Bolivia at the crossroads: December 2005

Military Review,  March-April, 2006  by Kent Eaton

Tags: Bolivia, Government, Leadership, president, SOFTWARE

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In the 1950s and 60s, the La Paz-based central government channeled revenues derived from the mineral wealth of Andean departments in the west into development projects for the sparsely populated Santa Cruz department in the east. Assisted by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the central government's "March to the East" resulted in large investments in Santa Cruz's infrastructure, including critical highway and railway projects that helped produce a sustained economic boom in Santa Cruz beginning in the 1970s. The economic boom in Santa Cruz generated deep conflict between what many see as two different Bolivias: the poorer, indigenous, less economically productive departments of the mountainous west and the richer, whiter, more economically vibrant departments in the lowlands to the east.

Bolivians in the east and west disagree about many things, including even how to explain Santa Cruz's success. Residents of western departments remind Santa Cruz of the role western mineral wealth played in its growth and demand it share the proceeds of its newly discovered natural gas deposits with the west. (16) For their part, Santa Cruz residents argue that the absence of the central state and its overweening bureaucracy--not favors from La Paz--enabled the department to grow faster than the national average.

Tensions between east and west worsened noticeably during Sanchez de Losada's disastrous second administration. In the October 2003 Gas War, indigenous groups in the west mobilized against him. Pro-market business and political leaders in the east responded by inviting him to move the national capital to Santa Cruz. (17) When this proposal failed and the following administration of Carlos Mesa began to negotiate directly with Morales, Santa Cruz leaders organized a series of rallies, protests, and signature-gathering campaigns to demand greater autonomy from the central government. (18) Demands for regional autonomy certainly predate Morales's national emergence, but they have escalated sharply in response to growing political turbulence in La Paz.

In the 2 years since Sanchez de Losada's ouster and Morales's election, Bolivian politics has polarized around two sets of rival electoral demands. Groups in the west have demanded elections for a constituent assembly that would enable them to leverage their newfound political power into constitutional changes in electoral rules (for example, having reserved congressional seats for indigenous Bolivians) and economic policy (for example, nationalizing the oil and gas industry). By contrast, Santa Cruz has opposed a constituent assembly and favored instead the holding of a referendum on departmental autonomy that would be binding at the departmental level. In a compromise that reconciles western and eastern electoral demands, the election of a constituent assembly and the vote on departmental autonomy are tentatively scheduled to take place on the same day in July 2006. For those in Santa Cruz who are concerned about Morales's anti-market positions and who demand local control over natural resources, the sequence of elections is significant. Morales won a national election without winning any of the four eastern departments, an outcome that might well increase support in those departments for the autonomy referendum, if and when it is held.