Beyond defeat in Bolivia: the limits of left electoral strategy in Latin America

The defeat of the left in Bolivia has raised a series of existential questions for the left in the region, and led many to draw hurried conclusions on where the blame lies

Bolivia President Luis Arce and former President Evo Morales, in August 2022 -- image via X

By Manolo De Los Santos & Zoe Alexandra, People's Dispatch

Bolivia’s left lost big in Sunday’s election, and a lot of the analysis in progressive circles has focused solely on the feud between former president Evo Morales and sitting president, Luis Arce. Morales was barred from running in the elections by Arce’s government and subsequently called for a null or blank vote in the contest. On Sunday, August 17, two right-wing candidates, Rodrigo Paz and Jorge Quiroga, emerged victorious, and they will proceed to the second round in October.

The feud between the two former comrades definitely played a factor in the demise of the once-vibrant and electorally successful party, MAS (Movement Towards Socialism). But the real story and the bigger lesson for the Latin American left is about more than just political rivalries. The roots of this defeat are deeper.

Beyond winning elections, winning a base

Bolivia’s left didn’t just lose an election. The loss exposed deeper issues that had been simmering for the last decade. When Evo Morales took office on January 22, 2006, Bolivia was the poorest country in South America. During his first year in office, he nationalized oil and gas production, redistributed revenues from natural gas exploitation, and implemented major projects to socialize healthcare, housing, and other public services. In 13 years, the Bolivian government managed to reduce poverty by almost half, from 60% in 2006 to 34% by 2019, according to World Bank estimates. Furthermore, extreme poverty fell from 37.7% to 15.2% during the same period. In 2009, Evo Morales promulgated a new Constitution that brought autonomy to 36 Indigenous peoples, who were represented for the first time, and guaranteed rights to minority and marginalized groups in this country of 12.41 million people.

These and many other massive reforms during the MAS party’s rule under President Evo Morales lifted millions out of poverty and expanded the middle class. Historic new rights were secured for the working class and Indigenous majority, but the class character of the state was not transformed. The basic institutions of capitalist rule: the military high command, the state bureaucracy, legislative bodies, and the federal structure of the state – that afforded a significant power base for the counter-revolution in the country’s east – remained essentially intact. They failed to fully dismantle the old state inherited from centuries of colonialism and elite rule.

“But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” Karl Marx, “The Civil War in France”.

The MAS party’s efforts to lead political and economic reforms in Bolivia from the beginning faced significant opposition in the US. For instance, between 2013 and 2018, the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID allocated a combined USD 70 million to right-wing organizations in Bolivia. This funding was directed towards civil society initiatives that mobilized opposition against the MAS government. This funding directly contributed to the political instability that culminated in the 2019 coup against Evo Morales.

Ultimately, the biggest winners in Sunday’s election, which saw major abstention, are US economic interests in the region. Taking advantage of the internal factionalism, the barring of Evo Morales from the ballot, and the effective destruction of the MAS party, the US will likely regain control of Bolivia’s lithium reserves and other natural resources, thereby opening the country to a neoliberal takeover.

These challenge are not unique to Bolivia; it’s a challenge every country with a progressive government faces. How can you address the contradictions created by capitalism – namely, unemployment, inequality, and underdevelopment – while fighting off the local bourgeoisie and powerful, right-wing elements of society that seek to overthrow you, empowering the movements that brought you to power, and radically transforming the state and its institutions? It is an intricate dance. And in Bolivia, it remained a constant struggle. Mass movements and trade unions, which didn’t cease their activity, were demobilized during Morales’s time in office from playing an active role in the socialist transformation of the state. Despite MAS cadres and movement leaders taking up roles within the state, the political direction of the state was increasingly in the hands of technocrats like Arce, who administered it with an emphasis on the people but whose aspirations were not transformative, reducing the MAS party to merely an electoral instrument instead of a revolutionary party of the people.

The 2019 coup was one manifestation of this. In the aftermath of the October 20 elections, the right-wing mobilized thousands on the streets across the country under the banner of “electoral fraud”. In some regions, such as Santa Cruz, mobs of armed men targeted state institutions, community centers, and local government figures. The mass organizations, trade unions, and movements that had fought for the process of change and, in some way, seen their demands reflected in it were paralyzed. As the coup was unfolding, fear and defeat took over.

Mobilizations would only re-emerge in November when Jeanine Áñez, in a provocative act, swore herself in as president on the bible, members of the security forces ripped the wiphala (the Indigenous flag) from their uniforms, and the right-wing mobs, more emboldened than ever, intensified their attacks. Security forces were given a free license to shoot and kill protestors by Áñez. Over 40 people were killed during the anti-coup protests. The impressive mobilizations and international condemnation of the coup regime would indeed put enough pressure on the Áñez government to force it to call for elections.

The return to mobilization by the mass movement on the streets was able to force elections to be held and turned out in impressive numbers for the MAS candidate, Luis Arce, who scored 55% and a first-round victory. Yet, the same mass movement alongside the progressive government was unable to engage in a meaningful process to address the social, economic, and political crisis after the election.

The economic crisis and its origins

Luis Arce, despite his role in presiding over the Andean country’s slow but steady economic growth during Evo Morales’s governments, proved unable to offer an effective response to the economic crisis during his term. The economic decline of the last several years is a direct consequence of the coup against Evo Morales and the COVID-19 pandemic, both of which disrupted the state’s ability to carry forward its economic planning, especially as Áñez focused on reversing some of the major achievements of the MAS government and dismantling nationalized industries. A report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) found that the de facto government slashed public spending by 7% of quarterly GDP in the fourth quarter of 2019 alone.

When Arce defeated the right at the polls, he was faced with a deteriorating economy. Instead of robustly bolstering national industries, especially energy like gas and lithium, he was timid, allowing a decrease in national exports and lithium and gas production and processing, leading to an overall economic decline. The far-right exploited the economic challenges and attacked the government, which seemed to offer no political and economic solutions to the crisis.

The infighting between President Luis Arce, a technocrat and economist by training, and former President Evo Morales, a charismatic and revolutionary leader steeled in the struggles of the mass movements, at a time of economic crisis, accelerated the collapse of MAS and its government of change. This division paralyzed the legislature, with Arce unable to pass economic policies, and the Bolivian working class paid the ultimate cost. Inflation soared, reaching its highest level in 38 years, and the national currency, the boliviano, saw a parallel market emerge where its value was nearly half the official rate.

The pink tide faces its limits: a warning for the region

The deeper issue is that the Latin American electoral left has reached its limits. Despite redistributing wealth and lifting over 70 million people out of poverty, it has been incapable of mobilizing the masses of people to make structural changes towards socialism. Instead, a growing number of left leaders like Arce have shifted to the right in an attempt to appeal to a new middle class. Other left governments in the region focused on wealth redistribution without a political project towards building a new state along lines that seek real regional integration, and working-class power will face the same catastrophe as the Bolivian left.

The Bolivian experience offers a sobering lesson. The defeat in Bolivia was not a simple loss at the ballot box. It was a failure to transform the state and to fully empower the very masses who built the MAS party and brought it to power. A genuine socialist project cannot be implemented by a small group of technocrats from above. It requires the active and permanent participation of a mobilized working class and its political organizations, who must take full power to dismantle the old colonial state and build a new one in its place. Ultimately, the defeat in Bolivia will not be a permanent one: Bolivia’s mass movements, rooted in the struggles of the Indigenous and campesino majority that have made history by ousting neoliberal governments in the past, will surely rise again to fight in the streets, in the factories, and the fields for the socialist project.

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