The Santa Cruz Uprisings – An Analysis

Bolivia has been in the international press all week because of the continuing marches and protests in Santa Cruz demanding “autonomy”. Our readers as well as the foreign press have been asking the same two questions all week. Is Santa Cruz really going to try to become its own country? Is the government of President Carlos Mesa on the verge of falling?

Here’s some thoughts, based on a flurry of conversations the past few days with Bolivians well connected to the country’s various social movements.

First, Santa Cruz is not going to split off from Bolivia. Even one of the mobilizers’ key allies in the department of Tarija called that idea whacko in the local press this week. What does “autonomy” mean in this case.

Much ado is being served up about the fact that President Mesa has announced that he will support a reform allowing each of Bolivia’s departments (essentially the same as states in the US) to directly elect their governors (called prefectos here). Right now those governors are appointed by the President. There is no legislative branch at the state level.

Is this a big change and concession? Yes. Is it a bad policy move? Actually, no. There is nothing wring with making these powerful departmental governments more directly accountable to the people. It might be much better.

I also think that this may end up being example #1 of the unintended consequences of the conservative-based moves for autonomy in Santa Cruz. To be clear, the demand for autonomy in Santa Cruz has come from the right, not the left, sparked by business leaders and others hot to cut a gas export deal and angry at the indigenous movements on the Altiplano who have been blocking it. However, there is a really good chance that the winners of many of these new governor elections (scheduled tentatively for June) could be from MAS, the socialist party. If Evo Morales runs for governor of the state of Cochabamba, I bet he wins. The socialists could even win in Santa Cruz itself.

The real issue with autonomy isn’t going to be whether the departments elect their governments. The real issue is who will control locally collected taxes, especially those for oil production, and how they will get spent. It is there, my friends, that on the issue of autonomy the rubber hits the road. Stay tuned for that.

No on to the other question, is President Mesa about to fall. Don’t buy it. To be sure, a lot of analysts here believe that the Santa Cruz rebellion had the toppling of Mesa in mind. His Constitutional successor is a man named Vaca Diez (cow # 10 in English) from Santa Cruz, who has already been publicly calling on Mesa to “start governing”, code for stop negotiating with the indigenous and the poor and start sending out the troops as President Gonzalo Sànchez de Lozada did before.

When the movements in Santa Cruz, at the start of the month, were about protesting Mesa’s gas price hike, they were allied with the left mobilized in La Paz and Cochabamba. Then it looked like Mesa could be in trouble. After Mesa partially rolled back the increase and agreed to cancel water privatization in El Alto, the left-leaning protests basically ended but Santa Cruz changed issues to autonomy. People in the rest of Bolivia know that that is code for, “We want to control the gas deal and the money from it.” Within days Mesa had declarations of support from they mayors of all of the country’s major cities, except Santa Cruz, and the socialists were essentially backing him as well. Backfire against Santa Cruz #2.

I have had reporters contacting me, commenting on the coverage of other foreign reporters, saying that some are over blowing the tenuousness of Mesa’s position. I agree. Street protests in Bolivia are just the way politics is done here. They are no more a sign that the government is about to fall than big John Kerry rallies were a sign that Bush was on the verge of being defeated.

Beware of exit polls, be they US or Bolivian.