A Review: An Article on Bolivia in the New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books has a long, worth-reading, article on Bolivia in its current issue: A New Bolivia? by Mexican journalist Alma Guillermoprieto.

The article is one of many published in the US over the last few months that seeks to explain to readers in the north what the election of Evo Morales means in Bolivia, both as a matter of politics and as a matter of national culture. Guillermoprieto stops well short of actually evaluating the results of Morales' first six months in office and never claims to do otherwise.

The article basis itself largely in a close-up look at Sacarias Flores, the former tin miner who serves as the Vice-President of MAS, and from there walks with a musical flair through recent Bolivian history, pockets of Bolivian life, and the search for an explanation of what "radicalized" Bolivian politics.

What I liked most about Guillermoprieto's article was its vivid descriptions of Bolivia. She recalls for us that during the hyperinflation years of the mid-1980s some Bolivians wallpapered their bathrooms with worthless currency. She describes Bolivia's new Education Minister as, " a small, unsmiling, folded-in man who never seems to open out…" And she does a fine job of capturing the uniquely high-pitched singing voices of certain altiplano women, "…startling voices that sounded like nothing so much as the highly stylized mewing of kittens."

Her descriptions of Bolivian politics, while equally stylized, is often weaker, sometimes more caricature than insight. She mentions Bolivia's Justice Minister (Cassimira Rodriguez) briefly as, "a woman who until recently worked as a maid." In fact, Cassimira hasn't worked as a maid in many years. She spent the last decade helping organize both a national and international union of domestic workers (a fete, by the way, that might be a better leadership credential than Tuto Quiroga's work in sales for IBM).

Guillermoprieto confuses and mixes the roots of the separate February and October 2003 uprisings – the first was, as she notes, over Goni's proposed tax increase (to keep the IMF happy), and the second (which she does not note) was over a Goni gas export plan and then his killings of people protesting against it. She credits Morales and the cocaleros as the driving force behind Cochabamba's 2000 water revolt, when that label is better placed on the people of the city's poor southern neighborhoods. She also treats reform of Bolivia's gas sector as a done deal when it is far from it, "Having reorganized the nationalized gas industry so that Bolivia gets a fair share of the profits…"

Whatever one thinks of Evo Morales, the last six years of political upheaval in Bolivia, or the potential challenges ahead, there is no doubt that Bolivia has captured world attention in a way that contrasts wildly with the "Bolivia? Is that in Africa?" level of attention it had a decade ago. No author has a monopoly on adding to our understanding and Guillermoprieto's addition to the mix is worth a good look.