“Bolivia calza hoy como piecita pequeña, sirve de dato para confirmar el sabotaje malvado del sistema capitalista contra un indígena presidente. Bolivia sirve para decir frases celebres sobre los pueblos indígenas, o poner en una línea paralela de peligrosísima y delicadísima similitud Palestina, los Balcanes, Afganistán o cualquier otro punto del planeta.
…
Quiero decir que somos actoras y acotres socialise corresponsables y no simples victimas de un proceso neocolonial.”
- Extracto de Carta abierta a Naomi Klein, por Maria Galindo de Mujeres Creando, mayo 2008.
“Bolivia fits today like a little piece of pie, it serves to confirm the evil sabotage of the capitalist system against an indigenous president. Bolivia serves for the saying of celebratory words about indigenous peoples, or to place [oneself] on a parallel line of high danger and great delicacy similar to Palestine, the Balkans, Afghanistan or any other [such] point of the planet.
…
I want to say that we are corresponsible social actors [male and female] and not simple victims of a neocolonial process.”
- Extract from Open letter to Naomi Klein, by Maria Galindo of Mujeres Creando, May 2008.
(weak english translation brought to you by ana australiana).
My three weeks in Bolivia ended up being a formative exercise in deconstructing the official news media, or what realpolitik might mean, or how to write (and not write) killing in a way that mourns every death; knowing how some murders are valued, contested, registered more than others, that mourning is intertwined with justice.
When I arrived in La Paz, The News told me that there was fighting in the streets of Sucre where the constitutional assembly was meeting. The government moved the assembly to the military base out of town, and then three people were killed, apparently by the police at the direction of the government. Being, as I am bound, to consider the authoritarian aspects of a socialist government represented by first world activists as an egalitarian utopia, I resignedly assumed that MAS was taking that familiar road of reform through violence. When I got to Cochabamba I was provided with some alternative news sources and I realized - apart from the silliness of thinking I could know a situation from a few days and a few dailies - just how much I had failed to consider the complicated picture that I was being presented with as though it was simple, and the reality that is bred by the fact that MAS, and any state goverment wanting to run itself against the neoliberal capitalist model, against a 500+ year legacy of colonization, against crippling oligarchies and stupendous social inequalities, faces a campaign begun from well below the underdog’s position. And when that position not only gains credence but real administrative power, those who have benefited from this previous set-up will use all of their ample means to prevent it from being taken away. So they can rightly say that ‘Evo Assesino’ killed three innocent members of el pueblo who were just fighting against authoritarianism. These terrible deaths (not the result of bullets fired by state police, but of crossfires much more confusing and insidious) became the collateral for those being threatened with the loss of their power to say there is no democracy in Bolivia, to say that pro-democracy protesters are being murdered by the state, that democratically elected local governments are being destroyed and that is why the international referees of democracy should step in before a socialist dictatorship is established in Bolivia. I got the shivers watching the news the night before I left Santa Cruz, seeing the prefects roll into Washington seeking US support. More than one activist in Cochabamba noted a few similarities between this moment in Bolivia and that before the 1973 coup in Chile.
Power will do what it can to maintain itself, including making itself appear vulnerable and threatened. And all the while knuckles are cracking in Santa Cruz mansions (pictured) as strategy is discussed, the shiny 4 wheel drives line up outside the plaza where their ‘oppressed’ drivers are ‘on strike’, and kids crowd around me with feisty, famished eyes and ask me to buy them lunch.
The strike is on today, and the streets are nervy-quiet. A good time and space to read a non right-wing analysis of what is going on politically in Bolivia at the moment. You should do it too if you’re interested, and especially if you’re reading news of Bolivia and getting the impression that Evo Morales’ government is a Murderous Dictatorship and The People are rising up against him. Because of course … things are more invested, more complicated, than that.