Evo Morales, Climate Change, and the Paradoxes of a Social-Movement Presidency

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4500151
AutoresJessica Camille Aguirre (Democracy Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia), Elizabeth Sonia Cooper (Democracy Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia)
Año2010
Volumen37
Número4
Páginas238-244
Fecha de publicación2010-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLatin American Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0094-582X • E-ISSN: 1552-678X
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0094582x10376362
OpenAlexW2005585856
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas16

It seems likely that, at the UN-hosted climate change summit in Copenhagen last December, the people with whom Bolivian President Evo Morales felt the strongest identification were not his fellow heads of state, meeting behind closed doors, but those left outside. Of all the groups Morales spoke to over the course of the summit, he shared the longest history with the indigenous caucus that he addressed on December 16. Almost nostalgically, he pro claimed to the gathering of 200 indigenous peoples: Before I was a leader, I was together with you in the alternative summits, in the summits parallel to the summits of the heads of state_We are out there marching and mobiliz ing, because [we are a] big family. Morales distinguished himself from other heads of state by gravitating toward this family of social movements and its struggles, intentionally locating himself outside the walls of the Bella Center. When the climate negotiations at Copenhagen failed in their mission of producing a binding agreement for action on climate change that could pro tect nations like his from the radical environmental changes already under way, Morales led a stinging denunciation of the entire process. He declared, We come from the culture of life, whereas the Western model represents the culture of At these summits we have to define whether we are on the side of life or on the side of death. Soon afterward he announced that he was convening a climate summit of his own, a People's Summit, and this sum mit was held in April just outside Cochabamba, Bolivia. As a political actor who had no decisive responsibility in building the UN agreement, Morales was free to use his position as head of state to become instead a forceful advocate for the disenfranchised?a president with one foot on the inside of the negotiating process and another on the outside. His posi tioning on climate change is a sign of a different kind of presidency, one that comes directly from his personal history as a leader. It is a social-movement presidency that contains within it the paradox of being something new and different in the world of global politics but something far more traditional back at home in the practicalities of Bolivia's domestic politics?political compromise included

Cartography · Geography · Indigenous · Political science · State (computer science) · Summit · Latin American Cultural Politics · Political theory and Gramsci · Social and Political Issues