Bolivian analyst Rafael Bautista during a 2019 conference in La Paz, Bolivia. Photo: Prensa Latina/File photo.
There is no doubt that what is taking place in Bolivia, with the strong division in the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), generates a dangerous scenario for the future. The rivalry between Evo Morales and President Luis Arce, which has led to the same fracture occurring at the base of the political party, would give rise to the possibility that in the next electoral contest in 2025, the right could once again take over the government.
To analyze this serious situation, Telesur interviewed the Bolivian philosopher and writer Rafael Bautista, a skilled analyst not only of the problems in his country but of what is happening on a global scale.
There is no doubt that the current Bolivian left confrontation is not only harmful at a local level, but it is also worrying on a continental scale. What is your view of what is happening, and how it will evolve in the future?
What we are experiencing today is what I have been often describing since 2018, and it points to an implosive collapse within the ruling party itself that suffered the coup d’état in 2019. Because it was not a coup against the government: what was projected from that coup was an assault on the Plurinational State and its indigenous and popular character. I want to make it clear from the beginning, because things have been so much obscured here. You have already realized that both sides are openly accusing each other which, politically speaking, is not at all prudent, knowing that the right and the oligarchic interests are the first to celebrate such a loss of credibility. It’s an issue that had already happened to the MAS at another time, but the party recovered when it returned to government. However, they did not learn anything from that, as they continued with what they had done for 14 years. Instead of being re-attached to the genuine and legitimate project that the people had introduced as a political horizon, even in the Constituent Assembly itself, it was diluted, especially in the last mandate of President Evo Morales. The new MAS government was supposed to learn, or at least try to remedy, the serious and catastrophic errors that had already begun to occur in the last administration. The people expressed it vehemently; and this required a redirection of the change process.
But you all know, too, that it was in Argentina where it was decided who would be the MAS electoral duo. In other words, just when the people had recovered political sovereignty it was once again taken away from them. And this does not even happen from within the country but from outside, it is decided above political sovereignty not only the candidacy—putting a token of Evo Morales, who was Lucho Arce, the former Minister of Economy and current president—but ignoring other pairs that had been proposed from the very bases. It also introduced a large part of that political apparatus, of such bureaucracy which was maintained in the 14 years and which served interests no longer of consolidation of a popular project, but simply partisan interests which have to do with the maintenance and amplification of the power.
Having achieved an electoral victory defeating the right wing, Evo Morales returns to the country and begins a multitudinous meetings tour. What is your opinion on what happened at that time?
Think about it, former president Evo Morales arrived in Bolivia in the middle of the government’s replacement and acted as if it were a parallel government. It was the first issue starting to generate friction between the party and the government. From then on, they began what I call restoring a political culture, which is known here as Movementist Nationalism. That became a political culture from 1952, and was corrupted to such an extent that the last leaders practically expelled everyone, leading to the uprising of 2003, called the Gas War, which led to the subsequent assumption of the first indigenous president of our country.
Those massive popular struggles and the arrival of Evo to the Government, meant a kind of “enough is enough.”
That’s true. That happened because people got tired of the same political caste that had assaulted the State as if it were their private property. And in a kind of “pasanacu,” as we call it here referring to a corrupt cooperative of power, the governments used to be shared among the same elites. It was that very elite that introduced itself, that was recycled within the MAS; and it is the one that also had, too, a lot to do with the implosion of the party in the coup d’état of 2019. Because these kinds of events do not only happen from abroad, there must be complicity within. Today, this political culture of Movementist Nationalism is the naturalization of corruption. It shows that those who had the task of redirecting the change process had no idea about how to do it. They had not even done their homework of analyzing why they had lost the government due to a fabricated coup d’état, planned as a color revolution. They did not have enough sense to remake the popular presence within the government. They just resorted to what is known as union and political favoritism in Bolivia.
So, in those conditions, you may consider what it would become: a struggle for power. The continuous reflections I have been publishing on this subject, detail and warn about the danger of pressuring the government to abdicate before its democratic period is complete. Because that would lead us, even now, to a State of what Mexicans characterize as political chaos. It would even lead us to the figure of a failed State.
Do you think Evo and the sector that supports him are committed to that position, by proposing Arce’s resignation?
Yes, because time has a lot to do with politics. A government has emerged from a coup d’état in which the State had been defrauded, and needs to be restored, and even the State itself needs political stability, needs social and economic stability. This is apart from the errors that the government also commits, which demonstrates, too, that the productive-social economic model has failed; for you cannot trust the inertia of a model that believes it acts by itself. Models, however perfect they may be, need impellers and adaptability to the current circumstances. Neither the Evo administration nor the Arce administration ever had a geopolitical reading of the matter; and currently, not having that reading is no longer just a gross error, it is what we call practically total blindness to what is happening in the world and in Bolivia.
A kind of suicide…
A state suicide, what is happening across the world. For example, the Chancay port has just been inaugurated in Perú. They are talking about the route “from Chancay to Shanghai,” and that this is even threatening the economic presence of the US, of the dollar, basically because they are calling this mega project “the port of South America.” Bolivia would be the most interested, and so would be China, so that we can connect once and for all to the Pacific, which is the economy of the 21st century, and we would do it through Peruvian ports, no longer depending on Chilean ports, which for us has always been a deficit, not only commercially and economically but also geopolitically.
In these conditions, in which a government needs to rethink its geopolitical presence, a social and political destabilization appears from its very headquarters. So, it is worth asking: what is happening here? Or who’s not reading it properly? Either both [Evo and Arce] are already fighting for power quotas, or both have lost their way and do not have the necessary prudence to measure political times. Let us arrive at 2025 with credible candidates, and let us not make this problem of generating a kind of untimely, anachronistic dispute that would only result in people themselves losing the credibility of the party in power. Currently, for example, a divided party does not meet the necessary conditions to be in power from 2025.
It means that the right-wing will take advantage of this under imperial tutelage to empower itself, because here lithium has to do with the issue. I have once said in a conference, that rather it seems both sectors have acquired different commitments regarding lithium exploitation, production, and commercialization. If that is so, it is then understandable that there is an interest behind it, acting to destabilize the issue and aiming to lead us toward a situation of state stability collapse. In the same way, to a lack of credibility in the party that assumed the task of building the Plurinational State. If this happens, it will have serious consequences for us. The first consequence will be the destruction of the Plurinational State and the put down of any kind of plurinational project, not only in Bolivia but also in other countries of the region.
So, as neither of the two sides have an adequate reading of the matter, if we are facing a confrontation, at least we do it discreetly and within the party and the government. But not in a Manichean or even rude way. You all are seeing the statements by one side and the other. In other words, this is already a total defenestration, this is no longer an ideological struggle, it is a fratricidal struggle. And when one sees that, one says: where are principles, where are programmatic issues, where is the political horizon? So, that worries us and it is what makes us think that there is a third party here that is carefully calculating its chances of succeeding, through what is always called “the dock circle”, that is, the internal fight. This is not in anyone’s interest within the party itself, within the government itself, which is threatened and that could lead to a fracture of the popular bloc. It would be the most disastrous situation.
Thinking about a little better future: do you see the possibility of a third MAS candidate? Do you consider that there would be an agreement to put aside grudge if there were a third candidate in this race, someone like Andrónico Rodríguez?
I don’t see a viable candidate at this time. President Arce is not a leader, much less a charismatic leader. It is difficult for him to bring together, let’s say, people in a project of such magnitude as the one we have outlined in the constituent process. Now he has a challenge, too, that would require a beneficial outcome in this situation through strategic agreements. In the case of Bolivia, the country is in a very fragile stability: lack of fuel, rise of prices, inflation, lack of dollars. All of that is threatening and undermining the credibility of the government. On the other hand, former president Evo Morales’s stubbornness is also leading us to a situation where there is a logic—I don’t appreciate this term, but it has to be said—a dictator. The one that says “either me or nobody else, if I fall, the whole world falls.” That is not politics. Moreover, a politician should never consider that as a final solution, because it is not his image that is at stake, but what his image represents. In the case of former President Evo, this is the indigenous person transformed into a political horizon.
Now, morally, his discredit diminishes his possibility to stand out in a political contest. Unfortunately, these infiltrated elements also present in Evo’s Government, are taking advantage of that. Up to this point, as I said: Evo is the one who practically outlined the government plan from Buenos Aires, putting his close partners back in power, and his people are the ones who later turn their backs on him.
What I call a besieged king syndrome is repeated; that is, they elevate the king to such an extent that they turn him into a divine figure. And this entourage, when it no longer serves them, sacrifices him, and they start looking for a new leader to sacrifice again. That’s what they are doing right now. This is what they have done in the last administration. Evo used to be a motive of popular unity, but today he is no longer it, because politically he no longer has the lucidity he used to have years ago, and he has made very severe strategic mistakes that are costing him not only credibility, but also his image and the MAS dissolution. He is now left alone with the hard-core. And when that happens, he sees himself so cornered that he is capable of adopting the option of political suicide. It is sad, as a leader who had worldwide repercussions, that he is creating conditions for his political presence in the country to implode. So, the outlook is complex and it’s leading us to a most dangerous thing, which would be the collapse of the popular block and the plurinational horizon.
Long before Trump won the presidential election, right-wing Bolivian leaders traveled to the United States, where they exchanged opinions with both Republican and Democratic leaders on how to move in the face of the Evo-Lucho conflict. On the other hand, everything indicates that the right does not have new leaders but still the same faces that acted during the coup d’état: Mesa, Camacho, who is still in prison, Tuto Quiroga, and somebody else. Do you think they have a real possibility of reaching the Government in 2025?
It is sad to say it because one also measures one’s adversaries, measures their political and even intellectual stature. The Bolivian right is the most ignorant in the entire region, the most submissive, and shameful to such a degree that one asks: “Have those people governed us for so long?” It makes us feel ashamed to admit the Bolivian right does not have even a volt of brightness. Right now, the right does not have a possibility. The only chance they have of coming to power is by seizing it.
They are currently trying to bring together all the right-wing parties, and they want another opportunity here. The only thing they know how to do is to copy. They intend to imitate the Milei model, to achieve a “mileization” of Bolivia. They are shamelessly submissive.
They have an advantage because, in the region, with a few exceptions, everything seems to be turning towards extreme right-wing positions.
It always depends on who is orchestrating foreign policy in Washington. Let’s imagine the scenario with Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. The region is between a rock and a hard place. Here, we have to rethink what we always say: the liberation has to be continental. If not, the US has no other choice. If not, the US has no other choice. Consider the following: the US Southern Command is in charge of restoring the Monroe Doctrine with new undisclosed addenda, which they call the Russia Chapter and the China Chapter. They have been well aware of what the project China has already inaugurated for the South American port will represent.
Today, I checked information from the British outlet The Daily Telegraph. It says something like this, I’m going to quote it: the objective would be in Perú, that is, the American influence is filtering this kind of threat, of a new world war scenario between China and the US. We should not forget that Trump’s cabinet is eminently Sinophobic, and they are attacking the controversial Chinese global-structure programs called the Silk Roads. So, The Daily Telegraph says, the inauguration of the Chancay Port would represent a casus belli which would be only the beginning, as hundreds of Chinese projects could enter via the Chancay Port, which would be definitive to re-establish decisively, from Washington, a new kind of hybrid interference. Trump is not going to orchestrate classic coups. Currently, it’s what the new administration has learned, as Trump is not a fool. We’d be facing an imminent balkanization process threat in South America. It’s enough seeing the current scenario: you guys in Argentina have been threatened by the Israeli, British, American presence in Patagonia, for example. Interests in lithium are being defined: Milei has already offered them to Israeli capital. We should not forget that before the state of “Israel” had been formed, Argentina was also an option to compose a state, which later led to [the colonization of] Palestine.
The problems as a result of the destruction of social advances in Argentina will lead to what happens in other places as Ecuador case, or what is happening in Perú. But in the latter, the commercial presence of China will give the government a break as long as it does not object to that sort of intervention, which is strong in Perú, from culinary to commercial matters. Border issues will be activated everywhere. In other words, I repeat: we are in the imminence of a regional balkanization threat that would be activated to prevent South America from decoupling from the geoeconomic of the dollar. In Bolivia, what I have highlighted in other types of articles is that the lithium triangle has already been finished. Milei has practically already raffled off part of that triangle. Chile already has its agreements with the West. Bolivia is the only one missing, and if it does not know how to calculate and strategically manage lithium, no longer as a mere commodity but as a backup for our currency and as a global-level strategic asset, we will have to face, too, a new interference of a much more sophisticated nature. It is not in vain that Elon Musk is in Trump’s cabinet. Elon Musk is already pulling the strings in the coming Trump government. The only good thing about Trump is that he is not one of the Wall Street Managers like the Democrats are. That is to say, with Trump, there will not be a world war but it will be hell for us. Even more, they are considering activating, too, the balkanization process in México.
Three Women, Three Perspectives on the Division in Bolivia’s MAS
But look at how Biden is leaving, authorizing Zelensky to launch more and more latest-generation missiles. He is giving a nice gift to Trump regarding US relations with Russia.
Now look at what is happening at a global level. Imperial legitimacy is collapsing on Earth. It is still missing, it collapses in heaven. It’s just because the skies have always been an epistemological reference place for people. In other words, that is the utopian horizon that a new project has been proposing in line with strong criticism of the world system where we live.
Where we already got the signal that this possibility of the collapse of the utopian horizon, which for five centuries has already been imposed in the world as a Western project, is in “New Zealand” (Aotearoa). All the world has seen the resistance that has been activated in the New Zealand parliament, under the shout of Ka Mate Ka Mate Ka Ora Ka Ora. Which has had such an impact that it is beginning to revitalize a new resistance process. Because now those who are in the global resistance, curiously enough, are the peoples denied by the modern world, the indigenous peoples. They welcome so much that spirit offered by New Zealand to also begin to reactivate this ancestral call, which means: we have to replenish our utopias. Because capitalism no longer gives more, it is breaching the very physical limits of the planet. Because capitalism is no longer possible, it is breaching the very physical limits of the planet. With each innovation in the name of progress and development, those limits are crossed with a serious risk for future coexistence. Why does it happen? Because the horizon of expectations that the modern capitalist world has generated is still being validated. So, we the people have to wake up because we are living in an apocalyptic period in which there will be a tremendous collapse, not only at the financial-economic level but also a credibility collapse in the very project that the modern world has globalized. Politically, the so-called first world is on the verge of collapse, and Europe will no longer play any geopolitical role from now on. Therefore, we have had the possibility of having a significant block in the BRICS, and Lula is stopping it, too, by not allowing Venezuela to join. So, we need to reformulate our categories of political interpretation to know what kind of world we are in, and how imperial interference is going to try to survive at our expense, infiltrating our popular movements with the ideologies of so-called progressivism. They have only undermined the popular field and prevented it from consolidating, disseminating the fight, separating them, making it seem that the fight is corporate, that they will not respond to a single popular project.
(Telesur)
Translation: Edu Montesanti for Orinoco Tribune
OT/EM/AU
