5 Chapter 5 Araceli Becerra

Indigenous Resistance: Lessons From Bolivia

I. INTRODUCTION

As a landlocked country in South America with significant poverty levels, Bolivia is often ignored on the global stage. However, during these last two decades, the Plurinational State of Bolivia has gone through a significant transformation as a result of successful Indigenous mobilization. This change is most evident in the popularity and power of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS-IPSP, Movimiento Al Socialismo–Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos) Party which helped elect the country’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005. President Morales and the MAS-IPSP Party have recently been in international headlines given the latest Bolivian presidential election. On November 8, 2020, MAS-IPSP candidate Luis Arce was sworn in as the next president of Bolivia. This was a highly decisive election where Bolivians demonstrated that they continue to side with the Indigenous political party and leftist politics. Facing a growing right-wing reactionary movement and increased disillusionment with Evo Morales, the MAS-IPSP Party was successful in holding on to power. How did they manage to maintain their popular status? To understand the popularity of the MAS-IPSP Party, it is necessary to study the history of Indigenous political participation in Bolivia. Which brings us to the actual question this paper attempts to answer: how have Indigenous people in Bolivia built social movements that challenge the status quo and yield results?

Despite Indigenous people making up 8% of the Latin American population, they account for 14% of those living in poverty and 17% of those in extreme poverty. (Dios 2020) In Bolivia, 41% of the population are of Indigenous origin according to the 2012 National Census. (IWGIA 2020) For about 500 years, Indigenous people in Bolivia were not seen as full citizens. They were openly discriminated against and faced severe economic hardships. (Albro 2019) However, while it continues to hold the status as the poorest South American country, Bolivia has experienced significant economic and cultural transformation under the leadership of the country’s first Indigenous president. From 2004 to 2017, the country’s GDP grew an annual average of 4.8% and the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty went from 36% to 17%. (Sarmiento 2019) The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) reported that this economic transformation was possible due to a new constitution with significant economic mandates, nationalization and public ownership of natural resources, redistributive public investment, increased wages, coordination between the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry, and the exchange rate policies focused on de-dollarizing the Bolivian financial system. (Arauz et. Al. 2019:1)

Out of all these factors, the nationalization of natural resources and the focus on social spending are particularly noteworthy. The commodities boom in the 2000s that increased the price of gas and other Bolivian exports brought new revenue into the economy which was then redirected to schools, hospitals, infrastructure, and the creation of cash transfer programs for children and the elderly. (Sarmiento 2019) However, given the recent tumultuous political situation and current health crisis, in addition to subdued commodity prices, the future economic prospects of Bolivia are uncertain. (United Nations 2020) Significant challenges remain for the country and its vulnerable communities, making it even more imperative to study Indigenous social movements that helped transform the economy in the first place.

II. PERSPECTIVES OF THE FOUNDERS

In this section, I will lay out key arguments from some of Sociology’s founders and contemporary scholars that can help explain the Indigenous social movements in Bolivia. Before looking at these social movements, it is important to acknowledge the global capitalist structures that led to the harsh conditions endured by Indigenous communities in Bolivia. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848:16) predicted globalization by explaining that “the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.” Alongside the need to increase profits, people’s desire for new things required new products available in “distant lands and climes,” (Marx and Engels 1848:16) such as the lands of the Global South. Nearly two decades after predicting globalization in The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels (1983:479) addressed the expanding reach of the bourgeoisie, the ruling class, when they wrote:

“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.” 

Marx (1983) grouped these moments under the label of primitive accumulation, also known as the starting point for the capitalist mode of production. This is the historical process of separating the producer from the means of production, and the result is an uneven relationship between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The disparities between the two have only widened with the passage of time.

As capitalism transformed the world into a single market, people such as John Cassidy (1997) acknowledged Karl Marx’s predictions of globalization. One of the more pressing concerns, according to Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, was that the international integration of markets was placing pressure on societies to alter their traditional practices. (Cassidy 1997) But these societies were not going down without a fight. The following section looks more closely at how Bolivians resisted the effects of globalization that sought to change their cultural practices and traditional way of life. For now, I turn to the work of W.E.B. DuBois to analyze the important role of Indigenous people in Bolivia’s social movements.

Whereas Marx focused exclusively on class relations in his study of capitalism, DuBois examined the role of race and ethnicity in class inequality. In The Souls of White Folk, DuBois (2004:36) explained “the world market most wildly and desperately sought today is the market where labor is cheapest and most helpless and profit is most abundant. This labor is kept cheap and helpless because the white world despises the ‘darkies.’” For DuBois, whiteness is at the center of capitalism. In his study of Europe, he came to see whiteness as “the ownership of the earth forever and ever.” (DuBois 2004:32) And when it got more difficult to subject the white working class, DuBois (2004:35) claimed that Europe found a loophole, “a chance for exploitation on an immense scale for inordinate profit, not simply to the very rich, but to the middle class and to the laborers. This chance lies in the exploitation of darker peoples.” By recognizing the relationship between race and capitalism, Marx’s historical process of primitive accumulation mentioned earlier is further contextualized.

DuBois’ thinking was heavily influenced by Marxism, but, rather than focusing on the European factory worker, he looked at the racialized and colonized workers which led him to realize that racism and colonialism were pillars of capitalism. (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020:17) This discovery became the basis of DuBois’ concept of racialized modernity which recognized the existence of a global color line that produced racial divisions all over the world. (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020: 15) Therefore, modern-day scholars of DuBois, such as Jose Itzigsohn and Karida Brown (2020), emphasize DuBois’ role as a global thinker and a global activist. As a man of the Global South, his work is pertinent to understanding the racial and economic conditions of Bolivia. Regarding Latin America, DuBois (2004:100) at one point wrote:

“The race problem of South and Central America, and especially of the islands of the Caribbean, became closely allied with European and North American practice. Only in the past few decades are there signs of an insurgent native culture, striking across the color line toward economic freedom, political self-rule, and more complete social 
equality between races….” 

DuBois anticipated the Indigenous social movements seen in Latin America today, but looking at Max Weber’s writings on political leaders will also be helpful to better grasp the success of these movements.

Along with rationalization and bureaucracy, Max Weber wrote significant essays on the topic of politics. He was interested in when and why people choose to obey certain leaders. In Politics as a Vocation, Weber (2013) explained that there were three types of authority— traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational. Similar to Weber’s conception, the most noteworthy one for the purposes of understanding Bolivia’s political landscape is charismatic authority. Under this authority type, “men do not obey [the leader] by virtue of tradition or statue, but because they believe in him. […] The devotion of his disciples, his followers, his personal party friends is oriented to his person and to its qualities.” (Weber 2013:79) According to Weber (2013:115), any politician can become successful if they possess the following three qualities: “passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.” This last point about proportion refers to a politician’s distance to things and men in order to think rationally. (Weber 2013) The argument goes that the absence of any one of the three qualities can cause irresponsibility and a lack of objectivity that lead to the leader’s downfall.

Given its breadth in covering politics, power, and organization of the state, Politics as a Vocation continues to influence contemporary scholars. However, Weber’s ideas are also challenging modern-day political scientists who have often ignored political leadership, especially in regards to characteristics such as charisma. (McLean et. Al. 2017) In spite of this reluctance by some in the discipline of political science, sociologists recognize the essay as evidence of eroding democratic values that affect people’s participation in modern mass society. (McLean et. Al. 2017) In Politics as a Vocation, Weber writes about the nature of political rule and how politicians balance their beliefs and their responsibilities. Given the widespread distrust of politicians that exists today, which many scholars believe threatens “the legitimacy and sustainability of democratic societies,” Weber’s essay provides important insight into a leader’s reasoning. Regarding Bolivian politics, Weber’s focus on the personal characteristics of leaders can help explain the success of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales.

III. HISTORY OF INDIGENOUS MOBILIZATION IN BOLIVIA

This section looks at the history of Indigenous political participation in Bolivia in order to better understand the social movements and organizations that exist today. Since 2006, Bolivian politics has been characterized by leftist President Evo Morales, the country’s first Indigenous president. Morales was born into a poor farming family and grew up in a rural Aymara community of miners, but he ended up moving to the coca-growing Chapare region after completing his military service. (Albro 2013) He then joined a union of coca farmers and was elected general secretary in 1985. (Flintoff 2008) In 1988, he was elected as executive general secretary of a confederation of coca farmers unions. (Flintoff 2008) His union leadership experience would lead him to the national parliament with the help of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS-IPSP) Party. He won a congressional seat in 1997, but he was expelled in 2002 for leading anti-government protests. (Forero 2002) That same year, Morales launched his first presidential campaign, and while he did not win, he went from a 3% approval rating in January (Forero 2002) to ending in second place. (Crane 2005)

In Evo Morales’ second presidential run in 2005, he won 54% of the votes and secured victory. (BBC 2019) In power from 2006 to 2019, Evo Morales was the longest-serving head of state in Latin America in recent times. (Nugent 2019) His party continues to be in power today with MAS-IPSP presidential candidate Luis Arce sworn into office on November 8, 2020. Morales’ presidency and the success of the Indigenous-led MAS-IPSP party are emblematic of a long history of Indigenous resistance. But how exactly have Indigenous people in Bolivia managed to sustain social movements that yield results? Studying the history of the community and looking at their methods of protest can help answer this question.

Indigenous people have been able to maintain a strong presence in Bolivia, which is not the case in many other Latin American countries. In total, there are an estimated 50 million Indigenous people living in Latin America. (Dios 2020) According to a 2009 UNICEF Report, the Latin American countries with the largest Indigenous population (% of the general population) were Bolivia (66.2%), Guatemala (39.9%), and Peru (13.9%). (Davis-Castro 2020) Since these figures at the beginning of the decade, the number of Indigenous people in Bolivia has been estimated to be anywhere from 40% to 66% of the total national population. (Davis-Castro 2020) Around 40% of the Bolivian population today identify as Indigenous, mostly Quechua and Aymara peoples. (Kurmanaev and Krauss 2019) It was not until after the 1952 revolution, once literacy tests were abolished, that the majority of them were able to vote– thirty years earlier than neighboring countries. (Van Cott 2003) Now, half a century later, Indigenous political representation in Bolivia is most notably seen by Evo Morales, the country’s first Indigenous president elected in 2005.

However, beyond the presidency, Indigenous people in Bolivia have also managed to take up important leadership positions at various levels of government. Aymara and Quechua women, in particular, have made significant gains in a ten-year span– from being banned at certain public spaces to holding seats in Bolivia’s national parliament. (Leal 2018) This new wave of leadership was supported by the MAS-IPSP Party, the only established Indigenous political party in power throughout Latin America. (Tamburini 2020) Under the leadership of Morales, the MAS-IPSP Party instituted national changes to help preserve Indigenous culture and tradition in Bolivia. These changes included a new constitution declaring the country as “plurinational” and the introduction of the rainbow-colored Wiphala flag to recognize the various ethnic groups. (BBC 2019) Since the early 2000s, with the rise of the MAS-IPSP Party and Evo Morales, Indigenous people in Bolivia have gained significant political influence.

Leading up to the 21st century, Indigenous worker’s unions laid the foundation that would eventually lead to the success of the MAS-IPSP Party. It was the coca farmers, also known as cocaleros, in the Chapare region of Cochabamba that created the Assembly for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (ASP, Asamblea por la Soberanía de los Pueblos) Party in 1992 which laid the foundation for the MAS-IPSP Party that helped elect cocalero activist, Evo Morales, as president of Bolivia in 2005. (Malá 2008) In Bolivia, the most prominent cocaleros hailed from the Chapare. This region has a rich history of established sindicatos, or networks of unions, that originated back in the Bolivian highlands and was brought over by ex-miners when they migrated to Chapare in the 1950s. (Healy 1991) The collapse of the tin industry in the 1980s led to even more highland miners and farmers migrating to the Chapare and expanding the union network. (Hellin 2001) This network is set up so that members belong to one of 160 community-based sindicatos, which are organized into 30 centrales (sub-federations) that are further grouped into six main federations. (Healy 1991)

The anti-coca movement spearheaded by the United States, beginning in the 1970s when the war on drugs was declared, pushed rural farmers to strengthen their network of unions. In 1971, President Richard Nixon announced that America’s number one public enemy was drug abuse, and he urged Congress to authorize and fund a world-wide offensive in order to defeat the enemy. (Nixon 1971) While Indigenous people in the Andes have traditionally used coca for its mild stimulant properties that suppress hunger, thirst, and fatigue, the alkaloid cocaine in the leaf made it a target for the United States. (Flintoff 2008)  The eradication of coca in the Chapare was mostly voluntary at the beginning, but farmers soon realized that other crops part of the alternative development programs were not as lucrative. (Hellin 2001) Bolivian farmers did not really see committed efforts of coca eradication until 1987 once the United States started blocking countries from receiving international aid if they were not scaling back coca production. (Hellin 2001) Then in 1997, General Hugo Banzer became president of Bolivia and initiated Plan Dignidad, his administration’s five-year plan centered around forced coca eradication that used the Bolivian military as an anti-drug force. (Ledebur 2002) The military occupation of their homeland became the ultimate mobilizing force for the coca farmers in the Chapare.

While the federations in the Chapare were primarily built to manage coca farmers’ interaction with the drug trade, they also became the institution that served as a de facto government. (Kurtz-Phelan 2005) In an attempt to protect the interests and rights of coca farmers, the federations helped found the ASP Party in 1992 to elect cocaleros to positions in government. (Malá 2008)  In 1998, the ASP eventually split between leaders Alejo Véliz and Evo Morales after members were unable to decide which candidate to put on the ticket, and what followed was Morales and his supporters forming the Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (IPSP) Party, now known as MAS-IPSP. (Van Cott 2003) While ASP and MAS-IPSP were not the first Indigenous political organizations, they were the ones that directly helped launch Evo Morales’ political career.

Before coca farmers and workers unions gained influence in Indigenous political parties, a growing class of Aymara intellectuals was leading organizing efforts. At that time, a key reason for forming independent peasant organizations and political parties was to respond to the 1974 Tolata Massacre, an event where the military killed 13 Quechua peoples for protesting agricultural policies. (Van Cott 2003:760) The most influential organization created was the Unified Syndical Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB). In 1979, the CSUTCB was created to unite the various independent unions. The Aymara leaders of CSUTCB combined a Marxist analysis of economic exploitation with a new Katarista ideology (named after Aymara rebel leader Tupaj Katari) that linked ethnic and class oppression. (Van Cott 2003) While the framework continued to guide the organization, the Aymara intellectual leaders would be replaced by coca farmers in the 1980s. As government eradication efforts increased in the late 1980s, cocaleros became more organized. Coca farmers tripled their number of delegates at the 1987 CSUTCB Congress and took control of the organization the following year. (Van Cott 2003) They continued to protest forced eradication, and, as mentioned previously, formed new political parties such as the ASP and MAS-IPSP.

The popularity of the MAS-IPSP Party can also be attributed to leaders’ successful framing of the situation in Bolivia. Given the cultural and religious role of coca in Indigenous farming communities, cocaleros were able to justify their resistance to national eradication efforts and gain sympathy from important social sectors, such as human rights organizations, journalists, and the Department of Cochabamba’s elite based civic committee. (Van Cott 2003) Coca farmers’ unions and their leaders were also able to link their struggles with other working-class and poor Bolivians. For example, cocalero activist Evo Morales gave speeches that portrayed “the cocalero cause as a fight for Bolivian rights, culture and independence against capitalist exploitation and U.S. imperialism.” (Long 1995:para.17) These claims were especially salient beginning in the early 2000s when the Bolivian government made moves to exploit the country’s natural resources.

The water conflict, known as the Cochabamba Water War, occurred in 2000 when the Bolivian government decided to privatize water services in the Cochabamba Department. Under pressure from the World Bank, Bolivia sold water rights to Bechtel, an American company that raised water prices by 35%. (Van Cott 2003) After three months of protests, the government gave control of Cochabamba’s water supply to La Coordinadora, the grassroots coalition that organized the protests. (Sadiq 2002) The protests and subsequent victory fueled public sentiment against neoliberal policies. (Van Cott 2003) The Bolivian water conflict also gave cocaleros an opportunity to link highly-publicized national protests to their cause. (Ochoa 2014) In 2003, similar protests occurred when President Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada gave gas contracts to various foreign companies as part of another privatization scheme. (Farthing 2018) The protests, centered in the city of El Alto and partly led by Evo Morales, ended with President Goni fleeing the country. While speaking to members of the different coca federations, Morales declared: “by defending the coca leaf we learned to fight against water privatization. After defending our water, we moved on to defend our gas. So we’ve learned to defend all our natural resources.” (Landes 2007) Evo Morales’ role in the protests propelled him to the national stage, and he became a symbol of defiance against the Bolivian government and the United States. (Van Cott 2003)

The water and gas privatization conflicts in the early 2000s caused massive resistance in Bolivian cities, and the cocaleros were able to take that anger and funnel it into support for their political parties. Leading up to the 2005 election, Evo Morales told attendees at a campaign rally: “yes we are cocaleros, but on top of that we are Aymaras, Quechuas, Guaranis, rightful owners of this land.” (Landes 2007) He highlighted that his experience in the cocalero movement was part of a greater cultural, ethnic, and class struggle. And he was also very aware of the significance of his run for president, using language such as: “I want to say to all my indigenous brothers from America, here in Bolivia today, that campaign of 500 years of resistance hasn’t been in vain. Enough is enough. We are taking over now for the next 500 years.” (Miller 2013:para.7) But public support also needs to be backed with resources in order to make sustainable change. Morales and the coca farmers were able to secure financial and logistical resources through “long-established, locally legitimate CSUTCB affiliates,” which they gained after taking control of the organization in 1988. (Van Cott 2003:767)

Catells (2010) social movement framework is helpful for analyzing the coca growers movement that led to the election of Evo Morales. He found it useful to define social movements by its three principles: the movement’s identity, the movement’s adversary, and the movement’s societal goal. Due to the ethnic nature of a majority of Bolivian coca farmers, the movement was and continues to be defined by Indigenous people. Their adversary was the neoliberal policies implemented by the Bolivian government and orchestrated by the United States. In terms of the movement’s societal goal, it started by calling for an end to forced coca eradication and military occupation of their communities. But once cocaleros unions and political organizations gained more national attention and connected their struggles to the country’s privatization efforts, the movement expanded their vision. During his first presidential run, Evo Morales stated he would like to enact communal socialism in Bolivia. (Forero 2002) He also envisioned a country led by Indigenous people, stating: ”as Indigenous people, we see ourselves as absolute owners of this noble land and the territory. And when we talk of territory, we talk about gas, petroleum, mineral resources. All those should be in Bolivian hands.” (Forereo 2002:para.23) For the movement, Bolivia was its Indigenous people.

IV. LEGACY OF INDIGENOUS ORGANIZING

Indigenous groups in Bolivia had to politically organize in order to protect their traditions and lifestyle from the effects of global capitalism. Their home’s proximity to an abundance of natural resources made it a desirable target for individuals seeking to expand markets. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote about this outcome in the Communist Manifesto (1848). They realized that the expansion of markets into new lands resulted from a desire for new products that would satisfy new wants and also increase profits for the ruling class. In Capital (1867), Marx expanded on these writings of globalization to recognize the role of the Global South in primitive accumulation. Bolivia’s exports matched the needs of the market—from silver and gold, then tin, and now natural gas. (Wanderley 2011) However, this model has failed to improve the economic conditions of Bolivians, especially its most vulnerable communities. While rates of extreme poverty decreased between 2004 and 2017, the level of moderate poverty neared 60% in 2009 and only increased when looking at rural areas. (Wanderley 2011)

Given the persisting poverty levels under a capitalist system, contemporary scholars who studied Marxism emphasize the founder’s warning that society will eventually reach a point where the majority of the population responds with revolution. Until that point is reached, certain members of society will continue to resist capitalist structures that seek to destroy native customs and traditions. (Casssidy 1997) This resistance was most evident in the mobilization of Indigenous Bolivian farmers against foreign policies that demanded they scale back the production of the traditional coca plant. Beginning in the 1970s, the anti-coca movement pushed rural farmers to strengthen their network of unions. Organization was needed because the harmful effects of capitalism, including the uneven relationship between Bolivia and a country like the United States, were tangible with these anti-coca policies. The ultimate mobilizing force was the military occupation of farmers’ communities. (Ledebur 2002) When the United States announced that it would create three military bases in the coca-growing region of the Chapare, farmers blocked a major highway for a month until the plans were canceled. (Ledebur 2002) This level of organization and persistence was possible because of the unions that protected the farmers’ traditions and lifestyle. These unions would eventually form their own political party to more directly address the harmful effects of capitalism on all Indigenous people in Bolivia, not just coca farmers.

This pushback from the native population would come as no surprise to W.E.B. DuBois who wrote about the effects of class inequality and its relationship to race. The negative relationship between the two systems was a result of a world market that relies on the exploitation of dark-skinned people. (DuBois 2004) Realizing that capitalism was supported by racism and colonialism led DuBois to his conception of racialized modernity. (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020) This concept acknowledges the existence of a global color line which can help explain the role of Indigenous people as leaders of Bolivia’s social movements against capitalist exploitation. It had to be Indigenous people that fought back and led these movements because their freedom is tied to the destruction of global capitalist structures. As DuBois wrote, the world market relies on exploiting black and brown bodies. If you take away the bodies, then the market will fail. Influenced by Marxism, DuBois realized that the world market was unsustainable. Capitalism would continuously be met with resistance. And in a place like Bolivia, where Indigenous people represent 40% of the population, it was more difficult for the ruling class to divide people that would eventually realize they faced similar problems. Those problems being neoliberal policies that harmed Indigenous communities by causing financial strain and attacking their traditions.

While Bolivian elites held onto power for hundreds of years, their increasing encroachment on Indigenous communities reached a breaking point. The 1952 Bolivian revolution resulted in more Indigenous people gaining voting rights. They were able to start forming political parties and increasingly did so as more Indigenous people died at the hands of the government. Donna Lee Van Cott (2003) argued that the success of these parties, which was finally seen in the 2002 Bolivian elections when Indigenous parties captured 27% of the national vote, was a result of institutional changes, the fall of two mainstream competitive parties, the consolidation of Indigenous social movement organizations, the unpopularity of the Banzer administration, and the ability of Indigenous parties to capitalize on growing anti-US public sentiment. Given this paper’s focus on Indigenous resistance, I focused more on the consolidation of the numerous Indigenous organizations and the ability of leaders to link the movement’s goals to the needs of other working-class and poor Bolivians. The creation of the CSUTCB in 1979 united the various Indigenous unions. (Van Cott 2003) However, it was not until coca farmers took over the CSUTCB leadership that the organization was able to successfully link Indigenous struggles with the entire nation’s well being.

The leader most successful at galvanizing support for the cocalero movement and mobilizing Indigenous people against neoliberal policies was Evo Morales, a coca farmer who would go on to become the country’s first Indigenous president. In my view, Morales is exemplary of Weber’s charismatic authority. This authority type is characterized by an “absolutely personal devotion and personal confidence in revelation, heroism, or other qualities of individual leadership.” (Weber 2013:79) It is about belief in the individual, which often requires the leader to be of the revolutionary type. If one were to hear his speeches and see the audience reception, it would be clear that Morales fits these qualifications. Back in his early days as a cocalero activist, known simply as “an Aymara Indian without a highschool degree,” he quickly rose in the Chapare’s network of unions. (Kurtz-Phelan 2005) His success can be attributed to his ability to empower other Indigenous people by embracing his own identity while also tying it to larger societal forces.

Evo Morales placed Indigenous people at the center of a movement against capitalist and imperial forces. The movement reached its peak in the early 2000s when Bolivians protested against the exploitation of the country’s natural resources. This fits DuBois’ (2004:100) observation of “an insurgent native culture, striking across the color line toward economic freedom, political self-rule, and more complete social equality between races….” Morales’ vision of a country led by Indigenous people inspired an increasing number of Bolivians to believe it was possible to fight back against the ruling class. And that vision frightened traditional politicians. However, their attempts to suppress Morales, such as expelling him from parliament in 2002, resulted in increased popularity for the Aymara leader.

V. CONCLUSION

Apart from my own familial ties to the country, this paper was motivated by Bolivia’s recent tumultuous election cycle. The 2019 presidential election ended with Evo Morales, the country’s first Indigenous president and Latin America’s most recent longest-serving head of state, being forced to flee the country. The public is still divided as to the exact events that happened last year. You have people calling it a coup given the military’s role in forcing President Morales to resign. Then there are others claiming Morales’ run for a fourth term was unconstitutional and there was electoral fraud. But despite a growing right-wing reactionary movement and increased disillusionment by some sectors of the Bolivian population, Morales’ party, MAS-IPSP, won the redo election in October 2020. Given everything they were up against, how did the MAS-IPSP Party manage to hold on to power? People did more than just show up to vote for Evo Morales in 2019 and MAS-IPSP candidate Luis Arce in 2020. They organized and took action, particularly Indigenous people who have a long history of political mobilization in the country. Their organizing is what led to the election of Evo Morales in the first place. So, for this paper, I wanted to better understand how Indigenous people in Bolivia built social movements that fundamentally challenged the status quo.

In order to answer this inquiry, key arguments from some of sociology’s founders can be applied to the history of Indigenous mobilization in Bolivia. Marx and Engels (1848) predictions of globalization explain the poor conditions of Bolivia that led to the need to build these social movements. The ruling class will search everywhere for the resources needed in an expanding market. Bolivia’s rich natural resources made it a target. However, Indigenous Bolivians resisted the effects of globalization that sought to change their cultural practices and traditional way of life. DuBois’s (2004) concept of the global color line, how capitalism relies on the exploitation of Black and Brown bodies, further explains the role of Indigenous people in leading the resistance. And finally, Weber’s ideas on political leadership, specifically charismatic authority, showed how Evo Morales’ leadership was critical to the movement’s success.

While there were certainly other important factors, Morales’ ability to link the various Indigenous groups and connect their struggles with other working-class Bolivians fundamentally changed the country’s political structure. Since the 1952 Revolution allowed the political participation of historically excluded racial/ethnic minorities, Indigenous people began organizing worker’s unions and political organizations. Early attempts to unite the various independent groups were made in 1979 with the creation of the CSUTCB. However, it was not until coca growers took over the confederation leadership in the 1980s that Indigenous people were able to successfully enter national political institutions. With the anti-coca movement pressuring Indigenous people to destroy the traditional coca plant and militarizing their homelands, additional support was gained from important social sectors, such as urban workers and human rights organizations. (Van Cott 2003)

The national government’s attempt to privatize resources in the early 2000s was the final breaking point for working-class Bolivians, the majority of the population. Evo Morales, already a popular leader as a cocalero activist, led the protests and linked them to a long history of Indigenous resistance. His rhetoric emulated Marxist and DuBoisan thinking, recognizing the oppressive effects of capitalism while also connecting ethnic and class oppression. Completely defying legal and traditional authority as the son of poor Indigenous farmers, his personal qualities won the hearts and devotion of many Bolivians. Morales became a symbol of defiance against the Bolivian government and the United States (Van Cott 2003), but he also offered a vision of what could be accomplished when people came together against the ruling class.

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