News of interest from Latin America by David Morris
Vol. 1, No. 12. Monday, November 19, 2007
Bolivia: wars of attrition
Evo Morales says his government is fighting two wars in the continuing struggle to transform Bolivian society, one of them political, the other economic.The political process of writing a new constitution, hampered by rightist opponents since it began in August 2006, still has some slight chance of succeeding before December 14, when the Constituent Assembly’s term ends. And government efforts may make staple food items more plentiful and cheaper despite the hoarding Morales charges large-scale food distributors are engaged in.
Most industrial agricultural production takes place in the eastern part of the country, which is also the center of wealth and of rightist opposition to the government. Specifically, the most prominent opposition leader, Branko Marinkovic, owns cooking-oil processing plants and other food-production factories in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, the largest and wealthiest city in the country. Food shortages and inflation, on the other hand, strike hardest in the poorer, more indigenous high plains of the west, where militant popular uprisings have been frequent over the years and where support for the Morales government is strongest.
In a move Vice-President Álvaro García Linera said was regrettable but necessary, the Bolivian government decreed on November 14 that certain grains, cooking oil, meat and other food products can be imported duty-free until next March. It also initiated a system of cataloguing food exports.
Businessmen deny there is hoarding or speculation in the food industry and attribute shortages and inflation to recent weather conditions and to the chronic shortage of diesel fuel. Describing the decrees as examples of neoliberalism, a policy they otherwise champion, they say the government actions are counterproductive and will lead eventually to dependence on foreign sources of food to the detriment of domestic agriculture. They charge the cataloguing of exports is in reality a step toward curbing them and will also lead to financial hardship for producers.
Morales says Bolivia is seeing the same kind of economic pressure that preceded the coups against Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2002, when rightist opponents drove up the prices of staples and then instigated banking strikes. “Now I understand why some of the comrades talk about nationalizing private banking,” Morales has said. “We’re not thinking of nationalizing them, or any other businesses, but we have to be prepared. Because in Venezuela the banks closed down for months to damage Chávez economically, to spur the people to rise against Chávez. That is the politics of attrition they are promoting.”
The Constituent Assembly, in the meantime, has scheduled a meeting for November 19, the first plenary session since last August. Committees of the Assembly and separate groups of political party members have sought in the interim to settle the question of whether the Assembly should take up the question of moving the legislative and executive branches of the government from La Paz to the historical capital of Sucre, which is still the site of the judicial branch. Sucre is also the site of Constituent Assembly meetings and is a center of rightist opposition. Government opponents, who favor the move, staged violent protests in August when the Assembly voted against taking up the question, intimidating members and forcing a suspension of the group’s deliberations. Indigenous groups, labor unions and other supporters have countered with massive marches and demonstrations of their own in support of the Assembly.
Assembly president Silvia Lazarte called off a resumption of deliberations on November 9 after drunken opponents assaulted members and reporters at the meeting site.
Representatives say there is basic agreement on 85% of the new constitution, although none of it has been voted on formally. The government has suggested the possibility of extending the deadline again.
Return to Latin America News Notes home.