Bolivia
Adolfo
Gilly September 26, 2008
Mexico - "The problem in Bolivia is that the country is undergoing a process
of reforms, without abandoning the democratic framework, but both the
opposition and the government act as if they were facing a revolution,"
stated Marco Aurelio Garc?a, a close advisor to Lula in international
affairs, according to an article by Jos? Natanson in the newspaper *Pagina
12*.
Allowing myself to not take this declaration literally, but instead in an
ironic sense, Marco Aurelio Garc?a, an intelligent and well-informed man,
can't help but realize that if the two protagonists of the Bolivian
confrontation believe that they are dealing with a revolution, this belief
is the best confirmation that, in effect, it is. The Vice President, ?lvaro
Garc?a Linera, on the other hand, has said that what is happening is "an
increase in elites, an increase in rights, and a redistribution of wealth.
This, in Bolivia, is a revolution."
He is right: in Bolivia this alone would already be a revolution like the
one in Nicaragua in 1979. But what is happening is something much deeper and
that goes much further than the elites, politics, and the economy. This is a
questioning of the means of the historical domination by those elites, old
and new. It comes from very far below, it is moved by an ancient fury, and
it will not be stopped by the massacres at the hands of fascist groups nor
by the fragile government agreements with the prefects of the *Media Luna*.
The massacre in Pando, with more than 30 campesinos assassinated in cold
blood by the hit men of the white minority, and the horrific scenes of
humiliation, pain and punishment of the indigenous people in the public
plaza of Sucre and in the streets of Santa Cruz de la Sierra at the hands of
gangs of fascist youth, are telling in that this white minority knows
exactly what game it is playing: its power is not negotiable, its lands are
untouchable, its right to despotic rule resides in skin color not in the
votes of citizens. The white minority is not willing to, in a sense,
"extend" said despotic right, supported also by poor white groups whose only
"property" is their skin color that separates them from the Indians. They
are much less willing to redistribute property or wealth.
?
The Bolivian right-wing, the old and not-so-old elites, the owners of land
and of lives, were defeated by the immense indigenous and popular uprising
that began with the Water Wars in the year 2000, culminated with the
rebellion of El Alto in October 2003, and concluded with Evo Morales' entry
into the presidency in January 2005. The new Constitution, even though
subjected to a referendum, and other measures by the Bolivia government,
have been steps to strengthen the new government in judicial, political and
economic terrain.
This process was approved again by a the great majority of the Bolivian
people in the referendum on August 10th; 67 percent of the votes?-more than
two-thirds?- with up to 85 percent approval in the communities of the
Altiplano. The dominant white minority in the eastern region has incited
revolt, and, with brutality and ferociousness, challenges these national
electoral results and threatens secession.
This minority knows well that it is not about simple "democratic
improvements/extensions" but that instead it is about a revolution that
questions the minority's power and its privileges, the "structural
inheritance" of its despotic rule. Therefore a revolution is one of those
culminating moments in which the insurgent movement of the people touches
those exact bases of domination, tries to destroy them, and is able to
fracture the dividing line where that domination passes through the given
society.
It is not about the line that separates the governors from the governed, a
political question, but instead about the line that separates the dominators
from the subaltern. In the classical sense, social revolution refers to the
subversion of that social domination and not just to political or economic
domination.
That dividing line is sharp and deep in Bolivia. It is not only a class
domination, although that does exist. It is above all about a racial
domination that was shaped in the colonial times and reaffirmed in the
ogliarchic Republic from 1825 onwards........rest at
http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2008/09/racism-domination-and-revolution-in.html
