Santa Cruz on Strike

Readers:

The past few days have been filled with charges by the Bolivian government against USAID and other U.S. agencies for meddling in Bolivian internal politics. This includes a demand by the Morales administration for public disclosure of how U.S. funds are spent here. We are working on a post on that issue, including information from documents just released to The Democracy Center from U.S. officials under a Freedom of Information Act Request. Meanwhile, here's a look at the general strike this week by opponents of the government.

Jim Shultz

Santa Cruz on Strike

On Tuesday of this week, thanks to the good graces of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, I had the opportunity to spend the day there and speak with locals during the one-day 'Paro Civico' [general strike]. Santa Cruz led a move by six departments to stage a one-day protest demanding a host of things, ranging from regional autonomy to moving the national capital.

Well, it wasn't actually an invitation explicitly to me. It so happened that my flight home from the U.S. landed in Santa Cruz on Tuesday morning and the 'paro' led to cancellation of all of Bolivia's domestic flights during the day. Hence my family and I spent the day in the city leading the rebellion.

While most all traffic in the city was blocked, the Committee did sell special permits to a few select taxi drivers, one of whom transported us from the airport into town where we could rest up for the day in a local hotel (flights resumed shortly after sunset). In addition to a much-needed nap after a night squeezed uncomfortably into seat 22D, our stopover also gave me time to walk about the city and speak with people.

"We want autonomy," the taxi driver from the airport told me. "We want the resources that come from Santa Cruz to stay here, to support development here. Right now our resources go to La Paz and are distributed all over the country. Here in Santa Cruz we work. In La Paz they survive just off politics. It isn't right."

I heard similar sentiments from others, including the small women running the lone snack kiosk open near our hotel. "We work hard. We want our resources to stay here," she told me. But then she complained about how to work stoppage had hurt business for her and the other people who eek out a living in the commercial center.

Battle of the Stereotypes

Those from elsewhere in the country like to characterize the Santa Cruz autonomy rebellion as the creation of a rich, white, Cruceño elite that drives around in late model SUVs. To be certain, a good deal of that rebellion is fueled by rich, white, elite Cruceños driving around in late model SUVs and one does not have to listen too hard to hear overt anti-indigenous racism expressed as part of the deal. Nevertheless, there are also plenty of people in Santa Cruz who don’t match that description who are also backers of "autonomy" – including people like the woman at the kiosk and the man behind the wheel of the cab – who don't match the stereotypes at all. While not all people in the region share the Civic Committee's view (and it is dangerous there to disagree too openly), it is clear that many, many people do.

I didn’t ask the cab driver in Santa Cruz if he thought that cab drivers in El Alto worked less hard. Nor did I ask the woman at the kiosk if she worked harder than her counterparts on the Prado in La Paz. The clear truth is that people such as these work extraordinarily hard in every part of Bolivia. In fact, if "working hard" were going to be the basis of dividing up national revenues, my guess is that cab drivers who work 6-and-a-half-day weeks and kiosk women who work 14 hour days, from all the regions, would stand a good chance of being first in line.

Who Doesn't Want the Biggest Piece of Pie?

Overshadowing issues such as relocation of locate the national capital and regional control of education – one Santa Cruz billboard declares, "Our children are ours!" – the real issue at hand is how to divide the wealth that comes from Bolivia's natural resources. Geology did not do Bolivia the favor of spreading these out equitably. In this particular turn of history those resources are gas and oil and geology put them in the country's eastern departments. Earlier and for a long time those resources were in the tin and silver mines underneath the western highlands.

I still have yet to find a reference to where leaders in Santa Cruz were demanding autonomy when the nation's wealth was coming from the mines. In those days spreading the nation's wealth seemed to be fine policy. Nor, apparently, did Santa Cruz have any great problem with national policies, under Hugo Banzer and others, that made the region the leading beneficiary of massive borrowing from abroad. Nor did Santa Cruz seem to have any problem with that massive foreign debt being the burden of the entire nation.

In short, it mostly boils down to a basic issue of how to fairly distribute the wealth under a nation's feet when accidents of geology put a lot more of that wealth under some people's feet than others. Lest any readers think this is a uniquely Bolivian conflict, I suggest you look to Iraq. The conflicts there between Sunni, Shia, and Kurds, over how to distribute oil revenue, make the regional disputes in Bolivia look like a love-in.

A big part of what fuels the regional battle here is human nature writ large. It is human nature to want the biggest share of something in front of us that is valued but limited. Try choosing between the last two pieces of pie with my 4-year-old (or me if it's pumpkin). It is also human nature to create logical rationalizations for wanting the biggest piece because, "Well, I just want it," sounds too self-serving.

Many people in Santa Cruz – whether it is the people cruising to Alexander's Coffee in their 4x4s or the ones selling them cheap gum en route – think the oil and gas pie is theirs, not because they earned it but because geology made them the fortunate ones this time around.

How to distribute the nation's mineral wealth in a fair and just way is a decent debate to have, and an important one. I suspect that Bolivia might do better if that discussion were had by taxi drivers and chewing gum vendors than by political leaders who have wrapped the issue in such heated and self-serving rhetoric. Again, the issue remains whether Bolivia can resolve this debate through democracy and politics before it spills into the streets and into violence that the politicians can no longer control.

And a Good Day for Bikes

Lastly, on my walk I also spoke to three happy young boys out for the day on bikes. A paro civico is a really fine day for bike riding.

Why are people having a strike?

For democracy!

What does it means to have democracy?

Autonomy and moving the capital to Sucre.

Wouldn't it be hard to move those big buildings?

No, they would build new ones.

And it’s a good day for bikes too, right?

Yes, democracy and bikes!