If Morales Wins, Will He Seek the Presidency?

Predicting the future in politics is always a dubious business. In Bolivia it is dubious en el extremo (Who predicted in 2001 that we would have five different Presidents in five years?). But with an army of fresh foreign reporters headed this way to cover Bolivia’s Presidential vote – many of whom read this Blog – here’s a bit of analysis and prediction that they ought to keep in mind as they try to interpret the strange dance of Bolivia’s unplanned elections.

Rule #1: Winning the Popular Vote is Not Winning the Presidency

Okay, let’s say that the polls are relatively accurate and not much changes between now and December 18th. If that is the case, then Evo Morales and MAS will likely finish in first place with (and this is a guess) somewhere between 30% to 35% of the vote. Tuto Quiroga comes in a strong second place with 25%. Samuel Doria Medina finishes third with 15% or so. The rest of the pack comes in with somewhere between 2% to 5% each.

To be sure, other scenarios are possible. Morales could ride a late surge and come close to 40% (MAS greatest hope is another lame statement against him out of the US Embassy like in 2002, but the Embassy is not that lame). Tuto could also find a last minute surge of Medina voters rushing to his side in an anti-Evo vote, a move Quiroga is trying to promote with public statements that, if he were running in third place he would drop out and back whomever could beat Morales.

I now present rule #1 for novice reporters of Bolivian politics: Coming in first in the popular vote does not mean you win the Presidency.

Once the vote is counted the real game begins, the behind-closed-doors negotiations between the parties in which the two top place finishers (under the Constitution, only they can be elected to the Presidency) try to assemble a block of 51% of the Congress. That vote in the Congress is how Bolivia elects its President, not the popular vote on December 18th.

If Quiroga should finish in first place, it seems a pretty clear scenario that Medina will join with him to get his 51% and deliver the former President a Presidency to call his own (Quiroga’s previous year as President was to serve out the term of the dying Hugo Banzer).

If Morales and Quiroga finish first and second respectively, Mr. Medina becomes the only Bolivian voter that matters, and he has certainly been sending out ample signals that an alliance with MAS is possible. This includes some sharpened rhetoric against foreign corporations, from the man who joined Bechtel as a 5% investor in the debacle of Bechtel’s water takeover in Cochabamba five years ago.

Evo’s Choice

Certainly there is ample speculation that MAS and Morales would eagerly join with Medina to give Bolivia its first indigenous President and one clearly dedicated to reversing the nation’s “Washington Consensus’ economic course. Such a deal would win Morales his long sought Presidency (this is his third run) and would probably deliver Medina and his backers an ample share of political power, especially in the government’s economic apparatus.

But there is also a very good chance that Morales and MAS might not contest the Presidency at all, and that comes from a source of mine that is about as close as one gets to Morales. Here’s why:

First, any deal with Medina would compromise a Morales/MAS government deeply from the start, and in particular on the two issues at the heart of the MAS campaign. A coalition that includes a leader in the Santa Cruz autonomy movement (Medina’s Vice-Presidential running mate) does not bode well for a forceful move forward to convene a Constituent Assembly. A coalition with deep connections to international corporations does not pave a smooth road to take back Bolivia’s gas and oil from those corporations.

Second, Morales would face a Congress that is assuredly going to be dedicated to blocking him at every turn. His base in Congress would be a clear minority and a good portion of the rest would love to see a Morales Presidency fall flat on its face.

Third, from the moment he assumes the Presidency Morales would face a mountain of high (an unrealistic) expectations from his supporters and from Bolivia’s social movements – an absolute guarantee of disappointment. And in Bolivia popular disappointment with politicians is not a pretty sight – hence its current average of a new President each year.

Evo’s Alternative

The alternative is for MAS to not seek the Presidency by wheeling and dealing for a 51% majority. Instead MAS could stand aside and let a very weak Tuto Quiroga take the Presidency and immediately turn its first place finish into political and street pressure for the convening of a Constituent Assembly. That Assembly would be empowered to both rewrite the political structure of the government and deal with issues such as taking back the nation’s gas and oil from the likes of British Gas, Shell, Enron and Repsol. Being a strong opposition instead of a weak government has its advantages, both for the issues MAS is promoting and its longer-term prospects for a successful Presidency instead of a failed one.

This is clearly the debate within MAS in the run up to the December 18 vote and will continue to be afterwards if Morales finishes first. Standing in the way of such a strategy is the nation’s most powerful ideology – not socialism, not capitalism, but opportunism. Political campaigns are fueled by a sense of self-destiny. Candidates couldn’t do all they do without it. If Morales and MAS finish with close to 40% of the vote or higher, a real chance to take the Presidency will be a hard thing to walk away from, especially for all those people who can get jobs out if it.

So my friends in the press, welcome to the complicated chess game that is Bolivian politics. And oh yes, if you come to Cochabamba, be sure to try the Pique Macho.

The Battle for Plaza 4 de Noviembre

This morning I went strolling through the north of the city, following my three-year-old daughter’s end-of-school-year performance at her day care. It was a great exhibition of two, three, and four year olds performing Little Red Riding Hood and also Bolivian traditional dances, for their parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and grandparents. Mariana, in the great tradition of her older sister before her, is really good at shyly mouthing the words while her body remains frozen during the supposed dancing. The hamburgers afterwards interested her more.

Not far away is the Plaza 4 de Noviembre, a traffic roundabout with a fountain in the middle that, for some reason I don’t quite understand, takes on the character of a political battlefield during election time. With three weeks to go before Bolivia heads into an epic election for President and Congress, the circle was in full battle mode, red vs. blue.

Red vs. Blue

Red is the party of Podemos and the leading right wing candidate, former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga. His partisans lined up along one side of the curve, wearing red t-shirts, waving large red flags, and attempting to lure passers by in cars to take small red leaflets promoting his candidacy.

Blue is the party of MAS and the leading left wing candidate, socialist Evo Morales. His partisans also lined a portion of the circle – blue t-shirts, blue leaflets, and alongside his blue flag the multicolored, checkered “Wipala”, the flag of Bolivia’s indigenous communities.

Both sides also had loudspeakers set up blaring campaign music. Quiroga’s is, to be honest, a really annoying jingle that one might confuse with a song for toothpaste if one were not paying close attention. MAS loudspeakers were blaring the traditional pan flute music of the Andes.

In the dueling symbolism you can actually see something of the campaign itself if you look close, two visions of Bolivia. One modern, market-driven and a little too keen to sound like the USA. The other is calling Bolivia to its indigenous roots. One claims it knows far better than the other how to actually govern a country. The other claims that, what it lacks in experience governing it makes up for in a commitment to govern for the poor and indigenous majority.

Preparado, but to do What?

It is an interesting point, this, “we know how to govern and you don’t” argument. Quiroga is pressing the point hard in his last efforts to close the deal with voters. Yesterday, during a drive-through visit to Cochabamba, he declared that Morales, “is not prepared to govern.” Preparado, it is a word here in Bolivia that generally means you have a formal education, in a country where most people don’t. You here the term, with the word “not” planted before it, a lot about MAS from its critics.

MAS shot back that the “preparation” that Quiroga has “from Harvard University” has mainly served to assassinate Bolivians, hand away the nation’s natural gas to foreigners and to have Bolivia bow down to the US Embassy.

[Note: I am not sure but I don’t think that Quiroga went to Harvard. I did though, and in fact, it doesn’t automatically prepare you to govern, certainly not as much as those with Harvard diplomas think it does.]

This debate, while exaggerated from both sides, is an interesting one. Which is more important, to know how to assemble a team of capable technicians that can make a government function, or having a government that is resolutely committed to the interests of Bolivians rather than foreign investors. Quiroga was, for example, Vice-President in the government that handed Cochabamba’s water system over to Bechtel in a one-bidder process that essentially amounted to robbery (a guaranteed 16% profit every year for forty years). In an interview with Bill Finnegan of the New Yorker Quiroga defended that give away:

I mean Bolivia is not, it's not the Brazil of the world where they're lining up to invest in different things.

It is not hard to envision the same kinds of excuses being cooked up by a new Quiroga government to justify bargain giveaways of Bolivia’s gas.

As for MAS, it has a better backbench of people ready to govern that many analysts give it credit for. One of the people I saw out there this morning, wearing his blue Evo shirt, was a man who had previously served as Bolivia’s Ambassador to two different countries. MAS may lag behind in degrees from Harvard, but it isn’t without some governing weight of its own.

A Preview

All this leads me to a preview of my next article on the elections. I don’t think that MAS will try to govern at all, even if Morales does win (as seems more and more likely) first place on December 18th. My sources close to Morales tell me they have another plan in mind of what to do with a first place finish.

Stay tuned.

Update on Bechtel vs. Bolivia -- A Settlement in the Works?

For months, Bolivian government officials negotiating with the foreign corporate consortium suing Bolivia over the Cochabamba water revolt, have been saying privately and publicly that they are nearing an accord with the companies. Under the agreement, the corporations – Bechtel of the US, Abengoa of Spain, and Edison of Italy – would drop their case in exchange for a symbolic payment of a few dollars.

To be clear, such a settlement would be an enormous victory for the years of effort by thousands of people worldwide who have fought this case.

Our news conference in Cochabamba on Tuesday, warning that the case had been taken by the World Bank and could cost local families as much as $250 each, provoked a reaction from Bolivian officials. An agreement is just weeks away, they claim, and they warned that our campaign aiming pressure anew at the corporations could jeopardize that. Jeopardizing such an agreement is not the aim of The Democracy Center or the leaders of the water revolt and we have told the government that we will give them time to complete a deal.

We would have kept this development private, except that the government itself released the news this morning in an article in today's edition of Opinion. This explains to our readers and friends around the world why we have held off initiating our global action campaign. To be clear, if this news from the government proves to be incorrect or if these negotiations drag out too long, an international action campaign is exactly what we will launch.

We will obviously have more to say about this in the days ahead.

Launching the Final Battle in Bolivia's Water War

Yesterday I broke eight years of practice of not appearing before the Bolivian media. I joined with the head of the Cochabamba water company (SEMAPA) and the Coordinadora for the Defense of Water to announce the last battle against Bechtel and its corporate partners in their efforts to sue Cochabamba for $25 million. Here's the article in the daily Opinion.

As long-time followers of our work know, in January-April 2000 the people of Cochabamba took to the streets to take back their public water system which had been privatized six months earlier into the hands of three foreign corporations – Bechtel of the US, Edison of Italy, and Abengoa of Spain. The corporations raised rates astronomically for the city's residents. One seventeen-year-old boy was killed and more than a hundred people were injured when the government of former dictator Hugo Banzer sent out troops to stop the protests. Here's the link to our reports on the water revolt.

In November 2002 the three corporations filed their multi-million demand before a closed-door trade court at the World Bank (ICSID) and shortly afterwards The Democracy Center and its allies in Bolivia and around the world launched a massive citizen effort to fight them. More than a thousand people wrote emails to the heads of the companies demanding that the case be dropped. Three hundred organizations from 43 nations endorsed a legal petition to the World Bank demanding that the case be opened up to public scrutiny and participation. Direct actions have been held at Bechtel's headquarters in California and Holland.

On October 21 the tribunal in the case ruled that it has legal jurisdiction to hear the corporations' demand and put the people of Cochabamba on trial. If the corporations win they could force the people of Cochabamba to pay an amount equal to what it costs to run the local water company for three years. Funds that would otherwise be used to provide water to families who have none would be used to pay off three of the wealthiest corporations in their respective countries.

So today The Democracy Center and the Coordinadora ready an international action campaign to send a message to the heads of these three corporations. That message is that the cost of their continued assault against Cochabamba will be a furious citizen campaign taken to their offices, their homes, and their public reputations. Just as international solidarity work demonstrated two weeks ago that President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is not beyond public reach, so it is for the heads of these companies.

[Note: Watch for an action alert on this blog within a few days.]

This is a case with wide repercussions, beyond water and beyond Bolivia. As this country seeks to recover its oil and gas (a position that even the conservative candidates for President proclaim on television), the biggest threat is not finding investors it is fighting off potential trade court cases just like this one. This point was made by Joseph Stiglitz in the Sunday New York Times magazine article:

"They could do it." If Bolivia abrogated its existing contracts, he said, some of the non-Western oil giants would gladly negotiate new deals on better terms. "Petronas" - the Malaysian state oil company - "would come in, China would come in, India would come in." If Morales did nationalize the country's oil and gas, the multinational oil companies that currently hold the Bolivian concessions, including Repsol, a Spanish company, and British Gas, would probably sue Bolivia in an international court and try to organize an international boycott. But Stiglitz dismisses that threat: "If you had three, four, five first-rate companies around the world willing to compete for Bolivia's resources, no boycott would work."

These closed-door trade courts are being used by international corporations to attack everything from California environmental laws to Bolivian demands for affordable water rates. Corporations worldwide are watching this case. If powerful Bechtel can be beaten by Bolivians, then other corporations will take extra caution before following in its footsteps.

In April of 2000, when Cochabambinos took to the streets, they called it la ultima batalla (the last battle). In reality that last battle begins now. It is one that citizens everywhere in the world have a huge stake in winning.

Today’s New York Times Magazine Article on Evo Morales and Bolivia

Today’s New York Times Magazine includes an article well-worth reading for those interested in Bolivia, Che’s Second Coming. The article, by Times writer David Reiff, is a good, fair look at current events in Bolivia and at Morales’ candidacy. I spent a good deal of time with Reiff when he was here and I congratulate him on his solid journalism and evocative writing.

A couple of other comments.

One thing that I applaud is that Reiff, quite rightly, explains that the current wave of protest and political change in Bolivia is the fusion of a rejection of the failed policies of the Washington Consensus economic model and the demand for greater indigenous power. He explains why the drive to cancel Bolivia’s contracts with foreign oil companies, and to demand better deals, is a totally viable policy, a fact underscored by Economic Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. I also think he is fair in criticizing the MAS position that none of the Bolivian coca crop goes to the illegal drug trade. In terms of Evo, the piece is balanced and fair.

The article also includes some great photographs from our friend here, Kathryn Cook, and some good analysis from our close colleague Roberto Fernandez Teran, an economist at the University of San Simon.

How Bolivia Ended up With Elections by Presidential Decree

Dear Readers:

It appears that Bolivia's elections are well set for December 18th and the campaigns are in full swing here in Cochabamba. To explain, briefly, how Bolivia finally arrived at an election date set by presidential decree we have asked our Bolivian colleague, Boris Rios, to once again offer an analysis. His article was adapted to English by Democracy Center intern Gretchen Gordon.

Jim Shultz

How Bolivia Ended up With Elections by Presidential Decree

On November 1st, Bolivian President, Eduardo Rodríguez, issued a presidential decree dictating a new distribution of congressional seats and setting a new date of December 18th for national elections. Elections had previously been scheduled for December 4th, but, after being called into question by Bolivia's Constitutional Court and subsequent power struggles within the congress, it appeared for a time that the elections might not take place at all.

For six weeks, Bolivia's congress debated, without solution, the issue of how to redistribute congressional seats based on the most recent national census (in 2001), to assure equity based on regional population. The issue proved unresolveable, however, because the redistribution required that some departments (La Paz, Oruro and Potosí) lose seats, while others (Cochabamba and Santa Cruz) gain representation. Bolivia’s national electoral officials finally announced that the delay in Congress had made it impossible to hold elections on December 4th as scheduled.

Faced with a looming political crisis and national uncertainty, President Rodríguez took matters into his own hands to resolve the distribution question through presidential decree. The decree is essentially a compromise which redistributes four congressional seats: an addition of three for Santa Cruz and one for Cochabamba, and a decrease of two seats for La Paz and one for each of Oruro and Potosí. The decree then set the 18th of December as the new date for both national and local elections.

All of the presidential candidates declared their support for the decree, as did the majority of Bolivia’s congressional delegations, with the exception of Santa Cruz, which maintained its demand of no less than four additional seats.

Legally, the presidential decree must be approved by a majority of the congress in order to become law. Congress reacted by selecting to neither approve nor reject the decree, though the Santa Cruz delegation chose not to attend the session in which the decree was debated.

The current situation is that elections are moving forward for December 18th. However, absent the congress’ explicit approval of the decree, the door remains open for yet another legal challenge to planned elections.

Sliding into the Soap Dish of the US War on Drugs

Dear Readers:

I am proud to present to you another guest Blog from one of our stellar Democracy Center interns. This one, about the San Sebastian women’s jail in Cochabamba, was written by Christina Haglund, a native of Portland Oregon and a former US Peace Corps volunteer. Christina and other Center volunteers (US and Bolivian) have been visiting the jail as part of an investigation into the human toll of the US-sponsored War on Drugs. I think you will find the article well worth reading.

Jim Shultz


Sliding into the Soap Dish

They call it La Jobónera. The “soap dish”, I thought the nickname had been born because at first glance, the place looks like a wash-by-hand laundromat. Clotheslines run criss-cross through the open patio, giving shade like a tree as it drips dry above a place that feels more like hopelessly passing time than life. There is a constant scrubbing noise. Water is always running somewhere. Braids are tied back and sleeves are rolled up. But no, I was wrong.

The “soap dish” has nothing to do with spending hours a day soaking and scrubbing soapy clothes. It gets its name because it is both getting in and getting out is slippery. Welcome to the San Sebastian prison.

La Jabónera is not just any prison. It is a confined residence for women, most of them supposed narco-traffickers, and their children. A jail that does not provide food to its prisoners. A jail filled with 112 women, many of who do not know how long they will reside there, and are guilty until proven innocent.

I sat with a group of women, varying in ages from 18 to 58. I was the only one without thick black braids draped down my back, the only one not dressed in a pleated traditional Cochabambino skirt or laced shirt. We labeled dirty clothes that had been delivered from the outside by sewing colored thread into the hems. I asked how long they have been here. One woman responded that she no longer remembers. The others chuckled.

“Why are you here?” I asked. One by one they confessed Law 1008 as the reason for their imprisonment. Not one looked me in the eyes. I come from the country that wrote this law, I told them. They did not know that this law was originally written in English, and that it came from the United States.

The War on Drugs that is being fought in Bolivia is producing statistics that give the appearance of success in the battlefield. The Embassy of the United States in Bolivia annually reports the number of detained narco-traffickers. That number has been exponentially increasing since the implementation of Law 1008 in 1988. This is the “Law to Regulate Coca and Controlled Substances”. Any alleged association with drugs (including many cases in which the evidence is beyond ludicrous) condemns an individual to loss of freedom, family and rights. These people become numbers in the US database under the category “narco-trafficker”.

Who are these narco-traffickers and does their imprisonment truthfully reflect victory in our abstract war against drugs?

A prisoner of the war on drugs was kind enough to share her story with us. We were sitting in the jail sewing room where, thanks to a local non-profit, many women learn the seamstress trade during idle imprisonment time. Two cholitas were machine embroidering tablecloths and pillowcases. Vacant sewing machines surrounded us. We all drank refresco (soda). “Why are they writing things down?” asked a woman in Quechua.

Forty-year-old Marlitza was telling of her arrival to the San Sebastian prison 4 years and 8 months ago. She was simply storing a package for a friend. The package happened to contain chemicals used to transform the coca leaf into cocaine. She searched her brassiere for tissue and guided us to a concrete side-room for privacy. She cried to us of her family, shattered by her imprisonment, separating her husband and her three children. The youngest child resides in the jail with her. “It wasn’t mine” was all she could say. But that didn’t cut her sentence to anything short of 6 years and 8 months. Is Marlitza a triumph in the War on Drugs? Is her existence in jail mitigating the problem of narcotics? Or did she just slip into the “soap dish” through no fault of her own?

Law 1008 strips a person of their rights as a citizen. There is no justice. People are guilty until proven innocent. Walter Vino, a National Police guard of the jail whispered to me on my way out of the jail “I think there are more innocents here than guilty”. The lives of people should not be determined by an unlucky slippery slope that lands hundreds in jail for the sake of misleading statistics that imply that the War on Drugs is being won.

[Editor’s note from Jim Shultz: Last March, in its formal report on the war on drugs in Bolivia, the US Embassy reported that, in 2004, total arrests on drug-related charges numbered 4,138. That is nearly double the figure for 1999, when The Democracy Center wrote about the case of one innocent US drug war victim, Adela Rojas Rodriguez, who spent 22 months in the San Sebastian jail with her infant baby son, Josue.]

An Invitation to Our Book Presentation in Cochabamba

To our readers in Cochabamba, we have an invitation for you. This Friday night I will be presenting the newly published Spanish translation of our book on the IMF and Bolivia’s Black February, Deadly Consequences. The book is renamed in Spanish: Lessons in Blood and Fire (Lecciones de Sangre y Fuego), a phrase used by then Vice-President Carlos Mesa when I interviewed him for the book.

Here are the details:

Friday, November 11
6:30 pm
CESU (the research arm of the University of San Simon)
Calle Calama entre Nataniel Aguirre y Esteban Arce

There will be some live music, both from Bolivia and the US, a couple of other speakers, and time for question and discussion. If you are in town, come on by. I am told it is best to get there by 6:30 to get a seat. I’ll be doing a similar set of presentations in La Paz later this month and will post details when we have them, here on the Blog.

The Dangers of Political Hubris

As long-time followers of The Democracy Center know, a main focus of ours back in California was initiative politics. In 1996 we published my book on initiatives, The Initiative Cookbook, which remains a staple still among activists nationwide. We advised campaigns and on election nights NPR brought me in to play pundit.

So, I have kept my eyes on the wild special election in my home state, in which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put his power on the line and found it smashed by voters back in his face yesterday. Here is the political lesson I see in those results, one that stretches from Sacramento to Washington and on to Bolivia: Beware the curse of political hubris (arrogance).

I have worked around politics and politicians for more than thirty years (I started young) and one thing you see over and over again is how full of themselves people get when elected and fawned on. It’s heady stuff for all involved. Hey, none of us are exempt. In 1984 I worked the New Hampshire primary for Gary Hart and in the months following our surprise victory there everyone involved was talking about what job we might get in the White House the next year. Of course, as it turns out that would have involved working for Ronald Reagan.

Schwarzenegger thought he was the new century’s equivalent of Hiram Johnson, the California progressive governor who championed the battle against the railroads and won approval of the initiative process in 1911. Arnold’s targets, however, were not robber barons but nurses, firefighters and teachers. Voters didn’t buy the comparison and rightly so.

A year ago Schwarzenegger caught the hubris bug and converted himself from a bipartisan moderate to, quite literally, former Governor Pete Wilson on steroids – same staff, same right wing vision. Wilson sat at Schwarzenegger’s side last night as he got the bad news. Now his governorship is becoming the political equivalent of all those really bad original sequels to Planet of the Apes (I think one involved them visiting a shopping mall in Van Nuys). California’s actor-governor is on the march from strong to silly.

President Bush suffers from a hubris problem of his own, one that didn’t take a landslide to acquire and which has produced far more damaging results. What kind of arrogance does it take to carry the nation to war based on a lie? What kind of hubris does it take to break the law to attack those who call you on your lies? Bush walks in the footsteps of every second term President (from both parties) of the past forty years. Johnson thought he had a mandate to escalate in Vietnam and fudge fatality statistics. Nixon thought he had justification to use the powers of the federal government against his political opponents. Reagan sold arms to Iran to fund his illegal contra war in Nicaragua. Clinton was enthralled by a thong, an arguably minor offense by comparison.

Here in Bolivia in a month’s time voters will go to the polls and elect a new President, most likely a right-wing former IBM executive who wants to restore order and safety for foreign investors or a left-wing coca grower leader who wants to put the country’s resources into public hands. Both Tuto Quiroga and Evo Morales are men with a great capacity for political hubris and, along with their supporters, a great capacity for overestimating the mandate they will capture from a wickedly split electorate and wildly polarized country.

I know a few antidotes for hubris. First, live with two teenagers and a three year old. You will find no shortage of observations about all your shortcomings, from mismatched clothing (my specialty) to not putting enough green food coloring in someone’s oatmeal. If that isn’t political enough, start a Blog and invite comments. If you are wrong on the facts, someone will catch it. If you are sloppy in your analysis, someone will point it out. So far I haven’t gotten too much comment on my clothing problems, but that may be the benefit of using just a headshot.

Blog from the Summit of the Americas

Readers: Here is another dispatch from one of The Democracy Center’s fine volunteers, Gretchen Gordon of the US. Gretchen is part of an entourage of Bolivian and US volunteers on site at the Summit of the Americas this week in Argentina. I think her on-the-ground report is a good perspective for those of you following President Bush’s visit from afar.

Blog from the Summit of the Americas

As heads of state from 33 countries in the Hemisphere prepare to converge on the beach city of Mar del Plata, Argentina for the economic Summit of the Americas in the coming days, outside the barricaded Security Zone, a different sort of convergence is already in full swing. Under the banner of "Another Americas is Possible," the People´s Summit of the Americas, the parallel meeting of social movements from throughout Latin America, was inaugurated Tuesday with a full day of workshops, panels, and cultural events aimed at proposing alternatives to the official liberal economic Summit agenda. While social movements participating in this third People´s Summit continue proposing alternatives to the Washington Consensus of economic liberalization, increasing U.S. intervention abroad in recent years has solidified the focus of this year’s summit in the unequivocal rejection of what is seen as a growing U.S. economic, political, and military imperialism of Latin America.

The FTAA Agenda

The Summit of the Americas process was initiated at the first summit in Miami in 1994 with the focal point of creating a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) spanning the continent. Eleven years later after several failed negotiating rounds, the FTAA looks like it likely will not come to fruition. The U.S. government, however, continues to push for the inclusion of the FTAA in Summit proceedings. It faces strong opposition from many Latin American countries, including most notably Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil, which reject many of the expansive liberalization policies mandated by the FTAA and call for greater access to U.S. markets for Latin America products. Argentinean president Nestor Kirchner has firmly rejected the inclusion in Summit proceedings of language relating to a restart in FTAA negotiations, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has predicted that the summit will instead see the "burial" of the FTAA.

Juan Gonzalez, leader of the Center of Argentinean Workers, speaking at an inaugurating press conference for the People´s Summit Tuesday, celebrated the contribution of the efforts of social movements in the defeat of the FTAA. "The FTAA was not able to be enacted in January of 2005 as scheduled because the people said "no" to the FTAA... "Today we have the satisfaction of having exceeded the expectations of participants from across Latin America."

While representatives of social movements from around the continent celebrated the failure of the FTAA, they warned that the neoliberal policies included in that agreement have found a home in other institutions and forums promoted by Washington, such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the Andean Free Trade Agreement, and as conditions of lending agreements by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Who Decides Latin America’s Development Path?

A central critique of the over 100 organizations participating in the People´s Summit is that the economic and political policies generated in the official summit are imposed on the people of Latin America by the U.S. and Latin American governments described by De la Cueva "surrounded by their walls, each time more isolated from their people."

"We have to say to the presidents that are going to be coming here that they have a bit of dignity and that they don’t buy the US agenda...," said De la Cueva. "We’re here to put forth proposals from the people."

Chechua indigenous representative Blanca Chancosa criticized U.S. rhetoric of increasing democracy in the region, "We want a true democracy in our countries. We don’t want a patronizing democracy like Mr. Bush wants to impose," stated Chancosa. "The countries of South America should be sovereign with dignity. Not an imposition, not a single owner who decides the lives of the people and that is supposed to be democracy. To this we say no."

Many of the social movements gathered in Mar del Plata are raising concerns over what they see as the increasing threat of U.S. military intervention in the continent. Argentinean Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, spoke against increasing U.S. military presence through initiatives such as Plan Puebla-Panama and Plan Columbia, the planned opening of an FBI office in Paraguay, and interventions such as that in Haiti. "Our people don’t need more armies, much less North American armies. What we need are resources for healthcare, for education, for life- not for killing."

Discussions both within the official summit and the People´s Summit will continue through Saturday. U.S. proposals on the FTAA are likely to be met with resistance within the official proceedings, and it remains to be seen what the final summit declaration will contain in other areas. Outside the security barricades, however, the message from the People´s Summit is unequivocal, that another Americas is not only possible, but urgent.

The Serving of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada – Postscript

The serving of legal papers on former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was big news this week in Bolivia, featured (with photos included) in much of the Bolivian press. Here are a few after thoughts on the case and what it means, as well as some thoughts about the flurry of comments on the Blog this week.

First, I offer up a reasonable correction. Sanchez de Lozada is not a convicted criminal. He is the subject of a formal Bolivian government prosecution in its introductory phase. On October 14, 2004 the Congress of Bolivia (dominated, it should be pointed out, by Sanchez de Lozada’s own MNR party and the allies that elected him President) authorized the prosecution of the self-exiled President and a large group of former aides. Most of them have fulfilled their legal obligation to provide testimony so that state legal authorities can determine whether a full prosecution is warranted. Sanchez de Lozada has refused to respond to that legal order, requiring him to return and provide testimony.

Second, the legal service in Washington was a legalized process. In the District of Columbia citizens can serve legal papers to the target of a legal action, provided that the appropriate notarizations are filed, as they were in this instance. That said, I have no doubt that Sanchez de Lozada’s lawyers will claim that the papers have to be served by the US government. If that is the case, the events this week demonstrate how easy it is for regular citizens to do the job that Bolivians have waited four months for the US government to do. The real question here is why the US government hasn’t fulfilled its role.

Third, the actions taken by activists on Washington were cleared carefully by lawyers involved in the case here in Bolivia. Those involved in pressing the case felt it would be an extremely important strategy to light a fire under both the Bolivian and US authorities involved.

Fourth, on this Blog one of the organizers of the meeting where Sanchez de Lozada was served complained about the action as an intrusion. No doubt, all this brought some discomfort to those who thought they were attending a civil gathering over wine and cheese with a former head of state. Weigh that discomfort, however against the pain that Anna Colque’s mother feels in her chest every morning, knowing that the Bolivian government assassinated her daughter on a rooftop and that no one, at any level, has had to pay any price for it. The demand for justice has a way of intruding on people’s happy parties sometimes. That, quite frankly, is a good thing.

Sanchez de Lozada’s precise responsibility is appropriately something to be debated and decided in court. However, he clearly has no intention of letting that happen. It is for that reason that Mr. Sanchez de Lozada can safely assume that every public appearance he now makes it likely to end similarly. Any organization wishing to have him as a speaker should be aware that his dark history in Bolivia will follow him in the room wherever he goes. Wine, cheese, and the demand for justice. That is the menu from here on out.

Let us not forget. Sanchez de Lozada’s actions in October 2003 where not really the stuff of, “well, maybe he went to far, or maybe no.” His own handpicked Vice President, Carlos Mesa, broke with him over the killings that took place here. If you have some problem understanding the significance of that, ponder this question.

How far would George Bush have to go down the road of repression before Dick Cheney made a public statement declaring that the President had gone to far?

On Todos Santos the dead of October and February 2003 came back and tapped Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada on the shoulder and told him, “Oye, Presidednte, todavia aqui estamos.” Whether and whenever he returns to Bolivia to face the charges of which he is formally accused, those dead will follow him everywhere he goes and most especially to every public appearance he makes in the country that shields him by its official inaction.

Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada Served in Washington with Bolivian Demand to Appear – Photos

Months ago the Bolivian government issued a formal order for President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to return to Bolivia to give testimony regarding his potential prosecution for murder. The charges relate to his government’s repression during 2002 that left dozens dead, hundreds wounded, and eventually forced his ouster from office.

Well, for months, the US departments of State and Justice have failed to meet their legal requirement to serve the Sanchez de Lozada the legal order sent by the Bolivian Attorney General. Perhaps the US bureaucracy lost it. Perhaps they just couldn’t find the former President’s house in Washington.

On Monday the President of Bolivia Human Rights Assembly and the organization representing Sanchez de Lozada’s victims sent a fax to Secretary of State Rice and US Attorney General Gonzales, letting them know that Sanchez de Lozada was scheduled to make an appearance last night at a Princeton University event in Washington. When US officials failed to show up to do the job, two US activists, Sara Grusky and Doug Hertzler formally served Sanchez de Lozada the formal papers.

Here are photos of Sanchez de Lozada receiving those documents last night.

Under the laws of the District of Colombia, Bolivia’s former President has now formally been served the Bolivian Attorney General’s demand. Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is now legally required to return to Bolivia to give testimony on the charges against him.

The question that remains is whether the US government will force him to comply with that demand or will block the Bolivian legal system and give another deposed leader exile, in the long and shameful tradition of Somoza of Nicaragua, the Shah of Iran and so many more.

Elections December 18

Last night Bolivia's President, Eduardo Rodríguez, issued an executive decree dividing up the seats in the Congress by region (a compromise formula) and setting December 18 as the day for Bolivia's national elections.

More details later.

Halloween and Todos Santos

Readers: The politics of resolving who has how many seats in Congress and of trying to set a firm date for elections continues. I spoke to one of the Congressional candidates today from MAS and he thinks that some sort of resolution, either by Presidential decree or otherwise, is pretty imminent. We’ll keep you posted and also, thanks to all the commenters who have helped shed light on the debate. Meanwhile:

Halloween and Todos Santos

Last night my three-year-old daughter experienced her first Halloween. By US standards it wasn’t much. I came home from work wearing a rubber monster mask (which she fortunately found to be more silly than scary) and then indoctrinated her into that most-USA of traditions, “trick or treat”. In our case this involved her putting on a pair of springy antenna as a costume and knocking repeatedly on the door to our home office to scream “trick or treat”. This was rewarded by my putting candy in a small plastic pumpkin that I also managed to find for sale on short notice on a street corner.

To be clear, all this was pale in comparison to Halloween back home in San Francisco. The first year that my eldest daughter (then six and freshly new to the US) had a US Halloween she thought she must have gone to heaven. You mean kids all over the city are going to dress up (she was a Dalmatian puppy, mommy-made) and go door to door and get candy? That made more of an impression on her than our chance positioning the night before at the end of the Castro Street transvestite parade. Elly kept exclaiming, “Que bonito” as dozens of well-coiffed men drove up in convertibles, most yelling “Hello there little girl,” to her little waving hands.

She was not, unfortunately, nearly so impressed when I came to her school dressed as a nun (bearded then). That costume did win me the friendship of her fifth grade teacher however, who often showed up in the Castro himself in full drag, and not just on Halloween. Well, that’s San Francisco.

I digress.

Halloween is really not much of a holiday in Bolivia. It seems to mainly show its face near Cochabamba’s solitary Burger King. Here that is the rough equivalent of a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco promoting Chinese New Year, I suppose.

Here in Bolivia the moment in which the spirits and the living find themselves in close quarters is not celebrated with tiny versions of witches or The Incredibles wandering the streets. In Bolivia the action is in the cemeteries. Tonight, the night before Todos Santos, some families will sleep in the cemeteries, near or on the graves of their loved ones. Tomorrow the cemeteries will fill, a collage of family picnics with their dead. Tablecloths will be filled with the favorite foods of lost fathers, mothers and grandparents. Tanta wahwahs, fist-sized cookies baked in the shape of people will be eaten and handed to the wandering children who say a prayer for the deceased in exchange for a little food.

There is concern here in Bolivia that Halloween will slowly invade its way here and crowd out Todos Santos. Already some municipalities are prohibiting the practice of sleeping in the graveyard. More and more Bolivian five year olds can be seen showing up with black high-peaked witches hats. Older people fret openly that these children will grow up forgetting Todos Santos altogether, replacing the season with sacks of candy. You do have to admit, in a contest of holiday traditions, the one that involves fistfuls of dulces has a big starting advantage over one that involves sitting in a blazing early summer sun in a graveyard. I think my littlest would be swayed.

Scoff if you will, with proclamations that it is a free word and people can choose any darn end of October/start of November celebration they like. But all this is a part of the “we’re losing our culture” fear that lurks just beneath the surface in the Bolivian psyche. It is not unfounded, to be sure. The current generation of adults has already pretty much dispensed with traditional clothing, in favor of cheap imported t-shirts emblazoned with such gems as “Mickey’s Bowl-O-Rrama, Milwaukee”.

Perhaps there is ample room in Bolivia for both traditions. Perhaps Bolivians will find a way to preserve the rich culture they have inherited while still dipping into some traditions from the north. When I lived in San Francisco I celebrated both Chinese and Western New Year (and preferred the one with the big dragon).

In the meanwhile, que viva Todos Santos. And do send some bite sized Butterfingers down here if you can.