Update on the Cochabamba Uprisings

It was certainly the largest massing of people in Cochabamba that I have seen since the water revolt seven years ago. At midday, a river of people, many blocks long, was filling the city’s main plaza, at least 5,000 people. Again, as yesterday, the demand of those marching was the resignation of Cochabamba’s elected state governor, Manfred Reyes Villa.

Two Worlds

Walking through the sea of protesters and listening to their comments, then doing the same with the rest of the city seeking to go about its business (in a center essentially shut down) was like walking through two vastly different worlds.

“The people have spoken, he has to resign.” That is what one older man concluded as he surveyed the thousands of men and women, many of them from rural areas beyond the city, who filled the center. In his view the ongoing uprising was a clear and compelling measure of public sentiment, a democratic expression that had to be respected.

“Who do these people think they are? The governor was democratically elected.” That was what a taxi driver said to me as we spoke a few minutes later, looking for an open route to another part of town. In his view, the crowds occupying Cochabamba’s core were defying democracy, not practicing it. Rule by rebellion.

For a brief moment on one of the many blocked off corners near the plaza I got to witness the two worlds and two perspectives in direct collision. A woman, who looked like a professional from her dress, accompanied by a slender man in a green necktie, was challenging a small crowd of young protesters.

“Manfred isn’t respecting the will of the people,” one of the protesters said.

“I supported Evo for president because I supported the change,” she replied. “But what has he actually changed other than telling police they can’t stop vandals?”

Despite the heated rhetoric and emotions, the most compelling thing is that they were actually having a dialogue, a real one, about the political future of the nation. As messy as it all seemed I did pause a moment to wonder if the US would not had been better off if people had been willing to engage with such conviction in spontaneous public, street corner debates about the wisdom of the Iraq war before it was launched. Sometimes democracy pops up in strange places.

The Chess Game

Today’s march, unlike yesterday’s, resulted in no burned buildings (the outside of the governor’s office is all smoke stains and broken windows) and no gassing. It is important to note that, according to everyone I spoke with who was actually there yesterday, the police clearly started firing gas on a peaceful protest and the assault on the state building was an angry reaction. In addition to the march in the city center, protesters have also begun to blockade the highways in and out of town.

Watching it all I couldn’t help feel like the whole scene was about regular people, on both sides, being caught up in a game of political chess not of their making. All of this is about a power struggle between politicians at the highest level. Morales and MAS are fed up with the demand that a minority be given veto power over every procedural move in a Constituent Assembly that is utterly stalled. Manfred Reyes Villa wanted to get in the national political game and did so by allying himself with the anti-Evo forces of the nation’s eastern departments.

Looked at coldly, as political chess, it is easy to wonder whether Ryes Villa looked even a move or two ahead. Even though he played a central role in the water privatization here seven years ago (as Mayor he signed the local water company’s authorization of the turnover to Bechtel), Reyes Villa has never been the target of the social movements that are so powerful here. Not until now.

A month ago he was happily governing his region utterly above the fray of the national political battle over the Assembly. A month ago he looked like a future president just waiting for his moment down the road. The people of Cochabamba voted by an overwhelming 63% against regional autonomy when it was on the ballot six months ago. Why Manfred set out to make himself a champion of what his voters so soundly rejected is anyone’s guess.

Today he has thousands of angry constituents demanding his resignation. And while some observers might say – he benefits from this, he looks like a victim of MAS strong-arming – there is one other rule in politics, be it in Bolivia or anywhere else. Having that many people so pissed off at you that they shut down a city to get you out of office, that isn’t where you want to be.