BOLIVIA: Evo Morales, the Best Ally of the Middle Class

[Judi Lynn]

BOLIVIA: Evo Morales, the Best Ally of the Middle Class
Analysis by Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Jan 8 , 2010 (IPS) - Just five years ago, an alliance between an indigenous leader and Bolivia's small but influential middle class seemed virtually impossible.

But left-wing President Evo Morales was re-elected last month with an even more impressive landslide victory than his already unprecedented triumph in 2005, clearly reflecting growing support among the middle class.

In upper middle-class circles in Bolivia, it is fashionable to be vehemently anti-Morales. Nevertheless, the president took 64 percent of the vote in the Dec. 6 elections, compared to just under 54 percent in December 2005 - in a country where leaders are often elected with less than half that level of support.

Nearly three million of a total 4.85 million voters expressed their support at the ballot box for Morales, the leader of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, while 1.9 million distributed their votes among seven different opposition candidates.

In Bolivia, where over 60 percent of the population of 9.7 million are Amerindians, the lighter-skinned middle class, made up of business families, doctors, lawyers, engineers and other professionals, have often played a key political role in the country's history.

That was the case, for example, during the so-called "gas war" of October 2003 - a month of protests against the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada's (1993-1997 and 2002-2003) plans for foreign oil companies to export huge quantities of Bolivia's natural gas to the United States and Mexico.

It was not just the strikes and roadblocks by indigenous and labour groups in El Alto, a vast working-class suburb of La Paz, but the presence of middle-class demonstrators on the streets of upscale neighbourhoods in the capital as well, that finally toppled Sánchez de Lozada - but not until some 60 people had been killed when the army was called out to squelch the protests.

There are no statistics showing the proportion of families that would be considered middle class in Bolivia, but this segment of the population has had a heavy presence in and influence on both dictatorial and democratic governments throughout Bolivian history.

The same holds true today. While Morales' support base is made up of the urban working class and poor coca farmers and other peasants, his cabinet is comprised of a large portion of ministers from the middle class.

In his reelection campaign, the president - whose second term starts on Jan. 22 - focused this time around on wooing middle-class voters, by incorporating personalities like Ana María Romero on his party's list of candidates for Congress.

Romero, a former ombudsperson with a middle-class - as opposed to rural or labour - background, is first senator for La Paz and will possibly become Senate president.

In 2003, Romero headed peaceful demonstrations in residential neighbourhoods against the Sánchez de Lozada administration's bloody repression of protests.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com.nyud.net:8090/2422/4075202209_8a85efeba8_m.jpg http://www.ernestojustiniano.org.nyud.net:8090/videos2/E0909030606.jpg http://img504.imageshack.us.nyud.net:8090/img504/1007/amrd.jpg

http://www.lanacion.cl.nyud.net:8090/noticias/site/artic/20091208/imag/foto_0220091208182420.jpg

Ana María Romero, Vice President Álvaro García Linera, Evo Morales

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49925

[Downwinder]

1. I'm going to get stepped on for this comment, but,

I can't stop wondering. As the Indigenous Americans become more politically powerful, how many European cross-breds are going to start finding their indigenous roots?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Absolutely! Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

As it is, they only seem to identify with the Bolivian people when they're entering beauty contests, or getting to wear colorful costumes in parades and celebrations. Then, they are "authentic" Bolivians.

http://photos.igougo.com.nyud.net:8090/images/p305964-La_Paz-Kari_Kari_Diablada_Pachamama_and_the_Tio.jpg http://www.craftstylish.com.nyud.net:8090/assets/uploads/posts/51583/Bolivia_lg.jpg

[Downwinder]

3. After all, Europeans have only been in the Western Hemisphere for about 500 years.

A fairly short period in the development of man, even if you ascribe to Intelligent Design.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Part 2 well worth reading! A gold nugget in almost every paragraph!

(CONTINUED)

Just three of Morales' 20 ministers are indigenous people: Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, Justice Minister Celima Torrico, and Minister of Rural Development and Land Julia Ramos, all of whom come from poor peasant families.

Trade unionists hold two positions in the cabinet: Public Works Minister Walter Delgadillo and Labour Minister Calixto Chipana.

The rest of the cabinet posts are held by professionals and technocrats.

Vice President Álvaro García Linera himself is a middle-class intellectual, and a firm believer that it was time for Bolivia to finally have an indigenous president.

Besides García Linera, MAS leaders include intellectuals with a background in the Communist Party, whose influence waned when it flirted with the insurgent movement led by legendary Cuban-Argentine guerrilla leader Ernesto Ché Guevara - before he was captured and killed in Bolivia in 1967 - and after its brief interlude in government as part of the centre-left Popular and Democratic Unity (UDP) coalition, which governed from October 1982 to August 1985.

In last month's elections, the governing MAS won 114 of 166 seats in Congress - a large enough majority to enable the Morales administration to push through far-reaching reforms needed to fully implement the new constitution, which was approved by voters in a January 2009 referendum and went into effect a month later.

The new constitution empowers the impoverished indigenous majority, historically discriminated against in Bolivia, South America's poorest country. Native people were not even allowed to vote until 1952.

Morales' main rival in the Dec. 6 elections was right-wing candidate Manfred Reyes Villa, who garnered 1.2 million votes, 26.4 percent of the total.

Cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina, Bolivia's richest man, a centre-right politician who has sought to portray himself as a moderate, came in a distant third, with 5.6 percent (less than 300,000 votes).

Morales not only took 10.5 percent more votes than he did four years ago, but the actual number of votes nearly doubled: from 1.54 to 2.9 million, out of a total number of registered voters that increased from 3.6 to 4.85 million over the last four years.

That leap was due to the government's successful nationwide voter registration drive, carried out with a transparent system that includes fingerprints and a photograph identifying each voter.

Many of the 1.5 million new voters who backed Morales had abandoned rightwing positions, at least partly because the economic results achieved over the last four years have been so much more outstanding than anything accomplished by the rightwing administrations that have governed since 1985.

Besides the continued solid support Morales reaped from the urban and rural poor and working-class sectors, he earned the backing this time around of a considerable number of middle-class voters, as indicated by the figures provided by the electoral authorities.

For example, in the department or province of La Paz, a bastion of Morales support, he not only won a majority of votes in poor areas like El Alto, but also in traditional rightwing districts. In the province, eight out of 10 voters supported MAS (i.e., Morales).

Despite the global crisis, Bolivia boasted one of the highest growth rates in Latin America in 2009, with GDP growth of three percent, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and 2.8 percent according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which praised the Morales administration's balanced management of public finances.

According to a study by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a Washington-based think tank, Bolivia’s economic growth in the last four years has been higher than at any time in the last three decades, averaging 5.2 percent a year since Morales took office in January 2006.

The report also points to Morales' reversal of the privatisation of the country's natural gas reserves - the second-largest in the region, after Venezuela's - by an earlier administration, a move that boosted government revenues from hydrocarbons from 5.6 percent of GDP in 2004 to 25.7 percent in late 2008.

In addition, Bolivia's foreign reserves climbed from less than two billion dollars in 2005 to more than eight billion in 2008, the CEPR study underlines.

The global recession has not hit Bolivia as hard as many other countries. Unemployment, for instance, has only risen slightly, from 10.2 percent in 2008 to 11 percent in 2009, according to the Centre for Research on Labour and Agrarian Development (CEDLA), a La Paz-based think tank.

Savings, meanwhile, increased by 581 million dollars in the first half of 2009, 10.2 percent more than in the first six months of 2008, with deposits rising to nearly 6.3 billion dollars, the private banking association, Asoban, reported.

By July 2009, Bolivia's banks had earned a record 148 million dollars, according to the Central Bank, outstripping forecasts.

Although other sectors of the economy have complained about a lack of incentives for their economic activities, the country's banks, based in the relatively prosperous eastern province of Santa Cruz, with interests in industry and large-scale production of soy, cotton and other commodities for which international demand is high, have particularly prospered under the Morales administration.

And while some analysts say drug production and trafficking have grown substantially, with an estimated 100 million dollars in purchases of coca leaves and services, that figure pales in comparison to the country's 19 billion dollars in GDP for 2009 or the total bank deposits.

The influx of contraband goods, informal trade and the activities of small businesses and craftmakers helped offset the low level of job creation by large investments.

Another sign of growth is the 23 percent increase in tax revenues, which rose from 1.86 billion dollars in 2008 to 2.28 billion in 2009, as Bolivia's national tax service reported in December.

Despite continued heavy resistance and opposition from big business and the elites, and with the painful memories of the economic disasters of the 1980s, the quiet confidence in Morales is apparently growing, and 4.5 percent GDP growth is projected for 2010.

Conditional cash transfers to poor families, a universal minimum pension, and payments to pregnant women and nursing mothers who follow a strict schedule of doctors' visits, along the lines of programmes carried out in Brazil and Chile, as well as a moderate, patient governing style similar to those of Chile's socialist President Michelle Bachelet and Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, seem to be another key to the undeclared social pacts and alliances that brought Morales back for a second term. (END)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49925

-------------------------------

FABULOUS SUCCESS FOR MORALES and the Bolivarian Revolution! The numbers say it all! Bolivia did even better than Venezuela in 2009--the Year of the Bushwhack Worldwide Depression. Both countries were well-poised to ride it out--with low debt, high cash reserves, smart budgeting and LEFTISTS in charge, to keep social programs going so that it did not slam the poor (the backbone of all economies).

Venezuela, however, was even better situated. Although Venezuela stagnated in 2009, it has had a longer period of economic growth (2003-2008) and twice the rate of growth of Bolivia (over 10%)--such sizzling growth that they now have the problem of inflation*. Some of Bolivia's accomplishments are more recent--such as doubling of hydrocarbon revenues. (And Bolivia apparently had help from Chavez advisors in renegotiating the gas contracts with multinationals.) Bolivia is really just getting started with its social programs. Venezuela's are huge and have been up and running for some time, and Venezuela has thus far weathered the Bushwhack Depression with no cuts in social programs.

I want to take issue with one thing in the above article. It's emphasized in the final paragraph, which it where it struck me that the article had an agenda--of portraying Morales and his quite amazing and profound revolution as "moderate" and acceptable to the middle class. The last paragraph lists some new benefits such as a universal minimum pension (which benefits the poor), then says that those and "a moderate, patient governing style similar to those of Chile's socialist President Michelle Bachelet and Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, seem to be another key to the undeclared social pacts and alliances that brought Morales back for a second term."

First of all, Morales is no moderate. He is a revolutionary. Peaceful, yes, but deeply, totally revolutionary. Secondly, while his "governing style" may be mild and patient (and the word "saintly" comes to mind), his policies are way to the left of Michele Batchelet and Lula da Silva. Thirdly, Morales did not need "middle class votes" to win a second term. He was already hugely popular. The addition of 10% more votes over previous wins was just "icing on the cake," so to speak. I think that the "middle class voters" have joined him and MAS because it is obviously to their benefit--rather than him and MAS recruiting "middle class voters" or "moderating" any of their policies to do so. Those very leftist, and very revolutionary, policies are benefiting the middle class, because they are good policies for the country, not because the policies have been tailored to attract them.

It is an important point, because I have seen evidence in our corpo-fascist press--specifically, the Washington Post (CIA scribes) but also elsewhere--of fawning over Morales, and painting Morales as "the good left," while continuing to excorciate Hugo Chavez, Morales' closest ally and closest ideological compadre. It is even arguable that Morales is to the left of Chavez in some ways. The purpose of this fawning over Bolivia may be to try to keep Bolivia out of a planned aggression against Venezuela, whose northern Caribbean coastal oil region is more vulnerable to attack, and which the Pentagon is surrounding with war assets--in Colombia, in the Caribbean, in Panama, in Honduras. Bolivia is not strategically well-situated for U.S. aggression--as the Bushwhacks found out in their failed coup attempt in Bolivia in 2008. But Venezuela IS vulnerable, and has Colombia--which the Pentagon is turning into a "South Vietnam"--all along its border, and illegal U.S. overflights are already harassing its oil coast on the Caribbean.

Painting Morales as a "moderate" and an "acceptable" leftist may be part of a strategy for attacking Venezuela--part of the political "divide and conquer" preliminaries. It is especially suspicious in the Washington Post. IPS may have just picked up on it--and is just pushing it because it seemed a good "handle" on the story. I really don't know the writer or IPS well enough to say. But given our country's warmongering stance in the world--and all the signs and omens that Venezuela is a target--we should develop a sensitivity to these kinds of subtle nuances in our largely untrustworthy and very warmongering press.

Batchelet and da Silva are good leaders, and they were especially wonderful when the Bushwhacks tried a coup in Bolivia in 2008. When Morales threw the U.S. ambassador and the DEA out, amidst U.S. funded and instigated rightwing rioting, they backed up Morales 100%. Both of them--and also Chavez in Venezuela, and Cristina Fernandez in Argentina--brought forth economic/development support to help Morales out further. Da Silva in particular has also had Hugo Chavez's back as well, and has often defended him. All of these leaders share a common view about sticking together for collective defense of their sovereignty and economic and other cooperation, and have in fact formalized a continent-wide trade group, UNASUR, which is a proto-type "common market" and does not include the U.S. They have mightily resisted U.S. corpo-fascist "divide and conquer" tactics. They also share a commitment to social justice. But they differ along a leftist spectrum--from "moderates" who are willing to make significant compromises on U.S. corpo-fascist economic and military issues, to strong leftists, who are not willing to compromise on those issues. Batchelet is most "pro-U.S.." Da Silva and Fernandez fall to the left of her. Morales and Chavez fall to the left of them--the most unwilling to make any compromises or do any kowtowing to U.S. corporate or military interests.

Although da Silva took a strong stance on Honduras, and is strongly committed on Latin American sovereignty issues, and is close to Chavez as a friend and colleague-especially on their "raise all boats" philosophy (big countries helping littler countries)--his own social justice policies are not nearly as revolutionary as those of Morales and Chavez. But all I'm really saying with these comparisons is that to paint Morales as a "moderate" is strange. He has drawn "middle class voters" because he is successful--his policies are working to improve life in Bolivia--not because he is a "moderate."

Finally, Hugo Chavez's accomplishments in Venezuela are equally as dramatic as those of Morales, yet they are never mentioned in the Washington Post or anywhere else in the corpo-fascist press, ever. I have provided a long list of them in other threads--a longer list than this one for Morales, including five years of amazing economic growth, and simply stunning statistics on improvements in education, health care, poverty and other spheres. They are truly astonishing. Morales is just getting started in a lot of ways, while Chavez has already produced such improvements in quality of life and wealth distribution that they now have to worry about inflation. Yet Chavez is demonized, and Morales is praised. Why? Just because he's a quieter person? I don't think so.


-----------------------

*(Bolivia might take some lessons from Venezuela, re keeping inflation under better control. I just learned, reading Mark Weisbrot on Venezuela, that inflation is to be expected in a progressive developing economy undergoing fast growth, and that 20% is the benchmark to look for, beyond which the government needs to be wary of hyperinflation and institute control measures. Venezuela just did the opposite. Inflation is beyond 20% but they just undertook a voluntary devaluation of the bolivar (long needed and expected), which, on the surface, threatens higher inflation, but also indicates their confidence in Venezuela's economy and seems designed to affect imports more than domestic products (and may stimulate domestic production). Another thing to be wary of is rightwing economic sabotage. USAID/CIA continues pouring U.S. tax dollars into rightwing groups in these countries, to support various political plans and likely destabilization and overthrow plots. Venezuela has seen a number of them--which I'm sure Morales and his government are well aware of. They suffered one themselves in September 2008--a full-blown, U.S. supported, white separatist insurrection--and it's interesting that Bolivia has prospered in every way since Morales threw the U.S. ambassador and the DEA out of the country.)