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As you probably know from the mainstream media, Evo Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) won again by a landslide in the latest Bolivian elections. Atilio A. Boron explores why at Rebelión (in Spanish). Briefly:
1. Termination of illiteracy, following a Cuban program. In 2008 UNESCO declared the country to be officially free of this social handicap.
2. Improvement of healthcare, with the help of Venzuela and Cuba.
3. Improvement of public attention towards marginalized sectors like the elderly, handicapped and pregnant women.
4. Important advancements of the agrarian reform.
5. Recovery of the public control over natural resources (oil and gas).
6. Good macroeconomic management that has allowed the country to have solid reserves for the first time in history, which has in turn served the social and development agenda of the government.
7. Personal integrity and ascetic ("spartan") disposition of Evo, making of him a most charismatic leader.
There are also some moderate criticisms: that the development model is unoriginal and that there is certain contradiction between the eco-comunitarian discourse and the reality of this "extractivist" development style. However he argues that it would be too much to ask the government to make such titanic achievments in such a short time.
2 comments:
I definitely think Morales is 100000 times more honest than Hugo I.
Still, I very much doubt the literacy issue. Latin Americans are in a constant state of denial with regards to their education.
It is completely false Venezuela has eliminated illiteracy and even though I think Bolivia is better off in that respect than Venezuela (in real terms it was before Hugo or Morales came to power as Unesco and IEA tests showed in 1998), I don't think illiteracy there is over.
Look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate
(and that is just what people announce...things are worse, much worse)
It is no coincidence Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador are the only major South American countries (Surinam, Guyana being the other ones)
that do not want to participate in the PISA programme.
I wrote this with some friends:
http://sites.google.com/site/venezueladesarrollada/Home
We got no reply. There have been many other such requests.
I wish Morales well.
In spite of his close ties to Hugo I, he seems to want the best for his people. I also hope Bolivia starts getting over personalities. Geez...we need large groups of people leading the way, cooperating, but also fairly competing and checking each other and being replaced by new individuals from all sectors of society, not caciques or vicereyes.
But then I am a capitalist...I know how much lefties love líderes supremos.
:-p
I know that anyone who does not know where, say Djibouti, is, is a practical illiterate. And that basically includes all Gringos, who typically believe that Spain is somewhere between Mexico and Argentina. If they know that a country called Argentina exists at all.
But for UNESCO purposes, there is no illiteracy in the USA. But there is much ignorance.
things are worse, much worse
True in Seville (Europe) there is a real problem of effective illiteracy (reading alone is not enough to understand) and they were using the Sí Puedo Cubam method to supress it (or was proposed by left-wing groups, can't recall).
I definitely think Morales is 100000 times more honest than Hugo...
Probably, Evo is a model for the politicians around the world to follow. Few if any are that serious and dedicated.
But I think the problem of Hugo is not so much that he is dishonest, as that he is arrogant. And he likes to talk and indoctrinate... Like any good Leo, he tends to believe he is the center of the Universe, more or less. That's the capital sin of Leos: arrogance.
Geez...we need large groups of people leading the way, cooperating, but also fairly competing and checking each other and being replaced by new individuals from all sectors of society, not caciques or vicereyes.
I agree with this in principle but needs a reality check. I do think that Hugo has not done any effort to secure that non-personalist transition (what will happen if the CIA tomorrow gets him killed?). That's a major weak point. However, in my experience (and that may be even more true in America, both Anglo and Latin, for whatever reasons), leadership happens. And for too many people, individual leaders and collective projects are tightly associated.
Another problem is that, without an integral leader, the shadow powers (typically corporate lobbies but can also be secret services, sects, foreign embassies...) can manipulate better in most cases.
The weak spot of personal leadership is that, if the leader is not a "saint", his defects can fan out to all the system.
But, sure, ideally leaders should be less important and collective management the reality. But first we may need to get rid of the shadow organizations such as corporations, sects, etc. Making them by law democratic and participative is the best antidote that I can imagine against counter-revolution.
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