The End of the Oppression of Indigenous Peoples under Capitalism? Bolivia under the Morales Government

• Author: Soraia de Carvalho
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20920271
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20920271

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 233, Vol. 47 No. 4, July 2020, 58–75

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20920271

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

58

The End of the Oppression of Indigenous

Peoples under Capitalism?

Bolivia under the Morales Government

by

Soraia de Carvalho

Translated by

Luis Fierro

Examination of the indigenous issue under the Evo Morales government in the frame-

work of class struggle points to the weakening of the labor movement with the implanta-

tion of neoliberal measures in the late 1980s and the rise of the indigenous movement. The

constituent assembly restored the democratic illusions weakened by the upheavals of 2000

and 2003. Its predominantly indigenous and peasant composition brought the agrarian

question and the recognition of indigenous nationalities to the center of the debate. This

experience did not and could not change the class nature of the state. The maintenance and

defense of large private capitalist property is incompatible with a practice of national

sovereignty and self-determination of indigenous nationalities.

Um exame a questão indígena sob o governo Evo Morales nos marcos da luta de classes

aponta o enfraquecimento do movimento operário com a implantação de medidas neolib-

erais nos fins dos anos 1980 e a ascensão o movimento indígena. A constituinte recompôs

as ilusões democráticas enfraquecidas com os levantes de 2000 e 2003. A composição

predominantemente indígena e camponesa da assembleia constituinte e a presença das

suas organizações no processo traziam para o centro do debate a solução da questão agrária

e do reconhecimento das nacionalidades indígenas. Esta experiência não modificou e nem

poderia modificar a natureza de classe do Estado. A manutenção e defesa da grande pro-

priedade privada capitalista são incompatíveis com uma prática de soberania nacional e

autodeterminação das nacionalidades indígenas.

Keywords: State, Bolivia, Constituent Assembly, Labor movement, Indigenous

movement

Along with other Latin American countries, Bolivia has experienced coloni-

zation, independence without effective national sovereignty, and a fragile and

unstable formal democracy. In the 1990s a nationalist party, the Movimiento

Nacionalista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement—MNR),

was the driver of neoliberal policies and, in the face of the political crisis of the

ruling classes, witnessed the rise of the coca-growers’ union leader Evo Morales

to the presidency in 2006. The election of an indigenous president was part of

Soraia de Carvalho is a professor in the Department of Social Work at the Federal University of

Pernambuco. This article is a by-product of her 2016 doctoral thesis, “Estado e luta de clases na

Bolivia.” Luis Fierro is a translator living in the Miami area.

920271LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20920271LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESCarvalho / THE INDIGENOUS ISSUE UNDER MORALES

research-article2020

Carvalho / THE INDIGENOUS ISSUE UNDER MORALES 59

a broader response to the attacks on neoliberal governments that were causing

them to leave the scene either via elections or after mass uprisings.

Several Latin American presidents had been elected on the basis of anti-

neoliberal rhetoric since 1998: Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Ricardo Lagos in

Chile, Lula in Brazil, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Tabaré Vásquez in Uruguay,

Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, among others. Their

governments promised the democratization of the state, social inclusion, a

struggle against social inequality, and sustainable development. The results of

the global economic crisis showed that their role in the international division

of labor was as raw-material producers.

Parallel to the decline of commodities prices and the difficulties in central-

izing the fractions of the ruling classes, these governments were eventually

removed either by elections or by institutional coups, and in their places openly

proimperialist governments with fascist wings, following a general trend to the

right of bourgeois politics, emerged. Evo Morales also faced difficulties. In

February 2016 a plebiscite to allow him to run for a fourth term resulted in a no

vote, but the constitutional court authorized him to run in 2019. While Bolivia’s

strong indigenous presence and low industrialization have parallels in other

Andean countries, the politicization of the mining proletariat is a distinctive

feature apparent since the adoption of the Theses of Pulacayo, a union docu-

ment developing a revolutionary strategy for the country, at the congress of the

Bolivian Miners’ Union Federation in 1946. The rightward trend was also evi-

dent in Bolivia. The Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement toward Socialism—

MAS) government itself embodied it, enacting restrictions on union organization

(Supreme Decree 2.348/2015), guaranteeing “legal security” for foreign inves-

tors, and collaborating with extreme right-wing governments in Brazil and

Italy by denying asylum to and arresting and delivering the persecuted politi-

cian Cesare Battisti in January 2019.

In response to Evo’s antipopular measures, mobilizations increased, espe-

cially of factory workers but also of indigenous people, cooperative miners,

and other sectors. The organic bourgeois parties sought to return to power but

were deeply demoralized by the masses, and significant fractions of the ruling

classes still preferred to express themselves through the MAS government. The

government moved to the right to present itself as the best option for contain-

ing the class struggle. The crisis of the Morales government raised the possibil-

ity of independent organization of the masses detached from the grand illusions

that accompanied Morales’s trajectory. Signs of this were the various forms of

direct action that the movements adopted against him—blockades, marches,

occupations, strikes, and even the use of dynamite in response to police repres-

sion. As a contribution to understanding the challenges of social movements

under the MAS, I will begin by reviewing the socioeconomic reality of Bolivia

to clarify the contradictions of the constituent process and its recent unfolding.

Aspects of the BoliviAn sociAl formAtion

Bolivia is a semicolonial country in which capitalist (concentrated in some

sectors) and precapitalist (with servile relations formally abolished only in the