Evo Morales - What does it mean?
It means that the US will now be at war with all of Latin America, even as it remains entangled in a Southwest Asian energy war.
Evo Morales, who leads the MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) in majority-indigenous Bolivia, and has long represented the indigenous coca growers of that landlocked nation, himself an Aymara speaking indigenous person from the Altiplano who herded llamas as a child, will be the next president of Bolivia.
Che Guevara, who was killed in Bolivia by the CIA and the Bolivian army in 1967, must be smiling. This election is merely the latest act in what began as an open rebellion against US and multinational depredations on Bolivian resources and labor that shut down cities and toppled governments.
“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.”
-Jean Friedsky, “Election Day in Bolivia 2005: A View from the Chapare and Cochabamba,” December 19, 2005
This development is the latest in a series of staggering setbacks for US imperialism in Latin America. Earlier this month, socialist Michelle Bachelet became the first woman to preside over Chile. Argentina’s President neo-Peronist Kirchner and Brazil’s left-center de Silva both just declared that they would pay down the principle on their IMF debt, cutting their dependency on the US-controlled international loan shark, and allowing them to break away from the IMF’s devastating structural adjustment programs. In November, 2004, Tabare Vazquez was elected the first leftist leader of Uruguay. In 2002, oil-rich Venezuela was subjected to a coup d’etat against the elected government of Hugo Chavez, supported by the US; which was reversed in two days by a popular uprising which included most of the Venezuelan military.
National sovereignty and self-determination are trying to break out in Latin America. These are not merely insider political maneuvers, but leaders who are serving as the representatives of highly mobilized, highly militant popular movements. these leaders are getting more pressure from their majority-left than from the minority, well-financed, US-supported comprador bourgeoisies and their truckling technocrats. And make no mistake about it. This will be contagious.
The two dimensions of this historic continental drift are (1) the increasing vulnerability of the US, dipolmatically ever more isolated, financially ever more exposed, economically ever more precariously perched on a huge debt overhang, politically in a malaise from corruption and a security-state overreach, and militarily trapped in the tar-baby of Iraq, and (2) the organizing role of Venezuela in the region.
Let there be no doubt about this: the war that is now breaking out between the US and Latin America is not just a continuation of US neo-colonial control for labor and markets — it is part and parcel of the global Energy War.
Diego Mantilla, in “Chavez, Mercosur, the pipeline and oil” (December 11, 2005), explains:
“As Western Hemisphere energy resources become increasingly scarce, competition for access is bound to create geopolitical tension. The latest example of this trend is the overture made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez towards Mercosur, the free trade area made up of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina.
“Venezuela’s accession to Mercosur would combine nicely with attempts by Venezuela and Argentina to connect their energy markets via a pipeline laid across the South American continent.
“President Chavez and Argentinian President Nestor Kirchner met in November to discuss the pipeline. The AP reported that ‘the cost for a pipeline running south through Brazil to Argentina has been estimated at $10 billion.’
“If the pipeline is completed, Venezuela could help Argentina overcome an expected energy shortage during the coming years as the natural gas reserves of the Southern Cone come under pressure of the growing needs of its population. According to The Economist, ‘Venezuela could become the hub of a regional energy network.’ Venezuela already helped Argentina meet its energy demand last year by shipping diesel, The Economist reported.”
Not only has Chavez been instrumental in the development of MERCOSUR, the regional trade bloc designed to “bury” the US Free Trade of the Americas agreement — another predatory NAFTA-like pact that allows US multinationals to rape less developed countries, Chavez recenlty set up a Venezuelan hedge fund that is buying up hundreds of millions of dollars of regional debt without the structural adjustment strings of IMF loans. This was possible because rising oil prices have left the Venezuelan treasury flush.
This strategic challenge to US power in the region is further facilitated by US dependence on Venezuelan oil. A critical margin of 15% of US oil imports comes from Venezuela. Bolivia, too, is sitting atop combustible hydrocarbons — including 48.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas that Morales has promised to nationalize. The technocrats are threatening to “strike,” as they attempted in Venezuela to prepare the coup, but there is as wild card named China that is cutting deals for energy development in Latin America, and China has no interest in perpetuating exteranl debts to keep Wall Street’s boot on Bolivia’s neck. And of course… there is Venezuela.
The other half of Energy War, aside from Energy, is War. Evo Morales came to prominence as a cocalero, a coca grower, who organized other indigenous coca growers to fight against the US-directed, so-called War on Drugs, which became the excuse to expand US military presence and patronage throughout the region, as wellas use coca eradication as a method to depopulate rural areas and make land availabe to investors. When the US military base at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico was closed in the face of miltiant nationalist pressure in 2003, that sense of nation against empire never went away; and Puerto Rican nationalism is on the rise. If Morales throws the US military our of Bolivia and manages to gain the loyatly and support of his own military, as the armed expression of Bolivian national identity, this is another spor that will be carried on the winds throughout Latin America, and even beyond.
(An international campaign to shut down US military bases abroad could not find a better time than now. Perhaps in Incirluk, Turkey, for starters, since Turkey was only behind Brazil in terms of its IMF debt load, and it is suffereing exactly like Latin America from the US/IMF system of dollar hegemony and “structural adjustment.” When Brazil pays its debt this year, Turkey will be number one under the heel of the IMF.)
Expect savage opposition to Morales, as there is against Cuba, Venezuela, the Colombian revolutionaries, and anyone else who dares assert their sovereignty against the US Imperium. But this is not Iraq, where an election has to be tweaked and re-tweaked to forge a “friendly” result (even though that WILL fail ultimately). The election of Morales was the last act, not the first, after years of struggle and organization and escalating militancy outside the electoral arena. Chavez is organizing the population to defned itself, just as Fidel Castro did against the invasion at Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs). Morales may consider the same.
The war has already started. There is no turning back. The Latin American masses are awake. We have to be awake, and be prepared to fight for them politically here.
The tip of another tentacle was cut yesterday. It is a time to celebrate, for a moment, then sigue la lucha.
Adelante!
Yolanda Carrington:
Being that my grasp of economics is marginal, I have a few questions.
1. If there is a Pan-Latin American movement for self-determination (in light of Morales’ election and Argentina and Brazil paying off the principal of their debts), what is this going to mean for the economic situation in the United States?
2. How critical overall is Latin American subjugation to US economic dominance?
3. What will happen to the masses of US people when the government goes to hell?
My thinking before was that (White-National) America’s imperial overreach in the Middle East would be the Empire’s undoing, but that the ultimate conclusion of this would take at least few years, if not several decades. Episodes like the Katrina atrocity would help hasten this, but the collapse would be mainly on account of militarism, nonetheless.
It’s hard to predict what will happen in the future, but I think most smart people realize that the United States can’t keep playing the game of domination forever.
Frankly, I just want to know how to cope when the neo-cons finally lead us over the edge.
Yolanda
20 December 2005, 7:13 pmCamilo Pino:
Evo Morales keeps a picture of Che Guevara in his pocket. The picture is his talisman, and also his north. Bolivia is going the Cuban way, or at least that is what Morales plans.
As a “cocalero†leader he is anti-American by definition. He has been mentored by Castro and Chavez. He wants a constitutional assembly to produce a socialist document. He also wants to nationalize all natural resources and get rid of foreign companies.
You would probably think that he is leading Bolivia to an economic crisis but he has the money to finance any extravagance, courtesy of Venezuela’s oil. Plus coca leaf production may become a major source of windfall money.
If Hugo Chavez is a headache for the US, Morales will be a migraine.
22 December 2005, 10:44 pmDunu Roy:
When Latin America revolts, will the US fall? and what happens to Africa and Asia? Dream on - for the end of Empire!
27 December 2005, 11:30 amStan:
Who has framed this so simplistically, except you?
Perhaps you’d like to provide us with some insights into the implicaiton for Africa and Asia, since you brought it up.
It’s a little more work to do that, but a lot more helpful to others than simply sending two short hypothetical questions and a sarcastic crack.
On to Yolanda’s questions:
1. If there is a Pan-Latin American movement for self-determination (in light of Morales’ election and Argentina and Brazil paying off the principal of their debts), what is this going to mean for the economic situation in the United States?
There are popular movements afoot specifically against IMF imposed structural adjustment, which is the most powerful form of economic control exercised over LA by the US. This is a political crisis more than an economic one at this point, but the loss of leverage by the IMF can eventually contribute to what is already an inevitable economic crisis in the US.
2. How critical overall is Latin American subjugation to US economic dominance?
Very, but not alone. It is the specific form of economic dominance that matters, and it is inextricable from military and diplomatic power. The real supporters of the US eocnomy right now - short term - are the big economies that buy US treasuries (give unpayable loans to the US), like W Eur, China, Japan. But once the LA dike breaks, there are plenty of other popular movements against neoliberalism in the wings.
3. What will happen to the masses of US people when the government goes to hell?
Until we know HOW it will go to hell, we can’t know what the rest will look like. Those with the least debt, however, are always the best off, provided they have somewhere to live. Don’t look for an dramatic apocalypse. Look for a steady irreversible decline.
The rebellion of LA is not mature enough to succeed yet, but these latest developments are VERY progressive.
27 December 2005, 12:17 pmStan:
[January 08, 2006]
Morales praises Mao, asks China to invest in Bolivia
(EFE Ingles Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Beijing, Jan 8 (EFE).- Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales kicked off his tour in China by declaring himself to be a great admirer of Mao Zedong and his “proletarian revolution,” and he urged Chinese businesses to invest in key sectors of the Bolivian economy, including natural gas and oil production, as well as mining in general.
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In his spontaneous and informal style, Morales met with Chinese state advisor Tang Jiaxuan and the head of the international department of the Chinese Communist Party, Wang Jiarui, to whom he acknowledged that he had read Mao’s biography “since I was a young man” and had “great respect” for China’s communist revolution.
Visibly tired already from the rigors of his four-continent international tour that in all likelihood, although it has not yet been confirmed, will take him on to India and Iran, Morales emphasized his admiration for orthodox Chinese communism, despite the fact that the Asian giant - over the past couple of decades - has replaced its former economic ideology with “market socialism.”
Because of his exhaustion, Morales cancelled two meetings with journalists that had been scheduled for Sunday sending his economic advisor, Carlos Villegas, in his place to explain the president-elect’s basic objectives in making the trip to China.
Although when he went to Europe in the early portion of the tour, Morales focused on warning firms doing business in Bolivia - including Spanish-Argentine Repsol YPF and France’s TotalFina Elf - that the Bolivian state will exercise its property rights over its natural resources, he urged Chinese businesses to make investments in the country’s main economic sectors.
“Chinese firms have been invited - if they follow Bolivian regulations - to enter into sectors like energy, mining or agriculture,” Villegas said.
On Monday, Morales will meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Trade Minister Bo Xilai, with whom he will discuss the investment invitation in further detail, and he is also scheduled to get together with Chinese businessmen from the energy sector.
Analysts say that getting investment commitments from the Chinese could serve to establish a strategic alliance between Beijing and the incoming Bolivian government, which sees countries like China and India as possible counterweights to the United States in the Latin American economy.
Beijing, for its part, wants to invest in Bolivia - which has the second largest reserves of natural gas in South America, after Venezuela - to assure itself a supply of energy to fuel its booming economy as well as to broaden its buoyant foreign trade with Latin America.
In 2004, China was the sixth largest exporter of products to Bolivia and the largest such supplier outside the Western Hemisphere with sales valued at $107.6 million, almost 10 times the figure from just two years prior, according to data from the Bolivian Foreign Trade Institute.
However, Villegas rejected the suggestion that Morales was trying to weave together an alliance against U.S. “imperialism,” an idea that flourished anew upon the announcement of the Bolivian leader-to-be’s possible visit to Iran, a member of the so-called “axis of evil” enunciated by U.S. President George W. Bush and for years a painful thorn in Washington’s side.
“The United States is no longer the only axis of economic and military hegemony. Now, a triad dominates the world - the United States, the European Union and Asia - and the only thing we’re doing is looking at reality and making contact with the different countries,” Villegas told reporters at a press conference.
In his meetings with Chinese officials so far, Morales has displayed a relaxed attitude and apologized - as he did in Spain - for his lack of familiarity with diplomatic protocol, to which state advisor Tang, a former foreign minister of China, responded that the indigenous coca growers’ union leader “doesn’t need formalities” in his meetings in China.
Tang also joked with Morales about the latter’s “summer” outfit - his signature short-sleeved shirt - and advised him to bundle up if he intended to go out on the street, given that recent Beijing temperatures have dropped down to below freezing.
Morales hopes to merge his political agenda on Monday with sightseeing trips to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, which will be closed for a short period of time to other tourists to allow him to contemplate both architectural wonders in all their splendor, Chinese Foreign Ministry officials told EFE.
Asked by reporters whether Morales will visit Iran, Villegas replied that Bolivia “wants to have relations with all countries.”
“The decisions that we’re taking are not (designed) to attack any country, but to assemble the necessary conditions for the (new Bolivian) government to be successful,” he added.
If his trip to India and Iran comes off, Morales will postpone his scheduled visit to Argentina and will end his world tour in Brazil and return to La Paz a week before his inauguration on Jan. 22, officials with the presidential entourage told EFE.
Morales began his foreign tour in Cuba, moving on to Venezuela, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and now China. EFE
8 January 2006, 9:18 pmStan:
Weeeellllll….
1-24-06: LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivian President Evo Morales reshuffled the military high command on Tuesday, stamping his authority on a top brass badly tarnished by a scandal over the destruction of Bolivian missiles in the United States.
Shouts of protest from the daughter of a general under investigation for the scandal interrupted a tense ceremony in which dozens of senior military men were replaced, two days after leftist Morales took office as the Andean country’s first indigenous president.
“I regret the information we’ve been receiving for months about the disarming of the armed forces. I haven’t taken any action against members of the armed forces, only against the leaders. Now is the time to investigate,” said Morales before swearing in the new military and police chiefs.
At the height of campaigning for the December 18 election that he went on to win, Morales denounced irregularities in the transfer of the country’s only missiles to the United States for disposal — fuelling anti-U.S. sentiment in impoverished Bolivia and raising concerns the government had little control over the military.
An estimated 30 Chinese-made surface-to-air missiles were destroyed in October.
The scandal prompted Morales’s predecessor to sack the head of the army and put several generals under investigation.
The former army chief had told local media Washington pushed for the destruction of the weapons because it feared Morales would win December’s presidential poll. He retracted his comments soon afterward.
A government report said the missiles were earmarked for disposal because they were obsolete.
Washington is wary of Morales, a former coca farmer who has resisted its coca eradication policy in Bolivia, the world’s third-largest cocaine producer.
Analysts said Morales was keen to assert his control over the armed forces, who have respected government authority since democracy returned in 1982 but have had a controversial role in quashing street protests in recent years.
“After the whole missiles affair, the high command was left seriously discredited,” said a political analyst, who asked not to be named. “There’s no risk in what the president has done because he has a big margin for action, he has backing.”
Morales named a new commander-in-chief of the armed forces as well as new chiefs of the army, air force, navy and police. His designation of a more junior general as head of the army forced several more senior generals into retirement.
But in the first moment of tension since Morales’ inauguration, the daughter of one of the dismissed generals shouted “It’s not justice” as the names of the new chiefs were being read out in Tuesday’s ceremony.
30 January 2006, 2:24 pmThor Flatmoe:
You are one of the few sources of information not subject to media-manipulation. Pretty much everything else is so tightly controlled by a network of corporate fascists that the truth no longer even has a voice in any mainstream American media. I am pleased to hear of Evo Morales’ victory in Bolivia. It is very refreshing to see freedom evolving somewhere.
3 February 2006, 10:43 amAmerican government is now corporate government. Not only does the US go around bullying everyone else, it has taken to bullying it’s own citizens through privacy-violation. Useful information is being funneled to groups of harassers-for-hire representing corporate interests.
The worst thing is the extent of information-control every American is subjected to. Reality is being defined by whoever is rich enough to pay off the now utterly corrupted American media. Today, the rich can not only get away with murder, they can also define reality for a large number of people through media-control. It’s good to find a place un-affected by the American disease of corporate doublespeak. Keep up the good work! Thor
Melissa:
I can only wish Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez all the best and hope they mean even half of what they say.
14 April 2006, 2:58 amRoberto:
I am originally from Bolivia, but have lived in the US for 25 of my 35 years. I have traveled for extended periods of time to Bolivia and have a pretty good perspective on different points of view. Some of my family is populist and some elitist. For most of the Bolivian population, this is a time of great expectations like they’ve never experienced before. They have not been let down yet. I am very sympathetic to Evo’s movement even though I grew up in Miami Florida where you can easily experience violence if you mention Che. I can personally guarantee that Evo’s victory could not have been possible without the alienating policies of the current US administration.
9 April 2007, 6:36 pm