Balivia’s Radical Tradition Permanent Revolution in the Andes S. Sandor John the university of arizona press tucsonIntroduction In December 2005, Bolivian peasant leader Evo Morales became the first Indian president in South American history. More than any event since Che Guevara's death four decades earlier, his election put the isolated Andean country on the map for people around the world. Garlanded in coca leaves, Morales and his running mate—Alvaro Garcfa Linera, a former “Indianist" guerrilla leader—took office to the tune of the morenada, a dance portraying black slaves and subterranean devils, traditionally performed by Bolivian miners in homage to the Virgin of the Mineshaft. The election of the leftist coca-grower Morales followed a series of convulsive social upheavals. For Bolivia, the millennium began with the “Water War" of 2000 Seana Ts petvateagtinokiegter eerste cae privatization of water services in Coch- abamba. Three years later, a bloody “Gas War" on the altiplano (high plateau) overthrew the ncolberal president wha was one of Washington’ regional ERSSHTGS” TW 200S-"Car-War lt” Go0K The coscey wo the beck ofa ear “again, overthrowing another president and opening the way for Moraless election Although Bolivia has made front-page headlines in recent years, it remains little studied and less understood. Legend has it that Queen Victo- ria took out her map of the world and drew a big X across Bolivia when a caudillo president humiliated Britain's envoy. For subsequent generations, it might have been summed up as the land of coups, coca, and Che. To many, its fragmented, convulsive history seemed incomprehensible. Today, Bolivia symbolizes new shifts in Latin America th: under the impact of social movements of th i indigenous peoples once crossed off the maps of “official” history. Bolivian rat jowever, has a distinct genealogy; and it does not fit into ready- made patterns of the Latin American left. This book was born from a desire —_————to understand a place where miners spoke in Quechua-inflected Spanish of Leon Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” while offering coca leaves and ciga- rettes to El Tio, a pre-Inca deity of the world beneath the world. Why was Bolivia home to the most persistently, heroically combative labor move- ment in the Western Hemisphere? How did the Andean altiplano foster a movement born from distant disputes over Marxist doctrine in Soviet Russia? This movement, "Bolivian Trotskyism,” has played a central role in shaping the tradition of Bolivian radicalism. A Distinctive Radical Tradition In many vital ways, the country is markedly different. Some differences are extreme expressions of tendencies common to much of Latin America; others are unique. Bolivia is one of the very poorest countries in the hemi- sphere, and also the most Indian, far outstripping even Guatemala: two- ‘oatile places ina region oem rurked By upheaval. Upper Pers Tupec Katari rebellion of 1781 was one of the most powerful indigenous risings in the Spanish empire. When Spain was driven out in 1825, Bolivia was named after South America’s “Liberator,” Simén Bolivar. Yet independence with Chile, and so many military takeovers that other Latin Americans nicknamed it Golpilandia (C ‘oup-Land Bolivia’ economy long revolved around production of one key com- modity, first silver, then tin; later gas and oil (and at some points coca). As tin became a strategic metal in the early twentieth century, miners drawn ence on national life. Centered on their union, Bolivia's labor movement ditions of struggle deeply colored by miners’ class identity and culture (see figure 1.1). Concentrated in the mine camps of the altiplano, these workers plaved a.central military and political role in the Bolivian Revolution of 1952, regional impact of this revolution owed much to the political prominence of Indian miners and peasants in the destruction of the old order and the conflict-ridden construction of its successors. The miners’ militancy, facing civilian and military regimes’ attempts to crush their resistance, made them a reference point for activists throughout the continent. A year after the 1952 revolution, a young Ernesto Guevara 2. INTRODUCTION