1.

Comment

THE LESSON FROM LULA
By Sue Branford and Hilary Wainwright

** South America's new generation of leftwing leaders would do well to heed Brazil's experience **

Guardian (UK)
December 21, 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/brazil/story/0,,1671807,00.html

Latin America's upheaval continues to transform the politics of the continent. In reaction to more than a decade of free-market reforms that failed spectacularly to end poverty but exacerbated extraordinary levels of inequality, left-leaning governments have been elected in one country after another -- this week in Bolivia. But Brazil's experience is a warning to these administrations that, if they are to achieve real change, they need to rely on their own social base as a counterweight to the powers-that-be.

Three years ago, as the former industrial worker Luis Inacio Lula da Silva prepared to take over as president of Brazil, many Latin Americans hoped that he would show a radical, non-violent path out of centuries of poverty and exclusion. Lula's Workers party (PT) grew out of the mass strikes in the 80s against the military regime. In its emphasis on internal democracy, support for groups such as the Movimento Sem Terra (the movement of landless people) and its hosting of the World Social Forum, the PT seemed an instrument of real change in a country where a small elite controls most of the land and wealth. Its local record had been impressive, developing imaginative ways in which citizens could have power over budget decisions.

But in government, Lula has been cautious and conservative, going even further than the IMF demanded and sacrificing social reform to repay huge external and internal debts. Worse still, since last May, a series of dramatic revelations has shown that the PT has been engaging in exactly the kind of corruption that activists joined the party to end. The leadership has been buying the votes of Congress members and operating a slush fund built from bribes paid by companies for government contracts. Lula denies involvement, but many are unconvinced.

Where did the PT government go wrong? Most commentators agree that the rot set in long before Lula's victory in October 2002. The party's original base -- the industrial working class -- was weakened in the 90s by rocketing unemployment as successive administrations enforced IMF edicts. Instead of trying to build a new base among the unorganized rural and urban poor, the PT increasingly used the same methods for winning elections as every other party -- even hiring the same spin doctors. This required money (hence the slush fund) and led to a concentration of power in a centralized leadership. The practice of involving the membership was eventually abandoned.

This growing obsession with electoral success at any price meant that the PT failed to prepare properly for government. Remarkably, when Lula walked up the ramp to the presidential palace in January 2003, he had no clear program for tackling the serious social problems or the anti-democratic nature of the Brazilian state. Even the flagship program for ending hunger (which has benefited more than 8 million families in extreme poverty) was thought up on the hoof without a strategy for real redistribution. The government has been most successful in international affairs, where a coherent strategy had been prepared. As a result, Brazil has successfully challenged the EU and the U.S. at the World Trade Organization over their huge agricultural subsidies.

Shortly before taking office, Lula said: "I cannot fail. The poor in Brazil have waited 500 years for someone like me." But real change demands confrontation, tough bargaining -- and risk taking. In his inaugural address in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt recognized this in his much-quoted comment: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." It is a lesson Lula appears not to have learned.

Despite rightwing crowing, the left has not been destroyed in Brazil. Some activists are staying to fight for change within the PT, but many others are taking their experience elsewhere. Most agree that the way forward is not to abandon the party's innovative experiments in participatory democracy, but to deepen them. Real change, they say, will require the incorporation of the poor within the political system so that they can provide permanent support for a radical government as it confronts powerful vested interests.

As Latin America begins a period of hectic electoral activity, which may bring more leftwing leaders to power, this is a cautionary lesson that future governments would do well to heed.

2.

Comment

THE CHALLENGE IN THE SOUTH
By Richard Gott

** Bolivia has joined the growing number of leftwing governments in Latin America that reject U.S. domination **

Guardian (UK)
December 20, 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1670949,00.html

The large vote for Evo Morales, the socialist and indigenous candidate in the presidential election in Bolivia, and the expected ratification of his success by the congress, marks a new and fascinating moment in the unrolling of radical politics in Latin America. Morales is a charismatic figure who represents two important strands in Bolivia's political traditions. An indigenous Aymara leader, he is also the spokesman for the country's powerful socialist and nationalist current that surfaces regularly in each generation. Contrary to the accepted wisdom, the alliance between these traditions should provide his government with a degree of stability in the political conflicts that lie ahead. Yet, as a major grower of coca, the raw material of the cocaine so beloved by U.S. citizens, Bolivia is inevitably affected by decisions taken beyond its borders.

Underlying the history of the country's majority indigenous population is the harsh legacy of centuries of Spanish colonial rule as well as the bleak inheritance of the independent governments of the 19th century. These brought in fresh swathes of European settlers, who were provided with land, and reinforced the practice of Indian slavery and oppression. The struggle between the white settlers, particularly strong today in the eastern province of Santa Cruz, and the indigenous peoples concentrated in the western Andean plateau has formed the backdrop to the politics of the past two centuries.

Bolivia's tradition of nationalistic leftism dates back to the aftermath of the Chaco war with Paraguay in the 1930s. This led to the nationalization of oil (the first such initiative in Latin America), the emergence of several radical military governments, and a major revolution in 1952. These and subsequent upheavals often ended in violence and fierce repression. Among the dead heroes of Morales and his political party, the Movement to Socialism, are Gualberto Villaroel, the reformist military officer who was strung up on a lamp post outside the presidential palace in 1946, and the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, who was shot in eastern Bolivia in 1967, as well as Tupac Katari, the leader of the rebellion against Spain in 1780.

Where once political debates concerned the exploitation of labor, today they center on the ownership and development of natural resources. Much of Morales's support comes from those mobilized in the "water wars" of recent years, a successful battle in several cities against the privatization of the water supply. Morales, famously, is a leader of the growers of coca, whose labor-intensive production provides employment for thousands of indigenous people displaced from the state tin mines. He plans to cease cooperation with the U.S. in the eradication of the crop, arguing that it is the job of the Americans to tackle the problem of drug abuse at home.

Meanwhile, the heirs to the white settlers in Santa Cruz and Tarija have been seeking to control for themselves the exploitation of the fabulous deposits of oil and gas that ought to provide for the sustenance of the entire country. They fear the arrival of an indigenous government and threaten to declare independence if they do not get their way.

Yet Morales's economic team has already planned for the renationalization of these resources, and for fresh rules of engagement with foreign companies. Taking a leaf from the new book of Latin American politics written by Hugo Chávez, Morales will seek to copy the example of Venezuela's reformed state oil company, which has secured advantageous deals with foreign companies without too much complaint.

Also following the Venezuelan example, he will concentrate in his first year on electing a constituent assembly and formulating a constitution that will recognize the preponderant role of the indigenous population in government. His relatively reformist program ought to calm the fears of the white settlers and the U.S., and reassure indigenous voters, anxious for an immediate improvement in their condition, that a new future is within their grasp.

Yet the Morales program, and his intention to deliver, has already led to the elaboration of many alarmist scenarios. Some see the oil-rich Santa Cruz province seceding from the republic and joining up with Brazil. Others envisage Chilean troops massed on the Andean frontier and waging war as they did in 1879. Still others talk of a U.S. invasion from its new military base in Paraguay, evoking the prospect of another Chaco war.

The proponents of such drastic possibilities tend to ignore the practical problems of warfare in the Andes and the Amazon basin. They also skate over the fact that Morales is not alone. He joins a growing number of leftist governments in Latin America that are critical of the neoliberal economic recipes of the past 20 years and hostile to the hegemony of the U.S. Beyond them are the powerful indigenous movements of Ecuador and Peru, increasingly influential in politics. The U.S., already overstretched in other parts of the world, is now being openly challenged on its southern flank, an extraordinary and unprecedented development.

--Richard Gott is the author of Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution.

rwgott@aol.com