Some Bolivian Rock Worth Checking Out

FYI, Bolivia-watchers, there is a lot more music coming out of these parts of the Andes than pan flutes.

Last year the New York Times did a fine article and video on Aymara rap music. A popular rock music band here in Cochabamba, Cartel Afonico, recently put out a new CD in the most creative (though perhaps not most environmentally sensitive) packaging I’ve seen. The album, titled “enlatado” (canned), comes in a giant, CD-sized, tuna can. All this is not exactly a rerun of popular traditional music from Las Kjarkas or Norte Potosi (whose most famous song is about the rhythm of a walking burro).

And then there is Atajo. The band from La Paz, together as a group just over a decade, is resolutely political. Their music often addresses the suffering and struggle of recent years, sometimes seriously and sometimes with good humor. I tuned into them when I heard their famous line (Santa Cruz friends, I promise, you aren’t going to like this) about the statuesque light-skinned modeling team from Santa Cruz, “Las Magnificas”. The line goes (translated to English), “You are a magnifi-ca-ca.” Not flattering, but clever.

Some people I know associated with the band recently posted a 5-minute music video from them, Ay Mamita, on You Tube, which you can view here. Dedicated, to the families who lost loved ones in the repression by then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada during the gas revolt in 2003, the video features images of them with photos of those lost.

There are certainly many other fine musicians from Bolivia worth global attention. Feel free to post links and news about them here – and debate away about the sins and blessings of those who would sing so blasphemously about those tall beauties from eastern Bolivia.

Evo Asks a Good Question on Climate Change

You could call it Bolivia's Katrina (though with a far more active national government than the one that so terribly botched relief to New Orleans). Whole sections of the country are under water. Thousands are displaced. A huge effort is required to save lives and an even bigger one will be needed to address the economic damage left in the floods wake.

In the midst of the Bolivian relief effort, Bolivia's President, Evo Morales, asked a reasonable set of questions this weekend. What role does global climate change have in Bolivia's massive weather disaster? Who caused this problem? Who bears its brunt? And what will the world do to address it, in all of its consequences both environmental and economic?

I will leave it to climate experts to debate whether the current Bolivian catastrophe is a genuine product of global climate change or just a run-of-the-mill El Nino disaster that would have happened anyway. If Bolivia can't hang the massive floods in its tropics and eastern lowlands on climate change, it can certainly point to other impacts, including the prediction by climatologists that the country's ancient glaciers, remnants of the ice age, may be melted off within 30 to 40 years.

It is not the world's impoverished countries that have fanned the forces of climate change with an addiction to energy use far beyond their fair share. The US, with 5% of the world's population, produces 25% of the planet's climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions. The "blame rate" for other wealthier nations is pretty similar. The catastrophic results of climate change, however, do not allot themselves according to energy overuse. Not only do poorer nations get hit, when they do get hit they are in a far weaker position to respond. Wealthy nations have rescue helicopters. Poor nations have rickety and slow wooden boats.

Much has been written in recent years about the financial debts owed by the global south to the global north, but little is written (for now) about the vast environmental debt the energy-eating countries of the global north owe the climate change victims of the global south. Who will pay Bolivia for its glaciers?

Evo has asked a good question. When will the world address the fact that it is poor nations (and I would add, as demonstrated by Katrina, poor people in wealthy nations) that are bearing so much of the brunt of this disaster? Morales has called for a special session of the United Nations to engage a full global debate on what is to be done. The US long ago signaled that it would not take the lead on addressing global climate change. In the family of nations that populates the world in 2007, it may be that it will be poorer nations, like Bolivia, that help force both a debate and action.

The New York Times on Evo and Hugo

Today’s New York Times has a good article, by Caracas-based reporter Simon Romero, checking in on the ongoing story of Venezuela’s close relationship with Bolivia and the Morales government. The article focuses on a comparison between US aid and US influence versus that of the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

I am not an expert on the military connections between the two governments, or the specifics of Venezuela’s role in Bolivia’s gas nationalization efforts – two issues covered in the article. There are, however, two other points that I think are worth a closer look.

First, the article notes Venezuela’s much-publicized investment in Bolivian facilities to support the “industrialization” of coca. Chavez has also pledged to import Bolivian coca tea and other similar products. The Times describes this as a major issue for Washington. I think that US concern about industrialization of coca is misplaced.

If the Bush administration’s concern is about Bolivian coca being exported for cocaine production then the issue is the size of the coca crop and its ultimate uses. If the Bolivian government can actually succeed in sucking up a good portion of that crop for the production of herbal coca tea (a product served to guests in the US Embassy in La Paz to help with altitude illness) then that ought to serve US purposes, not violate them.

On this issue the Bush policy seems more driven by ideology than practicality, a practice that has not served the administration too well in other parts of the world, Iraq to name one. This issue of whether Bolivia can globally export its coca tea is likely to heat up in the next year as efforts increase to get the UN to remove the green coca leaf from the world list of banned substances – alongside cocaine and heroin.

The second issue worth a closer look is the one I spoke to Romero about when he was preparing the article (I am quoted at the very end), the role that the Chavez government has played in helping its Latin American neighbors seal their divorces from the International Monetary Fund. Venezuelan loans directly enabled the Argentine government to end its dependence on IMF lending. Bolivia let its last IMF agreement expire a year ago without seeking a new one. That was largely enabled by the Fund’s cancellation of Bolivia’s debt (alongside many other countries as well), but the backstop of Venezuelan aid may have added to the Morales administration’s confidence in telling the IMF goodbye.

A Bolivian opposition lawmaker is quoted saying that, “We’ve become a client state of Venezuela, in what is a new form of imperialism.” If one measures the relative “conditionalities” associated with Venezuelan aid vs. IMF loans, it’s not even a close call.

It is unclear what direct negative effects Venezuelan aid has had on Bolivia so far. The IMF’s list is long. It played a key role in pushing for the privatizations of gas and oil, and other industries, in the 1990s, an economic experiment that robbed the national treasury of billions in lost revenue and ultimately sparked a series of bloody national rebellions. More recently, as the Democracy Center has documented in great detail, the IMF directly pressured the Bolivian government into the 2003 disaster of Febrero Negro that left 34 people dead.

As legitimately controversial as Venezuelan aid to Bolivia may be, so far Chavez hasn’t had anything like the impact on Bolivia that the economists from Washington had. Bolivia is, quite clearly, far more independent of foreign pressures today than it has been for the last two decades.

The lead from the Times piece is below, along with a link to the full article.

____________________________________

Venezuela Rivals U.S. in Aid to Bolivia

By Simon Romero

LA PAZ, Bolivia — To understand Venezuela’s growing influence here, consider that more than two dozen ambassadors are in this capital city, including those of Bolivia’s leading trading partners like Brazil, the United States and Argentina. Yet none enjoy the direct conduit that the Venezuelan ambassador, Julio Montes, has established with President Evo Morales.

Mr. Montes often accompanies Mr. Morales on domestic and international trips on executive jets provided by Venezuela’s national oil company, say officials who have seen them traveling together. On many days Mr. Montes, who arrived in La Paz a year ago, can be found at the presidential palace huddled in meetings with Mr. Morales or the president’s top aides.

Since Mr. Morales became president little more than a year ago, Venezuela has quickly come to rival the United States as Bolivia’s main patron. It has provided assistance for the army, cattle ranches, soybean cultivation, microfinance projects, urban sanitation companies and the oil industry.

Read the full Times article here.

Five Places to Sit Quietly in Cochabamba

I am a creature of habit. If I organize my day well, it begins with my leaving home by 6:30 am, with my two dogs in tow, for an hour and a half hike into the rocky slopes above the city. A day opened in silence, I have found, is generally a better day. So, since it is the weekend (pretty much) here are my five top choices of where one can sit quietly in Cochabamba. If you live here or plan to pass through, you might check them out.

1. Parque Tunari

The steep slopes that rise above Cochabamba and turn into a mountain range that stretches up to the altiplano, are actually part of a vast national park, Parque Tunari. I have been exploring those slopes for ten years and have a variety of secret spots I would never spoil by sharing them on the Blog. But the park itself is a great place to rise above the city noise. Take the Micro "G" bus to the end of the line and head upwards.

2. Plaza Colon

This is my favorite among Cochabamba's wealth of very nice public plazas (Note to US planners: We could do with some plazas of the type found in Latin America.). It is an appealing patchwork of green lawns, a pond in the middle (look for the mermaid painted on the bottom) and a small footbridge. I personally follow the Cochabambino rule about where to sit – even though sitting on the grass is technically prohibited, find a shady spot there anyway and stay until you are kicked off. There is a particularly nice spot on the south side where two trees of different species have wrapped so tightly together from the trunk up that most people probably never notice it isn’t just one tree.

3. Iglesia del Hospicio

I thank the Catholic Church for creating so many fine public spaces in which one can sit in quiet (praying or just pretending to). The Iglesia del Hospicio, just across from Plaza Colon, is my favorite. Its interior is light, with a genuine feeling of expansiveness that is much better than the usual darkened capilla. It is open pretty much all day. I go there to sit for 15 minutes or so on my way to work in the morning. As I do, I enjoy watching the movements of the humble caretakers – the male guard who watches over the door with audio earphones piping something into his ears, the gray haired woman in the matching gray smock who carefully sweeps the floor from altar to door (and mops on Mondays). If you go, do leave an offering in the box on your way out.

4. Casablanca

I am a coffee addict. More precisely, I have to have a cappuccino every day by 4pm or my work suffers greatly afterwards (fortunately this is an addiction much more affordable in Bolivia than in the US). For a quiet place to drink some of the best coffee in town (okay, quiet until the staff starts making the music blare in the late afternoon) visit Casablanca, a café on Calle 25 de Mayo, a block south of Plaza Colon. The owner is a friendly Italian transplant named Elio who likes to name his establishments after movies.

5. Jardin Botanico

Lastly, on the slight outskirts of downtown, sits the always-green Jardin Botanica, a large landscaped field that also has a display of Bolivian native plants. It also seems to be a favorite make-out site for Cochabambino teenagers, who kindly leave enough room for anyone else who cares to, to sit down for a quiet break.

If readers have other similar favorites, in Cochabamba or elsewhere in Bolivia, feel free to add them here as comments.

The Government Takes a Tin Mine

Readers:

There has been a good deal of international interest over the past week in the action by the Morales government on February 9th to “nationalize” the Swiss-owned Bolivian Vinto tin mine. It is the latest episode dealing with the intention of the government to recover Bolivia’s resources for the country, and what effect that will have on foreign investment.

The Vinto mine issue is not one that The Democracy Center has researched (as opposed to gas nationalization, for example) so we haven’t written on it. However, for those readers interested, here is an article on the issue written by a Bolivia-based correspondent for The Economist, which seems like a fair discussion of the issues.

Jim Shultz

__________________

TIN SOLDIERS

Feb 15th 2007 LA PAZ From The Economist print edition

The article can be found here

The political vendetta behind another nationalisation

IT IS becoming a familiar ritual. On February 9th Evo Morales, Bolivia's socialist president, flanked by troops, stood in front of the Vinto tin smelter and declared it nationalised. Last May he did the same to his country's natural-gas industry. In October he said it was the turn of mining. Yet with Mr Morales, whose rallying cry is “Bolivian resources for the Bolivian people”, sometimes the symbolism and the rhetoric is more ambitious than the reality.

So it was with natural gas, where he later signed new, tougher contracts with multinationals. The threat to nationalise mining quickly changed to a proposal to raise taxes on private mining companies. And even that was watered down after 20,000 members of mining co-operatives marched on La Paz earlier this month.

Vinto, officials claim, is a special case. “It's about righting a wrong,” says Guillermo Dalence, the mining minister. “The plant was taken from the Bolivian people fraudulently and we are reclaiming it.”

The smelter has a controversial history. Built by a military government, it was privatised in 1999. The buyer was Allied Deals, a British outfit later liquidated after its directors were charged with fraud over an unrelated scam in the metals market.

Goni is a hate figure in Bolivia today. That is partly because 67 people were killed when he called out the army against the protests in 2003. The government is backing moves to extradite him from the United States to face a trial which the former president's lawyers say is politically motivated. But Goni is also hated because he oversaw the privatisations that Mr Morales is now trying to reverse.

In 2005 Goni sold Comsur's Bolivian assets (which included several mines) to Glencore, a mining company based in Switzerland. The price was not disclosed, but it was said to be $220m, of which $90m was said to be for the smelter. According to one well-placed source, a side-letter required Comsur to repay Glencore in the case of nationalisation.

Since the world tin price was very low when Vinto was privatised, and the smelter had lost money in state hands, it is far from clear that Bolivia was swindled. The tin price has since risen sharply, reaching its highest level since 1985 this week. So in addition to targeting Goni, the nationalisation may boost government revenues.

Glencore is demanding compensation for the smelter. It says the seizure violates a 1991 bilateral investment treaty between Bolivia and Switzerland. The government says it, too, will seek compensation in any international arbitration. It claims that Glencore did not register the purchase in Bolivia and, somewhat improbably, that the smelter was worth $140m when it was privatised. “All foreign companies that operate within the legal framework have our guarantee that they won't be touched,” says Mr Dalence. Investors may not be wholly reassured.

Bolivia Under Water

MEMORANDUM

TO: Noah (the one in the bible)
FROM: The Bolivian People
RE: Assistance

If you still have an ark, it would be quite useful if you would send it here. Quickly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bolivia is, quite literally under water. For weeks much of the country, particularly the tropics and in the lowlands of the east, have been inundated with flooding from heavy rains blamed on the global phenomena, El Nino.

The Bolivian government reports that basically half the Department of Beni is under water. The numbers just released from the Vice Minister of Civil Defense are grave. More than 343,000 people (70,000 families) have been flooded out of their homes. 35 people are dead (primarily in the tropical regions of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz) and six more are missing. The long-term economic impacts haven't even begun to be calculated.

Aid is available, some $25 million designated by the Bolivian government and additional pledges from the governments of Italy, Argentina, the US, Spain, Japan, Germany, France and Italy. A big part of the current problem is not the lack of assistance but the practical challenges of getting it delivered to areas under water measured by the foot. Today's local papers report that 180 tons of food destined from Cochabamba to the affected regions is stranded because of road closures. The Bolivian government has made a formal request to the US Embassy in La Paz that it lend the relief effort use of the Huey helicopters the US maintains here for its "war on coca".

In the Beni, Bolivian officials say that the water levels are rising an average of 17 centimeters (more than half a foot) per day. Weather predictions for the region warn of more rain on the way, as well as one of the sporadic summer cold fronts that come this time of year. All of this translates into even more suffering for those affected and the ever-present danger that contaminated water can lead to the widespread outbreak of infectious diseases.

If readers have specific suggestions of groups that are providing useful aid to the people affected by the floods, I hope you will share that information here on the Blog. We will leave the task of verifying the bonafides of those groups to readers.

Cochabamba Carnival Potpourri

Readers:

This weekend is Carnival for real in Bolivia, the only four-day weekend most people here really get. Given that, and the fact that I am trapped these days in the “editing hell” that is finishing a new book, do not expect much of substance here until mid-week (we promise some meaty stuff later).

But I would not want to let you down without something to ponder. So in that spirit I bring you:

Cochabamba Carnival Potpourri

1. A Joke I Heard in La Paz

If you are a reader with a diminished sense of humor (we have some of those, really) try avoiding the use of this as evidence that I harbor secret anti-Cochabamba sentiments.

When is the best time of year to visit Cochabamba? During Carnival: the weather is great and all the Cochabambinos are in Oruro.

2. Water Gun Tip for Parents

We all know that water gun battle (or anything similar) with small children is a bit tricky. On the one hand they like to play rough, but then suddenly it all comes crashing down with a yelp of, “You squirted me in the eye!” and a fountain of tears. Okay, here is what you do. It’ll work, I guarantee it. I’ve tested this out. You turn around, bend over, point your “poto” right at her and say, “Okay, let’s see if you can hit me in the butt.” I assure you, it will work instantly and repeatedly. That’s free advice, no need to send checks.

3. Where the Hell do the Balloons Go?

An exact figure for the number of water balloons tossed and popped on the streets of Bolivia in February would be difficult to gauge. The population of Bolivia is about 9 million people. If only 1 out of every 3 tossed just one balloon, that would be 3 million tattered fragments of colored latex littering the streets of the nation. This is a conservative estimate. While it is conceivable that less than 1 in 3 Bolivians will toss a balloon this month, there are several thousand teenagers in any given city passing their quota about 50 times over.

So, where the hell do all these balloons go? For weeks I see them stuck in the cracks in the “empedrado” rock-paved streets of my neighborhood. But it’s not like last June I could still see the rubber memories of Carnival 2006. There really aren’t that many sewer systems here so they don’t get washed away into storm drains as they might in other places. Trust me, there are no big yellow street sweeping machines cruising through the hood as they did in San Francisco when I lived there (which were really a city plot, of course, to escalate the number of lucrative parking tickets).

Is there some little known “low spot” in Cochabamba where they all eventually come to rest sometime in early April? Do dogs eat them? Are they collected by the same people who gather plastic bottles, with some aim of selling them to a balloon recycler (If balloons are recyclable, I guarantee you that a Cochabambino will be the first to pull it off. Rock solid, bet on it.). Do space aliens come fetch them some early morning in late March? Honestly, I just do not know.

4. A Brief History of the Water Gun

I thought it would be nice to wrap this up with “A Brief History of the Water Gun” which I expected to find easily on the Internet. Finding no such luck I decided I could probably make up a more interesting one. Then someone else looking for one on the Internet would find this one, not read this introductory disclaimer, assume it is for real, then send it out on its way as truth. Don’t laugh, the Bush Administration wages war on flimsier evidence, no?

There are two rival reports on when firearm technology was adapted to the use of water as ammunition. The gun maker Smith and Western’s web site writes:

“In 1937 S&W weapons engineers developed an experiment that they thought would help the company refine its site mechanisms. The engineers manufactured 75 plastic versions of the company’s popular 22-caliber pistol, tooled to fire streams of water. The majority of these devices were used by shooters in S&W’s employ for target exercises that aided in the actual product’s planned 1939 redesign. However, at several S&W target facilities, employees also began engaging in water battle using the plastic models. This resulted in S&W’s licensing agreement in 1938 with Rasmark Toys to mass market the water guns as toys. In its first two years on the market the company sold more than 2.5 million pistols. Estimates are that by the end of 2007 more than 18 billion water guns (including the high powered water rifles introduced by S&W in 1946, after the end of WWII) making it among the ten most purchased items of the American household."

Alternatively, this entry appears in the Encyclopedia Americana’s 1991 edition article under the heading: Water Guns:

“Water guns made their first large-scale appearance in the late 1930s, following the Swedish Olympic Luge team’s first entry in competition in the Lake Placid games in 1936. The team’s coach, Lars Ahlstrom, known among his coaching colleagues as being a particularly brutal head of team, had a British gun manufacturer produce a plastic model that could fire short water streams. During the rigorous pre-Olympic training by the Luge team, carried out in subzero temperatures at a practice camp outside Stockholm, Ahlstrom would discipline slower team members by squirting them in the face, sending a stream of water down their shirts freezing solid within 10-20 seconds.

A pair of engineers from a US gun manufacturer reportedly saw the device in use at the Lake Placid games (where the Swedish team took the Bronze medal) and secured a US patent. Ahlstom later sought $3 million in damages against the Smith and Wesson Company in 1947 in civil court in Ohio, which was settled by the company for an undisclosed sum and an agreement that S&W would become the official sponsor of the Swedish Luge team, which it remains, as of this writing."

The Violence of January 11 -- A Month Later

Readers:

It has been just more than a month since the streets of Cochabamba exploded in violence. Much of the news attention afterwards has focused on the politics of those events. We asked two members of our Democracy Center team, Leny Olivera and Aldo Orellana, to spend some time this past week looking at a too-soon-forgotten side of the story – what has happened to some of the more than 200 wounded January 11th. Below is their report, written with the assistance of Jonas Brown, who wrote our earlier eyewitness account of the events on the street that day.

Jim Shultz

The Violence of January 11 -- A Month Later

El Prado, Plaza Colon, and Plaza de las Banderas, sites of mob brutality on January 11th, are back to tranquil gathering spots for families and couples. The bored soldiers with automatic rifles that guarded the bridges have disappeared. Crowds armed with clubs, guns, dynamite and stones have been replaced by pre-Carnaval parades. With its flower-lined streets and slow pace, Cochabamba is particularly good at exuding peace.

But to what extent has the city actually recovered from what has been termed “Black January?” What is on people´s minds one month later?

These questions probably have as many answers as Cochabamba has inhabitants. The mainstream press has focused much of its attention on the two deaths, as evidenced by the feature story in Sunday’s Los Tiempos and the latest issue of Datos. Manfred’s international excursions to complain of human rights abuses and excesses by the Morales´ administration have also been covered -- along with the vitriolic sniping back and forth between Manfred’s camp and MAS officials.

An estimated 216 people were injured on January 11th and 12th (according to public health officials). Clinica Belga and Clinica Copacabana, two of the main private clinics in the city, each reported 8 visits by "civicos" [the name given the people who took to the streets to counter calls for Manfred Reyes Villa's resignation] injured on January 11th. Clinica San Vincente, another private clinic, reported a total of 6 injured civicos from the 11th and 12th. Hospital Viedma and the Federacion de Campesinos del Tropico de Cochabamba treated the majority of the injured. Volunteers at FCTC alone treated 52 injured campesinos.

Many journalists have gone to Viedma in hopes of finding out how many were injured from each side of the conflict. The director of the hospital has a ready answer: “We do not recognize different factions. For us, they are our patients and they deserve all of our respect.”

Only two of the injured remain hospitalized. Luciano Colque, a 36-year-old campesino, had his skull crushed in several places. Doctors told us he is very unlikely to survive. The other, Raul Claros, a 19-year-old, was injured on January 12th during an aggressive protest by students and other youth against the television station UNITEL [which they accused of accepting bribes from Reyes Villa]. Raul’s workplace happened to be nearby. When he got to work, the doors were locked. The police arrived and, fearing harm, he ducked into a nearby market, where he hid behind a counter. Soon, the concentration of tear gas forced him to look for an exit. At that point, his memories blur. Running, he felt something he thought was a stone strike him in the back.

Raul woke in the hospital 13 days later. A bullet, apparently fired by a policeman, had entered through his liver and exited through his lung. He will live but will have to wear an external drip for a year. As with most of the people of Cochabamba, though to a greater extreme, the violence sought him out, not vice versa. “When I leave the hospital,” he said, “I’m going to seek justice because we aren’t dogs and cats. We’re people like them. We’re equal.”

There is a similar outcry for justice by Manfred supporters and civicos, particularly in the case of Christian Urresti, the 17-year-old killed by machete and strangling on January 11th. Both sides want justice. Both want democracy. The familiar, difficult task ahead is coaxing these important but foggy words into focus in a way that is meaningful for vastly different peoples.

Are street protests and highway shutdowns forms of democracy, or anarchy? Should people who have been subjugated by the law for centuries be expected to seek change through exclusively ‘legal’ processes? Is Morales becoming—or has he already become—the wielder of illicit power he once made his name by protesting against? After the mass violence, how does each side find the middle ground between granting impunity and exacting vengeance? These are a few of the questions simmering in Cochabamba, and Bolivia, one month later.

Edwin Claros, an official of the Cochabamba Assembly on Human Rights told us, of the legacy of January 11, "The people want peace, they want those events not to occur again here. Politics brought us to the deaths of two citizens, Cristian Urresti and Juan Tica Colque. We are all in agreement now that what the country needs is peace."

Written by Leny Olivera, Aldo Orellana, and Jonas Brown.

How Blind Economic Theology Left 34 Dead: Four Years Ago Today in La Paz

Readers:

It was on this day four years ago, February 12, 2003, that the Bolivian army and a unit of the national police launched a four-hour shooting war against one another on the steps of the Presidential Palace in the very heart of the country's capital. "Febrero Negro", as it is called here, left 34 people dead and more than 150 others wounded. Among the dead was Anna Colque, a 24-year-old student nurse and single mother, shot and killed by Army sharpshooters as she came to the rooftop aid of a young repairman also killed by soldiers.

Febrero Negro was a needless national tragedy utterly created by economic blindness and arrogance – the blindness and arrogance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington and of then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

In April 2005 The Democracy Center issued a painstakingly researched report on Febrero Negro, drawn from a lengthy review of economic documents, and interviews with, among others: Vice President Carlos Mesa; Sanchez de Lozada's senior economic advisors; the International Monetary Fund; the leader of the police uprising; and many others. We published that report, Deadly Consequences, in both English and Spanish and made it available in full on our Web site (here is the link).

Today, to mark the fourth anniversary of that Bolivian tragedy, we bring you a brief synopsis of how blind economic theology sparked the deaths of 34 people. We also encourage readers to have a look at the full report.

Jim Shultz

How Economic Theology Left 34 Dead

In January 2003 Bolivia's government received a warning from one of its key lenders, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC. It was time for Bolivia to get its economic house in order, IMF officials told the government. The Fund told Bolivia it needed to cuts its chronic and growing budget deficit by $240 million if it was to stay in the Fund's (and other lenders') good graces.

President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada told his advisors to draw up a plan. The proposal they came back with suggested closing the budget gap with a new tax on foreign oil producers doing business in Bolivia. Taxing the foreign oil companies that were making record profits made perfect sense, the advisors told the President. It was, in fact, the privatization of Bolivia's oil and gas in Sanchez de Lozada's first term in the 1990s that help lead to the deficit by cutting public revenue from oil and gas. The new tax would have raised $160 million, to be combined with a new modest income tax on the Bolivia's wealthiest (to raise another $20 million).

Going against most of his key advisors, including his own Vice President, Sanchez de Lozada took any proposal for taxes on the foreign companies off the table. He warned that the companies would stop doing business in Bolivia if the country raised taxes, and that it would threaten a plan he was negotiating to export Bolivian gas through Chile to the US.

"The great alibi, the great argument of the multinational corporations is legal security," then-Vice President (and later President) Carlos Mesa told me. "The moment that you change your tax rules, you are changing the rules of the game that establish the possibility that those companies will come and invest in Bolivia. With another set of rules that are less predictable, they say, we wouldn’t have risked coming here."

Tax the Poor but not the Oil Companies

Squeezed by the IMF on the one side and his refusal to consider taxes on the corporations, Sanchez de Lozada told his budget advisors to draw up another plan, one that would extend the new income tax on the wealthy all the way down to people earning two times the minimum wage, about $100 per month at the time. His advisors warned him against it, saying that it was both unfair and also politically explosive.

Then Sanchez de Lozada asked them, one told me – How much will it cost a policeman, or a nurse, or a teacher, earning two minimum wages? Calculators in hand, they told the President that the poorest would pay about $2 more per month. The wealthy President dismissed that as pocket change and ordered the plan to move forward.

The low-income people affected by the proposed new tax did not take the same view. For them $2 was two full meals, a week of bus fares, real money. Protests broke out in the nation's capital, joined by a unit of the national police. The President refused to alter his position. On February 12th, with the police and protesters occupying one corner of Plaza Murillo and the army protecting the President's office in another corner, the standoff turned violent – first with tear gas and then with live rounds.

Thirty-four people would eventually die, from that shooting and the government's repression against the protests. Sanchez de Lozada was forced to withdraw his tax plan and the IMF mission in town from Washington fled to the airport, denying later that the Fund bore any blame.

And Now $1 Billion More from the Oil Companies

History does not often tell us how wrong a stubborn leader can be, but in this case history does. Febrero Negro woke up Bolivia's social movements to how little revenue the country was receiving from the foreign oil companies in taxes. When news finally broke that September of Sanchez de Lozada's planned gas export deal via Chile, protests exploded through much of the nation (some over the deal and some over historical animosity toward Chile). Sanchez de Lozada's efforts to repress those protests, which left more than 50 dead, sparked a national rebellion and he was forced to resign and flee to exile in Washington.

With his departure the option for taxing the foreign oil companies was back on the table. Under pressure by social movements to act, then President Carlos Mesa championed a new law in the Congress (#3058) that substantially raised taxes on the companies. That was followed by President Evo Morales, in 2006, "nationalizing" the country's gas and oil and negotiating new contracts with all the foreign companies.

As a result of the Mesa law (primarily) and the additional efforts by Morales, in 2006 Bolivia increased its national revenue from oil and gas by almost $1 billion – four times the IMF deficit reduction target in 2003. And all the foreign companies are still here and still making profits.

Sanchez de Lozada, the long-time champion in Bolivia of conservative "Washington Consensus" economic reforms, used those reforms to drive Bolivia's budget into deeper and deeper deficits. Bolivia's leftist social movements – supposedly ignorant of how "real economics" works – forced a change in political direction that has achieved fiscal solvency for the government that the IMF never even dreamed of (Bolivia will run a budget surplus for 2006).

What is the lesson? Theology and blind faith belongs to the world of religion, not public policy. The myth that the oil companies sold and that Sanchez de Lozada bought – raise their taxes and they will leave – turned out to be just that, a myth. How much a city, or a state or a nation can raise taxes on companies before they move away is not the stuff of economic religion, it is a math equation.

Four years ago this week Bolivia's government and its conservative foreign champions wouldn't even do the math and instead, Bolivia had to count up the needless numbers of dead and wounded. It turns out that in Bolivia, the social movements demanding higher gas taxes knew more about real global economics than Goni did.

Read the full report here.

The Do's and Don'ts of Water Balloon Warfare in Cochabamba

Readers,

Cochabamba, since the start of the year, has been dominated by politics and conflict, and in turn so has our content on the Blog. It appears that this has led some of our readers to believe that it is our responsibility here to write about every political development in Bolivia. It isn't.

We write about political matters that we have enough information to write about knowledgably, and a lot falls outside of those limits. Readers hoping for a daily news service on Bolivia would do better to look at COMTECO's useful daily list (with links) to articles in the country's major daily papers (here's the link).

So with that in mind we bring you information that is key to all residents of Cochabamba this weekend:

DO'S AND DON'TS FOR AVOIDING GET WIPED OUT BY WATER BALOONS

Do have your four-year-old daughter in your arms if you must pass through one of the main water battle zones, such as the Prado. Water bombers generally respect the sanctity of small children.

Do not walk within 10 yards of your 20-year-old daughter if you enter one of these areas. She is a target and you will be too.

Do, if you go to a water battle zone alone, walk quickly and keep eye contact with potential assailants.

Do not walk through these areas yelling loudly, "Hey, doesn’t anyone notice that I'm a gringo?!"

Do consider wearing a rain jacket and pretend that you thought that, well, it could rain later today.

Do not carry a water balloon in your hand, unless you mean it and are ready for what comes.

Do keep an eye out for those wildly treacherous cans of spray foam, which will make you wish you had only gotten bombed with five buckets of water.

Do not walk up to the 10-year-old neighbor who has one and ask him to show you how it works. He will.

Do be sure to buy a water rifle with enough range and storage capacity to hold your own against the kids on your block, and the trufi drivers if you live near the end of the line stop, as we do.

Do not mistakenly lock yourself out of your house as you charge into battle. It will get ugly, mighty ugly when you are running for cover with your empty water gun and you suddenly find yourself muttering, "Crap, my house keys."

Do stand in awe of the six-year-old boy who can catch in tact, in his baseball cap, your excellently aimed balloons.

Do not wait around to see if he plans to throw them back at you. He does.

Do enjoy yourself in that odd Cochabamba tradition of dousing neighbors, your family and total strangers (as they do the same to you).

Do not say yes when that neighbor with the pick-up truck offers, "Hey wanna ride in the back?"

[Readers: Do feel free to add your own suggestions as well.]

More on the Poll Results from Cochabamba

In my Sunday post on Manfred Reyes Villa I wrote briefly about some recent public opinion polling here that reported that Reyes Villa’s public support had plummeted as a result of his new alliance with civicos in Santa Cruz, his demand for a regional revote on autonomy, and the subsequent conflicts and violence in Cochabamba.

Today’s issue of Opinion here in Cochabamba offers a bit more detail on the poll, conducted by the private firm, Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado.

The poll, according to Opinion and the firm’s release in Sunday’s Los Tiempos, was conducted from January 9-16 and included interviews with 1031 adult age men and women in “the cities of” Cochabamba, La Paz, El Alto, and Santa Cruz. The results, just for Cochabamba, look like this:

Percentage of Popular Support

Manfred Reyes Villa (Governor): December 71% -- January 43%

Evo Morales (President): December 62% -- January 54%

Gonzalo Terceros (Mayor): December 51% -- January 45%

The poll reports that Morales’ popular support nationwide hovers at 59%, a drop of three points since December.

There are a few things worth noting in these results (confessions of a former political science major and student of political polling).

First, if the sampling between the four included cities is split about even, that means the Cochabamba sample would be about 250 people, which is pretty small by polling standards and allows for a decent margin of error.

Second, polling is notoriously off the mark in Bolivia, in good part because there can be such a wide difference of opinion between people in the city and people in rural areas. Evo Morales’ popular support, as measured in surveys, has always been widely underestimated against his performance in elections, as a result of undercounting in rural communities. If this poll was carried out, as it says “in the city” of Cochabamba then it may well be that the real story is even worse for Reyes Villa than suggested, and more favorable for Morales. This is based on an assumption, a reasonable one, I think, that Ryes Villa’s base is stronger in the city and weaker in the countryside, and vise versa for Morales.

Third, what the Manfred results say to me is that the events of December and January cost him his long-running political honeymoon as a new governor. 71% support is very high for any politician and not sustainable over time, just as Morales' post-inaugural 81% support was not sustainable. When Reyes Villa stayed out of all the national battles over political power and focused on projects that people saw helping them directly, like water and roads, Manfred enjoyed wide support. When he jumped into the fray, for whatever motivations, he took a match and burned off a third of his base.

There is a lesson in this for all Bolivian politicians. While party activists, social movement leaders, and other politicos are wrapped up in issues of autonomy, 2/3 vs. majority votes in the Constituent Assembly, etc., the majority of Bolivians are much more interested in things like how to pay for all those school materials their kids need as classes start this week and how to get clean water to their neighborhoods. The farther politicians stray toward the first at the expense of the second, the more they can expect to watch their public support slowly evaporate away. Manfred Ryes Villa is learning that lesson the hard way.

As for his strategic decision to spend the three weeks after the crisis touring the US and Europe to make his case, as opposed to staying in Cochabamba and repairing that infamous torched front of the state building – here’s another lesson.

To be clear, it was the opponents of Manfred – the irrigators, the COD, the cocaleros and others – who escalated the tensions into blockades of the city and the destruction of the state building doors. But it was Manfred who set things in motion with his (apparently unconstitutional) demand for a revote on autonomy and it was his backers who deliberately broke through police lines on January 11 and turned a tense standoff of rival protests into a bloody and fatal battle of sticks, machetes and pistols.

Drawing global attention to a set of ugly incidents in which you and your backers also played such a clear role is no more smart than setting fire to a political honeymoon because you are itching to get into the national game. If Human Rights Watch comes to Cochabamba, as Manfred has promised, they won’t be coming to see who burned down antique wooden doors. They’ll be coming to find out the stories behind the dead and the wounded, and that story is not a winning one for Cochabamba’s governor.

Cochabamba at War Again (But with Water Balloons)

It is that time again in Cochabamba, a multi-week session of lunacy best summed up by a friend of mine this way: “If you don’t want to get soaked, stay home.”

Carnival has come to Cochabamba. There are many ways that people around the world celebrate the run up to Ash Wednesday and Lent, the Catholic season of sacrifice. In New Orleans (hurricanes or no) Mardi Gras goes on. In Brazil people take off most of their clothes and parade (occasionally, but not always replacing their underwear with small doilies or paint).

In Cochabamba the run up to Ash Wednesday involves very little disrobing, and not much jazz. It does involve ample amounts of water thrown, fired, and doused on other people.

Let me set the scene for you. You are walking down the street, innocently thinking up what new thing you can write on the Blog to really tick people off, and the next thing you know a kid that doesn’t come up as high as your waste has nailed you in the back with a bright blue balloon and dead on aim – kablosh! Or you are on a bus and forget that only really stupid people sit next to the open front door this time of year – sploosh!

Buckets emerge out of thin air from balconies – kaplosh! Super soakers that can send a stream 50 feet appear suddenly from around an otherwise innocent-looking corner – bloosh!

There are also certain places that you just don’t go unless you are asking for it. One is a street called El Pando, which features the city’s lone bowling alley, some upscale cafes, and other upper-middle class Bolivian hangouts – along with an army of well-armed balloon-throwing young men. It is, unfortunately, also where I have had to go once a week for the past few weeks to visit my dentist. Not good. The root canal is more pleasant.

But the real “mojazon” central is El Prado, the tree-lined restaurant strip that stretches from the stadium to Plaza Colon. If you want to give an unsuspecting visitor an experience that he or she will not soon forget, find someone with a pick-up truck and offer to give the visitor a ride in the back – say up and down the Prado for a few loops. Nemo isn’t that wet. I do not go to the Prado on the weekends, not for anything. Not even if my dentist was there.

Gringos are a target of choice, though second for sure to young women (I really think the water fighting it is a primitive mating ritual).

Now, home isn’t all that safe either. Last weekend my youngest (four years old) and I armed ourselves with a pair of little handheld pistols (a steal at 5Bs each in the marketplace) and had at it. She won – partly because she was more ruthless (“Hey you, no more face shots!”) and partly because Mommy took sides and had a bucket.

And by the way, The Democracy Center is an equal opportunity soaker. Come on by, be you Masista or Manfredista, Camba or Alteno and we will happily empty a bucket down on you from the third floor, on request.

For more on the wonders of Cochabamba’s Carnival (which is also an important ritual, in addition to water soaking) have a look at this newsletter we published in February 1999:

THE CURSE OF CARNIVAL

I am not leaving my house. The streets of Cochabamba have turned into a battle zone. Throughout the city people have armed themselves with everything from small pistols to long barreled rifles. From behind walls the unsuspecting are attacked with small hand-held bombs. No one is safe from attack. Okay Mom, don't panic! There is one other detail I need to mention, the weapon of choice is not bullets, it's water, by the gallons. It is Carnival week in Bolivia and the entire city of Cochabamba has turned into an all out, non-stop, no-holds-barred, water war. Read the complete article here.

Was it Racism or Just the Short Skirts?

Last week the fine people who organize the Carnival celebration in Santa Cruz (La Asociación de Comparsas Carnavaleras) announced that they would be excluding from the festival any dances from the western regions of the country. This includes a lot of dances – from the Tinkus of Potosi to the Caporales of Cochabamba (see photo).

At least among some leaders in Santa Cruz, the demand for autonomy seems to have spread its definition pretty widely. We can't confirm this but sources tell us that their next move will be to ban the sales of salteñas and maraquetas, and that restaurants serving pique macho will be subject to a five day closure and forced to serve only cunapés upon their reopening.

Within days cooler heads weighed in, with a number of Santa Cruz members of Congress proclaiming that all dances, regardless of region (and presumably food preferences) should be allowed to participate. We have no word, as yet, on the final outcome of the Great Camba Dance Debate.

The Chess Moves of Manfred Reyes Villa

I have never played chess with Manfred Reyes Villa, the embattled Cochabamba governor currently on world tour. However, judging from how he plays political chess, I would expect to encounter something like this:

He would begin by playing cautiously, building a secure base – the kind of guy who might build a small wall around his king. That’s the way it would go for a good long while until, finally, out of nowhere and with a flashy grin, he would suddenly sweep his bishop across the full length of the board and take my queen. He would do this completely oblivious to the fact that he has just put himself two moves out of inevitable checkmate.

Mr. Cochabamba

Manfred Reyes Villa is a retired Bolivian Army Captain (and graduate of the controversial US Army School of the Americas) who, as a politician, had built himself until recently a very solid political base in Cochabamba. He served multiple terms as popular Mayor here. The fellow nicknamed “Bon Bom” by locals built a reputation as a can-do guy through a series of high profile public works projects – from new parks to a $3 million sky tram that takes visitors to the feet of the world’s largest Jesus.

And despite being mayor of the city that became synonymous with social movement uprisings during much of his time in office, Manfred managed adeptly to stay out of the fray. During the city’s now famous “water revolt” in early 2000, Reyes Villa – who as mayor signed the agreement authorizing handover of the city’s public water system to Bechtel – became almost the invisible man. Even though he was on the opposite side of the issues from all these movements, he never became the target of their actions or animosity.

He built a huge network of support among the city’s neighborhood associations, one that kept him in office and politically strong. Locally in Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa was good at political chess, very good.

Reyes Villa Goes National

In 2002 Reyes Villa made the obvious move and ran for President of Bolivia. According to most polls he was an early and clear frontrunner, and stayed that way almost all the way to election day. But the campaign that seemed sure to send him to La Paz ran into the wily chess play of a team of US political consultants hired to deliver a second Presidential term to former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a.k.a. “Goni”.

In her excellent documentary film on the campaign, Our Brand is Crisis, US filmmaker Rachel Boynton gives us a close-up behind-the-scenes look at the work of a team led by James Carville and others of Bill Clinton fame. Following extensive opinion survey work in Bolivia, Carville and Company spelled it out this way to the man known here as “El Gringo” for both his heavy US accent and close US ties:

1. The maximum vote Goni could ever dream of winning was roughly 24%. The rest of the voters would never forgive him for the privatizations and other economic reforms he implemented during his previous term in the 1990s.

2. Winning would be about keeping any other candidate in the crowded field from getting more than 24%.

3. That “other candidate” was Manfred Reyes Villa.

As the film shows, Goni’s campaign relied on two relentless attacks against Reyes Villa (on the issues their research revealed as his biggest weaknesses). The first was that he was a former military man, a history that made voters nervous. Goni’s ads repeatedly showed old photos of Manfred in military uniform. The second was the vague cloud of corruption charges that have long seemed to hover around Manfred (his political party, NFR, got nicknamed in Cochabamba, “Nueva Forma de Robar”, new way to steal). Goni’s ads hammered away with photos of Reyes Villa’s various homes in Bolivia and Miami and asked how a former Army Captain could afford such things.

The man from Cochabamba never knew what hit him. On election day he came in a disappointing third, behind both Goni (who got his planned 24%) and Evo Morales (who was helped enormously at the end when the US Ambassador called on Bolivians to vote against him).

Manfred, clearly bitter by the campaign that Goni waged against him, refused to join the multi-party coalition that gave Goni the 51% of Congress he needed to take office. The former mayor announced he would stay in the opposition and seemed well positioned to run again five years on.

But being on the outside was not good politics for those who supported Reyes Villa. A lot of people who back presidential candidates in Bolivia do it for the spoils of public jobs and Manfred had none to dole out. Less than a year later, with Goni’s popularity slipping badly, Reyes Villa suddenly shoved his political bishop across the chessboard. In a huge (and ultimately stupid) political gamble, Manfred jumped into Goni’s governing coalition. He was awarded, among other political prizes, control of the job-rich state government of Cochabamba (the governors were still Presidential appointees at that time).

Politically speaking, Manfred’s move to team up with Goni was like buying a ticket on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Within months, Goni’s public support in Bolivia fell from bad to virtually non-existent, following his announcement of an unpopular foreign gas export deal. Faced with wide protest against that deal, Goni sent out the army, leaving dozens dead.

Then Reyes Villa demonstrated that his national political instincts were not only bad, they were miserably bad. Even after Goni’s own Vice President, Carlos Mesa, broke with Goni over the repression (saying that shooting its own people is not a way for government to deal with the problem) Manfred flew to La Paz to stand at Goni’s side as Bolivians bled in the streets. A week later Goni left for political exile in the US.

Manfred, instead of being able to stand tall as a Goni critic, was fixed in Bolivians’ minds as the man at Goni’s side. The self-inflicted political damage was so great that in 2005 Reyes Villa skipped the presidential race altogether and ran for Cochabamba governor. He won with an anemic 47% of the vote, against very weak MAS opponent.

Autonomy: Reyes Villa goes After the Queen Once More

Fast forward to November 2006. Reyes Villa is once again set up in offices just off Cochabamba’s Central Plaza and sitting pretty. All of the other major political figures in the country are embroiled in a battle over procedural issues in the Constituent Assembly tasked with writing a new national constitution.

As the conflict accelerates, Reyes Villa remains fortunately above it all. He is like Dorrie the Fish in “Finding Nemo”, who in the face of everything just keeps chanting “keep on swimming, keep on swimming.” While other politicians toss insults at each other and stage strikes, Reyes Villa just keeps on paving roads and cutting ribbons, and wallpapers the Sunday papers with state-funded ads showing him do it. On national politics he is virtually silent.

Then suddenly, once again, Reyes Villa grabbed hard onto his bishop and moved boldly across the political chessboard. In November he joined with the governors of the east in their demands at the Constituent Assembly. He also called for political autonomy for Bolivia’s states and declared that he would use his powers as governor to force a Cochabamba re-vote on that autonomy issue, despite the fact that the region's voters defeated it by a wide margin just six months earlier.

The political chess queen that Manfred was after seems obvious. Within weeks he went from being a non-player in national politics to being the leading opposition figure to Evo. And here again, in capturing that queen, Reyes Villa seemed completely oblivious to the political price it would cost him (and the people of the department of Cochabamba).

His image of “the man above the fray who just keeps governing” was gone. Instead he was just another polarizing politician, alongside Evo and the chorus of his domestic challengers. By positioning himself hard against Morales, Reyes Villa surely expected some kind of backlash, in a state that Evo carried by a far wider margin than he had. He probably did not expect 5,000 people taking over the Plaza, burning the doors of his office and demanding his resignation. I certainly hope he did not expect the violence that broke out here January 11 leaving two men dead and more than 160 others injured.

In the space of six weeks Manfred converted himself from being “the man who can govern” to being the absentee leader of a region wounded by violence.

The Manfred World Tour

When the backlash came and when violence overtook the streets, what was Reyes Villa’s chess move then?

First he went to a series of political meetings in La Paz. Then he spent a good week in another series of political meetings in Santa Cruz. Then he went to the US for a week to try to convince organizations in Washington that all the blame for the debacle in Cochabamba belonged to Evo Morales, and he solicited foreign investigation. For the past few days the Manfred world tour has been in Europe, where he is seeking support as well from EU officials (with markedly mixed reactions).

I am sure there is some reason why Manfred thinks all this is both right for Cochabamba and good political strategy for Manfred Reyes Villa. But I don’t see either. Sooner or later the people of Cochabamba will ask who paid for these trips and if it was them, they might not be too happy about it. Sooner or later they will expect their governor to govern. Sooner or later, if Reyes Villa is successful in getting a human rights group or two to investigate the events of January, they are going to ask some hard questions about what role Reyes Villa’s staff and his supporters played in the violence here last month.

As I have written before, I think the blame for January is evenly shared by both Reyes Villa and Morales and MAS.

A survey by the firm Opinion Data, published in Sunday's Los Tiempos, shows that both Morales and Manfred suffered declines in their Cochabamba popularity following last month's conflicts. Evo fell from 65% support in November to 54% today, reports the poll. Manfred, on the other hand, took the kind of biblical-scale tumble that ought to scare the pants off any politician, from 71% support in November to 43% support today.

The ex-Captain has once again demonstrated his gift for shooting himself squarely in the foot. It would seem that, while Cochabamba’s wandering governor has no shortage of bold political moves, he does seem to suffer from a shortage of wise ones.