Coffee Minister Manuel Canelas
By Jimmy Burns
Manuel Canelas is a relaxed, as well as a bright guy who is worth getting to know in an informal environment. So I was not surprised that the place agreed for our first meeting during my recent visit to his country, was not his ministerial office but a boutique cafe of those that offer a certain style and comfort amidst the urban chaos of the capital La Paz, a genial and fraternal venue , away from the more spooky aspects of Bolivian politics. As defined by a diplomatic observer, ‘Colombia invented magical realism. Bolivia practices it.’
Canelas comes from a renowned political and journalistic family – his uncle Jorge was the founder of several newspapers. Miguel was born in Caracas Venezuela where his father Víctor Hugo Canelas was exiled for his political activities during the period of García Mesa’s coup. His father returned to Bolivia in 1984, was a political actor during the 1980s to 2000, and was interior minister of the National Revolutionary Movement, whose liberal leader Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was deposed from the government by a popular rebellion in 2003.
Canelas studied Political Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid, where his study partners were Pablo Iglesias and Iñigo Erejon, founders of Podemos.
Errejon, like Canelas, has distanced himself from the vertical leadership of Iglesias. Errejon is still one of the two best friends Canelas has. The other is his partner Danny, a Spanish architect with whom Canelas has an enduring relationship. The couple have plans to live again in Madrid in some not too distant future.
It was in 2014, two years after returning from Spain and presenting a TV talk show, that Canelas – ‘Manu’ as his friends call him – publicly declared his homosexuality at a meeting of the Bolivian government party of the MAS the Movement to Socialism Movement during a debate on a gender law project that was later approved.
A former Deputy Minister of Planning and former lawmaker , Canelas assumed the key Minister for Communications portfolio, one of the most controversial of the Evo Morales regime, a few months ago after his predecessor had received harsh criticism for her inefficiency and extravagant expenses.
At the age of 37, the media savvy Canelas maintains his youthful energy and intellectual lights. He has an open and generally reasonable and measured way of facing the problems of his country, despite being part of a regime that approaches the new elections in October facing growing opposition.
Our conversation took place in two meetings in boutique cafes, the second, a breakfast meeting in a house that was once owned by a brother of Sánchez-Losada.
JB Shall we speak English?MC I speak something. But better that you speak English if you want, and I in Spanish… JB Well, since we’re both bilingual, let’s talk in Spanish….The Strike / Protest Day in Santa Cruz. The fact that a city / region with a certain political and economic strength – what does the fact entail? MC It is not the first time that the Civic Committee has organized a strike… It is a repertoire of classic action in the country’s modern history-protests, strikes, civic blockade… It has not surprised us, we do not underestimate it either. The Civic Committee has strength especially in the capital city and the middle classes. It is a parallel entity, not elected by the popular vote of course, but the representation of Santa Cruz is arrogated. It has the support of certain business sectors, and the traditional elite of Santa Cruz. It is not as decisive as twenty years ago when there was not even a governorship in Santa Cruz and when it was really The Institution … Now it has less strength although it is still important and ideologically it has always been located quite to the right. In the moments of greatest opposition to Evo, they were those who defended an independence of Santa Cruz more clearly … and strikes like this one was just a way to maintain a certain initiative …There is a new president in the Committee for a few months … Camacho ..And this man sees the need at the beginning of the mandate to show himself to be tough and radical so as to strengthen his following ..Camacho spends several months announcing initiatives in the media but then they do not materialize in reality. An example is when he goes to to see the President of Colombia carrying signatures against Evo’s candidacy a month and a half ago and he returns to Santa Cruz and tells everyone that the Colombian President is about to send an advisory opinion to oppose the reelection of Evo and nothing happened …Camacho organized the strike with a demand that he knows is impossible – the resignation of the election organising committee three months before the elections … but he does it more to win support among his followers…And then he is a guy who has a lot of money in Panama and The Bahamas … and who features prominently in the Panama Papers, in the Chapter on Bolivia. And I think he’s doing all this kind of thing to protect himself against being investigated by the government. JB But Mesa was also in the Santa Cruz strike and Ortiz … You focus on Camacho but I come from outside, for me the ones who seem the most prominent figures in the opposition are these two. MC Ortiz and Mesa do not have the strength to organize a strike as such…. JB The vice president says the strike was political … MC The origin for me is the President of the Civic Committee Camacho. He wants to be a strong regional actor. He is a young guy. He probably has a certain ambition. He needs more internal cohesion in the Committee and believes that he can get it, taking strong public positions … and the fact that Mesa attends the strike action is convenient for both Mesa and Camacho because there is a suspicion among the more radical opposition voter that Mesa is very soft and he is subordinate to the MAS… So when Mesa participates in the Santa Cruz strike, he does it so as try and show his credentials as a real opponent. JB Polls look good for the government. . Do you trust them? How do you see the electoral perspectives? MC Three months left. But if the elections were this Sunday the MAS would win in the first round, sure … But everything could change … JB What are the variables .. MC Several things … I think that what will be seen in this campaign in the next three months is two fundamental questions that people will want to ask …Whoever is able to put the question in an election has won a good part of the election …We need one question to be about who is more committed to stability,to order. The proposal of the MAS in short is to maintain the order that has given us good results …Mesa’s attempt is for people to vote remembering the unease felt around the president Evo Morales standing again, and who say that he should not be a candidate … and the discomfort around corruption and drug trafficking … Whoever is able to deal with these subject will have logically better possibilities ..I think that what happens to the third political figure is also very important: Oscar Ortiz ..Because Ortiz and Mesa are competing for the opposition vote. That opposition vote today is mostly a hard vote in ideological terms, a very anti-Evo vote, annoyed by the candidacy …Mesa is claiming that vote … in the sense of useful vote … saying I am the only one who can beat Morales so vote for me ..But that that hard vote sees Mesa with distrust and there are people who think he has a pact with Evo,…. everything indicates that the MAS will ge over 45 percent, that Mesa will find it hard to get more than thirty and that Ortiz will get 15 percent … If Ortiz wins 15 per cent, he ruins the chances of Mesa forcing a second round … JB So you are more concerned about the useful vote in favor of Mesa? MC Yes, of course. Saying I distrust Mesa because he is very close to Evo but I am going to vote with a blocked nose …The problem that Mesa has is that there is one thing recognized by eighty, even ninety percent of the Bolivian electorate. The vast majority of people acknowledge that these ten years have been stable, or foreseeable, ten years. Mesa has two problems…. The distrust of the hard voter, but then to the question if Mesa would give me guarantees of a stable country, the vast majority of people think not. Many Bolivians believes a vote for Mesa is a jump into the void because people remember that the Mesa government before Evo was very bad … his twenty months of government …We need to recover that idea of Mesa, that people say I am angry with Evo but I want to see what will happen next because even if I express my anger we have to have government that is capable of governing the country….And I would even say that Ortiz offers more certainty of being able to lead the country, that is, Ortiz is more right-wing but conveys an idea that he can govern. Mesa is less radical and more centrist but generates distrust in the hard right wing voter …JB Will Mesa and Ortiz join forces ?MC In the first round Impossible. In the second obviously, yes. JB So everything to playfor in the second round? MC Sure JB Moving on to another topic … You run a ministry with a lot of power, with a very large budget and you succeeded a person who was under investigation, after mishandling a huge budget.In your interview with El País you quoted a budget a little smaller than last year … 507 million compared to 527 million … MC The reality is that there are always adjustments. But there are twenty Ministries and there are other Ministries that have more budget than Communications – we are in the middle. Of course health, education, public works have bigger budgets… have others have smaller ones than us, like Culture, Sport, Productive Development …Last year we had about 560 million this year 528 million ..Because of low oil prices, from 2015 onwards … except health and government … all other Ministries have lowered their budgets … JB I remember that after the referendum in government spheres, the bad management of government advertising was blamed … it was thought there were too many billboards, and a very a low level of social networks..You represent a generation, better trained and very focused on social media … MC For me it is not so much a question of the tools, as the message. I believe that the referendum campaign had two problems. First the dirty war, of lies and intoxication .. JB from both sides? MC Yes, of course. But I think that was we have also seen this in Brexit, also in the Colombian referendum. The Colombian State Council published a very hard hitting report saying that the campaign against peace had used false information …Here it was half evident that there was a very intelligent strategy mounted against Evo around his alleged girlfriend, and a son…And then there was problem of the government’s message … It was a very classic message. The theme of anti-imperialism, very ideological , was appealed to a lot, and even if you had three times more social networks … if your message is not contemporary … it doesn’t matter if you communicate it by press, radio, or network …The key is that the message should be contemporary … and that this message is accompanied by necessary communication tools …Because you could have a team of 50 guys working for you on Facebook but if you campaign only talking about imperialism … nothing will happen however much you have a whole team also working all day on twitter. JB But they say you have a team of ‘digital guerrillas’ working for you … MC That is not true. It was a mistake of the my predecessor in the job who talked about digital warriors … and several colleagues wanted to popularize the term…..My social media network has no more than fifteen people … we concentrate much of the money on state advertising. JB In a pre-election period do you think it is ethical to convert institutional communication into a pre-election communication? MC Sure, it’s not right. The fact is that I do the same thing with the people of the social networks as the TV and the Radio. I am in charge of the management. I believe that any Ministry of Communication in an election year always faces that criticism. When I advertise lithium and hydrocarbons in a normal year, nobody seems to complain.But if I put the same announcement out three months before the elections, there will always be people who say it is propaganda. I think it is an inevitable criticism. JB And the fact that you control a majority of the media … MC.The information is not correct. JB let’s move on to another topic… A diplomat in La Paz explained to me recently that while in Colombia magical realism was invented, the practice is in La Paz, a city that feeds on rumors and conspiracies, many of them imagined. .Something unusual among those who form the current government, but in your case I do not find anyone outside the government who criticizes you … Because they see you as a guy who is trying to give a different image, not demagogic, quite measured … The same diplomat recently explained his perspective on Bolivian politicians and defines them as three categories: organic, potential and corrupt …The organic are the most enduring unquestioning supporters of MAS, the most ideological; the potentials which you belong to are, less ideological and acting with the conviction that things have to change … You are not accused of being someone who is only where he is because he likes power. You still know that you can return to Madrid whenever you want … Taking into account that you are not a corrupt but a potential … Let’s talk about Podemos, a movement with which you have had a lot to do in terms of friendships …I remember an interview I did in December 2014 with one of the founding ideologues of Podemos Juan Carlos Monedero where he told me how the statutes of his political movement prohibited more than two consecutive presidential terms …You represent a President who has violated the constitution by running for a third term … and the opposition says that this is a government that like the regime in Venezuela wants to perpetuate itself in power. And that if he Morales sees that he isnt going to get enough votes, , he will resort to fraud … How do you justify yourself in terms of your conscience? MC: It’s very simple. I think it’s a generalization to say that long governments have more corruption … I can think of lots of examples of very short ones that steal a lot .. JB Like what? MC: Take a look at the four years of the Guatemalan government … in political science the main argument in favor of reelection is that the government is accountable and has to behave well if it wants to be reelected.Although I am not defending a limitless time in government…. JB But the most potentially fragile point of this government is drug trafficking and corruption. Do you think that the re-election of Evo Morales is justified because if he is re-elected he will deal these problems? MC: It’s a more pragmatic issue. I do not say that it is good or bad but what I feel is with the government of Evo we have seen that Bolivia has gone through a process of modernization .. before 2005 in this country the parents of my friends had been presidents, I know Mesa since before going to school, my father has been a minister, my uncles have been ministers, the country was really a a political arena dominated by four families and I speak as someone who was a member of one of those families …As of 2005, with clumsiness, with errors, but we had a more or less classic modernization process that other countries had experienced in times past …The collapse of the pre-2005 political system make people who voted for Morales give ehim the power of arbitrator…Evo is the only guy still in Bolivia today who can speak with the president of Private Entrepreneurs, with the Head of the Trade Unions , who can engage with a right wing State Governor and also reach out to the radical left. I understand why people question his re-election. But let’s not forget that in 2014 the president’s candidacy was very criticized… but it was approved by the constitutional court… JB So you think it’s justified. . And if he goes to the electorate … you are on record as saying he has to appeal to new voters, less peasants, more urban dwellerrs … There are people who say that you really are a social democrat … MC: I think that although it would bother some ministers, the MAS government has been a very social democratic government ..I believe that the rhetoric for many years has been radical but that the practice has been social democratic, trying to set up a welfare state … strengthen the state, distribute benefits …,Now what is need is for the government to catch up with the times…… Because if the country has changed as it has changed since 2005, it cannot continue talking as in 2005 … that is to say, people no longer think so much about having to belong to a peasant union … JB But that is a great challenge. This is a government that has said that it is aware of the ecological issue but it is not. It seems to me a country full of contradictions , such as the fact that the country while having huge potential lithium reserves that could help create a world of electronic vehicles still has huge pollution in La Paz with cars from the fifties using diesel as fuel ; Bolivia is the fifth country in terms of deforestation; the Andes are running out of snow …The economy of Bolivia is still extractive … In 2005 the speech was La Madre Tierra ..Mother Earth MC: I believe that one cannot govern and win elections disconnected with what people demand. And I think that there is a fragility of the discourse of living well. Because living well was not an extensive and broad demand of Bolivian society … If you see what Morales was asked for in 2005 it was not an ecological demand to live well … it was a demand for a new institutional pact to include the hitherto disenfranchised sectors, indigenous people and peasants, giving them a sense of citizenship . Meanwhile the popular demand with the economy was purely extractive … nationalize hydrocarbons to exploit them ..Then, through some intellectuals close to the government, this issue of living well was discussed but still had no popular supportI think that is why in 2014 when the Greens ran in the elections in Bolivia they took only two percent of the vote and had no candidates elected…What is it that his aving more impact at the level of common sense in Bolivia in ecological terms? Garbage management. Not pollution, not mining.Here people do not perceive that we are screwed because of the pollution of cars. But they do care about garbage … And so you see mayors and Evo talking about garbage …Here you ask people what is the main problem of ecology, and they will tell you , it’s garbage … with absolute certainty … Not all countries enter the environmental paradigm in the same way …In the government manifesto in the October elections I guarantee that the issue of garbage will have an important place … and not even in the Mesa program will they talk about the pollution of cars … JB And deforestation? MC You have to find a balance from the government between what you know is a problem and what people perceive is a problem.I think that the program of the green party in 2014 was fantastic since it talked about deforestation, about car pollution… but it got two percent of the vote JB And you don’t think you have to do more to save the planet? MC We have to find an intermediate point .. If you are going to make me choose between an impeccable government programme that meets European taste like the one the Green Party was projecting but at the cost of not having one deputy elected, or having the power to decide about garbage….. JB Let’s go to the question: If Morales is re-elected, will ecology be a priority? MC: It’s an issue that is increasingly important. JB For example, will mining cooperatives continue with their abysmal health and safety and environmental records? MC You have to regulate. I am not an expert in the mining issue. Cooperatives have an important political weight in the country and I imagine that both the MAS and Mesa are going to field candidates with ties to the cooperative deputies …Well, you try to regulate bad practices. In the end it is a negotiation process. JB: Let’s finish, if you allow me, with a more personal issue. You are in an openly gay relationship with your Spanish partner. That has been a great challenge for you? Are you proud to be the gay prime minister in Bolivia? What does this fact tell us about Bolivian society? MC I come from a socially privileged background , from a well-off family. I have political power, and as someone who is white does not suffer the discrimination that another person may suffer. My experience is good but I don’t know if I am an example to judge how homosexuality is lived in Bolivia. I think this country is still quite homophobic. But I think one of the good things is that Evo got rid of the the Church as a public actor. The Church before 2005 was a fundamental actor. For example, in 2004 when Mesa was president, the government worked with a law project on sexual and reproductive rights – very advanced. Congress approved it unanimously and sent it for Mesa to promulgate. The Archbishop of the moment sent a letter to Mesa to make him reconsider the project and the project was put off.
Today although there are many conservative people who privately show prejudice in their homes, there are no political leaders, or organized political speeches, that criticize homosexuality. A very interesting case was when we passed the transsexuals law in May 2016.
I assure you that if you do a survey you will 80 percent of people in Bolivia are against it. But the Assembly approved it with 80 percent of votes and support from the opposition parties. .
JB But there is no legalized gay marriage …
MC No, not yet. What you have is in the Law to Combat Racism Homophobia is a criminal offense, and in the Family code approved in 2014, the possibility of regulating other types of unions opens up.
JB Do you think gay marriage wil be a long time in coming ?
MC I don’t think so. Mesa and Evo already agree and Ortiz cannot go against it. So I think you can expect it to get approval in the next legislature. Mind you, gay organizations here mobilise very few people in the streets. But they have a very good lobby. They engage with deputies, with senators, with the President, with Mesa.
JB All good. But Evo is labeled a misogynist with a rather negative attitude towards women, with a language and attitude that almost equals Trump. He is not a great example.
MC I think it’s an inaccurate observation. To evaluate what a president does, we must look at the statements, but also the actions taken by his government. It cannot be evaluated simply by grabbing five statements with misplaced jokes and saying that this is all Evo has done in the ten years of government. It is a cartoon that is not reality. ENDS
