38 CultureShock! Bolivia
Between 2000 and 2005, six years of indigenous-led
confl ict, mostly of militant non-violent roots, fi nally led to a
symbolic political transformation. With the election of Evo
Morales, perhaps only the second indigenous president in
the history of Latin America (Benito Juarez was president of
Mexico in the 1860s), Bolivia may never again turn back to its
colonial past.of Transformation The Chronology
The 1990s: Privatisation of Strategic
State Enterprises
In the late 1990s, white men did everything they could to
retain their aristocracy of power, dividing the spoils between
three main political parties, which negotiated their balance
of power according to election results but which all espoused
the same Thatcherite orthodox neoliberal economics. This
economic theory required business to be entirely private,
operating without state subsidies. Yet many of the companies
that were to privatise Bolivian strategic companies were
themselves subsidised by their own governments.
In the political arena, the Condepa (Conciencia de Patria
or Conscience of Fatherland) served as a populist contrast
with a signifi cant indigenous following under the paternalistic
leadership of the ‘Compadre’ Palenque. Condepa was the only
major political party to speak out against privatisations. But
Palenque’s own hyperpaternalism planted the seeds of the
party’s demise, and Condepa’s willingness to be included as
part of the government of former dictator Hugo Bánzer was
the fi nal straw that broke the llama’s back.
The void left by Condepa meant that no voice from
any official party spoke out against the unbridled
orthodox free market, all the while that ‘free’ Bolivian
enterprise had no possibility to compete against subsidised
foreign competition.
Meanwhile, the other facet of Bolivia’s potentially inclusive
democracy, the COB (Bolivian Labor Confederation), was
also in a state of deterioration, primarily because its base
was debilitated with the demise of the mining industry. The
COB, far more than Condepa, had represented Bolivia’s