LATIN AMERICA, MOBILIZATION, AND A MOVE TO THE RIGHT Four country analyses Maristella Svampa Luis Tapia Donka Atanassova Edgardo Lander CONTENTS

Contents : conflicts and socio-political reconfigurations during the Kirchner era By Maristella Svampa 3

Analysis of Bolivia

By Luis Tapia 26

Colombia: some contributions to understanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years By Donka Atanassova I. 37

Notes for a collective reflection on the Venezuelan situation By Edgardo Lander 53 Argentina: conflicts and socio-political reconfigurations during the Kirchner period

Maristella Svampa*

August 2016 accompanied by greater protagonism on the part of transnational companies. These In this analysis of the Kirchner era, I will last two processes also explain the decline, deal with four topics. In the first place, I isolation and, in some cases, transformation will refer to changes in Argentinian social of social subjects linked to other agrarian- structure over the past 15 years. In this productive models. regard, it is important to underline the Thirdly, I will refer to the aspect of recovery of social sectors that had been mobilizations and social movements, penalized in the previous decade, for focusing on the central conflicts of example the urban middle classes and Kirchner period, such as the confrontation the popular sectors (formal and informal between the agricultural corporations and workers), a process that had its roots in the the Government of Cristina Fernández growth of the economy, the expansion of de Kirchner, and the mobilizations of the the industrial model and the increase in middle classes (for and against ). consumption. However, it is worth noting I will then refer to the peripheries, i.e. that as in other Latin American countries, to mobilizations that took place outside the upper classes also benefited a great the binary field, that were linked to the deal during the Kirchner era. expansion of the frontiers of extractivism Secondly, I will provide an account of the and the appropriation of land. large scale rural transformations, starting Fourthly, I will speak briefly to the with the expansion and consolidation current political scene and social struggles. of a new agrarian model (agribusiness, In this regard, it is important to clarify that, particularly genetically modified consistent with other experiences on the soybeans), a change that brought with it continent, Kirchnerism demonstrated the emergence of new globalized rural great ability to monopolize progressivism subjects, although one not totally detached as the center-left option, and to expel from the old agrarian oligarchy. We should other political forces. At the same time, it also highlight the expansion of extractive promoted an interpretation of conflict as activities and megaprojects, as well as dichotomous or as a binary code, making the growth of the transnationalization some trade union conflicts (sexual diversity, of the Argentine economy, which was media, agricultural producers) visible, while

* Maristella Svampa is a sociologist, writer and researcher. She has a degree in philosophy from the National University of Córdoba and PhD in Sociology (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, France). Principal researcher of Conicet and principal profes- sor at the National University of La Plata (Argentina). She is part of the Permanent Working Group on Alternatives to Development.

3 Argentina: conflicts and socio-political reconfigurations during the Kirchner period Maristella Svampa

banishing others from its area of vision and Equipped with significant cultural capital, interest (amongst others: mega-mining, but weakened in terms of their economic, land grabbing, the social and health capital and social aspirations, the middle impacts of the soy production model, classes were the main protagonists of and even drug trafficking). This is still the the social protests that toppled several situation today despite the setbacks that Governments during 2001 and 2002. As a Kirchnerism has suffered, above all in the result, in the last 15 years, that is during judicial field. post convertibility and the arrival of the commodities consensus, the improvement 1. Social and economic structure. of their economic position and access to Recovery of positions and return consumption was not experienced as a to ‘normality’ type of ‘democratization’ (as happened in The changes and transformations that other countries, for example Brazil), but as took place within Argentine society during the ‘recovery’ of a standard of living and of the Kirchner period (2003-2015) are of consumption patterns that had been lost various types, both with regard to social in the previous decade (Kessler, 2016). structure and emerging social subjects in the conflict dynamic. In this section I will briefly summarize the changes and In the Argentina of the last reconfigurations within the middle classes, 15 years the middle classes as well as in the popular and dominant were boosted due to the sectors. To begin with, it must be said that in the increase in employment Argentina of the last 15 years the middle and wages and the recovery classes were boosted due to the increase in of consumption. employment and wages and the recovery of consumption. Also worthy of note is that despite their social heterogeneity, In this sense, a second transformation the urban middle classes have played associated with economic reactivation a central role in the configuration of an was the improvement of the situation of image of ‘Argentinian exceptionalism’. formal workers, thanks to the generation It is an image of a more homogeneous, of employment and economic growth. At more egalitarian country in comparison the same time there was a reduction in with Latin American countries that are the marginalized sectors and unqualified more marked by greater social disparities groups compared to the previous period. or greater inequality. Nevertheless, Again, we must take into account what took this image was shattered during the place in the previous period, when broad nineteen nineties, when, in a framework sectors of the urban working class suffered of social polarization, the middle classes a process of de-collectivization and swelled experienced a setback, made visible by the numbers of the marginal proletariat intra-class fragmentation and a major (informal or precarious workers) or simply reversal of upward social mobility. This became unemployed. This massive de- translated into the impoverishment of vast collectivization was the origin of a series swaths of the population (autonomous of unemployed movements () and salaried middle class sectors). that between 1997 and 2004 constituted

4 Argentina: conflicts and socio-political reconfigurations during the Kirchner period Maristella Svampa

the major proponent of social conflict in result of the confinement of conflict with Argentina, blocking roads throughout the unions to the labor area. This repositioned country and reorganizing the social fabric the formal workers’ unions as central of popular neighborhoods. actors and, from a symbolic point of view, In short, the post-convertibility period renewed their ability to generate a certain demonstrates, at least until 2011, a reversal amount of class confidence, visible in the of the dominant trend of the previous recovery of a ‘productive model’ based on decade related to popular sectors: an employment, as opposed to the financial increase in skilled employment from 17.5% model of the nineties. The traditionally to 33.8%, as well as industry job creation peronist General Confederation of Labor until 2006, in construction, and then in (CGT) was once again unified behind the service sector (Benza, 2016). But if /Kirchnerism, and under the the qualified and manual worker sectors leadership of Hugo Moyano, the head experienced a marked improvement and of the truckers, which had been one of increased, the reduction in the numbers of the sectors that most benefited from unqualified and marginal workers was less the policies of the nineties (as a result of significant. Certainly, at least until 2007 dismantling the trains). there was a robust increase in employment It is also interesting to observe what (about 5 million jobs after the crisis of 2001- happened regarding precarization: despite 2002), a fact that although it involved an the increase in formal employment, the industrial recovery, did not entail substantive informal employment rate continued to structural changes, as “the same dependent be high (around 30%, when in 2001 it and vulnerable industrial structure of the was 48%). On the one hand, there was an past” was still in place. (Katz, 2013). extension of the frontiers of precarization The growth of the economy and the due to outsourcing and third party increase in employment and salaries contracts, especially in the area of services. contributed to a substantial reduction As a consequence, and in the context of an of poverty compared to 2001-2002, increase in union protests, many protests when it had reached 52%. According to against precarization were led by internal the Institute of National Statistics and groups, in certain cases outside the trade Census (INDEC), in 2007 poverty had unions’ leadership or recognized unions been reduced to 20.6% of the population, themselves. Amongst these, the services while indigence was reduced to 5.9%. and transport sector stood out. Conflicts At the same time, during the 12 years of such as the one that caused the death Kirchnerism the situation of pensioners of a left wing militant, Mariano Ferreyra, improved: as of 2006 provisional pension killed in 2010 in a protest against work coverage was extended, allowing some precarization, exposed the dark side of 2.5 million retirees to receive a pension the expansion of new forms of inequality despite not having made contributions. within the urban working sectors. Kirchnerism also returned to the Other grassroots union conflicts that democratic tradition of free ‘paritaris’ stood out featured the public sector agreements (collective work contracts), (Education and Health). From strikes in that had been lost during the neoliberal public hospitals, to persistent strikes in period. This improved salaries for formal, the teaching sector in several provinces public and private workers, and came as a (primary and secondary education), such

5 Argentina: conflicts and socio-political reconfigurations during the Kirchner period Maristella Svampa

conflicts revealed the deterioration of Lastly, regarding the upper echelons salaries and the extension of the borders of society, these improved their position of precariousness in a time of economic during the Kirchner era, although there prosperity. The death at the hands of were modifications, among which we the provincial police of a teacher in the should emphasize four fundamental Patagonian province of Neuquén in April aspects. Firstly, there was a displacement 2007, as well as the constant struggles of financial capital (typical of the nineties), in other provinces, revealed the absence towards productive and extractive of integrated proposals for the recovery capital (opportunities provided by the and revaluation of the public sector, as reactivation of industry, the new agrarian well as the difficulty experienced by the capitalism, and the expansion of the unions themselves in giving the conflicts a frontiers of extractivism). Secondly, the national scope. concentration of foreign participation in the economy intensified: the process of external participation of the nineteen Many protests against nineties became more pronounced as of precarization were led by internal 2004, with the reactivation of the domestic market, dominated by oligopolies, which groups, in certain cases outside in the context of the commodity consensus the trade unions’ leadership or was enhanced by the rise of foreign recognized Unions themselves. participation in extractive industries (oil, mega-mining). As a result, the current profile of the business elite is notable for On the other hand, a hard core of workers the major presence of foreign firms. in marginal positions (marginality, the major Thirdly, after the crisis of 2001 – 2002, issue of Latin American social sciences), and during the first years of Kirchnerism, was sustained partly by the various social programs and previous Government policies the dominant sectors opted for a ‘low that the Kirchner Government reinforced. profile’ strategy, which basically consisted Marginalization presents particularities in reducing the ostentation typical of the of gender- it is higher in women than in Menem era. However, as of 2004 the men – of age – above all it affects young reactivation of consumption and investment people - and educational level, where its led to the reinforcement of a lifestyle incidence decreases as this increases. With linked to spatial segregation (private regard to social policies related to the most urbanizations) and luxury consumption. In vulnerable sectors, in 2009 the Universal other words, with the ‘return to normality’, Child Credit (unifying and replacing other the upper classes recovered their self- social programs) was promulgated by belief, that is, the trust in themselves that decree. The measure had been promoted for a number of years by progressive had been threatened by the crisis and the opposition parties and social organizations; debt default (2001-2002). the measure had an important impact on Fourthly, and related to the above, the the most excluded sectors, even if its scope period was characterized by the expansion was far from universal. of the new agrarian paradigm (agribusiness),

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which revealed the emergence of a new said reduction of poverty did not entail a business profile, whose merger with that of decrease of inequality. The improvement the old agrarian oligarchy would become in the situation of the popular sectors was increasingly evident as the agribusiness notable, at least between 2006 and 2011, model became increasingly dominant. but, starting from that time, the sustained increase in inflation, the stagnation in the In short, rather than mere changes in creation of private sector employment, as the dominant sectors, in Argentina we well as implementation of certain economic witnessed the emergence of a new policies, laid the groundwork for economic business ethos linked to agribusiness (at crisis, and as a consequence brought about least, as an identity model), that reinforced the reversal of the improvements previously the dominant sectors’ belief in themselves achieved, above all in the popular sectors. as the ‘motor’ of the Argentinian economy. Notwithstanding the above, and as is This can be seen in the generic expression well known, based on the latest studies on ‘rural areas’, which refers to the new inequality in the region, it is necessary to agrarian structure and denotes the re- temper the triumphalist claims about the reduction of inequality levels that circulated association of the economic bonanza with during the progressive decade. So, contrary the image of an agrarian country. to the affirmation that Latin America was the only region in the world where The upper classes recovered inequality had decreased, recent research (focused on the financial statements of the their self-belief, that is, the trust richest strata of the population) shows that in themselves that had been while poverty levels declined, at the same threatened by the crisis and time the region experienced a greater 1 the default (2001-2002) concentration of wealth. Returning to Argentina, apart from the taxes levied on agricultural exports and, as To sum up, the kirchnerist cycle was of 2008, on mining companies (between characterized by material improvements 3% and 5%), the period did not see any in work conditions, as well as in the tax reforms that would have implied a income and consumption levels of the reduction in the benefits of the more subordinate sectors. This led scholars such powerful sectors. On the contrary, the as G. Kessler (2016) to affirm that these State continued to subsidize service and improvements marked a reversal of the production companies, and in recent years trends of the nineties (The Exclusionary even began subsidizing the oil companies Society, Svampa, 2005), i.e., that compared that were threatening massive layoffs, to the previous period there had been a citing falling international crude prices and reduction of social polarization. However, the loss of comparative advantage. At the

1. See the special issue of Nueva Sociedad, in particular the article by economist Pierre Salama, ‘Did inequality decrease in Latin Amer- ica? Notes on an illusion ‘, 2015; available at http://nuso.org/articulo/se-redujo-la-desigualdad-en-america-latina/. For a discussion on the form of measurement and its methodology, see M. Medeiros, P.H.G. Ferreira de Sousa and F. Ávila de Castro, ‘Stabilidade da desigualdade de renda no Brasil, 2006-2012. Estimativa como dado de imposto de renda e pesquisas domiciliares’, Ciencia & Saude Coletiva 20 (4): 971-986.

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same time, the tax system continues to which turned Argentina into one of the be opaque, complex and regressive (the world’s major exporters of genetically reduction of the tax on profits has been one modified crops. These innovations implied of the unions’ demands, as it has an impact a major expansion of the agrifood sector even on medium and low wages; VAT is and a spike in the scale of production, also 21%); financial capital has not been all of which led to a notable increase in taxed, nor is there a tax on gambling (which agribusiness’ relative weight in the country’s expanded considerably in the period). In exports, and in the Argentine economy as addition, the new Land legislation does not a whole. Its dizzying expansion implied a affect the process of foreign involvement wholesale restructuring of the traditional (it is not retroactive). Finally, unlike other agrarian system, which was already in the Latin American countries, land reform is middle of an acute crisis aggravated by the not on the political agenda. exclusionary politics of the nineties. The agribusiness model not only expanded in the Pampas region, but also in the so called While poverty levels declined, marginal areas, that is, in the North and in the country’s coastal regions, and currently at the same time the region occupies some 22 million hectares (of 33 experienced a greater million cultivable), of which 90% is dedicated concentration of wealth. to soy production. The profitability of the agrifood sector was facilitated by the end of convertibility in 2002 (and the subsequent 2. The transformations of the agrarian devaluation of the local currency), as well structure: core and peripheries as by the boom in the international price of In general, you could say that in Argentina primary products. there are at least three agrarian universes: According to Grass and Hernández the clearly dominant world of agribusiness; (2013), the current characteristics of the the Chacarero structure, formerly central agribusiness model (which of course in terms of regional economies although includes, in addition to soybeans, other never hegemonic, and the historically genetically modified crops such as corn, marginalized campesino-indigenous world. sunflowers, cotton and others), are the From the agrarian point of view, the logic following: trans-sectoriality (vertical and of these three worlds is clearly different, horizontal integration), prioritization of even contrasting, as is their density and production for export, intensification of extension and the asymmetric relations the role of capital in agricultural production that exist between them. processes (and an increasing proportion I will begin with the dominant world. of financial capital), the standardization of There is a vast amount of well researched the technologies used, and the buying up literature that provides an account of the of land for large-scale production. emergence of an agribusiness characterized The new agrarian model has various by the intensive use of biotechnology and actors: while in the seed sphere we by international standards (genetically find the sector’s largest multinational modified seeds through direct seeding),

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companies (such as Monsanto, Novartis, of employment, consequently generating Singenta and Cargill)2, as well as a few a major population exodus from the rural large local economic groups, in the area areas to the cities. The data provided of production other economic actors have by the National Institute of Agricultural emerged. Amongst these we have the Technology (INTA) confirms the third parties (who have the technological concentration of land: 2% of agricultural equipment), the contractors, a type of holdings represent 50% of the land; while ‘producer without land’ (among which 57% of agricultural holdings (the smallest) are extra-agrarian actors, such as the account for only 3% (cit. in Aranda, 2013). seed pools and the investment funds), The transformation and reconfiguration of and, finally, the small and medium-sized the sector has helped to create a model of land owners, a number of whom became ‘agriculture without farmers’. rentiers, leasing their properties for the The emergence of a new social cultivation of soybeans. The expansion configuration also involved a profound of the agribusiness model also produced change in subjectivities and attitudes business organizations linked to the agro- of the subjects. For some specialists, industrial sector, notable amongst which are agribusiness came hand in hand with a the Argentinian Association of Direct Sowing new type of rural entrepreneur, “more Producers (Aapresid) and the Argentinian of a Schumpeterian type” (Gras and Association of Regional Agricultural Hernández, 2009), who combines modern Experimentation Consortia (Aacrea), as well technologies with the search for new as chain organizations. The latter, unlike the market niches. A fabulous job of identity traditional associations (SRA, Argentinian reinvention and positioning connected to Agrarian Federation or Coninagro), are this this ‘new player’, has been carried out characterized by vertical integration: from by institutions linked to the sector: the rural primary production to service sectors linked supplements of the principal Argentinian to the new chain of production. newspapers and by INTA, which has At the local level, the trade liberalization promoted ‘the second revolution of the and deregulation process initiated in 1996 Pampas’. For Gras and Hernández (2009), provided new opportunities for large who analyzed the ‘new business ethos’, companies during the neoliberal period, the ‘innovative entrepreneur’ is no longer leading to concentration in both horizontal identified with the producer, and less still and vertical terms. For example, 90% of with the traditional farmer, but with a style the sale of refined sunflower oil is presently and a managerial culture based on the in the hands of six companies, led by flexibility and intellectual versatility proper Molinos Río de La Plata, Aceitera Deheza to modern management, and oriented and Cargill. The expansion of the new towards the global economy.3 model also translated into a decrease in The dramatic shift from one agrarian the number of holdings and the reduction paradigm to another, highlighted an

2. Monsanto controls 90 % of the market in genetically modified seeds; Novartis is the largest agrochemical company in the world.

3. At one end of the scale, the archetype of this model would be the successful Argentine entrepreneur Gustavo Grobocopatel, who on innumerable occasions claimed to be “landless”, by this asserting that profitability is linked more to a set of operations than to land capitalisation.

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Argentina that has been losing biodiversity in Federation would bet more heavily on the parallel with the spread of soy monoculture supremacy of the soy model, and would and the buying up of land. One of the become part of the political opposition to a problems of the last few decades has been the Kirchnerism it had initially supported. destabilization and decline of the Chacarero Another difficulty has been the historical Pampas world (linked to agriculture and invisibility of the small farmers. It is true livestock) which, compared to the current that, unlike other countries Latin American, agribusiness model, is characterized by a in Argentina the hegemony of the agro- different style of organization of work and export model had led to the muzzling of production, as well as another system of a wide variety of agrarian social subjects, values and psychological outlook. This who were considered of marginal or minor process of change and breaking up of importance.4 It was only in the mid nineteen identities was highlighted by the different eighties, with the emergence of the Santiago positions assumed by the Argentinian del Estero Campesino Movement (Mocase), Agrarian Federation (FAA), which brings that we see a positive resignification of the together small and medium-sized rural term campesino. Later came the Movimiento land owners. As a coalition the FAA Campesino de Córdoba, the Movimiento participated in the current transformations Campesino de Formosa, and the Puna that led to the decline of the Chacarero Network, amongst others, all currently part world that it represented. As a result, until of the National Campesino and Indigenous 2008 it adopted a somewhat ambiguous movement (MNCI), which emerged in 2003 position, with a careful critical discourse and is in turn part of the Coordinadora of the agribusiness model. However, Latinoamericana de Organizaciones the confrontation with the Government Campesinas (Coordinator of Latin American of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner over Campesino Organizations) (CLOC) These the increase in agricultural taxes, led movements have as their banner: family the FAA to a change its position. In an farming, community rights, community law unprecedented shift, the FAA participated and agro-ecology, and as an objective, food actively in the liaison commission with the sovereignty. large employers’ organizations (SRA, CRA, In 2010, the National Government Coninagro), supporting the demands of a introduced the Agri-Food Strategic Plan set of players that rejected the increased 2020 (PEA2), with the goal of reaching tax burden on the sector. Moreover, far from a production of 160 million of tons of rejecting the new agrarian model, during genetically modified grains (mostly the dispute with the National Government soybeans and corn) by the end of that the FAA sought a better position within it in year (it is currently 100 million). Achieving order to achieve greater cost effectiveness. this would imply more clearing of land, Two thousand and eight therefore signaled increased compulsory displacement of an ‘end of cycle’ for FAA criticism and vulnerable people, more conflict with its previous position; from then on the campesinos and indigenous people, urban

4. The use of the word ‘campesino’ has in itself been a rarity. In Argentina we have spoken of small landowners, agricultural produc- ers, agrarian leagues, and within academic language there has even been talk of farmers within the framework of certain regional economies.

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overcrowding, pressure on native forests, showed a larger number: 955,135 or 2.4% and soil loss, amongst other things. of the country’s population (cit. in Binstock Finally, I will document the situation and Cerrutti, 2016). The population of of the native peoples, traditionally on the Argentina also includes Afro-descendants, periphery of the periphery. In historical whose presence has also been minimized: terms, this is a direct consequence of the the 2010 data speak of a total of 149, role of genocide in the founding of the 493 people, almost all of them born in Nation-State towards the end of the 19th Argentina, about 8% having been born in century,5 which had the effect of making the other countries of the continent (Ibid, 47). native peoples invisible and thus fueling the false idea that in Argentina there were 3. Dynamics of conflicts. no more native people. The Argentine Of centers and peripheries Constitution includes, of course, the most Over the last 15 years the social conflicts advanced international regulations related within Argentinian society became more to the issue. The constitutional reform of complex, creating a new dynamic between 1994 also introduced Article 75, paragraph centers and peripheries. Firstly, it could be 17, which recognizes the ethnic and cultural said of the centers that there was a shift pre-existence of Argentinian indigenous towards labor conflict, marked by the peoples, as well as their cultural and decline of organizations of the unemployed territorial rights. and the resurgence of unions. Secondly was the emergence on the political scene of new agrarian players (agribusiness model). In Argentina the hegemony Thirdly, the peripheries were implicated in of the agro-export model led to socio-environmental conflicts linked to the the muzzling of a wide variety of expansion of the oil and mining frontier, as agrarian social subjects, well as to territorial conflicts related to land grabbing. In this sense, centrality was not who were considered marginal simply a matter of the type of social actor or of minor importance. involved, but also the geography of the conflict: in the first case it was about rural In 2004-2005, an official survey stated and urban conflicts that were visible in big that there were 600,329 people in cities, with multiple ramifications and social Argentina who recognized themselves linkages, and with the capacity to occupy as belonging to an indigenous group, public space in the country’s capital. In the while identifying at least 31 indigenous second case, the conflicts were linked to peoples. In 2010, the census of that year extractivism (mining, oil) and the demands

5. In Argentina the founding interpretative vision related to the aboriginal peoples was the Sarmientine dichotomy ‘Civilization or Barbary’, which condemned the masses considered barbarians (indigenous rebels, montoneras, gauchos and ‘caudillos levan- tiscos’) to exclusion and extermination. With respect to the Indios, at the end of 1870 the political elite decided to use the military option as an exclusionary tactic, deploying it in different campaigns: the desert campaigns of 1879 and between 1881 and 1885 (La Pampa, Río Negro and Neuquén) which crushed the resistance of the Ranqueles and Mapuche Indians, and the Chaco campaign (1884), which defeated the Toba and Mocovi Indians of the southern and eastern Chaco region, thus ensuring control of the banks of the Bermejo River. To this was added the repression of indigenous rebellions in the Puna, and the devastating effect that the ex- pansion of sheep ranches had on the Selknam and Yamanas in Tierra del Fuego. The creation of the Republic was therefore based on the original genocide, which had a devastating effect on the country’s various surviving indigenous peoples (Svampa, 2016).

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of campesinos and indigenous people that issues to Argentinian society for first were linked to the rural arena, as well as to time. As a result, a large swathe of the small and medium-sized towns, far from the urban sector saw and became aware of great urban centers and with little capacity to just how large and profound had been make themselves visible in the Argentinian the transformations that had shaken the capital. As a consequence, Kirchnerism Argentinian agricultural map over the managed to limit these demands to the last few decades. Beyond the generic local or provincial level, something that was and ideologically biased use of the term facilitated by their lack of connection to ‘rural areas’, urban Argentina was able to urban sectors, which at least until 2012 had visualize the heterogeneity of players that been oblivious to these conflicts. made up the agrarian model. It is worth In the following sections, I will provide a underlining that, for the most part, the brief synthesis of the main conflicts of the roadblocks that proliferated in the country Kirchnerist period. were set up by self-convened assemblies composed of small producers whose 3.1. Conflict between the agricultural profile had been transformed thanks to sectors and the Kirchner Government the new model. The most important point, The continuity of the Kirchner however, is that this conflict revealed the Government, in terms of orientation and central place of the agribusiness model in style, was confronted by a conflict that the country’s economy. On the other hand, began in March 2008, and whose evolution the conflict was also a watershed moment in and outcome four months later signified political terms, given that the dispute over a major blow for the new Government of extraordinary profits was the touchstone Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. for a perceived need to fully update the It should be remembered that at the populist legacy. Both the Government’s end of 2007, the new President increased inflexible response and the rapid reaction taxes6 on the export of oil and gas, of parts of the urban middle classes, which mining, and agricultural products (among came out in support of the agricultural them, genetically modified soybeans), sectors and in doing so questioned the raising them to 35%. The agrarian anti- Government’s authoritarian style, served Government front managed to bring to update old binary structures, which have together both large organizations and been a permanent feature of Argentine the representatives of small and medium history and are anchored in the populist producers, who together carried out a tradition of ‘civilization or barbarism’, series of roadblocks (agricultural strikes Peronism or anti-Peronism, working class or and lock-outs), which left the country on anti-working class. In the end, the Executive’s the verge of shortages for 100 days. project was rejected in the National Senate Despite all its limitations and virulence, thanks to the Vice President-elect’s decisive the conflict served to introduce certain vote in favor of the agrarian sectors. As

6. The retentions or taxes on agricultural-livestock exports are an state instrument that has existed since the nineteen fifties; they were suspended under the Government of Carlos Menem, only to be restored by Eduardo Duhalde in 2002, in the midst of the Argentine crisis and in a context of great profitability for the export sectors. The increase in agricultural taxes by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, had among its objectives curbing inflation, neutralizing the possible link between international food prices and domestic market prices. Recall that inflation last year (2015) was around 20%.

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a consequence, the ruling party lost the originating both on high levels within the legislative elections of 2009, although it State apparatus and in the grassroots, soon regained the political initiative. and also notable for their virtual activism: In this aspect, the populist system was blogs, Twitter and other social networks. strengthened by two new events: on the Finally, the conflict also served to one hand, a new conflict generated by give certain visibility to campesino the draft media legislation, which brought and indigenous organizations, victims the Government into direct conflict with of displacement and dispossession of the Clarín multimedia group (which, even land as a result of land clearing and the before the dispute with the agrarian establishment of plantations of genetically sectors, had benefited from Government modified crops, especially in the North of policies). The debate over the new the country. However, as paradoxical as it audiovisual legislation also attracted the may seem, the organizations that made up support of numerous journalists, as well the National Campesino and Indigenous as educational and cultural sectors that Movement (MNCI) aligned themselves until then had offered tacit support for with the ruling party. In reality, as happened Kirchnerism. On the other hand, the sudden with other social organizations (unions, ex- death of Néstor Kirchner in October 2010 piqueteros, Human Rights organizations, signified the complete opening up of and later, GBLTB organizations, Fernández the gates to a high intensity in de Kirchner intervened in the MNCI, its classic statist version (Svampa, 2016). especially in 2005 (when the summit against This led to a consolidation of the binary the FTAA took place in Mar del Plata), populist discourse, (allusions to the and after the conflict with the agricultural Peronist past, and a ‘grand narrative’ of bosses, as a result of the various social Kirchnerism as its re-founder), synthesized programs aimed at the campesino world. as the opposition between a popular bloc Likewise, as of 2008 the Government began and the concentrated sectors of power to invoke agro-ecology as an alternative (monopolies, corporations, anti-Peronists). paradigm, defending the coexistence of In the context, Kirchnerism extended both this and the agribusiness model. The its range of alliances, from the explicit movement’s loss of autonomy speaks to its incorporation of youth organizations, weakness, but its situation did not differ which had been a notable presence in the too much from that of other vulnerable funeral of Nestor Kirchner. Groups such as sectors that benefited from compensatory La Cámpora (founded by Máximo, son of social policies, a fact that emphasizes their the Kirchner couple), and others of a similar dependence on the State and does not nature began to multiply throughout the point to true inclusion and autonomy of country, in a sort of a double militancy, the subjects and families.7

7. One of the moments of greatest tension in the inextricable relationship between the indigenous- campesino movement and the Kirchner Government came in November 2011, when Cristian Ferreyra, campesino, ethnic Lule and member of Mocase, was killed by assassins hired by a landowner when protesting against the agribusiness model. As a result, and with the support of numerous organizations (among them the then official Evita Movement), the MNCI promoted a law named after Cristian Ferreyra, that was designed to curb rural evictions for a period of five years. The draft law also promoted the creation of a National Registry of Rural Lands Surveys as a way find solutions for disputes between the campesinos and the agricultural entrepreneurs. However, by the end of the Kirchnerist era, not only had the Ferreyra law not been approved, but another member of Mocase had been murdered in 2012 in similar circumstances, that is, by a hitman in the service of a rural businessman.

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3.2. Middle class against middle class. to have reconciled after the conflict with The defense of ‘the popular’ versus the agricultural employers, as shown by the defense of ‘the Republic’ the results elections of 2011.8 Finally, Barely a year after the sudden death of faithful to the personalist tradition of Latin Néstor Kirchner, in October 2011, Cristina American politics, the concentration of Fernández de Kirchner was reelected in Executive power was creating an extreme the first round of voting by 54% of votes model of presidentialism, one with little cast, while also regaining the parliamentary interest in democratic debate or tolerance majority that had been lost in 2009 after for dissent. In this context of the narrowing the conflict with the agricultural sectors. of social alliances, Kirchnerism ended up This overwhelming majority enabled her to turning into a middle-class populism that consolidate the process of concentration sought to monopolize the language of of power in the Presidency, and to reinforce progressivism by claiming representation her vertiginous capture of sectors of the of the popular classes, by means of which middle classes. The rupture of the alliance it also sought to disqualify opponents from with the leader of the CGT, Hugo Moyano, other sectors of the middle classes. implied an abandonment of the path of Between 2012 and 2013 sectors of the classic populism (the unions as backbone), urban middle classes led massive social which led to a greater emphasis on allies mobilizations involving a diversity of within the middle classes (youth and cultural demands: the rejection of constitutional sectors). Kirchnerism’s trade union base reform that would have permitted a third of support was consequently reduced to presidential mandate, complaints about the one sector of the Central de Trabajadores corruption of bureaucrats, dollar exchange Argentinos (Argentine Workers Union), restrictions, and the growing economic which was linked to the middle classes crisis, amongst others. The demonstrations (teachers and state employees) and cultural clearly showed that one of the main sources actors (artists, intellectuals and academics). of polarization was the intra-class struggle: if Kirchnerism arrogated the representation of the lower classes on behalf of ‘a model Kirchnerism ended up turning of social inclusion’, on the opposition side, into a middle-class populism other middle class sectors criticized the growing authoritarianism of the regime and that sought to monopolize appropriated the monopoly of the flag of the language of progressivism ‘republicanism’.9 In the end, although the ruling party retained half of the provinces, This control coincided with a new break the legislative elections of 2013 were a between the Government and other setback for Cristina Kirchner and ended middle class sectors, with which it seemed any attempt at a third term.

8. This implies that not a few urban and rural middle sectors that mobilized against the Government of Fernández de Kirchner in 2008, ended up voting in favor of her re-election in 2011. 9. It is worth noting that in 2011, having only recently begun her second term, Cristina Fernández announced a series of restrictive measures regarding the purchase of foreign currency (stocks, exchange), as a way to counteract the flight of foreign currency and the fall of Central Bank reserves. These generated import problems and provoked deep dissatisfaction in the middle classes, who were accustomed to save in dollars.

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In recent years, after achieving the mining. The periphery became visible in deactivation of the various organisms of the center, and at least for a short while, State control and with a broad parliamentary during 2012, the protests resonated on majority, Kirchnerism took aim at the the national level. However, in addressing Judiciary. The accusations of corruption the question of mega-mining at that time, involving various officials did not prosper the then President made it clear that this (although they did lead to the prosecution was a fundamental and strategic part of of the Vice President, Amado Boudou, and the Government’s plans. Despite this, the to the conviction of the former Secretary of uprising in Famatina had a greater political Transportation), nor did the allegations of and more symbolic effect, much more illicit enrichment of other officials, including so than the discussion over the National the President’s family; the Kirchners’ Glacier Legislation of 2010 (Svampa and personal fortune increased almost 1,000% Viale, 2014), as it demonstrated all too between 2002 and 2015 (Anticorruption clearly the alliance between the National Office, cit. in Jastreblansky and Ruiz, 2015). Government and the large mining corporations. 3.3. The echoes of extractivism Regarding oil and gas, the situation was and the hoarding of land even more problematic. In a context of Large scale open cast mining was a internal and external restrictions, in 2010 the critical issue, and one where the progressive state oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Kirchner discourse foundered, especially if Fiscales (YPF), then in hands of the Spanish we take into account that in Argentina this group Repsol, announced the discovery of non-conventional hydrocarbons in the type of activity has generated numerous Vaca Muerta geological formation, located social confrontations from 2003 onwards. in the Patagonian region. In 2012 the So much so, that in alliance with institutional Government had partially expropriated players, citizen assemblies managed to YPF (51% of the shares), thus returning it sanction laws prohibiting this type of to the State,11 and had begun instituting mining, in seven Argentine provinces.10 For a set of institutional transformations many years Kirchnerism had managed to and policies, amongst whose principal stay on the margins of the anti-extractivism objectives was the proposed exploitation protests, limiting them to the provinces. of non-conventional hydrocarbons as a However, in January 2012, the barrier broke way to boost national production (Svampa thanks to the small town of Famatina, in the and Viale, 2014; Bertinat et al., 2014). province of La Rioja, which had previously Although the re-nationalization was talked expelled other mining companies (among of in glowing terms, in July of 2013 the them, Barrick Gold), a fact that gave Government announced an agreement public visibility to protests against mega- with the American company Chevron

10. This was facilitated by the fact that, thanks to the constitutional reforms of 1994, natural resources belong to the province, not the National State.

11. YPF had been privatized in the nineties, under the Government of Carlos Menem, and at the time was supported by Néstor Kirchner, who was governor of Santa Cruz, an oil province. The reform included the transfer of property from the resources of the national State to the provinces; a measure that was later extended to minerals.

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(which had been convicted of serious also the core of the new socio-territorial environmental crimes and violations movements that are constantly mobilizing of indigenous rights in Ecuador when in the cities, demanding land and housing. it was called Texaco), that granted the Finally, the vertiginous expansion of the company major exemptions and benefits frontiers of capital, above all connected to for the exploitation of unconventional extractivism, exposed the growing process hydrocarbons in the Neuquén Basin. Those of the marginalization of original peoples, agreements were secret, and despite the who were located on the periphery of legal demands and social protests, the the periphery. In 2006, at the request Government refused to publish them. of organizations and in a context of In the context of the re-nationalization increasing conflict, Law 26,160 was passed, of YPF, the consensus that had been prohibiting the eviction of indigenous established around fracking became communities and ordering the completion very difficult to break. While many of a territorial survey. However, this judicial questions were raised by environmental ordinance, observed at different levels organizations, assemblies and indigenous (provincial and national, in accordance with peoples, these remained on the periphery, an international norm), sits in stark contrast ignored in the midst of the el Dorado style to reality. Nothing provides a better idea euphoria promoted by the Government. of this reality than the final report of the However, in a scenario of low international UN rapporteur on indigenous peoples, hydrocarbon prices, another contentious James Anaya, who visited Argentina in aspect was the subsidies the Government 2011 to collect testimonies and listen to had provided to the oil companies in order the complaints of the communities. The to maintain employment in the sector.12 report provides a a very disturbing picture At the same time, a drop in the price of of environmental and cultural impacts, the crude led to the paralysis of numerous fragmentation of social fabric, the lack of exploitation projects in Vaca Muerta. prior consultation (Convention 169 of the Another issue, the growing hoarding of ILO), violent evictions, and situations of land combined with real estate speculation criminalization and repression, amongst in the cities, brought with it an increase in other problems. informal urban settlements (misery villages). Worth noting is that, as the Observatory For example, in the city of of Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples alone, the population of the settlements (Odphi) states, the criminalization of native increased by 50% between 2003 and 2013. peoples does not occur so much in the The inhabitants, who have become the exercise of the legitimate right of protest, objective of the ‘security policies’ of the but when they use legally recognized rights national and municipal Governments, are (claims for lands and territories whose rights

12. The oil subsidies were introduced by the Fernández de Kirchner Government, by means of resolutions14/2015 and 33/2015, “in which an economic compensation was provided to all companies extracting or exporting crude oil in Argentina; such as YPF, Chev- ron, Pan American Energy, in order to guarantee an internal price of about 75 dollars per barrel, when in today’s external market, the price is 34 dollars “. http://stripteasedelpoder.com/2015/12/macri-prorrogaria-los-millonarios-subsidias-a-las-petroleras-award- ed-by-el-kirchnerismo/

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have been protected by the existing national true that this gap between the two agendas and provincial regulations). The data was exacerbated by the existing lack of provided in a report written by Encuentro connection between labor struggles and Memoria, Verdad y Justicia, (2012) on the fight against extractivism; however, the criminalization of protest according in general terms the direct relationship to sector, is alarming. A survey of 2,198 between neo-extractivism, the politics of cases occurring between 2001 and 2012 land concentration and the deterioration reveals that 31.4% of the total corresponds of rights, was one of the blind spots of the to original peoples, that is, they represent Kirchner Government and, above all, of the almost a third of the total, a number equal Human Rights organizations linked to it.13 to that of the labor rights sector. Given the situation, it is no accident that, This worrying panorama leads to a faced with the structural nature of these reflection on the mutation of the forms of problems, Kirchnerism safeguarded its political violence in Argentina, and their progressive discourse (thus generating a favorite targets. In the nineteen nineties type of selective progressivism), by denying it was the unemployed who appeared as the National Government’s responsibility, the ‘surplus population’, men and women and emphasizing, in contrast, the major discarded in the name of neoliberal influence of social policies and the globalization, who rebelled against a revitalization of labor institutions, such as destiny of sacrifice, and who began to collective bargaining, amongst other things. block the country’s highways. Today it is entire communities, including indigenous and campesino, the victims of endemic The direct relationship between racism, that have become an obstacle, a neo-extractivism, the politics stone on the road towards the expansion of ‘progress’. In the circumstances, of land concentration and questions involving long term memory the deterioration of rights, come into play, questions interwoven with was one of the blind spots the original genocide and related to the of the Kirchner Government. place that contemporary Argentina and the prevailing development model reserves for communities and indigenous peoples. 4. The end of era and sunset images In summary, it is easy to see the The decline of Kirchnerism did not come dissociation between Human Rights about simply due to questioning by new agendas linked to State terrorism and the social actors (the soy bean industry and its trials of the military, and the Human Rights allied sectors in the economic and media agenda linked to the impacts of neo- fields) or to the evident fracture of middle extractivism in the different territories. It is classes (intra-class struggle) that was

13. The exception to this divorce between the DD.HH. agendas was the always the unifying role of the Peace and Justice Service, co- ordinated by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, and Nora Cortiñas, that belonged to one of the currents of the Association of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. On the other hand, it should be added that, in recent years, there was a tendency to outsource the repression through the use of football hooligans, unions,‘white guards’ and assassins hired especially by large land- owners and soybean farmers (in the case of provinces such as Chaco, Formosa and Santiago del Estero).

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increasingly critical of Kirchnerism’s style of with the Club of Paris which, between debt political concentration, but above all due to and interest, involved an outlay of USD the deterioration of the economic indices 9,700 million over five years, (penalties and and the lack of tangible recognition of that interest together accounting for more than fact. In 2007, intervention in the National USD 4,735 million). This was an active debt Statistics Agency (INDEC) had left the that dated from the eighties, the nineties country with no reliable figures on inflation and early 2000. However, access to credit or poverty levels. The Government began was closed off as a result of the litigation to suppress inflation data and to ignore with the 2002 default holdouts, leaving the increases in poverty, despite the fact that country in a virtual cessation of payments. independent organizations were pointing In short, the deterioration of out that inflation had started climb from the macroeconomic indicators was 2008 onwards, until reaching 38% around accompanied by measures that accentuated 2014 and 2015 (placing Argentina second financial and fiscal imbalances, at the same only to Venezuela in Latin America); time as employment was becoming more poverty, on the other hand, reached 29% precarious, the rate of inflation was high, towards the end of Cristina Fernández’ there were exchange rate consequences, term (Social Observatory of the Argentine the devaluation of 2013, the crisis unleashed Catholic University). by the debt held by the ‘holdouts’, and the We must remember that in response regressive tax policy, etc. However, on the to the mobilizations during the crisis, political level the Government kept to the Kirchnerism had from the beginning official discourse about Kirchnerism being maintained a public tariff policy with a model of social inclusion, and ‘would not respect to basic services, through the use make’ the ‘adjustment’ that the system of huge subsidies to companies (trains, seemed to be demanding. subways, buses, gas, electricity), which over The end of the regime occurred within time had an impact on the fiscal deficit that the framework of a major concentration of marred the Government’s last four years political power in the hands of the Executive, in office. Likewise, the international crisis, with a President ineligible for reelection, the subsequent drop in commodity prices who, nevertheless sought to control even and the difficulty Argentina experienced in the minor details of the electoral campaign obtaining loans on the international financial of her would be successor (Daniel Scioli, markets after defaulting on its payments in then the governor of the Province of Buenos 2002, complicated the country’s economy Aires): designating candidates everywhere to an even greater degree. One of the and handing the heads of lists to members more evident signs was the decline in the of her loyal group ‘La Cámpora’, to the growth of private sector employment, detriment of long serving peronist leaders. which was replaced by the increase in state As part of the fight, the Kirchnerists employment. sought to weaken any center-left option With the idea of looking for new lines of or ‘alternative’ populist leadership, in an credit, in 2014 the country settled its debt attempt to present itself as the opposite

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of and principal rival to Mauricio Macri, of the middle classes and, finally, the the founder of (Pro), subordination (in various ways) of wide a right wing party born in 2005.14 swaths of the popular sectors. This ‘end of cycle’ scenario contributed The political-electoral alternation has to a move to the right during the electoral involved a shift to a post progressive campaign, something that became clear scenario, led by a right wing free trader, in the November 2015 ballot, where and with a strong presence of members Argentines were offered a choice between of the business elite, that has been Daniel Scioli, a representative of the implementing a policy of adjustment or conservative peronist Right, and Mauricio ‘reality’ (of inflation, of tariffs, of basic Macri, a representative of the pro-business services, the value of the dollar and of Right. The defeat of Peronism on the payment to holdouts, etc.), that favors the national level and in the principal provinces most influential and wealthy sectors of (including the Province of Buenos Aires) society. illuminated both the clumsy mistakes There is no doubt that the previous made by the outgoing Government in its Government’s legacy was one of blind pursuit of keeping power, as well as profound problems, amongst which the the confusion between political alternation deterioration of the macroeconomic and alternative on the part of vast sectors indices, accompanied by measures of Argentine society. that accentuated financial and fiscal imbalances, stands out. However, far from 4.1 Social struggles and the turn the electoral campaign’s promises of ‘zero poverty’, the path chosen by Mauricio to the right The unexpected swing came at the Macri has been to make a traditional hands of the entrepreneur and twice mayor adjustment that has hit the most vulnerable of the City of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, sectors hard, as demonstrated by the who had formed Cambiemos, an alliance methods used to implement the increase of his party (Pro) with the traditional Liberal in the cost of services, characterized Party, Unión Cívica Radical. After its first by bad organization and a limited year in power, the Macri Government is acknowledgement on the part of the displaying differences to the outgoing new Government of the country’s social, administration, but also continuities. With regional and geographical diversity. As regard to the differences, until December a result of these measures, an analysis of 10, 2015, Argentina was governed by a the Government’s first months carried out progressivism that could be considered by the Social Observatory of the Catholic as high intensity populism, characterized University of Argentina (UCA) reported an by the concentration of political power increase of one million and a half in the in the hands of the Executive, by the ranks of the poor as a result of the policies super-protagonism of certain sectors that had been implemented, meaning that

14. It is important to underline that Macri arrived in the mayor’s office of the city of Buenos Aires, in 2007, thanks in part to a division in the ranks of Peronism, which presented two lists of candidates, one of which was supported by the ruling party, which in turn removed its support for the then head of the city Government, the peronist J. Telerman, who headed the second list. In 2011, Macri was re-elected mayor, with 47% of the votes.

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some 13 million people are now classified in the public and private sectors, general as poor (UCA, 2016).15 mobilizations of the different currents of For the moment, the political space trade unionism), in a context (especially available to the ruling party is tight in in the provinces) of successive repressions relation to social alliances, as it is not clear and the imprisonment of activists. Post (this is not a consolidated administration) on progressivism would therefore seem to what sectors, in addition to the dominant facilitate a context of ‘unity in struggle’ that business block, the new Government goes beyond the political wounds opened will base its operational capability, up during the Kirchner period, as two Union nor what strategies and procedures of Centrals have shown (de Los Trabajadores, domination it will implement in a context led by Hugo Yasky, and Autónoma, by of adjustment, both with respect to middle Pablo Micheli), which have jointly organized classes, which today sees its inclusion several protests, designed to reject both by consumption threatened (it was the acts of repression and criminalization guaranteed by the previous Government), (especially the jailing of social leader and to popular classes that appear to be Milagro Sala) and the presidential veto of facing a dramatically expanding horizon of the Emergency Occupational Law, known marginality and exclusion. as anti-layoff law. On August 22 the three As far as the double dynamic of capital existing Union Centrals held a reunification is concerned (not only concerning the congress in order to guarantee a transition, capital-labor contradiction, but the capital- by way of a triumvirate, after the departure nature relationship), it is clear that the of Hugo Moyano. Negotiations opened current Government is making the work– with the Macri Government despite the capital asymmetry worse by stressing the major disquiet that exists in the grassroots, market option and thus harming different have raised doubts about the interests of sectors of middle class and, above all, some union leaders linked to the CGTs popular sector workers. At the same time, in only appealing to the logic of protest, continuities can be seen in the area of the given a possible lack of governability that capital-nature relationship, as the new this could entail within the framework Government is gambling on deepening of a new Government, which as well not the commoditization of nature through the being consolidated, does not have a expansion of extractivism (agribusiness, parliamentary majority. mega-mining, fracking, dams, neoliberal On the other hand, regarding urbanism), and consequently consolidating extractivism, the Macri Government the socio-environmental gap opened up advanced on several fronts, although during the previous cycle. without reprehensible speeches. The The post progressive scenario would mining taxes were eliminated and those on therefore seem to indicate greater soybeans reduced, the Mining Secretariat conflict. In this regard labor conflict has was transferred to the new Ministry of been manifesting itself in all its angles Energy and Mining, in charge of a former and variations (specific protests, strikes CEO of Shell, and though a Ministry

15. The new report, of August 2016, points to the increase in “new poor” as a “worrisome fact that is also a conservative estimate”. http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1927350-para-la-uca-crece-la-cantidad-de-nuevos-pobres

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of the Environment was created, it was socio-environmental demands of the handed to a person who confessed to population. knowing nothing about the subject, but Despite the adverse conditions, on who travels the country defending large the socio-eco-territorial front we should scale mining. The oil company subsidies highlight the build-up of organizational continue and, despite the judicial decision, capacity, a product of resistance during the Government refuses to publish the the Kirchner decade, which has translated agreement between YPF and Chevron, into the consolidation of numerous while promising an energy plan that would collective assemblies and to the visibility boost the diversification of the energy of the territorial claims of native peoples matrix (wind), although without changes to faced with the expansion of the frontiers of the energy system itself. extractivism and land grabbing. Although Finally, the Government often speaks these types of conflicts are usually located of “climate change” and “citizen on the periphery (compared to trade union participation”, although in practice its conflicts, which are more central), their environmental narrative is empty rhetoric, presence on the national agenda, always linked more to a culture of marketing and a transitory and fleeting, tends to be seen few gimmicky slogans, than a real proposal as more relevant than in previous years. for a comprehensive discussion on the socio- These victories, such as the definitive environmental and cultural consequences suspension of the construction of a seed and policies of current development plant by Monsanto in the town of Malvinas, 16 models. An illustrative example is what Córdoba, have as their counterpart the is happening in Jachal, San Juan, where advance of a Seed Law in Congress, where judicial and institutional channels have what is at stake seems to be the question been closed off to protestors: on the one of patents (local corporations against hand, by an order of the Supreme Court Monsanto) rather than the technological of Justice, the case against the Barrick package itself (genetically modified seeds Company over the cyanide spill that took and glyphosate), thus downplaying the place in September 2015 was conveniently serious complaints related to the socio- diverted to the compliant Provincial Court. sanitary impacts of the agribusiness model. On the other, due to pressure from the Finally, in a context of impoverishment mining sector and the Provincial Governor and fear of recession, there is a danger himself, a citizen consultation demanded (or temptation) of falling into the trap by the population was not given the green of one dimensional resistance, even if light. In short, the new Government and its at present there is a greater connection allies are repeating and even exacerbating between the trade union-urban and socio- the legacy bequeathed to them by environmental lines of action, that is, Kirchner’s progressivism, even closing off between centers and peripheries. institutional channels to the most urgent

16. The problem of the matrix must be understood within the framework of the energy system, which is characterized by its multidimen- sionality. Thus, an energy boosting model requires not only diversification of the matrix, but, among other issues, decentralization and regionalization of generation, transport and consumption of energy, as well as increasing community control of energy system (Bertinat, 2016).

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The most notable aspect of the warning about the increasingly asymmetric post progressive scenario is the dispute in neighborhoods, following the growing prominence of socio-territorial expansion of drug trafficking gangs and organizations associated with the criminal networks, which are displacing demands for peace, food, shelter and social organizations through threats and work. The mass mobilization that began violence. The presence of the Catholic on the 7th of August, the feast of San Church (with its Villero Priests encouraged Cayetano, stretched from Liniers to the by Pope Francis) in this unequal struggle Plaza de Mayo, and marked the return for territorial control where what is at of neighborhoods to national politics. stake is the reconfiguration of popular This after a decade of domination by a subjectivities, is therefore no coincidence. Kirchner model that had taken control of In summary, the territorial organizations various territorial organizations thanks the that have re-emerged with their plebeian combination of social projects, effective power on the national political stage clientelism and consumer opportunities. It are not only the fruit of accumulated is likely that what we are seeing is a new experience, the expression of demands working class offensive, emanating from of the State over hunger and the threat organizations with roots, such of unemployment, but also of a losing as the Corriente Clasista y Combativa struggle against drug trafficking, which (CCC), Barrios de Pie (Libres del Sur) and will undoubtedly put down deeper roots the heterogeneous Confederación de in a context of greater impoverishment. Trabajadores de Economía Popular (CTEP), a new organization formed in 2015, that represents a regrouping of territorial The most notable aspect social movements, and a major presence of the post progressive scenario, of the Evita Movement (which recently abandoned Kirchnerism), of recovered is the growing prominence companies, campesinos, cartoneros and of socio-territorial organizations other urban territorial organizations. associated with the demands However, this (new) offensive on the for peace, food, shelter part of the neighborhoods exposes other problems, blind spots that were not dealt and work. with during the Kirchnerist era, and which evidence the current fragility of the popular To this social panorama we can add world. The scenario brings the scope of other elements, as, contrary to what drug trafficking in the neighborhoods into might have been expected, there was focus, as well as its capacity to spread no depolarization of the political field. though the envelopment of the youngest, Actually, the Cambiemos Government who end up being used as cannon fodder.17 has exacerbated the gap through the In practice, different social organizations implementation of a policy of revenge, (above all the non-Kirchnerists) have been with dismissals that reached relevant

17. See the interesting reflections of Rita Segato regarding statehood, linked not only to violence against women, but also to the terri- tory-drug relationship (2014).

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areas of the State and involved full time protest, education, and the relationship personnel, and the dismantling of various between the private and public spheres, social and cultural inclusion programs. On amongst other things. It is a worldview the other hand, despite the proven cases that endorses the central nucleus of of corruption that involve important ex neoliberalism, but that also carries with it a Government employees, Kirchnerism’s social and territorial modernization, whose reaction has hardly been one of self- aspirations could lead to it becoming criticism, and in that sense they too are consolidated in the field of Conservative widening the gap. Militant kirchnerite populism. urban middle class groups identified On the other hand, the counter-power with the previous progressive model of a mobilized society in its different fronts continue with their attempts to dominate and currents (socio-territorial, labor, socio- certain aspects of the protests by means environmental) and with a strong discourse of ‘ruidazos’ (noisy protests) against tax on rights, has had a definite impact above hikes, and mobilizations in favor of the and beyond the different narratives of former president. This despite the fact change. Also, as I pointed out at the that their connection to the labor union beginning of this article, the kirchnerist world and to the deteriorated universe of cycle, characterized by a material the popular sectors is almost nil. improvement for the middle and popular classes between 2006 and 2011, would 4.2 Towards a new exclusive society? have signified a reversal of the trends One year after the Cambiemos regime typical of the nineteen nineties. However, was installed, while it is true that this is beginning in 2011 the sustained increase not a consolidated Government, as it has of inflation, the stagnation in the creation neither a parliamentary majority nor has of private employment and the economic it been able to build (until now) a scheme policies introduced, facilitated economic of reincorporation attractive to the middle crisis and as a result brought with them, classes (that have had to adjust their especially in relation to the popular sectors, consumption expectations), or an effective a dismantling of the improvements that one in relation to the popular sectors (in a had been made. context of increasing poverty), the results In brief, the swing to the right managed, can only be classified as chilling. in a very short time, to rekindle one of At the same time, while the discontinuities Argentine society’s most painful social on the part of new Government do not traumas of the nineties: the specter of imply a linear return to neoliberalism, the social regression (unemployment, de- accelerated rise in poverty, the decided collectivization, downward social mobility) openness to foreign investment and the in both popular and certain middle class production of a more unequal situation sectors. The new political cycle also reveals have reactivated the phantom of a a visibly damaged society, one hardly nineteen nineties style social polarization. likely to be repaired within the framework In addition, the end of one cycle and the of the proposed political alternation. This beginning of another can be clearly felt in is not only because the perverse game the new worldview visible in addressing that for years was played both by the crucial issues such as security, markets, the ruling party and the opposition brought role of corporations, indebtedness, social out the worst sentiments of society and

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the country’s political class, but also from the genocide trials, to universal because Kirchnerism’s legacy is a political child allowance, the nationalization and cultural wound that has benefitted of the private administrators of public the fashionable right to the detriment of pensions, and even laws in favor of sexual left and center-left parties, that today diversity. This represents an important have collapsed or are divided, and that although admittedly partial agenda, as will sooner or later have to take on the it also obscured, in an interested and challenge of reinventing themselves. systematic way, other rights agendas linked to the struggles of the indigenous peoples, to the critique of extractivism and The swing to the right managed, environmental rights, labor precariousness, in a very short time, to rekindle and demands for land and housing. Far from being marginal problems, these one of Argentine society’s issues were (and still are) part of the hard most painful social traumas core of development models, and all this of the nineties: the specter at a time when political power was being of social regression. concentrated in the hands of the former President and the deterioration in the social and economic indicators was being The end of the previous cycle and the concealed, as a result intensifying the right entering of a new era does not signify, wing slant of the electoral offering. however, as a certain naive and misty-eyed Finally, we should be conscious of the view of the Kirchner docennium seeks to fact that the return of social polarization imply, the abandonment of an ‘egalitarian and downward social mobility, in a context country’ (the ‘Happy Peronist World’, ‘the that of itself is so threatening and complex decade won’), as the reduction of poverty for a popular world where drug trafficking, was not accompanied by a decrease in violence and exclusion are empowered, inequality. From my perspective, during implies the possibility of entering (no longer the kirchnerist cycle Argentina was far returning to) an inhospitable situation from being an egalitarian country: poverty where the framework of a new exclusionary was admittedly reduced and there was an society could easily be created. However, inclusion through consumption, at least although this post-progressive context until 2011, but the inequalities remained; presents a complicated outlook, 2016 economic concentration was accentuated is very different from 1990: as in other and there was no progressive tax reform. countries in the region, in Argentina Therefore, it is simply not the case that there clearly exist different experiences of as of December 2015 Argentines left the protest, each with its political grammars ‘Happy Peronist World ‘ to begin traveling and discourse of rights, that continue to once again through ‘the Long Neoliberal be part of the tradition of the country’s Night’. subaltern classes. Given the overwhelming allegations of corruption, neither is it advisable to fall into simplifications that reduce Kirchnerism to a pure matrix of corruption; it instituted a rights agenda which ranged

24 Argentina: conflicts and socio-political reconfigurations during the Kirchner period Maristella Svampa

BIBLIOGRAPHY Katz, Claudio. ‘The economy from the left’, Anred, 2013, Aranda, Darío. available at http://www.anred.org/spip. ‘The Extractive Decade, Special Report’, php?article7099 05/25/2013, http://www.comambiental. com.ar/2013/05/la-decada-extractiva/ Kessler, Gabriel (comp.). Argentinian society today. Radiography of Benza, Graciela. a new structure. Siglo XXI-OSDE, Buenos ‘Class structure during the decade Aires, 2016. 2003-2013 ‘, in Gabriel Kessler (comp.). Argentinian society today, the X-ray of a Sagato, Rita. new structure. (comp.), Siglo XXI-OSDE, The new forms of violence and women’s Buenos Aires, 2016. bodies. Ediciones Tinta Limón, Buenos Aires, 2014. Svampa, Maristella, and Bertinat, Pablo. Enrique Viale. Maldesarrollo. ‘Another energy is possible’, 2013, available at http://www.enredando.org. Svampa, Maristella. ar/2013/07/29/no-podemos-discutir- The Argentina of extractivism and politicas-energeticas-sin-discutir-el- dispossession. Ediciones Katz, Buenos modelo-de-desarrollo/ Aires, 2014.

Bertinat, Pablo, Eduardo d’Elia, Roberto Svampa, Maristella, and Enrique Viale. Ochandio. Maldesarrollo. Observatorio Petrolero Sur, Maristella The Argentina of extractivism and Svampa and Enrique Viale. 20 myths and dispossession. Ediciones Katz, Buenos realities of fracking. Editorial El Colectivo, Aires, 2014. Buenos Aires, 2014. Svampa, Maristella. Binstock, Georgina, and Marcela Cerrutti. The exclusionary society. Argentina under Population and social structure’, in Gabriel the sign of neoliberalism, Buenos Aires, Kessler (comp.), Argentinian society today. Taurus, 2005 Radiography of a new structure (comp.), Siglo XXI-OSDE, Buenos Aires, 2016. Svampa, Maristella, Latin American Debates. Indianism, Memory, Truth and Justice Meeting. Development, Dependence and Populism. Report on the Criminalization of Protest, Buenos Aires, Edhasa, 2016 2012, available at https://encuentromvyj. org/criminalization-de-la-protesta/ Catholic University of Argentina (UCA). Poverty and income inequality in Argentina Gras, Carla and Hernández, Valeria (coords.). 2010-2015, 2016, available at urbana Rural Argentina from family farming to http://www.uca.edu.ar/uca/common/ agribusiness. Biblos, Buenos Aires, 2009. grupo68/files/2016-Obs-Report-n1- Poverty-Inequality-Income-Argentina- Agriculture as a business. Production, Urbana.pdf society and territories in globalization. Biblos, Buenos Aires,2013

25 Analysis of Bolivia

Luis Tapia*

September 2016 There are economic processes that have consequences on several levels, 1. Social and political composition in particular the development of the It could be said that the two processes campesinos. In principle, this is the result that have had the greatest impact on of the revolution of 1952, which gave birth the social composition of Bolivia are the to a land reform that distributed land in 1952 Revolution, and the era of neoliberal small lots, above all in the Altiplano and in reforms. In between we have the expansion the Andean valleys, without extending to and secondary diversification processes the entire country. During an initial period, of the patterns that structured these two the segment of the campesinos that was political-economic processes in terms organized in unions formed an alliance, in of the direction of economic and social condition of subordination, with the military development. The social composition of faction that sustained the dictatorships of the country today is therefore a result, on the sixties and seventies, first with General the one hand of social structures generated Barrientos and then with General Banzer. in 1952 as well as the neoliberal reforms In a second phase, in the late seventies of the eighties and nineties, and on the these campesinos became independent other, of some features dating from the and reorganized as a trade union central aristocratic period of Bolivian history that still endure. There are also processes that with ideological and political autonomy. have taken several decades to mature, The change was organized and directed that is, they were produced by the 1952 by the political-cultural movement known Revolution and only in the last few years as Katarismo, which believed that it was have been making themselves felt to a necessary to have a dual perspective or greater degree, especially in terms of their to consider two dimensions: the condition translation into political power. I will now of campesino or agricultural workers, and sketch out a synthesis of some aspects of the cultural condition, or the condition the current social composition of Bolivia in of being a nation, which implied identity, relation to these historical processes. culture and history and, later, territory.

* Luis Tapia Mealla. Philosopher and political scientist. Professor and researcher in the postgraduate course in Development Scienc- es of the University Mayor of San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia. Coordinator of the Masters Degree course in Political Theory.

26 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

Agrarian unionism expanded from main change that has occurred in recent the late seventies through the eighties years in terms of the political composition and nineties, a process also involving the of Bolivian civil society and, therefore, of expansion of civil society, to the point the rural areas, is that campesino unionism where the Campesino Union had become underwent a change of leadership, the principal civil society organization, replacing the Katarist leadership that under that is, the largest and with major political Felipe Quispe had as one of its objectives influence. For a time, the Union was the reconstitution of community structures conformed of campesinos, a number of within the country. That leadership leftists, as well as nationalists, socialists and was replaced by factions that are the Katarists, who resisted neoliberal reforms, expression of the campesino vision in a in particular the proposal for a generalized stricter sense, that is, of small land owners land market scheme. In the run up to up who have become prosperous after more to the time of the Constituent Assembly than 50 years of agrarian reform, who have they made alliances with indigenous diversified their economy by venturing unification groups, both in the highlands into interprovincial and interdepartmental and in Quechua and Aymara territory. transportation, and have also invested Campesino unionism made alliances with their capital in commerce and increased indigenous organizations whose project the size of their land holdings. was the reconstitution and recognition of their communal territories. Here I will present a general hypothesis, There was a change in which is that in recent years the principal the correlation of political change is not to be found in Bolivia’s forces, which did not, however, social composition, but rather in its necessarily translate political composition, a change which into changes in came about as a result of more or less long term accumulation processes, above socio-economic structures. all in the case of the campesinos. There was a change in the correlation of political The leadership of the Union is forces, which did not, however, necessarily consequently in the hands of campesino translate into changes in socio-economic sectors whose project is not the structures. reconstitution of the national territory One of the results of the 1952 Revolution based on the collective ownership of land, and the consequent agrarian reform, is but rather on capitalist development, and that small land owners did not receive land who want to expand the land dedicated as collective property, but rather this was to agriculture but in private hands. Given shared out as a way to generate a modern that at the time of the Constitutional agrarian economy. As a consequence, Assembly the Government made a pact community members who had been in with the old landowning oligarchies that conditions of servitude were transformed there would be no new agrarian reform, into small campesino land owners. The the only land available was state and

27 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

community territory, above all in the and expansion of investment in the country, lowlands. As a consequence, in recent in particular a feverish expansion of the years the perspective of campesino trade agricultural frontier at a rate of one million unionism or the campesino leadership has hectares per year. been to expand into community territories, The ruling party also has alliances with thus coinciding with the expansion of corporate cores of civil society: with the the agricultural frontier the Government miners’ cooperative and with several is promoting to favor campesino coca social organizations. For a time, although growers and agribusinesses, as well as not initially, the Government struck up an the exploitation of mines and oil and gas alliance with the Central Obrera Boliviana exploitation with transnational capital. (Bolivian Workers Union) (COB), an alliance that has been questioned in recent months The change of the scenario caused the due to the dismissal of factory workers. breakup of the alliance between indigenous The COB mobilized against Government and campesino organizations, in the policies, which it has characterized as a new process radically changing the country’s neoliberal phase. political composition. Bolivia has gone from The Government has also decided that a moment in which the main conflict took the internal enemy is now indigenous place between, on the one hand, a nucleus groups, and the indigenous unification of regional landed oligarchies, especially organizations. In the process of separation from the South and East of the country, between the Campesino Union and that were allied with business mining and indigenous unification groups, there has agro-industrial groups and linked to parties been a shift in alliances. In the marches with a liberal political program, and on the indigenous organizations have staged the other, a block that for a time brought in defense of their territories, they have together campesino unionism, indigenous made alliances with the No Fear Movement organizations and some popular movements (Sin Miedo) which governs La Paz; these in favor of nationalization, to a time when marches have been actively supported this type of political antagonism has given by many small environmental and young way to another. The major conflict is anarchist organizations from the urban centers, in particular Cochabamba. The presently between, on the one hand, a block alliance between campesino unionism and consisting of an alliance between several indigenous organizations broke down, classist nodes that come from the Trade and, for a time, an alliance was formed Union Central, and on the other, an alliance between the urban democratic left and between the ruling party, MAS (Movimiento the indigenous unification organizations. al Socialismo) the and Campesino Unión, At the same time, the MAS has been which in the past has been used by the incorporating and giving greater weight to party to threaten and repress other civil an increasing number of business sectors, society organizations. In parallel, in the past in particular agro-industry, with whom it few years the ruling party has maintained has established alliances, agreements and alliances with the country’s principal Government policies. corporate business elites, especially those In this regard, I think that the main from the East. The MAS has offered them all political divide is the one that exists the legal reforms needed for the promotion between the inter-corporate block

28 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

articulated by the MAS and the indigenous in community territories, but into the organizations and their allies, and not the enrichment of campesino leaders. one that appears on the institutional plane, If we analyze the economic implications i.e. the party system, between ruling of long-standing processes, a part of the and opposition parties. This occupies a current middle class can be seen to be of secondary plane, although over time it has campesino origin, some of these being acquired greater importance, especially as entrepreneurs. In that sense, many are no a result of the electoral races for governors longer middle class but now form part of an and mayors. Confronted by a diversity of agricultural and commercial bourgeoisie. political forces, most of which had local On the other hand, in the Andean area and regional roots, the MAS lost in all the above all, the middle class is composed of main cities and in most of the departments. a large population of Aymara origin that has migrated to the cities. Many have studied in public universities and have become These resources have not professionals, others have become small necessarily translated into entrepreneurs with commercial capital. greater agricultural development It is therefore possible to postulate the in traditional campesino existence of a multi-ethnic middle class. This change in the socioeconomic territories, and even less composition of the country is not however, so in community territories, the result of MAS policies, but of an historical but into the enrichment accumulation derived from the modernizing of campesino leaders. reforms of 1952. What has happened in recent years is that some leading groups, especially those from organizations linked In the last 10 years, campesino unionism to campesino unionism, now have greater and in particular the coca growers sector, political power, while those without has acquired more power than ever, and economic power due to their productive now has a presence in the Executive, the activity, have been incorporated into the Legislature and the Judiciary. The conclusion state bureaucracy and, as a result, to the is that after more than half century of middle class. Many have become richer, land reform the campesino sectors that but I do not believe it can be said that have acquired economic power and have this Government has generated a wave diversified into commercial and services of middle class expansion; this has rather capital, now also have state political power been the result of half century of historical accumulation of Revolution of 1952. To and access to state resources. However, this I would add a note. There is another given the dominant dynamic of a clientelist factor operating in the expansion of the system used by the ruling party to obtain middle classes, and this is the rising price a political monopoly, these resources have of raw materials on the world market, as not necessarily translated into greater also took place in the seventies during agricultural development in traditional the Banzer dictatorship, when prices were campesino territories, and even less so high, particularly for gas. This implied

29 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

an expansion of the middle class and secondarily, agro-industry exports. There an increase in the purchasing power of has been no change in the productive some of the country’s urban middle class. structure. In any case, there has been a Something similar has happened in the reduction in the manufacturing sector, last decade as a result of the cycle of high and many ex-employees went to work prices of raw materials, in particular oil and in the Maquila for large transnational gas. Some agricultural products have also companies. These reforms accentuate benefitted from the boom and the high the weight that services and commerce price of Quinoa, for example, has made have within the Bolivian economy. In this some small and medium-sized farmers sense, one can see that a large part of owners rich. But now a regressive cycle is what might be called the middle class, under way. is composed of State employees both at Another element to be considered is the national and subnational levels, and the partial renationalization process, or of people who work in services in cities the recovery or extension of control over and in interdepartmental transportation. the surplus income resulting from oil and The increase in income from oil and gas gas sales during the last few years. It was has partially fueled the growth of some claimed that there had been a process of sectors linked, above all, to commerce redistribution of the surplus recovered, and and services. that this had partly fueled an expansion of In socioeconomic terms, it could be what we might call the middle classes in said that the Bolivian middle class is fairly the country through state spending, that homogeneous, as it derives from the salaries had increased in some sectors, mentioned sectors; on the other hand, it and that state employment and investment is also quite heterogeneous, as has been had expanded on a massive scale. It mentioned previously, especially in its should be noted, however, that in the political dimension. On the one hand, what main this expansion of public spending is called the middle class is in principle has not involved a substantial expansion of a socioeconomic criterion. It is group productive capacity, but in large measure comprised of people of different ethnic- corresponds to a redistribution through cultural origins, which has increased not income, which is in turn linked to the building exclusive as a result of this Government’s of client networks as a way of organizing a policies, but of long-standing previous political base for the ruling party. reforms, and as a result of family strategies. With the important changes that arrived There are families of Aymara and Quechua as a result of the neoliberal reforms - origin that are middle class as a result of the dismantling of State capitalism, the some degree of insertion and prosperity closing of mines and state mining and in the commercial and services sectors. manufacturing companies, as well as the Many people of Aymara and Quechua privatization of the field of operation origin have been professionalized, initially of institutions that worked in the area in public universities and then also in of social rights - a large number of the private institutions. workers that lost their jobs moved into the Politically, the middle class is informal economy. In part, the Bolivian heterogeneous. Towards the beginning of economy continues to be supported by the present century, in the period of the the exploitation of hydrocarbons and, great anti-privatization and indigenous

30 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

protests, a nucleus of the middle class the campesinos themselves are affected, reacted by expressing a certain degree such as support for the agroindustry of racism, dismissing the mobilizations as agenda agreed with the Government in irrational as they affected the preexisting 2015. This process involved, an initial phase power relationship. Around 2005 the middle of inclusion in the State, in the various class was divided. One side supported the branches of power, thus allowing resources change of Government and, in particular, to be channeled. However, the process the idea of the nationalization of oil and gas, was apparently limited to the leadership while another element resisted the change and has not translated into productive in the co-relation of forces. In the period structural investment in the various sectors. up to the approval of the new Constitution The organizations, and as a consequence the electoral power of the MAS increased the whole of civil society, has consequently in the cities. From that point on its support been increasingly dominated by the began to decline systematically, to such Executive, and has passed through a phase an extent that it has now lost control of of greater impoverishment of political all the department capitals, in some cases life, especially as compared to previous by a wide margin. It now probably has periods. From being an area of political the support of a third of the population. discussion and organization around the In most of the middle class there is an air principal problems (not only of the sector, of anti-MAS sentiment, although this does but of the country as a whole, as well as not necessarily imply a conservative, anti- the development of a political project), the campesino or anti-indigenous position, as organizations have entered a stage where it basically corresponds to a rejection of internal political life is non-existent to the the authoritarian form of exercising state extent that they have become little more power and Government’s operational style. than a way to channel decisions originating in the Executive: a poor substitute for 2. Situation of organizations internal political life. social and movements Campesino unionism has, in fact, An important number of civil society operated as a para-state device that has organizations made up of campesino and even been mobilized to repress marches factory workers and a diversity of guilds linked of indigenous people in defense of their to artisanal manufacturing, particularly to territory. The female arm of campesino commerce, find themselves in a situation of unionism, the Bartolinas, has even corporate negotiation with the Government. defended members of the MAS charged The result is political subordination. This is with the rape of campesino women. In the case of Campesino Union which has this sense, the Union has ceased to be an totally succumbed to the Government; for organization dedicated to the defense of a period the Bolivian Workers’ Union (COB) workers, and has become an organization was in the same position. that defends the arbitrariness of the The MAS negotiated, in particular with the Campesino Union, the inclusion of leaders of the Executive branch. organizational representatives in all the The situation of the indigenous State agencies and on all levels in exchange unification groups that made political and for a support that has become virtually social change possible in the country, is unconditional, even when the interests of different. Both the National Council of

31 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu (Conamaq) found much support in the cities, as this and the Confederation of Indigenous was a clearly indigenous project. As a result Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB), established of the march, the Government has since electoral alliances with the MAS in quite instituted a number of practices designed asymmetric negotiating conditions in the to promote internal divisions within the run up to the Constituent Assembly, with indigenous movement, in the case of some sectors even entering Parliament. Conamaq and Cidob creating parallel Nonetheless, they have been subject to organizations to approve policies and discrimination, especially the lowland projects that would have a particular effect peoples, but despite this, the alliances on indigenous territories: the construction were maintained given that the MAS of roads, dams and mining concessions. functioned as ally against the local and What this has involved is a decrease in the regional oligarchies. It should be pointed political life of worker organizations, at the out that, in parallel, the principal form of same as subordination to the State and the unification in the country was the Unity development of a client network became Pact, which brought together campesino more generalized. The persecution of unionism and the big indigenous independent organizations, particularly assemblies and confederations; this is indigenous groups, has also become more where the idea of the Plurinational State widespread. This consequence is that in was envisaged and promoted. However, these organizations the central concern the pact came to an end over the defense is resistance and survival in the face of of the inter-ethnic territory of the Isiboro repressive Government policies, and not Sécure National Park (Tipnis), where a the articulation of, or progress towards previously existing MAS extractivist project a new phase of proposals and political became evident. The rupture provoked a projects, which, for the time being, have realignment of social organizations, but vanished in the country. not only was the Pact broken, remarkably, Campesino Unionism factions mobilized to repress the indigenous march, thus Campesino unionism has moving from a phase of inter-union and operated as a para-state device indigenous organization unification to a that has even been mobilized phase of separation, confrontation and antagonism that exists to this day. to repress indigenous marches Something significant occurred during in defense of their territory. the march in defense of the Tipnis. In the cities it passed through, the march gathered support, and in the case of the city of La In Bolivia conditions were ripe for Paz that support was massive, a fact that the MAS to operate as a workers’ party; facilitated the spread of the Plurinational however, the tendency has been to move State concept in urban centers. It should in the opposite direction. Over time, be remembered that the Plurinational almost all MAS electoral candidates, above State was not an idea that had previously all in the East, have been selected from

32 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

members of landowner and commercial context of the new international division capital factions, many of Aymara origin. As of labor, created a new class of worker, a consequence, it is difficult to affirm that one that is perhaps larger or equal in size the MAS is a workers’ party, it is in fact a compared to the previous class, but largely party of entrepreneurs, but one that has a de-unionized and without social rights: in heterogeneous composition. It is a party of other words, whose condition is one of peasant origin, in which commercial and second class citizenship. services sectors have an increasing amount This has not been modified in terms of of influence, and where a set of economic general conditions. In the country there is a policies has been implemented that favor small core of formal work that has benefited the traditional business core that had lost from some tardily issued Government national power but maintains it regionally, decrees, i.e. after several years, in order both in the East and In the South. A to blunt some of the sharp edges of the solid connection also exists between a neoliberal model without replacing it. number of Aymara and Quechua business The changes have mostly involved the hubs, whose project is one of capitalist regulation of the minimum wage, which development, and the MAS, which also has has almost doubled over the years. On the a totally capitalist project. The MAS has other hand recent data shows that there also established alliances with fractions of has been a decrease in the private sector the old dominant economic block, which manufacturing economy. The figures is something new. The change in the indicate that between 4,000 and 6,000 correlation of forces in the country caused companies per year have closed in the last both the old dominant block to lose control few years, and that by the middle of 2016, of the State on a national scale, as well as four thousand had been closed. This does the disappearance of the neoliberal parties. not simply signify an increasing informality Today political agreements exist of work and production, but also a general between the ruling party and agro- decline in productive activity. To this is can industry business, landowner and miners’ be added a decrease in the capacity to organizations, and their economic sustain the country’s food supply. Bolivia’s interests are being promoted by a party of food is increasingly dependent on products campesino origin. This convergence is the from neighboring countries of the region: novelty, and is the result of the changes in Chile, Peru and Brazil, almost 65% being the correlation of forces and the changes imported. The scenario is aggravated by in the governing elite. Government statements in favor of agro- As regards the working class, this sector industry, for example regarding plans was hit hard by the neoliberal reforms to expand the production of genetically which brought with them a decrease in modified organisms beyond soy beans, formal work, above all in manufacturing which is where they are presently used. centers and state companies. In part this An expansion of the agricultural frontier is was compensated for by the growth of also planned with the goal of producing informal production. This was particularly soybeans and genetically modified true of work in Maquilas, which, in the products destined for external markets.

33 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

Also planned are measures to open borders life are a party of campesino origin, to trade, a situation that will aggravate and the Campesino Union is the largest the condition of the country’s campesino organization in the country. Its leaders are at agricultural producers. the head of the country’s Executive branch, In recent months we have witnessed even though they do not have campesino a process of withdrawal from, and even development as their main project. There demonstrations against the Government is however another organization that wields on the part of the Central Workers Union, a great deal of power, the Agribusiness bringing with it the probability of a rupture Association in the East of the country, whose in the pact that had been in effect over base is in the rural areas. In recent times the the last few years, one which involved Association has forged an alliance with the the subordination and loss of political Government, which in turn has assumed autonomy of the workers with respect to the the industry’s economic program. State and the Government. There are signs of an internal recomposition within the core 3. Political parties of the Union, which could develop into a The first great transformation of the recovery of its political autonomy, at least in party system took place in the nineteen the sense of overcoming subordination to eighties and was installed in the the Government, although at this point the nineties, when the majority of the party capacity does not exist for links between organizations basically became electoral civil society and the political project, that machines. As a consequence, Parliament is to say, political autonomy in the style of lost representativeness, a circumstance the nineteen seventies and eighties. that provoked a crisis of legitimacy. In Bolivia has become a predominantly this period a relationship between parties urban country, as for several years now and civil society was established that has approximately 75% of its population lives since been accentuated without changing in cities. There are no reliable figures its principal orientation. Most parties however. The last census was criticized by abandoned civil society as a promoter of most of the people knowledgeable on the organization and internal political life, of subject, as, it is claimed, the figures have discussion and articulation of alternatives, been manipulated with the objective of and became electoral machines that removing congressional representatives consequently needed to negotiate and reducing budgets in regions where the representativeness with the main civil MAS suffered electoral losses. The census society organizations of the cities and rural is not, therefore, a reliable instrument. areas, or with a great many of them. They In any event, the longer term trend is negotiated with leaders of neighborhood the conversion of the country into a councils, unions and guilds the inclusion largely urban territory. However, there are of their members as candidates for paradoxes and displacements. Although councilors, deputies and other State the majority of the Bolivian population lives entities in exchange for political support. in cities, the organizations that have the An extensive network of clients and greatest influence over national political perks had been constructed from the

34 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

nineties on, which the MAS extended, but South. These are parties formed around in a context of a change in the correlation corporate business nuclei, which attract of forces. The workers and the civil society people who have beliefs contrary to those organizations, for their part, had not been the MAS says it holds. These parties bring able to get much benefit from negotiating together liberal individuals and collectives with liberal parties traversed by class that believe in the rule of law, with division and ethnic divisions. The MAS victory of powers and a representative democracy changed the negotiating conditions for the regime. Ideology notwithstanding, it representatives of these organizations, who could be said that almost the entire could now become heads of ministries, party spectrum is comprised of electoral senators, deputies and assume positions machines mounted on corporate hubs in the different levels of the Judiciary. of civil society, in the one case of trade In addition, conditions were created so unions and social organizations, and in the that other organizations could acquire more other corporate nuclei linked to the socio- political power in terms of penetration of economic interests of business that also the State, in particular on the part of their participate in the MAS electoral machine. leaders. In that sense, the MAS became an electoral machine articulated around bilateral corporate negotiations with a The absence of an organization broad spectrum of civil society. It was the or party by which to organize civil society organizations that organized political life, political and articulated the basic corporate representativeness of the sector, which discussion and political then negotiated with the political parties projects, has resulted in the for a long period, mainly with the MAS. This was accompanied by a compressing of proliferation of citizen groups. the political parties’ horizons, in particular of the MAS, which negotiated bilateral The scenario’s predominant feature is agreements or inclusion quotas, but of a this link between the party as an electoral political project there was little or nothing. machine and the organizational nuclei For a while the project was embodied in of civil society. In the past few years, the Unity Pact, but this no longer exists. several initiatives have emerged from As far as the right of the party system citizen collectivities that have criticized spectrum is concerned, the dominant and protested against the Government’s feature is also that of electoral machines, authoritarianism and its socio-economic combined with elements of the political plans, such as investment in nuclear energy, defense of socio-economic and ideological dams, roads in indigenous territories, and interests. A number of members of fiscal policy. collapsed right-wing parties were recycled Although the country is predominantly by the MAS. Some are linked to the urban, there is a lot of fragmentation, and new parties of the country’s right wing political organization, in particular that of opposition, especially in the East and the the political parties, has been debilitated.

35 Analysis of Bolivia Luis Tapia

The absence of an organization or party by which to organize political life, political discussion and political projects, has resulted in the proliferation of citizen groups, some of which are looking to converge and form electoral alternatives in the next elections, particularly in the municipal arena.

36 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years

Donka Atanassova I.*

September 2016 The social configuration of Colombia has the characteristic of being both diverse 1. Some suggestions regarding and static. In order to understand the Colombian reality aspect of diversity, there are a number of key related factors. I will mention some of The end of one cycle implies the start of them in the following pages. a new one; in history there are no gaps. Regional configuration. Colombia has The interesting thing about this particular 32 departments, but beyond the political- moment in Colombia is that two elements administrative divisions, their life is above all have managed to prise an opening (still regional, regions being understood as fields small, but that does constitute a gap or a that bring together a set of relationships half-open window), and provoke a change with and between the dimensions of in the dominant attitudes of the country: power, territory, production and culture in that peace is better than war, and that an historically defined and particular way. new ways and contents are necessary The ‘development’ of the country has been in politics and government. There is an concentrated in areas located in the Andes expectation of change, but this time the mountain range, which crosses the country response to that expectation it is not from South to North, as well as around the necessarily personified (in the public three main cities of the Atlantic Coast. The mind), only or preferentially by the left or other areas of the country (Costa Pacific, by alternative movements per se. Who or Amazon, Piedmont Piedmont, Orinoquía, what holds the key to the response to that Magdalena Medio-Catatumbo, Guajira expectation is a question that has been and San Andrés and Providencia-islands) generating major debate. have been confined the margins: they have

* Donka Atanassova I. Sociologist at the National University with Master’s degree in Contemporary Political, Economic and Interna- tional Studies. She is currently a university professor and researcher, has lived in Colombia for 24 years and has spent two decades working with and from social processes, and on the construction of political union based on political transformation projects, and in the ‘Fuerza Común’ project.

37 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

never been included in the official coverage and is constantly growing. Although the of services, research or surveys. In the 2011 UNDP Human Development Report official mind they have remained invisible. proposes a more open vision, based on The center has the political and economic a new index of rurality that applies more power; the few industrial developments are to the rural character of many of the located there, as are the service economy, municipalities that the traditional index the large cities and education: everything. measured as urban, just 31.6 % of the While poverty rates in Bogotá are around population is defined as a rural inhabitant. 10%, in departments such as Chocó, A proportional trend, also in terms of Caquetá and the north of Santander they inequality, is that in most departments are in the region of 40% and 50%. the Basic Unsatisfied Needs Index (NBI) In the last 15 years, however, the in rural areas is double (or more) that extractivist boom has generated renewed of the principal cities. In the case of the interest in the peripheral areas: oil, gas, Multidimensional Poverty Index, the figure minerals, water, oxygen and illegal crops. recorded for the rural population centers Some areas were already producing these and scattered rural areas, is three times raw materials, but in many cases this that of the urban centers. took place within the logic of informal For this reason permanent waves of economies and war. In the last few decades, people have left the countryside for the the entry of new multinational actors and city: 6 million according to official data and the ‘approval’ of already existing illegal 8.5 million according to data from non- powers has involved major disputes over governmental organizations, is the number economies that many are attempting to of people displaced to the cities by the last control. That interest has not, however, cycle of armed conflict. These are people been accompanied by a general strategy who were stripped of their land, property for the improvement of living conditions, and history. This cycle, and in particular a fact that only creates more profound the paramilitary offensive of the eighties, imbalances and inequalities. nineties and 2000’s, installed a new Ultimately, these economies boost the involuntary territorial order, again linked traditional political elites in the regions, to the regional powers and economies and also facilitate the emergence of new already mentioned. sectors of power and economic capability Cities are also areas and territories that were previously of little relevance, that of segregation: populational, cultural, are often volatile and politically uncertain, political and economic. For example, and whose only certainty is ambition. That the department capitals with the lowest these powers are different and, in addition, rate of informality is 45% in cities such as are emerging in regions that are seeking Bogotá, Medellín and Manizales, while the justice and profound change, is one of the figure is 70% in cities such as Cúcuta; 38% greatest political challenges. of work (national average) is still agreed Another aspect that must be understood only verbally, without any type of contract with regard to the regions is that more than or guarantees. While cities provide 75% of the population currently lives in alternatives for many people, and that cities and the rest in the rural areas. This is a alternative does involve leaving the grim trend that has been consolidated in several situation behind, this does not necessarily waves since the mid twentieth century imply improved conditions of life. It is

38 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

consequently difficult to propose that the the basis of the ‘social mix’, meaning that cities themselves help to consolidate a very different people coexist in all types stable middle class. There has, on the other of scenarios. With regard to indigenous hand, been a higher level of social mobility peoples, the last National Census (2005) sparked by the expansion of the offer of states that, “in Colombia there are 1,392,623 private higher education of different levels indigenous people, corresponding to 3.43% and qualities, linked to medium and long of the country’s population; Afro-Colombians term bank loans. are 4,311,757 people, or 10.62% of the The population mix: neighborhoods total, while the Roma or Gypsies number and borders. The demographic history 4,858 people, representing 0.01 % of the of Colombia is the history of the flow of total population“ (tables 1 and 2). This displaced people, some for economic means that 14.06% of Colombians consider reasons– searching and opening up new themselves as belonging to one of the opportunities– millions of others due to ethnic groups, while the remaining 85.94% war and the violent fight over land. This do not considered themselves as belonging permanent population flow has formed to any of the previously mentioned groups.

Table 1. Indigenous Population by Department

San Andrés 0,1 Bolívar 0,1 Santander 0,1 Bogotá D.C. 0,2 Cundinamarca 0,3 Quindio 0,4 Boyacá 0,5 Antioquia 0,5 Valle del Cauca 0,6 Norte de Santander 0,6 Magdalena 0,8 Huilla 1,0 Meta 1,3 Atlántico 1,3 Casanare 1,5 Caquetá 1,6 Arauca 2,2 Risaralda 2,9 Caldas 4,3 Guaviare 4,3 Tolima 4,3 Cesar 5,2 Córdoba 10,4 Nariño 10,8 Sucre 11,8 Chocó 12,7 Putumayo 20,9 Cauca 21,5 Amazonas 43,4 Vichada 44,4 La Guajira 44,9 Guainía 64,9 Vaupés 66,6 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

Source: National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), 2015

39 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

Table 2. Afro Population by Departament

Guainía 1,0 Huilla 1,2 Tolima 1,2 Boyacá 1,4 Casanare 1,4 Bogotá 1,5 Vaupés 1,6 Norte de Santander 1,8 Amazonas 2,0 Quindio 2,5 Caldas 2,5 Meta 2,6 Vichada 3 Santander 3,2 Cundinamarca 3,4 Caquetá 3,7 Arauca 4,0 Risaralda 5,1 Putumayo 5,5 Guaviare 5,9 Magdalena 9,8 Atlántico 10,8 Antioquia 10,9 Cesar 12,1 Córdoba 13,2 La Guajira 14,8 Sucre 16,1 Nariño 18,8 Cauca 22,2 Valle del Cauca 27,2 Bolívar 27,6 San Andrés 57,0 Chocó 82,1 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

Source: National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), 2015

Regarding ethnic demographics, from the campesino groups. Secondly, there is not much clarity in comparative the 1991 Constitution introduced a major terms, as for years the national censuses change in the recognition of the diversity of did not include the issue or included peoples in the country, confirming them as it in a different form, which makes the subjects of specific rights and recognizing information impossible to compare. There their autonomies and differential political are some elements, however, that are key in rights. The organizational dynamics and understanding the political consolidation the political visibility of the indigenous of the organized ethnic groups. Firstly, peoples at that time were high, and the beginning in the nineteen seventies, the changes consequently contributed to indigenous struggle began to acquire a greater organizational depth. specificity and intensity which differed As for Afro people, there was a from the dynamics of the campesino remarkable organizational dynamism in organizations in general, as it emphasized the eighties and nineties in the territories the issues of ancestral territory, autonomy of the Colombian Pacific Coast. This took and cultural recognition, amongst others, place both as a result of historical processes and also distancing itself organizationally of resistance and due to having withstood

40 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

the major blows that paramilitarism and between 2009 and 2014, the payroll costs drug trafficking had dealt them during of the most affluent grew by 17% in nominal those decades. The 1991 Constitution terms during the period; meanwhile, the also opened up the possibility of capital of these companies increased by the recognition of rights for the Afro 95%, and in 2014 the richest companies population, and Law 70 was promulgated in the country concentrated 95.8% of the in 1993, providing recognition of Afro wealth. What this demonstrates is that the collective territories and Community generation of employment and income is Councils, but its regulations have not not a priority, the increasing concentration even been written. of wealth is the objective, but the most It is important to note that clashes successful companies in the country are also exist between neighbors. Conflicts also the country’s biggest debtors from between campesino, indigenous and Afro the perspective of tax expenditure. populations over land and territory have The same relationship can be seen in become increasingly visible in the social the analysis of the concentration of land. organization sphere. While the Constitution According to the 2011 National Human recognized rights, these have also led Development Report, dedicated to the to skirmishes between subjects who live analysis of the rural areas in Colombia, in rural areas and end up fighting each the great land holdings represents 52.2% other for land that the State has assigned of the country’s cultivable areas and are in by law. While the indigenous and Afro the hands of 1.15% of the owners; while people have differential recognition as the small properties, which represents well as specific figures relating to territorial only 10.6% of the cultivable area, are organization, the other rural inhabitants distributed among 78.3% of the owners, do not. Paradoxically, the achievements a circumstance that made Colombia, the of the struggle for differential rights were country with the highest Gini index for that interwoven with other factors that led to year, in terms of the concentration of land the fragmentation of the struggle for land, ownership:0.85. This situation has been a and there are still no convincing strategies constant in the last 100 years. The failure for reversing the situation. of the land reforms, the persecution and On the other hand, as well as being stigmatization of campesino organizations, diverse, as we have seen, the social an inadequate land market policy, the configuration of Colombia is also static, dynamics of the armed conflict and for the following reasons: drug trafficking, the political influence The concentration of wealth. In of the large land owners in national and Colombia, according to data published regional instances of power, and the lack by the Department of National Planning of information with which to recognize (DNP, 2015), the wealthiest 10% of the and address the problem, are some of the population earns four times more than the reasons the report points to as a way to poorest 40%. This is a measureable gap explain the situation. simply in economic terms it, but it is one Extending the analysis of the rural that finds an expression in all dimensions economy by placing emphasis on the of life. issue of food, it is important to note that As for the dynamics of the economy, the growth of agriculture is one of the according to business income statements great hopes and promises of the post

41 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

peace agreement scenario; however, as the political opposition on the left has the data from the last few decades is indicated, is that the national economy not encouraging. With the opening up is centered on the exploitation of oil and of trade and economic development in coal, and that no effort has been made the nineties, war was declared on the to promote the rural economy, except agricultural economy in Colombia, and by large agro-industries, especially that from that time domestic production of sugar cane and its derivatives. Even capacity has decreased. At the same in that field there is fear that the Trans- time, national food imports presently Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership represent 35% of the total. Exports have Agreement (TPP) agreement may bring grown only 4% since 2014, while imports with it a wave of imports of fuel alcohol have grown at an annual rate of 13% in and decreases in sugar prices. the same period. The message this sends,

Table 3. Public spending on the Agricultural sector (amount executed as % of GDP)

0,9

0,8 0,77 0,76

0,64 0,68 0,7

0,58 0,65 0,6 0,57

0,5 0,53 0,50

Percentage 0,39 0,4 0,42 0,35

0,3 0,22 0,22 0,24 0,23 0,18 0,2 0,15 0,15 0.12 0,09 0,1 0,11 0,11 0,08 0,10 0 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Year

Source: 2011 INDH calculations, based on the MADR statistical yearbook 1990-1999, and on the DIFP-DNP data base period 2000-2010.

42 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

Table 4. Downward tendency of short cycle crops over the last 3 years.

AREA HARVESTED AND PRODUCTION OF PRINCIPAL SHORT CYCLE CROPS 2015 V 2014

ANUAL ANUAL HECTARES TONNES VARIATION VARIATION CROPS 2014 2015 Pr % Absoluta 2013 2014 2015 pr % Absoluta

TOTAL SHORT 1 340 137 1 250 529 (5,9) (79 508) 8 978 443 8 704 182 8 855 891 1 7 151 708,7 CYCLE CROPS

CEREALS 910 452 851 371 (6,5) (59 091) 4 047 558 3 909 258 3 973 571 1 6 64 403,3

Rice 1 385 843 438 027 (13,5) 52 184 2 287 374 2 051 157 2 469 515 20 4 418 349,3

Corn 505 752 400 673 (20,8) (105 079) 1 694 345 1 803 039 1 471 026 (18 4) (332 013,0)

Sorghum 5 325 3 260 (38 8) (2 055) 36 038 23 853 15 101 (35 7) (8 762,0)

Barley 6 179 4 076 (34,0) (2 103) 12 978 13 858 8 137 (41,3) (5 731,0)

Wheat 7 363 5 335 (27,5) (2 028) 15 932 17 331 9 891 (42,9) (7 400,0)

OILS 69 481 53 002 (9,3) (5 479) 125 052 129 759 118 691 (8,5) (11 057,7)

Cotton 31 945 29 130 (8,8) (2 815) 33 375 42 174 38 207 (9,4) (3 955,6) Seed

Soy 32 010 28 330 (11,5) (3 680) 85 942 81 688 74 530 (8,8) (7 158,0)

Sesame 2 810 2 810 - - 2 542 2 670 2 699 1,1 29,2

Peanut 2 715 2 732 0,6 17 3 191 3 227 3 255 0,9 27,6

OTHER 392 140 375 285 (4,3) (15 854) 4 805 724 4 555 155 4 753 528 2,1 98 373,2 CROPS

Cotton 31 946 29 130 (8,8) (2 815) 23 783 30 710 23 700 (22,8) (7 009,9) fibre

Potato 125 780 122 120 (2,9) (3 660) 2 654 000 2 490 800 2 695 660 8,3 205 850,0

Bean 109 912 103 373 (5,9) (6 539) 136 903 144 180 132 322 (8,2) (11 858,0)

Blond 6 223 5 519 (11,3) (703) 13 627 11 574 10 053 (13,1) (1 520,9) Tobacco

Vegetables 118 279 115 143 (2,7) (3 136) 1 958 410 1 987 891 1 900 891 (4,4) (87 098,0)

Pr: Preliminary data subject to change. 1 / Information from DANE-Fedearroz: production in terms of green paddy. 2 / Information from Fonalce. 3 / Information from Conalgodón. 4 / Information from National Potato Council. Source: Production and Government unions. Calculations: SAC

43 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

The budget increase proposed for Studies done by the World Bank in 2013 agriculture is just 6% for next year, while at indicate an increase of between 15% and the same time the State’s capacity to carry 28% in the middle class in the previous out projects in the rural areas is very low. 10 years. All research agrees that this To this should be added the pact agreed expansion also coincides with an increase with the protesters as a result of the major in credit of between 30% and 35% over agricultural strike in 2013. The average the past 15 years, that the social ‘ascent’ percentage of budget effectively executed is vulnerable and unstable, and that the by the Ministry of Agriculture over the country’s economy is also unstable. last two years has been only 59%, which This puts Colombia in a situation demonstrates the lack of interest in the of risk due to its modest capacity to issue. Table 3 illustrates the phenomenon, sustain growth,1 although the National beginning from 1990. Government has endeavored to contradict that version, affirming that the country has the ability to sustain growth and that the With the opening up of trade post peace agreement or post-conflict and economic development period would bring growth of 1.5% of in the nineties, war was declared GDP, which would in turn be reflected in the growth of the middle class. It is on the agricultural economy also important to keep in mind that in in Colombia. the ‘common sense‘ of the population and in some statistical measurements, a distinction is made between the upper We should also throw some light on the middle class and the lower middle class, middle classes in Colombia. The definition evidencing an important internal gap in the of the concept varies: while for the World overall category. On the other hand, taking Bank it implies the range of the population into account the high level of informality of that earns between USD 10 and 50 per day, the Colombian economy, income growth is for measurements made in Colombia itself clearly also partly a result of growth in this a higher range has been assumed (which sector; and in this respect it is important to also varies according to the study), i.e. a reflect on the weight of the drug trafficking group that earns more than USD 1, 800 per economy. month. The national Government affirmed It is evident that the country does not in 2016, that in the last 5 years 4,600,000 have a clear appreciation of what or who Colombians had left poverty behind and the middle class is, and consequently falls entered the middle class, and that of these into common places or statistics that can 3.8 million were stable (that while not be cited and accommodated according necessarily exceeding the figure of USD to the situation and what needs to be 1,800 per month, they are no longer poor). justified. If one or another of the most

1. In 2013, the then Dean of Economics at the Universidad de los Andes, Alejandro Gaviria, argued “the fragility of an economy based on raw materials; a rising tax burden; the growing dependence on oil exports and mining; a battered manufacturing industry that in 1991 exported 30 million dollars in footwear and now only one million. And to top it off: a labor informality between 50 and 60 percent” (http://www.finanzaspersonales.co/trabajo-y-educacion/articulo/clase-media-colombia-fragil-pero-crecimiento/48836).

44 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

common factors in the definition of the achieved through processes promoted by middle class is placed in the center of the the democratic and left leadership. Nariño debate (income improvement, economic and Bogotá are two of the places where stability, improvement in access and (with ups and downs) a different type of conditions of education for layers of the political and institutional leadership has population, formal relationship with the been consolidating; other departments state and the market, greater consumption and cities have been moving in the same capacity, amongst others), the analysis direction, but to a lesser degree. changes, but it is clear that the relationship between all these factors does not occur in 2. The political scenario an integrated way. To understand the current political The permanence of regional and scenario in Colombia, it will be useful to national political elites. According to establish a contextual timeline that begins Francisco Leal Buitrago in his text ‘Seven with a moment that denoted a break with Theses on the continuity of the political the past. In 2002, Álvaro Uribe Vélez was elites’: “despite the structural changes that installed in the National Government, have occurred, especially in the twentieth accompanied by an authoritarian vision, century, the high level of concentration of the concentration of power, privatization wealth or income has not changed. This and total war against insurgencies and indicator is fundamental in appreciating anything that for him sniffed of alternatives the democratic inefficiency of the county’s or subversion, as well as the legalization elites”(2007, 4). In this regard, there is no and legitimization of paramilitarism, the control, or ability to demand a certain type appearance of false positives, and almost of behavior of the elites, because their 4 million people displaced, amongst clinging to power is guaranteed by their other things. Uribe gathered round concurrence and alliance with the most himself a broad but obedient political powerful economic sectors, as well as by bloc (including a good part of the current total inefficiency, and also because they Santos Government), while those from the are supported by the institutional powers ranks of traditional politics who did not fully that control the rules of the game of approve, opted for a comfortable silence. democracy, and of legality in general. This To facilitate a redesign of the political field makes the overlap between political elites and to concentrate his forces, in 2003 and illegality very high at all levels. Uribe proposed a political reform which On the national level, the entry of forced people to maneuver within a narrow Álvaro Uribe into the political field, with electoral threshold (for elections to the his victorious presidential candidacies of legislature), one that favored the parties and 2002 and 2006, represented a project political movements with greater electoral for the installation of an ‘alternative State capacity, while penalizing minorities (a project’ (to that of the traditional elites), situation that continues to this day). thus opening up political possibilities for In order to prepare his reelection, Uribe those generating wealth illegally, through was able to count on the Partido de la paramilitarism or drug trafficking. This ‘U’ (whose official name was the National attempt to ‘diversify’ the make-up of political Social Unity Party, but which for most elites was a tragedy for the country. Other simply meant ‘With Uribe’), which brought attempts have been made and successes together many of those who were allies of

45 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

the then President. The traditional Liberal the M-19 Democratic Alliance, and union and Conservative parties kept going, while and social sector organizations. The ‘Polo’ Cambio Radical (Radical Change), today presented Luis Eduardo Garzón as its led by the current Vice President, Vargas presidential candidate in 2002, he lost but Lleras, gained strength. Radical Change was later was elected mayor of Bogotá in had emerged as a division of the Liberal 2003; it was the first time that a member Party at the beginning of the 2000’s, but of an projected alternative left/social had supported the most right wing sectors democratic movement had been elected of the conservatives in 1998 (with Andrés to the second most important political Pastrana) and Uribe in his re-election. In position in the country. the traditional political field, the Liberal Party, led by one of its classic wings headed by Horacio Serpa and Ernesto Samper, The trade union, teacher, student, represented the sector of the traditional indigenous, womens’ and political elite that opposed Uribe; Serpa campesino movements, which confronted Uribe in the Presidential elections with the intention of preventing had been the protagonists of the latter’s reelection, but failed, as many the upswing in social protests, previous Liberal supporters had joined the were now also the hardest hit Partido de la U or Cambio Radical. by the Uribe regime. The social movement and mobilization scenario was both critical and painful. It had shown an increased capacity for mobilization In 2005, the PDA (‘Alternative Democratic in the nineties, motivated largely by Pole’) came into being, bringing together injustices and inequalities caused by the the PDI, the Social and Political Front (which adoption of the neoliberal model. The Uribe combined the Colombian left and social administrations intensified the model, at movements), and Democratic Alternative the same time generating an intense wave (political vehicle of actual senator Jorge of repression, leaving a tragic outcome in Robledo). The PDA was assembled around many regions, where people had to hide a basic program proposal, ‘Unity Ideology’, their political sympathies or ties to left and an electoral strategy. This diverse block wing political or social organizations. The quickly positioned itself as the face of the trade union, teacher, student, indigenous, ‘other option’ for Colombia, which was womens’ and campesino movements, which reflected in the parliamentary elections, had been the protagonists of the upswing where it achieved broad representation in social protests, were now also the hardest (in Colombian terms: 10 of 100 seats) hit by the Uribe regime. and came second in the presidential Outside the traditional elite, those who elections of 2006 with Carlos Gaviria, who publicly disagreed with the figure, forms polled 2,613,157 votes, something never and content of what the Uribe regime before achieved by an unambiguously represented and projected, came together left group. Meanwhile, in local elections in a solidarity and action block/network. In the left gained in popularity, winning 2002 the Polo Democrático (Independent several governorships and a second term Democratic Pole) was formed, as heir to in the Mayor’s office in Bogotá, effectively the National Popular Alliance (Anapo), demonstrating that many people were

46 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

tired of traditional politics and repression. who was causing serious problems and was Uribe’s time came to an end after an being accused of corruption. The difficulty unsuccessful attempt to perpetuate it by was handled adroitly by the traditional having a second presidential reelection political movers, who made the PDA the approved. Colombian political forces and benchmark for national corruption policy. elites then realigned themselves, forming Inside the PDA, however, the problem a new pact, the National Unity, headed by produced different positions, among these Juan Manuel Santos and Germán Vargas the members who thought that Moreno Lleras, who soon left Uribe aside. National and his brother should immediately be Unity defined five strategic themes for condemned and separated from the the (their) economy: Agriculture, Housing, party (a group led by Gustavo Petro and Mining, Infrastructure and Innovation. The independent sectors such as Common announcement and later development Force and regional processes) an option (more real than ever before in the country’s that was later confirmed by a decision of recent history) of the search for peace the Party Ethics Commission, those who through negotiations with the insurgencies, believed it more important to wait for was the point of rupture of Unity with Uribe, decisions of the justice system rather than who began structuring his own political simply react to accusations (those closest force, the Centro Democrático, loyal only to Moreno), and those who played down to himself. the importance of the accusations and In a more profound analysis, Santos and criticism so as not to expose the party’s Uribe (and what they represent) are on the failures and problems (sector Senator same side of the chess board, but when Robledo and the Communist Party). looking at the details, they are separated Once Uribe was out of Government, by the particular moment and its political he being one of the major common and economic configuration. The interests denominators of those who were in of the major sectors of the economy the PDA as opposition and as a unique and the multinational interests they both divergent voice in the country, the political express are different: Santos represents the options were shuffled once again. Being more ‘modernizing’ sectors of the national in opposition was not the same anymore, economy while Uribe represents a large an increasing number of voices critical of part of the major landowners, but also some Uribe did not belong to the PDA, and the sectors of the national economy that have political context had also changed. Within been hit by free trade policies (although he the PDA some proposed the need for himself promoted the trade agreements). change and the redefinition of horizons Today, without a doubt, a large part of the that went beyond those of the previous multinational economic interests present in phase of resistance and condemnation, the country have aligned themselves with while others embraced what had already Santos. been defined, and suggested that the A rupture also made its presence felt political situation and the composition of on the left, there being two principal the elites had not changed. Away from detonators for the change. The first was the public eye, and beyond political the PDA’s second period in the Bogota’s discussion related to the future of the PDA, mayor’s office, courtesy of Samuel Moreno, the political projections and aspirations

47 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

of each sector were clearly different and, over its vision, criticism of corruption rather than seeking to generate consensus and the party’s wider links, divided once out of diversity, division or ‘cleansing’ again over the party’s trajectory, in this became the preferred course (majorities case with regard to the relationship that it expelling others, on various occasions). should have with other social and political The different positions on how to organizations on the left, and over the understand the new political moment, the importance and priority to be afforded to alliances, and the capacity for the formation promoting the issue of peace and political of Government, generated enmity and negotiation between the Government competition based on debates and positions and the insurgencies. As a consequence, that went beyond ‘healthy discussion’ to the communist party and its allies were involve areas of everyday life and political expelled, accused of double militancy. behavior. Feelings of ‘contempt’ for each At this juncture, the PDA shrank and other became common, thus reviving the closed in on itself, at the very time that a ‘impossibility’ of working together, a position sense of encouragement and expectation that had been common in the eighties and began to grow within the country over nineties. A few independent sectors refused the possibility of concluding peace with to enter the logic of ‘political cannibalism’, the guerrillas. By the time of Santos’ endeavoring instead to promote renovation second presidential period, peace had and strategies for strengthening the party. become a national objective, complete Their voices found a lot of support within with Uribe as the ‘opposition’, but in the the grassroots activists and supporters process shrouding issues related to the of the party, but little among the leaders economic model, while at the same time who took the decisions about political making sure that almost all sectors on the action. In a party that had been born with left supported Santos in the second round a grassroots that reflected major diversity of voting against Uribe’s candidate. The within the left, that same diversity seemed, country began to polarize between peace between 2010 and 2011, to have become and war, and the formal left lost political impossible and even undesirable, as each influence as a party (while some leaders sector in the conflict seemed to be arguing of the PDA gained it as individuals), due that working with the others prevented it to not knowing how to position itself with from developing. sufficient force in the debate; at the same After the internal debate about the time, the traditional political elite began to projection of the party and its internal renew its public face and discourse. composition, the first to leave was the In the first part of the decade of 2010, group identified as progressive and that two very important movements were supported Gustavo Petro, who was later born: the El Congreso del Pueblo (The elected Mayor of Bogotá, becoming the People’s Congress) and the Marcha third mayor of the city with left wing roots, Patriotica (Patriotic March). The People’s although he had already left the PDA. Congress emerged from the Minga Social Meanwhile, the official PDA candidate y Comunitaria (Community and Social received only 30, 000 votes in a city of 8.5 Cooperation) a movement that, beginning million inhabitants. in 2006, had mobilized indigenous, A short time later, those who had come womens’, campesino, student, youth, and together to debate the progressive sector urban sectors. The movement was born

48 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

in order to mobilize, offer a proposal State control and where the State itself has with a national horizon, and assemble shown little interest in the realities of social all those dissatisfied with the situation to life, people have built a very strong tradition take control by beginning to legislate for of ‘solving things’ by themselves, assuming themselves as a way to change the country. responsibility for their own destiny and for The Patriotic March arose two years later improving the conditions of their lives. This and also brought student/youth, union implies several things. On the one hand, and urban groups together with a number that ties of collective solidarity have been of campesino sectors that had organized created and consolidated in the process around the Campesino Reserve Zones. of managing common everyday affairs (for Together with political actors such as example, the installation of public services, the Communist Party, and led by Piedad communal life, education), ties that have Córdoba, the March set out to mobilize often led to solid, permanent organizations political actors with the intention of centered on the management of social life integrating ‘the political’ and ‘the social’, and the generation of social autonomies, thereby generating a powerful popular that today must be recognized as nation initiative for achieving peace. As well builders. Unfortunately, in most analyses as these two movements, other social these autonomies are not recognized, as players emerged, becoming stronger and the vision of the failed or incomplete State mobilizing in a number of regions. is dominant, although not sufficient to Faced with the difficulties and the crises explain Colombian reality. within the formal left, social mobilization made the difference. Extremely effective agricultural strikes shook the country in Faced with the difficulties 2013 and 2016 and demonstrated that and the crises within the formal even though all agreed with the national purpose of achieving peace, the economic left, social mobilization made and ‘development’ model in general was the difference. contradictory, continued to impoverish the poorest, empowered corruption and fed a clientelist political culture. The Another important aspect of the way in ‘Cumbre Agricola’ (Agricultural Summit) which the self-management of social affairs and the ‘Dignidades Agricolas’ (Agricultural and how those organized autonomies have Dignities) emerged as two expressions of been constructed, is that in general they the mobilized rural sectors, and while not reject and confront what they understand coming to agreement amongst themselves politics to be in Colombia. Their experience (amongst other reasons, due to closed also implies a solid understanding of mediations of the traditional left politicians), mobilization and protest that comes became a symbol and a representation of into play every time there is a strong a protest that was viewed positively by the sensation that an issue cannot be solved general population. by themselves; according to a study carried The social struggle in Colombia out by the researcher Mauricio Archila and has tradition and has garnered a lot of published in 2005, between 1958 and 1990 recognition and legitimacy. In a country in Colombia there were an average of 1.5 where much national territory is not under social protests per day.

49 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

Returning to the field of formal politics, prevents the unity strategies crafted in in 2005 ‘Option Centro’ arrived on the the alternative field also being applied scene, led by Social Democratic sectors electorally. In most cases, those who have that did not form part of the PDA. With attained indigenous seats have been the end of the era of Uribe in Government, allies or close to opposition politics and Option Centro was formalized in 2009 therefore critical of the establishment. This as the Green Party, bringing together is not the case with the groups organized figures such Antanas Mockus and Enrique to compete for the seats available to Afro Peñalosa, whose profile had always been Colombians, which are mainly allied to presented as technical, managerial and traditional politics. This situation is a result ‘independent’. Both were former mayors of the differences in organizational and of Bogotá and intended to present political processes between indigenous themselves as presidential candidates. In peoples and Afros in Colombia. light of the rupture and differences within Convergence around the PDA only the PDA, some progressives segments became possible once again in the moved towards the Green Party, converting context of the candidacy of Clara López it into the Green Alliance. for the Mayoralty of Bogotá. She lost Pais Común (Common Country) also and once again the Right took charge of emerged in somewhat the same way, the Colombian capital, throwing away forged by independent sectors (Fuerza 12 years of programmatic and public Común/Common Strength) linked policy advances on the part of the district to social sectors that had distanced governments. The conjuncture appeared themselves from the PDA and that sought to be the last with the capacity to generate to create a new political voice based on a convergence that went beyond pure regional indigenous and campesino social pragmatics, on part of a left that had organizations. Unión Patriótica (Patriotic given birth to the PDA. Today the party Union) was a political expression that had structures exist, but most sectors on the left emerged in the nineteen eighties as a - progressivism, social democracy, sectors result of the peace negotiations of that era of the social movement and representative with the FARC; it had recovered its official personalities and generators of critical legal status as part of the victim reparation opinion - seem to have their eyes fixed on process and was relaunched onto the different points. Many appear to be betting political scene. Given the refusal of PDA on the opportunity to regroup based on to generate new alliances, these sectors the political reform that will soon emerge converged in an influential Convergencia as a result of the Havana negotiations para la Paz which allowed them to agreements. That reform will provide the participate in the 2013 elections. possibility of putting autonomous regional On the map of political actors, it is political participation on the national stage, important to mention the presence of the a fact that will have an effect on the power indigenous parties ASI, AICO and MAIS, of alternative politics. that form part of the range of alternative There are five probable presidential political parties, although by their nature candidates from the alternative/left sector they compete exclusively for indigenous for the 2018 elections and each has a seats in parliament (in recent years only different reading of what to do and how retained by AICO and MAIS) a fact that to govern. Some appear to be promoting

50 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

a Government of transition in alliance before generating other nominations from with traditional sectors who are working the same sector in order to pressure and for peace, but with a participation of the negotiate, while betting on leading the left that will guarantee the commitment ‘reconstruction’ of the country after the war. of the oligarchy to the implementation There are also several sectors disputing of the agreements; others think the key the so-called ‘political center’. Some come is that there will soon be an alternative from left and progressive processes or Government, while still others suggest social democracy, while others are closer to that an alternative Government must be right-wing positions but are independent built together with all the national business of traditional politics. These groups offer sectors that have suffered as a result of free an image of being free from the old style trade policy, going beyond their political of politics, free from corruption, technically positions on other issues. Finding a point qualified and capable, politically creative, of convergence will not be easy, and the and beyond the clichés of both left and pragmatic strategy that will guarantee a right. This position is less credible, but strong parliamentary representation will also the one that generates more visible surely end up being, once again, a take it or expectation in surveys and other public leave it type of criterion. Some voices have opinion indicators. also suggested the need for a consultation 3. General reflections among the alternative candidates in order The peace scenario has become, both to define the person that will contest the elections. Finally, there is also a lot of interest in The regions will become the direction that the FARC will take as fundamental scenarios a political movement without weapons, for the positioning knowing that they already have guarantees for their participation in popular elections. of alternative projects. There is also concern regarding the delay in installing a formal dialogue between in the political context and in the common the National Government and the ELN, wisdom of a part of the population, a the country’s second largest guerrilla synonym not only of the opportunity for organization, a fact that could become social change, but also of a change in an excuse for perpetuating both the war politics and forms of Government. As of dynamic and policies similar to those of the yet this has no face, but to a large extent decade of 2000. the left has lost representativeness and will On the other hand, there has been a have to find a collective a route to once renewal of faces, discourses and styles again becoming an option for the country. in the traditional sectors, millimetrically The left does better when it comes calculated around the expectation of peace, together, but needs to find other pieces of and presenting themselves as the option for the puzzle to put together, not due to the governing the ‘new’ country. With regard to pressure of being able to play according to the governing Unidad Nacional, the current the electoral rules presently in place, nor vice president, Germán Vargas Lleras, will to simply ‘be opposition’, but in order to probably be the presidential candidate interpret the moment, rebuild expectation who gathers the elite around him, but not and legitimacy among the population, and

51 Colombia: some contributions to undertanding the changes in social configuration and policy over the last 15 years Donka Atanassova I.

to find the ability to speak and reach out to people beyond its own circle. On the other hand, the regions will become fundamental scenarios for the positioning of alternative projects, and the movements and social organizations will consequently have to recognize this possibility and opportunity.

52 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation

Edgardo Lander*

Caracas, August 2016 Venezuela is living the collapse of the pattern of rent producing oil production 1. A country in crisis of the last century. It also faces major processes of political, social and cultural In a moment of deep crisis and of significant transformation, and a panorama of readjustments in society, it is difficult to extraordinary uncertainty in relation to state with any degree of certainty what the future. The country, in the context the perspectives are in Venezuela, or to of the global capitalist crisis, is passing characterize the fluid rearrangements that through a phase of modulation. What are operating in the different sectors of is not clear is whether it is possible to society. The changes in the country have begin the transition towards a post-oil been so rapid over the last three years, and post-modernist Venezuela, or if, on and particularly during the last year, that a the contrary, with the Orinoco Mining large part of the statistics are already out Arc, the country’s political and economic of date by the time they are published. elites and the transnational corporations It is difficult to characterize the economic will succeed in their attempts to push the structure of the country at a time when a country in the direction of a new and even major block of the economy is constituted more destructive type of rentier model by the so-called ‘bachaqueo’: i.e. a myriad based on mining. of informal activities, frequently illegal, Based on the trends operating up to sometimes mafiosos, where it is possible this point, it is therefore not possible to to find large scale contraband, speculation, formulate anything other than a very hoarding, and even popular subsistence tentative projection regarding the future. mechanisms.

* Edgardo Lander. Doctor of Sociology. Professor at the Central University of Venezuela and the Simon Bolivar Andean University in Quito. Fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI), Amsterdam. Involved directly in the dynamics of the World Social Forum, Member of the Permanent Working Group on Alternatives to Development. In Venezuela he is currently member of the Citizens Platform for the Defense of the Constitution.

53 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation Edgardo Lander

2. Extraordinary changes in the living The economically active population in the conditions of the population in the first agricultural, livestock and hunting sector three decades of the Bolivarian process fell from 884,546 in the first semester of The Venezuelan population went from 1999 (10.2% of the total) to 873,206 (6.7% 23,710,809 inhabitants in the first semester of the total) in the first semester of 2015 of 1999 to 30,337,439 inhabitants in the (Ibid). The economically active population first semester of 2015. in the manufacturing sector increased in absolute terms from 1,368,693 in the first 2.1. Poverty reduction and inequality half of 1999, to 1,640,380 in the first half According to the forms in which these of 2016, representing an increase of 19.9%. matters are measured in official statistics, However, in relative terms a significant between 2000 and 2013 the income reduction was seen in the participation of the poverty rate fell from 44% to 32% of the economically active population in industrial population, and the rate of extreme poverty activity, falling from 14.1% in 1999 to from 18% to 9.8% (ECLAC,2016). The 11.6% in 2016. The largest increases in the number of households in extreme poverty economically active population were seen measured by unsatisfied basic needs was in communal, social and personal services reduced by half between 1998 (10.8%) (from 28.6% to 32.4%); in transport, storage and 2014 (5.4%) (MPPP,2015). Between and communications (from 7% to 8.9%), those years the Gini index fell from 0.468 and in financial establishments, insurance to 0.407 (ECLAC, 2016). and real estate (from 5.3% to 6.2%) (Ibid). According to official figures, “in 1998, The unemployment rate, meanwhile, fell the ratio between the percentage income from 10.6%, in December 1999, to 5.5% in of the richest 20% and the poorest 20% December 2014 (MPPP, 2015). was 13, while in 2014, that indicator was 7.3”(MPPP, 2015). From 1999 to 2014, the 2.3. Formal and informal employment, legal minimum salary was greater than public employment, social security the cost of the official food basket (Ibid). The two most significant changes in the According to figures released by the UN composition of the workforce in those years Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), were the reduction of informal employment the index of malnutrition dropped from (defined as employment in units of five 21% in the period 1998-2000 to less than or less employees) and the increase in 5% in the period 2011-2013 (cit. in MPPP, employment in the public sector. 2015). Life expectancy at birth rose from The formal sector of the economy 72 years in 1998 to 75 years in 2014, while represented 49% of the working population the Human Development Index went from of 15 years or over in the first half of 0.68 in 2000 to 0.76 in 2013 (Ibid). 1999. This increased to 59.5% in the first semester of 2015 (INE, 2015). The number 2.2. Employment by sector of of people employed in the public sector the economy, levels of employment/ went from 1,348,181 in the first semester of unemployment 1999 to 2,713,324 in the first semester of Between the first half of 1998 and the 2015. In percentage terms, this represents first semester of 2015, the economically 15.5% and 20.7% respectively of the total active population rose from 9,699,330 to employed population (Ibid). 14,167,281, an increase of 46% (INE, 2015).

54 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation Edgardo Lander

The employment rate of the population in 2013 (Ibid). Between those years, the of 15 years old or more went from 66.8%, proportion of the economically active in the first semester of 1999, to 64.1%, population with a university degree in the first half of 2015. And while the more than doubled, going from 11.3% to employment rate for men decreased from 24.8%, while in the same time span the 66.8% to 64.1% between those years, percentage of the employed population the rate for women remained virtually with a university degree went from 11.8% unchanged (50.3% and 49.7%). In addition to 24.7%. It is interesting to note that a to a greater number of women students, university degree does not increase the and despite a significant drop in the female probability of being employed. Among population of 15 years or older, this can be the unemployed, the proportion with a explained by the fact that the proportion of university degree (25%) was similar to the women dedicated to housework remains percentage of the employed population high: 35.1% in 1999 and 28.5% in 2015. with a university degree (INE, 2015). This is an activity that continues to be On the other hand, the percentage of almost exclusively female: 98.1% of the students in the population aged 15 and people who claim to devote themselves to over was 10% in the first semester of 1999 household work are women (Ibid). rising to 12% in the first semester of 2015. Between 1998 and 2014, the number The difference between the sexes is quite of retirees receiving a pension went from marked. Between the same years (1999 – 387,007 to 2,565,725. The proportion 2015), the proportion of women aged 15 of people with the right to a pension and over who were studying went from (women aged 55 and more, and men 11.2% to 19%. For men, the variation was aged 60 and over) climbed from 19.6% from 8.6% to 11%. In the first semester in 1998 to 72.6% in 2014 (MPPP, 2015). of 1999, 30% of the population between The rural minimum wage was brought into 15 and 24 was studying, while for the first line with the urban minimum wage, and semester of 2015 the figure had risen to labor protections were established both 45.3% (Men 41.1% and women 49.7%). for janitors and domestic workers. All this was funded thanks to high oil prices and what, based on facts and 2.4. Increase in the educational level of going beyond the rhetoric, ended up the population, particularly the female being a strategic decision on the part of population the Government to opt to preserve the Between 1998 and 2014, the average country’s prevailing economic structure, number of years of education of the extend dependence on rentism and, in the population rose from 7.35 to 9.57 (Ibid). short term, make the most of oil bonanza. Between the first semester of 2002 and Both the functioning of the economy and the first half of 2015, the proportion of the legitimacy of the Government have the economically active population of been so dependent on the high level of 15 years old or more that was illiterate income, that given the total absence of or with no education, decreased from reserves to deal with the situation, when 6.2% to 2.4%. The number of people international crude prices collapsed the in university education increased from process entered a crisis phase. 862,862 students in 2000, to 2,629,312

55 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation Edgardo Lander

3. How has the configuration of (up to a hundred to one) between the the different class sectors changed? official subsidized currency exchange rate and its price on the black market. According 3.1. Traditional business groups to Edmeé Betancourt, the President of the and the emergence of new capitalist Central Bank of Venezuela at the time, military-civilian sectors of a total of USD 59 billion in subsidized During the years of the Bolivarian currency distributed in only one year, 2012, process, there have been significant about USD 20 billion was delivered to “shell rearrangements and displacements within companies”, an “artificial demand not the country’s economic elites. In relation associated with productive activities”.1 The to the previously dominant sectors, one former Minister of the Interior in the Chávez of the most significant changes has been Government, Héctor Navarro, estimates the intensification of the rentier logic and that “of the trillion dollars that entered the an even greater shift towards indirectly country between 2003 and 2012 about productive activities, such as imports, 300 billion disappeared from the nation’s trade, finance and telecommunications, as coffers, without those responsible having well as illicit activities such as speculation been punished“ (Armas, 2015). To this can and smuggling. On the political level, be added the generalized commissions the traditional business sectors have on public procurement and the income constituted a solid bank of opposition to derived from the control of ports and the Government through their principal the distribution of food. As many public sectorial organizations (Fedecámaras, officials as traditional and emerging Consecomercio, Fedeindustria, Fedeagro entrepreneurs have participated in these y la Asociación Bancaria). massive embezzlements. These goings-on have facilitated the emergence of a new civil and, above all military, business class During the years of the linked to the Government: what has been Bolivarian process, there have called ‘boliburguesía’. been significant rearrangements A new area of financial accumulation (and political power) opened up for the and displacements within military in February 2015 when President the country’s economic elites. Maduro decreed the creation of the Military Mining, Oil and Gas Company (Camimpeg), attached to the Ministry of The main source of private sector Popular Power for Defense. This company accumulation during these years has been a has a broad spectrum of attributions and combination of very high oil prices and the can devote itself “without limitation” to extraordinary levels of corruption that have any activity directly or indirectly related to been facilitated by the enormous disparity mining, oil or gas activities.2

1. “President of the BCV: Part of the $ 59,000 million delivered in 2012 went to ‘shell companies’”. Aporrea/AVN - https://www. aporrea.org Caracas, May 25, 2013

2. Official Gazette No. 40.845 of February 10, 2016. Decree No. 2.231, which authorizes the creation of a State company, in the form of an anonymous company, which will be called the Military Corporation for Mining, Oil and Gas Industries (Camimpeg), and will be attached to the Ministry of Popular Power for Defense.

56 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation Edgardo Lander

3.2. The Middle classes The expansion of enrollment and On the political level, from a relatively university graduates has not been early moment this sector of the population accompanied by a corresponding expansion viewed the Bolivarian process as a threat in the quality of employment. As result of to their interests and privileges, even the prevailing insecurity in the country and though many Government policies the scarce economic prospects, a significant benefited them and increased their proportion of young professionals do consumption levels. To the extent that the not see a bright future for themselves in process of political polarization of society Venezuela. As a consequence, the past few advanced and the politically exclusionary years have witnessed significant emigration discourse became more radicalized, most on the part of young professionals. of the middle class sectors identified Venezuela, second only to Argentina in themselves with the opposition parties. South America in terms of population born As part of this dynamic, new political and abroad, has gone within a few years, from ideological constructs have emerged that being a country that welcomed immigrants have displaced the more or less social to a country of emigrants. democratic ‘common sense’ that had been As it is a recent phenomenon compared dominant in Venezuela since the end of the to other countries of the continent, the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in 1958. These proportion of Venezuelans living abroad political constructs - liberal, neoliberal is low, not more than 2% (OIM). This has and pro-American - have frequently been been mainly an emigration of middle accompanied by explicit expressions of and high income sectors, the largest racism against the popular sectors. percentage of emigrants travelling to other countries by air, with the sole exception of 3.2 Students and young professionals Colombia. The countries which currently As noted, there has been an concentrate the majority of Venezuelans extraordinary expansion of university living abroad are: United States (197,171), enrollment, which has provided millions of Spain (151,594), Colombia (46,614), and young people with access to free higher Portugal (23,404) (Ibid). education. As one more expression of Generally speaking, the emigration of the political polarization of these years, the past few years can be divided into the student body has been divided several categories: oil engineers and between those attending the new public technicians dismissed after the oil strike/ universities, especially the Bolivarian coup of 2002-2003; migrants from other University of Venezuela, which tend by nationalized companies that after many conviction or for convenience to identify years decided to return to their countries with the Government, and the students of of origin; the descendants of migrants, the independent and private universities, above all Spanish, who have the right to most of whom are not only identified with recover the nationality of their parents or the opposition but play a central role in grandparents; privileged sectors that have their protests. The autonomous university enough resources to live well outside the students that for many decades had country, and, as noted, young people, mostly identified with the left, today tend especially professionals, who decide to to be liberal. rebuild their life elsewhere.

57 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation Edgardo Lander

It has been proposed that this type The trade union movement, historically of professional emigration represents a divided along party political lines, today is severe brain drain, and will have negative weaker and more polarized than ever. The consequences for the future. In sectors Government has given priority to salary such as university professors and medical increases by presidential decree rather professionals, the negative consequences than to collective bargaining. Likewise, this will have for Venezuelan society are little tolerance has been shown to any trade notorious. Both in universities and hospitals union, including those clearly identified as resignations are common, while public leftwing, that attempts to act autonomously competitions for new posts are frequently in relation to Government policy. Of note abandoned due to a lack of applicants. in this regard was the indefinite suspension by the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), in January 2016, of The trade union movement, union elections in the Orinoco Steelworks historically divided along party because the supporters of the Government had little chance of winning. political lines, today is weaker On the other hand, extraordinary and more polarized than ever. progress was made during the period in the definition of the constitutional and legislative rights of indigenous people: 4. The popular world: movements Chapter VIII of the Constitution of the and organizational processes Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Law of Women’s organizations, unions and Demarcation and Guarantee of the Habitat indigenous peoples’ organizations have and Lands of the Indigenous Peoples, and become divided or debilitated as a result the Organic Law of Indigenous Peoples of both the political polarization the and Communities. In addition, for the first country has lived through in these last few time in the history of the country a Ministry years and the implementation of certain of Indigenous Peoples was created and Government policies. In Venezuela, considerable resources were invested a broad partisan in policies of assistance to indigenous of women had come together in the people. However, far from contributing debate over critical issues such as gender to the strengthening of independence violence and sexual and reproductive and organization of indigenous peoples rights, including abortion. However, in the and to the strengthening of their cultures, years of the Bolivarian process, political- and far from complying with constitutional partisan loyalty has been given priority standards in relation to the demarcation of over this shared agenda. While there have their territories, these policies have been been some important advances such as characterized by a type of modernizing gender equality and protections against colonial logic. The most notorious example gender violence, others, such as the right of this has been the creation of indigenous to abortion, practically disappeared from peoples’ communal councils, that is, the the political agenda. This due to the imposition from above of an organizational anti-abortion positions prevailing within model similar to the one promoted in rest Chavismo’s predominantly male political of the country, one which ignores cultural leadership. patterns and specific forms of exercising

58 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation Edgardo Lander

authority. The result has been a process roots’, began to disappear in tandem with of division and acculturation amongst the the consolidation of increasingly vertical native peoples. Equally serious is the fact and sectarian ‘revolutionary’ management that the State has done too little to defend practices. indigenous peoples from cattle ranches, or from the coal and gold mining that is 6. Profound political advancing into their territories, activities that and economic crisis threaten their very existence as peoples. With the profound political and economic crisis of the last three years, due amongst 5. The new organizational processes other things to the death of the President The most important and most widespread Chavez and the collapse of oil prices, the organizational dynamics of these years were conditions of the country changed to a the new processes that flowed directly or significant extent. As well as the electoral indirectly from new public policies. In a few defeat suffered by the Government in last years, Venezuela went from being a country year’s parliamentary elections, all opinion that, apart from the important presence of polls register an important majority of political parties, had a very low level of the population as rejecting the Maduro social organization to being a country in Government. The combination of increasing which millions of people were involved in insecurity, extremely high inflation and a wide variety of new organizational forms: shortages of food and medicines has technical water committees, community made the day to day life of the population water councils, health committees, increasingly difficult. urban land committees, communes and People’s purchasing power has communal councils... However, these collapsed, and official figures register a extended organizational processes were, sustained decline in the consumption of with exceptions, traversed from the food over the past few years (INE, 2014). beginning by a important contradiction According to some calculations, inflation between the aspirations and potential for between June 2015 and June 2016 was autonomy and progress in experiences of more than 500%, a minimum salary is only democratic self-government from below, enough to acquire a small proportion of the and the fact that of these organizations food basket, and children die in hospitals many emerged as initiatives of the State, for lack of basic medicines. If these trends and did so based to varying degrees on the continue, the social achievements of the transfer of public resources and the political Bolivarian process will be reversed. In orientations that reached them from above. the meantime, the Government not only These tensions were accentuated from lacks the resources necessary to confront the moment President Chávez defined the crisis, but increasingly responds the Bolivarian process as socialist on the to discontent and social protests with 30th of January, 2005, in the context of repression and militarization, in the process the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, accentuating its authoritarian tendencies. while calling for the creation of one single It is quite obvious that despite the party. The openness to experimentation important popular organizational dynamics in the construction of the new, visible in of previous years and the construction of a ideas such as ‘Revolution Bolivariana’ and a vigorous social fabric, the responses to the process anchored in the ‘the tree with three crisis have not in essence been those of

59 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation Edgardo Lander

solidarity, collectivity or social organization, objects, as a route to personal benefit. but rather individualistic and competitive. The sense of ethics is disappearing This, combined with the information people and consequently mutual respect and have today regarding the widespread level trust, as the sense of responsibility, of corruption within the State, obliges us honesty and transparency decline vertiginously. A fierce individualism is to recognize the existence of a profound gradually emerging, one that in turn ethical crisis in the country. This crisis has is providing a solid cultural base for a been characterized in dramatic terms by brutal form of capitalism… This is the the following document by Barquisimeto country we have, where over many Cecosesola, entitled Ethics and Revolution, years a particular way of being has been whose basic contents are cited below. progressively penetrating everyone, in one way or another. It is a way of being “We live in the country of what’s good that emerges at the least provocation, for me. Where anything goes. Where in officials, business people, politicians individual shrewdness is prized. Where and, of course, the common citizen, as the honest person is forced to justify his in those of us who attempt to initiate honesty in order not to be considered a transformative process. The alarming an idiot and be ridiculed. The situation thing today is that, in our country, the is such that ‘everything goes’ has now ‘tumor’ seems to be metastasizing. Are become the socially accepted norm. we approaching a point of no return?” Anyone who does not act according to (2016). the mold becomes a social mismatch, and whoever does so behaves as if This, of course, is not true of the whole the country is their private property, country, Cecosesola and the producers where they can do what they want. This and their associated networks, without situation has been cooking over a slow going any further, provide a good example fire for many years, but in recent times – and not the only one - of other possible there is a clear impression that we have reactions to the crisis. These reactions are put our foot on the accelerator. We have consequently been transformed, without not only characterized by solidarity and many of us noticing, into a country where by not being ground down by difficulties, laws are no longer an obligation, rather but by a dynamic full of creativity and becoming simple suggestions that can experiments in other ways of doing things, be taken or left at one’s convenience. ways to innovate. All this is based on the And despite this, we persist over and explicit recognition that the country has over again in trying to run the country changed; that the logic of oil rentism is by modifying or approving endless no longer sustainable; that, for example, laws. In our country, the imposition of agricultural producers cannot continue a new modality of private property is to depend on imported seeds and, as a accelerating, one in which everyone consequence, need to involve themselves tries to take any space they fancy according to their convenience. Those in seed recovery and exchange processes. in the ascendency are the ‘sharpest’, In short, that it is necessary to begin, from the most capable of profiting from the below, the construction another country. circumstances for their own benefit Nor will the experiences and collective without taking into consideration the memories of participatory and solidarity damage caused to the other person, organizations disappear overnight. Are or the other thing. These only exist as the current individualistic and competitive

60 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation Edgardo Lander

reactions simply temporary modes of survival that occurred at particularly acute moments of this crisis? Or will they, on the contrary, install themselves in the collective consciousness as the normal way of life? Will it be possible recover hope for another, better world, or, on the contrary, will the traumatic experience of the last few years operate for the Venezuelan population, for the popular world, as an antidote not only to some idea of socialism for a long time to come, but also to any notion of change? What it is possible to affirm, is that a particular model of accumulation, a certain type of State with its State-centric system and its corresponding culture of easy money, has entered a terminal phase. In the context of the crisis, neither this Government nor a Government formed by the current opposition represents a credible option. As mentioned, Venezuelan society is passing through a process of transition, but the question is, in what direction? Towards a new extractivist rentier model, this time based on large scale mining, on the so-called Orinoco Mining Arc? Or in the direction of a democratic post-rentier, non-patriarchal society, one that does not prey on nature, and in which common sense shifts away from the clientelist logic that still predominates today, and which recognizes that there are no rights without responsibilities? The future is open, and all depends on how Venezuelan society responds to the challenges and complex options with which it is faced today.

61 Notes for a collective consideration of the Venezuelan situation Edgardo Lander

BIBLIOGRAFÍA National Institute of Statistics (INE). Population aged 15 years and over employed, Armas, Mayela. according to formal and informal sector and ‘Héctor Navarro: This is not socialism ... it is branch of economic activity, 2nd Semester aimlessness. State capitalism and corruption 1994 -1st Semester 2015. have come to an end. in Aporrea, Caracas National Institute of Statistics (INE). December 12, 2015. Population aged 15 and over, according to employer sector and branch of economic Barquisimeto Cecosesola. activity, 1989 -1st semester 2015. Barquisimeto. Economic Commission for Latin National Institute of Statistics (INE). America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Statistical Population aged15 years and older, Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean economically active, according to occupation 2015. Santiago, 2016. and educational level; 1st semester 2002- 1st semester 2015. National Institute of Statistics (INE). Global labor force indicators, by sex, 1st National Institute of Statistics (INE). semester 1999 - 1st semester 2015. Food consumption monitoring survey (ESCA) Semi-annual report. Second semester 2012 to National Institute of Statistics (INE). the first half of 2014. Population aged 15 years and over economically active, by branch of economic Ministry of Popular Power of Planning (MPPP). activity and occupational status, 1st Semester Venezuela in figures. Our transition to 1989 - 1st semester 2015. socialism. Caracas, February 2015. National Institute of Statistics (INE). International Organization for Migration Population of 15 years and over employed, according to employer sector and branch of (IOM). economic activity, 1st Semester 1989 – 1st Global migration flows, available at semester 2015. https://www.iom.int/world-migration

62 LATIN AMERICA, MOBILIZATION, AND A MOVE TO THE RIGHT Four country analyses

Authors: Maristella Svampa Luis Tapia Donka Atanassova Edgardo Lander

Published by: Fundación Rosa Luxemburg Andean Regional Office Miravalle N24-728 y Zaldumbide Teléfonos: (593-2) 2553771 6046945 / 6046946 email: [email protected] www.rosalux.org.ec Quito · Ecuador

Editing: María del Pilar Cobo English translation: Gerard Coffey Cover design: h2ostudio. Carla Aguas Page design: h2ostudio. Carla Aguas Publishing coordinator: Ana Robayo

First published in Spanish in May 2017

This document, distributed free of charge, has been sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation with funds from the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)