Bolivian feminists organize against crisis and patriarchal pacts

Untitled. Mixed technique, drawing with pencil crayons and stencil © Lorena K for Ojalá.

Opinion • Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar and Claudia López Pardo • November 22, 2024 • Leer en castellano

Feminist struggles in Bolivia are pushing past the calculations of the legislative assembly and the disorder of a judicial system that simulates the resolution of the serious conflicts emerging out of patriarchal politics.

They transcend confrontations between party fractions that, in recent days, led to the cancellation of indefinite re-election and disqualified Evo Morales from being the presidential candidate of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in the 2025 elections.

The difficult and steady work of reconstructing anti-patriarchal, feminist and anti-extractivist capacities at a grassroots level is expanding in Bolivia, even as the social reproduction of life becomes more difficult.

Broken pacts

For twenty four days in October and early November, road blockades in support of Morales cut the department of Cochabamba off from the rest of the country, causing shortages and a sharp rise in commodity prices. 

The conflict was a departmental-level expansion of the intense dispute that has roiled the MAS over the past two years. It revolved, once again, around the right that Evo Morales claims he has to be reelected as the presidential candidate at the head of the party next year. The blockades ended after they were violently dismantled by police, who made many arrests. The police action was applauded by a significant part of the population, something that rarely occurs.

At the current stage in this conflict there are broad social and political sectors within the MAS—which has been in government for almost two decades with a brief interruption from 2019 to 2020—that are open about their dissatisfaction with the situation. This fraction has undermined the stability of the patriarchal pact, which had allowed Morales to concentrate control of key decisions that impacted not only the party, but the entire nation. 

This rupture signals a key difference with what took place in 2019, when Morales resigned as President and left the country in the midst of another intense political confrontation. At that time the previous pact was operational, concentrating all power with Morales. This arrangement allowed Morales to become the mediating figure par excellence in Bolivian politics for over a decade. It was he who had the final word in every public matter, hence his status as a caudillo.

In October and early November of this year, that pact was finally shattered.

By seeking to continue to monopolize decisionmaking on all matters of public and collective interest, as well as by appointing and removing party officials and leaders at his every whim, Morales went from being a figure that produced internal cohesion in the MAS to becoming a nuisance. He insisted on boycotting the government led by someone he himself had chosen, current president Luis Arce Catacora.

Disputing and diminishing the political capabilities of a caudillo like Morales is not an easy task. To date, these events have presented themselves in the form of a polarized confrontation in which each rival seeks to defeat his opponent by force. Those who are now criticizing Morales have been accomplices to his excesses for years.

What’s most difficult is that so many years of allowing abuse, of refusing to heed internal deliberation within the party—and within society—and of disciplinary actions to bend social and communal organizations into uncritical supporters of unilateral decisions made by the “leader,” collective practices of deliberation and decisionmaking have been greatly diminshed.

Parallel to the culture of vertical leadership, a culture of compliance, obedience and silence was generated. That’s why the entire political structure cracked and threatened to collapse over the past weeks. This has brought the Bolivian right wing back to life, its operators are now rubbing their hands and preparing to claim spaces of state power from which they have been absent for many years.

Strengthening autonomies

In this context of disciplining of social organizations and powerful patriarchal pacts, we must not lose sight of a constellation of collective efforts in defense of territories, water and forests, as well as struggles against all patriarchal, colonial and capitalist violence, that has been cultivated—with difficulty—outside the party apparatus.

The organizational forms of these efforts and practices center care work and the sustainability of collective life, and they are maturing amid great difficulty and economic hardship.

These efforts cannot yet be compared with the massive union and social articulations that previously sustained a heterogeneous social force that collectively produced the capacity to intervene in public affairs. But the weavings of today’s efforts are broad, and expand over vast territories.

In Cochabamba, which is where the 24 days of the pro-Evo blockades had the heaviest impact, women, feminists and sexual and gender dissidents are asking how they can maintain and build feminist strength.

Cochabamba is a geography in which there is violence on a regular basis. The overlapping crises of shortages in the midst of hateful, bellicose discourses brings back memories of what took place November, 2019, when Morales resigned and fled to Mexico.

But this time it’s different. Today we know it is urgent to gather and create spaces that allow for conversation among women and dissidents. We must create a vocabulary that names what is happening, that foregrounds everyday concerns, and that allows us to reflect on the possibilities that can open up in a context in which there is so much confusion.

If what crises do is break connections and relationships, it is feminist assemblies that become places where trust, support and coping is made possible, where people can speak openly, choose their words with confidence, and plan future political action.

These assembly spaces are produced against disorganization, confusion and the growing fascistization of the social fabric. Feminist assemblies are acts of radical self-defense that tighten the threads of anti-patriarchal critique and name reality as it appears.

Bolivian feminist María Galindo says “rape culture” thrives within the liberal political form of the political party and its caudillo, and it can no longer be covered up. Morales is currently entrenched in the Chapare partly as a result of charges laid against him for the rape of a teenager.

Feminists insist that there can be no negotiation when it comes to harassment, abuse and rape. Denouncing male violence is an act of justice and rebellion. Over the last decade the feminist struggle has been focussed on breaking impunity. The margins of what used to be “acceptable” have shifted.

Politicians are no longer untouchable

Producing meaning isn’t easy. Twenty-four days of road blockades in Cochabamba produced a sense of suffocation and daily emergency among the population that hamper efforts at collective organizing.

Women who are organizing are clear about the fact that fascism is also an outcome of the militarization of society and the resurgence of paramilitary groups like Cochala Youth Resistance (RJC). When women gather, their concerns are centered on the naturalization and expansion of military violence in the name of security.

Rejecting violence is a verb-action that aims to preserve life. But such actions can have undesired consequences. Feminists understand that conservative counter-offensives that seek to discipline women's desires and bodies could follow.

Today, state institutions, the city of Cochabamba and right-wing parties are calling for the recovery of “moral values.” This can be read as a kind of revenge, one that’s filled with hatred towards feminists and feminist struggle, which has overflowed into the streets. Now, as always, is a crucial time for self-care and self-defense.

Precarious and in struggle

The effects of acute precariousness are felt in the bodies and emotions of women and dissidents, who have come together to create practical strategies to alleviate the economic crisis, which individualizes and isolates. A shared, collective fabric, when it operates as a network, can activate a range of strengths.

Thus, it is with different questions that women and dissidents will arrive this year to the November 25 demonstrations on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Politicizing the complexity of the current moment, urban feminists reaffirm that women are not a social sector, but rather a massive constituency, especially among people in struggle.

The current Bolivian scenario challenges women to raise their voices, to call out violences and to push forward the struggle to transform society in a country that’s been torn apart. Monday, November 25 will be a key moment to listen to their voices, to their many expressions that, we hope, will blossom into a full chorus.