The Incorporation of Social Organizations under the MAS in Bolivia

• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20918556
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20918556

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 233, Vol. 47 No. 4, July 2020, 76–95

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20918556

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

76

The Incorporation of Social Organizations

under the MAS in Bolivia

by

Angus McNelly

By drawing on the theoretical framework of the second incorporation of heterogeneous

social organizations by progressive governments through informal contestation and/or

technocratic implementation of their demands in Latin America, this article argues that the

first presidential term of Evo Morales in Bolivia (2006–2009) was marked by the incorpora-

tion of combative social movements through both a multidimensional co-optation of move-

ments and the technocratic competition of the central movement demands for the

nationalization of gas and the rewriting of the constitution through a constituent assembly.

However, by 2010, this incorporation had stripped social movements of their ability to

mobilize for change and the political conjuncture had shifted, making the government less

dependent on its social bases to maintain political stability. This simultaneously trans-

formed movements into defensive movements protecting the gains from the previous period

and state–social-movement relations into informal contestatory regimes in which move-

ments could only struggle against proposed political agendas.

En base a un marco teórico que abarca la segunda incorporación de organizaciones

sociales heterogéneas por parte de gobiernos progresistas a través de la contestación infor-

mal y/o la implementación tecnocrática de sus demandas en América Latina, un análisis

del proyecto político de Evo Morales en Bolivia sostiene que su primer mandato presiden-

cial se vio caracterizado por la incorporación de movimientos sociales combativos a través

de una cooptación multidimensional de dichos movimientos y la competencia tecnocrática

de las demandas del movimiento central en torno a la nacionalización del gas y la modifi-

cación de la constitución por una asamblea constituyente. Sin embargo, para 2010, esta

incorporación había despojado a los movimientos sociales de su capacidad de movilizarse

a favor del cambio y la coyuntura política había cambiado, haciendo que el gobierno

dependiera menos de sus bases sociales para mantener la estabilidad política. Esto trans-

formó a los movimientos en entidades defensivas dedicadas a proteger las ganancias del

período anterior y las relaciones entre el estado y los movimientos sociales en regímenes

informales de impugnación dentro de los cuales los movimientos mismos sólo podían

luchar contra las agendas políticas propuestas.

Keywords: Pink tide, Social movements, Bolivia, Evo Morales, Progressive governments

There is little debate that the conditions permitting the ascent to power of

Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, were created by the cycle of

social mobilization between the years 2000 and 2005 (Farthing and Kohl, 2014;

Angus McNelly is a lecturer in Latin American politics at Queen Mary University of London. He

completed his Ph.D. on working-class experiences of Evo Morales’s government in Bolivia in

Spring 2019.

918556LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20918556LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESMcNelly / SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS UNDER THE MAS IN BOLIVIA

research-article2020

McNelly / SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS UNDER THE MAS IN BOLIVIA 77

Hylton and Thomson, 2007; Webber, 2011). Mobilizations against the privatiza-

tion of water galvanized widespread protests from a coalition of urban and

rural forces, first in Cochabamba in 2000 and later in El Alto in 2004. In the rural

altiplano (highland plateau), the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores

Campesinos de Bolivia (Confederation of Peasant Unions—CSUTCB) orches-

trated three years of low-intensity protests, which rumbled on during the

period after Cochabamba’s water war (Gutiérrez, 2014). However, it was the

struggles for the nationalization of hydrocarbons and against the proposal to

export Bolivian gas through Chilean seaports that were most influential, top-

pling not one but two national governments (Spronk and Webber, 2007).

Morales’s political party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement toward

Socialism—MAS), was an active participant, albeit not the protagonist, in some

of these struggles. Being the political instrument of the CSUTCB and having a

cocalero (coca grower) as its leader later led commentators and party officials

alike to argue that the MAS had an apparent organic relationship with social

movements.

Over the Morales years (2006–2019), many authors have studied state–social-

movement relations under the MAS government. Particularly, there was a

spate of excellent intellectual production after the dust from Morales’s action-

packed first term (2006–2009) had settled, with the constituent assembly, strug-

gles over departmental autonomy and indigenous autonomy, agrarian reform,

and a series of nationalizations giving scholars and commentators ample mate-

rial to dissect. Most scholars were particularly interested in whether the MAS

government represented a break from the previous period—a new form of

politics—and whether the discourse of “a government of social movements”

had transformed state-society relations (see Escárzaga, 2012; Levitsky and

Roberts, 2011; Zuazo, 2010). Many of the most interesting debates situated the

domestic Bolivian dynamics within the broader left turn in Latin America, a

moment that Federico Rossi and Eduardo Silva (2018) labeled the “second

incorporation of social organizations” because of organizations’ newfound

importance under progressive governments. With the end of Latin America’s

pink tide1 and the controversial end to Morales’s time in government when he

was ousted on November 10, 2019 (see McNelly, 2019a), the imperative has

shifted as the Latin American left and its sympathizers elsewhere scramble to

work out where it all went wrong and to evaluate the gains, limitations, and

legacy of the pink tide.

To this end, in this article I address the dynamics of the incorporation of

social movements into the government of the MAS, examining its impacts on

the politics of these movements. The first four years of the second incorpora-

tion in Bolivia, I contend, were marked by offensive social movements forcing

the government into technocratic policy responses to demands.2 During this

initial period of the MAS, movement incorporation had three dimensions: (1)

co-optation from above, (2) the creation of parallel social organizations by the

government, and (3) the propensity of social organizations to be co-opted. The

central demands of the radical social movements of the previous period 2000–

2005 were incorporated into the government’s project, consolidating the posi-

tion of the MAS government and stripping movements of their most powerful

collective mobilizing frames. By 2010, the dynamics of social movement