Travels with a Cartoon Character

Traveling across Bolivia with a four year old is like traveling with a cartoon character.

My family began our plans for some post-Christmas travel with grand visions of something along the lines of New Years in Buenos Aires, but economic realities drove us to a wiser course – eight hours on a bus from Cochabamba to La Paz, followed by another four to the small valley town of Sorata.

Bolivian bus travel is always full of enough whacko-ness on its own. For a second year our bus got held up briefly en route to La Paz by a spur of the moment road blockade (road blockades are popular here). That gave us time to stretch our legs, eat a few local snacks and examine the truckloads of pigs that seemed unaffected by the blockade. I guess pigs get priority.

I knew that the eight hour schelp through the altiplano would take its toll on a four year old (my daughter, Mariana), for whom “bored” (pronounced “bowed”) is a recently acquired word specially designed for long bus rides. So I came up with the brilliant idea of bringing my laptop and a copy of a movie that goes well beyond being “her favorite”. It is an obsession, The Little Mermaid. How does a four year old memorize all the lyrics to a five minute song?

Look at this stuff,
Isn’t it neat?

Wouldn’t you think,
My collection’s complete...

I want to live where the people walk...

You get the picture. My 15 inch computer screen entertained a good portion of the forward section of the bus, including some women in bowler hats who probably didn’t have a clue before who Sebastian the singing crab was.

Entertaining people on buses seems to be natural to a four year old. This morning during the fourth flat tire on our bus from Sorata to La Paz Mariana explained to other passengers the exact ways in which she acquired her vast collection of vacation bug bites, leg scrapes and assorted owies. At one point she told a group of women sitting in a standed bus in Achacachi that she had, “fallen like caca”. She gets her gift of metaphor from me.

Her clearly favoritie amenity at the frumpy and ancient hotel we stayed at on Sorata’s plaza was not the century old high colonial cielings or ample pealing paint. No, it was the unbelievable discovery that the hotel was home to four baby kittens, each of whom had to put up with an hour or so of being held, sung to, and generally tortured. Wherever we ate she would be sure to tell the wait person that our hotel had four baby kittens. I have no idea if this will start a stampede to see them, but sharing the nes seems of great importance to her.

Our travels also somehow ampled up my little one’s focus on her second obsession (after Ariel the singing mermaid), “The Daddy Money.” Since she was two, Mariana has periodically announced her need to play with my small coin purse and whatever Bolivian cash and coins it contains. She used to declare in mixed Spanglish, “Hay que jugar el Daddy Money!” Now every other night or so, for some reason I can’t explain, she wakes up at exactly 5am, comes to my bed, shakes me awake with a cheerful greeting of, “Hello little guy!” and then asks if she can play with the Daddy Money. During the day this means we set up an elaborate store to sell off whatever trinkets we can scrounge from my backpack – kleenex, gum and such. But at 5am I am certain my 10 and 20 Boliviano notes are asleep.

The advantage of course of playing Daddy Money with a four year old instead of my two older kids (19 and 20), is that at the end I get it all back.

Happy New Year to all our Readers!!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town!

Okay, the nativity scene in my living room is now officially larger than the Boston apartment that I occupied in graduate school.

Being one of those people (there are a lot of us really) who is not aligned with the notion that Jesus Christ was the divine Son of God, Christmas time is a little tricky. As I write this I can look out my office window to a hill that sprouts the very largest Jesus in the world. Down below in the city, people are running around like crazed weasels getting ready for his birthday party. Me included actually. My eldest daughter and I spent the morning making our annual photo album for my wife. Don't tell her. It's a surprise.

Now, I have written abut the challenge of this once before, in a Christmas Eve newsletter inspired by the first introduction of a nativity scene into our house in 1997. Then my proposed compromise was that we should paint our Baby Jesus with glow in the dark paint. I lost that but was delighted to discover when we moved to Cochabamba that here they actually sell glow in the dark statuettes of Baby Jesus. I got one!

Thankfully, those of us who love Christmas but shy away from the virgin birth have a savior of our own – Papa Noel, St. Nick, Chris Cringle, the most northern gringo of them all – Santa!! And this year I have decided to make my mark on our family's Christmas tradition (the rest of them are Catholics) with music, very specific music:

He's making a list.
He's checking it twice.
He's going to find out who's naughty and nice.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

He knows when you are sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake.

My daughter Mariana who is 4 and in Christmas high gear is really into "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and has been listening to the classic version most of us grew up on, sung by I-haven't-a-clue. She's memorized it. So the other day I decided it was time to broaden things a bit and I burned a CD of LOTS of different people singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Now we can listen to it a dozen different ways, almost all of them better than the one that came with Frosty the Snowman.

Here, as a treat for our Blog readers, is my review of the best and oddest versions of Santa Claus is coming to town! And happily, you can hear a short snippet of any of these for free if you visit here (Don't download them, just click for the preview.).

The Worst: Regis Philbin

Do you need to ask?

Worth a Listen: The Jackson Five

Here is Michael Jackson in his full youthful splendor with his brothers before he became sort of whiter and weirder. It's got a beat.

Nostalgic: Captain Kangaroo

The captain that young US baby boomers grew up with teams up for a duet with Mister Green Jeans. If you don't know what any of that means definitely skip it.

Most Soul: The Supremes and the Pointer Sisters

I gotta call this a tie. The classic Supremes version slips in that very Motown new chorus, "Wooo, here comes Santa, comin', comin', here comes Santa, comin', comin'." Diana Ross and the girls backin' up have "you better not pout," down pat. Hard to beat. But when the Pointer Sisters belt this one out it seems clear that they are talking about a whole other kind of "bad." So, a tie.

Doesn't Really Work: Chris Isaac

What works for Neil Diamond covers does not work for Santa Claus. It's just a fact.

Didn't Even go There: The Carpenters

Maybe if Karen had lived and made a duet with Regis…

The One I Wish Existed: The Grateful Dead

Seriously, wouldn't you just want to listen to this one over and over and over? Maybe even as a combined effort with Dylan. Santa, this is what I really want this year!

Hands Down Best: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (Live)

Starts with Bruce heckling his band and asking if they have been rehearsing, asks Clarence of he wants a new sax, then asks the live audience to raise their hands if they've been good ("Not many. Not many"). Then he somehow turns Santa Claus into Thunder Road. Wipes Regis right out of your ears.

AND RUDOLPH

It's tempting to also go into the many fine covers of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (which Mariana calls the "Shiny Nose" song).

But, to be honest, there is no competition. There is really only one version of this song and that is the one by Tiny Tim. The ukulele cinches it.

Happy holidays to all readers of the Blog – whichever ones you celebrate!!

…and Now the Other Side

Last week here in Cochabamba it was Manfred and the middle class' turn to occupy the streets of Cochabamba. Today MAS and some of its allied social movements take a turn. A very loud, very large snake of people is just finishing its way past our office window here – thousands, a size that easily rivals the Manfred event.

What was different?

Last week's look: solidly middle class
This week's look: solidly campesino.

Last week's slogan of choice: "Democracy = 2/3"
This week's slogan of choice: "Prosecute Manfred for corruption"

What can we learn from all of this?

First, in Cochabamba (and I am only talking about Cochabamba here) both sides in the emerging Evo vs. Manfred battle can turn out crowds on short notice. Second, neither side is proposing any sort of reasonable compromise to the 2/3 uproar, nor is anyone else at this point from what I can tell. Third, both Manfred and Evo are playing fire with the political bases that put them where they are.

Captain Manfred is governor of Cochabamba not just because he carried the urban middle class but because he made real inroads with poor and rural voters. He's going to start ticking them off after months of working very hard to not tick anyone off. Evo is president because thousands and thousands of middle class urban voters put an X next to his name a year ago, ballooning his natural base among the rural and the impoverished to a historic majority. Talk to some of them now and it is safe to say that Evo has ticked them off.

Somewhere buried in this debate there surely is an argument over principle. The "ifs" and "whens" of supermajorities (the 2/3 demand at the Constituent Assembly) were debated when I studied political science in college thirty years ago and they'll be debated in political science courses thirty years from now. But, on all sides, this is about power, not principle.

That said, the fact that so many people are so invested in these issues here is a great thing. It is called democracy. If only people in the US had been so publicly invested in the run up to the Iraq War, that quagmire might not be.

A Note: Ya basta, enough of politics for a while. Even the people in the streets will soon take a break for the holidays. So, tomorrow we bring you a Democracy Center Holiday Special Blog: Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Don't miss it!!

Political Winds

In a past life, long ago, I used to work for politicians – people who ran for everything from city council to President of the United States. Some won and some lost. But from that experience, and as a political junkie for three and a half decades, I have noticed that the most powerful political force in any country is the political wind – sudden or historic sweeps of public opinion that change things.

Most often, politicians who are successful are that because they manage to ride these winds. George Bush, for example, caught one post 9/11 in the U.S. that kept him going politically for years. Then his adventure in Iraq turned ugly and the winds shifted so far into his face that he lost both houses of Congress. It looks so far that he intends to ignore that shift. The truly skillful politician can actually shift the wind, as Kennedy and Reagan both did, in favor of their vision of the world. A note, I am just talking about skill here, not whether I agree with the winds involved.

So what can we say about the political winds in Bolivia at the end of 2006?

Evo Morales and the Winds of South American Discontent

Evo Morales, among many other things, is a product of a powerful political wind that has swept not only through Bolivia but much of South America. It is a wind called dissatisfaction with the economic results of two decades of economic experimentation. It is about public mistrust of economics based on the principle of, “trust the free marketplace and the market will set you free.” Bolivia, like a lot of its neighbors, did not choose this economic course as a matter of free will. The adoption of that course was essentially a deal cut behind closed doors between international financial institutions who made such reforms “conditionalities” of loans and aid, and homegrown politicians such as Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada who believed in those policies for reasons of both ideology and self-interest.

From the Cochabamba water revolt forward (including the essentially anti-IMF Febrero Negro and the gas wars of October 2003 to June 2005) popular discontent with those policies became a pretty unmistakable political wind in Bolivia, whether you agree with it or not.

And that was the first wind that helped Evo Morales convert himself from the leader of the coca growers of the Chapare to a national political figure. In 2002 he overtly made himself the way people could express that dissatisfaction at the ballot box, which, along with the suspicious pre-election denouncement of him by the US Ambassador, propelled him to within 2% of finishing in top place. In 2005 Morales rode that wind again, which was even more powerful three years later, along with a different, also powerful wind, indigenous identity. Until 2005 I never saw Morales identify himself so much as an indigenous leader, but during the election and afterwards he wrapped himself tightly in that as well.

A year ago this weekend Morales rode those winds, translated into one word, “change”, to a historic majority victory for President.

For the first six months of his unusual presidency Morales managed those winds pretty well. His gas nationalization decree proved to be both politically popular (MAS only increased its support in the July Constituent Assembly vote) and despite problems along the way it will end up boosting annual gas and oil revenue from $400 million per year to $1.4 billion, a national fortune.

Evo spent the first half of his term benefiting from an enviable political honeymoon in which his popularity soared at more than 80% and his opponents looked more and more feeble by the moment. Then Morales and MAS made a huge miscalculation and the political winds ahead for 2007 are beginning to bear almost no resemblance to Evo’s now evaporated honeymoon.

The Uproar Over 2/3 – A Political Wind of Morales' Own Making

It doesn’t take much conversation with any of the people who have turned out into the streets of Bolivia this week to understand that the wind at their backs is not simply about the demand that all actions of the Constituent Assembly be subject to a 2/3 vote. No, this wind, like the opposite one that made Morales president year ago, is a confluence of several things.

First, it about the fear among many Bolivians (particularly the middle class) that Morales is becoming the Evo they didn’t want to elect.

“I voted for him because I voted for ‘the change,” says a neighbor of mine, who has since become a fierce critic of Morales. His nationalism on the economy – negotiating better deals with foreign oil companies, resisting unfair “free trade” agreements, etc. – is still popular. But the fear Morales evokes is not about a strong state role in economics, it is the fear (warranted or not) that Morales aims to take that strong state into other aspects of people’s lives. And here Morales has not been very politically smart.

When letters from the education ministry went out informing private and public schools that they would need to start teaching in Quechua and Aymara, and that the government wanted to rollback Catholic religious education in the schools (this is a very Catholic country), it evoked alarmed comments among reasonable people such as this, “See Evo wants us to be just like Cuba. He wants to kick out the church.” That’s when the opposition finally found some political traction. That is when people first started taking their anti-Evo fears into the streets.

The rallying cry for a 2/3 votes on everything in the Constituent Assembly (again, there is no dispute on a 2/3 vote requirement for the final document) is an extension of that same political wind. People aren’t turning out in mass in the streets here over a number, but because many see the MAS demand for simple majority vote (on procedural issues and separate articles) as a power grab, as Evo and MAS being able to push their way forward “without talking to anyone.”

Here MAS was even less politically adept than on education reform. As a friend of mine described it the other day (a person with very strong ties to Bolivian social movements on the left) – “Why did they pick this fight over 2/3? It is stupid. They could have compromised early, having all the committee votes decided by a simple majority and letting all the votes of the full Assembly be decided by 2/3. They aren’t even talking about what the new Constitution should actually include and now the right is unified all across the country.”

Morales also doesn’t exactly calm those opponents down when he attacks them by declaring, as he did a few weeks ago in Santa Cruz, that hunger strikers there are fasting because they are fat.

Bolivia, Meet Iraq

But the uproar over 2/3 is also about regional economic self-interest. Or, to put it more bluntly, “It about oil money, stupid.” A gathering of “autonomistas” from the protesting states is meeting this week in Tarija and leaders have announced that they intend to promulgate their own draft constitution to present to the Constituent Assembly. On the one hand that’s a good thing. At last the Assembly might start talking about what the new Constitution should include instead of just procedural matters. But it doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that one of the key things those departments plan to fight for is to have control over as much of the revenue as possible from the exploitation of oil and gas under those states. MAS has declared that those resources belong to the nation as a whole and that their distribution must remain a national political decision.

Bolivia, meet Iraq. One of the underlying sources of conflict in Iraq (and there are many to choose from) is that the minority Sunnis live in the areas of the country where oil doesn’t happen to lie in abundance under the sand. One of their demands is that the oil be treated as a shared national resource, not a regional one. Almost anywhere in the world the math equation is the same: an impoverished nation + resource wealth = political conflict. It is called “the resource curse” and Bolivia’s current conflicts have a good deal to do with it. As we have noted here before, Santa Cruz and the other departments never clamored for autonomy when the mineral wealth of Bolivia was in tin and silver mines in the highlands of Potosi and Oruro.

Political Ambitions

Finally, it is safe to say that the intensity of the current anti-Evo winds (while in large part Evo’s fault, as noted) is also because his opposition is fanning them for all they are worth. Such are the rules of politics. And, as we have noted here before, the best barometer is the actions of Cochabamba’s own President-in-waiting, Captain Manfred Ryes Villa, the departmental governor. No political fool, Reyes Villa spent most of 2006 virtually silent on national political disputes until the breeze on his finger in the wind told him the time was right.

To be clear, Manfred’s boast in yet another paid ad in Sunday’s paper – that 60,000 people turned out for his 2/3 rally on Thursday – is a huge stretch. I was there. It wasn’t anywhere close to 60,000. I have seen 60,000 people. That’s what it takes to fill a good chunk of the Washington Mall, not the three blocks at the end of the Prado in Cochabamba. Nevertheless, Manfred is as good a reader of political winds as they come and he knows that this new one against Evo has some staying power.

In the end there are two Evos. One is an economic populist who wraps himself in indigenous symbolism and also assures the middle class that he is their president too. It is an Evo that can often be charming. That Evo won a historic majority a year ago. The other Evo is the one who sees himself at the head of a historic move to translate that majority into a long time rearrangement of power in Bolivia, in ways that make much of the country feel excluded and fearful instead of a part of it. It is the Evo who vows that his base should rule 500 years. It is an Evo that can be arrogant.

It is that second Evo that marches into 2007 politically wounded and into a strong headwind against him. He can still survive this and keep the hopes of his election alive. To do that he needs to find a compromise fast on the voting procedure at the Assembly. Only then can he and MAS move the public discourse back to where it should be. Who owns Bolivia’s mineral wealth and how can it be used to advance the future of the whole nation and not just those with the current historic good fortune to have it under their feet?

That is a debate Morales and MAS can still win.

Report from a Rally

What position Mother Nature is taking on recent political events in Bolivia is getting hard to discern.

It has been a full week of rainless, blazing hot weather here since a rain and hailstorm of biblical proportions pounded Cochabamba the night before last week’s South American Presidential Summit. Then today at 3:30, precisely as marchers were gathering downtown for a rally demanding 2/3 approval of the building blocks of the new constitution, the Bolivian sky opened up again and drenched us all. Hail stones the size of marbles whacked the heads of anyone left out in the scramble for cover. The fastest in the crowd jammed into Burger King, owned ironically by one of the most prominent politicians demanding the 2/3 vote, Samuel Doria Medina. But I really doubt he engineered the downpour as a way of boosting business.

“Two Thirds is About Consensus.”

Under the tree where I took cover I had a chance to chat about the current political uproar with some of the other people getting soaked. A kindly older woman wearing a t-shirt reading, “Mom of a University of Arizona Student” explained to me that the demand for a 2/3 vote in the Constituent Assembly is about assuring that the country’s new constitution is based on a national consensus not just the will of one political party. A man who I presumed to be her husband, an equally friendly retiree wearing sandals and a blue baseball cap told me that he thinks Evo Morales’ advances on gas nationalization and land reform are terrific and he supports them. “Excelente!” he told me.

His views on Evo and MAS’ moves to let the pieces of the new constitution be approved by simple majority do not exactly qualify as “excelente”. [Note: As we have reported consistently on this issue – there is no disagreement that the final constitution must either be approved by a 2/3 vote of the Assembly of a majority vote of the Bolivian electorate.] “If MAS can write the new constitution with a simple majority then they don’t need to talk with anyone else,” he explained. “We don’t want one party rule, like they had in Nazi Germany. We know what that is like.”

He went on to explain to me that the problem is that Evo is listening too much to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He also explained that he has a brother who lives in Caracas and that since Chavez took over the streets there are filled with garbage.

On the topic of “what we need is consensus” I raised the obvious problem with my new wet friends – doesn’t that also give a minority the right to just veto anything the majority wants? I used an example. “Suppose you, I, and this other fellow here decide to get out of this wet mess and sit down together to have a beer. Suppose you two really want Taquina and I really want a Pacena and all three of us are stubborn jerks? Doesn’t that let me, one guy, keep you, two guys, from having the beer you really want?”

The woman in the U of Arizona t-shirt said we should just order personal sized beers. I suggested to her that the constitution is more like one of those giant bottles you have to share. The fellow in the blue baseball cap said it just meant that he and his friend would have the burden of convincing me that Taquina is a better beer. “Okay, but if I want a Pacena and only a Pacena. What then?” They were still sorting that one out when the rain stopped and we went our separate ways.

I have no doubt about the sincerity of the people I chatted with in the crowd or that their sincerity was shared by a good many of the 1,000 to 2,000 people I saw gathered at the end of the Cochabamba Prado. Evo Morales and his backers shouldn’t doubt their sincerity either. Yes this was mostly a march of Cochabamba’s middle class (with some notable exceptions, including several groups of indigenous waving wiphala flags). But it isn’t hard to understand why Evo makes them nervous.

Evo speaks passionately about the indigenous and rarely reminds Bolivians that he understands the challenges of everyone else. His education ministry recently sent notices out to all the schools, including private ones, that they will be expected to start offering primary instruction in one of the country’s indigenous languages. On a recent trip to Santa Cruz he didn’t exactly take the statesmanlike high road when he announced that the hunger strikers there were forgoing eating because they were fat.

…And Political Games

That said, it also isn’t hard to understand why MAS backers are a little suspicious about the current political choreography of their opposition and a city awash in white t-shirts reading “2/3!”. After the rally I stopped by Dumbos for a little cup of ice cream (maracuya sorbet, I highly recommend it!) and noticed that all the young people working there had “2/3!” shirts on.

“Why are you wearing those?” I asked the young woman tossing me a scoop. “Are you in support of 2/3?”

“No the owners made us put them on.”

So much for “We don’t want anyone imposing their will on us.”

A number of professors at the public university similarly postponed final exams and made their students attend the rally. Some businesses and other schools ordered their employees to go.

While there are reasonable questions about how many of the people getting soaked this afternoon were there out of democratic principle (I have no doubt that many were) versus those ordered out, there is no doubt about who led the orchestration. Among the many paid advertisements in today’s Los Tiempos newspaper promoting the rally, the most colorful was placed by the convener of the rally, the elected Governor of the state of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa (known better here as “Bon Bom”).

“TOGETHER we will make a single voice for the UNITY of the country in defense of DEMOCRACY,” proclaimed the advertisement placed by the once and likely future presidential candidate.

One of Reyes Villa’s more notable democratic acts in the past was flying back to Bolivia from Miami in October 2003 to stand by the side of about-to-be-deposed President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada while “Goni’s” government was slaughtering people in the streets during the “gas war.” Even Goni’s own Vice President had broken with him by the time Reyes Villa offered his backing.

There is also another little-noticed element to how Reyes Villa is playing political chess at this point that ought to get more notice. In his 2002 campaign against Sanchez de Lozada, Reyes Villa went to great lengths to not draw attention to his history as a military officer, which his advisors clearly considered a liability in a nation with fresh memories of military dictatorship. In fact, Goni’s political handlers, led by James Carville (yes, that James Carville) made Reyes Villa crazy by digging up an old photo of him in uniform to splash across their attack ads.

Today Reyes Villa is very clearly pulling his military credentials out of the closet and making them a key part of his message. His ad in today’s paper identifies him as: “Captain Manfred Reyes Villa, Governor and General Commander of the Department of Cochabamba.” The change is notable, and chilling.

To be sure, the crowd that turned out in Cochabamba today, and the much bigger one expected out in the streets of Santa Cruz on Friday, is raising a legitimate issue. Should MAS be able to create a new constitution in a way that basically excludes the opposition from real input? Giving the opposition a veto isn’t the answer but neither is dismissing all this as just manipulation by the US Embassy.

But underneath the surface, this is about power and politics. What I saw on the streets of Cochabamba today was not just the pouring of surprise hailstones but the opening act in Bolivia’s next election for President – between Evo Morales (who MAS aims to let stand for reelection via a change to the constitution) and Captain and Commander Manfred Reyes Villa.

A Conversation with the Santa Cruz Hunger Strikers

Readers:

At the end of last week at this time Bolivia was focused on the arrival of a dozen Latin American presidents to Cochabamba for a summit. This week the political focus of the nation is on the widening split over a math question – should the building blocks of the new constitution be approved, each one, by a simple majority of the Constituent Assembly (50% plus 1) or a super majority of 2/3? As we have written about here before, there is no dispute that the new constitution, in the end, needs either a 2/3 vote for final approval by the Assembly, or failing that, a majority vote of the people in a national election.

To press their case for a 2/3 vote on the pieces along the way civic leaders in Santa Cruz and elsewhere are staging hunger strikes, to pressure the MAS government towards a compromise. A rally of 2/3 backers is scheduled this afternoon here in Cochabamba and bigger ones tomorrow in the four eastern departments of the country.

The Democracy Center's assistant director, Melissa Draper, visited Santa Cruz recently and spoke to some of those fasting for what they say is an issue of democracy.

Jim Shultz

A Conversation with the Santa Cruz Hunger Strikers

Santa Cruz is a world apart in more ways than one from the central and western parts of Bolivia. Its humidity is one, in contrast to the dry valleys and altiplano. So is unrelenting population growth, which contrasts significantly with highland cities such as Oruro and Potosi where migration out is a common story. It is different economically (much more well off), culturally ethnically and politically, a place far different than the glacial peaks and grazing llamas backpackers see on the altiplano.

The “medialuna,” which refers to the four departments (Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and Tarija) of Bolivia’s nine in the eastern part of the country have banded together politically to challenge the La Paz-based Morales administration.

One of the ways they are making their voices heard is by going on hunger strike. Last week, I had an opportunity to talk to a couple of the leaders at the hunger strike in Santa Cruz’s main plaza. As the conversation progressed, it was clear just how wide that gap is between the perspectives of this country’s eastern and western regions and how many of the existing demands are an echo of historical tensions.

Oscar Vargas Ortiz, the President of Municipal Council of Santa Cruz, is a young, articulate man with piercing hazel eyes. Trained as a journalist, Vargas held the air of a leader to whom the other hunger strikers in the central plaza deferred. Seated on one of the mattresses that covered the ground under one of about six other tents, Vargas spoke clearly about why he was joining others on strike.

“We are here to protect democracy,” Vargas said. “We ask that the government respect the fact that four of the nine departments voted for autonomy.” The people in Santa Cruz do not feel represented by the Morales administration, he explained. He pointed to the thirty-some other hunger strikers surrounding him, saying they came from all parts of the department and represent a diversity—indigenous and non-indigenous—that is far broader than the Quechua and Aymara interests that dominate the west, and now the government.

“Every year 70,000 new Bolivians arrive in Santa Cruz. People are coming for work.” He claims that the Morales administration does not listen to the needs of the one of the fastest growing areas of the country. Santa Cruz’s population has now eclipsed La Paz’s, the main capital and the country’s historically largest city.

Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of an old man standing at the edge of the tent. In a raspy, quiet voice, the man speaks out in solidarity to the hunger strikers, telling them to stay firm in their convictions. Vargas turns to me and says, “History is repeating itself.” The man was Carlos Valverde Barberi, who also fought for autonomy for Santa Cruz back in the 1950s—a struggle that cost lives in the same plaza where we stood. The tensions between east and west have always been there, he says.

When we asked about land reform, Vargas directed us to Mauricio Roca, President of the CAO (Camera Agropecuaria del Oriente—Eastern Agricultural Chamber) who is a landowner and soy farmer in the northern region of the Santa Cruz department. Vargas deferred questions to him, and clarified that the hunger strikers in the plaza were not speaking out against land reform. Their central concern is the demand for autonomy and a 2/3 vote requirement for the articles of the new Constitution in the Constituent Assembly. The MAS government wants a simple majority to decide on the new Constitution, since it does not hold the full 2/3 of the Assembly.

To get to Mauricio Roca, we had to pass from the plaza, where, Vargas explained, the “people of the neighborhoods” were collected, to the central lobby of the state government building. Inside were the “well-known” people: writers, heads of civic committees, and other notables. We passed through security and were led through a very different collection of people. The diversity of the tents and hunger strikers in the plaza was nowhere to be found. And then I realized I had never seen a segregated hunger strike before.

One woman surprised me particularly. She was stretched out under carefully folded, clean pressed blankets. Her hair seemed freshly coiffed and her lipstick recently applied. The hunger strikers common in political struggles in Cochabamba are usually university student or union activists, people who set themselves up under makeshift tents on dirty pavement. Today in Bolivia hunger strikers are as diverse as the country.

Roca was far less inviting in his conversation than Vargas. Roca is a common figure in the national newspapers, serving as the primary spokesperson of the land reform opposition. He was curt and offered nothing more than the most necessary responses to our questions about land reform and the kind of actions eastern landowners might take against the new land reform law, pass by Congress and signed by President Morales on November 29.

“It is going to create lots of problems, said Roca. “We’re talking about impacting the productive sector of this country, which will effect the economic and the social well-being of this country.” When asked what was going to happen if the current hunger strike got no response from the government, Roca refused to elaborate on what actions were planned. “Wait a little bit and you will see.” He was not shy, however, in suggesting that eastern Bolivia may need to consider independence if the Morales administration chooses not to respect private property.

Not long ago, the Minister of Justice, Casimira Rodriguez, was quoted saying “our challenge [as the Morales administration] is to not repeat a history of discrimination but to remain open and represent all Bolivians.” Whatever one's position is on majority vote vs. 2/3, it seems clear, based on what I saw and heard in the plaza in Santa Cruz, that a good portion of the nation feels like the new government is not listening to it. Figuring out how to construct a bridge across such radically different perspectives remains one of the most difficult challenges the MAS government faces.

The Presidents Come to Cochabamba

Dear Readers;

Don't worry – I was never under any impression that all those siren-wielding motorcades and rush jobs to plant gardens near the airport had anything to do with my return here to Cochabamba this morning. That honor goes to the fact that the Presidents of more than a dozen Latin American nations are due here Friday for a regional summit.

All this is a big deal for Cochabamba. The city has scrambled for weeks to find enough fancy hotel rooms and to clean up all the small corners of the city that Presidents might pass. I can also report that somehow (temporary or permanent, I can't say) the city has also gotten rid of that putrid smell that wafts ever-present in the air from a tannery near the airport. The best credit goes, however, to the newly arrived summer rains which have begun to paint the surrounding hills their annual redo to lovely green.

Here's a report from The Democracy Center's intrepid Gretchen Gordon on the Presidents coming to town and the parallel "social summit" being held here this week as well. We'll have updates over the next few days.

Jim Shultz

The Presidents Come to Cochabamba

Traffic is bad in Cochabamba, but this week it’s not because of civic strikes or blockades. The city is making arrangements for the arrival of 13 heads of state this Friday for the two-day Summit of the South American Community of Nations. At the same time, yesterday, the 2nd Summit for a People’s Integration kicked off its program of workshops and roundtables to put forward proposals from activists throughout the hemisphere.

The Presidential Summit

The summit process of the South American Community of Nations has an interesting history. It grew out of a series of meetings of South American presidents starting in 2000, focused on developing commercial and physical integration within the continent, or in other words, free trade and infrastructure.

In 2004, though, the direction of the summits changed, due in large part to a push from Brazil for a broader political integration. The creation of a “South American community” was proposed. The 2004 Cuzco Summit declaration described a “South American space, integrated in the political, social, economic, environmental and infrastructural spheres,” and affirmed that “South American integration is and has to be an integration of the peoples,” though the concept was still without concrete objectives. The summit taking place in Cochabamba will be the 5th summit of South American presidents, but just the second under the banner of the Community of South American Nations.

In October, Evo Morales sent an open letter of proposal for the summit, calling for a concretization of the idea of a community of South American nations, including “a treaty that makes the Community of South American Nations a real South American bloc at the political, economic, social and cultural level.” Morales also proposed several initiatives, including linking social service provision, including water and energy, a coordinated fight against corruption, a South American development bank, the linking of state enterprises, fair trade initiatives, and physical infrastructure projects that promote local development.

The Social Summit

The parallel grassroots gathering, the Summit for a People’s Integration, is being coordinated by the Hemispheric Social Alliance and the Bolivian Movement for Sovereignty and Integration with Solidarity of the People (it doesn't translate that well in English). Summit organizers predict upwards of 2,500 participants from throughout the Americas, from indigenous campesinos to non-governmental organization representatives and activists. Eighty-six workshops and roundtables are scheduled over four days, ranging from the gender impacts of various integration models, to experiences with increasing social control over water resources. Events are organized around 13 main themes including: energy, water, agriculture, migration, social rights, financing and militarization.

This year’s People’s Summit builds on the recent success of fights against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (a free trade agreement for the hemisphere) and the expansion of the World Trade Organization. Now, rather than focusing on defeating free trade proposals, the popular summits are dealing more with developing alternatives for proactive positive integration. Looking far beyond commercial agreements, the idea of this social and political integration reflects a belief that the countries of Latin America have the opportunity to improve their individual situations by working together. While often having its paths dictated by external forces including international financial institutions, trade regimes, or the U.S., a more united and integrated South America would stand a better chance of “regaining its sovereignty.” Organizers describe the summit as part of a “long process of constructing proposals for an America that is integrated, free, sovereign, and inclusive.”

Examples of this different type of integration include programs of food security, environmental cooperation, or mutually beneficial trade agreements such as the People’s Trade Agreement recently signed between Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia.

This year’s summit will differ from its predecessors in that for the first time there will be a formal exchange between the official summit and its popular counterpart. Heads of State will address the People’s Summit and take proposals developed during the event.

What to Expect

Though these Summit events are usually more about relationship building than actually developing concrete plans, they will be interesting processes to watch given the recent social and political currents in the region. As more South American governments – Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador - have to varying extents rejected the one-size-fits-all economic model of free trade and deregulation, what will they put in its place? To what extent can these nations find common ground on which to pursue greater integration, and what kind of integration will that be? Will it really break out of the old economic mold? Will it really be “an integration of the peoples”?

Written by Gretchen Gordon

The Iraqi Refugee Crisis - Report from an Eyewitness

According to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodard, in his book Plan of Attack, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President Bush that by invading Iraq the US would be bound by the Pottery Barn rule: "You break it, you own it."

By any definition imaginable, the US invasion of Iraq has left the nation more badly broken than even the war's fiercest critics imagined. The stories of violence have left us too numb to absorb them. Estimates of Iraqi deaths soar from 150,000 to 600,000.

Last night here in New York City, I sat down with my old friend Cathy Breen, an eyewitness to the war, and listened to her tell about the Iraqi human rights crisis that has virtually escaped public notice – the flood of desperate Iraqi's trying to flee the violence the US ignited – hundreds of thousands who want to get out and can't.

A Voice of Conscience from the Start

Cathy Breen is no new recruit to the cause of human rights in Iraq. I have known her for more than fifteen years. When I first lived in Bolivia in 1991 Cathy was a Maryknoll lay missionary, a nurse who lived humbly in a poor neighborhood and helped her neighbors with everything from health advice to maneuvering through the maze of Bolivian bureaucracy to secure birth certificates for their children. In 1997 she returned to the US to be nearer her aging parents and took up residence in a Catholic Worker house in lower Manhattan – living humbly once again amidst the homeless, the disturbed and those who sought to make a life by their side.

She also threw herself full scale into the issue of Iraq and the US economic sanctions that cut people there off from medicines, food and other essentials, leaving thousands dead as a result. To ask Cathy how she was in those years (the years between the wars) was to hear accounts of her vigils at the UN and her efforts to let people in the US know what the impact really was of those invisible sanctions.

In 2002 when President Bush started his campaign to push the US into preventative war in Iraq, Cathy responded by moving to Baghdad. As a member of the group Voices in the Wilderness, Cathy lived side by side with the families that would bear the violence the US and its "Coalition of the Willing" threatened. She wrote reports home to her friends and returned to the US to sound the alarm. After the war she returned to Baghdad once more. But eventually, as George Bush's Iraq descended into civil war she found her presence a threat to those she sought to help (being associated with an American is akin to a death sentence) and returned to the US once more.

A Million Refugees and No Room at the Inn

From March to September of this year Cathy returned to the region, planting herself in Amman Jordan and immersing herself in the latest Iraqi human rights crisis to not make it on to the world's radar screen – the flood of Iraqi refugees trying to get out and being told by nation after nation, "Sorry, no room at the Inn."

According to one UN human rights commissioner Cathy spoke with in Amman, there are an estimated 700,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan alone. Other estimates, Cathy told me, put the number closer to a million. But the Jordanian government has no interest in becoming permanent host to the flood of refugees set loose by Washington. Legally they can stay three months and then they must go. One of the Jordanian prerequisites for permanent residency is $100,000 in the bank.

Families that have faced unspeakable violence at home face the constant threat of deportation back to hell. The US government, says Cathy, has its own plan for helping the refugees escape. In 2006 the Bush administration allotted all of 500 slots for Iraqis to come to the US.

In Jordan, living with and among the Iraqi refugees there, Cathy heard account after account of women raped in the presence of their families, of vicious kidnappings for ransom (some carried out by Iraqi security forces), and of violence at a scale and brutality few of us can imagine. So she set off to the foreign embassies, more than 20 of them, to find out what could be done to open foreign doors to the Iraqi's fleeing the violence. Some were polite – "The Japanese served me tea," she told me. Others, including that of the country that began the war, wouldn't let her in the door. None had plans to address the crisis.

In January Cathy Breen will return to Jordan to take up the refugee cause there once again. Before she leaves, her group (renamed Voices for Creative Nonviolence) will be issuing a report on the refugee crisis. We'll be posting that here and doing all we can to help her get out this story.