[A-List] Bolivia's Morales: 'This little Indian won't be leaving office'

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/696/36151
	
	

	Bolivia's Morales: 'This little Indian won't be leaving office'




	Federico Fuentes
	25 January 2007
	
	
	On January 22, 2002, then Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) senator
Evo Morales was expelled from parliament, accused of being a
"narco-terrorist". Exactly five years later, as the nation's first
indigenous president, Morales gave his first annual report to parliament.
This time it was not Morales who exited prematurely. 
	
	Morales began his speech by thanking those who had expelled him in
2002, particularly senator Luis Vasquez Villamor, then from the Movement of
the Revolutionary Left, now representing the right-wing party Podemos.
"Thanks to these people I am here today, they were my campaign managers."
Angered by these comments, just minutes into Morales's speech the Podemos
bench left the room. 
	
	They were not the only ones to leave upset. US ambassador Phillip
Goldberg did not take kindly to Morales's demand for the legislative body to
pass a bill requiring US citizens to obtain visas before entering the
country, as Bolivians must do to enter the US, for reasons of "dignity,
reciprocity and security". 
	
	At one point in his speech, Morales said his critics "should be
worried because this little Indian won't be leaving office easily". 
	
	Outside, thousands of indigenous campesinos (peasants) and workers
gathered to celebrate the day with Morales, waiting for him to deliver his
report to those who had brought him to power. 
	
	A poll published in the main La Paz daily, La Razon, a year after
Bolivia's powerful indigenous movement took control of parliament, showed
that Morales's approval across the major cities was 59% ? higher that his
historic 53.7% vote in the December 2005 elections. The rate was higher in
the countryside, where Morales's main support base is. 
	
	This reflects the support that Bolivia's national revolution, led by
Morales and with Bolivia's indigenous people as its core, has among the
Bolivian masses, who, having regained their spirit and dignity are fighting
to liberate Bolivia and decolonise its racist state structures. 
	
	A year of indigenous power 
	
	This strong support is in large part due to the progress made on one
of Morales's key election promises ? the nationalisation of hydrocarbons.
Having overthrown two presidents in their struggle to regain control over
their natural resources, particularly gas, over 90% of Bolivians approved
when Morales sent the military into the gas fields on May 1 to return
control of hydrocarbons to the state. 
	
	Six months later after intense negotiations, which resulted in the
resignation of hardline pro-nationalisation hydrocarbons minister Andres
Soliz Rada and a war of words between the Bolivian government and Brazil's
state oil company Petrobras, 44 new contracts were signed. The new rules
meant that the state gained control over hydrocarbons, from below the ground
through to the end of the industrialisation phase, and the corporations were
to become service providers. The state would receive 82% of the revenue,
which the corporations previously took for themselves. 
	
	The government also successfully renegotiated a doubling of the
price for gas sold to Argentina, and hopes to do the same soon with Brazil. 
	
	The result ? nearly US$1.3 billion in revenue from gas (an increase
of $635 million). Combined with a growth rate of 4.3%, a reduction of
parliamentary salaries by 50% and macroeconomic stability, the government
has been able to use this strong economic position to begin to deliver on
some of its promises, reversing the impact of neoliberalism in Bolivia. 
	
	Morales has personally travelled around the country to redistribute
the gains from the gas nationalisation. These include (with substantial help
from Cuba and Venezuela) 2000 Cuban doctors, 20 new hospitals, a literacy
campaign in which 73,000 out of 300,000 participants have already graduated,
the Juancito Pinto annual bonus for all school children under the age of 10
to help cover the costs of schooling, and tractors as part of the government
land reform plan. 
	
	This high level of support has also allowed the government to move
forward with its "agrarian revolution", violently opposed by the large
landowners who have begun to set up paramilitary groups. 
	
	Challenges ahead 
	
	While there were some important gains made in implementing the
government's economic plans over the past year, its key political plank ?
the Constituent Assembly ? remains stalled by the opposition. 
	
	According to Morales, the Constituent Assembly "is the best
democratic instrument ? to profoundly change our country. It is the best
instrument to unify, to integrate our national territory." He added that the
assembly is "the hope of Bolivians to patent the necessary structural
transformations, and the changes in the economic and social sphere". 
	
	Three other key challenges the government faces are pushing forward
with the industrialisation of gas and mining to maintain and further improve
economic stability, better management at the microeconomic level in order to
ensure more resources and redistributed wealth reach those sectors and
regions that need it most, and better coordination in the face of the rise
of a new opposition. 
	
	Morales noted that still pending in the process of nationalising
hydrocarbons was obtaining 50%-plus-1 of the shares in companies operating
in Bolivia, and the refoundation of the state oil company YPFB, which is
still not in a position to carry out the industrialisation of gas. The
increased revenue from the nationalisation, as well as help from Venezuelan
state oil company PDVSA, through the newly formed joint project Petroandina,
will allow the government to move ahead on these tasks, Morales said. 
	
	Morales also used his one-year anniversary to announce the "second
nationalisation" of the mining industry. Last year, mining exports equalled
$1.1 billion, of which only 1.5% went into state coffers. Morales proposed
that at least half of this now go to the state, while the exportation of raw
minerals will be limited to give primacy to Bolivia's industrialisation. 
	
	To help this, the government proposed recovering ownership of the
Vinto tin smelter, sold off illegally under previous neoliberal governments.
The Morales government has already begun to rebuild the state mining company
Comibol, having integrated 5000 ex-cooperative miners into the company. 
	
	National Coalition for Change 
	
	In order to ensure better management of the state apparatus,
particularly in the opposition-controlled regions, as well as coordination
among the social movements and their representatives in parliament and the
Constituent Assembly, Morales initiated the National Coalition for Change on
January 23. 
	
	The coalition is to involve 16 national social organisations ?
including indigenous, campesino and workers' organisations ? and will
"coordinate the social power of the social movements with the executive and
legislative power and the constituent delegates, and will fundamentally
define the political, revolutionary, democratic and cultural line",
explained the president of the lower house of parliament, Raul Novillo. 
	
	This coordination is necessary to confront the rise of a new
opposition, based in the pro-business civic committee of Santa Cruz and the
prefectures of the four eastern departments (states) referred to as the
"half moon". Raising the banner of autonomy in order to maintain its
hegemony over the east, the Santa Cruz elite (tied to the gas transnationals
and the US) have attempted to mobilise the predominately white middle and
upper classes against the Morales government. 
	
	Stressing the need for social stability, furthering economic
improvements and defending autonomy within a clear framework of national
unity and control of essential areas ? such as natural resources, police and
taxes ? will be crucial to isolating this new opposition and winning over
and consolidating large sections of the middle classes and the armed forces
to supporting Bolivia's revolution. 
	
	Similar structures are to be established at the departmental (or
state) level from February, which along with departmental delegates selected
by the national government will help in coordination and organisation at
this level. Such coordination has been impeded because six out of nine
prefectures are controlled by the right. 
	
	On January 24, the three opposition parties in the Senate united to
elect one of their own as president of the upper house, National Unity
senator Jose Villavicencio. This revival of the "mega coalition" of the
neoliberal parties that sustained the previous governments is one more part
of the oppositions plan to block Morales's attempts to lead a democratic and
cultural revolution. 
	
	That day, Bolpress reported that other official sources said this
new opposition directorate would ask for the revision of the parliamentary
session that passed the new agrarian reform law. Villavicencio has also
announced that the Senate would review another bill in that session relating
to cooperation with the Venezuelan military on Bolivian soil. 
	
	In response, Morales was quoted by the Bolivian Information Service
on January 24 as saying that "the right, the neoliberals, the auctioneers
have united, but there is no need for us to protest". 
	
	"The experience we have is that there are social forces who are
demanding their rights. Within this framework I am sure that the people will
identify if [the Senate] works against this process of change." 
	
	Morales recalled how the opposition had tried to block the passage
of the agrarian reform law, as well as the ratification of the gas
contracts, by boycotting the Senate, and argued that "it was the
mobilisation of the people that unblocked the Senate".
	
	From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #696
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2007/696>  31 January 2007.