indigenous president. That tells you a lot. The racial discrimination and exclusion from power--bigoted white Europeans (with imported South Africans to grab land and shore up the white minority) against the poor indigenous majority, has been intense. Maybe that's why there has been "instability" ...you think?
As Judi Lynn has reported, as late as the 1950s, the indigenous were not permitted to walk on the sidewalks in Bolivia! The bigotry was very similar to the racial bigotry of our own south--with "whites only" drinking fountains, etc. And the denial of civil, human and voting rights has also been similar--and has produced a similar result: a vast poor underclass, based on racial lines.
You know, fascist systems can appear to be "stable"--with power wielded brutally by the rich elite to keep their minority white neighborhoods free of riffraff and themselves safe from leftist government, democracy and creation of a good society for
everyone.
Instability, in that case, is a sign of life, a good sign. It means there is hope for a better, more just, balance of society's interests. A rich elite, lording it over a vast, dirt poor majority, is an INHERENTLY unstable system, in reality. The instability is built in, in the form of egregious unfairness. And the visible signs of that instability--mass protests, blockades, boycotts, civil disorder (almost always fascist security forces and rightwing thugs beating up on non-violent, leftist demonstrators)--are the only methods that the poor majority has, to try to bring about BALANCE--fairness, equity, economic and political justice.
This pretty much describes Bolivia until the election of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of the country. Morales has analyzed the structure of rightwing, rich, white minority power, and won a general plebiscite on forming commissions to re-write the Constitution, with 80% of the vote. (He himself won election with a 56% margin.) One of the problems of Bolivia's system--and why they go through presidents like discarded underwear--is that the president doesn't have enough power to
do anything about Bolivia's vast problems. Morales--like Chavez in Venezuela, and Correa in Ecuador--seeks to restructure the executive branch, to empower the president to
reform the country's corrupt institutions--too long in the hands of an entrenched, selfish, greedy, rightwing minority that doesn't really give a fuck about their country, sold its resources to global corporate predators, and failed to develop infrastructure, education, job creation, manufacturing capability and all the things that are needed to bootstrap the poor into a prosperous middle class. These are the folks who sold the water system in one Bolivian city to Betchtel Inc. Bechtel then began jacking up the price of water to the poorest of the poor--even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater!
In fact, that is the event that catapulted Morales into the presidency--a massive popular revolt against Bechtel's takeover of Cochabamba's water system. If you had entered Cochabamba as a tourist in the middle of that event, yes, you would have said, "This is disorderly! This is a mess! This is unstable!" Thousands of people were blocking highways and
trying to bring the city to a halt--to bring about a remedy for this egregious "under the radar"
instability of the poor having to pay half their pittance wages for water.
But, in the bigger picture, it is a movement
toward proper balance. And
IF the country's president has the authority to, for instance,
prevent a local oligarchy from
selling the country's natural resources (water, gas, oil, forests, minerals) to global corporate predators and "first world" loan sharks,
then the country can start walking the path toward a good society, in which
all prosper, and all can feed and educate their children, and live in contentment with each other.
Now it is the rightwing minority that is causing trouble, because they don't like democracy and majority rule, and they oppose social justice. They want to split off the gas/oil rich provinces from the central government, to deny benefit of those resources to the poor urban majority (millions of poor peasant farmers driven from the land, into urban shantytowns, by rich landlords). The poor have taken the path of peace--non-violent protest, political organization, electoral action and electoral victories--to achieve their RIGHTFUL place in Bolivia's power structure. And the rightwing minority wants a civil war. They have armed militias. They are allied with the fascists in Colombia and Washington. This is a circumstance that is exploitable by--and is being fueled by--the Bushites, who want control of the oil, gas and other resources in the Andes region (in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina).
So Bolivia may see more turmoil, truly, as its people--like the people throughout the Andes region and South America who have elected leftist governments--seek STABILITY: a rightful balance of socialism and capitalism, a rightful balance in the use of resources, rightful LOCAL development (schools, medical care systems, small business, coops, roads, manufacturing capability, services that benefit all), and regional self-determination.
Bolivia may, in fact, become the ground on which the Bush Junta and Exxon Mobil start their next project: Oil War II--South America. Colombia's bombing of Ecuador (with U.S. ordinance using U.S. surveillance)--and Exxon Mobil's recent effort to freeze $12 billion of Venezuela's asset--may have been the opening shots of this war. But Bolivia is the place that it may be fought--the place most likely to see U.S. boots on the ground this year, as Donald Rumsfeld (yup, him*) orchestrates the destabilization of the Andes region, and the last desperate effort of the Oiligarchy to gain control of big pots of oil, before U.S. taxpayers run out of borrowed money to pay for it.
I hope that the New South American Left can head this war off, and I think they can. They will, in any case, win it. But Rumsfeld is rather famous for inflicting great suffering and harm, in the course of failing. And Bolivia may get the brunt of it.
-------------------------
*
"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html(Note: He never mentions Bolivia, but he urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America, and I think the best candidate for that "swift action" is the rightwing separatists in Bolivia. What they may do is request Bushite/U.S. military support when they declare their "independence" in May--if Morales opposes them with Bolivian forces. Morales is working hard to prevent this. The Bushites are working hard to make it happen. Typical Rumsfeld M.O.--chaos is opportunity, so create chaos.)
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