RE: [Marxism] Interesting view on Ecuador events

["M. Junaid Alam" <mjunaidalam@xxxxxxxxxx>]

"

In Venezuela, with ONLY the underlying elements of an Ecuador or
Bolivia-type crisis (i.e., generalized repudiation of traditional
politicians and revulsion at the state of the nation, i.e., its subservience
to foreign interests and the conditions faced by the people, the big
majority) a leadership emerged which was even able to take advantage of
bourgeois elections and a constituent assembly to unleash a process that, at
least thus far, has largely consolidated a revolutionary government based on
the toilers, posed the question of a social transformation, and begun to
take what appear to be significant measures in that direction."

There are several factors at play. I make no special claim to knowing all of 
them,
or how exactly they interrelate, but some immediate observations come to the 
fore.

First, what you had in Venezuela was not "only the underlying elements" of a 
crisis.
You had more than that. You had a leadership prepared to act on the crisis: a 
junior
military officer corps which was very radical in its political outlook,
as a result of an organic connection to the people. This was for two reasons: 
they
grew to sympathize with the cause of the leftist guerrillas they were earlier 
tasked with
fighting, and they were put in contact with civilian leftist intellectuals in 
their
educational training at the universities.

So it was not just a general crisis that made the Bolivarian movement possible.
After all, the 1989 Carazco riots, when the masses descended on the capital in
anger over soaring bus fares, was about as much as a crisis you could have.
What happened? The military was called out, and massacred thousands of the 
rioters.
The rest slinked back into the shanty towns, demoralized and afraid.

The reason this is not the end of the story is that a section of that military, 
though
totally unprepared for this unforeseen explosion, was waiting for a chance
just like this to launch a leftist coup against the government. They were
forced to shoot down the people in whose name they were preparing to take
power. Chavez mounted an unsuccessful coup attempt two years later, with
civilian and military elements involved. But it was only unsuccessful in the
immediate sense - the commitment of these coup plotters, combined with the
anger of the masses, made an electoral solution possible years later.

So in one sense, the leadership did not "emerge" from the masses in a schematic
way. It emerged from the military, from the ex-guerrillas, from leftist 
intellectuals,
who were radicalized by their anger at the conditions of the masses, and who
themselves in large part came out of the same background as the masses.

Viewed in broader terms, the political tumult in Ecuador over the past decade
is a result of the political awakening of the huge indigenous population. Is
it possible that because of this composition, because of the large rift between
the indigenous and the rest of society, the middle class, the military, the
intellectuals, that there has been little interpenetration and 
cross-radicalization?

If so, if there is large racial and ethnic barrier separating the poorest
from the rest of society, who knows where this process will end up? It
could result in some very bloody confrontations down the road. Alternatively,
there is no reason to think that the system cannot bourgeoisify and
buy off the leadership of the indigenous movement. That is to say,
there is nothing automatic about indigenous people adopting a socialist
vision. It is one thing to run around protesting in the streets and raising
general hell; it is quite another to hold on firmly to the principles
animating this action and conquer political power,


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