In the Symbolic Heart of Bolivia

After two eye-opening weeks in La Paz, I moved on to the city of Sucre for my third week. Sucre is the constitutional capital of the republic of Bolivia, was the source of the first liberation movement in South America, and remains the symbolic heart of the country. The contrast with La Paz is dramatic. Where La Paz is intense in every way, bustling and sprawling and crowded, Sucre has an energy that is lively but easygoing. Known as “la ciudad Blanca,” Sucre’s buildings are mostly whitewashed colonial holdovers, and the architecture is beautiful. The streets are less crowded, the plazas are greener, and in general the city has a kind of small-town pleasantness to it.

My visit to Sucre happens to have fallen during winter vacation, so the University life that usually dominates the city is somewhat muted. Still, people are friendly and I have had a lot of quality conversations with people around the centro. In the course of discussing my project here, acquaintances have made some interesting observations. One old man, surprised that I was travelling and staying alone, asked if I was afraid. I said no, and he replied, “Ohhh, macho.” I laughed, it was such a Latin American response.

Another younger man, commenting on the distribution of opinions I was likely to receive here in Sucre, asked if I had been to the campo (countryside). When I said that I had not, he smiled knowingly and said that I would get a very different set of political views from the campesinos that make up Bolivia’s majority.


Regional demographics and political dispositions

I have realized that, with La Paz´s indigenous demographic mitigating the bias somewhat, I am limited in the types of groups I am engaging because I am spending all my time in cities. Still, through the occasional conversation with a visitor from the country, through responses from perceptive city-dwellers, and from general knowledge of the regional demographics, I can make fairly accurate generalizations about the views of these underrepresented country folk. The indigenous campesinos are where Evo gets his strongest support, with their unwavering faith in the first President who they trust to be looking out for their own interests. As a shoeshine boy explained to me, “There are two Bolivias. One is in the cities, and that is where the tourists and politicians and businesses are. The other is in the campo, and the people in the campo have none of the things that people in the city have. Evo is from the campo, he lived there and he knows what that life is like, so he wants to work to make it better for the people in that Bolivia”. His rhetoric of the “2 Bolivias” would have made John Edwards proud (his campaign theme, if you recall, was the “two Americas”).

Opinions on the political awareness of rural Bolivians continue to be divided, but I have learned some interesting things about the way campesinos conduct their politics. As one man from the mining region of Potosí explained it, these people have only recently become aware of the political power they wield through their vote, as a majority group in Bolivia. For this reason -the levelling of the political playing field- Evo can be satisfied that at least one of his goals has been met. These rural communities have learned to inform and organize themselves effectively, to be effective in their political roles. Each pueblo has a governing council, and community leaders whose job it is to travel to cities, listen to politicians, read the news and report back to the rural areas. In town meetings, people share information and views and decide on political views and actions. So while these groups do act as political blocks, they take their positions through deliberate processes that are not controlled by manipulation or social pressure, as some have suggested to me.

Of course, not all agree that the peasant communities have learned to participate constructively in politics. Recent history certainly shows an inclination for direct action, rather than votes, to make a political statement. Many, from “the old man in the park” to powerful politicians, argue that the risk of general strikes and massive highway blockages, strategies employed often in the months and years leading up to Evo´s election in 2005, do more to harm the country than to effect change in government. One man passionately declared that by cutting transportation and preventing people from being able to work, the campesino blockades harmed the areas of the economy that they should be improving. In addition, a country that is often at risk to be paralyzed economically by protests and blockades is not particularly inviting for international businesses and investors.

This argument has value, but lost force when I heard the man’s suggested alternative: “People should just be disciplined in their work, go on with their lives, and keep hoping that the country will improve economically, politically, and socially.” The man who said this believed that the revocatorio was just distracting people from work, and insisted that social tranquillity would lead to economic equilibrium and would eventually result in better quality of life for those who need it most. Politicians, journalists and citizens who fall on the political right consistently argue that the obvious and proven road to progress is through free trade and open markets.

This confidence is interesting to me, a student who has studied again and again the ongoing academic and professional debate over whether the free trade policies of the so-called “Washington Consensus”, supported by the World Bank and IMF (both of which have left strong impressions, mostly negative, on Latin America), are actually effective at reducing poverty and stabilizing economies. The evidence to date is far from conclusive, as a survey of the literature on political economy or a class on international development will readily reveal. Looking back, specifically, at the conditions of Bolivia’s poor during the past decades of neoliberal economics and institutionalized politics, however, I am sceptical of this stock approach to solving the country’s problems.

In theory, Evo´s aim of encouraging investment but making equal redistribution of wealth his priority is exactly what Bolivia needs (and for that matter, Latin America and the rest of the devloping world). The sad truth is that the government´s policies and practices have not met expectations, and controversy over lack of transparency and mismanagement has dogged the administration. Disagreements over the acquisition and re-distribution of the hydrocarbon tax, a point of conflict between producing regions and the central government, is one of the issues that consistently dominates news headlines. Imperfect though their economic knowledge may be, Bolivians are nonetheless intensely concerned with the overlap between politics and the economy. In the United States, even the politically aware citizen assumes that the economy, that vast and vague mechanism, is being run by people who know what they are doing. Here in Bolivia, past and ongoing economic and political instability prevent such a convenient assumption.


Sucre, capital pride, and political views

As I had anticipated from my background reading and conversations, the political insult done to Sucre when the constituent assembly denied its claim for a vote on sole capital status still dominates political views. Critics are technically correct in calling the move “anti-democratic.” Many have declared that they cannot support a constitution that does not make Sucre the administrative capital, and when I press them for a reason most only respond with vague allusions to liberation and independence. One man did point out that such a move would boost the region economically, but in a city that already has a relatively high quality of life, this argument is not overly compelling. Banners, logos, and other propaganda proclaiming the merit of Sucre´s case for being made sole capital of the republic are omnipresent. The newly elected Prefect ran her campaign on the promise of 2 referendums: a vote on departmental autonomy in Chuquisaca and a nationwide vote on the republic´s capital.

The capital pride of the sureños (Sucre residents) saturates political attitudes. The constitution does, in fact, name Sucre as the seat of government, but as the department’s Senator informed me, this issue is as symbolic and antiquated as the loss of Bolivia’s Pacific coastline to Chile (reclaiming the “litoral” is a constant theme of Bolivian political pride). Senator Rodriguez, the department’s representative in the upper house of Congress and a member of the opposition party PODEMOS, had much to say about the Morales Administration and the politics and life of Bolivia in general. Most of it was expected, but some was a surprise. He admitted that the autonomy strategists of the media luna used the symbolic issue of the capitalía to mobilize the people of Sucre against the constitution, not because they supported Sucre’s claim but because any opposition to the government’s constitution meant more leverage for the autonomy movement.

Sucre´s image as a a center of inclusive culture and progressive was tarnished by a startling event in May. In response to a visit by President Morales, local political and social leaders (it is still debated whose fault it was) egged groups of rightist students on to violence against indigenous campesinos in the main square. Farmers were beaten, had their shirts stripped off, and were forced to kneel and repeat chants against Evo. The event took place in the main square, the same square where independence was first declared in South America, and where during my visits families and young people of all races mixed in the pleasant afternoons and evenings. News cameras and a recently released documentary captured the event, and it has been decried as sybolic of the politically-motivated racism that has raised its ugly head in Sucre and Santa Cruz. The streets of Sucre gave no sign that anything other than peaceful coexistance and interaction ever occured, but this racist episode and others like demonstrate not only the darker underside of this post-colonial society, but also the ready potential for violece.


A conversation with the Opposition

Senator Rodriguez made well-articulated arguments against the Morales government’s policies and practices. He described the need for decentralization, offering muted support for the autonomy movements, and criticized the “self-interested” motives of the government in trying to centralize power. He attacked Morales´ government as divisive, combative, and polarizing, doing more to ostracize political and social gropus than to affect change for the Bolivian people. As every Bolivian has, he sympathized with the plight of the poverty-stricken campesino and emphasized the need to increase economic equality and social justice, but he did not think that Evo´s government was keeping its campaign promise to that effect. Health and Education are the two pillars of progress, and each side claims them as the motivation for their positions. Evo´s supporters see a government that is seeking health care and education for everyone, particularly in rural areas where basic necessities are lacking, and where the government´s spending has never reached. Those favoring autonomy and decentralization, on the other hand, blame the La Paz beauracracy for stifling regional efforts to improve facilities within departments.

Rodrigues roundly criticized the economic policies of the Morales Administration as the cause of limited investment, a worsening the job market, and increasing inflation, arguing that opening up the Bolivian economy to foreign companies is the only sure way to lift the informal sector out of poverty and realize stable progress. His example was Peru, which is enjoying record economic growth thanks to the rising prices of mineral commodities mined there. The situation is not all roses, I pointed out, as workers have recently been protesting the exclusive flow of financial benefits to businesses and investors, leaving working class wages stagnant as inflation increases. The Senator responded that this is part of the risk and the process, but he would rather have economic growth and then figure out redistribution of wealth than debate resource redistribution until the opportunities for growth are gone. His point was well taken, but not unconditionally. Again, I look at the unpleasant history of neoliberal policies in Bolivia, where many still vote based on their opposition to the age of “economic imperialism.”

Bearing the banner of the opposition party, the Senator salted his responses to my questions with descriptions of the Morales government as totalitarian and communist and vague references to narco-trafficking and terrorism. He often seemed to catch himself getting carried away on rants against Evo, but in general offered well-reasoned opinions and criticisms. I was surprised to learn later that Rodriguez is one of the local politicians accused of inciting the racist violence in Sucre. When he commented on the event, he iterated the opposition version of the story, where government-supporting MAS members staged the scene to hurt the image of the opposition. Once again, I am reminded that there is no such thing as universally accepted truth in Bolivia. There are two or more sides to every story, various lenses for interpreting every event, and even different press versions of the same topic. I am learning to question everything I hear, read, or see, no matter how convincingly objective it might seem.

Rodriguez was not even on the extreme of the opposition. He called Evo his friend, and recalled hosting him in his home, but went on to declare that the President could hardly read and write. He acknowledged the need for comprehensive government-led reform and a strong central power, even as he stated unequivocably the need for decentralized administration. He described hopes that Evo would be the Mandela of South America, but said that he is just as close to becoming a Mugabe-style dictator. Corresponding views are apparent in the press, depending on whether you are reading La Paz or Santa Cruz newspapers. In a society where politics is everything, polarization is the norm.

He described his party´s support for the revocatorio as a politically calculated decision to avoid a greater evil. Like much else in current Bolivian politics, the referendum law is the result of political posturing and personal pride, and of the heightened tension that allows for no compromise from either side. The needs of the people and the country had little to do with the referendum´s implementation, according to Rodriguez and others I have spoken to. He also re-iterated the common concern that tensions are going to increase up to the vote and beyond. The Senator was thoughtful and complete in his responses, but I certainly got the impression of an old-school politician who knows his stuff but doesn´t seem to be representing anyone or anything specifically.


Prediction: Unpredictability

Bolivia, the Senator informed me, has a political history much like a pendulum, where extremes are approached but not reached, and where the balance returns to the center between swings to the right and left. Bolivia also has made a habit of approaching the boiling point of a crisis, and pulling back just in time to avoid the worst. He expressed hope that this pattern would continue with regard to the current crisis, but also expressed worry that it would not. He informed me that a well-known political analyst had told him that he thought that this might be the first time in over a century that Bolivia could not solve its problems through non-violent politics, and that the potential for full civil war within the next year is very real. This analysis supports a statement made by a UNC professor and Latin America specialist, who also predicted open violence or civil war within this year.

The historical contextualization of this crisis reminded me of the thesis of my original research proposal, where I argued that Bolivia’s current situation, which embodies so many of the racial, social, economic and political conflicts that have dominated Latin American history, is the definitive test case for democracy and modern society in the entire region. Also apparent is the research theme that political and social polarization are the dominant trends in young democracies, where instutions do more to re-inforce painful historical legacies of division than to overcome them. My time here as only more thoroughly convinced me that the raw struggles and conflicts of interests that define Bolivian politics are the determining factor not only in the future of this country but that of the region in general. I will go as far as to say that the ideologies and interests at play in Bolivia today reflect much of the conflicts and issues that drive political and social developments worldwide.

Developments here continue to move rapidly, as does my time in Bolivia. I have moved on now to the Bolivia´s largest city and its economic center, Santa Cruz. I have learned not to expect anything expected, so I will be interested to see what new revelations occur during my days here. There is some bad news on my project front: I recently lost not only my backup digital camera, but also the memory card which contained all of my pictures from Sucre. So, unless by the grace of God it is somehow returned to me, the visual documentation of this recent part of my journey is lost and I will need to buy a new flash card to continue my photography.