Gaba's back from bolivia

Gaba got back yesterday after a long series of flights and delays. She was working with indymedia folks in lima peru, la paz, cochabamba, and sucre.

She brought me a copy of Sociologica de los movimientos sociales en Bolivia: Estructras de movilizacion, repertorios cultrales y accion politica by Alvaro Garcia Linera (coordinator), Marxa Chavez Leon, y Patricia Costas Monje. It’s a great book which goes in to the history and structure of contemporary social movements in bolivia. They focus mostly on organized social movements, which is good, but i wish they spent more time exploring the structure and organization of the aymara community assembly process.

Marxa and Patricia are both active indymedia la paz. They do a weekly radio news program on one of the community radio stations. Alvaro is an academic who was jailed as a member of an armed guerilla group in 1990 and was released in 1995. He represents a major intellectual force on the left in bolivia.

Evo Morales is the leader of the MAS party and the cocaleros (coca growers) movement. In the last presidential election he came in second. This time he’s widely seen as having become a politician who lies and who is no longer ‘of’ the social movements.

The left social movements were left with a big problem looking forward to the elections in December. The political party which they have united behind was MAS, but Evo no longer has the respect or real support of those social movements. But MAS has the electoral machine, and awareness to do well in elections.

So the left proposed a deal. They would support MAS and campaign for a MAS victory in the elections if Alvaro Garcia Linera as the vice presidential candidate. There is a small chance that the combined Evo Alvaro ticket might win. It’d be funny to have somebody who’s collaborated closely with indymedia activists as vice president. I guess it’s good that Alvaro isn’t a member of indymedia. In fact many campañeros of Alvaro’s were surprised he agreed to run for president on MAS, a party i’m pretty sure he’s not a member of.

In Bolivia (and ecuador for that matter), it’s normally to legitimize the overthrowing of a government by putting the vice president in power after the president has been removed. It’s also often the case that a vice presidential candidate will be chosen to ‘clean’ the record of the presidential candidate. This was the case where the Carlos Mesa who was not a member of any party was first vice president then later president before being pushed out of power himself a few months ago.

Perhaps the US embassy can lend a hand and denounce the Evo-Alvaro ticket which is always good for a big boost in polls.