Louise sent us the following article, written by Paul Regalsky.
A long march to liberate their territories and a context for the government of Evo Morales.
Evo Morales's speeches present a myth: the Indians have come to power and start now 500 years of indigenous power, and a fact: the first indigenous person, supported by social movements, becomes president through elections. His proposal for an inclusive government and the convening of an Assembly Constitutional for the reestablishment of Bolivia with the participation of indigenous peoples were excluded from the founding of the Republic 180 years ago Creole will be tested in the context of the confrontation of a people mobilized against the alliance that formed the sector landlords with oil companies.
The situation in Bolivia since 2000-that Garcia Linera, now vice president, and leftist groups also qualify as revolutionary or as a succession of revolutionary crisis "is the result of a network of processes of which three in the present review article. These are three immediate historical processes, the first connected the emergence of indigenous peoples, their organizations and their struggle for territory and autonomy from the 80, the second the organization by 1995 the political instrument of the CSUTCB (Confederación Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia) which then leads to the MAS and process until the last elections of December 18, 2005. The more general process that largely accounts for the previous two, concerns the territorialization of social movements and the resulting territorialization of bourgeois reaction in the context of globalization and a profound crisis of nation states. The exceptional results of 2005 elections were framed in these processes and, Of course, in a growing social movement that has not wavered in the past five years.
Other lines of analysis of the processes are equally or perhaps more important than these three in which I will concentrate to understand the current situation of class struggle in Bolivia, but what I decided to confine this article to these three axes is the need to draw new lessons of the Bolivian process under way and then figure out where you can follow the course of Latin American struggles is leading.
may be missing an analysis of the economic restructuring process and the process followed by the new configuration of the bourgeoisie and its links with transnational capital. We're just going to play those aspects needed to understand the key aspect of the situation is the strong emergence of a social actor, the indigenous peasants who moved to the working class of its hegemonic position and presents a new strategic vision for change in the country, in the context of the indigenous uprising in several other African countries.
emerge in 1979 CSUTCB nucleates around the Bolivian peasant movement. Part of the same nine peasant associations and many other regional department covering both the highlands and the lowlands of the country. At first became part of the CSUTCB even Amazonian peoples and CIDOB, then called Central Eastern Bolivia Indigenous, but soon after, in the early 80's CSUTCB was being confined to rural communities Aymara, Quechua and Castilian speakers that are approximately 11,000 with an approximate total population of 3,500 .000 peasants. Meanwhile CIDOB turned to early 90's in the Indigenous Confederation of Bolivia that covers the Amazon and Guarani minorities with a population of 300,000 people. Since then there have been several times in these structures gradually dismantling national and indigenous farmers which, however, has not dented the mobilization finally expressed in several semi-urban insurrections, demonstrating the depth of this process, also at times, strength to the national and regional indigenous and peasant to enter proposals for common action.
The baptism of fire took place immediately CSUTCB its founding when, shortly after the fall of the military dictatorship of Banzer, the provisional government of Lidia Gueiler elected to Parliament, enacted a tough economic package and reacts CSUTCB the first general blockade of all roads in the country and left completely isolated from the cities for more than a week in December 1979.
The CSTUCB born as an affiliate of the Central Obrera Boliviana that, at that time still led by the late Lechin, deployed all its efforts to turn the social explosion outside their control and also outpace the capabilities of the fledgling leadership of the CSUTCB aymara katarista. This spectacular national blockade of 1979, born of an application for annulment of the package Gueiler president monetarists, especially demanding the cancellation of the increase in petrol and transport prices, hinted that after the class for claims defensive struggle economic, was in fact raising the issue of territorial control.
situation in which the state is no longer the guarantor of freedom movement in the country and in which cities were to be frequently choked with communities padlock put all forms of transportation, including basic food to cities, with the declaration of national blockades, sometimes departmental and local level also.
at that time was also clear that, although the CSUTCB was part of the COB and the peasants considered themselves part of the working class, there was a schism between the urban and rural areas. While the struggles of the COB and particularly the teachers' strikes were often actively supported by the peasants, the reverse was not true and instead claims farmers were always viewed with suspicion from the workers' ranks, much worse from the urban middle classes who followed the situation with fear and more often tinged with rejection of racism.
The timing of autonomous peasant speech and to break with the paternalistic state
, 1979 This is a very important turning point which marks a break from the peasantry to the state, with a state regime was known in intellectual circles as "the state of 52", ie the regime that had returned the land through land reform of 1953. Following the reform, the peasants had gone to become active support state, taking part in rural armed militias arriving mining deal with the militias in 1956. This continues throughout the series of military governments and anti-that go from 1964 to 1976 at which time the first cracks appear in what is called the Military Covenant Campesino (PMC).
The importance of this break of 1979 is that, with the disappearance of the PMC mediating link between the state and the peasantry, not only the peasant union leaders no longer act as a transmission belt of military governments. The territory of the communities now appears as a territorial political space governed by traditional authorities of the Andean peasant communities themselves to begin to make gradual awareness of the situation. Apply to the exercise of the customary rule or self what they call their "uses and customs."
While this has been a tradition that has been broken and is maintained even within the estates in which the communities were "captive" had on whether state authority represented by the landowner and, after the reform land, the coordinator of the PMC. A breakdown of the PMC state authority is not present in these regions.
gradual process of reconfiguration of the Andean Community courts this time is often unaware of the rules that makes the positive law and state authorities responsible for implementation, such as in the case of land, the agrarian courts. Gradually, the same pyramid structure that had been constituted by the MNR in order to subordinate the peasantry to the state, begins to serve to form a regional authority structure parallel to the state that begins to exercise certain powers snatched from legal authorities.
This is the case of the agrarian courts, from the late 80's, land conflicts begin to be resolved by the authorities themselves mostly indigenous peasant and local level, but also from its structure in hierarchical levels in the case of CSUTCB appeals to channel of those affected by decisions made (or evading take) at the community, avoiding appeal to judicial authorities or police.
This inflection point indicates the beginning of practice, although not in the speech of a process towards autonomy in the field of Andean communities, ie in delimited territories inhabited by a number of domestic units, which control through its community assembly and traditional authorities and union what happens within that space. The axis around which are organized customs and forms of authority is access to land that is exercised through rules and mechanisms collectively generated. In some cases, this self-government begins to exercise also through umbrella organizations, ie the peasant unions that group substations and communities whose jurisdiction over the territory of a county or a province (the equivalent in Argentina for an apartment), with an extension that can vary from 100 to 1000 km2. This is the social basis and in fact (as opposed to de jure) on the Andean Quechua and Aymara peasants begin to build their self-jurisdictional areas, even before the discourse of indigenous autonomy and the struggle for territory had no echoed in their national organizations.
The timing of the speech Indian: the land and territory
The indigenous march for Territory and Dignity, 1990, led by the indigenous peoples of Beni in the northern Amazon, marks another turning point. Is of great importance for the recovery of the initiative by the subordinate sectors because it comes amid the reactionary offensive of structural adjustment. Adjustment policies are beginning to apply in 1985 following the catastrophic defeat suffered by the COB in that year, the fall of the government of the UDP (Popular Democratic Unity) of Siles Suazo and ascension to the government of Paz Estenssoro to the MNR ( Nationalist Revolutionary Movement who led the government after the revolution of 52).
urban middle class was drawn to the policy that promised to restore the authority of the state, eliminating all vestiges of dual power and allow the process of accumulation and welfare through work flexibility and the elimination of union power. The bourgeoisie, a sector which has nourished the drug in the 70 and 80, then formed a very strong united front that cuts across all institutions to support this policy through inter-party agreement called the "pacted democracy."
Any worker or peasant struggle seemed destined to crash and fail against the solid wall formed by the coalition of all sectors of the bourgeoisie and the middle class. Paz Estenssoro's government had to back only once, when he tried to impose a small property tax in 1986, breaking the old MNR agreements, including well respected in the military, not to impose taxes on rural property.
In this context of strong reactionary against the indigenous march that traveled over 500 km starting from the Amazon region and across the high peaks surrounding the city of La Paz, it generated the first cracks in it with a strong media impact and the sympathy that manages to create in urban areas: there are Amazonian Indians! Come to claim their territories and natural resources are being destroyed by logging companies and farmers that have been illegally taking over land titles counterfeit or simply by force.
Paz Zamora's government (1989-1993) yields to the great sympathy and solidarity that the march had been in the city of La Paz and promulgated several decrees giving several indigenous territories in the lowlands. Immediately demanding business circles react to the perceived threat of disintegration of the state to what they see as a legal aberration: it begins to question the government's role as guarantor of the freedom of capital throughout the country. In fact, Bolivian entrepreneurs understand that the declaration of indigenous land rights pose barriers that restrict the movement and reproduction of capital and access to natural resources.
Notwithstanding the existence of these decrees, more than 15 years later, several of those recognized as indigenous territories have not received their law degrees and the capital is powering some of them without many obstacles, often covered in armed gangs and other sometimes the corruption of indigenous leaders. However, the wall of the reaction solidified reactionary politics behind setting starts to fracture there. Sectors of the Church and of the petty bourgeoisie show your support to reject the decrees and business logic they understand that they affect individual rights enshrined in the constitution to establish a kind of collective property was not legally clear place within the existing legal system.
other hand, the indigenous march begins to show not only that the wall has cracks reactionary but generated a major debate among peasant and indigenous organizations, in reality, what is the Territory? What we are referring to when we demand "the return of our territory? The peasants of Quechua and Aymara communities have individual titles that have received 53 agrarian reform, how can now restore territorial control? What is the political organization that will administer these territories? Who embody the nation Aymara or Quechua nation whose base communities are organized in unions or central rural community or ayllu with narrowly defined geographic jurisdictions, unlike Chimanes or Chiquitanos Moxeño or if they can take that advice or Councils represented as identities or nations, but are numerically minority within the republic? Who will represent the Aymara and Quechua people living in cities, where the majority of the population? That debate starts stir in 1988, took place in Congress as those of the CSTUCB in Potosi and Tarija (CEDLA 1989) or as Corqueamaya Meeting which brings together representatives of all the peasant and indigenous organizations to prepare for the commemoration and protest for the V ° centenary of the invasion.
In principle, it was clear the answer to these questions and how would that fight for the territory but that Congress in 1992 made it clear that an Assembly would meet for Nationalities, which would be the Political Instrument responsible for land reclamation and territory and stating that this would be the body that should solve the problem of power. Now it happened that in some cases to claim land policy became a claim of identity, culturalist dye. There were even sections of leaders or activists, mostly Aymara, who began to give battle against all forms of trade union or class name of the struggle for the recovery of identity as a people.
is clearly seen in some of these intellectuals like Fernando Untoja Aymara and others to attempt to recover the idea of block classes, a block of classes under a new identity, indigenous or native to this time, but opposed to the idea of fighting class privilege, but rather defined by the recovery suppressed by their own culture of Western civilization. Some of these intellectuals' organic origin "then, in the mid 90's, passed without much fuss into the service of traditional parties of the right native or finished preaching a new military pact farmer.
In fact, the long awaited Nationalities Assembly passed no more, thanks to a good effort by the Church and the NGOs linked to it that their best efforts to neutralize it. It is true that there was still a clear development of the process of empowerment of indigenous peoples and peasant communities and there were many areas that could still take advantage of emerging parties middle class in connection with the church as the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria) who gets the government in accordance with the ex-dictator Banzer in 1989 and split the MBL (Movimiento Bolivia Libre), which ensures a place in government for Sanchez de Lozada in 1993.
At the same time, it begins to give a dissociation between the discourse of the intelligentsia aymara, claiming territorial recovery of the abstract in the form of a block of classes and as a cultural demand and the process was going on basic Andean communities, where recovery was being territorial, since these communities were exercising jurisdiction over the territory they occupied outside of the rule and authority of the state.
This dissociation is effective for the process of Sanchez de Lozada, remember that his vice president was the intellectual Aymara and former secretary general of the CSUTCB Victor Hugo Cardenas. The same was responsible for the development of the educational proposal of CSUTCB, under contract with UNICEF. While the top is going to give the second generation structural reforms in a sector which participates Aymara intellectuals, below, the original community farmer demand, already had a concrete framework and also tended to become a process of autonomous class where community members also demanded nature of farm workers.
speech Fusion peasant and indigenous territorial autonomy
Beyond the intentions of some indigenous intellectuals, the process of application for recognition of identity began to be linked to farmers' demands and class, the demand for land and the territory, and little by little to the struggle for control of natural resources. There
forged process first takes place in rural and indigenous movements and years later broke from the year 2000 with the Water War as a confluence of urban movements with the peasants. There is also the 90 from a confluence between the processes of recovery and exercise of their jurisdictions both in the control of access to land as in the "community justice" by the Andean Community and the struggle of the peoples of lowland Amazonia and seeking to gain control of their natural resources, particular forest, through the recognition of indigenous territories.
But digested the failure of the Assembly of Nationalities still had to go through a process in which the system tried to create forms of mediation using the figure of the multiculturalism policy and through recognition of cultural difference. The logic of these policies are implemented from the design provided by agencies multilateral is to prevent the process of claiming identity combined with processes of class struggle. Both
educational reform as the process of recognition of the communities that took place in 1994 during the government of Sanchez de Lozada's MNR (1993-1997) aimed to establish a recognition of cultural difference, just to establish a mechanism government-democracy, but for the difference. On the other hand, Sanchez de Lozada government was careful in distinguishing policy favoring the "true" natives, those who did appear as "peasants", "coca" or "settlers." Could often confront each other by privileging negotiation with the CIDOB representing lowland peoples (numerical minority compared to Aymara and Quechua) while the subject was the peasants from a policy of criminalization, trying to identify the CSUTCB as complicated with drug trafficking for their support to defend the coca leaf.
A state regime governing the use of cultural difference, politicized course that means moving away much of the form of government for cultural and political homogenization involves the establishment of nation states in the early nineteenth century (Smith 1986, Friedman 1998). In turn, this ethnification policy, or the politicization of cultural difference becomes the main weapon of the same indigenous movements in the struggle for regaining access to their traditional resources. But the idea behind the concept of "multiculturalism" as government policy is not to end the nation state as a hegemonic system.
It's just time to move for some constitutional reforms that include the recognition of difference, ending an education system focused on cultural homogeneity as the basis for the nation. These constitutional reforms were in many Latin American countries since the early 90's, even in those where indigenous peoples have a numerical weight apparently very minor. What is the purpose of establishing the recognition of difference, as seen from the perspective of power, seen from the perspective of the multilateral agencies and finally, from the perspective of the bourgeoisie in general? It clearly says Bahba (1994): the development of the interstices, ie the difference but to strengthen the tissues that connect, not to lift internal borders in the nation.
What we need to do is encourage the development of intermediary social groups arising from such culturally distinct sectors. This is the case of the education reform law and the law of popular participation. The problem is when the strategy of mediation does not exactly the fruits that are proposed. The problem is when the nation state really starts to sink. Countering
indigenous authority to participatory democracy
second generation reforms that the MNR threaded at its second government headed by Sanchez de Lozada, former Coordinating Minister Paz Estenssoro, was preceded by two acts that raised a wave of applause academic progress in the globalized environment.
the peasant organizations branded as "damned laws" at the time, but later some of those leaders desdijeron and saw it as a channel for political participation that we seek. Reform is Education (RE) and the Popular Participation Law (LPP) issued in 1994. The latter gives legal recognition to rural and indigenous communities as a "territorial base organizations" and builds the extension of municipal jurisdiction over the territories in which these communities are established.
The government of Sanchez de Lozada was very conscious of the need to neutralize the community self-governance as a condition to implement a functional land market. The Popular Participation Law is an important political precedent for the subsequent modification of the INRA Act (Law of National Service of Agrarian Reform), which sets out some guidelines for the counter-agrarian reform recommended by the World Bank. Unlike those who argue that the LPP is a breakthrough for indigenous peoples, I argue that a political basis for the subsequent construction of the land market and threatens the very foundation of the Andean Community's judicial system. But also, for good measure, the LPP creates the conditions for the fragmentation of the major peasant organizations, particularly the CSTUCB, through the possibility of incorporating the peasant leaders in the administration of state low levels, ie in municipal administration.
A year after the first municipal election (December 1995) and are triggered the first conflicts within peasant federations that are part of the CSTUCB, because of the struggle for control of rural municipal councils. Here is where the history of MAS, which began under the name "Earth Territory Political Instrument" in the Congress of the CSUTCB that takes place in Santa Cruz in March 1995.
The pattern of organization of the IP was Tarija congressional mandate of 1989 that we mentioned above, which was determined to organize a Political Instrument for the recovery of land and territory, in the form of the Assembly of Nationalities. In 1995, conditions have changed, the Assembly has failed, the LPP had already been approved despite two national blockades called by the CSTUCB to prevent its approval and the Education Reform Act and have been called municipal elections under the new judicial and regulatory scenario that the LPP established. The decision that the Congress of Santa Cruz takes to organize the ASP Political Instrument (Assembly for the Sovereignty of Peoples) and to seek legal status to participate in the municipal elections of December 1995 is clearly a defensive decision, to avoid political parties 'traditional' become strong in the new arena and reach rural municipal control space communities.
ASP reach a political agreement with the Left Together, until then a political group controlled by the Communist Party gives up its personality in an almost unconditional. The premiere of that political force to be tested in the department of Cochabamba is auspicious: the successes achieved in 14 municipalities and fails to take the mayors in 10 municipalities in those sections despite the opposition of all political parties and government.
municipal Three of these sections are in the Chapare, the region controlled by the five Federations of the Tropic Cochabambino who have formed a coalition since 1989, most of them, FTCTC, CSTUCB affiliate, is the space where it grows Evo Morales , the others are part of the Settlers Confederation of Bolivia (CSCB). Federations of the tropics in the northern lowlands of Cochabamba, in contrast to organizations belonging to the CSUTCB are the result of the displacement of peasants from their communities of origin to the Chapare, where coca cultivated and are mainly designated as "colonizers" state lands assigned to them through the Institute of Colonization.
Unlike the food security strategy that is deployed in communities high in the Andes, in the lowland areas is required to produce to sell: the tropical climate can not retain any food. The colonizers Chapare miners are joined relocated during Paz Estenssoro management in the second half of the 80 and the population grows to about 40,000 households.
The organization of coca has become well known for their fighting spirit and discipline, which had much to do with the type of organization that printed the miners campesinizados. However, the basis of this organization are the pioneer farmers who have the best land near roads and are the hired farm labor work newcomer to harvest and that is also used in the trampling of coca for industrialization. Chapare unions meet characteristics of upland farmers unions in the sense that control access to land, yet differ in maintaining a close connection to the market through the production of coca and tropical fruits.
establishing relations level trade unions has led to a far more iron structure of the pyramidal structures within the federations that contrasts with the figure of greater autonomy in the Andean community organizations based on the federations that are part of the CSTUCB and do not allow such development verticalised pyramid. However, the original indigenous concept of jurisdiction is so evident in the communities in height, it can be seen clearly in the colonization of land, possibly by the close relationship with influence the market and mining. Coca federations, which have so often resorted to road blocks and have threatened the state's ability to ensure free transit through its territory, but never had a territorial policy.
Worse, even if the INRA law offers an opportunity to establish some territorial construction as are indigenous communal lands (TCO), growers Cerradicas remained opposed to that provision. Conceived it as a relic of the Indians, and Indians were somewhat opposed a barrier to the expansion of coca crops, such as indigenous groups Yuquises and Yuracarés who have achieved recognition of their territories as TCO Isiboro Secure Park are located in the heart of the Chapare region and in constant conflict with the settlers that advance and occupy land within their territories. For these and other reasons, the ASP made in the Congress of the Santa Cruz CSTUCB fragments during the 1997 elections, where the growers decide to crossover voting, keep that way is elected the leader of the Peasant Federation FSUTCC that represents the Andean communities and instead comes first elected Evo Morales as a congressman.
Meanwhile, the process that took place at the municipal level where farmers had participated with their own candidates elected on a provincial assemblies, is taking shape.
Popular Participation and the new urban-rural jurisdictions
central aspects of the Popular Participation Law enacted in April 1994 are summarized as follows:
1. Define a new territorial jurisdiction of municipalities, extending to the whole area of the provincial sections. Until then, the municipal authorities had as an area of urban spaces, while rural communities fell under the jurisdiction of cantonal officers and magistrates who in turn were under the supervision of prefects and had very weak connection with the administration central state.
Since then unify the urban and rural areas in a single administrative and political jurisdiction in a single local development plan.
2. Grants to municipalities for 20% of revenues from the national treasury as revenue-sharing in the excise, of which 90% should be used in investment and can not be used in current expenditure as it seeks to "improve the quality of life of Bolivian men and women a fairer distribution and better administration of public resources "(art. 1).
3. Recognizes the juridical personality of the "territorial base organizations hereinafter called OTB's:" acknowledges promotes and strengthens the process of popular participation by indigenous communities, rural and urban life in the legal, political and economic life "(art. 1).
Two years later a Supreme Decree provides further recognition for his behalf of communities and indigenous peoples, ie the ombudsmen issued by the departmental prefectures should specify if they are treated peasant or indigenous communities, etc.. and not included under the name of OTB's. The OTB's elect a representative for each district or county to form a Vigilance Committee to the municipality.
4. "transfers the physical infrastructure of education, health, sports, local roads, micro-irrigation, with the obligation to manage, maintain and renew "(art. 2, inc.b).
National Dialogue Law of 2001 also transfers the running costs (staff) and education health were centralized national government administration referred to the municipal budget without it being clear the way for financing them.
From the main ideological current government raised the Popular Participation Law, first as an instrument generalization of citizens in development and equity. Development conceived from an equity perspective as it was to redistribute resources to regions that previously had received only one contribution from the general budget of the Nation. Arose as part of a strategy aimed at "productive city", although this concept was never made clear, seemed to walk within the meaning of "develop the field", ie to reach rural areas of progress urban civilization. (2)
Secondly, it is argued that participatory mechanisms established by the law meant a clear strengthening of civil society and local power (De La Fuente 2001). In another aspect of interpretation from the same government, a senior leader Aymara Indian, former secretary CSUTCB general now become the National Vice President Victor Hugo Cardenas law promoted from a speech that invoked the plight of marginalized peoples. In interpreting
was happening "in a democracy the vote to a social democracy, ethnic, cultural and economic" whose base is the legal recognition of legal personality of organizations called territorial base and that "after the legal recognition is the commitment to society "(Cárdenas 1997:21-25). This did not prevent that stress at the same time and in the same document," will continue to say, democracy is a democracy we live in colonial, colonial, inclusive and State arising from this actually is a colonialist state and exclusive ".
A paradoxical testimony reflected a double pressure: that of his office and that other pressure started from the originating mainly Aymara peasant organizations who played a principle Cárdenas's rise first, as an expression of his own chances of promotion as assimilated citizens in a society dominated by the Creoles and also as a possibility for the recognition of the characteristics of the Aymara as collective social subject.
My reading is based not so much on rhetorical aspects that accompanied the reform that seem to be moving towards recognition of indigenous, as in its practical meaning, which we anticipate and that same year of its enactment: "In our view, NGOs have already opened, consciously or unconsciously, a wide margin of action for the state to raise its control over the court room until now peasant community itself "(Regalsky 1994:161). Cardenas himself argues that it has borne the LPP is the reconstruction of "local state", ie what would become the neutralizing mechanism of the mini-native state and parallel Albó see Carter (1988) in the Aymara community of the 80's.
peasant organizations, both as the same departmental federations CSUTCB immediately interpreted the bill as an attempt to undermine the organizations and communities in their own forms of organization and control of space. They saw it as an attempt to undermine their autonomy and tried to oppose the adoption of the draft was barely publicized.
social movements were launched against the bill, part of what was called "three damned laws" popular participation, educational reform and capitalization, and failed, although the call was heeded by a block much of the rural communities especially in the mountainous region Quechua.
All it does is negotiate changes in the regulatory decree that recognized the proper name of each one of the organizations. Since then, an ambivalent attitude of the communities left in confusion at the direction of their own parent organizations that maintains the claim of repeal of these laws on its agenda until early next year 1995.
After its enactment, many communities in the highlands and lowlands then begin to organize to obtain legal status as OTB's. Immediately after they follow the valley communities. Is generated from the enforcement of the LPP a competitive race between communities that opens a whole period of growing local factionalism. First, there is a competition that begins between unions organized communities, and sometimes ayllus by associations and neighborhood who are struggling to obtain legal status and get the recognition, within certain geographic boundaries with respect to the representation on a population, sometimes expense of other organizations or communities.
The struggle for both municipal and territorial delimitation between these organizations and communities become both a source of conflict complicated. Regional organizations that were recognized did not follow the same geographical boundaries that had administrative jurisdictions within which were recognized, and there are numerous organizations whose territory falls under the jurisdiction of two or more different local sections, including different provinces.
For lowlands in eastern Bolivia is indigenous territories as demanded by the people TCOs displayed spread across 4 provinces (Orellana 1999). Secondly it sparks a competition for "municipal works" between communities belonging to the same central or subcentral and are part of a municipal jurisdiction. This competition weakens the inter-community negotiation and favors the villagers where he has his seat municipal authority fail privileged access to scarce local resources.
Mizque Township, always presented as the model case of popular participation, allocated 90% of its investment resources to the development of ornamental and sewerage for the 2000 inhabitants of the village, while for the remaining 30,000 inhabitants of the most than 150 rural communities was the remaining 10% (Rivero 2001). This case begins to unravel in 1996, when they assume their duties the new municipal administrations in terms of the LPP and the Municipalities Act 1985. These two items above, we have to look that interests us here: that of the life of its own jurisdiction-that Andean peasant and indeed there was no legal recognition, and gives rise to overlapping jurisdiction with the new urban-rural local government created by the LPP.
Community authority and competes in a game contradictory forces with the municipal authority. Municipalization rural area in urban-rural design unique and hard for the country we saw it undermines rural communities in the two aspects we have already stated, also brings into question the issue of indigenous self-determination referred Cardenas and that has to do with the implications of these reforms in terms of intercultural policies. Municipalization and electoralización authority (in terms of emergence of mandatory mediation of political parties for the election of local authorities) Nick community autonomy even when the farmers immediately designed a response in terms of "political instrument" that would participate in the electoral arena to two political parties' system. "
The peasant and indigenous electioneering
The first municipal elections under the new municipal system was done in December 1995. Then there is a new political actor, which is called "political instrument" organized by the CSUTCB in March 1995 congressional resolution national held in Santa Cruz. This represented an apparent shift of 180 degrees from the positions they had assumed the CSUTCB since 1989, when he was approaching the Quincentenary of Colonization.
The peasant and indigenous electioneering was not recent. In the 1993 elections the MNR had built on their lists several candidates with great experience in the peasant and indigenous movement and this did nothing but take up a tradition of co-opting MNR farm leaders emerged in the 1952 revolution. Another component of the coalition party that will rule after 1993, the MBL (Movimiento Bolivia Libre) had built on their lists a number of representatives Indians, including the president of CIDOB, (3) Martial Fabricano.
peasant organizations react and expel the leaders who are committed to games without having consulted with their bases in the first place, as in the province in 1989 Campero. In other provinces, the leaders take different paths across a variety of games, but are careful to consult first with the assemblies of their central or communities in a more or less organically. "
However, the electioneering that was gaining strength among the leaders of peasant and indigenous organizations, and the fact that several of them were affiliated to different political parties in the called "traditional" by these organizations, is a different phenomenon and should not be confused with the participation of "organic" these organizations in the electoral process and, therefore, with the consequences of such participation.
not be confused with a process that takes greater historical depth and that is the restructuring of the forms of authority and territorial organization in the area occupied by the Andean communities takes place following the implementation of the LPP. Organic participation begins to take effect as a result of the Peasant Congress made in 1995 by the CSUTCB, above. In fact, there will be a combination all these factors, which plays a fundamental role played by co-optation and political patronage that developed the games of the "pacted democracy" within social organizations.
But patronage alone does not explain the significance of the changes on the horizon of the peasant communities. Participation also "organic" and bureaucratic processes that appear to result in the same peasant organizations have their weight changes. Not only is a shift farmers' organizations at the addresses of second and third degree in organic form begin to intervene in election campaigns. Not only is that farmers' organizations, which had until then an industrial action and a perspective of self-serve now spent on election campaigns where it acquires weight component of "seduction" and "promise" that involves campaigning.
This represents a shift in the type of actions of these organizations and a kind of internal segmentation. There is a level of greater historical depth that is affected by the LPP but that only begins to feel drunk once the election: "The LPP has strongly impacted and continues to do increasingly in rural communities, traditional communities.
They
but no other realities, along with organizations of indigenous peoples of Eastern and Chaco are being driven to join the new democratic society in Bolivia, the formation of new forms of citizenship. The expression of the new company is still in the process of definition and transition (or emergency) from old systems of values and social hierarchies, in search of new forms of integration in relation to the state and politics, and who have been affected by these changes have been peasants when threatened their traditional organizational systems, their land and their ways of relating to the current state since 1952. "(Blanes 1999:3)
From the appearance of the candidates farmers to municipalities in 1996, which consolidates Blanes considered an "irreversible process" that leads to:
"Clashes and factionalism have always existed in the highland communities, both Aymara and Quechua. The novelty in the case of the implementation of the Law (PP) is the abundance of situations, motives and opportunities for this. The Workhorse are not differentiated strategies for development, but access to works "(Blanes 2000 : 69)
In sum, the LPP weakened the authority of communities and reinforces the factionalism, thus contributing to dismantle the jurisdiction of the communities on earth. Thence that the proposal contained in the LPP not only refers to an upgrade in the forms of public administration, decentralization and equity in access to public funds. Is closely related to changing production strategy that achieves dynamic commercial agriculture and disrupt agriculture for food security based on solving the intimate relationship of indigenous peasant communities to the land: in other words, separate the Indians from their land and consolidate what the MNR sought with the Agrarian Reform of 1953: establishing capitalism in the countryside.
The local political arena seemed so easy field to which was possible to derive the acute social and political tensions that left a national proposal raised the national self-determination of indigenous peoples. The town and its temptations facilitates the fragmentation of national social movements from hundreds of local cockfights. Paradoxically, this is also where most power is concentrated on discrediting democracy parties agreed on the degree of corruption that accompanies them. The policy response of peasant organizations walking on a delicate balance with various dangers.
The political instrument, originally a peasant, happened in 2002 the level of local representation and intervention in municipal elections to be achieved, unexpectedly to all, a great burden on the national level, even getting to contest the presidency of the republic in these national elections where Evo Morales takes an unexpected second place. The interference of the U.S. Embassy, which attacks directly Morales, play farmer for the candidate. Since then there has been a fundamental change within the political instrument organized by the CSUTCB, now known only by their initials as MAS election. In the period between 1997 and 2001 has reversed the relationship: the MAS is no longer the political wing of the CSTUCB, the guidelines are set out in the National Congress peasants.
Until then you could say as well as local, territorial power was exercised communities in parallel to state institutions, including within the MAS was a kind of dual power: the territorial organizations had at their addresses of policy tools taking decisions and chose their candidates for councils and mayors, elected officials above the MAS party began to structure a traditional authoritarian style.
continually gave the tension between the two structures, although the personal authority of Evo helped consolidate the gradual predominance of the device. Now the decisions are taken by MAS extended, composed exclusively by MPs, mayors and councilors elected and CSTUCB is reduced to the role of a participant despite being the leading provider of votes. Moreover, while in the 2002 elections participated in the lists of MAS and were elected to parliament some 18 indigenous leaders, however in the lists for the last 2005 elections if there were any Indian leader was a level such as alternate Carlos Cuasase in Santa Cruz, while only a few peasant leaders, those most notorious for their personal loyalty to Evo, get on the list.
Red October was the result of molecular aggregation from local conflicts is right
Prada (2005) when calling attention to the molecular process underlying the gradual rise of social movements.
Little framed in national organizations that had lost its ability to convene, the indigenous movements of 2000 and the outbreak semiinsurreccional October 2003 appear in the eyes less noticed as an event such as the emergence of the "multitude" (Garcia Linera 2000 .) However this rise and the fighting between the masses organizational structure of local good solid base to be added as the tension grows, as was already evident in the case of the Cochabamba Water War in 2000 derived in the creation of the famous and the Coordinator of Water Life.
that arise from the molecular aggregate, the Coordinator successfully channeled this process for several months. Once stopped the social aggregate, and obtained the goal of mobilization (cancellation of the contract with the multinational Bechtel), the coordinator was only the name and, of course, fame.
The first moments of social upheaval that overthrew President Sanchez de Lozada in October 2003 were marked by local conflicts where massive population elected mayor dismisses the charges of corruption and appointing another general meeting, accompanied with blockades to demand recognition This new designation that violates the rules of election of officers. While there is a conflict led by the Aymara leader Felipe Quispe "Mallku" that seeks to free a lakeside community leader jailed because he had applied the two rustlers community justice.
not spared this violent reaction in those local farmers' representatives, having been promoted by state officials "political instrument" were then bought or corrupted by agents of the apparatus of "pacted democracy" of the parties "traditional" and had gone to the ruling party as in the case of the province Morochata in Cochabamba.
The actions seeking placed MAS in the political arena with the rejection of the sale of gas through Chilean ports, organized peaceful marches in several cities, allows social mobilization has fragmented initially find a point of unification in domestic demand. The city leaders of La Paz, Aymara peasant federation of La Paz and the COB refused to line up behind the more than propaganda intended to profit from the protests but agreed on the demand for rejecting the sale of gas at the same time, sought to overcome the context in which the MAS wanted to keep the demonstrations.
The subsequent repression in Warisata, a town famous for having hosted the first institute indigenales teacher training and indignation throughout the country therefore can structure the national movement quickly. Then comes the siege of La Paz reprinted in the popular mind the saga of Tupac Katari. The city remains unserved, including law enforcement agencies had no fuel for their mobility. The military suppression of mass protests in El Alto with more than 60 deaths plaguing the country, government is broken and the front end this will help win the conference in the fall of the regime of Sanchez de Lozada. El Alto is a working city with a predominance of activity "informal" which is the standard of the productive system and national trade. A pair of weeks before the uprising, El Alto had hosted a popular mobilization against the imposition of a municipal tax that had to be suspended.
Local organizations of the neighborhoods that are home to thousands of small artisan shops generally acting together with associations of small traders. They occupy the streets of the city of El Alto and also move the hole from La Paz to sell in small jobs that occupy less than one square meter on the sidewalks and in the street. Thousands of El Alto El Alto and weekly or daily move to the hollow to find temporary jobs. The luckiest
have work in a factory that have been installed in the building alteña abundance of labor and the proximity of roads and the airport as well as easy access to the borders with Chile and Peru. The COB lived a slight raise over the protests of October but the fragility of its structures immediately made her hesitate. The leadership went in the direction of the neighborhood groups that was associated with the coordinator of the Cochabamba water to start a fight immediately after the expulsion of the French concession of water services.
crisis
State
popular mobilization but does not explain itself, to dry, the crisis of state. The fact is that the above no longer have the capacity to govern and those below and do not want to be governed. The state crisis was laid bare in the wrong dubbed "black February" which was the prelude to the days of October 2003. The armed confrontation between the panels of the police with the military garrison of the Government Palace which had to flee the President Goni Sanchez de Lozada erupted following the announcement of increased taxes on wages.
the policemen had already mutinied in 2001 during the demonstrations of the plateau as a result of pay and working conditions. Failure to comply with the agreements signed at the time and the threat of salary reduction determined tantrum that led to dozens of deaths, including civilians who joined the rebellion. What explains this condition almost permanent state of crisis in Bolivia lived since 2000 and that just seems to take a breather after the 2005 elections where Evo wins? The standard explanation is the exclusion and the worsening gap between the two Bolivia, Bolivia Bolivia's indigenous and mestizo and white urban.
Added to this historical element the economic crisis caused by the capitalization of the state generated by the policies of denationalization of mining, oil and general nationalized companies supplying the domestic BUDGET and provided labor in Bolivia post 52. The recovery of strategic natural resources is stateless as a condition for the recovery of this crisis and that task has been entrusted by the electoral mandate the government of Evo. But there is a general element that runs behind the two factors, one historical-cultural and the economic cyclical mentioned.
Globalization itself as the herald of a system of imperial domination and transformation in the global hegemonic system that would allow to overcome the crisis of capital accumulation model resulting from the exhaustion of Keynesian cycle. However, globalization is not only the attempt to overcome the crisis, is also in the ad itself and the consequence of the crisis. Involves, as Friedman explains very well (1998), the crisis of hegemony of a system based on nation states.
What explains the fact that the capital locked up in the cocoon of nations, they see no way to keep profit rates high enough. It has closed the cyber technology cycle without announcements of new business cycles driven by innovations in genetic engineering and nanotechnology stick out as a solution to the crisis of the profit rate. The only engine of global economy is now the use of semi-slave labor China, without however, is already showing signs of rebellion.
The fall of wages in the imperialist countries has failed to create conditions for the resumption of capital expansion cycles. So it seems that the crisis of nation states and the growing monopoly consolidation evidenced the announcement of a global civilization crisis, with global domination of the culture of Coca Cola and McDonald's the swan song of bourgeois civilization born of the industrial revolution. Expressed in the ideology of the dominance of individual liberties over collective rights, individualization and social fragmentation as a model of progress, that civilization is now in question from outside and from within.
The resurgence of those civilizations defeated by capitalism, Islamic civilization lived primarily as a religious confrontation, and the indigenous cultures of America almost simultaneously, experienced more as a territorial recovery process and both claiming the primacy of collective rights over individual, are indirect evidence of this decline in global civilization. Inside, the possibility of a new cycle-based technology in bioengineering is questioned by their own middle classes of the imperialist countries who see it as a threat to the survival of life on the planet as we know.
If this is the case, we would be on the verge of a crisis in the chain process of nation-states. France recently gave a bell in that sense, not understood by conservative leaders, who refuse to give an outlet to this situation through policies of multiculturalism whose essay, we have seen, failed at first instance in Bolivia. The current Bolivian process is, to anyone who wants to hear and see a foreshadowing of the new times.
Additional elements to locate the December 2005 elections
If we consider the process of the crisis of hegemony that we painted briefly in the previous section, it may be easier to understand how the most reactionary sectors of the bourgeoisie latifundiaria, which has already begun to assemble their paramilitary groups to defend their ill-gotten lands, may be accepted with very feeble protests at the government installation of your worst enemy, head of the coca growers.
But there is an additional element must also be taken into account to understand what is happening today and what probably will happen in the Palacio Quemado in La Paz and in the streets and fields and part of the characterization that bourgeoisie has made Evo Morales. In May and June 2005 were repeated days of October 2003, he returned to settle the same siege to La Paz, with the addition of this time he also launched a siege on Santa Cruz.
the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz which brings together the strongest sectors of the Bolivian bourgeoisie allied with the oil companies is in part its strength from the fact that Santa Cruz's population has not yet been able to organize. There is an enormous influx of population in western Venezuela, in areas called "Colla" by Santa Cruz's own, providing a cheap labor next to agriculture, and settled as squatters on land north of the city.
also have flooded the city and its suburbs thousands of small merchants of La Paz and Cochabamba constituting a kind of "middle class" colla amid the city of Santa Cruz. These areas began to mobilize in 2005: the settlers of northern Santa Cruz established a roadblock that had isolated the city from the rest of the country. Worse, on the south side exports were also blocked, this time by the organizations of the Guarani People's Assembly called for the creation of the 10th department of Santa Cruz will spin off to form the Grand Chaco.
These challenges have already begun to alarm the bourgeoisie used to arrogance and even genocide of any people that put him ahead. Who helped them overcome the shock? Nothing less than Evo. When mobilization became more strong demand the immediate nationalization of hydrocarbons and the convening of the Constituent Assembly, even coming to the occupation of oil wells in Santa Cruz, was just the coca growers' leader who raised the advancement of the elections and the resignation of Carlos Mesa. This proposal was rejected by the rest of the popular sectors, but the claim made by Evo and MAS had a way that the most lucid of the system immediately taken with the active support of the Catholic Church and the press. Thus
mobilization diluted ends without achieving its objectives, as a large sector of the population accepted the proposition: take Evo the government and solve the problems. It is then possible that the political system to regroup and re-legitimize its institutions in general elections. This is an important aspect to highlight the outcome of 18 December. On the one hand, there is tremendous and poignant fact that we saw in Tiwanaku: aymara symbols with which the rise around the government's first Indian president of America.
But the other side of the coin is the recomposition of the political system, the recovery of the confidence of a great mass of people in the institutions of bourgeois democracy. And that is why the most reactionary sectors of the business mafia Santa Cruz were willing to receive at its headquarters and applause, the February 3, 2006, who was his sworn enemy. This does not diminish the importance of the electoral results of December 2005. They reflect the earthquake that is shaking those nation states built during the nineteenth century by the native bourgeoisie over territories conquered militarily. A cycle of hegemony that seems to be coming to an end. While
Evo himself could end up being part of the recipe "multicultural" to prolong the agony of these regimes, the very nature of the remedy may also mean a bitter pill for the dominant sectors. Evo's government is now on a tightrope since the social movements who wanted to subordinate through the MAS have regained some initiative with the consolidation of the Pact of Unity of the indigenous and original "social summit held in the city of Santa Cruz this 15 to 17 February 2006.
The important fact is that the march of indigenous people for the recovery of their territory is far from being interrupted, and now have decided to carry out very complicated tasks, such as those posed by the upcoming Constituent Assembly about to be convened. Bibliography
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