The year was 2002, Gonzalos Sanchez de Lozada, a US-educated mine owner whose English was stronger than his Spanish, won the Bolivian election with a popular vote of 22% mostly coming from Bolivia’s upper and middle Business classes. The victory was thanks to aggressive campaign strategies of US polling and marketing consultants Greenville Carville and Shrum. In October 2003, Goni authorized the violent repression of Indigenous citizens who were protesting the privatization of Bolivia’s oil and gas reserves and the export of Bolivian gas through the Chilean ports to US companies. 68 were killed and more than 400 were injured by the Bolivian military, including women and children. The majority of the conflict between the protesters and the military took place in El Alto. The massacre led to a chain of events in which caused Goni to resign and flee to the US in which he now lives in Washington under full impunity in the suburbs under protection from the Bush, Obama, and Trump administration which has protected him from any court lawsuits from the Bolivian people. The massacre and privatization attempts on not only Bolivia’s gas reserves but water supplies as well led to the popular uprising in which led to the landslide victory of the first Indigenous President of Bolivia, Evo Morales of the movement for Socialism party.
In May 2006, The newly elected Evo Morales made a move backed by overwhelming popular support to renationalize Bolivia’s oil and gas industries. The increased tax revenues allowed Bolivia to vastly increase its macroeconomic policy space, much of this revenue has went into reserves which have increased from 12.1% in 2003 to 48.4% by 2013 as percentage of GDP, and allowed much more revenues to be put into public investment initiatives to reduce poverty, income inequality and the homeless crisis in Bolivia. During Morales’ term poverty has been decreased by 25% and extreme poverty has been decreased by 43%, as well Bolivia has adjusted the real (inflation-adjusted) minimum wage by 87.7% while the urban unemployment rate has decreased from 8.1% in 2006 to 3.2% by 2013. This new Bolivian economy in which moves away from reliance on IMF loans and foreign investments and rather uses taxable income from nationalized industries for creating a genuine social safety net in the transition to a Socialist economy has earned the term, “evonomics”. While the economy in Bolivia has grown an estimated 6.5% in 2013 the international community has begun taking notice of Morales’ success. “Bolivia has been in a way an outlier,” said Ana Corbacho, the International Monetary Fund’s chief of mission, considering that falling commodity prices and other factors have downgraded economic expectations in the Latin American region. “The general trend is we have been revising down our growth forecast, except for Bolivia.”
Though the nationalization of Bolivia’s gas and oil reserves were a large success, Morales is still advised to create and transition towards an economy in which the taxable income is not dependant on an unstable market, given its effect on Venezuela in the 2014 world oil market crash. Still, prior to the nationalization of natural gas in Bolivia, foreign corporations pocketed about 85% of the profits generated by it’s production in Bolivia. Morales increased Bolivia’s profit share from 15% prior to his presidency to 80%-90%, in 2015 all gas and oil revenues exceeded $4 bn, composing of 50% of Bolivia’s export earnings and totalling over 4 times as much revenue experienced prior to Morales. Over ten years, Evo Morales has gained $31.5 Bn from the nationalizations compared to $2.5 bn earned during the previous 10 years under neoliberal policy. This income, regardless of where it is derived from, is essential for the social programs designed to eliminate poverty and move Bolivia towards becoming a self sufficient country agriculturally, Bolivia now provides 95% of its own food and poverty has decreased from 60.6% of the population in 2005 to 38.6% in 2016.
Evo Morales has as well pursued more progressive policies in other aspects in which heavily affect Bolivian society, the drug war. In 2008 Bush added Bolivia to a lengthy list of Countries that have supposedly “failed demonstratively” to meet standards necessary to counter narcotics. Bolivia is still on the list despite reducing the amount of Coca in cultivation. In Bolivia, Morales receives praise for respecting Indigenous rights to utilize Coca for traditional purposes, the slogan being “Coca yes, Cocaine No” that emphasizes a more humane approach to combating narcotics. In 2010 31,000 hectares of coca were in cultivation, by 2013 Morales had succeeded in reducing the amount to 23,000 hectares (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime). Many other progressive policies have been implemented for protecting human rights in Bolivian society such as Nationalizing property in which practised forced or coercive labour, as well the new government has appointed a large number of women and Indigenous people to high government posts. Three new ministries have been created including a Ministry of Transparency and fight against Corruption minister, which has been approved with much popular support to combat corruption. As a result of these Changes Morales won the 2009 election in a landslide victory where he won 64% of the popular vote.
In short, Evo Morales’ connection with not just the Indigenous but nearly entire Bolivian population continues to gain him more success not only in terms of approval ratings but bettering Bolivian society everyday. It is difficult to assess a proper equilibrium in a Country as impoverished as Bolivia between environmental protection and economic growth, an issue in which divides many of Morales’ supporters between those who support the use of natural gas and those who do not. For Socialists he can be criticized of making policies too nice on the Business minority and vise versa, some say he is too left others agree to disagree. However the numbers don’t lie, Morales is the best leader in Bolivian history and without a doubt represents a change for the better.
New Democrat Society 