The Battle over Bolivia's Constituent Assembly: Class, race and nation in Bolivia

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In March 8 in reply to an article I posted on the Marxmail list written by Pablo Stefanoni and entitled “New tendency in the government: Evo moves away from Chavista style in order to attract the middle classes”, David Walters wrote

I think this essay deserves some consideration. If the essayist is correct, what Evo has done, and, for essayists, what he hasn't done, represents a broad-based retreat from the days of his election and May of last year. What do people think, what do people know of this since Bolivia has been out of news of late?

I responded by writing

why is it a "retreat" to want to consolidate forces, particular amongst an important sector of society who have begun to be won away in part to the project of capital, in order to gather strength before the next big battle?

Walters never replied.

Now, 3 months later it is clear what these moves - or "retreats" - particularly the agreement reached in the constituent assembly over the method of voting (two-thirds vs simple majority), has enabled the Morales government to.

As I explain in an article i have submitted to Green Left Weekly

The breaking of a six-month deadlock in Bolivia’s constituent assembly, has paved the way for the opening of an intense debate and discussion on the future of this highly polarised country, nestled in the heart of South America.......having finally agreed on rules for debate and procedure for the Constituent Assembly, delegates have began to discuss and draft proposals for Bolivia’s future constitution. The right-wing opposition, having hoped to both weaken the powers and credibility of the body and enforce a minority veto on any radical measures, had been pushing vigorous for a two-third majority voting system, stalling the process from moving ahead.

A comprise agreement was reached on February 14, which sets out a plan to attempt to reach two-thirds consensus, whilst leaving it open for controversy issues to go directly to a vote in the referendum.Since then delegates have spent 6 weeks back in their electorate, discussion with the communities there proposals for the new constitution, along with forming 21 commissions to draft up proposals to present to the assembly.

So this tactical retreat, as opposed to a political retreat, has shifted the public debate away from petty regulations of debate to discussion over differing visions of Bolivia's future, and once again allowed popular forces to go on the offensive. This has scared the pants of the opposition.

Stratfor explains it like this:

Bolivia's ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) appears to have gathered enough third-party votes to push a reconfiguration of Bolivia's political structure through committee in the South American country's Constitutional Assembly.......

A series of maneuvers by Bolivia's ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) over the past few days could lead opposition party Podemos to conclude it has been disenfranchised from a vital component of the Constitutional Assembly process......

The committee in charge of drafting an article on the political division of powers in Bolivia is expected to vote on proposals June 13. MAS' main proposal is almost certain to gain a majority of votes, creating autonomous regions based on traditional indigenous territories, with many of these situated in lowland areas ruled by the primarily ethnic European opposition. The proposal breaks a compromise MAS announced just last week, which would have incorporated the indigenous districts only within the existing departmental and municipal framework.

Even more alarming for the opposition, it now appears MAS has secured enough votes from third-party delegates to co-opt the dissenting minority proposal as well. It had been assumed that Podemos' proposal, which expressed the Media Luna lowland region's preference for regional autonomy without new indigenous zones, would gain the second-highest number of votes and hence move on for consideration as the minority proposal.

However, a third proposal, also by MAS, was submitted unexpectedly June 11 as a second minority position. Assuming MAS can get enough votes to force the committee to approve both of its proposals before the June 21 deadline (it currently needs only two more votes to do so), Podemos will lose all its power in this committee. The strategy is a bold move by MAS, but by abandoning its earlier compromise consensus, the party risks forcing the opposition to move to derail the assembly altogether.

Stratfor now even has no shame in complaining that:

Bolivia's ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) appears to have gathered enough third-party votes to push a reconfiguration of Bolivia's political structure through committee in the South American country's Constitutional Assembly.

Funny that, only a few months ago the opposition was mobilising under the banner of “democracy” to defend two-thirds. Now that MAS might have two-thirds, the opposition is no longer concerned about this issue.

Instead now according to Stratfor (and the opposition themselves),

the region could be left with no option other than street protests and quitting the assembly.

So what can we take in from all this. The MAS forces, inside and outside the Constitent Assembly by taking a step sideway, have paved the way towards an opening of discussion on more favourable turf, over the politicis of what the new Bolivia should look like. This is exactly where the opposition is weakest because they lack any alternative project in the face of the growing national hegemony of the indigenous-popular bloc headed by MAS.

In a fascinating report “The state of the state in Bolivia” (only available in Spanish), the authors argue that a new emerging common sense, or hegemony, is emerging in Bolivia. For them it is based on five simple premises:

“Despite the conflicts, we are optimists, we want change and Bolivia is changing”

“Democracy is all of us: this implies conflicts and conciliation, participation and control”

“We support the nationalisation of gas: natural resources belong to all of us and should be the basis of our development”

“We are Aymaras, mestizos, cambas and collas: we are diverse but before everything else we are Bolivians and we make up one pluri-nation”

“The Constituent Assembly is citizens participation and social justice, it is the scenario for a new social pact”

Instead the opposition is once again forced to raise fears of instability through street confrontations and the spectre of Bolivia's disintegration, two issues that play heavily on the minds of the middle class and the military. Politically they know they cannot win the argument, this helps explain why they have attempted to cloak themselves in a nationalist guise. For the majority of Bolivia society the days of neoliberal plundering are over, and anyone who dares try to raise a return to the past will be dealt with accordingly.

In this context, the position of maintaining unity amongst the differing indigenous groups and organisations and social movement, strengthening the alliance with the middle classes which has wavered in its approach to the first indigenous government and early this year had begun to shift to the opposition, promoting the nationalist sentiments within the military to try build support for his project there, and pushing forward with MASs project for a new Bolivia - at a pace that keeps all this, and the international and national balance of class forces, in mind - seems a much more sensible policy that “socialist revolution now”.

One question though that i would like to raise to get peoples' thoughts on (Im working on an article for the following issue of Green Left Weekly which will touch on this, so help would be appreciated) is one that Fred Feldman raised a while ago on the Marxmail list. Responding to an article "Evo's Errors"by ex-minister of hydrocarbons, Andres Soliz Rada, were he wrote

It is incompatible to defend the Great Bolivarian Homeland whilst holding some of the positions that MAS has inside the Constituent Assembly which attempt to splinter the republic, such as the reconstruction of 39 indigenous nations and the reterritorialisation of Bolivia within a new pluri-national state. This is heavenly music for the agents of eastern separatism, who last September founded in Guayaquil – with delegates from this Ecuadorian region and the Venezuelan state of Zulia – the “International Confederation for Freedom and Regional Autonomy” of Latin America, financed by petroleum companies who yearn to control important gas and petroleum fields in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Fred Feldman replied

There may be contradictions in the concrete circumstances, but a "Great Bolivarian Homeland" in Bolivia must be built in part on a distinction between the nationalism of the oppressed and that of the oppressor, and that must include a radically different attitude even toward the separatism of the oppresse and the separatism of the oppressor. If the Bolivian project does not yet have the political strength to make this distinction and base policy on it, THAT IS A PROBLEM.

The various indigenous projects, some of which may be positive and some not, have to be distinguished from the Eastern elite operation on this basis and dealt with on the basis of this distinction. If the Bolivian regime cannot operate on the basis of this fundamental democratic distinction, rather than getting tangled in bourgeois-democratic abstractions that place the drive for autonomy among the land and oil barons in the East and the long-suppressed aspirations of the indigenous people on the same level of rights, THAT IS A PROBLEM.

In this case, I agree wholeheartly with Feldman: the two issues are fundamentally different and need to treated as such (I imagine Soliz Rada would agree too). But this doesn't full answer the question of what position socialists should take to in regards to some calls for the reconstitution of pre-colonial indigenous “nations”, or the argument against the call for a plurinational state which says that by establishing a plurinational state, as opposed to a pluricultural state, you are opening the door to the break up of Bolivia, as the acceptance of nations also means the acceptance of their rights to form their own nation-state (one which Soliz Rada agrees with) .


It seems to me the position that MAS advocates – indigenous autonomy, within the framework of the unity of Bolivia – is the correct one. It is also true that this is the majority sentiment amongst Bolivians (both indigenous and non-indigenous) who want to see the various national and ethnic groups inserted into the international community through a diverse but united Bolivia, and who above all else identify as Bolivians. There are some trends who maintain a firmer indigenist vision of the return to Qullasuyu and the reconstitution of the original indigenous territoriess (which have been expressed in difference within MAS over certain positions such as whether land and natural resources should be under state or indigenous control) but they are a minority. Anyways, I would appreciate any comments on this.