Back from One Balkans, Home to Another

bal·kan·ized: to break up (as a region or group) into smaller and often hostile units.
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

I have found myself to have a new secret power. I can now recite the major headlines in any given Bolivian daily newspaper without even reading it.

Governors and Morales in New Battle

More Protests as Inflation Soars.

Morales Criticizes U.S.

U.S. Criticizes Morales

None of this is because I am clairvoyant. 'Polarization' and 'Bolivian politics' have become so synonymous now that if you look in a dictionary for one of those terms it tells you to see the other. Having just spent two weeks working in the Balkans (Kosovo and Montenegro) I can't help but be struck by the comparison. There the era is 'post-conflict' and new governments are trying to put things back together. Here the era is 'a-new-conflict-a-day' and those leading seem pretty intent on pulling things apart.

So, in the interest of provoking more spirited debate on the topic, here are some reflections and analysis about the Balkanization of Bolivia.

Means and Ends

Every now and then, though less of late, you hear political or social leaders clamor about the importance of the 'rule of law.' It is a principle that has become almost quaint in Bolivia. Politicians and movements both left and right have made it clear that 'the law' in Bolivia is something roughly akin to stopping on a red light in Cochabamba – a thing that is advisory only.

Let's begin, in fairness, with the left. In the days when Evo and many of his current allies were on the outside, the law was always something that needed to flex in response to bigger social demands. Road blockades, destruction of public buildings, the shutdown of cities and other tactics were always considered acceptable acts when needed to get the attention of governments. The strategic principles were clear – find the spaces of power and occupy them and make the nation ungovernable until demands were met or the government fell.

And today, the right and regional autonomy movements inspired and led by the right cheerily imitate those same strategies and tactics. Find the spaces of power and occupy them. Make the nation ungovernable until demands are met or the government falls.

Using ends to justify means is nothing new in politics, but it has basically become the rule in Bolivia, including by the political right.

Take the autonomy votes in Santa Cruz and elsewhere. Is it legitimate to hold a vote to take a formal public pulse on the topic? Yes indeed, legitimate and legal and a great tactic if you plan on winning big. But can a region unilaterally renegotiate fundamental issues in the regional/national distribution of authority? Well, now that wouldn’t be legal. Last night a taxi driver and I came up with this metaphor. What if, after we agreed that I'd pay 15 Bolivianos to go from Cochabamba to Tiquipaya, I announced on arrival that 5 Bs. seemed a fairer price and paid that? Neither does the Bolivian Constitution allow for such sudden one-sided changes.

Or take the Governors of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Pando, Ben and Cochabamba, who suddenly announced a week ago that they weren't going to participate in the August 10 'revocatoria' vote approved by the Congress and President – a law actually initiated by the opposition to Morales. It is a bit hard to take pious declarations about respect for law from a group of politicians who then say, 'Okay, but that law we don't like, so screw it.' The political aerobatics by Cochabamba's Governor, Manfred Reyes Villa are especially breathtaking. Less than two months ago he was bragging about his original call for such a vote and declaring on CNN, "How many lives and confrontations would have been avoided if in that moment we had approved the law?" Now he just wants to ignore it. Slick.

The sad thing is that in a political environment in which ends mean so much and means mean so little, there isn't even a very focused debate on what those ends ought to be.

What's at Stake?

It is not however, particularly difficult to spot what are the genuine public policy issues that reside beneath the political power plays at hand right now in Bolivia. The fundamental questions that divide the nation remain:

Land Reform: What land would the government give to the landless? How would the land in private hands be compensated for? Who would be eligible to receive the land and in exchange for what commitments? What support would the government provide them to help them make that land productive?

Gas and Oil: How will the soaring profits from Bolivia's gas and oil – courtesy of both soaring global prices and increased taxes on foreign companies – be divided between the regions where it sits and the regions where it does not sit? What role should the Bolivian state have in exploration, production and sale and how can it do that effectively?

Autonomy: What political authority – in the fields of justice, education, resource management, and others – will be reserved for indigenous communities, regional governments, and local governments?

The Presidency: Can Bolivians, if they choose to do so, re-elect their President and Vice-President and if so, how many times?

These are some of the concrete issues at the heart of the divide and none have been raised into full public debate. All have been obscured by a dangerous stew of political power plays, over-heated rhetoric and overt racism. As recipes for Balkanization go, it’s a pretty good one.

To be clear, the divide in Bolivian politics existed long before the current actors took the stage. Bolivia is a nation deeply divided by race and class. But both Morales and his opponents have done a masterful job of making the divide new and different.

Opponents of Morales, for reasons racial, economic, political, regional, and strategic, made a clear choice early on to treat his election as a heavy train headed down the tracks straight at them and tried to throw everything in front of that train they could to stop it. Their July 2006 election campaign (for the Constituent Assembly) tried the "Hugo Chavez! Hugo Chavez!" approach and failed miserably. They then scored a good political victory with the demand for a 2/3 vote on everything before that Assembly.

But the regional autonomy campaigns and demand to move the national capital to Sucre, that was pure political genius.

Where once Evo faced an opposition that one could genuinely classify as the old elite, he now faced one that was regional, taking with it even many of the lower income parts of the rebel departments. If I am a woman selling gum on a street corner in Santa Cruz, who do I like better – the President who wants to take a full cut of gas and oil revenue for El Alto or the regional leaders who say keep it here. Regional identity beat class identity. And Evo helped his opponents mightily, with confrontational appeals to his base that pushed a lot of people in the middle into the greetings arms of the opposition.

Y Ahora, Que?

What does this mean? Okay, here's a guess. Political stalemate for two and a half years. Regions will seize autonomy where they can (by blocking land reform, for example), knowing that Morales will not send in the Army to stop them. They won't be able to extend autonomy where it would take national cooperation, for example getting a bigger share of gas revenue.

And then the opposition will run out a long political clock.

Absent a new Constitution – which seems a more and more distant possibility with each passing month – Bolivia will head into new national elections in December of 2010 in which Evo can not be a candidate and in which he has groomed no successor with a chance. And then once again out of power, it will be the left's turn to show once again that it still knows how to make Bolivia ungovernable from the other side.

Now, I want to admit a couple of caveats to this analysis:

First, my more revolutionary friends will quickly dismiss this as a 'reformist' analysis, which it is. Many prefer to see what Evo represents as a revolution, a movement to pull the existing political and social order up by its roots and start anew, with equality replacing privilege as the national organizing principle. In many parts of the nation, the altiplano in particular, that may well be true. But most of Evo's actions are hardly revolutionary and amidst the Bolivians I interact with, be it my neighbors in the cow fields or the vendors in the street, what I hear about isn't revolution but dreams of lower-priced food, a little political stability for a while, and a shot at a living income.

Second, at the risk of channeling former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in Bolivia it isn't the 'known unknowns' that will trip you up. It's the 'unknown unknowns.' Just when you think that the course of events in Bolivia seems to have a discernable pattern to it, some event turns that pattern on its head – the people kick out Bechtel, or Evo wins, or people start killing each other on the streets of Cochabamba.

Let's hope the surprises ahead here are good ones.

Video of the Week: When Politicians Dance

I am still catching up on the delightful state of Bolivian politics, and will be back with a post on that early next week.

Meanwhile, this weeks "video of the week" selection answers the question: Is there anything more unseemly that a politician can do than enacting most of their public policies? Well, if this video is any evidence, then dancing runs at least a clear second. So if you are a fan of either embarrassing images of politicians, or the band Coldplay, or like me fans of both, enjoy!

And I don't want to hear any complaints of 'leftist bias' this week. I mean, a video that shows Fidel Castro almost breaking his neck can't really be a leftist plot, no? And yes, that really is Karl Rove. Yuck!

Notes from the Road

Days on the road: 32
Airports: 15
Hours in the air: 50
Continents: 3
Countries: 6
Cities: 10
Languages: 5 (counting U.K. English as a separate language, which it is)
Coffees: 47
Pounds gained: I'm guessing my shoe size, and I have very big feet.
Carbon footprint: I believe that I am now obligated to reforest Paraguay.

Back in the USA

An all day layover in Santa Cruz, two options, Alexander's for coffee or the zoo. We go to the zoo. The llamas look more nervous these days. The sloths are campaigning for autonomy. In Bolivia it seems everything is politics.

American Airlines is a sad airline. Now even the pretzels are gone. But it isn't the pilots' or the stewardesses' fault. One of our flight attendants wears a button calling on American's CEO to resign, before he collects six more bonuses. The pilot who takes us from Miami tips his cap to my small daughter and invites her to have a look inside the cockpit. "Mariana, don't touch any buttons!" I yell. But not even that seems to knock him off balance. Too bad he's not CEO.

Southern California – people here are spoiled. They take the beach and burritos for granted. They should try living in Bolivia for a year. I tried to convince my 5-year-old daughter that all the people with a little telephone receivers in their ears are robots. She thought about it, but then decided I was joking. But I wasn't.

Big news for those who make that oh-so-California of treks, the car trip up Interstate 5 from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Starbucks has a pair of drive-thrus along the route. I consider this as evidence that civilization in the U.S. has continued to advance. My eldest daughter is a 'barista' at a Starbucks in Jacksonville FL. Who invented the word 'barista' anyway? It sounds like a Latin American political movement…"armed baristas have taken control of the national parliament and have demanded more logical names for coffee sizes…' If Starbucks measured 'barista' height the way they measure their cappuccinos my daughter would be 'tall', which would be really something for someone who barely measures 5 feet.

Marin County California, everyone seems to have a smile on their face. Affluence and redwood trees will do that to people. We hang out in Fairfax. We eat white yogurt-covered pretzels and marvel at houses where people leave their doors unlocked when they go out.
In San Francisco I go on a father/daughter outing with my five-year-old. We take a boat there. My daughter calls Chinatown "China City." At the restaurant where we ate lunch she spends most of the time looking at the big silver fish swimming in the tank waiting to be eaten. We have a joke we like to make. "Hey, you know what they call Chinese food in China City? Food!"

In Berkeley I run into an old friend of mine. She is leading a group of women dressed in pink who are protesting at the U.S. Marines recruitment office. The police guarding the door don't seem terribly happy to be there. But better there than in Iraq I suppose. I am happy to see Berkeley hasn't changes completely since I went to school lived there 150 years ago. I might be exaggerating that number, but only slightly.

I meet an old friend for drinks in the lobby of the St. Francis Hotel and strike up a conversation in Spanish with the waitress who is from Peru. She gives us a second round on the house. I like having conversations with immigrants in the U.S., even when they don't give me free drinks.

Washington. Here's how conversations there go these days:

"Hello how are you?"

"Fine, and you?"

"Fine."

"Okay, now that we have that out of the way, shit! What about Obama!!"

Fully-grown adults seem to be living a glee that most thought they left behind when they bought the theory that Santa isn't real (disproven, by the way).

Also a phenomena in Washington, the city's conservative, the Washington Times, seems to look for photos of Barak Obama that will make him most look like Malcolm X having a bad day. I like to imagine the editor barking orders like that character in Spiderman. "Jesus, can't anyone get me a good snarl on that guy?!"

In the U.S. capital saltenas cost $4, but they are really big. But less big than my feet.

Across the Atlantic

London, a city where it seems that everyone is inexplicably obsessed with imitating the voices Monty Python characters, is also the financial capital of the world. I think I know how Londoners make their money. In a cinema in London the price of a Bolivian movie ticket will roughly cover the cost of seeing one preview, which is actually not one of the admission options. Public transport in London is partly financed by requiring passengers to by tickets from coin-operated machines at the bus stops that mainly seem to eat the coins without dispensing a ticket. This happens to me every time. I am a major financier of London public transport.

In the Vienna airport all the guys who work at Starbucks seem to have the same haircut, which involves using gel to make your hair in front stand upright in a triangle. They also didn't seem to notice this until I pointed it out. "Wow, I guess so!" Is a guy a 'baristo'?

In Pristina, Kosovo's capital, people are very proud of their newly declared national independence, but they still have a few kinks to work out. The main one is that the city's electricity goes out several times a day, sometimes for hours. I discover this, unfortunately, while taking a pee in a suddenly-pitch back public restroom.

I like Montenegro, the tiny Republic (population of less than 1 million) carved out of the former Yugoslavia. Perhaps it is a sign that I was allowed to watch too much television in as a child, but when Montenegrins speak they all sound to me like Boris and Natasha, the Russian spies who sparred with Rock and Bullwinkle. Maybe it is their sentence structure. Here's a sign posted over a toilet in a UN office in Podgorica:

"When flushing, we are kindly asking you to push the flushing button once again. In this way you will avoid leaving the water in the running state which could, God forbid, cause flood."

In Europe in general, the man-purse is in. Men across the Balkans and Spain can be seen with small rectangle bags hanging at their hip from a strap tossed around their necks. Just big enough for a cell phone, a wallet and perhaps some mysterious European man-snack. I consider myself a trendsetter here. I've been a knapsack guy for thirty years. But the purse? What's the point if you can't carry a book? I'm just saying.

Something I read (in Spanish) on the back of a waiter's t-shirt at a Madrid street café (I don't think they call anyone in Madrid a 'barista': "The secret to life is to eat and drink without moderation." Many people in Madrid were practicing that advice on Sunday night when Spain faced Italy in the EuroCup quarterfinals. Ninety minutes, a scoreless tie. Twenty minutes of overtime, more scorelessness. Spaniards filled every café with a big screen in the city center. Television stations reported the largest audience in the history of Spanish television. Plaza Colon was filled with thousands watching on really big screens there. A decades-old curse of penalty kick losses just like this one hung over the nation. And with a pair of blocked Italian kicks a nation seemed to explode in celebration in one collective cheer. Nations need that from time to time.

The Way Home

The Miami Airport. It is a scary thing to know an airport so well that the bagel guys know my name and I can tell you which store sells Flaming Hot Cheetos. Tips about the Miami airport. There is a post office hidden on the fourth floor where few visitors ever go. Handy for sending gifts while in transit. There is a small park outside just beyond the Airport Hotel. You can actually go outside on a long layover.

Airports all have aquariums now, but they are for people, not fish. People who smoke. If you want to put yourself on display, anyone can. You just need a cigarette and sour looking face.

Decency is not hard to find in the U.S., even though the face we often show the world is far short of decent. One place you can find it is in the lost and found at the Miami Airport. I passed by the door without meaning to and strolled in for a chat with the fellow behind the desk, Ernie Alonso. He's worked behind the Lost and Found desk for 15 years.

"A wheel barrel came in today," he tells me. "We've also had human ashes." It is hard to imagine that someone could accidentally misplace their cremated uncle at the Borders Books here, but things happen. In the case of the ashes Alonso used information on the side of the can to track down the funeral home that had handled the cremation and through them was able to contact the family and Ecuador that had come to fetch a relative's ashes and then lost them somewhere between terminals E and D. "We don't just sit around and wait for people to come in. We make phone calls. We send emails." Maybe instead of making a fifth round of those CSI shows that seem to be so popular they could do one about Ernie as detective extraordinaire. They could call it, "L&F Miami!"

The La Paz airport. From summer to winter. From sea level to more than two miles high. From men with purses to women in wide skirts and bowler hats.

Way to American, three hours late so my connection to Cochabamba left me behind. Sometimes I think AA is channeling LAB.

But eventually I will find a way home – to my family, my dogs, my hidden eucalyptus grove. Oh yeah, and to a bed, my own.

New Feature on the Blog: Video of the Week!

Now this may come as a surprise to many readers but I am (wait for it) a political junkie. So, election season in the U.S. is for me sort of like what the World Cup is to fútbol fans, the Super Bowl is to football fans, the World Series is to baseball fans, Terminator 3 was to Arnold fans and…you get the picture.

And the great thing is that my high junkie season lasts not just a day or a week or a month but more than a year. And better still in the age of YouTube, there are so many great political videos out there that I can't keep up!

So, to help our readers keep abreast of what's hot in new on-line political video we are going to start a new feature here on the Blog: Video of the Week! Now our political leanings to the 'progressive side' (as opposed to the Dark Side) are not exactly a major secret, so naturally our tastes will run in that direction. But we are bipartisan here in our admiration of good satire. So please post or send us your candidates for other videos for future weeks, and if you find a good one featuring Dick Cheney riffing with great wit against Obama or global justice, send it along and we'll have a good look.

Today's founding selection, "I'm voting Republican" was suggested by our own intrepid Virginia transplant, Lily Whitesell.

Enjoy!