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Land of hope and, possibly, glory By Mahir Ali Wednesday, 27 Jan, 2010 Fake newspapers, including one showing Bolivia's President Evo Morales as "Evotar", a likeness from the film "Avatar", are displayed in a stand at the traditional "Alasitas" fair in La Paz January 24, 2010. - Photo by Reuters. On the eve of last month's elections in Bolivia, a voter by the name of Inez Mamani, carrying a two-month-old baby, told an American reporter: "With my other children, there wasn't a programme like this. It was sad the way we raised them. Now they have milk, clothing, diapers...." Mamani receives a stipend funded by the state-run gas company, nationalised by the government of Evo Morales. Young students and the elderly also receive stipends, which reach two-fifths of Bolivia's population of five million. Irene Paz, a teacher, told Reuters after casting her vote: "The kids [now] go to school with hope, because they get breakfast there and the subsidies ... I ask them how they spend the handouts, and some of them say they buy shoes. Some didn't have shoes before." It doesn't require a great deal of imagination to guess who Mamani and Paz voted for. Morales won by a landslide: with about 64 per cent of the popular vote, he was more than 40 per cent ahead of his nearest rival. And his party, the realistically titled Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), comfortably won control of both chambers of parliament, which removes obstacles on the legislative front for the re-elected government's agenda. What makes all this fairly remarkable is that just a couple of years ago, the Morales administration and its Bolivian experiment were widely being written off as a lost cause by much of the western media. Although Morales had a firm mandate even then, the race and class that had wallowed in wealth by monopolising power in Bolivia - often via the expedient of military rule - seemed determined to cling on to its privileges, if necessary through violence. Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, not because it lacks resources, but in large part because too many of these resources were signed over to foreign interests. And not just oil, gas and other mineral resources: a popular revolt in Cochabamba at the turn of the century against the privatisation of water by a subsidiary of the US multinational Bechtel crucially fed into the popular anger that thrust Morales and his movement into the limelight. Bolivia also boasts a huge indigenous majority, which until recently was relegated to the political and economic periphery. This form of apartheid inevitably turned out to be incompatible with genuine democracy. Morales, an Aymara Indian, is the first fully indigenous leader to have acquired power anywhere in Latin America, but that's not the only reason Bolivia's white elite finds him so distasteful. It may even have learnt to tolerate him had he been inclined to perpetuate the status quo with a few cosmetic changes. But land reforms? Equal rights for all Bolivians in a 'plurinational' state? Nationalisation of key industries? The redistribution of wealth? What is the world coming to? The elite might have found some consolation in recent indications that Latin America's so-called pink tide may be turning. In Honduras, the coup-makers who ousted the progressively inclined Manuel Zelaya were able to get away with it; despite stirrings at the grassroots level, the disputed election last November of Porfirio Lobo is likely to mean that the 10 families that own most of the country's resources can rest easy for the time being. In Chile, a conservative billionaire has, through more democratic means, defeated his rival Eduardo Frei, who represented the ruling centrist Concertacion alliance - but is expected not to dispense with the mildly reformist agenda of the extremely popular outgoing president, Michelle Bachelet. She retains an approval rating of more than 80 per cent after four years in power, but was ineligible to compete this time around. (That does not, however, preclude the possibility of a comeback in 2014.) A similar trend may be witnessed in Argentina and Brazil. Thus far, however, reversals of this nature have democratically been resisted in countries undergoing a particularly meaningful transition, as reflected in the polarisation they have experienced - notably Bolivia and Venezuela. The resistance there from pockets of privilege is much greater precisely because they feel more threatened. It won't be smooth sailing ahead for Morales despite his overwhelming majority - just as it wasn't after he scored decisively in a recall referendum and obtained popular approval for his new constitution in another vote. (His mandate is thus effectively based on four votes in little more than four years.) After his constitution was endorsed, Morales, who is not given to the sort of bombast associated with Hugo Chavez, declared: "For the first time ... in the world, basic services - water, electricity, telephone - are now a human right...." And as Fidel Castro wrote last October, Bolivia is the third Latin American country to have eradicated illiteracy, after Cuba and Venezuela. It took three years to accomplish the task. Morales also announced that the under the new constitution, no foreign nation could construct military bases on Bolivian soil, a provision clearly aimed at the only nation in the western hemisphere inclined towards such behaviour. The expulsion from La Paz of the US ambassador in 2008 indicated that destabilisation of governments that resist Washington's dictates is still the default instrument of foreign policy - and there are no indications that regime change in Washington has altered Uncle Sam's attitude towards its 'backyard'. Cuba offers a stark example of the price that must be paid for defying the North American behemoth. But also serves as a reminder that it can be done. Meanwhile, another indication of Morales's intentions came last Saturday, when he swore in a 20-member cabinet that included 10 women - a nod to equality of the sexes that has only one precedent: Bachelet's Chilean ministry. What comes next in the hallowed land where Che Guevara fell matters a great deal for Bolivians, but the rest of us ought to keep watching, too. One way or another, chances are there will be important lessons to absorb. For the time being, it's deeply gratifying that the red glimmer on the Andean horizon still signifies daybreak rather than sunset. mahir.d...@gmail.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
