[ 18 December 2005: Message edited by: cco ]

Since a second round is almost guaranteed and the president will be decided by the legislature, we'd better hope that MAS and the small leftist parties win a Congressional majority if we want a peaceful transition of power.

Should the right want war, may the streets run red with the blood of oil barons. (It's a shame most of the world is too illogical to use IRV in its executive elections...It would save a lot of pointless second round hand-wrangling.)

[ 18 December 2005: Message edited by: Ghost of the Navigator ]

quote:

---

The national television chain ATB has given Evo 41.2 percent of the vote up to now, with 36.3 percent for former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga. But the media conglomerate Usted Elige, made up of television and radio stations as well as newspapers across Bolivia, announces 44.5 percent for Evo and 34.3 for Quiroga. If the vote follows this trend, Evo would win by the largest margin in the history of the Bolivian electoral system.

MAS’ people across the country, despite their denunciations of possible fraud, have begun to celebrate…

---

quote:

---

Former president Jorge Quiroga has effectively conceded defeat to leftist coca farmers leader Evo Morales in Bolivia's presidential election.

"I congratulate Evo Morales and (running mate) Alvaro Garcia Lineras for their electoral showing," he said after exit polls showed the leftist candidate garnered just over 50 per cent of the vote.

"Bolivian democracy is ending one cycle and starting another," Mr Quiroga said.

Two exit polls showed that Mr Morales garnered about 50 percent of the vote, leading Mr Quiroga by about 20 percentage points.

---

[ 18 December 2005: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

---

New Congress

The nation's 3.6 million voters also elected the 157-member Congress and prefects for the country's nine departments. Morales' Movement Toward Socialism won party 78 seats in congress, one short of a majority, and two prefect's seats, according to Unitel.

---

[ 18 December 2005: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

The analysts were saying Morales would fall short of a majority and would have to rely on gaining enough support in the congress to be selected as President. Well, he got his majority.

The struggle's for people based government has seen too many setbacks and I hope that the over 50% result holds up.

More importantly, I hope Morales follows through on his commitments and doesn't pull a "Luna". If Morales continues being the voice of the people, our world has just suddenly gotten more hopeful.

Viva Evo!
Viva MAS!
Viva Bolivia!

With 50% of vote counted:
Evo Morales 50.2%
Tuto Quiroga 31.5%
Samuel Doria Medina 8.3%

(this is a historic landslide by Bolivian proportions which are used to a highly fractured electoral verdict)

The social movements are adopting a wait and see attitude. They've been screwed before, so are pretty cynical of Morales' potential, but a I guess at this point it is either him, or total revolution. The left at this point is more afraid of of Morales failing and the social movements fracturing than even Washington at this point!

quote:

---

Originally posted by beluga2:
Headline on a US website called "The Conservative Voice" which I will not pollute babble by linking to: "Bolivian Thug Becomes President".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by fern hill:
First indigenous leader of a 'New World' country!

---

How "indigenous" do you have to be, to be considered indigenous? What about Alejandro Toledo, the current President of Peru? In many Latin American countries the vast majority of the population is of indigenous background, either entirely or in part. And while in many of these societies those who "look and act" European/USian have the power, there must have been many dozens of Latin heads of state that are, to one degree or another, of native American background.

Edit: That BBC link is being flaky. Here's wikipedia.

[ 19 December 2005: Message edited by: Albireo ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Albireo:

How "indigenous" do you have to be, to be considered indigenous?

---

[Edit to add:] Maybe the claim has to do with how people self-identify, or whether they are perceived to have led a traditional native lifestyle, rather than a career in the military (like Chavez) or getting a Ph.D in economics from Stanford University (like Toledo). Who knows.

[ 19 December 2005: Message edited by: Albireo ]

Here is a quote from Morales on la Pachamama (Mother Earth):

People like Nelson Mandella is certainly indigenous, however the Khoisan and other groups like them have continued to face genocide by the likes of him and other "indigenous" leaders.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Vigilante:
It tragic that indigenous people are playing with the very phenomena that enslaved them to begin with.

---

He just imposes the same ideological schema on every country in the world.

quote:

---

Originally posted by VanLuke:
The guy hasn't even taken office yet and hasn't had a chance to do anything and he's already being denounced by the "left".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Vigilante:
Who cares if he's indigenous or not. What you will ulitimately have is someone taking the wheels of capital for a spin. It doesn't matter what culture/race the person(s) happen to be. It tragic that indigenous people are playing with the very phenomena that enslaved them to begin with.

---

[ 19 December 2005: Message edited by: Makwa ]

quote:

---

The Bolivian people have made history. Never have they directly elected their President with more than 50% of the vote; no candidate has even reached 37%. But today, blowing away all polls and projections that placed his support around 35%, Evo Morales Ayma has officially won the Presidential election with over 50% of the popular vote and will head the next government of Bolivia. Scattered accounts of this monumental event are below.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Michelle:

And who would that be?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Michelle:
He doesn't even represent babble's "left".

---

Apparently you do not know the meaning of quotation marks.

quote:

---

...when you denounce an entire political movement..

---

I did no such thing and have been on the left before you knew how to spell the word.

Plus the colour class line is the unspoken central facet of almost all the nations of this Hemisphere. The apartheid walls seem to be finally tumbling down as the Left achieves historic victories.

Apart from ridiculous sectarianism on the left, the social movements are actually afraid that Evo may fail or compromise their aspirations by arriving at a settlement as opposed to full out expropriation of resources. They are also cynical about the entire political system and see Morales as a politician, even if one of their own.

quote:

---

Originally posted by VanLuke:
I did no such thing and have been on the left before you knew how to spell the word.

---

Morales will face all these pressures. We should wish him all the luck in the world, as so much of Bolivia's future as well as ours is riding on his efforts.

quote:

---

3rd world nationalism gets people nowhere at the end of the day. It essentially plays with the same symbols and techniques that enslaved those indigenous peoples to begin with.

---

Bolivia has just elected a new president Evo Morales. If you liked the Chavez movie you will love this one. I thought I would slap something together so you could enjoy it as much as I did. It is a little long but so are Fidel's speech's

Who is EVO MORALES and why the US hates him.

In April 2000, Aguas de Tanari, a large multinational corporation, was due to take over the privatised water works in Cochabamba. Water prices were to increase and laws were passed to make it illegal to catch and use rain water. Water would be out of the reach of the majority of residents, 65% of whom live below the poverty line. Mass demonstrations erupted, roads were blocked and running battles where fought with the police and the army until the government gave in. The sell-off was defeated.
Evo Morales, of the Movement to Socialism (MAS), was one of the leaders of this battle. Morales has also led the peasants' struggle against the US-sponsored forced eradication of coca and is a prominent leader of the indigenous Quechua people.
Long before coca was used to make cocaine, the indigenous people of the Andean region, the Aymara and Quechua, chewed coca leaves as a dietary supplement. The consumption of coca leaves and tea is part of daily life for Bolivia's peasants, miners and workers.
This US-financed plan involves US military advisers on the ground ordering Bolivian soldiers to attack, kill and displace peasants with US-made weapons. This has led to resistance among the peasants, with several self-defence groups being formed. In 2001, for the first time since coca eradication began, more police and soldiers were killed than peasants.
Morales has publicly declared that he not only supports the peasants' right to self-defence but is participating in the organisation of these popular self-defence groups with the aim of forming a people's army.
Since early 2001, Morales and the MAS have campaigned across Bolivia for the June 30 presidential election. The MAS platform included: the nationalisation of strategic industries; price reductions and a price freeze on household goods; the provision of basic services for all; defence of free public health and education; increased taxes for the rich; an end to corruption; the redistribution of land to those that work it; a new political apparatus; an end to neo-liberal economic policies; and opposition to a “flexible” work force.

2005 Election

Throughout Bolivia’s election campaign, Evo Morales seemed alone in his insistence that he would be elected president with an absolute majority of the popular vote. On Sunday, he was proved right, in a stunning victory that makes him not only the first member of the indigenous majority to be elected head of state but also the first president of Bolivia to win such a mandate since the return of democracy in 1982. Mr Morales won 51 per cent of the vote, while his supporters will form the largest group in Congress.
One clear explanation was the overwhelming desire for change. Bolivia’s traditional parties were virtually erased from the political map.A second factor was Mr Morales’s ability to galvanise the myriad social movements representing the poor and indigenous. Mr Morales was also able to attract support from small entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity for social peace in a country whose economy has periodically been paralysed by roadblocks, a favoured tactic of the left.
“You ask the people what will happen and they say under Evo there won’t be blockades,” says Prudencio Alavi, a small businessman from the indigenous city of El Alto whose company transports soya from Santa Cruz to Peru. He also drew support from many middle-class professionals.

US Reaction

Last night the US State Department congratulated Mr Morales on his apparent victory. Now his likely accession threatens to frustrate the US's three main policy objectives in Bolivia: "democracy building, economic development and the eradication of coca, the raw material for cocaine." In 10 years Mr Morales, a protégé of Hugo Chávez, the radical populist leader of Venezuela who has become a bete noire for the Bush administration, has built MAS from a handful of deputies to the country's principal political grouping. The shock waves could be economic as well as political. Analysts believe that at least some of the global energy giants that have collectively invested $3.5bn in the past decade to develop Bolivia's vast gas reserves could opt to abandon the country, concerned at Mr Morales's support for nationalisation of the gas industry.

The potential of Bolivia to destabilise the region has not escaped the US's policy-making establishment. In a July speech to the Hudson Institute, a Washington think-tank, Roger Pardo Maurer, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs, spoke of a "revolution going on in Bolivia, a revolution that potentially could have consequences as far- reaching as the Cuban revolution of 1959 – the things going on in Bolivia could have repercussions in Latin America and elsewhere that you could be dealing with for the rest of your lives". Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, said: "There certainly is evidence that both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways."
There is unquestionably an ideological and personal bond between Mr Morales and Mr Chávez. Mr Morales echoes the Venezuelan leader's rhetorical onslaught on "neo-liberalism", while Mr Chávez sees the Bolivian as an ally in his ambitions to hold sway over the region.

But the US appears paralysed in the face of that threat, concerned that if it is seen to interfere it could push Bolivia into the Chávez camp. The hard-line policy inadvertently supplied the launch-pad for Mr Morales's political career. The coca farmers organised and he emerged as their leader, beginning his rise to national prominence. That in turn could lead to an upsurge in cocaine production and a fall in the street price of the drug – putting Mr Morales on a collision course with a cadre of anti-drug "warriors" on Capitol Hill. The Bush administration would come under pressure to strike Bolivia from the list of countries it deems to be collaborating in anti-drug efforts, meaning the US government would cut bilateral support and vote against multilateral aid to Bolivia. However, a reduced US role in Bolivia would make it even more difficult for Washington to claim success in its war on drugs.

For other members of the Washington establishment it is less Mr Morales's background as a coca farmer than his radical political credentials that are ringing alarm bells. Through his relationship with Mr Chávez the MAS leader is close to Cuba's Fidel Castro while Washington claims Mr Chávez is funding Mr Morales's campaign – a charge he denies. His victory could also create a domino effect that could jeopardise the US's influence in the wider region. In neighbouring Peru, a Morales victory could boost Ollanta Humala, a nationalistic populist currently running second in the polls ahead of elections in April. In Ecuador, another country with a powerful indigenous street movement, it could provoke the emergence of a radical leftwing candidate such as Rafael Correa, the popular former finance minister, who also has close ties to Mr Chávez.

There is little US investment and the Bush administration has close friends in nearby countries such as Chile and Colombia. But such insouciance is tellingly lacking among Washington policy­makers. In the eyes of those focused on coca eradication, good governance and open markets, Bolivia is on the brink of an abyss.
As Mr Pardo Maurer put it in his Hudson Institute speech: "The two main Cuban projects in the region are Venezuela and Bolivia. Bolivia is the set battle piece going on right now. It is not by any means inevitable that Bolivia should go to [being] a Marxist, radical, anti-US, pro-Cuba, drug-producing state. That is not inevitable. But the other side is working very hard to take it that way."

BASTA YA!

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
Oh, don't worry about Vigilante's comments. He knows absolutely nothing about Bolivia, has never visited Bolivia, has never met a Bolivian, and has never read a Bolivian book or newspaper.

He just imposes the same ideological schema on every country in the world.

If progressives won in Botswana, Nepal, or Guatemala, he'd have the same, dismissive comment to make about "capital". You see, he's superior to all those people down there. He knows better.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by VanLuke:
Methinks you just want to pick a fight and I do not need you to tell me to get a grip.

Apparently you do not know the meaning of quotation marks.

Find somebody else to fight with.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by M. Spector:
Bullshit. If anyone should apologize, it's Michelle.

---

Possibly. I shouldn't have said that he denounced a whole political movement - that was poor wording on my part, so I guess we're even. But I stand by my assertion that he took the one negative post in the thread, and then claimed that "the left" was denouncing Morales. "The Left" was doing no such thing. Vigilante was, and he doesn't represent "The Left".

I wasn't picking a fight, just drawing attention to an unwarranted generalization in a thread full of people who identify with "The Left".

“The gas nationalization policy of my government does not mean expropriation or confiscation of assets from transnational companies. We need their technology, and we will pay for those services. My government will be focused on industrializing those natural resources”, insisted Mr. Morales in his first statements. Actually Brazil’s Petrobras and Spain-Argentine Repsol-YPF are the main investors in the Bolivian gas and oil industry, and are mainly government owned and managed companies. Besides, both countries are Bolivia’s main gas consumers.

Morales has pledged to nationalise the country’s huge gas reserves and call a constituent assembly to write a new constitution that will reflect the indigenous majority. In La Paz’s middle-class neighbourhood of Sopocachi, many white voters said that they were voting for Señor Morales for the first time after losing faith in the traditional political class. “For 180 years since independence we have been governed by ‘the gentlemen’ and what did we get? Nothing!” said Gabriella Sánchez.

"Thank you very much Cuba for showing Latin America and the world how to live with dignity and sovereignty," he said in a telephone interview for a Cuban television show on Monday. "The hour to liberate Bolivia and Latin America has arrived," Morales said.

[ 20 December 2005: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

It's near-perfect. Morales wins resoundingly, and controls congress *with the help of other leftist parties*. Most of the other leftist parties are if anything more radical than MAS, so they should help keep him off the Lula path.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Avans:
I couldn't have said it better.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rufus Polson:
Most of the other leftist parties are if anything more radical than MAS.

---

The MAS already serves as an indigenous-dominated leftist movement dedicated to ensuring that Bolivia's indigenous people are allowed to benefit from their country's natural resources.

[ 20 December 2005: Message edited by: Ghost of the Navigator ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ghost of the Navigator:
Can somebody explain to be the purpose of the MIP?

---

quote:

---

Who cares if he's indigenous or not. What you will ulitimately have is someone taking the wheels of capital for a spin. It doesn't matter what culture/race the person(s) happen to be. It tragic that indigenous people are playing with the very phenomena that enslaved them to begin with.

---

Its way way way too early to make claims about the kind of president Evo Morales will be. It took a long time for the Marxist left to realize that Hugo Chavez is revolutionary. If Evo Morales is as much like Chavez as he claims, then his is truly a great victory for the left. At the very least, his victory opens up space on the Bolivian left for discussions of socialism.

No, Evo Morales isn't going to abolish capitalism overnight. Chavez hasn't even done that. However, I am hopeful that the Bolivian social movements can push Morales, just as the Venezuelan social movements have pushed Chavez.

Morales's win is also another major defeat for US imperialism in Latin America. If the left doesn't support Morales at this early juncture it simply plays into US hands. This is not to say that Evo Morales will still be worthy of support in 2, or 3 or five years; but that is a bridge to be crossed if and when we get there.

For now, it's time for the left to celebrate!!!

[ 20 December 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]

quote:

---

Evo Morales – whose decisive victory in the 18 December elections opens his route to join the exclusive presidential club – was born with the help of a witch-doctor, tended llamas on the long walk from high-altitude Oruro to semi-tropical Cochabamba, and chewed the orange peel thrown by passengers out of bus windows.

In Bolivia, where 70% of the population is indigenous, a World Bank study of May 2005 found on average indigenous peoples have fallen deeper under the poverty line in the last decade; seven out of ten jobs in that country are now in the “informal” low-wage economy.

“Morales has said he will end the stage of Bolivian history in which indigenous people were subordinated to white business and political elites, and were subjected to a system of employee slavery”, explains journalist Roberto Navia, author of a fascinating biographical portrait of the young Morales.

Evo Morales for his part will not merely be fending off pressure from Washington and business elites. His own party, entrenched in a broader movement of peasant and indigenous resistance, will be subjected to intense scrutiny from supposed allies. Felipe Quispe, an Aymara who has long called for the reconstruction of the mythical, pre-Inca Kollasuyu nation, has already sounded a divisive note: “Quispe accused Morales of surrounding his political party with right-wingers and not being an original Aymara”, explains Navia.

---

As to Makwa's point, do you really want the disposessed that you mentioned to more or less accept this enforced society. For me who ever runs these material/symbols of capitalism is bad. I'm not really interested in a non white equivelant of what white people have done for the past 500 years of so. People like Nelson Mandela do nothing for me and the liberation I want and desire. They perpetuate this system of control. As someone who comes from the west indies(barbados mostly) I have seen what poc leaders have done, fuck them all. They've all continued to live by the white male christian govermentality that was forced on them. The british parlementary system is still there, they're still wearing uniforms, corporal punishment is still alive. Talk about not emacipating yourself from mental slavery. It gets to the whole issue of soverignty that the post-structuralist speak of.

quote:

---

my two weeks in rural Bolivia really changed the way I looked at my own opinions and I admit that I got too comfortable in giving my opinions without taking a look at what I am doing to affect change in Bolivia. If I wanted things to stay the same, make sure that I could find cheap labor, pay miniscule amounts for goods and maintain the social status that my family retains, then sure I would vote for the status quo, which means Tuto Quiroga. I truly believe that Morales holds genuine concern for those who are powerless and at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

Every single candidate said that they were the candidate of change, which was a way to recognize that the system was corrupt. But in the end, MAS was the only alternative left to attempt to make those changes.

. . . many so-called Trotskos (Trotsky-ites), those considered to be even farther left than MAS despise him? If Morales is far-left, what are the COB, Jaime Solares and other Trotskos? Perhaps they circled all the way around and are right-wingers again. Many of these groups are already giving a MAS administration deadlines to when all the problems of the country should be solved. Thirty days, they say, or else measures of pressure will be implemented. I wonder if they voted for Felipe Quispe, who said during his close of campaign that if elected, all of the country's problems would be solved in 5 days max.

---

No Left Majority in Congress?

quote:

---

election returns projections indicate that Mr. Morales party, Movement Towards Socialism, MAS, will have 53 seats (out of 130) in the Lower House and 12 (out of 27) in the Senate; runner up former president Jorge Quiroga (Podemos) 48 deputies and 13 senators; Samuel Doria Medina (FUN) 15 deputies and one senator and the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario of ousted president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada 11 and one senator. If this is finally confirmed next December 29 which is the deadline for the Electoral Board final count announcement, Mr. Morales will have to mount a working alliance most probably with the National Unity party of Doria Medina, (a cement tycoon) which has anticipated a “constructive but watchful” opposition.

---

Samuel Doria Medina was MIR (social democratic) vice-president candidate in the 1997 elections. He chose as his vice-president candidate former MIR militant Carlos Dabdoub. MIR did not run presidential candidates this time.

Official results here. Three provinces' count final, six to go.

Meanwhile, another projection says FUN 14 (not 15), and the New Republican Force and the Pachakuti Indigenous Movement one each, leaving two others undeclared or independent. Still no majority for the Left, unless you can call the FUN centre-left.

[ 22 December 2005: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

Bolivia's Morales brands Bush a "terrorist"

Reuters - Evo Morales, the winner of Bolivia's presidential election, branded U.S. President George W. Bush a "terrorist", in an interview with Arabic satellite television on Tuesday.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Transplant:
George isn't gonna like this...

---

Gee. Now, what do we have to do to get Canadian leadership hopefuls to brand Bush a terrorist?

BTW, has Canada officially congratulated Morales?

[ 21 December 2005: Message edited by: Cougyr ]

My bigger question is Canada going to follow through on last summer's G8 promise to forgive all Bolivian debt now that their bribe did not work to keep their puppet in La Paz?

Thanks to all of those providing links and information. What Morales does will have incredible benefits for the entire South American continent if he follows through on his potential. Let's hope he dopesn't disappoint with the Lula brand of appeasement.

quote:

---

A number of things to clear up. First of all I'm a post-leftist not an leftist. Heck I'm an anarchist.

---

Evo Morales Become President, Now His Real Challenge Being

Indiginous Leaders Celebrate Morales Victory

Evo Morales Elected Bolivian President in Landslide Victory

quote:

---

Originally posted by Left Turn:
wonder if Morales won't simply be another Lula.

---

Mind you, at least in Bolivia they have only one vote for President, Senator and Plurinominal Deputies. This is supposed to favor the formation of parliamentary majorities, and so facilitate governance. Further, if no candidate to the Presidency achieves absolute majority of valid votes, Congress will choose one of the two candidates that received the highest number of votes. "The model ensures the generation of stable majorities, and a culture of pacts and alliances that have favored institutional continuity and governance." Well, maybe. If the President gets 51% of the vote, his party should get 51% of the deputies, so we'll have to see what is the glitch if this doesn't happen.

Latest partial count figures give MAS 54%, but the projections were 51%. The major urban areas are more conservative, and perhaps they are the areas not yet fully counted.

[ 22 December 2005: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by radiorahim:

I don't have a problem with anarchism...just a problem with most of the folks who call themselves anarchists.

---

Amen.

He didn't have a majority either, and many of his own allied deputies turned against him once he began moving in a radical direction.

Luckily he got the military to begin the work ahead of time in 1999-2000 as they had a curse to lift according to Chavez (the curse of turning their guns on their own people as happened in 1989).

As for Vigilante's concerns, I think we are really seeing something different now. All the old models have been swept away, and people like Chavez are creating new ones that are wholly original and don't fit with the contours of traditional Marxist or Anarchist expectations of what a revolution is supposed to look like.

And I don't dissmiss enlightenment anarchist thought. Quite the contrary I respect those thinkers, however I see them as part of a greater tendency that includes the likes of the greeks diogenes and zeno for instance, as well as lao tzu and the taoists. On an organic human scale I simpy point you to the surving nomadic groups such as the moken, khoisan, or the people of the andemen islands who are litterally fighiting for their lives. Also anarchism is less about economics and more about power and domination.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Vigilante:
Well Rufus to tackle your first point, I would hope you like spector do not fall for that positivist nonesense of how primitve existance was.

---

What do you mean, "was"? Tribes aren't generally anarchies. Neither are chimpanzee troops. The Hobbesian "state of nature" has never existed. Anarchy without anarchism would create it--the war of each against all. That would be a bad thing.

quote:

---

Anarchy should be seen as a tendency in everyone as opposed to some formalized discourse.

---

No it shouldn't. This is naive romanticism, and it invites the "tyranny of structurelessness". When people get together, they will create norms and tacit structures if there are no overt ones. Tacit structures are less democratic than well-thought-out overt ones. Equality doesn't just happen; if it did, our political structures would just happen to embody it. It has to be worked on and thought through carefully.

You may say that this wouldn't be the case if everyone had anarchist sensibilities of the kind you're talking about. Maybe. But in order to bring that situation about, one would need a coherent, highly effective program which would need to be worked on and thought through carefully. You can't just get there by being individually a good guy and preaching good guyness--look what happened when Jesus tried that. Within a few years some authoritarian schmuck named Paul turned the whole thing into a nasty hierarchy.

quote:

---

As far as your last point about no rulers and no rules. I have no idea how these categories can be seen as mutually exclusive.

---

It's not hard, and it's not mystical. People get together, they decide on egalitarian, democratic rules together, they ensure that those rules involve collective decision making with no leaders. That's what anarchism is about--working freely and collectively without any top dogs telling you what to do. But if everyone gets together and passes by consensus a rule that says people must not, say, commit murder, and anyone who does will be punished in some manner, then that's a rule. You don't need a prime minister or a CEO to have rules. And you need rules if people are to be able to live in harmony and equality, much less get anything accomplished together.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rufus Polson:
What do you mean, "was"? Tribes aren't generally anarchies. Neither are chimpanzee troops. The Hobbesian "state of nature" has never existed. Anarchy without anarchism would create it--the war of each against all. That would be a bad thing.

---

Twasn't anarchism either dude. As such those societies are ones of equal access(or pretty near) the point is to create an affinity based system(as they were) of equal access communalism and let the various individuals do as they may. That is where the anarchy comes in. Think Stirner's union of egoists

quote:

---

No it shouldn't. This is naive romanticism, and it invites the "tyranny of structurelessness". When people get together, they will create norms and tacit structures if there are no overt ones. Tacit structures are less democratic than well-thought-out overt ones. Equality doesn't just happen; if it did, our political structures would just happen to embody it. It has to be worked on and thought through carefully.

You may say that this wouldn't be the case if everyone had anarchist sensibilities of the kind you're talking about. Maybe. But in order to bring that situation about, one would need a coherent, highly effective program which would need to be worked on and thought through carefully. You can't just get there by being individually a good guy and preaching good guyness--look what happened when Jesus tried that. Within a few years some authoritarian schmuck named Paul turned the whole thing into a nasty hierarchy.

---

Let's be clear on one thing, every social organization has structure. From that the Jo Freeman argument you are presenting becomes bogus.
When one fails to see structure as a contingent phenomena and tries to put it into objective categories, that is what gives you the Hamurabi codes. The great tragedy of the enlightenment is that it has tried to package freedom into objective categories(constitutions, rights, the rest of the bullshit) This is the type of reification that Max Stirner tore to pieces in his classic work.

quote:

---

It's not hard, and it's not mystical. People get together, they decide on egalitarian, democratic rules together, they ensure that those rules involve collective decision making with no leaders. That's what anarchism is about--working freely and collectively without any top dogs telling you what to do. But if everyone gets together and passes by consensus a rule that says people must not, say, commit murder, and anyone who does will be punished in some manner, then that's a rule. You don't need a prime minister or a CEO to have rules. And you need rules if people are to be able to live in harmony and equality, much less get anything accomplished together.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Vigilante:
As to Makwa's point, do you really want the disposessed that you mentioned to more or less accept this enforced society. For me who ever runs these material/symbols of capitalism is bad. I'm not really interested in a non white equivelant of what white people have done for the past 500 years of so. People like Nelson Mandela do nothing for me and the liberation I want and desire. They perpetuate this system of control. As someone who comes from the west indies(barbados mostly) I have seen what poc leaders have done, fuck them all. They've all continued to live by the white male christian govermentality that was forced on them. The british parlementary system is still there, they're still wearing uniforms, corporal punishment is still alive. Talk about not emacipating yourself from mental slavery. It gets to the whole issue of soverignty that the post-structuralist speak of.

And to answer ceti's question. If you've read guns germs and steel, you'll know that we all have either enslaved each other, or could have with the material conditions at hand. The answer to this perpetual opression is not resentment. As Nietzsche said "when fighting monsters, one must not become one"(not exact quote)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Vigilante:

Let's be clear on one thing, every social organization has structure. From that the Jo Freeman argument you are presenting becomes bogus.

---

No, it most certainly does not. That doesn't refute Freeman's point--that *was* Freeman's point. Many social organizations (especially small ones, and ones that grew faster than they expected) try to pretend they don't have structure, which is what you tend to sound like you're advocating. Maybe you aren't really, but that's totally how you usually sound.

If a social organization tries to pretend it doesn't have structure, it will still have structure but the structure will be implicit rather than explicit. Implicit structure is very difficult to challenge (because everyone's pretending it doesn't exist), and similarly very difficult to evaluate, improve, or hold to any kind of standards.
I get really impatient with the hostility to structure, and to taking the time to think about making sure structures are easier to improve than to abuse, that's very common in progressive movements. And I get nearly as impatient with the sort of lazy optimism that says "Oh, we don't need to worry about that--everyone's progressive good people here, as long as we all keep thinking good thoughts it'll be fine." Well it won't. And more progressive groups have been taken over by careerist bastards and ossified, or by right-wing bastards and turned into trojan horses, because people weren't willing to worry about it. Greens seem particularly prone to this, from Greenpeace and various other environmental lobby groups to the US and Canadian Green parties. But there are plenty of other cases. Take the ways the World Social Forums have actually been organized, although that may have started to change. For a while it was this forum all about decentralized egalitarianism, organized by fiat by a few leader types with no input or control from anyone else. Everyone wanted to do this wonderful thing, great idea and so forth, nobody wanted to sit down and figure out how to make the practices for building it match the ethics it was espousing.

quote:

---

To those who argue that the Bush administration is too deeply mired in the war in Iraq to contemplate acting against Morales, the pessimists point out that the US found the time to organise the overthrow of the president in Chile in 1973 despite being neck-deep in the Vietnam war.

Chavez's aim is serious: to free all of Latin America from the grip of neo-liberal economic policies, indeed from American influence in general. Last July's launch of Telesur, a new television network whose aim is to provide an alternative to US-based news and analysis for all Latin Americans, is a case in point. It is based in Caracas and 70 per cent financed by Venezuela, but it is also backed by the governments of Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba and Brazil.

The larger reality is that while the Bush administration has been obsessed by its grandiose plans for reshaping the Middle East, the real transformation has been happening in America's own "back yard". Left-wing governments have come to power in Brazil and Argentina, the two biggest countries of South America, and in a number of smaller countries as well.

Like Chavez in Venezuela, they combine a commitment to the poor and a rejection of the project for a US-dominated Free Trade Area of the Americas with a pragmatic respect for the rules of the free market: no nationalisations (except for oil and gas) and more or less balanced budgets. With this month's presidential election victories by Michelle Bachelet in Chile and now by Evo Morales in Bolivia, virtually all of South America except Colombia and Peru is now part of this nascent left-wing bloc.

But the continent is seeing more than just a comeback in modern dress by the traditional left. The Indians and part-Indians who form a downtrodden majority in most of the Andean countries are staging their own comeback. They mostly talk in terms of winning elections and re-writing constitutions, but they basically share the view of Antauro Humala, leader of the Etnocaceristas in Peru: "There are four races, black, white, yellow and copper. We are the copper people and I want us to be recognised as a race."

Hugo Chavez's Indian and black ancestry is written all over his face, and explains much of his popularity with the majority of mixed-race Venezuelans who felt excluded by the dominant white minority in that oil-rich country. Evo Morales is even more clearly a descendant of the Incas who ruled the central and southern Andes before the white conquerors and settlers arrived, and he wants the two-thirds of Bolivians who share his heritage to hold the power in their own country at last.

It will get very fraught in Bolivia when Morales starts re-writing the constitution to include the excluded, as he has already sworn to do, but the ethnic solidarity among Bolivian Indians that has helped him into power will also make it very hard for Washington to overthrow him. So long as he avoids the civil war that some of the more extreme members of the white minority may now try to provoke, he will probably manage to serve a full term in office. What he does with that term may change Bolivia beyond recognition.

---

quote:

---

Given the new president's strong electoral mandate, Bolivia's 8.5 million people are putting their hopes on his shoulders, and analysts say his opponents will be under pressure to deal with him. That also will leave him no one else to blame for failures.

``It is precisely the magnitude of his victory that places on him a much greater responsibility because he will practically have no opposition,'' said Cayetano Llobet, a Bolivian political analyst.

---

I believe it to be the most important news story of this month, and one of the most important news stories of the year.

[ 28 December 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Left Turn:
Checking out CBC's "year in review" coverage on the internet, and Evo Morales's win is NOT metioned.

I believe it to be the most important news story of this month, and one of the most important news stories of the year.

[ 28 December 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]

---

Yes, but keep in mind that the CBC has more than just political junkies to cater to, and as important and as positive a development as Morales' victory may be, including it in the Year in Review would just leave most people scratching their heads...

[ 28 December 2005: Message edited by: Ghost of the Navigator ]

quote:

---

In addition to the bombast of fashionable neo-liberal intellectuals, and the scolding insistence of right-wing politicians, we would do well to recall that the deans of social democracy had also, by the 1990s to be sure, fallen in line to prostrate themselves before the market and justify the rule of capital. The ‘Left’ in power, at least in the form that Canada and Europe had known it as mass social democratic parties, has seemed all too willing to impose, or all too impotent to oppose, neo-liberal measures and legislation....

Regardless of what we are told by the guardians of economic and political power, there is an alternative. All progressive-minded people would be wise to look closely at Venezuela, Bolivia, and at the social movements of Latin America, where the people are leading the way towards a future beyond neo-liberalism.

---

Obviously I am pleased with the news so far and hope that the European trip doesn't turn into a gang up to convince him to follow Lula's path of "compromise".

So far I am incredibly impressed with Morales' spirit and conviction. We need more of that which
is why I hope for us all that the people's agenda prevails over the corporate.

Now if only us Canadians could get our act together ...

quote:

---

among the nearly 200 organizations invited are the Zapatistas from Mexico, Brazil’s Landless Movement, the Bolivarian Circles from Venezuela, the “Piqueteros” of Argentina, and the National Council of Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador.

Already confirming their presence at the swearing-in ceremony are Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona, singer-songwriters Piero of Argentina and Silvio Rodriguez of Cuba, and Jose Saramago from Portugal, Nobel Prize in Literature. The list of invitees includes Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, former South African president Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace Laureates Rigoberta Menchu and Adolfo Perez Esquivel, and Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano.

---

More seat projections:

quote:

---

He also attained a solid majority in Congress with MAS winning 72 of the 130 seats in the House of Representatives and 12 of the 27 Senate seats.

---

[ 31 December 2005: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

[ 01 January 2006: Message edited by: Left Turn ]

Under terms of the Cuba-Bolivia agreement, which technically will go into effect as soon as Morales is formally sworn in January 22, Cuba will provide technical resources and other support for a literacy campaign that will begin in July. Morales emphasized that this campaign would be of special benefit to women in the countryside.

"In a year and a half we plan to teach everyone in Bolivia how to read," he said. "It's not possible that in the third millennium there continue to be illiterates in Bolivia. The State has neglected peasant women."

Cuba pledged full scholarships for 5,000 medical students in the next two years, in addition to some 800 Bolivians who have been already attending the Latin American Medical School or other universities on the island, and is setting up three eye clinics with all necessary equipment, supplies and personnel to offer free services to Bolivians who can't afford the services of eye doctors and surgeons. This is an expansion of a program that was originally an initiative with Venezuela and is being taken to other countries in the region.

Cuba will also help the Bolivian Government develop its sports programs.

Source

[ 01 January 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

---

Despite menacing offers of "help" from IMF chief Wolfowitz, Evo Morales seems to be the unintended beneficiary of disastrous "free market" policies that wrecked Bolivia in the 1990s under minority governments overseen by the World Bank and...the IMF. During that time, publicly owned mining and energy resources were privatized based on arguments that more open market policies would attract foreign investment beneficial for the country. The policy was sold as "capitalisation".

But Bolivians soon discovered that foreign investors are only interested in capitalising themslves. When Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada became Bolivia's President, he did so with just 22% of the vote. The US government, so outraged about "undemocratic" Venezuela at the time, welcomed de Losada's minority win and backed him hard as he tried to force through ever more fierce "free market" policies against popular opposition. De Losada had to flee Bolivia in 2003 after mass protests in which over 80 people were killed by security forces acting under his government.

Neo-colonial "free trade" policies promoted by corporate proxies loyal to the US government, like Sanchez de Losada and his replacement Carlos Mesa are completely discredited. Among the wreckage of those policies, the Venezuelan and Cuban governments are successfully building ALBA, the Bolivarian Aternative for the Americas, inspired by the integrationist vision of 19th century South American Liberator Simon Bolivar. ALBA represents a program of sovereign cooperation and economic integration that prioritises social justice. Venezuela's recent entry into the Mercosur regional trading bloc should deepen ALBA's strength and reach by revitalising Mercosur to overcome its recent stagnation. The head of Mercosur's Representative Commission, Carlos Alvarez, wants Bolivia to sign up soon as well.

---

http://todayspictures.slate.com/20051230/

[ 02 January 2006: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by VanLuke:
For an interesting slide show about the elections click on the Che Guevara image

http://todayspictures.slate.com/20051230/

---

And good to hear the chants that have previously only been available in print, such as:

¡Se siente, se siente, Evo presidente!

quote:

---

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday promised Bolivian president-elect Evo Morales fuel, economic cooperation and his backing for coca leaf farmers to seal ties between the socialist allies.

The Venezuelan leader and Morales, a former coca leaf farmer, have antagonized the U.S. government with their alliance with Cuba and promotion of leftist integration to counter U.S. free-market policies in Latin America.

Chavez said Venezuela would supply 150,000 barrels a month of diesel fuel in exchange for farm products, provide $30 million in financing for social programs and support Morales' crusade to protect coca crops against U.S. eradication campaigns.

---

quote:

---

...The new left-wing President-elect of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has chosen to spend his time before his inauguration on 22 January on a whistle-stop tour of eight countries in four continents.

His choice of countries is hugely significant. He has already been to Cuba and Venezuela. Now he is travelling to Spain, France, Belgium, South Africa, China and finally Brazil - but not the United States....

---

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4581364.stm

Pictures:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4540836.stm

Map of South America and political leanings of various governments:

Evo Morales visited Venezuela on Tuesday on his way to Africa, Europe, and Asia. Here are excerpts from one report:

quote:

---

The rapport between Morales and Chavez was immediately visible, during the press conference, as each kept slapping the other on the shoulder and as Chavez promised to support Morales in all of his projects, most of which sounded very similar to Chavez’s own projects when he was first elected. Among the projects Chavez promised to support was a 30-month campaign to eradicate illiteracy in Bolivia, an effort to organize a constitutional assembly, the nationalization of Bolivia’s natural gas fields, and to engage in a land reform effort, among other things.

In addition to providing strategic advice and support on these projects, Chavez promised that Venezuela would supply Bolivia with the country’s entire diesel fuel needs, 150,000 barrels per month. In exchange, Venezuela would not ask for hard cash but for an in-kind payment of Bolivia’s agricultural products.

Also, Chavez said that Venezuela would provide Bolivia with a $30 million donation for social projects, to start off his presidency....

Another aspect of the agreements was for Venezuela to open a series of offices of state-owned companies in Bolivia, such as a branch of its oil company PDVSA, its main industrial bank, Banco Industrial (BIV), and its main development bank, Bandes. Chavez emphasized that with Morales, Venezuela's project to create a conglomerate of state-owned oil companies, Petroamerica, would receive an important boost....

Asked about what he thought of the candidacy of Ollanta Humala for president of Peru, who was present at the press conference[!], Morales said, “We are convinced that the indigenous people, the original people, the social movements, the victims of neo-liberalism have their candidates and I believe that in Peru compañero Ollanta is part of this movement, part of this rebellion, of this great courage of the Peruvian people. I wish him much luck and success in his campaign.” Morales added, “The time of the people has come.”

Many analysts see Ollanta Humala of Peru in a similar political line as Bolivia’s Morales and Venezuela’s Chavez, who have all staked out positions farther to the left than many of the other current left governments in Latin America.

Chavez said that the recent leftward trend in Latin America does not represent an axis of evil, as the U.S. administration likes to say, but “an axis of good, an axis of the new, of the new century.” It is the U.S. that threatens, invades, and kills, said Chavez.

---

[ 05 January 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

Not a huge sum but everything helps and I like th symbolism.

More importantly I think it's great that Bolivia is not getting isolated.

Hell, Callahan ("generals' man"), the "socialist" insisted on sending the weapons to Pinochet's Chile that Allende had contracted for and that shortly after the mass murder had been unleashed on Chileans. He made some pompous remarks about having to honour contracts but most people knew it was about a few Brtitish jobs that made him turn his back on the people who had been members of the same Socialist International as Callahan himslef.

I know, it's not strictly comparable but if I remember correctly Unidad Popular was relatively isolated before the coup and it's important for Bolivia to get all the support it can.

Not that the Yankees care much about what the rest of the world thinks.

Maybe this time around Un peueblo unido, jamas sera vencido will actually work.

quote:

---

MAS MOVIMIENTO AL SOCIALISMO 53.740%
PODEMOS PODER DEMOCRATICO Y SOCIAL 28.594%
UN FRENTE DE UNIDAD NACIONAL 7.798%
MNR MOVIMIENTO NACIONALISTA REVOLUCIONARIO 6.467%

MAS 70 seats
PODEMOS 45 seats
UN 8 seats
MNR 7 seats

---

quote:

---

Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws?

...At best, Evo will promote some marginal increases in property and royalty taxes, and perhaps increase some social spending on welfare services (but always limited by a tight fiscal budget). Political power will be shared between the new upwardly mobile petit bourgeois of the MAS office holders and the old economic oligarchs. No doubt diplomatic relations will greatly improve with Cuba and Venezuela. Relations with the World Bank and the IMF will remain unchanged ­ unless the Cuban-American mafia in Washington push their extremist agenda. While any aggression is possible with the fascist-thinking policy makers in command in Washington, it is also possible, given Morales’ de facto liberal policies, that the State Department may opt for pressuring Evo to move further to the right and to make further concessions to big business and coca cultivation reduction. Unfortunately, the Left will continue to respond to symbols, mythical histories, political rhetoric and gestures and not to programmatic substance, historical experiences and concrete socio-economic policies. ...

---

http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?id=639

quote:

---

...Bolivia after Evo Morales’s Electoral Victory

On January 2nd New Socialist editor Jeffery R. Webber gave a talk to a Vancouver audience on the prospects of popular politics in Bolivia after the electoral victory of Evo Morales on December 18, 2005.

The talk was recorded by Vancouver Coop Radio’s Redeye program and will be aired between 11am and 12am on Saturday, January 7, 2006...

---

To listen online, go to Vancouver Coop Radio’s [Canada's first community radio station, not counting university based stations] website:
http://www.coopradio.org/listen/

I have only succeeded making it work under Section 1 Use Stream Playlists, clicking on M3U, which will launch Windows Media Player.

I have followed the many instructions there trying to make it work with Real Player Classic to no avail (and I think I messed up the settings). I also tried to make it work with QuickTime but it just plays the same 10 secs or so over and over again. None of the many suggestions there enabled me to make the stream work with another player.

If there is a babbler who can share his/her knowledge of how to make it work with a player other than Bill's I think many would be appreciating it.

[ 05 January 2006: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

But then again groups with Trotskyist sectarian tendencies tend to always maintain a "lefter than thou" position, so that when movements fail, they can say "we told you so." They always offer conditional support as a way to maintain a very pure banner, and would rather hold that aloft than engage in the nitty-gritty of social change.

But its true that similar things have occurred before. The Bolivian Revolution of 1953, like the Guatemalan progressive government of the early 1950's, created huge expectations.

However, most of these countries are so poor that, unless they all pull together, they have insufficient capacity to create policies independent of the International Monetary Fund or of the US government.

Bolivia's Gross National Product is approximately 1% of Canada's. Yes, 1/100! So, if you are disappointed with Canada's capacity to oppose American dictates, imagine how much less capable is Bolivia.

quote:

---

Originally posted by ceti:
... then again groups with Trotskyist sectarian tendencies tend to always maintain a "lefter than thou" position, so that when movements fail, they can say "we told you so." ..

---

I fully agree with you.

I still remember the vehement criticism of Trotskyite groups because Allende didn't arm the people. (I think it would have triggered the murderous coup earlier and given it more "justification".)

However, since I do not have a crystal ball I like to expose myself to all sorts of perspectives (even right wing ones).

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
So, if you are disappointed with Canada's capacity to oppose American dictates, imagine how much less capable is Bolivia.
.[/QB]

---

I fully agree.

Here's a sample:

quote:

---

More than a few voices on the political left have begun to denounce the Evo Morales government before it even gets into office. James Petras is one of many such voices. Petras and others have already written Morales off as another foreign reformist capitalist politician. In order for the readers of this and other lists to make sense of the situation in such a place as Bolivia, an approach of trying to understand what's going on without a set of pre-conceived notions seems best to me.

---

Latest 100 messages

quote:

---

... Bolivia is of central strategic interest to both the United States and Brazil, and the former is now in retreat. Morales' success is also likely to embolden similar movements in the other Andean states -- Ecuador and Peru -- leaving Washington with the prospect that Colombia will remain its only reliable ally on the continent. Washington's loss is Brasilia's gain. ... Morales stands on the far left of the current tendencies in South America to seek alternatives to Washington's neoliberal economic policies. ... Morales wrapped up his proposals in an ideology that attacked the neoliberal market model and offered in its place a vision of cooperative socialism and regional integration similar to Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution." ...

---

http://www.redbolivia.com/noticias/News%20in%20English/8553.html

Written 6 weeks ago this article is still of interest:

quote:

---

... Rogelio (Roger) Pardo-Maurer IV, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs and a senior adviser to Donald Rumsfeld on Latin America, said in a talk last summer at the Hudson Institute in Washington, "You have a revolution going on in Bolivia, a revolution that potentially could have consequences as far-reaching as the Cuban revolution of 1959." What is going on in Bolivia today, he told his audience, "could have repercussions in Latin America and elsewhere that you could be dealing with for the rest of your lives." And, he added, in Bolivia, "Che Guevara sought to ignite a war based on igniting a peasant revolution.. . .This project is back."

For most Bolivians, globalization, or what they commonly refer to as neoliberalism, has failed so utterly to deliver the promised prosperity that some Bolivian commentators I met insisted that what is astonishing is not the radicalization of the population but rather the fact that this radicalization took as long as it did. ...

---

http://www.redbolivia.com/noticias/News%20in%20English/6003.html

I couldn't resist:

[ 06 January 2006: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

On Saturday, he attended an indigenous ceremony and made a speech.

quote:

---

But even as Morales calls Cuba's Castro "a father figure" and rails against "imperialism," the charismatic, racquetball-playing bachelor has tempered his rhetoric since capturing a dramatic 54 percent of the vote in December's eight-way presidential race.

In recent news conferences, Morales insists he welcomes foreign investment and denies gas nationalization means expropriation. Still, he says, the state will control all gas reserves and slap a hefty, 50-percent tax on profits.

Morales also says he'll crack down on cocaine traffickers and only support traditional use of coca, which indigenous Bolivians chew for medicinal and religious purposes. And he's promised to entertain offers for a regional free-trade pact with Washington if it will help Bolivia, the poorest nation in South America.

"If the empire wants to support us, the support will be welcome," Morales said last week, referring to the United States in just the sort of language that makes U.S. policymakers squirm. "We want agreements, but not subordination." Source

---

quote:

---

When we talk about recovering the territory we are talking about recovering the natural resources, and these need to be in the hands of the Bolivian people and the Bolivian state.

We were told 10, 15, 20 years ago that the private sector was going to solve the country's corruption problems and unemployment, then years go by and there is more unemployment, more corruption, that economic model is not the solution for our country, maybe it is a solution for an European country or African but in Bolivia the neo-liberal model does not work.
....

We want allies in the fight against drug trafficking, we know and we are convinced that this business hurts humanity.

However, the fight against drug trafficking can not be an excuse for the US government to dominate our nations. We want true dialogue without conditions or oppressions or bribes.

---

quote:

---

New President Evo Morales cut his salary by more than half and ordered that no Cabinet minister collect a higher wage than his own, with the savings earmarked for hiring more public school teachers.

In one of the first decrees of his five-day-old administration, the leftist former street activist said his monthly salary would be 15,000 bolivianos, or the equivalent of about $1,700.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by lagatta:
how do you say flannel in Spanish?

---

franela

quote:

---

According to the U.N., Bolivia put 107 tons of cocaine on world markets in 2004.

---

What the UN did say is that if the total potential production of dry coca leaf in Bolivia (15% of the world's production) were converted into cocaine, it would amount to 107 [metric] tons. Source (.pdf file)

This is a theoretical figure that does not take into account the considerable domestic consumption of coca.

quote:

---

The Bolivian president later confessed that he had only worn a suit just once in his life, and that was to play the trumpet in a dancehall.

His story - a poor child from Isallavi, a forlorn village that doesn't even appear on a map of Bolivia, who almost died at the moment of birth only to be saved by the magic of an elderly witchdoctor, whose four brothers and sisters didn't survive, yet who dared to become president of the republic - has stirred the admiration of millions of people.

It's worth remembering that until the 1950s, indigenous people were not allowed to walk through Plaza Murillo in the centre of La Paz, home to the presidential palace and the city cathedral, because it was reserved for whites, oligarchs and politicians.

A new president has started to take shape, someone who has not shaken off his resentment, who in innumerable speeches attacks the oligarchy - very violently so in the case of business leaders from the lowland city of Santa Cruz. He declares that their time is over, and that he'll take back and distribute their land come what may. Some people question Evo because whenever he attacks, he does it with broad sweeps. He asserts that the oligarchs have damaged Bolivia, but he doesn't say who these oligarchs are.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the main government objective was to destroy the coca leaf, a target that was given greater priority than eliminating corruption or any of the other ills that are so deeply embedded in every corner of this land; from 1997 to 2001, for example, sixty peasants were killed.

But there was a problem. The real leader of the fight against coca was the United States, while the targets were thousands of ordinary people, former miners and other victims of the capitalist system - in other words, the coca-growers themsleves. In the space of just a few years, these farmers developed a sort of workers' union that was broadly modelled on the old miners' associations. Evo Morales played an important part in this process. In 1980, at the age of 21, he had fled to the region with his father during a terrible drought on the altiplano; a year later, he witnessed a fellow Indian farmer burn to death after being set alight by soldiers, an incident that he has said changed his life forever.

Evo's union went on to organise around 40,000 coca-farmers - many of them brought together by the football tournaments he arranged across the region, where teams composed of farmers played each other or teams of miners. They were practically at war; it was a fight for survival. This conflict caused many deaths, the dead became martyrs, then journalists came from around the world and Chapare became a global news item.

But the right wing governments of the time and the United States only got tougher. The conflict gave the coca movement strength, and the image of Evo rose too as he started to travel the world to denounce what was happening in Chapare. Chapare was his refuge, his school in union life, and the root of his politics.

Since Evo took power, the country has been changing everyday. Indigenous power is enormous, and it's possible that 2007 will be the key year for Bolivia: either a social pact is signed to satisfy everybody, which is almost inconceivable at the moment, or the conflict is solved by force, by a civil war. Certain initiatives from Evo's government, such as seizing the land of big-estates owners in the eastern states and giving it to peasants from the western highlands, could easily trigger off such violence.

---