Vol. 72/No. 20      May 19, 2008

The vote is part of a campaign by large landowners and other capitalists in Bolivia to destabilize the government of Evo Morales and demobilize popular struggles for greater control of the country’s land and resources. The nearby provinces of Tarija, Beni, and Pando, have scheduled autonomy votes this summer.

The campaign is a direct challenge to an agrarian reform program, laws aimed at loosening the grip of foreign capital on the country’s resources, and other popular measures passed by the government. These have been won over the last two years following upsurges and mass mobilizations of workers and peasants.

Among the powers the Santa Cruz provincial government is demanding are control over land distribution and the right to sign international treaties on trade and investment.

The referendum’s backers claimed to have won more than 80 percent of the vote. Morales, who called the vote illegal, urged residents to refuse to participate. Initial reports say 39 percent of eligible voters abstained. Following the vote Morales pledged to negotiate with the renegade provincial governments.

Santa Cruz and the other lowland provinces in eastern Bolivia contain the bulk of the country’s oil and natural gas, and produce much of its food. A majority of Santa Cruz’s residents are mestizo—mixed indigenous and European descent—and white.

The majority of Bolivia’s population are of indigenous Quechua or Aymara origins and live in the three highland provinces.

“It has to be clear that we are not going to accept an interruption of the institutional order by the hand of the Evo Morales presidency,” said Santa Cruz provincial governor Ruben Costas following the vote.

Part of that order is defense of the prerogatives of wealthy landlords—both Bolivian and foreign. Some 90 percent of arable land in Bolivia is owned by a mere 10 percent of the population.

Under a draft constitution currently being discussed, individual holdings in Bolivia would be capped at 25,000 acres. Time magazine reports that landless peasants have already won deeds to 25 million acres of land since the land reform began in 2006.

Months after taking office in January 2006, Morales declared the nationalization of the country’s oil and natural gas. On May Day this year, addressing a mass rally in La Paz, he announced moves to nationalize the country’s main telecommunications company. He also reported that four foreign-owned natural gas companies that he had announced plans to nationalize two years ago were now in state hands.

Morales, the first Bolivian president of indigenous descent, is a leader of the political party Movement Toward Socialism, one of the groups that participated in protests that toppled his two predecessors.

In 2003 a revolt by workers and peasants toppled the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. Mass protests again forced the resignation of Lozada’s successor Carlos Mesa in 2005.  
 
 
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