Evo Morales, his Fall and the Myths of the West
One of those myths is the indigenous nature of Evo Morales and his government.
By Pedro Portugal Mollinedo
Pedro Portugal Mollinedo is an Aymara activist, historian, and director of the Pukara Magazine. Throughout decades of activism, he has written extensively about decolonization and the history of indigenous activism in Bolivia, the Indianista-Katarista movement. He is widely respected as a critical voice on politics and culture.
Originally published in Revista Pukara, Nº160 Diciembre 2019, La Paz, Bolivia. Link to original text.
Translated and published with permission of author.
Considerations on exogenous views of the Bolivian political context:
Recent events in Bolivia have deserved analysis and comments in the press and international social networks, with descriptions and predictions that are more alarmist and crude than those that can be found in Bolivia itself.
This is due, in large part, to the fact that Evo Morales is an indigenous person, whom are dispossessed of power in this country. A myth has been built in the western world about indigenous people, that contradicts the previous ones created in this same part of the world. Every social myth has an economic and political function. When the myth comes from the colonizer (or the neo-colonizer), surely its implementation is related to the maintenance of domination and not to the liberation of those identified by it.
Europe and its publishers in our countries used various myths throughout their historical relationship with the so-called Indians of America. First, they were savage, heathen, uncivilized; then, retarded, untamed; later, on paths to development with local peculiarities. Today the myths are more flattering, but no less pernicious. It is fashionable in the West to praise the primitive as the bearer of truths that the vile Westerner cannot perceive, to be expressed in a worldview in which humanity is subordinated to nature. In which, the Indian is portrayed as being respectful of the environment and of coexistence, even with the meanest critters of Mother Nature.
These myths only serve to resolve an illusory Western guilt complex, while they lead to a mistaken approach towards social and political reality in that part of the world. As such, they necessarily have to take refuge in metaphysics and avoid analyzing contemporary historical and social problems.
The origin of colonization with the European invasion of 1492, understood not as a matter of knowledge and otherness, was rather the very earthly usurpation of political power.
From then on, Indians were alienated from political power and from any effective influence in the conduct of their own affairs. That is the reality of colonization. Therefore, the history of decolonization was self-determination and access to independence for the formerly colonized.
For reasons that go beyond the scope of this note in detail, this type of historical decolonization could not be achieved in America. In what is now Bolivia, the clearest attempt at this alternative was — surely — the Tupak Katari war, in 1781. That is why this historical rebellion and particularly the figure of its leader continue to be emblematic in our country.
In America, rather, what is known as the “Wars of Independence” occurred, that created the current states on the continent and imposed the republican model under white (creole) hegemony, the children of the Spaniards and, more subordinately, of the mestizos (mixed-race). This new republican model did not achieve the formation of a new national identity and integration of the indigenous, but rather reproduced Spanish colonial segregation, sometimes worsening it.
The empowered whites (creole) established a racialized society (if we understand racism as the belief in essential biological differences between human beings, racialization is the construction of social roles based on that prejudice). State institutional and political power were thus based on indigenous subordination, their placement in the last rung of a caste society, antecedent to class, and the use of ideologies to justify and reproduce this injustice.
At the level of ideological justification, the whites (creole) utilized every ideology that came from the West, sometimes altering them according to their interests. It happened with Christianity, the Enlightenment, Liberalism, Socialism, and now postmodern culturalism.
In all the countries of the continent, the dominant ideology in the academy is postmodern culturalism. All state functions towards the indigenous are carried out from that ideological inspiration, which is also the same for international cooperation agencies.
What is unique about Bolivia is that this generalization was assumed by an indigenous president, which led many naive people to believe that it was the application of indigenous policies through a truly indigenous government. Hence the confusion in the analysis about what is currently happening in Bolivia, which derails almost all foreign commentators. This error generates delirium in the analysis about what is happening in this country. I am going to take, just as a sample, what Thierry Meyssan expressed in his note “La Bolivie, laboratoire d’une nouvelle stratégie de destabilisation” (1)
This author believes that “The appointment of a new government without indigenous people led the Indians to take to the streets, taking the place of the thugs who previously persecuted the Morales government”.
According to this analysis, the new government can only be seen as “white”, while the Indian is only seen fighting them in the streets. Any curious person, who investigates any media source, knows, on the contrary, that the current government has included indigenous people in its cabinet, yet in non-strategic responsibilities. And that the current government has been able to reach agreement with social organizations -COB, CSUTCB, Pacto de Unidad, Interculturales, Ponchos Rojos… — previously believed to be exclusively allied to the death with the government of Evo Morales (2)
On the other hand, it is the caucus of senators and representatives of the party Movement towards Socialism (MAS), now predominantly indigenous, that finally accepted new elections, without the participation of Evo Morales and Álvaro García Linera! This happened since the whites (creoles) of the MAS party, who were empowered over the indigenous and who were the ones who really ruled Bolivia, are on the run, refugees in embassies or already enjoying the delights of golden exile.
This was foreseeable, since during the 14 years of Evo Morales’ government, the State’s relationship with indigenous peoples was always patronizing. There was no political, functional, structural decolonization. What is happening, therefore, is that the same mechanisms of submission are being manifested with another new government.
Worse still, being that models of postmodern culturalism are of liberal capitalist inspiration, it is foreseeable that through this scheme the current government will be more successful than the previous one in its application. If so, in the same way that this politics signifies an imposture and the subsequent indigenous abandonment of Evo Morales, it will also represent chaos for anyone who implements it and does not understand decolonization in its economic, social and political terms, rather than as the idealization of the past. The imposture of supposed autonomy over small territories rather than full decision-making and participation in the whole country and on concurrent terms. Nor is there the “inter-ethnic violence” that Thierry Meyssan seems to desire rather than to verify.
It is true that the opposition to Morales arose first through the middle class and that much of it has longings for bygone times, in which racism was openly expressed. There were expressions of this type, without a doubt, but they did not appear as such, in any type of inter-ethnic confrontation … this came later and for reasons unrelated to the exclusive defense (or attack) of Evo Morales. The first stage of the attack against Morales arose in the middle class, which manifested itself in mobilizations and urban blockades.
While the residential areas and the center of La Paz were in turmoil, in the popular neighborhoods and particularly in the neighboring city of El Alto, daily life proceeded normally, despite Morales’ call to mobilize and defend him.
Finally, there were neighborhood councils in El Alto and popular mobilizations in La Paz in support of Morales. These generated clashes, some violent, with those mobilized from the middle class, but they were without force and nothing decisive, since the events concluded in the resignation of Evo Morales.
Anger manifested in El Alto and in indigenous communities only recently after Morales’ abandonment of his supporters, when he went into exile, offered to him in Mexico, and left his ministers poorly planted (some were talking about — and were surely organizing — to make Bolivia another Vietnam). But anger manifested because in the fever of victory, the winners began to vilify and insult the Wiphala, the flag of the indigenous. Thus, the opposite situation proceeded to occur. While La Paz and particularly its residential areas were now quiet, fury was unleashed in the countryside, the popular areas, and especially El Alto.
The new government reacted with violence, causing deaths and injuries. Some justified the violence or preferred silence, seeing it as the end of remnants of the previous regime, while others distorted the violence in their analysis, seeing posthumous but heroic defenses of Evo Morales.
In reality, these events are the emergence of a new reality and a consciousness that is beginning to take shape, organized under the cries of war: “Now yes: civil war” and “The Wiphala is respected, damn it”. In the future, it can only have a political outcome. It is the emergence of what will be true decolonization, the realization of which will be to satisfy the demand for real empowerment in Bolivian political life.
This empowerment will not be — in my opinion — the satisfaction of a supposed ethnic revenge. It may rather be the opportunity to create a true nation. History has shown us –except in the Latin American experience– that nations are not ethnic destinies, but political creations, that, when successful, originate new realities that transcend their creators. But for this to occur, inspiration, vitality, and hegemony are needed. And the latest events show us that this, in Bolivia, can come from the Aymara people.
For this to be possible, we must get rid of immobilizing myths created by whites (creoles) and focus on reality. And if myths are necessary, they have to come from the colonized, because that is how decolonization begins. For that reason, myths do not persist, as they are only a passageway to get on with living, to manage and act on contemporary, national and international reality.
One of those myths is the indigenous nature of Evo Morales and his government.
Fortunately, in Bolivia there is criticism in this regard, especially within the middle class that idolized him and his government in the early days (3). This criticism has apparently not yet happened abroad…
It is not, then, to bring down from the Andean Olympus, or to seek to resurrect and re-establish elements of power that had some role ten or more years ago, that now seem ridiculous or at least irrelevant, such as the role of the Ustaše in Bolivia, in which Thierry Meyssan insists in his note.
- La Bolivie, laboratoire d’une nouvelle stratégie de déstabilisation. par Thierry Meyssan. 26 NOVEMBRE 2019.
- Consensúan ley de pacificación y acuerdan modificar el decreto 4078. La Opinion. 24 de noviembre de 2019.
- ¿Por qué cayó Evo?. Por Rafael Archondo. 28 de noviembre de 2019.
