27th July, another Bolivian anniversary

This is a country very keen on its anniversaries and its history, a country with a big chip on its shoulders keen to emphasise national unity and create the semblance of a nation state. This, even though the state does not get to all those corners of the country where there is no health care, no education, no police presence, no justice…

So, anniversaries cover every single important event in Bolivia and in Latin America’s history. It was from current Bolivia after all, that the Latin American liberation from Spain was instigated exactly 200 years ago. There are, however, less memorable anniversaries; Bolivian defeats in the Pacific War, the Chaco War…just some of the many Bolivian defeats at war with her neighbours.

This time the anniversary is mine. I arrived here exactly on 27th May 2008 and I am now only weeks away from leaving (if they let me out of the country but that’s another story). In the interim, political events have been exhilarating (some) and depressing (others). These are some of them.

I arrived in the middle of a political campaign like I have never experienced before. Having taunted the president for endless months accusing him of being a ‘dictator’ scared to put his position under the scrutiny of the electorate, the opposition won the right to expel Evo Morales through a recall referendum – the first such event in Bolivian political history – to be held on 10th August.

I have never seen a more ruthless, unpleasant, vile campaign. One accepts that lies and politics are one and only thing. But in Bolivia, I heard open calls to the military to overthrow the president on live radio and TV, accusations of fraud before, during and after the referendum, in the most biased media campaign I have ever witnessed. It was a truly bizarre experience.

The result in favour of the president (with a 67 % support nationwide, even greater than expected) was followed by a mature call for dialogue with the opposition prefects. Not a chance. Those who before the election took the mantle of guardians of democracy, instigated from the regions a violent uprising led by violent thugs – racists and not a few neo-fascists paid by the opposition and the infamous civic committees in Santa Cruz – designed to destabilise the government, force a military intervention and provoke a few deaths that could serve as the basis to overthrow the same government that two thirds of the electorate had just legitimised with its support. The provocation went as far as to lead to the massacre of peasants in the northern department of Pando in the middle of September.

Fortunately for Bolivia, the events of 2003, when a previous president had to leave the country, did not repeat themselves. Instead, the government chopped off the head of the snake, so to speak, when the US ambassador was expelled from Bolivia, leaving the opposition prefects without a political rudder. Very soon things got back to a tense normality. Along with the ambassador, the DEA and USAID were also soon expelled from the country. The US response was swift and petty, suspending Bolivia’s special trade agreement ATPDA, something that new president Obama has only confirmed. Oh well, no surprises there in spite of some initial high hopes that Obama’s presidency symbolised a new beginning for US-Latin American relations.

For me, the second ‘historic’ moment took place on 21st October in the presidential square, Plaza Murillo. As the country has become accustomed to expect, there was a blocking of the law needed to call a referendum that would put to the Bolivian people the constitution drafted by 255 men and women elected for the purpose in 2006 (after many, some would say illegal changes made on it by Congress and a group of negotiators that included the opposition prefects in October 2008).

I have never seen a demonstration like this. Some estimate that as many as 100,000 people from all over the country marched on to La Paz to demand from congress their right to vote. They came, led by their own president, and they stayed for 30 hours outside congress, chanting, dancing, and listening to speeches. Every now and then the president himself, surrounded by the leaders of the social movements, had to make an appeal for calm, especially at 6 am when a group of miners, dynamite in hand were ready to storm congress. At last there was a law and it would be January 25th 2009 when Bolivia approved the new constitution that many hope will be the basis for refounding the state. We will know how when, after new elections in December, the new plurinational assembly – this is the new name for congress – begins to work.

The shine was rubbed off this process of change when days after the new constitution was approved, the head of the ‘nationalised’ oil and gas company was arrested after being involved in the worst corruption scandal of this administration. That the head of YPFB was someone with the total confidence of the president didn’t help. Oops, the MAS appeared to be not quite as virtuous as we thought.

At last (and at least), after such high level social and political confrontation, you could think that it was time for the country to pacify itself. Not a chance, I’m afraid. Only a couple of months later, antiterrorist police arrested two members of a terrorist cell (three others died in the shooting that ensued during the arrest) in Santa Cruz, just meters away from where I had been staying a couple of weeks earlier. There is more than enough evidence to link them to opposition leaders and businessmen from the Santa Cruz region. It seems that the same forces at work behind the recent Hondurean coup will not give up. Will they ever?

This month we have just celebrated the bicentennial of Bolivia’s role in the war of liberation from Spain. Celebrations are over and now begins the race towards the December elections that will continue the process of change that was set in motion with the victory of MAS in December 2005. It is difficult to know what might happen. All we can guarantee is that this will be another hot pre election period full of surprises.

200 years of Bolivian independence

As the previous post mentioned, yesterday marked the 200th anniversary of the start of the rebellion in 1809 that would result in the independence of Bolivia 16 years later. The celebrations in La Paz were memorable but I thought that these pictures from the BBC do much more justice to them than any I could have taken so...enjoy.

The link is the following:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8155083.stm

Presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador and Paraguay visit La Paz

July 16 is the day when, 200 years ago, La Paz joined the cry for freedom from Spain, giving way to a revolutionary wave that led to the independence of all of the current South American countries. Today, that day is remembered in La Paz, with the presence of Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa and Paraguay’s president Lugo.

In the Villarroel square of La Paz, they are currently remembering Pedro Murillo, the independence leader who pronounced the words that have become so famous this year: “I will die but nobody will be able to put out the torch of freedom that we set alight today”. And so it was.

But 200 years later there is still a long way to go for those aspirations to become a reality. The signs of change are in the air with a new wave of democratic and progressive governments in power and united among themselves that have realigned the power relations with the US. The extent to which they are undertaking revolutionary changes as they claim is less clear. The mass of impoverished populations are still with them. Let’s hope that these governments can deliver more social justice before patience runs out.

200 years on, a new revolution still needs to take place

25th May was the date when the call to revolution and independence from Spain was made in Sucre, unravelling a wave of independentist fervour throughout Latin America. In spite of starting it all, Bolivia would be the last country in South America to gain independence many years later.

To add insult to injury, the indigenous majority only managed to swap one set of masters, the Spanish crown, for another in the form of criollos, or Bolivians of Spanish descent, who now took their place at the top of the highly stratified society to continue to perpetuate racist practices that survive to this day, as the shameful events of 24th May last year in Sucre demonstrate.

In the meantime, two Bolivias and two speeds of development have imposed themselves in the country. One is modern and city-based, looking to join a single, globalised world. The other is indigenous, poor, and largely rural.

The 1952 revolution attempted to bring together these two worlds by denying the existence of the indigenous reality of Bolivia while perpetuating the discrimination against the majority of the population and maintaining the highest levels of inequality and discrimination in Latin America.

With the arrival to power of the first indigenous president in the history of the country in 2005, a new revolutionary period began. Through democratic means, Bolivia aims to reconcile these two worlds, uniting them in their difference. For this reason, the much-maligned new Bolivian constitution recognises for the first time the existence of 36 nations inside the country, with their cultures, languages and customs. In addition, it recognises different economic systems and forms of property – private, state, and collective property forms favoured by Andean communities. The new constitution also recognises different legal systems, including the also much maligned traditional forms.

At the heart of current divisions in the country lies precisely the unwillingness of the modern world to recognise equality in difference. Bolivia is, for the first time, bringing to the fore the worldviews of its traditional societies. It is telling the world, for example, that an alternative model of development based on a symbiotic relationship with ‘mother earth’ is possible and desirable; that the Andean concept of suma qamaña (literally ‘living well’) can help us achieve the wellbeing that a model based on conspicuous consumption and the accumulation of wealth is not giving us; and that participative forms of democratic practice can also improve our body politic.

Will the modern world listen? The new revolution that needs to take place will do so when dissonant voices at the margins of the world are finally listened to.

200 años de grito libertario ….200 years later, La Paz remembers its role in Latin America’s independence from Spain <

What a month! With all this stuff about the new constitution going on, I have had little time to write about anything else. The truth is that approving a new constitution is not something a country does every day. It is certainly something that deserves to be discussed and debated.

This much can clearly be said about Bolivia: the new constitutional text might not be perfect but it has been debated ad nauseam first in the constitutional assembly in Sucre, and then in the media ever since the assembly ended. That is why all this nonsense about this being a constitution ‘imposed’ by MAS or written by Hugo Chavez – a regular accusation from the right – is basically…well… nonsense.

Here we go again. I seem to find it difficult to let go off the constitution. But what I wanted to say is that this year 2009 is an anniversary year and a year of celebrations because, two hundred years ago in May, the first independence declaration in Latin America was made in the city of La Paz.

La Paz wasn’t the first or most important city to be founded in the coyasullo, charcas or Alto Peru, as the area roughly equivalent to today’s Bolivia was originally called. No, the first and most important city was Sucre, then called La Plata (Silver). The city was situated in a valley of low altitude with a benign climate from where the Spanish king’s administrators and soldiers could oversee the exploitation of the richest silver mines ever found in history. They were situated close by in Potosi but, at over 4,000 metres above sea level, the emerging town had too harsh a climate.

La Paz was instead found to protect the road between Sucre and Lima, then the centre of Spanish power in South America. However, at the beginning of the 19th century Latin American criollos – colonials of Spanish descent born in Latin America – began to question their exclusion from high level administrative jobs that were exclusively reserved for Spanish-born migrants. This discontent was fuelled by the successful example of revolt in the United States as well as by ideas emerging from the French revolution. The result was a demand for independence from Spain.

In this, La Paz was the most daring city, declaring independence exactly 200 years ago in 1809. However, Spanish repression kept the area of Alto Peru under control until 1825 when finally, the combined efforts of Bolivar from the north and San Martin from the south, met in Lima to take the last bastion of Spanish power before Antonio Jose de Sucre liberated Alto Peru.

Two hundred years ago La Paz was the first to declare independence from Spain and the last to achieve it. Two hundred years later La Paz launches its second cry of independence, when more than 70 per cent of its population voted yes to a modern, progressive and decolonising constitution. The re-founding of Bolivian begins now.