After 20 years of almost a monopoly of power, the Movement for Socialism (MAS) was dealt an electoral blow, winning only 3% of the vote in the presidential election—barely continuing any meaningful representation in Congress.

THEORIES ABOUND

Several theories have been put forth to explain the collapse. First is the economy, which has been rightly characterized as the worst in four decades. Rising inflation accompanies shortages of dollars and fuel. Second is the full-blown split within MAS: Evo Morales, three-time president, split with Luis Arce after Arce became the MAS candidate in 2020. That was when the courts prevented Morales from running for a fourth term, which he attempted, even though it was quite unpopular. Third was Morales’ romantic relationship with a 15-year-old resulting in a child birthed by a child. All contributed to Morales’ isolation and the collapse of MAS.

SOWING THE SEEDS OF THE MAS COLLAPSE

What has not been discussed in any meaningful way, is that the seeds of the MAS collapse were planted in the three terms of the Morales presidency, including Vice-President Garcia Linera, a social and economic theorist for the MAS government, beginning in 2006.

Let’s roll the clock back. As I wrote in 2016:

“An extraordinary series of revolutionary events unfolded in the first half decade of the 21st century….From the Water War in Cochabamba in 2000, through the vast mobilization of the Aymara in the Bolivian altiplano…[to] the actions of the coca growers in Chapare…[and] With the powerful protests of Aymara in El Alto….Bolivia experienced a series of mobilizations, popular protests, strikes, highway blockades, and confrontations with the army and the state. Again and again came eruption of creative human power resisting the governing powers of capital and state” (“Bolivia: In Revolutionary Transformation, 2000-2005; The Pull of State-Capitalism, 2006-2013,” Chapter 7 of Utopia and the Dialectic in Latin American Liberation, Haymarket Books, 2017).

A major force in breaking the old order was the massive Indigenous opposition to the old regime, particularly when Indigenous people marched from their community in El Alto, above the capital La Paz. However, rather than outright civil war and/or the taking of power by the left-indigenous insurrectionary force that had brought down two governments, the movement found itself presented with an electoral alternative. Only then could Morales, President of the Cocalero Union, be elected as the first Indigenous President of Bolivia, riding the wave of Indigenous protest.

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT DIVERTED

The substitution of an electoral pathway for a full social uprooting blunted the Indigenous mass protest as pathway to freedom in several ways.

1. Whereas the demand for a Constituent Assembly was meant to be a vehicle for decision-making by social movements, it was reduced to a tool of Party-ism. Yes, a far more progressive Constitution was written, but under MAS control, not Indigenous power from below.

2. A growing separation of the MAS-run State from the movement developed when the Morales government announced a price rise for gas in 2011. A massive protest—the Gasolinazo—erupted throughout the country. Its power forced the abandonment of the price increase, revealing another sharp division between the State and the population.

3. The developmentalist ideology of the State was expressed in the government’s insistence on building a highway through Isiboro-Secure Indigenous Territory and the National Park (TIPNIS), despite the opposition of those living in the regions. Their opposition was met with police oppression.

The ideological basis for this statism was state-capitalism, developed and articulated by Vice President Garcia Linera. It was “not realistic” to think that Bolivia could “build socialism.” Rather, “[W]e want capitalism with a big state presence.” This so-called “statist Marxism” (state-capitalism) was already a disastrous reality in Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China. It was surely a dead-end for liberation in Bolivia. (See “The Statist Marxism of Alvaro Garcia Linera” in chapter 12 of Utopia and the Dialectic in Latin American Liberation.)

With such ideology, with the separation from the masses, with the pressures of the world market, there was no place for MAS to go but towards collapse.

–Eugene Gogol