President Evo Morales and the government of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) are celebrating two years in government. Morales has addressed the nation, telling his supporters how the MAS has introduced literacy, education and health reforms along with the nationalisation of the hydrocarbon industry and the creation of a new constitution.
But the government is faced by a right wing threatening that, unless Morales abandons these policies, they will secede from the Bolivian state, taking the great bulk of the countries natural resources with them.
Since Morales came to power, the masses have repeatedly taken action to defend the reforms of his government against the right. Whilst the poor and the indigenous communities have been celebrating the new constitution the right have held ceremonial burnings of it in their strongholds such as Santa Cruz.
They object that the vote in the CA was not passed by the two-thirds majority they had extricated as a pledge for even participating in the CA. They object to that the vote it took place in a military barracks. They blithely ignore the fact that their own delegates boycotted the vote in the Assembly in order to invalidate it, and their thuggish supporters actually drove the CA members out of Sucre where it was sitting and even tried to burn down the nearby barracks where it had taken refuge. Since then the four rich lowland states of Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and Tarija (which between account for two-thirds of the country’s GDP) have unilaterally declared autonomy.
This declaration is also aimed at undermining November’s pension law brought under which 700,000 Bolivians over the age of 60 will receive $26 a month. The money from this is to come from the hydrocarbon tax mainly drawn from the lowland states. The oligarchs are complaining that “their” revenues are being used to pay for the poor in highland areas. There are widespread reports that ranchers in the Chaco imprison indigenous people to work on theie farms, i.e practice modern slavery.
Morales, rather than face down the oligarchs and call his supporters onto the streets, has entered into negotiations with the governors of the rebel states, even offering to further amend the draft constitution to meet their objections and compromise on the pension fund.
Morales vice president Álvaro García Linera, has emphasized the desire fro compromise:
“On the part of the government there is an open and decided search for an accord. We have demonstrated great flexibility around the issue of the distribution of the hydrocarbon taxes and the reopening of discussion on the new constitutional text in order to correct errors and see how we can make it compatible with the sensible proposals of regional autonomy.
Morales has even called off all campaigning for the new constitution, which has to be approved by referendum. In addition, he has promised that if he loses this referendum he will subject himself to a recall vote.
Such pathetic attempts to persuade the Right to play the gave of democracy ignores a basic fact: what is at stake is their property or rather their right to continue to exploit all of Bolivia’s natural riches for a tiny handful. They fear the hydrocarbons (gas and oil) nationalisation will take the royalties away from their wealthy provinces and the central government could be pressured to applying them to meeting the needs of the poor of the country. They fear the even limited agrarian reform Morales promises.
This would allow unused lands to be nationalised and distributed to the landless. But the big landowners see this as the thin end of the wedge. It might lead the newly empowered indigenous masses to demand a far-reaching agrarian revolution, confiscating the latifundistas huge and ill-gotten estates. No democratic mandate will force them to disgorge their stolen wealth . Only force can overcome their resistance, the force of the armed masses.
Who are the right wing oligarchs?
The United National Programme for Development estimates that just 100 families own 25 million hectares of the best land – about a quarter of the whole area of the country and five times the amount owned by the two million Bolivian peasants and indigenous people. Many of these families are of German and Balkan origin, ultra right wing refugees from Europe, who bought huge tracts of land in Bolivia under various right-wing governments from the 1950s onwards. Thus it is that –
• 10 families in Beni own half million hectares.
• 15 families in Santa Cruz own half million hectares.
• Eight families in Pando own one million hectares.
Leader of the Santa Cruz civic committee Branko Marinkovic owns 26,000 hectares of prime land near Santa Cruz. Along with other oligarchs and two multinationals, he also has complete control of the soybean and sunflower oil industry and has about a fifth share of the Bank Economic. The 100 families are a tight network that control land, agribusiness, banks and media. On the streets these families are backed by violent fascistic youths such as the Santa Cruz Youth movement.
The 100 families have traditionally ruled the two-thirds of Bolivians who live in poverty and more than a third who live in extreme poverty. And there is no way they are going to allow the mass of the people to share the wealth of hydrocarbons or adopt a new constitution.
What is to be done?
A halt must be called to Morales offers of concessions. The workers and peasants must come out on the streets and reject this road to surrender. It is time to rally those elements who defend the existing reforms and want to go much further in expropriating the oligarchs’ land and businesses. Workers, peasants and indigenous peoples must organise themselves into councils of delegates in every town and city and in the countryside, bodies that can organise action against the right and defend themselves arms in hand. Furthermore steps must be taken to break from the MAS and form a revolutionary workers party. A party that will lead the masses to power not conciliate the right.
For more on Bolivia, including an action programme for the current crisis, go to here