Evo Morales, a charismatic leader´s journey to power

Evo Morales is the first indigenous president of Bolivia, a country with an indigenous majority that has been subdued to the rule of the less numerous elite of the country for years. No doubt, he is an important man for the country and especially revolutionary as he has established innovative politics based on ideological principles such as anti-capitalism, anti-neoliberalism and indigeneity. So far, he’s already been president of Bolivia for 10 years and I think it’s interesting to look at how he achieved to legitimize his rule while incorporating significant changes to the country.

As he has been referred to as charismatic more than once, this paper starts with an analysis of charisma as a legitimizing mechanism for authority, mainly drawing upon Weber’s conceptualizations but also taking into account other approaches in order to build an extended and complete definition of the concept to later look at the extent to which Morales authority presents any of the elements that characterize charismatic authority. Again, drawing upon Weber, this paper also explores the ways in which his charismatic authority becomes routinized and the effects of this for people’s access to the state.

The aim of this paper is to show that Morales’s authority even though it presents a charismatic element it has been routinized and resulted in an authority based on bureaucracy and the rule of laws. I also argue that the ways in which Morales tries to prove his charisma through linking environmental politics and religion, creates a meaning that excludes certain sectors of the Bolivian people from the reach of the state as the definitions of the subjects included in the nation don’t fit their identities.

This paper includes a section which exposes the different theories about charisma to come to a definition that synthesises different approaches taken to the concept. After that, I contextualize my case study which is Evo Morales’ rise to power and his years of presidency in order to be able later to analyse the happenings exposed according to existent theories and conceptualizations of the topic.

Charismatic leadership: conceptualizing charisma

One of the main contributors to the definition of the concept of charisma is Max Weber for whom charisma was one of the legitimizing instruments of power along with tradition and legality. For Weber, a charismatic leader is likely to emerge “in times of psychic, physical, economic, ethical, religious, political stress”. For Gramsci, a crisis of the traditional and legal authority to which Weber refers to as the right conditions for a charismatic leader to emerge is addressed as a “crisis of representation”.

Weber defines charisma as a “certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural powers”. Weber shows that the charisma of a leader is dependent on the followers who recognize the charismatic qualities in them. As he puts it: “It is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission to recognize him as their charismatically qualified leader”. As he goes on, he says that the claim by someone to charismatic authority “breaks down if his mission is not recognized by those to whom he feels he has been sent.”

One of the main ways in which a leader can gain charisma is by building an emotional bond with the people they claim to represent. As Riggio drawing on Houses´s theory on charismatic leadership puts it: “Followers of charismatic leaders often  develop strong emotional bonds with their leaders, which serve as a foundation for their willingness to be compliant and committed to their leaders agenda.”. This emotional bond can lead to a variety of consequences such as the attribution of extraordinary or divine qualities to the leaders as seen in Weber or their perception as bearers of a certain gifts of grace, personal trust in revelation, heroism or other qualities of leadership.

The Weberian separation between traditional authority and charismatic authority has generated some criticism among scholars such as T.K.Ommen. He gives the example of one of the most widely recognized charismatic leaders Gandhi, who actually appealed to tradition in order to legitimize his actions and argues that the charismatic element can be present in all the different types of authority as defined by Weber. Therefore traditional and charismatic authority do not need to be necessarily separated from one another. Indeed, Weber also knew that as his types of authority are pure conceptualization but in reality they can appear combined.

Another important scholar of charisma is Stanley Tambiah, as he extends Weber’s definition affirming that not only can charisma be bestowed upon individuals and institutional structures but also on objects such as talismans, amulets, charms, regalia, palladia and so on. According to this, charisma can be objectified and therefore power can be objectified and embodied in objects.The way the objectification of charisma works according to Tambiah is through semiotics in a way that indexical symbols are “associated with the represented object by a conventional semantic rule”. Possession of these objects can guarantee legitimacy.

Also, Shils extended the definition of charisma by Weber by recognizing that not only could charisma be bestowed upon individuals and institutions but also to actions and cultural objects or any entity that evokes feelings of order and authority. He emphasized the importance of preservation of an order as an important source of charisma. As he says : “The attribution of charismatic qualities occurs in the presence of order creating, order-disclosing, order-discovering power as such; it is a response to great ordering power”. 

Sahlins approaches personality and actions similarly to Weber by describing the behaviour of a charismatic leaders in Melanesia whom he also classified as ‘Big Men’. His emphasis was on the leaders acts that could “elevate a person above the common herd and attract about him a coterie of loyal, lesser men”. For him there are different ways of expressing the personal powers for these big men and it depends mainly on local cultural differences. 

My research suggests there is no unique consensus when defining charisma but there are overlapping observations that the theorizers of the concept seem to have observed. First, charisma is dependent on the followers perceptions of the leader which implies that a leader can be charismatic to some collectives but not to others. It also means that charismatic leaders present the ability to identify their common with  followers while identifying their needs by presenting themselves as one of them. In this way,  an emotional bond is built between followers and leader.

In addition to this, if a leader is charismatic they present an extraordinary personality as perceived by the follower, which can be achieved through different means. In regards to Tambiah observations, charisma can be achieved through the use of amulets or objects in which charisma has been objectified. According to Weber through establishing a link to a supernatural force or presenting themselves as bearers of charismatic qualities such as heroism or a gift of grace, as Shils observes by inspiring a sense of order or as Sahlins emphasize by acts that elevate the leader over the followers.

Morales’ prominence and leadership: an activist’s way to charismatic leadership

In Bolivia, the period between 1960 and 2005, specifically from 1990, was characterized by active social protest. This period was significant because it marked the start of the process of consolidation of a collective will through awareness of a common injury and common enemy (the state) and therefore identity of a group of individuals oppressed by same forces.

During those years,  Evo Morales, already one of the leading figures of the cocaleros, would start gaining real prominence as in 1989 as he gave a speech to commemorate 1 year anniversary of the protests against Ley 1008. After his speech he was beaten by agents and almost died. That was an important event for his later rise as a charismatic leader as him risking his life for the cocaleros strengthened his link with their identity as he became to be seen as one of them, repressed by the state just like them. Evo´s prominence coincided with events that helped the creation of a stronger collective identity among the cocaleros which broadened their scope as a group.

The unity among the cocaleros was reflected through the creation of La Coordinadora which was an organism that would coordinate different federations of cocaleros. Evo Morales was head of the Coordinadora and in 1997 won one of the uninominal seats being the highest voted candidate among all districts which shows his early prominence as the head of the institution that unified all the cocaleros in a group with a collective identity.

Later events such as the Water Wars (2000), the formation of a coalition in a government of Lozada that made most of the population in Bolivia to feel not represented in the state and the gas wars (2003) made the movement rise to the political sphere, especially when the IPSP(Instrumento Político para la Soberanía de los Pueblos) was created as a political instrument. This political instrument “complemented its classist ideology with a strong line of support for the recognition and rights of Bolivia´s indigenous people”. They all had in common one thing: “the political identity of excluded”. This marked a beginning of a switch from peasant to indigenous as the defining identity of the movement and Evo Morales was leading the new IPSP faction showing his continual leadership position.

 The culmination of the IPSP position as a political instrument was its registration as MAS for the election in 2002. The ideological principles of the MAS party combined both the classist discourse of the left and the indigenous right discourse. It presented the MAS-IPSP´s struggle as one based on class and ethnicity. By then, an important event for Evo Morales occurred as he was expelled by the congress due to his participation in protests against coca eradication.  This would be another event that would help him emerge as a charismatic leader as his actions, representative of the collective identity of the cocaleros and indigenous had risen to another stage in which he was becoming to be seen as an embodiment of their struggle and a hero who fighting for them has exposed himself to many dangers: “Morales had become the victim of the state, neoliberalism, and imperialism”. No wonder he ended up winning the election in 2005 with 54 percent of the vote. This would also symbolize an even stronger politicization of ethnicity. As Urioste puts it “Morales discovered the power of the indigenous identity and transformed himself into an indigenous figure that represents the indigenous Bolivia.”

        Once in power, Morales took part in many ritual ceremonies typical of the Andean cultures and rooted in ancestral Incan traditions. The Andean religion is influenced by the religion of the Incas that is characterized by the worship of natural entities such as the Sun, thunder or Earth. Morales seems to have been establishing a link between this religion and his politics. There’s no better evidence for that as the declaration of the Rights of the Mother Earth from 2010 in which the Earth and “other natural entities which exist as part of Mother Earth.” acquire a human status.  

In some the ritual ceremonies he has participated in so far, the veneration of natural entities is very present and he appears to be attributing the divine qualities of these entities to his perceived person. For example, in one of his swearing ceremonies in Tiwniaku he appeared dressed as an Incan emperor with “an embroidered gown engraved with the Inca sun god”.

However, sometimes this religious practice seems to be adapted to a current reality as the natural entities venerated are natural resources such as gas or oil. This is what happened when in Oruro he appeared in “an oil-worker’s helmet, with a lit match in his right hand (...) leaned over a gas stove” as he said: “Thanks to Mother Earth, we have cheap natural gas,” He himself recognizes the innovative character of these rituals as he says "no es un retorno romántico al pasado, sino una recuperación científica de lo mejor de nuestro pasado, para combinarlo con la modernidad". (it’s not a romantic return to the past, but a scientific recuperation of the best of our past to combine it with modernity).

Morales’s authority and charisma: an analysis

·         Early days and semiotics of charisma in Evo Morales’ government

In my opinion Evo Morales emerged as a leader in the right circumstances and was able to take advantage of the situation. His prominence started early on with his speech to commemorate the victims of the protest in 1989 and the repression he met with after that speech; leadership of the main instruments of struggle such as the FETCTC in 1988 and La Coordinadora in 1997, his imprisonment in 1994 and expulsion from the Congress in 2002. All these events made him another victim of the same enemy that the one of the people he represented. Heroism, according to Weber, was one of the qualities of leadership that could contribute to gain charisma seemingly as a certain  gift of grace and definitely the years of the social struggle in Bolivia and the repression suffered by Morales was making the people attribute heroic qualities to his person since his early prominence in politics.

According to Weber´s definition of charisma as “certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural powers ” Morales was becoming to be bestowed by people with those qualities early on. As one of the people who voted for him in the elections stated: “We voted for Evo because it meant that we were voting for ourselves. (…) Evo is the same as us; he has the vision of the common people; he is not like the rest”. In this statement one can see how Evo is “set apart from ordinary men” in a way and  presenting innovative character in a moment when the traditional authority was in crisis which for Weber were the ideal conditions for the emergence of the charismatic authority.

However, as Weber himself affirms the charisma of a leader can easily disappear if not continuously proven : “The charismatic holder is deserted by his following ... because pure charisma does not know any ‘legitimacy’ other than that flowing from personal strength, that is, one which is constantly being proved”. However, as Tambiah shows he doesn’t recognize that there are certain sources of charisma that can help the leader keep charismatic qualities for a long term.

This seems to be what Evo Morales does when participating in different rituals by which he links himself to deities of the past by creating a kind of semiotics of meaning by wearing certain iconic elements that create an indexical relationship between him and deities of the past. By representing himself as the Sun God and appealing to Mother Earth he is able to appear as endowed with a kind of religious, magical qualities and establish a link between his person and those deities. By doing so, he also emphasizes his political appeal to indigenous identity as these rituals are typical of ancestral Incan cultures.

The fact that Evo chooses Tiwanaku as the site for many of these rituals is not accidental since this place is endowed with a powerful religious significance. As Wayne Janusek describes it: “Space and style took on particular significance in lively social gatherings and solemn rituals, in which an immediate feeling of common identity and an experience of common identity and an experience of  community coherence (...) were periodically recharged”  This feeling of communitas that Evo seems to aim to create by taking part in such rituals is, as Weber recognized, directly linked to charisma.

As Sahlins observes the big men need to gain support of the people in order to preserve their leadership position and therefore generosity is one quality of a charismatic leader personality.  By being generous the leader is “amassing a “fund of power”.. If the object that is given away is in addition endowed with charismatic qualities, it helps the leader as Tambiah puts it to distribute “his charisma as a donation inspired by compassion and loving-kindness (...) The amulet is indexically or metonymically related to the ascetic monk and represents a materialization of his virtue”. Therefore, I think that Morales by attributing special qualities to the land and Mother Earth in a way makes it sacred and takes it to the level of an amulet which helps him in the end to emphasize his charisma. Indeed, in 2009, a change in the constitution recognizes  “Pachamama” the Andean Goddess of Earth.

Tambiah also asserted that in a capitalist economy the commodities could acquire a powerful value and therefore can become a source of charisma for the leader. This seems to be what Morales achieves when appearing in Oruro surrounded by gas symbology  and claiming “Thanks to Mother Earth, we have cheap natural gas”. In that way, by linking the commodity to the deity of Mother Earth he makes gas sacred and this in addition to his policies of nationalization of gas can help him to gain charisma as the commodity of gas becomes propriety of the national state of Bolivia of which Morales is representative. From Tambiah semiotic approach the gas points to the Deity and also to the state and therefore Morales.

·         Beyond charismatic leadership: creation of meaning and rationalization of charisma

The earth politics by which Evo attributes human and divine qualities to natural entities, the rituals by which he links himself to these entities along with his politics of indigeneity create a meaning as natural entities indexically point to peasant/rural and at the same time to indigeneity as the worship of such deities has its roots in their Incan ancestors. In addition to that symbols such as the coca leaf and the multi-colored wiphala flag are further used to symbolize indigeneity. However, this meaning doesn’t go down to everyone similarly and as Goldstein shows us in “Outlawed” since Morales’ charismatic authority is not perceived in certain spaces who fall out of the meaning created by the state as they don’t correspond neither to rural/indigenous nor to urban/elite. As he puts it: “barrio residents may find that their poverty, race, or geographic location on the margins disqualifies them from the protections of state’s legal purview”

As the meaning that MAS’s government projects is set from their perspective, it also gives place to different interpretations of the constitution by the people, especially as they don’t see their identity well reflected in the text, being neither rural-indigenous nor urban-elite. This is what happens to the residents of the barrios of Cochabamba who make their own interpretations of the constitution in terms of community justice and there seem to be no hallucinogenic drug that would help them understand the text from the state perspective which served to that end to the living-beings in Avila according to Kohn.

It has been demonstrated above that Morales’s government presents a charismatic element but it also relies a lot on law especially since the rewriting of the constitution in 2009. As he says in one interview “In my first year of government, these groups always said the president doesn’t respect rule of law or legality. Now, the people can see and the whole world can see how these sectors don’t respect the rule of law.” Indeed, the rationalization of power by Morales is evident by the new constitution established under his government which makes most of the authority to rely on the power of laws. This is also well illustrated in Goldstein’s narration of the situation in the barrio of Cochabamba where it’s the authority reliance on laws and their inability to obey them what makes them outlawed.

According to Weber, charisma was incompatible with legality and a growing bureaucracy to which it leads as it “tends, on the one hand to dilute the power of the leader on the basis of bureaucratic procedure, and, on the other, to delegate the leader’s power to others in the chain of command”

Indeed the bureaucratization of the rule of Morales is made evident by Goldstein as one of the reasons why the residents of the barrio are unable to access the state is due to the “nightmarish bureaucracy” However, as Weber affirms this process of routinization is something that happens in order to adapt the political system to “everyday conditions”.

What Weber refers to as disenchantment linked to capitalism seems to be happening in Morales’s government. As shown above, Morales recognizes the innovative character of his rituals when talking about the rituals that took place for the start of this third term of presidency. He refers to this innovative character of the celebrations as a “recuperación científica” of the past (scientific recuperation of the past) which clearly points out to a rationalization of the ceremonies. As Weber affirmed when the world starts to rely on science principles there’s a disenchantment and there’s no more reliance on magic magical or mysterious powers.

Indeed, the modernization is not limited to the ways in which rituals are taking place but the economic projects promoted by the MAS government are becoming more and more capitalistic and aiming at modernization contrasting the whole essence of the anti-capitalistic and anti-neoliberal discourse of the state. An example of this is the allowance for the construction of a highway that would go through a rainforest or the authorizing of projects such as the exploitation of fuel or gas resources in biodiverse areas of the country. This contrasts with the sacred character that these goods acquire in the rituals Morales takes part in and paves a way towards a rationalization of the charisma attributed to these goods in the first place.

Conclusion

This paper demonstrates that even though Morales’s authority presents a charismatic element it tends towards rationalization of this charismatic power that results in the bureaucratization of the state administration and a more capitalistic approach to economy. Charisma becomes rationalized without leaving out the meaning it has been embedded in by its semiotic creation that points to the followers addressed by the state appeal as bearing the identity of rural-indigenous.

As a consequence, as Goldstein shows in Outlawed, some people do not have access to the state authority as their identities are not represented by it. The rationalization and the growing rational-legal character of the state authority makes them stand as illegal as they cannot go through all the mechanisms this rationalization results in.

Ironically, the government of Morales, while decolonizing his politics in Kohn-like fashion as he attributes human qualities to natural entities, he essentializes the human identities of its citizens and leaves certain humans-beings living in dehumanized conditions. They are the clearest victims of the disenchantment that is taking place in Bolivia.