Bolivarianism and its critics

Last night we spoke with a Peruvian couple about politics here. The husband, Sergio, repeatedly expressed his disdain for the tactics of the “strike”, which are used throughout the country by the disaffected and disadvantaged to gain recognition for their causes (and have affected us on more than one occasion). I disagreed with him, arguing that this was the only recourse open to the relatively disenfranchised and its effectiveness – roads and rail closed to the tourist dollar – made it a useful method of having their voice heard (since the couple have their own trekking agency, there is no small amount of self-interest involved).

I explained how the miners strike in the UK had been a watershed in our country´s political history and marked the defeat of the workers, whose rights had never been the same, and argued that privitisation had been sold to us as efficiency and profit, whereas it was really job losses and higher prices. By repeatedly referring to the workers as the country, I was able to argue against the “us and them” mentality that the “educated” classes foster: “us”, the enlightened few looking towards the future; “them” the stupid masses stuck in the past. Sergio insisted that “education” was the way forward, which is a subtler take on the position that “I am educated and know what is best. If the people who disagreed with me were as clever/educated as I am, there would be no disagreement because they would see that I am right”. Or as a Venezuelan I knew in London simply repeated time after time, the poor are “estupido”.

Sergio claimed that some of these strikes in Peru were encouraged or inititated by Venezuela´s President, Hugo Chavez, and as he repeated the slurs of the right-wing news: Chavez, “ a charlatan”, Evo Morales: “a Chavez puppet”, I argued for the majority who voted for these men and pointed out that Alan Garcia could be described as a US puppet. Sergio and Jessica consider their president the lesser of two evils, and stated “better the devil you know”, in comparison to Ollanta, the “nationalist” who they seemed to imply hated white people and with whom they associated a return to the violence of the 80s. Their preferred candidate for the 2011 presidential elections is the current Mayor of Lima, Luis Castañeda Lossio, who they see as having turned around an inept and corrupt city government. As for Keiko Fujimori, they felt she had no chance in seventeen months´ time.

Sergio held opinions that I disagreed with but he was a generous listener and claimed at the end of the conversation that he had changed his perspective. For me, it was interesting to delve deeper into the mindset of the opponents of the “new socialism”, “Boliviarianism” or “indigenous movement” that is gaining ground on this continent and was reinforced yesterday with Evo Morales´ landslide reelection in Bolivia.