[Marxism] Bolivian VP on Indianismo and Marxism

["Fred Fuentes" <fred.fuentes@xxxxxxxxx>]

Indianismo and Marxism: The mismatch of two revolutionary rationales
Álvaro García Linera

Introduction by Richard Fidler -- This important article by Álvaro
García Linera, now vice-president of Bolivia, was first published in
2005. It traces the contradictory evolution of the two most
influential revolutionary currents in the country's 20th century
history and argues that Marxism, as originally interpreted by its
Bolivian adherents, failed to address the outstanding concerns of the
Indigenous majority. García Linera suggests, however, that the
evolution of indianismo in recent decades opens perspectives for a
renewal of Marxist thought and potentially the reconciliation of the
two currents in a higher synthesis. Although framed within the
Bolivian context, his argument clearly has implications for the
national and anti-imperialist struggle in other parts of Abya Yale
(the indigenous name for the western hemisphere).

Although Bolivia won formal independence from Spain in 1825, its
national character remained fragile and incomplete. Not only did it
lose significant territories over the years — to Brazil, Chile and, in
the 1930s, Paraguay (the Chaco War) — the continuing existence of
semifeudal property relations in agriculture deprived its
overwhelmingly campesino Indigenous majority of property in land and
was the material basis for their oppression as peoples. Indianismo
developed among Bolivia's three dozen Indigenous peoples as an
ideological reaction to this oppression, but only in recent years has
it emerged as a dominant force in the political life of the country,
in a process outlined by García Linera in the following article.

The Marxist current, on the other hand, developed primarily among the
urban and mining proletariat and paid little heed to the distinct
concerns and interests of the Indigenous majority as Indigenous
peoples. The Theses of Pulacayo, for example, a political program
adopted by the miners' union in 1946 under Trotskyist influence, while
singling out agrarian reform as a central demand, advanced no demands
that would encompass the Indigenous component within its strategy for
permanent revolution. See also "Bolivia – From Colonialism to
Indianism" 
(http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2007/05/bolivia-from-colonialism-to-in...).

"For this Marxism", García Linera writes, "there were neither Indians
nor community, and one of the richest veins of classical Marxist
thinking was blocked and rejected as an interpretative tool of
Bolivian reality." Insensitivity to the Indigenous reality inhibited
the Marxists' ability to win the allegiance of the Indigenous masses,
who for decades turned instead toward the nation-building program of a
non-Marxist revolutionary nationalism, while developing distinctive
Indigenous perspectives within that framework.

Although his article does not explore that classical Marxist vein,
García Linera is clearly alluding to the writings of such leading
Latin American Marxists as José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930), a
Peruvian whose conceptual theorisation of the Indigenous reality was
strongly influenced by the Bolshevik approach to Indigenous peoples
and anti-imperialist movements, as well as by a current in Western
Marxism represented most famously by Antonio Gramsci that emphasised
the importance of national and cultural considerations in the
development of mass revolutionary consciousness.

García Linera's article was translated by Richard Fidler from the
version published in the Mexican daily La Jornada, December 20, 2007,
under the title "Indianismo y Marxismo: El Desencuentro de dos razones
revolucionarias". The ellipses in the translation follow those in La
Jornada's text......read the article at
http://www.dsp.org.au/links/node/264

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