Bolivia: A Way Back to Being a Nation

After living a decade of my life in Bolivia I am still an outsider. I always will be. My passport is blue, not dark red. My tongue will always botch-up Spanish. An even though my children are Bolivian, I am a gringo, with eternal limits on my ability to understand this place where I live. Nor is it my place to tell Bolivians what to do. I am an observer.

But anyone looking honestly at the events of the past week here has to recognize that Bolivia is a nation on the edge of a precipice. More than one journalist has quoted me this past year saying, "Never underestimate the ability of Bolivia to look like it is about to careen over the side of a cliff, and then not do it." Well, the possibility seems less remote now.

None of the major leaders or movements in this country today is looking for consensus. Instead, each is preparing for battle, readying the armaments of political war.

The President is pressing forward to adopt a new national Constitution through a process that now completely excludes the opposition and any meaningful dissent. The Constituent Assembly process has started to look more cartoonish by the day.

The main opposition party has acted out a strategy, for more than a year, intent entirely on blocking legitimate change. It has played the game of making the Constituent Assembly impossible, and then trashing it for being dysfunctional.

The Governor of Cochabamba talks democracy but then calls on the military to rise-up and sends his employees into the streets on motorcycles with sticks to deal with those who don't share his point of view.

To be sure, I could go on and name others acting in similar ways, but it is sufficient to say that there are so many people hell bent on pushing Bolivia over the edge right now that finding people and institutions to blame is pretty easy work.

There are really only two ways forward right now. One is political battle, the results of which are impossible to predict but, as we have seen over and over, aren’t likely to be peaceful or pleasant. The other is some kind of initial steps toward compromise – an agreement, at least, not to jump together into the abyss.

Here are five ideas that I think are important to that way forward, none of which will work unless they are taken together and agreed to by all the major sectors and actors:

1. The Constituent Assembly needs to be given one final extension to complete its work (3 months perhaps). It needs to convene somewhere other than Sucre, where its work has been rendered permanently impossible. All parties need to agree to participate and MAS needs to commit itself firmly to the rule that no constitution can be approved by the Assembly without a 2/3 vote.

2. The opposition parties and MAS need to make a genuine commitment toward reasonable compromise on the key issues. That might begin with an agreement to bring the proposed constitution to a national ballot in two parts. The first would be the articles on which there already is a reasonable consensus, or at least 2/3 support, and there are some. The second could be a package of articles that have 51% support, but short of 2/3, such as Presidential re-election. To satisfy Sucre, a third measure could allow a national up-or-down vote on moving the capital, and let them make their case.

3. All sides need to agree to stop bringing out their respective mobs to either "stop" or "protect" the Assembly. Attacks should also cease on media and public offices.

4. All sides should stop calling for the various resignations of the other. From Manfred to Morales there should be an agreement that those elected in 2005 should serve out their full terms. Without that, and a serious toning down of the mutual attack rhetoric, all sides will be driven to their most extreme and least productive behavior.

5. The governors of all nine Bolivian departments, the President and the Vice President, and the mayors of the major cities should appear together before the national media to declare that, while deep differences remain between them, they are committed to a unified nation and a peaceful way forward. The people of Bolivia need that a lot right now.

Just to be clear, none of this is likely to happen. I still kind of hope that Santa Claus will show up here next month too, but that doesn't mean I'll wait up for him Christmas Eve.

Gone are the days when the Catholic Church could act as mediator and call all sides to dialog. No other person or institution in Bolivia today has the credibility or clout to do so either. The leaders who would need to genuinely make this happen would have to initiate this on their own. But it is pretty clear that each of them has made the calculation that it is time to stoke their respective bases' hatred and darker passions; not to be peacemakers.

No, this vision of a way back from the brink (and there are certainly others) is not a prediction of how things might go. More, it is a means of measuring how far we are from that here. And that is a very worrisome thing.

Notes on a General Strike

Thanks to Governor Manfred Reyes Villa and the other local sponsors of Cochabamba’s participation in today’s ‘paro civico’ (general strike), Superman can fly again. Okay, I guess that requires some additional explanation.

In most of Cochabamba, today’s paro feels like a Sunday dropped into the middle of the week. The streets in my neighborhood are empty of cars, but peopled by slow-walking pedestrians. The small stores are open here beyond the city center. People are still buying milk, eggs and, I suspect, a little extra beer. Think of a snow day in upstate New York, but with really nice weather.

I took advantage of the morning at home to turn to a long-neglected project, teaching my 5-year-old daughter how to make movies. We settled on a father-daughter production of “Superman’s Hat”, acted out with my collection of small knitted finger puppets bought for 2 Bolivianos apiece from a kindly lady who sells them on the street near my office. The plot was simple. A monkey steals Superman’s tiny knitted cap (okay, this was a bit improvised), which, as it turns out, he has to have in order to fly. Thanks to the friendly intervention of an elephant, a donkey and a pig, the hat is reclaimed and returned to its superhero owner.

So, Manfred, on behalf of the ‘Man of Steel’, thanks for the morning at home.

A citywide shutdown like this one, regardless of whether it comes from the right or left (they take turns) is generally something everyone honors, whether they agree with the politics behind it or not. “Are you guys going to work at all tomorrow?” I asked a taxi driver last night. “Probably not, if there are people out with sticks looking to break car windows, it isn’t worth it.” The stores and businesses downtown are closed down for the same reason.

Downtown, of course, is always the place to watch. As we saw on January 11th, what seems like an extra Sunday can turn into a bloody melee horrifically fast. What I hear so far is that, while there have been ample fireworks exploded into the air – another general strike tradition – serious confrontations have been few.

My colleague Aldo tells me that there was one such outbreak at a bridge on the outskirts of the center, where two crowds of people with very different views on current events almost came to blows, finally blocked from one another by local police. For a time the anti-Morales group lined up on motorcycles and threatened to ride through the police lines. “They looked like something from a Mad Max movie,” Aldo reports.

Back here in my neighborhood, I asked a fellow who has a little electronics repair shop what he thought of the paro. “Ayyy, I don’t have a government job like all those people. I have to work.” Certainly there are people passionate on both sides of this general strike, or there wouldn’t be one. Most people though are just caught in the middle, with a good many of them losing a precious day's wages as a result.

I actually think my pre-kinder daughter summed it up pretty well, when I asked her:

Why isn’t there any school today?

Because there’s a paro.

What is a paro?

It’s when the cars and the trufis don’t drive around.

Any why aren’t the taxis and the trufis driving around.

Because no.

For most people here, the paro is just another given complication to deal with. As long as it doesn’t explode into something else.

For background on the social conflicts behind today’s six-department general strike, see our Blog post from yesterday.

Constitutional Reform in Bolivia: And Now the Ugly Endgame

Readers:

Those who follow Bolivian events closely know that the political battle over drafting a new national constitution took a violent turn over the weekend, when conflicts in Sucre left three men dead and hundreds of others wounded. As always, it takes time to gather reliable information about events here and provide readers with something serious and solid. We have also had a few other things on our minds the past few days. Here is an extended Blog post on the battles over the weekend, developed with the close assistance of two Bolivian members of The Democracy Center team, Aldo Orellana and Leny Olivera. For those who want more background on the struggle over Constitutional reform, I encourage you to have a look at our recent briefing paper on the issue, here.

Jim Shultz

Constitutional Reform in Bolivia…and Now the Ugly Endgame

If you were going to lay out the various phases of Bolivia's struggle to write a new Bolivian Constitution, it would go something like this.

First there was the long period when a Constituent Assembly and new Constitution was a demand promoted by many of the nation's indigenous communities. A new national Constitution would be written "by the people". Then there was the phase when the Assembly leapt to become a central national issue, and then a pledge by the nation's first indigenous President. Then there was the part where the political parties in the Congress cut a deal to put the political parties in charge of the process.

Then there was the July 2006 national election to pick the delegates that would go to Sucre, a virtual repeat of the Presidential vote six months earlier. Then there was the battle over procedure that spilled into the streets and delayed all work for six months. Then there was the phase where the Assembly commissions actually went to work and drafted articles for a new constitution. Then there was the phase where the opposition succeeded in blowing the whole process up by igniting a fierce debate over moving the nation's capital. Then there was the part where the whole pretense of the Assembly-as-decsionmaker was set aside and MAS made one last effort to seek compromise with its opponents in a commission of political party leaders.

Then there was last weekend – when all intentions of compromise, by anyone, seemed to be permanently set aside and the battle over a new Constitution entered the ugly politics of endgame.

The Week that Led to Bloodshed

Here are the events of the bloody last week in a nutshell.

Early last week, the MAS-led committee that runs the Assembly made one last attempt to reconvene the body in its official headquarters, a theater in central Sucre. Protests demanding that Sucre be named the nation's new capital has blocked the Assembly from meeting since August, despite recent assurances from civic leaders there that the delegates could continue to work. On Wednesday, amidst reports that Sucre protesters spat on and verbally attacked delegates arriving at the meeting hall, the "directorio" led by MAS formally suspended the Assembly once again.

Then, last Thursday, MAS leadership voted to formally move the Assembly's meetings from the protest-plagued city center to a small military installation on the outskirts of town. The installation was guarded by as many as 1,000 national police officers. Hundreds of social movement MAS sympathizers also gathered outside the site, pledging to "protect" the Assembly. Opposition leaders announced that they would not participate in the relocated sessions, citing intimidation by the presence of the campesinos supporting MAS and MAS' refusal to place the Sucre capital issue on the agenda.

Behind police lines and in sessions boycotted entirely by MAS' key opponents, 154 of the 255 delegates met Friday and Saturday, approving en grande the basic framework of a new constitution, one that reflected all of MAS' positions and none of the opposition minority positions.

Some MAS officials and Assembly technical staff argued later that the draft approved was only a preliminary one, and that before it could go before voters, it still required 2/3 approval of the specific articles. But the specter of MAS locked behind guarded doors, approving a lopsided constitution of its own design, set off a firestorm of street protest in Sucre and public denouncements from the opposition.

On Friday night civic leaders in Sucre called for civil disobedience to block the Assembly's work, but did not call specifically for a march on the military facility where the meeting was being held. No matter, by Saturday morning Sucre university students and others, numbering in the thousands, climbed to the small hills outside the Glorieta military facility and began attacking the police and the Assembly, according the news reports, with a mix of dynamite, Molotov cocktails, burning tires, and small arms.

As MAS delegates approved a draft constitution inside, the protesters and the police battled on the outside. Scores of people were injured and, at nightfall, one man was dead, Gonzalo Durán Carazani, a 29 year old lawyer. News reports say he was shot in the chest with a small caliber weapon, not the type carried officially by any police. The police tear-gassing of the students and the attacks by the students on the police lasted until nearly midnight. Two of those wounded in the Saturday confrontations died later from their wounds, Juan Carlos Serrudo, 25, killed by a police tear gas canister shot into his chest and José Luis Cardozo, 19, of a gunshot wound.

On Sunday morning, mobs of students and others began setting fire to public buildings, specifically the office of the transit police, police command center, police academy, fire department, and tax department. Then the national police announced that a Sucre mob had lynched and killed one of their officers, Jimmy Quispe Colque. [According to news reports Wednesady, the officer, while beaten, escaped and went into hiding, and was not killed as first reported.] On Sunday, citing concerns for their own security, the national police abandoned Sucre, with most traveling to Potosi. More than 100 inmates at a local jail escaped when the police guarding the jail left their posts.

In Santa Cruz early Sunday morning anti-Morales protesters there swept past police guards to takeover local offices of the national tax authority, declaring that the money should stay in Santa Cruz and not be sent to the national government in La Paz.

Political Reaction, from Right to Left

Political reaction to the chaos in Sucre, and surrounding the approval of the draft MAS constitution, was fierce. Jorge Quiroga of PODEMOS, Morales' chief 2005 opponent, and ostensibly the leader of the opposition, denounced the MAS draft as, "a proposal drafted in a military base, and the point of guns and bayonets and stained with the blood of repression."

Manfred Ryes Villa, the governor of Cochabamba and also a past and future Presidential candidate called on the Bolivian military to stand against the Morales government in defense of the Bolivian people. That drew a quick response from the head of the Bolivian armed forces, warning that the former Army captain turned Cochabamba politician had no mandate over the nation's armed forces and should not pretend to have one.

On Sunday afternoon, from La Paz, President Morales spoke officially to the country in televised remarks. In a break with usual protocol, most of the country's major private television networks refused to carry the broadcast. On the one hand Morales called for “serenity and tranquility" and called on Bolivians to work "democratically" for social justice. On the other he laid the blame squarely on his opponents for the chaos in Sucre and the failure of the Constituent Assembly to reach a consensus. "Some groups of oligarchs, conservatives and neoliberals don't want to change the Constitution…and for this reason since the beginning they have intended to close or bring failure to the Assembly." He also expressed his total confidence that if the MAS draft were brought to a national vote it would be approved by the required simple majority.

On Monday, speaking to a march of 2,500 rural supporters in La Paz, Morales acknowledged that the MAS draft still required final revision and approval by the Assembly in order to advance to a national vote. He also declared that the Assembly should continue its work, whether the opposition chooses to participate or not.

Meanwhile, civic leaders in six of the nine Bolivia regional departments have called for a daylong general strike Wednesday to protest the MAS draft of the Constitution. This guarantees that the political conflicts of the last week will at least have one sure winner – thousands of Bolivian school children treated to a mid-week day off.

And the Chess Game Behind the Scenes

As is almost always the case in interpreting the frequent chaos of Bolivian politics, it is essential not only to look at the hot rhetoric and street action that is public, but the political chess moves that lie underneath.

First, there really should be little question that MAS very much wanted to go to voters with a Constitution that had support from at least some of its opposition. If that was not their aim, then Morales and his party went to great lengths to hide their intentions, with more than a year of work by the Assembly and endless efforts to negotiate with the opposition. If the party's true aim, as some opponents will claim, was to push a MAS-only version straight ahead, they could have done that a year ago and from a much stronger position than Morales has now. Polarization was never MAS' or Morales' best move – though the President's frequent rhetoric of fire against his opponents over the past year hasn't helped win MAS any allies.

That said, polarization and blocking Assembly progress does seem to have been the favored move by MAS' political opponents. From a purely Machiavellian view that's completely understandable.

Was there ever anything on the table that opposition leaders liked better than the status quo? On issue after issue – indigenous rights, land reform, resource management, presidential re-election, the structure of government, and more – the conservative parties that lead the opposition are clearly a lot happier with the Constitution they have than with any reforms being pushed by MAS.

The one possible exception has been the demand by the gas-rich eastern departments for autonomy over resources and revenues – something they were never going to win in the form they wanted from MAS and Morales. Looking at that scenario, it is hard to imagine why the opposition would have chosen to do anything other than block the process. And if your intention is to stop a new constitution from happening, and to force MAS into its most extreme action mode – it would be hard to develop a better recipe than that employed by the opposition since it lost a lopsided defeat to MAS in the July 2006 Assembly delegate vote.

That is, provided of course, that you are interested in seeing the nation slide to the brink of chaos in which it now finds itself. But the image of a Bolivia in chaos may also work to the opposition's advantage as well. It is not by chance that Reyes Villa is waving the military action card around for anyone willing to have a look.

And Next?

So what happens now? Absent some sort if unanticipated change, we can expect the following:

1. MAS and Morales will try to entice at least some of the opposition back into the Assembly process to participate in the "revision and approval" stage for each proposed article in the new Constitution. This is the approval that is supposed to require a 2/3 vote of the whole. But it is hard to imagine why the opposition would that process now, though MAS could try to get support for moving forward on a smaller number of articles that already have some opposition backing. More likely, MAS may continue to go it alone and try to bring their plan to a national vote.

2. Under a unified rallying cry of "See, Morales is Chavez after all and is trying to impose his own Constitution on the people!" all the disparate pockets of opposition to MAS will come together. PODEMOS and Tuto Quiroga, the six opposition governors, civic leaders in Santa Cruz and Sucre, and a host of others will, for the first time, form a united front, with the aim of blocking the MAS constitution and delivering a heavy political blow to Morales.

3. The Constitution battle, from both sides, will be carried into the streets, and the results of that are never fully predictable in Bolivia – witness last January in Cochabamba. This will include attacks on media facilities, as it has already, by MAS supporters who have raised the issue of media bias against Morales. This will also include confrontations driven not only by politics but the unpredictable ingredient of mostly male violence released to the streets, from both sides.

If the MAS Constitution does come to a vote, the opposition will have a choice to make. It can encourage its backers to vote but vote 'blanco', the equivalent of abstention, in an effort to deny the election legitimacy. Alternatively, the opposition can unify behind a call to voters to vote NO. Frankly, they may be better off with the latter.

Do the political math. In both the Presidential vote and the Constituent Assembly vote, Morales and MAS got about 53%. That was a solid majority, and nearly twice that of their nearest opponent, PODEMOS. But two things next time around will be very different. First, Morales' and MAS' popularity at the polls is likely to be significantly less than it once was, especially among anxious middle class voters, a sizable number of whom backed MAS before. Second, in both those previous votes, MAS had the great political advantage of facing a fragmented opposition and a relatively unified base. On a Yes/No vote on a MAS-backed Constitution, that opposition will be unified as never before. Nor is it clear how unified the political left will be in favor.

Whatever one thinks about who is to blame for the fiasco over the weekend in Sucre, or for bringing Bolivia to a dicey political precipice, the fact is that it is a whole new scenario now. What really happens next, both in the street and behind the scenes is really anybody's guess.

Note: I am taking the liberty of moving to the comments section of this post a handful of comments on the Assembly issue posted to our Memoriam for BBC Reporter Lola Almudevar. That will leave the comments section there to be what it should have remained, a place for those who knew and admired her to offer their condolences and memories.

In Memoriam: Lola Almudevar

Readers:

Events, and violence, are unfolding quickly in Sucre, the site of Bolivia’s combative Constituent Assembly. We will certainly be providing coverage of these events here on the Blog shortly. However, we dedicate this space today to some tragic news close to home for the small community of foreigners living here, the tragic death early this morning of one of our own, BBC correspondent Lola Almudevar.

Jim Shultz

In Memoriam: Lola Almudevar

If you follow the news in Bolivia from overseas, via outlets such as the Associated Press, the BBC, Reuters, the San Francisco Chronicle or a host of other media, more than likely you owe that news to one of the handful of adventurous young people who come here from abroad willing to go great lengths to get the story. Bolivia is not an easy country to cover, and often being a reporter here comes at great risk.

At about three am Sunday morning, one of the best young foreign journalists I have met here paid the ultimate price. Lola Almudevar, 29, a correspondent for BBC radio, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other news organizations, was killed in a head-on collision en route from La Paz to Sucre to cover the political explosions underway at the Constituent Assembly. With her in the car was another talented young foreign correspondent, Eduardo Garcia, a 31-year-old Spaniard who covers Bolivia for Reuters. As I write, he is in critical condition and in surgery in a La Paz hospital. Two Bolivian occupants of the car, and two occupants of the truck they collided with are also dead.

The two young journalists made a snap decision to head to Sucre late Saturday. I wasn’t there when they made the decision, but I know just the conversation they had about it. I was with them last weekend, at a barbeque at Eduardo’s house in La Paz. They both told me about another rush trip they had made to Sucre more than a month ago, at another time when it looked like political events at the Assembly might explode. Both were clear that they had a responsibility to be wherever breaking news was going to happen. It was how they viewed the pact of being a foreign journalist.

The road to Sucre is a dangerous one even during the day. At night, even under last night’s full moon, it is a trip not everyone would be willing to risk. If you are a reader or listener to foreign news from Bolivia, they took it for you.

Lola Almudevar was from Nottingham England, the daughter of a Spanish father and British mother. Her trajectory toward being a working journalist a hemisphere from home was no more direct than most of those who come here. She worked for a time for the European Union in Brussels, on international labor protections. Later she morphed into being a video producer, winning just this year an award for her co-production of a BBC television program, “Alexandra Road.”

She came to Bolivia a half year ago, and clearly loved the place. Her style of journalism did not involve sitting in the capital waiting for news to trickle out from official sources. She traveled deeper and more often into the heart of the country than almost any journalist I have met here. She filed stories, solid ones, on the children of Bolivian workers who have migrated abroad, on the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara, on the gas issue, an interview with President Evo Morales, and on coca.

She was also the kind of spirit that made people want to be around her. I asked her last weekend, “Do you ever not smile?” Laughing, she explained to me that, actually, her propensity to grin non-stop got her in trouble when she first appeared in video as a journalist. “They told me I needed to frown in order to look serious.”

This afternoon, returning home from a family trip to the countryside, I received news of Lola’s death as soon as I walked in the door. A little while later, while downloading my backed-up emails, I found one from Lola sent Friday afternoon. It included the recording of a BBC radio piece she had just filed on coca, and which I knew she was proud of. She added a short note, “The voice overs they chose this time are priceless!” I am sure she meant the odd match-up of thick British accents speaking the English translations of coca growers from the Chapare. A week ago I’d confessed to her that every time I traveled to Britain I felt like I was in a Monty Python film.

Even though it probably violates about 35 different copyright protections, we posted the piece on our Web site, because we thought that one way to honor Lola would be to let people listen to the last piece of journalism she would ever produce. Click on the link here (and be a bit patient, it’s a large file).

Eduardo has our best wishes for a full recovery. Lola’s family has our deepest sympathies. We hope they know that she will be remembered with great affection here by those who knew her here; in a country that she clearly did love.

A note Monday evening: I did not expect, but am glad to see, that this post has become a place for friends and admirers of Lola's to express themselves about what she meant to them and how they feel affected by her death. Later this week I will copy these comments and forward them on to Lola's family in the UK, and to her friends here in Bolivia. I am sure what people have had to say here will mean a great deal to them. Jim

Thanksgiving: An Economic Analysis

In the summer of 1619 the International Monetary Fund issued a report about the macroeconomic prospects for the North American continent that included some alarming conclusions. At the time the IMF was staffed entirely by two men, both named Frederick, who operated out of a one-room office in Central London that they shared with a wagon wheel maker. They did also have a secretary in their employ, a woman named Mildred who, according to the gender roles at the time, was not allowed to weigh in on substantive matters.

On the IMF’s behalf the two Fredericks reported:

“Prospects for macroeconomic growth in the northeast section of the continent appear bleak, projected out through at least the mid-1620s. This forecast owes mainly to the reality that the native populations there operate in a non-cash economy, providing for their basic needs through planting and barter. Absent major economic restructuring, it is a virtual certainty that those populations will not be able to take full advantage of the large anticipated growth in the global economy projected over the next decade.”

A footnote, credited by historians to Frederick #1, added, “Exactly how long do these blokes think they can trade with cobs of corn. Hello! They need cash.”

Soon after the report’s release, the World Bank, staffed entirely at the time by Frederick #2’s second cousin Jonathan, proposed an action plan to stimulate economic development in the region:

“We recommend sending a special mission of men wearing hats with large silver buckles sewn on to them, to investigate possible products available in the region for cash exchange on the global market. We also recommend that the team wear large square white bibs on the font of their shirts, just because it would look really cool.”

The joint IMF/World Bank mission arrived at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts in November of 1620. The rock was given its name by the Chrysler Corporation as part of a World Bank corporate sponsorship agreement, narrowly beating out a bid by the Toyota Corporation of Japan. The team began undertaking a round of community-based consultations with local tribal leaders, all of whom seemed really impressed by the hats with the large buckles.

A week later the mission team reported its findings to the native leaders, in an 85-page memo:

"Based on a rigorous and educated review of the resources available, and a careful analysis of local and global markets, in our view the best opportunity available to make the required shift to a cash economy resides in the region’s abundant turkey population. We anticipate a significant market for exports of the bird, which can later be converted, in Europe, to a variety of uses. The demand for turkey hot dogs, in particular, seems both promising in the short-term and virtually unlimited in the long-term."

The local indigenous population took the document under study for a week, and sent a committee to meet with the World Bank/IMF mission, led by Squanto, a native leader who, by chance, was also among the first graduates from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, three days away by horseback. According to interviews collected later, Squanto reportedly told the mission members that his people were not interested in selling the turkey as raw product, and insisted that they would undertake the industrialization of value-added products themselves. One account records him declaring:

What? You think you need to be from England to kill a bird and stuff its meat into little round tubes of skin that can fit into a bun or lay flat on a grill. Give me a break. As we speak, I have sent our best archers to guard the entire local turkey population and have, by decree, nationalized these birds as the patrimony of our people. With special loans from our friend, Chief Hugo of the Iroquois – whom I admit is a little whacko and looks silly in that red beret – we will develop a complete turkey-dog manufacturing sector. You want the dogs Mr. Oscar Meyer; you’ll pay us a fair price!

Dismayed by the rejection of their educated guidance, the members of the IMF/World Bank mission issued a warning that no additional economic aid would be forthcoming until the native tribes adjusted their policies to be in accord with the group’s recommendations. When reminded that neither the IMF nor the World Bank provided the local tribes with aid, an exasperated Frederick #2 is reported to have said. “Alas, perhaps someday.”

In the meantime, seduced by the allure of the local weather and abundance of corn, the members of the mission decided to stay in the new continent, setting up a conservative policy think tank with the financial backing of Mr. Orville Soros, a wealthy financier from Hungary.

Months later, at the end of the autumn harvest season in 1621, Squanto and his people threw a great feast to celebrate the opening of their fifteenth full-scale turkey-dog factory, and the signing of a $10 billion dollar, 95-year contract to the Spanish navy. The former members of the IMF/World Bank mission were invited to attend the feast, and were served all the turkey dogs that they could eat.

“Well Squanto, I have to hand it to you,” Frederick #1 is reported to have said, in a toast delivered at the feast. “Who would have thought that a tiny population such as yours could have pulled off such a large scale industrialization as this one? You have forced us to rethink all of our macroeconomic doctrines.”

“Thank you,” the native leader replied. “But let me ask you a question. Those large white bibs on your shirts. What the hell were you guys thinking?

Happy Thanksgiving to all from The Democracy Center

U.S./Bolivia Relations: Another Outbreak of Foolishness

Well, just when it seemed like the diplomatic wars between the Morales Administration and the U.S. Embassy here had died down – making it safe to visit that new Pirates of the Caribbean ride opening up in Oruro – both sides are back at it.

The latest round began with the appearance of a photo, a shot of a slightly smiling Ambassador Phillip S. Goldberg at the big annual commercial fair in Santa Cruz. One one side he is flanked by a well-known Santa Cruz civic leader and vocal adversary of Morales. On Goldberg’s other side stands a young man in a white t-shirt – a fellow later identified as a Colombian recently jailed by Bolivian authorities for suspected "guerilla activities." Not the kind of company a U.S. Ambassador generally likes to keep in public.

"Hey, Let's Walk Around ExpoCruz and Plot Against Evo."

The Goldberg photo exploded its way into the Bolivian media just over a week ago, wrapped in a new round of Bolivian government denunciations and conspiracy theories. Angry Foreign Ministry officials announced that they were demanding an explanation from Goldberg. The U.S. Embassy responded that it was just like dozens of other sort-of-a-celebrity photos taken of Goldberg while in public with people he doesn't know. President Evo Morales, nevertheless, took the photo and ran with it, all the way to his address before a Latin American Presidential summit a week ago in Chile. Waving the photo in the air, he cited it as further evidence of a U.S. plot against him.

Conspiracy?

Let's see. The U.S. Ambassador wanted to engage in clandestine planning for an anti-Evo assault with a leading Santa Cruz critic and a Colombian paramilitary operative. Inconveniently, all the usual secret spots were occupied that day, so instead they went for a walk around ExpoCruz. Yes, that's how it went down. Standard Embassy coup-planning operating procedure.

Okay, while Mr. Goldberg has certainly botched a few things here these past few months, could we please have a little reality check here?

Goldberg explained later, "I know that many people come up to me as Ambassador of the U.S. to take photos and it isn't because I am so handsome. It is because I am the Ambassador of the U.S." Does anyone, even Morales, really believe that Goldberg would be so stupid to be knowingly hanging out in public with a genuine coup operative? Oh yes, and professional wrestling is real too.

[A disclosure: There is a photo that exists of me standing beside both Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez, taken, similarly, at a public event. If the U.S. Embassy requests that I release it, I will.]

"My Big Brother is Gonna Beat You Up."

Now, a more savvy diplomat would have simply offered his explanation to the Bolivian media and government that this was a picture, like dozens of others, taken in a public place standing next to someone he didn't know. A more savvy diplomat would have left it at that and watched, with some amusement, as the President he so dislikes made a fool of himself by belaboring the photo-as-conspiracy charge. But alas, Mr. Goldberg seems to have been absent on ‘savvy day’ at Ambassador school.

This week, while walking out of an event in La Paz, Goldberg declared to the Bolivian press that, in response to Morales' recent declarations against him, the U.S. State Department had called in Bolivia's U.S. ambassador to rake him over the coals. "Our government has expressed its disappointment over these accusations." This is diplomatic speak for, "See, now my big brother [in Washington] is going to beat you up."

First, there is the question of how much Goldberg's superiors in Washington really want to get dragged into his ongoing tit-for-tat with Morales. I tired to imagine the call:

"Secretary Shannon, it's Ambassador Goldberg on the phone from Bolivia again. He says Morales is still being mean to him."

"Ayyy, geeze, again?"

In the immediate aftermath of Goldberg’s declaration there was a good deal of confusion about whether it was actually true. Bolivia's Washington Ambassador, Gustavo Guzman, told AP, that he hadn’t been called in for any such scolding. A State Department spokeswoman then told the press,"We have regular meetings with officials of the Embassy of Bolivia and other countries to talk about our bilateral relations." Not exactly how you might describe an Ambassador being called in to hear a reprimand about Presidential rhetoric.

On Thursday, events got so confusing that Los Tiempos here ran the story two ways. It’s morning headline read, "The U.S. Calls in Bolivia's Ambassador in Washington." By mid-afternoon the paper had changed its headline (on its Web site) to, "The Government of the U.S. Has Not Called in the Bolivian Ambassador to Express its Disappointment." By day’s end the State Department spokesman decided to chime in on Goldberg’s behalf, issuing a statement saying that the State Department had spoken to Ambassador Guzman and said it wanted Morales to stop making the photo accusation.

What was really said and when still remains unclear.

Again, all this is pretty ridiculous from the Morales side. If the government here is intent on scoring points in diplomatic tit-for-tats with the U.S. Embassy, it should have stopped after the ammo at the airport episode, in which the Ambassador offered up a good case study for foreign service students about how not to handle an incident. But the 'photo as conspiracy' business just serves as equal fodder for a session on how not to be a President.

For his part, one assumes that Mr. Goldberg is here to facilitate good working relations with the host government, not to find new and inventive ways every week to keep his name and image in the media. Did he really think that a statement from Washington was going to move Evo to listen to his more rational impulses, or make Goldberg's diplomatic relations easier?

More and more these two look like two people in a bad marriage looking for new and inventive ways to provoke each other. It sort of makes you wish that one of them, at least, would have the good sense to start acting like a grown-up. Shall we take bets on the Blog about what goofy thing they’ll fight over next, and when?

By the way, in that photo of Chavez, Morales and I – we were discussing global domination, and beer.

Bringing Coca to the YouTube Republican Presidential Debate

No issue has been more contentious between the Bolivia and U.S. over the past decade than the issue of coca. The coca leaf has been a part of Andean civilizations for millennia, from medicinal use to rituals. It is also, when altered through an elaborate chemical process, the raw ingredient to manufacture cocaine.

The U.S. “War on Coca’ in Bolivia has left a stark trail of human rights abuses – from violent forced eradication efforts to the jailings of thousands of innocent people, courtesy of special anti-drug police and prosecutors paid by the U.S. government. Yet illegal drug use in the U.S. continues with little change.

Today The Democracy Center is releasing its video submission on the coca issue to the You Tube Republican Presidential Debate. You can see it by clicking on the screen here, or via this link. We encourage readers to share the video with their friends, which you can do by clicking on the small envelope icon below.

To provide additional background information on the coca issue we have also just published a new Democracy Center brief on the topic, an expert from our forthcoming book, Dignity and Defiance, Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization (University of California Press). The chapter excerpt was written by Coletta Youngers, a Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, and a leading expert on the ‘U.S. War on Drugs.’ You can read that paper here.

The video was created by The Democracy Center staff in Bolivia and filmed and edited by our friends at the School for International Training, Ismael Saavedra, Michael Steiner and Talya Hernandez-Ritter.

The Annual Democracy Center Magazine Returns

Last year The Democracy Center unveiled the first issue of its annual magazine from Bolivia, Jallalla – pronounced hy-ya-ya, an indigenous word for "Live!" With our readers' help, the magazine was a big success, with more than 1500 copies distributed across the U.S. Here's the link to that first issue, for those who missed it.

Well, we are back in an editing frenzy, getting ready to go to press with issue #2, and once again we'd like to ask for our readers' help in getting the magazine out and into the eager hands of people who want to read it in paper and ink [as before, the electronic version will be posted and available for free on The Democracy Center web site]. Here's a photo of the new cover.

The new issue will continue to have a solid focus on Bolivian events and culture – including aan analysis of the battle over Constitutional reform, an update on the coca issue, a look at the ritual of the Q'owa, and more. But in this issue we also expand to put the spotlight on our work globally – from New Mexico to the Balkans – and on some of the people around the world with whom we work. And, once again, the magazine will offer some of our favorite photos and art from Bolivia and beyond. The theme of this issue is The Power of the Citizen.

Like last year, our plan is this. If you are interested in helping distribute the magazine among your friends, colleagues and neighbors, please send a note by November 20 to magazine@democracyctr.org. Let us know how many copies you'd like. That helps us know how many to print. As before, we'll be asking for $1 per copy ordered, to help with printing and postage.

Thanks to everyone who joined with us last year. Let's do it again!

Sucre Poker and Bolivian Chess

Here's the hand you've been dealt.

You are the Bolivian department of Chuquisaca, the home of Sucre, the judicial capital of the country and also one of its least developed regions. You bear the grudge of a historical wrong – the loss of the full capital to La Paz – committed before your great-grandparents were born. Suddenly, you find yourself for the first time with some serious political leverage on your hands. You are the host of a Constituent Assembly to re-write the nation's Constitution. You make a move.

You try to plant before the Assembly a proposal to move the nation's capital back to Sucre from La Paz. You aren’t taken very seriously. Basically, you are blown off. You can’t even get the issue put to a vote before the full Assembly. So you play the same card that the President and his allies once played so often when their demands were ignored – disruption. You physically harass the delegates, block building entrances, and generally make it impossible for the Assembly to meet. And so it doesn’t meet. It is dead in its tracks for two months.

The government is desperate to get the Assembly process on track and because of that it's ready to deal. You have leveraged 'capatalia' into a real issue and into real negotiating power. From the perspective of political poker, you've played things shrewdly. The government offers up construction of a new regional airport and a new highway. It pledges to move significant government functions to Sucre, including the national election authorities and even some sessions of Congress. If your goal was to boost public investment in the region and obtain a more visible presence in the nation's politics, it is a solid win.

The First Rule of Poker

But there is a rule in poker, one that I explained once upon a time to my tearful daughter when teaching her the game. It isn't actually your money until you take it and walk away. The danger in poker is that players with good hands convince themselves that they have great hands. Then they end up having losing hands. [Note: Being the good father that I am, I let my daughter win back all of my pocket change.]

Some realisms:

Upstate New York is not going to be handed back over to the Iroquois.

The Spanish are not going to refill Potosi with silver.

Paraguay is not going to hand back El Chaco.

Bolivia is not going to declare war on Chile and recover the sea.

The capital of Bolivia is not going to be moved to Sucre.

Injustices one and all, but the more that time that passes after the injustice is done, the more subtle the reparations that are possible. No person, or region, in any country, is terribly game to give up a major chunk of its economy freely to another. This is especially true when the sacrifice is aimed at making amends for a wrong that no one still alive actually committed.

What does that mean for Chuquisaca now? Well the Constituent Assembly is sitting in Sucre waiting to reconvene, but those leading the "return the capital" rebellion seem pretty intent on not letting it. Some of them apparently still suffer the illusion that a ticked off population five times its size in La Paz and El Also is going to wave a cheerful goodbye to being the national capital. One wonders whether these leaders also put their wobbly adult teeth under their pillows at night waiting for Ratoncito Pérez (the Latin American equivalent of the tooth fairy).

There are splits over the matter in Sucre, just as a poker player wrestles with choices over how to play her hand. Some of those pushing to take the deal on the table and let the Assembly get back to work are backers of the government, but others not. Some may just be realists. In any event, MAS seems about ready to call the bluff and move the Assembly to friendlier MAS territory in Oruro, a city which does not have its sights on the capital, but which does produce the best Carnival in the nation.

If the Assembly leaves that will leave Sucre free to fill its streets in protest, but with no leverage left to wrestle even the promise of a few street pavings. This is bad poker.

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it…

If Sucre fills its streets in protests demanding the capital be moved and the Assembly has gone elsewhere…

Bolivian Chess

All of which leads us to the real question: If demanding the move of the capital is being pushed far beyond the point of a winning hand for Sucre, why is that hand being played? It is hard to believe that the intelligent people of Chuquisaca are that blinded. The answer lies not in poker, but in chess.

Since it lost so lopsidedly in elections for delegates to the Assembly 16 months ago, the political opposition here – most specifically PODEMOS and leaders in Santa Cruz – has made a strategic choice to block the Assembly's progress rather than shape its product. That is understandable. From the perspective of the opposition there is nothing that the Assembly could possibly produce that it would prefer to the status quo. The exception to that might be greater regional autonomy, but the MAS majority isn't going to cede to the regions control over either land reform or gas, the opposition's lead desires.

Simple chess: If you can't checkmate your opponent then just make damn sure your opponent can't checkmate you – stalemate. At this point stalemate is the best move the opposition has got and after the 2/3 vote issue ran its course and the Assembly began working again, blowing up the Assembly with the 'capatalia' issue was an ingenious play toward stalemate.

Here is the formula. First make every move that you can to block the Assembly from functioning, then declare that the Assembly is dysfunctional. Not bad.

You can tell in the newly hot rhetoric coming from MAS leadership that they are getting tired of the game and are pondering a new move themselves. Vice President Linera, always the cool rhetoric member of the President/Vice President team, declared this week that the Asamblea had been kidnapped by "racist and fascist" Sucre leaders.

Watch for MAS' 'Plan B', and it won't be just moving the Assembly to Oruro. Don't be surprised if, whether it is by an act of Congress or by Presidential decree, the MAS version of a new constitution is placed on the ballot where it can be made the national 'magna carta' by a simple majority vote. And MAS may be able to win such a majority at the ballot box. The opposition will cry bloody murder amidst chants, fair ones, that a new constitution should seek to represent something closer to a national consensus.

But seeking a national consensus is a very different strategy than blocking the majority at every turn. If the Assembly fails Bolivia is headed for a political showdown. It might be in the streets or it might be at the ballot box, but either way, the nation would be a lot better off if its leaders played less poker and less chess, and more statesmanship on all sides.

For a deeper look at the Constituent Assembly process see The Democracy Center's new briefing paper, Re-Founding Bolivia: A Nation's Struggle Over Constitutional Reform.

A Former Bush Administration Official Takes a Bolivian Spin

Over the weekend the Bush administration’s former point man for Latin America, Roger Noriega, weighed in publicly on the criminal charges against former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, in an op-ed article in the Miami Herald – No Crime, No Punishment. I for one would like to thank Mr. Bush’s former Assistant Secretary of State for doing so. Mr. Sánchez de Lozada’s protected exile in the U.S. ought to be on the pages of U.S. newspapers and Mr. Noriega has done a service to that cause.

The problem arises, however, when one actually analyzes what Mr. Noriega has to say about the case. Whatever it is that has led some Bush foreign policy officials to make up the facts to suit their political needs is apparently something that Mr. Noriega carried with him when he left.

Mr. Noriega vs. The Facts

Mr. Noriega, for example, begins his article with this interesting rendition of recent Bolivian history:

It is a dramatic tale. After losing his bid for the presidency in democratic elections, a cocalero congressman [current President Evo Morales] immediately turns to violent protests that succeed in toppling the man who beat him. At the head of an angry mob, the populist leader forces early elections, leading to his winning of the presidency on his second attempt.

A dramatic tale indeed, however, also a made-up one – in the spirit of “Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction and is prepared to use them.” Here, on the other hand, is a quick look at the actual facts.

The elections that Mr. Noriega is referring to took place in June 2002, when Evo Morales finished two percentage points behind Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. It is worth noting that Mr. Morales' strong finish owed greatly to reaction provoked by rantings against him from Mr. Noreiga's underling at the time, the U.S. Ambassador.

Mr. Morales' first act with the new administration was not "violent protests", as Mr. Noriega would have us believe. To the contrary, one of Mr. Morales’ first acts was to sit down with Sánchez de Lozada – right here at the Hotel Cochabamba – for negotiations over the complex coca issue. There is little question that Mr. Noriega knows this, of course. The careful compromise on coca that the two Bolivian leaders worked out was blocked by the Bush administration while Mr. Noriega was in charge of its Latin American agenda.

Understandably, these facts get in the way of Mr. Noriega’s careful story telling.

With regard to the mass protests that led to Mr. Sánchez de Lozada's departure, those took place more than a year later, in October 2003, and here again Mr. Noriega deliberately paints a misleading picture. He describes those events as a President using “legal and responsible” force against armed mobs and concludes: …respected former President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada…gave up power in 2003 hoping that Morales would spare the country from more violence.

But there are important facts that Mr. Noriega ignores about what led Bolivia’s President to board a commercial jet that night in October 2003 and flee to suburban Maryland.

Mr. Sánchez de Lozada’s downward spiral began when word leaked that he was negotiating a secret deal to sell off Bolivia’s gas and oil at bargain prices through Chile to the U.S. – a deal that the Bush administration did like. Mass protests against Mr. Sánchez de Lozada’s plan sprang up nationwide, including in La Paz where they effectively shut down the capital. Mr. Sánchez de Lozada responded with what had become his signature move, military and police repression so violent that even his own Vice President, Carlos Mesa, publicly broke with him over it. More than sixty people were left dead, including women and children shot by government troops.

With church leaders, prominent intellectuals, social movements, and even key members of his own administration calling on him to step aside, his last remaining ally was Mr. Noriega and his team at the Bush State Department. None of this, however, has a place in Mr. Noriega’s lopsided narrative.

Of the Bolivian criminal case against the former President, Mr. Noriega gives all credit to a vengeance-seeking President Morales:

The new president then grabs the reins of once independent courts, forcing trumped-up criminal charges against the political foe whom he hounded from office.

There are, however, a few major points that Mr. Noriega forgets here as well. To begin with, the Bolivian criminal charges filed against Mr. Sánchez de Lozada were formally initiated before Mr. Morales was elected, and they were approved by a Congress still controlled by Mr. Sánchez de Lozada’s own party. And while President Morales has clearly made the charges a priority for his government, the real push behind the case has always been from the families of the dead and wounded that Mr. Sánchez de Lozada left in his wake.

Histories Better Told in Accurate Shades of Gray

To be clear, there is plenty of real history with which one can question some of President Morales’ actions. In this Blog, we have written about his inability to find competent managers, his needless provocation of opponents, the costs of his new U.S. visa policy, his dilution of the Sánchez de Lozada case with other less warranted prosecutions, and many other topics known to our regular readers.

The real tales of both Mr. Morales and Mr. Sánchez de Lozada are not written in black and white. They come in shades of gray and touch on issues that are more complex. Mr. Noriega might have pondered the question of how ex-leaders can be assured a fair trial, a worthy issue in the Sánchez de Lozada case. Or he might have considered how Presidents can respond to mass protest short of shooting their own people by the dozen. But exploring gray areas does not seem to be Mr. Noriega’s current assignment. Instead, his current mission seems to be coming to the rhetorical rescue of old friends.

[Author’s note: I have sent this article to Mr. Noriega and have invited him, should he wish to do so, to respond in our comments section.]

Announcing: The Democracy Center's New Report On Bolivia's Struggle to Write a New Constitution

For more than a year, Bolivia has been in the midst of a historic struggle to write a new constitution. While the work of writing the new national 'magna carta' has taken place in the Constituent Assembly, elected by the people to undertake the historic task, conflicts over it have spilled out into the streets in every major city in the nation. That includes here in Cochabamba where three men were left dead in political street battles last January. The Assembly is scheduled to begin meeting again, after a two-month hiatus over the "Capatalia" conflict, this week in Sucre.

To help interested readers more fully understand what the Constituent Assembly and the process of constitutional reform means for Bolivia, The Democracy Center assigned a special team (a mix of Bolivians and people from the U.S.) to assemble the story. Our new briefing paper, Re-Founding Bolivia: A Nation's Struggle Over Constitutional Reform, is the product of their work.

Part One of Re-Founding Bolivia looks at the mechanism of a Constituent Assembly and its recent history in Latin America as a whole and Bolivia in particular. Part Two looks at the major issues before the Bolivian Assembly, from indigenous rights, to government structure, to land reform. Part Three tells the narrative of a difficult process in action, including the various conflicts that have threatened to sideline the Assembly and still do.

You can read the full paper here. As always, we look forward to your comments.

Todos Santos (Mastaku) in Bolivia

Readers:

Today is the Catholic holiday of Todos Santos, a time when Latin Americans in particular practice rituals to remember loved ones who have died. From the famous altars of Mexico, to the tradition of sleeping overnight in cemeteries in Bolivia – this is Latin America’s version of ‘trick or treat’.

Today we bring you a Blog by Democracy Center team members Leny Olivera and Elliot Williams, looking at Todos Santos (Mastaku) in Bolivia.

Jim Shultz

Todos Santos (Mastaku) in Bolivia

Walking through the crowded alleys of the canchas or open-air markets throughout Cochabamba, the sights, sounds and smells of Mastaku are everywhere. All around are clusters of stalls full of tantawawas, or breads in the form of everything from people, to the moon, sun, ladders, and snakes. Vibrantly colored sweets made by artisans can be found in the shape of baskets or little animals. The scent of fresh fruit and flowers permeate the air and people are moving everywhere. Preparations are underway for Mastaku, the Andean holiday honoring the dead.

Recently these preparations have increasingly coincided with another holiday -- Halloween. One can’t miss the advertisements on the radio and television promoting the celebration, nor the orange and black displays cropping up in many supermarkets. Even roadside stands have added costumes and decorations to their usual wares.

In Bolivia the first and second of November mark the festival of the dead -- in Quechua, Mastaku. This festival begins during the last week of October with the baking of the tantawawas and sweets. It is particularly important for families who have a person who has recently died, to make the tantawawas themselves.

Starting at midday on the first of November the souls of the dead visit the families. They are received with food that has been made with great thought and care. A large table is prepared with all of the favorites of the deceased family member. The table will contain anything and everything that the deceased enjoyed eating and drinking: full plates of typical foods, entire cooked chickens, fruits, vegetables, soda, juices – whatever the favorites were. The tanawawas are also placed throughout the table. In addition the tables and have elements of the Catholic Church like crosses wrapped in black and purple. The area may be decorated with flowers, purple and black streamers, and a picture of the deceased as well.

Later that evening, children from the neighborhood visit all the houses where people are honoring souls and offer prayers and songs to the dead. The families invite all the kids as well as visitors (friends and family) to a variety of breads and corn cookies. The next day the prepared table is brought to the cemetery to meet the dead. It is a time to wish them a good departure and invite all who are close to visit with the spirit, pray, sing, and eat the remainder of the food.

This tradition originates within the millennial cultural practices of the Andean culture and has since been mixed with elements of the Catholic Church. When someone dies, according to the Andean cosmo-vision, the person actually continues living but in another world. Many Andean ritualistas (spiritual leaders of rituals and ceremonies) agree that three worlds exist: one with all of the people who are living; another with protective beings like the sun and the moon; and a third that in Quechua is called Ukjupacha -- a world where you find all the people who passed away to be a different kind of being that care for the lives of the community.

Because of this, when someone dies there exist grand rituals that bring the entire family together – not only to help each other through the pain of mourning, but also wishing that the dead are alright in the other world. After Spanish colonization, the Catholic Church introduced new elements to the ritual. For example, the inclusion of prayers and the presence of crosses adorned in black and purple.

In the last ten years the presence of Halloween has become much greater in Bolivia. As a mixture of ancient Celtic practices, Roman holidays, and influences of the Catholic Church, Halloween also has a very deep religious and spiritual tradition. Although in the United States the holiday has become increasingly secular, it maintains a focus on community. There is certainly an economic aspect to the holiday as well with an estimated $6.9 billion dollars being spent annually. In Bolivia, there is little to no cultural significance to the holiday. Instead it is only the commercial aspect of Halloween that has been manifested here.

Despite this, Bolivia’s traditions continue. For those who do choose to observe Halloween, it has become one more reason for celebration. It is another addition to the days of Mastaku, rather than a replacement. In this country where the indigenous majority fervently maintain their cultural practices, Mastaku, or Festival of the Dead, is more alive than ever.

Written by Leny Olivera and Elliot Williams

Photo credit: www.fotociclope.com/galerias