Battle at the Cochabamba Airport

A Special Report from the Embattled Runway at the Cochabamba Airport

Normally on a Thursday morning Jacamo Urresti, a pilot with Bolivia's LAB airlines, would be on the runway at the Cochabamba airport in the cockpit of a Boeing 727, taking off on a flight destined for Santa Cruz. This morning Urresti was one of several hundred LAB workers and their supporters who broke through police lines to take over and block that runway – in Bolivia's escalating crisis over the country's treasured and privatized national airline.

It is a crisis that, this morning, saw national police under the command of President Evo Morales tear gas and beat some of his oldest political allies.

One More Failed Experiment in Privatization

LAB has been Bolivia's national air carrier for eighty years, one of the oldest commercial institutions in the nation. It employs more than 2,000 people (and according to the pilot's union indirectly sustains more than 9,000 families), also making it one of Bolivia's largest and most important employers. In 1995 LAB became one more lab rat in that great IMF-induced economic experiment of privatizing all of Bolivia's state-owned industries.

Under "capitalization" LAB was one of almost a dozen companies in which the government handed off a majority, managing stake to private buyers, amidst great promises about how the loss of public control would be offset by new investment and efficient leadership. A decade later, LAB is a case study of how bad that experiment failed.

"The airline has had a management of thieves," says Urresti, an active member of the pilots' union. "They have dismantled the corporation, selling it off, selling it off, selling it off." According to the union, LAB (which was solvent when it was privatized a decade ago) now has a debt somewhere in excess of $140 million.

Service has suffered as well. My personal nickname for LAB is Lloyds Atrasado Boliviano (which translates, "late"), because getting anywhere on time on LAB is about as likely as finding bagels in Cochabamba. Good luck.

When privatized originally, the new controlling owners were partners in the Brazilian airline VASP. Those owners evidently pilfered LAB jets out of Bolivian service to help with their other airline. Three years ago, Bolivian millionaire Ernesto Asbun swooshed in to supposedly save the day, buying VASP's shares and putting LAB back into Bolivian hands, albeit private ones.

In fact, Asbun turned out to be more pirate than effective manager of an airline. Half the controlling interest he supposedly brought three years ago he bought on credit. While writing boasting columns for the monthly LAB in-flight magazine, he was selling off assets and building up massive LAB debt. In December it all became too much to keep hidden, as LAB employees didn’t get paid for almost three months. It was also discovered that Asbun had stopped making legally-required payments to the employee pension fund.

The Battle for LAB

With that began the battle for LAB and calls for the Morales government to re-nationalize the airline.

In February the pilots and other workers staged a full-system shut down, leaving thousands stranded. Among them was one of our young Democracy Center staff, who spent three days camping (tent pitched) in the Caracas airport. The shut-down provoked a timid promise of intervention from the freshly-inaugurated Morales. The pilots went back to work, LAB took anew to the air, but the government's promises crashed, as Morales and his advisors threw up their hands and said that LAB was really out of their hands.

A week ago LAB workers and their supporters from other unions launched a hunger strike and by yesterday more than 200 people in three cities were participating, including a large group at the Cochabamba airport. With the Morales government still refusing to act, the LAB workers and their allies decided on a more radical course. This morning hundreds of them broke through an armed police line to take over the runway in Cochabamba. The national police, equipped with tear gas, rubber bullets and long black riot batons, used them all against the protesters, beating people, pulling women by the hair and leaving several seriously wounded, including at least one journalist.

"We can’t allow an airline that has been around for eighty years, that two thousand workers and their families depend on for their livelihoods, we can’t allow it to be sacked [by Asbun] and to let it disappear with the stroke of a pen," said Urresti. "My father was a pilot for this airline. My grandparents flew this airline. It is a symbol of the Bolivian people."

"Evo is Tear Gassing His Brothers"

Who sent the police with orders to beat protesters is unclear. When I asked commanders that question at the airport this morning they refused to answer. Technically the police are under the command of Cochabamba's regional governor, Manfred Reyes Villa, a former military officer and graduate of the much-decried US Army School of the Americas. Reyes Villa went on TV at mid-day to deny that the police at the airport were under his orders, a claim many doubt. It is also highly unlikely that national police would be under orders at the airport without the involvement of the national government, and that points the finger at Morales and those closest to him.

Next to the runway this morning, I asked Oscar Olivera who, as head of the Cochabamba Factory Workers Union, is supporting the LAB workers, "Is it fair to say that Evo is now tear gassing his friends?" Weary from a week-long hunger strike and having been hit this morning by police, Oscar told me, "Evo is tear gassing his brothers."

Shortly after being gassed, Olivera received a call on his cell phone from Bolivia's Vice-President, Alvaro Garcia Linera, who told Olivera, "We can’t block the country, can’t block airports."

Said Olivera, "These are the same people, Evo and Alvaro, who before [they became the government] supported the force of the people expressing themselves."

As I write this, several hundred LAB workers and their supporters remain beside the airport runway in Cochabamba, being watched over by an equal number of heavily-equipped riot police, under orders from someone somewhere who won’t admit it. No flights have left since this morning and the next one is scheduled for 6pm. It is unclear whether LAB workers will try to take the runway once again.

Union leaders told me they expect Morales to make some sort of intervention to stop the destruction of the airline, perhaps before the end of the day. If not, LAB workers will be joined tomorrow by a citizen force much larger than the one at the airport today, including students and professors at the public university, neighborhood groups, and other unions.

Said one of the activists I spoke with, "If the Morales government isn't willing to take forceful action to save the national airline, it is even more sure it won’t stand up to the foreign oil companies."

The battle for LAB is not just a battle for LAB, it is a battle over whether Morales will be kept true to his promises during the election for a new kind of economy. So far, it doesn't look so good.

A Follow-Up Reflection

I think that the debate over “nationalizing LAB is an important one and I hope the comments on this post will look at that seriously. This may surprise some readers, but I also think that nationalization of LAB, especially at this point, is full of problems.

It would be a huge mistake for the government to get saddled with the massive debt that LAB’s private sector operators have racked up. It also isn’t clear to me that the Bolivian government is in a position to run an airline right now. Six years after the water revolt, Cochabamba still hasn’t mastered the art of running its public water company, SEMAPA, and an airline is harder, I suspect.

That said, it is an awesome display of private sector incompetence and thievery to have sacked and destroyed an airline that was solvent when it was privatized. LAB is a vital part of Bolivia’s economic architecture and, for that reason alone, there is a strong public interest in having it survive. I haven’t studied the details enough to say with great confidence what should happen but it probably includes the total dismissal (and some jailing) of the airlines current administration, a declaration of bankruptcy to get out of as much of its debt as possible, and then a reconstitution with strong government involvement.

Advocates of LAB’s “nationalization” need to be very specific about what they mean and equally specific about how they will address the hard choices involved. However, the longer that Evo Morales pretends that this isn’t the government’s problem to solve, the bigger his LAB headache is going to get.