Ending 'El Modelo'

Such are the practical problems confronting any radical movement that achieves political power. Evo Morales has yet to define where Bolivia will stand in the spectrum of new Latin American nationalisms, which range from Cuba and Venezuela, which so far oppose any free trade deals with the Americans, to the more reformist Brazil, Argentina and Chile, which see themselves as driving bargains for their domestic industries in a free-trade context. In part these differences reflect different economic realities--Cuba is under US embargo, while Venezuela is a source of oil--rather than ideology alone. But Morales has preached a "communitarian socialism based on the community, a socialism, let's say, based on reciprocity and solidarity. And beyond that, respecting Mother Earth, the Pachamama. It is not possible within the [neo-liberal] model to convert Mother Earth to merchandise."

When I interviewed Morales in 2004, he said the "struggle is not only in Bolivia, because el modelo [the neo-liberal model] fails especially for the poor," adding that multinational domination "is not going to happen" because "it's a clash between two cultures, the indigenous versus the US, sharing versus individualism."

Morales's vice president is Alvaro Garcia Linera, a former guerrilla leader, political prisoner, academic researcher and public commentator. He describes the Morales-MAS coalition as one on the "center-left." Socialism, he says, is not possible in a Bolivia where a proletariat is "numerically in a minority and politically non-existent," and where the economy has imploded into family and community structures, "which have been the framework within which the social movements have arisen." Linera favors an "Andean capitalism," which will build a "strong state" to transfer the surplus of the nationalized hydrocarbon industry to "encourage the setting up of forms of self-organization, of self-management and of commercial development that is really Andean and Amazonian." In other words, modern economic development would be embedded in, or allied with, the traditional communal structures of the indigenous people, instead of replacing those structures with vertical forms of control.

In an interview with Monthly Review before the election, Morales described socialism as "something much deeper" than the class-based model, founded on the indigenous values. It is likely that Bolivia will contribute to this indigenous framework to the ongoing debate over a Latin American alternative to neo-liberalism. That suggests that he will avoid surrendering to the free-trade model Washington demands. Instead, he is proposing a "constituent assembly" that will transfer even greater power to communities excluded by the colonial Bolivian state. He has said "a new integration is possible," borrowing from the global justice movement's refrain that "another world is possible." >

There is another factor in the equation, a North American one, often ignored by the analysts. "We need support in the United States, not only about our image but especially about these trade agreements," Pablo Solon said. There is so far only a fledgling network of Bolivian solidarity activists, compared with the US movements during the Central American wars of the 1979s and '80s. And despite remarkable but unheralded work by fair trade activists like Citizens Trade Watch in the US, demonstrations and lobbying have so far only dented, but not prevented, Congressional acquiesence in the US Administration's drive to assure corporate property rights over labor and environmental standards. When I interviewed him two years ago, Morales said he sided with "the many movements in the United States struggling against neo-liberalism, and we must struggle together."

In sum, a far stronger alliance between Latin American and North American social movements, based on a common anti-corporate, pro-indigenous, pro-democracy agenda, might become a crucial factor in expanding the possibilities of what leaders like Evo Morales feel able to achieve. Twenty years after Bolivia was plunged into chaos by US-imposed privatizations, there is an incipient rethinking of free trade in US establishment circles. For example, Newsweek reported in January that a "new consensus" is developing that "trade is not enough to end poverty" and that "what's needed is more government intervention in economies, not less. Call it a new New Deal, and get ready to hear much more about it in 2006."

But there is little sign of this welcome development in the US approach to the new Bolivia. It is likely that multinational oil companies will accept greater sharing of their wealth, and the transfer of controls over industrialization, to Bolivians. But that is because their profit margins are in the range of 30 percent, according to a corporate attorney I talked to who had fifteen years' experience in Bolivia. But a World Bank official I interviewed repeated the official dogma that development depends on unfettered private foreign investment. Her key suggestion for Evo Morales was that Bolivia's street vendors--about 70 percent of Bolivians are employed in the "informal sector," selling Fresca and toothpaste on the streets--should be licensed and registers so they can be taxed. It is a trickle-up policy sure to be resisted.

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