Defending Democracy from the Streets in Bolivia

Bolivian journalist Fernando Molina on the racist roots of Bolivia’s right-wing 2019 coup and how the country’s movements defended democracy from the streets.

Armored trucks and rogue military officers filled La Paza’s central Plaza Murillo once again this past June in a failed coup attempt against Bolivian President Luis Arce. This right-wing effort at seizing power harkened back to 2019, when another coup successfully overthrew the government of President Evo Morales, leading to massacres and widespread repression. The 2019-2020 coup government of Jeanine Áñez was ultimately defeated by the country’s social movements and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).

Throughout those events and up today, Bolivian journalist and analyst Fernando Molina has written incisive commentary and journalism that helps readers navigate the country’s tumultuous times. Molina is the author of numerous books including Racismo y Poder en Bolivia and El pensamiento boliviano sobre los recursos naturales. In 2012, he won the King of Spain’s Ibero-American Journalism Award. He regularly writes for El País and Nueva Sociedad on current events in the region.

In this interview, Molina discusses the classist and racist roots of the 2019 coup against the Evo Morales government, how MAS party defeated the coup government at the ballot box, and how the country’s social movements defended democracy from the streets.

Benjamin Dangl: To begin with, how do you explain Áñez’s support and the movement against Evo and the MAS in 2019-2020? Can you explain what sectors participated and why?

Fernando Molina: I call it a counter-revolutionary insurrection by the bourgeoisie, although it’s not the bourgeoise per se but rather what replaces the bourgeois in countries like Bolivia, which is a more politicized, more educated middle class.

These groups begin to distance themselves from Evo Morales from the very beginning, even if some voted for him in order to punish neoliberalism (precisely, Sánchez de Lozada). But it quickly becomes evident that there’s a division between a popular, working-class, Indigenous majority that supported the changes and a group that pollsters called ‘the scared ones,’ those scared of change, as I said, even if some of them had voted for Morales.

The core of this group is in Santa Cruz, because for different reasons the area has an elite holding a hegemonic control of the region, based on the identity of cruceños. They don’t feel Indigenous at all, rather, they’re pretty racist. Cruceños feel they’re different from the rest of Bolivians, that they are direct descendants of the Spaniards, and that the mixing has been absorbed by what is Spanish. They feel whiter and more Western than us. That elite has also gotten richer, especially since 1952 [when the National Revolution took place], and is at the core of this Bolivian middle class. This conglomerate radically opposed Evo Morales more and more as his politics unfolded.

Morales enjoyed an economic bonanza, so the opposition remained rather silent, but two things were always present. One, a sense of national tragedy because we called ourselves plurinational, that is, Indigenous, and for them this was tragic; they felt they weren’t included in that country, that it was not theirs anymore because they were losing the power they always had. They were expecting Morales to be similar to other processes like the 1952 Revolution, which after a while allowed the elite to join.

But Morales came from below; even if there were spaces where the elite were allowed in and did business, in general terms they were not able to fully enter. So, they lost a political space of ideological, cultural, educational capital they had which was the State. This was very useful to carry out their business; they also made business through the State.

The Plurinational State was a tragedy for them, and they also had a feeling of losing relevance. So, they became more anti-MAS and more explicit about their racism, which used to be more hidden, it wasn’t an issue, or rather it was a private issue, but Morales makes it a public one, so it generates a lot of reactions.

The ‘scared ones’ go from being 25-30%, who sometimes voted for MAS, to becoming a stronger opposition; they’re never homogenous, and they’re always fragmented. Finally, Morales makes the mistake of giving them a space as he’s trying to get reelected again [through a 2016 national referendum]. These groups win the referendum in 2016, as they had grown enough; they’re also lucky – they did a better campaign than Evo.

And back then the country was in a pretty good balance, but when Evo tries to get reelected [in 2019]… Uff! Things change. That is, the popular movement in the left loses strength and cohesiveness due to those mistakes, and certain groups break away, like the miners from Potosí, sectors from the COB [Bolivian Workers’ Central, a national union], teachers… That mistake generated the conditions for Áñez’s arrival, and of course those who supported her were from Santa Cruz, and the elites of all the departments.

During the coup it became serious; there were patrols against Indigenous people. They returned to power and kicked the Indigenous out. This translated into a brutality against the MAS, because of all the previous years without being able to take revenge against what they supposedly suffer. What do they want? What was the counterrevolution for? To eliminate the Plurinational State and return to the Republic, that is, a monocultural government, and to return to neoliberalism as much as possible.

Racism plays a fundamental role. It’s because racism disconnects the elite from the MAS groups—since they’re very different realities—that they feel they’ve lost their space in the country. And so, the first thing they do is to offend the Indigenous population. Áñez’s attacks against the MAS were also attacks against the Indigenous people so they would ‘learn their lesson.’

BD: Regarding the MAS and this period, could explain why and how MAS Presidential candidate Luis Arce and Vice President David Choquehuanca won in the 2020 general election?

FM: When Áñez came to power, a racist, corrupt, and authoritarian and violent leader—not only against the MAS but also its bases—there emerged a fantastic phenomenon of cohesion. It was a time of courage and struggle. That was Arce’s victory; the popular bloc came back and that is now a bigger sector than the elitist. There was again a cohesive movement, as happened in neoliberal times.

Another factor was that they did a good campaign because they had a very good candidate for the time, which was a period of economic crisis due to the pandemic. Arce was an economist [in the Morales administration] and he’s been in good times, economically speaking. So, they did a good campaign. At that time something stronger than Morales happened, which was a punishment vote against the elite, ‘we don’t want this again’, and so [MAS] obtained 55% of votes.

BD: What was the role of the movements demanding elections in August of 2020?

FM: Yes, the thing is that, as it happens a lot in Bolivia, [Áñez’s] was a transitional government, but first it tried to re-found neoliberalism in Bolivia. They had three months and tried to re-found the nation, right? And above all they wanted to do business, to get offices, etc. So then the pandemic comes…

The pandemic gave Bolivia the chance to look at [the Áñez administration] for a year as they were governing. The pandemic gives the MAS the opportunity to consolidate as an alternative to what was happening, which was a disaster. Áñez and her ministers want to take advantage of this and make up the fact that the elections were going to kill one million people due to COVID, so they could keep delaying them.

That’s when the August blockades came. I think Áñez’s desire to keep delaying [elections] as much as possible is easy to prove, there are many declarations. She was already a candidate, but there was always a chance of her not wining, so she tried to continue being president as much as possible. Obviously, there were ministers like [Interior Minister Arturo] Murillo who were stealing and wanted to keep doing it.

Now, the August blockades are interesting because, given the context it should’ve been a peasant massacre. We had two previous massacres against pro-Evo protests [in 2019]. The [Áñez government] had no scruples, they controlled the Army, and did with it what they did. And then the social base of Añismo was hysterical.

And why did the press align with Áñez? It wasn’t the money; it was an ethnic-racial issue. The press begins to try to prosecute the protesters.

The logical thing—and this is what I expected—was for Murillo to crush the protests by fire and sword. There’s no proof of this but some say that Murillo told the Army to stop the blockades (this would necessarily be with violence), and they refused. Why? Because the blockades were very strong. The strength of the blockades was impressive, it was full of rocks from one town to another. Every town organized blockades. The blockade was really important, really impressive. […] Thanks to this, the elections were moved forward.

Note: This interview was translated from Spanish to English by Nancy Piñeiro and has been edited for clarity and length.

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