The Roots of Rebellion, I. Insurgent Bolivia
Hylton, Forrest & Thomson, Sinclair
THE GREAT ANTI-COLONIAL INDIGENOUS insurrection of 1781 has haunted republican Bolivia since its founding in 1825. From their military encampment in El Alto overlooking the colonial city of...
...Globalization, they argued, afforded unprecedented opportunities for indigenous peoples to reap the benefits of modem capitalist democracy...
...In the Chapare, the country's principal coca-growing region, the majority of residents are from the Quechua-speaking regions of the Cochabamba valleys...
...It could recognize the enduring non-liberal forms of collective political, economic and territorial association by which most rural and urban Bolivians organize their lives...
...We must first note that the keen sense of Aymara identity is itself a product of recent political struggle, and that the entire context for the revolutionary cycle that opened in 2000 has been shaped by forceful and fluid processes of ethnic formation...
...2. See Ren6 Zavaleta Mercado, Las masas en noviembre (La Paz: Juventud, 1983, Lo nacional-popular en Bolivia (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1986...
...The regantes (small-scale coordinators of regional water distribution) who are best known for their role in the 2000 "water war" in Cochabamba also played their part in the "gas war...
...15NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON BOLIVIA but almost entirely at the behest of the COB and as a junior partner in the national-popular bloc...
...The stunning turn of events-dubbed by journalists the "gas war"-brought to an end the era of neoliberal domination in the country...
...The repression intensified and 31 died on October 12, the anniversary of Columbus' incursion into the Caribbean...
...Cocaleros (coca growers), another important sector in the contemporary popular movement, and agrarian colonizers from the Yungas recognize their own Aymara origins, although their collective identity is more closely tied to grassroots union organizations than to the traditional Andean community, or ayllu...
...During this same period, coca producers acquired a strategically crucial political importance through their opposition to U.S...
...The southern Andean nation became a shining star in the neoliberal firmament, and its militant popular movements appeared to have suffered a historic defeat...
...3, December 1991, pp...
...According to the 2001 census, 82% of altefios, as the city's residents are known, identify as indigenous...
...The point to emphasize, however, is that the insurrectionary energy of the 2003 uprising stemmed initially from the Aymara heartland of Omasuyos, on the altiplano around Lake Titicaca, and later from the Aymara city of El Alto...
...INSURGENT BOUVIA 1. See Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, "Aymara Past, Aymara Future," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Ultimately, though, all sectors converged around the same demands: the resignation of Sanchez de Lozada and his ministers, a trial to punish those responsible for state violence against the unarmed civilian population, a national referendum on how to develop the country's natural gas reserves, the formulation of a new Hydrocarbons Law and the convening of a Constitutional Assembly...
...Waving the Aymara flag (the wiphala) and the Bolivian flag side by side, the crowds swelled to as many as 500,000 on October 17, the day a heavily guarded Sanchez de Lozada fled to Miami...
...Simultaneously, urban Aymara insurgents and their allies in the neighborhood of relocated miners known as Santiago II began to develop autonomous institutions for self-government similar to those developed in Warisata after September 20...
...Although not all these neighborhood residents would overtly identify themselves as Aymaras, they share with altefhos a history of multi-generational migration from the Aymara countryside and insertion into the ethnically segmented urban social hierarchy...
...All of these groups contributed to the insurgent movement that expressed itself so boldly, and with such a strongly indigenous accent, in 2003...
...It also confirmed that Bolivia has entered a new revolutionary moment in which indigenous actors have acquired the leading role...
...Members of mobilized rural communities on the altipiano (highland plateau) have gradually adopted a selfconscious cultural and political identity as "Aymaras" since the late 1970s...
...The galvanization of indigenous identity is especially striking among the subaltern actors of October's events...
...and Luis Tapia's, La produccidn del conocimiento local: historia ypolftica en la obra de Rend Zavaleta (La Paz: Muela del Diablo, 2002...
...and Rivera's article in this issue...
...National-popular struggles were behind the nationalization of Gulf Oil under Gen...
...In La Paz, laborers from the hillside neighborhoods of Munaypata and Villa Victoria, a proletarian stronghold during the Revolution of 1952, actively sup16 ported the insurgent altefios...
...In contrast to the proletarian character of the nationalpopular struggles that ended the phase of military and narco-dictatorships in the early 1980s, the powerful movement in 2003 displayed an indigenous centrality in synch with the current demographic, sociocultural and political realities of Bolivia, where 62% of the population claims indigenous identity, according to the 2001 census...
...If we are to understand the October insurrection, however, it is not enough to point out Aymaras' currently assertive historical agency...
...3 The October insurrection thus represents an exceptionally deep and powerful, though not unprecedented, convergence between two traditions of struggle-indigenous and national-popular...
...the sign reads "The gas for Bolivia...
...One of the most arresting features of the 2003 uprising was the expression of Aymara ethnic identity and solidarity among the urban residents-especially young protestors-of El Alto, an impoverished yet dynamic city of 900,000 outside La Paz...
...However, as long as they have no alternative agenda to offer, their attempts to stonewall the process are likely to only further radicalize the opposition...
...These groups privileged a schematic vision of class consciousness over cultural identity as the basis for political action...
...They are coeditors of Ya es otro tiempo el presente: Cuatro momentos de insurgencia indigena (La Paz, 2003...
...Historically, indigenous movements have sought to build ties with other popular and middle class opposition forces in cities and mining districts...
...During his administration (19972001), Bolivia ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world...
...Other actors in the uprising, like the peasant communities from Potosi and Chuquisaca, are organized through ayllus and are of mixed Quechua-Aymara background...
...They have their roots in the region's Quechuaspeaking mestizo peasant culture...
...25, No...
...militarized drug intervention...
...Such tentative efforts took place during the indigenous mobilizations against Spanish rule in 1780-1781, the insurgent federalist movement led by Pablo Zarate Villca in 1899, the regional revolutionary movement led by Manuel Michel in 1927, the uprisings that began in Ayopaya in 1946 and the general strike of 1979...
...The trajectory of Aymara leader Felipe Quispe-known as "El Mallku," an Aymara term meaning both condor and traditional authority-reflects this process...
...U.S...
...With state violence and social protest on the rise, and the legitimacy of neoliberal political parties eroded, Sanchez de Lozada narrowly won the 2002 elections...
...Whatever the future brings, there will be no going backwards...
...ever, began during the Chaco War (1932-1935) and culminated in the Revolution of 1952...
...Though economic growth was sluggish and state revenues plummeted as a result of privatization, the discourse of neoliberalism appeared hegemonic...
...Once the massacres began, first in the countryside and then in the city, the relatives and friends of the deceased dubbed their dead "martyrs fallen in the defense of gas...
...A deal to export gas through a Chilean port to California was negotiated between San Diego-based Sempra Energy and the Spanish-British-U.S...
...Others, like cocalero leader Evo Morales, are Aymara migrants from the highlands or Quechua-speaking former miners...
...Bolivians have had a long and bitter experience with the expropriation of their mineral wealth for the benefit of oligarchs connected to foreign capital...
...Political theorist Rent Zavaleta Mercado pioneered the idea of "national-popular" forces in Bolivian history...
...But by that point what had once seemed impossible had already become likely: Sanchez de Lozada-also known as "El gringo" because of his heavily accented Spanish (he was raised in the United States)-would have to go...
...2 National-popular struggles of this sort can conceivably be traced back to the wars of independence against Spain...
...During Sanchez de Lozada's first administration, international financial institutions signaled Bolivia as a model of "reform" and democratization for other developing countries...
...But relations between indigenousNOVEMBER DECEMBER 2004 REPORT ON BOLIVIA movements and their potential national-popular allies have generally been marred by mutual suspicion, misunderstanding or plain racism...
...They too laid siege to the capital and brought it to a virtual standstill...
...18-23...
...Cuatro momentos de insurgencia indfgena (La Paz: Muela del Diablo, 2003...
...Alfredo Ovando Candia in 1969, the Popular Assembly government of Gen...
...Political and economic elites will undoubtedly attempt to divert the current process...
...Zavaleta posited that the insurrectionary "multitude" opposing oligarchic elites and their foreign, imperialist allies was formed through the political unification of normally divided subaltern subjects...
...Likewise, indigenous communities and neighborhoods were the first to put forth the basic demands around which so many others eventually converged in October...
...The upcoming Constitutional Assembly, demanded by indigenous peoples since 2000 and secured by the revolutionary intervention of popular forces, offers a0 0 z zNOVEMBER DECEMBER 2004 REPORT ON BOLIVIA the most immediate possibility for social reform, or even national transformation...
...Members of the insurgent communities of Warisata and Achacachi, like their kinfolk in the altefio neighborhood of Villa Ingenio, conceived of themselves as patriots and their rulers as traitors to the Bolivian nation...
...Luis Garcia Meza dictatorships and the rise to power of the center-left UDP between 1979 and 1982...
...After several days of mourning, and once the insurgent communities from Omasuyos arrived, rebels set out to overrun the capital...
...Throughout this period the left and the union movement held, at best, a condescending view of indigenous participation in national political organization...
...The protestors in the gas war were unwilling to see the old pattern repeated with natural gas since, according to many, only sovereign control over Bolivia's gas reserves-the second-largest in Latin America-could underpin a viable political and economic future for later generations...
...Lacking urban allies, they were ultimately unable to seize the city, yet the aspirations of that uprising have taken on new life at the beginning of the 21st century...
...Then in 2000, a new revolutionary cycle was ushered in with indigenous protests on the altiplano and the water war in the Cochabamba valley...
...The center of conflict spread to El Alto on October 8 when the 18 Federation of Neighborhood Associations (FEJUVE) and the Regional Workers' Federation (COR-El Alto) declared a general strike...
...The union movement, which the government deemed an outmoded corporatist institution, came under relentless attack...
...Unlike Katari and Sisa, the latest insurgents successfully overtook the urban center, occupying all but a few blocks around Plaza Murillo where the Presidential Palace is located...
...It is a time of great promise, but one whose outcome remains unforeseeable...
...Sinclair Thomson teaches Latin American history at NYU and is author of We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency (University of Wisconsin, 2003...
...In the 1970s and 1980s, workers, students and members of the progressive middle classes organized themselves through left parties and the national Bolivian Workers' Confederation (COB...
...However, on this occasion they also surprisingly affirmed their own indigenous roots...
...Prominent middle class personalities and politicians organized hunger strikes on October 15 that spread with remarkable speed to every major city in the republic...
...What would Bolivia look like with sovereign control over its territory and natural resources, with forms of regional and ethnic self-determination, with meaningful national political representation for popular movements or with true majority rule...
...Alberto Natusch Busch in 1979 or brought the Democratic Popular Unity (UDP) government to power in 1982...
...As part of the wave of privatizations, SAnchez de Lozada drafted a Hydrocarbons Law in 1996 that dismantled YPFB, the state energy firm, setting the stage for the transnational takeover of Bolivia's rich oil and natural gas resources...
...The Assembly could help redraw state-society relations to reflect Bolivia's new historical conditions...
...A year later, just two days before the end of his first term, he signed another decree effectively forfeiting constitutional sovereignty over the reserves...
...IN RETROSPECT, THE IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY OF THE Washington Consensus, embodied in Bolivia by Sanchez de Lozada, appears to have been a mirage...
...More than 150,000 people marched from El Alto to downtown La Paz on October 13...
...Alberto Natusch Busch and Gen...
...17NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON BOLIVIA The sweetheart arrangement for these oil corporations was an eerie-and not unnoticed-repetition of the oligarchy's sell-off of Bolivia's mineral reserves to AngloChilean capital following the War of the Pacific in the late 1800s...
...The active consolidation of this mode of struggle on the national political stage, howA workers' march on May Day 2004 In La Paz...
...They also shared with elites a "whitening" ideology of national progress through mestizaje...
...Self-consciously building on earlier revolutionary cycles, especially those of 1780-1781, 1899 and 1952, the current cycle of 2000-2003 will leave its own legacy...
...On September 20, the day after some 500,000 people marched throughout the country to defend national economic sovereignty, security forces killed three civilians in Warisata and one in Ilayata as part of an effort to "liberate" a group of tourists stranded by a road blockade...
...The political fortunes of the left and the COB went into decline with the onset of neoliberalism in 1985, but indigenous political and cultural organization gained increasing momentum in the 1980s and 1990s...
...More recently, however, this began to change...
...3. See Rivera, this volume...
...Today, the working conditions and technology in most of Potosi's mines recall those of the colonial era, while Oruro is a landscape of post-industrial devastation where residents make superhuman efforts to survive...
...Finally, the events of October 2003 revived the tradition of Aymara community insurrection in one of Latin America's largest indigenous cities...
...It could also redirect the future exploitation of the country's coveted resources in a way that benefits most Bolivians...
...Juan Jose Torres in 1971, as well as the overthrow of the Col...
...In the 19th and 20th centuries, tin extracted from the area near Oruro was smelted in the Women belonging to the Federation of Neighborhood Associations (FEJUVE) of El Alto march in Villa Ingenio, one of the city's most politically mobilized neighborhoods...
...His attempt to close the gas deal in 2003 sparked massive opposition to which he responded with blunt force...
...However, in October 2003 the progressive middle classes stirred only belatedly and the COB was a relatively minor player...
...Contrary to neoliberal common sense, Bolivia's revolutionary past was not obliterated after 1985, but rather reconfigured...
...Yet the profile and organization of these previous mobilizations were different...
...The monetary system in early modern Europe thrived on the export of Bolivian silver from Potosi, now one of the country's poorest, most desolate regions...
...The latest insurgency constitutes a major challenge to Bolivian society's internal colonialism and may lead to the formation of a new national-popular bloc representing the social majority...
...An official report released by the Bolivian government in December 2003 revealed that the Bolivia-based operations of Britishowned BP Amoco and Spain's Repsol YPF enjoy the lowest operating costs for oil and gas production and exploration in the world...
...A powerful tradition of popular urban mobilization has been evident in earlier historical moments, as when "national-popular" forces overthrew the dictatorship of Col...
...The current conjuncture in Bolivia is marked by seasoned political skepticism, yet also measured hope, and it may well carry implications for other struggles in the Andes and Latin America more broadly As indigenous insurgents of previous centuries proclaimed in moments of anti-colonial and autonomist insurrection: "Ya es otro tiempo el presente" ("The present is a new time...
...Technocrats, ideologues and mainstream party functionaries-former middle class dissidents prominent among them-recited neoliberal mantras: competitivity, governability, efficiency, deregulation, decentralization, direct foreign investment...
...More importantly, these groups were essentially backing demands previously launched by Aymara insurgents, organized mainly through their community, union and neighborhood organizations...
...energy consortium Pacific LNG under the watch of one-time dictator and thenPresident Hugo Banzer...
...In October 2003, popular classes of Aymara descent living in El Alto spearheaded what became a broad-based movement to overthrow the increasingly repressive and illegitimate regime of then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada...
...The regime set out to privatize state tin mines and to "relocate" mining families to the outskirts of Oruro, Cochabamba, El Alto and the lowland frontiers of the Chapare...
...Contemporary indigenous radicalism grows out of a long, largely underground history, yet its irradiating effects since 2000 have reanimated aspirations for social and political change, harkening back to earlier moments of interethnic, interregional and cross-class alliance...
...Bolivian miners have traditionally identified and organized themselves on a class basis...
...It could democratize the political relations that throughout the republican era have limited the participation of indigenous peoples in national political life, forcing them to resort to costly insurrectionary struggles...
...Forrest Hylton, Felix Patzi, Sergio Serulnikov, and Sinclair Thomson, Ya es otro tiempo el presente...
...The rise of militant peasant unionism and the emergence of radical indigenous leaders criticizing ongoing forms of colonial hierarchy and racism within the country are largely responsible for this ethnic affirmation...
...The politically emergent indigenous peasantry mobilized as well during this period, Forrest Hylton is a PhD candidate in history at New York University...
...These elites may try to construct a more visionary new hegemonic project but there are no signs of this as yet...
...Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, an architect of Bolivia's free market "shock treatment" in 1985, hailed Sanchez de Lozada as one of the most creative politicians of the era...
...Meanwhile, popular sectors are engaged in effervescent debate and are formulating their own visions of the future...
...From their military encampment in El Alto overlooking the colonial city of La Paz, Aymara leaders Tuipaj Katari and Bartolina Sisa laid siege to the ruling Spanish elite from March to October 1781...
...When mineworkers traveled from the mining center of Huanuni to join the protests in El Alto, they revived the memory and symbolic power of earlier proletarian struggle in the national-popular tradition...
...and Britain...
...Earlier mobilizations, and some of their gains-notably the nationalization of mines in 1952 or petroleum in 1969-left a more enduring legacy than had been supposed...
...THE NATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY TRADITION, SYMBOLIZED BY the overthrow of oligarchic rule in 1952, seemed definitively vanquished by neoliberal ideology as structural adjustment reached its apogee during Sanchez de Lozada's first term (1993-1997...
Vol. 38 • November 2004 • No. 3
