Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Bolivia - Who's Left?

Has Anyone seen where Bolivian leftist intellectuals, professionals, and politicians from the 70's, 80's, and 90's are? Bolivia had an active, sophisticated left, with the parties around the UDP alliance among others - some who were in exile during Banzer.

These were the people who made up the MIR-ADN government, the ones who formed the earliest NGO's, and the ones who Goni brought in to work on decentralization.

Not being blind to reality after the Berlin Wall fell, many of these folks moved more to what in the sane world is considered the center. After the collapse of the traditional parties, you can now find them in the Civic Committees, opposition parties, business, academia/research institutes, NGO's and the pages of editorial pages - mainly criticizing the Evo.

As for those who "remained left" (or far left) they were often the least prepared, the most intransigent, the blind, the half-wits, and the delusional. And that is why the MAS government makes the "politqueros" from Podemos, Civicos, and past governments seem wise and competent in comparison. Besides angry syndicalist dynamite throwers, they have a few educated ideologues who have kicked around, but not many people with useful skills or talents for anything except conspiracy, agitation, and the very Bolivian art of playing politics.

And that also explains why the Evo government is so thoroughly criticized. Many people are up to his game. Besides having a thorough understanding of Bolivian history they know how 'hardcore' the hard-left hold-outs in Evo's party are. People familiar with far left ideologies, understand perfectly the double talk and lies used by Leninists to advance positions, and consequently mistrust a government which talks out of three not two mouths.

The foreign press is caught up too much in the "indigenous president" angle, and of seeing everyone opposed to Evo being on the "right". Instead they should look where the opposition to Evo comes from, because they would find many people formerly "of the left", who have moved to modern, social-democratic positions. They are in such nerve centers of opposition to Evo like the Santa Cruz Prefecture and the editorial pages. And their is a lot more to their criticism of the Morales government than a simple "white vs. indigenous" or "oligarch vs. poor".

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nazi's in Chile? Is this true? If it is, this is really scary, but it does makes sense.

I live in France, in a zone where this history episode was very intense and painfull. Therefore, the Nuremberg trial, established by USA ,France , GB and Russia, judged and made sure that the responsables where punished, by death penalty, usually. These kind of trials in European countries avoided wild slaughters, that happened in little towns. Many secret services of different countries and people spent their lifes seeking them. Some where found, some where not.

This is another big issue.

Boli-Nica said...

^huh???

wrong post....
i did write about Nazi influence in Chile's military couple years ago.

Anonymous said...

i need to read more about bolivia. how do you think the evo opposition compare with mrs in nicaragua? there isnt a whole lot of foreign press here to be caught up in any romantic angle with danny o, even though he does have that whole revolutionary thing going for him.

Anonymous said...

Since you are Nicaraguan you might be interested in The Real Nicaragua at
http://www.therealnicaragua.com