The Movement for Socialism, officially the Movement for Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (Spanish: Movimiento al Socialismo – Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos; MAS or MAS-IPSP), is a socialist political party in Bolivia. Its followers are known as Masistas.
MAS-IPSP has governed the country from 22 January 2006, following the first ever majority victory by a single party in the December 2005 elections, to 10 November 2019, and since the 2020 elections. MAS-IPSP evolved out of the movement to defend the interests of coca growers. Evo Morales has articulated the goals of his party and popular organizations as the need to achieve plurinational unity, and to develop a new hydrocarbon law which guarantees 50% of revenue to Bolivia, although political leaders of MAS-IPSP recently interviewed showed interest in complete nationalization of the fossil fuel industries, as well as the country's lithium deposits.
MAS-IPSP is the dominant force in municipal politics in Bolivia. In the most recent municipal elections in 2015, it was the only party to contest leadership of all 339 municipalities. In all, the mayors of 227 municipalities belong to the party, as do 1,144 of the country's 2,022 municipal council members.
History
Origins
The roots of MAS-IPSP can be traced to the closures of the Bolivian Mining Corporation and shut-down of various mines during the 1980s. Thousands of former miners became coca farmers as their means of survival, but also encountered new hardships in their new profession. The growth of the coca farmer community resulted in a sharp numerical growth of organizations such as Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB) and Confederación Sindical de Colonizadores de Bolivia. The movement built alliances with the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Bolivia (CIDOB) and mobilized joint protests in a 1992 campaign titled "500 years of resistance of the indigenous peoples", culminating in a march to La Paz where a protest was held on 12 October 1992 (Columbus Day). The 1992 campaign marked the emergence of a 'peasant-Indigenous' movement.
However, CSUTCB was wary of building a political party to contest state power. The experiences of the 1980s, when the CSUTCB leadership had been divided over electoral candidatures (of leaders such as Jenaro Flores Santos and Víctor Hugo Cárdenas) had been negative. Rather the organization began discussing the possibility of launching a 'political instrument', a structure in which the trade unions would enter as collective members. The idea would be to combine social and political struggles, to have one branch in the social movements and one political branch. According to Lino Villca there were also discussions about forming an armed wing of the movement.
Carlos Burgoa Maya traces the initiative for a political instrument to the Third Congress of the CSUTCB (26 June–3 July 1987, Cochabamba) in which several proposals were merged into a document proposing an "Assembly of Nationalities" including traditional authorities to forge "political instruments of the nationalities." In the COB's 9th Congress (May 1992, Sucre), a thesis for worker-indigenous unity in "constructing a political instrument" was approved. Numerous prominent future leaders of the MAS, including Evo Morales, Félix Patzi, and David Choquehuanca met on 7 November 1992 in a gathering organized by CSUTCB, CSCB, CIDOB, FNMCB (Bartolina Sisa), and the COB, which decided to call for withdrawal from existing parties and to consolidate as an independent political force. The August–September 1994 cocalero march also endorsed the creation of a political instrument.