Blog from Bangkok

I'm on the loose. I'm away. I'm out. I'm on the lamb, Manfred-style but without a warrant chasing me. But please don't tell anyone my location. Top secret.

On the one hand, farther away from Bolivia I could not be. My daughter and I examined the globe together before I left three weeks ago, one of those older globes where Germany is still two countries and the Soviet Union just one. Thailand is on the other end of the world, south to north, west to east. To get farther away you have to go to the moon. Imagine those frequent flier miles!

But in the back streets away from the high rises where the humble live in narrow alleys there is another Bangkok that feels like another Bolivia with different faces and hotter weather, and cats instead of dogs.

The Beatles are Back

I got taken to lunch one day, at a fancy hotel named for a US political scandal that was also the site for the training workshop I did here. My host was a 20-something sales representative for the hotel who considered lunching with people who hold workshops in his hotel as part of his job. I'd do it too if I were him – free food in exchange for potentially boring conversation. But I did my best for him.

Young men here aiming for a certain professional niche have a particular wardrobe look, identical almost, that can only really be captured this way – The Beatles in about 1964. This isn't the John, Paul, George and Ringo of later years with beards down to their chests and guru shirts bought in India. No the look here is tidy little black suits that look two sizes too small, with giant black leather shoes jutting out from narrow pants. Even the haircut bears a resemblance. I am going to come back in four years and see if Thailand's young professional class all looks like the hairy version of John in bed with Yoko. That would be cool.

So what is it like to be young and aspiring in East Asia at the dawn of the new decade? That seemed to me to be a worthy conversation over pad thai, green curry and sticky buns. If Naruebet, my focus group of one, is any true measure, one thing is optimism. He thinks his region's future is bright – growth, opportunity, excitement. I'm not sure his counterparts headed out of university in the U.S. feel that way these days. There, even after a brief stint of overstated Obama-era optimism, the mood seems more like, anxiety, concern and "crap, what bad timing."

Ok, let's talk China. Not just with him but also with others I have spoken with there is an assumption here that won’t make folks back in the USA too happy. The era of the USA empire is over, declining fast. It is all going to be about China now. That's what people here think. When I was in my 20s big name authors and my graduate school professors along the Charles used to say the same thing about Japan, and that didn't exactly work out. But China's formidable accumulation of economic and political power is likely to be stickier than sticky buns. For 10 points who can name the country from which the US government has borrowed close to a trillion dollars to finance our recent wars and bank bailouts?

"There are Chinese all over the world in high positions opening up economic opportunities for China," my young McCartneyesque lunch partner told me. What kind of empire would China be? "Pushy," he says. Well, I don’t suppose it will be more pushy than the U.S.

Buddha vs. Jesus

Okay, let's talk about the Buddha. This is one of my strongest memories from my last visit to Thailand, to up north in Chiang Mai seven years back.

Those temples. Now I don't mean to disparage Christianity of Christians, but let's just make a comparison on the surface. You walk into a Christian church and there are hard wooden pews, a place of worship designed to make you physically uncomfortable. And Catholics, by the way, don't make things better by adding all the rituals of standing up and sitting down, a particular torment for bored children. And the fellow up on the cross looks none too comfortable either. In the U.S. he looks like he is basically asleep in a really awkward pose. In Latin America Jesus on the cross is all blood and gore – the "suffering Christ" to match the suffering of the poor, my theologian friends might say.

But the Buddhist temples. No hard wooden pews, only open space and faded red carpet. No priests in uncomfortable collars or ministers in uncomfortable shoes, monks in loose-fitting orange robes and bare feet. Not only do they let visitors to the temple take off their shoes as they enter (Can you imagine an Episcopalian doing such a thing!?), it's required.

And the Buddha. He's not being tortured on a wooden cross. He isn't hanging uncomfortably. He is happy as can be in bright gold twenty feet high in what looks like a comfortable pose with his legs crossed. In a contest between a deity who supposedly died for our sins (before we were born and committed any, a confusing notion) and another who just wants us to relax, breath and here silence, Christianity has tough competition in the world. And also, from what I can tell, Buddhists don't go door to door either, trying to convince people. It reminds me of something I saw painted on a wall in Cochabamba. "Si Dios existe, porque tanta propaganda?" If God exists, why so much advertising?

Okay, moving on.

The King

Here, when people speak of the King, they speak neither of Elvis, Larry or a chess piece. They speak of Thai's beloved 82-year-old monarch, Bhumibol Adulyadej (pronounced Bhumibol Adulyadej). And believe me when I say, this guy's photo is everywhere. You would be hard pressed to pass a block without seeing his image posted somewhere. Massive portraits stories high are placed of the King everywhere. There are more of them and they are bigger even than those of Evo back in Bolivia (placed there by Evo mostly). And in most, he has a camera around his neck, old style, film not digital. He is Thailand's Kodachrome King.

The last time I visited Thailand I actually had time to go to a movie and learned the tradition of every movie beginning with a standing tribute to the King. I and the other five other foreigners that day who ditched their responsibilities to see the 2pm matinee of Liar Liar with Jim Carrey were required to stand up at the start for the full duration of a strange 5-minute film homage to the King that mostly included footage of him wandering around in nature with a camera around his neck.

Tourist World

Bangkok is a magnet for young foreigners, most especially from freezing Europe and nearby Australia and New Zealand, who seem attracted like flies and candy to the rituals of mass quantities of beer intake, cheap guest house rooms and cheaper foot messages, and riding about in Tuc-Tuc motorcycle taxis that give one the optimal opportunity to breath in the city's fumes of car pollution.

Whole strange industries have developed around these young tourists. Two favorites of mine include the opportunity to put your feet in a large tank of nibbling fish (I did not try this but perhaps Bolivia could do the same with piranha from the lowlands) and a quite creative collection of tourist-oriented t-shirts. These designs include the popular image of a smiling bride and frowning groom over the title, "Game Over," and another featuring a large tree asking a man, "Please hug me," and the man replying, "no." It might be a statement about global warming, I am unsure.

A whole street, Khoa San Road, is closed off to car traffic and dedicated to such tourism. Here you can by, among other things, a full collection of excellently produced false identifications, ranging from passports of various countries to a false California driver's license. I have only wandered this street twice looking for appropriate souvenirs to bring home, but I am pondering getting an Argentine passport in the name of Dr. Alfred E. Newman, should the need ever arise to have one.

The Food

Okay, we save the best for last. This part is important. Remember it. In Thailand almost all food is Thai food. Really! Do you what they call Thai food in Thailand? Breakfast, lunch, and dinner! I tortured my wife with that joke at least a half dozen times before I left home.

Curry in the morning!
Noodles at night!
Tom Ka Gai soup in the middle!

If I find bagels here as well I might never leave.

And so I say to all of you – sawatdee and see you back in Bolivia soon.

Evo de Nuevo

Readers,

A week ago Bolivian President Evo Morales was sworn in to his historic second term of office – historic both because of the margin of his December election victory (63%) and the constitutional change that for the first time in decades allows a president to serve a second consecutive term. To mark the occasion and spark the debate that this event surely does, we bring you an extended Blog with several features – from analysis to photos.

Jim Shultz


‘Evonomics’ Gets a Second Term in Bolivia
A new article by Jim Shultz in the new edition of NACLA

If election results are a measure of public support for a president’s economic policies, then Bolivia’s Evo Morales got a massive sign of approval December 6. The nation’s first indigenous president was easily elected to a second term with 63% of the vote, almost three times as much as his nearest competitor.

This is a huge win in a country where, for decades, presidents were regularly elected to office with less than a quarter of the popular vote. Part of Morales’s success is connected to Bolivia’s stunning macroeconomic performance under his administration, thanks largely to new taxes on gas and oil revenues, together with a hydrocarbon price boom in 2005–07. GDP growth in 2008, in the face of a global recession, surpassed 6%, and the government boasts foreign currency reserves totaling more than $8 billion. In October, this success garnered the leftist Morales administration praise from an unlikely source: officials at the International Monetary Fund. Read the full article here.


Bolivia's Election Results, for True Political Junkies

For readers interested in understanding the results of December's Morales landslide, in incredible detail, we bring you this extremely complete analysis from Dutch researcher Hans Zandvliet. The analysis includes a comprehensive comparative analysis of Morales' support in 2005 vs. 2009 and maps that break that analysis down by sub-regions within each department. If you want the details or just like colorful maps, this report is for you. Read it here.


The Morales Inauguration in Photos

The Democracy Center team was present in La Paz and Tiwanaku, and there with camera in hand. For those who want to witness the inaugural events in living color, we present a special photo exhibition from Aldo Orellana and Jessica Aguirre. See it here.


Evo Morales’ Inauguration at Tiwanaku
(A special report written by Jessica Aguirre and Aldo Orellana, with editing by Jim Shultz)

On January 21 an estimated 50,000 people gathered at the centuries-old altiplano ruins at Tiwanaku. They gathered on a few gentle hills underneath a fiercely blue sky and around a few squat stone structures. After they had made their way through the corridor of vendors selling food out of aguayo-covered pots on the ground or MAS memorabilia, they assembled under the sun. There, in front of the ancient Incan temple Kalasasaya, they waited for Evo Morales, the newly re-elected president of Bolivia.

Morales at 11 o’clock carried by a red helicopter. In celebration of his arrival, a profusion of musica autoctona groups representing indigenous communities from across Bolivia simultaneously broke into song.

After a brief Q’owa ceremony, conducted on the top of the small mountain of Akapana, Evo was led down to the temple. There he received representatives of indigenous communities from across the Americas who presented him with symbolic gifts: White Bear from Canada gave him a leather coat; Marno Santi from Ecuador gave him a flag. The ceremony, anachronistically powerful, lasted into the afternoon sun, and the celebrations continued long afterward.

The Official Speeches

Since preparations for the inauguration began, the government has been announcing that the ceremony would not only recognize Evo Morales as the new head of state, but that it would mark the “re-founding” of Bolivia.

President Morales emphasized in his speech at Tiwanaku that Bolivians are living through a transition, from a colonial state to a plurinational state. He observed that during the moment of transition there were two states: one that died and one that was born.

Morales referred to the new state as a dignified one that was meant to replace an undignified and indebted history.

The following day, in the official inauguration of a new National Congress – renamed under the new constitution as the Plurinational Legislative Assembly – Vice-president Álvaro García Linera criticized the original founding of Bolivia. “The country was founded for a last name of class and a checkbook,” he said.

Linera contrasted the plurinational state to the colonial state, saying that the transition would assure that all Bolivians have the same rights and obligations. The plurinational state, he said, was one in which indigenous people and people of mixed descent (mestizos) are equal and enjoy the same opportunities.

Morales also spoke of the necessity of respecting the Pachamama. But many questions surfaced regarding the challenges Morales will face in effectively achieving his vision. One of the most significant challenges will be making Morales’ ecological discourse compatible with his vision of political development, which is based on the extraction of natural resources.

Another task will be overcoming one of Bolivia’s greatest challenges: social segregation perpetrated on the basis of skin color, last name, origin, and economic condition. Bolivia remains a racist society and changing that fact will require more than recognizing equality in terms of the law: it will require concrete policies.

Symbols of the Re-founding of Bolivia

There are many symbols that characterize the “second founding” of Bolivia since 1825.

One of the most notorious changes is that the presidential sash, which bears the colors of the Bolivian flag, will now also bear the “Wiphala” in the center, the flag of indigenous peoples.

The medallion of the vice-president, which bore the image of Simón Bolivar on one side and the national shield on the other, will now display the images of Tupak Katari and Bartolina Sisa- the couple who led the indigenous rebellion against the Spanish crown in 1781 in La Paz.

Tupak Katari is considered by some to be a national hero and has been a constant source of rebellious inspiration for the indigenous peoples of Bolivia. He is attributed with the famous phrase “They will kill me, but I will return and I will be millions,” allegedly uttered after he was captured and quartered by Spanish troops. For many, Morales is the materialization of that prophecy.

The Morales inauguration saluted Tupak Katari, Bartolina Sisa, and Chiriguano Apiaguaiqui Tumpa (another indigenous leader that led a failed revolution at the end of the 19th century) by putting their portraits next to those of Simón Bolívar and Antonio José de Sucre above the presidential balcony. The government thus imbued the Bolivian imagination – and the imagination of the attendees, which including the Prince of Spain – with the rhetoric of de-colonialization.

One symbol did not change: the presidential medallion. The medallion was presented to Simón Bolívar by the Bolivian Congress as a gesture of its appreciation for his part in the struggle for independence. When Bolívar died, the medallion was returned to Bolivia and since then has been worn by incoming presidents on the day they are invested with presidential power.

Big Changes in the Presidential Cabinet

The new Morales cabinet, announced shortly after the parties ended, included some important departures from his first term.

One of those big changes was the appointment of a large number of women to the cabinet. Ten women now fill the nation's powerful Minister positions, a full half of the total. Some of the ministries that will be headed by women are the ministry of legal defense of the state (charged with negotiating and defending Bolivia against corporations in international tribunals), the ministry of development planning, the justice ministry, the work ministry, culture ministry, the ministry of the environment, and the water ministry.

Morales expressed profound satisfaction with the changes, stating that the presence of 10 women in the ministerial cabinet served as homage to his mother, his sister, and his daughter.

A second major change was the departure of Juan Ramón Quintana from the powerful post of Minister of the Presidency, easily the most powerful post in the government after the Presidency and Vice Presidency. Quintana, a former military officer was one of the most controversial figures in the Morales cabinet, regarded by many as a sort of Bolivian Rasputin who manipulated and controlled a good deal of power behind the scenes. He was replaced with the previous Minister of Hydrocarbons, Oscar Coca.

A number of key ministers remained in their posts, most notably his Minister of External relations, David Choquahuanca. Also remaining are the ministers of economy, education, autonomy and the anti-corruption minister.

One of Morales' cabinet appointments has already run into trouble. Mining Minister, Milton Gómez didn't last much more than a week before being forced to resign following charges of corruption in previous public posts. Corruption is a huge problem in Bolivia, one that permeates public offices and pre-dates Morales. But recently Transparency International has reported that the problem is getting worse and Morales has publicly declared fighting it a priority.

To be certain, not everyone was happy with the new cabinet appointments. Rafael Quispe, a representative from CONAMAQ, one of the most important organizations of indigenous communities in the country, stated that: “We are not in agreement with the formation of the cabinet. It is not a plurinational cabinet because indigenous and native peoples are not represented as Evo proposed at Tiwanaku. We respect his decision, but we do not accept that there are no native peoples represented in the cabinet.”

Stay tuned for more reports on the start of Morales' second term.

Bolivia vs. Manfred Reyes Villa

Readers:

Different countries have different protocols as to what happens to candidates who lose their nation's Presidential elections. In the U.S. Al Gore wrote a book, made a movie and won both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. John McCain returned to the Senate and became one of the opposition's leading voices.

Bolivia is different than the U.S. in many respects and here again that's true. Manfred Reyes Villa, the former Cochabamba Mayor and Governor who was runner up in last December's presidential vote in Bolivia, is neither writing a book nor leading his party. He has instead fled to the beaches of Miami to avoid prosecution on corruption charges back at home.

Jessica Aguirre of the Democracy Center team in Cochabamba offers us a look at the controversial case.

[Note: We will have a special report from the Morales innauguration up in a few days.]

Jim Shultz

Bolivia vs. Manfred Reyes Villa

Barely a week after his distant second place finish in Bolivia's Presidential vote on December 6th Manfred Reyes Villa disappeared. After a flurry of public and media speculation about his whereabouts – and official U.S. claims of ignorance as to his whether he had entered the U.S. – a Miami newspaper found the former candidate in his Miami apartment and published an in-person interview with him.

As it turns out, the four times mayor of Cochabamba escaped Bolivia somewhat ignominiously through the country's border with Peru and onward from the Lima international airport. According to Peruvian officials, Reyes Villa left the country there on an American Airlines flight heading to Miami on December 15th. The Nuevo Herald found him in his luxury apartment in Miami on January 12th, nearly a month after his disappearance.

“Regrettably, I had to leave Bolivia because I had a pending case of political persecution in addition to my pending court case,” Manfred told the Herald in a videotaped interview. He expressed his distrust in the Bolivian judiciary and stated his belief that his political adversary, President Evo Morales controls all three branches of government.

The runner-up presidential candidate, who garnered 26 percent of the national vote in December, is wanted in Bolivia on various charges of corruption and malfeasance. Manfred announced in early December that he would no longer appear in public for fear of politically motivated detention, saying that he was a victim of political persecution. But he assured publicly that he would not leave the country.

Wanted on Corruption Charges

While the charges against Manfred are from the term he served as governor (which ended in August of 2008 after he was removed from office by Cochabamba voters in a national referendum) those charges did not officially surface until after the December vote. The Cochabamba daily, Los Tiempos, reported that there are 22 legal demands against Reyes Villa, involving an alleged 16.5 million dollars in public funds. The demands include corruption charges, misuse of public funds, and tax evasion, as well as charges of election fraud.

Reyes Villa and his supporters have declared that the charges are purely political: strategizing on the part of MAS to clear the field of its chief adversaries. Senators from Manfred’s political party (Progress Plan-National Convergence) publicly announced their support for him on January 13th.

For its part, MAS defenders say that it was generous not to embroil Manfred in political scandal during the election campaign.

Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera takes Manfred’s escape to be an admission of guilt, announcing, “We lament this cowardly and delinquent attitude of Manfred Reyes Villa - eluding justice, eluding his penal responsibilities in front of the justice system. It is proof, it is an affirmation that he is guilty.”

The furor following Manfred’s escape has resulted in the dismissal of two top migration officials and a general legal scramble to get Manfred returned to Bolivia for trial. The newspaper La Razon reports that U.S. officials have stated that they will fully cooperate with the Bolivian government if the charges have merit, quoting John S. Creamer from the U.S. embassy in La Paz as saying, "We are checking our files over there but I cannot confirm his presence. Clearly, if he is there and there is a judicial process here, we are always prepared to collaborate with Bolivian authorities."

Echoes of Ganzalo Sanchez de Lozada

The fleeing of Ryes Villa to Miami holds clear echoes of another high profile prosecution in Bolivia, the criminal case against former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, currently being heard in the Bolivian courts in Sucre. In the case initiated shortly after his ouster in October 2003, by a Congress controlled by his own political party, Sanchez de Lozada is charged along with top aides with involvement in the killings of dozens of Bolivians during the 2003 protests. Sanchez de Lozada has been living since 2003 in the Maryland suburbs just outside Washington and U.S. officials, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, have refused Bolivian requests for his extradition. President Obama's first White House Counsel, Greg Craig, served as Sanchez de Lozada's defense attorney prior to joining the White House.

Reyes Villa's attorneys and Bolivian officials are both appealing to international institutions to support their cause. Reyes Villa attorney, Daniel Humérez, is submitting a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, saying that the former candidate doesn’t trust the Bolivian justice system. Meanwhile, the Bolivian courts have issued multiple orders to appear, and the central government states that it will work to get Manfred extradited.

Written by Jessica Aguirre with assistance from Jim Shultz

Being CAREful About How we Give Our Financial Support to Haiti Relief

Readers:

There is not story in Bolivia this week, or anywhere in Latin America, that is more urgent than the devastating earthquake in Haiti and its aftermath. With deaths measured in the tens of thousands and individual stories of terror, pain and suffering greater than any most of us could even conjure, Haiti is home to one of the largest single tragedies that most of us will see in our lifetime.

And so we must help.

For most of us the only real way to help is to send money to groups and people on the ground that are in a position to help more directly. In the immediate aftermath of the quake that means clean water, food, and medical support. Later, when Haiti begins to recede from our immediate memories aid will be needed for massive rebuilding and support of a nation in tatters.

In the bits and pieces of television I have seen as I travel across the planet this week (en route to Asia) it is evident how people all over the world have risen to the call, giving tens of millions of dollars in aid and support to Haitian relief efforts.

This generosity also needs to be combined with a closer look at who we give our money to in this relief effort. Some groups will get that aid to the people who need it quickly and without skimming any off the top. Others, some of the bigger groups, will eat up huge portions of that support in overhead and administration before it ever crosses the Caribbean.

This is a concern that calls up memories of a different environmental disaster (certainly a much smaller one) in Bolivia exactly a decade ago this month, and the operations of one of the biggest of the international "relief" organizations – and biggest seeker of relief donations, CARE. It was exactly a decade ago that an oil pipeline operated by Enron and Shell cracked wide-open and spilled toxic fuel for three days into the Rio Disaguadero, decimating more than a million acres of indigenous farmlands in Bolivia's highlands. When Enron and Shell went looking for someone to put the right public relations spin on its minimalist compensation program for the devastated villages that were the recipients of the companies' black poison, CARE is who they picked. And the "relief" group made a good fortune from that alliance.

Below is a segment from the chapter on the Enron/Shell spill – A River Turns Black: Enron and Shell Spread Destruction Across Bolivia’s Highland, by Christina Haglund – in the Democracy Center's recent book, Dignity and Defiance, Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization. I can't speak to CARE's current efforts in Haiti, but this excerpt certainly paints a cautionary tale based on CARE's dubious work for Enron and Shell.

Because our readers include so many people knowledgeable about Latin America, I encourage you to use the comments section for this post as a place to share information about groups you know doing good work today in Haiti. We should open up our wallets to provide relief in this crisis, and we should do so wisely.

Compensation Wrapped in a CARE Package

[Excerpted from: A River Turns Black: Enron and Shell Spread Destruction Across Bolivia’s Highland, by Christina Haglund – in the Democracy Center's recent book, Dignity and Defiance, Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization.]

Getting compensation to communities would not be as easy as writing a check. Transredes addressed this challenge as one of its corporate parents, Shell, had done before in Nigeria. It contracted the globally known international development organization CARE to handle the compensation process on the company’s behalf. The contract signed between the two proclaimed that CARE would “turn a very simple process of compensation into a contribution to the sustainable development of a very poor region.”

The director of CARE Bolivia, Victor Rico, told me, even before I asked, that the dollar amounts for compensation were already determined before CARE got involved. The aid organization stamped a humanitarian face on Transredes’ process and was paid more than $800,000 for its services.

According to Transredes, the compensation program that CARE managed would return people’s lives equal to or better than pre-spill conditions. Compensation in cash was never an option, another decision made unilaterally by the company. Instead, communities could opt for in-kind purchases, such as land, animals, or machinery. Or they could choose community projects, such as road building, electricity installment, or tourist development.

The communities of El Choro decided on a soil rehabilitation project, to improve the conditions of the earth for planting. Several communities put their compensation amounts together to buy a tractor. Their project also included training for the operation and maintenance of the machine. Six years later this tractor sits rusted and broken, the metal equipment worn down by the severe altiplano weather conditions.

Don Vidal, the man who thought my tent was a spaceship, took off his hat to wipe away his sweat. He shook his head and said that the parts to get the tractor fixed are too expensive and too far away.

The cold winter month that I spent in Acopata revealed how yet another of CARE’s compensation projects proved better theory than reality. The aid organization awarded community members enough red bricks and cement to construct homes with a metal door, tin roof and a window – a 250-square-foot dwelling. The people of the region themselves constructed the houses. In the frigid altiplano winter of 2006, I found many of those houses empty. Families opted instead to sleep in their adobe homes, which, according to them, provide far better insulation than brick and concrete.

Don Benedicto is an Uru fisherman who is missing his two front teeth and lives on Lake Poopo. He explained that his community’s CARE project was the purchase of a used car – one that would ease the fishermen’s long trek to the lake. This car only lasted a year. It broke down and the village didn’t have the resources to repair it. This once-prized piece of the community’s compensation now serves as play equipment for children.

Transredes officials claim “there is no doubt that this was the compensation model that brought the best results and benefits to the population and local development.” The physical evidence and the testimonies of community after community, however, tell a story that does not trumpet the same level of success.

How did any of these projects repair environmental damage caused by the oil spill? How were pertinent issues such as water, or food for animals addressed? While in theory, development projects and in-kind purchases were to be equivalent to damage done by the spill, this was far from the reality on the ground following the compensation process. New animals purchased as replacements for the ones that had died or fallen ill still grazed on contaminated lands and continued to drink contaminated water.

Ripped and faded CARE calendars were nailed into the adobe and brick walls of several homes in my travels along the Desaguadero. The top of the poster calendar read, “It is the hour to hold our hands together to get out of poverty.”

CARE distributed the equivalent of $1.2 million to just less than 4,000 families through these various projects. This works out to about $60 per affected person, just short of the minimum wage in Bolivia for one month. The $818,372 that CARE took home for its efforts was equal to 68 cents for every dollar it distributed in compensation.