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Title: Community Organizing and Rebellion Author: Emily Achtenberg Date: July 22, 2007 Language: en Topics: Bolivia, FEJUVE, syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism, mutualism, Dual Power Source: http://www.plannersnetwork.org/2007/07/community-organizing-and-rebellion-neighborhood-councils-in-el-alto-bolivia/
Visitors to La Paz in August 2004 experienced a rare event: a day
without car horns, gasoline fumes and traffic congestion. A strike by
transportation workers protesting an increase in gasoline prices sparked
a series of road blockades, converting major downtown arteries into
impromptu soccer fields and pedestrian-friendly boulevards. The streets
soon filled with thousands of indigenous demonstrators demanding the
nationalization of gas. Women in traditional skirts and bowler hats
discoursed eloquently on the link between the lack of basic neighborhood
services (including cooking gas) and the role of transnational
corporations in exploiting Bolivia’s natural resources.
To a progressive planner, even more remarkable was the realization that
these groups were marching for nationalization under the banners of
their local neighborhood councils—chapters of FEJUVE (the Federation of
Neighborhood Councils), a grassroots community organization in the
neighboring indigenous city of El Alto. In fact, during the tumultuous
“Gas Wars” of 2003-2005, while many groups (including campesinos, coca
growers, workers and students) participated in the broad-based social
movements that brought down two neoliberal governments and ultimately
elected Evo Morales as Bolivia’s first indigenous president, the role
played by FEJUVE-El Alto was decisive. It was FEJUVE that forged a
national consensus and mobilization around the demand for
nationalization of gas. By barricading El Alto’s gas storage plant,
blockading road access into La Paz and carrying out massive civic
strikes, FEJUVE and its allies created a prolonged state of scarcity
that paralyzed the national economy and government. And El Alto paid the
price, providing most of the Gas Wars’ sixty-seven victims.
How did a grassroots urban community organization focused on the
delivery of basic neighborhood services become the major protagonist in
a civil insurrection against the neoliberal order? How did FEJUVE move
from organizing the community to organizing rebellion? What challenges
does FEJUVE now confront in relation to the new MAS (Movement Towards
Socialism) government? These issues are of interest to progressive
planners and others seeking to understand the relationship between urban
neighborhood organizations, popular movements and government in Latin
America and elsewhere.
As Bolivia experts Linda Farthing, Juan Manuel Arbona and Benjamin Kohl
have noted, the La Paz/ El Alto metropolis is a dramatic expression of
the neoliberal globalized city. El Alto, an impoverished township of
rural migrants steeped in traditional indigenous customs, sits on the
rim of the Altiplano overlooking and nearly surrounding La Paz, the
colonial capital driven by market forces and the perpetuation of elite
privilege.
El Alto itself is largely a product of Bolivia’s neoliberal structural
adjustment policies, which expelled massive numbers of miners and
campesinos from the Altiplano over the past twenty years as unprofitable
government mines were shut down and cheap food imports (along with
drought) undermined traditional peasant agriculture. From a village of
11,000 in the 1950s, El Alto became an independent municipality in 1985
and now has a population exceeding 800,000. It is the fastest growing
city in Latin America, soon to surpass La Paz in population.
El Alto is dominated by the informal economy, which has increased by 162
percent since 1985. Seventy percent of the employed population works in
family-run businesses or microenterprises. Many Alteños commute daily
into La Paz, where they build the infrastructure and provide the
services that enable the reproduction of global elite lifestyles. A high
percentage of Alteños are street vendors. Sixty percent of the
population is under age 25.
This explosive population growth has vastly outstripped El Alto’s
capacity to provide basic services to its residents and neighborhoods.
Land use and urban settlement patterns are basically unregulated,
allowing for the creation of subdivisions without public services or
community facilities (schools, churches, parks). Most neighborhoods have
no paved streets, trash pick up or telephone service, while most homes
lack indoor plumbing, potable water and electricity. Seventy-five
percent of the population lacks basic health care, and 40 percent are
illiterate.
The earliest neighborhood juntas in El Alto were established in 1957 to
provide basic services for the recently urbanized migrant population,
later becoming affiliated through FEJUVE in 1979. Historically, the
juntas have played multiple roles, including:
Self-help. Through the juntas, ex-miners and campesinos have pooled
their resources (including miners’ pension funds) and technical skills
to buy land, build schools and parks and install basic utility services.
This has enabled residents to basically self-construct their communities
and neighborhoods.
Regulation. The juntas regulate neighborhood transactions, such as the
buying and selling of homes. They may mediate neighborhood disputes and
administer community justice (with sanctions ranging from community
service to the occasional lynching). In many respects, the juntas
function as neighborhood micro-governments, substituting for the mostly
absent state.
Protest. The juntas also have a long tradition of mobilizing residents
to demand from municipal authorities what they cannot build or deliver
themselves. In 2001, FEJUVE was a major protagonist in the struggle to
found the Public University of El Alto. In 2003, FEJUVE successfully
resisted a municipal tax on building and house construction. In 2005,
FEJUVE spearheaded a campaign to throw out the privatized water company.
In this role, FEJUVE mediates between residents and the state outside
the traditional political party structure to make government more
accountable.
The neighborhood juntas were greatly strengthened in 1994 by the Law of
Popular Participation, a neoliberal democratic reform that devolved 20
percent of the national budget to municipalities and gave local councils
an enhanced role in participatory planning and budgeting. The ability to
demand and deliver funds for neighborhood projects significantly
increased FEJUVE’s power and influence.
Today there are close to 600 neighborhood councils in El Alto, organized
by geographic zone in each of the city’s nine districts and affiliated
at the citywide level through FEJUVE. According to Uruguayan analyst
RaĂşl Zibechi, the basic unit at the neighborhood level must have at
least 200 members. The elected leadership committee meets regularly and
calls a general neighborhood assembly monthly or semi-monthly. An
elected leader must have at least two years of residency in the zone;
may not be a merchant, transportation worker, real estate speculator or
political party leader; and cannot be a traitor or have colluded with
dictators. Farthing and Kohl state that women represent 20 to 30 percent
of the neighborhood junta leadership, a higher percentage than is found
in most popular organizations in Bolivia.
A parallel set of territorially-based organizational structures exists
for small proprietors and workers in El Alto’s informal economy, who are
highly organized. As anthropologist Sian Lazar explains, the street
vendor association represents vendors (mostly women) who sell in the
same street or market. It regulates access to stalls, monitors upkeep
and cleanliness, mediates disputes and negotiates relations with the
municipality. Taxi and bus drivers are organized by route, and the union
(sindicato) regulates departures, allocates itineraries and performs
other functions similar to the street vendor association. These types of
organizations dominate El Alto’s citywide trade union federation and
ally with FEJUVE on critical issues.
Both the neighborhood councils and their counterparts in the informal
economy are patterned after the traditional communitarian organization
of rural indigenous communities (ayllu) in terms of territoriality,
structure and organizational principles. They also reflect the
traditions of radical miners’ unions, which for decades led Bolivia’s
militant labor movement. Fusing these experiences, El Alto’s migrants
have reproduced, transplanted and adapted their communities of origin to
facilitate survival in a hostile urban environment.
FEJUVE’s success broadening its role from organizing the community to
organizing a rebellion against neoliberalism during a period of national
crisis can be attributed to several factors:
Strategic location. Due to its unique location on the rim of the
Altiplano, El Alto controls access to most of the roads that connect La
Paz with the rest of Bolivia. In a tradition dating back to the
indigenous siege of La Paz in 1781 and continuing with the militant
miners’ entry into La Paz from above during the 1952 revolution, El Alto
residents have regularly exploited their strategic geographic location.
The global economy has only enhanced this advantage, since El Alto is
also the site of La Paz’s international airport. Road blockades during
the Gas Wars, for example, effectively cut off La Paz from the rest of
the world.
Autonomous organization. Through the neighborhood juntas, El Alto has
developed as a self-constructed city run by a network of
micro-governments independent of the state. In Raúl Zibechi’s view, the
autonomous organization of labor in the informal sector, based on
productivity and family ties instead of the hierarchical boss-worker
relationship, reinforces this sense of empowerment: Citizens can
self-manage and control their own environment.
Collective traditions and experiences. El Alto’s traditional culture,
reinforced by the practices of the neighborhood juntas, provide the
infrastructure for social resistance in a number of critical ways.
Collective identity. El Alto’s residents identify strongly with their
neighborhoods, making territorially-based organizations the logical
vehicle for collective action. But the settlement patterns of these
neighborhoods also reflect their rural communities of origin, with which
Alteños maintain strong ties (often owning land in the campo and
returning to grow crops, according to Lazar). This has been an important
factor in promoting national indigenous solidarity. When peasant-led
blockades caused food shortages and rising prices in El Alto, most
Alteños identified with the campo, despite their immediate economic
hardship as consumers.
Participation. A high degree of member participation in collective
organizational activities is expected and achieved in El Alto. During
the civil strikes that characterized the Gas Wars, all shops, markets
and businesses closed; transportation stopped; and thousands mobilized
for daily marches and demonstrations. This solidarity is produced by a
unique blend of social coercion and incentives that dates back to the
ayllu, where non-participation was commonly sanctioned (or understood to
result in a loss of benefits). Similarly, failure to participate in a
“voluntary” neighborhood campaign orsindicato activity might result in a
fine, a denial of neighborhood services won by others or assignment to a
less favored market stall or taxi route. While these “consensual
obligations” (in Zibechi’s words) depart from the liberal democratic
tradition, they are generally accepted in El Alto as part of the way the
community works.
Direct democracy. During the Gas Wars, grassroots mobilizations were
strengthened by the traditional practice of community assembly, where
residents meet to deliberate, exchange information and reach decisions
by public consensus. Community radio facilitated direct communication
and the growth of “horizontal” networks at the base, acting without
traditional leadership. Neighborhoods took responsibility for
maintaining individual road blockades, utilizing the traditional tactic
of shift rotation to allow the protest to continue indefinitely. The
tradition of leadership as a form of community service (not a privilege)
served to further empower the grassroots networks which formed the core
of the social resistance.
With the election of Evo Morales, FEJUVE faces new and substantial
challenges that demand further changes in its ever-evolving role. While
broadly supporting Evo Morales’ agenda to regain popular sovereignty
over natural resources and re-found the Bolivian state, FEJUVE has
maintained a critical posture towards the MAS government. This includes
denouncing the Minister of Water, FEJUVE’s former president, for failing
to move decisively to return El Alto’s privatized water company to
public ownership. FEJUVE continues to press for accelerating the pace of
the government’s nationalization programs to generate revenues for
economic development, housing and social services in response to
neighborhood demands.
At the same time, FEJUVE has recognized the need for more pragmatic
tactics in the current political environment. In its recent campaign to
oust the governor of La Paz for promoting regional autonomy (which would
deprive the federal government of necessary resources), FEJUVE withdrew
its threat of civic strikes and road blockades to facilitate a potential
legislative solution.
Whether FEJUVE can retain its strong, independent neighborhood base and
organizational capacity under current political circumstances—despite
the potential challenge this poses to the MAS government—remains to be
seen. To the extent that FEJUVE can remain a potent national force while
delivering concrete benefits to its neighborhood-based constituency,
progressive planners and community advocates will continue to draw
inspiration from this creative grassroots organization.