The Evo and Hugo Show

One of the interesting things about having lived in and written about Bolivia for eight years is watching the foreign press that parachute in for a week or two, declare themselves Bolivia experts, and start publishing. Some get Bolivia and the story remarkably well and some don’t get it very well at all. And most, time has shown, tune into to whatever current angle on Bolivia is in vogue in the other foreign press.

And the story that is in vogue this week is the “Evo-Hugo Show”, the combination political/psychological analysis of the relationship between Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and what it means for Bolivia. That story is going to get even bigger over the weekend as Chavez returns to Bolivia, this time to join Morales in the coca-growing Chapare region before massive crowds of coca farmers.

What is the truth about the Morales-Chavez alliance?

On the one hand there are the conspiracy theories. Chavez is engaged in a not-so-secret plan to dominate South American politics and make the continent a “Bolivarian” beachhead of anti-US politics in the sole superpower’s political backyard (or “neighborhood” as President George Bush tagged it this week).

According to this theory, Chavez sent money and agents into Bolivia to help make Evo Morales president last December. He did this in cahoots was that wily old Communist, Fidel Castro who, according to a senior US Pentagon official, actually had agents in Bolivia that were activated to promote the protests over the Carlos Mesa gas law a year ago. Now Chavez is consolidating that power and he was the secret force behind Morales’ “gas nationalization” decree May 1.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal added its reporting voice to the conspiracy theory, in a piece written by José De Córdoba and David Luhnow. According to the WSJ, Morales, “has aligned his country so closely with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez that it is sometimes difficult to tell where one government begins and the other ends.” The lead evidence presented:

During an April 25 session with India's Jindal Steel & Power Ltd., two Venezuelan experts whispered into the ears of their Bolivian counterparts and passed them notes, says Juan Mogrovejo, a representative of Jindal Steel who attended the meetings. Then the Bolivians hardened their terms, demanding that the length of the contract be cut to 20 years from 40. "The proposed contract changed radically," Mr. Mogrovejo says. Other companies have also expressed dismay at the new terms.

In other words, Venezuelan economic experts evidently came in and helped the new Bolivian government negotiate a better deal for the Bolivian people. That is worrisome – for foreign corporations who had hoped to keep negotiating really exploitive deals that took Bolivians for a ride. It is too bad Venezuelan experts like these weren’t at the table, along with Bolivian officials who cared, when the Bechtel water takeover deal was negotiated in 1999, or during the gas negotiations a decade ago. Bolivia would have more money in its treasury and close to a hundred people killed in protests against those deals might still be alive.

It is too bad that IMF and World Bank officials didn’t see their role in “economic assistance” as including helping Bolivia get the best deals possible in their foreign negotiations. Really, it is pretty hard to see the evil in the WSJ’s worrisome example of Venezuelan meddling.

The charge that Venezuela masterminded Morales “gas nationalization” decree is just plain silly. That demand came from the Bolivian people back when Chavez was still a young soldier in the Venezuelan army and it was the central campaign pledge by Morales in last year’s campaign. It is also a move that was endorsed by Economic Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz in a visit to Bolivia this past week.

Silly as well as the WSJ’s description of, “Bolivia's decision to kick out foreign energy companies this month and nationalize its natural-gas reserves.” The decree clearly did not kick out the foreign energy companies, which is why they are still here. It basically said that the government intends to renegotiate all the contracts, aiming to get better terms for the Bolivian people. If the companies made such a declaration aimed at the government, the WSJ would probably have called it sensible capitalism.

On the other side of the coin in the Evo-Hugo debate are the cheerleaders of that alliance. They say that Chavez and his oil money are helping Bolivia stand up to the US and foreign corporations, just as Venezuelan loans to Argentina helped that country pay off its debts to the IMF and kiss the Fund goodbye. They see Chavez as a counterweight to a bellicose US government, setting a model of how oil revenue can finance health care, literacy and other basic services for the poor. They deny the charges that Chavez is involved in any scheme to centralize his power in Venezuela and continue as President for many years to come. They welcome the close embrace between he and Morales.

It is a debate, interestingly enough, that seems to be much hotter among foreigners looking at Bolivia and trying to analyze events here than it is among Bolivians who actually live, day to day, with the course of those events. I have yet to hear the “Chavez” issue raised by any of the many regular Bolivians that I speak with about the news every day – the lady who sells me eggs, the driver on my bus (the Trufi #5), the guy who tends bar where my daughter waits tables.

Here’s what I hear from them:

What about the people who aren’t indigenous, but aren’t rich either? What place do we have in Morales’ vision for Bolivia?

I think it is good that Evo issued the decree on gas, but let’s see what really comes out in these negotiations, no?

I just hope we stop having so many blockades and strikes. I need to work. We all need to work.

The Bolivians one hears stressing out about Chavez’ influence here are mainly opposition politicians trying to make hay out of it. The man Morales beat nearly two to one last December, Tuto Quiroga, told the WSJ, "We have become a colony of Venezuela." Aside from being the kind of wild exaggeration that one expects to hear on Fox news, it is also important to note, that whatever influence in Bolivian politics Venezuela is establishing, it is pale beyond words to the nearly outright control of economic policy that the US-dominated IMF and World Bank have had here for two decades.

The issue of any foreign nation wielding too much power in Bolivia is always a legitimate issue, especially in a country that has had its borders, its minerals and its national destiny raided and determined by foreign powers for half a millennium. But the debate on this topic seems to be less about whether there is foreign influence than about who is in and who is out. The US government and its media champions are understandably uncomfortable with the decline of US influence in Latin America and the rise of a counterweight with cash.

So now get ready for the photos, the headlines, and the official horror from some quarters as Chavez and Morales stand this weekend before throngs of coca farmers. It is, to be sure, the diplomatic equivalent of flipping up a large bi-national middle finger at the superpower to the north. Is it smart diplomacy for Morales and Bolivia? I doubt it. His Vice President, Alvaro Garcia Linera, and I had a conversation about this just before he took office. Chavez likes to piss off the US government for sport, it often seems. Bolivia had no interest in following suit. Its diplomatic moves, Alvaro said, would be made like moves on a chessboard, thought out clearly in advance for all the implications involved.

On the other hand, Bolivia, much to the dismay of some, is in fact a sovereign state and it can associate with any other nation and leader it cares to without a permission slip from Washington, or the Wall Street Journal for that matter.

Let us just hope, for Bolivia’s sake, that Morales is deepening that association for reasons that are strategic, solid and well thought out, and not just following Chavez into the arena of pissing people off for sport.