[Marxism] Re: Evo's errors

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fred Fuentes, quoting Soliz Rada, submitted:
 
It is incompatible to defend the Great Bolivarian Homeland whilst holding
some of the positions that MAS has inside the Constituent Assembly which
attempt to splinter the republic, such as the reconstruction of 39
indigenous nations and the reterritorialisation of Bolivia within a new
pluri-national state. This is heavenly music for the agents of eastern
separatism, who last September founded in Guayaquil - with delegates from
this Ecuadorian region and the Venezuelan state of Zulia - the
"International Confederation for Freedom and Regional Autonomy" of Latin
America, financed by petroleum companies who yearn to control important gas
and petroleum fields in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.
 
What I have written does not imply not recognizing the enormous value of our
millenary cultures, whose best traditions should form part of the united
country that we aspire to build....
 
It is inconsistent to ask the "Red Ponchos" to
take up arms (as Alvaro Garcia Linera did) and celebrate nostalgic homages
to guerilla focos, and then ask for the backing of the armed force, which,
in theory, are recognised for the fundamental role they play in national
life.
 

Fred comments:

 

Some or many criticisms of  the Morales government here may be sound, but
these generalizations just about have to be at least somewhat off, in my
opinion.

 

It is incompatible to defend the Great Bolivarian Homeland whilst holding
some of the positions that MAS has inside the Constituent Assembly which
attempt to splinter the republic, such as the reconstruction of 39
indigenous nations and the reterritorialisation of Bolivia within a new
pluri-national state. This is heavenly music for the agents of eastern

separatism.

 

There may be contradictions in the concrete circumstances, but a "Great
Bolivarian Homeland" in Bolivia must be built in part on a distinction
between the nationalism of the oppressed and that of the oppressor, and that
must include a radically different attitude even toward the separatism of
the oppresse and the separatism of the oppressor. If the Bolivian project
does not yet have the political strength to make this distinction and base
policy on it,  THAT IS A PROBLEM.  The various indigenous projects, some of
which may be positive and some not, have to be distinguished from the
Eastern elite operation on this basis and dealt with on the basis of this
distinction.  If the Bolivian regime cannot operate on the basis of this
fundamental democratic distinction, rather than getting tangled in
bourgeois-democratic abstractions that place the drive for autonomy among
the land and oil barons in the East and the long-suppressed aspirations of
the indigenous people on the same level of rights, THAT IS A PROBLEM.

 

(2) Soliz Rada states: It is inconsistent to ask the "Red Ponchos" to
take up arms (as Alvaro Garcia Linera did) and celebrate nostalgic homages
to guerilla focos, and then ask for the backing of the armed force, which,
in theory, are recognised for the fundamental role they play in national
life.
 
This sounds 100 percent wrong to me.  The Bolivarian process in Venezuela
has made great advances in arming the people without ever denying
recognition to the military, which is still part of the process today even
though it has been selected out at many stages, including with the departure
of many officers right now on the basis of their attitude toward socialism.
 
This statement has the ring of leftist opposition to collaboration with the
army, which has been a big problem in reading Bolivia in the past for
outsiders (which Soliz Rada is not, of course), particularly back in the
Torres period in 1971.
 
Many of the other points I cannot judge at all from the outside.
 
Clearly the Bolivian process has hit something of a logjam, but I tend to
think that Joaquin's critique of the critiques has a core of legitimacy.  We
should remember that the Bolivarian process in Venezuela hit a similar
logjam in the 2001-2002 period.  The decisive element proved to be the
patient work that had gone on at the base, the modest reforms of all kinds,
the organizational measures which were near-invisible to the external eye.  
 
Thus when the oligarcby and imperialism concluded that they were strong
enough to break the logjam in their favor with the coup, they ran into an
overwhelming reaction which had been well prepared but could not be
predicted in its full depth and power even by the revolutionary leaders. And
that broke the logjam.  So I think the decisive factor is what is going on
right now village by village and barrio by barrio, and factory and mine by
factory and mine in the process.
 
Further, Latin America continues to swing more in this direction.  Ecuador
seems to be joining the revolutionary process.  Others are moving more
firmly into the nationalist camp. 
 
We have cause to be optimistic, although Soliz Rada has every right and duty
to sound the alarm and could turn out to be more right than wrong in his
criticisms.
 
But it seems to me that we continue to approach the situation once predicted
by Fidel: Latin America is heading for a revolution that will be harder to
prevent than the labor of a pregnant whale.
Fred Feldman

 

 

 

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