Ten years of the process of change in Bolivia: a geopolitical view

Today a Bolivia is emerging of enlightenment, of examples, of victories and of optimism and this puts us in a very important place of honor. We must take advantage of this in a collective sense of the term, so that this visibility of Bolivia can serve to open up greater economic growth, international leadership and presence, all directed to the issue of [access to] the seas.
Álvaro García Linera

January 26 2006. Evo Morales Ayma, in an ancestral ceremony in Tiwanaku, was invested as Apu Mallku (leader) of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. One day later, on January 22, in the Legislative Assembly, he assumed the Presidency of the Republic of Bolivia. The same thing was repeated on the 21st and 22nd of January of 2010 and 2015, after being elected Constitutional President, this time of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

February 21, 2016. In 339 municipalities -- including 11 indigenous peasant autonomous communities, already constituted or in process -- in the 9 Departments of Bolivia, a constitutional referendum will take place in order for the Bolivian people, in a sovereign and democratic manner, to decide if the Constitution can be partially reformed to allow President Evo Morales and Vice-President Alvaro García Linera to present themselves for re-election in the general elections of 2019.

Within one month, the Bolivian democratic and cultural revolution will live transcendental moments of its recent history. First, on January 21 and 22, the anniversary of the Plurinational State and ten years of the change process are commemorated, and a month later, on February 21, there will be a historic vote which will symbolize the strength of the new Bolivian democracy against the fossilized neoliberal democracy.

The constitutional referendum is probably the most important vote that the change process has faced since the first victory of Evo Morales and the MAS-IPSP in December of 2005.The stakes are high, and the Bolivian right, that had already managed to introduce "the padlock" of no reelection during the Constitutional Assembly, have joined behind the No in the referendum, conveniently financed by the US State Department, as recently denounced [1] by Vice President Alvaro García Linera.

This is the most important vote because, for the first time, the possibility that Evo Morales will not be the candidate of the social majorities in 2019 is at stake, and in second place if the Yes were to lose, MAS-IPSP would face the difficult challenge of continuing to further the process without their national leader as the President of the Plurinational State.

The fact is that the figure of Evo goes way beyond the limits of a party leader, of a President of a country, to crystallize the dreams of the popular classes, of the Bolivian indigenous peasant movement, marginalized by centuries of colonialism. Evo synthesizes the anticolonial struggles undertaken by Túpac Katari and Bartolina Sisa, and also the anti-capitalist struggles unleashed during the Water and Gas War. Evo brings his ajayu (spirit in Aymara, the force that contains sentiments and reason), an anti-imperialism forged in the struggle against the DEA and USAID in Chapare, against the interference of the US Embassy that had him expelled from the Congress when he was a Member, an anti-colonialism that led him to become an international leader of a union and rural movement during the "500 Years Campaign of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance" that culminated in 1992, at 500 years from the invasion of our America; and from this campaign in 1993 the Via Campesina was born, in which Evo came to define his own anti-capitalist horizon and his defense of food sovereignty.

Therefore, all the great advances of the process of change in Bolivia can be situated in three coordinates, beginning with the nationalization of natural resources that returned their sovereignty to the Bolivian people. This allowed for a redistribution of wealth without precedent in the nearly 200 years of republican history and began a transition process towards socialism that necessarily meant strengthening the State, in order to move beyond neoliberalism and to frame the coordinates of an anti-capitalist horizon springing from a State and communitarian economy. Starting from this basis, the material conditions of the Bolivian people have improved; there is an anti-colonial perspective that is transforming the imaginaries of society and has begun a slow but unstoppable process of decolonization and depatriarchalization of the State and of society, breaking with the old paradigms and beginning to define this communitarian socialism of Living Well, that is the final station of a political project of national and social liberation. All this in addition to a new relation with Mother Earth. And since it could not be otherwise, Bolivia has adopted a solid anti-imperialist position in national and international affairs, beginning with the expulsion of the DEA, USAID and the US Ambassador, and continuing with the denunciation of all imperialist aggression and the defense of the national sovereignty of any country in the world attacked by the empire.

Peoples’ diplomacy

But this anti-imperialist conscience is only a part of a new doctrine of international relations and a new geopolitical vision of a multipolar world Bolivia is constructing, that can be defined under a new paradigm of peoples’ diplomacy.

There are a number of references that we could find in the new peoples’ diplomacy fostered by President Evo and the Foreign Minister Choquehuancca, but we would like to highlight four:

• In the first place, transferring this retrieval of national sovereignty and of the dignity of the Bolivian people to the international sphere, by bringing the demand to reclaim Bolivia’s sovereign access to the sea from Chile, to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. We cannot forget that Chile seized 400 kilometers of the coast from Bolivia in an aggressive war, a coast that, in addition, (or precisely because of this) is rich in natural resources such as guano, saltpeter, borax, copper and silver. Moreover, Evo’s seal is present in his seeking to unify the interests of a nation for the maritime demand, by including in the team the greater part of the former presidents of Bolivia, even including, as the spokesperson for the cause, Carlos Mesa, an ex-President from the neoliberal period. This unity of the Bolivian people, and also the international solidarity that the Bolivian cause has received, would be unthinkable with any other President.

• A President that has been the principal promoter of Latin American integration together with the architects of the process, Commandants Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. Bolivia not only incorporated the name TCP (Peoples’ Trade Agreement) to ALBA, but has also been an important pillar of the constitution of Unasur and CELAC, the latter a mechanism of regional integration that he will preside over in 2017 and in which, in the words of Evo: "All the presidents are called upon to participate. The majority will be there, excepting Canada and the US (..) this is also a way to free ourselves from the domination of the US empire". Nor should we forget the approach and subsequent entry of Bolivia to Mercosur, and the critical position maintained on the regional disintegration mechanism known as the Pacific Alliance.

• The proposal for Latin American and Caribbean integration has been accompanied by the strengthening of South-South relations. And here it is important to note the Presidency of the G77+China, led by Bolivia in 2014, and the organization of the Summit of this UN group, in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in June of that year. Work and leadership that was compensated by the nomination of Bolivia in the UN to preside over the Committee on the Process of Restructuration of the Sovereign Debt in the framework of the defense of Argentinian sovereignty against the vulture funds.

• But not only has Bolivia taken part in multilateral diplomacy. The New Peoples’ Diplomacy and South-South relationships have also appeared on a bilateral plane. Here we must put in first place the excellent relationships that exist with the People’s Republic of China led by the CPC, that gave new momentum to Bolivian scientific and technological sovereignty with the construction in China of the Túpac Katari satellite (TKSAT-1), the first telecommunications satellite that is the property of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. Nor can we forget the relations with Russia, the other BRICS power, a country with which we have signed an agreement for the construction of a centre for nuclear research and training of personnel to develop nuclear energy with ends that are not only peaceful but medical.

But in addition to the new peoples’ diplomacy, of Bolivia toward the world, the world also has its eyes on the heart of South America, mainly for two aspects:

• First, the good performance of the Bolivian economy. In a context of crisis of capitalism and the fall of petroleum prices to historic minimal levels, Bolivia continues to grow at 5%, something exceptional in Latin America that bordered on 1% of growth in 2015. In spite of the fact that the price of gas is indexed to petroleum, that today is around 25 dollars per barrel, the good performance of the Bolivian economy is something to be studied [2], even in the University of Chicago, birthplace and laboratory of neoliberalism.

• In second place, Bolivia is building a new paradigm of the relationship with nature. To a planet that has reached the limits of sustainability, and a model of growth that implodes on the need to maintain the rate of capital growth, Bolivia is driving a model of development that does not imply growth at the price of the exploitation of peoples, persons or nature. We must note here the adoption of the Framework Law of Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well, which should become a model for humanity in search of another model of development.

• But all these advancements and the Bolivian contribution to the construction of a new multipolar world are now threatened by a rightwing that, with the complicity of imperialism, wants to promote a conservative restoration in Bolivia that has triumphed in Argentina and obtained a partial win in Venezuela. Without forgetting the need for political education and the formation of new leaders to continue strengthening the democratic and cultural revolution, it is necessary to complete the re-founding of the State begun on January 21 ,2006, a re-founding that should culminate in 2025 when the Patriotic Agenda is completed and Bolivia reaches a second and definitive independence, where extreme poverty has been eradicated and a full economic, scientific, technological and cultural sovereignty is achieved.

The process of change in Bolivia is now, through both endogenous and exogenous factors, the most stable and solid in the region. But in order for this stability not to be under threat, it is necessary for the YES to triumph in the February 21 referendum. This triumph will not only allow Evo and Alvaro to be candidates of the people in 2019, but will be a breath of fresh air for the process of continental change that requires a new boost following the electoral defeats in Argentina and Venezuela.


[1] http://www.hispantv.com/newsdetail/Bolivia/200723/morales-oposicion-bolivia-eeuu-referendo-linera
[2] Conference of the Minister of the Economy of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Luis Arce Catacora, at the University of Chicago, April 2015 http://medios.economiayfinanzas.gob.bo/MH/documentos/Presentaciones/Presentaciones%202015/1_Pres.Chicago_University_(16.04.15)_Espa%C3%B1ol_2.pdf