FEJUVE
The Federation of Neighborhood Councils-El Alto is a federation of almost 600 neighborhood councils that provide public services, construction and jobs to citizens of El Alto, Bolivia. Councils of the FEJUVE organise according to the principles of participatory democracy and consensus decision-making, while implementing systems of workers' self-management in the city's economy.
Based in the traditional organisational methods of the Aymara people, neighborhood councils were first established by residents of El Alto in the wake of the Bolivian National Revolution, in order to provide services for local inhabitants where the state had little presence. In 1979, these neighborhood councils united into a single Federation, the FEJUVE. Over the subsequent decades, the FEJUVE built infrastructure, schools and parks, and provided public utilities for many of El Alto's residents. The FEJUVE went on to participate in the Bolivian gas conflict of 2003, during which they took over management of most of the city's economy and organised a blockade of the capital of La Paz.
In the 2005 Bolivian general election, the FEJUVE supported the candidacy of Evo Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo. Many members of the FEJUVE joined the new government under a policy of "constructive but critical collaboration", with FEJUVE leader Mabel Monje becoming the country's Minister of Water. This move was criticised by some of its members, who questioned whether the FEJUVE would be able to maintain their autonomy under the new government. While many of the FEJUVE's proposals were not taken up by the MAS government, they managed to push it to support their policies of public housing, participatory planning, and workers' control in El Alto.
History
Background
During the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952, the government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro redistributed land to peasants from the highlands, while providing financial support to lowland farms that were dedicated to commercial agriculture. The indigenous peoples in Bolivia, who largely practiced traditional methods of farming, eventually found themselves unable to compete with the cheap food that was imported into the country, following the economic restructuring programs of the neoliberal era. The government shutdown many of the country's mines and small farms, leading to thousands of miners being displaced and large sections of the peasantry being expelled from Altiplano, with many of them settling in the small town of El Alto.The small town quickly became a major urban center, with over 850,000 residents, largely made up of indigenous Aymara and Quechua people. The Bolivian state had little presence in the city, leaving its residents without infrastructure like paved roads, waste management or telephone networks, and even without basic necessities such as running water and electricity. Three quarters of the city's residents had no access to healthcare and nearly half of them were not literate. 70% of the population earned a living from small family businesses, forming a city-wide informal economy that has only expanded since the implementation of neoliberalism.
Foundation
In response to the widespread poverty, corruption and violence in El Alto, during the 1950s, the city's residents started to form their first self-organized neighborhood councils, based on the traditional practices of the local Aymara people. In 1957, the first council was established in order to provide a program of universal basic services for the new residents. The councils increasingly coordinated with each other and, by 1979, had united together into a federation, establishing the Federation of Neighborhood Councils. The first political demonstrations organized by the FEJUVE took place in 1987; they demanded the paving of the Pan-American Highway, the provision of electricity and drinking water, and the establishment of a hospital and a public university in El Alto.Divisions and democratization
During the first years of its existence, in the 1980s, a certain amount of social stratification existed between the leadership and the grassroots membership of the FEJUVE. Members reported that the council leadership was often elitist and largely kept decision-making power to themselves, only occasionally sharing them with the assemblies, while political party activists sought to gain control over the organization to serve their electoral ambitions. Initially, the FEJUVE leadership only questioned the "opportunism" of the party activists, which were offering neighborhood activists favors in exchange for votes. But the FEJUVE and the Bolivian Workers' Center were soon coopted by a new left-wing political party, the Conscience of Fatherland. The FEJUVE subsequently lost its autonomy, as its leadership was brought under the control of CONDEPA. By the early 1990s, this had resulted in a fragmentation of the FEJUVE; it initially divided into factions that supported the Patriotic Accord and the Solidarity Civic Unity, then split into two entirely separate federations.But by this time, the FEJUVE grassroots was already pushing the organization towards more autonomy for its grassroots organs and the decentralization and democratization of decision-making. The experience of the miners' unions, which were used to organizing outside of state and political party control, provided further impulse to the democratization of the FEJUVE. In response to the factional division of the FEJUVE, the grassroots base also divided itself. The grassroots strategy was to disperse themselves within both conferences of the FEJUVE, so that they could regain influence over the organization without supporting either political tendency. They also established the El Alto Assembly, which gave control back to the local councils and trade unions. The Assembly oversaw strike actions and the construction of infrastructure projects, providing a grassroots democratic alternative to the political party domination.
By the end of the 1990s, the local councils had regained control over the FEJUVE, while the CONDEPA progressively dissolved as its clientele network evaporated. The democratization process halted the previous leadership's capacity to act as an intermediary between the councils and the state political parties. Grassroots activists became more suspicious of leadership figures, who were increasingly scrutinized for political corruption. The FEJUVE leadership was replaced and the assemblies took greater control over the organization, in order to prevent a repeat of the monopolization of power by the leadership. It became increasingly difficult for the leadership to operated unilaterally, without popular consent; on one occasion, after FEJUVE president Mauricio Cori was accused of allegedly negotiating for a position in municipal governments and a state company, he was publicly beaten and stripped of his clothes.
Consolidation
In 1994, the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada passed the Law of Popular Participation, which devolved a fifth of the national budget to local municipalities, giving local communities a participatory role in budgeting and urban planning. In return for legal recognition, the LPP imposed new organizational standards on FEJUVE, requiring it to meet certain legal requirements and to include women in its leadership structures. This new law increased the FEJUVE's influence significantly, with neighborhood councils beginning to function as the de facto local governments, subverting the influence of state governance.The councils provided the means for residents of El Alto to develop their own communities, without state intervention. Residents pooled their resources and skills within the neighborhood councils, securing the purchase of land, the construction of schools and public parks, and the installation of utility services. The councils also acted as the de facto regulation authority in the city, overseeing property transactions, mediating disputes between neighbors and establishing a form of community justice that has resulted in El Alto's relatively low crime rate. FEJUVE has also acted to mobilize their neighborhoods in protest against the government: leading the movement for the establishment of the Public University of El Alto in 1998; preventing the implementation of a tax on home construction in 2003; and putting an end to water privatization in 2005.
Conflict
During the Bolivian gas conflict, the infrastructure that FEJUVE had already built provided a means for El Alto's citizens to resist the government.The local culture of collective identity, tied closely to both the neighborhood councils and the residents' original communities in Altiplano, linked urban and rural communities together. Despite peasant roadblocks causing food shortages and inflation in El Alto, urban residents maintained their solidarity with the peasantry. The conflict also ignited a reconciliation of indigenous struggles with the trade union movement, as both the indigenous peasant and mining cultures of El Alto reinforced each-other, with elements of the two converging into a collective resistance. A general strike shut down El Alto, with thousands mobilizing in popular demonstrations. A sense of collective responsibility, inherited from the practices of the Ayllu, encouraged a high level of popular participation in neighborhood campaigns, through a system of both individual benefits and penalties.
The grassroots organizing of the resistance was strengthened by traditional practices of direct democracy, with horizontally-organized assemblies utilizing consensus decision-making to facilitate collective action. The neighborhood councils organized roadblocks, social kitchens and community self-defense, rotating shifts in order to keep the protest going continuously. Councils also worked together with the trade unions to facilitate access to markets and roads for the local populace. The FEJUVE itself did not lead the events, as it was guided by the indigenous principle of "leading by obeying". One FEJUVE leader noted of the protest movement:
Neighborhood councils seized control of resources, territory and infrastructure from the government, which provided El Alto with a high degree of autonomy from the state. The FEJUVE organized a blockade of La Paz, effectively placing the capital under siege, even shutting down the airport to cut the city off from the world. The social cohesion associated with the neighborhood councils was consolidated during this period of insurrection; sociologist Álvaro García Linera himself believes that El Alto's "community of neighbors" was formed during the uprising. Emily Achtenberg has compared the autonomy achieved during the conflict to dual power, implemented earlier by the soviets during the Russian Revolution. But the FEJUVE nevertheless refused to seize state power, instead laying the groundwork for a broader political shift that culminated in the election of Evo Morales in 2005.