John Crabtree: Patterns of Protest: Politics and Social Movements in Bolivia.

John Crabtree Patterns of Protest: Politics and Social Movements in Bolivia Latin America Bureau, 2005, x + 118 pp. ISBN 1-899-36571-0 (pbk) 9 [pounds sterling]

The Cochabamba 'water war' of 2000 projected Bolivia--South America's poorest country--into the international spotlight, if only for a moment. The popular mobilisation that defeated the privatisation of water and threw out a multinational corporation became an inspiration within the poorly labelled 'anti-globalisation' movement. Then in September-October 2003, the 'gas war', with its epicentre in the shantytown city of El Alto, saw more than 500,000 people in the streets, scores of unarmed protesters killed, and finally the forced resignation of the hated neoliberal president Gonzalo (Goni) Sanchez de Lozada. Bolivia briefly re-entered the spotlight. The year 2005 witnessed a steady increase in mobilisation against Goni's replacement, Carlos Mesa, with various popular-indigenous sectors demanding the nationalisation of hydrocarbons (oil and gas). This most recent wave of protests reached its zenith in May-June 2005 with the 'second gas war', which forced the resignation of Mesa, the second president to be thrown out in two years.

Some important studies of the Cochabamba water war have appeared, but the whole spectrum of contentious popular politics in Bolivia from 2000 to 2005 has mainly been subjected only to conjunctural, journalistic analysis. This is especially true of the literature available in English. John Crabtree's Patterns of Protest: Politics and Social Movements in Bolivia is one of the first preliminary efforts to paint a broader picture, to uncover patterns and to reveal the deeper, underlying economic and political structures that help to explain the causes and dynamics of the various waves of contemporary Bolivian social movements and the actors involved. This short book is clear and well written and, surprisingly, conveys a good deal of the complexity of the situation in a small space. Patterns of Protest is free of academic jargon, focusing instead on serious description, empirical detail and textured, multilayered analysis. Crabtree utilises his quite extensive knowledge of Bolivia to highlight the local particularities of each movement investigated, while always placing those particularities in the wider socio-political context of the country as a whole and, still more broadly, within the international setting that determines no small part of Bolivia's internal politics.

The purpose of the book is to understand the dynamics and causes of social movement protests in Bolivia, starting with the Cochabamba water war and ending with the El Alto gas war. As Crabtree argues, 'these bouts of confrontation have rational explanations which need to be understood. They are rooted in a sense of inequality, exclusion and discrimination, and in a political system that--despite some of the reforms passed--still had strong barriers (formal and informal) to genuine participation and negotiation' (p. 109). The deceptively simple idea that resistance to the neoliberal political and economic system could be rational is an important corrective to the celebration of the Bolivian model over the last twenty years by international financial institutions and mainstream academics.

Crabtree highlights the important Bolivian tradition of radical protest, which had been led, to a large extent, by the miners of the Bolivian Workers' Confederation following the 1952 revolution. This came apart with the imposition of neoliberalism in 1985, the privatisation of the mines, and the firing of tens of thousands of miners. After that, effective protest faded away for roughly fifteen years, and civil society became more heterogeneous. Nonetheless, ex-miners migrated to various parts of the country and became key actors in what would become new forms of popular protest. Patterns of Protest is largely an attempt to understand popular resistance in the neoliberal period, after the miners lost their vanguard role.

Poverty, inequality, injustice and racism are described in broad terms in order to set the context. The lack of ideological variation within political parties during the neoliberal period, as well as the near-total distrust of political parties on the part of the Bolivian population, is also portrayed as a key contextual factor to understanding contemporary movements. The undemocratic role of external actors such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the United States embassy and the Inter-American Development Bank, among others, are also indicated as key factors in the widespread disillusionment in Bolivia with formal liberal democracy.

Chapter I examines the Cochabamba water war. Crabtree avoids any romanticisation of the situation following the water war in Cocha-bamba, explaining the technical difficulties with water access that persist. At the same time, he does not lose sight of the broader political impact of the water war: 'Beyond the still unresolved local problems of water supply management, the importance of the Cochabamba water war lies in how it showed that it is possible to resist the tide of privatization' (p. 31). Chapter 2 provides an important overview of the cocaleros' (coca growers') movement in the Chapare and Yungas regions. The us 'drug war' is subjected to substantial critique, and the way in which peasant leader Evo Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party arose from this context is also effectively conveyed. Chapter 3 is one of the most important sections of the book. It highlights the political and social dynamics of the richest department of the country, Santa Cruz. The politics of far-Right lobby groups, the historic weakness of the Left in Santa Cruz, elite demands for 'autonomy', racism, the rise of the landless and indigenous movements, and the ongoing problems with land concentration and vigilante landowners' justice are all introduced. Chapter 4 concentrates on the problem of pensions in Bolivia, and the movement--spearheaded by ex-miners--to guarantee a basic living pension.There are especially insightful comments, in this chapter, on the gendered aspects of poverty in old age.

Chapter 5 tackles the rise of Aymara nationalism, and the issue of land in the altiplano (high plateau) region of the country. The chapter seeks to understand the material and economic basis of the political-ethnic situation, in addition to applying cultural analysis. The fascinating ways in which tradition and modernity overlap in the Aymara world are discussed. Finally, the gas war of 2003 is attended to in Chapter 6, which is followed by a concluding chapter that seeks to underline the particularities and commonalities between these multifaceted and complex movements.

Let me point out two shortcomings in this important book. First, in the concluding chapter Crabtree points to four limitations of the popular movements: their episodic nature, their disunity, their failure to build strategic bases of broader sympathy and support and, finally, their reactive nature. The key related issues of relations between Leftist social movements and political parties, and the question of vying for state power, are not taken up. These issues are being widely debated within the Latin American Left, and their absence from the text is surprising. Second, Crabtree's own ideological preference for a 'social compact' of sorts, in order to build consensus and trust between competing interests in Bolivia, seems a far cry from what social movements are actually demanding. In a country where racial and class stratification is so profound, contemporary radical social movements are looking to fundamentally destroy the foundations of the current order through street insurrection, while the few who enjoy the privileges of the current order are highly unlikely to ever engage in a trusting and consensual process that will lead to the demise of their privilege. Furthermore, there can be little moral foundation for a 'social compact' which fails to undermine that privilege thoroughly.

Patterns of Protest is an important introduction to Bolivia's contentious popular politics in the neoliberal era. It will be an especially useful tool for undergraduate students. Given its length, and the breadth of subject matter that is included, this book could not be anything more than an introduction to the dynamics of the social movements in question. However, as an introduction, it manages to encompass an unexpectedly wide swathe of the important issues.