Bolivia and the Open Veins of Latin America

By Steve Halpern

The recent coup against the elected President of Bolivia, Evo Morales appears to be another chapter in the continuing rape of Latin America. Eduardo Galeano documented this rape in his classic book titled: Open Veins of Latin America – The Pillage of a Continent. Galeano’s primary argument is that one of the principle reasons for the underdevelopment of Latin America has to do with the immense wealth that has been taken from its soil.

So, when we think of Latin America, we are talking about the fact that the sugar grown in the Caribbean islands was the center of the word economy for over 100 years. Today, the nation of Haiti is one of the poorest in the world. However, in the 1700’s Haiti was the French colony of San Domingue that was the most productive sugar producer. 30% of the French economy came from this lucrative sugar harvest.

After the Haitian Revolution the slave-owning powers isolated Haiti. They didn’t want the example of the abolitionist Haitian government to spread to their slave labor camps.

Today, capitalists are scrambling to get their hands on the oil from Venezuela. That nation has the largest oil reserves in the world. The Venezuelan people are struggling against those powers, so they might have access to some of the wealth created from those oil reserves. The people of Chile are also struggling to stop the theft of the wealth produced by the huge copper deposits located in that nation.

I believe it is useful to look at this history when we look at the coup against President Evo Morales. Today, Bolivia has huge deposits of lithium that is a necessary ingredient for cell-phones. Bolivia also has large gas deposits that can be used to generate electrical power. However, taking wealth from Bolivia is not a new endeavor.

Eduardo Galeano quoted from Karl Marx who wrote about the theft of resources from Bolivia in the first volume of his classic work Capital. This is what Marx had to say: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.”

The silver mines of Potosí

Where were the largest deposits of silver that Marx was talking about? Answer: Bolivia. Who were many of the people representing the “aboriginal population” that that were enslaved and entombed in the silver mines? Answer: The indigenous people of Bolivia. When Marx wrote about what he sarcastically called, “the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production, what was he talking about? Answer: The international capitalist system we are living with today.

So, in his book Open Veins Eduardo Galeano exposes a piece of history that the educational system in this country ignores. In the year 1573 the Bolivian city of Potosí had a population of 120,000. Of the most populous cities in Europe, only London had a population as large as Potosí. By 1650 the population of Potosí had increased to 160,000. At that time the most populous city in the thirteen colonies that became the United States was Boston. Potosí had a population ten times larger than Boston.

In the following extended quotation, Galeano gave us an idea of the immense wealth of the city of Potosí in the 1600s. We might consider that residents of Potosí had to endure an altitude of 1400 feet:

“Suddenly a rich and disorderly society burst forth beside the silver, and Potosí became the ‘nerve center of the kingdom,’ in the words of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza. By the beginning of the seventeenth century it had thirty-six magnificently decorated churches, thirty-six gambling houses, fourteen dance academies. Salons, theaters, and fiesta stage-settings had the finest tapestries, curtains, heraldic emblazonry, and wrought gold and silver; multicolored damasks and cloths of gold and silver hung from the balconies of houses. Silks and fabrics from Granada, Flanders, and Calabria; hats from Paris and London; diamonds from Ceylon, precious stones from India, pearls from Panama; stockings from Naples; crystal from Venice; carpets from Persia; perfumes from Arabia; porcelain from China.”

However, Spain only managed to keep about five percent of the wealth it had taken from the Americas. The reason is that Spain was slow to develop a manufacturing base, so most commodities needed to be imported. The Spanish Inquisition blocked independent thought and became a roadblock to capitalist industrial development. Today, the official who replaced Evo Morales as President claims that she is bringing the Bible into the government. 

In other words, Belgium, Holland, France, and Britain all profited from the Spanish plunder of the Americas. The British became the world power because of their navy proved to be more powerful than the naval forces of Spain.

Capitalists have ignored the lessons of the past

So, how is this history relevant to the current reality?

The labor movement, the civil rights movement, and the women’s movement all worked to improve the standard of living in this country. Capitalists responded to these movements by relocating factories from the United to nations where the wages vary from $1 to $10 per day.

Corporations also went into enormous debt and today there are investments of hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives. Derivatives are nothing but bets that the economy will be all right.

So, just as Spain had enormous wealth and went into enormous debt, today capitalists in the United States are in a similar position. Yet, President Donald Trump claims that he is a “genius.” How can this be?

When we think about the capitalist system, those who have power don’t need to have an understanding of history. Their primary concern is supply, demand, and the drive to maximize profits. The question is: Can the relative stability of the capitalist system continue indefinitely?

We can answer this question with a few historical facts. These are the depression of the 1930s, and the recessions of 1987 and 2008.

As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued in the Communist Manifesto written in 1848, in capitalism there is the disease of overproduction. When Native Americans had more food then they needed, they had a party and celebrated. When there are vast amounts of commodities on the market that people are not buying, there are recessions and depressions. In other words, in the capitalist system overabundance actually creates scarcity for working people.

In Cuba the revolutionary government first removed the former military before it took power. Ernesto “Che” Guevara led a Cuban and Bolivian force attempting to establish this same kind of transformation in that country. We should never forget that Che was murdered because of orders emanating from Washington. I have confidence that sooner or later the Bolivian people will take control of the defense of their country.

Today, Bolivia is only one country in the world where the people are demonstrating and risking their lives demanding a profound change. We are learning that we do not need to continue to create super-profits for the affluent. We can begin to use the enormous wealth of the world to establish an environment where poverty will no longer be a part of the human condition.