What’s at Stake

Sunday evening and we just had a surprise visit from our friend Carlos Prado, a Bolivian curandero, and a well-known expert here in traditional indigenous medicine. Surprise visits by friends are one of the things that make Bolivia so different from the US. He came just in time for pumpkin soup. Maybe Bolivian curanderos also have a sixth sense about food.

Visiting with Carlos is a reminder of what is at stake deeper under the surface in Bolivia’s social struggles. It is not just about gas, or economics, or political power. Beneath the surface is a battle for the survival of a culture.

Here in Bolivia, once you get out of the tiny circle of the middle class and the affluent you find a culture that is still indigenous (as is more than 60% of the population of the country) and still dedicated to a certain set of values and way of life. Here the tradition of greeting the sun as it breaks the frigid night of the winter solstice is as rooted in the culture as is heading to shopping malls like fiends in the US the day after Thanksgiving.

And that’s the point. The US suffers from a disease of cultural arrogance. A lot of Americans, if not most, believe that the practices of materialism – days spent in malls, driving cars the sizes of small tanks, arranging houses that look like castles – that this is what all people in the world want to aspire to and ought to. No matter that such affluence comes at the expense of our environment, our family life, and our sanity. Addictions are addiction s and materialism is no different.

A New York Times reporter asked me the other day if Bolivia was more polarized than it has ever been. I think the answer is yes. But I don’t think that the lines are strictly economic, or even based on regional interest. I think Bolivia is dividing into two countries. One is populated by people who desperately want Bolivia to become the US, who want a shot at US style affluence and all its material trappings, and who are bought into the idea that foreign corporations will deliver it to them.

The other Bolivia lives close to the earth. It isn’t seeking affluence but it is hoping for a future in which the basics of survival – food, health care, clean water, some land, a way to make a modest living – do not seem always out of reach. And importantly, this Bolivia resolutely does not want to be the US. It does not want to trade in cuñapes for Big Macs, Todos Santos for Halloween, or the winter solstice for a binge of buying.

As the globe becomes more and more integrated each nation brings to that integration some particular character, like a dysfunctional family. We know too well who the know-it-all father is these days, ordering people around without listening. Bolivia, in this global mix, has a message and the world will be better of for the hearing of it. Beware of the deluge of materialism. Beware of what it causes us to become and what it leads us to do unto others.

Bolivia’s indigenous culture will not go quietly into the night as the globe clones itself into the USA. If the world pays attention it might preserve something vital in all our natures that is so close to being lost that it is almost invisible.