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Bolivia: Evo´s Challenges

Luis Figueroa - 1/24/2006

Evo Morales, the socialist, will assume as president of Bolivia. He was favored by the Bolivian voters, so the coca grower and leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (Movimiento al socialismo) has the opportunity to vindicate the above mentioned corrupt and pauperizing ideology.

Some readers may not agree with this, but the truth is that the government of Luiz Ignacio da Silva, the Brazilian socialist and union leader, is having a hard time trying not to drawn in it own corruption mud pit.

Lucio Gutierrez, former hero of the Latin American socialism, has been outsted from Ecuador in the midst of scandals of corruption. Goofy Hugo Chavez is ruining Venezuela as fase as he can. In Kirchner´s Argentina the socialists are doing weird things like forcing boutiques to sell clothes size extra large, for the robust.

This should not come as strange as it seems because Latin American socialism, as socialism everywhere, has a long tradition of legislating absurdities. Pol Pot, for example, almost exterminated the whole Cambodian population because he thought that his country should be dedicated to agriculture. Julius Nyrerere wanted do establish the socialism alla Africana and he condemned Tanzanians to misery. The kibbutzim are closing, or changing their collectivist nature. national socialism was a tremendous failure, and real socialism was a giant with feet of clay (and both costed millions and millons of human lifes).

The most succesful of all socialists is Fidel Castro. His regime brags about its good systems of education and health; but his people fly (or more properly swim) as fast as they can, and as far as they can, from his socialist island paradise

If Cuban propaganda was true, the Cubans life would be the kind of life that my parents dog had. Simon was well educated, and he had the best veterinary of the city; but he was served food only once a day (best quality concentrate, of course), he could only have sex when my parents wanted him to breed, and literally his life was in the hand of his masters.

Socialism is no good, chico!, and when it is, it is because the socialists are lite; pretty much like inconsistent neoliberals. See Tony Blair, Ricardo Lagos, Felipe Gonzalez, and even Tabare Vasquez, so far from Clement Atlree, Juan Velasco Alvarado and Salvador Allende.

The Chinese socialists, instead of turning to more socialism to become an important player in the globalized world, well…they have become more like capitalists. The rulers of Beijing still rule under terror and oppression; but at least in their coastal cities they can offer a gentle mask, one that shows no scars from the so called Cultural Revolution, or the Great Leap Forward.

So, Evo may be a coca grower and a socialist; but if he manages to keep his administration from collapsing in corruption and depauperization, and if he manages to survive the expectations he has raised, it will be because he does not follow the example of the socialists who took socialism seriously. Even Rodriguez Zapatero, the true Rodriguez Zapatero, his Spanish socialist colleague, has asked him to come to his senses when dealing with the Spanish investments in Bolivia.

My fellow journalists, are proclaiming that Evo will “take the indians to power”. An unsustainable prediction in the sense that there is no such thing as “the indians” such as there is no such thing like “the proletarians”. The pretention is candid because those who will get to the power are Morales and his friends. In fact Felipe Quispe, another Bolivian indigenous leader, says that Evo is not fit to be president. So, it still has to be proven that the Bolivian indians feel represented by Morales.

Traditional socialism, the one that rejects private property, favors monopolies in the social security system, surrenders the lives of individuals to the interests of the party and the colective; that socialism which generates unemployment through minimum salaries and that which sofocates investments and new jobs´opportunities through the taxes on the capitals´returns, and other arbitrary taxes, that socialism has pauperized the indigenous populations in Latin America.

Lets see if Evo Morales is the new hope for socialism and indigenism, or if he is another failure, and another brick in the wall of misery.