TeleSUR: Adolfo let’s start by talking about the upcoming elections in Bolivia this October 12. What is the general evaluation of Evo Morales’ government so far?
Adolfo Mendoza: Well, it’s not just about doing an evaluation. In this case it’s more important to explain the situation of the transformation that has occurred from one type of state to another. It’s an evaluation of the extent to which transformations have occurred between the state and the economy, and the state and the civil society, among other structural issues.
It’s already been five years since the new constitution was approved and the institutional foundation for the Plurinational State was laid.
The last five years has been defined, not only by the construction of this base, the foundation for the new state, the plurinational state, but also an immense revolution in democracy, which has been achieved in political, institutional, social and economic spheres, and which allow us to clearly see the difference between what was happening before 2005 and after 2005, with the arrival of President Evo Morales.
TS: In that sense, can you highlight some of the major achievements of Evo Morales' administration?
AM: The first thing was the implementation of the agenda of the social movements and people's mobilization in Bolivia. In 2002, a large march took place in which Bolivian indigenous peoples walked more than 800km to call for a Constituent Assembly. This demand had really arisen during the Water War in Cochabamba in April 2000 . Almost immediately after the march, came the October Sessions for the recovery of natural resources and hydrocarbons, which resulted in (former President) Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada escaping our country.
So, the first thing our president, Evo Morales, did, and the first thing done in terms of political transformation, was to fulfil the call for the Constituent Assembly, and the recovery of our natural resources through nationalization.
TS: At this moment what is the balance of power that the opposition holds within Bolivia?
AM: In Bolivia, more clearly than in other Latin American countries, not only has the old party system of representative democracy, or liberal democracy, entered into its crisis, but there was a total collapse of the party system. The only real legitimate party of the old system is the Movement to Socialism, and it's not entirely a part of the old system, because it represents a union of social organizations. It’s more like a political instrument rather than a political party. So, in this case, the liberal difference between ruling party and opposition that we usually recognize in representative democracies is blurred.
The ruling party and opposition now have new characteristics. It depends a lot on the current issues of a given moment. It’s not something that falls under party ideology, but more like something that depends on the relationship between the government and the social organizations and movements.
In this sense we could say that an intercultural democracy is being born. The democratic and cultural revolution itself has transformed the patterns of this classical division in representative liberal systems between the ruling party and the opposition.
Nevertheless, what we can say, is that there are groups called opposition, that take shelter in the private media, and that respond to an old way of thinking, an ideology of the Washington Consensus, of privatization, of the present-day plunder of our Latin American countries. And on the other hand, you have a government that in fact organizes the people and the social organizations politically. The capacity for political leadership of our president and the Movement to Socialism is organized in this sense.
TS: Is that maybe the reason why Evo said he wouldn’t take part in the electoral debate that’s been held? Because his relationship is with the people’s movement and not with the candidates that represent themselves or their parties?
AM: Not only that. To be honest, what is happening in Bolivia is very serious, because of the nonexistence of a responsible opposition. But that is not only because of the concept of a new democracy that requires a discussion with the citizenry; with the people, instead of a debate with politicians who only want to remember and propose what was done during the neoliberal past.
But rather there’s another element that’s crucial to understand the discussion with the Bolivian people and not with these candidates that have no real proposals. We are now altering the definition of state policies and not only the policies of the government. Policies that look toward 2025. Policies that pertain to the construction of a Latin American agenda for the whole region. For that, you need proposals that function as state policies. These people that represent the past in Bolivia not only aren't organized as an opposition, which can generate relevant alternatives, but they have a structural incapacity to think, act, and behave in the political system, which prevents them from understanding that what’s at stake are state policies. This is what has to be discussed with the citizens and the only one who can do that is our president, Evo Morales.
TS: Would you say that this is the importance of another term for the presidency of Evo Morales in Bolivia?
AM: Yes and no. In these conditions it is extremely important, but on top of that President Evo combines a history... Marx used to say that we are more than the sons of our history than of our parents. That’s who Evo is. He is the son of the history of the strength accumulated by the social organizations, of the coca workers movement, of the indigenous peoples, of the urban popular sectors, of the middle classes, that together have achieved a union for the transformation of our country.
But besides expressing this sense of historic accumulation, he has an international impact. He represents the possibility of continuing to build and revolutionize democracy within democracy, but not based on liberal patterns.
The Argentine political theorist Ernesto Laclau used to praise populisms for precisely this reason. Because they are the builders of democracy beyond the indicators that the representative liberal democracy shows us; in which a few parties, a few political options, play into the alternation of power, but in order to keep that power, rather then connecting with civil society or the people.
TS: You’ve mentioned the importance and the relevance of Evo internationally. We recently saw him speaking at the UN during the Conference on Indigenous People. What can you tell us about his impact internationally?
AM: Three things: First, he is a figure with great quality, who possesses a sense of organization, in an alliance with other presidents in the region; that is an alternative for Latin America, and which is part of a group of revolutionary and progressive expressions in Latin America that require his presence.
This means that there’s an internal reality in the progressive and revolutionary bloc in Latin America that holds Evo as a central figure. But he is also important because of his indigenous trade union experience and his defense of the coca leaf as a means of defending of our country’s sovereignty.
This creates a different path for him that other presidents don’t have — this closeness with the indigenous movement that at the same time connects him to the defense of the rights of Mother Earth.
If we add the G77, the World Union Conference and the Indigenous Peoples Conference, we see that in fact work is being done and Evo is a part of that — an alternative in the construction of a counter-hegemony in Latin America that is definitively changing geopolitics across the world.
TS: What about the role of women in Bolivia, and women’s participation in the electoral process and the Bolivian society nowadays.
AM: I’m going to refer to a current situation first and then to something that I believe has structural importance, and which functions as part of the democratic and cultural revolution in Bolivia.
The current figure is the number of seats currently occupied by women candidates. Fifty two percent of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly seats are occupied by women.
In other words, we’re no longer in discussions over quotas for women's participation. We are living the principle of equality that has been imposed not only in the Bolivian Constitution, but also in the Law of Electoral Regulations, which at this current electoral moment is expressed in this numerical way.
You can deduct from this women's political importance. But also in Bolivia, we have approved a package of laws that would have been impossible without the Movement of Bartolinas Women, an intercultural movement of low-lands indigenous women, women from the countryside and the city, from NGO’s, from urban sectors, that made up part of the movement of important women in history.
Law 348 for a life free from violence, the law against political harassment, among other laws and regulatory instruments, would have been impossible without the intense participation of women’s movements in our history.
We could say that the women and the indigenous were the fundamental pillars in the constituent process. And after that, skipping the relevant current cases we have moved from gender issues to issues of de-patriarchalization. The Plurinational State confronts the Patriarchal State and proposes the institutional de-patriarchalization of the state. Therefore, women are no longer talking just to the woman, but they are talking about the common things that unite us in a non-patriarchal understanding. That’s de-patriarchalization.
TS: Adolfo, can we think of a second round in this election?
AM: No, there’s no chance of a second round if we take a look at recent polls, but not only in terms of electoral preference but in terms of support for the administration of our President Evo Morales.
TS: Recently, evidence has been presented on the ties of some of the right-wing candidates to U.S. intelligence agencies. What can you tell us about that?
AM: Ties? I doubt they are just simple ties. These are political expressions of the empire in our country. They are more than links. It is organized action. It’s something you cannot separate. It's so embedded that the right-wing candidate, Tuto Quiroga, has complained about another right-wing candidate, Samuel Doria Medina, who is contracting people who designed the electoral campaign of former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, now living in the United States.
They accuse each other of better representing the interests of the old Bolivian political class. Both of them accuse each other of having links to Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and Manfred Reyes Villa, the right-wing now sheltered and supported in the United States of America. It’s more than ties, they are mindsets, and proposals regarding the strategy of the United States to go from a low intensity war to another way of perforating the transformative processes.
But there’s not only this mindset and these ties, as you call them. Ties sometimes come and go, but this is a state of mind that has more to do with a subordinate condition which the Bolivian right-wing has not overcome.
Just to cite some examples. The declarations of Samuel Doria Medina and Jorge Quiroga over the need to advance the Pacific Alliance, which, we know was organized in opposition to the ALBA bloc, and in opposition to the processes of integration of the Latin American countries. This example is enough to see the kind of logic that’s operating.
TS: What are your predictions for the elections on October 12?
AM: Our president Evo Morales said in a demonstration in Cochabamba that there will be a “sena quina.” In a game of dice “sena quina” is the highest score. A large vote is expected, but it's important to stress that the Movement to Socialism will once again have two thirds of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, for two objective reasons.
First, the political fragmentation of the right. They are actually factions that respond to personal and group interests; factions you would call them in the political science.
Second, the sense of discursive articulation that our President Evo Morales has and the way in which many actors have been adding themselves to the project, but not in alliance, but in organization with the project set out by our president, by the Movement to Socialism, and its vanguard, the indigenous movement.
TS: Adolfo, one last question, what are the main areas in which the Evo Morales government would focus most extensively in a new term?
AM: There are twelve points laid out in the Government Program. It would take a while to discuss all of them, but the main thing is to think about five core ideas that articulate all of these points: the battle against extreme poverty, universal access to education, to health care, basic services in general, industrialization, etc..., All of the 12 points mean strengthening our sovereignty, strengthening an economy model that started with the nationalization, but that must allow us now to combine industrialization with the defense of the rights of Mother Earth; to find a new way to industrialize to be self-sufficient, and at the same time to generate added value and to defend the Mother Earth.
Plus, there is the development of a strategy that links sovereignty with the creation and accumulation of knowledge. Our president says: we have freed ourselves first politically, then we have freed ourselves economically, because the country is growing at a good pace; and now is the time for us to free ourselves technologically. That’s our big challenge. Beginning with this challenge, we can fuse the Bolivian agenda with the agenda of the Latinamerican regin. And that’s why we have also laid out these issues for the regional agenda that have to do with the our core: energy, security with food sovereignty, the battle against extreme poverty, the battle to strengthen sovereignty, the construction of a new pattern of intercultural democracy, in which the citizens participate in government decisions, and there is no representation without a connection to those who are being represented. And above all, the battle for the consolidation of the hegemony of the transformations in Latin America.
Both agendas are one and the same — the national agenda and the continental agenda. And now, even more as our president Evo Morales takes a leading role in the G77 and the United Nations, with the rebellious agenda from the South on the world stage.
Fuente: Telesur
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