Andean Multitudes Prevail Over Neo-Liberal System

We won! For the first time we Aymars, Quechuas, Chiquitanos, and Guaranies are President (Evo Morales) In my country for things to get better, first, they have to get worst
Coco Manto1 BY MARCELO SAAVEDRA-VARGAS Echoing the voices of millions, Evo Morales, running on a platform based on what is called the October Agenda, won the 2005 national elections in Bolivia in absolute terms with 54 percent of the vote and became the first Indigenous union leader to be elected a chief of state in the Western Hemisphere. His political party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) not only won in an electoral system imposed by decree in 1985 but also defeated a powerful electoral fraud apparatus brought in from the US2. Now Evo Morales has before him the monumental task of deconstructing more than five centuries of exclusion, discrimination, dependency and the imposition of foreign models and economics programs.

Numerically deciphering a crisis

In what is now known as Bolivia, Indigenous Peoples represent between 80 and 86 per cent3 of the population. It is a country where poverty indices show that the poor make up almost 63 per cent of its people4. Of these, 60 per cent live in urban areas while an astonishing 90.8 per cent of the poor live in rural areas. Not surprisingly, rural areas are overwhelmingly inhabited by Indigenous Peoples. Ninety-five per cent of the poor are extremely poor and 90 per cent of those identify themselves as Indigenous5. According to official statistics, only 2.05 percent of rural households have network sanitation services.

Jorge Mansilla Trres (Coco Manto) is now Evo Morales Ambassador to Mexico. Taken from Breveras: Aforismos bolivianos a ms no joder, La Razn, December 2005. 2 Resemblances between the Florida electoral filtering and the Bolivian purging are ju st too many. For more information see: EU: Preparativos de fraude by Pedro Miguel, in La Jornada http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2004/10/31/036a1soc.php?origen=opinion.php&fly=1 and http://www.reformelections.org/data/news/full_report.pdf) and Our Brand is Crisis a documentary showing US consultants at work in internal politics in Bolivia in the 2002 elections: http://www.filmforum.org/films/ourbrand.html. 3 Bello & Rancel, 2000 and Mamani, 2005. 4 Social Watch Report 2005: Roars and Whispers. Instituto del Tercer Mundo, 2005, p. 78. 5 Jess Gonzlez Pazos. Algunas notas sobre Bolivia, in www.revistapueblos.org.

Yet Bolivia is also a country of plenty. It has 14 ecological floors, four hydrographical basins and probably the densest biodiversity index in the world. And it is a country known since mythical times for its mineralogical treasures: silver, tin, gold, lithium, petroleum, natural gas, iron, among others. Bolivia is also a country in debt. For 2004, the countrys external debt amounted to 88 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Privatization of state companies, promoted by the discourse of capitalization, was the hardest blow to the national economy and the State.6 Inequality distinguishes Bolivian society. According to the World Bank, the GINI index increased from 0.52 in 1985) to 0.61 in 20037. The wealthiest 20 per cent receive almost 58 per cent of total labour income while the poorest 20 per cent receive 3.15 per cent of it. Although formal unemployment has remained very high in the last decades, real unemployment is extremely high. About 60 per cent of the economically active population belongs to the precarious informal sector8. And 90 per cent of productive lands are in the hands of fewer than 200 families.

Wealth as sources of poverty

A major iron deposit is located in Bolivia. Its reserves 40 billion tons of iron and 10 billion tons of magnesium represent 70 per cent of world total, or US$ 100 million in annual income. Bolivia has the second largest deposit of hydrocarbons in the Western Hemisphere. Translated into currency these deposits represent US$100 billion. They were in the hands of transnational corporations under an economic plan that was the ultimate expression of neo-liberalism. However, on May 1, 2006, this resource was nationalized by the Morales government. Although it is too early to see what this nationalization really means for Indigenous Peoples, according to Evo Morales (t)he pillage of our natural resources by foreign companies is over.

Is this a turning point?

A predecessor the political change that was to come to Bolivia was a widespread rebellion in 2000 against the privatization of water. In October 2003, in what is called the first gas war, a grassroots mobilization of the people demanded the nationalization of their natural resources for the benefit of the impoverished majorities and rejecting what has been called the dictatorship of the subsoil9.

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Social Watch Report 2005: Roars and Whispers. Instituto del Tercer Mundo, 2005, p. 160. World Bank, Country Assistance Strategy 2004, p. 2. 8 CEDLA, Dossier de estadsticas de empelo, condiciones laborales y dimensiones de gnero, 2004. http://cedla.org/pubs/slideshow/inicio.htm. 9 E. Galeano. El pas que quiere existir, Rebelion.org.

In February 2003, then President Sanchez de Lozada issued a decree imposing direct taxes to pay down the huge fiscal deficit. It was a surreal situation. Here was an immensely rich country giving away rights to its huge natural gas deposits and complying to every demand of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). And, at the same time, it was announced Bolivian hydrocarbons were to be exported to provide energy to California development projects. On October 18, 2003, La Paz is a paralysed city, besieged by hundreds of thousands of poor people, campesinos10 and miners marching to city, as well as urban proletariat families and even middle-class groups who saw the perilous evolution of events. From 2000 onward there was a succession of wars, as the insurgent multitudes have accurately called them: the water war defending water as a human right in Cochabamba; the war defending the ancestral coca leaf in January 2003; the war against direct income taxes in La Paz in February 2003; the first gas war in September and October 2003, and the second gas war in May and June 2005 that brought the country to the brink of separation and civil war.

The October Agenda and a turning point

The October Agenda is a direction and a turning point. The MAS faces colossal challenges and almighty enemies, inside and outside the country. As well, the enemy still walk the halls of the state itself. With the legacy of five centuries of resistance by the Bolivian people, the new government has gigantic challenges and uncertainty is the only certain aspect of this revolution in democracy.

Prospects
What lies ahead is the beginning of a difficult new era, filled with enormous challenges and plenty of high hopes for Indigenous populations in Bolivia and everywhere else in the world. We are a nation with our own culture, our lands and great political experience in building harmonious relationships among ourselves and with our Mother Earth. Indigenous movements face unique and crucial challenges in this new century. We need to find new meanings, and to redefine concepts, principles and processes. We need to create a state that not only truly represents majorities but also reflects a view of the universe that is in concert with natural laws. Those changes call for a real paradigmatic shift for all humanity. The greatest opportunity and challenge for this new administration is to redefine the society and the state, moving from what is called liberal democracy into a revolutionary democracy, characterized by a more just, equitable, inclusive, participatory, popular, Indigenous, and sovereign state.
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In rigor, though, peasants (campesinos) is an economical objectivization. In fact peasants in that region of the world are Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous Peoples will keep vigilant eyes on the Evo Morales government. We will take his word when he asks our social organizations and our elders to control him. We will be guided by his pledge that if I cannot move forward, I ask you to push me, always correcting me. We will understand his challenge when says, It is quite possible that I will commit mistakes, but I will never betray the Bolivian peoples struggle, which is the same as the struggle of all Latin American peoples. Marcelo Saavedra-Vargas is President of the Group of Support for the Peoples of the Americas (GAPA), Representative of the Andean First Nations Council (CANOOttawa Chapter). He is a Researcher with The North-South Institute.