Bolivia -- A Santa Cruz Perspective

A new new Constitution

2008-10-26T17:12:00.000-07:00

New Day Dawning?
Cautious optimism seeps across Bolivia

A remarkable and quite unexpected change has taken place in the political landscape of Bolivia in the last week, resulting mainly from the startlingly moderate version of the proposed new Constitution put forward by the national Congress last Monday. The Congress was threatened by a group of thousands of campesinos marching from various parts of the country to “cerco” or surround the Congress until they passed the constitution and gave Congress a deadline of just a few days to do finish their work. And finish quickly they did.
The result is that there were compromises on both sides, Surprisingly, President Morales gave in on the issue of being able to be reelected two more times and settled with a provision that allowed him one more term, and made a number of other concessions.
A national referendum on the constitution has been set for next Jan. 25, and there are indications that some groups, such as the Comite Pro Tarija, and some political leaders that have been militantly pro-“autonomia” will support its passage.
On the other hand there is a hard-core fringe of leftists and indigenous leaders who accuse President Morales of having sold out. “This is not the Constitution we approved,” said one such leader who had participated in drafting the prior version in Oruro when it was approved under armed guard with only the MAS party constitutional convention delegates present.. He added, “This looks like the Constitution of PODEMOS,” the principal opposition party to the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party headed by President Morales.
The new prefect of Oruro, who was recently appointed by President Morales, has said he will oppose the Constitution too.
Opposites oppose newest Constitution.
Opposites oppose
The civic leaders of Santa Cruz who reflect the opposite end of the political spectrum, have called for a national effort to vote NO on the proposed constitution. However, by week’s end the Cruceño leaders were still having a hard time articulating a compelling case against the reviswed version of the constitution.
The Constitution in its new form or its old form is no simple document like the US Constitution. It goes on for scores of pages of fine print Spanish legalese, and the devil or divinity of the document has always been in the details. It may be weeks before constitutional scholars and others are able to comb completely through the thickets of obscure verbiage to find any lurking snakes.
However, a first reading indicates that the major areas of concern have been either removed or rectified to a considerable degree in the more than 100 changes that were made. Private property is specifically guaranteed, as is the right of parents to send their children to private schools. (Both of these had been matters of concern in regard to the previous version.)
The unicameral Congress that many considered way for the MAS party to take total control of the Congress much less just poor political science, has been replaced with a two-chamber legislative branch that will have a single name. The set-asides for various administrative and other bodies guaranteeing that 40 percent of the members be pure-blooded Indians are out.
Crash course for Morales?
Public officials must, however, know at least two languages. This could conceivably pose a problem for many office-seekers including President Morales who reportedly speaks only Spanish, and knows no Indian language. Presumably this can be fixed with a fast immersion course. The exact level of fluency required, in any event, is not specified.
Certain nettlesome questions such as far-reaching land reform are omitted from the Constitution and left for future governments to hash out, though there are limits to how much land one can own.
Perhaps most importantly, the newly proposed Constitution recognizes a limited form of autonomia for the departments (states) as well as for indigenous areas, which will have their own elected governors and legislatures with certain designated powers in their regions.
About 30% of autonomia okayed
Juan Carlos Urenda, the architect of autonomia and the man who wrote the “estatutos autonomias” approved by referenda in four of Bolivia’s nine departments, estimates that only 30 percent of the powers allocated to the department in those estatutos are permitted under the new Constitution. Urenda argues that this is not enough, but others, such as the civic leaders of Tarija, who had been in the vanguard of the autonomia movement, think it’s a lot better to have 30 percent than the zero percent permitted under the previous proposal It could be considered as a solid first step in developing a federalist system and they´ll take it, thank you.
In any event many neutral observers had thought that the statutes included some items of dubious wisdom, such as giving autonomous departments the authority to conclude treaties with foreign governments without the approval of the national government.
Moreover, many observers thought that the exact details of the sharing of power between the national and departmental governments did not lend themselves to specific delineation in a constitution, but could only be worked out in a gradual process of negotiation, trial and error, and repeated tests of strength.
The Constitution does provide for centralized authority in the country, and would allow the imposition of socialist schemes to, basically, spread the wealth. So do most other Constitutions, including the US Constitution, if those are the policies advocated by the country’s elected authorities The difference, of course, is that Bolivia’s socialist president is more likely to take that centralized authority, as can be seen in his frequent use of governing by decree and skirting judicial processes for opponents who are in jail without being legally charged.
The threat of re-election
One issue that opponents of the new proposed constitution have latched onto is the provision allowing the president and vice president to be re-elected to a second five year term Morales and Garcia Linera and supporters had wanted that provision to be applied in a way such that it would allow them to have two more five-year terms. In a crucial compromise, this provision will not apply to the first president elected under the new constitution, who everyone presumes will be President Morales. If he is elected in an election in 2009, as is expected if the constitution passes, he would be able to remain in office until 2014 not 2019.
The issue of re-election in Latin America is a treacherous one. Many times re-election has been tantamount to lifetime appointment since Latin American electorates often seem to be so malleable to corruption, intimidation, patronage, and graft. However, allowing a second re-election seems to work fairly well in other countries, such as, for instance, the United States.
As has been the case in Venezuela, it is hard to oust a president who is democratically elected, but after elected, acts in many ways like a dictator and uses all types of methods – legal or not legal- to assure his reelection. Or, the administration, after solidifying power could urge another constitutional amendment to allow for indefinite reelection.
Confession of weakness
The objection to the re-election provision is also in large part a confession of weakness on the part of the opposition to President Morales. Here we are, almost three years into the Morales Era, and the opposition is nowhere close to being united and having leaders who could represent an alternative to Morales. The opposition party, PODEMOS, seems to be falling apart and due to the ill-advised recall referendum held in August, the opposition lost two of its five prefects. There is no apparent leader to act as a counter balance to Morales. The opposition thus far has done only a fair job of explaining what it is against, and as President Morales demonstrated in the recent recall referendum that if Bolivians are asked to vote si or no on him, a big majority will vote si.
“Autonomia,” the banner under which the opposition has gathered, remains a gossamer political precept whose precise meaning very few seem to be able to express in concrete terms. The most prevelant thought about what autonomia means seems to be something akin to the federalist system in Spain.
Autonomia is not "separatism"
President Morales, in a turn-around on some of his provocative oratory, this week took back what he had said about autonomia being a code word for “separatism,” but with even that misleading definition gone, the concept of autonomia seems even more diaphanous, and the opposition looks more and more like the Key Stone Cops. cops.
Passage of time is needed to see how many of these issues are going to be worked out (if they are). The major fact of the moment is the dramatic change in the mood of the country, particularly the city of Santa Cruz. In two weeks the prevailing sentiment has gone from expecting Armageddon any day now, probably in the form of a bloody shootout between Cruceños protecting their families and homes against the onslaught of an armed column of campesinos marching on the city to maim and kill, at the orders of the president.
Just 10 days ago the President was promising that the proposed Constitution would be passed, without even a comma changed, “come hell or high water.” The campesinos encamped in a “Woodstock Andina” in La Paz, it was feared, would blockade the Congress, preventing participation of non-MAS congresspersons, and effectively ending yje concept of representative democracy in the country.
Peace in our time?
Now the mood is much more sanguine. Friends who only weeks ago were talking about the inevitability of civil war, have reinstated previously canceled vacation plans. People we know were sitting around on back porches on a sunny afternoon yesterday explaining to one another how they always knew this was going to happen. (The most popular explanation for the sudden rapprochement: President Morales feels he needs a period of calm to insure his orderly re-election.)
The modified (and mollifying) Constitution is not the only sign that peace may be at hand (at least for a while). The government this week canceled bans on the export of soy and corn, which had been filling silos in eastern Bolivia to the bursting point. The agriculturalists are unhappy to have missed the high prices for their products that were in place until the current international financial crisis broke, but pleased to be back in business. (The government had claimed the export bans were in effect to reduce food prices, but it was widely believed that the bans were mainly an effort to punish the agricultural interests in the eastern plains, particularly Santa Cruz – the autonomistas.)
The long dormant Supreme Court has started making noises about giving jailed Pando prefect Leopoldo Fernandez a trial, and one that would take place in pro-autonomia Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia where the Supreme Court is located, rather than in MAS-controlled La Paz. where Fernandez is being held.
Gas at last?
The government also claims it is at long last taking steps to end the shortages of diesel, gasoline, propane and other petroleum products facing Bolivians daily, but there are no apparent signs of relief yet. Some had thought that the shortages, occurring most often in autonomista areas, were a type of castigation but it appears, however, to be more ineptitude than planned punishment
The national pipeline company, formerly known as Transredes, appears to have been placed firmly in the hands of hacks and boodlers in its most recent wholesale change of personnel, where the Board of Directors decided that they wanted to become management and appointed themselves to the executive positions of President, Vice-president, etc. while many of them still remain on the Board.
The newest government appointee to the embattled national oil company board is an indigenous activist who cheerfully admits he doesn’t know nothin’ about pumpin´ no gas. He explains that he’s there to deal with the “social” rather than the “technical” aspects of the oil and gas business, but this is at a time when the oil company, falling behind on all fronts, is in desperate need of people who know at least whether or not pipelines should gurgle.
In short, the situation while more hopeful overall, remains confused and conflicted.
A friend reminds us that, as he has always said, the time horizon in Bolivia is never more than six months. But for now the next six months are looking pretty good.(if one discounts the dark cloud on the horizon presaging a global recession).

Racist comments complicate things

2008-10-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

The Melgar Case Revisited

Jorge Melgar Quette, the Riberalta televisión commentator arrested in the middle of the night by hooded men last week, is still in jail and likely to remain there for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, a separate set of controversies has arisen around him related to racist and inflammatory statements made by him
At the time we first wrote about Melgar we were not aware, or at least no fully aware, of the nature of the statements he made, many of which we find shocking and objectionable, as do many others who might otherwise be inclined to rush to his defense.
Still, we think the case raises serious questions regarding freedom of speech and the rule of law in Bolivia, and deserves international attention.
What has Melgar said? To begin with, he has said that President Morales and various ministers of his government “should be shot” for their actions in arming and inciting to violence the campesinos involved in the so-called “Pando Massacre.”
While the government’s alleged actions in regard to the Pando Massacre are reprehensible as wekk as its repeated calls for indiscriminate armed attacks on, for example, the citizens of the city of Santa Cruz, give Melgar the opportunity to say he was just fighting fire with fire, we do not condone calls for assassination.
Beyond that, Melgar’s daily 15-minute broadcasts have often been laced with racist remarks against Indians, often mixed with profanity. A former editor of the editorial page at a leading Bolivian newspaper said, “I was appalled at the detention until I saw a recording of Mr. Melgar's hatemongering.”
What's a journalist, anyway?
Next there is the question of whether Melgar is, in fact, a journalist. One leading Bolivian journalist wrote to an international body that seeks to protect journalists saying of Melgar, “This person is NOT a journalist. He is a political activist who buys time on achannel in his region. The channel is the property of a leader of the opposition [to President Morales], He is not affiliated with any organization of journalists.”
These are true facts, but they in turn raise the question of when a journalist is a journalist. Does he or she need to be a member of an association of journalists? On this point, there is disagreement. In Bolivia, affiliation with professional and social organizations is seen as more important than it is in other countries such as the United States. . A columnist for a major La Paz newspaper and television commentator (who is more famous as an economist) says, “In Bolivia, erroneously, it is believed that a journalist is someone who has registered in the Association of Journalist, even though he may have 15 years of experience in journalism.”
Journalism is his crime
A man who is the former editor of two major newspapers in Bolivia says, “The majority of the news commentators in Bolivia are not credentialed journalists [“periodistas titulados”], but citizens exercising their right to free expression of opinions.”
Moreover, he adds, it is clear that Melgar was arrested for being a journalist. “Melgar has been detained for divulging a video of the Minister of the Presidency , Juan Ramon Quitana, urging the political lynching of Leopoldo Fernandez the Prefecto of Pando the day before the massacre, (saying that Fernandez would soon be sleeping with the worms) and also for revealing the testimony of the families of people who died saying the government was directly involved in the planning of the violent confrontation. The government contends that Melgar was arrested for being involved in the takeover of government buildings and the airport in Riberalta. However, he is so far the only ordinary citizen arrested and charged in connection with those acts. There is something special about Melgar, and its hard not to believe that it was his journalistic activities that caused him to be singled out.
Irregularities are troubling
His arrest, indeed, is disturbing on many levels other than freedom of expression. Even the former editorial page editor appalled by Melgar’s “hate-mongering” adds, “Nevertheless, I am worried at the downplaying of the fact that Mr. Melgar -- journalist or not -- was arrested/kidnapped in the small hours by hooded men. That goes expressly against the constitution and is a violation of Mr. Melgar's rights. It also confirms a dangerous trend of snapping opposition members from their regions and getting them hurriedly to La Paz, another serious legal irregularity.”
Yet another point needs to be made.Freedom of speech is only guaranteed when it also includes speech that shocks and disturbs. Otherwise the distinction between permissible and impermissible speech becomes too fine a line, too easily moved or stretched by governmental authorities.
Free speech often offends
We should not forget that in the United States the Constitutional guarantee of free speech has protected the pro-Nazi speeches of Father Charles Coughlin on the eve of World War II, and, more recently, the anti-Semitic hate-mongering of Gerald L. K. Smith.
Moreover, freedom of press has famously figured in cases that did not directly involve journalists. In the case of the New York Times vs. Sullivan, widely regarded as the most important decision ever made by the US Supreme Court in regard to freedom of the press, the text at issue was not a news story written by journalists. It was an advertisement paid for by civil rights activists.
Before we are inclined to dismiss Melgar as “an activist with a TV program,” let us reflect a little on where such thinking might lead us. Does Matt Drudge then become in a legal sense merely an “activist with a website?” Should we think of the late William F. Buckley as merely “an activist with a magazine?” And should such people be denied freedom of the press protection and due process of the law?
This is indeed a slippery slope.
And before we cast the intemperate Mr. Melgar into the outer darkness, we might think of another comment made by the economist-columnist: “It is painful what is happening in Bolivia. People every minute have more fear of writing something.”

Human Rights Foundation Report on Bolivia

2008-10-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

We thought it important to publish a summary of the recent report issued by the Human Rights Foundation about the political situation in Bolivia. For the actual report go to the HRF website shown after the following article.

The Human Rights Foundation released a 14-page report detailing the crisis that claimed 21 lives in the month of September of 2008, and left hundreds of people injured throughout Bolivia. The report was sent to Bolivian President Evo Morales with a letter outlining HRF’s concerns regarding the political violence and the repeated statements by the Bolivian head of state defending racial hatred, threatening the freedom of the press and inciting conflict.

“It is appalling that the president of a country that is a signatory to the majority of the world’s human rights treaties is literally calling on the people of his nation to choose between his political agenda and death,” said Thor Halvorssen, president of HRF. “Unfortunately, as long as the government’s official discourse continues to promote conflict and racial hatred between Bolivians, the human rights situation in Bolivia is going to continue to deteriorate,” he added.
The report criticizes Morales for repeatedly using terms such as “racists,” “fascists,” “separatists,” and “traitors” to describe the leaders of the opposition. The report states that Morales’ calls for supporters to “die” in “defense of the revolution” are in direct violation of article 13 of the American Convention of Human Rights, which prohibits any propaganda for war or racial hatred. Similarly, the report links a growingly belligerent discourse by the government as responsible for physical assaults against members of the press by supporters of the government.

According to the report, since the beginning of Morales’ presidential term in 2006, Bolivia has become the Latin American country with the second highest number of deaths due to political conflict—second only to Colombia, which has been engaged in an ongoing internal struggle with the terrorist organization FARC. The deaths and injuries on the 11th, 12th and 13th of September add up to the more than 40 deaths and thousands of injured as a consequence of the political violence which has spread since Morales took office.

HRF believes that political tensions will only be resolved through dialogue and by the categorical commitment, both by the Bolivian constitution as well as the recently approved local government statutes, to respect and improve the individual rights of all Bolivians regardless of their race, color, gender, language, religion, national or social origin, economic position, place of birth or any other social condition. HRF urges both the President of Bolivia and the governors of the country to operate within the framework of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights.

HRF is an international nonpartisan organization devoted to defending human rights in the Americas. It centers its work on the twin concepts of freedom of self-determination and freedom from tyranny. These ideals include the belief that all human beings have the rights to speak freely, to associate with those of like mind, and to leave and enter their countries. Individuals in a free society must be accorded equal treatment and due process under law, and must have the opportunity to participate in the governments of their countries; HRF’s ideals likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience. HRF’s International Council includes former prisoners of conscience Vladimir Bukovsky, Palden Gyatso, Armando Valladares, Ramón J. Velásquez, Elie Wiesel, and Harry Wu.

(From Human Rights Foundation: http://www.thehrf.org/media/100808.html)

Ominous turn

2008-10-15T18:45:00.000-07:00

Journalist arrested
for telling too much

In the off and on political crisis through which Bolivia is living, last week had seemed like an off week.
So little of import happened we were going to violate our rule of posting something each week -- until Monday, when thirty uniformed men with their faces covered broke into the home of a TV commentator in Riberalta, the capital of Beni.
According to news accounts, they beat the man up, ransacked the house, smashed the windows in his car, and spirited him off to La Paz, where he was charged with sedition, conspiracy, and possibly terrorism. (The accounts are unclear.)
Jorge Melgar Quette, who has had a fifteen-minute daily commentary program on a local television station for eight years, has unquestionably been a pain in the neck for the government in recent weeks.
Recorded Quintana's "worms" speech
It was he who recorded and made public inflammatory speeches made in the Department of Pando by the minister of the Government, Juan Ramon Quitana, calling for the death of Pando's elected governor, Leopoldo Fernandez, promising in Godfather-esque terms that the pro-autonomia governor would "lie with the worms." (Fernandez was arrested after the referendum and imprisoned without a trial or the prospect of one.)
Melgar had also reported that Quintana had been visiting this section of Pando, which adjoins Beni in northern Bolivia, three times a week during the recent recall referendum to stir up groups of indigenous people in the area.
It was in this area that the so-called "Pando Massacre" occurred when there was a shoot-out between supporters of President Evo Morales and supporters of autonomy. A still undetermined number of persons died. Martial law was declared, and Fernandez arrested.
Melgar's reporting, based on interviews with the families of people involved, and with people who had fled to Brazil, had also substantiated the reports that the pro-Morales contingent had been armed by a local functionary of President Morales' party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).
MAS demonstrators paid
Melgar's interviews also disclosed that the campesinos in the MAS group were being paid by the government.
Melgar's son, Percy, is a leader of the Union Juvenil of Riberalta, a sort of pro-autonomy proto-militia, which had a proment role in the takeover of government buildings and the airport by pro-autonomy demonstrators.
Percy Melgar told the press he thought the soldiers or police who arrested his father were also looking for him, but that he had not been at the family's house when the arrest squad broke in.
At least one other prominent advocate for autonomia in the city was reportedly in hiding after Melgar's arrest.
So it has come to this -- the imprisonment without trial of an elected opposition leader, and now the arrest of a hostile journalist.
The mask is off.

Tension lurks below the surface

2008-10-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

Bistro brawl shows restive mood

One of the difficulties in assessing the crisis level in Santa Cruz is the exquisite ordinariness of everyday life.
Yes, there are lines for diesel fuel, and disquieting headlines in the paper -- but there are diesel lines and disquieting headlines every year. Meanwhile, traffic continues to be horrendous, new construction is ubiquitous, the 12-screen movie theater and associated mall are packed, and the restaurants are full.
It was in one of those crowded restaurants that a huge brawl broke out last Saturday night demonstrating that only centimeters below the surface hot and dangerous currents are flowing. According to an account phoned in by alert reader Mary Bernasconi, who was dining with her family across the street from the fight, together with reports of another direct witness and newspaper accounts, here is what happened.
Embattled Morales supporter
Entrepreneur Salvador Ric, Santa Cruz' most conspicuous supporter of President Evo Morales, was at a bistro on Avenida Monseñor Rivero, which is Santa Cruz' modest response to Madrid's Prado or Rome's Via Veneto.
Ric, who owns the local Kia dealership and a chain of supermarkets and department stores among other enterprises, was a major funder of Morales' election campaign, and served in the cabinet as minister of public works for the first year of Morales' government. He resigned, but remained a Morales supporter.
An unidentified man approached Ric and his party and began berating Ric loudly for having brought Bolivia's current problems upon it. People from that restaurant and adjoining ones began to congregate around the table, and words became angrier. Ric's huge bodyguard took out a camera and began snapping pictures, causing some in the crowd to sieze and smash the camera.
The owner of a nearby cafe, a tiny woman with a large voice, now inserted herself into the situation. She and Ric had apparently had a previous altercation during which Ric had told her to take down her sreen-and-white "AUTONOMIA!" banner. She screamed insults at him, and finally hauled off and hit Ric in the face, while others in the crowd almost simultaneously began punching the bodyguard and knocked him down. The crowd had by now swelled to several hundred persons, including the waiters from the Bernasconi's restaurant (who had not run out to rescue Señor Ric -- quite the contrary).
Ric then retreated inside Fridolin, and, after a goodly portion of the crowd pushed in after him, went to the restaurant's upstairs office. Police were called. They arrived, dressed Ric in riot police gear, including helmet and shield, and expeditiously escorted him out of the building, adroitly ending the episode.
Talks break off
There were other developments in the country over the past week that may have lacked the drama of the restaurant brawl, but also pointed up the dangerous and rising level of tensions. The president and the prefects of the "autonomista" departments broke off talks without reaching any agreement. President Morales said he would now go to Congress and ask for a law setting up a referendum on his proposed Constitution.
The opposition -- a fragmented coalition without a clear leader -- said it would oppose this effort, and technically has the votes in the Senate to do this. However, in the past the President has been able to bring over enough votes to his side, by methods that can only be darkly hinted at, to get through measures he really wanted, like the new contracts forced on oil companies operating in the country.
Good news for Santa Cruz -- for now
The good news for Santa Cruz, at least in the short term, is that campesino groups allied with the President announced that they will march on La Paz this month to pressure the Congress, thereby apparently at least postponing their plans to march on Santa Cruz.
The next step for the opposition would presumably be to launch a campaign to defeat the proposed Constitution. Serious articles criticizing the constitution for its contents, rather than just its provenance, have started circulating. The major objection is that the Constitution sets aside 40 percent of the voting power in every public or quasi-public endeavor for certifiable indigenous persons.
Juan Carlos Urenda, a lawyer who is the foremost advocate of autonomia, wonders in his article why, if Bolivia is 70 percent indigenous as the government claims, such set-asides are needed. "Why not just stick with representative democracy?" he asks. He also raises the question of how, in this country where birth records are scanty or non-existent, anyone would be able to show that they were pure-blooded Indians all the way back to pre-Conquest times (a requirement to qualify for the set-asides).
Economic turblulence ahead?
Another factor here are some rapidly forming economic storm clouds, which included falling prices for tin, gas, and other commodities that Bolivia exports.
Also on the economic front, Bolivia also has its own potential credit mess resulting from the large number of adjustable rate home mortagages that have been taken out in recent years. Another potential economic problem area is the Boliviano, which the Bolivian central back has artificially strengthened against the dollar and other currencies in recent years.
Should the economy turn down in Bolivia, and the dollar continue to strengthen, there could be a "dam breaking" effect on the Boliviano, causing a rush to acquire dollars and triggering rapid inflation.
Finally, Bolivia has benefited in recent years from money sent back by Bolivians who emigrated to Spain. In fact such remittances were greater than all the outside private investment in the country. However, many of those emigrants are now returning because of the economic downturn in Spain.
Where will it all end? We think we'll go down to Monseñor Rivero, have a coffee and cake at Fridolin -- and think it over.

A quiet week

2008-09-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

Talks continue, fears build
of looming confrontation

Not much of major importance has occurred over the past week, but there seems to have been a marked rise in concern over what may happen in the middle of October.
The negotiations in Cochbamba are continuing, with both sides saying they need more time, but hopes for a successful conclusion seem to be dimming.
Part of the reason has been the harsh rhetoric of President Evo Morales, who earlier this week declared that he would put into effect his proposed constitution "por las buenas o las malas," which translates as something pretty close to "come hell or high water."
The constitution is bitterly opposed by the five eastern departments that have voted for "autonomia" who dislike its increased centralization, its weakening of property rights, and its setting aside of political power for indigenous people, among other things.
But the talk from the would-be autonomous departments has not done much to pour oil on the troubled waters. Many people here noticed that Branko Marinkovic, head of the pro-autonomy Committee for Santa Cruz, was quoted in the International Herald-Tribune as saying that without international arbitration a bloody showdown was likely.
What has been more chilling for us has been the growing acceptance among people we know of the likelihood of a violent clash. People who just a couple of weeks ago were certain that "it won't happen here," reassuring us that Bolivians always go to the brink and then back off, now seem resigned to violence arising from another campesino march.
The stage has certainly been set. Leaders of the campesino groups allied with President Morales have said that if the talks in Cochabamba don't come to an agreement by October 13, campesinos will encircle and cut off that city.
If no agreement is forthcoming after that, they will march on Santa Cruz the 15th.
There are still no overt preparations for battle in the city, but many people say that they are underway covertly. We are thinking of going to Brazil or Peru for that mid-month period.
Meantime, Cruceños are discussing with great gusto three recent news stories that we cannot verify personally, but are definitely the talk of the town.
* Numerous news stories report that the two sisters of the highest ranking woman in President Morales Party, the Movement Toward Socialism, were arrested near Cochabama by police when 147 kilos of cocaine paste was found in their luxury SUV during a traffic stop. One of the sisters had a large wad of cash hidden in her underwear. The husband of one of the sisters was also arrested.
* One Caracas daily reports that six Venezuelan military personnel in civilian clothes were killed in the recent armed clash in Pando known as the Porvenir Massacre. The bodies of the Venezuelans, the paper said, had been airlifted back to a military base in Venezuela.
* The buzz on the Internet is an unsourced story, with pictures, reporting that President Morales' representative in Santa Cruz drives her kids to Collegio Aleman, one of the city's tonier prep schools, in a canary yellow Humvee, the most expensive SUV sold in Bolivia.

Another Bullet Dodged Dept.

2008-09-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

STRIFE-TORN CITY? -- Cruceños cool off Wednesday, Santa Cruz Day, at one of the city's two aquatic parks. El Deber

Marchers threaten crisis,
then disappear -- sort of

All week long we have been meaning to post a story about the looming clash involving between besieged citizens of Santa Cruz and the columns of thousands of marching, machete-wielding, shotgun-brandishing campesinos who were ostensibly threatening to lay waste to the city when they got there.
We were just waiting for the pending cataclysm to take shape -- who would be doing what, when, where,why, and maybe how.
But it never happened. Things never coalesced. By yesterday afternoon the news was spreading that the marchers had decided not to storm the city after all. Some other day perhaps, but not today.
Stores that had begun boarding their windows earlier Tuesday began taking the boards down as evening fell, and the city seemed to give a blasé, can-you-beat-that? shrug of the shoulders to the

whole affair.

__________

ARMED AND DANGEROUS --Scenes from the campesino march. OGLOBO

This was in keeping to an attude

maintained all week of studied

indifference to the affair on the part of most Cruceños, who, when asked about the possibility of a Gunfight-at-the-OK-Corral-type showdown within the city, dismissed it with a downward flip of the hand that implied, "It will never happen here."

This flies in the face of the fact that it has happened here. Truckloads of campesinos were trucked into Santa Cruz in the late 1950s when the same issue was in play, with Santa Cruz demanding its legislated portion of revenues from the country's petroleun industry. Although the Cruceños eventually got the payments restored that time, the invasion by the campesinos wrought all manner of mayhem, particularly in the outer regions of the city, where there were incidents of torture and killings. In earlier conversations many long-time Cruceños acknowledged a desire to extract revenge for those historic atrocities.
One did not, in fact, have to go that far back in Bolivian history to find an episode in which a city's political confrontations escalated to the scale of civil war. For two weeks in October 2005 something close to a state of war existed in La Paz as followers of Evo Morales, the current president, sought to drive one of his predecessors from office by shutting down the city. People who didn't want trouble stayed inside their houses.
In 2006 the city of Cochabamba was the scene of a city-wide fist-fight between pro-Morales and anti-Morales factions.
And this time the campesinos marching on Santa Cruz were clearly carrying shotguns, World War I mauser, cattle-killing .22s, and assorted other firearms. (See pictures.)

What -- us worry?
Nonetheless, the entire citizenry of Santa Cruz seemed to decide to turn the other cheek. While the Union Juvenile Cruceñista, a sort of proto-militia for the Santa Cruz government, was reportedly holding nightly meetings to examine possible responses to the marchers coming in on at least three different approaches, the UJC leaders didn't share their thoughts with the populace at large, and there were no messages from other civic leaders giving instructions for how to receive the marchers, or even noting that the marchers were on the way.
Foreigners, on the other hand, along with some more affluent Crcueños, were transfixed with fear, constantly asking one another where the marchers were, and how many hours march from the city they were. One student reported that her mother was "watching TV news 24 hours a day," and considering making a hasty exit from the country.

"I´ll bring my machete"
But far more typical was the reaction of my veterinarian. On Tuesday he had begun treating our horse for blood parasites, and said he would be over on Wednesday to start the next phase of treatment.
Wasn't he worried, I asked, about the possibility that the region might be engulfed in civil war be then?
"I´ll bring my machete," he said sardonically, as he climbed into his muddy red SUV.
Some people suggested that the outward indifference built on an understanding that if push had really come to shove, the people of Santa Cruz could turn out in overwhelming numbers. "There are a lot of guns in Santa Cruz," one American communications expert who has been in Bolivia for decades told me.

A different city today
I was also reminded that when the campesinos overran Santa Cruz in the 1950s, it was a tiny city of around 50,000 in which only the four streets around the central plaza were paved. Today it has a population of 1.5 million, and a lot more paved streets.
Also, the marchers would have been entering the city through, or past, districts that had voted for autonomia by as much as 90 percent to 10.
Anyway, the cloud seems to have passed. Negotiations between the autonomous governors and the national government are continuing, albeit fitfully, in Cochabamba. The word on the street is that we're probably safe for another month.
Gasoline is available again, along with propane and diesel in limited quatities. (There are often lines.)
Here's a list of what one cannot find at the supermarket, presumably as a result of the various blockades: Strawberries, peaches, the canned whipped cream that comes from New Zealand by way of Argentina, Dr. Pepper soda . . .and, well, that's all I noticed. Oh, and Betty Crocker Pancake Mix and Aunt Jemimah imitation maple syrup.

Boom in luxury condos?
In fact it would be hard to overstate the mood of normalcy with which the city is gripped at present. The cover of the real estate section today talks about a coming boom in luxury condominiums, which tend to be favored by refugees from La Paz. These are nice places with swimming pools and gyms, but not that expensive -- $55,000 for two bedrooms.
The big thing to do this past weekend (and again today, Wednesday, on Santa Cruz Day) is to go to the big trade fair -- Expocruz -- which runs through Friday. We were there Sunday when 41,000 people paid there way in, and it was packed to capacity. It was hard to walk down the midway because of the press of the populace.

Long lines for USA pavillion
There long lines in front of many pavillions, incuding the USA pavillion, which consists mostly of exhibits by export-import firms of products like double-door General Electric refrigerators, Hewlett Packard computers, and silicone breast implants. (You could pick them up and check the natural feel.) All were on sale with special Expocruz markdowns.
When one tired of the corporate attractions, including immense agricultural equipment with airconditioned cabs, there are the cows -- hundred of huge white and brown cattle that gave the impression of having been crossed with elephants.
Scattered throughout Expocruz were the stars of the show, the female presenters, or "azafatas" -- magificently beautiful women wearing fashions created by designers who had clearly been ordered to conserve material by using as little as possible.
The passageways were filled with the full array of Santa Cruz denizens -- oligarchs, Indians, mestizos, people of all shapes and colors, with kids in tow, happily eating ice cream and taking in the show. Pairs of policemen strolled throuygh the crowds. Constantly circulating trash trucks picked up the trash gathered by the seeming numberless crews of santiation workers in yellow and green uniforms.
All in all, the crowd scene seemed to offer a picture of another
possibility for Bolivia, one that may not be getting proper consideration at the Cochabamba talks.

A Difficult Path to Peace

2008-09-17T11:01:00.001-07:00

Storm clouds still
darken the horizon

All's quiet on the eastern front here in Santa Cruz this morning, but big problems still loom in thebackground.
As of this moment two large contingents of pro-MAS campesinos are still intending to march on the city of Santa Cruz. We will track this situation, and update the weblog when we get further information.
Also, we should have stressed more in our previous posting that the agreement announced Tuesday night is a preliminary accord, with the details to be worked out in meetings that will begin today in Cochabamba. And, as always, the devil is in the details.
Adding to the tension in Cochabamba is the expected arrival there today of a contingent of tin miners. These are a particularly rabid group of MAS supporters, known for being rock 'em, sock 'em guys. They like to toss sticks of dynamite around as they march, as if they were firecrackers.
In any event the mood of euphoria that prevailed yesterday, when the newspaper El Deber was suggesting that September 16 might become a hallowed day in the Bolivian calendar because of the "peace agreement," has largely evaporated.
Further bulletins as they are received.

Is Peace At Hand?

2008-09-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

Morales, Autonomistas
Ink an Agreement

Remember that picture that seemed to be taking form of Bolivia sinking rapidly into the flames and chaos of outright civil war?
Well, forget it. At least for the moment. Or so it would seem.
This morning's papers say that President Evo Morales and Tarija Prefect Mario Cossio signed an agreement Tuesday evening in La Paz.
Under the agreement the national government will resume sharing oil and gas revenues with the regional governments, and in return the four provinces that have declared for "autonomia" will give the national government back the various national government offices they have siezed during the last 10 days. Cossio negotiated in behalf of the autonomous provinces.
The national government also agreed to a short one-month postponement of the referendum on its proposed new constitution, originally slated for December, and now apparently to take place in January.
The two sides pledged to find some way to guarantee in the process the somewhat autonomous status that the provinces of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando have ratified for themselves through referendums.
Not all of the ends have been tied up by any means. A march of campesinos was still headed toward Santa Cruz at last report, with over 5,000 people carrying machetes, bats, and firearms. Their declared goal was to retake the siezed offices, and depose the elected prefect of Santa Cruz, Ruben Costas.
Police had pledged to keep the marchers from committing mayhem, but many in Santa Cruz were bracing themselves for what could have been (and might still be) a drenching blood bath.
In addition, the pro-autonomy prefect of Pando, Leopold Fernandez, has been arrested by the national government and is being held at an undisclosed location in La Paz charged with violating the martial law imposed by the government on Pando. The government will also probably try to charge him with having been complicit in some way with the massacre of perhaps as many as 30 persons in a pro-MAS contingent that got into a gun battle with anti-MAS citizens in the tiny town of Porvenir. However, the press accounts of that altercation have clearly indicated that the pro-MAS group was the aggressor, and had killed two people before anyone started shooting back. They killed one man, an employee of the prefectural government, while he sat in his car, with a bullet from under the chin, and another through the temple.
After that a vigilante group formed, and chased the MAS adherents through the woods until they were trapped beside a river, and massacred them as they attempted to cross.
The details, however, are still sketchy. Military and other government officials have been in the area. Depending on one's point of view, they are thought to be either gathering evidence concerning the episode, or destroying it.
More details as we get them . . . ,

"Watchful waiting" at week's end

2008-09-14T09:31:00.000-07:00

A returning calm --
or eye of the storm?

Santa Cruz was quiet this weekend, with most people hoping that some sort of "modus vivendi" will be worked out between the national government and the autonomous departments in the talks that began Friday between the prefect of Tarija, Mario Cossio, and Vice president Alvaro Garcia Linera. Cossio was in Santa Cruz Saturday conferring with the other "media luna" governors and will return Sunday evening to La Paz to continue talks with the Vice-President.

However, even with negotiations between the government and the opposition in full-swing, the President still stokes the fires of conflict with his rhetoric. As Reuters reports, "Morales defied them (the Prefects of the autonomous departments) on Saturday by vowing to introduce divisive reforms just hours after signs of a compromise had emerged from a first round of talks." In Cochabama today speaking to a group of coca farmers, Morales called the governors of the five departments who oppose the proposed socialist constitution enemies of Bolivia. Just imagine, Morales said, how unpatriotic they are. "They are the enemies of all Bolivians."

The tensest part of the country right now is the small, rural department of Pando at the northwestern limit of the media luna. The first deaths in the current flare-up occurred there with around 25 and counting people reportedly being killed in an altercation Friday between agricultural workers who some say were armed by President Morales' party, MAS, and pro-autonomy residents of the tiny town of Porvenir. The group affiliated with MAS reportedly suffered the majority of the casualties after they had initiated a gunfight. In addition, two more deaths were blamed on the military who opened fire when they landed in Cobija to take the airport back from opposition groups. The armed forces earlier had stated that they would not open fire on Bolivian civilians.

Martial law is still in effect in Pando and Evo Morales has said that he would not hesitate to extend the "estado en sitio" to the other autonomous departments. However, we have no first-hand knowledge of the situation in Pando, and will leave the details to other news organizations, which are gradually arriving in Bolivia.

Santa Cruz itself has returned to a state of near-normalcy, though there is apparently some fighting with sticks, fists and rocks going on out at the blockades that pro-Morales campesinos have set up on the principal routes leading into the city. The principal effect of the blockades surrounding the city is a lack of gasoline in the city. Most stations are out of gas most of the time, and when they have it long lines form immediately.

Generally the mood is to wait and see what comes of the talks between Cossio and Garcia Linera. People in Santa Cruz to whom we spoke believe that the national government is in a weakened position, and will have to make some accommodation with the autonomous departments regarding the sharing of gas and oil revenues, which the departments had been receiving a fixed part of since 1939, and which President Morales had cut off by decree earlier this year. The autonomous departments also want a cancellation of the proposed December referendum on Morales' controversial proposed constitution.

The events of last week seemed to show that the national government is not able to project effectively its authority into the "autonomous" departments. The army and police retreated to their quarters in the face of popular protests in several cities in which offices of the national government, airports, and other facilities were taken over. In addition, one gas pipeline was blown up, and the flow through others curtailed, at least temporarily, by anti-government groups. Bolivia currently is not producing enough gas to meet domestic demand, and is way behind on its contracted shipments to Argentina.

In conversations with Cruceños, they seem to feel that a remarkable turnabout occurred last week. Until then Morales seemed to be in the driver's seat as a result of is two-thirds majority in the recent recall referendum. (However, he lost in all four departments -- out of nine -- that have voted for "autonomia.") Now, the President is forced into dealing with the opposition.

This point of view was reflected repeatedly at a Friday night party attended by relatively well-to-do Cruceños who cheerfully accepted the epithet "oligarchs," that President Morales throws at the entrepreneurs of Santa Cruz. ("It's time for all the oligarchs here to get up and dance," shouted the acting master of ceremonies early on in the evening.) Many expressed confidence that Santa Cruz and the other autonomous departments were united, and well prepared to thwart a wide variety of central government plans to curb exports, centralize government control, and implement various socialistic economic policies President Morales' government wishes to impose. One "oligarch," in summing up his optimistic assessment, concluded: "Remember, Che died here."

Spinning out of control

2008-09-11T05:43:00.000-07:00

MECHANIZED ASSAULT -- Anti-government militants comandeered a Land Cruiser to crash the glass facade of the land reform office. El Deber

Violent Clashes

Weren't Foreseen

The sudden escalation of violence in Santa Cruz this week in which crowds of pro-autonomy militants stormed government buildings was not part of the original plan undertaken by the nominal political and civic leaders, Santa Cruz Perspective has learned.
Under the scenario originally contemplated by the leadership here events were not scheduled to escalate until Sept. 25, the day after the annual Santa Cruz Day observations, which would include a mass civic meeting. According to sources with access to the the inner circles of the city's leaders, the escalation was also supposed to take place under much more deliberate and controllable circumstances than occurred this week when the violence appeared spontaneous and the actions little-planned.
That date -- Sept. 25 -- would also also delayed the stepped up level of activity until after the completion of Expocruz, Santa Cruz´huge annual trade fair that normally draws an international audience.
Cabinet changes trigger events
The event that apparently caused at least one faction of the civic leadership to initiate action more precipitously was the announcement last week by President Evo Morales of the promotion or appointment of three cabinet ministers known to favor radical policies. This was taken as a sign that the president and his advisers did not intend to carry out any negotiations that could lead to compromise with the four regions that have voted for "autonomia," and which are currently in a state something close to to active rebellion and demanding restoration of the long-standing system of sharing revenues from gas and oil between the national and regional governments.
However, the decision was apparently not unanimous, and many of the leaders were not even sure what was happening when things turned violent Tuesday. On Wednesday leaders of the university students group (FUL) and the Union Juvenile Cruceñista, a sort of proto-militia, denied that they had planned Tuesday's takeover of national government buildings and the offices of a recently nationalized phone company. They said that they were planning a "peace march" for Friday, which could represent an effort by the civic leadership to get the situation back under control.

Have they crossed the Rubicon?
At the same time it's hard to know how the autonomistas can retreat from the current situation, in which most offices of the national government here have been taken over and closed. (On Wednesday pro-autonomy militants of various sorts took over everything from the ministry of education to the superintendent of forests offices in the city, and were moving on the major transportation hub where rail and bus lines originate. In addition, someone blew up a gas pipeline carrying natural gas to Brazil.
Meanwhile, supporters of President Morales were promising to set up blockades around the city to shut off all supplies to the city, a move almost certain to evoke a violent response.
Will the army open fire?
A key question is whether the armed forces will take action to restore the national government's control of Santa Cruz, and to carry out the President's order to arrest the department's leaders.
The most important fact emerging from Tuesday's confrontations was that the army commanders were not willing to order their troops to shoot civilians. Santa Cruz Perspective's source said that the leadership in Santa Cruz had known for some time that the soldiers would not shoot to kill.
In a remarkably candid interview with El Deber published Wednesday, General Marco Antonio Bracamonte, commander of the Eighth Division which is stationed in Santa Cruz, said, "I am a military man trained for war, but I pray to God for peace." He said that he had consciously disobeyed the order of the President to hold the government buildings at any cost, but did so in the realization that "there would be deaths" if he carried out the order. He said he was fully prepared to be removed from command, but that "God knows" the factors he had to weigh in making his choice Tuesday.
It remains to be seen whether Bracomante's successor, assuming he is replaced, will be more ready to order soldiers to kill fellow Bolivians.
Where were the police?
Bracomante's interview also served to focus attention on the role -- or non-role -- of the national police in Tuesday's confrontation. General Bracamonte complained that the police had taken a position on his flank, "but one moment they were there and the next moment they disappeared," leaving his soldiers vulnerable. The national police have not been seen on the streets of Santa Cruz since Tuesday's violence, resulting among other things in some horrendous traffic jams.
At this point people in Santa Cruz, even those at the highest level, are watching and waiting, unsure of what will happen next.

Violence Arrives In Santa Cruz

2008-09-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

"Universitarios" battle soldiers,
sieze key government buildings

Fighting raged through the center of Santa Cruz Tuesday as youths battled against soldiers in the central plaza and adjoining streets while tear gas fumes filled the air. An estimated 50 persons were hurt.
The youths described as university students by the media smashed their way into the offices of the central government's tax, land reform, and migration offices. They also broke into and trashed the offices of Entel, a cell phone and long distance communications company recently nationalized by the government.
During Tuesday afternoon, large contingents of soldiers hunkered down behind concrete barriers in the central plaza, or behind riot shields in strategic corners, and fired tear gas grenades at the crowds of milling youths.
Some of the youths may have been members of the Union Juvenile Cruceñista, which has functioned as a sort of ad hoc militia for the self-proclaimed autonomous government of Santa Cruz.
Similar youth unions are serving a similar function in the other provinces that have declared themselves autonomous via referenda -- Tarija, Pando and Beni.
An echelon of handicapped persons, who have been demonstrating to demand promised benefits from the national government, was also involed in the fighting on the side of the autonomista forces.
The youths advanced on the soldiers behind dumpsters that they pushed across the plaza, and by nightfall the soldiers had withdrawn or fled, and were nowhere in evidence Wednesday.
Nor were any of the national police to be seen, though the unarmed Santa Cruz constabulary force was out on the streets.
The streets where the government offices and Entel showroom had been taken were cordoned off. A trash fire in front of the offices of the tax authority was still smoking.
The national government was calling for the arrest of the government and civic leaders in Santa Cruz, while those leaders were proclaiming the protests were the "response of the people" to the allegedly dictatorial actions of the government.
TV news reported that campesinos favoring the national government of President Evo Morales were seeking to surround the city with blockades, and that tensions were particularly high inside a market on the west side of the city that in the past has been the scene of clashes between pro-Morales and pro-autonomia factions. Some schools in the area of the market suspended classes and sent their students home.

This Is the Week That Was -- August 31

2008-09-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

"High Anxiety" reigns
as crises threaten
Santa Cruz undertook blockades of Bolivia's principal routes to Argentina, while President Morales decreed that there will be a referendum on his proposed new constitution on December 7. The latest news, however, is that the National Election Court ruled that the referendum can not be decreed, but a law must be passed in Congress to allow for a vote on the proposed constitution.

Those were the principal events of the past week, but far from the only actions. Some of the others that are probably worth noting:
* The national government made unveiled threats to cut off more revenue from oil and gas that had been going to the departments on a formula basis. This time President Morales threatened to cut off the departments' share of royalties. He had previously cut off, by decree, the departments' share of taxes paid by oil and gas companies to Bolivia. The sharing of these revenues is required by a law that dates back to 1939, and the issue of how that money should be allocated between the national and regional governments is at the bottom of the current confrontation between the departments of eastern Bolivia, where the gas fields are located (and which have declared themselves autonomous), and the central government, which collects the taxes and royalties.
* The national government also briefly stripped the major private universities in Bolivia of their accreditation, only to restore it the following day. Our sources were unsure what to make of this. The Morales government has long been suspected of harboring hostility toward all private educational institutions, and this may have been the precursor of a larger plan to ban such institutions.
On the other hand, it might have just been bureaucratic bungling -- saying the universities were at the end of their five-year accreditation. The accreditation, which allows the institutions to declare themselves "full universities," has in fact reached its five-year time limit for those universties that received accreditaton the first year after the accreditation law was promulgated. The irony is, however, that the universities could not have renovated their accreditation because the government has not established a review process.

* The department of Chuquisaca slated a referendum for Nov. 30 on whether to become "autonomous" as four other departments have done. Chuquisaca includes Sucre, the co-national capital. (The judicial branch, which is basically non-functioning at present, has its headquarters there.) If Chuquisaca were to approve "autonomia," then five of the country's nine departments would have done so.
* President Morales was barred by demonstrators from using any of the airports in the department of Beni to fly back to La Paz after a ribbon-cutting ceremony there, and had to use an air strip at a Brazilian border town instead. It was the latest in a series of episodes in which the president has been prevented from flying into or out of airport facilities in the autonomous departments.
We're apologetic for throwing out all this information without much form or cohesion, but Bolivia is in a time of ferment ("high anxiety" accoriding to the headline in one major newspaper), and it is much more difficult than usual to separate the significant events from those that history will show to have been mere background noise.
Since this weblog is aimed at English-speakers living outside of Bolivia who want to stay abreast of the situation here without becoming immersed in it, we intend to use this format of weekly highlights until further notice. The goal will be to "skim the cream," so to speak.
The blockades and the referendum on the constitution do appear likely to be continuing themes, and deserve some further comment.
The blockades of the border crossings to Argentina are a little hard to figure out in terms of trying to see how they might bring the national government to its knees. They will probably cause some shortages and annoyance in the western part of the country, as will the decision of ranchers in the Beni to stop sending beef to La Paz.
However, the blockades are also cutting off needed truckloads of key materials to Santa Cruz and other cities in the so-called Media Luna -- the self-declared autonomous provinces. One of the most important cargos coming to Santa Cruz from Argentina is diesel fuel, which is in increasingly short supply (along with propane and, most recently, gasoline).
One well-connected Cruceña explained to me that it is a sort of existential expression of anger, a message that will be noticed by the international community saying, "We're mad as hell, and we aren't going to take it anymore."
She says it needs to be seen as part of an escalating array of tactics designed to gradually build momentum and support, starting with the most ineffectual (hunger strikes and general strikes), and moving up toward something that will actually have an effect (shutting down the gas pipelines).
We shall see.
In regard to the Constitutional referendum, it's unclear at present whether the opposition will attempt to defeat the constitution, or whether the "autonomous" departments will simply refuse to hold the referendum.
At least one alert reader has noted that we have, as yet, not taken a firm position on the constitution. Our feeling up to now has been that its provenance is so sullied that it lacks legitimacy. It was finally approved by a rump session of the constitutional convention that met under military guard in a fort near Oruro. Only delegates adhering to President Morales' MAS party were present at those final sessions.
If there is going to be a legitimate vote on it, we will post a discussion of the pros and cons, which are not simple and clear-cut. For example one of the most frequent arguments against the constitution is that allows for a president to be re-elected one time. But that doesn't seem so terrible to us. In fact, it is probably a good idea. More troubling though are sections that would open the way for the government to seize private property more easily. The proposed constitution also provides, in a number of ways, for affirmative action for Indians that goes way beyond the wildest fantasies of the most radical civil rights leaders inthe US.
In any event, we are going to read the proposed constitution carefully and post a detailed analysis of what we feel are its strengths and defects.

Aftershocks and Aftermath

2008-08-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

Evo´s margin widens;
Opponents call strike

Today (Tuesday) an atmosphere of calm envelops the five provinces of Bolivia that have declared themselves to be in opposition to the government of President Morales as they observe a one-day "paro," or general strike.
During paros virtually all economic activity ceases, normal vehicular traffic is banned, and families ride about on bicycles and quadritrack recreational vehicles, which are allowed. People visit parks, play soccer games, and generally have a nice time. They are like school "snow days" for kids in the northern US, except that grown-ups get them too.
Somehow they are supposed to exert pressure on the government to do whatever it is the strikers supposedly want, in this case resumption of the sharing of oil revenues with local governments. But as with so much in Bolivian politics, it's not clear how exactly this is supposed to work.
The theory is that the central government loses the taxes from the economic activity that would have taken place on the day of the strike, but it seems more likely that the day's transactions are either moved up to the preceding day, or postponed to the following day.
In any event, there's no evidence that President Morales really cares whether or not some provinces take an extra day off or not.
A paro does, however, provide an excellent chance for people to update their blogs, and much has occurred since the recall referendum a week ago.
Morales' victory becomes bigger
As the final official figures came in over the past week, the vote in favor of the retention of President Morales grew appreciably to nearly 68 percent, up from the 62 percent initially calculated from preliminary results and exit polls.
Moreover, Morales won 54 percent to 46 percent in the department (state) of Chuquisaca, which he had appeared to be losing in the preliminary results.
So Morales, and not the opposition, ended up winning in five of the country's nine departments. It became all the more certain that the President would try to build on these results to push forward a referendum on the proposed constitution worked out by a rump session of the constitutional convention that contained only his supporters. The proposed constitution grants special rights to Indians, further centralizes governmental authority, weakens private property guarantees, and would allow Morales to be re-elected.
The status of one prefect, Alberto Aguilar in Oruro, remained in doubt. He is a member of President Morales' party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), but his relative unpopularity appeared to rest on local issues. One analyst said he had favored rural areas over urban areas to a degree that annoyed urban voters. In any event, President Morales carried Oruro handily.
In other developments, the defeated prefect of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes, agreed to step down from his post. Reyes had previously refused to recognize the validity of the referendum.
Here are the official results by department based on 96 percent of the vote:
The Vote on President Morales by Department
Potosi: 85 percent yes, 15 percent no
Pando:* 53 percent no, 47 percent yes
Beni:* 53 percent no, 47 percent yes
Oruro: 83 percent yes, 17 percent no
Santa Cruz:* 56 percent no, 44 percent yes
Cochabamba: 71 percent yes, 29 percent no
Tarija:* 50.2 percent no, 49.8 percent yes
La Paz: 83 percent yes, 17 percent no
Chuquisaca: 54 percent yes, 46 percent no
* provinces that have voted for "autonomia"
Vote for Prefects by Department
La Paz: Peredes ousted with 36 percent yes
Tarija: Cossio retained with 58 percent yes
Cochabamba: Reyes ousted with 65 percent yes
Santa Cruz: Costas retained with 67 percent yes
Oruro: Aguilar probably retained with 51 percent yes
Beni: Suarez retained with 64 percent yes
Pando: Fernandez retained with 56 percent yes
Potosi: Virreira retained with 79 percent yes
(Statistics from El Deber, August 14)

Shadow of suspicion clouds voting
The increase in the vote totals for President Morales and his allies shown as the results became complete was probably the result of including more results from rural areas where the President's support is stronger.
However, there are charges of voting irregularities based on many reports of several voters using the same identity card number. The observers from the Organization of the American States reportedly urged a criminal investigation.
One possible source of the irregularities, it has been alleged, is a program undertaken by the government, and funded by Venezuela, to provide identity cards to many Bolivians living in rural areas who didn't previously have one. Theoretically this program could have been exploited to produce ID cards for Morales supporters who could be counted on to vote early and often, as the expression goes.
While a lot of these incidents have been confirmed by journalists, they probably did not seriously skew the results. President Morales improved significantly on his victory margin in 2005 even in pro-autonomia Santa Cruz, where the voting was unlikely to have been tipped in the President's favor. There seems to be no reason to believe that the President would not also have improved his margins in parts of the country that have consistently supported him.
Standoff persists
The recall referendum definitely did not produce any rush toward a rapprochement between the president and the five departmental prefects who oppose him. The prefects' main goal at present is to reinstate the sharing of oil revenues between the central and local governments that had been in effect until the President canceled it by decree earlier this year.
The President did invite the prefects to "dialogue" on the issue. The prefects, however, delayed for a day to hold their own meeting, and their discussions with the President, when they did commence, ended rapidly. The prefects walked out and announced the general strike, which is in effect today.
The President said that the "prefects only wanted money -- they didn't want to discuss politics." That's probably a fair assessment.
The prefects regard the revenue-sharing as a right, long enshrined in law. They reject as a subterfuge the President's claim that the money has to be used to continue a limited program of financial support for older Bolivians without pensions.
The money is badly needed, the prefects say, for roads, bridges, airport improvements, port facilities and other infrastructure development. The government is continuing to distribute money for such projects, but is favoring departments and cities that support Morales, and discriminating against regions that have voted for autonomia.
Propane shortage continues
The long lines and short tempers of people lined up to obtain the dwindling supply of propane tanks for household use has not subsided. The government finally conceded that the shortage is real, not the result of an allocation problem, and that it plans to import propane. One expert has said that this like "a banana-producing country having to import banana puree." (For a fuller discussion of Bolivia's oil and gas situation, please see "Whose Gas Is It, Anyway?" posted June 19.)
Handicapped march triggers disturbance
Fairly large-scale fighting between the police anti-riot units and gangs of youths paralyzed traffic in much of Santa Cruz last Friday. The youths, many affiliated with Union Juvenile Cruceña (or Santa Cruz Youth Union) claimed to have been enraged by the brutal tactics used by the police the previous night to evict a group of handicapped persons from the offices of the government oil company, which the handicapped persons had taken over. The youths joined the fight on the side of the handicapped.
A subtext to the confrontation is that civic authorities in Santa Cruz, for whom the Youth Union functions as a sort of unarmed militia, would like to replace the national police with a regional police force. The President has accused the civic leaders of aiding and abetting the handicapped, who say they are demanding benefits President Morales had promised when initially running for office. Legislation that would give benefits to the handicapped is scheduled for a vote in Congress this week.
The handicapped, many of them in wheelchairs, have been marching, blocking refineries, and taking over government offices for some time. They are a contentious group, and have been willing to battle the police with surprising vigor. A picture in the paper last week showed an elderly man in a wheelchair whacking at a policeman's plastic shield with a two-by-four, while another elderly gentleman standing next to him jabbed at the line of riot police with his cane.

Recall Referendum results

2008-08-10T18:59:00.001-07:00

Morales and opponents
both score big wins
Results of a recall referendum in Bolivia Sunday defined even more sharply the split already apparent in the country from earlier referendums in which four of the country's nine departments voted for "autonomia."
President Morales' tenure in office was ratified, and probably strengthened, by a "yes" vote of around 62 percent on whether he should be retained in office, according to projections made by television networks late Sunday night. The victory was probably big enough to encourage the President to push for approval of a controversial new constitution, which had seemed to be in abeyance.
However, all four of the prefects (governors) in the pro-autoniomia provinces also appeared to have been retained in office by the referendum, with at least one of them, Ruben Costas of Santa Cruz, winning by an even wider margin in his department of Santa Cruz than the President.
Moreover, President Morales actually lost in all four of the departments that had voted for autonomia, as well as in Chuquisaca, a department that did not conduct a referendum because it had recently elected a new anti-Morales prefect (See story below in "While We Were On Vacation").
Two anti-Morales prefects lose
The big loser in the recall referendum was Manfred Reyes, the prefect of the department (state) of Cochabamba, and a nationally known political figure who had once made an impressive run for the presidency. Reyes, a consistent critic of President Morales, received a yes vote of only around 38 percent.
He was the only prefect who never recognized the legitimacy of the recall vote, and only made a small effort to campaign in his own behalf in the final week before the vote. He did not vote Sunday. Reyes has said he would not step down from his post even if the vote went against him, as it did.
One other prefect who had opposed President Morales was defeated -- Jose Luis Peredes of La Paz. Peredes at one point had commanded an independent power base resulting from his two successful terms as mayor of El Alto, but was long considered to be operating on borrowed time because the department has increasingly become a stronghold of President Morales' Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party.
Great day for a referendum
Sunday – the day of voting – was cloudless with gentle breezes in most of Bolivia, a day of precious beauty and delicate tranquility. Normal civilian vehicular traffic is banned from the streets on election days, and a holiday atmosphere was in evidence at least in Santa Cruz, with families out bicycling together on the nearly empty avenues.
The scene, in short, was utterly and completely at odds with the mood of civic irritability and unrest that had pervaded the country all week.
Protestors prevented President Morales from making appearances in Sucre and Santa Cruz, underlining again that the chief executive cannot travel freely in his own country.
Hundreds of civic leaders in the departments that have voted for “autonomia” -- Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando – began hunger strikes whose announced purpose was to persuade the President to resume automatic sharing with departments and municipalities of the government’s revenues from taxes and royalties on hydrocarbons that had been mandated by law, but which the president had curtailed by decree earlier this year.
(Exactly how these hunger strikes are supposed to influence the President is unclear. President Morales and his colleagues made fun of the hunger strikers during the week, accusing them of going home to big barbeques at the close of day when out of public view, and suggesting that many of them could afford to lose a few kilos anyway.)
Dynamite as Fire Crackers
Meanwhile, the country’s government-employed tin workers – a really fun group of guys who toss around sticks of dynamite like firecrackers when they march – were out protesting for higher pensions.
Not to be outdone, a group of handicapped Bolivians took over public buildings and sought to block access to refineries to back up their demands for benefits.
The propane shortage continued, with angry crowds forming around distribution points that sold out of their supplies within five hours of opening, leaving many would-be customers unsatisfied and angry.
In addition, lines of cars formed at service stations as gasoline supplies dwindled in Santa Cruz. The government said this was because of a forecasting error on the part of the government company that refines and distributes gasoline, but very possibly it was because the country is running out of petroleum as well as natural gas.
Protestors also prevented the presidents of Venezuela and Argentina from landing at the airport in Tarija for a planned summit meeting with President Morales on the energy crisis in Bolivia.
At week’s end the government did announce that the government-owned oil company in Venezuela would send three well-drilling rigs to Bolivia to try to increase Bolivian production, which currently is failing to meet the country’s domestic demand and international obligations. It wasn’t clear exactly how Venezuela could spare the rigs, because that country is also desperately short of drilling equipment.
An article in the New York Times Magazine in 2007 said that Venezuela needed 191 rigs to maintain current production, and was about 120 short of that. (Many thanks to alert reader Otto Rock for providing the current number of rigs in Venezuela -- 115.)
For a fuller discusssion of Bolivia's gas and oil situation, see "Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?" posted June 19, 2008, below.
The mood among many voters we know in Santa Cruz was one of uncertainty and puzzlement, partly over the lack of vigor with which the civic leaders had prosecuted the campaign for a “no” vote against President Morales in this region, where the President is a highly unpopular figure.
"When you aim for a king . . ."
There were at least two reasons for the half-heartedness of the anti-Morales campaign. One was that, given the President’s popularity in the western part of the country, it was unlikely that he could be recalled, and a failed effort to remove him would tend to strengthen the President’s hand even further. As the old political adage counsels, “When you aim for a king, don’t miss.”
The anti-Morales forces in Santa Cruz actually seemed surprised when a poll taken a month before the referendum showed Morales getting a “yes” vote of only 49 percent, with many voters undecided. Later polls, however, showed the President getting a healthy majority of the vote, as he in fact did.
Morales better than nothing?
Secondly, many of the pro-autonomy leaders actually said that they believed a national government with President Morales at its head was preferable to the chaos that would ensue if he were removed from office, leaving the country leaderless until a new president could be elected.
The leading opposition party to Morales, Podemos, apparently did not consult with civic leaders in Santa Cruz and elsewhere prior to agreeing to the recall referendum, which had been put forward originally by the President.
Still, at the end, there was a steady flow of advertisements on television, radio, and in newspapers favoring the prefects and defending “autonomia,” while answering the equally heavy flow of ads urging the retention of the president.
Kids were stationed outside supermarkets in the final days distributing flyers urging a “no” vote on the President and a “yes” vote on Santa Cruz’ pro-autonomy prefect, Ruben Costas. At traffic intersections youths offered motorists pro-Costas bumper stickers. Still, there was little political paraphernalia urging a “no” vote on the President. For example, there weren't any "VOTE NO ON EVO bumper stickers.
An unclear "bottom line"
So what did it all mean?
President Morales can say that he still has a strong mandate to lead the nation. The 62 percent "yes" vote was higher then the 54 percent he got when he was first elected in 2005, and that earlier total represented the first time that a presidential candidate in Bolivia had exceeded 50 percent. (The elections are multi-party affairs in which past winners have sometimes gotten substantially less than a third of the vote.)
The President was also able to remove from office two prominent critics, Manfred Reyes and Jose Luis Peredes. His popularity in the four departments he carried was very impressive. He received over 80 percent of the vote in La Paz, Oruro and Potosi.
The president's opponents can say that anti-Morales sentiment prevailed in five of the country's nine departments, and by a substantial margin. Sixty-four percent of the voters in Santa Cruz voted to remove the President from office. The provinces in which the President lost are the ones that are producing most of Bolivia's economic growth.
It can also be said that President Morales was not running against anybody. The opposition to him at the national level remains inchoate and leaderless.
Whither the constitution?
It would be very hard to figure out what the vote presaged in terms of a proposed new constitution, which would infringe property rights, and further centralize control of the country. Opponents of Morales' policies would fight hammer and tongs against the constitution, which they did not do in Sunday's recall referendum.
The constitution is far more vulnerable to attack than was the President, who undeniability has great popularity in at least the western part of the country.
The constitution's tarnished provenance will certainly be used against it. Most Bolivians know that the document was approved by a rump session of the constitutional convention under military guard with only adherents of President Morales' party present and voting. The convention had been chased out of Sucre, where it was originally convened, by angry mobs.

There was a continuing confusion over just how many votes the prefects would need to avoid recall. The original law required that the prefects get more votes than opposition candidates had totaled back when they were originally elected in 2005. This meant that the prefects had to get, variously, between 52 and 59 percent of the vote. In some cases the vote totals were in dispute.
The national electoral court tried to clarify the situation by decreeing that the prefects only needed 50 percent plus one to be retained, but President Morales said that ruling was invalid, and the matter was in doubt even as voters went to the polls Sunday. Fortunately, none of the important results fell into the disputed range. Only the future of the MAS prefect in Oruro remained in doubt Tuesday.

Condensed update

2008-07-28T15:14:00.000-07:00

While we were
on vacation . . .

The news didn't stop here in Bolivia while we were on holiday in the US. Here is a brief summary of what's happened in the past month, along with a preview of what may be ahead.
MAS defector wins in Chuquisaca
Savina Cuellar, a campesina woman who had been an adherent of President Evo Morales' Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party until she recently turned against the president, was elected prefect (governor) of the department (state) of Chuquisaca by a margin of 55 to 41 on June 29. Cuellar defeated a candidate backed by MAS and the president.
She has subsequently announced that Chuquisaca will hold a referendum on whether to become "autonomous," as four of Bolivia's other departments have done, on Nov. 29. The outcome is much less certain than it was in the other departments that voted on autonomia. Chuquisaca, unlike those departments, voted against autonomy in a preliminary referendum in 2006.
While Cuellar's margin of victory in the prefectural election was ample, her opponent was much less well known, and she ran well behind him in rural areas.
Cuellar, a graduate of the government's literacy program, had been a MAS delegate to the constitional convention that was originally convened in Sucre, Chuquisaca's main city, but the convention withdrew from Sucre in disarray when rioting broke out in Sucre over the convention's refusal to consider making Sucre the full capital of Bolivia again.
The riots were also reportedly a reaction against the large number of campesinos who had come the city to support MAS' initiatives, but were accused by the citizenry of using the streets as public toilets and generally trashing up the city.
Cuellar replaces David Sanchez, who was originally elected as a member of MAS, but resigned a fled the country in protest of the Morales' government's repressive actions before and during the riots.
Recall Referendum for President, Prefects
Although there is something of a legal cloud hanging over things, Bolivians will apparently be going to the polls August 10 to vote on whether to retain in office President Morales and the prefects of the nation's nine departments.
Polls have indicated that President Morales will be retained, and by a healthy margin. The most recent polls have shown the percentage of yes votes rising to well over 50 percent, even inclkuding people who aren't sure, or plan to cast blank ballots.
The outlook in the recall referendums for the prefects is a mixed bag. Three of the four prefects in the departments that voted for autonomy seem to be safe, according to the polls. They are Ruben Costas in Santa Cruz, Mario Cossio in Tarija, and Ernesto Suarez in Beni.
However, Prefects Leopoldo Fernandez in Pando and Manfred Reyes are in danger of failing to get the necessary 50 percent plus one required under the recently revised rules for the recall referendum.
Getting rid of Reyes, who has been a real thorn in the side of the Morales government, and who has been seen as a figure around whom the opposition to Morales might rally, would be an authentic victory for the president and his supporters. It might also squelch a planned autonomia referendum in that department.
Another likely victory for Morales, though a less surprising one, would be the recall of the prefect of La Paz, Jose Luis Paredes, another critic of the government. He was originally elected based on his own personal popularity, but few expect him to survive the recall referendum against the concerted efforts of the president and his party in what is their political stronghold.
Surprisingly, the prefects of Potosi and Oruro, both MAS affiliates, also appeared to be in trouble. Local issues were apparently paramount in these races.
The legal cloud results from a decree from the only remaining judge on Bolivia's high court for determining constitutionality calling for the delay of the referendum until the full court could rule on its legality. So far the decree has been ignored, but the opponents of the referendum are continuing to press their case.
Most of the pro-autonomy forces regard the referendum as a meaningless distraction, even though the nominal opposition party in the national congress went along with it in May.
Polls also showed that a plurality of voters don't expect the recall referendum to settle the political confrontation, that half of the voters expect violence, and that 70 percent believe that there will be fraud at the polls. However, a large majority wants the recall referendum to take place.
Prefects who lose will immediately be removed from office, and their posts could be filled by presidential appointees until new elections are held. In departments that have not voted for autonomy, prefects have very little real authority. (Updated August 5, 2008)
The strange case of Lt. Nava
On June 21 a television station in Yacuiba, a small Bolivian city in the department of Tarija and on the border with Argentina, was attacked with explosives.
Very shortly thereafter Lt. George Nava, a member of an elite anti-terrorism unit also charged with protecting President Morales, was in a traffic accident a few blocks away.
Police investigating the accident allegedly found weapons, bomb fuses, and other incriminating evidence in the car, and arrested Nava, who was reportedly drunk.
The Toyota Rav-4 he was driving turned to have been rented to the Venezuelan embassy, according to receipts produced by senators opposed to the Morales government.
A flash memory stick found in the car contained, according to the same sources, information the supposed loyalty to the Morales government of various police and military commanders, apparently the result of a domestic spying effort.
The calling records on Nava's cell phones disclosed calls to the presidential palace.
Since Nava's arrest the opposition has concentrated on thwarting efforts to have the case turned over to the military justice system, and on preventing Nava's transfer from Yacuiba to La Paz. So far the opposition has succeeded.
New information gathered by the opposition indicates that other members of Nava's military unit were also involved in the TV station bombing, as well as in earlier civil unrest in the city.
The bombing, which took place early in the morning of the day on which the voters of Tarija approved an autonomy referendum, was apparently part of a larger effort to sow chaos in the department and disrupt the voting.
To understand the potential significance of the actions by Nava and others, one expert suggested trying to imagine what the result would have been in the US if the Watergate burglars had been caught been caught blowing up the Washington Post's television station, instead of just bugging Democratic Party headquarters.
If the case actually comes to trial, and it is scheduled to do so in a week or so, the plot will presumably thicken.
The gas crisis continues
Bolivia began to ration gas to some major industrial users in the Cochabama area, and the country continues to be substantially in arrears in terms of the deliveries of gas it is required by contract to make to Brazil and Argentina. This remained true even after a renegotiation of the contract with Argentina to reduce the amount Bolivia has promised.
On the bright side, Venezuela announced that it had increased the amount it will invest in Bolivia's faltering gas industry by 50 percent to $833 million.This amount is still well short of the amount experts have said Bolivia needs to develop its gas fields fast enough to meet internal demand and its international contracts.
Transredes, Bolivia's recently nationalized pipeline operator, and the government recently announced the start of contruction on a long overdue pipeline to Cochabamba. Largely skipped over in the ballyhoo of the announcement was the fact that they still have not lined up financing for the project.

Autonomia vote in Tarija

2008-06-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

`Autonomistas' notch
another easy victory

As polls had predicted, voters in Tarija approved new laws making the department (state) autonomous of the central government, which is currrently headed by President Evo Morales, a socialist and ally of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
According to preliminary official counts, the autonomy measures passed with about 81 percent of the vote. This was just about the average of previous referendums in the states of Santa Cruz, Beni, and Pando. However, the turnout in Tarija was somewhat higher, approaching 66 percent, making the victory even more impressive.
Morales party. the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), never had any hope of defeating the measure, but had encouraged voters to abstain, and sought to disrupt the elections with blockades and boycotts. There were scattered incidents in which MAS adherents attacked polling stations and burning ballot boxes, but generally the voting was peaceful.
A commehtator in El Deber, the major Bolivian daily, contrasted the vote on the referendums, which took place openly in public squares, union halls, and other such places, with the proceedings of the constitutional assembly convened by President Morales, which had concluded its deliberations under guard in a military facility with only MAS adherents allowed to participate.
The vote in Tarija brings to four the number of provinces (out of nine) that have voted for autonomy. The prefect (governor) of a fifth department, Cochabamba, announced yesterday (June 22) that voters there will vote on autonomy in September.
Morales' government, and party, will be put to a test in another province, Chuquisaca, next Sunday when there will be an election for prefect pitting a campesina woman and former MAS advocate, against the MAS-backed candidate, together with a third candidate.
Tarija, Beni, Pando, and Santa Cruz are all located in Bolivia's eastern lowlands, and have called themselves the "media luna," or half moon, of Bolivia that opposes President Morales. These departments have never supported President Morales or his party, even in the election in which he won with more than 50 percent of the vote in 2005.
Cochabamba and Chuquisaca represent an intervening area between the lowlands and the highlands both politically and geographically, and are referred to as "the valleys." Both provinces voted for Morales in 2005, and a defection by either one would represent a significant diminution of his mandate.
President Morales apparently plans to get back on a winning track in a referendum in August in which the nation's voters will be asked whether they wish to retain or dismiss the president and the prefects of the nine departments.
This measure was approved, apparently in an aberrant moment, by the president's principal opponents, the Podemos Party, headed by former president Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga.
However, the recall referendum never had the full support, or even partial support, of the autonomia movement's leaders, who doubt that President Morales can be defeated in a straight up-or-down vote of the entire nation, and would would rather be about the task of building their autonomous regimes. At present there is talk that the autonomous regions may not even conduct the recall referendum.

Whose oil is it, anyway?
The referendum in Tarija brings into sharp focus the question of what "autonomia" really means.

Tarija goes to the polls Sunday to vote up-or-down its own version of “autonomia,” and much will be made of the fact that about 85 percent of Bolivia’s petroleum reserves are in that department (state) located along the nation’s southern border with Argentina.
The question then naturally arises as to what, exactly, could be the effect of a “yes” vote on autonomy there for Bolivia’s petroleum industry.
There is no simple answer. The apostles of autonomy say they have no plan to take control of the gas and oil fields and bypass the national government of leftist President Evo Morales in the marketing of the product. That would be the equivalent in Bolivia of pushing the nuclear button, and would trigger a civil war.
The autonomistas do talk about getting more control of the natural resources in the provinces that have voted themselves into this status, not total control. However, since recent decrees by President Morales have eliminated any claim that the regional governments have over oil and gas resources under previous law, it might be more precise to say that the autonomous provinces will be seeking to get back some control over these natural resources.
Indeed, Morales has clearly selected the issue of the proceeds from oil and gas to be the principal battleground in his government’s effort to centralize political and economic control of the country.
So far three of the country’s nine provinces – Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando – have voted for autonomy. Tarija would be the fourth if, as expected, it votes for autonomy Sunday, and that would just about complete a half moon-shaped segment of the country consisting mostly of the lowland plains region in the eastern half of the country. (A little finger of a fifth department, Chuquisaca, separates Tarija from Santa Cruz. Chuquisaca has not yet scheduled a vote on autonomia, and may not do so, though much of the province is at odds with the president, who was prevented from attending a civic holiday there recently.)
Not enough gas
At this same moment, Bolivia is facing a crisis in terms of not being able to produce enough gas to comply with contracts it has with Brazil and Argentina, along with internal demand. Natural gas in canisters (propane) for use in kitchens and for home heating is in short supply, with long lines forming to get it. Monday the government announced that military policemen will start riding on the trucks that deliver propane to keep order.
_________
SHORT SUPPLY --
Bolivia is not producing enough propane to meet internal demand.

There are reports that the government is actually planning to import propane, which would be expensive -- and embarrassing. “It would be like a banana-producing country having to import banana pureé,” says Carlos Delius, director of Kaiser, a petroleum services company, and a widely acknowledged expert on Bolivia’s petroleum situation.
Delius and other experts expect that autonomy will produce a subtle and complicated change in the negotiating relationship between the national government and the autonomous provinces that will enable the provinces to rise above their current position of being, basically, beggars.
They aren’t sure what the linkages will be in this process, which remains somewhat mysterious, but they note that the governors (prefects) have been declining the president´s invitations to negotiate until they have in place their autonomous mechanisms, which include a legislature.
The past is prologue
To understand what may happen in the future it is necessary to first know what has happened in the past. The discovery and development of major gas reserves in Bolivia is a relatively recent event, having occurred basically during the 1990s. And in the global scheme of things Bolivia’s hydrocarbon resources are relatively small.
It is customary to say that Bolivia’s gas reserves are exceeded only by those of Venezuela in South America, but putting things this way tends to give an exaggerated impression of Bolivia’s assets. South America, in truth, doesn’t have much in the way of proven petroleum reserves.
In terms of gas production, Bolivia ranks 34th in the world, flanked by Bangladesh and Burma. Its gas reserves total about one-half of one percent of the world’s. It also has some oil reserves, but these are negligible on a global scale, not quite covering its internal needs.
To get an idea of the difference in scale between Bolivia and Venezuela, a New York Times Magazine story last year said that Venezuela needed about 190 oil drilling rigs to maintain its current levels of production, and had only 70 available. A recent article in El Deber, Bolivia’s major daily newspaper, said that Bolivia needed 14 rigs to maintain its current production, and had only three.
Gas fuels Bolivia's government
However, while Bolivia’s reserves and earnings from petroleum products might seem small when considered on a global scale, they are of immense importance to this relatively small and very poor country. It’s estimated that the government currently gets about $2 billion a year from royalties and taxes on the oil business, which accounts for about 80 percent of its income, much higher than the 50 percent Venezuela’s government gets from its oil and gas industry.
But Bolivia has gone from feast to famine in terms of being able to exploit its gas reserves. Only five years ago, in 2003, its production capability seemed infinite, and the discussion was all about building a pipeline to the Pacific coast where the gas would be liquefied (converted into LNG), pumped onto tankers, and sent off to, among other places, California, which was then desperately short of energy.
The only argument seemed to be whether the LNG plant should be in Chile or Peru. The Chilean ports were closer, but Chile has been Bolivia’s ancestral enemy ever since it snatched away Bolivia’s seacoast during a very conflict in 1871.
Investment drops in 2003
But in 2003 international investors sharply curtailed their activities in Bolivia. In 2002 over $600 million had been invested in Bolivia by outsiders. That amount dropped by about half to around $ 300 million in 2003, and has trailed off from there to about $200 million. The last year in which over $1 billion dollars was invested in Bolivia's hydrocarbon industry was 1999.
There were several reasons for the drop in 2003. One was that the pipeline to Brazil had been completed, and there was no new market in sight because of the the seemingly hopeless stalemate that was developing over the Pacific LNG project.
Another was a general increase in the political instability of the country, fomented in large part by Morales, who was then a leader of the opposition and wreaking havoc by deploying his campesino followers in road blockades and other actions that paralyzed the country. However, it might be noted that the oil industry has had few qualms about sinking money into other politically troubled regions. Yemen and Nigeria serve as cases in point.
Delius, the expert on Bolivia’s gas situation, thinks that another, and possibly more crucial factor was the contract that Bolivia entered into to provide gas to Argentina. That contract, he says, did not have the same safeguards guaranteeing payment as Bolivia’s more carefully drawn contract with Brazil, and Argentina is widely regarded as one of the most fiscally untrustworthy countries in the world. It has often, and recently, welshed on its debts.
Is this deal sustainable?
Moreover, its state gas company was selling gas to Argentinians at a price way below what it was paying Bolivia, a seemingly unsustainable policy that has only worsened with time.
Currently Argentina is selling a million BTUs of gas to its citizens at a subsidized price of $1.40, although that amount of gas costs Argentina $7. In fact, to make up for the large shortfall in the deliveries of gas from Bolivia (which the Argentine government is keeping quiet about), Argentina is importing LNG by ship that is costing $15 for the same amount.
Morales’ decision, taken in 2006, to “nationalize” Bolivia’s hydrocarbon industry did nothing to reassure the international investment community. The companies currently are spending just enough to keep their investments from deteriorating. “They are hostages to their sunk costs,” says Delius.
(As is discussed elsewhere on this weblog, Morales “nationalization” was more a “forced renegotiation” that did dramatically increase the amount the government received -- from $320 million annually to $2 billion currently. However, thanks to rising energy prices the companies, all of which stayed in Bolivia until very recently, were also able to increase their return on their investments, according to Delius. In May, Morales did confiscate the pipeline company, Transredes, an action that will be thrashed out in international arbitration. The government also took over a controlling interest in three other petroleum-related companies. (See article below in "Reporters' Notebook")
The result of all this has been that Bolivia has been unable to increase production fast enough to keep pace with the increases required by its contracts with Brazil and Argentina, and rising internal demand. Delius estimates that it fall short of the total needed by about ten percent this year, and that, if nothing is done, the gap will widen in future years.
This is a fairly dire prediction because Bolivia’s contract with Brazil requires Bolivia to pay fines if it doesn’t deliver the amount of gas promised in the contract. Civil unrest within the country resulting from gas shortages is another threat to be reckoned with.
Bolivia’s increasing unreliability as a supplier was one factor driving Brazil’s recently successful effort to discover gas reserves on its own territory and become independent of reliance on Bolivia. It has found huge gas deposits under the sea off the coast of Santos, a principal port, and might actually become a gas exporter itself in a decade, according to Delius. “It could be another Gulf of Mexico,” he says.
No shortage of demand
Still, there will be plenty of demand for Bolivian gas in the region, which will face an escalating energy shortage for the foreseeable future. “What people have to realize,” says Delius, “is that Bolivia’s gas is not the same as a surface diamond mine, where you can get more diamonds by just kicking the dirt away.”
The gas is thousands of feet underground, and development the five to seven new megafields that Bolivia will need to meet its needs over the next 40 years will require billions of dollars – at least a billion a year over the next seven years.
Delius, for one, thinks it can be done, but the government’s current strategy of screaming at the international oil companies to invest more money will not do the trick. The companies, he notes dryly, can hardly be held to account for failing to fulfill production plans for 2008 that the government, as a result of bureaucratic inertia, has not yet approved.
What’s needed, he says, is a change in stance by the government that will guarantee the operating companies' income stream. The oil companies and the government don’t have to love each other. They just have to trust each other.
If that happened the companies could overcome the short-term shortfall by uncapping wells that have been capped for various reasons. Bolivia’s need for drilling rigs to solve the longer-term problem is sufficiently modest that it could be overcome despite the current world-wide shortage of such rigs.
“If one of the big companies working here like Total (French) or Repsol (Spanish) went to a drilling company in Houston, and showed that they had a guaranteed income, that company in Texas would build them five rigs. It would go to China for the parts, if necessary.” The ability of the oil industry to overcome obstacles when there is a large profit to be made cannot be over-estimated. he says.
Then, he adds, it would also help to renegotiate the contract with Argentina to make it a little more ironclad. Such a renegotiation is already being spoken of, but mainly for the purpose of lowering the quantity of gas Bolivia is obligated to ship by pipeline to Argentina. Delius fears the renegotiation could also lower the price Argentina is paying.
Militant anti-globalists
The big reason that Bolivia is unlikely to take this route out of its current impasse is that the Morales government is split in its attitude toward the country’s oil and gas industry. About half the people in it are devout, doctrinaire anti-globalists who want the country to secede from the global economy.
They see the petroleum industry -- and particularly the newly strengthened national petroleum company -- as a source of patronage jobs and short term gains. In short, they are ready to eat the goose that lays the golden eggs.
“I have explained the situation to them as forcefully as I can,” says Delius carefully, “but some of them just . . . couldn’t . . . care . . . less.”
On the other side is a contingent, probably including the president (at least at times), that wants to keep the goose laying, and sees continuing gas revenues as necessary for the part’s political and economic aims no matter how repugnant they find multinational oil executives and their ilk. At the present moment the intramural battle within the government seems to be a stand-off.
If the departments are able to gain a better bargaining position with the central government, possibly by taking or threatening actions that are unrelated to petroleum, that might strengthen the hand of those in the government who want to keep the gas business at least at current levels. On the other hand, it could also further radicalize the anti-globalists, making them even more rabid.
Certainly Morales has demonstrated an eagerness to get control of the gas revenues. His decree earlier this year annulled a previous law that had guaranteed the departments and municipalities a fixed percentage of the oil and gas revenues, eleven percent in the cases of the departmental governments in Tarija and Santa Cruz.
This money was used for development projects, particularly highway and bridge building, which are badly needed. At present there is no paved road from Bolivia’s eastern border with Brazil to its western border with Peru, and the part that´s paved is badly paved. Much of the national highway system is of lower quality than the average American suburban driveway.
Morales has said the money was needed to continue funding the country's rudimentary social security program, as well as for his party’s recently unveiled Soviet-style five-year plan. However, the president’s critics say he is using his control of the funds in Machiavellian fashion to reward political loyalists, and punish political enemies.
The departments, of course, want the old system of revenue-sharing reinstated, and perhaps even expanded. That will be the basis for the arm-wrestling match between the government and the autonomous departments that will begin soon.
When and where it will end no one can say.

Reporters' Notebook

2008-06-18T13:58:00.000-07:00

Round-up of recent events

We haven't posted many items lately both because there haven't been that many earth-shaking events, and the things of possible interest that have occurred have tended to be in other cities where we haven't had direct knowledge. (Our information comes from news accounts.) But here are some of the recent happenings that are worth noting at least in passing.
US Embassy threatened by mob
A large angry crown consisting mostly of people from El Alto, a large city located close by La Paz and a stronghold of support for President Morales, attempted to storm the US Embassy in La Paz earlier in June.
Police prevented this with tear gas and riot gear, but it was a reportedly a close call.
The crowd was said to be protesting the granting of political asylum in the United States to the former defense minister of Bolivia, who was blamed for deaths that occurred during riots when Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was president, before he was driven from office in 2004.
The US ambassador, Philip Goldberg, was recalled to Washington for consultations shortly after the attack on the embassy.
Morales' travel in country curtailed
Anti-Morales protestors took control of the airport in Tarija and forestalled a planned presidential visit to that city June 17. The president was coming to campaign against the "autonomia" referendum that will take place Sunday (June 22), and to announce public works projects that would benefit his adherents in that department.
It was the latest in a series of canceled presidential visits. He was a no-show at a bridge dedication outside the city of Santa Cruz earlier this month (June), and has now made three unsuccessful efforts to land at the airport in Sucre to visit supporters in the department of Chuquisaca, of which Sucre is the capital.
During the referendum on autonomia in Beni a government minister, also on a mission to announce public works projects, was prevented from landing at an airport in that department by protestors.
Nationalizations: a phone company and four oil companies
President Evo Morales celebrated May Day (May 1) by announcing the the government would take over a controlling stake in Entel, a telephone company, and four oil companies.
Entel was once a government-controlled monopoly providing phone service to the entire country, but was privatized in the 1990s and now is one of several companies offering cell phone and long distance services. President Morales said the takeover would result in improved phone service in rural areas.
The four oil companies in which Morales demanded a controlling stake for the government are Andina, a subsidiary of the Spanish oil company Repsol; Chaco, a subsidiary of BP; CLHB, a Bolivian company that handles the delivery of petroleum products; and Transredes, the pipeline company in which Ashmore Energy International had a major interest.
Repsol and BP worked out arrangments with the Bolivia government under which they will continue as minority shareholders. The government did not reach a similar agreement with Ashmore, and, in effect, confiscated its stake. President Morales accused Transredes of conspiring against his government, but didn't offer any list of overt acts.
Ashmore's subsidiary that holds the shares in Transredes, and the Italian phone company that had held a controlling stake in Entel, have both said they will take their cases to international arbitration.
The curious case of Roberth Lenin Sandoval Lopez
The arrest in Sucre and subsequent release in El Alto early in June of Roberth Lenin Sandoval Lopez was both chilling and, ultimately, somewhat reassuring (at least for the moment).
Judging from his name, Sandoval was evidently a "pink diaper" baby from a leftist background. But he apparently had rejected his Marxist ideological inheritance, and had gone over to the other side, becoming a key aide to
the campesina woman who is running for prefect of the department of Chuquisaca against the candidate of President Morales party, MAS. He allegedly was also involved in organizing various local protests, including the one that prevented the president from visiting the city.
According to his wife, Sandoval was arrested early in the morning by six masked men who arrived in a white Cherokee SUV. (Shades of Central American "death squads.") The government later said he was arrested by uniformed law enforcement officers and taken away in normal a police vehicle.
Whatever the circumstances of his arrest, by nightfall Lopez was in El
Alto, the MAS stronghold located next to La Paz, in police custody, and charged with a wide variety of offenses including terrorism, sedition, seduction of troops, abuse of the people's rights, incitement to commit crimes, and, for good measure, murder. The murder charge was interesting since no one was killed in the contretemps he was accused of fomenting.
The next day the nation was universally shocked when a judge in El Alto freed Sandoval and threw out the charges against him.
The types of reaction, however, differed widely. The residents of El Alto were livid, and promptly declared a 24-hour general strike along with other protests. Sandolval was able to escape the mob outside the courtroom only by disguising himself as a policeman.
Most other Bolivians probably emitted a silent sigh of relief and amazement that some semblance of a rule of law seemed still prevailed in the country, though it was widely assumed that the judge's days in office are probably numbered.
Price controls on chicken, eggs, beef
The central government announced price controls on chicken, eggs, and beef in mid-June that would reduce current prices on the market by about a third.
These controls are similar to those imposed in Venezuela by President Hugo Chavez, an ally of Bolivian President Evo Morales.
In Venezuela the price controls have resulted in scarcities, as farmers have refused to send their products to market at prices they say gives them insifficient return for the work and investment required.
As of our last trip to the supermarket, the new prices were not in effect, and supplies continued to be abundant. Chicken currently costs about $2 a kilo, or 91 cents a pound.

"Autonomia" Referendums in Beni, Pando

2008-06-01T19:57:00.001-07:00

VICTORY CELEBRATION -- Autonomia supporters in Trindad, capital of Beni El Deber

"Si" cruises to easy wins

The "autonomia" movement, as expected, picked up a pair of easy wins in the less populous northern departments of Beni and Pando Sunday.
In final, but not yet official results, the "yes" vote was around 80.5 percent in Beni, and 81.6 percent in Pando. A similar measure had passed with about 85 percent of the vote in the much larger department of Santa Cruz a month ago.
There were a few scattered reports of protests or violence, and many charges and countercharges of voting irregularities, but newspaper accounts indicated that things had gone remarkably smoothly.
If Tarija, a larger state with important gas and oil resources on the southern side of Bolivia, also passes a pro-autonomia measure, which it is expected to do on June 22, that will complete the construction of a "media luna," or "half moon" of departments in the east and south of the country that have voted to disconnect themselves, in ways not entirely clear as yet, from the control of the national government. That government is headed by President Evo Morales, a socialist and ally of Venezuelan preident Hugo Chavez.
Two of Bolivia's other five departments -- Cochabamba and Chuquisaca -- have growing pro-autonomic movements, but are more closely divided and have not scheduled votes on the concept.
The national government maintains that the referendums and subsequent actions taken by the local government in Santa Cruz are illegal. The issue cannot be adjudicated because there is no functioning Supreme Court as a result of the political impasse in the country. (Morales forced several justices to resign and no replacements have been forthcoming in part because the opposition to Morales controls the national senate.)
Morales and his party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), had little hope of defeating the measure, but had urged people to show their displeasure by not voting. The government appeared to have had some success in this regard. The turnout in Pando was 68.9 percent, and in Beni it was 58.7 percent, lower than had been the case in Santa Cruz and probably a little low by Bolivian standards though it was hard to know how to evaluate it. This was, at bottom, a one-question referendum in which the outcome had not been in doubt.

Violence shatters period of calm

2008-05-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Students riot in Sucre,
block presidential visit

Rock-throwing youths took control of the streets of Sucre Saturday, forcing soldiers to retreat from the center of the city, and preventing a carefully planned foray into the city by President Evo Morales.
The out-of-control youths, took prisoner a group of about 30 campesinos, marched them through the city, stripped off their shirts, stole their money and watches, and ultimately forced them to kneel in the central plaza and beg pardon for coming into the city to takeover the streets. It was an ugly scene that may lead to violent revenge.
_____
ON THEIR KNEES -- Youths forced these MAS adherents to beg pardon for coming to the city. Photo from El Deber.

The occasion for the presidential visit was the annual celebration in Sucre of the "first cry of freedom," saluting the fact that Sucre was the first city in Latin American where a movement for independence from Spain took form.
Several other cities in what became Bolivia soon followed suit. However, the independence movement in this area was ultimately suppressed, leading to the historical irony that although the first cries of freedom were heard here, Bolivia would be the last part of the Spanish Empire to actually become independent.
Sucre has been a hotbed of anti-Morales sentiment ever since mobs forced the constitutional assembly to flee the city last year, after the conclave had been split on the question of whether the central government should be completely moved back to Sucre from La Paz. (The executive and legislative branches moved from Sucre to La Paz after a civil war a century ago. Sucre is still the home of the supreme court.)
Carefully arranged visit
The presidential visit had been designed to be a highly controlled affair inside a stadium which was to be packed with pro-Morales supporters, and ringed by soldiers. However, the mobs of young people took control of the streets around the stadium early in the day and ultimately forced the soldiers to retreat, cowering under a hail of rocks being thrown at them.
By Sunday the violence in the city had subsided, but campesinos in the surrounding countryside were blocking all roads into the city, and threatening to cut the city's main water supply, as well as its gas supply. Civic leaders were busily apologizing, though in some cases rather weakly, for the violence. A spokesman for Morales castigated the civic authorities for failing to keep order. The Catholic Church was offering to mediate, leading the newspaper El Deber to headline its Monday story, "Sucre Between the Cross and the Sword."
A civic ceremony commemorating the "first cry of freedom" went forward Sunday, though without the participation of the Army troops who were scheduled to be in the procession. The only police present were those assigned to protect the judicial buildings in the city.

THINGS HAD BEEN COMPARATIVELY CALM in the country in recent weeks, during the run-up to the departmental autonomia referendum in Beni this Sunday. The referendum is regarded as sure to pass, with the main question being whether Benianos will exceed the 85 percent vote in favor of autonomia recorded in Santa Cruz May 4. In 2006 Beni did approve the measure that paved the way for the votes on autonomia by a wider margin than it got in Santa Cruz.
Meanwhile the autonomic process had been chugging along steadily in Santa Cruz, where the prefect, Ruben Costas, had been proclaimed governor, and an advisory council converted into a regional assembly. President Morales and his ministers had been content with grumbling that it was all illegal.
The looming confrontation over the central government's attempt to halt exports of vegetable oil, an important industry in Santa Cruz, had been defused with agreements allowing the major companies to export for a limited period of time, with various extra reporting requirements laid on them in what seemed like an effort to avoid the appearance of complete surrender.
Fiddling with salaries
Both the fledging regional government of Santa Cruz and the central government are working on various ways to monkey with salaries that impede the workings of the free market, but illustrate the differing directions in which they are headed.
The first major law to be passed by the departmental assembly is apparently going to be a minimum wage law, requiring that every salary earner in the department of Santa Cruz to be paid at least 1,000 Bolivianos (about $136 US) per month.
No one is voicing the usual objections to minimum wage laws, namely that they result in the laying off of marginal workers and hasten the replacement of human labor with machines. And in Bolivia the cost of labor is so low that those objections may not apply.
The major resistance is coming from restaurateurs and service businesses who say they simply can't afford to pay employees that much.
The real test will probably be enforcement. Some foreign businessmen have suggested that a better first step would be to require that companies actually pay what they have pledged to pay employees, and pay it on time. Foreign companies often find they can cream the local talent pool simply by meeting their payrolls.
Lowering oil company salaries
For its part, the central government is seeking to lower some salaries. (To be fair it did require pay raises earlier, though not to the level contemplated by the Santa Cruz leaders, who clearly want people to feel a tangible benefit from the somewhat abstract concept of autonomia.)
The government recently acquired a majority share in four of the 10 oil companies operating in Bolivia, and promptly announced that henceforth no employee of the companies could earn more than $12,000 a year. About 100 employees in the four companies were reportedly earning salaries above that level.
But this is likely to produce problems. The companies presumably need the services of a few petroleum engineers, and the American Society of Petroleum Engineers recently reported that the average petroleum engineer is earning $124,000 a year. (You can get one without experience, though, for around $70,000.)
Moreover, petroleum engineers are becoming increasingly hard to find. The number being graduated has been in decline, and half of those on the job today are expected to retire in the next ten years, a big chunk of them in the next two years. Petroleum engineering supposedly offers better earning potential at present than law or medicine.
The rate of increase in production in Bolivia's oil and gas fields has slowed dramatically in the last two years, and the country is currently having difficulties meeting its contractual requirements for gas shipments to Brazil and Argentina. There are also chronic shortages of diesel fuel.
It all reminds one of Winston Churchill's observation that "capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, while socialism is the equal sharing of misery."

Another side of life

2008-05-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

Here she comes,

. . .Miss Santa Cruz

Let it be known that life here in Santa Cruz is hardly all work and no play, and last week people took time off from forming a new government and battling with the central government over export controls to observe an annual rite of the season – the crowning of Miss Santa Cruz.
Actually the anointing of Miss Santa Cruz and the principal runners-up, one of whom almost always becomes Miss Bolivia and a contender in the Miss Universe contest, is the culmination – a Super Bowl, if you will -- of a series of crownings that take place all year long as the department (state) pays tribute to its abundant production of long-stemmed beauties.
There is the Queen of the Corn, the Queen of the Wheat, the Queen of Carnaval, Queen of the Sugar Cane, the Queen of Soy, the Queen of Sunflower Seeds, and, well, the list just goes on and on.
Nor is the Miss Santa Cruz pageant a short, succinct episode on the civic calendar. It goes on for weeks as first the two dozen or so candidates backed by assorted groups -- Lions Clubs, fraternities, universities, charities like “Liga Cruceña de Combate al Cancer,” and so on -- are all taken to a local resort where they are extensively photographed for the public prints. Following that, and then there is a succession of minor competitions in various venues for prettiest face, best “silhouette,” best coiffure, best smile, and so on.

Getting the "morning line"
The pageant itself is a large, well-attended, big ticket event held in one of the larger entertainment venues. The day of the event the major local newspaper runs a six-page section with alluring pictures of all the candidates, most of them supine, that is basically a racing form handicapping the contestants, weighing in frank and brutal terms their various strengths and weaknesses.
Of one contender the paper observed that “she possesses a sculptural figure, has good height, and knows how to walk down the runway,” but, alas, “her skin is very white and her smile is not attractive, and she has not found a hair style that favors her.”
The pageant is far from being all fun and games. Feminine beauty is a serious business here in a region where a particularly congenial melding of genetic pools year after year produces bumper crops of gorgeous women, a fair number of whom go on to be models in the fashion capitals of the world – and sometimes movie stars (or, well, starlets).

Raquel Welch, for example, is a Cruceña, and returned a few years ago to preside over the Santa Cruz International film festival, which featured a retrospective of her cinematic oeuvre.
The local supermodels, who are known collectively as “Las Magnificas” put on their own pageant, which consists mainly of the opportunity to look at them wearing glamorous clothing. (That show filled what had been the one remaining gaps in the calendar of beauty pageants.)

Santa Cruz women in history
Santa Cruz’ reputation for beautiful (and assertive) women goes back well into history. Many early travelers to the city commented on the high pulchritude quotient. French naturalist Alcide D’Origny, who arrived at Santa Cruz central square on horseback in 1830, reported that a lovely young woman who was coming out her house on the square at that moment announced loudly, “He’s mine. I saw him first.”
Kelly Clark Boldt for many years complained that there were too many pictures in the paper of scantily clad models (along with often suggestive photos of young girls who have just celebrated their “Sweet Fifteen” birthday parties). Each morning she would intercept the paper with scissors in hand to censor out the images she regarded as too lascivious to be a good example for her young daughter.
David, who once covered the pageant for a now-defunct English-language paper in Bolivia, has tried to take a broader view. Complaining that there are too many pictures of beautiful women in the Santa Cruz paper, he says, is like complaining about too many pictures of cars in the Detroit papers.
The presence and tradition of feminine beauty in Santa Cruz undoubtedly colors life here, though it needs to be kept in perspective. Not every Cruceña is a raving beauty by any means. However, any time you go out in the city you are likely to see at least one, and often several, gorgeous females.

You can't miss them
And they can occur almost anywhere. Standing in their stilettos in the roadside mud waiting for a bus, for example; behind the teller’s window at the bank; poking at the produce in a supermarket aisle. You just never know.
Once Kelly and David were having a coffee in a popular bistro on what passes for Santa Cruz´ ”strip” when our attention, along with everyone else’s, was captured by a curvaceous, elegantly turned out woman who was artfully maneuvering her way between tables to one of the few remaining empty seats. Kelly broke the silence just after she passed, whispering, “How do they make so many of them?”
One effect of this pervasive presence of precious belleza is that there is a tremendous emphasis, for women, on being attractive, well dressed, carefully groomed, and tightly tailored. The plastic surgery industry and orthodontics business are thriving here, not so much to do repair work as to give young women an added edge in a highly competitive atmosphere.
At one time it was customary, on the occasion of a girl’s Sweet Fifteen party, to gift her with a major item of personal property, up to and including a vehicle. Then, about a decade ago, the custom came to be a trip abroad. But most recently there have been an increasing number of girls given, and gratefully receiving, the offer of a breast augmentation or a nose job to commemorate the big day.

Emphasis on appearances
Critics of the generally free-wheeling, party-loving social customs of Santa Cruz – where almost any night you can hear dance music in the air – this preoccupation with beauty contributes to the superficiality that often seems to characterize the city. (People here don’t read much, for example. The biggest newspaper in this city of 1.5 million sells less than 10.000 copies a day in the city.)
Another charge is that it feeds a spirit of sexism, though this is a hard case to document. In the employment realm there is no shortage here of female TV anchorpersons, bank officers, university administrators, and the like. Many women head their own businesses (though they tell often tell interviewers that it’s a hard role to play).
Watching young couples, the girl often seems to be in charge, twirling her male companion as she crosses the street, or pointing out purchases in shop windows she would like him to make. Santa Cruz girls definitely find out early how to open doors with just a smile.

Are the men worthy?
The jury is still out, incidentally, on whether Santa Cruz men are worthy consorts of their womenfolk. There are, to be sure, some handsome men, but they don’t dress up the way the women do. Jeans and T-shirts are the standard uniform of young men, who rarely, if ever, match the dressiness of the females they are escorting. (To be sure, this would often require a tuxedo.) And often one can hear (or see in people’s eyes and furrowed brows) the question: “How did a guy like him get a girl like her?”
And it may be that the spell wears off as time goes on. It is in domestic relations that the inequality of the sexes shows up in starkest relief. There are innumerable horror stories of husbands deserting their families, fathering children out of wedlock, and failing to meet the requirements of fatherhood. This often has a shattering effect on the wives and children involved, and does not, generally, entail much social opprobrium for the errant husband. Young Santa Cruz women are infamous for stealing male expats right out of the lives of their older wives.

Laying down the law
Still, one should be cautious in drawing conclusions. There is little hard evidence that infidelity and poor fathering are worse in Santa Cruz than elsewhere in the macho cultures of Latin America. And many marriages seem to survive, even thrive, without major difficulty.

Sometimes this involves carefully formulating the ground rules. One attractive Cruceña, who brought her American husband home to live in her home town, first laid down to law to him. “Things are different in Santa Cruz,” she told him, “but not for you, gringo.”
Many women, including ex-pats, like some parts of the culture here. One fashion conscious woman from Los Angeles who came down to do volunteer work for a charity, said she was very glad that there was such emphasis on fashion and appearance. “It made it much easier for me to fit in,” she said.
And few men are complaining. Often while driving through the city David often finds himself humming Standing on the Corner from the Broadway musical "Most Happy Fella." But Kelly has made it clear: “Not for you, gringo.”

Department of Truthiness

2008-05-15T13:56:00.000-07:00

Horrid errors from
the horde of hacks...

(This will be a recurrent feature, focusing only on things in the international press that are flat wrong, while turning a blind eye to exaggerations, irrelevancies, misconstruals, errors of omission, and other relatively minor matters.)
Flat Wrong: From CNN, May 14:
"Morales also favors a national referendum on changes to the constitution, under which the central government would be further emphasized at the expense of the current system, which gives relative autonomy to the country's departments. "
The Truth: The current system gives almost no control to the country's departments. A Bolivian at present must deal with the national government to start a business, form an association, get a national ID card, pay parking tickets, get a high school transcript, or, well, do almost anything. It is one of the most centralized governmental arrangements on the face of the earth. That's one reason why there is so much enthusiasm for autonomy. And President Morales is not seeking to change or amend the current constitution; he is seeking to replace it with a new one that, incredible as it may seem, actually increases central authority.

Flat Wrong: Newsweek, April 14, "One Sure Thing: Death to Taxes" by Mac Margolis. "Much of Bolivia's recent upheaval centers on La Paz' attempt to stop wealthy provinces in the fertile oil-and-gas-rich lowlands from declaring tax autonomy, and to tighten the central government's reins on local revenues."
The Truth: The proponents of autonomia in Santa Cruz and elsewhere have made no effort, and have not threatened to interfere with the payment of taxes to the national government, nor has there been any noticeable attempt to tighten central government control of local revenues. The provinces seeking local autonomy would like to see more of their taxes coming back from the central government for local development projects in which the local governments have some say, but "tax autonomy" has simply not been on the table.
Actually, the main problem with this story is not a few facts here and there. The problem is that it is totally misconceived. It is based mainly -- indeed almost entirely -- on protests against new taxes on agricultural exports in Argentina (with Bolivia and a few other countries sort of thrown in for good measure). But the issue in Argentina is not taxes per se. The issue is the Argentine government's attempt to curb exports. This is also an issue in Bolivia, and it might have made an interesting story.

The plot thickens further . . .

2008-05-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

Recall vote fails
to excite Cruceños

The possibility of recalling President Evo Morales has produced very little tangible enthusiasm in Santa Cruz, despite the long-time antagonism between the province and the President.
Last week Morales and the opposition-controlled Senate agreed, in effect, to a recall vote in which voters could end the terms of the president and the prefects (or governors) of the nine departments if any of them gets a no vote higher than the percentage by which they won election in 2005.
Morales, for example, would be ousted if the no vote exceeded the 53 percent he received in 2005. The recall referendum has been slated for August 10.
Branko Marinkovic, head of the Committe For Santa Cruz and principal advocate of autonomy for the province, said in a press conference that the recall was basically an annoying distraction that could only create instability and reduce confidence.
It would do nothing, he continued, to deal with the problems of the people, such as the economy, rising prices, and the lack of jobs. "Nothing in Bolivia is functioning now," he said.
Probing at least elite opinion in this currently booming city disclosed that similar sentiments are widely held, and disclosed further reasons there is little enthusiasm for the recall effort against Morales that Podemos, the principal opposition party, has said it will lead.
To start with, no one seems to believe that Morales can actually be recalled. His "core constituency" of Bolivian campesinos has not become disaffected, it is noted, and the Bolivian middle class, which has become disaffected, is not that large outside of Santa Cruz.
Indeed, the conventional wisdom is that the recall referendum will simply succeed in cementing in office the people who are already there, without solving anything. (Santa Cruz´prefect, Ruben Costas, is very popular polls show, and there is almost no chance of his being recalled.
But beyond that many Cruceños who were all for autonomy, do not have that big a problem with Evo Morales´ being president -- as long as he doesn't bother them. And they think the vote for autonomy gives them some protection against that.
The rest of the country really did vote for Morales together with his centralizing and socializing policies, it is said, and they deserve him.
Right now, Santa Cruz wants to be about the business of defining autonomy by electing a governor and legislature, forming a police force, taking charge of schools and health clinics, and, hopefully, showing some positive results. It does not want to be dealing with a constitutional crisis, which recalling the president could cause.
This attitude of benign indifference toward the recall referendum could, however, be changed as the major crisis de jour plays itself out. Santa Cruz' crucial vegetable oil industry held a summit today to decide basically whether autonomy means being able to ignore the national government's ban on the exportation of their product.
Morales and his government has claimed the ban, passed by decree, is an effort to hold down the domestic cost of vegetable oil. People in Santa Cruz, however, believe that it was an attempt to cripple the region's economy. Vegetable oil, mostly from soy and sunflower seeds, is a big business here, employing an estimated 300,000 people.The producers point out that only a small part of production is for consumption in Bolivia, and that the price of vegetable oil in Bolivia is lower than in any other country in South America that does not subsidize it. (Venezuela subsidizes vegetable oil, and the product is cheaper there.) A liter of vegetable oil in Bolivia today costs about $1.90 a liter,roughly equal to a quart.
A decision to defy the export ban could trigger a critical confrontation, though the build-up could take some time. Planting time for next year's soy and sunflower crops is still weeks away.

* * *

All the stakeholders in the vegetable oil situation -- farmers, refiners, workers, etc. -- met and formed a council pledged to restore the right to export by any means possible. A spokesman for the Morales affirmed that only the national government can may export policy.
Thus the stage is set, though meanwhile one association urged farmers to switch to sorghum, wheat, and corn, which are not subject to the new export restrictions.

The Plot Thickens

2008-05-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

Morales accepts recall plan
In a surprising new twist to Bolivia's political struggle, President Evo Morales agreed to a recall referendum in which he and the nine departmental prefects would all submit themselves to the judgment of voters.
The exact terms and date for such a recall weren't immediately known, but presumably office holders who received less than 50 percent of the vote would have to step down. Press accounts indicated the vote would take place in late July or early August.
It would represent a sort of "Gunfight at the OK Corral"-type scenario for settling the standoff currently forming between the president and the four departments that have determined to hold referenda on whether or not to become "autonomous."
One of the provinces, Santa Cruz (where we live), has held its referendum, and autonomy "won" with over 85 percent of the vote, although the President insisted that the referendum was illegal and the result inconclusive because only about 65 percent of eligible voters turned out. (The exact meaning of autonomy is not clear. For a further discussion of it see the "Main Story" below.)
The idea of the recall referendum is not new. Morales proposed it in December, and it was tabled at the time while attention focused on the autonomy votes, which will be completed by June 22. The opposition-controlled Senate, apparently buoyed by the vote in Santa Cruz and annoyed by the president's intransigence, revived it Thursday, and the President approved it.
It will be an interesting test of strength with the outcome far from certain. Morales has lost considerable popularity since becoming the first president in Bolivian history to get more than 50 percent of the vote two-and-one-half years ago (53 percent). However, it is far from clear that more than half the voters would choose to oust him in a straight up or down vote.
The prospects for the nine prefects vary from department to department, though the prefect of Santa Cruz, Ruben Costas would seem to have a safe seat. Recent polls have shown him with an approval rating of over 80 percent.
One factor in Morales' favor is that the opposition to him remains disorganized -- a large but inchoate mass of popular discontent with no clear leader. And there's an old saying in politics that "you can't beat something with nothing."
In the election that swept Morales to office the opposition was seriously split, and it holds control in the Senate only through a fragile coalition of three parties.
On the other hand a thumbs-up-or-thumbs-down vote is probably the best possible format for the opposition since it doesn't force them to pick a single candidate or announce a platform.
The Boldts are reluctant to hazard a prediction, in part because we have never fully understood how Morales got elected in the first place. Except for a few "limousine Marxists," nobody we know voted for him. Obviously he has an appeal that we don't fully understand or appreciate, which makes us cautious in assessing the situation.

Referendum Results

2008-05-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

"El Si" passes by big margin

The deed is done. The die is cast. The Rubicon has been crossed.
The voters of the Department of Santa Cruz approved the referendum in favor of "autonomia" today (Sunday, May 4) by over 85 percent, with a pretty good turnout of around 65 percent.
Several communities where sentiment in favor of President Evo Morales and his MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) party runs high blockaded themselves and prevented balloting. There were also anti-autonomia demonstration in a low income neighborhood in the city of Santa Cruz, though pro-autonomia supporters prevailed in the ensuing rock-throwing fight.
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AUTONOMIA GATOR STRIKES -- A festive mood prevailed as voting took place. Photo from CNN

A few other irregularities were reported and a vice minister of the government was detained for trying to subvert the balloting, but generally things went smoothly on a day when the weather was perfect for a referendum. (Not a cloud in the sky.)
We hope coverage in your local media at least tells you this much. Bolivia will no doubt soon be descending again below the radar of the North American media, however, so we will be posting further developments on the weblog as the plot thickens to keep you up to date with major developments.
And there will be major developments. Between now and June 22 three more provinces will vote on similar pro-autonomia measures. Please stay tuned.

Late-breaking news

2008-05-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

Government nationalizes a phone company,
acquires shares of oil companies by decree
On May Day President Morales announced the nationalization of Entel, the major international and long-distance phone company, and one of several companies offering cell phones. Euro Telecom International NV, the Italian company that owns Entel, had no immediate comment as police surrounded its principal offices. Entel had been the government telephone monopoly until it was privatized in 1996. Telephone service in Bolivia up until that point had been execrable. It is now quite good.
The President also announced that the final step in the "nationalization" of three petroleum oil companies, under which the government would acquire 51 per cent of the outstanding shares, would be accomplished by decree since an agreement had not been reached through negotiation.

Main Story -- The Current Situation

2008-05-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

The real story from Santa Cruz

Many of you have asked us in recent months what is going on in Bolivia, our home for the last seven years. Rather than send half-baked replies to each and all we thought that we would sit down and make an effort tell you everything we know all at once. Don’t worry. It won’t take that long. -- David and Kelly Clark Boldt

RALLY FOR "EL SÍ" -- May Day rally closed the campaign for "Yes" on autonomy. Photo from El Deber

THINGS ARE ON A COLLISION COURSE here at present.
On May 4 the state (called department here) of Santa Cruz will vote on whether or not it wants “autonomy.” The resolution seems almost certain to pass, and within a few weeks after that, several other departments in eastern and southern Bolivia will vote on similar resolutions.
The national government of Bolivia under Evo Morales, the Marxist indigenous president (and friend of Venezuela president Hugo Chavez). has said these resolutions are illegal, and has vowed to prevent any effort that would subvert the authority of the national government. Morales was swept into office by the largest margin in Bolivian history two years ago.
Yet at the same time Bolivia has a long tradition of going right up to the point of crisis, then backing off. Moreover, there does not appear to be at present an issue that would trigger the outbreak of some sort of civil war.
One is tempted – especially if one is an optimist – to classify the current situation as “hopeless – but not serious.” But if one is pessimistic, there are also reasons to believe that the current situation might be more explosive than any the nation has faced in the past.
Our own forecast is that the voting will be accomplished without much fuss, and that the test of strength, if it comes, will occur further down the road.
“Autonomia: What will it mean?
One reason for this is that the exact meaning of “autonomia” has been kept, either brilliantly or deceptively (depending on one’s point of view), vague. No one seems to know what, exactly, it will mean.
I was talking about what the future might hold with the head of a big, important company in Santa Cruz the other day while we were both watching a high school basketball game. Did the civic authorities who were backing autonomy have a plan for what they would do once the referendum passed,? I asked. “Not that they’ve been willing to share with me,” he replied.
Apparently there will be elections for a governor (although we already have an elected “prefect” for the department) and assembly, and the department will take charge of schools, public health facilities, and the like. The department will have its own police force. There is some talk about new local taxes. (Almost all local government revenue now comes through the central government.) And the autonomous status could interfere with thenational government's efforts to confiscate underused land from large landowners and redistribute it.
But no line has been drawn in the sand, and presumably there is still room for negotiation and compromise, when it comes to the really crucial questions like the forwarding of tax revenues to the central government, the controlling of natural gas and petroleum fields in the department, or the enforcing of exportation policies
Why, you might ask, do people in Santa Cruz want autonomy? The reasons run deep and have roots that reach back way before Evo Morales took office. Indeed, causes for the sectional rivalry go all the way back to the beginnings of Bolivian history.
Independence was thrust upon Bolivia
Bolivia is really an accident of history. Bolivians did not win independence. It was thrust upon them. During most of the time that Simon Bolivar and José de San Martin and others were fighting the famous battles against those who wished to remain loyal to Spain, the area that is now Bolivia was controlled by a loyalist regime that was, however, independent of the main loyalist groups in Peru and elsewhere. When the loyalist forces elsewhere were defeated, the loyalist regime in Bolivia broke into factions that fought among themselves, and it disappeared.
When Bolivar’s principal general, José Antonio de Sucre, came into the region at the head of an army, he was entering a political vacuum. He asked a group of locals who had convened as sort of a de facto ruling body what they wanted to be – an independent country, part of another country, or whatever. They opted to become a separate country.
Sucre, knowing that Bolivar might not like this because it conflicted with his dream of a United Latin America, suggested that they name the country after Bolivar to win him over, which they did. Bolivar at this point had also come to feel that if Latin America was not going to be united immediately, there probably should be a buffer state between Argentina, which had been ardent for independence, and Peru, which had been a hotbed of loyalist sentiment. Bolivia filled that need.
Bolivar agreed to be the first president of Bolivia, and actually made a sort of triumphant tour through the country before handing over the presidency to Sucre, who served until he was nearly assassinated, at which point he quit.
But there were few formative shared experiences for Bolivians that would serve to weld Bolivians together. Big chunks of what was originally Bolivian territory were bitten off by Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay in the years following independence without much protest from the people who were annexed into the other countries.
Two regions with little in common
What was left were two big regions that had little or nothing in common geographically or historically, except for a period when they were loosely administered together by Spanish colonial authorities as Alta Peru (Upper Peru). On the western side of the country was the “Altiplano,” or High Plain, an arid, windswept area located between two ridges of the Andes Mountains. La Paz, located in a depression on the Altiplano, was originally a place where mule trains taking silver from the mountains of Bolivia to the ports of Peru could take shelter out of the wind and get some water.
On the eastern side of the country were the lowlands – broad, fertile, well watered (indeed often overly watered) plains that had once been at the bottom of an inland sea. This is the area where Santa Cruz is located.
The two regions have been quite separate even into antiquity, with different Indian tribes inhabiting each. There is actually an ancient Indian “fort” located in the mountains just west of Santa Cruz that probably served, among other purposes, as a guard post to inhibit lowland Indians from invading the Altiplano.
The pattern of neglect continues
From very early on in Bolivian history efforts were made to develop the eastern lowlands by, for example, allowing trade to flow through the Amazon River by constructing a railroad around a treacherous set of rapids on a major tributary of the Amazon. Such efforts were unfailingly opposed by La Paz and the Altiplano, which feared losing their economic and political dominance of the country.
This pattern of neglect continued in the 20th century. One result was that the railroad system of western Bolivia was never connected to the lines in the east. In fact, to this day there is no transcontinental railroad across the upper part of South America.
A paved road didn’t reach Santa Cruz until the 1950s, at which time it was a sleepy, insular backwater town of around 50,000 people. Since then it has exploded to a city of over 1.5 million, passing La Paz to become Bolivia’s largest city in the census of 2001.
Cruceños are quick to point out that they had to pull themselves up by the bootstraps with little help from the national government. They are proud of the fact that they developed their own infrastructure such as their large electric cooperative, sewer and sanitation systems and telephone companies. They are now incensed when they hear the Morales government talk of plans to nationalize these same organizations.
They can also quickly catalogue the continuing examples of neglect by the central government. The post office in Santa Cruz – and there is only one – is housed in a disheveled, tin-roofed building in downtown Santa Cruz that is filled with puddles when it rains, while the post offices in smaller cities are little granite and ceramic tile palaces. (The post offices are also eerily empty. Mail service in Bolivia is so limited and unreliable that it is little used. Even advertisements are sent by private couriers.)
A boom town on the plains
Santa Cruz today is the center of a thriving agricultural area where soybeans, sugar, rice, sunflower seeds, and other cash crops are grown on large farms. Every other business seems to be either a tractor dealership or a seed store. It is something of a boom town, buoyed by rising commodity prices and fueled by an influx of businesses and people leaving other cities in Bolivia. New apartment buildings, houses and offices are going up everywhere, with plenty of help wanted signs around, even in car washes. Sales of commercial property have been brisk over the last several years.
The downside is that the place has a sort of half-finished feel to it. It looks like what it is: A city that has been thrown together over the last 50 years, with lots of dusty unpaved back streets, sidewalk-less thoroughfares, and a glut of vehicles far greater than its streets can handle. The city has recently started making some nice little parks, but until then there was no attractive common space other than a nice central plaza.
When the wind isn’t blowing, parts of the poorly sewered city even smell bad, though boosterish locals might claim that it is the smell of success. Cruceños like to claim that Bolivia’s recent annual growth rate of close to 5 percent has been achieved by Santa Cruz growing 10 percent a year while the rest of the country’s growth stays flat. This assessment ignores the good times currently underway in Bolivia’s mining areas, but otherwise it’s probably not that far off the mark.
An almost Texan fear of government control
The advent of Evo Morales has only exacerbated the antique antipathies between the eastern lowlands and the Altiplano. Morales’ so-called 21st century socialism with its emphasis on centralized control and anti-entrepreneurial biases just annoys the hell out of Cruceños, who have an almost Texan belief in the importance of private initiative and the perils of government control.
Morales has never had much support in Santa Cruz. It was considered amazing that he got 30 percent of the vote in Santa Cruz in the election in which he won over 50 percent nationwide. He only got that much because many people thought that Morales, a former mining union organizer and leader of coca growers, would be less of annoyance as head of the government than he had been as head of the opposition. During his rise to power he had specialized in disruptive protests and road blockades.
Others thought he “deserved a chance.” A few thought it would just be fun to see him in power. “It will be like watching a monkey play with a pistol,” one friend told me.
Those people are mostly sorry now, and the president’s support in this part of the country has, according to polls, dwindled to considerably less than 30 percent. Could it have been different? Maybe.
It would have required something on the order of a second coming of Franklin Roosevelt, and would be a lot to expect of an ex-union leader with no executive experience. Still, Morales got off to an interesting start with his “nationalization” of Bolivia’s petroleum industry two years ago, which showed a canny blending of leftist theatricality with centrist pragmatism.
A successful “forced renegotiation”
It wasn’t really a nationalization, however. (If it had been it would have been Bolivia’s third nationalization of the oil business, thereby setting a world record.) What happened can be more accurately described as a “forced renegotiation.”
It started off radically enough with a May Day takeover of petroleum companies in which troops occupied the oil company facilities and frisked the employees as they left work each day to make sure they were not trying to sneak out with any computer CDs. (The troops, however, had not been briefed on flash disks, and let those pass.)
However, none of the dozen or so oil companies has actually left the country, and the deals that were finally struck have left the oil company executives grinning like Cheshire cats ever since. One company president told his employees at the annual picnic that the new contracts were the best thing that could have happened to the company, taking all the risk out of the oil business. The new government oil company, he said, was now required by law to buy whatever gas or oil their company could pump out of the ground at a satisfactory price.
The main defect that has surfaced regarding the new contracts is that they eliminated the incentives to find more oil and gas, replacing them with pledges by the companies to spend money on exploration. The result, as any student who passed Economics 1 could have told the government, is that the companies have spent the money (to the extent they have spent it) on sure-fire exploration of known fields, rather than higher-risk searches for new reserves.
A gas shortage emerges
The result is that Bolivia does not have enough gas at present to meet its contractual obligations to ship gas by pipelines to Brazil and Argentina, and is going to have to pay Brazil a cash penalty. Bolivia is also forced to become increasing dependent on imports for diesel fuel, which is increasingly in short supply. Trucks wait in mile-long lines for their share of diesel when supplies dwindle, and the most recent shortage continued for months.
Another defect is that one company did not agree to continue even with its previous level of exploration. That was Petrobras, the half-government-owned Brazilian petroleum company, which had been the major investor in Bolivia’s petroleum resources. Since the new agreements were hammered out Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who has tried to be sympathetic to Morales, has said that the company was going to resume exploration, but there is no sign yet that it is doing so.
However, and more importantly, the finesse that the Morales government showed in the oil negotiations has not reappeared, and the remarkably broad coalition that brought Morales to power has largely disintegrated as the situation in the country has become increasingly polarized. The Morales government has lost the support of entire provinces through the mismanagement of a sequence of crises.
Losing battles in Cochabamba, Chuquisaca
At the end of his first year in power Morales’ movement attempted to oust the governor of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes, a former presidential candidate who had become increasingly oppositional to the government. The pro-Morales and pro-Reyes forces actually got into a mass street fight in the city of Cochabamba, and Morales’ forces lost, leaving Reyes more securely in power, and enabling him to become one of the persons around whom the heretofore somewhat formless opposition to Morales is coalescing.
More recently the Morales government managed to estrange itself from yet another department as a result of a huge, and largely unnecessary, fight within the Constitutional Assembly over the location of the national capital. Bolivia at present technically has two national capitals. The judiciary has its head in Sucre, the original capital of the nation, which is also the capital of the state of Chuquisaca, and, not incidentally, the city where the Constitutional Assembly was meeting. It is located in a valley between the Altiplano and the lowlands, and, like Cochabamba, had supported Morales in his run for the presidency. The executive and legislative branches of the government are in La Paz, where they were moved after a minor civil war around 1900.
To make quite a long story short, the delegates from Sucre wanted the capital moved back to their city, and tried to put a provision to that effect into the Constitution, against the wishes of the Morales government, not to mention the populace of La Paz. The delegates from Santa Cruz and the other lowland departments, eager to diminish La Paz and sow discord into the ranks of the opposition, happily embraced the idea of making Sucre the full-fledged capital again. The argument proved unamenable to compromise and took on a life of its own, becoming a surrogate for other complaints about the Morales government as well.
Finishing the Constitution -- under guard
Ultimately there was mob violence in the streets of Sucre, and the Constitutional Assembly, by then attended only by its pro-Morales members, was moved to the Altiplano city of Oruro where the process was completed, under dubious legality and military guard. Meanwhile the prefect of Chuquisaca, who had been elected as a member of Morales’ MAS (Movement to Socialism) party, broke with the government, resigned and is now living outside the country in self-imposed exile. (At one point, the new constitution was supposed to be put up for voter approval the same day as the autonomia referendum, but was pulled back, probably because of uncertainty as to whether it would pass.)
When Morales and his party came to power he had had the support of five of the nine departments, including Cochabamba and Chuquisaca. Now he probably no longer has the firm support of the latter two, giving him solid support in only three of the nine departments.
Who are the "oligarchs"?
The rhetoric between the two sides has heated up. Morales no longer seems to seek any sort of accord with the civic leaders in Santa Cruz, whom he refers to only as the “oligarchs.” This terminology is meant to classify them as oppressors of the working class in Marxist analysis. However, the business leaders of Santa Cruz have kind of cottoned to the term. The society section of the main newspaper in Bolivia recently carried an account of a group calling themselves the “Vacationing Oligarchs,” who had just completed a sojourn to the beaches of Brazil. The other day we spotted a bumper sticker on an oversize SUV reading, “100% Oligarch.” And a strapping new horse in the equestrian competitions at Santa Cruz’ Club Hipico – a known hangout for the city’s upper crust – is named “Oligarco.”
Who, exactly, are these “oligarchs.” We have seen the “oligarchs” described in an Associated Press story as “white descendants of the Spanish settlers.” But this is misleading. There are a few descendants of the “original Spanish settlers” still around. (We personally know one, a hotel owner.) But there aren’t many, as one can deduce from the aforementioned fact that before 1950 there were not many people here at all.
(In other newspaper stories Santa Cruz is referred to as the “rich renegade” state and other press coverage would leave readers outside of the country to believe that Santa Cruz is chock full of millionaires. Believe us, in seven years we sure haven’t seen many that would met that criterion. Obviously the international press has not done much of its own investigation.)
Most of the “oligarchs” are in fact descendants of people who immigrated to Santa Cruz in the last 50 to 100 years, from places other than Spain. Perhaps the prime example is the current head of the Committee for Santa Cruz, who has the very un-Spanish name of Branko Marinkovic, and whose parents came to Bolivia from the former Yugoslavia.
A polyglot upper class
I run a website that covers the sports events of four elite prep schools in Santa Cruz, and a perusal of the team rosters gives an interesting insight into the polyglot nature of the city’s upper class. There are more Yugoslavs (Matkovic, Ibrahimpasic), Arabs (Rik, Abuawad, Dajbur, Mustafa), Iranians (Nowrooziyani, Hajari, Shoaie), Italians (Foianini, Gamboa, Gioto, Cocciani), Germans (Grote, Linggi), and lots of Asians (Yuan, Zhau Fua, Sakuma, Shin, Oh, Kook, Li, Song, Yong, and so on). Few are more than second generation immigrants. Many are freshly arrived.
Whoever the “oligarchs” are, it’s important to keep in mind that the autonomia movement is a mass movement. Polls indicate – and it will be interesting to see what the final count is – that the “si” vote in the autonomy referendum will exceed 70 per cent. Huge rallies have been held in support of autonomy, with far more people present than just oligarchs.
A Million Cruceño March
The largest, a town meeting (or “cabildo”) convened at the foot of the huge statue of Christ in the middle of the city a year ago, was said by the newspapers to have attracted 800,000 people. David was there, and thinks there were at least 500,000. He has covered the big marches convened on the mall in Washington (Million Man March, Promise Keepers, etc), and the gathering here was of that magnitude. Vast crowds of people stretching in all directions. And all kinds of people – taxi drivers, beauticians, maids, construction workers – from all manner of ethnic backgrounds including, most definitely, many people of indigenous heritage. The latter were also represented on the speakers platform.
In much of the American and European press, the struggle in Bolivia is depicted as one between the good and wholesome indigenous people lined up behind their fearless leader, Evo Morales, and the “white” forces of evil and oppression. As the daughter of friends of ours very innocently said after spending a year as an exchange student in Germany, “Indians seem to be in fashion.”

Morales shaped by his personal history
But the situation here defies simplification. Evo Morales is widely acclaimed as the first Indian head of state in Latin America since Mexico’s iconic leader Benito Juarez. However, according to people who grew up with him he reportedly can't converse in any Indian language. His Indian heritage seems to be, in part, a fashion statement, expressed in his hand-tooled leather jackets, made by a well known Bolivian clothes designer, and distinctive broad-stripe sweaters.
More than any ethnic identity, his strongest allegiance seems to be with the coca growers who were his political base. (Most are former tin miners, displaced when world demand for tin declined, and the tin produced by Bolivia’s government-run monopoly became the most expensive, and lowest quality, on the world market.)
His early years of poverty left him with a strong resentment of people with perceived power or money which, unfortunately, prevents him from being a president of all Bolivians. He specializes in polarization and pitting one faction against another because that is how he views the world. It served him well when he was leader of the opposition and successfully overthrew two elected governments, but it’s doubtful that augmenting cultural and regional polarization will lead the indigenous population or other tragically poor Bolivians into prosperity.
To the extent that the Morales has acted as an advocate for indigenous people it has been an uneven effort in which it has become increasingly clear that some Indians are more equal than others. The Indians of the lowlands – Guaranis, Chiquitos, Ayeoros, and so on – perpetually get the short end of the stick, just like their paler fellow lowlanders.
The central government has, in a number of celebrated cases, sent educational materials in Aymara or Quechua, the principal Indian languages of the Altiplano, to lowland communities where no one, whether of Indian descent or not, spoke or read those languages.
An indication that ethnicity plays less of a role in Santa Cruz than elsewhere in Bolivia came in the 2001 census in which Bolivians were given nine choices to describe their ethnicity, which might have seemed to cover most of the available possibilities. However, over half of the residents of Santa Cruz checked “none of the above.”
Battles over exports
The biggest rupture between Santa Cruz and the Morales government has taken place in recent months over the issue of agricultural exports, which are a major part of the Santa Cruz economy, and not so important in the Altiplano, which is above the tree line and hasn’t been profitably farmed since Incan times.
Ostensibly to cut down on the rising inflation that has been taking place in Bolivia by increasing the supply of agricultural products, the Morales government, by decree, banned the exportation of beef, chicken, and, most importantly, vegetable oil. This last hit Santa Cruz soy and sunflower seed farmers right where it hurt.
The high international prices for these products should have made it possible for Bolivian producers to earn greater profits, to expand acreage and employment, and to boost the national economy. The export bans seem to be a classic case of the government shooting itself in the foot, economically speaking, especially since prices of agricultural products in Bolivia remain relatively low and supplies plentiful.
Counting too many chickens
One aspect of the affair definitely illustrated the central government’s lack of sophistication and knowledge in economic affairs – the ban on chicken exportation. The ban on beef exports was never very important because Bolivia doesn’t export much beef. In fact it imports a lot of beef from neighboring Argentina, one of the world’s major beef exporters. The most expensive item on the menus of Bolivian restaurants is usually an Argentine steak.
Chicken was a somewhat different matter. The government apparently really thought that Bolivia exported a lot of chicken. However, it turns out that chicken happens to be one of the most heavily regulated exports in the world because of the danger of spoilage, avian flu, and so forth. Only one company in Bolivia had successfully met the international sanitary standards, and it was exporting only a small number of frozen chickens to Peru. Moreover, that company and the government had – at least until the exportation ban was announced – been working together to try to open the Japanese market to Bolivian frozen poultry, which had been considered a worthwhile goal.
To the national government’s credit, once these facts were diplomatically brought to its attention, it dropped the ban on chicken exportation.
The ban on vegetable oil exports has led to more a fractious and involuted contretemps. The vegetable oil producers and their employees, of whom there are many, responded like gored bulls to the government action, with large protest meetings and truck cavalcades. The long-distance truckers went on strike for a period of time to protest the export ban, though they backed down when their pickets and blockades were threatened with violence by MAS-led mobs.
"To arms brave Cruceños"
Ultimately an arrangement seems to have been worked out in which the vegetable oil producers will export their product at international prices, while selling to the domestic market at another, lower price. But the affair has caused a vitriol build-up in the Bolivian body politic.
The leadership of Santa Cruz, it needs to be added, has done little to effect a rapprochement with the Morales government over the past two years. Most recently, the export bans were characterized as deliberate attempts on the part of the national government to cripple the Santa Cruz economy (which may indeed have been one of the goals).
In any event, the walls of the city are awash with anti-Morales sentiments, like “To arms brave Cruceños – Time is running out,” “No to Narco-Communism,” and “Dictator Morales.” Perhaps the coldest is, “Evo Morales Dies in Santa Cruz.” Only a few “Evo Delivers” slogans answer back.
Recently signs of support for autonomia have become ubiquitous in the city in such forms as green-and-white Santa Cruz flags flapping from the tailgates of cars, along with street banners and billboards declaring, “SI! A la Autonomia! Let nothing and no one hold us back!” (This is something of an improvement, content-wise,” on the previous pro-autonomia slogan, which was, “Autonomia, Carajo!,” or “Autonomy, Dammit!”)
Television station breaks have been filled with pro-autonomy ads, with some responding ads from the government urging rejection of the referendum, or at least abstention. The news reports are filled with pro and con commentaries, along with stories on the city government’s opening of an Autonomy Park, on the release of a new autonomy song, and on the freewheeling autonomy dance craze that is reportedly sweeping the city. It feels like New Hampshire during presidential primary season.
Where will it all end? No one can say. Those who argue that this too will pass without disastrous consequences point to the fact that Bolivia has never had major civil unrest on the scale that, say, the United States has had. Even the revered Bolivian National Revolution of the 1950s in which the sainted Victor Paz Estenssoro overthrew by force of arms a military regime that had annulled his election to the presidency, was a relatively mild affair in which only a few hundred people were killed, all told. (By contrast, it has been estimated that 5.000 soldiers died in one 20-minute phase of the Battle of Shiloh during the US Civil War.)
Moreover, the confrontations that have taken place so far in Cochabamba and Sucre have also been brief, as these things go, and involved only a few deaths arising from idiosyncratic circumstances. The one near-battle in Santa Cruz ended with no fatalities. It was over so fast that the global media didn’t even have time to take note.
Occupying the airport
It occurred last year when the national government, for reasons that have never been made entirely clear, sent in military police to take over Santa Cruz’ international airport, the most important in Bolivia.
The civic leaders in Santa Cruz, on learning this, rang the bells of the cathedral, the traditional means of sounding the alarm. People poured out to the airport, which was then sealed off. (Arriving passengers were taken out in taxis on a dirt track that passed through an adjoining ranch.) Much tear gas was fired by the police, and as night feel there was a stand-off between the police and the mob.
During the night efforts continued that would have brought thousands of more protestors to the airport in the morning with the apparent goal of overwhelming the military contingent. Happily, in the dark of the pre-dawn the military were airlifted out. A spontaneous party broke out in place of violence as the airport was “liberated.” By noon, airport operations were back to normal, and haven’t been interrupted since.
Adding racism to the mix
It’s hoped that the rapid and relatively non-violent outcome was an accurate precursor of things to come. But those who say things could be worse this time around note that this time large numbers of people on both sides care passionately about the issues involved this time, more so that in the past.
Moreover, the confrontation is tinged with a complex kind of racism. It’s not a simple whites vs. Indians kind of racism. It’s a more complex sort of racism that involves the mutual dislike between Cruceños, whether mainly Indian or mostly white, who call themselves cambas, and the indigenous people of the Altiplano, who are called koyas. The distinctions are difficult to describe, and many koyas coming to the lowlands are said to undergo instantaneous conversion into camba-ness once they cross a certain river. (“As long as they’re good-looking they fit right in,” an American who studied the situation once told us.)
Koyas, who for the most part are hard-working merchants, are flocking to Santa Cruz where they can make a better living and where they run the large mercados (markets) located around the city. Cambas, in the Koya view, are said to be lazy but blessed with more abundant favorable natural resources.
However, as a general rule the two groups know each other when they see each other, sometimes, with the more traditional groups, more by dress than physical appearance. But even in wealthy neighborhoods where to the outsider’s eye the residents all seem to be just Bolivians, the Bolivians themselves are acutely aware of who is originally from La Paz and other Koya locations, and who is a life-long Cruceño.
Subtle though it may be, this racial, or ethnic, distinction has become increasingly virulent, and it adds volatility to the situation. Moreover, many old-time Cruceños remember that in 1959 truckloads of Indians were sent into Santa Cruz to suppress a separatist movement, and in so doing committed a number of hideous and infamous atrocities. Some of those who remember are itching to get even.
Still, there would seem to be plenty of room, given time, for a Bolivian-style accommodation to be worked out. A one-time political mentor of President Morales said in a recent newspaper interview that it was not too late for Morales to co-opt the autonomy movement. Morales’ own constitution calls for giving Indians – some Indians, anyway – more autonomy in zones where they are dominant to follow their communitarian impulses, even condoning so-called “community justice” in which alleged miscreants are beaten to death by mobs. These “lynchings” have in any event seldom, if ever, resulted in prosecutions of the mob leaders.
Autonomy as an "escape valve"
A measure of autonomy for Santa Cruz and the other, smaller departments of the eastern lowlands, sometimes known as the “Media Luna” (Half Moon) because of the shape they form on a map, might provide a handy escape valve for Morales’ experiment in 21st century socialism, something on the order of the boat lifts that removed many disgruntled inhabitants of Fidel Castro´s Cuba. Bolivians in both camps might be reasonably well pleased with a country in which they could take their pick as to whether they wanted to live under the more free market oriented regimes of the autonomous regions, or take part in the more centrally planned socialistic economy of the Altiplano.
The sticky point comes over the fact that Santa Cruz is, in fact, the main engine of economic growth in Bolivia, and, more treacherous still, is the fact that the nation’s petroleum reserves are almost all in the Media Luna. On the other hand, the Altiplano has Bolivia’s still considerable mineral wealth, and maybe, perhaps through the revival of Incan agricultural methods, the Altiplano might be made to bloom again.
As they like to say in television news, only time will tell.

E-mailed comments

2008-04-30T19:32:00.000-07:00

"Detailed Description"

Hi David,
Thanks for sharing your excellent and detailed description of the current state of affairs in Bolivia, and how it came to be. The section the “polyglot upper class” offers hope that Morales and his followers will somehow acknowledge that the issues cannot be about righting the wrongs of the past but about living in peace and getting on with facing the chronic issues of education and poverty.
All the best,
Phil Behr
Philadelphia, Pa.

"Excellent Summary"

David & Kelly—

Bravo! An excellent summary, which I have forwarded to several friends.
A lawyer from LaPaz tells me that the structure of the autonomía referendum is illegal but that only the Constitutional Court can decide that. And the Constitutional Court does not have a quorum because MAS can’t get its people in and because there are other issues that Evo does not want the Court to decide.
With somewhat less substance, I have heard Cruceño businessmen speculating that the department and the national government may try to collect the same taxes twice if autonomía succeeds. In other words, folks would be forced to pick sides. Interesting theory, but farfetched, I think.
All the best.
Charlie Marshall
Pottstown, Pa.

"Congrats"

thanks
nice
congrats are in order
as the chinese say, may you live in interesting times!
as these are.
stay tuned,...
Richard Fisher
La Paz, Bolivia

"Major help"

David and Kelly,
This is great! I've posted a message on your blog, though you might miss it, because it's at the bottom of your May 1st posting. It was a major help to understand what's going on in Bolivia right now. I hope civil war doesn't erupt before June 6th!
Barbara Pence
Salt Lake City, Utah

"Thanks for letting me know"

Dear David and Kelly,
thanks for letting me know about your blog and for setting it up. I look forward to reading about what is going on.
The American press never seems to fail in mis-interpreting some aspect of reporting in foreign lands.
I hope all is well.
Much love,
Kim Reid
Los Angeles, Calif.

"Keep updates coming"

Dear David and Kelly,
For two neophyte bloggers, you sure are good! And it was good to hear from you -- but what a mess. Please keep the updates coming and know we are wishing you and many of your neighbors well.
Best to you both,
Mary G. Gregg
Philadelphia, Pa.

“Enjoyed It”

Dear Kelly and David,
Thanks so much for sending me this. I thoroughly enjoyed it! So well done! I only wish it would be publiished in the US/Europe. Keep it coming!
Jeanne Johnson
Santa Cruz, Bolivia

“So fresh and sincere”

Dear Kelly & David
I called you this afternoon to congratulate you with all my heart for the splendid idea of launching the blog of the "Santa Cruz Perspective."
Loved your article, so fresh and sincere, and it made me proud of being your friend. You show more commitment with this land than many others that are born here.
Autonomía, Damn it!
Jorge Orias Herrera
Santa Cruz, Bolivia