Bolivia Under Evo Morales
Issue Editors: Benjamin Kohl & Rosalind Bresnahan
The election of Evo Morales not only brought Bolivia its first indigenous president, but gave Bolivia a leading role in the challenge to neoliberal policies in Latin America. Morales’s efforts to implement land reform have been met with violent threats and opposition, particularly from the landed elite in the eastern lowlands, many of whom wish to secede, taking with them the region’s natural resources (e.g. gas, profitable agroindustrial crops, timber, and minerals). His administration has strategically navigated the international financial arena, on the one hand promising macroeconomic stability and guarantees for foreign investments, yet on the other hand retreating from ties to international financial institutions. Recently, inflation has sent shockwave throughout the economy, generating widespread anxiety amongst various social sectors. Through a hybrid form of “nationalization” of the hydrocarbons sector, Morales has renegotiated contracts with multinational oil corporations such that a greater proportion of revenue is retained by the treasury. The new Hydrocarbon’s law also includes safeguards to protect the rights of indigenous and other communities affected by hydrocarbons development. Yet, affected communities have expressed reluctance to make claims to the administration for fear of undermining its political legitimacy.
With respect to the environment, thus far the Morales administration has pursued a mainstream developmentalist agenda predicated on intensive exploitation of natural resources, prioritizing hydrocarbons development, agroindustrial crops (e.g. soybeans, sunflower, and sugarcane), cattle ranching, logging, and mining. Forest clearing for such agroindustrial crops has resulted in one of the most rapid rates of deforestation in the world. One of the key development projects being promoted by the administration is the world class El Mutún mine, rich in iron and magnesium. Although Morales has partially nationalized the hydrocarbons sector, his administration, under pressure, chose to privatize El Mutún, and recently signed a contract with Indian corporation Jimal. Across social sectors, the project is expected to generate significant revenues and employment, but its implications for the environment and communities affected by its development are daunting. In order to facilitate this sort of development, the administration has also sought to expand infrastructure (e.g. roads and bridges) which jeopardizes sensitive ecosystems, indigenous and campesino communities. Such projects include the bioceanic highway in Santa Cruz, which threatens the Chiquitano Dry Forest and Pantanal Wetlands, as well as IIRSA’s Peru-Bolivia-Brazil Inter-Oceanic Highway, which threatens humid forests of the Bolivian Amazon. Expansion of legal coca cultivation, backed by international financing from Europe, promises to generate significantly greater revenues for campesinos than alternative crops, yet has resulted in significant fruit shortages, as well as the destruction of biodiverse forests in the Chapare and Yungas. Morales’s move to close the Ministry of Sustainable Development brings into question the extent to which his administration will be able to integrate conservation with development.
A forthcoming issue of Latin American Perspectives will analyze the conditions generating the movement that brought Morales to power, the national and international context within which the Morales government has attempted to carry out its reform agenda, and the implications of these policies for Bolivia and Latin America.
Article submissions are welcome on these and other topics:
- indigenous movements in Bolivia
- anti-neoliberal movements in Bolivia
- domestic opposition to Morales
- transnational economic interests in Bolivia
- Morales’s political, economic, and environmental policies
- Bolivia’s role in the Latin American challenge to neoliberalism
- U.S. policy toward Bolivia
- conflicts within the Morales administration and among Morales supporters
- Morales and the environment
- corruption scandals, reactions by the administration and impacts on political legitimacy
- viability of "nationalization" from economic, political and environmental standpoints
- land reform and secessionist movements in the eastern lowlands
- coca development (implications of industrialization for coca growers, narcotrafficking, US-Bolivia relations, and the environment)