12 July 2005
Newton Garver
Bolivia:
Roadblocks to Power
In Bolivia roadblocks are not an obstacle to power but an instrument for attaining and exercising power. During May and June of 2005 mainline newspapers in the US often described the groundswell of opposition in Bolivia as violent demonstrations. On the other hand, when I spoke with Bolivian friends of mine, who are Indians and Quakers and advocates of nonviolence, they generally objected to characterizing the uprising in Bolivia as violent. Our perceptions and our judgments are often heavily influenced by words like “violent”, so it might be useful to try to sort out just what is involved with respect to what happened in Bolivia.
Two facts are beyond question. One is that the principal tactic of the demonstrators was a type of blockade, and the other is that very little blood was shed on either side. It is remarkable that so little blood was shed in three weeks of intense demands and demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of marchers and attempts to take over parliament and the presidential palace. The credit for this remarkable achievement belongs to both parties. The demonstrators had stones and clubs but no firearms. This was undoubtedly known to the police and the army, and reassured them that the officers and soldiers were not in mortal danger during the confrontations. The police and military did, of course, have powerful weapons, but their front line of defense consisted of water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. There was a double cordon of police and military surrounding Plaza Murillo where the parliament and presidential palace are located. The skirmishes which occurred when the militants attempted to take over those symbolic buildings were won by the security forces without loss of life, and without the use of lethal force.
Much credit goes to President Mesa and the security forces for limiting themselves to non-lethal force in securing Plaza Murillo. If Plaza Murillo and its buildings had been occupied by the rebels, or if there had been demonstrators killed by security forces in the skirmishes, the momentum of the confrontation would have swung decisively in the direction of the rebels. After all, it was the deaths that occurred in skirmishes in 2003 that intensified the demands that forced Gonzalo Sánchez from the Presidency in October of that year. In 2005, the authorities had clearly learned their lesson and were determined not to make the mistake that Sánchez had made in 2003.
One death did occur just a day before the resolution of the drama. Unable to meet in Plaza Murillo and hoping for a more tranquil venue, Congress scheduled a meeting hundreds of miles away in Sucre, the official capital of Bolivia. Miners, who had been leaders of the protest from the beginning, sped down to Sucre in trucks, and one of their leaders was killed in a confrontation with the soldiers on the outskirts of town. But the drama was already in its final scene, and the one death did not affect its conclusion. In retrospect, it remains astonishing that three weeks of such intense protests by so many thousands of farmers, teachers, coca-growers, and miners, all Indians, resulted in only one fatality.
Does the absence of fatalities signify that the confrontations were not violent? That is the question with which we began, and we may expect differing answers so long as the question is posed in those terms. My Quaker Indian friends gave an affirmative answer. When I suggested to one that there seemed to be more violence in 2005 than in 2003, he insisted that the protests were not violent affairs. Turning from the action of the protestors and demonstrators, I mentioned that Aymara marchers had been attacked with clubs and stones when they attempted a peaceful march into Santa Cruz. He replied that no one was seriously hurt, and that those using the clubs and stones were in any case a group of right-wing young people opposed to the aims of the demonstrations. I did not pursue with him how he understands the conception of violence, partly because I do not trust my Spanish enough to enter into a discussion that requires careful wording. He did not deny that there was violence and I am inclined to credit him with a conception according to which violence is less violent, and perhaps negligible, if there are no fatal casualties or if it occurs in the course of demonstrating for justice. Recognition of degrees of violence strikes me as a more reasonable posture than an absolute conception according to which an action is definitively either violent or not violent. Such a conception of degrees of violence, although rarely encountered in the public media, is probably the most widespread conception in practice. There will of course be endless disputes about what makes an action more or less violent, but general agreement to distinguish levels and grades of violence makes sense and facilitates reconciliation following a confrontation.
BLOCKADES, ROADBLOCKS, ETC.
That brings us to the question of roadblocks and blockades. The article on blockades in my 1958 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica explains that a blockade is an act of war implemented by naval forces. The article discusses various legal conditions and qualifications pertaining mostly to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the conception is obviously too narrow for us. In discussions of the protests in Bolivia the phrase “road blockade” has often been used, and this would simply be a contradiction in terms, if the encyclopedia’s definition were the whole story. In Bolivia road blockades, or roadblocks, have been a tactic of protest for a quarter century, primarily among the Indians of the Altiplano, and they have grown increasingly powerful and effective. They are a tactic that has nothing naval about them at all, that does not occur in the context of war, and that does not depend on firearms or heavy weapons. These three points distinguish the roadblocks in Bolivia from the naval blockades discussed in the encyclopedia. They also suggest that the roadblocks are not violent, or are less violent. About their being less violent I have no quarrel, but I cannot agree that they are nonviolent.
One aspect of violence toward people is that it deprives them of liberty. It is obvious that when a person is raped or assaulted or murdered, that person’s liberty of movement has been severely restricted. In his essay “On Liberty” John Stuart Mill insists that the primary principle of liberty is that all persons should enjoy as much liberty as is compatible with equal liberty for other persons. It is useful to think that there is a presumption of violence where Mill’s principle of liberty is not respected. Such a conception of violence is bound to be rejected by those who are determined to mold or control the behavior of others, but it is useful despite being controversial. To the extent that this conception of violence is biased, its bias generally works against governments, and it is on the whole salubrious to hold governments to higher standards of criticism
It is evident that blockades of any kind severely limit the liberty of many people. In the recent blockades in Bolivia, the cities of El Alto and La Paz were shut down. There was no public transportation and private transportation was also curtailed. At the beginning of the protests, public buses continued to operate, but were discontinued after a hundred of them had windows broken by stones from the demonstrators. So the buses were forced off the street, as were taxis and private cars. It is true that no lives were lost and that “lethal force” was never employed. But force was employed, and to my mind the roadblocks and the enforced suspension of transportation constituted a form of violence.
In the United States and in Europe protestors have sometimes engaged in sit-downs at the entrances to facilities to whose work the protestors have had moral objections. These protests, in which people have blocked entrances and have chained themselves to trees or gates, have not involved the same degree of violence as throwing rocks at bus windows. They have generally been characterized by the press and the police as well as by the organizers as non-violent protests. Certainly they have been less violent than the recent protests in Bolivia. In the United States a person arrested and convicted for such an act would not be classified as having been convicted of a violent crime. In Germany however, deliberately sitting down on a driveway so that a truck would have to run over you to enter or leave has been defined in law as an act of violence (Gewalt). The point is that such an act violates Mill’s principle of liberty, depriving truck drivers of the liberty of entering or exiting without running over a human being. This German legal conception of violence results is a much broader conception of violence than the conception of violence that requires that there be bloodshed or death, though it remains narrower than that of Gandhi or King.
The blockades in Bolivia have been a political rather than a military tactic. This has resulted in their being less violent, but the element of violence should not be overlooked. There must have been civilian deaths in La Paz during the three weeks of demonstrations and protests, and it is likely that some of these deaths (it is midwinter, after all) were hastened by shortages of food and fuel. Blockades like these are a more powerful weapon than boycotts, strikes, and embargos. Boycotts seem a relatively benign form of pressure or economic coercion, causing hardship but not curtailing liberty. Strikes are in principle equally nonviolent, and are included as such in Staughton Lynd’s survey of nonviolence in the USA. In practice they have at times become more violent, as when company property has been trashed or scabs beaten up. Embargoes, however, do curtail liberties and they can cause death. The embargos on Iraq from 1991 to 2003 were claimed to be responsible for many thousands of infant deaths. Such embargos violate Mill’s principle, since they curtail the liberty of trade, and they do contain an element of violence.
Nothing much should be made of the fact that these Indian roadblocks in Bolivia were part of a political rather than a military campaign, and that the Indian cause has a powerful claim to justice because of centuries of oppression. Clausewitz famously reminded us that war and politics are inseparable, saying that war is a continuation of politics by other means. So politics must also be a version of war, using other means. The common element is the attempt to call the shots, dominate other people. Roadblocks as well as naval blockades can be a means to achieve power and domination, and the Bolivian Indians have been using them effectively. The recent events of 2005, like those of 2003, were designed to demonstrate and expand the power of the Indians. They achieved this goal — but they achieved only this goal, since the substantive issues about the gas reserves, restructuring political authority, and regional autonomy remain unresolved.
Although a pacifist, I am not inclined to criticize the Bolivian Indians who have adopted roadblocks as a political tactic. The poverty and oppression imposed on the Indians for four centuries by the ruling elite from overseas is a flagrant injustice. It is no doubt more by necessity rather than free choice that the Indians are now combating this injustice by political rather than by military means. There is, as Robert Mugabe and George Bush have brilliantly demonstrated, no guarantee that power achieved politically will remain benign. Nonetheless, using political means, even where some degree of violence is involved, leaves better chances for a resolution that will not tear the country apart but will instead facilitate greater peace and prosperity. Let us hope that the new interim President, Eduardo Rodríguez, can help the contending parties, who remain fiercely at odds, find such a mutually acceptable path.
BOLIVIA NOW: THE CONFRONTATION STILL TO COME
The events of June replaced one anti-political politician with another. Substantively nothing was accomplished — no relief of dire poverty and no redress of standing injustices. Nor is there a President who can exercise substantive leadership in the manner of Victor Paz Estenssoro. Like Carlos Mesa, Eduardo Rodríguez belongs to no political party, has no political base, and has never been elected to office. That is all to the good, since the political parties are, with the exception of MAS (Movement toward Socialism), rooted in th past and aligned with the interests of the ruling non-Indian elite. Eduardo Rodríguez is an interim president, with limited but unclear powers. His principal mandate is to call for early elections, within six months. This will surely occur. Early elections is one of the four demands of the campesino demonstrators who forced Mesa from office, and is the only one of the four that meets with no opposition, since it is a procedural matter that gores no one’s ox. Two of the other three are vital to changing the locus of power in Bolivia, and the fourth aims at retribution against the last elected president, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. In addition there is a demand from right-wing politicians in Santa Cruz (the free-enterprise hub of Bolivia) for regional autonomy.
The three principal campesino demands are for a constituent assembly, for nationalization (again) of the oil and gas reserves in Bolivia, and for the imprisonment of Sánchez de Lozada. The aims and interests behind these demands are for re-alignment of representation in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies so as to coincide with the population of the country, to prevent foreign interest from exploiting (as they have regularly in the past) the natural resources of Bolivia without any benefit to Bolivian Indians, and to resolve the powerful and persistent anger among Indians about the roughly one hundred fatalities (mostly Indians) during 2003.
President Rodríguez has now decreed that general elections (for Senators and Deputies as well as for President and Vide-President) will be held on December 4, at which time there will also be balloting for the Constituent Assembly. Elections by themselves are unlikely to change to allocation of power significantly. In the election of 2002 Evo Morales, the Aymara leader of MAS, came is second in the balloting. But all three of the top contenders achieved between 21% and 23% , and the traditional elite easily combined forces to deny Morales the presidency. It could easily happen again. In June of 2005 Morales was one of three announced candidates, who are roughly tied at about 20% in the polls. Curiously, ex-President Mesa, who is ineligible, out-polls them all at 25%. Mesa had vowed to serve out his mandate until the regularly scheduled elections of 2007, so having early elections is a clear achievement of the protests and demonstrations, however those elections turn out.
Natural resources have traditionally been nationalized in Bolivia. The big resource, which lasted for centuries, was silver. The mines at Potosí, a city at an elevation 15,000 feet and 300 years ago the largest and richest city in the Americas, filled Spanish coffers for centuries, and financed the Armada that was destroyed by Queen Elizabeth’s navy at the end of the 16th century. There was no thought of privatization in those days. When the silver was exhausted, the same mines produced tin, until the price of tin collapsed. The Indians of Bolivia gained nothing at all from the development of these resources — the benefits and the resources were alike shipped abroad, or retained by those descendants of Europeans who remained resident in Bolivia. There is now a widespread realization of this history and an increasingly sharp determination that it not be repeated. Hence the strident demand for nationalization and the fierce opposition to regional autonomy. (The gas and oil deposits and reserves are located in parts of remote from those departments where the Aymara and Quechua predominate, so one clear consequence of regional autonomy would be to limit the benefits these Indians derive from such resources.) It is difficult to imagine a significant compromise on this issue, even though the prospects for early development and for income from exports thereby become dim. For more than two years the demand of the most prominent Indian politician, Evo Morales, was for 50% control, but he was eclipsed by those calling for 100% control and now seems to have fallen in with that demand.
Regional autonomy appeals to business groups in Santa Cruz and Tarija, who called for a national referendum on the issue to be held on August 12. Santa Cruz has oil, close ties with Brazil, and thriving businesses. Tarija has the huge gas reserves. The purpose of regional/departmental autonomy is to insulate those rich, or potentially rich, departments from control by the central government, and especially from taxation to assist the development of impoverished areas of the country. It is therefore a move to try to ensure that the richer get richer and the poor stay poor. Though its name may smell like a rose, autonomy in Bolivia therefore has a distinctly dark side. Other parties are willing to have the referendum that is demanded, but not before the elections in December — so certainly not on August 12. President Rodríguez included in his election decree a refusal to order any other balloting before December 4, so the decision on autonomy is postponed, though it is not likely to go away.
The Constituent Assembly is also postponed until after the elections. An Aymara friend of mine writes: “Constituent Assembly means participation of social factions such as miners, campesinos, and other groups that exist in Bolivia, to decide about the political constitution of the Bolivian state.“ That sounds momentous indeed, like a constitutional convention. The Indians are determined to use it to increase their role in government to roughly their proportion in the population, roughly 65% or 70%, and also to embed in the constitution national ownership and control of all natural resources, water as well as hydrocarbons. There will be intense contrary pressure from Washington, as there was behind the scenes in the recent change of leadership. In view of the politicking to which such gatherings are invariably subject, the outcome is far from secure.
PROSPECTS
The roadblocks have vastly augmented the political power of the peasants and the indigenous people in general. This increased power will probably be confirmed in the elections, but it is unlikely that the peasants and the left will have a clear-cut victory. The three right-wing parties appear likely to agree on a single candidate for the Presidency, which would greatly increase the chance of one candidate (possibly Morales) gaining a majority and thereby winning the election outright. If no candidate wins a majority, which is still the most likely outcome, the election is thrown into the Congress and the leading candidates work out deals in the age-old tradition of back-room politics. The congress in question will be the newly elected congress, which should include more indigenous members, but the ingredients for a deal are bound to be subtle and complex.
There are now three parties representing indigenous people. One is that of Felipe Quispe with its strength among Aymara peasants in the Altiplano. Quispe, known as “El Mallku” (the boss condor), initiated the roadblocks and protests in 2003; he has been largely silent this year, but I expect him to be a significant factor in the elections. The second is MAS, the socialist party of Evo Morales, whose main strength is with the unions (miners, coca-growers, teachers) and in external support from Hugo Chávez and others; MAS has shown more sophistication than Quispe’s group in electioneering, in parliamentary coalitions, and in securing media attention. The third group, FEJUVE (Federación de Juntas Vecinales - Federation of Neighborhood Groups), arose in El Alto during the 2003 confrontations and is led by Abel Mamani; its strength is in the city of El Alto, it represents the urbanization of Indian political power, and it undoubtedly profited more through the recent demonstrations than any other group. As peasants continue to move from the country to the city, Mamani may replace Quispe as one of the top two indigenous leaders in Bolivia.
Decisions in Bolivia will be made in the shadow of the G-8 summit at Gleneagles. It is well known that the summit decided to forgive certain foreign debts of the 18 poorest nations, including Bolivia. It is less well-known that the debt relief is conditional upon the nations in questions adopting neo-conservative economic policies, both with respect to macroeconomic stability and also with respect to allowing foreign investments and unrestricted imports. The Bolivian economics minister has already characterized the free trade aspect as unfair because of US agricultural subsidies, foreign investment invariably bleeds resources out of the country (that, after all, is its purpose), and the conditions seems to clash head-on with the determination of indigenous Bolivians to gain control of Bolivia’s energy resources. The G-8 is clearly backing the US policy of opening third-world countries to exploitation by international firms. So even with the best imaginable results in the December elections, the future hardly looks rosy.
Bolivia, on the other hand, has as two of its neighbors and trading partners Brazil and Argentina, which are prominently defiant of US trade policies, and the left-leaning indigenous groups in Bolivia can count on support from Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Fidel Castro in Cuba. With international finance, world trade policies, control of energy supplies, global ideology, and breaking out of poverty and oppression all hanging in the balance, the December elections loom larger than usual on the world scene. In such confrontations it is usually the interests of the impoverished Indians that lose. But in Bolivia the events of 2003 and 2005 have shown that the Indians have now acquired a powerful veto, and there is in any case a leftward momentum in large parts of South America. It will be interesting to watch.
Roadblocks have been the means to power for all three indigenous political groups. Roadblocks, however, are intrinsically negative. They can no more serve as an instrument of government than can the Pentagon troops in Iraq or the bomb at Hiroshima. It remains to be seen whether and in what way the show of overwhelming power to shut things down can transform itself in the upcoming elections, in the new congress, and in the Constituent Assembly.
—11 July 2005
Newton Garver's
Limits to Power: Some Friendly Reminders will be published this fall by Center Working Papers.