Empowerment through articulations between post-neoliberal politics and neoliberalism: value chain alliances in Bolivia

ABSTRACT

Development cooperation between the “New Left” governments in Latin America and the World Bank shows the paradoxical and complex nature of social transformation processes initiated by these governments. Using the case of Bolivia, we analyse how the government of Evo Morales seeks to realise its political goals while introducing elements of neoliberal governance prescribed by the World Bank through the Rural Alliances Project. Though full of contradictions, a neocollectivist practice emerges that succeeds in combining political empowerment of social movements with specific modes of neoliberal governance.

RÉSUMÉ

La coopération pour le développement entre les gouvernements de la « Nouvelle gauche » en Amérique latine et la Banque mondiale montre la nature paradoxale et complexe du processus de transformation sociale initié par ces gouvernements. Prenant le cas de la Bolivie, nous analysons comment le gouvernement d’Evo Morales cherche à réaliser ses objectifs politiques, tout en introduisant des éléments de la gouvernance néolibérale établis par la Banque à travers le Rural Alliances Project (PAR, « Projet Alliances Rurales »). Bien que pleine de contradictions, une pratique néocollectiviste émerge et réussit à combiner l'autonomisation politique des mouvements sociaux avec des modes spécifiques de gouvernance néolibérale.

KEYWORDS:

• Neocollectivism
• empowerment
• World Bank
• post-neoliberalism
• Bolivia

Introduction

In 2012, at Tiawanaku near La Paz, Bolivia, President Evo Morales and Hasan Tuluy, Vice President of the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean, inaugurated the National Farmers Fair for the Rural Alliances Project (PAR). The PAR programme, financed by the World Bank (hereafter the Bank) since 2007, aims to strengthen small farmers by providing them with financial resources and technical support. The focus is on creating alliances between buyers and farmers and ensuring that farm production complies with market requirements. Addressing nearly 3,000 attendees, including producers and social organisation representatives from around the country, Morales said that the forces for reform were able to strengthen themselves as a social movement through the unions, as well as through the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party in electoral politics. But, he continued: “it is now time to empower ourselves economically” (La Razón Digital 2012).

Morales praised the financial support given by the Bank, a portfolio of 14 investment programmes totalling US$450 million, and considered the Bank to be a strategic ally of the MAS government in the field of poverty reduction. He added that the support received would foster the economic freedom of small farmers and stated: [if we were to promote] “social liberation and electoral or political liberation without the accompanying economic liberation, we would surely make a mistake” (La Razón Digital 2012). In his turn, the Bank representative, sporting a traditional red poncho, praised the economic development model of the MAS government which “focused on social inclusion with the objective of eradicating extreme poverty” (La Razón Digital 2012) and the outstanding results of the PAR programme.

This was a surprising turn of events as President Evo Morales had up to then been a staunch critic of the Bank’s policies for Latin America. For example, at the XXI Ibero–American Summit of Heads of State in Paraguay in 2011 he held the capitalist policies pursued by the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) responsible for the subcontinent’s recent economic problems (Opinión 2011).

The strategic partnership with the Bank is also surprising given the trajectory leading up to the election of Evo Morales as president of Bolivia. In his first presidential campaign in 2005, Morales, an Aymara coca farmer and peasant union leader, described the campaign as a collective political struggle based on the awakening of new consciousness to challenge and transform the unequal power relations in the country. This collective awareness raising would allow the “re-foundation” of the country, the recovery of natural resources sovereignty, and the transformation and decolonisation of the state (Fabricant 2012). Alvaro Garcia-Linera, a middle class intellectual and his running mate, called this politically-charged process of empowerment a “Pachakuti” or “time of change” according to the Andean worldview, in which movements of indigenous, peasants and other popular sectors symbolically take the state. Once in power, the MAS government implemented a political project that we call “neocollectivism”. In its formal discourse, it emphasises state transformation embedded in grassroots organisations in order to achieve social justice. The transformed state is not seen as opposed to civil society, as two different autonomous spheres; the mutual relationship should empower grassroots organisations (Córdoba and Jansen 2016). In short, the key elements of MAS’ view on empowerment are the building of collective conscience, transformation of the state and a steering role for social movements.

In turn, the Bank, in its World Development Report, adopted a contrasting view of empowerment, defining it as: “the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes” (World Bank 2011). It is, in fact, a non-relational view of power that focuses on strengthening individual and group capacities in four key areas: (1) access to information; (2) inclusion or participation in decision making; (3) accountability of organisations to people; and (4) capacity to organise at the local level to resolve problems of common interest (World Bank 2011). Poverty “is seen as a lack of resources rather than an absence of entitlements and power, as an ‘economic’ rather than a political problem” (Green and Hulme 2005, 869). The Bank’s shift to empowerment and participation in development has been criticised as a move to depoliticise development in the sense of “technocratising” problems that are political and by imposing most of the responsibility for change in individuals providing insufficient attention to structural limitations and the complexities of development issues (Li 2007). The adoption of a management efficiency focus leads to an instrumentalisation of participation of the poor (Cooke and Kothari 2001), and has been viewed as a strategy to push the neoliberal agenda from below (Harriss 2002; Carroll 2009, 459).

This rather brief sketch of the MAS and the Bank’s views on empowerment is meant to highlight their differences and to set the context for addressing our two interlinked questions: how did a highly politicised view on empowerment like that of the MAS party in Bolivia articulate with the World Bank´s view on empowerment, and how did this articulation shape post-neoliberal alternatives?

The political change in Bolivia is embedded in a broader shift to left-wing governments in several Latin American countries. This dramatic shift started in Venezuela in late 1998 and spread across the continent at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Novo 2014). Although these progressive governments have taken different paths, they have in common that they were launched from an anti-neoliberal platform that has sought alternative development strategies and a protagonist role of the state in society. After more than 10 years in power, these governments have created a political hegemony that is not without contradictions and tensions (Postero 2013), especially due to the prioritisation of neo-extractive development strategies (Bebbington and Humphreys-Bebbington 2010) and the lack of radicalism of their policies (Petras and Veltmeyer 2009). In this context, the alliance between MAS and the Bank could be interpreted as evidence of contradictions between discourse and practice, or as proof that Evo Morales, despite some reforms, wants to continue with a strong neoliberal agenda (Andersson and Haarstad 2009; Kaup 2010; Webber 2011). These interpretations do not fully grasp the nature and role of interventions such as the PAR programme. We argue that, although these interventions are limited by the pre-existing neoliberal framework, they also represent a mixed model that weaves a politicised vision of empowerment and a non-relational vision of empowerment together. The latter does not contradict but facilitates the MAS government by teaching the grassroots organisation to interact with the state apparatus. In this sense, the case of the PAR intervention in Bolivia will help to understand the paradoxical and complex nature of social transformation processes carried out by the “New Left” in Latin America (Enríquez 2013). It illustrates the major contradictions and risks involved in balancing political empowerment of social movements and challenges to implement concrete interventions once in power.

This article draws upon 46 in-depth, semi-structured interviews and over 50 open informal interviews, participant observation and documentary analysis, carried out through different periods during 2011 and 2012. We focussed on the department of Santa Cruz in order to observe the implementation of the PAR project in different contexts: (1) In Yapacaní and El Torno, municipalities in the lowlands with settlements of highland peasants who developed strong ties with agro-industrial businesses, (2) in the Andean valleys (municipalities of Comarapa, Valle Grande and Mairana) characterised by a peasant economy, and (3) in the Guaraní indigenous community of Iupaguasu in the municipality of Villa Vaca Guzman. Yapacaní and El Torno are municipalities where people strongly support the MAS government. People in the municipalities of the Santa Cruz Andean Valleys are more divided regarding political support for the MAS government (Jaldín 2013). Field visits and semi-structured interviews with PAR project officials in Santa Cruz started in January and February 2011. We observed the work of PAR officials in planning, monitoring and evaluation sessions at 16 PAR project sites¹ between June and September 2011. Additionally, we observed interactions between the PAR team, technicians who offer technical assistance and project beneficiaries in the PAR offices in Santa Cruz. We conducted follow-up visits to the selected sites in August 2012.

This article proceeds as follows. The next section explores how the Bank and the MAS government frame empowerment. The third section of the article analyses the PAR programme in practice. The fourth discusses how the neocollectivism of the MAS government articulates with the Bank’s view on empowerment, building upon and strengthening relationships between civil society organisations and the MAS government. The conclusion argues that neocollectivism and neoliberalism can in fact coexist productively.

Neoliberal and neocollectivist views on empowerment

It is for the fight, our experience, all of Bolivia will be reborn, awakening new consciousness, we will bring the people to power. (MAS 2005)²

These were the words that Evo Morales and his MAS party repeated over and over in the campaign for the presidential elections in 2005. Empowerment has become a key idea in challenging the hegemonic discourse of development, linking it to historical notions of collective citizenship that question power relations and structures. The MAS government was elected with the support of an archipelago of indigenous, social, peasant and urban movements with diverse class and ethnic demands. These movements have a long historical tradition of exercising collective citizenship through their political and territorial organisations such as agrarian unions, ayllus and Native Indigenous and Peasant territories (TIOC) (Kohl and Farthing 2006; Postero 2007; Farthing and Kohl 2013). At least two key historical moments have shaped this collective citizenship (Assies 2005). The first was the 1952 revolution that granted voting rights to Indian people and pushed for a land reform led by liberal notions of citizenship linked to individual land tenure (Rivera-Cusicanqui 1990). Indians were redefined as campesinos and the state-sponsored peasant unions became the main vehicle for interacting with the state and demanding civil, political and social rights and participation (Wanderley 2009). Peasant unions, later grouped at the national level into the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores de Bolivia (the Sole Union Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers or CSUTCB), supported various governments in the past and played an important role in the 1980s democratisation process. They have come to form a corporatist movement, with deep roots in class claims and strong powers to mobilise rural society at the local, departmental and national level (Wanderley 2009). The second moment of strengthening collective citizenship occurred during the neoliberal restructuring of the 1990s when the MNR government, led by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, triggered a series of reforms such as the Law of Popular Participation (1994) and the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) Law. These reforms, together with the mobilisation of indigenous people from the lowlands, recognised indigenous organisations as interlocutors with the state within what has been called “neoliberal multiculturalism” (Yashar 2005; Postero 2007). This development changed the terms of citizenship by focusing rural demands on cultural recognition and difference, and on the right to communal ownership rather than on class demands.³

The third moment of citizenship, which we label neocollectivism, began with the social upheavals since 2000 and the rise to power of the MAS. The MAS government has tried to bring together, in one political project, different models of collective action of different excluded sectors: indigenous peoples’ demands, peasants’ class demands and the demands for political representation of popular sectors in general to participate in the decision-making process. Neocollectivism forges a mutual relationship between state and grassroots organisations. In the Communitarian and Productive Agricultural Revolution Law approved in 2011, the MAS government reinforced these intentions by proposing agrarian development policies based on the ideas of “Food Sovereignty, ‘Living Well’ and the rights of the ‘Mother Earth’” (Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia 2011). The plans entailed a politically charged view on empowerment that is close to Freire’s notion of conscientização, or critical consciousness (1970), in which social movements press for social transformation. The main difference with previous forms of collective citizenship in Bolivia is the focus on the strengthening of the state to balance and satisfy social movements’ class-based and cultural recognition demands with their economic empowerment. It emphasises that social movements should present these economic demands not to the market, but directly to the state to press for the transfer of public resources. Neocollectivism also highlights that productive aspects and organisations are dependent on the political organisations of rural communities (Córdoba and Jansen 2014).

This contrasts with the Bank’s development model, implemented via PAR, in which empowerment means strengthening the productive and organisational capacities of farmers to improve production, to gain access to productive assets and to comply with “modern” supply requirements (quality, safety, quantity and timely delivery) such that they can compete in the market economy (World Bank 2005). The state plays a facilitating, not controlling, role in line with the so-called post-Washington consensus that considers “healthy” states essential to the well-functioning of markets (Joseph 2012). This means that states, while maintaining a market-centred vision, must facilitate access (either directly or through third parties) to technical support, rural credit, infrastructure and commercial logistics services.

The PAR programme frames subjects as “participants” in projects and markets rather than as citizens. The PAR intervention facilitates the search for solutions by the poor themselves and promotes individual “self-governance” crucial for neoliberal governance or “governmentality” (Lemke 2001; Foucault 2010). Neoliberal governance emphasises technocratic administration in which the proper functioning of the market and “good governance” of the state depend on and contribute to forming empowered “entrepreneurs of themselves” (Lemke 2001; Valdivia 2005). This new way of exercising power is not practised from the top down, but from within society. It “operates through the promotion of freedom, governing from a distance” (Foucault 2010, 10). Scholarship on neoliberal governmentality, based mainly in the global North, suggests that the mechanisms of self-governance, like participation based on good governance, reform state rule through a range of techniques and an ensemble of new institutions to govern people in freedom, by telling them to be enterprising, active and responsible citizens (Joseph 2012). In the PAR project, farmers pass from being passive recipients of resources to becoming effective producers able to make decisions that improve their agricultural production and access to markets. Within PAR, disempowerment is not understood as a consequence of unequal political–economic and social structures, but as the lack of capacities and individual self-management strategies that would allow them to solve their own problems and make better decisions. Alliances with agribusiness are presented as an effective way to enhance the entrepreneurial capacity of small farmers (World Bank 2009; Collion and Friedman 2010; Labaste and Webber 2010). Parties establish win–win relations in which each benefits by developing solutions they could not achieve on their own. This contrasts with the MAS government rhetoric in which empowerment strategies are a means to change structurally the dominant market-oriented and economic-growth-based food system, and a contribution to the strengthening of a collective citizenship. But how do these two contrasting frames of empowerment come together in practice? In the next section, we explore this and the extent to which the Bank and the MAS government stick to their respective views on empowerment.

The PAR programme and its empowerment strategies

The PAR model in Bolivia

Much of the technical institutional organisation and implementation of the PAR are set by the Bank. The programme was designed by a small community in the Latin American and Caribbean section of the Bank, including the Bank’s senior representative in Bolivia, interested in how to incorporate poor producers into the market. Implementation started in 2002 in Colombia (Córdoba 2012) and extended to 10 countries in Latin America with variations according to national policies and contexts (Collion and Friedman n.d.). In Colombia, the model strengthened commercial agreements between farmers and buyers, focussing on agro-chain constraints, while in Bolivia it concentrated on the productive level, improving farming systems so that farmers are able to respond to concrete market demands. Since its inception the model did not include the poorest of the poor. Prospective beneficiaries must already be engaged in markets and have the potential to generate income (surplus) and jobs (World Bank 2005).

Once the MAS government assumed office, the Ministry of Rural and Land Development (MDRyT) took over the PAR programme proposal initiated by its predecessor. The first US$28.4 million Bank credit for the PAR was approved on 26 May 2005 and implemented in 2007 (MDRyT 2010). In the first phase, PAR launched four calls for proposals including a pilot in 2004. In 2007, the programme covered 65 municipalities from the Tropics, the Valley and the Salt-flat sub-regions. In 2009, coverage of the programme expanded to 110 municipalities, and the intervention area doubled including the Chaco, North and Lake Titicaca regions. As of 2013, the programme supported 769 productive alliances reaching approximately 28,000 families in all departments of the country, except Pando. In 2013, a second phase started with a US$50 million loan from the Bank.

The PAR model was adapted during the MAS government. First, PAR changed the name of beneficiaries from “small producers” to “indigenous people”, thereby recognising the context of indigenous villages. This name change did not imply a reformulation of the content of the programme as PAR offered the same support mechanisms and management formats to all participating producers regardless of their ethnicity. Second, the programme expanded its intervention areas during the first six years of implementation. The MAS government argued that the programme should be more inclusive, alleviate poverty and support the poor. While the Bank emphasised the productive technical area, the MAS attempted to expand the programme to include poorer municipalities and not only those sites with greater economic potential. Third, PAR increasingly focussed on business opportunities in the domestic market to contribute with national food sovereignty whereas the initial PAR proposal had emphasised the support of export initiatives. Fourth, while the MAS government initially distrusted the PAR model, it became gradually a stronger supporter and hailed it as a “successful project”. The programme received complete political support while remaining relatively independent from the government (MDRyT 2010, 2). The MAS wanted to replicate the programme in other parts of the country during the first phase to implement a second phase (2013–2017) and to plan a third phase starting in 2018.

The PAR, although linked to MDRyT, operates as an autonomous programme. Once the Bolivian government receives funding from the Bank, the programme manages these as a decentralised entity with operational autonomy from the MDRyT. PAR being completely funded by the Bank makes its administration and operational management responsive to the Bank’s general guidelines rather than to the Bolivian state. The PAR representatives interviewed found that this brought greater financial independence and management flexibility as well as independence in choosing beneficiaries and intervention sites on the basis of technical rather than political criteria. However, this also isolates them from other state institutions. PAR’s central offices in La Paz are located in a small house in a residential neighbourhood at some distance from the MDRyT. The recruitment of programme managers and technical staff is based on merit. For example, members of the technical team of the PAR were selected by an external private company that evaluated the candidates according to merit and not political affiliation. The current PAR general manager has been in the job since 2004, allowing greater stability compared to other government jobs where rotation is high. This aspect has been highlighted by the Bank as one of the successes of programme: “the focus on results coupled by the absence of political involvement in the Project’s management” (World Bank 2014). As such the PAR technicians occupy an unusual position, working in accordance with both the technical dictates of the Bank and the needs of the MAS government and its constituency.

Depoliticising social movements: individual entrepreneurship vs. collective citizenship

Central to the PAR programme for “economic empowerment” is the depoliticisation of social movements by organising them into market-oriented associations, thereby stifling their ability to debate questions of justice. The Productive Revolution Law 2011 aimed to support Community Economic Organizations (OECOM), which are strongly linked to social movements. The Law gives OECOMs the power to manage and approve rural projects and channel financial resources for communitarian economic initiatives, a demand expressed by the Sole Union Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers. Rather than waiting for the slow process of endogenous development to take place through the strengthening of communitarian economies (like OECOM) as advocated initially by neocollectivism, the Bank proposed market-centred associations comprising market-oriented producers interested in improving farm income, productivity, marketing and local processing activities and participating in value chains (Collion and Friedman n.d.). For one Bank representative interviewed, the involvement of social movements would distort the purpose of the programme which, according to him, is productive, not political. The main challenge for PAR, he highlighted, is precisely the creation of depoliticised economic organisations. He said:

We [the Bank] have insisted, and eventually the Bolivian government supported this view, that the economic transfers from the PAR go directly to the producers, with an economic purpose ( … ) The [political] Unions can co-opt and hinder productive resource management. (Interview, 1 August 2011)

He also stressed that using social movements as intermediaries could divert part of the resources to purposes other than those intended. This view on supporting economic organisations in the PAR programme, instead of more communitarian organisations such as OECOM, was finally accepted by the MAS government.

The prioritisation of market-oriented associations over communitarian enterprises created tensions within the communities studied. In the presence of PAR representatives, community leaders voiced their concerns about divisions in the union structure arising from the top-down imposition of new associations, which have a different modus operandi from that of life in the communities. As the associations organise individual farmers by agricultural product, it is difficult to link them collectively to the community as a whole. One union leader held that PAR sought to do the same as the NGOs: “create associations with the intention of dividing the unions” (Interview, 20 February 2011). The distinction between collective and productive organisations is perceived as a divide and rule strategy.

External interventions, however, can be developed and appropriated in different ways by different actors (Jansen 2003; Nuijten 2003). Our observations suggest that in places where individual land tenure is dominant, forms of coordination and negotiation with social movements have been generated in practice. In Yapacaní, a town of predominantly Andean migrants (Quechua and Aymara origin) and where the unions are the dominant form of organisation, emerging associations have maintained strong ties to the unions. In August 2012, we attended a workshop conducted by a local NGO to train women from the Union Federation on how to organise themselves into productive associations. Yolanda,⁴ a representative of the federation, told us that those attending had created three women’s associations so as to access the PAR resources. One group of women proposed a project raising poultry for eggs, another a project with pigs, and a third, with more economic resources, opted for genetically-improved livestock and pasture. Each group worked separately on these productive projects and organised their association around market opportunities, while continuing to belong to a single active political union. She added:

The members of the Union Federation get together and inform us that there is a call from the government to access resources. The leader goes and gets the PAR forms and calls a meeting. In the meeting it is announced what the possibilities are and we decide what we want to do, if we want to raise chickens, pigs, cattle, etc. (…) not all want the same thing (…) With the Union Federation we work on gender issues. The Ministry of Justice supports us. We have been actively involved in the formulation of five national laws. In the union, women raise gender issues and the need to participate in power spaces; from the unions emerge local government representatives, councillors and ministers. In the town we have a new secretary of gender for women to learn how to empower ourselves in power positions. Productive projects are also important to position women within the family, to gain independence and contribute financially. (Interview, 17 August 2012)

While the unions highlight the significance of collective citizenship and political empowerment for social transformation, the associations focus on managing state-resources to improve individual production. This is one example of what Albó labels “individualism within the group” (quoted in Lazar 2008, 179), and what some scholars (Zoomers 2006) point to as part of the Andinidad (the Andean way of doing things). Here individual land tenure, individual agricultural production and strong market orientation do not necessarily conflict with collective political projects and aspirations.

The case of lowland indigenous people who are trying to strengthen their collective land ownership and recognition demands linked to notions of indigeneity (Canessa 2014), however, is different. An illustrative example is the Iupaguasu captaincy (a form of indigenous organisation), which is a member of the Guarani People’s Assembly in Lagunillas. This community, like other Guarani communities, has historically experienced strong oppression. People were held as semi-slaves, and worked under the yoke of large landowners. The struggle of the Guarani to recover their lands and territory started in the late 1970s (Gianotten 2006), with the support of NGOs. Today, the community of Iupaguasu owns 38,229 hectares entitled as Community Territories of Origin (TCO – Tierras Comunitarias de Origen) under the National Agrarian Reform Law of 1996. When we studied this community in 2011 they were proposing a productive project to PAR and other government programmes. The project aimed to create a strategic alliance between the community and AGRINUTS, a company based in Santa Cruz dedicated to the production and export of Bolivian peanuts. The Guarani community owned land suitable for intensive peanut cultivation and AGRINUTS needed to increase its production area to meet export orders. CEPAC, a local NGO, facilitated the partnership between AGRINUTS and the Iupaguasu community. CEPAC was concerned because the Guarani did not cultivate their land themselves but rented it out to others, even to those who were once their landlords. The alliance with AGRINUTS could potentially terminate these leases. AGRINUTS would contribute capital and the Guarani land and labour. The profits would be shared equally. Guarani leaders saw it as an opportunity to empower themselves productively and alleviate poverty. However, the land recovery process was not easy. Tenants refused to return the land and the captaincy had to hire a lawyer to dissolve the contracts. Although the community wanted to receive support from PAR, they had doubts about being divided into associations. As a member, the captaincy receives support from the Guarani People’s Assembly but associations may not receive such support as they are economic initiatives in which only some participate.

Additionally, the MAS neocollectivist project presents new threats for the Guarani of Iupaguasu. The Law of Popular Participation (LPP) 1994 helped them to increase their representation at the local political level and the agrarian reform law 1996 awarded them collective land rights (Wanderley 2009). Their collective territories were entitled Community Territories of Origin (TCO) in 2001 but with the new constitution of 2009 (art. 30 and 394) they became Native Indigenous and Peasant territories (TIOC). Today they consider this change in the constitution to be detrimental since it includes peasant communities, based on individual land tenure, who may want to seize and divide their lands. According to an Iupaguasu leader:

Now all laws are changing, now we are TIOC. Also, the migrants [peasants from the highlands] are going to be able to enter our territories, then we will never have real land access and they are going to take it from us. (Interview, 29 July 2010)

The Guarani from Iupaguasu find themselves caught between their struggles for recognition of indigenous territories and rights, the need to fight poverty as a community and the pressure from neocollectivism to become productive and incorporate into markets.

The emphasis of the PAR on economic-oriented forms of organisations based on individual land tenure and class-based demands has placed the MAS government in a contradictory situation with regard to its constituencies. On the one hand, the PAR structure can serve the redistribution (class) claims of agrarian unions who seek greater governmental economic support for their individual productive projects. On the other hand, it creates tensions within indigenous group organisations, weakening and depoliticising their recognition demands.

Improving capacities and self-governance to demand state support

Once farmers are grouped into market-oriented associations, the PAR officials visit the communities to explain how to formalise the association and to build productive and market capacities and skills, different from those involved in social movements. For Carmen, the PAR social specialist for the department of Santa Cruz, this capacity-building is like the birth and upbringing of a baby. “Being grouped together is not enough” (she explains to producers during her visits to the communities) “just as it is not enough for babies merely to be born” (El Torno, Field notes 1 August 2011). To be “brought up” it is necessary to follow a series of steps so that associations can garner programme support. First, just as each baby needs a birth certificate, so the association, to be recognised by the PAR, needs to secure a legal personality (personería jurídica) by formally registering as a productive organisation with the signature of the governor of the department.

Second, the association must meet certain requirements: (1) a minimum of 20 members, (2) at least two years’ experience in the selected productive activity, and (3) a contribution of about US$560. The latter is a subtle filter to select those association members with sufficient economic resources and better market connections, as failing to give this contribution means a cancellation of the PAR support. Additionally, the association must have a Tax Identification Number and be registered with the Integrated System of Administrative Management and Modernization (SIGMA). When these requirements are fulfilled, the association can open a bank account and be in a position to receive financial resources from the PAR.

Third, members have to identify business (market) opportunities on their own and submit a summary business plan setting out what they will buy and when. The PAR does not provide any technical advice at this stage but it does offer plainly written manuals on the required business skills, such as how to open a bank account, write a check, prepare vouchers, manage bank accounts and how to present accounts to the PAR. Most producers lack such managerial skills and only a few have attended school. Some associations receive support from agricultural technicians in their area or rely on members with more experience with development projects or higher educational qualifications to design their first plan.

The use of these tools to achieve “self-governance” drew heavily on the discourses on empowerment advocated by the Bank. Central to empowerment is stakeholder control and decision making for ownership and efficiency of the projects, giving voice to the poor and collective action, or “social capital” (Bebbington et al. 2007). But this empowerment process also serves neocollectivist redistributive aims. An official from the ministry of rural development related how farmers benefit from participation in the programme and learn how to manage public resources. For him, this improves farmers’ access to current and future state resources (primarily economic) and liberates them from social exclusion. He added:

We do not want technicians managing money or for the NGOs to manage their resources. We want farmers entering the formal system, that when there is an interesting business they can invoice. [we want them] to decide (…) which technicians to hire, that they take risks, that they decide the things they want to buy, and that they carry out all the processes. (Interview, 7 July 2011)

This quote illustrates the continuity between neoliberal governance (self-governance) and the transition to post-neoliberal neocollectivism and its concerns to incorporate social movements’ demands into the state apparatus. Farmers must be prepared to handle and manage resources as well as be citizens capable of having a direct relationship with the state without the mediation of external actors like NGOs.

Two actors are important in bringing association members closer towards self-governance and in incorporating the social movements into the state: the facilitator and the acompañante (companion). With the participation of the association, the facilitator, hired by PAR, develops a technical proposal. This proposal sets out a technological package that includes a market and environmental assessment and the association’s strengths and weaknesses. Facilitators call themselves “proyectistas” (project designers) because they are in charge of rallying the associations to submit the technical proposal for PAR approval and of bringing the association into contact with buyers. The buyer does not participate except to specify product characteristics: quantity, quality and frequency.

Once the proposal is approved, PAR appoints the acompañante to provide technical services to the association. Acompañantes, usually individual technicians who help associations choose technology packages and innovations, are seen as “the eyes of the PAR in the communities”, since they permanently monitor and report to PAR. However, contrary to the image of extensionist or technician associated with top-down methods, farmers associate the word acompañante with being more bottom-up and less controlling. This shifts the professional’s stance away from directing farmers’ opinions and decisions towards facilitation. Thus, producers are expected to be responsible for choosing technology packages and technical services and for controlling the quality and continuity of these services while acompañantes are expected to advice on the best available options. This is seen by a MAS representative as an empowering experience for producers and social organisations since the former impose their will on the management of relationships with different services providers and economic actors and the latter increase their “participation and social control” (Interview, 7 July 2011).

The PAR programme ends the empowerment process with an evaluation workshop guided by PAR officials. This workshop is seen as the end of the contractual relationship with the PAR (the state). We accompanied a PAR team for eight closing evaluations in different communities in the municipalities of Comarapa, La Guardia and El Torno. These workshops had a festive air, association members providing food for the PAR representatives as a sign of reciprocity for the support received. A PAR official calculated the economic impact that the PAR had had on the association, including investment of the project, costs, sales prices and transaction costs. Efficiency in the use of project resources was calculated by quantifying investments and profits and converting them into the format required by PAR. Participation was understood in terms of the average number of members who participated in association meetings and the percentage of women or indigenous people involved in the project, illustrating the project’s intention that they should benefit from the intervention. Empowerment in turn was measured by the capacities of the group to successfully manage the grant given by the PAR and the training received to acquire these capacities and improve production and access to markets. Participants regarded one of the most important results in terms of empowerment to be the fact that they managed resources by themselves and decided on the destination and distribution of these resources within the group. They also highlighted the credibility and transparency of the PAR, which allowed them to view the allocation of the budget. An association member explained:

I learned how to manage resources, though it has been difficult since the vast majority of us do not have a high level of education. Many institutions came, did things and left. But with the PAR things are clear, this and this were bought, and this money was left over. I like it, there is no one to distrust, not as in other institutions. (Field notes, 3 August 2011).

At the evaluation workshop, Carmen, the PAR official, again used the metaphor of comparing the associations to raising children. She reminded the producers that the association, like a child, is now walking and that further steps forward depend on them. Finally Carmen said:

Today you have ended the contractual situation with the PAR because your association is now established, the PAR helped you to improve your product. Now you have to seek other resources to help you to improve other aspects, seek other financing opportunities.

In these evaluation sessions the PAR was described as a learning process that empowers farmers to interpellate the state and present claims for projects and an opportunity to prepare the farmers to achieve self-management.

We observed strong support for the programme’s aims among participating associations and agrarian union representatives. People were enthusiastic about the PAR programme because of the financial resources provided which they could not get through the banks. Many producers had entered PAR to obtain more cattle or to extend or improve their cropping systems. According to the union members interviewed, the greatest contribution of PAR was that it allowed access to productive assets (purchase of animals, seedlings, agrochemicals, tools and productive infrastructure), as opposed to past interventions, especially those of NGOs, in which project resources were mainly devoted to training and technical support. PAR support was, instead, tangible and perceived as fundamental for their productive activities. An agrarian union leader related that they do not defend capitalism as such. Rather “what we defend is a plebeian capitalism, a capitalism that works for the poor” (Interview, 9 August 2011). Union members do not see their interests as going against the capitalist economy (see Jansen 2015) and they use the associations to access PAR resources and see this project as a way of demanding their distribution claims.

The limits of self-governance: confronting government failures

While the PAR programme forges economic empowerment through capacity-building and facilitating participation, programme participants struggle to access technical assistance crucial to develop their productive projects. Throughout the process of strengthening the state, neocollectivism has been faced with an inability of the state apparatus to offer adequate technical assistance services. Bolivia does not have an agricultural extension agency and, since the 1970s, NGOs have had an important role as providers of technical services. In the transition to neocollectivism, this role has been cut back (Córdoba and Jansen 2016). PAR has few relations with municipal governments, which do not provide a source of funding for hiring technicians. Although assigned a role in strengthening technical services in rural areas, municipal governments lack the required capacity and resources (Kay 2004). For example, the Association of Potato Seed Producers (APROSEMCO) in Comarapa has experienced serious problems in continuing their PAR project due to the lack of local technicians. They have put out seven invitations to hire a potato seed production expert. The association leader told us:

We need the technician; we could not find one with the required experience in the area. (…) The problem with technical support is that there are no technicians in the area and the ones that are here do not meet the requirements, with the terms of reference. Those from Santa Cruz ask for a lot of money and are not interested in moving to live here. (Interview, 19 February 2011)

The PAR recognised that the lack of technical support is a crucial constraint, especially in remote locations. One of the PAR’s strategies for solving this problem is the creation of a database of service providers. However, as an APROSEMCO leader commented, as farmers have to contribute 30 per cent of the costs of technical support, they could not attract technicians from other regions who are only willing to move for a good salary. Thereby, since associations may distribute PAR financial resources as needed, the trend is that they allocate more funds for investment in productive capital (machinery, equipment, livestock and inputs) than in technical assistance.

Local NGOs, who are the only providers of technical service in many regions, criticise the PAR intervention. According to an NGO technician in the Chaco region:

The MAS government is not interested in the technical side; they are interested in giving things and making politics. It’s very nice that they give things; this was never seen with previous governments (…) before it was the other way around, you got good technical support and the projects only spent money on the technical part. This has drastically changed, but it should not be an extreme change. (Interview, 9 August 2012)

PAR has shifted the nature of support from one extreme to the other, away from providing technical support and knowledge towards giving material goods such as animals and agricultural inputs. According to this critical view, the role of the gift is driven by the MAS government’s desire to exchange material resources for votes to stay in power. Material goods foster local production and are perceived by producers as tangible aid. Therefore, PAR support affects the political fortunes of the MAS government. The problem is that capacity building, farmer participation and productive material goods, although important, do not compensate for the government’s failure to provide farmers with the necessary technical support.

Articulating empowerment as capacity-building with structural empowerment

In this section, we examine how the strategies articulate with the MAS government’s view on empowerment. The problem of this articulation can be illustrated by the encounter between the Minister of Rural and Land Development Nemecia Achacollo, members of the association Junta Piraí and PAR technicians during a project evaluation (PAR evaluation – El Torno, 2 August 2011). The Junta Piraí association grouped together 25 producers who had requested the construction of two warehouses with a production capacity of 15,000 broiler chickens. Ten members of the association were waiting for us sitting on wooden benches in a makeshift shelter near the newly constructed warehouses. Another three were adding finishing touches to a commemorative plaque which thanked the PAR, the Bank and President Evo Morales for their support. PAR technician Marcelo installed a banner with the image of the PAR programme. The minister arrived accompanied by the mayor of El Torno (from the MAS party). Four producers, including the association president, the treasurer and the secretary, spoke words of appreciation for the programme, the government and the president for the support given to small producers. They mentioned that it was the first time that resources had been transferred directly to them and that they had received concrete goods. Cesar, representing the PAR, took the floor and said that the project would not have been successful without the producer organisations and that it was the associations not the government, who should take the credit for this.

Marcelo, who privately expressed his disagreement to us with what he called the “politicisation” of an event that should be about technical evaluation, intervened to highlight the productive nature of the project. While for Marcelo the objective of the project was to assess compliance with and effectiveness of productive goals, for the minister, the project meant something else. Having remained silent during the earlier interventions, the minister only started talking once the public television cameras arrived. She hailed the PAR as President Evo Morales’ most successful programme, and thus a success for the most excluded sectors of the country. She reminded the audience that while previous governments had not been concerned about peasants, this government was doing everything possible to reverse that. She continued:

You have to thank Brother Evo Morales. The PAR exists thanks to the political stability that we have in our country, thanks to the credibility of the president. Today we are supported by many loans. So far we are working with concession credits (…). There are 11 decentralized units, 11 programs like the PAR. (Field notes El Torno, 2 August 2011)

The minister explained that the PAR sought to provide farmers with an initial stage of support, a first relationship with the state and after that they were to find funding from other agencies created by the MAS government. She went on to say:

We have the BDP [Productive Development Bank] from whom you can continue to borrow money. I think that because of this, brothers, you have managed a project. You know how to manage a project, you have followed the path and the government has shown you the way. We believe that you have to take this forward. You, who have already received support, should give space to other comrades who have not yet received any; hand in hand we are going to make a change, to achieve food sovereignty. (Field notes El Torno, 2 August 2011)

These interchanges illustrate how different views on empowerment are combined. The MAS government strongly increased the role of the state in redistributing resources: the state being seen as the central agent and the small producer as the one who should “receive support”. This fits into the neocollectivist perspective whereby the Bolivian state played a significant role in rural development by increasing expenditure on social grants, creating or recovering state companies and development initiatives (Domingo 2009; Postero 2013; Córdoba and Jansen 2014). To strengthen small-scale production, economic resources were directly transferred to productive organisations, responding to the class demands of agrarian unions as set out in the Productive Revolution Law (Rojas 2012). The implementation of PAR is seen as political empowerment by the MAS. The MAS government wants farmers to regard the PAR as a mechanism freeing them from social exclusion and enabling them to become the country’s providers of food sovereignty. Being a confederation of social movements and a government at the same time is potentially conflictual. In this context, the MAS government needed to impose some order over the contentious politics of the social movements. PAR is one of these ordering mechanisms. It binds the MAS constituency to the MAS ruling power by demonstrating that there is a flow of resources from the state to local communities. The capacity building, the increase of technological efficiency and the improvement of managerial capabilities embedded in the PAR programme seem to have served the MAS to strengthen state–social movement relations, to further the distributive aims of neocollectivism and to trigger social transformations. This at least can be observed in the studied municipalities with higher support for the MAS, where producer associations collaborate with social movements (especially agrarian unions) on preparing the political agenda for social change.

At the time of data collection (2012), both the government and the PAR administration seemed satisfied with the programme’s impact. The measure of success for the MAS was the amount of state support given to local communities. In its first stage the PAR benefited nearly 33,700 families and was the productive development programme with the largest national coverage (Gómez 2012, 41) and received strong acceptance from social movements, especially peasant unions (supported by author’s field notes and interviews). However, the PAR team emphasises a different measure of success, one which relies on efficiency and producers’ self-management and entrepreneurship. For example, the evaluation of the first stage of the PAR recognised that the programme had a positive and significant impact on almost all income variables, increasing “total agricultural sales and total agricultural income between 28% to 39%” (World Bank 2014, 14). This evaluation also added:

In the PAR model producers assume greater responsibilities (in the formalization, development of the alliance business plans, implementation, and in monitoring and social accountability and sustainability of their businesses). Therefore, the process of empowerment is quicker and leads to better results. Moreover, it also reduces the cost of the PAR. (World Bank 2014, 45)

In this view, producers have to learn to deal with modern bureaucracies and to develop self-management skills to contribute to project efficiency. The state is a facilitator, enabling individuals to assume responsibility for their own development (neoliberal governmentality) rather than being dependent on the state.

Conclusions

The MAS government campaigned against neoliberal politics and advocated a post-neoliberal agenda, called here neocollectivism, based on the active intervention of the state in the economy and the development of close ties between the state and social movements. Many left-wing critics of the MAS government and other progressive governments in Latin America have claimed that there is no real intention to “decolonise development” or to generate radical social transformation. They argue that these governments only seek to reform the neoliberal project (Webber 2011; Kennemore and Weeks 2011; Novo 2014). Our research on the case of the PAR programme in Bolivia indeed shows that the MAS government has not been able to make a definitive break from neoliberalism and its governance strategies, like similar post-neoliberal projects on the continent (Radcliffe 2012; Farthing and Kohl 2014). In contrast to the critics, however, we argue that the neocollectivist project has tried to ride two horses at once. On the one hand, it has sought to generate an open-ended process of political empowerment for social transformation that can reconcile the different demands of social movements towards neocollectivism. On the other hand, it has resorted to certain modes of neoliberal governance, such as self-governance and capacity-building processes based on a non-relational view of empowerment to facilitate government. Individual small producers and communities have become better able to actively engage with the state and develop market relationships that contribute to Bolivia’s aim to reach food self-sufficiency. It has helped the MAS to strengthen, or at least maintain, state–social movements’ relations and has sustained the political support for the government during its first two terms.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Paul Richards for his constructive suggestions and useful comments. In Bolivia, our thanks go to the organisations and individuals who shared with us their views on rural transformation. We are especially grateful to Rodolfo Ayala, the PAR team in Santa Cruz and the Centre for the Promotion of Farmer Production (CEPAC) for their fieldwork support.

Notes on contributors

Diana Córdoba is a researcher at the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and a visiting researcher at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (www.dianacordoba.net). Her major research interests include international development and agrarian change, and participatory processes for community and technology development.

Kees Jansen is based at the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation group in the Social Sciences Department at Wageningen University, the Netherlands (www.keesjansen.eu). His current work focuses on pesticide risk governance, the multi-level governance of plant diseases, and political ecology. Among his publications is Agribusiness and Society (2004).

Carolina González is an Agricultural Economics PhD with a joint position between the International Central for Tropical Agriculture, CIAT and the International Food Policy Research Institute, IFPRI. Her work focuses on socioeconomic impact assessment and collective actions. Bio economics is the topic of her forthcoming publication.

ORCID

Diana Córdoba http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4095-4274

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Collaborative Crop Research Programme (CCRP) of the McKnight Foundation (Grant 11-004) and Wageningen University.

Notes

1. These associations were: (1) Comarapa: Aprosemco, Asogacom, Asofrumac, Torrebal; (2) Valle Grande: Aprovalle, Asociación de Ganaderos Rurales; (3) Yapacaní: Asople, Competitividad de La Cadena Apícola Comunitaria; and (4) El Torno: Asapai, Junta Piraí, Nueva Asociación Surutú-Yungas, Asoprop, Asopega; La Guardia: Asapiguardia, Lechería Naranjillos, Apromat.

2. 2005 MAS Party presidential campaign slogan.

3. It has to be remarked that cultural recognition, or identity, is not necessarily different from or contrasting with class demands. Depending on political context, identity and class will dovetail or contrast (Otero 2007). The MAS has created a context in which recognition struggles and redistributive demands coalesce.

4. Pseudonyms are used for all individuals mentioned.