{"id":2797,"date":"2019-11-17T01:56:41","date_gmt":"2019-11-17T01:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/?p=2797"},"modified":"2019-11-17T02:01:58","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T02:01:58","slug":"bolivia-morales-comes-up-against-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/bolivia-morales-comes-up-against-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Bolivia \u2013 Morales comes up against capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For many, the years following Evo Morales\u2019s 2005 election in \nBolivia were marked by jubilation and hope. For Bolivia\u2019s indigenous \npeople, support for Morales appeared to be paying off. The poverty rate \ndropped from 59.9 percent in 2006\u202fto 36.4 percent. Access for indigenous\n communities to electricity, sewerage and water service all grew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morales presided over an economy that has grown by an annual average \nof 4.6 percent since he took office, more than twice the rate for all of\n Latin America. After nationalising the country\u2019s natural gas reserves, \nhe pursued market-friendly economic policies and invested export revenue\n in social programs that helped lift more than two million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now Morales faces growing opposition from the diverse ethnicities \nthat made him Bolivia\u2019s first indigenous president. After clashes with \nnative groups over development, and constitutional manoeuvres to stay in\n office, across Bolivia, indigenous people are increasingly turning \nagainst Evo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018His way of thinking and his actions aren\u2019t indigenous,\u2019 said \nGualberto Cusi, a former judge and ethnic Aymara, an Andean tribe from \nwhich Morales himself also hails. \u2018He always said he would consult the \npeople,\u2019 said Salles, the former Conamaq leader. \u2018Now he doesn\u2019t.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two major indigenous rights organisations, Cidob and The National \nCouncil of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu, left the Unity Pact. \nGovernment supporters began to stage what some described as coups within\n the organisations. Politics and loyalty to Morales began to matter more\n than the indigenous cause and pro-Morales activists said those \norganisations\u2019 previous leaders were tools of American imperialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I have heard many debates in the UN where presidents condemn climate\n change but they never say \u2013 cowardly enough \u2013 what causes it. We say \nclearly that it is caused by capitalism,\u2019 Morales declared in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lake Poop\u00f3, once Bolivia\u2019s second largest body of water covering \n2,400 sq km, dried up completely by late 2015. The government blamed \nclimate change exclusively for the lake\u2019s disappearance, allowing it to \navoid taking any responsibility for the lake\u2019s drying and ignoring the \neffects of irrigation schemes and water taken for mining which Morales \nis reluctant to regulate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Morales has accused developed countries of pushing \u2018colonial \nenvironmentalism\u2019 in Bolivia when NGOs criticise the construction of a \nhighway through protected ecosystems. The 190-mile (300km) road would \ncut through the Isiboro S\u00e9cure Indigenous Territory and National Park, \nknown as Tipnis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018This is the beginning of the destruction of protected areas in \nBolivia and indigenous peoples\u2019 territory,\u2019 Fernando Vargas, a Tipnis \nindigenous leader, explained, \u2018Evo Morales is not a defender of Mother \nEarth, or indigenous peoples. He\u2019s in favour of extractivism and \ncapitalism.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opponents of the road say it will open up the park to mining and oil and gas exploration, as well as loggers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morales has also lost another pillar of his support. Historically the\n mining cooperatives have been allies of the President. With the global \ncommodities downturn in prices such as in zinc, tin, silver and gold it \nhas reduced the income of the miners and the miners want a larger share \nof the mining revenues. The pie is smaller for the cooperative miners\u2019 \nreturns. The pie is smaller for the state and its taxes. The \ncooperatives want the right to form partnerships with transnationals. As\n the Guardian put it (28 August 2016): \u2018They want to be able to \nassociate with private companies, which promise to put more cash in \ntheir pockets, but are currently prohibited from doing so.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A cooperativista is willing to risk poor health and water pollution \nin the hopes of benefiting. With commodity prices well down the outlook \nis for fewer prospects for co-operatives to make a living \u2014 and thus \nmore anger, discontent and unrest. An article in Dissident Voice reached\n the same conclusion as the World Socialist Movement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2026like many cooperatives in the US that arose out of the 1960s, they \nhave turned into small businesses. Regardless of their initial \nintentions, cooperatives existing in a surrounding capitalist \nenvironment must compete in business practices or go under\u2019 (our \nemphasis, \ndissidentvoice.org\/2016\/08\/behind-the-bolivia-miner-cooperatives-protests-and-the-killing-of-the-bolivian-vice-minister\/).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we now see from the series of articles here on Latin America, \ncapitalism is a global system and no matter how genuine politicians may \nbe or how well-meaning their policies may be, capitalism has its own \nlaws which must be eventually submitted to and which cannot be \ndisregarded for very long. In Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia, each \nnation may have encountered issues unique to them but all three shared \none common problem \u2013 capitalism dominated their economy. Declaring that \nyour government is anti-capitalist does not make it so and they are most\n definitely not examples of socialism or even aspiring to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALJO<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Socialist Standard November 2018<\/a> article in Material World <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many, the years following Evo Morales\u2019s 2005 election in Bolivia were marked by jubilation and hope. For Bolivia\u2019s indigenous people, support for Morales appeared to be paying off. The poverty rate dropped from 59.9 percent in 2006\u202fto 36.4 percent. Access for indigenous communities to electricity, sewerage and water service all grew. Morales presided over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2798,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2797\/revisions\/2798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}