Racism, Domination and Revolution in Bolivia

[Judi Lynn]

Racism, Domination and Revolution in Bolivia
Adolfo Gilly September 26, 2008

Mexico - “The problem in Bolivia is that the country is undergoing a process of reforms, without abandoning the democratic framework, but both the opposition and the government act as if they were facing a revolution,” stated Marco Aurelio García, a close advisor to Lula in international affairs, according to an article by José Natanson in the newspaper Pagina 12.

Allowing myself to not take this declaration literally, but instead in an ironic sense, Marco Aurelio García, an intelligent and well-informed man, can’t help but realize that if the two protagonists of the Bolivian confrontation believe that they are dealing with a revolution, this belief is the best confirmation that, in effect, it is. The Vice President, Álvaro García Linera, on the other hand, has said that what is happening is “an increase in elites, an increase in rights, and a redistribution of wealth. This, in Bolivia, is a revolution.”

He is right: in Bolivia this alone would already be a revolution like the one in Nicaragua in 1979. But what is happening is something much deeper and that goes much further than the elites, politics, and the economy. This is a questioning of the means of the historical domination by those elites, old and new. It comes from very far below, it is moved by an ancient fury, and it will not be stopped by the massacres at the hands of fascist groups nor by the fragile government agreements with the prefects of the Media Luna.

The massacre in Pando, with more than 30 campesinos assassinated in cold blood by the hit men of the white minority, and the horrific scenes of humiliation, pain and punishment of the indigenous people in the public plaza of Sucre and in the streets of Santa Cruz de la Sierra at the hands of gangs of fascist youth, are telling in that this white minority knows exactly what game it is playing: its power is not negotiable, its lands are untouchable, its right to despotic rule resides in skin color not in the votes of citizens. The white minority is not willing to, in a sense, “extend” said despotic right, supported also by poor white groups whose only “property” is their skin color that separates them from the Indians. They are much less willing to redistribute property or wealth.

More:
http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2008/09/racism-domination-and-revolution-in.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Wow! This is the sort of deep background that is totally, completely, unforgivably missing

from our Corpo/Fascist 'news' monopolies. An ancient wrong, of immense magnitude, is being corrected, in Bolivia, by the very people who were wronged. And the miracle of that correction, thus far--as in the miracle of South Africa, and the miracle in our own bigoted, segregated south in the 1960s--is that violence, by the wronged, has been explicitly disavowed by the leaders of the wronged, even while it continues to be employed by the wrong-doers.

Evo Morales, like Martin Luther King and like Ghandi--and like Nelson Mandela in his later years--has a philosophical commitment to non-violence, personally expressed by his own activism, as head of the coca leaf growers union, before he was president, and in the "Water Wars" that led to his election. He was beaten by police for his union activism, and did not respond in kind. He did not become an armed leftist guerrilla, as he certainly had the emotional cause to become. He and his supporters--eventually most of the country--took the long view of human history and struggles for justice, the view that has, at its core, a desire to redeem those who oppress you. This is NOT a weak position, but it is one that requires collective action to be effective. Bigots can isolate and beat or lynch individuals, and can generally bring more fire power to bear against the armed resistance of the poor, but there is nothing--nothing!--that can stop a unified, collective, non-violent movement for social justice that persists in its goals.

The Bolivian indigenous will defend themselves--and have defended themselves--when attacked, and they have frequently been attacked by the fascist white minority in Bolivia, both historically and recently. But they are NOT organized to beat up on whites, and do NOT have that in their hearts. They do NOT enter white neighborhoods in gangs and assault people and cause mayhem and destruction, as the whites do to them. And, while they may bring along a bat or a machete, if walking a lonely country road, and while they may respond with bricks and improvised bats, if they are attacked in a group--which has often happened (fascist thugs attacking peaceful indigenous protesters)--their intent clearly is neither violent nor acquisitive. It is--as this writer points out--deep, as if a sea of historical wrong pours through them, and wisdom emerges from the sea.

A particularly apt metaphor, if I do say so myself, as Bolivia is land-locked, yet has a navy, and has, at long last (lo, these more than 130 years), achieved an agreement with Chile for access to the sea, one of the greatest accomplishments of the Morales government, along with Morales' nationalization of the gas resource and re-negotiation of the contracts, to DOUBLE Bolivia's gas profits, from one billion dollars per year, to TWO billion. (A great irony, that--as it's one of the reasons for the white separatists' appalling greed.) (Another is their association with Bushwhacks.)

In Evo Morales, the indigenous majority in Bolivia has found a highly apt leader of their deeply moral, social justice movement. He is faced with the dilemma that Martin Luther King never had to face--calling out the National Guard, using force of arms to repress the repressive. MLK was never president or governor. Morales is. That dilemma--Morales' non-violence, and the fascist murders and mayhem in the eastern provinces--has been at issue this last month. Some have criticized Morales for ordering the police/military not to use their guns. Some police were even humiliated by fascist thugs. Order had to be restored, and Morales finally sent troops into Pando, where the massacre of an unarmed indigenous group had occurred.

But the writer has pin-pointed a common, underlying reality, in Bolivia's indigenous movement, which was also manifest in the civil rights movement of the 1960s (and other great movements with non-violent leaders): the genuine, understandable, often life-long, often seering grievances of the poor, especially the brown and the black poor in white European-dominated cultures, and the potential for great grievances simply blowing up into violent (and sometimes very self-destructive) revolution. This was a clear threat in South Africa. And there were several violent uprisings in the U.S.--the Watts riot, for instance--that were mainly just ventings, and accomplished little, and, indeed, made things worse, the way prison riots usually do. The forces with the bigger guns, and all the money and power, almost always win in those situations. MLK was trying to direct that grievance energy, through non-violent civil disobedience, toward positive, organized goals, and thereby accomplished the end of legal segregation, and secured the right of black citizens to vote, and now we have black mayors and sheriffs and Congress persons, all over the country, and a mixed race presidential candidate (who is often referred to as black).

I remember something MLK said during that period, when I received non-violence training from his group, in Georgia in 1965. He said that he was recruiting courageous people, people who knew how to defend themselves, people who were streetwise and maybe had been in many a street fight. He did not want wimps, in other words. He did not want those who are non-violent because they are afraid, and who give in to bullies because they don't want to get beaten up.

It has always stayed with me. Non-violence requires STRENGTH, and requires even more courage than violence. It is a transcendent strength. It is not a weak position, if you are not a weak person. As a tool for social change, it is more powerful than any tactic, because it calls upon the oppressor to be human and to be moral. It gives them a chance to transcend their own bigotry and rage. It draws people in, rather than repulsing them with mere anger, revenge or violent self-defense, and the often resultant mayhem. Nobody wants to live in a community rent by violence, justified or unjustified. Most of us want peace and friendship and generosity and prosperity. Non-violence appeals to the best in human beings, but it must be employed with a lot of personal inner security, and generally needs to occur in public, in solidarity with like-minded people.

The indigenous and the poor--the vast majority in South America--have taken the peaceful, democratic path to change, which has to be one of the most stunning political miracles of the 20th and 21st centuries. This does not mean that they cannot, or will not, defend themselves, under grave assault--the other point that this writer is making. They are not democrats out of weakness. They are not non-violent out of weakness. And they thus, in gaining rightful power, will not--and have not--oppressed others.

The violence in Bolivia is completely uncalled for. It is the result of Bushwhack support of a greedy, fascist, racist minority. No one is taking anything from them that is rightfully theirs; indeed, the Morales government promises to create prosperity for all. Brazil and Venezuela just pledged the money to build a road from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through Bolivia, which will make Bolivia a major thoroughfare for trade from Africa/Europe to Asia, and all up and down the American coasts. This, and Chile granting Bolivia access to the sea, are the result of Bolivia electing a leftist, social justice government. They are the rewards for being democratic. And the usefulness of these rewards are contingent upon Bolivia accessing the talents, creativity, intelligence and productiveness of all of its citizens.

The new Constitution calls for land reform, but it is not land confiscation. It is a settlement of land rights. One of the incidents with fascists in Bolivia, recently, was their violent expulsion of government land surveyors. Bolivia has no comprehensive database on land ownership; thus, land grabs have occurred, against the indigenous, by violence and intimidation. The new Constitution, and the Morales government, are merely bringing "law and order" to the matter of land ownership, in what has been a "wild west" culture of land grabs over the last half century (and before). They want to break up large estates that have been illegally aggregated, and that give their few owners untoward power over the region and its landless (evicted) indigenous.

A settlement of rights is far different from, say, a communist system of simply declaring all land for the government, making private ownership illegal, and running farm co-ops, centrally controlled. Settlement of rights is a just and democratic system, in which everyone's claims get heard. It will also be good for agriculture and food self-sufficiency, as well as for the environment, because there are no better organic farmers than the indigenous, and an agriculture landscape that includes lots of small, organic farms is the safest and most productive system, in the long term. Monsanto may be able to get more yield, temporarily, but Corpo farming quickly destroys the soil. And fallow farm land--unused, and largely uninhabited, in large estates--with food scarcity and thousands of small farmers lacking land, unable to even feed their families, is absurdly bad policy.

Further, as a philosophically non-violent, and democratic, government, the Morales government does not want trouble; it does not want unfairness; it is extraordinarily even-handed, and it will create a fair process for disputes. The trouble is that the white separatists--egged on by the Bushites--don't want fairness. They want to own everything, control all resources, and use the indigenous as slave labor--as they think is their right--and they are willing to sacrifice their country and its hard-achieved stability and democracy for their private gain, just like Bushites.

I can't remember right now how many presidents Bolivia has had over the last ten years. It has been tumultuous. At last, they have a government that nearly 70% of the people approve of. That is unprecedented in Bolivia. And it is a measure of just how good the Morales government is, in every respect.

My prognosis: The white separatists in Bolivia will have to yield to the reality that all of South America is against them, and they themselves have disgraced their cause, by their murders and mayhem. A prosperous and just future is being laid out, by the Morales government, in cooperation with other leftist governments, and it is in their best interests to transcend their own racism, greed and violence, and help create that future. And if wiser heads don't prevail, among this separatist elite, they will effect their own disempowerment and marginalization--much like the ugliest of the white bigots in our own south, who became an embarrassment to the larger culture, and whom no one wanted around any more.