Nova Guerra Fria?

Desacoplamento e Nacionalismo: Caminho de uma Nova Guerra Fria?

Por Francisco Domínguez

The people of Bolivia were able to both resist a full year of repression by the de facto racist regime of Jeanine Añez and force elections. On 18 October 2020 they obtained a massive electoral victory, thus creating condition for the recovery of democracy. As is well known, Añez “interim government” was installed by a US-led coup d’état engineered by OAS General Secretary, Luis Almagro in November 2019.

The Europeans did also actively work to bring about the ousting of Evo Morales and the MAS-IPSP government. Information provided by the website Declassified UK, revealed that the UK government saw the de facto regime as an opportunity to open Bolivia’s lithium deposits to UK companies thus making the UK embassy in La Paz a strategic ally of Añez. It would appear that the UK and Añez signed millionaire contracts barely two weeks after the coup and days after the Senkata massacre.

Leon de la Torre, European Union ambassador in Bolivia, also played a pivotal role. In interview to Página Siete (a Bolivian newspaper) de la Torre declared that in the 2019 election the EU mission of electoral experts had closely collaborated with the OAS mission and that “Our observations [about the supposed electoral fraud] coincided to a large extent with those of the OAS.” He went on to say “in the last years, due to the fact that a political party had the absolute majority” democratic consensus was not deemed necessary (i.e., the problem was the MAS-IPSP’s strong electoral support). He also declared he expected from the 2020 election a “more conventional political equilibrium.” This is gross interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country.

Predictably, the international corporate media best to whitewashed the actions of the de facto regime and at worst supported and welcome the golpe. The UK’s “progressive” The Guardian, for example, went as far as to editorialise that the coup had been Evo’s own fault for trying to perpetuate himself in power.

The sheer size of Bolivia’s right wing’s electoral defeat in October 2020 surprised everyone: the MAS-IPSP won with 55% of the votes cast, thus electing Luis Arce as president; right-wing Carlos Mesa got 28%, and extreme right-wing Luis Camacho only 14%. The MAS-IPSP won in 6 out of the country’s 9 departments (with 68% in La Paz; 65% in Cochabamba; 62% in Oruro; 57% in Potosí; 49% in Chuquisaca; and 46% in Pando; departments where 7 out of Bolivia’s population of 11 million live). And, MAS-IPSP candidates obtained 75 out of the 130 seats of Bolivia’s Congress, and 21 out of 36 in the Senate; Arce also won in 314 municipalities, the extreme right in 21, and the right wing in 18.

This electoral victory occurred against the background of a year of brutal persecution of the MAS-IPSP leaders, including Evo, who (charged with terrorism) had to flee into exile in Mexico. Añez unleashed a wave of repression against the country’s social movements, involving illegal imprisonment, harassment, torture; racist violence, especially against indigenous women perpetrated by fascist paramilitary thugs; and three massacres (Sacaba, Senkata and La Paz), about which the International Human Rights Clinic’s report (with the eloquent title “They shot us like animals’) registered 36 people dead and over 500 injured.

The purpose was to intimidate opposition to her harsh neo-liberal programme of cuts, lay offs of public sector workers, privatisations and so forth aimed at demolish what had been developed in 14 years of Morales government, no small task given the MSAS-IPSP’s impressive achievements:

• Bolivia’s GDP: US$10bn (2005), US$40bn (20130, over 400% increase): an annual average of 4,6%, highest in the region; from 2006 Bolivia had a fiscal surplus for the first time in its history; by 2018 it had US$8,946 million in international reserves. • Extreme poverty: from 38% in 2006 to 16% in 2018 (a historic low) • Infant mortality down by 56%; • Bonuses (for the elderly, primary and secondary school pupils, pregnant women) benefited 5,5 million people (over 50% of the population) • Domestic savings for 2006-2018 increased: US$4,361 million to US$27,123 million. • External debt down from 61% of GDP in 2004 to 23% in 2018 • Health centres from 2,870 to 3902, plus 49 well equipped with latest medical technology new hospitals (public health is free of charge) • With Cuban collaboration, Operation Miracle conducted over 3 million ophthalmological visits and 742,000 surgeries leading many Bolivians to having their eye sight restored (Añez expelled the Cuban doc-

tors) – budget for health: 2,5 million Bolivianos (national currency) in 2005 to 18, 805 million in 2018 • Illiteracy, with Cuba’s Yo Si Puedo method, eradicated by 2014. • Between 2014-18 the nine-lines metro-cable in La Paz (completed in 2014), had transported 174 million passengers • By 2020 drinking water reaches 9,7 million people • About 1 million hectares of land were redistributed to peasant families. • Between 2005 to 2018 proportion of women in parliament: from 18% to 51% • Decades of neoliberalism built 1,098 km of motorways; between 2006-18 4,796 km added to existing motorways • Everything financed by the renationalization of the energy industry (Bolivia is rich in gas but also has oil; and it is very rich in minerals, especially lithium) • Bolivia placed in space the Tupac Katari satellite, renationalised telecommunications granting Internet access free of charge, as a fundamental right, to millions of Bolivians • For the first time in 500 years, 36 indigenous nations were recognised special cultural and ancestral land rights (enshrined in the Constitution of the Plurinational State). • In 2018 the World Human Development Report classified Bolivia for the first time a “high human development country.” • Evo affirmed national sovereignty by eliminating foreign (US) interference with the expulsion of the DEA, USAID, CIA and even the US ambassador. • And much, much, more.

President Arce restored full diplomatic relations with Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, sending shockwaves to right wing forces from Patagonia to the Klondike.

Arce’s economic measures, consistent with the MAS-IPSP policies, have put people first. Among the many measures there are: a Bonus Against Hunger of 1,000 Bolivianos (US$150) aimed at the most vulnerable (disabled, pregnant women, the elderly, the poorest, etc.) that will benefit about 4 million people; a reduction of tax on credit card payments from 13% to 8% returning the difference to users; return VAT to low income people; plus a tax on large fortunes, their assets (real and non real estate), and income.

Arce announced his intention to enter into negotiations with multilateral bodies to obtain credit but without economic or political strings attached, including both a moratorium and the condoning the country’s debt and the interests. He will seek to strengthen domestic demand so as to reactivate economic activity via subsidies to the poorest and other segments of society. And he will avoid devaluation of the national currency so as to encourage economic growth and foment import substitution among other policies.

He will continue with the industrialization of lithium and iron, coupled with a programme towards food sovereignty, promotion of domestic tourism, export of electricity and the industrialization of gas, by keeping these activities under state control and ownership.

State expenditure on health and education will be increased to 10 and 11 percent, respectively. Public investment is to be increased to bring about a rate of economic growth of 4,8% for 2021. Arce has re-launched to complete all public works (suspended by Añez), as another plank for domestic economic reactivation. The MAS-IPSP majority in parliament has passed legislation to ensure the implementation of these measures. And, Arce returned the unnecessary IMF loan contracted by Añez in 2020.

The deeply racist Bolivian oligarchy has been threatening with violence and with another coup d’état. The arrest and trial of Añez and of several prominent members of the coup accomplices have intensified these threats.

Arce has continued the recuperation of Bolivia’s democracy by ensuring not only free and fair elections for the country’s 336 mayoralties that took place on 7th March 2021, but also by guaranteeing the full participation of all the parties that had taken part in the coup and had been members of the Añez regime. The results were again, amazing. The MAS-IPSP won in 240 of the 336 mayoralties, 71% of the votes cast (it won 227 in the 2015 election).

In Bolivia, the recuperation of democracy is vital for continued socio-economic progress. This victory has substantially altered the continental relation of forces in favour of progressive politics and therefore, must be given all the support it may need in the period ahead. The recovery of democracy will not be easy: given the world economic crisis the pandemic brought about, reactionary forces both domestically and externally, will do everything they can to sabotage it. They will need all our solidarity.

Francisco Dominguez é Professor da Universidade de Middlesex / Inglaterra.