Behind Today’s Autonomy Vote, and Reports from the Street

Readers:

Preliminary returns report that 86% of those who participated in the controversial vote yesterday supported autonomy for the Santa Cruz region. Approximately 40% of Santa Cruz voters chose not to participate at all.

In adition, a 69-year-old man has been reported dead by the Bolivian press, asphyxiated from tear gas used by police on a crowd in Santa Cruz today. Several others are injured. This was the human cost of today’s Santa Cruz autonomy vote.

This extended post primarily features reports from the street, from four major Bolivian cities with a major stake in today’s Santa Cruz vote – Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, La Paz and Potosi. You’ll find those below. However, because we will have many readers today who are not so familiar with Bolivian politics, we precede those reports with some analysis. For those readers who just came for the reports from the street, feel free to skip on down.

Jim Shultz

Behind Today’s Autonomy Vote

Today there was a vote here in Bolivia. I call it a “vote” rather than an election because, while thousands of people in Santa Cruz today did go to the polls, the legitimacy of that vote is in real dispute. National election authorities have called it illegal. It is as if Arnold Schwarzenegger convened a vote, without national authorization, to exempt California from the U.S. Constitution – say, in the name of higher fuel efficiency standards. How should we interpret its validity or its democratic-ness? So it is with Santa Cruz.

However, even before Santa Cruz officials deliver their numbers, the result that really matters is clear. Bolivia today is a nation deeply divided.

The core of that division is not about the more concrete topics fueling the Santa Cruz autonomy vote – matters such as land reform, gas revenue distribution, or the export of cooking oil. The division here is over a historic process of political and economic change that many people believe in deeply and that others despise with full force. It is also a process of change represented, but by no means begun or owned, by Evo Morales.

Millions of Bolivians identify deeply with the process of change underway in their country. They believe it is aimed directly at lifting up their difficult lives and they have fought for that change for decades, against dictators and ‘democrats’ alike. Today by the tens of thousands – in Cochabamba, La Paz, El Alto, Potosi and elsewhere – they returned to the streets to remind those watching, and themselves, that they are still willing to fight for a ‘revolution’. Even if that revolution has become muddled for two years in the rocky complexities of governing.

On the other side are many other Bolivians dead set against those changes. Some are driven out of direct economic self-interest and they see Morales as an Aymara Robin Hood and themselves as the vulnerable wealthy of Nottingham. Some oppose Morales out of ideology, a defense of smart business against weak-headed socialism. Others come to their opposition out of politics. Evo and his allies stand in the way recovering power they held for a very long time and lost in a windstorm in 2005. And there are absolutely others who oppose Bolivia’s first indigenous president out of thinly-veiled racism against “un indio de mierda.”

And then there is the up-for-grabs middle.

Today’s twin events – the vote in Santa Cruz and the anti-autonomy mass rallies elsewhere – make three things clear:

First, in Santa Cruz, the wealthy elite that pressed the autonomy drive has demonstrated their ability to capture much of that middle and solidify a powerful sense of ‘regional interest’ that identifies Evo as its enemy. Others can debate whether Santa Cruz’s vehemence was manipulated or natural. There is plenty of evidence both ways. It is sufficient to say, however, that deep opposition to MAS in the department is a reality. This not only solidifies Santa Cruz as a huge anti-Morales block but it will intensify the desire of other MAS opponents in other regions to try to repeat the autonomy formula. Regional interest will now become the key weapon in stopping Morales and what he represents.

Second, the autonomy vote has unified progressive social movements in a way that they have not been since Evo’s election. After Morales took office those movements went through a quiet separation. Some, such as the cocaleros and the powerful national irrigators union (regantes) went into the government. Others, such as the factory workers union here in Cochabamba, stayed on the outside and leveled criticism in private but rarely took on Morales in public. Santa Cruz’ challenge has put them all back together in the streets. Today’s Cochabamba march was the city’s largest in years (see photo above and report below).

And the third thing that is clear is that what happens next is not clear. Bolivian politics has become a chessboard marked by wild moves yet no real change in who has the advantage.

At a practical level, the Morales government and Santa Cruz leaders remain in a stalemate. Those things that Santa Cruz leaders can do without national government permission they will likely do, such as creating a state-level police force and blocking Morales’ efforts at land reform. Morales, who spent today playing soccer in La Paz, will not send in the Bolivian army to stop them. That would actually bring civil war.

Those things that Santa Cruz leaders need national cooperation to do, like win a bigger share of gas and oil revenue, they will continue to just dream of. Morales and his backers will now become even more intransient.

Underneath today’s banners and calls for national unity is the reality of nation more deeply divided today that it was a week ago. The unity called for in the streets of Cochabamba was really a unity of forces opposed to Santa Cruz, not a unity with Santa Cruz. And in the region where autonomy was voted on today, the words “national unity” didn’t even make it on to a banner.

Bolivia’s next move is now anyone’s guess.


REPORTS FROM AROUND BOLIVIA

A day of combative voting has left behind one person dead, others injured, scores of ballot boxes torched and a nation absorbing the results. Thanks to a handful of friends around Bolivia today, we are able to bring you on-the- street reports from four different cities: Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, La Paz and Potosi. We have many readers in those cities and elsewhere around the country. We hope you will add your eyewitness reports as well.


Santa Cruz: High Heels and Slingshots at Ground Zero (Annie Murphy)

Depending on whom you talk to, taking place in Santa Cruz today is a historic vote to give this department it's dues, or an illegal bid to keep the status quo.

The national electoral court declared the vote to accept or reject the Santa Cruz autonomy statute illegal, and the national government also refuses to acknowledge it. As such, it's not the police but normal citizens who are running today's activities. At five a.m. cars were already being stopped and checked by those who'd taken it on themselves to block major streets. The same was true at polling stations, with citizen guards in headsets keeping watch while Civic Committee President Branko Marinkovich cast his vote in the upscale Las Palmas neighborhood.

In an elite neighborhood like Las Palmas, this "citizen guard" seems nothing more than odd and vaguely discomfiting. Little challenge is posed by a housewife in heels and her coiffed lapdog, or agribusiness executives, both of whom believe that prosperous Santa Cruz should have greater power not only in the administration of resources, but over their legislation and distribution. As Eliana Jaldin said, "It would be nice if we could give more to the poor, but you can't just make everything nice... Why should they get a break? The importance of Santa Cruz has been ignored long enough. We need to determine our own future."

Las Palmas passionately supports the autonomy statute, and with little to do, informal security passed the morning eating empanadas and yucca bread.

But in Plan 3000 many of the city's indigenous and campesino immigrants pushed for abstention and even impeded voting in some cases. The "citizen guard" isn't snacking on pastries in here. Truckloads of pro-autonomy men in their teens and early twenties carrying clubs, slingshots, and rocks arrived, with armed groups of ten to twenty each patrolling the streets. Meanwhile a group of several hundred MAS supporters -- some also with sticks in hand -- had taken up the main roundabout, with the two sides scuffling at intervals.

"We want autonomy, but not the sort of autonomy outlined in the statute," says Ninoska Murillo, a recent immigrant from Oruro and resident of Plan 3000. "This statute keeps the same people in power that have always run this country, while the public watches from the bleachers."

Yet both sides say that they don't want or expect this autonomy statute to divide Bolivia, and that today's vote, legal or not, is just a way for Santa Cruz to increase its bargaining power in eventual negotiations. And, it's a reminder of the common demand across political and social classes for decentralization. From Las Palmas elites to the working class from Plan 3000, there's a clear need in Santa Cruz for law and order at the local level. The city may be Bolivia's economic engine, but today it feels like a forgotten frontier town.

Update: 10pm

The scuffles of earlier in the day turned into full-out acts of violence. The percentages of voter abstention are also striking. Almost 40% across the whole dept seems very high, and 62% in Montero more striking still. There are now reports of one possibly two people dead, and an Erbol headline says that this is the most violent vote in 25 years of democracy. I went to a celebration rally at Plaza Principal. Santa Cruz’s governor, Ruben Costas talked about "the creation of a new republic and modern state," while the head of the Civic Committee said now the MAS government has no choice but to respect the vote; "that we've put a face to autonomy, and now must give it force." This was punctuated by cheers of “Autonomy!” and “No more fear, goddammit!”

Annie Murphy is a freelance journalist in Santa Cruz.


Cochabamba: Tens of Thousands Take to the Streets (Leny Olivera and Aldo Orellana)

Today’s march began at 9am from several different points of the Department of Cochabamba.

The most active movements participating included factory workers, irrigators, youth and cultural organizations, rural teachers, farmer associations from rural communities such as Tapacari, Aiquile, Bolivar, and Colomi. Also present were many students, music groups, and other sectors of the city.

All the sectors displayed clear messages on the banners they carried – such as "United Bolivia, Never Divided", carried next to Bolivian flags of all size and indigenous whipalas. The slogans shouted by those marching also spoke of their desire for the recognition of Bolivia’s diversity. One group of young people conveyed that message very well, marching together dressed in nine different forms of dress associated with each of the nation’s departments.

Something else that characterized the diversity and unity of the huge march was the presence of so many kinds of musical groups – from bands, to folkloric music, to indigenous songs played with wind instruments, an expression of cultural resistance. The music played at the beginning and throughout the Cochabamba march demonstrated an intention to build and fight for change without violent confrontations. It was also striking yesterday, the day before the march how the number of Bolivian flags for sale in the marketplace was as many as for Bolivian Independence Day the 6th of August.

Leny Olivera


Tens of thousands of people turned out in the streets of Cochabamba today. Never in the history of the department have so many taken to the streets under a single slogan, “Bolivia united.” The march began from at least 8 different points around the Cochabamba Valley, converging at a steel and concrete bridge an Avenida Blanco Galindo, three kilometers from the city center.

The factory workers marched in first, followed by a wide variety of rural and urban social movements, including both old and young. From far away one could see an ocean of Bolivian flags, in red, yellow and green, along with wiphalas and the blue flag of Cochabamba. As noon arrived social movements continued to arrive. Leaders began speaking at 1pm, after the singing of the Bolivian national anthem. Leaders from farmer groups, the irrigators, and some elements of the MAS party spoke to the march, as did Isaac Avalos, a prominent farmer leader from Santa Cruz.

At the conclusion of the rally, marchers shouted their support for a variety of points including a call for Bolivian unity, the bringing to trial of the governors of the four departments of the “media luna” and Manfred Reyes Villa of Cochabamba for trying to break up Bolivia, the convening of a national vote on the proposed new constitution, and the expulsion of U.S. Ambassador Phillip Goldberg. The crowd also rejected Santa Cruz’s autonomy statutes and declared an ongoing mobilization to re-found the nation.

Aldo Orellana

Leny Olivera and Aldo Orellana, both social movement activists in Cochabamba, work for The Democracy Center.


La Paz: A Quiet Sunday Morphs into a Day of Protest (Julia McDowell)

Near the university, La Paz seems its usual, sleepy Sunday-self. Few stores are open, and only a fraction of the usually chaotic flocks of mini-busses and taxis are making their rounds. Families and couples stroll the quiet streets, eating ice cream and enjoying the morning sun. A few dozen students stand in atrium, some holding flags and signs, congregating for a march, a popular weekend activity. Small charges of dynamite explode somewhere, echoing against La Paz’s valley walls. No one flinches, or even looks up from their conversations and sign painting endeavors.

As stragglers arrive to fill in gaps at the university, the marchers form their ranks, holding up signs that say “No to Autonomy!” and “Bolivia United!” They march down La Paz’s vacant thoroughfare, the Prado, to the U.S. Embassy, chanting their desire for Ambassador Goldberg’s untimely death. The Americans, one professor explains, have always supported fascism in Bolivia.

Heading north, the rumble of a crowd is audible. The scant assortment of passersby begins to thicken, as vendors sell popsicles, flags, and other parade-type accessories. Turning the bend, the city’s main artery suddenly opens out onto a massive concentration of thousands of indigenous peasants in the Plaza de los Heroes, a traditional meeting point for protests. Indigenous groups have come from provinces all over the Department of La Paz, representing cocaleros, agrarian unions, and ayllus. City-dwellers have joined in, as well.

Today, there are more Bolivian flags than wiphalas, the indigenous rainbow checkered flag that has come to symbolize the fight for social justice of indigenous peoples and peasants. Women sit on the curbs and pull oca, chuño, and habas out of their woven aguayo packs. They eat and share with their neighbors. The plaza begins to look like an enormous picnic. Then, representatives of the various unions and indigenous communities begin to speak in Aymara and Spanish over a scratchy loudspeaker to the plaza, a sea of heads frequently topped with derby hats or floppy denim. Some of the leaders threaten violence, should Santa Cruz decide to press their separatist agenda. Most speak of the unity of the Bolivian people.

Julie McDowell, a former U.S. Fulbright scholar now works on water project development in La Paz.


Potosi: Miners and Dynamite (Lily Whitesell)

The morning of May 4, a campesino march wound its way through the streets of Potosi, filling the air with the scent of dynamite sticks and interrupting the otherwise quiet Sunday morning with their energetic chants. 'Bolivia, unida, jamas sera vencida' was their message of choice, waving wiphalas and Bolivian flags. As one group reached the main plaza, they broke out with, 'Kausachun constituyente, wañuchun oligarcas' expressing support for the Constituent Assembly and their disdain for Bolivia's wealthy elite. The crowd totaled roughly 2,000, gathering in front of the mayor's office to hear speeches given over loudspeakers into the early afternoon.

Why did they come to Potosi? One demonstrator carrying a wiphala said: Nuqayku kayman jamunku... Nuqayku kayku de la provincia linares distrito 7. Separatismo Boliviata mana munaykuchu. Chayrayku noqayku jamuyku kaypaqchaman kay Potosiman. (We came here... from the Linares province. We don't want separatism in Bolivia. That's why we came here today to Potosi.)

Lily Whitesell, a social justice activist from Maryland has lived in Bolivia for two years and works for The Democracy Center.

[A special note to our readers in La Paz. Thanks to so many of you who turned out and help ed make the event Friday such a huge success. The auditorium was packed, including the balcony, about 400 people.]

Photo Credit: Aldo Orellana