AGL

There are multiple lessons to draw, but we also need to think a bit deeper. Winning with 62 percent in one election and 47 percent the next time is normal enough — indeed, many governments around the world rule with 35 or 40 percent support, and sometimes less. But for a progressive government, things are more complicated. If ruling with such a base of support is routine practice for a normal, merely administrative government, winning with under 50 percent support poses different challenges to a government that is pushing transformations in society. One such challenge is how to neutralize and transform the state’s legitimate power of coercion. In this sense, Venezuela was more advanced than all the rest of us.

Indeed, beyond any problems it may have, Venezuela had the virtue of creating a defense structure within its revolutionary process, parallel to the state. We didn’t build that. Not because we did not see it as necessary — in fact, initiatives did exist — but perhaps this was not done quickly or deeply enough. This is a key consideration.

This debate goes back to Salvador Allende. Is it possible to reach socialism democratically? Yes. But there also have to be structures to defend democracy itself. For me, democracy isn’t just elections — I’m talking about a deeper conception of democracy. Democracy is equality, the broadening of rights, the de-racialization of authority and the rights that people enjoy. For this reason, there can be no transformation process if it is not democratic. This transformation has to take over the institutions but also have organizational forms capable of defending its achievements when faced with disturbances triggered from the outside. It is clear, in this case, that the money coming into the hands of police and military command came from the outside — and it’s a lot of money.

Faced with the possibility of constitutional breakdown, there need to be popular defense structures. Venezuela built these; we didn’t. This is the first lesson. The second is that if progressive processes are, indeed, progressive, they have to generate mechanisms of social mobility. If you were very poor, you now join the somewhat poor. If you were somewhat poor, you now come to have a middle income. If this does not happen, then clearly collective resources are not really being democratized.

But at the same time, it’s only normal that those who came from the popular layers and now have middle incomes have developed a different type of expectations. We cannot blame them for this. But what happened in Bolivia is not the same as in Brazil or certain other countries in Latin America. There, the regressive process began when the popular middle classes’ gradual rise ground to a halt and they felt the risk that they would fall back into the abyss once more. There, there was a moment of conservatism. But when we in Bolivia saw this in other countries, we did everything to make sure this social mobility did not fall — the curve did slow a little, but it continued rising. So what happened?

What happened is that the traditional middle classes saw themselves as being “invaded” by popular and indigenous layers who now had university education and savings, and now had greater capital of various kinds to take on public posts. This traditional middle class was paralyzed precisely because new middle classes from popular backgrounds were emerging. And it crystallized around ever more conservative positions.

What were we missing? We did not widen our discourse to embrace this traditional middle class as well as some fragments of the new middle class. Perhaps, as we governed, our discourse remained out of step with the realities that were developing. Materially, the classes had changed, but the core of our discourse remained anchored in the old reality.