An MNR Move to Hold onto Power?

Okay, the chess game of these "tal vez" December elections in Bolivia is getting pretty complicated to follow. However, there is another theory floating about that could well be plausible – What is underway is a skilled move by the on-its-deathbed MNR to hold on to power. Here's how it works:
First: The MNR, party of the 1952 revolution, has been Bolivia's dominant political power for half a century. It won two of the last three Presidential elections, when led by then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Today it still holds more seats in the Bolivian Congress than any other political party. However, the MNR is also about to get destroyed in national elections, in a way that could leave it a historical memory akin to Hugo Banzer's ADN, or the eight track for that matter. If the MNR breaks better than 5% in elections in December, that will be an achievement.

Second: Bolivia's current President, Eduardo Rodriguez, is constitutionally only supposed to be a transitional leader. If the elections do not take place as scheduled or shortly thereafter the delay could trigger Rodriguez's resignation. If that occurs, under the constitution the Presidency falls into the hands of the President of the Senate. That change of hands, in turn, would eliminate the constitutional requirement for new elections. Rodriguez' successor would be allowed to serve out the remainder of the presidential term which ends in 2007.

Third: The previous President of the Senate, Hermando Baca Diez from the MIR political party, resigned earlier to become the MIR's presidential candidate (another candidate who will be lucky to crack 5%). His successor, Sandro Giordano, hails from the MNR and has made no public statement as to his interest in ascending to the Presidency.

In other words, if a reasonably possible sequence of events plays out over the next few weeks, the MNR could be back in the Presidency for two years, backed by the Congressional plurality it won in 2002. That scenario, if you are an MNR office holder or activist anxious to get your hands back on power and patronage, looks a whole lot more promising than getting beaten into political oblivion in eight weeks.

Mind you, this scenario is no MAS conspiracy. Former President and current candidate Tuto Quiroga launched just this accusation. He is quoted in today's Los Tiempos (the Cochabamba daily) warning, "Democracy should not be about the ambitions of a few who do not want to leave power." Similarly, the other main candidate of the right-center, Samuel Doria Medina, sent letters this week to the heads of both houses of Congress exhorting them to, "put an end to the political uncertainly and comply with their patriotic roll owed to the people."

To be clear, a scenario by which the MNR takes the Presidency through suspension of elections will be greeted about as warmly by Bolivia's social movements as Baptist fundamentalists might welcome a transvestite bishop. If the MNR really is pondering such a move it must be carefully weighing how much turmoil it is willing to provoke in order to retake power. I can't imagine anyone sane being willing to do this to Bolivia. But political ambition has trumped sanity in more countries than this one.

Stay tuned for the ever-changing game of "will we vote or won’t we".

Human Rights Protest at US Embassy Attacked with Tear Gas

Yesterday a peaceful protest march headed for the US Embassy in La Paz was attacked with tear gas by Bolivian police assigned to protect the Embassy. The protest, organized by the Bolivian Assembly on Human Rights, was in support of the formal request by the Bolivian government that former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada be extradited from the US to stand trial in Bolivia.

The protest included many family members of the more than 50 people killed by armed troops sent out by Sanchez de Lozada in October 2003 to break up protests against his plans to export the country's gas to the US. Even his own Vice President broke with Sanchez de Lozada over his violent repression, leading to "Goni's" resignation and escape to self-exile in the US. The Bolivian government has since indicted the former President on murder charges and two months ago filed a formal extradition request with the US government.

"We wanted to hold a peaceful protest in front of the Embassy to press our demand for Sanchez de Lozada's extradition," the Human Rights Assembly President, Sacha Lorenti, told me by phone from La Paz this morning. Before the families of the victims could reach the fortress-like US compound, they were beaten back with a rain of tear gas.

The US role in the October 2003 killings goes well beyond giving aid and comfort to the deposed President. In the face of his own Vice President breaking with him, huge protests calling for his resignation, and a nationwide hunger strike by respected human rights and religious leaders demanding the same, Sanchez de Lozada held on to power and continued the killings for nearly a full week, primarily because of the almost daily proclamations of support for him issued by US officials. Absent those declarations, the Bolivians killed in the last week of Goni's government would likely be alive today.

Lorenti says that families of Goni's victims plan to march on the Embassy every Thursday, regardless of the threat against them. The groups are also considering making a request to meet directly with the US Ambassador to press their demand for Goni's extradition. The US has long demanded the right to have Bolivian citizens extradited to the US for trial, when charged with certain drug-related crimes.

Photos of the protest and its break up by Bolivian police can be found here. The account of the repression yesterday in La Paz, in the Bolivian daily Opinion, can be found here.

Well, Bolivia Was Supposed to Have Elections December 4th…

As I have written before, never be surprised by the surprises that can arise out of Bolivian politics. Now we have yet another. The national elections scheduled for December 4th may well be postponed until, well, who knows when. Here's the story.

Last June a series of nationwide social protests over two issues – corporate ownership of the nation's gas and the call for a citizen assembly to rewrite the constitution – culminated in the resignation of President Carlos Mesa. He resigned more because he seemed to want out than because of any broad demand that he do so.

Mesa's resignation and the assumption of the Presidency by the Supreme Court head, Eduardo Rodriguez, triggered new Presidential elections that were scheduled for December 4th. In a move that was always constitutionally debatable, the government ceded to social movement demands that the new elections also toss out and replace the sitting Congress as well, a move resisted by Congress members not too keen to give up their sought-after jobs two years early.

In any event, by late August the Bolivian campaign season was in full swing with candidates selected for seats all the way down the slate, from President to Congress, and the slogans and promises started flying in from all sides.

Then the congressional delegation from Santa Cruz through a big whopping monkey wrench into the whole process. The December elections were to be based on the population figures from Bolivia's 1991 national census not the much more current 2001 count of where Bolivians reside.

Translated into regular words, this means that Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and other areas of big population growth are headed into elections in which they aren’t getting their fair share of congressional seats (and in turn, their fair share in the congressional vote that will elect the new president in January). The Santa Cruz delegation filed a legal demand to stop the elections and correct the numbers and on September 22 Bolivia's Constitutional Tribunal, which rules on such matters, agreed and ordered that the elections not go forward as planned.

Well, one thing that you can be sure of is that when a major constitutional issue is at stake, in Bolivia or any country, the political actors involved will make a quick assessment of their political self-interest and launch a battle to defend it. Bolivia's political leaders have proven no exception to that rule.

Congress members from La Paz, Oruro and Potosi, all areas which stand to lose seats if the 2001 census data is used, have launched a defense that is essentially, "okay, if we are going to play strictly by the law let's play strictly by the law," and have called on the Congressional elections to be cancelled altogether until the normal 2007 schedule. Members of Congress who resigned their seats to run for higher office are now trying to see if they can take back their resignations. MAS Presidential candidate, Evo Morales, traveling in France this week issued a statement demanding that the elections go on as scheduled and warning, "It is not the social groups, it is not the indigenous movement that are challenging the country or destabilizing it. It is the state institutions, the Constitutional Court and behind them are the transnationals, the U.S. embassy, which wants to avert any triumph of the indigenous movement."

Meanwhile President Rodriguez and the Congress are wrapped in some sort of political dance trying to find a solution that can keep the December 4 election date in tact and Rodriguez is probably really wishing someone else held his unenviable job.

Personally, I don't see any real conspiracy here. I think that since the Mesa resignation in June Bolivia has been wandering in the risky land of dubious constitutionality. Most people sort of turned a bind eye to that and hoped that a brief bridge of dubious constitutionality would take Bolivia forward to a new start.

The new start never looked all that promising (see my recent analysis of possible election outcomes) and now it appears that the competing regional interests have called the question on Bolivian constitutionality.

What will happen next? As the saying goes: Those who know don't say and those who say don't know.

Bolivia’s Would-Be President from Pepsi

I was asked not to say anything publicly about the meeting in my office here last July. But now, since the people involved have revealed the whole tale in a long article in the Bolivian magazine Datos, I think I can share my own little story about Bolivia’s would-be President from Pepsi. It is a story that says something about the odd state of Bolivian politics.

The Man With Pointy Shoes

In early July I received an email note from a fellow in NY, a former UN official who had worked here years back. He said he wanted to come by for a chat about Bolivian politics with a friend of his, Edwin Lozano, a New Yorker of Bolivian decent (but who never lived here) who was a senior vice president of Pepsico, the corporate empire that brings us everything from Fritos to Quaker Oats (and of course that dark syrupy stuff that isn’t Coca Cola). I am generally open to chat with anyone so I responded that they ought to come on by.

To be honest, the first thing that I noticed about Lozano was his shoes. They were these big, long and pointy leather dress shoes that looked like they would actually puncture a soccer ball if they ever kicked one. The pointy style also really extends their length. I have since learned that they are the style now in the US. However, as the owner of size-thirteen feet that CONSTANTLY draw unwelcome attention here in the country with the world’s smallest feet, I just couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose to make their feet look BIGGER.

In any event, after a quick exchange of pleasantries, Lozano said, “Let me cut to the chase. I am looking at running [for office].” His declaration left me a little confused. After a moment of thought I asked him, “Uhh, where, in the US?” “No,” he told me, “Here.” The visitor from Pepsi had come to Bolivia to launch a campaign for President.

Well, I had heard of people visiting Bolivia from the US as “eco-tourists”. I have seen them come as missionaries. I have seen them come to volunteer with kids, to help us in our office, and to climb Andean peaks. But, before that moment, I had never seen anyone pop on down to explore a run for the presidency. It was, to be sure, a novel approach to vacationing.

According to the long article in Datos [only an excerpt is available on-line, here], Lozano and his fellow New Yorker companion spent three weeks talking to everyone in Bolivian politics they could get hold of – from Evo Morales to the remnants of Bolivia’s dieing political parties (MNR and MIR) – as well as ample chats with the US Embassy. The latter, according to Datos, had some hope that a Lozano candidacy might draw away votes from Evo Morales. That only goes to prove that the Embassy has learned remarkably little about Bolivian politics since it almost launched Morales into first place last time around by denouncing him.

Lozano evidently tested the waters on everything from being an independent candidate, to leading Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada’s fading MNR, to being the Vice Presidential nominee of the equally defunct MIR. In the end it didn’t work out and the would-be President has returned to New York to resume real life.

It is All So Simple

After his wildly pointy dress shoes, the other thing that I noticed about Lozano was that he much preferred to speak in English instead of Spanish, the latter a language he was still hoping to learn better. Hmmm, I thought, doesn’t that make campaigning just a little tough? But I didn’t mention it. In addition, Lozano’s “cut to the chase” line proved to be just the tip of the iceberg of a “can-do” forthright attitude with which he hoped to bring US corporate sensibility to the minefield of Bolivian politics.

“What we need to do is just get everyone in a room together and force them to come to an agreement,” he explained to me, as he described how he would solve Bolivia’s political conflicts. Hmmm, I thought, get everyone into a room and get them to agree. Boy, I bet that no one even thought of trying that before. How simple. How we could we have missed that?

After confidently elaborating his plans for a good deal of time to my co-worker Marcela and I, the New Yorkers finally asked us what we thought. “And please be frank.”

After some pause I explained that I had been working in politics and political campaigns since (as it turns out) about the time he was in the first grade. And from that perspective I told him that I thought what he was planning looked like a really good way to waste a lot of money and that if he really wanted to help Bolivia he ought to do something in business here not in politics. That seemed a message that he did not want to hear so I tried an approach that might have more resonance. I talked market share.

Let’s see, a guy from the US with a background in business with a non-Bolivian wife and a faith in market fundamentalism as the solution to the country’s problems. I think Tuto Quiroga pretty much has that niche covered and he was already president for a year and people know who he is. Looks to me like you are going to end up Tuto-Lite.

Actually, that sounds like a product Pepsi might market.

Then, after pondering the situation some more I noted, “Add in the stiff US accent in Spanish and you are going to look like the second coming of Goni.”

So that is the tale of my conversation with the would-be President of Bolivia from Pepsi. I am not surprised that it didn’t work out and I wish him well in whatever he decides to do. He seemed like a nice enough fellow (but those shoes, Edwin, lose the shoes).

Even Tuto moved himself and his family off to the US as soon as his brief Presidency ended in 2002 and I wouldn’t be surprised if he does so again if he loses in December. With the enticement of good Thai food and six digit corporate salaries, for some folks it really only makes sense to live in Bolivia if you can be President. For some, if you can’t have that green, yellow and red sash across your chest, the deal is off.

Alternatively, however, maybe Bolivia needs a President who, at least, is willing to stick around win or lose.

A Look Ahead at Bolivia's Three Presidential Elections

As Bolivia watchers know (and they seem to be increasing daily) this humble nation in the Andes is headed toward a historic election in just two short months. On December 4th Bolivians will go to the polls to select a new President. The fact of the vote itself is historic, an unscheduled election provoked by the second Presidential resignation in three years (of Carlos Mesa in June). Bolivia is a deeply polarized country and that polarization is clearly at hand in the run up to the December 4 vote.

Here is some analysis and predictions about where things stand with not just one Presidential election coming up here, but in reality, a series of three important decision points that will determine the immediate political future of this politically fragile country.


The Candidates

On December 4th Bolivians will have eight official President/Vice-President tickets to choose from. However, in reality these are the ones that matter (in roughly the order they are now running in public opinion polls):

MAS, Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia Linera: Bolivia's "Movement Toward Socialism" party, led by the leader of the coca grower's union, Evo Morales (who came within a percentage point of finishing first in 2002) is teamed up with Garcia Linera, a well-known political analyst from the left.

PODEMOS, Jorge Quiroga and Maria Rene Duchen: The former President who served out the last year of former dictator Hugo Banzer's last elected term is teamed up with a well-known, woman, TV newscaster.

UN, Samuel Doria Medina and Carlos Fernando Dabdoub: Unidad Nacional is essentially the old MIR party reincarnated, led by the owner of Burger King Bolivia, among other large enterprises, and Dabdoub, a leader in the Santa Cruz "autonomy" movement.

NFR, Gildo Angulo Cabrera and Gonzalo Quiroga: The political party of former Cochabamba Mayor Manfred Reyes Villa (who finished a strong third in the Presidential vote in 2002) is led by two unknowns, as Manfred opts for a surer thing and runs for governor of the department of Cochabamba rather than President.

MNR, Michiaki Nagatani Morishita and Guillermo Bedregal Gutierrez: The former political party powerhouse of the 1952 revolution and party of ousted President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, has fallen from finishing first place in 2002 to being a marginal force led by a Santa Cruz politician known mostly for being of Japanese decent.

MIP, Felipe Quispe and Camila Choqueticlla Mamani: The most visible indigenous leader of the Altiplano ran poorly in 2002 and is overshadowed this year by a strengthened Morales candidacy.


Election One: The Popular Vote

The first key decision point is the popular Presidential vote on December 4th. Here's how that looks, an analysis based on pure political handicapping not an assessment of each leader's personal qualities.

Evo Morales looks much stronger than he did a few months ago for several reasons. First, unlike in 2002, he really has the political left and the rural vote, two important political bases, much to himself. The race for first place is clearly only between Morales, Medina and Quiroga. The MNR and NFR might win 5% each and Quispe probably won’t hit more than 3%. Second, Morales has successfully shored up his political base on the left, by bringing Garcia Linera on the ticket as a representative of Bolivia fractious social movements. That move helped preempt a series of regional candidacies that threatened to divide Morales' base, for example the expected then abandoned candidacy of Abel Mamani, leader of the neighborhood groups in El Alto. Now the El Alto groups are lined up behind MAS.

Quiroga looked like an early front-runner, running a slick, well-financed campaign that has already turned a good number of concrete walls in my neighborhood bright red with his campaign colors. He is running a very US-style campaign, presenting himself as moderate and experienced leader who can unite Bolivia and run a competent government that will attract foreign investment. Unfortunately for him, his message sounds too much like that of the deposed Sanchez de Lozada. Quiroga also has to compete for the right-center, middle-class base with an aggressive and well-funded Samuel Doria Medina.

Medina has a history that makes him seem either invincible or really lucky. In the 1990s he was kidnapped by a guerilla organization and ultimately released. Last year he survived a plane crash and walked away. Medina looks hungry and determined, jumping the gun with television advertising before the legal starting line. He also worked to build himself a base early in Santa Cruz, by picking a champion of the autonomy movement there as his running mate. He acts like a man who has been waiting in line to run for president longer than he has wanted to and going all out now. In politics, hunger matters.

If you add up the math, it is now quite possible to see a scenario in which Morales finishes in first place, and perhaps a strong first place. I think that his 2002 base of 22% is solid and there is plenty of room for him to build on that. For example, my friend Adela told me today that she plans to vote for Evo. In 2002 she supported NFR and Manfred. I think there are a lot of voters who may do the same. If Morales could get the US ambassador to denounce him in the run up to the vote, as the previous ambassador did in 2002, he might do even better.


Election Two: The Presidential Selection Vote in the Bolivian Congress

Under the Bolivian constitution, the winner of the presidency is not the first place winner in the popular vote, but the candidate able to secure 51% or more of the subsequent vote in the national Congress. Seats in the Congress are apportioned roughly according to the popular vote received by each political party's presidential candidate. The new Congress then meets in a joint session and, member-by-member, they cast their votes for President. It is a pretty dramatic event to watch as 157 Congress members cast their votes, each making a speech in the process. The 2002 vote lasted more than 30 hours and was televised live throughout the night.

What all this means is that no candidate is likely to come anywhere close to 51% of the vote on December 4th, setting off an immediate and high-stakes game of political jockeying aimed at knitting together a coalition that can assemble 51%. To be clear, this is not a negotiation over public policy ("we'll compromise on gas if you compromise on land rights, etc."). Nope this is straight up wheeling and dealing over securing government jobs for each party's backers, from seats in the cabinet to clerk jobs in the post office. And in the background you can count on the US Embassy working hard, pressing for "anyone but Evo."

This is where Morales, even if he finishes in first place, is likely to be shut out of the presidency. I can always be wrong but I don't see any possible alliance that can help MAS bridge the gap between what they win Dec. 4th and 51%.

The most likely governing coalition would join together Quiroga, Medina, and the weakened MNR and NFR. Quiroga painted himself into a corner at the start of the campaign, declaring that he would not take the presidency if he did not finish in first place. He might come to regret that. Medina has made no such pledge. In Bolivia, however, as elsewhere, political promises are pretty flexible. I expect that the race between Quiroga and Medina, even if it turns out to be for second place, will become the race for who is selected by the Congress.

So, Bolivia is headed, quite probably, toward the scenario of historically putting an indigenous socialist in first place at the polls, only to end up with a President who spent much of his professional life working for IBM in Texas or one who runs Burger King. Neither is a recipe for political consensus or stability, thus setting up round three.


Election Three: Can the New President Survive?

I see no scenario, post-election, that promises much in the way of a solid political path forward. I see several that could dissolve into violent confrontation.

Suppose, for example, that Morales comes in first, or even a strong second (as in 2002) and Quiroga becomes President in January. It is only a matter of time before the ever-so-brief political honeymoon comes to an end and the new President and the social movements arrive at a point of confrontation. The most likely issues to spark this would be over the demanded "constituent assembly" to rewrite the constitution, a battle over a new gas law, or aggressive new efforts to eradicate coca.

As before, the social movements, especially in the altiplano and El Alto, will blockade highways to press their demands. But unlike Carlos Mesa, who refused steadfastly to send out troops to fire on civilians, Quiroga will take to the airwaves. "My fellow Bolivians, they contested the election, they lost the election and they have no right to shut down our country. We will take the steps necessary to keep the economy of our country moving forward."

Quiroga demonstrated in his brief year as President in 2001-2002 that he is not shy to use the bullet, with more than a dozen Bolivians killed by government force. With the US Embassy likely offering private words of encouragement and public declarations of support (as it did with both Banzer and Goni), the troops will move to the streets and we will be back to the violence of February and October of 2003 in which more than eighty people lost their lives.

Alternatively, suppose that by some unexpected combination of events Evo Morales manages to win election to the Presidency. The scenario there is not much more promising. MAS would enter poorly prepared to govern, sitting on a mountain of pent-up expectations of what a new government can deliver, and with the prospect of being blacklisted for aid from the US government, the World Bank and the IMF. More than one solid analyst on the left has said to me in private – What happens if foreign aid is cutoff and three months into his term Evo is facing down striking police in the streets because they haven't been paid?

In short, Bolivia faces a third Presidential decision point early on in the new government. Will the new President, be it Quiroga, Morales or Medina, be able to survive the division, conflict, and raw economic pressures that have brought Bolivia to the political brink over and over again for the past three years?

As I have written before, the upcoming elections are not a solution to the conflicts Bolivia faces. The elections are merely a postponement of those conflicts to the new year.

All this said, elections anywhere, and in Bolivia especially, have a tendency to surprise us. A lot can happen between now and December 4th. Stay tuned to this Blog as we will do our best to keep you well informed.

On Blogs, Bolivian Elections, and Dogs and Kids in Rivers

First, a special greeting to all the recent newcomers to this Blog. Saludos de Cochabamba!

Over the weekend I checked the little tracker we use to see how many people are visiting our Web site and the graph just about flew off the page. Normally (meaning Bolivia is not in turmoil and driving visitors to our site for information) we have about 1,000 visits per day. Over the weekend that average leapt to 4,000, which is really a lot of people.

I couldn’t figure it out. My last Blog entry on Wednesday morning was one I wrote in a semi-coherent state in the La Paz airport after a sleepless night of flying American Air flight #922 from the US. Could it be that people like Blogs better if written by people suffering from serious sleep deprivation? It is a bit of an odd theory, no?

Then someone sent me a note that the Blog from Bolivia had just been listed as a "Blog of Note" on Blogger.com. My guess is that this is how so many of you have come to check us out. So, again, greetings from Cochabamba and keep on coming.


Polling Tales -- We Told You So

On August 28th we offered a Blog entry noting that the Cochabamba daily, Los Tiempos, had run a huge front page article showing that former President and current candidate Jorge Quiroga has leapt to a commanding first place lead in the coming Presidential elections (December 4th). We noted that the poll was a pretty lame measure of the candidates' support since it expressly limited itself to voters in the cities and excluded rural voters who are the major base of support for MAS candidate Evo Morales. We wrote:

What happens in October when someone actually produces a poll that includes both the cities and the rural areas (where Morales’ base and support is much, much stronger)? Suddenly the numbers are going to look wildly different and, like it or not, Los Tiempos is going to get stuck with a story showing a Morales surge, when in fact all that really happened is they used a representative sampling.

Well, we were off by two weeks. The "Morales surge" articles started today. The Swiss-based Center for Security Studies published an article today – one likely to be a precursor for many to come in the next few days:

Bolivian Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) presidential candidate Evo Morales has surged to a lead of 28 per cent of potential votes ahead of December elections, according to a recent poll conducted by an independent research firm.

Morales now enjoys a six percent lead over Quiroga, says the poll. What's behind the "surge"? The new poll included rural voters in the sampling.

But to be clear, it is a long, long way to December 4th and the Bolivian election road will be windy and ever-changing. We'll be back with a more in-depth analysis for those interested in the next few days.


Rivers, Rocks, Dogs and Kids – The Joys of Being Home

Ahhh, the joy of being home in Bolivia.

Yesterday my wife, my two-year-old daughter, our two dogs, and I took off early for a hike into the hills behind our house. Back beyond the end of the bus lines. Back beyond the mammoth cooking pot full of greasy fried pork being prepared for a whole neighborhood. Back beyond the adobe houses and flower farms. There we found the small river where our two dogs find their bliss in chasing rocks.

Really! They chase and bring back rocks, the way other dogs do with rubber balls. This is fortunate because Cochabamba is blessed with many, many rocks. At the orphanage where we were volunteers for many years the kids thought the dogs were actually eating rocks. To my knowledge neither Simone nor Little Bear has ever swallowed.

Equally joyous was my soon-to-turn-three daughter who spent the morning walking around barefoot in cold mountain water. She is also working on her rock-throwing skills and shows great promise.

Cochabamba at the start of spring.

Snowed In and Other Reflections on Coming Home from the USA

I am sitting in the La Paz airport after having flown all night from the US and El Alto has turned into a "winter wonderland". Snow falls from the Andean sky and has painted the altiplano white. It has also managed to leave a fleet of grounded aircraft frosted like Bolivian wedding cakes and stuck on the ground. Looks like I will not spend Cochabamba day in Cochabamba.

A week in the US has left me worried about my home country. I also visited the US in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 four years ago, including a walk to ground zero. Then what I remembered was the outbreak of national identity – flags everywhere, volunteer message therapists from Ohio who flew to NY to give relief to relief workers, a sense of being-in-this-togetherism (which unfortunately got hijacked by GB II into a march to war on a lie in Iraq).

This time, in the aftermath of Katrina, what I found was a sense of holy-shit-I-am-all-by-myselfism. Folks in Los Angeles watching a whole lot of stranded people screaming for help in New Orleans, certainly had a whole new image of what life might be like if "the big one" took out southern California's freeway system. One person I know just fully stocked his big motor home (bought in part for just such a contingency) and last week added to the inventory a hefty firearm. In New Orleans people had their cars hijacked at gunpoint by others desperate to escape the rising tide. It was a scene taken directly out of the summer flick War of the Worlds. Space aliens, floods, and earthquakes, any one of them promises to drive Americans into the me-first zone.

Fear and insecurity are a powerful force in an individual. When it infects a whole country it is national identity at stake. The powers that be in the White House have not done a whole lot to make people feel any safer.

All this reminds me of a conversation I had long ago with my father when he was still alive. In the 1930s he was a boy and in his south central LA neighborhood of Jews, blacks and the lower middle class and he watched as one business after another (including my grandfather's) went belly up. "We thought we were licked," he told me. "I saw our neighbors picking garbage out of the trash cans looking for something to eat." He then told me, with tears in his eyes, of how much FDR's courage and optimism meant to people like that. He told the nation, we will try this and if it doesn't work we will try that. We will try everything we can until we put people back to work.

My home country is never at its best when it becomes the land of each one for himself. But that is the message behind almost everything this administration does. In Iraq each soldier needs to buy her own armored protection. At home each person on a New Orleans roof needs to find his or her way to safety. Today the policy is – we will try this and if it doesn’t work we will just keep doing it anyway.

It is corrosive this fear of being on one's own. The private acts of charity toward New Orleans, which I flew over yesterday en route home, show my country at its best. How long, however, will we wait before we have a government that does not seem so insistent, at home and abroad, from showing off my country at its worst?

Blog from the USA I: I've Got the Power (to stop traffic)

I am certain now that this was not a dream. This was an actual incident that happened to me yesterday at the Miami International Airport. Listen close.

I left the airport terminal to walk to the little park outside of Terminal E. To get there I needed to cross the four lanes of chaos where cars, vans and taxis leave off departing passengers. As I put my foot in the white-striped crosswalk a miracle happened. The cars stopped! Not one, all of them! They stopped for no other reason than to let me cross. I am not making this up.

Perhaps you have to live in Bolivia to understand the miracle of this. In Cochabamba, my friends, cars do not stop for pedestrians. Never. Ever. Okay, once around 2002 it happened to me but I think one exception in eight years does not change the rule. In fact, the actual rule seems to be speed up and aim at pedestrians, as if it were a point system of some kind. I even got knocked down once by a white Toyota (90% of the cars in Cochabamba are white Toyotas, as if Toyota had some kind of point system).

Now, there may be pathological reasons that I am so breath taken by the fact that the cars in the Miami Airport stopped for me. I confess, I may have a car-stopping obsession that I can trace back to when I was seven years old living in Whittier, California and the powers that be (God, for all I knew then) installed brand-spanking new traffic signals at the corner where I lived, complete with little buttons that made the light change and set off a pedestrian go signal. I discovered, to my great delight, that a certain size stick would smash the button into permanently-pressed mode and, without lifting a finger and from the deniability of my front yard, I could make four lanes of drivers screech to a maddening halt every 85 seconds. It was glorious, really.

I guess I am a pedestrian at heart. It has been 21 years since I got my first driver's license and in those 21 years I have only owned a car for 8. Not bad for someone who lived in California most all of that time. A Californian without a car is like a Bolivian politician without his own political party, a rare breed.

Here in Washington, DC this morning, while out for a run, I saw something even more amazing in pedestrian power. At the traffic lights they have a little timer that tells pedestrians exactly how long they have before the light changes and you become fair game for any car that wants to make road kill out of you. That is courteous. In Cochabamba there are no timers involved. If you step off the curb they assume you are a volunteer.

So there you have it. The US is great nation because, unlike so many in the world, you have 45 seconds to cross the street and in that moment, pedestrians are king. More powerful than a Hummer, more than a limousine with diplomatic plates. All this and bagels with cream cheese. Just some of the cultural advantages in the world's lone superpower.

A Day Without Cars

Today is one of my favorites in Cochabamba, “Pedestrian Day”. On this Sunday (repeated once each year) thee are no cars on the streets of this city of 700,000. No giant green Ford Explorers. No white 1991 Toyota station wagon taxis. No “trufi” minibuses imported from Korea (with the Korean lettering still on them as proof). No red, white and value painted Micros (that look like small re-painted US school buses).

No vehicles except for bikes, bikes in abundance, and families out on foot for the afternoon. Ice cream anyone?

Imagine. Imagine if my old US stomping grounds, San Francisco, did this for a day. Imagine flying on two wheels from the foot of Market Street up through the Haight, onward through Golden Gate Park and then to the Pacific Ocean, all without seeing a car.

Imagine. Imagine biking all the way from the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge to the upper west side in Manhattan with no honking or traffic. Imagine riding from downtown LA to Santa Monica without cars. Okay, not even I can imagine that.

Here is something really special that Bolivia has to offer to the rest of the world, a message. One day a year, just one day, say No Cars! It really isn’t quite so hard as you think and, truly, it is amazing to see (especially when it is isn’t accomplished because someone blocked the roads as a protest).

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A note to our regular readers: I haven’t been on a Blog strike this week. I have been on a wicked writing deadline for a report we are wrapping up – on how international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank influence countries’ budget policies. This is some of the more wonky work that we do at The Democracy Center. I’ll post a link when it is published. I also don’t think I have anything to say sufficient to distract people’s attention from the American meltdown in New Orleans. Meanwhile, I am going to be in the US for a week starting Monday and I’ll post something of note from there.