Open veins

Colonial backlash

Through the grainy print, I could just make out three men in suits and hats haughtily bristling their guns. At their feet were a line of indigenous men and women on their knees, heads bowed, the gaunt look of humiliation etched on their faces. Beneath the photo the caption: “Capture of savages in Santiago de Chiquitos,1883.”

I meant to challenge the gentle motherly museum owner in the small village in the eastern region of Bolivia about the inscription, but shamefully didn’t. My silence scratched at my conscience for a few days like an infected insect bite.
 
What I never expected though was to see a similar image live on TV a month later. Yet three nights ago, I sat sickened and disturbed as I watched a line of campesinos kneeling, their shirts stripped off, forced into mumbling chants against Evo and in favour of Sucre whilst a gang of students deliriously shouted racist insults.

A day in the country life...

My blog hasn’t really caught up with my personal life and some imminent changes afoot, which I will blog about soon.. But this piece has been floating around a little while and captures some of my experience of living in the “campo” (countryside) in a format I used to describe life in La Paz a few years ago.

6.30am-ish: Blurred sounds and light filter diffused into the room and my consciousness. I squeeze up against Juliette’s slumbering back, limbs entangling to extract some heat against the early chill of the morning. Outside the door, I hear the scratching of one of our three dogs. I fall back to sleep.

7.20am: There is a knock on the bedroom door. I know instantly that it is our neighbour, Irineo. I grab some trousers and open the door, patting the heads of the three dogs we have somehow come to inherit as they enthusiastically jump up and I try to dodge their muddy paws. Our bedroom leads straight onto an outside first floor balcony which connect the two other rooms that we use of the house: the kitchen and the toilet.

Irineo’s face wrinkles into a laugh when he sees my sleep-crumpled face: “Look!” he points at the sun. “The sun is already there in the sky.”  I mumble, “Yes, but you know I am flojo (lazy).” He invites us to his daughter’s fifteenth birthday (a big occasion in Bolivia) on Sunday. I offer to be padrino of the cake (godfather), a tradition here where neighbours help each other pay for the costs of special occasions. As he heads off quickly to pick up cargo from the Pil milk factory, I reflect on how much easier it is to get to know neighbours in the countryside.

May 4th referendum

Just imagine if Cornwall decided that it had had enough of Gordon Brown, decided to write its own constitution declaring it had right to control exports and negotiate international treaties related to the region, control land distribution and agricultural policies, and run its own police force and that it would hold a referendum to pass it. Then when that was declared illegal by the national courts decided it would go ahead anyway. Well that is the picture in Bolivia – although obviously with a very different history and context – as the eastern region of Santa Cruz pushed through a referendum that won more than 80% approval for its autonomy statutes.

The victory has been hailed as the start of a new era for the jubilant Right across the country who understandably see the Evo Morales chances of delivering “radical change” running into serious difficulties, whilst the government has pointed to the large abstention rates (40% which is very high when voting is compulsory) which combined together with No and Null votes meant the majority was more like 50%. It is a clear victory but unlikely to be what the Santa Cruz elites hoped for given the amount of resources they put into the campaign in the region where they have the most support.

The reality is that the referendum probably doesn’t change very much. The fight which has reached an apparent stalemate between the rightwing prefects and the government which has been going on for more than a year looks likely to continue. The government is opposed by a majority in Santa Cruz and right across the east of the country and there are doubts as to whether the government can even effectively exercise state power in these regions without risking violence – most incredibly the Vice-Minister of land was recently kicked out of Camiri by landowners with guns as he tried to hand out land titles to indigenous Guaranis. Yet the huge march I witnessed here in Cochabamba of hundreds of thousands of mainly campesinos and indigenous people on Sunday against the votes shows that Evo Morales still has strong support and his powerful and mobilised bases behind him. Internationally, the autonomy vote has received no recognition shown in the complete lack of international observers (bar a few rightwing thinktanks). Neighbouring governments and the Organisation of American States have clearly backed Evo Morales which means that independent attempts to control hydrocarbons resources or exports in the province are unlikely to flourish.

There is an enormous amount being written on blogs and websites about the statutes, of which I would particularly recommend Upside Down World. I have just spent more than a week in both the city and the countryside of Santa Cruz, so thought I would share my observations based on four stories.

Debt chapter arrives

It has taken forever, but finally my chapter examining the politics of debt in Bolivia has been published in spanish. You can download it here (PDF, 464KB) or read more about the book here. It will be published in English in Britain by Merlin Press in September.

Bolivia's elites push for autonomy

My partner Juliette has recorded another piece on the autonomy movement in Santa Cruz for Free Speech Radio News that you can listen to here.

Shock doctrine

Bolivia is a good setting for reading Naomi Klein's latest book "Shock doctrine." Not just because Bolivia features in it as one of the model countries where the Chicago school of economists were able to wreak their policies of deliberate inequality and unprecedented corporate welfare, ultimately causing a backlash that grew from 2000 onwards. But also because in the last few years I have been able to observe the faltering attempts to try and create a different post-neoliberal path by the new Evo Morales-led government. In fact , living in Bolivia is like observing the postscript to Naomi Klein's book.

For those who haven't read it, Naomi Klein  examines how Milton Friedman and his Chicago school of economists used crises (and at times created crises) to impose their fundamentalist neoliberal model on the world. In fact she argues with well documented research from across the world from New Orleans to Poland to Iraq that it is impossible to impose these policies, which are based on increasing inequality and undermining public social systems, without crisis.

Where I think the book has weaknesses is its failure to both critically examine Keynesianism that preceded the neoliberal agenda or to warn of the dangers of the still limited and confused policies of the Left when it takes power. It was illuminating to finish the book at the same time as reading in Bolivian newspapers about fights in central government and hearing from friends in government about the frustrations two years on of pushing forward innovative ideas within resistant bureaucracies. It portrayed more starkly than ever that the Left lacks its own "Chicago school" to invest in the policies  and practices needed to create effective and workable alternatives to neoliberalism.

Such a school clearly would not emulate the use of crisis or military force to impose their agenda, but would be prepared for building on growing popular rejection of neoliberalism to develop well worked-out public policies that provide an alternative. It would learn from the fundamental flaw of the Chicago school that abstract ideas are not enough but need policies that are developed in practice and that examine critically how to deliver these policies within a deeply entrenched neoliberal and corrupt state bureaucracies. It would, like the inspiring model of Public-Public partnerships on water, look to draw in experience and expertise from across the world to deliver on the hopes that many people have, not just in Bolivia, for policies based on environmental and social justice.

Crude reflections

I have had the following piece published in the April/May edition of Red Pepper (buy now in all good bookshops and newsagents!). The piece focuses on the different visions of development that are emerging that result from conflicts around the impact of extractive industries on communities in Ecuador. The piece has been published with some amazing photos taken by Kayana Szymczak of indigenous communities affected by contamination caused by Chevron Texaco and shown in a gallery "Crude Reflections" on Chevrontoxico.com.  You can also see an article by some friends on a similar theme but with a much broader look at Venezuela and Bolivia as well on upsidedownworld.

The boat crested the wave and swept in, crunching up against the stony-sand beach. Within seconds it was surrounded by men in baggy shorts, bargaining like marine stockbrokers for the boat’s catch. Danny, a fisherman and trader, pointed beyond the boat to a port shimmering on the horizon, which he said was the US military base Manta: “We used to be able to fish out there, but when it was given to the Americans they stopped us.” He mentioned that the US had also sunk at least eight fishing boats and that several people had gone missing.

In Ecuador, you don’t even have to head to the coast to see evidence of strong US presence. You just have to put your hand in your pocket. For since a financial crisis in 2000, Ecuador’s currency has been the US dollar.

Potato harvest

On Easter day, we joined a friend Calixto and his wife Encarnación to help harvest potatoes on his land in El Alto. In a dry barren neighbourhood, we firstly shared coca leaves to bless the harvest. We then  plucked out lots of varieties of potatoes watched impassively by the snow-capped Huayna Potosi behind his adobe brick wall. We finished with the tastiest chicken and potato stew before heading back to La Paz. A memorable Easter and a great harvest too!

Coca is not a drug

My partner Juliette has produced a great short programme for Free Speech Radio News on the UN call on Bolivia to ban coca. Click here to listen

 

The political price of bread

I looked at the bag. There were only two rolls not three. Ever since I have been in Bolivia I have got three rolls for one boliviano (about 8 pence). It was very concrete evidence that prices are going up.

It has been in the papers for a while, but it is really in the last month that every other conversation you hear is about rising prices. A group called “Amas de casa” were out marching in Cochabamba earlier this week. Whilst they are often dismissed as a front group for opposition prefect, Manfred, the same can’t be said for the union workers in El Alto who have expressed their “frustration” at food prices and marched on Friday calling for the resignation of the Finance Minister.

And the rise in prices is probably the biggest threat to MAS’s programme of changes. For discussions about ethnic identity and plurinationality start to become irrelevant if people are paying more for the basic necessities of life. In fact those who are most affected are those who are the core of Evo Morales’s support: those on low incomes who saw no benefits under years of neoliberalism and have hope for real changes under Morales. With more than a third of the population earning less than one dollar a day, a 30% increase in staples such as bread is not something that can be easily absorbed.