Bolivian Elections: We’re Asking the Wrong Questions
Presidential elections on Sunday, August 17
By Huascar Salazar Lohman (zur.uy)
HAVANA TIMES – “Who’ll win the elections?” “Does the conflict within the MAS [Movimiento al Socialismo governing party in Bolivia] run that deep?” “Which candidate can stand up to the right?” Those were some of the questions about the upcoming Bolivian elections people asked me at an academic event in Bogota a few weeks ago.
It was all about the elections that are taking place on August 17. Many referred to the nearly-defunct MAS party, and almost no one was worried about how the people and their organizations were faring. Honestly, for understanding the current context in Bolivia, some of these questions seemed irrelevant.
The urgent questions are others. Why has a country suffering from a devastating economic crisis, shaken by violent polarization since 2016, and threatened by predatory extractionist policies that burned 12 million hectares last year, not exercised a strong social response. Why are all the electoral agendas – on the right and the supposed left – so similar, all betting on more extractionism and greater insecurity as their response to the crisis? Faced with this panorama, how is it possible that we’ve settled for a collective resignation that the mediocre traditional rightist parties are leading the polls, while making no greater effort to change this?
These questions lead us to the underlying problem that has been little discussed in Bolivia, one that’s even more imperceptible outside the country: the popular organizational processes have very little capacity to influence the political agenda and uplift their demands to the general public debate, especially in the electoral scenario.
In the preceding months, the pre-electoral dynamic has generated confusion and impotence. Everything has been resolved from above and behind closed doors: opaque negotiations between the different factions of the MAS; unexpected alliances among opposition groups; agreements between upper leaderships, disconnected from the grassroots. Never before, in recent Bolivian democracy, have the elections so abruptly disconnected themselves from the popular mandates.
The historic experience of the country shows that the dispute over economic surpluses, the production of vetoes for destructive processes of plunder, as well as the opening of horizons for transformation – including that which progressivism tried and later failed to navigate – were all born from below, by the generation of mandates and challenges that marked to a great extent the rhythm of Bolivian politics.
Without that capacity to challenge and create mandates, the elections become what they are today, a spectacle taking place within a scenario that we can influence very little – at most applaud or boo, but with no influence over the script.
2005: elections marked by currents from below
It’s worth taking a close look at the 2005 elections, when Evo Morales won the presidency for the first time —not out of nostalgia, but to understand the importance of that electoral process in the context of the social struggles that were shaking the country at the time.
What was at stake in the 2005 elections? At that time, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), but also smaller groups such as Felipe Quispe’s Pachakuti Indigenous Movement, were the face of a contest that had been driven for more than five years (since the Water War) by the constant social mobilization of various massive organizational processes—mainly, but not exclusively, rural.
In the view of Zavaleta Mercado, these struggles ushered in a period of social openness, in which Bolivian society opened itself up to the possibility of profoundly transforming its power structures. From the concentration of surpluses in the hands of transnational corporations and national elites, to the colonial and deeply racist nature of government policies, to the prevalence of large estates and associated privileges, all of this was denaturalized and called into question.
Such was the pressure exerted on government policy that even right-wing candidates like Jorge Quiroga incorporated into their discourse proposals advocating better conditions for the distribution of gas surpluses, and other similar offers of a social nature.
For its part, the MAS party adopted nearly all the banners that had arisen from the different social struggles, including the proposal for a Constitutional Assembly, an initiative that was forged by the Unity Pact in assemblies and deliberation sessions at the margins of the government institutions during that entire cycle of struggles.
In other words, the electoral agenda that year – on the right and even more so on the left – couldn’t in any sense turn a blind eye to the fundamental problems expressed by the organized sectors of Bolivian society, or the way they considered important to address them. The parties build their platforms based on this set of demands, that were set by organizational processes that weren’t state-centered.
2025: Elections channeled from above
In contrast, the current electoral process has been characterized by an avalanche of disperse information about possible candidates and alliances. Beginning weeks before the elections, there’s been continuing speculation about possible candidacies to be determined in negotiations between leaders and parties. Everything takes place in an ethereal and opaque sphere, from which only fragmented elements can be inferred.
The dynamics in these spheres of power don’t respond to processes undertaken by the social organizations. Instead, everything has been resolved between “professional politicians” and their interest groups, as evidenced by the fracture between opposition parties, Arce’s sudden decision not to run, or the disturbing conversations between the different factions of what was once the MAS. In short, underlying negotiations in which everything is negotiated and nothing is revealed.
The political debate revolves around empty slogans that, at best, superficially allude to the complex economic situation: “100 days to solve the dollar shortage;” “gasoline and diesel at 5 Bolivianos (0.72 USD). without subsidies;” “the MAS model has failed” (the latter, paradoxically, put forward by Andrónico Rodríguez himself, considered Evo Morales’ chosen successor).
The devastating fires in the Bolivian lowlands, the agro-industrial production model and predatory mining that devastate entire ecosystems, the critical dependence of state finances on extractive activities, the scandalous concentration of wealth in a few hands, the persistent – and worsening in times of crisis – colonial and patriarchal structures… these problems are fundamentally absent from the electoral debates these days.
Instead, we observe an aligning of agendas among the supposed political rivals. The most emblematic case is that of agro-power, a force responsible for nearly 90% of the national deforestation and for Bolivia’s inclusion on the ignominious list of countries with the greatest quantity of lost forestland. Yet these forces are backed by the entire political spectrum: from Evo Morales, who in his attempt to win support for his candidacy that never was, defended genetically engineered crops and opposed measures to combat the forest fires; to the candidates on the traditional right who never cease promoting measures favorable to large agro-industry. Parallel to this, they all offer speeches that are ever more conservative, macho, and anti-rights.
These aren’t Bolivia’s most important elections
We should begin by recognizing and accepting the political moment: there is little collective force from organized society to set the pace for elections, proposals, and candidates. This process of weakening has been developing over the last two decades, and has been accentuated in the current moment of crisis.
Exceptions like María Galindo and her ability to denounce and challenge, are essential; they allow us to gauge the degree of political decay and glimpse the path that those in power will follow. However, responses are needed that take a leap towards the collective, in order to have the capacity to veto the powers that be, and amplify dissident ideas, with the ability to profoundly change the status quo.
In these elections, there is no such thing as a wrong vote. Voting is compulsory in Bolivia, so we have no choice but to vote pragmatically for what we consider the least bad option, and that is fine too. The issue is that there’s no option that’s the lesser evil for everyone; the least bad for each individual depends on particular contexts and experiences that cannot be delegitimized.
Not all the votes that will be cast for some of the MAS offshoots seek continuity or the resuscitation of their caudillos – many of them will be cast out of deep rejection for the most racist and classist political elites of the country. Similarly, not all the votes for the right are looking to have the country become more fascist – a large part of these votes will be punishing votes in response to a MAS now so dysfunctional and authoritarian. On the other hand, the blank or null votes, those that express dissent or indignation, in no way can be capitalized upon by some caudillo figure, as Morales is trying to do.
In any case, a disperse electoral result that leads to a weak government will really be the least of the bad outcomes in the current political scenario. Nothing would be worse than a landslide electoral option at a moment of such fragility for the popular organizational processes.
The one thing we can’t renounce – and that the possibility of different futures depends on – is the need to rearticulate the grassroots organizational processes with the capacity for deliberation, determining meaning, and challenging the current Bolivian social order and that which will prevail in the coming years; their hierarchies, the privileges that exist and are recreated, the historic inequalities, and that so violent relation with nature that is being encouraged.
In no way should we lose sight of this organizational horizon beyond the individual votes which must not become a factor provoking rifts down below. This moment of widespread political decay in the country should serve us in two ways: 1) to recognize that state politics – be they from the right or the left— when independent of social mandates, tend to reconfigure themselves into a dominant, hierarchical, and violent social order; 2) to channel our discontent and frustration toward places where our desires can find possibilities to do and to build; and recognize that while this may not have immediate repercussions on state policy, in the medium and long term it reconfigures power relations— and not only of the government.