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<http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/696/36151>http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/696/36151
Bolivia's Morales: 'This little Indian won't be leaving office'
Federico Fuentes
25 January 2007
On January 22, 2002, then Movement Towards
Socialism (MAS) senator Evo Morales was expelled
from parliament, accused of being a
"narco-terrorist". Exactly five years later, as
the nation's first indigenous president, Morales
gave his first annual report to parliament. This
time it was not Morales who exited prematurely.
Morales began his speech by thanking those who
had expelled him in 2002, particularly senator
Luis Vasquez Villamor, then from the Movement of
the Revolutionary Left, now representing the
right-wing party Podemos. "Thanks to these
people I am here today, they were my campaign
managers." Angered by these comments, just
minutes into Morales's speech the Podemos bench left the room.
They were not the only ones to leave upset. US
ambassador Phillip Goldberg did not take kindly
to Morales's demand for the legislative body to
pass a bill requiring US citizens to obtain
visas before entering the country, as Bolivians
must do to enter the US, for reasons of "dignity, reciprocity and security".
At one point in his speech, Morales said his
critics "should be worried because this little
Indian won't be leaving office easily".
Outside, thousands of indigenous campesinos
(peasants) and workers gathered to celebrate the
day with Morales, waiting for him to deliver his
report to those who had brought him to power.
A poll published in the main La Paz daily, La
Razon, a year after Bolivia's powerful
indigenous movement took control of parliament,
showed that Morales's approval across the major
cities was 59% higher that his historic 53.7%
vote in the December 2005 elections. The rate
was higher in the countryside, where Morales's main support base is.
This reflects the support that Bolivia's
national revolution, led by Morales and with
Bolivia's indigenous people as its core, has
among the Bolivian masses, who, having regained
their spirit and dignity are fighting to
liberate Bolivia and decolonise its racist state structures.
A year of indigenous power
This strong support is in large part due to the
progress made on one of Morales's key election
promises the nationalisation of hydrocarbons.
Having overthrown two presidents in their
struggle to regain control over their natural
resources, particularly gas, over 90% of
Bolivians approved when Morales sent the
military into the gas fields on May 1 to return
control of hydrocarbons to the state.
Six months later after intense negotiations,
which resulted in the resignation of hardline
pro-nationalisation hydrocarbons minister Andres
Soliz Rada and a war of words between the
Bolivian government and Brazil's state oil
company Petrobras, 44 new contracts were signed.
The new rules meant that the state gained
control over hydrocarbons, from below the ground
through to the end of the industrialisation
phase, and the corporations were to become
service providers. The state would receive 82%
of the revenue, which the corporations previously took for themselves.
The government also successfully renegotiated a
doubling of the price for gas sold to Argentina,
and hopes to do the same soon with Brazil.
The result nearly US$1.3 billion in revenue
from gas (an increase of $635 million). Combined
with a growth rate of 4.3%, a reduction of
parliamentary salaries by 50% and macroeconomic
stability, the government has been able to use
this strong economic position to begin to
deliver on some of its promises, reversing the
impact of neoliberalism in Bolivia.
Morales has personally travelled around the
country to redistribute the gains from the gas
nationalisation. These include (with substantial
help from Cuba and Venezuela) 2000 Cuban
doctors, 20 new hospitals, a literacy campaign
in which 73,000 out of 300,000 participants have
already graduated, the Juancito Pinto annual
bonus for all school children under the age of
10 to help cover the costs of schooling, and
tractors as part of the government land reform plan.
This high level of support has also allowed the
government to move forward with its "agrarian
revolution", violently opposed by the large
landowners who have begun to set up paramilitary groups.
Challenges ahead
While there were some important gains made in
implementing the government's economic plans
over the past year, its key political plank
the Constituent Assembly remains stalled by the opposition.
According to Morales, the Constituent Assembly
"is the best democratic instrument
to
profoundly change our country. It is the best
instrument to unify, to integrate our national
territory." He added that the assembly is "the
hope of Bolivians to patent the necessary
structural transformations, and the changes in
the economic and social sphere".
Three other key challenges the government faces
are pushing forward with the industrialisation
of gas and mining to maintain and further
improve economic stability, better management at
the microeconomic level in order to ensure more
resources and redistributed wealth reach those
sectors and regions that need it most, and
better coordination in the face of the rise of a new opposition.
Morales noted that still pending in the process
of nationalising hydrocarbons was obtaining
50%-plus-1 of the shares in companies operating
in Bolivia, and the refoundation of the state
oil company YPFB, which is still not in a
position to carry out the industrialisation of
gas. The increased revenue from the
nationalisation, as well as help from Venezuelan
state oil company PDVSA, through the newly
formed joint project Petroandina, will allow the
government to move ahead on these tasks, Morales said.
Morales also used his one-year anniversary to
announce the "second nationalisation" of the
mining industry. Last year, mining exports
equalled $1.1 billion, of which only 1.5% went
into state coffers. Morales proposed that at
least half of this now go to the state, while
the exportation of raw minerals will be limited
to give primacy to Bolivia's industrialisation.
To help this, the government proposed recovering
ownership of the Vinto tin smelter, sold off
illegally under previous neoliberal governments.
The Morales government has already begun to
rebuild the state mining company Comibol, having
integrated 5000 ex-cooperative miners into the company.
National Coalition for Change
In order to ensure better management of the
state apparatus, particularly in the
opposition-controlled regions, as well as
coordination among the social movements and
their representatives in parliament and the
Constituent Assembly, Morales initiated the
National Coalition for Change on January 23.
The coalition is to involve 16 national social
organisations including indigenous, campesino
and workers' organisations and will
"coordinate the social power of the social
movements with the executive and legislative
power and the constituent delegates, and will
fundamentally define the political,
revolutionary, democratic and cultural line",
explained the president of the lower house of parliament, Raul Novillo.
This coordination is necessary to confront the
rise of a new opposition, based in the
pro-business civic committee of Santa Cruz and
the prefectures of the four eastern departments
(states) referred to as the "half moon". Raising
the banner of autonomy in order to maintain its
hegemony over the east, the Santa Cruz elite
(tied to the gas transnationals and the US) have
attempted to mobilise the predominately white
middle and upper classes against the Morales government.
Stressing the need for social stability,
furthering economic improvements and defending
autonomy within a clear framework of national
unity and control of essential areas such as
natural resources, police and taxes will be
crucial to isolating this new opposition and
winning over and consolidating large sections of
the middle classes and the armed forces to supporting Bolivia's revolution.
Similar structures are to be established at the
departmental (or state) level from February,
which along with departmental delegates selected
by the national government will help in
coordination and organisation at this level.
Such coordination has been impeded because six
out of nine prefectures are controlled by the right.
On January 24, the three opposition parties in
the Senate united to elect one of their own as
president of the upper house, National Unity
senator Jose Villavicencio. This revival of the
"mega coalition" of the neoliberal parties that
sustained the previous governments is one more
part of the oppositions plan to block Morales's
attempts to lead a democratic and cultural revolution.
That day, Bolpress reported that other official
sources said this new opposition directorate
would ask for the revision of the parliamentary
session that passed the new agrarian reform law.
Villavicencio has also announced that the Senate
would review another bill in that session
relating to cooperation with the Venezuelan military on Bolivian soil.
In response, Morales was quoted by the Bolivian
Information Service on January 24 as saying that
"the right, the neoliberals, the auctioneers
have united, but there is no need for us to protest".
"The experience we have is that there are social
forces who are demanding their rights. Within
this framework I am sure that the people will
identify if [the Senate] works against this process of change."
Morales recalled how the opposition had tried to
block the passage of the agrarian reform law, as
well as the ratification of the gas contracts,
by boycotting the Senate, and argued that "it
was the mobilisation of the people that unblocked the Senate".
From: International News, Green Left Weekly
issue #<http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2007/696>696 31 January 2007.
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Currently based in Venezuela.
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