Bolivia: Another Uncompleted Revolution

Latin American Politics and Society, Fall 2005 by Barr, Robert R

ABSTRACT

Since 1999, growing citizen dissatisfaction in Bolivia has been manifest in a cycle of often violent protests. Citizens believe that they have no means of expressing themselves except demonstrations. The public has grown weary of neoliberalism, which is perceived as benefiting only the elite. A recent economic downturn provided the catalyst for the unrest. Underlying these economic concerns, however, are fundamental problems with representation. The second Bolivian "revolution" involved not only the shift from state-led economic development to neoliberalism but also a shift from corporatism to pluralism. Representative institutions have not fully responded to the new pluralistic landscape, despite a range of political reforms. Many Bolivians find that their voice in government has weakened even as their needs have grown. The Bolivian case thereby highlights the obstacles young democracies face in winning over decreasingly tolerant citizens.

Bolivia's political establishment recently arrived at a turning point. In October 2003, mounting violence forced President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to step clown and turn over the government to his vice president, political independent Carlos Mesa. The new president, who faced similar difficulties and threatened to resign in March 2005, was the first since Bolivia's democratic transition to come from outside the three main political parties. The writing was on the wall, however. In the 2002 elections, Sánchez de Lozada, of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), had narrowly taken the presidency with only 22.5 percent of the popular vote. Collectively, the three main parties received less than half the total votes cast. Second place went to Evo Morales, the leftist leader of the country's powerful coca growers' association, the small farmers who produce the raw material for cocaine. Morales, who was kicked out of Congress early in 2002 for leading violent protests against the government's eradication policies, lost to Sánchez de Lozada in the run-off. He received 20.94 percent of the popular vote, just ahead of Manfred Reyes Villa with 20.92 percent. Both Reyes and Morales campaigned against the neoliberal economic policies supported by the traditional parties.

Although the traditional parties have withstood previous electoral challenges from political outsiders and populists, their grip on power has steadily and significantly waned. Political competition increasingly takes place between the beleaguered political establishment and the outside challengers, rather than among the three traditional parties (Van Cott 2002a, 1). With Sánchez de Lozada's fall from grace, it seems likely that Bolivia's party system will undergo further fragmentation and perhaps collapse, as experienced by the party systems in Venezuela and Peru.

This electoral trend is but one manifestation of mounting societal discontent in Bolivia. Another is the virtually continuous cycle of protest. Despite their dramatic conclusion, the October protests were only part of a far broader trend of dissension dating to 1999 and involving an equally broad array of social groups. The year 2003 just happened to be one of the more violent periods-probably the most violent year since the 1952 revolution. In February 2003, two days of conflicts in the capital, La Paz, left about 30 people dead, government buildings burned, stores looted, and Sánchez de Lozada's grip on power substantially weakened. The conflicts that brought down the president in October resulted in 59 deaths. Comparable events since the end of the 1990s have also left an array of casualties, disrupted the economy, and obstructed governance. The demands of farmers, teachers, miners, police, retirees, and other protesters have not been of an ideological or esoteric sort, but have reflected very concrete concerns about economic issues and living conditions. The difficult economic circumstances are part of the lingering costs of economic restructuring and recent macroeconomic difficulties.

Citizens have clearly placed the blame for those problems on the political establishment. Considering the variety of groups and the number of people involved in the protests, a wide swath of society apparently believes that political parties have failed or are incapable of representing its interests and meeting its demands. Despite a range of reforms over the past decade to strengthen the ties between government and society, the credibility of political parties is so weak that expression of societal interests takes place outside formal political channels. The paradox is that Bolivia has been the locus of some of the most radical and innovative political reforms in Latin America. Implementing those reforms, however, raised popular expectations beyond the state's ability to meet them.1

The imbalance between social demands and state capacity has been exacerbated by the very attempt to correct it. Compounding the problem are poor public sector management and muddled responsibilities among the levels of government. Many groups therefore believe that they lack any recourse other than protest aimed primarily at national authorities. As a result, societal demands become social crises, even over local or regional issues.