Borders Erased, Borders Created, Borders Blurred

Zagreb, Croatia

It is a symbol of hope really. Public buildings all across this city display not only the red, white and blue checks of the Croatian national flag, but also the ring of twelve gold stars on a blue field that is the flag the European Union. The funny thing though is that Croatia isn’t a member of the EU, not yet. A lot of people here hope that it will be soon.

For the moment, Croatia is blocked from EU entrance because it hasn't handed over a former general who is under indictment with the international criminal tribunal dealing with war crimes from the Serbian wars of the 1990s. Some people here consider the general involved a hero but mostly no one can find him. A Croatian friend noted to me that the country's entrance to the EU is going to be really screwed up if the guys turns out to be dead and is never found.

So here is a nation that for much of this century was an independent republic, then got swallowed into a forced Yugoslavia, spent the 1990s in a bloody break-up with its neighbors, especially the Serbs, and now is aching to become a part of a united Europe, just as Europe (after big public votes in France and Holland) is starting to look a whole lot less bent toward uniting.

It all begs the question – what is a country now?

I am a big fan of globalization. I am a gringo living in Andes with three Bolivian kids. How can I not have a stake in the boundaries of the world being torn down and something more unified being constructed in place of those lines?

Should we be fearful that, in the midst of all this mixing and blurring of boundaries, that cultures will be absorbed, that those places where each people most expresses its uniqueness will disappear? Is an American shopping mall the truest vision of the world's collective future?

I have asked that here in Croatia, where the unique culture of a people is held in high regard. The answer one friend gave me was this. Just as we are unifying across nations and cultures in some ways, in others we are more dedicated than ever to protecting what is unique in our culture. I think she has a point.

Croatia celebrates its music and art.

Bolivians celebrate indigenous rituals that are centuries old.

Our hearts want to hold on to these things, even as economics wants to make us more the same.

The populations of the world, especially the young, are on the march. Corporations and the wealthy have argued for decades that capital ought to be able to run free, like water, downhill to wherever it can make the most profit. Workers want to do the same.

Young Bolivians flock to Barcelona to watch children and wait tables. Young Hungarians and Poles want to head to London to do the same. Mexicans, Guatemalans and others head to California. Vigilantes head to the southern border to keep them out, following in the footsteps of those who didn't want my grandparents to come a hundred years ago.

People will go where they find opportunity. As long as opportunity is a resource divided with unbelievable inequality between some parts and others, people who live where opportunity resides in abundance had better expect visitors. Some of those visitors will stay just for a time and go home (as many, many immigrants do) and some will make a life. And most will miss home, bring something of it with them, and we'll all be better off for it.

Blog from the Balkans

Zagreb, Croatia.

The Balkans – for many people the name conjures up images of a decade of war, ethnic hatreds that go back centuries and have lived on into the 21st. That corner of Europe in which violent conflict seems to lurk just under the surface.

The wars of the 1990s are vividly remembered here. A professor on the Croatian coast tells me how she delivered her son in a hospital without lights, blacked out in expectation if an imminent Serbian shelling from the sea. A university student recalls spending episodes in her middle school years in a Zagreb bomb shelter. A friend explains that her stubborn parents refused to leave their hometown even after it came under regular shelling. Twenty-five miles away, she could only go visit when the road looked safe.

This is my second trip to this region in the last year. Last fall I was in Montenegro, invited by a group of community activists to offer training in public advocacy. This week I am in Croatia, studying how citizens are mobilizing to help shape decisions about the public budget.

Countries like this are called, in the jargon of global development, "transition countries". Transition from Yugoslavian Communism to European capitalism. Transition from warfare to peace. Transition to a future that people here are still trying to define for themselves.

This morning I met with the leadership of the second largest labor federation in the country. I could just as easily have been back home in Bolivia. The IMF and World Bank are at work here trying to convince the country to privatize its water and its public heath system. People are nervous, especially labor groups. The other privatizations here haven’t turned out so good for workers. One by one the nation's economy is not only being put into private hands but foreign hands.

As in Bolivia, the tool in the hands that come from Washington is debt. Countries like these have borrowed a bundle from abroad and now the payback includes not just cash but changing the economic rules of the game to the IMF's and Bank's liking.

The people of the Balkans have suffered horribly in the past fifteen years. A third of this nation was occupied for five years. Hundreds of thousands of Croatians fled the Serbian takeover, left their communities and became refugees. And this pales against the horror of "ethnic cleansing" operations that took place nearby in Bosnia and Kosovo.

What do Croatians want now? In addition to peace they want democracy – the right to self-determine their own futures, both political and economic. Yet here, as in Bolivia, democracy is really a power sharing relationship with global institutions over which the nation has little influence.

Solstice and Politics in Bolivia

Readers:

In my absence from Bolivia this month I have asked my co-worker Marcela Olivera to provide the Blog with an update on political developments. Here it is.

Jim

-----------------

Update from Cochabamba
Marcela Olivera

With the winter solstice, a new year has begun in the indigenous world of Bolivia. The ceremonies performed in El Alto with the first rays of the morning sun predicted the union of the social movements and the continuation of the struggles in the coming year.

Below the ceremonial sites, in La Paz and other cities of the country, the demands are growing from many groups and sectors (including 6 of the 9 mayors from the main cities in Bolivia) for resignations from parliamentarians. It is likely that, coinciding with the presidential election at the end of the year, we are going to have elections for a new Congress.

Jorge Lazarte, the Presidential delegate for political issues, said they are looking for a consensus in order to guarantee national elections along with the elections for governors. Even further, they are checking the possibility to launch a referendum about granting autonomy for each region of the country. They would prefer to have these elections all at the same time.

Parliamentarians from many parts of the country have announced massive resignations in order to facilitate the process for new congressional elections. Some important alliances have started to emerge in light of these events. For example, a couple of days ago Evo Morales (MAS) and Juan del Granado (MSM), announced a “Frente Amplio”, an alliance between the coca leader and the Mayor from La Paz. This is the same Mayor who recently opposed the initiative from El Alto to create a public water company. Such an alliance seems to be a conflict of interests as they call to the social organizations, political parties and other sectors to join their initiative. In fact the “Frente Amplio” is being watched with distrustful eyes from traditional parties and social movement leaders.

This political maneuvering is just an illusion that is a tragic distraction for the public from the real issues facing our country: the establishment of a constituent assembly and the future of the oil and natural gas industries. The new President’s political strategy is to avoid a discussion of these issues and the opposition political parties are more concerned with their alliances for power. The issues that brought the public outrage into the streets these past several months will not be solved by traditional political alliances and compromise. What the people are asking for is true representation and direct participation in their government and a new perspective on how Bolivia’s resources can be developed to benefit all of us.

The elders of the indigenous people are looking toward a new future in their solstice rituals and ceremonies. Let’s hope that their offerings and predictions will bring new proposals about solving the real problems ahead of us. And, when they announce the “struggles ahead”, this does not only mean struggle in the streets but also describes the struggles in the halls of government for new solutions that bring economic justice to all Bolivians.

Blague from Prague

If you like collections of ancient castles and churches surrounded by scores and scores of schlocky souvenir stores Prague is the city for you. Really, how many blown glass cats and pornographic t-shirts can the Earth support?

Prague is a city of tourists – Disneyland without rides. As such, it is a slice of the world, or at least that small part of it that has they money to travel around.

Each country, I can observe, contributes its own special style to tourist culture.

Americans are easy to spot. For some reason they like to travel around in large groups all wearing identical t-shirts. Why would a group of twenty-somethings decide to go out together all wearing bright orange? How about that group of thirty-somethings all wearing black t-shirts proclaiming "Michael's 40th Birthday". Yeah, that's how I want to spend my 50th when it comes around. Maybe I'll line up a couple dozen close friends and family to hike the Inca Trail into Machu Pichu with us all wearing bright green shirts emblazoned with "Vamos Gringo Viejo!"

Europeans are easy to spot too. None of their shirts match but they studiously follow dour-faced tour guides who hold closed umbrellas high aloft so their charges don't get lost. Really, I thought that was just in movies. So obedient.

A city of tourists is also a city of languages and people who speak all kinds of odd combinations of languages. Austrians who also speak Spanish. Bulgarians who speak English. Chinese who speak Czech. Here's one place where my American brethren get left behind. As the old joke goes: When people speak three languages they are called trilingual. When people speak two languages they are called bilingual. When they speak one language we call them American.

Finally, there are the long cobblestone streets that tourists find so quaint. We have those in Bolivia too. In Bolivia we call them simply, "the street".

On to Zagreb.

Profile in the Sacramento Bee

To any readers interested, the Sacramento Bee published a little profile of me on Saturday. The reporter came and followed me around Cochabamba a bit a month ago. My mother seems to be happy about it so I’d thought I’d pass along the link. Here’s the article.

Blog from Britain II – An Economist Fairy Tale

London

Several times this week my walks about town have taken me past the headquarters of that venerable British weekly, The Economist. Somewhere inside, a writer for the magazine was cheerily weighing in on events a hemisphere away in Bolivia, in an article that carried the appropriate subtitle: Some dangerous fairy tales about what is going on in South America.

I say “appropriate” because the article does a fine job of spinning a whopping fairy tail of its own about events in the country where I live. [Note: Since the actually article is hidden behind a pay-for-it fence at the magazine’s Web site, I’ll post the full text in a comment to this Blog entry.]

The unnamed Economist writer (Has he ever been in Bolivia? It is not an unreasonable question.) warns that too much of the international commentary has painted recent Bolivian events as “a popular revolution by downtrodden Andean Indians.” One “pundit” is singled out for special scorn, someone who wrong-headedly told the New York Times, “that Latin America is in open rebellion against the economic policies of the Washington consensus.”

The unnamed pundit was I.

In any event, in getting the story wrong the Economist writer followed the time-tested formula for conjuring up a fairy tale:

First, Have a Vivid Imagination

With a single stroke the Economist rewrites Bolivian history to blame public control of gas and oil (as it was until a decade ago) for the nation’s notorious economic suffering in the 1980s: Inefficient state oil and mining companies stoked the hyperinflation of the early 1980s.

Indeed, Bolivia’s notorious hyperinflation of two decades ago was a disaster to behold. People still tell stories of the prices of food and shoes shooting up by double between breakfast and dinner. The culprit was not, however the sin of having the nation’s natural resources in public hands. It had a good deal more to do with the collapse of global tin market on which nearly half of the nation’s economy depended. That and years of dictatorships.

Second, Invent the Villains

The Economist has a simple explanation about why tens of thousands of Indians, miners, workers, students and others chased down their government leaders to demand recuperation of the nation’s oil and gas – outside funding. The Economist writes:

Where does the money come from? Venezuela's populist president, Hugo Chavez, of whom Mr. Morales is a disciple? Perhaps, though there is no proof. The drug trade? Maybe. European NGOs? Probably, in some cases.

You might disagree with their economic analysis. Fair enough. But the people I have spoken to marching under a hot Bolivian sun have been there because they really do want the country to take back the gas and oil and convinced that nothing short of marching will get the government to listen given the huge pressures being brought to bear on the other side from the real external forced involved – British Petroleum, the IMF and others.

Five years ago the same they can’t possibly be mad about what they say they are mad about thinking tried to blame drug traders for the Cochabamba water revolt. Do foreign writers like the one for the Economist really think Bolivians can’t think for themselves?

Finally, Have a Moral

Lastly we have this gem of Economist insight into the course of politics among Bolivia and its neighbors:

As for that continental rebellion against the Washington consensus, it is largely confined to Venezuela, where high oil prices have let Mr. Chavez defy the laws of economics. Elsewhere, Latin America's poor are too busy trying to earn a living to indulge such
fantasies.

Last I checked Brazil did not elect Lula because he pledged to defend and deepen the Washington Consensus status quo there. In Argentina, the President responded to the IMF’s demands to pay down its debt with a declaration that he’d consider thirty cents or so on the dollar. Uruguay didn’t just elect a Socialist president because he was endorsed by BP or the World Bank. In Bolivia the struggle may be on the streets but it is all part of the same region-wide public rebellion against a package of economic policies that the people living with them have dubbed an outright failure.

The spin is on my friends. Some people out there desperately want the world to believe that Bolivia’s five years of uprisings against the policies of market-driven globalization are anything but. Drug traffickers, not high Bechtel water rates drove people into the streets of Cochabamba in 2000. Renegade police leaders, not at IMF-imposed tax increase, are what led to 34 deaths in February 2003. Cash from Hugo Chavez drove Bolivia to the brink this month and last, not a genuine demand that gas and oil be public (as 92% voted for last July).

Fairy tales make great bedtime stories for our children but they make for lousy economic policy and worse journalism.

PS: To all. No, as some have speculated, I did NOT leave Bolivia for safety reasons. If safety had been a concern I would not have left my family. I am in Europe for work.

Blog from Britain

Readers, if anyone has noted the sudden silence from me on this Blog the past few days, after the flurry of activity last week, there is more afoot that a temporary pause in Bolivia’s convulsions. I have been on a plane. Believe me it takes a very long time to fly from Cochabamba to London. That is a lot of bad airline pasta my friends.

I’ll be away here in Europe working for a bit, and in the meantime I’ll still be watching events as they unfold in Bolivia and will be getting help from my co-worker Marcela to keep the Blog up to date from Cochabamba. Meanwhile, from my work here, I hope to post reports on some other issues of interest to readers, including an analysis of the new proposal by the world’s wealthiest nations to forgive some of the massive debt owed by the poorest ones, including Bolivia.

So while I trade in salteñas for bangers and mash, here’s some other good ways to sep up with breaking events in Bolivia – in addition to what we post here.

Erbol – headlines and a live radio feed in Spanish

Comteco News – daily headlines and links from Bolivia’s major dailies

Google News – search “Bolivia” for latest articles in English

Three Bolivias

The Internet, newspapers, and radio airwaves are full of analyses about what the last three weeks of events have meant here in Bolivia. Some of these are more astute than others. Taking both a breath and a step back from the turmoil of the past week I have been trying to sort out myself what all this means. Here’s a reflection on the tense dance between three Bolivias.

The Powerful

Bolivia is a nation run by a tiny elite that doesn’t look, think or share many of the interests of the nation’s poor and Indian majority. What it takes for them to become economic winners is not the same as what it takes for the rest of Bolivia to move ahead economically.

When you spot economic growth indicators for Bolivia the first thing you should ask is who is benefiting. Assuming that the poor move up when growth hits 4% is like saying that if Bill Gates goes to a Thanksgiving dinner in a homeless shelter, on average, everyone eating is a millionaire.

When a small elite holds on to privilege amidst a sea of people who have none, a psychology develops. They assume that their privilege is wholly earned, and all that inheritance, corruption, foreign aid, and an economic system rigged to their advantage have nothing to do with it. People who ask questions are labeled as radicals and conspirators. I have lived here eight years now and have seen this mentality of the powerful in operation in everything from the running of an orphanage and an international school to battles over privatization.

The Poor

I have always found that Bolivia’s poor have a very sophisticated analysis of their country’s economic problems. Sometimes there almost seems to be an inverse relationship between how much formal education people have and how clear their vision is. I have written before about Victor the plumber, who, while simultaneously fixing our broken water pump, explained eloquently the problem of Bolivia always selling off its natural resources in raw form at bargain prices instead of reaping the real benefits that come from industrializing and selling it as, for example, plastic and electricity.

All that and he can fix a pump.

It is the poor than are demanding now, both the return of oil and gas to public control and a rewriting of the national Constitution. As the past few weeks have reminded us, these groups – the indigenous of El Alto and the altiplano, minders, laborers and others – do not lightly take NO for an answer

The “I Just Want to Work”

Stuck in the middle between the two is a large portion of the population, probably a majority who, as I have written, generally support the demands of the social movements but live on the margin themselves and are tired and angrily of weeks of national disruption. They are the taxi driver who says to me, “I just want to work.” As much as they blame the protesters for the disruption they also blame the country’s political leaders for failing to solve the nation’s problems.

How the Powers Clashed This Week

This week in particular showed all those groups in action. Carlos Mesa, who is certainly of the elite, strove mightily in his 19 months in office, to build a bridge to the poor and social movements. I will not forget the cajones he demonstrated two days after he took over from Goni, when Mesa crashed Felipe Quispe’s indigenous victory rally in La Paz and asked to speak directly to the crowd. But in the end he had his hands tied by the IMF, the oil companies and others (including, perhaps his own point of view) and the country fell back into conflict.

Hormando Vaca Diez represented the old elite in pure form, a gruff, wealthy Santa Cruz businessman who thought that the way you deal with protests is to send out the army – the way he might fire on the spot a maid who scrambled his eggs not to his liking. I have no doubt that the US was bought as well into a Vaca Diez strategy and it sure looked until late Thursday that the elite was about to rise back into power.

The best way to interpret things here this past week, I believe, is less by the policy outcomes (nationalization is still on the table, etc.) but as a measure of respective power. In fact, that is what has been going on here for five years. The stability that ruled the country for a decade was based on an adherence to IMF/World Bank doctrine, following US orders in the war on drugs, and a set of social movements still too weak to make a challenge.

The Cochabamba water revolt exploded that stability with Bechtel’s ouster in April 2000 and for five year’s since the bases of power, elite and movement-based, have been circling each other like two cats poised for fur-ripping battle. When the Aymara of El Alto chase the Congress out of the capital and then miners from Potosi cut off their air escape from Sucre, to the point where the elite’s Vaca Diez strategy goes belly-up, I think you have to say that the exercise of power is titling in the direction of the movements. Quarrel if you like about the validity of their demands, but as a simple measurement of power, the Bolivia elite just got its butt kicked for the fifth time in five years over an issue directly related to economic globalization.

And on the merits – do not dismiss the call for nationalization as either a radical dream of a nostalgic trip back to Latin America in the 1960s. To be sure, some of the slogans in the streets might lend themselves to believing that. When I was a student in the 1970s in Berkeley some of my classmates used to paint a misspelled “Devest” on a banner and walk down to the Bank of America and break windows. However, the fact that their spelling was bad and their tactics dubious didn’t mean that they were wrong that South African apartheid had to go.

The case for Bolivia taking back control of its oil and gas is stronger and stronger the more you analyze the bad deal under which it privatized those resources a decade ago. And, even if you look at the case and still think it is a big mistake, it is one that Bolivians have every right to make.

What happens after a few days or a few weeks of talking? I tell you, I don’t see the social movements backing down on this one, not in the face of requests, or international pressure, or arrests, or tear gas and guns. The movements have picked their battle and have decided, as John Kennedy once said of the US’s commitment to fight communism, to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe.” That doesn’t mean the full forces of the Bolivian political elite and the US government won’t try to stop them, as Malcolm X said, “by any means necessary.”

But having watched this country closely as a resident for eight years now, I don’t think the people in the streets have any intention whatsoever to back down. The last person I would ever want to pick a fight with is a Bolivian miner with a stick of dynamite in his hand.

What Now?

Last night Bolivia dodged a bullet but it came no closer whatsoever to addressing the fundamental issues that brought thousands into the streets and shut down the country – the call for re-nationalizing gas and oil; convening a constituent assembly to rewrite the Constitution, and deciding the fate of regional autonomy. Bolivia has a new President who will lead the process of deciding those issues and he is, quite fortunately, not the one who had all but pledged to start the process by sending out the army.

The first question is: What will the social movements who have mounted such fierce “street heat” do now? Evo Morales and MAS have signaled that they will give the government a truce of unknown duration to allow a dialogue on those issues with the Congress and new President. Other movements, most especially those in El Alto and the altiplano, have made it clear that they will continue to press on with their demands (on gas and a constituent assembly) and are no doubt in heavy discussions this morning about whether to call for a break in the heavy protests they have waged in the capital of La Paz.

We should know a good deal more by day’s end.

There is a proposal that I have seen, circulating among social movement leaders, mayors, and civic groups, which would constitute a concrete way forward. It would call for a “Super Election” in the next few months in which would include:

· Election of a new President and Vice-President

· Election of representatives to a Constituent Assembly empowered by the Congress and President to rewrite the Constitution

· A straight up or down, binding vote on renationalizing the gas and oil

· A vote on regional autonomy (in some unknown form)

In my view it is both a reasonable proposal and the only real route forward at this point. In the next few days watch for that proposal to surface with broad political support and then watch to see the reaction of the Congress and other political elites in the country who have so much power at stake.

Vaca Diez Relents

A short while ago the President of the Bolivian Senate, Hormando Vaca Diez, announced that he would not seek to assume the Presidency if the Congress, as expected, accepts President Carlos Mesa’s resignation.

For those who have not been following this story closely, Bolivia has been besieged by intense protests for the past 24 hours by miners, campesino organizations, labor groups, and hunger strikes by mayors and other public officials demanding that the Santa Cruz politician not take the Presidency. House leader Mario Cossio, next in the constitutional line of succession after Vaca Diez, had already declared his refusal of the Presidency.

As I write, the Bolivian Congress is meeting in late night session in Sucre where the likely outcome is the acceptance of Mesa’s resignation (which will no doubt make him elated to be leaving the toughest job on Earth) handing the Presidency to the President of the Supreme Court, Eduardo Rodriguez. This also triggers a constitutional requirement for new elections.

The leaders of the current protests are planning to continue their pressure on the government until two additional demands are met. The first is setting in motion the plan for convening a constituent assembly to rewrite the nation’s constitution. The second is a national referendum on re-nationalizing the country’s gas and oil reserves and a national vote on regional autonomy.

The good news is that Vaca Diez’s announcement moves the country away from an all out confrontation. However, the protest movements that began three weeks ago were never about a new President or new elections. They have been about gas and the Asamblea and those two issues are still a long way from being decided.

Good night to all after a very long and tense day here in Bolivia.

Congress Session Fails – More Rumors of a Coup

Here is what we know. Congress has abandoned its plans for meeting. Members are stuck in their hotels and other locations in Sucre where miners and other protesters have blocked access to the airport. There are reports of troop movements in Santa Cruz and a strong belief among reliable sources here that a coup of some kind is possible tonight. We will do our best to keep you updated as things develop.

For the many readers who have asked, my family and I are fine but obviously worried about the deepening crisis and how it will affect all of Bolivia.

A note: Marcela Olivera and I will be on Democracy Now in the morning. You can hear it live and recorded here.

The First Death and Airports Closed

A short while ago a 51 year old miner from Potosi, part of a march of miners headed to the Congress meeting in Sucre, was shot and killed by government forces. This is the first death in the three-week standoff between protesters and the government and is an ominous indicator of the rising tensions.

As of noon today all of the country’s airports are shut down, as airport employees join in a spreading hunger strike protesting the possible ascension of Senator Vaca Diez to the presidency.

There are reports on radio Erbol that the Congress is abandoning its planned session (already delayed until 6pm), as members want to leave Sucre ahead of a reported effort by protesters to shut the airport there. I can’t confirm that but will do my best as we continue our updates.

The large march here in Cochabamba that I reported on earlier was broken up by tear gas fired by police, provoked by an effort by a small wing of the protests to enter the offices of the state government. Crowds were sent fleeing away from the plaza and the city center remained filled with gas for hours.

A Nation Holds its Breath

I am writing this from an Internet Cafe on the Plaza Principal of Cochabamba, where some 3,000 people are gathered after a march to the city center. The Congress session in Sucre has been delayed until this afternoon. Huge crowds have reportedly descended on the city to prevent Congress from going into session.

The chilling expression on the lips of my friends here is, a las puertas de la guerra civil, at the gates of civil war. Could the Congress be so stupid as to install a new President, when that action will surely spark violent confict. But the question on the other side is, What strategy does the US government and the Bolivian elite have left to protect the powers on which both feed here?

The Bolivian left has painted itself into a corner. The demand for Carlos Mesa to resign was a miscalculation of potentially bloody proportions. Mesa has been the thin blue line between Bolivia and military repression. The left here erased that line by calling on Mesa to leave without a guarantee that the leaders of Congress would pass the Presidency to the Supreme Court and to nw elections. Even that, I think, was a miscalculation. The left is unlikely to do any better in elections in August than it died in 2002 when Evo Morales peaked at 22%.

A chess player does not race across the board to capture a knight without checking to see what is going on with his king. Now all of Bolivia is left naked in the middle of a chessboard in which the forces here who would like to use the army to settle things are close to having a checkmate on their adversaries.

If that happens, if Vaca Diez becomes President and follows through with threats of military action, Bolivia will not be a chessboard. It will be a battlefield. Yesterday the US Embassy began offering US employees and their families paid air passage and paid vacations to leave the country. It would apear that my government, always such an active force behind the scenes here, is getting ready for battle.

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.

The US Seeks to Blame Chavez for Bolivian Turmoil

As Yogi Berra supposedly once said, it feels like deja vu all over again.

Five years ago, as Bolivia was similarly wracked by political turmoil during the Cochabamba water revolt, Bolivian government spinners sought desperately to blame the protests on “narcotraffickers”. The Associated Press reporter at the time, who just happened to be a close friend of the President’s spinner, pedaled the bogus analysis in AP dispatches all over the US. We were supposed to believe that Bechtel’s massive water rate hikes had nothing to do with those protests at all.

Now the US government is playing the same false blame game. This morning’s Miami Herald reports on the efforts by the US’s lead diplomat for Latin America, at the OAS meeting in Florida, to blame Bolivia’s current troubles on…Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Here’s the article.

Here’s the portion about Roger Noriega's comments:

Noriega also sparked an exchange of barbs with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Alí Rodríguez when he seemed to hint that Chávez was somehow responsible for the worsening situation in Bolivia. Some Latin American and U.S. officials have long alleged that Chávez has provided financial assistance to Bolivian opposition leader Evo Morales. ''Chávez's profile in Bolivia has been very apparent from the beginning,'' Noriega said when asked about Chavez's role in the turmoil in Bolivia. ``His record is apparent and speaks for itself.''

The US government seeking to blame Chavez for the current Bolivian unrest is no more accurate than the efforts by the Bolivian government to blame drug traffickers for the water revolt five years ago.

In both cases – then and now – the culprit is a set of global economic policies pushed onto Bolivia by the US through its two chief vehicles of policy export – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It was the World Bank that coerced Bolivia to privatize its water, setting in motion rate hikes and a public rebellion (see article). It was the IMF that coerced Bolivia to privatize its gas and oil a decade ago, sewing the seeds for the current unrest.

Here’s how I tried to explain it in an article published by the New York Times on its Web site this morning:

“The bottom line is that Latin America is in open rebellion of the economic policies of the Washington Consensus," said Jim Shultz, director of the Democracy Center, a group in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba that is critical of free market reforms in the country. "Sometimes it happens in the ballot box. Sometimes it happens on the street, like in Bolivia. It is in essence the same rebellion."

If the White House is looking for where to place the blame for sewing the seeds of what is happening in Bolivia today, it need not look far. The World Bank and IMF headquarters are both just around the corner.

Is the US Helping Light the Fuse of Bolivian Violence?

With last night’s resignation announcement by President Mesa, Bolivian politics has quickly transformed into a dangerous mix of intense protests on the street and a complicated game of back door maneuvering over who will be his successor.

In declaring his intention to step down, Mesa said he was doing so in the cause of national unity, hoping that a change of government would help end the tense and volatile political standoff that has nearly shut the nation down. Of all the possible routes forward now there is one that is very clearly NOT the path toward national unity. It could even be the path toward civil war. It has a name – Hormando Vaca Diez – the President of the Bolivian Senate who is now wheeling and dealing behind closed doors to become Mesa’s successor. There is reason to believe tonight that the US is behind those doors helping him.

Vaca Diez is roughly the same kind of unifying presence in Bolivian politics that Representative Tom DeLay is in US politics. He is a close ally of the deposed and reviled ex-President, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. He comes from Santa Cruz, the region whose demands for autonomy have helped spark this crisis. He is an opponent of returning the country’s gas and oil to public hands. He has also called chillingly for Mesa “to govern”, again, shorthand for using the military to crush protests.

It is hard to imagine a political development here that could be more divisive and which could more easily spark violent conflict. The alternative is for both Vaca Diez and the House leader to step aside and allow the Presidency to pass to the Supreme Court President as a caretaker, triggering new elections in August. In contrast, Vaca Diez would serve two more years – ample time to call out the military, block demands for recouping the gas and oil, scuttle plans for putting Sánchez de Lozada on trial, and set Bolivia down a path toward violent conflict.

Why then are the old-line parties in the Congress starting to line up behind handing such a divisive figure the presidency?

It is make-a-deal time again in Bolivian politics and a politician within reach of the Presidency has a lot to deal. When Mesa took over in 2003 he declared the administrative apparatus of government off limits for party operatives. That is a lot of lucrative patronage and opportunity for corruption snatched out of their hands. If you invested tens of thousands of dollars in your party’s efforts to capture the spoils of governing and then get denies those spoils (like becoming a vice–minister), how are you supposed to get back your investment?

Watch for politicians from the MNR and MIR old-line political parties start publicly lining up behind Vaca Diez in the next few days and then watch others follow to put together a Congressional majority.

And where is the US in all of this? A very reliable source told me this afternoon that the Embassy here is in talks with Vaca Diez, helping pave the way for his succession. This should not be a surprise. Never underestimate the ability of the US government in two respects:

1. Nothing Big Happens Politically In Bolivia Without The US All Over It

Who did Carlos Mesa meet with yesterday just before tendering his resignation? The US Ambassador. Do you think he paid a similar visit to the Spaniards or the Nicaraguans? After the 2002 elections who called in the various candidates one at a time to pressure them to line up behind Sánchez de Lozada? The US Embassy. It would be utterly out of character for the US Embassy NOT to have its fingers all over the question of who succeeds Mesa and apparently it is acting in true form.

2. The US Embassy is Really Good and Being Stupid

Remember back to the elections in 2002. The US Ambassador at the time took square aim at Evo Morales as the US’s chief Bolivian political enemy. To implement that view the US Ambassador publicly threatened Bolivians with a cutoff of aid if they voted for Morales, an announcement that single-handedly skyrocketed his support in the polls and put him within two points of finishing first. One would suppose that the US interest in Bolivia right now is promoting stability. By promoting Vaca Diez behind the scenes the US is really shoving Bolivia off the cliff.

What to watch for in the coming days:

A move to convene the Congress in Sucre, away from the La Paz protests, to accept Mesa’s resignation and make Vaca Diez his successor.

A response from other political leaders outside the Congress warning that Vaca Diez is a recipe for Bolivian disaster.

A counter-proposal from the social movements and others for: a caretaker government led by the Supreme Court President; new elections in August for President and Vice-President; and a national vote at the same time on regional autonomy, nationalization of gas, and election of members to a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution.

The US is playing with fire these days in Bolivia and it never plays with fire here well. In October 2003, when everyone including his own Vice President had broken with Sánchez de Lozada over his violent repression against protesters, the US propped him up for another week and another few dozen needless deaths.

Here’s a suggestion to my friends covering Bolivia for the foreign press. Start calling the Embassy and ask what role they are playing behind the scenes in the question of Mesa’s successor. I am not saying you’ll get a straight answer out of them, but you’ll be onto an interesting and vitally important story.

President Mesa Resigns

Tonight Bolivian President Carlos Mesa gave an address to the nation and announced that he is resigning. The immediate political future of the country is unknown.

Mesa has threatened resignation twice before in recent months but those previous threats were generally viewed as a political ploy, stunts by a former TV newsman to cast a shadow of drama over events and lure support behind him. Tonight Bolivia needs no more drama than it has on the natural. This time, I believe, Mesa’s resignation is real.

"This is as far as I can go," Mesa told Bolivians. "It is my decision as president to present my resignation as President of the Republic."

What does this mean? Here are the three big questions:

1. Will the Bolivian Congress accept the resignation?

Mesa remains Bolivia’s President until the national Congress formally votes to accept his resignation. That could happen Tuesday, assuming that Congress meets. Congress has been prevented from meeting for nearly a week owing to the combination of protesters blocking their way and members from Santa Cruz refusing to come to La Paz. Anything is possible. I can imagine a good portion of Congress, the socialist MAS party included, refusing the resignation until they are satisfied with the terms of succession (see below). On the other hand, Congress may just decide that if they guys wants to go it is time for him to go.

2. Who succeeds Mesa?

Assuming that Congress formally accepts Mesa’s resignation, who replaces him? The line of succession begins with Senate President Hormando Vaca Diez, a Santa Cruz politician who has called on Mesa several times in recent months to “start governing”, shorthand here for sending out the military to deal with protesters. Next in line is the little-known lower house President Mario Cossío. Evo Morales of the MAS and other protest leaders have called on all three political leaders to resign, which would leave the Presidency temporarily in the hands of the President of the Supreme Court and constitutionally trigger new national elections.

3. How will the protest movements react?

The buzz over the weekend here was about a Catholic Church brokered deal in which the government would resign en masse and trigger new elections. Some evidently believed that new elections, in themselves, would provide enough hope for political change to bring the current wave of protests over gas export to a close. That was never a very realistic hope.

The issue in the streets is not who is President; it is who controls the nation’s oil and gas, along with calls for rewriting the Constitution through a national constituent assembly. A snap election in October will be run through the same political rules that people are in the streets protesting against. I don’t see how new elections satisfies anyone.

If the voices in the street spoke to the country’s national leaders in the language of my homestate of California, the message might be, “What part of we want to take back the oil and rewrite the constitution didn’t you understand?”

There is a saying here in Bolivia, Hasta las ultimas consequencias! Literally translated it means, until the final consequences. Politically translated it means, once the people have mobilized past a certain point there is no turning back. The people who are in the streets in La Paz, who are piling up rocks by the kilometer to block roads in and out of Cochabamba, poor farmers who took over a Shell/Enron pumping station earlier today – I don’t see them backing down. Not a Presidential resignation, not a promise of new elections, not even a state of martial law will send them quietly home.

I also don’t want to give readers a false sense of the story here. This is not October 2003 when the country was united broadly in the demand that President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resign. While these protests are fueled by a real intensity on the part of the people engaged in them, a good portion of the Bolivians I talk to are just getting increasingly angry by the inconvenience of it all and the instability they see ahead. I hear more and more twenty somethings talking about leaving. “Bolivia will always be a third world country.” “I don’t see a future for myself here.”

Bolivia tonight is a deeply divided nation with a political course ahead that is very difficult to see.

Resignation or Martial Law?

A quick note, as things are changing too quickly and are too hard to predict to warrant an analysis much longer.

All day there have been comments coming out of the government that President Mesa will speak to the nation sometime tonight. The people I am speaking with who know the situation best say he’ll either announce one of two things – his resignation or a declaration of un estadio de sitio, effectively martial law. The latter would be a precursor to a military and police action to break up the protests, especially those in La Paz. This is, of course, the action that Carlos Mesa said he would never take.

If Mesa does resign the next question becomes who succeeds him. Absent other resignations that would be the Senate President, Baca Diez, a politician from Santa Cruz whose assumption to the Presidency would inflame the protests by double. If Baca Diez and the House President also resign (a possible combination deal with a Mesa resignation) then we are set on the path toward new elections in August.

If that happens, watch for the return of the US’ favorite son (and favorite Bolivian politician) Tuto Quiroga, the boyish former IBM executive who assumed the Presidency for a year in 2001 when his predecessor, Hugo Banzer resigned to his death bed. In a year in office Quiroga managed to kill more Bolivians than Banzer, the former dictator, did in four years as the elected President. Here an article I wrote at the time.

More news as we have it.

The Church Tries Mediation

Weeks ago I wrote that the most likely scenario for a peaceful end to Bolivia’s political crisis would be the Catholic Church stepping forward as a mediator and cajoling the various political actors and movements of the country into a dialogue. This weekend Church leaders have been engaged in an aggressive diplomatic campaign to achieve just that, but it is unclear this morning whether the call for a dialogue will bear fruit.

Church leaders met with President Carlos Mesa and Congressional leaders over the weekend. Reports I have received from those privy to the meetings indicate that Mesa is ready, even eager, to resign. The proposal being floated by Mesa and Church leaders is for the President and the leaders of Congress to resign, triggering a new round of national elections before the end of the year, with the head of the Supreme Court acting as a caretaker President until then.

Some social movement leaders, including MAS and Evo Morales, have agreed to participate in a church-mediated dialogue. Others, most especially those in the altiplano and El Alto have resisted that call up to know. As blockades continue to shut down La Paz and have begun to block land access in and out of Cochabamba as well, the social movements are holding heated internal conversations about how to respond to the call for new elections. The demand by those blockading remains that an Asamblea Constituyente be convened as quickly as possible and that the gas and oil issue be decided there. Whether new national elections will satisfy them as an alternative remains unclear and frankly, I doubt that it will.

I will write more as we are able to get and analyze more news from our sources.

The Wonder of Rumors

A last note to share at the end of a long day – the rumor watch. I do my best here on the Blog to filter through the multitude of rumors one hears all day these days in Bolivia and just post things that we can document to be fact. Nevertheless, here are some of the rumors that have been bouncing about Bolivia this Friday.

I repeat, these have been RUMORS, NOT FACT, but interesting nonetheless:

President Mesa is going on a hunger strike: This was a good one that bounced all over Cochabamba all morning. Supposedly President Carlos Mesa was going to go on a hunger strike until the Congress approved his decree for October elections. We speculated that he would secretly sneak food while alone in his Presidential office (the first time I ever saw Mesa in person, while still the vice-president, he was alone in the Burger King in the Miami airport chowing down a Whopper, so we know the guy likes to eat. If you eat Whoppers you like to eat.).

We noted that other players in the Bolivian drama, such as Senate President Baca Diez, could stand to lose a few pounds and maybe he should go on a hunger strike. The hunger strike seemed like it might become a sort of Bolivian South Beach Diet – no carbs, no anything. Anyway, I wasn’t able to confirm the story all day and it seems to have grown out of an offhand comment by the Mayor of La Paz that he might go on a hunger strike until protesters left the city. I think he is still eating, however.

The US Embassy is Shutting Down: This came in the form of a phone call this evening. The US Embassy and USAID in La Paz were reportedly closing down early and carting away files. Precursor to a coup? This one never made sense to me. First of all, if a coup happened it would almost certainly have the tacit support of the US Embassy, behind closed doors and with deniability of course. So if a coup is in the works the Embassy should remain wide open for business. Second, the real threat to the Embassy is the protests that are likely to diminish over the weekend, not intensify. I tell people here that the real sign that the US knows that the s%&$ is going to hit the fan is if they evacuate the Peace Corps and my sources tell me that as of this evening, they are all staying put and going no where.

The US Ambassador Resigned: I am sure that someone somewhere in Bolivia resigned tonight but it probably wasn’t the Ambassador. Mr. Greenlee (by many credible reports a former CIA officer here in his youth) seems to like his job and if history is any indicator, the US Embassy is burning up the phone lines trying to cajole various political actors to do one thing or another that the US thinks is the path toward stability (and protection of US interests).

A Coup is Coming: This, of course, is the quiet fear of many here. In Bolivia, Everyone over 30 has lived through a dictatorship at an age old enough to remember it. The leader of the national labor union (the COB) has called once again today for a coup by the military. Every time he says that he only isolates himself more from other elements of the movements and makes himself look, well, whacko. That is not to say a coup is impossible.

There is an expression often used here in Bolivia, todo es posible, anything is possible. Now usually that refers to efforts to bring a 1975 Toyota back to life or some similar mean feat of making things past their time keep running. This week when people say todo es posible, they mean politically. Tonight anything is indeed possible, but the rumors reported above are among the least likely.

Again, so no one accuses me of bad reporting. These were rumors, right? Rumors.

The Democracy Center Returns to Democracy Now

This morning I returned to the Pacifica Radio news program, Democracy Now, to talk about the current state of things in Bolivia. For those interested visit here to see a transcript of the interview or to listen to it.

A Commentary on Tactics

There has been a bit of a debate here on the Blog about the tactics being used by social movements these past two weeks, namely road blockades and marches to shut down the Congress. Here’s a sample:

However, the marches only make those possible sympathizers react negatively to the entire movement. They no longer respond to the message of a fairer treatment for Bolivia, rather they only see the tactics as a threat to their daily way of life.

The reader also asked me what advice on tactics I have been giving social movement leaders.

First, let me say something about what it means to be a gringo in Bolivia. I live here. I raise my family here. It is not up to me, however, to tell social movements how to do their business. If I am asked for an opinion I offer it bit it is not my place to go around telling movement leaders how to wage their political struggles.

If I were leading a political fight here, would I organize people to block roads? Probably not. I don’t think it is all that brainy an idea for ACT-UP to try to shut down one of San Francisco’s major bridges from time to time either. I believe that the tactics of political confrontation should be used when non-confrontational tactics have been tried and failed and I think they should be aimed at those with authority, not the public at large.

Bolivians, however, live a different reality. Ask movement activists here why they have taken to blockading roads and they will tell you, “There is nothing else that will make the government listen to us.” Evidence is on their side.

All this reminds me of one of the most important expressions ever written about the tactics of civil disobedience, Martin Luther King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail. In April 1963 King was jailed for participating in civil disobedience in Alabama. Other clergy on the outside criticized King for crossing an unwise tactical line. Scribbling on the margins of whatever scraps of paper he could find, King penned a response the wisdom of which endures four decades later:

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.

To be clear, Bolivia isn’t Birmingham and the tactics being used here aren’t exactly those used by King. That said, there is a principle that is the same. People use the tactics available to them in the political contexts in which they operate. Nelson Mandela once said it isn’t we who select our tactics it is our opponents. People are in the streets here because they have been ignored politically, over and over again.

Do I wish movements here could find a less disruptive, less damaging way to press their demands? Yes. Do I see an obvious alternative? No. Is it my place to tell them what to do? Surely not.

A Presidential Decree

Here’s the latest. Last night late President Carlos Mesa took to the national airwaves once again with a new announcement (no, not another resignation threat). Mesa announced an official presidential decree calling for a special national election next October, to simultaneously elect delegates to a Constituent Assembly (Asamblea Constituyente) and decide the issue of regional autonomy. With that, he then called on the Catholic Church to bring the fighting parties of the country together in a negotiation for peace.

So, what does that mean?

On the one hand, it puts the President, after far too long a delay, squarely into the camp declaring that the political solution at hand is to throw the debate over the nation’s future (including oil and gas) squarely into the hands of the Constituent Assembly. On the other hand, it is so late that the social movements now blocking a majority of Bolivia’s highways seem convinced that it is a trick to get them to go home.

First, for constitutional reasons beyond my comprehension, the decree is probably illegal. Second, the decree would have to be approved by the Congress which seems uninterested in doing so and which really can’t even meet because it is besieged by protests. Third, it is unclear exactly what the autonomy elections really mean. Can a region like Santa Cruz vote for autonomy and win it even if the rest of the nation votes no?

Social movement leaders here in Cochabamba told the press this morning that they will increase their road blockades and other pressures starting Monday, demanding a commitment to a Constituent Assembly they can count on.

The Fork in the Road

Protests and blockades paralyzing La Paz. Roads across the country shut down. Campesinos marching on Santa Cruz attacked by stick-wielding youths. Congress struggling to find some compromise that can bring the country back to normal. All sides losing patience and repeated rumors of coups in the air. This is the way Bolivia looks tonight.

It is unclear how long Bolivia can continue along with the current stalemate. The movements calling for nationalization of oil and gas and for a national Asamblea Constituyente not only show no signs of letting up, they show all the signs of growing more intense and bold in their willingness to shut the country down.

Yet, here in Cochabamba, as soon as you step away from those involved in the protests, you run into a wave of frustration by taxi drivers, shop workers, neighbors and others who, while generally in support of the social movements’ demands, are getting increasingly ticked off at having the center of the city shut down and work made impossible for many. I can only imagine that in La Paz these sentiments on both sides are even more intense.

The fork in the road – Bolivia will either find a compromise forward soon or the government will take up arms to squash the protests. Only those who don’t know better predict which way things will turn.

Once again, it is time for a little reminder of the hidden forces at work here from abroad. Bolivians did not get themselves into this conflict by their own doing, not by any stretch.

Here how it works:

Step One: The International Monetary Fund decides that the economic medicine that the country needs is privatization of all its industries – say eating raw eggs ten times a day – you can say no. When the IMF is the doctor and you are dependent on it for economic aid, it is like the doctor being able to withhold your food if you don’t chow down the eggs. You take the eggs.

Step Two: Bolivia takes the IMF’s advice, privatizes its oil and gas, watches state revenues from oil and gas take a nosedive while prices skyrocket. People start to get mad.

Step Three: After the people get mad enough to oust their President (Goni 2003), the next President promises to put the whole thing to a vote and does, with 92% of the people affirming that they want Bolivia to take back control of the nation’s gas and oil.

Step Four: The IMF and the oil companies tell Bolivia (albeit, in economic jargon): “Hey a deal is a deal. You can’t put the toothpaste of privatization back into the tube. If you do this no one will invest in your country. You will be a pariah.” Behind the scenes the IMF makes no tampering with the oil companies’ contracts a condition of renewed aid.

Step Five: Unable to get their government to listen in any other way, people go to the streets, they push their country to the edge of chaos. Some take a historical view and see, in oil and gas, the makings of a 21st century version of the Spanish stealing three centuries of silver out of a mountain in Potosi’ leaving Bolivia the poorest country on the continent. They act “radically”. Others take a daily view, “I just want to work, I just want peace. Who are these people disrupting our lives?”

The pressure from those demanding that Bolivia take back its gas and oil is as visible as a mass of people occupying a city and as loud as dynamite thrown in anger. The pressure from the other side – from the IMF, from the USA, from foreign oil companies – is invisible. It takes place among calm people wearing suits, ties and heels, behind closed doors. So far, that is a pressure far more powerful than thousands in the street and suffers no similar public reaction against it.

So here is a moral question for our readers. If a nation is pushed by foreign players like the IMF into a policy without any public input or support, and if that policy turns out to be such a failure that the people rebel – who bears responsibility?

How would people in the U.S. feel if the IMF came in today and forced the US government to privatize Social Security, took that fundamental democratic choice right out of the public’s hands? Or suppose that the IMF forced the US government to turn over the Alaskan wilderness over to oil companies from China? What then?

What is happening in the streets of El Alto, La Paz and Cochabamba this week is nothing to be shocked about. It is a political boomerang a decade in the making from a simple fact – Bolivia did not hand control of its oil and gas reserves over to foreign companies because the people deliberated on it and decided it was a good deal. Bolivia took that action under the threat of losing foreign aid it was dependent upon.

You don’t take a decision like that away from people and then express shock and dismay when they finally react. If fatal violence again breaks out in Bolivia in the next week, let us not pretend that it was a purely Bolivian act. The actions that set that violence in motion will be traceable, once again, to an unelected institution a hemisphere away in Washington DC.