Book Review: Whispering in the Giant's Ear

Readers:

A number of new books in English (in addition to ours) are coming out on Bolivia these days. From time to time we will offer reviews of them on the Blog, beginning with this review on William Powers’ Whispering in the Giant's Ear, written by our friend Lee Cridland at Volunteer Bolivia.

Happy reading.

Jim Shultz


Whispering in the Giant's Ear
By William Powers

In his new book, Whispering in the Giant's Ear, William Powers deftly weaves memoir and analysis into a captivating chronicle of contemporary Bolivian life and the politics. Santa Cruz's tropical lowlands and Noel Kempff Mercado National Park provide fascinating backdrops for this personal account of Bolivia's struggle with globalization.

The book opens with Powers leaving a high-paying development job in La Paz for Santa Cruz, where he has been hired by a local environmental NGO. His new job puts him at the forefront of the international community's effort to promote "new green globalization," as laid out in the Kyoto Protocol. Powers graphically illustrates the clash between this worldview and local perspectives by detailing his growing friendship with Salvador, an indigenous activist. Through humorous anecdotes detailing personal and professional foibles, Powers offers readers a glimpse into the challenges that a gringo encounters when working with local populations.

Beyond the author's personal experience towers Bolivia’s struggle against 500 years of colonization, currently embodied by global financial giants such as oil companies, the World Bank and the IMF. As popular discontent increases in the streets, the author ingenuously draws parallels between the struggle of the country's indigenous population and his own effort to find a place in Bolivia’s political and cultural milieu. His personal journey in the remote jungle is mirrored by social upheavals and political transformation in Bolivia's cities; in the end, each one is required to make sense of the other.

Reviewed by Lee Cridland

Speaking Visit to the San Francisco Bay Area -- All Welcome!

Dear Friends (old ones and new ones!) in the San Francisco Bay Area

I am coming your way and, in the midst of showing my four-year-old daughter what it means to Trick or Treat, I am doing a public event about Bolivia. Please join me if you can and bring friends. It will be great to see you.

Best wishes to all!

Jim Shultz


Bolivia and What it Teaches us About Real Democracy

Speaker: Jim Shultz, Executive Director of The Democracy Center, Cochabamba, Bolivia

When: Wednesday, November 8th @ 7pm

Where: New College, 780 Valencia St. between 18th and 19th Streets, in San Francisco's Mission District (16th and Mission BART), in the "Creamery" Room

Admission: Free, of course!

A Little More Information:

Since its historic water revolt against the San Francisco-based Bechtel Corporation in 2000, Bolivia has caught world attention for its popular resistance to globalization rules imposed from abroad. That attention and interest has only grown since last December's election of Evo Morales as the nation's first indigenous president.

Jim Shultz, who was a Bay Area-based social justice activist for decades, has lived in Bolivia since 1998. His reports on the Cochabamba Water Revolt brought the rebellion to world attention and his ongoing reporting on Bolivia is featured in newspapers, magazines and radio across the US, Europe and Canada. He, along with the rest of The Democracy Center team in Cochabamba, is about to publish a new book: Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization.

Bolivia on the UN Security Council?

It may well turnout to be one of those stories that fizzles out almost as it began – but for the moment there seems to be a tiny possibility that Bolivia, the land of llamas, street protests and Evo, might be elected to a position on the UN Security Council. Here's the tale.

Alongside the permanent Council members – the US, UK, China, France and Russia – there are another ten "non-permanent members" elected by region. For weeks Guatemala (a US ally) and Venezuela (let's say, not a US ally) have been battling it out in more than 35 votes, with no side winning the requisite majority.

If Venezuela (which has trailed its Central American competitor) ever had a shot at winning, that shot certainly evaporated with President Hugo Chavez's "Bush is the devil and I still smell sulfur at the podium" speech. Hence a nice reminder that sometimes in politics being in love with your rhetoric is not exactly a ticket to win friends.

So yesterday the Venezuelan government accepted reality and threw its formidable support behind an alternative candidate for the seat, Bolivia. When Evo Morales followed in Chavez's footsteps to the UN podium he was much more polite and later, when asked about the Sulfur Speech, said he thought it was wrong to get so personal. I doubt that is enough to get the US and other Morales non-friends to say, "Hey, that fellow in the sweater is a hell of a nice guy, how about a seat on the Council." But Bolivia is now one of the alternatives in play, along with Costa Rica, Uruguay and Chile.

Now, I am not sure that Bolivia actually has a permanent ambassador yet at the UN, and certainly there will be doubters who ask, "What does Bolivia have to add to the weighty global debates before the Security Council?" But, actually, Bolivian membership on the Council could be a breath of political fresh air, depending on how it is handled.

For example, I'd like to see the new government take the key Council decisions and put them before the Bolivian people for debate. I am imagining a gathering in the Central Plaza in Cochabamba, where government officials solicit public input from gathered crowds about how to deal with, say, North Korea's detonation of a nuclear bomb.

A man in a black felt hat and worn sandals yells out, "What do they need a bomb for anyway? Who are they going to bomb, the US. Then they get blown up. Tell them to put the money into food. Caramba!"

One of the women selling fresh squeezed orange juice looks up from her cart and yells out, "Of course they want a bomb. You have a bomb no one invades you."

"Hey, if we had a bomb Chile would have to give us access to the sea, no?" yells out an old man with a cane and a hearing aid. "Tell Evo we want one. We'll give those Koreans gas."

A young woman from a university student's activist group chimes in, "No one should have the bomb. Tell the UN to take them away from the US and Russia. Their war makers, all of them."

Finally a grandmotherly woman stands up from a bench. The young man with her (probably her grandson) tells the crowd that the woman in gray braids and white straw hat wants to speak. She's the kind of woman one sees in neighborhoods on Sunday afternoons yelling at drunken young men and telling them to stop fighting.

"Señor," she asks the government representative, "You will see the President on this, no?"

"Si Señora."

"Tell them all to just stop it, the grandmothers are tired of breaking it up."

Bolivia’s Agrarian Reform: Coming Soon to a Home Near You?

Readers:

One of the issues that has dominated Bolivia in the past few months has been the plan by the Bolivian government for "land reform", giving title to some of the millions of people who have no land and who are demanding fields in which they can work and earn a living.

One of the young writers who contributes to our work, Wes Enzinna, recently looked at the issue and went to visit one of Bolivia's many landless settlements. Here is his report. We look forward to your reactions and feedback.

Jim Shultz


Bolivia’s Agrarian Reform: Coming Soon to a Home Near You?

Over coffee a Bolivian friend confided in me her fears of Evo Morales’ land reform, launched by executive decree last May.

“Because my family has two houses,” she told me, “we are very worried Evo is going to take one of them and give it to the landless peasants.”

The land reform effort, which Morales has called a “profound agrarian revolution,” aims to redistribute agricultural land to some of Bolivia’s 2.5 million landless peasants—in fact, the new reform law explicitly prioritizes such peasants, stating its goal as “the distribution of lands exclusively to peasants and indigenous communities without land or who possess insufficient lands.”

The new reform says nothing to the effect of re-distributing small-scale private property such as houses. Instead, as Morales explained on August 2 to a crowd of 100,000 peasants, “the goal of the reform is to break up land oligarchies, to break up latifundios.” Latifundios, or haciendas, are extremely large plots of land owned by one person or family, an arrangement left over from colonial times.

Bolivia's Land Ministry claims that 400 individuals own 70% of the nation’s potentially productive lands. Yet, despite the limited number of landowners that might be affected, the number of people who feel they might be targeted is much greater.

But who exactly are the landless poor Morales aims to help, and who instill such fear in the hearts of some Bolivian citizens? Recently, I took a trip to the Bolivian countryside to find out.

Near the city of Yaquiba, in the dust-covered Gran Chaco province of southern Bolivia, there are four landless peasant settlements: Los Sotos, Palmitos, Nuevo Amanecer, and Chirimoyal, all established within the last five years. Each is home to thirty to fifty families, all of them members of the Movimiento Sin Tierra (MST), the landless peasant movement.

Even though they don’t have deeds to the land, the peasants believe the land they live on is rightfully theirs. Their basis for this claim is an important 1953 law, the law of “Social Economic Function,” which says that land can only be owned by those who work it. Morales has said publicly that his reform aims to carry forward the spirit of this 1953 law, and to give titles to “those who work” the land.

Not surprisingly, wealthy landowners are not happy about this. Waiting with a shotgun for peasants he believes are coming to take his land is Choei Yara, who owns 1,400 acres in eastern Bolivia. He told the Washington Post in June, “I’ve worked this land for thirty years, and I have never had a problem until this past year….No one respects private property anymore, not even the government.”

In August, equipped with giant bags of coca leaves as gifts, and an “okay” from the MST national leadership, I set up my tent at Chirimoyal to spend some time there and get to know the people who my friend in the city, and Choei Yara, are so afraid of.

On the settlements, I was met by gracious hosts who went out of their way to make me comfortable, who thanked me endlessly for helping them pick a few weeds, and who at mealtime always gave me the biggest helpings. I lived with farmers who sold a quarter to a half of their monthly produce on the market, and who, in some months, earned little as $50 as a whole community. I knew proud women who, though they worked sometimes twelve hours a day in storm or sweltering heat and only owned two or three changes of clothes, fussed with their hair and skirts for a photo. I also found ingenuity and industriousness, exemplified by the two-room schoolhouse residents at Palmitos had built with no outside funds or assistance.

I also found violence. A woman from Los Sotos shyly showed me the thick scars on her hands from a May 13, 2001 attack. The land’s former owners sent men armed with guns and clubs to evict the squatters, and set fire to her thatch hut with her and her baby still inside. Another man showed me the scar that began above his belly button and slithered like a snake into his waistband, the result of being shot with a high-powered rifle during the same eviction.

I also did not find saints. The residents of Los Sotos told that several days after their eviction, which left at least three squatters dead, they happened to run into one of the men hired by the landowner on a deserted backroad. “We beat him to death,” they told me, their voices tinged with both shame and pride.

But perhaps most importantly, what I found on those four squatters’ settlement in the dusty Chaco, was patience and hope. Even as they wait for the titles and assistance the Morales government promised, they still feel a measure of legitimacy they never did before. “The President is on our side now,” a resident of Chirimoyal told me.

In the end Bolivia’s battle over land runs across the same fault line as so many other controversial clashes in the country—two visions of the nation and in this case two visions of what is just. For landowners "justice" means respect for private property. For landless peasants, "justice" means land for those who work it. How Bolivia will resolve these two perspectives remains, for the time being, unknown.

What is certain, though, is that my friend with the two houses will be keeping them both.

by Wes Enzinna: wenzinna@temple.edu

The Coca Fair

Readers:

Here's a quick announcement about an event being held next week in La Paz – the Coca Fair. If you are the area and interested have a look.

Jim Shultz

The Coca Fair

The Fourth Campaign for Coca and Sovereignty will take place in La Paz, Bolivia between October 23 and 29, 2006, sponsored by the Colectivo Coca y Soberania and the Comunidad THOA. The weeklong event includes a fair exhibiting coca and its products, a two-day seminar on depenalization of the coca leaf, and various art and music-related events.

The fair will display different types of coca and lejia and a variety of art pieces associated with coca. Coca producers and artists will be on hand to present their various wares. The accompanying two-day seminar (October 26-27) will look at the struggle for depenalization of the coca leaf, including advances made with the Constituent Assembly and strategies for preparing a platform to address this issue at the UN’s meeting on drug policy in Vienna, Austria in 2008.

For details on the events planned, including their locations and times, click here.

A Last Word on the Goni Case -- From a Young Bolivian

Readers:

The front page of today's Cochabamba daily, Los Tiempos, features square in its center a large full color picture of a line up of San Franciscans standing in front of City Hall. Dressed in mourning black and holding up makeshift headstones to remember the sixty people who died here three years ago. These people by the Bay were just a few of hundreds upon hundreds that participated in similar events across the US, Australia, Europe and here in La Paz where a march of families of the fallen, and foreigners in solidarity with them, lay 60 white crosses at the gates of the US Embassy.

Yesterday across the world people remembered Bolivia's Black October and renewed with greater voice than ever the demand that its architect, former President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, be brought to justice. One of yesterday's vigils took place at "Goni's" home in suburban Maryland. Laywers for the ex-president announced this week that Sánchez de Lozada will no longer leave the US, fearing that Interpol will intercept him to implement the detention order issued by the Bolivian government (pre-Evo). This week makes it clear that he will not likely find much peace in the US from now on either.

To cap our writing about this issue I think it is important to give the last word to a Bolivian. I asked Aldo Orellana, a university student who works with us here in Cochabamba, to share with our readers his thoughts on why this anniversary and why bringing Sánchez de Lozada to justice is so important to so many Bolivians.

Jim Shultz

To the Real Heroes
by Aldo Orellana

Yesterday Bolivia’s newspapers, radio and television news all made reference in some way to the three year anniversary of the massacre of October 2003, speaking of the impunity that Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada enjoys in the United States, protected by its government despite intense efforts for justice in the months past.

We remember that three years ago, 67 lives were lost because of Sánchez de Lozada’s government in the so-called gas war, which caused much suffering and pain in the for the Bolivian people—more than anything to the families of victims both dead and wounded in this bloody occurrence. Today we could try to say that despite the passing of three years, in some ways the families no longer cry. But this is not so. The bullets of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada continue taking lives.

Just this past Saturday, October 14, in the marginalized neighborhood of El Alto, the 27 year-old Raul Marca Ruiz died. This young man was wounded in the gas war by a projectile that entered his abdomen, severely injuring his spinal column. Raul could not walk, work, study or live a normal life. After three years of suffering, with his life falling through his hands he became depressed and finally died with a bitter taste in his mouth.

This young man may be nothing more than a number for people outside of Bolivia. But he has a family, he was someone’s brother, someone’s son, someone’s father. He was the nephew of someone and the husband of someone. In the end, he was someone who simply believed in a life with hope.

He was only 24 when wounded. He wasn’t looking for riches, fame or prestige, but like all youth, especially in El Alto of La Paz, he felt the obligation to defend the natural resources that were in capitalist hands. He felt it was his turn to hit the streets just like his parents and grandparents had, who had fought against past dictatorships and for democracy.

Surely to the rest of the world—including Bolivia—this death did not affect lots of people. But at 24 years old—the age of dreaming for the future—this man dreamt of historical re-vindication for a better Bolivia, to end the very injustice lived by his parents and grandparents, an end to this injustice in his generation, and for generations to come.

In some way this dead person continues dreaming, he dreams that the impunity does not persist and mostly that there will be justice so that his death is not in vein. Then he will finally rest in peace.

Written by Aldo Orellana, translated to English by Christina Haglund.

The Exile in Maryland -- Bolivia's Deposed President Three Years Later

Readers:

Tuesday marks the third anniversary since Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada fled the nation to political exile in the US, following public outrage over his government's brutal repression of protests against his plans to sell the nation's gas through Chile to the US. The anniversary will be marked by events in seventeen cities on four continents. The Democracy Center marks it with this article sent to the 4,000 readers of our global newsletter. Below is the introduction with a link to the full text.

Jim Shultz

The Exile in Maryland -- Bolivia's
Deposed President Three Years Later

I have only seen Bolivia's deposed ex-President, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, in person once. It was about a year ago and he was alone in the Miami airport, waiting for the same flight as me to Washington. He seemed like any other business traveler – a tired looking man who attracted no special public attention.

Three years ago this week, on October 17, 2003, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was boarding a very different flight to Washington. For a month, Bolivia had been exploding in protest against Sánchez de Lozada’s plans to export bargain-priced Bolivian gas through Chile and onward to California. Troops under presidential orders to stop those protests killed at least sixty people and left hundreds of others wounded. The killings sparked such public outrage that even his own Vice-President broke with him.

That night, as a tense nation watched events unfold on their televisions; Sánchez de Lozada resigned his presidency, boarded a private jet, and fled to political exile in the suburbs of Maryland, just outside the US capital. Three years later the ex-leader known here as "Goni” (and often as "El Gringo" for the sharp American accent he picked up living in the US a good part of his life) faces murder charges in Bolivia for his actions during Black October. He is under a legal order from the Bolivian government to return for trial. But thanks to the political graces of the Bush Administration, the man accused of murder remains a happy protected resident of Center Street in Chevy Chase.

Read the full artile here.

Announcing, from The Democracy Center: A New Magazine About Bolivia!!

Dear Readers:

For the last four months The Democracy Center in Bolivia has been working hard to bring you a new magazine – J’allalla Bolivia. J’allalla is a Quechua and Aymara word that means, roughly translated – Live!

Available in December, J’allalla will be a twenty-page blend of politics, culture, photography and more. The new magazine includes everything from a report on the first year of the new government, to interviews with Minister of Justice Casimira Rodriguez, to first-hand accounts of life on a landless peasant settlement and in an indigenous weaving community.

Take a look at the cover and working draft of the table of contents here!

To distribute the magazine we are looking for groups who would like to partner with us to get it to their members and friends. We will ship 10 to 50 copies to groups that are interested in distributing it, at a cost of $1 per copy to cover postage and printing costs. We will also be publishing J’allalla in electronic form, in full and for free on The Democracy Center Web site.

If you belong to an organization, a club, an academic department, or some other gathering of people who care about and are interested in Bolivia, join us in making J’allalla Bolivia a big success. Groups interested should contact us by November 1 at: magazine@democracyctr.org, with "magazine" in the subject line.

Thanks to all and J’allalla!

Rallies and Rallies – Now Evo Takes a Turn

Last week it was here in Cochabamba, a large rally dedicated to "respect for law" which brought a few thousand people to the end of the Prado. It was not hard to sort out who people were calling on to respect the law – that would be the President – amidst complaints tat Evo is seeking too much control over the Constituent Assembly.

A friend of mine was there as a participant. The private school he teaches at told him to go or be docked a day's wages. But I am sure that many others present were there for reasons more sincere.

The poster promoting that march featured photos of all kinds of Bolivians, from the indigenous to a blonde who looked like a candidates to be one of the Chicas Primer. I found it interesting that the only photo repeated twice in the poster was the blonde – subliminal message or did the poster maker just think she was hot?

Today Evo has called for a rally of his own, in Plaza de los Heroes in La Paz. Morales' spokesman, Alex Contreras dubbed it a "March for Democracy" and said the intent was to "reaffirm the democratic system" in the face of rumors of a coup. I can't say if any of the people showing up there have gotten similar pay notices, but I am sure the rally will be big and that most of those present will be there for sincere reasons as well.

Santa Cruz, of course, had the Bolivian "mother of all rallies" just before the July 2 vote on autonomy, more than a hundred thousand people filling a section of downtown. Really, it was impressive, and carried live on all channels. Assuming that the Evo-fest in La Paz today doesn't surpass that, my bet is that Santa Cruz wins the Rally Olympics for now. I think it would be unfair to count Evo's inauguration, which probably drew even more people than Santa Cruz. I know people who hate Evo who went to that, just so they could tell people they did.

The main opposition party, PODEMOS, doesn’t think it is a good idea for Evo to call on people to rally. "God doesn't want that to happen, but it could result in confrontations," a PODEMOS member of Congress told the media here. It is good to know that PODEMOS has such a direct line to God. It is unclear if God also took a position on rallying in general, pro or con.

It is certainly more than safe to say that the Evo Bolivian honeymoon is over. Outright hatred seems to be the rule among many in the country's eastern states. So many transportation strikes are underway right now that the only real way to tell if there is going to be a way to get to work is to poke your head out the window at dawn and see if there are any buses. Evo's public support is down from 81% to 51%, according to a string of recently released opinion polls (Though be cautious, pollsters also somehow missed spotting the majority Evo was about to capture in the elections last year, something about not being able to reach people in the campo by phone).

One of my friendly neighborhood cab drivers old me this morning, "Aaay this government isn't doing anything it promised. The economy should be better by now." It is the kind of thing people said about Mesa, Goni, Quiroga, Banzer, Paz Zamorra, all the presidents that I have lived under across 15 years. No wonder most of them began their terms hiring poor people to put on orange vests and work under the hot sun for a few weeks repairing cobblestone streets that really didn’t need repairing. It sure made it look like the government was doing something.

Take unrealistically high expectations; mix it with a combination of arrogance by the new leaders and the determined defense of privilege by those who have it; add an economy that is no easy fix; and you have the current day's serving of Bolivia Soup – charges, counter charges, rallies, muscle flexing, and increasing polarization.

None of this is really surprise in a country passing through a moment of as much profound political and social change as this one. But what people wonder now, with more and more worry is – si esta es la sopa, que es la segunda?

In-Depth Analysis of Last Week's War of the Mines

Readers:

As we reported here, in brief, last week, last Thursday two rival groups of miners at the huge tin mine at Huanuni went to war with each other, leaving 17 people dead in a storm of tossed dynamite and live rounds. It was the bloodiest day in Bolivia since the government repression three years ago that led to the ouster of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

Our friends at the Blog, Upside Down World, April Howard and Benjamin Dangl, have just published a very thorough report on events at the mine, including both a deep historical analysis of what led to the conflict and a wide collection of eyewitness accounts. We recommended the article to anyone interested in learning more about what happened at Huanuni, or interested in a solid historical backgrounder on Bolivian politics since the 1952 revolution. Below is the opening of April and Ben's article and a link to the full text.

Jim Shultz

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Tin War in Bolivia: Conflict Between Miners Leaves 17 Dead
April Howard and Benjamin Dangl

"Something that should have been a blessing for the country has been turned into a curse." - Bolivian Vice President, Alvaro García Linera

October 7th was supposed to be a day of celebration for the Virgin of Rosario, the patron saint of miners. Yet events in Huanuni delayed the festival interminably.

In place of the celebration, the archbishop presided over a mass for 17 people killed in a two day conflict over access to tin mines. As an uneasy peace returned to the town, a nearby soccer field-turned-battlefield was still carved up by craters from dynamite explosions and stained red with the blood of miners.

Only six days after two coca farmers were killed by soldiers sent to eradicate unauthorized coca crops in a remote national park in Cochabamba, seventeen miners in the town Huanuni are now dead after conflicts between mining organizations. This recent conflict has its roots in the exploitative history of the Bolivian mining industry, in revolution and nationalization, in privatization and the failure of neoliberalism.

Read the full article here.

Rumors of a Coup

The rumors fly across list serves, get echoed by left-leaning intellectuals abroad, and are magnified by declarations from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Then foreign reporters take notice. Yesterday a young stringer for a foreign news service called me to ask, "So, Jim, do you think there is anything to these rumors of a coup against Evo?"

Bolivia is abuzz with rumors of a possible coup. One foreign analyst who sometimes advises the Morales government even named the supposed date – tomorrow, October 11.

So, is there anything to this? Here's my guess – no. Let's look at the political terrain a moment.

Are there a lot of powerful people in Bolivia who hate Evo Morales. Yup. In Santa Cruz you can download "Kill Evo" screensavers for your cell phone. Morales, his rhetoric and what he represents (separate a lot of the time from his actually politics which are more moderate) inspire a lot of passion both for and against him. Finding where it runs hard against him is easy and it dovetails a good deal with the old Bolivian outposts of money and power.

Would the military make such a move? Militaries in Latin America traditionally take the drastic step of a coup when two conditions are present – one is a wave of instability that provides the pubic justification and the other is behind the scenes support from the US government (though not in all cases).

How unstable is Bolivia right now? Well, there is the bloody conflict last week between miners. There is a transportation strike right now in La Paz. And there is the discontent in the nation's eastern departments that produced a daylong general strike a month ago and a lot of heated rhetoric. But not even all of that together adds up to anything near the instability that each of the past four Presidents had on their hands – nationwide road blockades, strikes that went on for weeks, soldiers shooting into crowds leaving dead bodies in the dozens. If instability is a prerequisite for a coup, the current situation falls pretty short.

Would the US government support such a move? The US government certainly has a long record of winking its support to militaries to topple (or try to) leaders that the US doesn't care for. Ask Chileans who lived through that other 9/11, in 1973. US fingerprints in the much more recent attempted ouster of Chavez are also not hard to find, which helps explain why the Venezuelan president keeps acting like an early warning system.

But here as well, just from a Machiavellian point of view, I don’t see why the US government would support this, at least now. I know a number of Embassy officials who have said, off the record, that they don't expect Evo and MAS to serve a full five-year term. But there still remains a split in the Bush administration over how hostile or cooperative to be with the Morales government and the Morales government, despite some soaring rhetorical attacks on he US, has also held out enough genuine olive branches that it seems like we are a way from the US launching another experiment in "regime change". Of late those experiments haven't gone too well.

Finally, a lot of the powers that might desire a coup – be it the US government or Morales' most rabid domestic opponents – also have a stake in national stability. In Bolivia a coup would not mean stability. It would mean plunging the country into one of the bloodiest and most unstable situations on this continent since the bloodiest days of the 1970s. The genie of the poor and the marginalized tasting power is out of the bottle and tanks won't put it back in.

To me, all that says that a slow undermining of Morales' public support – through strikes, stalling the Constituent Assembly (over demands that do often have legitimacy) and other such tactics – is a much better strategy by his foreign and domestic opponents. A better one by far that guys in green uniforms trying to seize control.

But then again, as they saying goes – sometimes the paranoid are right. Let's hope not.

Movie Review: Quien Mato a la Llamita Blanca?

Last night I finally got a chance to see the new Bolivian film, Quien Mato a la Llamita Blanca? (Who Killed the Little White Llama?), by Rodrigo Bellott. A mix of cops and robbers comedy, biting political satire aimed at every power group in the nation, great images from across the length of the country, and Bolivian cinematic hip, anyone interested in Bolivia should get the chance to see it.

The essential plot involves a whacked-out pair of Bolivian robbers, Domitila and Jacinto (played wickedly by Erika Ándia, Miguel Valverde) – a braided Paceña and her longhaired boyfriend, who seems like a Bolivian version of Cheech Marin. Nicknamed, Los Totolitos (The Turtledoves) they do things like rob a motorist on the Prado in La Paz, steal his car and send him back into the street in his underwear.

Then they score a chance for a big cocaine heist through a slimy American named “El Negro” (which is funny because “El Negro” is a gringo) played with great camp by my friend John Byers (way to go John, loved the Texas accent!) who also played the slimy American consulate official in American Visa, another recent Bolivian film.

Soon the two are chased the length of Bolivia, from La Paz to the Beni, by a pair of Bolivian anti-drug police (FELCN), an old guy and a young one (Cacho Mendieta and Pablo Fernández) who smoke pot and snort cocaine while on the pursuit. I’ll leave the plot there.

You can tell the movie was produced by the directors of a film school (La Fabrica here in Cochabamba) because it is a rainstorm of wild editing devices – screens split into eight squares to show the same scene from different perspectives, rapid MTV cuts, and the splashing of text across the screen to provide quick definition to the Bolivian slang tossed into the dialogue, An example is “ch’api”, one of my favorites, used to describe things that are tacky or of low-quality, as in the tiny blue Orange Crush delivery van that Los Totolitos steal to make their way across country with the coke.

Quien Mato a la Llamita Blanca? is funny, and in parts hilarious, a lot of that thanks to the Greek Chorus political commentary provided by Guery Sandóval who shows up in all the major scenes. Riding a dilapidated bike along a wall in Oruro still painted with faded “Goni 2002” propaganda, he does a dead-on imitation of the deposed President’s bad gringo Spanish accent. Later, with Carlos Mesa’s face popping onto the screen in a bubble, his character reminds us of the events in 2005 when Mesa kept saying he wanted to resign and the Congress would ask him to stay. “What a country, when we have a President who refuses to leave [Goni] we blockade the highways. When we have a President who wants to leave we say, ‘tranquilo hermano, tanquilo.”

Evo is not spared either, nor are foreign NGO workers. The Sandóval character tell us that Evo is “un lider de primero (first class)”, but that is because when he was campaigning around the country last year he always flew first class. Later, in Cochabamba, we meet an attractive French human rights activist who keeps chanting like a parrot, “coca is not cocaine, coca is not cocaine.”

But no one gets skewered more than Cambas and the elite of Santa Cruz – a mix of wannabe beauty queens (Miss Autonomy) and their middle aged wannabe lovers. The 5-star Los Tojibos hotel, one of many locales across the country to open its doors for filming, will never seem the same (American Airlines put me up there once).

There’s more – the actual ex-Mr. Bolivia from Nebraska who plays himself, a great scene in Oruro where the robbers and the coke-sniffing anti-drug cops all stop to get drunk and dance in La Fiesta de San Jorge (the film is full of scenes that mix real Bolivia with film hip, and it works), a stolen Hari Krishna VW that keeps “reincarnating” into different colors and flower designs, and a sound track that turns Bolivian folclórico into amped-up rock. That works too.

A friend of mine asked me if I thought people who didn’t know Bolivia would get the film. I actually don’t think so, not anywhere close to the way you would if you live here or are a Bolivian abroad.

But if you are here, run don’t walk to a cinema nearby to see the film before it leaves the big screen and, presumably in Bolivian tradition, becomes available on pirated CDs on the street. Of course, maybe for this film, that works.

View more details about the film, including a trailer, here.

Violence at the Mines

On Thursday morning, at the Huanuni tin mine 290 kilometers south of La Paz, two rival groups of miners wanting more access to the mine broke out into violent conflict leaving between 11 and 16 dead (press reports differ) and scores of others injured. The huge tin deposit is owned by the Bolivian government. The two groups of miners – one group state-employed and the other from independent labor cooperatives – threw sticks of dynamite and one another and fired live rounds.

Both the Bolivian Defensor del Pueblo and the national government of President Morales have intervened to host negotiations and a tentative "peace accord" is in effect at this writing. The government also sent in 700 police to take charge of the mine and prevent another outbreak of violence.

The Democracy Center has not been to the mine or had an opportunity to talk with either of the miner groups involved, nor the government, so we can only report, for the moment, based on a review of today's Bolivian and foreign news coverage.

Here are two articles that are worth reading for those seeking additional information:

Miners Cease Hostilities in Bolivia
By Dan Keane, AP

Mineros firman tregua tras muerte de 11 personas
Los Tiempos

Meanwhile in the USA

Readers:

I have been away for a week in the countryside. We'll catch up here shortly with analysis and comment on the events here in Bolivia these past few days, and there is much to report.

Meanwhile, as our Bolivian colleagues travel the US speaking out against the shroud of impunity that the Bush administration has offered their former President (Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada), here is a reflection on the impunity currently enjoyed by the President of the nation they are visiting.

If we measure things by death toll alone, the numbers racked up by George Bush surpass those of Goni by totals almost icomprehensible:

Number of Iraqi civilian ceaths since Bush launched war: 43,800

Number of US soldiers killed since Bush launched war: 2,737

Jim Shultz

"Let's Impeach the President"
by Neil Young

Let's impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door
He's the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let's impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones
What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government's protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Let's impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected
Thank god he's cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There's lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean

Thank God

Bolivian human rights delegation in the US this week

We would like to call attention to several opportunities this week to hear public presentations from a Bolivian human rights delegation visiting the United States. Rogelio Mayta, an attorney representing the family members of those killed in the Gas War of 2003, will be speaking on human rights issues and urging the U.S. government to notify Bolivia's ex-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and two of his former ministers, Carlos Sanchez Berzain and Jorge Berindoague, of their obligation to return to Bolivia immediately for trial in the deaths of 67 people and more than 400 wounded during October of 2003.

Mayta has been meeting with government officials at the U.S. State and Justice Departments, as well as key congressional leaders, to urge that U.S. officials fulfill this request from the Bolivian government, which was received by the U.S. State Department on June 22, 2005. To date, the U.S. government has failed to notify the three men or give an official response. The matter is a critical one for the Bolivian people, as the trial cannot proceed without formal notification of Sanchez de Lozada, Sanchez Berzain and Berindoague, all of whom have resided in the U.S. since fleeing Bolivia in October 2003.

In New York, Mayta will also be joined by Oscar Olivera, spokesperson for Cochabamba's Committee in the Defense of Water and Life.

Wednesday, October 4 in New York City
HUMAN RIGHTS, INDIGENOUS POLITICS, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
A Lecture and Discussion presented by NYU Law Students for Human Rights
6:00 PM at Vanderbilt Hall Room 206, 40 Washington Square South (W 4) between Sullivan/McDougal

Thursday, October 5 on Democracy Now radio show
8:00 AM on your local Pacifica radio station or at www.democracynow.org

Thursday, October 5 in Washington, D.C.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN BOLIVIA
7:00 PM at All Souls Unitarian Church, 1500 Harvard St NW near the Columbia Heights metro station

Saturday, October 7 in Washington, D.C.
HOUSE PARTY WITH OSCAR AND ROGELIO
7:00 PM at 1830 Belmont Road, NW
A showing of the movie "Fuera" (Out!) about the Suez corporation's abuses in El Alto, Bolivia and the people's struggle to regain control of their water resources. There will also be short presentations by Oscar and Rogelio followed by discussion.

This will be in the Belmont house in Adams Morgan between 18th and Colombia NW; between the Dupont Circle (red line) and Colombia Heights (green line) metro stops.

Tuesday, October 10in Falls Church, Virginia
MEET NILA HEREDIA MIRANDA, BOLIVIAN MINISTER OF HEALTH
7:00 PM at Restaurant Tutto Bene, 501 N. Randolph Street
Presentation and discussion with Nila Heredia Miranda, Minister of Health in Bolivia, discussing strategies for improving health care in Bolivia and speaking about current events in the country.

To arrive by Metro: Ballston stop (Blue/Orange), go east on Fairfax Dr. (toward Stafford St., away from Stuart St.), go about 2 blocks to Randolph St. Turn right and go until the corner of N. Randolph and 5th Rd. N.

To arrive by car: Take 66 East from DC, take exit to Route 50. Exit on to Glebe Rd., turn right. Turn right onto Randolph St., a few streets ahead. Restaurant is immediately on right.

For more information about these events, contact David Kane, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns at dkane@maryknoll.org; or visit ww.juiciogoniya.org.bo or www.boliviasolidarity.org.

Bolivian Women and the Mud Ceiling

Readers:

Here is another guest posting, from my right hand at The Democracy Center, our assistant director, Melissa Draper. Melissa just returned last week from attending a global seminar on Women in Leadership hosted by the Salzburg Seminar (www.salzburgseminar.org). She spent her week there in a swirl of impressive women leaders from all the continents. Below is her posting on what she learned and what it means for the rise of women’s power in Bolivia.

Jim Shultz

BOLIVIAN WOMEN AND THE MUD CEILING

*A Room Full of Troublemakers*

They say it is a quiet revolution. It begins around the kitchen table (or on its packed dirt floor, as is most common in developing countries) and is gaining strength in unlikely places such as Kuwait, the Middle East, rural India, and-- albeit slowly-- in Bolivia too. Traditionally relegated to the private sphere, women are now becoming more integrated into the political system, making their way into public office.

This quiet revolution made an impressive show of its global impact at the Salzburg Seminar two weeks ago where a generous foundation helped bring together 60 women from diverse parts of the world to share the experience of women’s political participation in their respective corners of the world. They included academics, elected officials, political advisors and activists. The experiences spanned from that of a Filipino woman, who ran for the mayor’s office in a small town and defeated a corrupt male candidate, to an Indian woman who spent 38 years in parliament and is now a close advisor to Sonia Gandhi, who heads up India’s largest political party.

The picture painted at the beginning of the seminar was an alarming one. Around the world, only 16% of representatives in parliament are women. Female heads of state around the world represent only single digit percentages. The statistics spell failure for some, but the stories of the women participants in Salzburg brought inspiration worthy of goose bumps.

Perhaps the most impressive troublemaker was Rola Dashti, the young Kuwaiti activist who was responsible for the May 2005 decision in the Kuwaiti parliament to give women the right to vote and run for public office. Her story involves savvy media strategy and a persistence to stand up to deep-seated cultural and religious norms that veil many women from the public eye. The contrast of perspectives could not have been greater when a US participant told a perplexed audience that her work was to fight widespread indifference among female voters in the US for the upcoming national elections.

A Ghanaian participant noted that the phrase “glass ceiling” is better described as a mud ceiling due to the ultra private workings of men’s networks in the governments of most countries. Bolivia has proved to be no different.

The room of troublemakers in Salzburg was an inspiration to trace out how Bolivia fares, from a global perspective, on women’s access to and role in politics.

*Controversial Quotas*

Bolivia got off to a relatively early start in granting its women the right to vote, in 1938. Its biggest leap, however, was in 2001 when the national Election Law was changed to include a quota for women candidate nominations to parliament. The lower house was to ensure one woman for every three seats is nominated. In the upper house, one out of every four seats should include a nomination of a female candidate. As of 2005, however, these measures led to a scant 17% (22 of 130) women elected to the lower house and a mere 4% (1 of 27) to the upper house. The quotas, despite their controversial nature, do need to stay in place to facilitate women’s participation. The key to successful reservation policies is to remove the quotas after they have done their job to facilitate greater women’s participation and before they begin to erode the legitimacy of women candidates.

The Constituent Assembly offers a huge opportunity for Bolivia to secure their commitment to bringing women into the political system. The elections on July 2 for Constituent Assembly representatives boasted 2,112 candidates running for 255 spots. Women constituted 43% of those candidates. MAS played an important role in adhering to the 30% quota law: of the 86 women representatives elected, 74% of those are MAS members. The President of the Assembly is also a woman, Silvia Lazarte. Despite the skepticism that she is merely a puppet of the administration’s wishes, her presence as a female dirigenta from the Chapare indicates that the male-dominated government is aware of its need to involve women in higher levels of authority.

*Suggestions for Moving Forward*

Women are far from reaching a level playing field in Bolivia when it comes to politics. In order to stay true to its claims to support women’s participation, here are a few suggestions the men and women of the administration and civil society should consider:

-- Stick to the quota law that was passed in 2001. The Electoral Court and civil society failed to demand adherence to the 30% reservation of seats for women in parliament.

-- Develop gender-specific strategies to help build capacities of women candidates and current officials so that the quota system does not delegitimize women candidates.

-- Ensure women’s involvement in the Constituent Assembly translates to recognition of their rights in the new Constitution. Do not let political or class affiliation trump the representation of women.

-- Build common ground among women of different political affiliations and classes through common projects and policies. This is probably the most challenging due to the political polarization of the country where class, culture and ethnicity create chasms that are hard to bridge.

-- Recognize the women who have been successful leaders in the social movements, civil society, and government. These women are valuable resources who should be used in collective problem solving and as constructive examples of female leadership to which the next generation can look for guidance.

By Melissa Draper