Bolivia: Notes on a Divided Country

Look, I am a foreigner here, even after ten years. So my perspective on things will always be limited. Even if I live here 100 years (FYI, unlikely). That said, here are some reflections from a few steps back about a country deeply divided.

Where to begin? How about with cooking oil?


A Different Kind of "War for Oil"

Just in case you haven't been paying attention to events here, the biggest issue in Bolivia right now isn't autonomy, regional elections, or even high-altitude futbol. It's inflation. It is on the lips of almost everyone I talk to. The father of one of the children in my daughter's kindergarten: "The price of meat went up 20 centavos per kilo from the morning to midday!" The woman selling at a store: "The price of everything is going up, milk, rice, bananas!" One report a week ago predicted that Bolivia's inflation would hit an annual rate of 25% this year. That's poison for people living on the margin, as so many do here.

Now, there are two things that have a long history of bringing down governments in Latin America (in addition to U.S. back coup attempts, a la Chile 1973) and that is natural disasters and inflation. Since Bolivia has just has a massive bout with the first and is in the midst of one with the other, it is no surprise that the Morales government wants to either battle inflation, look like it is battling inflation, and preferably both. In Bolivia a "W.I.N." button (Whip Inflation Now, for our many readers who never heard of Gerald Ford) isn't a real option, and so we come to cooking oil.

With prices for cooking oil, a major staple here, going up Morales decided to act. The government issued an executive decree forbidding Bolivian cooking oil producers from exporting their product. The theory: inflation is what you get when you have too much money chasing too few goods. So, dump a large quantity of cooking oil previously destined for abroad into the domestic market and you ought to see prices come down. Evo the capitalist. Supply and demand.

Well, a few problems. First, Bolivia's export production is about five times its domestic market. You'd have to massively ramp up the frying going on around these parts to use up that much oil, and don't even get me started on the cholesterol implications of such a move. Second, even though the owners of all those cooking oil companies may be rich men from Santa Cruz, the companies also employ many thousands of regular Bolivians who are going to get royally screwed economically, both in the short-term as production plummets and in the long-term as foreign buyers declare that Bolivia is not a reliable supplier.

It is hard to imagine Santa Cruz more unified against Morales than it has been, but cooking oil did the trick and a new round of road blockades and other protest actions are underway.

Current report from the Cochabamba marketplace, the cost of a liter of oil has dropped Bs. 1.50. Worth it? You decide.

Meanwhile the government has dropped hints that it is willing to lift the 6-month export ban if producers drop their domestic prices down to 11 or 12 Bs. per liter (its Bs. 13.50 today). So perhaps it is just a tactic by the government to force a drop in prices. You know – when you have them by their profits their hearts and minds will follow. We'll see.

Mind you, there are certainly people here, smart ones than me, who think that the big producers of various sorts are deliberately monkeying with domestic supplies of some products, to fuel inflation and do political damage to a government that many of them hate more than drought or floods.

That Whole Election Thing

Now call me old-fashioned, but I like the kind of elections you can count on. You know, always held the first Tuesday after the first Monday….that kind of thing. In this respect it is unclear whether Bolivia is following the unhealthy example of Michigan and Florida Democrats or visa-versa, but we don't really know what elections we are having and when. Try to follow this is you can.

Late last year it looked like we were going to have three big – previously unscheduled – elections in 2008. There would be a national referendum vote on the MAS-backed constitution, regional votes on autonomy, and a showdown recall vote in which the President, the Vice-President, and all nine state Governors would face an up or down moment of truth with voters. All this looked like really excellent news for makers of t-shirts and caps, the standard campaign give-aways here.

But then the bumps came. None of the politicians involved could agree on the rules for that recall vote (not a major surprise) and the National Electoral Court ruled that neither the constitution vote nor the Santa Cruz autonomy vote scheduled for May 4 passed legal muster, suspending both elections. Both MAS and Santa Cruz civic leaders decried the ruling, but while MAS dropped its plans for a May 4 vote, Santa Cruz kept right on moving like an electoral Energizer Bunny. Why? Well, most likely the difference is that MAS knew that it could easily lose on May 4 (akin to Chavez's constitutional vote in December), while everyone knows that in Santa Cruz the margin of victory on autonomy will be overwhelming.

So plans for the vote move forward in Santa Cruz. The national government, which has declared the vote illegal, has said that the police won't guard polling places, as is custom. Santa Cruz's governor said, who cares we'll put together our own vote watchers from the Jóvenes Crucenistas, whose history of public beatings and racial epithets does not exactly inspire confidence in a fair process. This would be roughly the equivalent of inviting as vote supervisors those Aymara groups who slit a dog's throat to make their point recently. MAS also says it will organize civil disobedience to disrupt the vote, to which delighted Santa Cruz leaders have said, in essence, Bring it on! If testosterone among male politicians in Bolivia (all sides) was a marketable commodity, the nation would have an ample supply for all its global markets and could just give it away free domestically.

So that's the story with elections, for the moment.

And Now, a Little More Analysis

A good portion of the foreign writing about Bolivia (and there are notable exceptions) usually collapses into one of two caricatures quickly. Choose one:

Bolivia is in the midst of a historic indigenous revolution, led by a charismatic leader, Evo Morales, who is under attack from all sides by a racist elite of white rich people in Santa Cruz.

or,

Evo Morales, a despot in the mold and pocket of that Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez, is methodically destroying both Bolivian democracy and its economy. Santa Cruz civic leaders stand at the head of a heroic opposition fighting for the soul of the nation.

Those are pretty much the cartoons. And the facts?

Is the opposition to Morales primarily racism in a flimsy disguise?

Well, anyone that tells you racism isn’t a serious factor isn't giving you a straight story. The epithets aimed at Morales and his supporters by his opponents are loud and clear, from the streets of Cochabamba a year ago January to more recent events in Sucre. A friend of mine here told me about the cell phone conversation he overheard not long ago involving one of Santa Cruz's major civic leaders: "Indio de mierda, su lugar es lustrar mis zapatos no ser Presidente." A lot of them say such things in public as well.

Race is also an issue from the other side though. As another friend of mine noted, the MAS-backed constitution would limit new land rights for the dispossessed to the indigenous dispossessed, which leaves out a whole lot of destitute Bolivians who have mixed blood.

It is also important to note – an observation that riles some Morales fans when I say it – that a lot of working poor here in the cities have joined the opposition for no reason related to race. I heard the rap again a few days ago in the dilapidated Toyota Station wagon in which I was one of the sardine passengers headed for Tiquipya. "I voted for the government. I wanted to get rid of all the corruption. But every time I see Evo on television I get mad. He just wants to pick fights with everyone." This was not someone behind the wheel of a Ford Expedition.

Has the opposition done everything in its power to provoke conflict? Not much question here. From the start, the political opposition made a decision to try to block Morales and the social movements, not to engage or influence them. Polarization clearly works to the opposition's political advantage and Morales and his allies have fallen for the bait every time.

Bolivia, as far as I can tell, is under the spell of all kinds of schisms at once. Some like to paint things as right and left, socialists versus oligarchs, etc. True enough, there is plenty of that. Others focus on the indigenous/white divide, and that is in full play as well. Still others focus on the regional split, the oil rich east vs. the depleted mines west – again, a clear fact.

But day-to-day, in crowded taxi trufis, conversations at the market, or at the gate in front of the school (a regular Bolivian school, FYI), I hear another divide on display. There are many here who see this moment as an epic historic struggle, on both sides, in which losses of blood and treasure are the needed price to pay. But there are many others who are hoping to just live their lives in peace, with some new opportunity added into the mix and a chance for their children to have more chances than they have.

So Bolivia is divided along many fault lines at once, and fault lines like these are hard to cross. Who in Bolivia, from either side, is positioned to do what Senator Obama did a week ago in his speech on race in the U.S. – to articulate in full voice the world views of both sides in a way that both might hear?

That kind of leadership is in much shorter supply in Bolivia right now than Fino cooking oil. And the price paid for the lack of it is going up as well.