Mr. President, Some Bicycles Please…

Readers:

I am on the road again for work, in Europe this time. Fortunately, my Democracy Center colleagues back in Bolivia have agreed to help me keep good Blog postings coming while I travel. This one is from Jeanette Bailey, a Fulbright scholar from the US who is working with us this year. Jeanette is living in Bolivia's altiplano, studying how globalization is affecting what Bolivians have on their plate -- quite literally -- to see how global economics affect what Bolivians have to eat and don't.

Here's a reflection from Jeanette, from the altiplano. I hope you find it interesting.

Jim

Mr. President, Some Bicycles Please…

It is the end of a long day of training for community health volunteers in a rural village some 8 hours drive outside of La Paz. We are celebrating with a large dinner of vegetable soup, rice, chicken, onions, tomatoes and Bolivian staple, potatoes. No dinner is complete in Bolivia without potatoes. At the end of the meal one of the community health volunteers stands up and announces he’d like to make a proposal to the blonde gringa standing in the corner of the room. The room falls immediately silent, and I find myself in an awkward spotlight.

“I’d like to ask the U.S. citizen in the room, Yaneth (as they pronounce my name, Jeanette) to speak to her president about getting us some bicycles.” I know exactly what he is referring to. Some of these community health volunteers have walked 4 or more hours to arrive at this workshop, leaving families, aging parents, children and the stress of the harvest season behind to come and learn about preventing malnutrition, diarrhea and other common childhood illnesses. They will return to their home communities and conduct visits to their neighbors’ homes, with the intent of imparting newfound knowledge on health, hygiene and nutrition. They are the grassroots leaders in their villages; the mothers and fathers who are determined to raise the next generation “sano, fuerte y inteligente.”

This plea for bicycles reflects one of many challenges faced by rural Bolivian citizens who wish to develop their own communities. Eight hours walking per day is not conducive to even the most motivated of budding community leader to attend a capacitation workshop. They are motivated, they are concerned, and they desperately want to improve their communities. But even with all this, sometimes the fight against poverty comes down to the simple things. Like too much rain making the rivers impassable or the mountain paths too difficult, or the inability to find a caretaker for the kids because it’s harvest season and the grandparents and neighbors are in the fields. Just arriving to capacitation training is hard enough.

The solutions are sometimes equally simple. Wouldn’t a bike make it a bit easier? Shorten that 4-hour one-way trip down to one, maybe? And if you need a bike, whom do you ask? Who better than an American citizen, someone with a direct link to the developed, powerful, wealthy nation that seems to have entered the consciousness of every small, underdeveloped, poor village worldwide?

I answer his question with a joke in kind, though I’m not so sure his question was a joke. Though the room laughs, there is a brutal truth underlying the quick back and forth banter.

“Of course, I’ll send him a letter directly; in fact I’ll call him this evening.” More laughter, but not without expectation. Perhaps I shouldn’t have responded with a joke. Perhaps it would’ve been better to be honest.

Why turn to the U.S. to solve the problems of this community? Why reinforce the evident feeling of dependency on U.S. handouts?

But no, we never think of these things until it is too late. I thought perhaps that post-dinner dialogue would be the end of it, but the next day, 3 or 4 volunteers came to me and asked if I really thought it would be possible to get those bikes from Mr. Bush.

Sometimes fighting poverty comes down to the complicated things, too. Like U.S. policy and power and the inherent mentality of development dependency. How do we truly capacitate a community leader to develop her or his own community, disengaging capacitation from dependency?

The fight against poverty is a winding road, or rather, in the Bolivian Andes, a steep, muddy mountain pass. It will take caution, focus, determination and integrity. For any of us who want to join the fight for development, we will have to pay attention to every step and constantly ask ourselves: Are we helping, or hurting? Are we capacitating, or unwittingly participating in a new form of colonization?

by Jeanette Bailey

US Shuts the Door on Another Bolivian Official

The US government managed to shut the door on yet another Bolivian official this week, barring his entry into the US for an official work visit. This time it was Renee Orellana, Bolivia’s Water Vice-Minister. This latest incident follows one in February in which a MAS Senator, Leonilda Zurita, discovered her US visa revoked as she was boarding a flight from Santa Cruz.

The US Ambassador, David Greenlee blamed the denial of a visa for Orellana on bureaucracy rather than politics, telling a Bolivian radio station, This is an administrative issue, it is not a political signal. We have to find out why our electronic system rejected the application, there may be a very simple answer, it could be a mix-up.

US officials, in posts large and small, are allowed to travel freely to Bolivia. In fact, any US citizen can show up at the airport without a visa and get 90 days stamped in his or her passport. But the US can’t get its act together to let key Bolivian officials in the US on official business. I know Orellana well. He is one of the most competent appointments in the new government.

Bureaucratic incompetence by US officials won’t hold up for too much longer as an excuse.

Who Reads Us?

Each day, on average, somewhere between two to three thousand people visit The Democracy Center Web site. Most of those people come to read this "Blog from Bolivia" -- from foriegn journalists to the moms and dads of Peace Corps volunteers serving here. Many others surf around to download free advocacy materials, read the history of the Cochabamba water revolt, and a surprising number still look at our articles from years back. We also publish a monthly electronic newsletter that goes to 3,500 readers worldwide and is usually passed on to many, many others.

So who is it that is reading The Democracy Center’s writings? I make a habit of sending out short notes to new people who request our newsletter, asking them where they are from and how they heard about us. Here’s a selection of some of our recent responses – a glimpse of the other people who find our pages worth reading.

Jim

I am from Ft. St. John British Columbia in Canada. I was lucky to spend last summer several weeks in Bolivia with” Development and Peace”. We support our partners from the “Escuela del Pueblo Primero de Mayo”.

I was born in Cochabamba Bolivia and raised in Cincinnati and now live in St. Louis.

I'm from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I'd heard of Cochabamba through ZNet and I'm a budding activist in general.

I am based in Mumbai and associated with Focus on the Global South and also signed on to your International Citizens Petition to the World Bank.

I live in Twickenham - close to London and have been reading your Blog for a year or so. I feel I know you quite well. I had a couple of holidays backpacking round Bolivia have just developed a love of the country and find your Blog so helpful in understanding what is going on at this very interesting time.

I used to work for an indigenous peoples' rights organisation in the UK called the Forest Peoples Programme and I heard of the Democracy Centre while working there because we tried to keep abreast of the Bolivian riots back in 2004.

Hello from Western Australia. I think that I heard your interview with Philip Adams on Radio National which is the jewel in the crown of our national broadcaster. I was fascinated to know more about Evo Morales. I was relating some of this information to my students at work. I am an Education Officer at the maximum security prison here in Perth and most of my students are indigenous.

I am from India, currently working in the UK.

I'm from London, UK. Paul Mason, the BBC journalist who recently returned from Bolivia, also recommended your organisation to me.

I am a “totoreno”, via Oruro, who’s been in the States since 1966. I’m a banker in Philadelphia, PA and I live in Staten Island, NY. Keep up the good work.

I am Norwegian, live in Oslo, the capital of Norway. During 2002-2003 I lived for 6 months in Cochabamba, Bolivia to do fieldwork for my studies in social anthropology at the University of Oslo. My time in Bolivia left a deep impression, and I try to keep myself updated on what is going on in this country that became so dear to me.

I'm from Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, (near Toronto), employed as a Housing Social Worker in low income housing, very involved with my church and social justice issues, and it was a friend who forwarded one of your newsletters to me and I was very interested in the work your organization does.

I followed the link to your blog from the BBC News website. I am a graduate student in International Affairs, focusing on Latin America, and your work looks interesting.

I'm in Rochester, NY, (EEUU) where I work as a study abroad adviser at the University of Rochester. I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in southern Potosi (near Tupiza) from 1994-96.

A friend and I are trying to put together a documentary about indigenous filmmakers in Bolivia. The Democracy Center seems like a really wonderful organization, and I've been reading the blog pretty regularly for the past six months.

I'm a born Cochabambino who lives and works in Cochabamba. I found your site/blog when I was browsing to find news and info on LAB, where I work.

My father was born in Copacabana and I visited once. Great country, kind people. I was born in the USA and live in Los Angeles.

I’m a Bolivian American living here in the rotten apple otherwise known as New York City.

An Important New Resource on Bolivia and Gas

As Bolivia watchers know well, and to borrow from a famous phrase from US politics – It’s about gas and oil, stupid. Bolivia’s political turmoil the past three years has been very much about the nation’s huge reserves of gas and oil and about the popular demand that the benefits of those reserves be used to benefit all of Bolivia’s people. Two presidents have fallen over that issue and a new one elected over it as well.

One of the most important questions in Bolivia’s great “gas debate” is this one: How have the various privatization policies the past decade affected how much the Bolivian treasury collects from oil and gas development? It is the answer to this question that determines whether revenue from oil and gas is being used to finance schools, health care and development, or just making a handful of foreign oil corporations much better off. Answering this question is also essential to developing a new gas policy that does benefit the Bolivian people.

It is not, however, an easy question to research and answer.

Last year, two key Bolivian research organizations – CESU (the research arm of the University of San Simon in Cochabamba) and CEDLA (a research NGO in La Paz) – began an in-depth research effort to look at the role of gas and oil in Bolivia’s public finances. Their work is one of a network of similar efforts supported by a group The Democracy Center collaborates with closely – The International Budget Project.

This week, the CESU half of that project launched a new Web site, Ojo Enerjetico, in which they will make their research work available. If you are watching the gas debate, keep an eye on Ojo Enerjetico. The site is in Spanish.

If you are interested in more information about The Democracy Center’s work with citizens and budgets, including our report on budgets and oil and gas, have a look here.

The Power of Immigrants

Readers:

It was a dozen years ago that I was in the middle of the last great US political battle over immigrants. The Democracy Center worked closely with the immigrant community in California for many years, doing everything from teaching media skills to day laborers to helping fight an anti-immigrant ballot measure, Proposition 187. It was that experience that led me to write The Initiative Cookbook, a guide to initiative campaigning that I dedicated to California's immigrants (who at the time included my two oldest children).

As the saying goes, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it echoes. Here is a reflection on the echoes at hand this week as millions of immigrants take to the streets of the US, wrapped in American flags and demanding rights and respect.

Jim

THE POWER OF IMMIGRANTS

Sometimes tectonic changes in politics catch you by surprise. Such is the case with the stunning new flexing of street muscle and political power of the Latino immigrant community in the US.

Echoing their worst tendencies of that last great national anti-immigrant rant of a decade ago, the Republican right wing decided, in the midst of plummeting Bush/GOP popularity, to try to change the subject away from war and corruption. They pulled out that old standby – America ails because of the brown masses illegally swarming over the border. They proposed declaring all undocumented immigrants to be felons, for the crime of just being there. They proposed finding all those lazy immigrants by finding them, ironically, at work, through their employers.

We've Been Here Before

It is all so familiar.

Rewind to my home state, California, in early 1994. A Republican governor, Pete Wilson, was headed into a reelection disaster. The state's economy, and in turn the state's budget, was a fiasco. Even housing prices were dropping, less common in the golden state than snow at the beach. With polls showing him headed for certain defeat the following November, Wilson decided to do what a certain kind of politician does in such circumstances – he tried to change the subject and shift the blame. At a news conference on the US/Mexico border (one of many he would hold that year) he told Californians that the state's problems were the result of illegal immigrants pouring over that border.

But Wilson and his GOP brethren didn’t stop there. They decided that what they really needed was to have an anti-immigration initiative on the same ballot with his reelection vote. That would make it assured that "immigrants-are-the-threat" would dominate the fall debate. But they were late to this realization, too late to put forward a ballot measure of their own. But right there, lurking in the racist shadows, was an anti-immigrant measure sponsored by a radical anti-immigrant organization that peppered its newsletters with such gems as, "Wake up and smell the refried beans." Among other things, the measure would have prohibited the children of undocumented immigrants from entering the doors of their public schools.

The Democracy Center, still based in California then and active with immigrant rights groups, was tracking the initiatives progress and it was going nowhere. Facing a looming deadline to submit nearly a million voter signatures, the anti-immigrant measure had about twenty thousand. Well, until Wilson and the GOP decided to adopt the measure, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into paid signature gathering, qualifying it for the ballot and creating the now infamous Proposition 187.

In the realm of political history, Pete Wilson and his calculated dance with anti-immigrant racism go down as the textbook case of short-term smart and long-term really stupid. That fall Wilson won reelection, directly on the coattails of a whopping 2-1 victory for Proposition 187. He also labeled the California Republican party as so anti-Latino that the only statewide official the GOP has left is a former movie action hero who is also an immigrant.

"If you counted on silence, you counted wrong."

I guess it is a lucky thing that today's GOP leaders don't read history as well as they ought to. What was supposed to be a clever election-year strategy to change the subject has instead ignited an earthquake of Latino political action. Organizers of an immigrant rights rally in Houston on Monday expected 20,000 people. They got 500,000 – nearly half the population of the city. Half a million people turned out in Los Angeles as well, along with huge crowds in other cities dotted around the US.

Latinos and immigrants to the GOP: "If you counted on silence, you counted wrong."

The political fallout of these huge marches is also a measure of how much things have changed since the last round of US immigrant bashing. In the run-up to Proposition 187 there was a fierce internal debate among groups fighting the initiative. Immigrant groups in Los Angeles wanted to organize a huge demonstration against it. They were adamant that immigrants could not remain silent.

The political consultants (not Latino) hired by state Democrats to run the campaign were equally adamant, warning that the more visible immigrants became the bigger the backlash would be against them. “We begged and begged them not to do this,” one of the campaign directors told me.

Two weeks before the vote, march they did. Seventy thousand (mostly all Latino) immigrants marched through the streets of downtown LA, one of the largest protests of any kind in they city's history up to then. Unfortunately for the organizers, however, the march followed by just a few weeks the World Cup Soccer finals in LA, in which Mexico had been a semi-finalist. Los Angeles was awash with Mexican flags and thousands of them ended up at the march on as the lead story on news programs statewide. Immigrants handed Wilson the exact image of the foreign invasion he'd been warning about and support for the anti-immigrant measure skyrocketed overnight.

Harvesting the Fruit of Activism from Seeds Planted a Generation Before

Through the lens of history, the decision by immigrant leaders to march that October morning in 1994 can be seen as short-term bad strategy and long-term visionary. One of the organizers told me at the time why they had decided to cast aside the advice of the campaign consultants and take to the streets anyway.

“We knew the odds were against us. Our obligation is to the youth, to the so-called ‘lost generation’ to give them an opportunity to be involved in a mass movement for their civil rights."

I would like to be with him again this week, a dozen years later, to see the look on his face as he sees the long-delayed harvest of the big gamble that he and others took that fall. All those Latino teenagers that marched in 1994 are in their late 20s now and I am willing to bet they were at the core of the organizing that has turned out millions of their hermanos y hermanas out on the streets this time around, in the face of this new season of attack on immigrants.

And this time around no one is talking about the anti-immigrant backlash that will be provoked by all those beautiful brown faces in the streets. This time around the backlash pundits are talking about in the US is the one that the Republican party is getting ready to face from the nation's fastest-growing voter block, and not just this November, but for many Novembers to come.

This Morning in the Cochabamba Public Cemetery

The public cemetery in Cochabamba is not a green hillside with white gravestones. It is a labyrinth of high while concrete walls, vaults really, where the dead are nailed into wooden coffins and stuffed into small rectangle slots – six high and maybe fifty wide.

I have been to these walls many more times than I would wish in my eight years here. A 12 year old boy from the orphanage where I volunteered. The mother of one of my first Bolivian friends. There have been others.

It’s the sounds that get to you. The raw wailing of a mother or daughter saying her last goodbye. The harsh scraping of wooden coffin against rough cement as it is shoved into the hole. The sound of plaster being slapped up against the small white nameplate that seals off the hole.

This morning was Palm Sunday and the Catholics of Cochabamba were awash with long woven palm fronds and church processions through the streets. And Palm Sunday seemed to being a record crowd as well to the public cemetery.

A blind woman yelling out, selling lottery tickets. A blind man playing accordion.

Young children, not a one that has seen ten years, bouncing up and down the long walkways between the labyrinths, working the crowd for coins. A boy that looks like a first grader offers to shine up any dusty headstone of my choice. A small girl offers to spill water from a plastic bucket onto wilting gravesite bouquets. Another young boy offers to say a prayer over the grave that brought me here to this place this morning.

I run into my neighbor, a generally cheerful man who age has bent and left with a large droopy mustache of white hair. “I come here every Sunday, “ he tells me, “to see my wife.”

A ten-foot high Jesus, dressed in mustard colored robes and a coffee-brown cape, looks solemnly downward, as if he is staring into the dirt. His right hand is raised in benediction.

Just off to Jesus’ left is the small gray rectangle of granite that marks the place where a 17-year-old Cochabamba boy, Victor Hugo Daza, once received his last goodbyes from his family, six years ago today. On the day before, April 8, 2000, Victor Hugo was gunned down and killed by a military sharpshooter during the Cochabamba Water Revolt. The next day, Sunday, a long procession of dark hair and dark clothing carried his coffin here.

A dozen of us went to accompany his family to this place, on this morning, to share this memory. The gray stone is hidden under bouquets of white and yellow daisies and an assortment of other flowers, including a purple one I can’t recognize. The only thing visible from underneath the flowers is his name and a raised metal cross. His mother is pouring fresh water from a discarded plastic container into the cutoff bottoms of sodas bottles that serve as makeshift vases.

A few of us say prayers. “It is said that there is no greater pain that that of a mother or a father losing a child.” I tried to find words. “I hope that Sra. Carmen and her family understand somewhere in their hearts that Victor Hugo is also a son of Cochabamba and that knowing he will not be forgotten will bring some relief to their hearts.”

The rest of his family arrives. His brother’s face is familiar. I have seen footage of it a score of times – writhing in pain and growling in anguish as his brother’s body is brought through massive crowds into the city’s central plaza and a sheet is removed, revealing the boy’s face, destroyed by a massive bullet hole through its center.

Victor Hugo Daza, 17 years old, killed exactly 6 years ago this weekend. A victim in the midst of a battle over something important and just. A mother’s son. Presente. Presente. Presente.

Bolivia and the Debate Over Gas and Oil: A New Briefing Paper

Readers:

The Democracy Center is in the middle of a series of in-depth research projects in Bolivia these days – from a follow-up on the impact of the water revolt six years later, to a serious look at the policy debate over what it means to “nationalize” Bolivia’s gas and oil. Because of the strong interest in the issues that we are researching, from time to time we are going to publish shorter “issue briefs” that capture our initial findings along the way. Today we present the first of these: Oil and Gas Policy in Bolivia – A Post-election Update. The brief was written by two Democracy Center researchers, Aaron Luoma, Gretchen Gordon (and edited by me).

Below is the opening to it and here is the link to the full brief. We appreciate your feedback on these and how to make them more valuable in the future.

Jim

Oil and Gas Policy in Bolivia – A Post-election Update

In power now just over two months, Bolivia's new MAS government, led by President Evo Morales, has moved swiftly to announce plans for changes in the hydrocarbons sector. These include breathing new life into the state-controlled oil and gas company (YPFB) and securing investment for new development projects. Many of these initial changes stem from the 2005 Hydrocarbons law that was passed during the Mesa administration, but which has not yet been fully implemented.

The international investment community seems to be regarding the new Bolivia with eager interest, as opposed to the capital flight some analysts predicted. In terms of a more radical restructuring or complying with the promised nationalization of the industry, progress has been limited. While rhetoric remains strong, the failure to meet the public demand for profound change could bring social unrest in the future. Things to watch for are the upcoming April announcement of a more detailed government plan for oil and gas, and a June deadline for the revision of all contracts as mandated in the May hydrocarbons law.

Click here to read the full issue brief.

LAB, Cochabamba Water, and the Dance of Public Protest and Public Policy

A confession – I am a schizophrenic. Well, in certain terms. I have always straddled the line between the worlds of public protest and advocacy on the one side and public policy making on the other. I’ve studied both, done both, and written about both (in The Democracy Owners’ Manual). While these two worlds are certainly related, they are also very clearly not the same worlds.

The dance between the two is at the heart of two of the most visible public battles in Bolivia’s recent history. One is happening right now – the battle to “nationalize” LAB Airlines. The other happened exactly six years ago this week – the Cochabamba Water Revolt.

Advocacy and protest is about two basic things – getting authorities to pay attention to issues they would rather not and getting them to change direction. Public Policy is about defining and implementing that change of direction in very precise ways. They are two different parts of democracy, they usually involve very different kinds of people and skills, and they are both equally legitimate and equally essential. They both need each other.

Cochabamba and its Water

The facts are basic. Bolivians never had any kind of public debate over whether to hand control their water over to foreign corporations before the government did just that under World Bank pressure. When Cochabambinos were furious at the result (50% rate increases overnight) the government not only refused to listen, it also used armed troops to try to keep people from protesting those rate hikes.

I believe it was Nelson Mandela who said, “You don’t choose your tactics, your opponents do.” In the case of Cochabamba, the government of Hugo Banzer and Tuto Quiroga made mass public protest and civil disobedience the only means by which the people could take back their water, something which remains a historic victory worthy of its reputation.

Well, then there was the tricky part – turning a romantic victory won on the street into a functioning and efficient public water company. That latter part of the story is pretty mixed.

SEMAPA, the re-established water company that took over after Bechtel’s ouster has, in fact, achieved some important things. In the first four years after the water revolt the new company connected up more than 55,000 new people to water service, an increase of 22%. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are still tens of thousands of families who still don’t have water service. Cochabamba has almost doubled in population since the first time I moved here in 1991 and SEMAPA has a long, long way to go in catching up with that population growth.

Some of the problem is the difficulty of financing water development, but some of it is about inefficiency as well. SEMAPA just isn’t that well managed and it owes the public better, especially given the sacrifices made to win back public control of water. Kicking out Bechtel and effectively managing a public water company are two different tasks and the leaders of the first were never going to be the ones to achieve the second. They city’s public leaders and professionals still haven’t risen to the task. The leaders of the water revolt haven’t adequately held their feet to the fire to do so.

LAB and “Nationalization”

Six years later history is echoing in the battle over LAB Airlines. Protests have once again erupted in Cochabamba, this time by airline workers demanding that President Evo Morales “nationalize” the airline that privatization has left lying on its deathbed and mired in debt.

Advocacy Rule #1: First you get their attention, then you press your demands.

The Morales government wanted the LAB problem to go away, or at least to land somewhere else than square in its political lap. Landing in its political lap, however, was pretty much inevitable. LAB is a staple of the Bolivian economy, the government owns almost half the company, and an administration elected to care about the people’s well-being doesn’t get to stand off to one side while 2,200 jobs threaten to go up in smoke. That it took protests to get Morales to see that is Morales’ problem. He and the people around him should have known better.

That said, then comes the tricky part. What should the government do about an airline that is just plane in bad economic shape? Morales is right to be apprehensive about any deal that leaves the government holding the bag for LAB’s more than $140 million reported debt. What does nationalization actually mean when it gets translated from slogan on the street to public policy in action? Does Bolivia become majority owner and manager of the airline (as it was for many years)? Does it manage the restructuring of the airline and then leave it in private ownership? These are really complicated issues to tear apart and look at and you don’t make public policy until you do that – if you are wise.

Public Protest vs. Public Policy

In my view it boils down to this. The protests over water six years ago this week and the protests over LAB today are both important because they forced reluctant governments to deal with legitimate public demands. On the other hand, there is a cautionary tale here for both.

The wave of public interest and involvement in water in 2000 never got converted into educated and long-term public oversight of the new water company. In the last public vote to elect members of the water company board, three percent of the population turned out. In the battle over LAB, those protesting need to apply some real world economics as they evaluate the options on the table. Both Bolivia and the thousands of Bolivian families that rely on LAB for their livelihoods need an airline that is economically sustainable, not one built on hope and unsustainable subsidies.

Without protest, governments often just pretend real problems aren’t there. Without a commitment to solid public policy and public management, those protests often fail to deliver the goods. That’s not just true in Bolivia.

The Cochabamba Water Revolt – Six Years Later

Dear Readers:

It was six years ago Tuesday morning that the people of this city where I live, Cochabamba, took to the streets by the thousands, put rocks in the roads and shut down the city with a general strike. It would last a full week, see the declaration of a state of emergency and the suspension of constitutional rights, the death of a 17 year old boy, the wounding of dozens of others, and eventually the ousting of a major US corporation.

The “last battle” of the Cochabamba water revolt began six years ago this week.

I have told the story to so many people these past six years that, frankly, it often feels like I am reading off a script instead of digging into a memory. Here’s one of the things that people who weren’t here might have a hard time grasping. It was full of moments that were extremely,extremely frightening for the people who lived them.

One night at midnight Bolivian police forced themselves into the home of Oscar Olivera’s mother, searching for the water revolt’s most visible leader and breaking up the house as they searched (Oscar and other leaders were in hiding). All night long a group of us were on cell phones trying to help people find places they could escape arrest and deportation from Cochabamba to a jail on the other side of the country. A car driving slowly down our street at 2am sent chills up my spine.

Remember, the President in April of 2000 was Hugo Banzer, a recycled 1970s dictator -- Bolivia’s Pinochet. Bolivians had very clear memories about his dictatorship – the murders, torture, disappearances, and jailings. Bolivians knew quite well what Banzer was capable of. On Saturday morning of that week, just as I was about to send out a dispatch about events, all the power went out in our house, which I quickly discovered was not just my house but also the entire northern hillside where I live. The government cutoff the power to take out the television broadcast antennas. My friend Tom Kruse told me on the phone, “Welcome to dictatorship.”

I recount that atmosphere, mostly I think to remind us all that – whatever we think of what the water revolt means six years later – the people who were a part of that revolt acted with great bravery and that should not be forgotten.

This week The Democracy Center is joining with Fundacion Abril, the semester abroad program of SIT, and others, to sponsor a set of activities to help Cochabambinos recover their collective memory of this event – films, art and music, photography and more. A schedule of these is below. If you are in town this week, please join us.

Also, for those interested, here is a link to the full collection of the dispatches that I wrote during the week of April 4-11, 2000: The Cochabamba Water Revolt, Reports from the Scene.

REMEMBERING THE COCHABAMBA WATER REVOLT: APRIL 4-11

The Foreign Documentaries
Wednesday: 5:30 and 7:30 – Thursday and Friday: 5pm

There will be a showing of a collection of foreign made documentaries about the Cochabamba water revolt, none of them ever publicly shown before in Bolivia.

La Fabrica Film School: Pasjae San Rafael 264

K’oa and Music Festival
Friday: 7pm

A traditional Bolivian K’oa and talented collection of artists will perform.

Casona de la Santivanez: (Santivañez entre Ayacucho y Junín)

Photo Display
All Week

An exhibit of photos, articles and other legacies of the water revolt will be on public display in two locations.

Tuesday: Plaza Principal
Thursday – Friday: Casona de la Santivanez:(Santivañez entre Ayacucho y Junín)

Evo Morales to Marry Woman from US

The national uproar over LAB airlines got bumped off the front page today in every Bolivian daily by the surprise announcement yesterday that President Evo Morales will be getting married in June to a 29 year-old woman from the US, Cynthia Rogers. On Friday, Morales’ spokesperson confirmed what had been a brewing rumor here for weeks. The headline in Los Tiempos reads (translated to English) “Evo Will Marry a Gringa!!”

“It is true,” Alex Contreras told Bolivian reporters yesterday, “On June 10 the President will marry Miss Rogers in the Presidential Palace. Both President Morales and Miss Rogers are very happy and we hope that all Bolivians will share that happiness as well.”

Cynthia Rogers is an anthropologist from Seattle, Washington who first came to Bolivia two years ago as a Fulbright Scholar. She apparently met Morales while conducting research interviews in 2004 and has been involved with him, as a closely guarded secret, for much of the past year. Today’s edition of the Cochabamba daily, Los Tiempos, carries a full-page photo of Morales kissing his bride to be on the cheek. See the photo here.

The news that Morales – who during the elections referred to himself famously as, “The US’ worst nightmare” – would marry a US citizen provoked a variety of public reactions.

“We knew that the new government was seeking cordial relations with the US,” joked US Ambassador David Greenlee. “We just didn’t know how cordial.”

Reaction from Bolivian social movement leaders was less positive. “This news, which comes as a shock to all Bolivians, only confirms our deepest suspicions of Morales and the new government,” said Coordinadora del Agua leader Oscar Olivera. “Evo is now absolutely in bed with the gringos and this signifies that the Bolivian people can be assured that nationalization of the country’s gas and oil reserves will require mass popular action.” Social movement leaders are reportedly making plans to blockade the streets surrounding the Presidential Palace on the day of Morales’ wedding.

The other Cochabamba daily, Opinion, carries an interview today with the last US citizen to serve as Bolivia’s first lady, Ginger Quiroga, wife of former President Tuto Quiroga. The native Texan told Opinion’s society page. “The best part is going to Washington and having tea with Laura Bush at the White House. She told me on our first visit, ‘Oh my God, finally a first lady from Bolivia who speaks English. I was getting so tired of having to say ‘Care for a scone?’ through a translator.”

Neither Morales nor Rogers appeared before reporters Friday but close friends of the first lady-to-be spoke to reporters about the couple.

“I knew something was up when Cindy started showing up all of the time with a huge wad of coca in her cheek,” her friend Melissa Harris told one Bolivian reporter. “I mean it is gross, she looks like a chipmunk with that thing in her mouth. I think it was really just to impress Evo.”

“Can you believe it?! I am so excited!!” another friend, Amy Folger told a reporter in La Paz. “I am going to be a bridesmaid and all our dresses are going to me made out of whipalas.”

This morning’s Seattle Times carries a brief interview with Cynthia Roger’s father, Paul Rogers, a dentist (image here). “Cindy has always been a free spirit, so at a certain level, I am not surprised. We haven’t been to Bolivia yet, but we are looking forward to coming for the wedding. Cindy said something about not needing to wear a coat or tie, but I am not sure what she meant by that.”

It remains unclear who will officiate the ceremony. Morales has strained relations with Catholic Church leaders and his decision not to get married in the national cathedral may only deepen that rift. One Morales aid hinted that another head of state, one close to Morales, might be invited to officiate the ceremony, as he had numerous other weddings.

On the streets yesterday here in Cochabamba, where I interviewed people for their reactions, that reaction was mixed.

“I think it is great,” said Lourdes Mamani, a fruit seller downtown. “Maybe now Evo will calm down some.”

Boris Canelas, a student at the University of San Simon had a different response to the news. “Caramba, he’s just doing it to get a US visa. Everyone knows that. He’ll get the visa and he’ll be off to Virginia to earn some money for a while. Evo is no different than anyone else.”

Happy April Fool from The Democracy Center