Report from a Rally

What position Mother Nature is taking on recent political events in Bolivia is getting hard to discern.

It has been a full week of rainless, blazing hot weather here since a rain and hailstorm of biblical proportions pounded Cochabamba the night before last week’s South American Presidential Summit. Then today at 3:30, precisely as marchers were gathering downtown for a rally demanding 2/3 approval of the building blocks of the new constitution, the Bolivian sky opened up again and drenched us all. Hail stones the size of marbles whacked the heads of anyone left out in the scramble for cover. The fastest in the crowd jammed into Burger King, owned ironically by one of the most prominent politicians demanding the 2/3 vote, Samuel Doria Medina. But I really doubt he engineered the downpour as a way of boosting business.

“Two Thirds is About Consensus.”

Under the tree where I took cover I had a chance to chat about the current political uproar with some of the other people getting soaked. A kindly older woman wearing a t-shirt reading, “Mom of a University of Arizona Student” explained to me that the demand for a 2/3 vote in the Constituent Assembly is about assuring that the country’s new constitution is based on a national consensus not just the will of one political party. A man who I presumed to be her husband, an equally friendly retiree wearing sandals and a blue baseball cap told me that he thinks Evo Morales’ advances on gas nationalization and land reform are terrific and he supports them. “Excelente!” he told me.

His views on Evo and MAS’ moves to let the pieces of the new constitution be approved by simple majority do not exactly qualify as “excelente”. [Note: As we have reported consistently on this issue – there is no disagreement that the final constitution must either be approved by a 2/3 vote of the Assembly of a majority vote of the Bolivian electorate.] “If MAS can write the new constitution with a simple majority then they don’t need to talk with anyone else,” he explained. “We don’t want one party rule, like they had in Nazi Germany. We know what that is like.”

He went on to explain to me that the problem is that Evo is listening too much to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He also explained that he has a brother who lives in Caracas and that since Chavez took over the streets there are filled with garbage.

On the topic of “what we need is consensus” I raised the obvious problem with my new wet friends – doesn’t that also give a minority the right to just veto anything the majority wants? I used an example. “Suppose you, I, and this other fellow here decide to get out of this wet mess and sit down together to have a beer. Suppose you two really want Taquina and I really want a Pacena and all three of us are stubborn jerks? Doesn’t that let me, one guy, keep you, two guys, from having the beer you really want?”

The woman in the U of Arizona t-shirt said we should just order personal sized beers. I suggested to her that the constitution is more like one of those giant bottles you have to share. The fellow in the blue baseball cap said it just meant that he and his friend would have the burden of convincing me that Taquina is a better beer. “Okay, but if I want a Pacena and only a Pacena. What then?” They were still sorting that one out when the rain stopped and we went our separate ways.

I have no doubt about the sincerity of the people I chatted with in the crowd or that their sincerity was shared by a good many of the 1,000 to 2,000 people I saw gathered at the end of the Cochabamba Prado. Evo Morales and his backers shouldn’t doubt their sincerity either. Yes this was mostly a march of Cochabamba’s middle class (with some notable exceptions, including several groups of indigenous waving wiphala flags). But it isn’t hard to understand why Evo makes them nervous.

Evo speaks passionately about the indigenous and rarely reminds Bolivians that he understands the challenges of everyone else. His education ministry recently sent notices out to all the schools, including private ones, that they will be expected to start offering primary instruction in one of the country’s indigenous languages. On a recent trip to Santa Cruz he didn’t exactly take the statesmanlike high road when he announced that the hunger strikers there were forgoing eating because they were fat.

…And Political Games

That said, it also isn’t hard to understand why MAS backers are a little suspicious about the current political choreography of their opposition and a city awash in white t-shirts reading “2/3!”. After the rally I stopped by Dumbos for a little cup of ice cream (maracuya sorbet, I highly recommend it!) and noticed that all the young people working there had “2/3!” shirts on.

“Why are you wearing those?” I asked the young woman tossing me a scoop. “Are you in support of 2/3?”

“No the owners made us put them on.”

So much for “We don’t want anyone imposing their will on us.”

A number of professors at the public university similarly postponed final exams and made their students attend the rally. Some businesses and other schools ordered their employees to go.

While there are reasonable questions about how many of the people getting soaked this afternoon were there out of democratic principle (I have no doubt that many were) versus those ordered out, there is no doubt about who led the orchestration. Among the many paid advertisements in today’s Los Tiempos newspaper promoting the rally, the most colorful was placed by the convener of the rally, the elected Governor of the state of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa (known better here as “Bon Bom”).

“TOGETHER we will make a single voice for the UNITY of the country in defense of DEMOCRACY,” proclaimed the advertisement placed by the once and likely future presidential candidate.

One of Reyes Villa’s more notable democratic acts in the past was flying back to Bolivia from Miami in October 2003 to stand by the side of about-to-be-deposed President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada while “Goni’s” government was slaughtering people in the streets during the “gas war.” Even Goni’s own Vice President had broken with him by the time Reyes Villa offered his backing.

There is also another little-noticed element to how Reyes Villa is playing political chess at this point that ought to get more notice. In his 2002 campaign against Sanchez de Lozada, Reyes Villa went to great lengths to not draw attention to his history as a military officer, which his advisors clearly considered a liability in a nation with fresh memories of military dictatorship. In fact, Goni’s political handlers, led by James Carville (yes, that James Carville) made Reyes Villa crazy by digging up an old photo of him in uniform to splash across their attack ads.

Today Reyes Villa is very clearly pulling his military credentials out of the closet and making them a key part of his message. His ad in today’s paper identifies him as: “Captain Manfred Reyes Villa, Governor and General Commander of the Department of Cochabamba.” The change is notable, and chilling.

To be sure, the crowd that turned out in Cochabamba today, and the much bigger one expected out in the streets of Santa Cruz on Friday, is raising a legitimate issue. Should MAS be able to create a new constitution in a way that basically excludes the opposition from real input? Giving the opposition a veto isn’t the answer but neither is dismissing all this as just manipulation by the US Embassy.

But underneath the surface, this is about power and politics. What I saw on the streets of Cochabamba today was not just the pouring of surprise hailstones but the opening act in Bolivia’s next election for President – between Evo Morales (who MAS aims to let stand for reelection via a change to the constitution) and Captain and Commander Manfred Reyes Villa.