Reinventing "Tuto"

For those following the upcoming Bolivian national elections (December 4th) an important reading assignment is the lengthy interview in last Sunday’s edition of OH Magazine with front runner Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga (it is in Spanish).

Quiroga served as President of Bolivia for a year (2001-2002), moved back to the US with his family, and has returned to wage a campaign for President. The former Texas-based IBM executive is engaged in a whirlwind of reinventing himself, from an image of young technocrat to a unifying champion of Bolivian democracy in a time of crisis.

Tuto the Image

Judging from his interview, Quiroga has armed himself with a forceful and captivating message, one worthy of any well-paid political consultant from the US. He has started a new political party, The 21st Century Alliance (Alianza Siglo XXI) that he proclaims to be a national coalition of citizens with ample representation by indigenous communities, women, youth and other sectors. His goal, he says, is nothing short of remodeling Bolivian democracy from scratch:

“Very few times, surely only once in a life, in my life, or one time in a generation is there an opportunity to make a revolution in democracy, saying this is a new state, this is a new Constitution…”

To do that he calls for breaking the monopoly hold on political power in the country. He wants local governments to be elected by neighborhood, governors and their assistants to be elected directly by the people, and the President to be elected by a second round runoff.

He challenges his chief adversaries, MAS and Evo Morales, with a stinging attack that is likely to have resonance with many here:

“Cochabamba, here we are where MAS won first place in 2002 and what did [Cochabamba] receive in exchange? Did it receive employment programs? No. Did it receive irrigation and roads? No. Did it receive resources for indigenous communities? No.”

[It is worth noting here that MAS has been the opposition and not in the coalition controlling the government and that, in the same interview, Quirgoa uses “being in the opposition” as the reason he bears no blame for the economic policies of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Such is the game of political rhetoric.]

Quiroga then goes on to say:

"The other risk, before [political] fragmentation, is the proposal that is incarnate to MAS, that if you don’t win what you want via democracy, go out into the streets and we have blockades and blockades."

The former and would-be-again President then lays out a list of political promises: expansion of public services, rural electricity, Internet access, telecommunications, clean water, sewage and more, but with no proposal of how to raise the funds to pay for any of these things.

Tuto the Record

Indeed, the lanky young man who I last saw a few months ago in first class on American Airlines with a copy of “The Mystery of Capital” tucked under his arm, makes a striking political package. It is no surprise he is running first in the polls. However, Quiroga brings something else to this race besides image and words – a public record.

First, it should not be forgotten that the man who now portrays himself as a champion of Bolivian democracy rose to prominence as the Vice President to the nation’s former dictator (later turned politician), Hugo Banzer. In politics sometimes we reveal our truest colors by our alliances. The fact that Quiroga willingly served as number two to the man who was Bolivia’s version of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s should send a shiver up the spine of these who really believe in democracy.

More troubling, during his brief year as President (Banzer resigned in 2001 with fatal cancer) the young Texan-Bolivian outdid his mentor in a chilling category – government killings. Within months of taking office, in the eyes of many here, Quiroga is started to look, "even more like Banzer than Banzer." According to the Permanent Assembly on Human Rights, in just eight months Quiroga's government killed 13 people in political conflicts. Banzer's government, during three years in office, was responsible for 19 government killings. "He is using an even harder hand than Banzer," said Father Luis Sánchez, a Roman Catholic priest who served as President of the Human Rights Assembly's Cochabamba office at the time. "Quiroga's government resembles the darkest hours of the dictatorship [under Banzer in the 1970s], even more than Banzer's did."

On economic issues and specifically the privatization frenzy that has been at the heart of so many political battles here, Quiroga tries to pin the blame for failed economic policy on Sanchez de Lozada (“changes yes, but not those”). However, it was Quiroga and Banzer that presided over, for example, the disastrous handing over of Cochabamba’s public water system to the powerful Bechtel Corporation. It was a deal negotiated behind closed doors and so flawed that not even the World Bank, privatization’s big booster, supported it. When the people of Cochabamba protested rate hikes they could never afford, Banzer and Quiroga sent in troops and started shooting.

In a 2001 interview with New Yorker correspondent William Finnegan, Quiroga defended the Bechtel deal:

"Because it was, it's necessary to bring, to bring private investment to develop the water project. I mean Bolivia is not, it's not the Brazil of the world where they're lining up to invest in different things. I think we've had lots of processes where we'll wind up with not as many bidders as we thought."

One of Quiroga’s main rivals, Samuel Doria Medina went farther and became a co-investor with Bechtel in the privatization.

Words vs. Action

It is a staple of modern politics. In the midst of elections politicians promise the world, obscure their past, and hope that reality won’t catch up to them before the voting is over. As often as not it works. Bolivian politics is no different and no candidate is a saint. Quiroga, however, is spinning an image and a tale that looks very different than what he actually did when he had power.