Class War Boils in Bolivia Despite Morales Attempts at Appeasement

by Gerry Foley / September 2008

"The right takes the streets while Morales counts his votes." That was the commentary of Econoticias, a radical Bolivian web news service, on Aug. 12, a couple of days after the referendum in which the country's populist president, Evo Morales, won the support of apparently 67 percent of the voters at the national level.

Econoticias was reporting on a civic strike organized by the anti-Morales right in the four out of the country's nine provinces that it controls. Nearly all of the country's oil and petroleum reserves are located in these provinces (called "prefecturas," according to the Bolivian constitution).

The article reported: "This Tuesday [Aug. 12] the forces of the right, which exercises an iron control over the east and part of the valleys of Bolivia (Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, Tarija, and Chuquisaca) carried out a crushing civic strike against Morales, demanding the return of the resources generated by the tapping of oil and natural gas, as well as recognition of its illegal and unconstitutional separatist autonomist regimes."

The rightist strike was supported by gangs of thugs who applied a high level of intimidation. "In Santa Cruz in the early morning of Tuesday, fascist gangs of the Union Juvenil Crucenista, with shields, sticks, and short arms, beat up the residents who resisted supporting the strike. They attacked and kicked policemen, burned police cars, and wrecked the stores that dared open their doors. They did the same last Friday and Saturday when they tried to seize the police headquarters. Here there is no law and order except that imposed by the power of the fascist ultraright. Here Morales is 'persona non grata.'

"Further north, in Cobija, the capital of Pando, there are blockades organized by fascist gangs that have armed 'civic columns' that beat and intimidated dissidents. Here the violent groups closed all the bridges. They don’t even want to let the people walk around, and all the shops are closed. There are provocations and insults.

"In Sucre, the racist capital of Chuquisaca, there is no transport, no classes in the schools, the public bodies are not functioning, and very few shops are open.

"In Tarija, to the south, shock groups of youths have seized the public offices, there is no commerce or transport. … In all these cities and regions, the forces that support President Morales are driven into a corner. The fact that on Aug. 10, 400,000 people voted for Evo there and against an oligarchy that decides everything has been no use, not even for consolation."

Thus, it became evident immediately that even a very high vote in support of Morales at the national level has not impressed the rightist landowners who dominate the provinces where nearly all of Bolivia's decisive natural resources are located. In that sense, it is clear that Morales' electoralist strategy has failed.

The results of the Aug. 10 plebiscite to confirm or reject the mandate of Bolivian President Evo Morales and a series of provincial government elections were about what had been generally predicted, except that Morales’ vote was higher than many foresaw. He won overwhelming support in the highland areas, where the tradition of the Bolivian workers and indigenous movements is strongest.

Thus, at this writing, while the final official tally has not yet been issued, it is evident that Morales got at least 10 percent more votes than when he was elected in December 2005.

However, in the eastern lowland areas, the so-called Media Luna (Half Moon) the rightist governors also won as expected with higher votes than in their previous election. Thus, Rubén Costas, the governor of Santa Cruz, won 66.6 percent. Mario Cossío, the governor of Tarija, got 64.5 percent. Ernesto Suárez, the governor of de Beni, got 61.2 percent. And Leopoldo Fernández, the governor of Pando, got 56.3 percent. Costas increased his vote by 20 points; Cossío by 20 points, Suárez by 15 points, and Fernández by eight points.

On the other hand, in the prefect of Potosí, a highland mining area, a supporter of Morales, Mario Viereira, was elected with 75 percent of the vote. He increased his vote by 35 percent. And two right-wing governors were defeated: Manfred Reyes Villa in Cochabamba and Jose Luis Paredes in La Paz, the site of the country's capital and its most populous province. The first got 39.3 percent of the vote, the second, 42.3.

Reyes Villa, a truculent reactionary, was nearly overthrown earlier by a mass upsurge. Morales had to rescue him by calling on his supporters to respect the constitutional rules. After the Aug. 10 vote, the disgraced governor declared that he considered the vote illegal and intended to hold on to his post.

The province of Tarija includes about 80 percent of Bolivia’s oil and natural gas resources, its principal natural resource today. The highland areas were the site of the country's major natural resources in the past, tin and silver. But these older mining areas, where the radical tradition of the workers’ movement developed, have been in relative economic decline for some time. Also, the landless peasants are concentrated in the highlands, whereas most of the new land available for cultivation is in the lowlands.

The geographical division of the country also reflects a racial division. The population of the lowlands is largely of European origin. The population of the highlands is overwhelmingly indigenous. In the geographical and ethnic border province of Chuquisaca, where the votes for and against Morales was even, the city of Sucre, the country's second political center, is mainly white and was marked by a racist pogrom against indigenous protesters in May.

Although Morales lost in the provinces of the Media Luna, his vote was higher than in 2005. He won in Pando. And in Santa Cruz and Tarijas, he got 40 percent of the vote.

Obviously, a significant number of voters cast their ballots both for Morales and for the right-wing governors. It is another indication of the confusion created on this issue by Morales himself, who has tried to conciliate the rightists from the start of his term in office by saying that he was not against provincial autonomy—which in fact the rightist local strongmen have adopted as their issue and their defense against the progressive measures of the national government and the radicalization of the national majority.

The substantially increased vote for Morales clearly reflects a big jump in the polarization of the population between the left and the right. But Morales has been trying to defuse the polarization by offering "dialogue" to the rightists, who have shown absolutely no interest in any compromise whatsoever. Morales has been quoted by some sources as saying that he fears the left getting out of control more than fears the right and U.S. imperialism.

Morales is a typical Latin American populist president—that is, his rule is based on balancing between the classes. He has introduced measures that are in the interests of the masses but do not endanger the capitalist system as such. He has attacked workers' mobilizations in order to try to keep the workers’ movement in check, and then retreated when his repression has threatened to set in motion a broad movement against him.

The Huanuni mine, a center of the most radical section of workers, has been a particular flashpoint. Before the referendum, Morales' police attacked strikers there who were demanding reform of the pension system, which had been made very regressive by the policies of the neoliberal governments in power in the 1990s and up to the 2005 election. Two miners were killed. Morales defused the confrontation immediately before the referendum vote by a compromise with the union.

However, opposition to the class-collaborationist policies of the Morales government has been growing. It led some Trotskyist groups to call for boycotting the referendum or casting blank ballots because Morales' proposition was phrased as explicit support for the government's policies.

The position of these groups, as Econoticias noted, did not threaten Morales' victory because only valid votes were counted in determining the result. But it was a tactical error, similar to the one made by some Trotskyists in the latest Venezuelan referendum for the same reason. It was a formalist error The basic issue was a confrontation with a right-wing movement seeking justification for a coup d'etat. That was more important than the specific phrasing of the proposition on the ballot.

Morales has good reason to fear the left. There is a strong revolutionary tradition in the workers’ movement. It was expressed in a resolution of the branch of the COB (Confederación Obrera Boliviana, the Bolivian trade-union confederation) in the province of Oruro. It was quoted in Econoticias' Aug. 12 article:

"The deals, pacts, and concessions granted by the MAS [Morales' party] to the oligarchic minority and his policy of conciliation and understanding with the class enemy are aimed at converting the bosses into partners.

“The experience of the Constituent Assembly [blocked by the right] and the touted Democratic Cultural Revolution demonstrates the material impossibility of achieving a revolution by peaceful means, an alternative tried again and again by the reformists and which has only prolonged the agony of capitalism and maintained the cruel exploitation of millions of workers, mass unemployment, and desperate poverty."

Morales' dilemma is that the bosses have shown no interest in making compromises with him, and every time he has tried to get close to them, they have stuck a knife in him. Now, the polarization, shown among other things by the vote in the referendum, is increasing the uneasiness of the standoff between Morales and the right.

The only way the mobilization of the right can be countered is by a mobilization of the working masses and poor peasants. And that can only be achieved on the basis of a program that gives clear and unequivocal expression to their interests.