By Michael Miller

Evo Morales’ 2005 presidential victory was historic in every sense of the word.  Morales’ success marked a major step forward in the struggle of a single nation and of an entire continent to further define its independence and pursue economic reform.  Indeed one finds in Bolivia a rough outline of Latin America’s modern history: a protracted battle between unregulated capitalism and labor movements that played out over the course of the 20th century.  Throughout the region, governments vacillated between programs of unregulated capitalism to ones of social welfare—frequently electing to occupy one extreme rather than a balance of the two.  To provide an analytical framework for understanding the historical significance of these changes, I will draw from the work of Karl Polanyi and argue that, during the 20th century, Latin America experienced a dramatic series of double movements that twice brought the region back to populist politics after extended periods of free market domination.  Using Bolivia as a case study for this larger series of political movements, I will examine the historical significance of Evo Morales’ election, which I believe goes beyond just another countermovement.  As the continent’s first indigenous president, Morales’ election marked not only a practical victory over neoliberal economics but also a symbolic victory over colonialism—signifying a new beginning or even a second independence for Latin America.

In his seminal work The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi states that no society can withstand the forces of laissez faire capitalism. In response, there must be a countermovement to prevent the market from tearing apart the very fabric of society:

No society could stand the effects of [laissez faire capitalism] … unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill[1] (76-77) … For a century the dynamics of modern society was governed by a double movement:  the market expanded continuously but this movement was met with a countermovement checking the expansion in definite directions.[2]

The process Polanyi describes is dynamic: the two forces, market liberalism and social protection, interact in a perpetual dialectic.  Interestingly, Latin America, and Bolivia specifically, have passed through various double movements—vacillating from one extreme to another over long periods of time. In these dramatic movements throughout Latin America, political transformation grew out of conscious decisions by people and politicians to either strengthen or reduce market dominance.

In Bolivia as in the rest of the region, the story begins at the beginning of the 20th century, when wealth was concentrated in a small portion of the society—the tin barons.  The barons’ absolute control over the unregulated mineral market allowed them to take advantage of Bolivia’s cheap labor and make windfall profits by exporting to American and European markets.  Such was the case throughout most of Latin America, where economic vestiges of colonialism remained deeply embedded into each nation’s political economy.  Adhering to the doctrines of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, Latin American countries emphasized their so-called ”competitive advantages,” which entailed deregulating markets and suppressing wages to maximize production of selected goods. Bolivian workers, torn asunder by the economic ravages of neo-colonial economic exploitation, responded by staging a revolution to demand their rights. The 1952 revolution successfully expanded voting rights, nationalized the mines, and promoted the formation of unions—none more important than the Confederación Obrera Boliviana, which successfully advocated for better wages, working conditions, and policies favorable to the working class.[3]  Part of a first wave of countermovements that included the administrations of Vargas, Allende, and Peron, the revolutionary government extended significant protections to urban workers and enacted limited land reform to encourage wealth distribution. Indeed, across the continent the markets needed to be reformed, or rather regulated, to preserve social stability and restore human dignity.

Yet the U.S.  empire would soon strike back: global capital would make its return to Latin American politics.  Recognizing the economic and political opportunities in Latin America, the U.S., under the guise of the World Bank and IMF, brought unregulated markets back to the continent in the 70s and 80s.  Aimed at stimulating economic growth through deregulation and a program termed “structural adjustment,” the policies resulted in the reassertion of the power of capital over labor and eliminated all social progress made during the first countermovement.  In a paper on the subject, Dan La Botz argues that “within ten years of the introduction of neoliberalism, the power of the old Latin American labor federations had been devastated”.[4]  And as was the case throughout the entire region, for much of the period, Bolivia’s “liberal” government was able to prevent countermovements only by oppressing its population despite hyperinflation and tremendous civil unrest.  As a result, throughout the 90s and early 2000s, profits for corporations and wealth inequality both grew astronomically–in Polanyi’s language, the market expanded, tugging at the very fabric of social life.  Describing the economic state of the country before Morales’ election, the New York Times quoted Coletta Youngers, senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America as saying, “ ‘the free-market policies since the 1980s have failed to trickle down to the average Bolivian … Ultimately, what this election comes down to is the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have-nots.’ “[5]  The stage was set for a dramatic countermovement.

During his ascent to the presidency, Evo Morales campaigned aggressively against the neo-liberal regime that had dominated his country’s politics for nearly forty years.  His message clearly resonated with Bolivians, who had been politically and economically excluded during the neoliberal period.  After winning the election, he promptly enacted one of history’s most dramatic countermovements by nationalizing Bolivia’s industries and rewriting the constitution in order to ensure that the country’s natural resources would be used for the benefit of the people.  Though he had stopped short of establishing a centrally planned economy, the ideals of his presidency resembled those of Castro and Chavez, two political actors with whom Morales would soon align himself.  In his presidential acceptance speech, he emphasized social solidarity and deplored the inhumanity of both laissez faire capitalism and neoliberal exploitation.  He argued, “the people have defeated the neoliberals … we want to change the neoliberal model. Starting next year, we’re going to change the history of Bolivia, with peace and social justice”.[6]  Replacing international economic exploitation with domestic industry and denoucing political exclusion in favor of social solidarity, Morales’ politics ran completely against those of the neoliberal era.

Morales’ success, however, was not an isolated episode.  Rather, his election was part of a region-wide political shift to the left in response to the social devastation of the neoliberal period.  As described in a 2006 Economist article, “The bottom line … is that Latin America is in open rebellion against the economic policies of the “Washington Consensus”.[7]  In his analysis of the region’s widespread move to the left, Dan La Botz [WB1] echoed this statement: “…the presidents elected in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Uruguay in this period came to power by opposing, at least nominally, the free market policies pushed upon them by the United States” (italics added).[8]  Hence, the return to the political left was reactionary—indeed a countermovement against the tyranny of unregulated capitalism—that marked the end of neoliberalism not only in Bolivia but throughout Latin America.

The importance of Morales’ election, however, goes past his defeat of neoliberalism to a more significant issue: true Latin American independence.  As the continent’s first indigenous president, he is the embodiment of South American self-governance and a living symbol of the end of colonial oppression.  An extremely self-aware politician, Morales’ campaign embraced the historical symbolism of his election, infusing his rhetoric with iconoic language: “I want to say to all my indigenous brothers from America, here in Bolivia today, that campaign of 500 years of resistance hasn’t been in vain. Enough is enough. We are taking over now for the next 500 years.”[9] (ABC News).  Indeed, although Morales’ election was technically no different from any other, it carried tremendous political significance.  Of the success of Morales’ presidency and the potential of a new Latin American Left, Noam Chomsky argued that “five centuries after the European conquests, Latin America is reasserting its independence … the region is rising to overthrow the legacy of external domination of the past centuries and the cruel and destructive social forms that they have helped to establish.”[10]  In short, the new Latin American Left has moved Latin America from de jure independence to de facto independence: with Morales, Chavez, and more moderate social reformers as its ideological leaders, Latin America is now truly self-governing.  Morales’ victory is a historic one indeed for the entire continent.

While one cannot understate the historic significance of Morales’ election, the discourse surrounding his victory seems to ignore much of the region’s recent history.  Morales’ election has been described by some as the completion of the 1952 Revolution and by others as the end of colonialism.  In many respects, these perspectives are accurate: Morales indeed extended the Revolution’s reforms and the symbolism of his victory seems to have brought an end to a long, dark chapter in the region’s history.  Yet, I would qualify these endings as only half-truths because complete and end connote a sense of finality that I see as entirely absent in both Bolivia and the rest of the region.  Indeed, if one accepts Polanyi’s argument as is–that in a capitalist regime, capital and labor exist in a dialectic—and attempts to draw any conclusions from the last eighty years of Latin American history, he would be hesitant to declare a winner.  Ironically, change, if not radical change, is the only element of the region’s politics that has remained constant.

From this perspective, the election of Evo Morales leaves us with more questions than answers regarding the direction of the country.  While Morales’ indigenous nationalism has effectively articulated what his government is not (a neo-liberal collaborator of the U.S.), and where it comes from (pre-Columbian, indigenous solidarity), it is hard to know exactly where it is going.  This forces us to ask: what is the future for a nation whose identity lies in such distant past? Nevertheless, for the time being, there is no turning back. With the memories of free market social dislocation still fresh, Latin American governments will likely continue their social democratic and socialist policies. In a statement affirming Bolivia’s commitment to Leftist politics and capturing the gravity of the political moment in Latin America, Minister of Hydrocarbons Soliz Rada argued: “If this movement [M.A.S. (Morales’ political party)] divides, is destroyed, we will regress back to the old neoliberal governments and probably the destruction of the country.”[11]  Yet, with the specter of global capitalism looming, one can only speculate how long Bolivia will be able to maintain its current course.  History suggests that unregulated capitalism will reassert itself at some point, but considering the character of Latin American politics, unregulated markets may not return until a very distant manaña.

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