Merry Kwanzakahsolmas!

Dear Readers,

On behalf of everyone here at the Democracy Center, we wish you, your families, your loved ones, your pets and anyone else you care to celebrate with – a very happy holiday, whichever you one you celebrate this time of year.

So, if Jesus is your deal, Merry Christmas!

If the festival of lights is more your gig, Happy Hanukkah!

If a black nationalist holiday is more to your liking, Feliz Kwanzaa.

And if the headline event this week is the longest day or night of the year, Happy Solstice!

Here in Cochabamba the summer sun is evaporating last night's rain. The Christmas lights in Plaza Colon sing in full blare (each in its own rhythm). Families are preparing for the midnight feast. And I am negotiating with a large dead bird that will be our Christmas dinner tomorrow (Come on baby, just thaw, will you!).

I offer two special treats this year. The first is a survey. Which of the following versions of Santa Claus is Coming to Town is the best one (I have been playing a CD non-stop with each of these on it)?

1. Captain Kangaroo
2. The Pointer Sisters
3. Chris Isaac
4. The Supremes
5. Michael Jackson
6. Mickey Mouse
7. Bruce Springsteen

(Please cast your vote below in the comments section – even thought it is of course, no real competition. Bruce!!!!)

And lastly I offer you this smashing new video, which I call, One Pissed Off Elf.

So, to you and yours -- Happy Holidays!!

Jim Shultz

Bolivia – Ecological Paradise

"I am the spokesman for the indigenous and peasant peoples who live in harmony with Mother Earth.”
--
Bolivian President Evo Morales

Many environmentalists were no doubt thrilled and inspired this week by the declarations of Bolivia's President at the Copenhagen summit. Amidst diplomatic dithering by the world's wealthy nations over doing anything real about the global climate change their people's have caused, the leaders of the impoverished nations most directly impacted spoke in a different voice. Symbolic among them was the indigenous man who is President of the most indigenous nation in the Americas.

In a post summit interview on Democracy Now, Morales declared:

The earth is our life. Nature is our home, our house. If the mother is recognized as Mother Earth, it’s something that can’t be sold, it’s something that can’t be—it can’t be violated, something sacred. This is nature. This is planet earth. And that’s why I’ve come here, to defend the rights of Mother Earth, to defend the rights to life, to defend humanity and saving Mother Earth.

From afar observers might imagine that Bolivia is an environmental paradise, a haven for indigenous values about the relationship between humans and the land, the air and the water.

Oh, if it were only so.

To be clear, for 500 years Bolivia has been on the blunt receiving end of the practices of foreigners that have badly degraded this diverse patch of earth. It was the Spanish empire that gutted the silver mountain of Potosi, not Bolivians. It is the reckless environmental practices of the wealthy north that is melting the country's fragile glaciers today.

But that said, it also true that Bolivia has more than its share of environmental calamities that are home grown as well. President Morales did not create these problems, but they are his now to address:

Garbage, Garbage Everywhere

The Dump that Destroys the Earth

The city of Cochabamba has many environmental problems to solve, but a particular one that is long overdue for action is the K'ara K'ara municipal dump in the impoverished southern zone of the city of Cochabamba. It is a mountain of garbage where the nearby residents have neither adequate water nor sewage. In operation for more than thirty years the dump receives 400 tons a day of unsorted garbage. The 5,000 people who live nearby consume groundwater polluted by its chemicals, they inhale the gases and putrid odors that the garbage emits into the air, and they are targets for the insects and disease that come as well.

Although a 2001 environmental audit recommended its closing to address the huge impact it has on public health, the local authorities have not been able to find a place to locate a new dump built with the needed safety protections. Yet even if a new site were opened today, the communities around he dump will continue to suffer such extreme contamination that only a concerted and expensive program lasting a decade could begin to mitigate the effects.

[Written by Aldo Orellana]

The City of Garbage

Looking out my third-floor window, I see beautiful mountains beginning to turn green with thespring rains, a variety of green trees, a garden with roses, a banana tree and a bougainvillea vine. I also see trash, lots of trash. There is a discarded tire in the canal, a pile of dirty rags ground into the dirt road, plastic bottles, empty juice bags, candy wrappers, a discarded shoe without laces, an empty take-out food container and a yellow comb.

My neighborhood is not unique. Household trash can be found on the streets and sidewalks throughout the city of Cochabamba. Litter is dropped by pedestrians and from the windows of cars and busses. Signs on busses direct passenger to please "throw your garbage out the windows."

Alongside this purposeful or accidental littering, a dedicated population sweeps their storefronts and sidewalks every morning and carries their household garbage to designated dumpsters, where they are available. However, it is impossible to protect the rivers and waterways from the garbage that is either blown or dumped in. Why is there so much litter on the streets of Cochabamba? We can’t pretend that there is a simple answer- certainly there are cultural, economic and consumption patterns involved- but it is difficult not to interpret it as a disregard for or neglect of the earth.

[Written by Kris Hannigan-Luther]

In the Countryside, Where Garbage Reins

It breaks my heart, such abuse of the earth amidst such beauty. In the mornings just after dawn I take a long walk through the countryside outskirts of Tiquipaya with my two dogs. And every day there is another new pile of discarded garbage. Two bags of discarded plaster now sit astride a small canal where green and white lilies try to grow. The water canal that snakes its way through farms and fields is jammed stuck with a discarded pile that includes a tire, two huge plastic bags of trash and an assortment of building materials that seem to be leaking chemicals. Then last week a pile of plastic bags and bottles that would fill the bed of a small pick-up truck (and probably did) is now strewn across an open field next to the soccer court where the neighborhood children pass these days of summer vacation.

It isn't hard to understand why Tiquipaya – this town that declares itself an ecological zone – has become more of a spread out dump. The city (run by Morales' MAS party for many years) has no real program to collect the garbage generated by its residents. A single garbage truck does make a weekly route along the few main roads, but that is of little significance to the many families who live far from these roads. There are no trash receptacles anywhere nearby. So the fields and water canals take their place.

The Murder of Trees

Deforestation, the murder of trees, is a major cause of global warming. If you want a planet with a global respiratory illness, cut down its lungs – it isn't rocket science. And Bolivia is certainly doing its fair share of the cutting.

The main street that connects the town of Tiquipaya and the city of Cochabamba is called Avendia Ecologica, Ecology Avenue. My friend Ismael pointed out the irony one morning when we were driving along it together. The road is lined with one massive lot after another full of equally massive felled trees. Most of these come from the Chapare region 100 miles away. A few may have been cut under some sort of permit. Most are just the corpses produced by one illegal raid after another on some of the earth's oldest living things.

Locally, the story is the same. Just in the last year I have watched four small nearby groves, numbering 50 trees or more, turned into wastelands of abandoned stumps. Here in Tiquipaya most of these are eucalyptus trees, which most environmentalists will point out, are not native to the area and are notorious suckers of water underground. While that may be true, to kill them all will simply convert Tiquipaya into another Quillocollo, an urbanized mass where trees are a memory not a fact of life.

Why are the trees being killed and carted away? It's the same phenomena that the country's president warned about in Copenhagen, the trading in of nature for money. The people who live here and cut these trees may not profit as handsomely as Shell or Chevron, but the principle is the same.

Bulldozing through a Rare Refuge for Wildlife

Not long ago the Bolivian government declared that animals are also part of the world of nature it seeks to protect by banning the use of animals in circuses in Bolivia. However, one of the most important animals refuges in the country, Parque Machia just outside of Villa Tunari in he Chapare, is under threat by government plans to build a road through it heart.

The so-called "Monkey Park" is well known to Bolivian and foreign visitors alike. My family and I just made a return visit there in November. Small black monkeys, most liberated from abused lives in the city, will crawl into your lap and onto your head (and put a hand into your pocket and steal its contents, if you aren't attentive). The park is also home to a host of other animal species, including pumas and an endangered Spectacled Bear. Jane Goodall recently visited the park to lend her support for its continued existence.

But local officials (another community run by MAS) have failed to complete any reasonable environmental assessment of the road's impact and seem committed to bulldozing right through the park. Here's a report from volunteers at Parque Machia.

Degrading the Earth to Capture its Mineral Wealth

The harshest and most long-term threat to Bolivia's environment has been the relentless pursuit of its vast natural resources. From silver and tin in the past, to gas and iron today, the quest for riches under the earth has come at an enormous environmental cost. If it is not careful, the country's new quest to leach out its abundant lithium reserves will be just the newest tragic chapter.

While this exploitation at the earth's expense is a long legacy in Bolivia, even the country's new regime is subject to the same course. As our colleague Linda Farthing wrote recently in NACLA:

"Even since the 2006 election of indigenous president Evo Morales and his progressive government, the social pressure to satisfy the country’s immediate economic needs through extractive industries that destroy the natural environment—primarily natural gas, mining, and forestry—remains as strong as ever. Moreover, the government confronts a terrible legacy of ecological degradation. For despite a relatively low population density, about a quarter of the national territory, or 60 million acres, is environmentally degraded, with almost 17 million acres under threat, according to the Environmental Defense League (Lidema), Bolivia’s principal environmental coalition."

Welcome back from Copenhagen Mr. President. The Pachamama right here at home can use a hand.

A Visit to the Cemetery of Glaciers

Dear Readers

This week in Copenhagen representatives from 192 nations have gathered to discuss the future of our small and imperiled planet.

The crisis of global climate change lingers over most of us in gauzy and unseen ways that make it easy to still ignore. Easy for us to still live in ways that turn up our planet’s temperature more each year. Easy for us to let our governments act as if tinkering and rhetoric is all that is needed. Easy for us to pretend that radical action is not needed now. Easy for us to still believe that a global environmental crisis is the stuff of Hollywood disaster movies and not current reality.

So now we welcome you to reality. We welcome you to the Andean highlands where the planet’s crisis is not tomorrow – it’s now.

Bolivia’s glaciers are melting. Vast mountaintops of ice older than the human race have disappeared and are disappearing. If you want a preview of what is happening to our planet don’t go to a multiplex, look to Mount Chacaltaya, look to Mount Illimani.

That’s what two members of the Democracy Center team did in late November. Anders Vang Nielsen (from Denmark) and Jessica Aguirre (from the U.S.) traveled to the melting slopes to talk with the people who live in the shadow of monumental environmental loss, video camera in hand.

The result is the short film above. Please take seven minutes and watch it. Please listen to what the people of these Andean slopes have to say. Please send a link to this page and video to your friends and family. Please take in the full measure of the disaster underway across our fragile planet. And then decide, as we all must, what you will do to take action now.

Jim Shultz


A Visit to the Cemetery of Glaciers

Written by Jessica Aguirre

When we arrived at the community of Khapi after a lurching three-hour truck ride along tortuously pitted dirt roads, it felt like stepping into a church. The central field of the village stretched out like a velvet carpet between a border of humble houses. The green vein that snaked down from Mount Illimani – a gash of verdant agriculture in the harsh rock mountainous landscape - culminated here before giving way again to dark crags that pointed to the sky and to the awesome Illimani that stood like some omnipresent sovereign or a stalagmite to god.

After a week of trudging up and down the vertical streets of La Paz, rushing from interview to presentation in the rain, the arrival to Khapi seemed incongruously calm. Set against the expansive panorama of the distant mountains, a small central building squatted at the edge of the village in front of which a community meeting was taking place as we roared up. The village men sat in a circle on meager wooden benches in from of the building, garmented in used American clothes and colorful hand-woven accessories. They seemed unimpressed by our arrival and continued speaking in low measured voices until they were ready to address our appearance, some forty minutes later.

We were introduced to Don Alivio, Don Max, and Don Severino: three community leaders who have had experience speaking to foreigners about climate change. Khapi has received a moderate amount of attention in international media as a terrifyingly stark example of the water shortages that could become common with global warming. The three men were patient in explaining to us the changes to their environmental, but their tone was urgent. They are anxious to see the results of their openness, of their advocacy.

Their anxiousness is not unfounded. Earlier in the week we had gone up to Chacaltaya to get some footage of a dead glacier. The trek was eerie: the mountain was frigidly cold and swirling clouds covered the landscape and whipped around our group. We rounded a point, and our guide tersely motioned toward a dip; “that’s where the glacier used to be,” he remarked. Looking out at jagged brown rock at the tiny dirty patches of snow (where three years ago skiers would have been speeding past), I felt like I was looking at a cemetery.

To be in the presence of landscape so staggering is to feel humbled in a holy way.

When Felix and Javier at CONOMAQ explained to us that the mountains were Achachillas, it didn’t require knowledge of Aymara to understand what they meant. Or to understand that climate change is about much more than physical survival.

[Note: If you would like to publish this video on your own Web site we gratefully encourage you to do so. You can find the YouTube post and embedding information here.]

Election Day in Bolivia: The Morales Landslide

Readers:

It has been quite a day in Bolivia. In a vote with few glitches, Bolivians went to the polls today in huge numbers and gave President Evo Morales a huge victory. Morales won more than 62% of the popular vote, beating his nearest opponent, former Cochabamba Governor Manfred Reyes by more than 2 to 1.

It is a huge mandate by any conceivable measure. To put this in perspective, for more than two decades before Morales no president ever took office with much more than a quarter of the vote. The three political parties that once rotated the presidency between themselves for twenty years now no longer exist. Bolivian politics has been turned on its head in deep and enduring ways. What President in the Americas or the world has a mandate larger?

All day the Democracy Center team has been blogging live from around the country and even abroad. We hoped you have enjoyed the coverage. As we and Bolivia finally head off to bed, we also bring our live blogging to a close as well. Here is what you will find below:

1. The Final Results
2. What the Candidates Had to Say
3. A Review of the Day from Around the Country and Beyond
4. The Oddities of Last Minute Media Coverage

For those interested in more images of the day, here is a slide show prepared by Democracy Center team. Thanks to everyone here who worked so hard today and for the past few weeks to contribute to the Democracy Center's coverage: Leny Olivera, Aldo Orellana, Anders Vang Nielsen, Jessica Aguirre, and Kris Hannigan-Luther.

Best to all,

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

1. Latest Results – The Morales Landslide

Here are the latest numbers from the national TV network ATB, which reports 100% of the vote now counted:

National Vote:

Morales 62.5 %, Reyes Villa 27.6 %, Doria Medina 6.1%
Senate: Morales/MAS 66.7%, Reyes Villa/PPB 27.8%

Departments

La Paz: Morales 78.5%, Reyes Villa 9.4%
Santa Cruz: Morales 40.1% Reyes Villa 53.2%
Cochabamba: Morales 67.6%, Reyes Villa 25.7%
Potosí: Morales 74.9%, Joaquino, 15.1%, Reyes Villa 5.3%
Chuquisaca: Morales 53.1% Reyes Villa 36.3%
Tarija: Morales 48.6%, Reyes Villa 40%
Oruro: Morales 77.3%, Reyes Villa 10,2%
Beni: Morales 37%, Reyes Villa 53.7%
Pando: Morales 45.4%, Reyes Villa 50.8%
Bolivians Voting Abroad: Morales 69.8%, Reyes Villa 25.2%

2. What the Candidates Had to Say

President Evo Morales – The Winner (62.5% of the vote)

"Here we are, blacks, whites, brown-skinned; and everyone has the same rights, be they indigenous or of the working class. The new Constitution guarantees an economic system that respects private property, communal property and that also respects a state managed economy. We are going to accelerate the change. This is a triumph against imperialism.
This is the first constitution of the Bolivian people that benefits distinct sectors of workers."

Manfred Reyes Villa – The Loser (27.6% of the vote)

"Now more than ever, I’m convinced that we must continue struggling to strengthen or democracy. And I want to say to all Bolivians, that there was never a ticket going anywhere for Manfred Reyes Villa. Manfred Reyes Villa is going to continue struggling here for democracy, for country, and for all those Bolivians who keep betting on the viability of this national alternative."

3. A Review of the Day from Around the Country and Beyond

It has been an extraordinary day in Bolivia. A day without cars across a whole nation and a day in which more than 5 million voters were set to head to the polls. Here are our reports from Cochabamba, La Paz, and Arlington Virginia.

1. Election Day in Cochabamba

As families stroll around on the streets of Cochabamba this Election Day, eating pork sandwiches and ice cream, an occasional car interrupts the tranquility of the pedestrian filled streets. The cars bear special documentation in their dashboard; they are carrying representatives from the electoral court who are rushing around among the voting stations checking for irregularities or fraud.

But in the voting stations of the city, all is uneventful. Edwin Claros, a human rights representative who has been to 30 voting stations this morning confirmed to us that, other than a few minor glitches which included lack of tables in some stations of the Southern zone, everything is proceeding normally.

Talking to people on streets, dressed in their Sunday best for the occasion, one is impressed by two overriding sentiments. Public opinion is split between deep pride in being able to take part in the formation of democracy, and apathy towards an act that the state imposes as a civic obligation. Either way, all seem content to enjoy a day that (aside from a few hours of standing in lines) entails good food, time to nap, and room to stroll.

@Colegio Aleman Santa Maria

In downtown Cochabamba, many of the polling places are schools. We managed to speak with a few voters at one such school, where people waited on benches, found shady spots for their panting dogs, pushed babies in strollers, chased young children around on bicycles and tricycles and calmly went through the voting process.

We approached Karen Asad Ayala on the school grounds of a polling place in downtown Cochabamba. Her purple index finger identified her as someone who had already cast her vote. She spoke with us as she bounced her three-month-old daughter on her hip and opened a bag of juice for her three year old.

When asked what the elections mean to her personally, Karen responded, “We’ve had a lot of dirty politics in this country and I think that now people are trying to vote for a change.” Karen also told us that she is in favor of departmental autonomy. After speaking with us, Karen resumed chasing her 3 year old on her pink and purple tricycle.

Jenny Salamanca was waiting to cast her vote at the same school. After locating her name on the list of registered voters, she had identified which table she was to go to in order to cast her vote. She was waiting in the shade with her husband and adopted daughter when we approached her. “This is the election for a President of Bolivia” she said, “We always want to elect someone to represent everyone, not just the rich people, or just the poor people, but someone to represent everyone.”

“I think that we need capable people in government, she added; “Unfortunately, this past government has a lot of inept people in it, in my opinion. There are people in professional roles without professional training.”

@Colegio Avaroa

Fernanda Avila, a storeowner, was also enthusiastic about the elections: “(The vote) is a marvelous thing, but you have to think a lot to arrive at this extreme and not vote along with the crowd, we have to think a little to give our support to the candidate that is presented to us.”
Mrs. Avila also supported the referendum for autonomy, saying: “(Autonomy is) a good thing, if it is to be truly autonomous. When we have a business we are autonomous, all that we own is at our disposal, without waiting for another second person to make it available to us. Being autonomous means to be independent and in this case, all departments would have their independence…”

But another woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, echoed the sentiments of others when she said: “(I’m voting) because it’s an obligation, because they always ask us for our voting papers to be able to cash checks. But beyond that, it doesn’t mean anything to me; none of the candidates will give me money and I live off of my own work.”

2. A Pair of Short Interviews with Voters in La Paz

Jaime Linares, Engineer.

Q; What do these elections represent to you?

To me they represent the fact that we’re living in a democracy because all Bolivians can elect our next president. This is a historical election because we have a president that represents the people that are of Evo Morales. And I think that its management this government has achieved a lot of good things. It has helped a lot of poor people with its bonuses for the elderly, for children and for moms, something that no other government has done in the past 50 years. They (other governments) have never thought of the people, and I think it would be a very positive thing for us to re-elect Evo Morales. I’m not with MAS, but that’s my perception.

Q: What do you think of the referendum for autonomy in La Paz?

I think that autonomy would be really good for La Paz, because it would mean that we would be more self-sufficient. Now our taxes go to other states, and with autonomy, they would stay here.

Rita Hilda Palacios, Retired.

Q: What do these elections represent to you?

I think that there’s order and security, and that these are clean elections. I have already voted and I hope that my preferred candidate is elected. To me, the most important thing is that there aren’t problems or fights. Democracy is the most important thing; it has to be and exist because without democracy no one would respect anything.

Q: What do you think of the referendum for autonomy in La Paz?
I’m not convinced by the referendum for autonomy, because it would mean that state authorities could do anything they want, and that’s not good. I voted “NO” for autonomy, definitely no.

3. Bolivians Cast their Votes in Arlington

One of the other important changes in this election has been the right of Bolivians abroad to vote in it. Here is a special report from Arlington, Virginia from Andrés Carvallo and Lily Whitesell:

An early snowfall yesterday didn't make getting to the Iglesia Santa Maria any easier today, but it certainly didn't keep anyone away. Four blocks from the church, the traffic on Route 50, a major highway thoroughfare that cuts across northern Virginia, had already begun to slow. Iglesia Santa Maria, an Episcopal Church which is a major institution in the Bolivian community here, was the main site for today's vote from abroad in the Washington, DC area. The streets were completely full of parked cars for blocks upon blocks surrounding the building. Police closed off streets around the church to allow the pedestrians streaming in from all directions to reach their voting place, and nearly a dozen police were directing traffic at any given time at three different congested intersections.

At the church, the line was well outside the building and had reached the sidewalk, taking about fifteen to twenty minutes to reach the door. Once inside, things started warming up. CNE officials gave kind offers of assistance to point voters in the right direction. A mix of accents and languages resonated in the church rooms and halls, bringing together every corner of Bolivia. On the way out, a group of reporters were interviewing voters who had complaints. The problems at the Virginia polls were reminiscent of those encountered in Bolivia: principally voters who claimed they had registered but did not appear on the lists, and a small group of voters who were upset after being told they would have to go to the voting site in Maryland, a thirty minute drive away. For the first time Bolivians had the opportunity to vote from abroad, participation was robust, signaling the importance that Bolivia holds for those who have left their homeland.

4. The Oddities of Last Minute Coverage

With the close of official campaigning early in the week the Bolivian and foreign media have been looking around for last-minute stories to report. My favorite, reported by Erbol and others, was the appearance (from an unnamed source) of an American Airlines reservation (first class) for candidate Manfred Reyes Villa and his wife on Monday morning, to fly from La Paz to Miami. The inference here would be that the former Cochabamba Governor is either not wildly enthusiastic about his chances in Sunday's vote or perhaps has a visit planned to the White House to immediately work at bettering U.S./Bolivian relations.

When I got news of this stunning development by e-mail I went on-line and made a similar reservation for Evo Morales (see above) who I am reasonably sure is not headed to Miami on Monday, just to show how wickedly easy it is to fake something like this. Ahhh the wonders of journalism.

More stunning was that while covering this story the Bolivian and foreign press completely missed the real story of the campaign's final days – this must see joint appearance between Morales and Reyes Villa here in Cochabamba, caught on video by the Democracy Center team. You will want to have a look.