You Too Can Have a Blue Jesus for $80,000

The world’s largest Jesus is now blue. Well, for the next ten minutes or so.

Cochabamba is home to what is claimed to be the largest statue of Jesus in the world, El Cristo de la Concordia. It is, supposedly (I haven’t personally measured it) just a few centimeters taller than the Jesus statue in Rio de Janeiro. Legend has it than when the Brazilians complained that the Cochabamba Jesus should be no more than exactly 33 meters tall because he died at 33, the Cochabambinos are said to have replied, “If he was born in December and died in April he was really 33 and a little more, so we made ours 33 meters and a little more.” So goes the legend.

The statue is by far the largest icon in the city. Its only rival, a short-lived one, was a massive inflated Ronald MacDonald that used to sit atop the roof of the MacDonalds here before it closed. I dreamt once that the Jesus statue smote the enormous red-haired clown with lightning and he popped. But I am pretty sure I dreamt that.

For years since its construction (which was supposed to be for the Pope’s visit to Bolivia in 1988, but the city ran out of money and for years we just had Jesus’ feet) the giant savior has been illuminated at night by bright white lights. Sitting atop one of the taller hills in the city, it makes Jesus look like it is floating in air.

This week all that changed when the city invested $80,000 to have an Italian firm equip the son of God (depending on your outlook, of course) with a menagerie of colored lights that alternate every ten minutes or so. Look up one minute and Jesus is a faint yellow. Take a few bites of your hamburger at a corner stand and look up again and he is purple. And shooting out from his head like a broadband connection to the heavens is a beam of light that matches the color of the moment.

I just walked to the store a few minutes ago and Jesus was a bright blue, the shade of a dimly lit aquarium.

So now, in addition to being able to debate Evo, coca, land reform and gas nationalization, we can debate whether a city that’s poor should have spent 110 annual minimum wage salaries to make Jesus glow. And if we tire of debating that, we can argue whether mauve is more marvelous, or blue is more blessed.

Meanwhile, I will ponder what odd observations of Cochabamba from on high Jesus might be sending to heaven up through that purple-beamed broadband connection. Those might well be worth $80 K.

A Day of International Solidarity with Bolivia (October 17)

Readers:

Below is an announcement from one of our guest Bloggers, Gretchen Gordon (also one of our gas and oil researchers), about the upcoming International Day of Action in Solidarity with Bolivia. We hope that many of our readers will join in.

Jim Shultz

A Day of International Solidarity with Bolivia (October 17)

On October 17, people across the world who have never thought they had anything to do with Bolivians will hopefully be changing their minds.

This International Day of Action in Solidarity with Bolivia is an effort sponsored by the newly initiated Bolivia Solidarity Network. The goal of the event is two-fold. First, it aims to increase awareness about Bolivia and to call attention to current issues facing Bolivians. Second, it seeks to build an international base of solidarity with the Bolivian people; both to lend support to social movements as well as to learn from the rich knowledge and experiences they have to offer the rest of the world.

A Focus on the Case of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada

A central focus of the Day of Action is to call attention to the campaign by Bolivians to bring former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada – who currently resides in the U.S. – to trial for human rights abuses. October marks the three-year anniversary of the killings of Bolivian civilians by Sánchez de Lozada’s government in what later became known as the Gas War of 2003.

In 2003, when Sánchez de Lozada’s government readied plans to export Bolivian gas (at bargain prices) to the U.S. via Chile, citizens staged massive protests and blockades. Sánchez de Lozada declared a national emergency and deployed the military into the streets of some of Bolivia’s poorest indigenous neighborhoods. On October 17th, after even his own Vice-President denounced the killings, Sánchez de Lozada resigned as president and boarded a plane to the U.S., leaving behind him 67 Bolivians dead, and hundreds wounded.

“Sixty-seven lives destroyed, sixty-seven families that have to reconstruct their lives; mothers without children, fathers without children, children without fathers, grandparents without grandchildren,” explains Monica Mendizabal, a member of the Bolivian Comite Impulsor, one of the main organizations pushing to bring Sánchez de Lozada to trial.

Efforts by subsequent Bolivian governments to bring Sánchez de Lozada back to Bolivia to testify in a Trial of Responsibility have been obstructed by the U.S. government, which has for more than a year failed to serve Sánchez de Lozada with the official Bolivian government request for his return.

The case against the former President has such huge significance for Bolivians (President Morales raised it in his recent speech before the UN General Assembly) because of the desire throughout Latin America to end a vicious political culture of impunity. While the man who sat at the head of the 2003 killings lives comfortably in the wealthy suburbs of Maryland, Bolivians at home are left trying to repair the economic and human damages his policies inflicted.

For the families of the victims, if Sanchez de Lozada is not held accountable, the message that is sent to all future political leaders, Evo Morales included, is that it doesn’t matter what you do running the country, you can always find a comfortable retirement elsewhere.

A Mix of Action and Educational Activities

In addition to highlighting the case against Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, other events during the Day of Action will focus attention on issues of fair trade, economic justice, indigenous rights, and culture, and help to build relationships between Bolivian and non-Bolivian communities where each of us live.

Events are currently planned for 15 cities in eight different countries, from an educational forum in Toronto and video screenings in Sydney to a petition campaign in Galway and a march to the San Francisco City Hall. Visit the Bolivia Solidarity Network website to see if there’s an event planned in your town. If there isn't already something planned in your community and you'd like to start something, contact the Bolivia Solidarity Network for ideas and help.

The International Day of Action in Solidarity with Bolivia on October 17th is an opportunity to raise awareness in your community, to build bridges between Bolivians and non-Bolivians, and to work together to make a better future. To join in this international effort, or to learn more about some of the events planned, visit the Bolivia Solidarity Network website. To learn more about the campaign for a Trial of Responsibility for Sánchez de Lozada, visit here.

by Gretchen Gordon

The Cuban Doctor Pays a Visit

St. Augustine's Catholic Church in Barrio Temporal is a pretty odd place for a Cuban outpost in Bolivia. But so it goes.

It is midday here in my neighborhood and the sun is brutal hot. A short line of local women, most looking to be in their mid to late 50s, is waiting at a small side door to one of the church's tiny classrooms. I know this classroom. It is where both my older kids prepared for their first communion (We're in Bolivia, someone in the family has to be Catholic).

Today the room is occupied by a visiting doctor from Cuba, Doctora Maita, a serious woman who I guessed to be in me late 30s. She tells me that she's been here eight months and likes Bolivia.

All through the weekend the local neighborhood organization was passing out flyers for "Operation Miracle" which at this moment is focused on offering free eye exams and free surgeries for anyone diagnosed with either cataracts or certain other operable eye problems. Judging from the line yesterday, and a stream of visits that lasted from 8am to 6pm, local interest was high.

"If you need an operation it will be free," Christian Cruz, head of the local neighborhood association, tells the women and men who come by. "If you need glasses it will be free."

There is one catch however, to get the surgeries my neighbors will need to travel four hours by bus to Villa Tunari, a small town in the middle of Cochabamba's Chapare jungle region. Operation Miracle tried to get clinic space in Cochabamba, but to no avail. The project needed a loan of three rooms for three years – one for reception, one for doctor visits, and one to set up for operations.

"The doctors here just want to make money," Cruz complains. I also expect it was just easer for the Cubans to set up in one place and Villa Tunari – a tourist destination that is also hub to a region of rural poverty – probably wasn't a bad pick. It also, coincidently, is the political hometown of Evo Morales' MAS party and the government is a key backer of the Cuban doctor program.

"I have a problem in this eye," a young Bolivian soldier tells Cruz and I through a chain link fence as he passes by. "It keeps looking at all the girls."

"Be careful," I warn him, "I think the Cubans might spread it to the other eye as well."

Much uproar has been made in Bolivia and in the foreign press, these past few months, over Cuban doctors coming here to offer free care. Medical quality isn't the issue. A lot of Bolivian doctors have studied in Cuba and the island of Fidel is also a popular destination for members of the Bolivian middle class seeking high quality care.

But up on the hillside near my home, politics was not an issue. "I have had two surgeries on this eye and neither of them worked," a woman with cataracts tells us. She took a number and joined the line, hoping that maybe Doctora Maita might help her do better.

More on Evo's Talk at the UN This Week

Here are a few translated excerpts from Bolivian President Evo Morale's speech to the UN on Tuesday:

On Private Property and Investment:

And when we talk about recovering our natural resources, with reference to the dirty campaign of accusations that the government of Evo Morales won't respect private property, I want to say to you, in my government private property is respected. It is true that we need investment. We need partners, not bosses nor owners of our natural resources. We understand perfectly that an underdeveloped country needs investment.

On Immigration

You know, especially in North America as well as in Europe, that many Bolivian people are going in search of work. Before it was the Europeans that invaded Latin America, especially Bolivia, and now it seems like the situation has changed. It is Latin Americans or Bolivians that are invading Europe like before to the United States. Why? Because in these circumstances and at this moment there aren't enough jobs being generated.

On the US Government's War on Coca

With the previously implemented policies the conditions spoke of 'zero coca'. 'Zero coca' is like saying 'zero quechuas, aymaras, mojenos, chiquitanos' [some of Bolivia's key indigenous groups] in my country.

I want to say with much respect to the government of the United States, we aren't going to change anything. We don't need threats. What is called certification or decertification of the struggle against drug trafficking is simply an instrument, a pretext to dominate the countries of the Andes, just as they have invented preventative wars to intervene in countries in the Middle East.

On ex-President Gonzalo Sanchez and Others Living in the US

…and it isn't possible that corrupt criminals escape to live in the United States, a developed country like the United States. I have the obligation as president to assure that these authorities be tried in the Bolivian justice system and I believe that no country, no head of state, should be able to protect, to hide these law breakers…

On the US War in Iraq

[We shouldn't] implement policies that permit economic humiliation or economic theft, and when they can't rob using rules then they use troops. I want to request, with much respect, it is important that the troops in Iraq be removed. If we want to respect human rights it is important to remove economic policies that permit the concentration of capital in the hands of a few.

Evo and Coca at the UN

Whatever your views on Evo, coca and the current state of Bolivian politics, it was a pretty spectacular moment.

There at one of the most prominent podiums in the world, before the UN General Assembly and the leaders of nations across the globe, the President of Bolivia whipped out a small leaf, held it aloft and declared, “This is the green coca leaf, it is not white like cocaine. It represents Andean culture. It isn’t possible that it is legal for Coca Cola and illegal for other medicinal consumption in our country and around the world.”

I know there was some conversation before Evo’s visit about how he might get coca to New York to be a part of rituals there during his visit this week. When Bolivian officials contacted the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington the best the institution could come up with were some plastic replicas. I think the real leaf was better.

Good for Evo, good for him for putting the issue front and center in his visit, along with the official Bolivian demand that former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada be returned to the country for trial.

Here is another way he might plant the question. Why can’t Bolivia export coca tea to the US and other markets?

I have served commercially manufactured Bolivian coca tea for years to visitors here, including to a heavy duty Bush backer who once gave me an inaugural neck tie as a present (it came in handy at Halloween), and they all loved it and to my knowledge not a single one turned into a drug addict as a result.

Does a good share of Bolivian coca end up destined for the illegal drug trade? Of course it does (though mainly to Brazil and Europe as opposed to the US). Is that bad? Yes. I spent a good deal of my last years in California helping lead an initiative to expand drug recovery services for pregnant women. It is a fact, so long demonstrated as to be embarrassing, that every dollar spent on eradication in places like Bolivia would deliver far more effect if invested at home to deliver drug treatment on demand. But politics dictates a less sane approach.

Is the coca leaf a narcotic? Far less of one than the coffee I had this afternoon, until it is altered with all manner of other chemicals. Would allowing the free export and import of Bolivian coca tea lead to new production of cocaine around the globe? Anyone want to make a guess how many of those little paper tea bags (yes, like Lipton sells) you’d have to open to get the quantity of leaves needed to make any real quantity of cocaine? Can we get real please?

Here is my point. The war on drugs should be about drugs and it should be real. It should not be about throwing thousands of Bolivian innocents in jail to justify high-paid DEA gigs and State Department boasting. It should also not be aimed at little bags of herbal tea adored by visiting Republicans and Democrats alike.

Holding up a coca leaf before the leaders of the world and explaining the difference. That’s the kind of cajones we could use a little more of from world leaders.

Bolivia's Political Revolution – Nine Months On

Dear Readers:

We just published the September issue of our e-newsletter, The Democracy Center on-line. The newsletter, which we have been publishing for a decade, has 3,500 readers worldwide. This new issue looks at Bolivia's Political Revolution – Nine Months On. Below are the introduction and a link to the full issue. Blog readers will note a lot of overlap with our ongoing analysis in recent weeks here.

If any readers of the Blog are interested in receiving the newsletter and do not currently, just send us a note at: info@democracyctr.org.

Best to all,

Jim Shultz


Bolivia's Political Revolution – Nine Months On

It really was a dramatic and hopeful beginning that cold January weekend when Evo Morales took over the presidency of Bolivia. Standing atop 1000-year-old pre-Inca ruins at Tiahuanaco, Morales received a blessing of his powers from leaders of the indigenous communities of Bolivia's highlands, in a ceremony that hadn't been held in 500 years. His formal inauguration in the Bolivian Congress drew nearly a dozen heads of state, from Chile to Slovenia. Knock-off copies of the new president's red and blue horizontal striped sweater sold briskly on the internet. His picture graced page one of the Washington Post. "Evo Mania" took Bolivia and the world by storm.

In the months since, Bolivia has developed a whole new tourism industry of filmmakers, journalists, academics, and revolution-seekers who want to see close-up what they think is some new form of democracy by the people taking shape in the Andes. If they look close, and with their eyes wide open, they can see a new government that really does inspire great hope among people long-marginalized by both politics and economics. They can also get a really good lesson in how hard it is to convert the romance of hope into the far less romantic task of governing a nation.

Link to full article.

Two Cochabamba Ironies

Readers: Here, as a weekend special, is a small report on two Cochabamba “ironies” I’ve been witness to again in recent days. Ponder them both for a minute:

#1 “Welcome to Cochabamba, Now Hold Your Nose”

As anyone who has flown in or out of here in the last six years knows, Cochabamba has a really fancy airport. No, really. The airport here is a massive structure, a modern monument to what can be accomplished with copious quantities of glass, steel, and cheap labor. Its vast front is a reaching-toward-heaven arc of solid windows.

In other words, in a place where thousands of families have no water piped in to their houses, we have an airport that looks like it was constructed here accidentally, the construction kit sent here instead of California. It is also either a “visionary investment in the future” or a total boondoggle. Twice as big as it needs to be, the fancy top floor is basically vacant.

But this is not the irony of which I speak. No, that is reserved for an odor.

We are talking about on odor of epic proportions, a smell so putrid that it is well known to all Cochabambinos – and to all Cochabamba arrivals by air. Because this indescribable stink of rot and suffocation wafts 24/7 through the air precisely at the entrance of Jorge Wilsterman International Airport. The most common explanation I have heard is that a cowhide tanning operation sits nearby and…you get it.

Now, I have little doubt that one of the reasons politicians must have given a decade ago for abandoning the city’s graceful old 1940s era Quonset Hut airport was that the city needed to give visitors a first impression that packed more impact.

Well, mission accomplished.

But, really, wouldn’t Cochabamba really be better off with an old airport and the smell of jasmine in the air? By the way, I know how to fix this and fix it fast. All I need is full access for a month to one of the big billboards near the airport’s exit. I would redesign it to read (in Spanish):

Welcome to Cochabamba. It doesn’t smell this
bad everywhere. Don’t worry.

Manfred Reyes Villa
Governor of Cochabamba

I think that would do the trick.

#2 Guarding the DEA

Elsewhere in Cochabamba, on Calle Americas (there is an irony) sits the once-stately offices of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (The DEA). In this case “once-stately” means that a few years ago when the DEA decided it needed more office space it took over one of the city’s loveliest old mansions and wallpapered the outside fences with giant plates of black steel. I presume this was for “security” reasons and not an effort at creating warm and fuzzy feelings toward the US among Cochabambinos.

A Burger King opened up right afterwards (irony or market analysis?) but moved soon after to the center of town.

On the issue of security, after 9/11/2001 the DEA decided it needed to beef up its own guard considerably. It arranged for a 24-hours-a-day Bolivian police presence at the front gate. These are fierce looking men with green uniforms, automatic weapons, and (occasionally) excellent sunglasses. One of them once ran me off the narrow grass strip in front as I was waiting for my Trufi bus. I don’t know anyone who ever said I resembled a fierce-looking guy, but maybe through those dark glasses…

But here again, the irony is other.

In this case it is reserved for the fact that several of the unfortunate Bolivian police who are stuck guarding that empty fortress on the midnight shift have a secret that keeps them awake till dawn. They chew coca.

Yes, cruise by the DEA’s big house during the late shift and the policeman keeping the DEA’s office equipment safe has a big wad of green leaves in his cheek. The hard drives and computer screens backing the US War on Drugs, safe all night thanks to coca.

Stopping Traffic – Here and There

I was out with my three-year-old, Mariana, tonight when we heard a noise that demanded her attention. “I hear music,” she told me, and indeed she did.

One of the multitude of high school marching bands in town for a gigantic “marching band competition” Wednesday had decided it needed an attentive audience. So, just after 9pm, with traffic calmed from the evening rush hour but with cars still in abundance, a pumped-up group of 16-year-old baton twirlers and drummers (glockenspiels seem to be not much of a presence in Bolivia) shut down one of the city’s major thoroughfares and started to perform.

That Mariana thought this was cool is not a real surprise (or that I did). But what was notable was how cool the stranded motorists were for the ten minutes or so that traffic piled up. It was hard to see through their windshields in the dark, but I think I even spotted a smile or two.

Well Mariana, I guess we aren’t in California.

Now, I really do love my home state. It is a lovely place with fine people and excellent Mexican and Thai food. It is also however, a place that takes cars and unobstructed driving pretty seriously. I doubt that motorists there would have taken a sudden street blockade, even one with baton twirlers, so cordially.

I remember years ago when ACTUP, the hard-edged advocacy group on behalf of AIDS treatment, experimented with messing with traffic as a way of getting public attention. That little adventure in activism included an effort one sunny rush hour to try to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge. I think it took San Francisco police about 45 seconds to swoop in and stop the blockers. At the time I thought, “Hey guys, those cops are your very best friends because if the people in the cars had gotten hold of you…”

Hell has no fury like a frustrated California commuter. Trust me on this.

Not even rock stars are allowed to interfere with the flow of autos, or at least they aren’t allowed to brag about it. If you ever see the 1980s era rock documentary about the Irish band U-2, “Rattle and Hum” there is a great scene from a surprise concert the group gave downtown by the San Francisco waterfront, along side the ugliest piece of public art in the world (folks from “the city”, you know the one). Taking note of the snarl of cars the band had created, its lead singer, Bono, climbed the hideous cream-colored beast and sprayed on it in black paint, “Rock stops traffic!” The Mayor at the time, Diane Feinstein had a hissy fit and threatened to prosecute the group for vandalism. I think a city maintenance worker fixed it with a $1 can of white spray paint.

My point is simply that here in Bolivia, people stop traffic all the time and life goes on.

Teenagers stop traffic to play the drum. A week ago the whole city of Cochabamba suspended traffic for its annual day without cars. I’d like to see that sight in any city in California with a population of half a million, even one time. Political protesters, on the left and the right, blockade whole highways.

Yeah, sometimes people get ticked off about that, even here in Bolivia. But they don’t “go postal” about it the way people surely would in most of the US. Somehow in the global scheme of things here in Bolivia, there are some things that supercede even the free flow of automobiles.

And while it is easy for me to say this since I haven’t owned a car since 1998 and walk most places – actually, I think that stopping traffic once in a while really isn’t all that bad a thing.

Especially if you are a 16-year-old with a drum, or a three-year-old fascinated by it.

Wednesday: An Apology to all Bolivian Glockenspiel Players

Readers: An addendum to my post of last night. It so happens that The Democracy Center's palatial offices in downtown Cochabamba are precisely on the route of today's 12-hour procession of marching bands through the center of the city. I can now personally attest to the fact that there are MANY glockenspiel players in Bolivia, MANY. And I would also like to add, for the record, that they all seem to play From the Halls of Montezuma very well, especially as they pass underneath my office window.

Jim Shultz

The Opposition Finally Finds Some Traction

Yesterday’s successful four-department general strike, by political opponents of the MAS government, makes it official that the opposition has finally found some political traction eight months into the Morales presidency. Morales and MAS deserve a good deal of the credit for helping them achieve it.

During his first three months in office, Morales could hardly have had a sweeter honeymoon, both in Bolivia and abroad. On his ascendancy to the presidency Evo went from being a roughly cut coca union leader to an international rock star. He embodied hope at home, and abroad he was wrapped in the imagery of new indigenous power. Even old foes offered kind words and promises of assistance. His popularity in Bolivia hovered at 80%. His detractors, both to his right and to his left, found little interest in their criticisms.

Soon afterwards the imagery of a new government gave way to the realities of governing and political choices. In came the Cuban doctors and Venezuelan oil advisors. Out went the soldiers to the oil fields for a photo-op of aggressiveness aimed at domestic politics, but that also played far more radically in the foreign press than the government might have strategically intended. Onward came elections for the Constituent Assembly to rewrite the nation’s constitution.

MAS opponents, led by Tuto Quiroga and PODEMOS, imagined they could find political traction in weeks of advertising featuring photos of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and dire warnings that, essentially, any day Evo would start parading up and down the Prado in La Paz sporting a red beret and automatic rifle. The success of that political strategy by PODEMOS was measured in its trouncing at the Constituent Assembly polls in July, even worse than the drubbing MAS handed them in December.

Then Morales handed his domestic political opponents two excellent pieces of political red meat that on the one hand had real substance, and on the other played directly to the two political weaknesses that were always certain to be the new government’s Achilles heel. The first was that he would not be able to assemble a competent administration and the second was that Morales harbors an authoritarian streak.

In January he had put in charge of the state-owned oil corporation a genial friend, Jorge Alvarado, who had already well-established himself as a mediocre administrator when he took over Cochabamba’s public water company after the water revolt in 2000. Those qualities of administrative mediocrity caught up with the new government in August in the explosion of a scandal involving a government contract with a Brazilian firm. The opposition pounced, and Morales helped them with a week of rhetoric castigating his critics instead of dealing with the problem. Alvarado finally stepped down.

Morales’ opponents found their first real bite.

Then MAS played to that other perceived danger embodied in Evo, the authoritarian streak, by engineering a vote in the Constituent Assembly to make the voting along the path toward a new constitution subject to a simple majority vote (one MAS could dominate), while final approval would remain, as required by law, subject t a 2/3 vote that gave MAS opponents an effective veto power at the end.

Both sides have reasonable arguments – the need to not have political obstruction at every turn versus the demand for keeping the majority in check. Nevertheless, the opposition seized on the issue hard and that resistance culminated in the general strikes yesterday in Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija.

So what does all this mean?

First, it is important to see the resistance around the majority vote issue in the Assembly as a two-headed beast. On the one hand it is certainly a legitimate issue and I do not question the sincerity with which many in the opposition have taken to battle against it. On the other hand, given that PODEMOS and its allies continue to have a clear, unchallenged veto over the final product at the end, the fuss also has some hidden agendas as well.

If I were PODEMOS I would certainly not relish the prospect of having to use my minority vote in the Assembly to stop something that may well be a political freight train traveling with huge momentum at the end. Standing in front of such a force is not good politics. Ask Goni. Or, if alternatively a MAS-backed constitution proposal is put before the electorate for approval, PODEMOS is really unlikely to win there either. Aside from the “process” debate involved, opponents of MAS are simply more powerful if they can block proposals piece by piece and slow the process to a crawl. I also would not dismiss the charges that foreign oil firms and other outside interests have their hand in the slowing strategy as well.

MAS, for its part, looks like it will respond to yesterday’s strike the way it tried to respond at first to the opposition’s attack on the problems with its gas administration – attack the opposition. As several astute readers of this Blog have noted in recent weeks, this ironically has Evo taking a page from the political playbook of George W. Bush. That strategy, while tempting, is not likely to play any better in the Andes than it has in the USA.

All this is not great timing for Morales. He is headed later this month to New York, his first trip ever to the US, where he will address the UN General Assembly, hob nob with other heads of state and have an opportunity for another round of international media attention. The strikes assure that he will go north stripped of some of the rock star glow he hoped to have in full supply. I am sure his domestic opponents know that as well.

Morales and MAS are at their best when they focus both their rhetoric and their governing on the concrete tasks of lifting a poor nation out of poverty – something Evo’s predecessors never seemed to care much about and certainly did a miserable job of delivering. Morales and MAS are not at their best when they shift into hard-core political mode and offer the appearance that consolidating political power is really their deepest desire.

In politics the high ground is better, and rightly or wrongly, Morales and MAS are at risk of losing it.

The Fiercest Political Campaign in Bolivia

Now this is Bolivian politics at a boil – intensity; masses out in the streets; sound trucks blaring, beckoning people to come out; a mobilization that counts its numbers in the thousands.

No, I don't mean the anti-MAS general strike in Santa Cruz today. The fiercest political campaign of the year in Bolivia, far fiercer than the July vote for delegates to the Constituent Assembly, is the race taking place today in Cochabamba to elect members of…the administrative board of the telephone company.

No, I am not kidding.

It has been going on for weeks – banners, candidates, flyers, campaigning. The phone company, COMTECO, is a cooperative, so anyone who has forked over the $1000+ to own their own phone line gets to vote for the men and women who will steer the network of cable and wire into the next decade.

Here is what the scene looked like this morning as I made my way on the slowest trufi bus in the world past the stadium (yes, the soccer stadium) where the vote is being held.

Armies of young people in the colored t-shirts of their candidates – red, blue, yellow and white were the favorites – are desperately handing out paper flyers to any open fingers they can find. Another candidate is having his flyers handed out by a round man in a bright red "lucha libre" (wrestling) mask. So many huge banners, most hand painted on vast strips of what look to be old bed sheets, are hanging from the trees and electric cables that it is hard to see much of anything else. A candidate whose ubiquitous campaign photo features him holding a phone (clever, no?) has his supporters handing out the tiny saplings of pine trees. I am still trying to sort that one out.

Regardless who places first in today's vote, I think the big winners are the women who spent the morning doing a bumper business in sales of juice and silpancho (flattened and fried chunks of beef) to the hungry crowd. My bus was so slow snaking through that crowd that I was tempted to get off, buy one, and get on again.

The campaign promises banded around by the candidates have been, well, not exactly lofty. The most common seems to be to increase, from 90 to 120, the number of calls we are allowed to make a month free before having to start paying the equivalent of 12 cents per call. I am in favor of that. My teenagers are too, I'll bet. Other candidates promised to cut their salaries if elected. I have no opinion there.

None of them mentioned fixing COMTECO's wobbly broadband Internet service, which would have been my chief issue if I could vote. That and doing something about those company technicians who set my computer on fire the day they installed the service, and claimed it was just a coincidence. I am also against candidates who use sound trucks in the street below my office.

I asked a friend of mine, "Why so much interest in who runs the phone company?" He explained that each of the winners gets 20 jobs to hand out. I can’t verify that, but it would provide an explanation for why some guy would so eagerly dress up as a wrestler and hand out flyers all morning.

I am not sure what kind of job that prepares him for at the company. But I'll bet the guys who set my computer on fire looked good in that costume during the last election.

The Bolivia Index

(With due credit given to the Harper's Index for the idea)

Number of seats in Bolivia's National Constituent Assembly: 255

Number of seats required (2/3) to approve a new constitution: 170

Number of seats held by MAS: 137

Amount of new revenue Bolivia collected this week from the French oil company Total, as a result of the government's new gas decree: $32.3 million

Length of time it would take 1,000 Bolivian workers to earn that amount working at the national minimum wage: 44.5 years

Evo Morales' popularity rating in May when the gas decree was issued (according to the poling group Apoyo): 81%

Evo Morales' popularity rating today: 61%

George W. Bush's popularity rating in the US in August: 37%

George W. Bush's popularity rating in Latin America (according to the New Republic): 25%

Number of coffees consumed by Democracy Center staff and volunteers per day: many, many

Number of comments on this Blog in the last 30 days: 136

Number of them posted by the same four people: most

Number of comments accusing The Democracy Center of being either: communists; stupid; getting rich in Bolivia; MAS lackeys; or some mix of all: Oh, we stopped keeping track of that a long time ago.

National Meltdown or Just the Loud Noise of Political Change?

Is Bolivia in the midst of a national meltdown or just emitting the loud noise of political change? That is the big question on the minds of Bolivians and Bolivia watchers this week.

So many tables have turned here that it is hard to keep track.

Key elements of the nation's traditional ruling elite, led by former-President Tuto Quiroga and "civic leaders" from Santa Cruz are organizing a paro civico (general strike) for Friday in four departments of the country. It is the kind of action that Quiroga and his political mentor, President Hugo Banzer, used to send out troops to squash. Meanwhile, the government of President Evo Morales, who used to help organize such strikes, pledged yesterday that, while it opposes the objectives of Quiroga and his allies, the government has no intention whatsoever of using soldiers or any other means to intervene. "It is part of their democratic right," announced Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera.

Quiroga, who talked a tough law and order line during the campaign he lost badly in December (his billboards featured the word "Authority" in huge letters), is now part of an effort threatening to organize its own Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution -- no Congressional authorization or government sponsored elections required, evidently.

Quiroga and the other MAS opponents argue that Morales and his backers are breaking the law by pushing to give the Assembly convened in Sucre more power than it was authorized in the Congressional act convening it. They can certainly make a reasonable case for that and have every right to do so. On the other hand, despite the fact that President George Bush breaks the law wildly in the US (for example, illegally spying on US citizens), I have yet to hear a call by Congressional Democrats to set up a new Congress all on their own.

Is all this a sign of a meltdown in the works? On the one hand, it could be.

Will MAS's insistence on the rules it wants governing voting procedures in the Assembly push its opponents into full political battle against the government? Will those opponents feel so threatened that they start risking the thing that they supposedly have craved so much – national stability? Where would instability take Bolivia?

If the elite in Santa Cruz, for example, thinks it has a unified base behind it in the four departments joining in Friday's strike (Santa Cruz, Beni, Tarija, Pando), it might want to check its back. As a Bolivian friend of mine pointed out to me yesterday, Santa Cruz is just like Cochabamba. It is full of people from Oruro, Potosi and other parts of the highlands, who migrated to Santa Cruz in the last decade looking for work. When their families and old neighbors, people like the miners from Potosi, start to march on Santa Cruz as they have threatened, will the region's elite wake up one morning to find their empleadas and workers marching with the miners?

On the other hand, this could all be just a national version of the scenes I used to witness of an old Santa Cruz friend of mine, Sister Lourdes, negotiating tomato prices in the cancha (the market place).

"How much per kilo…ayyyy, that is much too high!!" she would proclaim to the woman selling, as if she really was offended. "I'll pay four."

"Ayyyy, I can't sell it to you for that," the seller would respond, apparently equally offended.

So the haggling went back and forth until some number in between was settled on. Then they'd exchange warm niceties with one another, the seller would toss in a "yappa" of an extra tomato or two and the show was over.

A lot is at stake in the rewriting of the nation's constitution. Whether committees can pass proposals by a majority vote or a 2/3 vote is very small tomatoes in comparison to the mammoth debates ahead over gas, land, and the distribution of political power.

Maybe the ever-more-heated rhetoric on all sides this week is the opening act of a political conflict that is simply unstoppable in a country undertaking such a huge transformation of who has power. Or maybe both sides are testing, to see how far they can push, to see how hard the other side pushes back – but with each side knowing that a meltdown serves no one's interest in Bolivia.

They may just be negotiating the price of tomatoes, but on a scale so far-reaching and historic that the haggling is very, very loud.

Rumbles at Bolivia's Constituent Assembly

What's going on at Bolivia's Constituent Assembly to rewrite the nation's constitution? Pick your metaphor.

Is it this one reported last week? Assembly delegates from MAS, the socialist party of President Evo Morales, were saying something (evidently with great passion) in their native Quechua. Delegates from the PODEMOS party, the political vehicle of the nation's wealthier elite, responded back, "We don't understand you. We don't speak Quechua."

Are the rumblings at the Assembly evidence that Bolivians from such different viewpoints just can't speak to each other?

Or, is it this one? On Friday the head of the MAS delegation tripped into the 6-foot-deep orchestra pit in the Assembly hall while speaking to delegates. He suffered a skull fracture and remains in critical condition.

Is MAS so enamored with its own agenda and its own speeches that it can't see itself walking into a deep hole of political opposition?

Is it a power grab by Morales and MAS, as their critics claim? Is it a move by national elites, beaten badly at the polls twice, to block a legitimate process of transformation?

The Assembly has been an important political demand of indigenous and other social movement groups for years. Their aim has been to rewrite the rules of Bolivian politics to empower a national majority long marginalized, both politically and economically. This week the Assembly is in a state of turmoil, not over any differences of what the new national "Magna Carta" should contain (not yet), but over the process of the Assembly itself.

What is a Majority?

Under the law approved by the Bolivian Congress that convened the Assembly, the proposal that comes out of that process must clear it with a "supermajority" 2/3 vote. That number is very significant because, while MAS came in a huge first place in the July 2 vote to seat delegates, it has a strong majority but not 2/3. For any vote requiring 2/3, PODEMOS and the other main opposition party, UN, is in a position to block MAS over and over.

On Friday MAS delegates engineered a vote declaring that, on the litany of issues relating to how the Assembly does its business, a simple majority will do. Critics in the opposition were quick to declare that this is exactly the kind of Morales/MAS power grab that they feared.

The parties went into full polarization mode from there. PODEMOS announced that it was boycotting further Assembly sessions until the rule is changed. They, along with civic organizations in Santa Cruz and Beni, strongholds of anti-MAS opposition, began talking about organizing a regional general strike, the same kind of tactic that MAS and MAS allies commonly used against previous presidents.

Vice-President Alvaro Garcia-Linera took the tact of chiding PODEMOS and the others, for having eagerly governed the country (and pushing through huge economic changes like privatization) with governments elected with less than a quarter of the vote and less than half the mandate MAS enjoys. Morales announced over the weekend that he was ready to call on social movements to "mobilize" to Sucre (the city where the Assembly is meeting) to "protect" the process.

Hearing that no doubt caused opposition forces to remember June 2005, when mobilizations of miners blocked members of Congress from leaving Sucre and effectively stopped the President of the Senate from taking over the presidency when Carlos Mesa resigned. Morales' weekend warnings only further inflamed the opposition.

Looking a Little Deeper

We've gotten several calls this week from reporters trying to make sense of the story. What does all this really mean beyond the fireworks of people falling into orchestra pits and threats of general strikes by the old guard elite?

First, when it comes to what the Morales government has a mandate to do, the two main sides really are speaking very different languages. Rightly or wrongly, Morales and MAS believe that they have a historic mandate to alter the political landscape of the nation in deep and far-reaching ways. PODEMOS and its allies, I think, still look at the MAS people as just having their turn at bat, so to speak. They have five years to do a few things here and there, but not wholesale political reconstruction of the state.

When MAS looks at its mandate it see Mandela and the ANC taking over the reins in South Africa in 1994 – a new constitution, a new weave of power, a new nation. PODEMOS sees Tuto handing over power to Goni in 2002, "Ok, your turn to steer a while, but keep moving in the same basic direction."

That said, is the MAS/Morales effort to reshape Bolivia according to its vision any more radical that Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada's massive changes in economic course in the 1990s, including the privatization of the nation's energy reserves and a long list of public enterprises? It would be hard to find changes as radical as those, and those he did with a voter mandate in the low 20s.

Should MAS opponents be wary of a political power grab that tilts the scales unfairly to Morales' favor? Of course, unchecked political power in any hands, be they of the left or right, is a dangerous thing – Political Science 101. But are the screams of PODEMOS and others really a rallying cry to protect democracy or the sound of that old elite finally finding some political traction in its effort to block MAS undoing the political instruments of its historic power?

In my view, that's the real debate here.

Update Tuesday Morning

Here's the latest on the political battle over the Constituent Assembly.

Yesterday civic leaders in four departments – Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija – met in Santa Cruz. They denounced MAS' moves in the Assembly as unconstitutional, announced a four-department general strike for Friday, and threatened to convene a rival Constituent Assembly to write their own constitution for Bolivia.

Vice-President Garcia-Linera repeated MAS' position that a 2/3 vote would still be required for approval of the final proposal to come out of the Assembly, and that the majority vote rule would apply only to the work of the Assembly's committees and on procedural issues. The V.P. also made a new proposal, echoed by one of the leaders of the opposition, the UN party's Samuel Doria Medina, that if the new proposed constitution fails to win a 2/3 vote in the Assembly, it would go to a nationwide voter referendum where it could be approved by a majority of those voting.

The National Assembly on Human Rights called on all the parties to start talking again, sort of a "Can't we all just get along?" declaration. In Cochabamba, Governor Manfred Reyes Villa stuck his nose under the tent of national politics (Reyes Villa nearly won the presidency in 2002 and is clearly positioning himself to run again), calling on MAS and others to respect the law that convened the Assembly but declining the opportunity to join with the more hostile anti-MAS opposition in Santa Cruz.

Organizations Hosting Political Visits to Bolivia

Predictably, with all the political changes underway in Bolivia, there is a flurry of new interest in visiting here. Two groups with experience elsewhere in hosting political visits have jumped in to sponsor political tours this fall – Witness for Peace and Global Exchange. Both have asked us to pass along the key information to Blog readers who might be interested. Here it is:

Witness for Peace
November 9-17, 2006

Global Exchange
October 8-18, 2006