Bolivia's Home-Grown President

[Thom Little]

On its face, the election of Evo Morales to the presidency of Bolivia would seem like an enormous victory for the left -- another domino in the line of Latin American nations turning away from Washington Consensus-style economics to forge a path of its own. But the question remains whether the first indigenous president in Bolivia's history will be allowed -- by the Bolivian Congress or by the larger international financial and legal system -- to live up to his promises and fulfill the enormous expectations of his supporters. If not, Bolivia could face an even more unstable future.

The symbolic value of a Morales victory cannot be overstated in a country where symbols represent the passions of a people mobilized to change what they see as 500 years of state oppression. Thus the wiphala -- the checkered rainbow flag of indigenous resistance -- flew from every Morales campaign vehicle; technocratic economic policy proposals about how the nation should manage its natural gas industry became symbols of Bolivian "independence" and "self-governance"; and politicians called for the defense of Pachamama (Mother Earth) as they pressed their home-grown solutions for this cash-poor but resource-rich country, urging the rejection of the North American capitalistas.

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Years of Washington Consensus-style economic policies, first adopted in the mid-1980s under the label "shock therapy" and expanded in the mid-1990s, when the country privatized its oil, gas, electric and other major industries, have done little to help Bolivia's people, more than 65 percent of whom are still stuck below the poverty line. In fact, despite being the testing ground for much of neoliberal economic policy in the past 20 years, the average Bolivian is now poorer than his grandparents were 50 years ago. The privatization schemes, rather than bringing prosperity as promised, have provoked a wave of anger against international financial institutions and the United States, which was on display all over Bolivia in this presidential election.

And while the U.S. government has expressed deep fears about a Morales presidency, in many ways it's the United States that has put Morales in the position he is in today. In Bolivia the United States is not only a symbol of foreign capital but of the bitter "war on drugs" that strong-armed Bolivia into accepting a U.S.-financed coca eradication campaign that even the World Bank has admitted bears responsibility for Bolivia's continued poverty.



http://www.alternet.org/story/30457/