| As I write, barricades in the streets of the major cities of Bolivia, from the capital of La Paz, on the Peruvian border, to Cochabamba, in the highlands, have shut the nation down. A sea of humanity is using its bodies to stop all traffic, shut down oil wells, and prevent the government from conducting business. In doing so the protesters have toppled the presidency of Carlos Mesa and forced the resignation of the next two people in line. The people are demanding that the president of the Supreme Court assume Mesa’s position and make plans for new elections in a matter of months. So far their demands have been fulfilled. I cannot predict how events will unfold by the time you read this, but hope that this analysis will help you understand what has happened between my writing and your reading.
Bolivia has the largest reserves of oil and natural gas in Latin America after Venezuela. Despite its immense natural subsoil wealth (for decades Bolivia was the world’s supplier of tin), Bolivia has not reaped the wealth of its resources. Currently foreign corporations buy the crude oil and gas, process, and sell it for seven times the price they pay Bolivia. Bolivians pay $49 a barrel for gasoline they sold to multinationals for $7.
Grassroots pressure to nationalize the nation’s oil and natural gas resources have been mounting for the last five years. In early May, the Bolivian Congress passed a compromise law taxing corporations at the rate of 50 percent. President Carlos Mesa did not veto the congressional bill. Oil corporations, the U.S., and a tiny group of private elites clustered in the Eastern city of Santa Cruz and whined about the tax. Bolivian people meanwhile immediately began to mobilize protests. Led by the national labor union who were followed quickly by campesino and indigenous groups, they demanded a full nationalization of oil and natural gas resources.
These demands and the militant protests of May and June 2005 should come as no surprise if we consider the following recent events:
* During the election of 2002, Evo Morales with his Move toward Socialism Party (MAS) came in just 1.5 percentage points behind the winner, Sanchez de Lozada, on a platform demanding nationalization of natural gas.
* In October 2003, a massive uprising removed President Sanchez de Lozada from office after he began a deal to sell natural gas to the U.S. for a pittance. Carlos Mesa became the interim president.
* In a referendum in 2003 92 percent of voters said yes to nationalization.
The uprising in Bolivia is also about indigenous rights. The indigenous people make up two-thirds of the population. They make up over 90 percent of those who are malnourished in Bolivia (about 70 percent of the population). In addition to nationalization of the oil and gas industries, the Aymara nation is demanding a new constitution for Bolivia. They want a Constituent Assembly that will for the first time bring indigenous people into the decision-making process in representative numbers. The Assembly would be mandated to create a new constitution for Bolivia. Unlike the Zapatistas of Mexico, the Aymara nation does not want autonomy. They want a new government for Bolivia, one based on cooperatives and local control and one that represents the culture of the majority of the population.
Bolivia and the United States:
Since 1990 the United States has been mired in deadly conflicts in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and East Africa while trying at the same time to impose free trade agreements and privatization campaigns on its southern neighbors. The United States has tried to use economic pressures and aid to proxy military forces (often hidden from the U.S. public or sold as an anti- drug campaign) to implement these “structural adjustments” in Latin America. The targets of privatization are not just the primary cash products like natural gas in Bolivia, but also internal necessities like health care, social security, education, water, and electricity. Bolivians engaged in a mass protest in 2000 to protect their right to water. The coalitions formed and tactics used five years ago provided an organizational starting point for the current uprising against oil and natural gas corporations.
For over 105 years, the United States government has supported the interests of the petroleum industry in the region. It has threatened to cut off all aid to Bolivia if the nation’s subsoil resources are nationalized. But the U.S. public is not likely to support another war for oil. Without the Soviets to blame anymore, the United States has had to scramble to find justifications that will convince the U.S. public to support its Latin America policy.
Beginning in the early 1990s, the U.S. Drug War replaced the Soviet Union as the justification for U.S. campaigns against democratic forces demanding rights in Latin America. In Bolivia drug enforcers have been poisoning the land and the farmers in the countryside in a supposed effort to stem the tide of cocaine in the U.S. Cocaleros, who are primarily indigenous farmers, have lost land and livelihood. The result has been that land ownership is increasingly in the hands of large agribusiness, and cocaine distribution in the U.S. continues. Given this reality it is no surprise that Evo Morales was able to gain widespread support demanding legalization of coca production during his 2002 campaign bid for the presidency.
In this latest wave of protests the United States has found a new enemy, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. At the OAS meeting in early June 2005, U.S. Ambassador Roger Noriega proclaimed that Hugo Chavez was the mastermind behind the uprising in Bolivia. No doubt the people of Bolivia are inspired by the Venezuela revolution, as are most people working for indigenous rights and against privatization and free trade in Latin America. Noriega, however, is not talking about inspiration, but money, guns, and deals. The fact that there is no evidence of this collusion is irrelevant to the U.S. ambassador.
What an old story! Those of us involved in Central America solidarity in the 1980s remember well the claim that Soviets and Cubans were the bosses of Central American campesinos. The assumption was that the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador would never think of rebelling themselves if foreign agitators did not fill their heads with false promises, slush funds, and military hardware.
But some things have changed since the 1980s. Latin America is not the primary focus of U.S. policy. It is clear that there are limits to the imperial reach of the United States. Conflicts in the Eastern Hemisphere have limited U.S. resources and have allowed Latin American social movements like those in Bolivia to gain ground.
I don’t know what will happen in Bolivia, but I can say the following: First, the uprising of May and June 2005 was grassroots and indigenous (in more ways then one); and second, it will not go away; and finally, the United States will try to suppress it. Depictions of Bolivian freedom fighters as terrorists, coming soon to a TV near you!
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