Bolivia's Day of Reckoning

Tomorrow morning at 10:30 am the Bolivian Congress will convene in Sucre, the modest city of white walls that serves as the country’s second capital (the Supreme Court meets there). Congress is lucky to have a second capital city, as protesters in La Paz have prevented them from using the regular one.

The political forecast for Thursday is ominous. The Congress has placed just three items on tomorrow’s agenda – accepting President Mesa’s resignation and establishing his successor, setting the regional autonomy election demanded by Santa Cruz, and deciding on whether former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada should be tried for the deaths during his tenure in office.

Together these actions could combine to become a “perfect storm” of provocation to the protests that have shut down the country. There is no vote planned on setting forth a national election on the gas issue nor to set in motion a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution – the central demands that have brought Bolivia to a near halt.

The worst outcome of all is the possible election of Senate leader Vaca Diez as President. Last night President Mesa made an impassioned televised plea for Vaca Diez to forgo the Presidency. A new poll shows that only 16% of the country wants him to take office. Nevertheless, he seems hell bent on doing just that.

National protests against Vaca Diez taking office are growing. In addition to calls from the street in La Paz, tomorrow morning a host of civic leaders around the country, including the mayors of La Paz and Cochabamba, will announce a hunger strike calling on Vaca Diez to renounce the nation’s top office and allow new elections to take place in August.

The battle over Baca Diez taking office reveals something essential in the Bolivian struggle. In the indigenous cultures here, community is considered sacred. Community decision-making is respected and one of the lowest attacks that can be leveled against a person is to call him or her egoista, looking out for his or herself at the community’s expense. By any stretch that is what Vaca Diez is doing. Personal ambition and greed versus the desires and well being of the community.

There you have it – Bolivia stripped down to its bare bones.