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March 17, 2015<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/17/bolivia-a-country-that-dared-to-exist/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/17/bolivia-a-country-that-dared-to-exist/</a></small></small></b><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big>An Interview with Félix
Cárdenas Aguilar, Bolivia’s Vice Minister of
Decolonization</big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Bolivia: A Country That Dared to Exist</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by BENJAMIN DANGL</div>
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<p>In 1870, Bolivian dictator Mariano Melgarejo offered an
English diplomat a glass of chicha – a corn-based beer
consumed for centuries in the Andes. The diplomat refused the
drink, asking for chocolate instead. A short-tempered
Melgarejo responded by forcing the Englishman to drink a vast
quantity of chocolate, and then made him ride a mule,
backwards, through La Paz.</p>
<p>At least, this is how the story is related by Uruguayan
author Eduardo Galeano, <a
href="http://www.progressive.org/node/982"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.progressive.org']);">who
writes</a>, “When Queen Victoria, in London, heard of the
incident, she had a map brought to her and pronounced ‘Bolivia
doesn’t exist,’ crossing out the country with a chalk ‘X.’”
While the story is unlikely true, Galeano suggests it can be
read as a metaphor for Bolivia’s tortured history as a victim
of colonialism and imperialism.</p>
<p>In the interview below, Bolivia’s current Vice Minister of
Decolonization, Félix Cárdenas Aguilar, makes a similar point,
that “Bolivia is a failed country” because, from the time of
its independence in 1825, its modernization was based on the
exploitation of indigenous people. The challenge now, Cárdenas
explains, is for Bolivia, under the presidency of Evo Morales,
to decolonize itself, to reconstruct its past and identity,
and to build a “plurinational” country where many indigenous
nations can thrive. By resisting subjugation, Bolivia is
daring to exist on its own terms.</p>
<p>This movement toward decolonization in the Andes is as old as
colonialism itself, but the process has taken a novel turn
with the administration of Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous
president. Morales, a former coca farmer, union organizer, and
leftist congressman, was elected president in 2005,
representing a major break from the country’s neoliberal past.</p>
<p>Last October, Morales was re-elected to a third term in
office with more than 60% of the vote. His popularity is <a
href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/5080-why-evo-morales-will-likely-win-upcoming-elections-in-bolivia"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://upsidedownworld.org']);">largely
due</a> to his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party’s
success in reducing poverty, empowering marginalized sectors
of society, and using funds from state-run industries for
hospitals, schools and much-needed public works projects
across Bolivia.</p>
<p>Aside from socialist and anti-imperialist policies, the MAS’s
time in power has been marked by a notable discourse of
decolonization. Five hundred years after the European
colonization of Latin America, activists and politicians
linked to the MAS and representing Bolivia’s indigenous
majority have deepened a process of reconstitution of
indigenous culture, identity and rights from the halls of
government power. Part of this work has been carried forward
by the Vice Ministry of Decolonization, which was created in
2009.</p>
<p>This Vice Ministry operates under the umbrella of the
Ministry of Culture, and coordinates with many other sectors
of government to promote, for example, indigenous language
education, gender parity in government, historical memory,
indigenous forms of justice, anti-racism initiatives, and
indigenous autonomy.</p>
<p>Before becoming the Vice Minister of Decolonization when the
office opened, Félix Cárdenas had worked for decades as an
Aymara indigenous leader, union and campesino organizer,
leftist politician and activist fighting against dictatorships
and neoliberal governments. As a result of this work, he was
jailed and tortured on numerous occasions. Cárdenas
participated the Constituent Assembly to re-write Bolivia’s
constitution, a progressive document which was passed under
President Morales’ leadership in 2009. This trajectory has
contributed to Cárdenas’ radical political analysis and
dedication to what’s called the <em>Proceso de Cambio</em>,
or Process of Change, under the Morales government.</p>
<p>Such unprecedented work by the MAS hasn’t happened without
its shortcomings and contradictions. Violence against women in
the country is on the rise, a recent corruption scandal has
weakened MAS popularity in current local election races, and
extractive industries, while providing funds for the
government’s social programs and national development, are
displacing indigenous and rural communities, and poisoning
land and rivers. Leftist and indigenous opposition to the MAS
has also faced government crackdowns, limiting the autonomy
and space for grassroots dissent in the country.</p>
<p>MAS allies say such pitfalls are part of the societal
legacies of colonialism and neoliberalism in the country,
challenges which can’t be reversed overnight, but which the
MAS is trying to overcome. Critics say that the MAS is
worsening such problems with sexist rhetoric, a deepening of
extractivism, and silencing of critics.</p>
<p>Bolivia’s road toward decolonization is a rocky and contested
one. But, as Félix Cárdenas argues below, in a bleak world
full of capitalist tyrants, bloody wars and racist
exploitation, Bolivia’s Process of Change continues to shine
as an alternative to the dominant global order.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p><strong>Benjamin Dangl: Could you please provide an overview
of the kind of work the Vice Ministry of Decolonization
does?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Félix Cárdenas:</strong> First of all it’s not the
kind of vice ministry where we have to say ‘we built 3,000
kilometers of highway,’ or ‘we constructed 20 stadiums.’ It’s
more than anything a political and ideological vice ministry,
and for this type of work what we have to do first of all is
establish some points of departure for the work of
decolonization. It’s not sufficient to go somewhere and say ‘I
declare you decolonized!’ and that’s it, they’re decolonized.
No. It’s a question of changing mentality, behavior, of life
philosophy, and to do this at an individual level, or at a
communitarian level, a national level, we have an obligation
to first ask ‘what is Bolivia?’ If we don’t clearly understand
what Bolivia is, then we don’t know what needs to be done.</p>
<p>So, as a part of this process, one has to explain that
Bolivia is a failed country. This is a point of departure.
Bolivia failed as a proposed country. This country, that was
founded in 1825, that claimed to be modern, that claimed to be
civilized, that wanted to look like Europe, that wanted to be
Europe while denying itself – this type of country failed. It
failed because this type of country, that was born in 1825,
wanted to be modern, wanted to be civilized based on the
destruction of the indigenous people, based on the destruction
of their languages, their culture, their identity. <em><br>
</em></p>
<p>Therefore, it’s from this perspective that we understand that
Bolivia is not what they tell us – that Bolivia is one nation,
one language, one religion. We are 36 [indigenous] nations, 36
cultures, 36 ways of seeing the world, and therefore, 36 ways
of providing solutions for the world. We call this diversity
of cultures ‘plurinational,’ and we want to build a
plurinational state.</p>
<p>So, seen in this way, if our future work is to decolonize and
create a plurinational society, we have to work in education,
we have to work in all areas, in justice, for example, to
reinstate indigenous justice. The constitution tells us that
indigenous justice and standard justice have the same
hierarchy. So there is a need to work in indigenous justice,
reinstate indigenous justice in the face of the crisis of
standard justice, which is foreign as well as corrupt.</p>
<p>The constitution speaks of a secular state. Before, the
catholic religion was the official religion. Not today. Today
no one is obligated to get married in front of a priest. No
one is obligated to be baptized in front of a priest. Religion
was the strongest aspect of colonialism. Religion was always
power. Today, no. Today religion is outside of power, outside
of the government palace. It’s fine if religion dedicates
itself to saving souls, but never again will it define the
politics of the state as it used to.</p>
<p>When many people talk about decolonization they think it’s
just an indigenous people’s problem. But decolonization is not
an indigenous peoples’ problem, decolonization is everyone’s
problem. For example, our bourgeoisie, our private business
class, thinks that they are condemned to always live off of
the scraps thrown to them by transnational companies. This is
colonialism, and they don’t dare invest in the development of
their own country. And so, decolonization is everyone’s work.</p>
<p><strong>BD: A process of decolonization has to be global,
right? What do countries in the north, the most capitalist
countries, have to do as a part of this process?</strong></p>
<p>FC: For the first time, the countries of the north have to
look at themselves in the mirror and realize that they are in
crisis. If they don’t accept that they are in crisis, they
will never find ways to solve their crisis. But they also need
to accept that they’re in crisis and they themselves don’t
have the solutions. They have to look to us, to the indigenous
people. Not to Bolivia, but to the indigenous people that are
all over the world, and who have a philosophy of life that is
qualitatively superior to philosophies constructed in the form
of civilizing modernity.</p>
<p>From Bolivia, we salute the [Syriza] triumph in Greece. We
salute the future triumph in Spain, which has more or less the
same characteristics. These revolutions in Spain and in Greece
are being built while looking to Bolivia. So, for us, this is
a kind of complication; to recognize that 500 years ago they
[Europeans] arrived, taught us a way of life, a type of
religion, a type of modernity that failed. And so today, after
500 years, we, the indigenous people, have the obligation to
go to Europe and speak to them, to convert them, to tell them
that there is another way to live, and that their crisis is
bringing planet earth to a global crisis.</p>
<p><strong>BD: The economy of Bolivia is very much based in
mining, gas – extractivism. How do you see this process? How
can Bolivia overcome its dependency on mining and gas? On
the one hand, the president speaks of respecting mother
earth, but on the other hand, mining and gas industries are
very crucial here. How do you see these contradictions?</strong></p>
<p><strong>FC:</strong> This isn’t something that this
government invented. Bolivia has always lived off of mining,
we have always lived off of extractivism. Now, what we hope to
do is that this sacrifice, this fruit that mother earth is
providing us with, is not in vain. And that it doesn’t just
leave [the country] as raw material, but that there’s a need
to industrialize, and as we industrialize we can reach the
point where we can lower the level of extractivism.</p>
<p><em><strong>Benjamin Dangl</strong> has worked as a
journalist throughout Latin America, covering social
movements and politics in the region for over a decade. He
is the author of the books </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Dynamite-Social-Movements-America/dp/1849350159"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);"><em>Dancing
with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin
America</em></a><em>, and </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Price-Fire-Resource-Movements-Bolivia/dp/190485933X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422481340&sr=1-1&keywords=price+of+fire&pebp=1422481360338&peasin=190485933X"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);"><em>The
Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in
Bolivia</em></a><em>. Dangl is currently a doctoral
candidate in Latin American History at McGill University,
and edits UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and
politics in Latin America, and TowardFreedom.com, a
progressive perspective on world events. Twitter: </em><a
href="https://twitter.com/bendangl"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://twitter.com']);"><em>https://twitter.com/bendangl</em></a><em> Email:
BenDangl(at)gmail(dot)com</em></p>
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