The Guardian 25 January, 2006
Morales sweeps to victory in Bolivia
Bob Briton
Evo Morales, the leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), won an absolute majority in Bolivia’s Presidential elections on December 12 and was due to be sworn into office as The Guardian goes to press. The 46-year-old member of the Aymara ethnic group will be the first Indigenous person to become the country’s head of state since Bolivia achieved independence in 1825. This is despite the fact that, together with the Quechuas and others, Indigenous people form the majority of the population. His movement’s radical program promises to see Bolivia added to list of Latin American countries (which includes Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay) that are standing up to the dictates of the US and its economic agencies.
Even before the election, the Bush Administration was worried about the prospect of change in Bolivia. Rogelio Pardo-Maurer IV, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Western Hemisphere affairs warned Washington’s Hudson Institute last year that: "You have a revolution going on in Bolivia, a revolution that potentially could have consequences as far-reaching as the Cuban revolution of 1959". The US has already arranged to station an initial 400 troops in Paraguay just across the border from Bolivia’s main natural gas reserves.
Before the 2002 elections, US ambassador Manuel Rocha threatened to reconsider all future aid to Bolivia, the poorest country in Latin America, should Morales win the post of President. US official sources have perpetuated the myth that Morales is a narco-trafficker, under the influence of Cuba’s President Fidel Castro and bankrolled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
The people have clearly stopped worrying about these slurs and threats and are ready to take control of their resources and their futures. Their protest movement has chased two neo-liberal Presidents out of office in the past two years and left only a caretaker government in place. They are now immune to promises of better times to come through the application of the economic medicine of the sort prescribed by the IMF and the World Bank through the 1980s and ’90s. While Bolivia’s 25,000 per cent per annum inflation has been curbed, the people of the resource-rich country are now even poorer than when the privatising and austerity measures began.
Morales’ own story is typical of many Bolivians. His family lost its income when the tin mine in his home town in the Oruru district was shutdown and they were forced into coca cultivation. Coca is the source of many traditional medicines and condiments. It is also the raw material of cocaine which has such a ready market in countries like the US. The eradication of the crop has been used as a pretext for US intervention and influence in a number of Latin American countries, particularly Colombia.
Morales was first elevated to political leadership through his advocacy for the coca growers ("cocaleros). He insists that non-narcotic markets for coca exist in Europe and China and plans to remove all restrictions on cultivation. Like most Bolivians, he believes the US and other developed countries should do something significant about the demand for drugs rather than driving poor cocalero families into starvation.
Morales’ major promise is to bring the oil and natural gas wealth under the control of the country. Bolivia is a significant oil producer and the second biggest producer of natural gas in Latin America after Venezuela. Unlike Venezuela, however, Bolivia’s resources are not state owned but in the hands of foreign companies. Morales has been keen to point out that "control" and "ownership of the natural resources" does not mean their immediate expropriation and nationalisation.
As a first step, he wants to renegotiate the contracts with companies like Spain’s Repsol and British Gas to ensure that Bolivia gets the benefit due to it as a result of its hydrocarbon wealth. "We want partners, but not owners" as the MAS pre-election manifesto put it. Morales was in Spain earlier this month explaining this position to the heads of industry and the Zapatero Government. He was well received. Spain has agreed to waive €99 million of the €120 million owed by the cash-strapped Latin American country.
It seems Bolivia’s oil and gas wealth could finally be used to secure a more dignified and prosperous future for the majority of its struggling population. As Joseph Steiglitz — Nobel laureate, former World Bank economist and professor of economics at Columbia University — pointed out to The New York Times, Morales has the chance to negotiate much better terms for the exploitation of its oil and gas. If the new, independent-minded government cannot get a better deal from existing companies, Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas would love to move in. "China would come in, India would come in", the Professor noted.