A
caravan of buses, security vehicles, indigenous leaders and backpackers
with Che T-shirts wove their way down a muddy road through farmers’
fields last Wednesday to the pre-colonial city of Tiwanaku, where
Bolivian President Evo Morales was ceremonially inaugurated into his
third term in office. Folk music played throughout the morning as
indigenous priests conducted complex rituals to prepare the president
for his next term. The spectacle in the ancient city’s ruins was marked
by its many layers of symbolic meaning.
“Today
is a special day, a historic day reaffirming our identity,” Morales,
the country’s first indigenous president, said in his speech in a stone
doorway to Tiwanaku. “For more than 500 years we have suffered darkness,
hate, racism, discrimination and individualism, ever since the strange
[Spanish] men arrived who told us we had to modernize, we had to
civilize ourselves… But to modernize us, to civilize us, first they had
to make the indigenous peoples of the world disappear.”
Last October, Morales was re-elected with more than 60% of the vote. His popularity is largely due
to his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party’s success in reducing
poverty, empowering marginalized sectors of society, and using funds
from state-run industries for hospitals, schools and much-needed public
works projects across Bolivia.
“I
would like to tell you, sisters and brothers,” Morales continued,
“especially those invited here internationally, before what did they
say? ‘The Indians, the indigenous people are only for voting and not for
governing.’ And now the indigenous people, the unions, we have all
demonstrated that we also know how to govern better than them.”
For
most of those in attendance, the event was a time to reflect on the
economic and social progress enjoyed under the Morales’ government, and
to recognize how far the country has come in overcoming 500 years of
subjugation of its indigenous majority.
“This
event is very important for us, for the Aymara, Quechua and Guarani
people,” said Ismael Ticona Quispe of the Tupak Katari campesino
federation of La Paz. “[Evo Morales] is our brother who is in power now
after more than 500 years of slavery. Therefore this ceremony has a lot
of importance for us… We consider this a huge celebration, especially
for the Aymaras.”
For
critics on the left, the Tiwanaku event embodied the contradictions of a
president who champions indigenous rights at the same time that he
silences and undermines grassroots indigenous dissidents, and who speaks
of respect for Mother Earth while deepening an extractive economy based
in gas and mining industries.
But the politics of decolonization in Bolivia are never simple, and the spectacle represented more than these contradictions. This
complexity was fully on display in Tiwanaku, where indigenous movement
leaders walled off beyond the main event complained that the Argentines
with blond dreadlocks yelling “Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé, Evo, Evo” were
blocking their view while “Hallelujah” played on the loudspeakers at the
same time that Andean priests blessed a Middle Eastern dignitary
shaking hands with the president right after Evo said “there’s no first
world… or third world… only one world” while a local worker cleaned out
the dozens of porta-potties.
There
were thousands of Bolivian social, indigenous and labor movement
participants in attendance, yet the presence and enthusiasm of
international activists, from Europe to Central America, was very
palpable at Tiwanaku. Beyond the many shortcomings and victories of the
Morales government nationally, the administration also serves a
political purpose outside of Bolivia’s borders, orienting and inspiring
people toward an alternative horizon.
As
Ana Llao, a Mapuche leader from Chile, explained, she was attending the
ceremony “to strengthen the ties between the indigenous peoples of Abya
Yala and especially give our support to our brother Evo who is the
first indigenous president. I believe that in Latin America and
throughout the world, as [Morales] said so well in his speech, that
today the indigenous, the original peoples, these social classes are
capable of governing. Today Bolivia is demonstrating this.”
The
way the MAS used Tiwanaku for political ends, as it has in past
inaugurations, was shameful and opportunistic for some critics. But
there is a long history in Bolivia of couching politics of liberation
within the deeper story of colonialism and indigenous resistance. From campesino and
indigenous movements in the 1970s to the MAS party today, activists and
leftist politicians have evoked a glorious indigenous past to
legitimize their demands and guide their contested processes of
decolonization. In the Gas War in 2003, when residents of El Alto laid
siege to La Paz, their militancy recalled another siege over 200 years
earlier, when Tupak Katari and Bartolina Sisa led a similar assault on
the colonial city. Today, the country’s main indigenous and campesina women’s movement bears Bartolina Sisa’s name and just celebrated its 35th anniversary earlier this month.
The
MAS doesn’t have a monopoly on the uses of Bolivia’s rebel past, but
it’s incredibly savvy in its deployment of historical consciousness as
an ideological and political tool. From the uses of the coca leaf and
the multi-colored wiphala flag as symbols of indigeneity, to
naming Bolivia’s first satellite after Tupak Katari, the past has always
been present with the MAS. When Evo Morales walked through the doors of
Tiwanaku last week amidst incense and the prayers of Andean priests, it
was a profound moment marking the third term in office for the
country’s first indigenous president. It was also just another day in
the MAS era.
***
Benjamin
Dangl has worked as a journalist throughout Latin America, covering
social movements and politics in the region for over a decade. He is the
author of the books Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America, and The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia.
Dangl is currently a doctoral candidate in Latin American History at
McGill University, and edits UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism
and politics in Latin America, and TowardFreedom.com, a progressive
perspective on world events. Twitter: https://twitter.com/bendangl Email: BenDangl(at)gmail(dot)com
Source: Upsidedownworld (originally posted by Alternet -- page not available)
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