Notes on a General Strike

Thanks to Governor Manfred Reyes Villa and the other local sponsors of Cochabamba’s participation in today’s ‘paro civico’ (general strike), Superman can fly again. Okay, I guess that requires some additional explanation.

In most of Cochabamba, today’s paro feels like a Sunday dropped into the middle of the week. The streets in my neighborhood are empty of cars, but peopled by slow-walking pedestrians. The small stores are open here beyond the city center. People are still buying milk, eggs and, I suspect, a little extra beer. Think of a snow day in upstate New York, but with really nice weather.

I took advantage of the morning at home to turn to a long-neglected project, teaching my 5-year-old daughter how to make movies. We settled on a father-daughter production of “Superman’s Hat”, acted out with my collection of small knitted finger puppets bought for 2 Bolivianos apiece from a kindly lady who sells them on the street near my office. The plot was simple. A monkey steals Superman’s tiny knitted cap (okay, this was a bit improvised), which, as it turns out, he has to have in order to fly. Thanks to the friendly intervention of an elephant, a donkey and a pig, the hat is reclaimed and returned to its superhero owner.

So, Manfred, on behalf of the ‘Man of Steel’, thanks for the morning at home.

A citywide shutdown like this one, regardless of whether it comes from the right or left (they take turns) is generally something everyone honors, whether they agree with the politics behind it or not. “Are you guys going to work at all tomorrow?” I asked a taxi driver last night. “Probably not, if there are people out with sticks looking to break car windows, it isn’t worth it.” The stores and businesses downtown are closed down for the same reason.

Downtown, of course, is always the place to watch. As we saw on January 11th, what seems like an extra Sunday can turn into a bloody melee horrifically fast. What I hear so far is that, while there have been ample fireworks exploded into the air – another general strike tradition – serious confrontations have been few.

My colleague Aldo tells me that there was one such outbreak at a bridge on the outskirts of the center, where two crowds of people with very different views on current events almost came to blows, finally blocked from one another by local police. For a time the anti-Morales group lined up on motorcycles and threatened to ride through the police lines. “They looked like something from a Mad Max movie,” Aldo reports.

Back here in my neighborhood, I asked a fellow who has a little electronics repair shop what he thought of the paro. “Ayyy, I don’t have a government job like all those people. I have to work.” Certainly there are people passionate on both sides of this general strike, or there wouldn’t be one. Most people though are just caught in the middle, with a good many of them losing a precious day's wages as a result.

I actually think my pre-kinder daughter summed it up pretty well, when I asked her:

Why isn’t there any school today?

Because there’s a paro.

What is a paro?

It’s when the cars and the trufis don’t drive around.

Any why aren’t the taxis and the trufis driving around.

Because no.

For most people here, the paro is just another given complication to deal with. As long as it doesn’t explode into something else.

For background on the social conflicts behind today’s six-department general strike, see our Blog post from yesterday.