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Alternative Globalizations In Latin America: Bolivia and Venezuela
By Jerry Harris

Far from the “end of history” the twenty-first century has witness the birth of widespread alternatives to neo-liberal capitalism. These new political struggles create the experience, practice and consciousness that will help determine the future course of global society. If we hope to develop a relevant theory of social change we need to study the important battles of today that have raised the banner of alternative globalizations.

One such battle has been taking place in Bolivia. Neoliberalism came to Bolivia in 1985 with the government privatizing most state owned industries to foreign interests, cutting social services, and all but destroying the once powerful unions. Although manufacturing grew it became fragmented and decentralized into small workshops, permanent jobs dropping from 71% to just 29% of all employment between 1989 and 1996. As self-employment, temporary labor and subcontracting grew, wages were cut to half their previous value. (Olivera, p. 111 -113) The IMF, typically blind to the human toll, praised Bolivia as one of Latin America’s best examples of globalization. Writing on Bolivia’s submersion into global capital Alvaro Garcia Linera explained, “Today transnational capital, which has become the principal agent promoting a modern economy, controls the economic areas representing the greatest capital investment, the highest rate of profit, and the fullest articulation with the world market.” (Linera, p. 66)

When the government sold Bechtel the municipal water rights of Bolivia’s second largest city, Cochabamba, the people erupted in what became known as the Water Wars. The types of resistance that developed in this mass mobilization, and the following political battles over gas resources, are rich examples of alternative forms of democracy and social organization. The battle over Bolivia’s resources was not lead by the old industrial unions or a united front of political parties, but by the Coordinadora, a representative body of social movements and popular sectors organized through grassroots and participatory methods. Oscar Olivera, a key leader of the movement, points out, “The formation of the Coordinadora responded to the political vacuum uniting peasants, environmental groups, teachers, and blue and white-collar workers in the manufacturing sector…there could be no individual salvation. Social well-being would be achieved for everyone, or for no one at all.” (Olivera, p. 28)

The Coordinadora responded to the fragmentation of the working class with a new type of diverse and plural social solidarity, one that reflected the change of social relations under globalization. Industrial capitalism had massed workers into concentrated work sites creating a common experience and consciousness expressed through their unions and classed based political parties. Having lost these affiliations and common identities new collective forms arose in civil society based on neighborhood groups, small businessmen and market vendors, rank and file labor groups, peasant and craft unions, and professional and student associations. The Coordinadora acted as the central node, building a horizontal network of these mainly territorial based organizations. Each sector was organized into assemblies that met and sent spokespersons to represent their viewpoint in the Coordinadora. The meetings of representatives decided on strategy and wrote up communiqués, which were then presented at large-scale town meetings that at times were attended by fifty to seventy thousand people and finalized the decisions. After a number of mass mobilizations and intense street battles the government retreated and broke their contract with Bechtel. The Coordinadora had succeeded in creating an autonomist democratic space in civil society based on assembly-style communal politics.

But large collective actions and common decision making is often an aspect of mass, but temporary, social rebellions. The task now was to turn this newly won space into an institutional form with a permanent position in civil society. As intellectual activist Raquel Gutierrez-Aguilar wrote, “How could we sow the seeds of full autonomy in relation to the state through our proposals to regulate water…reclaiming decision-making and through it, of recovering alienated ‘social wealth’.’’ (Gutierrez-Aquilar, p. 55) Fellow activist Alvaro Garcia Linera was also concerned about the transitory nature of the mass movement. As he noted, “sometimes the Coordinadora consists of half a million inhabitants; at other times it can claim no more than one hundred active and permanent members. Perhaps the way of overcoming this organizational weakness is to consecrate, institutionalize, and symbolically ritualize the local and regional assemblies as institutionalized assemblies of the Coordinadora.” (Linera, p. 83)

This was accomplished with an ambitious plan to create water committees in every neighborhood, independent of any political association. Creating more than 100 committees these groups, working with technical staff, solve a multitude of problems arising over services, sanitation, maintenance, environmental concerns and costs. In addition, as formal ownership of the water reverted back to SEMAPA, the municipal water company, the Coordinadora named the general manager and created room on the executive board for union representatives and professional organizations. As Gutierrez-Aquilar explains, the effort is “to convert SEMAPA into a socially owned and self-managed enterprise in which its property form would transcend existing legal provisions in order to make room for new means of management, decision-making, citizen participation, and social control.” (Ibid. p. 60)

This process went on in a continual battle with the government that sought to bring SEMAPA under more formal state control. The social movement in Cochabamba understood this as a strategic battle, viewing the market as a question of democracy and a space to contest transnational power. The object is not to simply demand more resources from the state, but to occupy autonomist institutional positions that democratize decision-making power over social wealth. In this manner participatory management over state run services was connected to civil society and popular participation in the economy.

Another important aspect of the Water Wars was breaking free of the culture of cynicism, apathy and defeat. Neoliberalism had achieved ideological hegemony, isolating people and destroying their collective social belief that people could change and manage society. But the successful mass mobilization and victory of the people in Cochabamba created a consciousness that spread throughout Bolivia, helping to mobilize further battles over the recovery of gas resources and the extension of democracy. This is vitally important, wherein autonomist space creates new confidence and self-awareness that propels people to become agents of change and consciously build a historic bloc of popular forces.

But change in social consciousness is a long drawn-out process. Popular organizations always face the danger of becoming an appendage of state clientelism as mass participation withers. Under such circumstances leaders are often incorporated into the state as local mediators with the power to distribute resources. In addition, organizations based on specific social sectors often fail to develop lasting solidarity and a united political strategy. This can result in growing isolation and competition over social resources based solely on their immediate needs. This makes it easy for the state to incorporate some and attack others, controlling certain social movements to strengthen the state’s hold over civil society. These are dynamics that need to be recognized as points of continuing conflict, particularly by those who tend to portray social movements as the only pure representation of grassroots democracy. In fact, under certain circumstances a popular democratic government may be the best vehicle to maintain a strategic plan for social justice and overcome the petty squabbles that can dominate local and regional groups.

In order to expand counter-hegemonic space from the local to the national level the Coordinadora proposed a Constituent Assembly. The Assembly would be as a mass participatory democratic challenge to the traditional state apparatus composed of “citizen representatives elected by their neighborhood organizations, their urban or rural associations, their unions, their communes.”(Olivera, p136) According to Olivera the “Constituent Assembly is basically an instance of the political organization of civil society…not based on the reform of the political constitution of the existing state…but a general transformation of political institutions” for self-government. (Ibid. p 136-7) The use of democratic means to fashion revolutionary institutional space differs significantly from twentieth century socialist strategies that focused on the seizure of the existing state by armed insurections. The effort here is to reapropriate democracy from a restricted and statist form with an expanded and participatory model. In part it is similar to worker councils or soviets that appeared in the early stages of previous socialist revolutions, before these grassroots structures became absorbed by the state.

But the autonomist strategy does not encompass all the social movements in Bolivia. Movement To Socialism (MAS) under the leadership of Evo Morales has a powerful presence and became focused on winning the presidency of the country. MAS developed out of the cocalero struggle against the militarized anti-drug campaign brought to Bolivia by the US. The coca growers symbolized a peasant movement fighting for economic survival, and came to occupy a militant and historical cultural position within Bolivian society. As an important sector in the social movement MAS launched electoral campaigns in 2002 that won the second most seats in congress and in the presidential race placed Morales just one percentage point behind winner Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Lozada was consequently run out of office by the gas war rebellion, setting the stage for a new presidential campaign. While continuing to take part in the mass social mobilizations Morales concentrated the efforts of MAS on an electoral strategy for power. With Alvaro Garcia Linera as his running mate, Morales won a historic and decisive victory in December 2005 that many saw as the culmination of the mass movements that had forced two governments from office. El Alto, the poor and highly organized community sitting above La Paz, was an important stronghold of Morales support. As one resident commented, “We have all supported Evo. It is not just what he says. It is that this is his base and he knows us.” (Forero)

But the social movements were not fully united behind Morales’ campaign for president. There were serious debates over the best form of ownership of Bolivia’s gas resources, as well as questions over electoral strategy and political alliances. As Olivera commented, “What the social movements need to do now is to continue accumulating popular forces, as we have been doing since 2000, to build up our ability to pressure whatever government that comes. A Morales government would be less difficult to move, but it will still be difficult.” (Schultz) Many activists feel that Morales will not be able to fulfill his campaign promises because of Bolivia’s relationship to powerful oil and gas transnationals and the country’s international debt overseen by the IMF. Therefore the autonomy of the social movements acts as a necessary counterbalance on the government, pressuring the state to withstand the demands of transnational capitalism.

The lack of a common and coherent political project for the seizure of power is not isolated to Bolivia. In many countries there are clear tensions between those focused on creating autonomous space in civil society and those intent on winning political power by building mass electoral parties. In Mexico, the Zapatistas have sought to build democratic autonomy without competing for state power. As pointed out by Neil Harvey, “Their strategy is not to seize power and wield it over others, but to democratize power relations in every sphere of life.” (Harvey, p. 14) Their efforts have been twofold; to build over 30 autonomous municipalities among their base communities in the Chiapas jungle known as the Juntas de Buen Gobierno (Councils of Good Government); and to seek alliances and dialogue with other social movements to create a diverse but common democratic agenda for social change. Meanwhile on the electoral front, the Party of Revolutionary Democracy (PRD) is set to win the presidency with the populist mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, as their candidate. The left-center party was formed in a merger of the Mexican Communist Party, two socialist parties, and the left-wing of the traditional ruling party, the PRI. The PRD has had their greatest success in states with large indigenous populations, winning governorships in Guerrero, Michoacan and in the Zapatista’s own backyard of Chiapas. Yet the autonomist movement remains skeptical of the PRD’s progressive legitimacy. As Zapatista spokesperson, Sub Comandante Marcos has stated, “Yesterday they were on the left, today they are on the center, where will they be tomorrow?” (Ramirez) But the Zapatista’s have their critics too, as activist and writer Tariq Ali has argued “the Zapatistas have failed to make serious gains, because the proposal to ‘change the world without taking power’ is only a ‘moral slogan’ that does not pose any threat to dominant groups in Mexico or their foreign allies.” Harvey, p. 14)

This same tension is seen in Brazil between the Landless Rural Worker’s Movement (MST) and Lula’s Workers Party (PT). The MST may well be Latin America’s most powerful social movement with hundred of thousands of members. Founded in 1984 with the help of liberation theology church activists the MST is focused on the collective struggle for land and cooperative farms, having won 20 million acres for 350,000 families. They maintain a grassroots organization starting with groups of about ten families that constitute a “Base Nucleus,” participatory local general assemblies, on up to regional, state and national levels. MST members voted in large numbers for the PT when Lula won the presidency, but the organization never joined the Party. As founding member Joao Pedro Stedile explains:

“From all we have learned from history, we realize that the health of the social movement depends on a large degree of political and ideological independence. We have always understood that only they who travel on their own feet and think with their own heads can go far. Therefore, we always insist that the MST and other social movements have to be autonomous in their relations with political parties, the government, the state, the Church and all other institutions…We are in permanent negotiations with the governments in search of our objectives. But we always set our own goals and methods.” (Stedile, p. 25)

The MST has good cause for caution, land distribution under Lula’s government declined sharply to the lowest level since the military government of 20 years before. Although the MST extended tactical support to Lula and limited their number of land occupations, after his first year in office they resumed widespread activities mobilizing in 20 states and marching on the federal capital demanding action.

These different strategies for social change between state and civil society naturally create tensions, and at times bitter disagreements. Activists in civil society often label those involved in the electoral arena as untrustworthy reformists or worse, as traitors to the mass democratic project. On the otherhand, party militants getting out the vote see autonomists as unwilling to confront the real problems of power and responsibility. Meanwhile, millions of mobilized people participate in multiple forms of social organizations as well as vote for left candidates in local and national elections. Perhaps more pragmatic than their ideologically driven leaders, a vast majority of workers and poor see no problem with participating in both forms of activism. In fact, this is an essential aspect of the democratic dialectic.

The tension between the two strategies, state power versus autonomous civil society and what can be accomplished in either political realm, will and should continue to be a contradiction within any truly dynamic democratic society. Establishing counter-hegemonic positions within the state and society are both necessary, with both having their strengths and dangers of co-option and corruption. Sometimes they will compliment and strengthen each other; sometimes their interaction will reflect different needs, perspectives, pressures and strategies. Since the ultimate goal is to restrict the state until society can be govern by the producers themselves, the dialectic is solved in the long run by a synthesis to a fully democratic and participatory civil society that ultimately replaces the state. Or as Antonio Gramsci put it, “the State’s goal is its own end, its own disappearance, in other words the re-absorption of political society into civil society.” (Gramsci p. 253) That, to say the least, is a very long-term project, the results of which are unknowable. So in considering the historic transition, understanding the dynamics of the democratic dialectic becomes a strategic orientation for guiding social change. There is a necessary democratic linkage between state and society, only by recognizing this unity of opposites and through understanding its inherent contradictions can an appropriate transitional strategy be created.

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