Happy New Year

Dear Readers:

My family and I have marked the new year by moving house, from the urban hillsides of Barrio Temporal to the flat and open countryside beyond Tiquipaya. In other words, we now live in the Bolivian version of "out in the boonies". In fact, here is a photo of one of our new neighbors. As you can see, she is pretty happy to have us in the neighborhood.

All this means that I won't be posting for a few days, due to both the lack of time and the lack of either a phone or Internet connection. Also, FYI, even though the news is certainly full of things to write about, it is New Years. So whether you celebrate by dancing until dawn in Cochabamba, or by sleeping on a freezing sidewalk in Pasadena waiting for the Rose Parade, or by vegging out in front of a TV watching college football in the U.S. – a Happy New Year to all!

Have a great start to 2008 and I'll be back on-line in a few days.

Jim Shultz

A Christmas Story

Dear Readers:

Well, I wanted to post something special here for the holidays. I think that we can all use a little Blog break from coverage of Bolivian politics. I thought long and hard about what might work.

First, I thought I might come up with something that did have a slight political theme. I got as far as:



[To the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas”]

In the new constitution,
Evo gave to me,
Not much regional autonomy

But I couldn’t really get the syllables right and, frankly, it was a pathetic effort. Then I thought perhaps this might work.

[To the tune of “White Christmas”]

I’m dreaming of a dry Christmas,
My clothes have been on the line,
For seven days.

Again, to be honest, it just wasn’t of the quality that I know that you, our readers, expect.

So, in the absence of anything newly creative coming to mind, and facing the pressures of both preparing for Santa’s arrival and a house move, I have decided to bring back a classic. Below is one of the earliest additions of our Democracy Center newsletter, something I wrote and sent out while slightly out of my mind at Christmas exactly ten years ago, the last Christmas my family spent in the U.S.

I hope that you enjoy it and, on behalf of everyone at The Democracy Center, happy holidays to one and all, whichever ones you celebrate this time of year.

Jim Shultz


I THINK THAT BABY JESUS SHOULD GLOW IN THE DARK

Christmas 1997, San Francisco

There are many theories about what constitutes the first crisis in a young couple's life. I say it is Christmas.

Two people come together, embedded with two decades of detailed and nuanced visions of what Christmas should be like. What kind of tree and how big? When should it go up, when should it come down? Tinsel, yes or no? Christmas lights around the house? A myriad of questions about decorations and rituals destined to divide the most loving of couples just when they are starting out.

"Lights in the tree? What do you mean we're putting lights in the tree? My family never put lights in the tree," I whined to my wife. In our family, where we celebrated the holidays in the balmy winters of Southern California our tree decorating was straightforward and Spartan. You pulled out the boxes of 1950s Christmas ornaments my parents had bought when they were first married, you hung them in a good spread-out fashion and then threw on a little tinsel. The thing was the tree, not the glitz. My wife Lynn celebrated her holidays in the arctic winters of Buffalo where I imagined that the shear fear of going outside inspired her family to spend hours if not days decorating their tree.

Hers was a careful formula. First you weave an enormous string of (non-flashing, absolutely non-flashing) Christmas lights throughout the trees branches. As she would later carefully instruct our children, some lights had to be on the inside of the tree, some near the outside, to give it that three-dimensional look. The come the ornaments, a massive mix of colored balls, cut-out Christmas cards and miscellaneous angels and small animals that have found their way into our collection.

While I conceded the tree debate to my wife, I stood my ground unequivocally on the dinner issue - turkey. No ham, no creative vegetarian alternative - turkey, stuffed and with all the trimmings. The first year we cooked a turkey I thought our cat would have a heart attack. I think it was the first time we had ever cooked meat in the house and as the smells started wafting their way through the apartment she went nuts, meowing, ordering, pleading as if to say, "Turkey! You never told me you could cook turkey! Don't forget me, I want some, don't forget me!"

The addition of children ratchets things up exponentially. The small box of holiday decorations that we used to store in an apartment closet has ballooned into enough boxes to fill our house basement. Okay, some of these additions are mine - the five foot blow-up Santa that I bought at a Southern California service station, and the ever-growing strings of lights that I have gotten into draping around all our windows and doors.

But it is clearly my wife who is responsible for the relentless "Christmas creep" that has expanded our collection. We have music, hours of it, a new tape every year. For weeks we live to a soundtrack that runs from "I Ain't Gettin' Nuttin' for Christmas" to Michael Jackson singing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus".

Then there are the hanging things -garlands, Santa figurines, wreathes - an unparalleled onslaught of things hanging everywhere. Now my family doesn't even consult with me any more.

This year I walked into our kitchen and discovered plastered to the walls clippings from every Christmas card we have ever received in our lives (and perhaps also those of half our neighbors). The explosion of Santas, angels, paper ornaments and snow scenes hits you the way the stars do on a moonless night out in the woods. It was like being stuck in Fantasia. "Okay, they've gone crazy," I thought. "They're nailing up everything we have that even remotely resembles Christmas." My wife has started hanging holiday napkins over the doorway.

I had to take a stand and I knew what it needed to be. I had remained silent on the point ever since it first snuck into our house a couple of years before. It was time for a serious talk about the nativity scene. I grew up with a Christmas that was totally secular, the vestige of a Jewish family that whole-heartedly embraced the American icons of Santa, Rudolph, and gingerbread men but stopped way short of Jesus, Joseph and Mary. My own theology was flexible enough that the arrival of Baby Jesus, the animals and the manger into our home didn't weird me out as it has friends of mine. My daughter and son love arranging and rearranging them and my wife always uses their set-up as an opportunity to introduce a little more of the Roman Catholicism of her roots.

With my family assembled I made the announcement, "I think we should paint the Baby Jesus with glow in the dark paint." I could see immediately that the kids definitely had the potential to warm to the idea, while my wife had that exasperated look of having to prepare to deal with another of my crazy ideas that she didn't know whether to treat as a joke or authentic weirdness. She would much rather that I focus my creative energies on repairing our leaking five-foot blow-up Santa.

I explained my case carefully. If we were really going to treat Jesus as divine than our nativity scene needed to be more authentic. After all, in pictures of the nativity scene doesn't Jesus always have a glowing halo? Painting our baby Jesus with green glow in the dark paint (I knew we still had some somewhere left over from Halloween) would make him more real.

Finally, I just could not get away from how cool it would look in our living room with all the house lights turned down, the tree glittering with Lynn's endless strings of green, red and yellow non-flashing mini-bulbs and baby Jesus leaping out of an otherwise dim nativity scene, glowing with the same fluorescent green of a Halloween skeleton head.

I knew I had the kids convinced, but Mommy vetoed the idea, dismissed it without even really giving it a fair consideration. I just wanted something about our Christmas ritual to have my signature on it as well. It wasn't enough that I was allowed to hang a stocking for the cat. I wanted something really big that would be my tradition.

Maybe we can compromise. Maybe I'll go out any buy an extra baby Jesus to paint glow-in-the-dark green. We don't have to have it in all the time, just on special occasions, like when we have company over. I'll bet they and my kids will remember it for a long long time. Maybe they'll even want to make a glow-in-the-dark baby Jesus a part of their holiday traditions when they grow-up. Really, can't you just see it, the light turned down low and baby Jesus lying there glowing as bright and green as can be?


A Note from Bolivia Ten Years Later: Well, it turns out that this little essay proved to be prophetic. On our arrival to Cochabamba soon after, I discovered that here in the marketplace they actually sell authentic glow-in-the-dark Jesus figurines. I bought one right up. Then of course, just this year, Cochabamba became home to the largest glow-in-the dark Jesus on Earth when the Governor paid $80,000 to have it illuminated at night in constantly changing colors. You can read about that here. Now, that is what I call winning a family argument!

Autonomies Here and There

Things have calmed down considerably in Bolivia since last week. The political conflict between President Morales and the eastern Governors has all but disappeared from the front pages of the daily papers. Most people are focused more on Christmas and the expected arrival of their annual ‘aginaldos’ – the 13th monthly salary that is customary here. The political battling will surely resume once again in January.

So, the temporary respite offers a bit of a chance to reflect. And one of the issues that I would like to reflect on – this is the policy wonk in me – is the notion of ‘regional autonomy.’

Public Policy 101

The issue of decentralizing government away from national bureaucracies, and into the hands of more local authorities, is a classic in public policy. Everywhere that I work in the world, from the Balkans to Brazil, decentralization is an issue. In Bolivia, a serious policy debate has gotten lost in what is more a game of power politics between Morales and his Media Luna adversaries.

A reminder of how universal this issue is comes this week from the U.S. The issue of state vs. national control is in the headlines over an issue that affects the whole planet – carbon emission standards for cars. The Bush Administration announced yesterday that it is interpreting a new U.S. energy bill in a way that will eliminate the ability of the states, and in particular California, from setting their own standards. While the Bush administration has lagged consistently on pushing for higher standards, Governors including Arnold Schwarzenegger have led the way. U.S. automakers don’t like that, and never one to miss a chance to put corporate interests over the environment, Mr. Bush wants to block the aggressive state standards in the name of a “clear national solution.”

Public Policy 101: What powers should be left to a national government and what powers should reside with states (or in Bolivia, the nine regional departments)?

In the U.S. the Bush ruling breaks with years of states being able to push their own standards, recognizing the different needs in each state. Air pollution in California, for example, is a much more serious problem than it is in Vermont. Mr. Bush’s fellow Republican from my home state, Governor Schwarzenegger responded, “It is disappointing that the federal government is standing in our way and ignoring the will of tens of millions of people across the nation. We will continue to fight this battle.”

Like a lot of issues, “states’ rights”, ends up being less a mater of consistent principle than one of political convenience. The right wing in the U.S. has a long history of demanding respect for states’ rights on issues like civil protections against race discrimination, where the national government has led the way. And the right has been dead set against giving states latitude on issues like environmental issues and consumer protections, where states have led the way. The political left has taken a similar stance of flexibility, the other way around. In politics where you stand usually depends on where you sit.

A Bigger Slice of the Pie

Which brings me back to Bolivia. On the one hand, Morales backers and MAS need to recognize that, among some, the call for regional autonomy is a completely reasonable demand in the face of a long history of national governments in La Paz that, through bureaucracy, corruption and incompetence, burn up a sizeable chunk of the cash sent to there from the other regions. And the Morales government hasn’t shown itself especially more competent or less bureaucratic than others, thought it does clearly have different priorities.

Nevertheless, in Bolivia, autonomy is also code for two basic desires by the leaders of eastern regions. One is to block any real plan for land reform. The other is to take a share of the country’s growing gas and oil revenues greater than the region’s portion of the population. The east’s latest proposal is a cut of 50% off the top. Santa Cruz leaders were more than content with a national approach in the 1970s and 1980s when all of Bolivia was saddled with massive foreign debt used largely to finance economic development in Santa Cruz. It helps when you have a dictator, Hugo Banzer, who comes from your region.

The eastern regions, in demanding a bigger-than-their-share cut of gas and oil revenue, are not doing anything unusual. Civil wars are being fought in Africa over similar regional revenue disputes, and the division of oil revenue is behind much of the ongoing violence in Iraq as well.

It is a curious demand, really. To my knowledge, no one currently living in Bolivia’s gas and oil rich east herded dinosaurs or planted ancient forests or did anything else to contribute to the geologic accident that the nation’s oil and has is in Tarija instead of El Alto. The regions’ claim of entitlement to a bigger slice of the pie smacks of the story of the man born on second base who thinks he hit a double.

There is another irony here that I never hear mentioned in this debate. The conservative political leaders now leading the opposition, including Jorge Quiroga and Manfred Reyes Villa, spent years in governments that steadfastly refused to raise taxes on oil companies, adhering to what Carlos Mesa once described to me as “the great myth” that raising taxes would chase the companies away. The bigger pie of revenue now available – nearly $1 billion – owes itself directly to tax increases on the foreign companies forced by the left, both before Morales became President and after, combined with record world prices. And the companies haven’t moved away. They all signed new contracts and this week Brazil announced that it will invest $1 billion in gas and oil projects here.

The left in Bolivia still has a long way to go to prove that it can manage Bolivia’s gas and oil industry competently, but there is little question that it was the left here, not the right, that called the bluff of no new taxes on foreign oil companies and brought in the piles of new cash the regions are now fighting over.

There is no surprise here that the regions would fight over oil and gas revenue. Revenues are tight here and they fund not only public services, but also public graft and political patronage. But again, beneath this all are legitimate ‘democracy’ issues of what the national government should do and what regions should do.

That question of good governance may form a part of the rhetoric here from time to time, but it is really no more the heart of things here than Mr. Bush’s claim that he wants to lower standards for auto emissions in the name of national consistency.

To borrow a phrase: “It’s about the oil and gas money stupid.”

Taking a Closer Look at the Politics of US Funding in Bolivia

In recent months, the Morales government has repeatedly accused the United States of using aid to Bolivia to support the political opposition here, insisting on increased transparency and reporting around aid money, particularly from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The US Embassy has repeatedly denied such accusations and claimed to be sufficiently transparent already.

The Democracy Center is researching an upcoming briefing paper on the issue of US aid spending in Bolivia, with a focus on USAID, as well as the National Endowment for Democracy and other related organizations.

If there are readers who have information or personal experience that might offer insight into: which agencies fund projects in Bolivia; what they fund; how decisions are made; and especially the ways in which this spending may or may not be political, partisan, transparent, helpful, etc., please send an email to elliot@democracyctr.org. We would be especially interested in hearing from anyone who worked for organizations receiving such funds, the funding agencies themselves, or who has had direct experience with any such agencies.

The Democracy Center on Democracy Now

Attention to Bolivia in the international media always tends to come in waves, most often based on when political tensions erupt in the country. This weekend’s rival rallies in La Paz (celebrating the new MAS-backed Constitution) and in Santa Cruz (promoting the region’s declaration of autonomy) drew a flurry of foreign media coverage, from the New York Times, Financial Times, Loa Angeles Times and others. Readers interested in looking at this coverage can find a list of the articles and links to them here.

This morning I did a brief interview with Amy Goodman on the news program Democracy Now regarding recent events here. For those interested in hearing it, go to the link here. The Bolivia segment starts at the 30-minute mark.

Developments on the Road to 'Division Day'

The rhetoric and acts of political polarization have continued to escalate in Bolivia in the last 24 hours, with new developments coming rapidly from across the country. Observers from all manner or organizations and press outlets have decended on Santa Cruz to witness what may or may not be the opening act of a Bolivian meltdown tomorrow. Here is a synopsis view of Bolivia on the road to 'Division Day'.

Santa Cruz Set to Declare its "Autonomy" Saturday

Yesterday the "Provisional Autonomous Assembly" of Santa Cruz, a body assembled by civic leaders there, issued the statutes upon which it intends to unilaterally declare its autonomy from the national government on Saturday. Among its 155 articles are declarations that, effective Saturday: residents of the department will now be issued separate Santa Cruz identity cards; the department will form its own police force and no longer recognize the authority of the national police; and Santa Cruz department authorities will now control all issues concerning land reform. The statutes will be presented symbolically before a public gathering in Santa Cruz Saturday.

Evo Warns Against Attacks on the Police and Army in Santa Cruz

In a declaration Friday, President Morales warned that his government will not tolerate the division of the country or any of the threatened attacks against Bolivian police or soldiers in Santa Cruz. He did not make clear what steps he was prepared to take to prevent such attacks, or to block implementation of Santa Cruz's autonomy plans. On CNN he also blamed the U.S. Embassy here for "coordinating actions" aimed at destabilizing his government.

Indigenous Groups in Santa Cruz Plan Counter Protest

The Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB) has announced that it will be organizing a counter protest in Santa Cruz Saturday to counter the rally by the Civic Committee there when it presents its new autonomy plan. "We are not going to obey [the Santa Cruz autonomy statutes] because it isn’t a law, a statute or a Constitution," the group's Vice-President, Pero Nuni, declared. "It is just a pamphlet that they [Santa Cruz civic leaders] have made."

MAS Opponents Set Fire to Jeep Carrying Documents

In Sucre yesterday, opposition groups to the government intercepted and set fire to a Jeep sent to recover files from the Constituent Assembly's headquarters there and carry them to La Paz.

Civil Society Leaders Call for Dialog

A voice calling for dialog between Bolivia's warring factions emerged yesterday from a group of respected civil society leaders from all major regions of the country. The group included the Defensor del Pueblo, Waldo Albarracín, his respected predecessor in the post, Ana María Romero de Campero, along with a variety of labor groups, journalist associations, religious leaders, and literary and arts figures. "The mechanism of dialog is the door that will allow us to leave behind confrontation and is the tale that will permit everyone to meet to reach solutions for all. This is a first call that we are sure has the support of the silent majority" said Albarracín.

US Embassy Issues Travel Warning

The U.S. Embassy in La Paz took the unusual step Wednesday of issuing a warning against travel to Bolivia: "The Department recommends that U.S. citizens defer non-essential travel to Bolivia at this time. U.S. Embassy La Paz is restricting the official travel of U.S. Government employees to Bolivia during this period. Since protests and demonstrations can break out with little or no notice, U.S. citizens in Bolivia should monitor local media sources for the latest developments. U.S. citizens should avoid demonstrations at all times and exercise caution."

Santa Claus to Bolivians: The Naughty List is Getting Bigger

In a news release issued from the North Pole, Santa Claus issued a warning to al of Bolivia's rival factions that he and his elves are monitoring the situation close and are able to make modifications in the naughty list up to the last minute before his Christmas Eve departure. "While Mr. Claus has no official position on the articles of Bolivia's proposed Constitution, he cautions all involved to use the coming holiday season to mellow out," noted the release. "And he is also not amused by the letter from Santa Cruz Civic Committee head, Branko Marinkovic, asking for a fresh supply of Uzis and ammunitions [see photo above]."

What to Watch for Over the Weekend

1. Will the 'autonomistas' in Santa Cruz try to seize offices of national government agencies?

2. Will there be confrontation between the two rival public gatherings in Santa Cruz?

3. Will the Morales government mobilize either the national police or the Bolivian army in reaction to any events in Santa Cruz Saturday?

4. Will the call for dialog, issued by national civil society leaders, get any traction and lead to the arrangement of a meeting between Morales and leaders from the eastern departments?

For ongoing updates on developments in Bolivia I encourage readers to visit Radio Erbol, which offers both written and broadcast reports on its web site. I think their reporting is independent, solid and balanced.

Footage from Surprise Morales, Quiroga, Reyes Villa Meeting in Cochabamba

In the midst of the rising and worrisome tide of political combat between the nation’s rival political factions, three of the nation’s key political figures came together for a surprise meeting in Cochabamba on Thursday. Behind closed doors and away from public view, President Evo Morales, PODEMOS leader Jorge Quiroga, and Cochabamba Governor Manfred Reyes Villa held what was a strange meeting to see if they could work through their well-known political disputes.

While we don’t know the results of that meeting, an enterprising Democracy Center volunteer was able to capture footage of the session, which we have posted here.

A note to readers: We think that it is important to try to maintain at least some sense of humor, even in the midst of current events.

A New Constitution, and Fresh Battle Lines

Events in Bolivia, surrounding the adoption of a new Constitution, have begun to happen so fast and furious that we'd have to put up new posts every few hours just to keep up. In addition, the Constitution approved by the Constituent Assembly is 405 articles and 100 pages long. A real analysis is going to take a bit of time.

So, for this post, we offer an overview – of what the various warring sides have to say about the Constitution approved over the weekend, and of the events across the nation in reaction to that approval. We'll get to a more complete analysis of the Constitution itself later.

THE NEW CONSTITUTION: WHAT THE VARIOUS SIDES HAVE TO SAY

Depending on which version of events you wish to believe, the adoption of a new Constitution over the weekend by the Constituent Assembly is either the fulfillment of decades of campaigning to right centuries of injustice, or a headlong step toward authoritarian rule by Evo Morales and MAS. As usual, the two sides farthest apart, MAS on one side and PODEMOS and Santa Cruz Civicos on the other, are prone to political exaggeration. Here's a look at what they have had to say.

The Word from MAS

We have had to deal with pressure, not just from the right, but from our families. After we were kicked out of Sucre and after they would not let us finish our work, we had to finish in Oruro. But our work has not finished; now we have to guarantee approval [of the new Constitution] in the referendum.

-- Constituent Assembly President Silvia Lazarte

The rap from MAS and Morales: The new constitution is a historic step that, for the first time, recognizes Bolivia's 36 indigenous peoples, establishes public control of the nation's key natural resources, and establishes a critical set of individual and community rights. It also allows Bolivia to pave a way forward based on a variety of economic models, not just foreign corporate control. The Constitution was approved legally, and after more than a year of dialogue and work by people with many different views. The leading opposition party, PODEMOS, failed to participate in the meeting over the weekend by its own choice.

The Word from the Opposition

The Assembly has broken democracy and order in the country, becoming the imposition of the governing party and robbing Bolivia of the historic opportunity to have a new Constitution clearly inclusive. But Bolivia has been a sea where countless authoritarians have drowned and no action that has been imposed against the will of the people has lasted.

-- Statement Monday from the Governors of the Beni, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija and the Pando.

Rap from the opposition: The Constitution approved over the weekend is illegal because the Assembly failed to give opposition members the legally required notice for the session in Oruro. It's main objectives are to consolidate power into the hands of MAS and Morales, by allowing reelection of the President for an additional ten years, and by eliminating full representation by minority parties in the Congress and letting the majority party alone approve key government appointments. It also lets the government prosecute, as 'traitors any individual or group accused of advocating division of the nation.

The Word from the Middle of the Road

It's overall not a bad constitution, but the problem is the official party didn't listen to anybody else. It seems this matter of presidential re-election was Morales' final goal all along.

-- Samuel Doria Medina of the opposition National Unity party.

UN's chief criticisms: Presidential reelection in any form is a doorway to authoritarianism in Bolivia. The new Constitution undermines minority representation in the Congress. Many of the articles are vaguely worded or incomplete and need to be modified. MAS did not include many of the consensus points worked out in the multi-party discussions in October.

WHAT NEXT?

Again, the big question here is whether the heated differences between the various parties and regions will be worked out through a political process or in the street. Most likely, according to Bolivian custom, we can expect a good bit of both.

President Morales, while trumpeting the Constitution and defending its legitimacy, has asked again that the nine Governors meet with him and talk about a way forward. Five of those Governors, meeting in Cochabamba yesterday, showed no signs of being interested in such a dialog. Four of them – from the regions where regional autonomy was approved by voters last year, the Beni, Santa Cruz, Tarija and the Pando – announced that they would be declaring that autonomy from the national government effective this Saturday. What that means remains unclear.

We can certainly look forward to a flurry of elections in Bolivia in 2008. There will be one in which the new Constitution will be voted up or down by a majority vote. Another will take up the land reform issue, where the new proposed article received a majority vote but not 2/3. Then of course there will be the proposed 'recall' vote to give voters the option of abruptly ending the terms of the President, Vice President, and the nine state Governors. The formula for that vote will now become the next big political debate here.

The good news here: lots of free t-shirts and caps for everyone next year!

A FEW ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS TO ADD TO THE MIX

First, I think that, in fact, the opposition from PODEMOS and the eastern departments got just what they wanted this weekend. If they had really wanted to kill the MAS Constitution in its Oruro cradle all they had to do was show up and vote 'no', article by article. The approval was based on a vote of 2/3 of those present. The opposition's absence, which was deliberate, assured that MAS could achieve that. Consider these two opposition choices. Choice one: Show up in Oruro, kill the MAS Magna Carta, article by article, and face the wrath of a really pissed off mass of indigenous groups, social movements and others. Choice two: Let MAS ram through its Constitution without opposition support or participation and have the rallying cry of 'beware the authoritarians' fall right into your lap. Which option would you pick if you were them?

Second, MAS is going to have a real hard time convincing swing voters that the approval process was 'kosher', to use a Bolivian term. Talk to people present and you will here the story of one article after another voted on by a quick show of hands with no real debate or reflection. As I have written before, I really don’t see how MAS and other backers of the new Constitution expect to win 51% for it given that MAS political ceiling seemed to be pretty pegged at 53% two elections in a row and given that in a yes/no vote on the Constitution much of the party's urban middle class political base will desert it and the opposition will be unified, not fragmented as before.

Third, let’s just review a few of the recent events from that hotbed of democratic principle, the department of Santa Cruz. Early Sunday morning the lone MAS representative on the Santa Cruz city council, Osvaldo Paredo, faced a sixth violent attack against he and his family. This time, according to a report from Radio Erbol, a group of attackers threw a live hand grenade at the window of the room where his 11-year-old daughter was asleep. Fortunately, the grenade bounced off and blew up just outside the house.

Then yesterday in Santa Cruz's Central Plaza a small mob of hunger strikers from the famous local "Youth for Democracy" physically attacked a 45-year-old ex-miner, René Vargas, after mistakenly identifying him (presumably by his skin color) as a MAS party activist (see photo above). Screaming their favored chant of "Indian shit" the youth chased the man for blocks hitting and kicking him at all the opportunities they had, until several women intervened to stop them. Bolivia's Human Rights Ombudsman, Waldo Albarracín denounced the attack, "The country watched with indignation the images on television when a group of people, four or five youth, cowardly attacked another countrymen with similar rights as them, demonstrating a racist attitude against the victim."

Is there really anyone left in Bolivia willing to say with a straight face that race is not a central factor in this conflict?

New Visa Requirements Take Effect for U.S. Visitors to Bolivia

Readers:

Despite the recent news of political upheaval in Bolivia, the fact remains that hundreds of U.S. citizens will keep coming to Bolivia each month and, effective last weekend, getting in has gotten a good deal more complicated. Bolivia’s new visa requirements for visitors from the U.S. took effect December 1. The Democracy Center has received a lot of recent email asking us for information, so as a courtesy to our readers our assistant director, Melissa Draper, has prepared the post below with details on the new rules.

This post isn’t about the politics of the new visa requirements. For readers interested in that, I would refer you to one of our previous writings below. If you do look at any of these, please take note that the visa details discussed on this new post are the ones you should pay attention to (in other words, no, you won’t actually have to buy an ‘Evo sweater at the border.)

Bolivia to Require US Visitors to Get Visas (January 4, 2007)

Bolivian Government Announces New Visa Rules for US Visitors (April 1, 2007)

New Visa Requirements for U.S. Visitors to Bolivia Take Effect December 1st (September 11, 2007)

Lastly, if you want to know my personal opinion about the wisdom of Bolivia’s new visa rule, suffice it to say I really wanted to use the graphic here to accompany this post, but didn’t.

Jim Shultz


NEW VISA REQUIREMENTS TAKE EFFECT FOR U.S. VISITORS TO BOLIVIA

The U.S. now ranks in the category of most regulated in terms of immigration requirements for the Bolivia Foreign Ministry. While they stuck to their word on the start date, the government unfortunately did not release the details of requirements until mid November, sending many into a tizzy considering the holidays were just around the corner. Here are the basics:

Who Needs a Visa

There are thousands of Bolivians who have family members currently living in the U.S. and with U.S. citizenship who want to come back to Bolivia to visit their families. The government has gotten around this neatly, by clarifying that Bolivians with U.S. citizenship, or U.S. citizens who can show they are the children of Bolivians via a birth certificate or other documentation, can pass freely without a visa. However, if you are a U.S. citizen without such a Bolivian bloodline or connection, you do now need a visa to enter Bolivia.

Where can you get a Visa

Officially, and fortunately, you have two options. You can either apply for a visa from one of the Bolivian Consulates in the U.S., or you can get one upon arriving at the airport in La Paz or Santa Cruz, if you have all the documentation required. The Bolivian Embassy in the US has posted a list of all the specific requirements and other information here.

What Do You Need to Get a Visa

Here is the official list, according to the Bolivian Embassy in Washington:

** A completed two-page form
** A passport with at least six months left before its expiration
** A copy of credit card or bank statement (to show fiscal solvency)
** A yellow fever vaccine certificate
** A roundtrip itinerary in and out of Bolivia
** An invitation from a Bolivian or proof of a hotel reservation
** $100 in cash

What has not been confirmed is whether, in practice, you can do the on-site visa process if you arrive in Bolivia by land.

What the New Tourist Visa gets You

The new visa is good for five years, during which you can enter multiple times, for stints lasting a maximum of 30 days each. You cannot exceed a total of 90 days per calendar year and you cannot come and go more than three times in one calendar year. Unlike in the past, it appears that only in rare cases will visitors be allowed to stay legally over 90 days in any given year. However, informally, the Director of Immigration in Cochabamba has told The Democracy Center that the government will maintain its policy of charging those who overstay their visa a 10 Boliviano-a-day penalty (roughly $1.30 a day).

A few fears have been allayed, mainly on the logistics end. By allowing visitors to get the visa upon arrival, the bureaucratic mess is somewhat averted, and the visa becomes more of a tax on Americans than anything else. The requirements are not as “over the top” as predicted earlier (originally U.S. citizens were going to be required to produce a police certificate confirming that they had no criminal records).

Here’s a tip regarding the yellow fever vaccination requirement: If you have not had the vaccination, consider holding off on getting it (in the U.S. the shot typically costs $120). For the visa requirements, you have an option to sign an affidavit saying you have chosen not to take the vaccination and promise not to take legal action against Bolivia if you get the disease. The shot is really needless here unless you are traveling into some of the deeper jungle regions of Bolivia and you can get it here, if needed, for under $10.

If You Want to Stay Longer than 90 days in a Given Year

You can consider seeking a one-year temporary visa. The requirements for this are a bit different, namely you must have a Bolivian institution—educational or a work place—that formally invites you to the country and vouches for your status as a student or worker. It’s more expensive than the tourist visa, but gives you the flexibility to come and go as you please within a one-year period. According to documents we got from the immigration office here, the first step-- to get a visa de objeto determinado (specific purpose)-- costs just over $100. This visa gives you 30-days to fulfill the requirements for the one-year visa (Interpol check, police report saying that you are not a criminal and a blood test to prove your healthy, among a few other things), which costs another $134.

The days of fast entry into Bolivia for U.S. citizens may be gone, but the chance to visit Bolivia is not. We do ask any readers who have first-hand experience with entry by land or air since December 1 to let us know how the process went. Those experiences can be posted as a comment to this Blog. That way we can help keep students, teachers, backpackers, academics, friends, parents and businesspeople and others informed about their next trip to this amazing country, Bolivia.

Written by Melissa Draper

In Bolivia: the Other Cochabamba Rises

The jammed crowd of marchers took an hour and a half to walk past the window of our office, from start to finish. By the time that the dense snake of Morales supporters wound its way through the city Center and gathered as a single throng in the city's Central Plaza, it easily numbered 10,000, or more. It was the largest gathering I have seen in the Plaza since the high tide of the Water Revolt in April 2000. It was also completely peaceful.

Today was a day when, in typical fashion, political struggle in Bolivia played out both among the politicians and on the street. The headlines were taken up with the announcement last night that President Morales will push for a new national referendum in which he and Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, along with all nine state governors, would stand for an up or down vote from the people, to decide whether each would continue in his job (they are all men). This will be a hard offer for the Governors to resist, given that Cochabamba's Governor, Manfred Reyes Villa, proposed exactly the same thing during the conflicts between he and MAS last January. But the devil is in the details of how such a referendum would actually work (more on that later).

But in the streets of Cochabamba today the news was not of political ping-pong, but of the return of "the other Cochabamba" to the streets in full force. Over and over again, in Manfred-led rallies and in 'paro civico's like last week's, the opposition to Morales has flexed its muscle in the street, in significant numbers. But none was anything close to what was seen here today.

"This mass gathering is to demonstrate that the Bolivian people and the people of Cochabamba are in agreement with the new constitution that has been approved in draft," a cocalero representative, Julio Salazar, told The Democracy Center. "We are in support of this process of change, to recover and industrialize our natural resources and especially to recover our dignity and sovereignty."

Not since before Morales' election has the city seen a full mobilization of the social movements, labor groups, cocaleros, and other elements of MAS' political base. The January marches on the city by MAS backers were hardly one at full steam. And a large number of people here are not simply Morales backers and part of that base. Many came from youth groups in the city and other sectors, mobilized by what they see as an effort by the opposition to block political change.

Today, however, to be sure, the vast majority were people from the countryside. Women I talked to left early in the morning, babies on their backs, from the deep corners of the Chapare and elsewhere to arrive for the 2pm march. Critics love to spin the tale that all these people came only because they were paid to do so, but that's never the story I get from anyone I speak to who came. They are here because they see themselves in a battle for change vital to their children's futures. Don't doubt it.

There were also middle class people from the city who joined in the march. I spoke to one young Bolivian woman I know, who owns a small restaurant in Cochabamba:

"Most of Bolivia is campesinos. They came here today from Tiquipaya and Quillacollo and Tarata. People in the city forget that most of Bolivia still lives in the countryside. Bolivia is a lot more than just the north [affluent] side of Cochabamba. And most of these people have five kids, six kids. In ten years Evo Morales will still be President of Bolivia because they support him."

Her point is well-taken. While both local and international media reported that last week's 'paro civico' was complete in Cochabamba, in fact it only stopped movement in the center of the city and the better-off northern neighborhoods, and the absence of public transit was about fear of broken windows, not political support for Reyes Villa and the paro's other patrons. In Cochabamba's poorer southern neighborhoods and in outlaying towns like Tiquipaya and Quillacolla, life was normal.

It is easy to forget how deep and adamant the MAS political base is in this part of Bolivia. It is where Morales began his political rise and many of the people here know him, not as a figure on television, but as someone who has spent time directly by their side.

On the surface, it would seem difficult for Morales to match the 53% of the vote he won in December 2005. But don't believe polls, which, with a distinctly urban bias, have underestimated Morales support by double digits consistently. And don't count out the power or passion of Bolivia's rural poor, either in the streets or, as may be, at a new ballot.

Venezuela’s ‘NO’ and Bolivia's Uncertainty

Here's the question that a half dozen foreign journalists have asked me in the last two days, a reasonable one: What will be the effect in Bolivia, of Venezuela's Sunday vote turning down President Hugo Chavez’s new constitution? Will it embolden the Bolivian opposition? Will it weaken the constitutional reform efforts by MAS and Morales? Will it move things toward compromise or toward deeper conflict?

Making predictions in Bolivia is never easy, and recent events here have made it more difficult still. There is the 'doomsday scenario', in which the country dissolves into violent conflict. There is the 'suddenly they work it out' scenario, in which MAS and the opposition hammer out some sort of compromise. And there are many other scenarios that fall somewhere in between. At this point, anything seems possible.

Today was supposed to be the day that Morales and the Governors (the real opposition here) were going to get together in La Paz to talk. But instead, five of the Governors are headed to the U.S. to make a formal complaint before the Organization of American States, and Morales' aides are preparing their own version of events to present to the OAS as well. It seems that both sides care a good deal how they come off in foreign eyes.

As MAS and its opponents ready their public cases about why the other is to blame for the recent violence, here are a few observations about where things stand:

The Opposition's Next Move: Let the Constituent Assembly Fail

Legally, if December 14 comes and goes, with neither an extension from the Congress nor a Constitution approved by 2/3 of the Assembly, Bolivia's Constituent Assembly will be dead. From a purely political point of view, I am certain that is exactly what the opposition here wants.

Blocking progress in the Assembly seems to have been the opposition's modus operandi from the start, and its failure now would serve the opposition on three levels all at once. First, it removes their fear of a new Bolivian Constitution primarily crafted by MAS. Second, it deals a heavy political blow to President Morales. Third, the Assembly's official failure is likely to enflame and radicalize MAS and its backers – a move that will certainly further deliver urban and middle class Bolivians into the opposition's welcoming arms.

Working out some sort of compromise is a better thing for Bolivia. There are critical issues contained in the Constitution – recognition of the nation's indigenous peoples, the laying out of basic rights, and more – that ought to be in the nation's primary legal document. There are also plenty of these issues where a consensus or reasonable compromise is possible. It would also be a valuable thing for Bolivia to find a way forward based on some sense of national unity, instead of heading down an uncertain path of national anger. But politics trumps patriotism and even if MAS and Morales were to change course and offer a serious hand toward reconciliation, it is hard to imagine a scenario now in which the opposition would move to save the Assembly.

MAS and Morales: Confusing Social Justice with Consolidating Power

There is another root of the conflict that has to be put on the table. In Venezuela and Bolivia alike, some supporters of Chavez and of Morales have confused the important cause of advancing social justice with the partisan cause of consolidating political power into their own hands. These two causes are not the same things.

Reacting to the Venezuela vote, some Chavez defenders have blamed the NO vote's narrow win (51% to 49%) on low-turnout by Chavez supporters among the nation’s poor, “…because they did not either understand or accept that this was a necessary referendum.” But it didn’t take journalists in Caracas too much digging to find people, poor people, who eagerly support Chavez's moves to share the nation's oil wealth but who aren't keen on his aims to stay in office for life.

To be certain, the heart of what is happening here in Bolivia is about a social movement, which dates back long before Morales' Presidency, for social justice and economic equality. Nevertheless, if one travels beyond the circles of political activists, it isn't hard to find people who support MAS and Morales in their drive for fairness and justice but who are also none too happy about changes like unlimited Presidential re-election. In fact, it isn't hard to find those same complaints and concerns among social movement activists.

It is a dangerously common thing for political leaders to confuse national interest with their desire for more power. George Bush wants to eliminate checks against torture and spying, in the name of "protecting us against terrorism". Hugo Chavez hoped to stand for lifelong re-election and to assume new emergency powers, in the name of delivering a socialist state dedicated to the needs of the neediest. In Bolivia, where every adult over the age of 40 has lived first hand under dictatoship, the MAS and Morales moves to "consolidate power" have struck a nerve and given the opposition free political fuel.

What to Watch for Next

What will happen in Bolivia next?

For the next few days watch for leaders of every stripe wrapping themselves in the banner of "democracy". It is a word that has been used here to defend everything from burning public buildings (by both sides) to blocking highways (both sides again). Bolivian history buffs will note the irony, for example, of opposition leader Jorge Quiroga traveling about the region as a defender of Bolivian democracy – ommiting the fact that he eagerly served as Vice President to a former dictaor, General Hugo Banzer.

Eventually the Governors will come back from their trek to Washington and the question will be, once again, will the Governors and Morales meet and will they find a compromise way forward.

In the meantime, the other issue is how these issues will play out on the streets as the politicians talk. Cochabamba, I believe, is the city to watch. In Santa Cruz there will be hunger strikes and probably more marches, but crowds there are lopsidely loyal to the opposition so conflict is unlikely. The reverse is true in La Paz and El Alto, with loyalty there to Morales and MAS. Sucre, now that it no longer hosts a Constituent Assembly, will cease to be the center of attention. Cochabamba, on the other hand, is where the two sides meet in roughly equal numbers, and as we saw in January, when both sides occupy the streets together, the possibilities are volatile.

The next step in the streets will be here on Thursday afternoon. Social movements, labor groups, and coca growers have called for a march to defend the demand for a new Constitution, and to remind all sides that it is demand larger than the political parties now dominating the process.