"It's as if the United States had 160 million Apaches, Hopis and Iroquois"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, June 11, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor
Poor Little Rich Country
By WILLIAM POWERS

Samaipata, Bolivia

MY taxi is stuck behind Indian roadblocks. Three hundred farmers, many of 
them Quechua in colorful ponchos, just took control of the only highway 
near this small town in central Bolivia, right below a jaguar-shaped Inca 
temple. I can escape neither east to the sweltering boomtown of Santa Cruz 
nor west toward the windswept Andean capital, La Paz, where tens of 
thousands of Aymara Indians are on the march. I get through, but only after 
abandoning my taxi and making my way on foot.

For three weeks, the country has been paralyzed by blockades and protests; 
a few days after my experience at the roadblock, the uprising forced the 
president, Carlos Mesa, to resign. The protesters want to nationalize 
Bolivia's vast natural gas reserves, South America's second largest; BP has 
quintupled its estimate of Bolivia's proven reserves to 29 trillion cubic 
feet, worth a whopping $250 billion. The Indians are in a showdown with the 
International Monetary Fund and companies like British Gas, Repsol of Spain 
and Brazil's Petrobras that have already invested billions of dollars in 
exploration and extraction.

Many are calling the remarkable past five years in Bolivia a war against 
globalization. In a limited way, they're right. McDonald's closed its 
outlets here, unable to lure Bolivians away from their saice and salteñas. 
Demonstrators in bowler hats forced out Bechtel and Suez water privatizers; 
blocked an income tax urged by the mighty I.M.F.; and ousted President 
Mesa's predecessor, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozado, who spoke Spanish with a 
heavy American accent, over his plan to export Bolivian gas to California 
through Chile.

But this is not about walling off a Wal-Mart-free utopia; it's more of a 
struggle over who has power here. An American Indian majority is standing 
up to the light-skinned, European elite and its corruption-fueled 
relationships with the world.

You might say that Bolivia has colonized itself. When the Spanish Empire 
closed shop here in 1825, the Europeans who stayed on didn't seem to notice 
- and still don't. Even within Latin America, the region with the greatest 
wealth inequality in the world according to the World Bank, Bolivia is 
considered one of the most corrupt, per Transparency International's annual 
index of political dishonesty. It's also divided along a razor-sharp racial 
edge.

Highland and Amazon peoples compose almost two-thirds of Bolivia's 
population, the highest proportion of Indians in the hemisphere. (It's as 
if the United States had 160 million Apaches, Hopis and Iroquois.) And 
while native people are no longer forcibly sprayed with DDT for bugs and 
are today allowed into town squares, Bolivian apartheid - a "pigmentocracy 
of power" - continues.

I've been here for three years as an aid official, and exclusion is part of 
life. Indians are barred from swimming pools at some clubs, for example; 
they are still "peones" on eastern haciendas little touched by land reform. 
In La Paz, I was walking through the fashionable South Zone beside an 
Aymaran woman, Fátima, when another Bolivian viciously pushed her off the 
sidewalk. She wasn't shocked by the sentiment, but she was amazed that the 
man had been willing to touch her. Meanwhile, Bolivia's energy-rich eastern 
states are agitating for "autonomy" in a thinly disguised effort to deprive 
the poor Indian west of oil and gas revenues.

What is to be done to prevent a collapse in Bolivia? The answer, of course, 
must begin with Bolivians themselves. Elites here must recognize that the 
country's dark-skinned social movements are stronger than any political 
party or president and will not go away. Any lasting solution must shift 
real power to Bolivia's poor majority.

We'll see a lot of political maneuvering in the coming days. Some of the 
roadblocks have been dismantled in the wake of Mr. Mesa's ouster and the 
installation of a new interim president, Eduardo Rodríguez, the former head 
of the Supreme Court. But sustained stability depends on movement toward 
more equality, not just cosmetic changes, starting with speedy national 
elections and a constituent assembly with the full power to rewrite the 
Constitution and decide who benefits from Bolivia's petroleum.

Solving the crisis, however, depends not just on ending exclusion, but also 
on how the rest of the world relates to Bolivia, South America's poorest 
country, particularly through economic policy.

The United States and the international community have a vital role. In a 
speech this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was right to 
acknowledge Bolivia's democratic deficit.

But beyond lip service we must accept that democracy means, well, letting 
people decide what to do with their own resources. Existing contracts with 
foreign oil companies were signed by corrupt Bolivian leaders, without the 
approval of Congress. Even if nationalizing petroleum may be a 
growth-zapping bad idea, we need to let Bolivians themselves decide.

Moreover, our own ideas for this region are not always so fabulous. Bolivia 
was the testing ground for the I.M.F.'s "shock therapy" liberalization in 
1985. This stringent recipe has made millions for oilmen and industrial soy 
farmers here (neither sector creates much employment) but has not reduced 
inequality; 20 years later, Bolivia's income levels are stagnant or worse, 
and half the population lives on less than $2 a day.

BESIDES taking a respectful hands off, the world should contribute one 
vital thing toward a more democratic society that embraces Indians: debt 
relief to the reforming government. Bolivia's debt load has risen to 82 
percent of gross domestic product, sucking up a mind-boggling 40 percent of 
fiscal expenditures. This is a recipe for more poverty and turmoil.

Meanwhile, the Indians, distrusting Mr. Rodríguez's promise to call 
elections and talk to proponents of nationalization, are keeping some of 
the roadblocks in place, a tactic that costs millions of dollars in lost 
commerce, hurting the Indians themselves most of all. But as one Quechua 
told me as he crossed his arms in front of trucks here in Samaipata, 
vaguely evoking Tiananmen Square: "Our cultures have been blocked for 500 
years. This is our only voice."

William Powers is the author of "Blue Clay People" and a forthcoming book 
on Bolivia, "A Natural Nation."