[News] Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/
January 4, 2006


The Bankers Can Rest Easy


Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws?

By JAMES PETRAS

A realistic assessment of the electoral victory 
of Evo Morales requires knowledge of his recent 
role in Bolivia's popular struggles, his program 
and ideology as well as the first measures 
adopted by his regime. In the recent past 
innumerable leftist intellectuals, academics, 
journalists and NGOers have jumped on the 
bandwagon of a series of newly elected "popular" 
presidents(Lula in Brazil, Gutierrez in Ecuador, 
Vazquez in Uruguay and Kirchner in Argentina) who 
maintained all privatized firms, punctually paid 
the foreign debt, applied IMF fiscal policies and 
sent military forces to Haiti to uphold a 
US-imposed puppet regime and repress the poor 
struggling to restore the democratically elected Aristide government.

Once again in Bolivia we have a popular leader 
elected to power. Once again we have an army of 
uncritical left cheerleaders, ignorant of 
significant facts and policy changes over the last 5 years.

Evo Morales' margin of victory, 54 per cent 
against 29 per cent for his closest opponent 
exceeded that of any prior president in half a 
century. His party, the MAS (Movement to 
Socialism) gained a majority in the lower house, 
and a near majority in the Senate, and won 3 of 9 
governorships, despite the fact that the 
Electoral Council eliminated nearly one million 
registered voters (mostly peasant-Indian voters 
for Morales) on technicalities Morales won all 
the major cities (except Santa Cruz, bulwark of 
the extreme right) and exceeded 65 per cent in 
many rural and urban impoverished regions. 
Morales and the MAS won despite the opposition of 
all the major electronic and print media, the 
business and mine owners associations and the 
heavy-handed intervention and threats of the US 
embassy. In this case US business opposition to 
Evo added to his popular support and resulted in a record turnout.

Contrary to the "media critics", most people were 
not influenced by the 24 hour barrage of dirty 
propaganda by all the mass media. Evo was 
presented by the mass media and his publicists as 
the first Indian president of the Americas, which 
was technically correct. However, it should be 
noted that President Chavez of Venezuela is part 
Indian, a former Vice president of Bolivia was a 
(neo-liberal) Indian, Peruvian President Toledo 
claimed Indian origins and wore a poncho during 
his campaigns, and Indians in Ecuador occupied 
key ministerial posts during the regime of the 
ousted President Gutierrez in Ecuador (including 
Agriculture and Foreign Affairs). With the 
exception of Chavez, the presence of Indians in 
high places did not lead to the passage of any 
progressive measures in basically neo-liberal regimes.

The general response from left, center and right 
wing regimes to Morales' victory was positive. 
Congratulatory greetings were sent by Fidel, 
Chavez, Zapatero (Spain), Chirac (France) and 
Wolfowitz (of the World Bank). The US took an 
ambiguous position. Rice's guarded praise of 
electoral politics was accompanied by the 
predictable warning to rule by "democratic 
methods" (i.e. to follow US directives). Meantime 
shortly after the election, the US Special Forces 
based in Paraguay began military exercises on the 
frontier with Bolivia. The major oil companies 
(Repsol, Petrobras etc) expressed their 
willingness to work with the new president (if he 
would abide by the rules of their game). In the 
meantime, they announced that new investments were being held up.

The leaders of the major labor confederations, 
the Bolivian Workers Confederation (COB), the 
Mineworkers Confederation, the barrio 
confederations of El Alto (a proletarian city of 
800,000 near La Paz) took a cautious "wait and 
see" attitude, demanding that his first measures 
include the nationalization of the petroleum and 
gas companies and the convocation of a 
constitutional convention. Despite the reticence 
of these leaders, even in supporting Evo's 
election, the great mass of their followers voted overwhelmingly for Morales.

In summary, except for the US, there was a broad 
spectrum of support for Evo's victory from Big 
Business to the unemployed, from the World Bank 
to the barefoot Indians of the Andes, each with 
their own reading and expectations of what 
policies an Evo Morales presidency and a MAS dominated congress would pursue.

There are at least two views on what to expect 
from an Evo Morales Presidency, which cross ideological boundaries.

The exuberant left and sectors of the far right 
(especially in the US and Bolivia) evoke a 
scenario in which a radical leftist Indian 
President, responding to the great majority of 
poor Bolivians will transform Bolivia from a 
white oligarchic-imperialist dominated country 
based on a neo-liberal economy, to an 
Indian-peasant-workers' state pursuing an 
independent foreign policy, the nationalization 
of the petroleum industry, a profound agrarian 
reform and the defense of the coca farmers. This 
is the view of 95 per cent of the Left and the 
view of the extreme-right including the Bush Administration.

An alternative scenario, the one I hold, sees 
Morales as a moderate social liberal politician 
who has over the past five years moved to the 
center. He will not nationalize petrol or gas 
MNCs, but will probably renegotiate a moderate 
increase on their taxes, and "nationalize" the 
subsoil minerals, leaving the companies free to 
extract, transport and market the minerals. He 
will promote three variants of capitalism: 
Protection of small and medium size businesses, 
invitations to foreign investors and financing of 
state petroleum and mining firms as junior 
partners of the MNCs. To compensate and stabilize 
his regime he will appoint a number of popular 
leaders to government posts dealing with labor 
and social welfare with limited budgets who will 
be subject to the economic and financial 
ministries run by liberal economists. Morales 
will promote and fund Indian cultural 
celebrations. He will promote Indian language use 
in Andean schools and at public functions. "Land 
reform" will not involve any expropriations of 
plantations but will involve colonization 
projects in unsettled or uncultivated lands. Coca 
farming will be legalized but reduced to less 
than half an acre per family. Drug trafficking 
will be outlawed. Morales will propose to work 
with the US DEA against trafficking and money laundering

A wealth of data ­ facts pertinent to evaluating 
the two scenarios ­ is abundantly available to 
anyone interested in making an informed judgment 
in which direction Evo Morales will take:

Even before taking office Morales gave the green 
light to the privatization of MUTUN, one of the 
biggest iron mining fields in the world 
(Econoticias 25/12/2005). In late 2005, private 
bidding, under very questionable circumstances, 
was underway among several competing MNCs. The 
outgoing President, Rodriguez, consulted two 
leading congressmen of the MAS and agreed to 
suspend the bidding, in deference to the incoming 
Morales government. Morales and his neo-liberal 
vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, over-ruled 
and reprimanded the Congressional leaders and 
their parliamentarian advisers and told President 
Rodriguez to proceed with the private bidding of 
MUTUN. The mine has 40 billion tons in iron 
reserves and 10 billion tons of magnesium 
reserves (70 per cent of the world total). In the 
lead up to his unilateral decision to continue, 
Morales bent to pressure from right-wing 
pro-imperialist business interests of Santa Cruz 
and ignored ecologists, trade unionists and 
nationalists who opposed corrupt bidding. He also 
ignored ecological, workers' nationalist interests.

While the ill-informed leftists boosters of Evo 
picture him as the revolutionary leader of the 
Bolivian masses, they ignore the fact that he 
played no role in the insurrections of October, 
2003, and May-June, 2005. During the general 
strikes and street battles of October, Evo was in 
Europe at an inter-parliamentary meeting in 
Geneva discussing the virtues of parliamentary 
politics. Meanwhile, scores of Bolivians were 
being massacred by the electoral regime of 
Sanchez de Losada for opposing his policies on 
foreign ownership of petro-gas interests. Morales 
returned in time to celebrate the overthrow of 
Sanchez de Losada and to convince a half-million 
protesters to accept neo-liberal Vice President 
Carlos Mesa as the new president. Less than two 
years later, another wave of strikes and 
barricades led to the overthrow of Mesa for 
continuing Sanchez de Losada's oil policy. Once 
again Morales stepped in to direct the uprising 
into institutional channels, proposing a Supreme 
Court Judge to serve as interim president while 
new presidential elections were convoked. Morales 
succeeded in taking the peoples' struggle out of 
the street and dismantling the nascent popular 
councils and channeling them into established 
bourgeois institutions. In both crises, Evo 
favored a neo-liberal replacement in opposition 
to the peoples' demands for a new popularly controlled national assembly.

During the Presidency of Mesa, Evo supported the 
latter's referendum (2004) which left the foreign 
MNCs in control of the oil and gas subject to a 
small increase in royalty payments. Though parts 
of the referendum passed, it was later repudiated 
by the mass insurrectionary movement.

In the run-up to the presidential elections, 
Morales-Garcia Linera's (Vice-President) slate 
spoke a "triple discourse": to the urban and 
trade union crowds they spoke of "Andean 
Socialism", to the Indians in the highlands they 
spoke of "Andean Capitalism", to the business 
leaders they said socialism was not on the agenda 
for at least 50 to 100 years. In private meetings 
with the US Ambassador, Bolivian oligarchs and 
bankers and the MNCs, Morales/Garcia Linera 
eschewed all intentions to nationalize ­ on the 
contrary they welcomed foreign investment as long 
as it was "transparent". By that they meant that 
the MNC's paid their taxes, and didn't bribe 
regulators. The message to the masses lacked 
specifics; the speeches to the business elites 
were backed by concrete agreements.

Evo and his Vice-President Linera have promised 
to retain the tight fiscal and macro economic 
policies of their predecessors and to maintain 
all the illegally privatized companies. Evo's 
economic spokesperson, Carlos Villegas, stated 
that President Morales will "derogate in a 
symbolic fashion the decree which privatized 
enterprises" ­ but added it will "not have any 
retroactive effects". Symbolic gestures of a 
purely rhetorical nature, devoid of nationalist 
substance, seem to be the path chosen by Morales and Linera.

The incoming President/Vice-President have 
categorically stated the new government will not 
expropriate any large private monopolies or large 
landholdings, nor foreign investments. On January 
13, 2006 Evo travels to Brazil to discuss with 
big Brazilian corporations new investments in 
gas, petrochemicals, oil and other raw materials. 
According to the Brazilian financial daily Valor 
(Dec. 26, 2005), Lula will offer state loans and 
insist that Evo creates a "climate of stability 
for investments". The giant Brazilian corporation 
PETROBRAS pays less than 15 per cent in taxes on 
the daily extraction of 25 million cubic meters 
of natural gas, at prices far below international 
levels. Lula hopes to use "aid" to deepen and 
extend Brazil's MNC low cost exploitation of 
valuable energy sources. Meanwhile gas sold in La 
Paz is three times more expensive than in Sao Paolo.

Evo promises to "tax the rich" knowing full well 
that any new taxes on low income groups would 
provoke a major uprising as took place in 2004. 
However the tax proposed on property valued at 
$300,000 or $400,000 will exclude the vast 
majority of the upper middle class and all but 
one percent of the very rich. As a source of 
revenue it will make a negligible impact, but the 
"symbolic" propaganda value will be immense.

Regarding peasant demands, Evo's agrarian 
commission has not come up with any specific 
targets for agrarian reform, (neither the number 
of acres to be distributed nor any lists of landless family beneficiaries).

While his local and international supporters 
emphasize his "popular" and Indian origins (the 
"face of Indo-America"), there is no discussion 
of his support for big business, his agreements, 
with the pro-imperialist Civic Committee for 
Santa Cruz, PETROBRAS and the other petro-gas 
MNCs. What is crucial is not Evo's militancy 
during the 1980s and 1990s but his alliances, 
deals and program on his way to the Presidency.

All the data on Evo Morales' politics, especially 
since 2002, point to a decided right turn, from 
mass struggle to electoral politics, a shift 
toward operating inside Congress and with 
institutional elites. Evo has turned from 
supporting popular uprisings to backing one or 
another neo-liberal President. His style is 
populist, his dress informal. He speaks the 
language of the people. He is photogenic, 
personable and charismatic. He mixes well with 
street venders and visits the homes of the poor. 
But what political purpose do all these populist 
gestures and symbols serve? His anti-neo-liberal 
rhetoric will not have any meaning if he invites 
more foreign investors to plunder iron, gas, oil, 
magnesium and other prime materials. Systemic 
transformations do not follow from upholding 
illegal privatizations, the maintenance of the 
financial and business elites of La Paz and 
Cochabamba and the agro-business oligarchy of Santa Cruz.

At best, Evo will promote some marginal increases 
in property and royalty taxes, and perhaps 
increase some social spending on welfare services 
(but always limited by a tight fiscal budget). 
Political power will be shared between the new 
upwardly mobile petit bourgeois of the MAS office 
holders and the old economic oligarchs. No doubt 
diplomatic relations will greatly improve with 
Cuba and Venezuela. Relations with the World Bank 
and the IMF will remain unchanged ­ unless the 
Cuban-American mafia in Washington push their 
extremist agenda. While any aggression is 
possible with the fascist-thinking policy makers 
in command in Washington, it is also possible, 
given Morales' de facto liberal policies, that 
the State Department may opt for pressuring Evo 
to move further to the right and to make further 
concessions to big business and coca cultivation 
reduction. Unfortunately, the Left will continue 
to respond to symbols, mythical histories, 
political rhetoric and gestures and not to 
programmatic substance, historical experiences 
and concrete socio-economic policies.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at 
Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year 
membership in the class struggle, is an adviser 
to the landless and jobless in Brazil and 
Argentina and is co-author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1856499383/counterpunch>Globalization 
Unmasked (Zed). His new book with Henry 
Veltmeyer, 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745324231/counterpunchmaga>Social 
Movements and the State: Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia 
and Argentina, will be published in October 2005. 
He can be reached at: <mailto:jpetras at binghamton.edu>jpetras at binghamton.edu


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