Backlash in Bolivia: Regional Autonomy As a Reaction Against Indigenous Mobilization Kent Eaton Politics Society 2007; 35; 71 DOI: 10.1177/0032329206297145

Politics & Society http://pas.sagepub.com Backlash in Bolivia: Regional Autonomy as a Reaction against Indigenous Mobilization Kent Eaton Politics Society 2007; 35; 71 DOI: 10.1177/0032329206297145 The online version of this article can be found at: http://pas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/1/71 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Politics & Society can be found at: Email Alerts: http://pas.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://pas.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations (this article cites 7 articles hosted on the SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms): http://pas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/35/1/71 Downloaded from http://pas.sagepub.com at UNIV OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ on July 3, 2008 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Backlash in Bolivia: Regional Autonomy as a Reaction against Indigenous Mobilization KENT EATON In the 1990s, Bolivia’s indigenous population mobilized to claim new political roles, and in the process, directly challenged the privileged position of economic elites within national political institutions. In response, business associations in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s most prosperous region, began to demand regional autonomy—in contrast to the demand for authoritarianism that characterized prior generations of business elites when confronted with threatening political change. After examining Santa Cruz’ past relationship with the national government, this article explores the challenges that led economic elites in the department to seek autonomy and the strategies that they have adopted in pursuit of this goal. Keywords: regional autonomy; indigenous mobilization; decentralization; business associations; Bolivia In recent years, parts of Latin America have witnessed a remarkable transformation according to which long-excluded indigenous people have mobilized to play fundamentally new roles in national political systems. The transformation is ongoing, but it has already produced a number of significant changes. Examples include the revision of constitutions to assert the multiethnic nature of the state,1 the emergence of indigenous parties,2 and the sharp increase in organizational Research in Bolivia for this article was supported by funds from the Research Initiation Program at the Naval Postgraduate School. I am grateful to John Carey, Catherine Conaghan, Rachel Gisselquist, Jeanne Kinney Giraldo, Roberto Laserna, and Jessica Piombo for helpful suggestions in the design and execution of this project. For insightful comments on the article, I thank Thad Dunning and the editorial board of Politics & Society. POLITICS & SOCIETY, Vol. 35 No. 1, March 2007 71-102 DOI: 10.1177/0032329206297145 © 2007 Sage Publications 71 Downloaded from http://pas.sagepub.com at UNIV OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ on July 3, 2008 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 72 POLITICS & SOCIETY activity along ethnic rather than class lines.3 Not unlike the incorporation of labor, which proved to be the crucial political juncture of the twentieth century, the mobilization of indigenous Latin Americans represents what could be for many countries the most pivotal political event of the current century. While imperfect, this parallel between indigenous mobilization in the contemporary period and the earlier incorporation of labor unions is a productive one to explore. Just as the regionwide process of labor incorporation played out differ- ently in distinct countries,4 so the common process of indigenous mobilization has generated important differences across national borders.5 The historical parallel with labor incorporation also suggests, however, that it is not enough to study cross-national variation in how indigenous people are organizing. Equally press- ing is the need to analyze how established elites respond to the emergence of actors who were previously marginalized within the political system. Enough time has now elapsed since the onset of the current period of indigenous mobilization to begin to assess more systematically forms of backlash by actors who feel threatened by the political emergence of indigenous groups. In the twentieth century, economic elites were profoundly threatened by cer- tain patterns of labor incorporation, particularly when radical political parties served as the agents of incorporation in periods of democratic rule.6 In many countries, these elites responded by throwing their support behind military governments in the hopes that authoritarianism would check or reverse political advances by labor. The importance of the backlash against labor incorporation in the previous century begs the question of how today’s political and economic elites are reacting to indigenous mobilization. The question is particularly inter- esting because compared to most of the twentieth century, authoritarianism as a political option now receives far less support from a broad set of internal and external actors—despite manifest failures in the consolidation of democracy. Given that democratization has facilitated the recent gains made by indigenous groups,7 some established elites who are threatened by these “new” groups may well prefer an authoritarian solution. Unlike in the past, however, they would face significant obstacles in promoting such a solution in contemporary Latin America. In this article, I argue that it is the pursuit of regional autonomy rather than authoritarianism that has defined the elite response to indigenous mobilization in one particularly important case: Bolivia.8 Nowhere in Latin America is the newfound political salience of indigenous actors more pronounced than in Bolivia, the country with the highest percent- age of people who identify as indigenous in the region.9 Within the past fifteen years, indigenous Bolivians have penetrated into important decision-making arenas in both municipal and national governments. At the municipal level, decentralization in 1994 gave local indigenous communities a degree of inde- pendence from established political parties that they had never before enjoyed, which proved to be critical in the growth of new indigenous parties, including Downloaded from http://pas.sagepub.com at UNIV OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ on July 3, 2008 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. KENT EATON 73 most importantly the now governing party, Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement toward Socialism, or MAS). Increasingly, indigenous groups have also come to exercise greater political protagonism at the national level because of a complex series of events that includes the withdrawal of corporatist protec- tions,10 the cumulative effects of municipal decentralization, and the migration to La Paz and El Alto of indigenous workers displaced by the collapse of min- eral exports.11 By 2003, indigenous groups achieved sufficient political power to begin to veto national governments they perceived to be acting against their interests. This is precisely what happened with the eviction of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada in October of that year over his attempt to increase exports of natural gas, and this is what happened again in June 2005 against his successor, Carlos Mesa, who refused to support the nationalization of the gas industry. Six months later, the remarkable political transformation of Bolivia’s indigenous population culminated in the victory of Evo Morales by a twenty- five point margin in the December 2005 presidential election. Faced with the rapid and dramatic constriction of their ability to shape political events in Bolivia, powerful economic elites have reacted by demanding autonomy for the country’s regional or “departmental” level of government. The demand for autonomy is particularly acute in the eastern lowland department of Santa Cruz, which occupies a third of the national territory and is home to the country’s most productive economic activities and most well-organized business associations. Grouped together in the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee (Comité Pro-Santa Cruz, or CPSC) that they finance and control, these business associations are directly threatened by the antimarket sentiment that indigenous political groups in the highlands have so successfully harnessed. Since the critical 2002 presidential and legislative elections, they are also threatened by the seri- ous electoral difficulties of the traditional political parties on which they previously depended to represent their interests in the national government. To use Hirschman’s language, “exit” has emerged as a much more attractive option to economic elites in Santa Cruz with the muting of the “voice” they previously enjoyed in La Paz.12 But who exactly are the “economic elites” of Santa Cruz, and what specifi- cally do they understand by the term regional autonomy? For all of the nine- teenth century and half of the twentieth century, Santa Cruz elites were owners of agricultural plantations that used forms of debt peonage to produce goods for regional markets, and in a much more limited fashion, for the national market to the west.13 Beginning in the 1950s, however, these traditional haciendas were replaced with modern and increasingly extensive agrobusinesses that produce sugar, wheat, cotton, soy, and beef for both national and export markets.14

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