[NYTr] Bolivia: Coming to Terms with Diversity (Intvw w/Vice Pres Garcia Linera

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

CIP/Americas Program - Nov 16, 2007
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4735

Bolivia: Coming to Terms with Diversity

An Interview with Bolivia's Vice President Álvaro García Linera 

by Laura Carlsen

As head of Congress and the major political operator for President Evo
Morales, Bolivia's Vice President Álvaro García Linera stands in the
eye of a political hurricane. The changes proposed by the MAS
government have unleashed protest from conservative sectors of society,
leading to suspension of the Constituent Assembly called to revamp the
nation's political institutions.

García Linera says the conflicts are to be expected, as Bolivian
society takes on "the two conquests of equality"—political rights for
indigenous peoples and economic equality through a redistribution of
national wealth. He calls the Morales administration a "government of
social movements" and describes the goals to build "institutions that
allow us to recognize our pluralism" and "generate minimal levels of
access to opportunities and resources."

LC: The government of Evo Morales came to power with the symbolic force
of being the first indigenous president in the country, and has
promised to address an historic backlog of demands for indigenous
rights. But the government also faces the challenge of achieving some
degree of unity to carry out deep transformations in society. In
practice, how do you reconcile these two responsibilities?

AGL: The presence of the first indigenous president is without a doubt
the most important symbolic break in the last centuries in Bolivia.
Within our political culture, both indigenous and non-indigenous people
had always had an image of indigenous people as second-class citizens,
in a position of permanent subordination. President Morales in the
presidency marks a radical transformation, politically speaking, in
this country because it re-establishes a principle of equality that had
been denied by colonial or neocolonial practices, and by the mentality
and the customs of society.

Since Morales has been president, the range of options and
opportunities open to members of society has been socialized, has
evened up. If an indigenous person can be president, then why not
diplomat, congressional representative, member of the constituent
assembly, or minister or vice minister—all positions previously closed
to the indigenous majority of the country.

But soon we saw that as political equality advanced, the challenge
remained to expand this progress in political equality to other
realms—notably, the economic realm in the form of a new redistribution
of wealth. Not just because of the results of the elections, but
because this was already on the agenda of grassroots mobilizations as a
main demand coming from the most vulnerable sectors of Bolivian society.

So society was ready for, and needed, both these tasks to be taken on
together: Political equality and recognition of equality for indigenous
peoples, their culture, and their language; but also a redistribution
of wealth to improve peoples' access to resources. And that's where the
job of President Morales' government has gotten complicated.

LC: Why is that?

AGL: In other societies, political equality is not necessarily
accompanied by an immediate effort to redistribute wealth. South Africa
is a case in point: There was a huge battle for political equality and
a slower process of redistribution, or economic equality. In the case
of Bolivia, the two tasks had to be taken on simultaneously.

Modernity and the advance of the general process pushed the privileged
sectors to accept political equality, but to accept redistribution of
wealth is another matter. It generates more resistance from groups that
are accustomed not only to holding positions of power but also to a
form of allotment that earmarked public resources with their families'
names on them.

This is the most difficult part of what we've taken on—the two
conquests of equality. But the fact that there was already a democratic
and redistributive agenda proposed by society since 2000 led to the
need to assume both tasks simultaneously, with all the difficulties
that you're seeing in these days and weeks—all predictable, of course.

LC: In this task where the government has to take measures that affect
very powerful interests, how do you convince or obligate sectors with
historic privileges to cede privileges in order to establish the new
state and society?

AGL: Among the most privileged sectors, it requires—not "generosity,"
because in politics and economics that term doesn't exist—but a
strategic viewpoint. This is not a movement that at any time seeks to
annul privileges. This is a movement that seeks to generate minimal
levels of access to opportunities and resources.

>From a strategic point of view, the most privileged sectors would
understand that the best way to preserve part of their privileges is to
cede part of their privileges. But when they are not willing to cede a
part of these privileges, what that does is generate a pressure that's
more and more adverse to them, with the risk that it could affect all
their privileges.

If you look at the program put forth by the poor in Bolivia, it doesn't
propose socializing all wealth or property. What you find is the demand
for opportunities, a demand to take part in the distribution of
resources. I haven't seen anyone who's saying "We have to take all the
land away from the hacendados (large landowners)." They say, "We want
to have land too, we also have a right to have land." Same with natural
resources, water, or oil. They're not saying "We want to expropriate
oil and gas and kick all the foreign companies out" but rather, "We
want to be included in the profits from these resources."

And in fact, the measures we've taken—such as the nationalization of
hydrocarbons that didn't expropriate fixed assets but rather took back
property and decision-making capacity over gas and petroleum—illustrate
the strategy of society and the government. But there are privileged
sectors that have a short-term perspective and resist this
redistribution.

The key for privileged sectors resides in not looking to the future in
one year, but in 10, 20, or 30, or 50 years. This strategic point of
view is what could help this process of redistribution of wealth and
lead to a coming together, but in a more balanced way and not with the
scandalous distances in terms of property and money that we still see
in Bolivia.

LC: Speaking of these sectors and their resistance, today with the
problems facing the Constituent Assembly, there has been talk of a
growing political and social polarization in the country.

Do you agree with this assessment of the present moment?

AGL: Ethnic, class, and regional differences in Bolivia are not recent;
they didn't appear this year or even in the last five or 10 years. They
cut across our entire history as a republic.

Don't forget that Bolivia emerges as a republic refusing to recognize
the right of citizenship for the indigenous majority. And that refusal
was only slightly modified just 50 years ago when indigenous persons
were granted the right to vote.

Even then, what doesn't disappear are the privileges in terms of access
to and control of the positions of political, economic, and cultural
power that run the society. It's not the forms but rather the practices
and habits of society that continue to impede indigenous people from
reaching decision-making spheres, due to that kind of "glass ceiling"
that feminists talk about.

The fact that today these issues are on the agenda of debate is nothing
new. The novelty is that society for the first time is forced to look
at itself in the mirror, and it has to see its limitations, its cracks,
its weaknesses. Exclusion and confrontation have been recurrent themes
throughout Bolivia's history—uprisings, massacres every 10, every 15
years. The idea is that what's been a fissure in society for over 190
years must finally be resolved now, based on a democratic pact of
mutual recognition.

The same goes for regional divisions. Bolivia is born as a republic as
the fruit of a very particular alliance of more than 100
mini-republics—regions with their own leaders, economies, symbols, and
political practices, all very fragmented. The process of building
national unity has been to this day a tortuous process, with many
imbalances.

In fact, the governments of the 19 th century concentrated power,
wealth, and privileges, where they established their control while
leaving out the rest of the zones and regions.

It's no coincidence that by 1830 they were already talking about
federalism. A hundred years ago there was a federalist proposal in the
country that sought to redistribute political power among the regions.
Again, it emerges as an historic fissure throughout the history of our
republican life, and is never resolved. There was a federal civil war
that ended up in the agreement to move the capital from Sucre to La Paz
and after achieving that the next day they forgot about federalism. The
regional elites of Santa Cruz have raised the flag of autonomy and
decentralization since the 50s. When they came to power, they became
centralists again, putting away their banners of autonomy and
decentralization.

And now the issue comes up again—what we want is to have it resolved,
not by pretending the problem had gone away like they did in the past,
but to be resolved through an authentic territorial distribution of
power, and not on a class basis.

Bolivia has been experiencing these ethnic, class, and regional
tensions off and on throughout its history. The difference today is
that in the past they were separated. An ethnic movement would arise
and be "resolved" through massacres or bullets. Time would go by and
the regional issue would come up and find some kind of half-way
solution. A little while later, ethnic or class conflicts would emerge
again.

Ethnic, cultural, and regional differences in our Bolivian society,
today visible all at once, are not recent products. They are old wounds
that have been present in our history and were never healed.

It's up to this generation—I'm not saying "this government," but this
generation, this society—to resolve issues that couldn't be resolved in
182 years of political life as an independent republic. We have to
resolve them, not by pretending the problem has gone away as leaders
did in the past, but through an authentic territorial distribution of
power, and not on a class basis. If we do, we will have resolved
something that throughout our history couldn't be resolved by dictators
or liberals or populists or caudillos.

At root, what you're seeing now is the real inner workings of society
exposed. And you see the unhealed wounds, previously hidden behind
bandages, and now we have to heal the three kinds of wounds at once.

There's no reason to become undone over these tensions because they're
tensions that we've experienced before. Instead of worrying about these
issues becoming visible, the concern would be if we did what past
governments have done—just swept them under the rug.

Because this is the historic opportunity for society to finally come to
terms with itself, to see a rebirth of our collective spirit based on
who we really are—not the illusion of who we want to be, as the elites
have always done before in this country.

Perhaps this is the big spiritual void that we Bolivians have had: that
we never could be honest about who we are. We said we were a unified
republic, when we weren't. We've wanted to be modern, but we're not.
We've wanted to be homogenous, but we're not. What we are is diverse,
with many local and regional identities, and we have to build an
institutional structure for what Bolivia really is. And that is exactly
what we want to do now.

LC: In the context of these divisions, do you still think it's feasible
to agree on a new constitution with profound changes, or will it be
necessary to accept minor reforms?

AGL: The Constituent Assembly is conceived of and was convoked to
create an institutional order that corresponds to the reality of who we
are. Up to now, each one of our 17 of 18 constitutions has just tried
to copy the latest institutional fashion—French, U.S., European. And it
was clear that it didn't fit us, because these institutions correspond
to other societies. We are indigenous and non-indigenous, we are modern
and traditional, we are liberal and communitarist, we are a profoundly
diverse society regionally and a hybrid in terms of social classes. So
we have to have institutions that allow us to recognize that pluralism.

This is the great challenge of the Constituent Assembly. And that's why
we are confident, we are betting on its success, in spite of the
difficulties, with this idea of expressing the real society and
projecting that in institutional and normative terms for the coming
decades.

LC: You have spoken of diversity not only in terms of the need to
recognize it in a new form of institutionality but also as the guiding
principle of a new social pact. Reading the newspapers these days,
diversity would appear to be more a factor of division. How do you move
toward this vision of strength through diversity?

AGL: We've always been divided. It's just that now we're seeing
ourselves with all our divisions and tendencies. The illusion of a
monolithic, cohesive unity has broken like a glass thrown to the
ground. And it can never be put back together. We can't go back to
living with illusions. The key for all the groups is to affirm their
difference, but at the same time produce a will to unity—to an
agreed-on unity, not an imposed unity, not an illusive or merely
superficial unity.

Sure, at first it's scary as everyone begins to wake up to the fact
that they are different from the other, and to assume that difference
and not to hide it. That's the first step in building real unity.

The second step is, based on the affirmation of differences, to affirm
what we have in common. Without a doubt, the indigenous and peasant
movements that have led this process are the most lucid in taking these
steps. To give you an example: it would be very easy for the indigenous
and peasant movement to demand that each community, each culture, each
nationality have the right to the control and ownership of natural
resources. Even the United Nations declaration recognizes that right—to
land, forests, gas, and oil.

But what you see is that, at the same time as they say "we are
indigenous peoples, we are nationalities with our own culture," they
are also objectively asserting unity when they say "we have to
nationalize hydrocarbons"—in the sense of a collective "I" that is
above the particular language, culture, or region. The proposal to
nationalize gas and oil didn't come from intellectuals or from the
middle classes. It came out of the social movements, mostly indigenous
and peasant.

That's why you see the indigenous-peasant sector leading changes today.
Not because it mobilizes more people, not because it stages the
biggest, most militant demonstrations, but because it proposed with
greatest clarity this idea of the collective "I."

It is in this dialectic—between the individual and the community,
between the differences and the commonalities—where the country's
future will be decided.

Not all sectors have this way of looking at things, especially the
privileged sectors. Sometimes the press focuses the cameras on the
differences. Then you see a country that appears to be on the verge of
a breakdown because everybody wants to assert their own identities and
differences at their moment. The sectors that demand difference as a
historic right because they were never allowed the right to difference
are simultaneously the ones that fight the hardest, the ones who have
done the most, to build a real common "I." Not a fictitious one, not
just symbols and rites, but in real actions: the constituent assembly,
nationalization of hydrocarbons, redistribution of wealth.

LC: You mention the responsibility of social movements. Other
progressive governments, brought to power by grassroots movements, have
been criticized for subsequently demobilizing or sidelining those
movements. How do you conceive the role of social movements in the
Morales government?

AGL: We consider this to be a government of social movements. Even
though that means there are tensions. Because government and state are
by definition a process of centralization of decisions. And by
definition a social movement is a process of socialization and
collective diffusion of decision-making, of controls. What's
interesting is to ride on that tension. That's the novelty of the
process.

You'll ask: But do you back up this claim of being a government of
social movements? How can this be demonstrated in objective, material,
practical terms?

On four levels, from the most general to the most specific.

The most general: the program of changes and transformations in the
government is, without a doubt, the program proposed by the social
mobilizations over the last five, 10, 15 years. What the government of
President Morales has done is simply to practically transcribe into
decree or law what was collectively built up by society itself through
social movements. Land, hydrocarbons, Constituent Assembly, the issue
of autonomies, redistribution of wealth, process of industrialization,
and so many things still pending—the big decisions of this government
have been historically proposed over the past 10 years by the social
movements.

The second level is that for the government's major decisions—all of
them, without exception—we've consulted with the leadership of the
different social movements. Not all the social movements, of course,
but a good part of the most active social movements in the country. The
issue of water, the law on agrarian reform with indigenous and peasant
organizations, the issue of hydrocarbons with neighborhood assemblies
in El Alto, mobilized workers, and so on. There isn't one important
measure that isn't marked by a process of feedback and consultation
with these sectors, because every one of these actions can only be
sustained through mobilization of society, not through bureaucratic
action.

Third, in the structure of the government, among its upper- and
medium-level leaders you'll find the presence of a good part of the
sectors' and movements' leadership. Whether as mayors, prefects (the
provincial leadership), parliamentary representatives, constituent
assemblypersons, ministers, there's a practical, physical presence of
grassroots leadership in government.

To what degree they maintain their connection to their constituents is
a different problem. To what degree they could become bureaucratized is
definitely a risk. But if you watch the parliament on television or the
assembly, you see an enormous presence of these sectors. This is
something that was unthinkable five or 10 years ago, because these were
positions reserved for certain families, for elites cultivated in
foreign universities, with famous last names, and a tradition of being
in politics.

In fourth place, because even if the social movement itself can't move
into government administration, as a movement, the process of selection
of government officials obligatorily passes not only through a criteria
of merit but also through approval from social movements and
organizations. Here it's equally valid to have a masters or doctorate
from Harvard as to have links with the peasant federation. Yes, this
can slow up certain areas of government efficiency but it's a sign of
the times.

These are the four elements that show you a government of social
movements. Does that mean that all social movements are in the
government? No, there are other social movements that remain on the
margins of government. But there's no doubt that the mobilizing nucleus
of the last decades is what sustains this government.

LC: You and the president come from a background of participation in
movements. What are the big surprises or unexpected challenges of
coming to government?

AGL: There are so many.

There's clearly a leap between the logic of mobilization and protest,
to the logic of administration. However, the Movement toward Socialism
(MAS) as a coalition of social organizations has experienced a learning
curve and transition from strictly making demands and being a union
movement to increasingly becoming a revolutionary political entity.
This started 10 years ago when the unions began to control local
governments. The agrarian unions entered the mayorships and had to put
to the test their demands with transparency. It's not a lot of time,
many parties have to spend 30 years preparing for governing. In our
case, there were 10 years of training—too fast.

But for better or worse, you have there a first period of gestation of
political leaders who had to combine the discourse of mobilization with
the ability to govern. These leaders that were trained since the 90s in
local government, several of them are now in parliament or are even
vice ministers. There has been a small training school, rapid, but
training in this new logic.

It also has to do with the fact that this social movement matures very
quickly since 2000, to go from confrontational strategies to proposing
designs for the nation. It isn't usual, even in the history of Bolivia,
to see this kind of political maturation. It means that increasingly in
the process of mobilization and protest the issues that you enter into
dialogue with the government on are no longer "how can I get something
for my sector?" but "how can I change Bolivia?" The Constituent
Assembly arose as a proposal since 2000-2001, recovery of control over
of the hydrocarbon sector in 2003, a new law on land since 1999—there
were already general guidelines developed for defining public goods.

When President Morales, colleagues, myself, arrive here we have to
change part of the chip in our brains. What we decide to do is very
clear: there are a lot of things we don't know and we have to learn,
but there are a lot of things that we have to do. Because we came to
act; we didn't come to administer government, we came to change it. So
what do we decide? The first decision of President Morales was to leave
the technical base of intermediate officials in all the ministries and
institutions intact and just make changes on the level of ministers and
vice ministers with political leaders.

Those were the months last year that we had problems—when public
administration didn't work so well, there wasn't good implementation of
the budget, there were contradictions between ministries. However, if
we had tried to replace all the staff at once from the beginning and
install pure political leaders, it would have been a catastrophe.

There have been difficulties that we've admitted publicly of course,
but it still is remarkable what we've achieved with these decisions.
Economic growth; modification of the economic structure of society;
implementation, albeit gradual, of some things at the social level; and
so many changes still pending.

For this reason, I believe it's a healthy process and full of vitality
and has good possibilities of success.


[Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico
City.]