It's been two years since Evo Morales was democratically elected, and people are eager to know how to locate the "Bolivian revolution" within the different tendencies that are arising in Latin America.
It's important to remember that Evo was elected at the end of 2005 with 53% of the popular vote – 15% more than his opponent – in a system full of pseudo-democratic rules and where the medias, the economy and social powers are dominated by an old minority that has been installed in power for decades, a descendant of the military dictatorships and the oligarchies that have "reigned" in Latin America for centuries. Despite this situation, Evo Morales received the greatest electoral backing of any President in the history of Bolivia.
Attempts have been made to assimilate the Bolivian process to that of Cuba. But in recent celebrations for the anniversary of Che Guevara's death last October, Evo made it clear that while he admires the mythical Argentine-Cuban guerrilla, he himself aims to carry out social transformation through peaceful, democratic and non-violent means. He stated that "the only difference between Che and I is that Che sought equality and justice with weapons in his hands."
Comparisons and similarities with the Hugo Chavez model in Venezuela are also made. But with the explicit renunciation of war as a method of solving conflicts between countries included in the New Constitution, Evo Morales is in fact forging a new revolutionary variant that is unmarked by "arming the people to resist". Evo is opening new roads that have not been explored in Latin America before.
The new Bolivian Constitution addresses historical revindications and takes its place among the most progressive constitutions in the world. Its text is filled with references to Human Rights but goes beyond the typical platitudes, committing itself to free health and education, the right to a pension and social security, the rights of children, the elderly, indigenous peoples, workers, handicapped, consumers, prisoners, etc., all of them placed at the Constitutional level. It is a secular constitution, unlike the one it replaces that entrenched support for the Catholic Church. It is a pacifist Constitution that explicitly rejects war as well as the establishment of foreign military bases on its territory. But above all it is a Constitution that is driven by an Aymara Indian, a coca-worker by trade, like any other grape or orange-picker; by "President Evo Morales" as those with pride in their roots call him; or by "The Indian", as he is called by the same racists as always.
The myopia of the Western countries, especially in Europe (to say nothing of the USA, which is totally blind), consists in propagating systematic disinformation regarding the events that are taking place in Bolivia, and in offering no support for Evo Morales – in the best of cases. At worst, they try to demonize him, linking him disparagingly with Fidel or with Chavez.
The Evo Morales phenomenon should be understand through the same lens as Mandela, and not through a Bolivaran or Guevaran one. Only 40 years ago, just like in South Africa, native people could not walk on the sidewalks in Bolivia. If a white person was approaching, they were to step down into the road. In a country where 65% of the population are natives, 25% metis and only 10% white, there has never been a native person in power for the past 500 years.
There are social and political revindications in everything that is happening, but behind it all there are deeper motivations that are driving this process – historical revindications about regaining the dignity of peoples who have been oppressed for centuries, revindications to open the future and give hope to all the aspirations of a people that wants to express itself. Above everything, the people most thank Evo Morales for having returned to them their social dignity and opened their future.
The Evo Morales phenomenon will be better understood if we see him as another Mandela, than if we compare the process there to others in the region. Bolivia lived an "apartheid" for centuries and is now emerging from it.
We don't know how things in Bolivia will play out, with the all pressures exercised by the multinationals, landowners and corrupt governments. We don't know if they will be successful in making this peaceful, democratic but revolutionary attempt at social transformation fail. But what we perceived in the people with whom we met and spoke in the days when the new Constitution was approved, is that there is an unstoppable process in motion and that there is no going back. This is a people that wants to express itself and it has found its path to dignity. No multinational or ambitious landowner eager to maintain his hegemony is going to stop that. If there is a step back – and let's hope there is not! – it will be momentary, because the certainty of the just and the dignified will return once more with even greater strength.
My friend the MAS Senator Gastón Cornejo Bacopé, with his poetic pen, wrote the following brilliant description of the celebration of Dec 14, 2007 when the text of the new Political Constitution was officially presented: "The doors of the Presidential Palace opened to the people, to the musical bands and all the native groups. President Evo, Vice-President Alvaro, the constitutional assembly members, the chiefs of the Armed Forces, the ministers, danced. They danced and gambolled inside the great hall. To the sound of huayños, flutes, and drums, in a big round circle, the commanders of the three Armed Forces, the city Police, and the Assembly danced playfully, hand in hand with native women in beautiful dress, the women ministers and deputies danced, linking arms with young men from the peoples of the 36 Nations. People of Bolivia, military people, native people, metis, middle-class, intellectuals and workers, patriots of all kinds, humble and simple people, danced joyously together, celebrating the political and legislative change being initiated in Bolivia."
This is not the Bolivia of international business, of Repsol, British Petroleum, ETI-ENTEL or Telecom; this is the Bolivia of the peoples who have been kept down for centuries and who are now standing up and searching for a new future.
As our governments do not support this process – revealing clearly what interests they respond to – we are calling to the hearts of the citizens and social organizations of Europe to support Bolivia in this very special moment. It is a process in which we are all staking alot, not only the people of Bolivia. Evo Morales, as he himself said, is a humanist who is seeking that his people be finally able to express themselves and be the protagonists of their own country. It is so simple that it is revolutionary. It's a hope for everyone that Bolivia advance and put itself at the vanguard of peaceful, democratic revolutions in the world. Humanist revolutions.
I believe that this undertaking will be successful if it goes deeper along its chosen path of active non-violence. This path, ignored by its opponents, provides incredibly effective tools to fight against the violent and "disarm" them totally. It would not be the first time; Gandhi managed to defeat an even more powerful force.
We are now before a new type of revolution: a pacifist revolution; a revolution that is based on the ballot-box; a revolution because it proposes to eliminate once and for all the State's right to war; a revolution because it tries to give voice to the forever "voiceless". It is from that point of view that one can begin to understand what is happening in Bolivia, and to understand Evo, the Mandela of Latin America.
17/12/2007
Rafael de la Rubia
International Coordinator
[translated by R.Verdecchia]
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