the UN General Assembly, December 4, 1972.

[8] Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru had just signed the “Declaration of Cartagena” in 1969. Venezuela joined in 1973.

[9] Assassinated by the Chilean dictatorship’s secret police in September 1976 in Washington, where he was living in exile.

[10] Gonzalo Martner, El Gobierno del Presidente Salvador Allende, 1970-1973: Una evaluación (Ed. Prog. de Estudios del Des. Nac. and Ediciones literatura americana, 1988), at 193-198 and 214.

[11] Dorval Brunelle, “De l’Alaska à la Terre de feu, le tout-commence à l’oeuvre”, Le Monde diplomatique, April 2001.

[12] Damien Millet and Eric Toussaint, “Banque du Sud contre banque mondiale,” Le Monde diplomatique, June 2007.

[13] Renaud Lambert, “En Amérique latine, des gouvernements affrontent les patrons de presse,” Le Monde diplomatique, December 2012.

[14] Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet, “Payer la dette: l’Equateur dit ‘non’,” Le Monde diplomatique, July 2011.

The MAS government in Bolivia: Are the social movements in power?

Introduction
This following article is of particular interest for its discussion of the relationship between the Bolivian government leadership, the indigenous and peasant organizations, and the party based on the latter that is led by President Evo Morales and his team.
Some foreign observers have argued that with its election in 2005 the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) diverted from the streets to the ballot boxes the powerful struggles that it had helped to lead against repressive right-wing governments earlier in the decade. In this article Moira Zuazo, a leading Bolivian political scientist, shows that in fact the MAS and the social movements have combined both electoral and mass action throughout the period from the formation of the party in the mid-1990s to today, albeit in changing forms and combinations of tactics.
Among its useful insights, her essay documents and historically situates the development of major tensions between the government and the campesino and indigenous movements that make up the social base of the MAS. Many of these arise from the inevitable conflict between the natural impulse of the movements to defend their particularist corporate interests and the challenges faced by the Morales administration in governing a reconstituted “pluri-national” state that continues to confront the opposition of the old elites and their imperialist backers.
Zuazo’s conclusion, which is of course debatable, is that the role of Evo Morales is akin to that played in much of Latin American history by the caudillo, the chieftan who rules as a charismatic populist leader, balancing between contending social forces — he acts, as she puts it, as a “mediating axis” between the party and the social organizations at its base. By itself, this extension of the term to define Morales’ role may, in my view, obscure more than illuminate the complex interaction involved, the operation of which is nevertheless very usefully described in this article. (For a much earlier, pre-MAS analysis of the “caudillo” in Latin American history, see “Caudillo Politics: A Structural Analysis” by Eric Wolf and Edward Hansen.)
For an informative report on the formal state mechanisms for consultation of indigenous peoples and how they operate, both in law and in practice, see this report (in Spanish only) to the United Nations by the Bolivian government: http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/session_10_Bolivia.pdf.
My thanks to Federico Fuentes for critically reviewing my draft translation. Fuentes is the co-author with Marta Harnecker of the book MAS-IPSP de Bolivia: Instrumento político que surge de los movimientes sociales (Caracas: Centro Internacional Miranda, 2008).
– Richard Fidler

* * *

The MAS government in Bolivia: Are the social movements in power?
By Moira Zuazo
Nueva Sociedad No. 227, May-June 2010, http://nuso.org/revista.php?n=227
The Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) grew out of a decision of the peasant social organizations to have a political instrument. Later, in its leap to the cities, the party’s reach expanded and Evo Morales emerged as the caudillo capable of guaranteeing internal cohesion and operating as a mediator between the MAS and the social organizations. With the accession to government in 2005, the concentration of power in the president’s hands was accentuated and the role of the social movements has faded. While they continue to occupy some space, their place in the leadership of the process is increasingly less relevant.

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“What happens when the soviets retreat?” - Álvaro García Linera
In an interview published in Le Monde diplomatique, Bolivia’s vice-president, Álvaro García Linera, when asked about the relation between the social movements and the state, said that Bolivia now confronted the same challenges that Lenin’s Russia did and asked: “What happens when the soviets retreat?”[1]
That is the subject that will be addressed in this essay: What happens in Bolivia today, when the high point of the social empowerment, the establishment of “politics in the streets,” has now passed?[2] What happens when the crisis that extended from 2000 to 2005 is now part of history and we are living under a government that obtained 54% of the votes in 2005 and 64% in 2009? After the big mobilizations, are we now in a time of direct and unmediated participation of the social movements in the state? How does this participation function? And where has this left the rest of society, the “silent mass” that votes but does not mobilize? Or perhaps, in the wake of the mobilized masses has an institutionalization of participation been initiated by way of the democratic political party? Or are we faced with neither of these two options, and on the contrary it is raison d’état that is now imposed while power is being concentrated in the hands of the president and his entourage and both the social movements and the party are left, in varying degrees, outside?
To consider these questions, I will first analyze the relation of the social movements with the political party in the stage of crisis of the state, that is the period of social empowerment. In this section, I suggest that the MAS originated in campesino [peasant] social organizations on the basis of their decision to have a political instrument in order to operate in the democratic arena; that is, the MAS is, by its origin, a peasant party, and the second mass party produced in Bolivia’s republican history.
In the second part of the article, I focus on the period when the MAS becomes established in the cities, the relation of the urban population with the party and, fundamentally, with Evo Morales. What challenges does this leap portend and what are the implications for the new party? Here I argue that the horizontal-rural force that was the MAS, in the leap to the cities, saw the emergence of the caudillo that subsumes the party and reduces its role.
Lastly, in the third part of this article, I will analyze the process experienced by the social movements after 2006, once they had acceded to government. I analyze this stage on the basis of the tense relationship between three simultaneous and conflicting processes: the tendency to concentration of power in the hands of the president; the situation of a party trying to define its role as a party in government; and the presence of social organizations, which by 2010 were dispersed and negotiating their space in the government.
The birth of the MAS
The MAS originated as a product of a paradoxical movement: on the one hand, as part of the process of democratic opening in the period from 1982 to 2000; and on the other, as a consequence of the crisis of that process. The 18 years of democracy allowed the development of a process of political integration through the democratization of access to political space as a result of municipalization and the creation of single-member electoral constituencies. These opened a window for access to politics for the campesino and indigenous population. However, democracy, which in the 1980s was perceived as a promise of inclusion, became in the 1990s an unfulfilled promise. Political integration without economic and social integration proved inconclusive. By the end of the 1990s, the rural and urban popular society felt deceived and excluded.
During the years of stabilization of Bolivian democracy, between 1982 and 2000, the political class did not perceive the importance of the state’s role of social integration or the relevance that institutional strengthening would acquire in the fulfillment of that role.
There are two reasons for this. A crucial one was the role of the left forces, which developed a pragmatic form of action, opposed to the party-based institutionalization, that allowed them to camouflage themselves in the neoliberal consensus, a consensus that closed its eyes and its mouth to the social question. This came at the cost of losing the image of a party of the left and assuming the modest position of a force that turned around a caudillo, as in the case of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). But the left forces also were quick to be delegitimized by the dreadful experience of state management left by the Unidad Democrática y Popular (UDP), and they therefore continued to exist as marginal forces without any prospect of participating in state office, as was the case of the Partido Comunista de Bolivia (PCB) and the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario de Izquierda (MNRI). The result of this debacle was that when the crisis stage began there were no left parties credibly defending the interests of the popular sectors.
Secondly, the centre and right forces gambled on being good students of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), promoting liberalization of the economy and dismantling of the state, and were uninterested in reflecting on the importance of the state’s role in social integration to the consolidation of democracy.
In this context, the emergence of the MAS is a result of the confluence of four factors: the politicized emergence of the cleavage between countryside and city; the crisis of the neoliberal economic model and the increasingly apparent social debt; the crisis of representativity of the political parties, in particular the absence of left parties with any institutional solidity; and the process of political integration that was generated by municipalization and single-member electoral constituencies.
The first factor, the cleavage between countryside and city, can be interpreted as a result of the post-colonial character of the Republic of Bolivia, which created a basic distrust in the relationship between the indigenous/originary peoples and the state as embodied in its institutions. But it is also the result of the feeble state appropriation of the rural territory, which shapes a dual relationship of the campesino-indigenous with the state: an abstract feeling of “Bolivianness” as opposed to the concrete experience of isolation as a campesino.
The second factor, the economic crisis of the late 1990s and the political stagnation of the government of Hugo Banzer, provided material content to the perception of democracy as an unfulfilled promise. Added to this is the third factor noted, the crisis of representativity of the parties, which generated a vacuum that opened space for the process of circulation of elites that Bolivia has been experiencing since 2005.
Lastly, the process of municipalization begun in 1994 with the Law of Popular Participation, opened a stage of political integration that was reinforced and expanded territorially with the definition of single-member electoral constituencies.
This political decentralization of the state allowed for a politicization of the countryside-city cleavage and determined the ruralization of politics on the basis of the state’s arrival in the local sphere, where in the past it had had no presence, and the articulation between the municipal and the forms of anti-institutional protest, rooted in the alienation — or at least distance — between the state and the communitarian-campesino.[3]
In this confluence of factors, the MAS presents three moments that function as constitutive axes. The first is the development of the campesino movement, which is built around the idea of unity: “The parties divide us” is the recurring complaint of the campesinos. In the panorama of crisis of democracy that opened earlier in the 1990s, the campesino movement perceived the need to build a “political instrument” based on a positive appreciation of unity as a weapon for effective defense of those below in the conception of a society of unequal persons. This positive appreciation of unity was to pose, in the future, difficulties in accepting pluralism based on respect for the individual and his or her right to dissent, both in the communities and within the party.
The second constitutive axis of the MAS dates back to 1995, that is, after the municipalization and implementation of single-member election constituencies. During this stage, the role of elections was of central importance for the consolidation of unity under cocalero [coca farmers] leadership. The electoral experiences led to a favourable assessment of democracy, and suffrage came to be seen as an effective mechanism for electing and empowering governments. The cocalero movement, which scored some major electoral triumphs and took power in the municipalities of the Chapare district, appealed to the other campesinos and took the leadership of the new party.
Lastly, the MAS was formed and developed in the cycle of social protest that opened up after 2000 on the basis of a strategy of weaving together a network of organizations and taking the leadership or control of them.
With the accession of the MAS to government, Bolivian society underwent a process of circulation of elites that is here to stay and has involved a structural change. This process was unleashed by the serious crisis of representativity of the old party system, combined with the politicization of the cleavage between countryside and city. Both factors led to a displacement of the old criteria for legitimate access to power. The cleavage between countryside and city reorganizes the values needed for holding political office, in three respects. In the first place, for the first time in the history of the Republic indigenous ethnic affiliation or ascendency, as expressed in family names and ethnic roots, is regarded as an asset. Secondly, educational level and professional merit are no longer criteria for access to political office, and even become obstacles. Thirdly, the “organizing capital” of Bolivian society, expressed in the presence of strong social organizations, is regarded as an asset. This assessment restores a tradition that is both urban and rural.
The positive reassessment of the corporate organizations is a process of reconciliation of Bolivian society with itself. The discursive objective of the MAS, to achieve the occupation of the state by organized society, is an expression of this. Firstly, we will address the question of whether this is possible; later, we will consider whether this is desirable.
The MAS in the cities: birth of the caudillo
In December 2005, the MAS won the national elections with 54% of the votes. Half a year later, in July 2006, the party prevailed in the Assembly elections, with 51%. Two years later, in August 2008, the government won the recall referendum with 67% of the votes.[4] In the general elections of December 2009, the MAS repeated its triumph, with 64%. These numbers demonstrate that what we are dealing with is a process of construction of hegemony expressed in a substantial electoral strength that contrasts with a serious institutional weakness of the party. This paradox is analyzed in the lines that follow.
Between 1995 and 2002, the MAS was a campesino party, with horizontal decision-making processes and spaces for debate, which emerged from the campesino-indigenous social organizations. Beginning in 2002, but more clearly after the 2005 election victory, a transition began from an indirect structure to an “urban party,” which generated tensions and changes.
The MAS originated as a party of indirect structure.[5] This means that affiliation to the party is by social organizations; individual members of the union are indirectly affiliated to the party.[6] This explains why Evo Morales has on various occasions stated that “where the union organizations function well, a parallel party structure is not necessary.”
Beginning in 2002, the party faced the challenge of appealing to the electorate in the urban centers. This gave rise to a dual challenge: on the one hand, the urban social organizations lacked the strength and organizational discipline of the rural organizations. On the other hand, and even more important, the MAS’s appeal to the urban electorate was met by citizens who wanted to affiliate individually to the party. This resulted in an initial tension between a party whose origin assumed an indirect structure but which, in the transition to the cities and in its interest in sinking roots in them, was beginning to be transformed into a party with a direct structure. However, as this matter was not debated internally it remained in fact as a vacuum in the party’s norms, which in turn opened up an area for circulation of power. And it was Evo Morales who occupied this space for circulation of power and became the mediating axis of the party.
But this normative vacuum also encouraged a relationship to the party based on expectations of access to public office (“a job”) and discouraged an approach based on the intention to be part of the party and contribute to political debate among the rank and file.
In this scenario, there arose a differentiation between, on the one hand, “organic members” or “early members,” that is, those from the social organizations with the right to challenge power internally, and, on the other hand, “guests,” a sort of second-level membership of those who have been incorporated in the process of penetration of the cities. The “guests” encounter many difficulties when it comes to disputing legitimacy within the party, but they are key elements in the governmental administration by the MAS. A significant portion of this new urban and middle class membership hold positions of responsibility in the state apparatus. However, without being organic members of the party, they are in a relationship of dependency on the President, both in developing their career within the party and in remaining a member of it.
This has meant that Evo Morales becomes the center for all mediation between the Executive Power, social movements, party and urban members and sympathizers (“guests”). At the same time, it has removed the party’s importance in the process of internal decision-making and has meant that the party is now unable to establish a space for political debate within the party concerning the direction of the process.
Through its origin in protest, struggle and confrontation, the MAS has an accumulated organizing capacity which, in extreme situations of polarization, has provided a high degree of cohesiveness to the ranks and a great capacity for mobilization in confrontations. This energy in protest and questioning of the State was to be renewed after becoming the government, under the coordination of the Executive, with the Pacto de Unidad, and later with the Coordinadora por el Cambio (Conalcam), and, ultimately, with the Mecanismo Nacional de Participación y Control Social, which we discuss in the following section.
In the time of resistance to the State, and of confrontation, the party’s cohesion was achieved by way of identification of the enemy and struggle against it. It was a time of participation; as Ernesto Laclau would put it, a time of the people. With the transition to the urban electorate we move to the time of the leader who acts as a mediator and, in that role, as a binding and cohesive factor in the party. The big dilemma and the big challenge of the MAS is to build a party life capable of generating proposals and cohesion that goes beyond the protest and confrontation of the years when the party was not in government. What the process of the last five years shows us is that the leader, together with a small milieu, has opted for a centralization of power in order to achieve cohesion, while the party is weakened and plays a relatively insignificant role.
When the MAS transitioned to the cities, the cleavage between city and countryide was translated in two ways to the urban centres: through the cultural and identitarian problematic, and through the problems of access to power experienced by the migrants. This context modernizes and politicizes what is urban and popular from a nationalist perspective with a campesino-indigenous face. That is how the recent migrants become the main point of entry for the party to the cities. This urban-rural symbiosis, which reflects and comes to represent the party, expresses one of the biggest challenges in contemporary Bolivia: to be able to expand democracy and convert it into an effective experience for the population as a whole. This also informs the initial promise of the MAS, the promise of integration of the city and the countryside.
The exercise of power: three moments in a complex relationship
Vice-President García Linera, asked how compatible presidential democracy was with participative and direct democracy, stated:

“A government of social movements like this one is going to experience a tension between concentration and socialization of decisions. How is the concept of a government of social movements validated? First, by the type of strategic decisions taken… Second, by the form of selection of the public officials, who go through the filter of the social organizations. Third, by the presence of cadres of the social movements in the state apparatus, who answer to those movements.”[7]

Analyzing the process of transition from the Pacto de Unidad to the Conalcam, and from the latter to the Mecanismo Nacional de Participación y Control Social, we observe the transition from a moment of relative autonomy of the campesino and indigenous social movement, in the Pacto de Unidad, to a re-edition of social empowerment, which is the moment of the Conalcam. In effect, now with Evo Morales in power, the Conalcam represents a form of exercise of violence from the State that goes beyond the monopoly exercise of legitimate violence subject to the rule of law of the Republican order. And finally, the passage to the third moment, the deployment of a strategy of channeling and state control of the participation of the organizations of the society, which is presented parallel to and in negation of the party, and which at least theoretically could be on top of the institutions of the state, but which at the same time is controlled by the government. This is the moment of the Mecanismo Nacional de Participación y Control Social.
We analyze below the three aforementioned moments.
The Pacto de Unidad and the Constituent Assembly. The Pacto de Unidad[8] is a coordinating body of the campesino and indigenous organizations of both the East and West of the country that was established to combine efforts, first, to win a Constituent Assembly, and later, when the Assembly had already begun, to express and promote the interests of the campesinos and indigenous in the conclave.
This was achieved through an internal debate and construction of proposals, and through street protest actions, which at some points pressured the Assembly and at other times protected it from the demands of other social movements. So the Pacto de Unidad was a space for corporate collective deliberation and mobilization of the campesino and indigenous sectors outside of the party.
In this initial stage, the relationship of the social movement with the MAS was one of relative autonomy. Although many of the social leaders were also senior leaders of the MAS, this autonomy in deliberation became evident in a relationship that at some points included challenges to the MAS representatives in the Assembly, as well as in the fact that there was an attempt to avoid an organic link with the party precisely in order to strengthen its capacity to influence the promotion of the corporate interests.
Once the Constituent Assembly had concluded and the new Constitution was approved, the Pacto de Unidad did not return to active or visible participation in Bolivian politics.
The CONALCAM and the defeat of the opposition. The CONALCAM was formed on January 22, 2007. Its creation was announced by Evo Morales, in a ceremony marking the first year of the MAS government, as a coordinating body “formed by unions, Executive and Legislative.”[9]
The creation of the CONALCAM was part of a dual strategy of the government. On the one hand, it aimed at confronting the opposition since it established the possibility of recreating the peak moments in the process of social ascent and empowerment in Bolivia (2000-2003), but this time under government leadership. On the other hand, it was also a strategy to put some content in the idea of a “government of social movements” since it established the form of action of the social organizations as part of the government.
Initially, in 2007, the CONALCAM was formed by the organizations that were part of the Pacto de Unidad, plus a few urban organizations.[10] Subsequently, in 2008, the CONALCAM was broadened to include various urban social organizations.[11] The transition from the Pacto de Unidad to the CONALCAM is the transition from the MAS’s coordination with the rural organizations to the government’s leadership in the direction of the rural and urban organizations with the challenge of leading the process of change from the streets. But the governmental leadership in the management of the CONALCAM is only one facet of the process; the other is the strengthening of its mobilizing capacity in the most serious moments of the conflict, which reflects to what degree the social organizations feel they are part of the government and see the MAS government as “their” government.
During 2008, the polarization and political conflict became more acute as a result of the confluence of two factors: the action of the civic-departmental government opposition[12] and the show of force in the streets, that is, over and above the legitimate monopoly of force relied upon by any state. The regional opposition radically resisted the process of change and opted to block the Constituent Assembly, thereby helping to unleash the events of “La Calancha.”[13] After the adoption of the constitutional text as a whole in Chuquisaca, without the presence of the opposition, and faced with the foreseeable result of the referendum to recall the President, Vice-President and governors,[14] the regional opposition violently seized institutions in the departments of the Media Luna — the “Half Moon” (Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija). This signified the political suicide of the civic-regional opposition.
The show of force of the social organizations developed with a siege of the Congress,[15] the march on Santa Cruz and the threat of an encirclement of the city. At the time of the march in Santa Cruz, between September and October 2008, Evo Morales, in his capacity as President and leader of the party, personally chaired some crucial meetings of the CONALCAM. The presidential leadership of the social organizations united in the CONALCAM helped to put content in the phrase that Morales constantly cites — mandar obedeciendo, or lead by obeying — even if the result of these deliberations was the imposition of the president’s decision.[16] On the other hand, this action emptied of its content the republican democratic principle of the president as representative of the nation as a whole.
The culminating moment of the CONALCAM was also the beginning of its decline, since after the march on Santa Cruz it carried out no other major public intervention in the national process. Asked about this situation, García Linera explained:

“The point of bifurcation is the exceptional moment, of short duration, basic but decisive, in which ‘the Prince’ abandons the language of seduction and imposes himself through his warlike tactics of coercion… It was a warlike or potentially warlike moment. The pro-coup right carried out its consultations and gradually initiated the formation of small regional powers that did not recognize the government. We understood that signal and we deployed in an encirclement strategy as the military calls it. Both through the coercive mechanisms of the state and through the social mobilization…. The forcefulness and firmness of the political-military response of the government to the coup, along with the strategy of social mobilization in and towards Santa Cruz, created a virtuous ‘state-society’ articulation seldom seen in the political history of Bolivia.”[17]

The national mechanism of participation and social control. The new Constitution institutionalizes corporate participation in decision-making by a part of society.[18] To that effect, it establishes a supra-state organ that assumes the supervisory functions in an undefined — and accordingly arbitrary — juridical framework. From another perspective, which pays more attention to the process than to the norm, what we observe is a domestication of the social organizations on the basis of a strategy of fragmentation and appropriation of political and organizational initiative.
To incorporate the social movements in the state following the approval of the Constitution, the government created the Mecanismo Nacional de Participación y Control Social, under the Ministry of Transparency and the Fight Against Corruption, as the governmental authority responsible for carrying forward the process of participation of “organized society.”
Thus, the right to participation is restricted to the organized sectors, which in order to be such must be recognized by the state.[19] How does participation operate? Each ministry or state division convenes the social organizations that it considers relevant to a meeting with an established agenda. This institutionalization of participation of civil society can be viewed from two perspectives. From the perspective of the state, what we now have is organized, calibrated participation in which the government defines the agenda. From the perspective of society, the social organizations are convened at state initiative and when they participate they do so in a fragmented form.
In the 1990s, the Law of Popular Participation signified the territorial decentralization of power and posed the challenge of decentralization of political action, in the context of a heavily corporate society that was accustomed to negotiating with the state in a centralized scenario. It was in this setting that the second mass party in Bolivia’s republican history arose, in tune with the municipal decentralization and single-seat electoral constituencies. The emerging party, the MAS, was a peasant party that today confronts the challenge of the exercise of power and must fight against a corporativismo that emerged with great momentum as a result of the decisive role it played at the high point of the social empowerment. Once the moment when the social movement held the political initiative had passed, it was followed by the moment of its symbolic incorporation in the Constitution. When the symbol is translated into governmental practice, in the Mecanismo Nacional de Participación y Control Social, we find that it promises little in terms of social control but even less in terms of democratic participation.
Returning to the question posed at the beginning: What happens when the soviets retreat? The Bolivian reality shows that it is replaced with the time of the caudillo and a state that is uncomfortable with republican limits.
Moira Zuazo is a Bolivian political scientist, author of various books and articles published in Bolivia, Argentina and Germany. She is a professor at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and project coordinator for the Fundación Friedrich Ebert in Bolivia. Among her major publications are ¿Cómo nació el MAS? La ruralización de la política en Bolivia (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, La Paz, 2009) and, with Luis Verdesoto, Instituciones en boca de la gente. Percepciones de la ciudadanía boliviana sobre política y territorio (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung / Ildis, La Paz, 2006).

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[1] Pablo Stefanoni, Franklin Ramírez and Maristella Svampa, Las vías de la emancipación. Conversaciones con Álvaro García Linera, Ocean Sur, México, DF, 2009, p. 92.
[2] Fernando Calderón and Alicia Szmukler, La política en las calles: política, urbanización y desarrollo, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito, 2000.
[3] M. Zuazo, ¿Cómo nació el MAS? La ruralización de la política en Bolivia, 2^nd edition, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung / Ildis, La Paz, 2009.
[4] The recall referendum differed from a general election in a multiparty system like Bolivia’s. In the recall referendum the voter has only two options, to approve or reject the authority subject to recall, while in multiparty systems there are three or more options, which tends to disperse the vote.
[5] Maurice Duverger, Los partidos políticos, FCE, México, DF, 1994.
[6] The Organic Statute of the MAS, in article 9, provides that “members and sympathizers participate in the organic life of the Party through their natural organizations.” Source: Corte Nacional Electoral.
[7] P. Stefanoni, F. Ramírez and M. Svampa, op. cit., p. 90.
[8] Participating in this agreement were all the campesino and indigenous sectors: the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB), the Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia (CIDOB), the Confederación Sindical de Colonizadores de Bolivia (CSCB), the Federación Nacional de Mujeres Indígenas, Originarias y Campesinas de Bolivia Bartolina Sisa (FNMCB-BS), el Consejo Nacional de Markas y Ayllus del Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), the Coordinadora de Pueblos Étnicos de Santa Cruz (CPESC), the Movimiento de Trabajadores Campesinos Sin Tierra de Bolivia (MST-B), the Asamblea del Pueblo Guaraní (APG), the Central de Pueblos Étnicos Mojeños del Beni (CPEMB) and the Asociación Nacional de Regantes y Sistemas Comunitarios de Agua Potable y Saneamiento (ANARESCAPYS). Source: Centro de Comunicación y Desarrollo Andino (CENDA), Centro de Estudios Jurídicos e Investigación Social (CEJIS) and the Centro de Documentación e Información Bolivia (CEDIB), <www.constituyentesoberana.org>.
[9] La Razón, 23/01/2007.
[10] The Federación de Trabajadoras del Hogar, the Confederación de Jubilados and an organization of unemployed in Tarija. Source: La Razón, 24/01/2007.
[11] Added to it were the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB); neighborhood councils; guilds; students and members of cooperatives. Source: La Razón, 17/09/2008.
[12] This was a regional opposition with its geographic center in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. It differed from the political opposition of national scope expressed in the major opposition parties, Podemos and Unidad Nacional (UN). A part of the political opposition — the UN and some Podemos members of the Assembly — tried to promote an agreement in the Assembly, and later reached a parliamentary agreement to adjust the text of the draft constitution and to call for a consultative referendum for approval of the new Constitution.
[13] Faced with the inability of the Constituent Assembly to meet in the city of Sucre, owing to the opposition of the local social movement supported by the civic-regional opposition, which was demanding that the seat of all state powers be transferred to Sucre (making it the sole capital), the Constituent Assembly moved to a military school on the outskirts of Sucre and on November 23-24, 2007 approved the new Constitution as a whole without the presence of the opposition. This final session of the Assembly in Chuquisaca met amidst fierce confrontations between police and military forces and the social movement of Sucre, resulting in the death of three civilians in the area around the military school where the Assembly was meeting, which is called “La Calancha.”
[14] In the recall referendum of August 10, 2008, the MAS was supported by 64% of the voters.
[15] The most important siege of the Congress was carried out on February 28, 2008 to prevent the opposition from entering the Parliament and to force approval of three decisive laws, including the law calling a referendum to approve the [final version of the] Constitution. Source: La Razón, 29/02/2008.
[16] Fernando Mayorga, “Evo: ¿liderazgo sin fronteras?” in Umbrales vol. 1, No. 19, 9/2009, pp. 119-133.
[17] P. Stefanoni, F. Ramírez and M. Svampa, op. cit., pp. 95-96, 98.
[18] Section 241, sub-section II, states: “The organized civil society shall exercise social control over the public administration at all levels of the State and the private, mixed and public enterprises and institutions that administer fiscal resources.” Sub-section VI provides that “the state entities shall create spaces for participation and social control.”
[19] Any social organization, to be recognized as that, must have a certificate of origin, which is the legal status granted by the departmental government.

The Tar Sands come to Ottawa

The report in the June 24 Ottawa Citizen was alarming:

“TransCanada Corp.’s proposal for its massive $5-billion Energy East pipeline project could send as many as 850,000 barrels of crude oil a day through rural areas in the south end of Ottawa and across the Rideau River.”

The Citizen outlined the proposed route, which would transport diluted bitumen (“dilbit”) from Alberta’s Tar Sands “through environmentally sensitive lands around the Rideau River before passing through the waterway” and on to neighbouring communities.

“TransCanada plans to retrofit the underused 3,000-kilometre Canadian Mainline natural gas pipeline, which already runs through the region,” wrote reporter Vito Pilieci. “A 1,400-kilometre extension has also been proposed to carry oil as far as Saint John, N.B., where Irving Oil has a refinery.

“The project is intended to help reduce Eastern Canada’s dependence on imported oil, while offering Alberta oil companies better access to shipping ports where crude can be loaded onto oil tankers and sent overseas. TransCanada has said it would like to see the crude oil flowing east as early as 2017.”

TransCanada is already secretly lobbying senior officials at Ottawa’s City Hall and in nearby municipalities to bring them onside, the newspaper reported.

As a resident of Ottawa, I felt an immediate threat. I live along the bank of the Rideau River in the downtown area, just 1.5 kilometres from the scenic Rideau Falls where the river empties into the much larger Ottawa River, navigable for small vessels through Quebec and the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. The Rideau is relatively healthy as urban waterways go,[1] and like many others in my neighbourhood I have long treasured the adjoining parklands and pathways, and the variety of local wildlife — big snapping turtles, great blue herons, bullfrogs, and fish, including some very impressive muskellunge (“muskies”) occasionally landed by recreational fishers.

I also recalled that one of my first political activities, as an adolescent in the 1950s, was in relation to the construction of this very pipeline, which was a matter of great controversy in its day. The story is vividly told by one of my then schoolmates, John Riddell, who also relates our involvement in the issue: see “Canada’s pipeline wars of the 1950s: a memoir.”

So I was pleased that Ecology Ottawa, the major environmental group in this city, was quick to take up the challenge. It moved quickly to set up an on-line petition and hired a full-time organizer, well-known indigenous activist Ben Powless, to head up a public campaign against the “Tar Sands pipeline.” Powless was an initiator of Occupy Ottawa in 2011.

The campaign held its first public meeting last night, at the main branch of the Ottawa Public Library. I joined the well over 100 people who attended. It was a diverse and predominantly youthful audience. I recognized a few people known to me as activists in the antiwar and other political and social movements. But most seemed to be concerned citizens without an activist profile. A few attended from Gatineau, our Quebec sister city across the river, although the meeting was conducted entirely in English (Ecology Ottawa’s website is bilingual). And there were a few militants who attended from a Montréal group already campaigning against another tar sands pipeline project, the Enbridge Line 9 reversal project.

Among those who introduced themselves from the floor was a group of young people who have recently organized in Ottawa as “Decline9” to fight the Enbridge project. Some of them had participated in the recent occupation of the Enbridge pumping station in Westover, near Hamilton, Ont., they reported.

The meeting was addressed by Powless and Ecology Ottawa’s executive director, Graham Saul. They outlined the hazards of the TransCanada plans and explained the relation between Tar Sands development and the climate crisis. A two-page Fact Sheet on the “Tar Sands Pipeline,” distributed at the meeting, made the case that “the pipeline is all risk and no reward for the residents of Ottawa.” It noted that “the risks of shipping oil near people’s houses and sensitive ecosystems has become a central issue for many” in the wake of the recent disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, where a runaway train with more than 70 tanker cars filled with shale oil products from North Dakota crashed, exploded and burned, killing 50 people and destroying the entire centre of the town.[2]

“While many argue pipelines are safer than trains,” said the Fact Sheet, “that doesn’t mean they are safe. In the US alone, there were an average of 250 pipeline spills per year over the last 20 years. Canada counts over 100 spills on average per year, some of them major spills…. And when they spill, because of the extra chemicals required to dilute and ship the heavy Tar Sands crude, the spills are harder to clean up, and also cause more damage, as this kind of oil is known to sink and not float.”

The ensuing discussion from the floor ranged far and wide. An issue raised by several speakers was how to engage with the numerous indigenous and farming communities in the surrounding area whose lands are crossed by the pipeline. Notorious incidents were cited, such as the Enbridge spill of 3.8 million litres of Tar Sands oil in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River that cost nearly $800 million to partially clean up, although the river still lies polluted years later. There were references to the growing protests across North America against pipeline expansion, such as TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline project in the United States. 

Some asked whether it was technically possible to ensure the safety of pipelines. But the overwhelming consensus of the meeting was that this pipeline was a threat to our health and environment, and that action to stop it was urgently needed. At the end of this initial information meeting, more than half the participants stayed behind for a brief discussion of the next steps to take.

Ecology Ottawa had already produced 10,000 copies of a bilingual “door-knocker” leaflet for distribution at neighbourhood households. “Are you prepared for an oil spill in Ottawa?,” it asks, citing the risks and asking readers to “Learn more and sign the petition to call on our elected leaders to oppose the pipeline,” with a link to the campaign web site.

It was agreed to distribute these (many more will be printed) in the coming weeks, in three priority areas of the city: the Ottawa South provincial constituency, where a by-election is scheduled for August 1 to replace retiring Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty; communities in the direct path of the TransCanada pipeline; and communities like mine along the Rideau River.

Other projected actions include:

• A Day of Action on July 27, the anniversary of the Kalamazoo spill;
• An August 24 action in solidarity with an indigenous peoples’ march on the Alberta Tar Sands, where it is hoped to block Highway 63, the main road used by the oil companies;
• Attendance on October 10 at a TransCanada public briefing on its plans in Stittsville, an Ottawa suburb.

Participants at the meeting noted that the pipeline projects are now arousing opposition in hundreds of communities across Canada. And this is only the beginning. We face a huge challenge, as none of the major political parties — not even the Greens — oppose the Tar Sands. Federal Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair of the New Democratic Party does not oppose the Harper government’s support for piping Alberta oil eastwards. And almost without exception organized labour is on record in support of continued Tar Sands exploitation.

I was reminded of these obstacles as I left the Library. While unlocking my bicycle to return home, I noticed someone pasting up stickers on lampposts: “STOP Harper’s Crimes,” listing “climate, militarism, mining, Palestine.” I recognized him as a friend who is employed by what is now the biggest union in the country, one that represents many oil workers. I told him about the meeting we had just held, which he had not known about. He was sympathetic (and a little contrite about his absence), and then he told me that his union’s official position on the pipelines, which are favoured by their refinery locals, is to support the pipelines — but not to make representations at the public hearings of the National Energy Board, the federal regulatory agency.

It will fall to others to make that case, not only with the Board (if we can), but more importantly with the mass of our fellow Canadians and Québécois. Graham Saul made the point well, in his concluding remarks to our meeting (I paraphrase):

“We represent the majority. But you here are abnormal, because you are already attending a meeting like this. Our task is to reach out to all those who want an ecological environment, and to get them active.”

---

[1] This is partly because most industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries was located along the Rideau Canal, a related but separate waterway built by the British in the 1820s to create an alternative navigable route between Montréal and York, now Toronto. The cities were connected by Lake Ontario and its outlet, the St. Lawrence River, access to which the Americans had threatened to close during the war of 1812.

[2] For an excellent discussion of the causes of this disaster, see “Why are Canada's Trains Vulnerable?”

Open Letter to Edward Snowden

This wonderful letter was published today on the Marxmail list. http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.marxism.marxmail/170501

I cannot resist sharing it.

Ten Reasons Why You Should Beat It to Venezuela

From Roger Burbach

It is understandable that you are requesting temporary asylum in Russia, given the determination of President Obama to mount an international crusade to apprehend you and throw you in prison. But here are ten reasons why it is in your interest, and the world's, to find a route to Venezuela as soon as possible.

1. President Nicolas Maduro is a man you can rely on to assist you in your odyssey. He is one of your earliest champions on the international scene and understands the principles that drive you to challenge the US national security state. On June 26 he declared: “What has this young man done? He divulged documents that the United States spies on the entire world; they listen to anyone's telephone, they over see the Internet around the globe, and they monitor all electronic mail....” The United States “violates international laws of self-determination and sovereignty,” … Snowden “hasn't planted any bombs, hasn't assassinated anyone, hasn't robbed anyone, he simply one day looked in the mirror and said: 'What am I doing to the world, this should not be.' … He is part of the rebellion of North American youth that is moving forward in a rebellion of consciousness, of ethics.”

2. Maduro and Venezuela are facing the same hostile forces that you are. Aside from the US government led by President Obama (who appears to have developed a personal vendetta against you) the US main stream media, including much of the liberal press, have maligned and lied about you and Maduro. Innumerable distortions about both of you have been carried in the New York Times, the newspaper that carries “all the news that's fit to print.” Even National Public Radio has joined in the fray. On the day of your conference in the Moscow airport, an NPR news commentator asserted that you had “lauded Russia's human rights record,” which is not true as we hear on the videos that came out of the conference. The New York Review of Books has yet to weigh in on you, but we should be prepared for the worst as one of it authors did a hack job on Maduro in early May.

3. You will encounter an outpouring of support in Latin America. Newspapers and journals up and down the Americas, from Santiago, Chile and Buenos Aires, Argentina to San Jose, Costa Rica and Mexico City have taken up your cause and excoriated the Obama administration. On July 12, the day of your conference at the Moscow airport, Mercosur, the largest economic bloc of nations in Latin America met in Montevideo, Uruguay and issued a statement defending your right to asylum in their countries: “We repudiate any activity that could undermine the authority of States to grant and fully implement the right of asylum,” the statement said. “We reject any attempt in pressuring, harassment or criminalization of a State over a country's sovereign right to grant asylum.” Outraged by the documents you released revealing massive spying and intelligence gathering by the National Security Agency in Latin America, Mercosur's final declaration stated: "We emphatically reject the interception of telecommunications and espionage actions in our nations, as they constitute a violation of human rights, of the right of our citizens to privacy and information. It's unacceptable behavior that breaches our sovereignty and harms relations between nations."

4. In Venezuela you would witness a popular struggle to construct a socialist society, and would be able to visit Bolivia and Ecuador, where similar and yet different paths are being taken in pursuit of a 21st-century utopia. In Caracas you will experience shortages (from toilet paper to electricity) because the Venezuelan economy is in transition. I witnessed similar difficulties during the last democratic transition to socialism in the hemisphere, that of Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity government in Chile from 1970 to 1973. As is now well documented, the CIA and the local bourgeoisie conspired to destabilize the economy, overthrew Allende and imposed the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet for seventeen long dark years. Hopefully your generation's engagement around the Americas can help prevent a similar tragedy in Venezuela or elsewhere in Latin America.

5. Although you and Maduro are of distinct class backgrounds—he is working class and you are middle class--did you know that you and Maduro are both interested in eastern philosophies? According to Wikipedia you practice the martial arts and are a self-declared Buddhist, interests you apparently nurtured while you worked as an undercover CIA agent as a State Department officer at the US embassy in Japan. Maduro is interested in eastern teachings as well, following the thoughts and practices of eastern leaders particularly those of Satya Sai Baba who is renown for having supported a variety of free educational institutions, hospitals and charitable works in over 166 countries. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, visited him in Puttaparthi, India in 2005. You might even discover some mutual interests in music, given that Maduro in his youth played guitar in a rock band called Enigma. To add to his complexity, Maduro's paternal grandparents are Sephardic Jews who converted to Catholicism.

6. In Caracas you would have access to one of the better Internet grids in the global south and this would facilitate the use of your talents to set up an international non-profit center. You might want to host open seminars or workshops, inviting university educators, business executives and government ministers to learn about how to deal with US surveillance as well as other predators on the Internet. Others like me, might want to know your thoughts about how we can use the Internet to our advantage and stop the incipient emergence of an Orwellian world.

7. Last year an oceanic fiber optic cable was completed that links Venezuela to Santiago de Cuba. I am sure that your skills would be useful in advising both countries on how to best use the cable and the Internet for the benefit of their peoples, given that Cuba has dramatically changed its Internet policy, throwing it open to public access. I suspect you would concur with Vice-president Miguel Diaz-Canal, the probable successor to Raul Castro, who pointed out in May the challenges presented by the Internet:

"Today, with the development of information technologies; today, with the development of social networks; today, with the development of computers and the Internet, to prohibit something is nearly an impossible chimera. It makes no sense. Today, news from all sources, from good ones and from bad ones, those that are manipulated, and those that are true, and those that are half-truths, all circulate on the web and reach people and those people are aware of them.”

8. Caracas is only three and a quarter hours from Miami via commercial air carrier. As you have probably heard many times, “Cuba is only ninety miles from the United States.” Your relative proximity, much like that of Fidel Castro, would drive the National Security Agency nuts for years and perhaps decades, albeit on a lesser scale, given that you don't aspire to state power.

9. You could be in touch with your family and friends. Perhaps your last girl friend in Hawaii would come to visit. You might have to set up a personal housing compound to entertain and house all of them. Many from the US would make a pilgrimage to shake your hand and talk to you. I might even be one of those who appear at your doorstep.

10. Lastly you should enjoy the great geographic vistas Venezuela offers its peoples and tourists alike. It has crystal clear beaches, rain-forests, breathtaking mountains and plains, and the tallest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls.

I will not recommend any tour guides, but in lieu of posting my by-line at the end of this letter, and to introduce you to the political terrain of Latin America, I humbly suggest you ask your favorite book store in the Moscow airport if it can order a book I co-authored with Michael Fox and Federico Fuentes, Latin America's Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First Century Socialism. Hopefully it won't be intercepted by air or land as it is transported from Zed Books in London to Moscow.

Sincerely, Roger Burbach July 15, 2013 http://futuresocialism.org

* * *

My own review of Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions: http://lifeonleft.blogspot.ca/2013/03/latin-americas-turbulent-transitions_12.html