I started writing this Friday morning, and didn't finish until Saturday morning, and here I am, sending it on Sunday. The political situation in Cochabamba, constantly changing, but for the last couple of days, calm, recovering.
Friday, 01.12.07
It's been raining in Cochabamba this morning. Ayer ha sido muy grave.
Usually when there are blockades or protests, I tell people, "Look, there are blockades or protests every other day. It's not a big deal. There are ways of dealing with these kinds of things. People still go to work and come home safely. If it's a big one, you walk (or bike) to wherever you're going (because all the transportes are also on strike) and stay out of the center of the city, or you stay at home.
The worst it's ever been in Bolivia when I was here was October 2003, when ex-president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (Goni) sent out tanks and sharpshooters against people protesting a gas deal to export Bolivia's natural gas through Chile to the United States. The terms of the deal were very beneficial for Chile and the US, not as great for Bolivia. In the light of the most recent contract re-negotiations, Goni was basically trying to give away Bolivia's natural gas. To paraphrase Jim (Schultz), the revenue from the recent deals has fixed Bolivia's decifit problems in ways that the IMF and Goni never even dreamed of.
But I digress. In October 2003, over 50 men, women, and children were killed. Most of the killing, though, was in La Paz-El Alto and the blockading altiplano areas on the road between La Paz and Cochabamba. I was safely tucked away at my calm and peaceful host family's house far away from the center of town.
Well, yesterday was pretty bad, and while I was never in danger, I got to see a lot more than I had seen before.
*Political Background*
Excerpts from Conversation with Jen. Tuesday, Jan 9.
usuario: Cochabamba is where it's at. Especially right now, if you're talking about blockades
Jennifer: That makes sense. What's with the blockades?
usuario: Manfred Reyes Villa (governor of the department of cbba) tried to put forth a referendum for autonomy for Cochabamba. Autonomy is widely seen as a Santa Cruz issue, and while Cochabamba has swung a little to the right over the 2/3 voting issue in the Consituent Assembly (for the constitution), it certainly is nowhere near that far to the right.
Jennifer: interesting
usuario: Evo (still) has a lot of support. Today there were ~15-20,000 people marching in cocha, just flooding the streets. A lot of them had bandanas and vinegar (apparently the best way to protect yourself from tear gas). They held a vigil in the plaza principal.
Jennifer: wow
usuario:a pretty intense first two days, I'll say
Jennifer: no joke. so what's this about the constitution thing? are they currently writing their constitution?
usuario: correct. re-writing
Jennifer: gotcha. why re?
usuario: in Bolivia, there has of course been discrimination against indigenas & campesinos, not just on an individual racism basis but also in the legal system. the idea is to rewrite the constitution to "right the wrongs" so to speak. and to allow for ways of representation that also fit with traditional community structures.
Jennifer: dude! how come no one talks about this stuff? this is history in the making
usuario: right!? now of course to those that have been in power, that seems like an upset of the "natural way of doing things"
Jennifer: duh! it's kind of a big deal. i can't believe you're in the middle of all that. how exciting
usuario: it definitely is. and Jim (the guy I'm working for) is the guy calling the AP press guy based in La Paz and feeding him information, which is really cool.
More analysis:
http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/
*The Events of Thursday, January 11th*
I had been exhausted on Wednesday - tired from waking up at 6AM for Tai Chi, probably mentally exhausted from getting used to being here, and certainly physically strained: sore hamstrings from the Tai Chi workout, recuperating from a slight sunburn (I have since stocked up on sunblock) and a North American cold trying desperately to adapt to a Bolivian climate. After taking a four hour nap and then being equally tired at the end of the day, I let myself sleep in on Thursday and not go to Tai Chi.
I ended up waking up around 8AM, did some stretching, took a shower, ate breakfast, grabbed my laptop and bag and went down to the Democracy Center office, walking a couple blocks down the Prado, through the Plaza Colon, and down a few blocks to the office.
While in the office, we saw the various groups of campesinos marching along our street (it's a pretty major street). Most of these groups are sindicato-based, with each group of obreros (workers) having their own sign, parade-style. Over the course of the day, I would hear them called "el pueblo," "movimientos sociales," "cocaleros," "los anti-Manfred," and "campesinos." The most accurate is probably the "anti-Manfred" folks, but for simplicity's sake, I'm going to use "campesinos." The campesinos are fairly well-organized. As march and manifestation veterans, they walk in rows and columns that a marching band could be proud of. (There were also smaller groups of less-organized, more trouble-making protesters among them, mostly younger men. These are likely the people that had started the burning of the prefectura the other day, and apparently often get chewed out by the more mature, organized obreros.) The anti-Manfred chanting was a lot more charged than in previous days. Some of the other Democracy Center folks commented, "They know that there's going to be some kind of confrontation today."
I stayed in the office until about 2PM, then walked home. The group of chicos that was with the campesinos was in the Prado, so I took a side street up to the house just to be safe, since the other day I had been accused of being an "Espia de Bush!" (though I passed Gretchen on the way, who said the worst that she suffered while passing by was getting whistled at a few times). Got to the house without problems, saying hello to Chichi on my way in. You could tell she was already upset, her nerves on edge, but we sat down for some tea and she and I began chatting about this and that, which made her visibly calmer.
She explained to me that her son, Jose Miguel had gone out to march with the people that had gathered at the Recoleta, a plaza on the northern side of the city, against her wishes. She was worried sick that he hadn't called yet, which he had promised to do. Later on, these people would call themselves the "Juventud Democratica" and I would hear others call them "the white shirts," "the Manfredistas," or "the ricos." I'll call them the "Juventud," although there were plenty of jovenes with the anti-Manfredistas, and there were definitely a good number of older people with the juventud. Chichi was very quick to say that that same son had voted for Evo a year ago, which I thought was particularly interesting.
At about 3:30 or so, we started to hear more chanting and fireworks, and Chichi began to get nervous again. Trying desperately to calm herself down, she got out old photo albums and started to show me old pictures of her sisters and her parents, from her wedding and from when her sons were little. The latter, of course, didn't help at all with her worrying about Jose Miguel, so I offered to show her my pictures.
As we talked, we were hearing more and more noise coming from the direction of the bridge on the northern side of the Prado, and later we heard that at about 4:15, the juventud group armed with palos (long wooden sticks about as big around as my wrist) that had been amassing in the North had broken through the police lines and had started running across the bridge towards the Prado, where a group of campesinos was stationed with thier own palos. According to Jose Miguel, when the juventud advanced, the campesinos started setting off tons of fireworks, scaring some of the juventud back, but when it was clear that they were in no way turning back, the police launched tear gases on both groups, producing even more confusion.
When Jose Miguel and his cousin got to the Prado, they, with a group of about 20 other people, split off to the side streets to "run out" the campesinos from the first and second blocks parallel to the Prado. They were successful in a few cases, and then when they got to the corner of Chuquisaca (perpendicular to the Prado) and Valdivieso (parallel), they saw a larger group of campesinos coming up Valdivieso towards them. Of the 20, only two were left and they figured now would be a good time to run down the street to their uncle's house, which they promptly did.
They got in the door at around 5:00 and Jose Miguel called Chichi, who by this time was pacing from her little altar in the corner of the kitchen to the windows to see what was happening, shaking uncontrollably and unable to calm herself, calling out "Why hasn't he called yet!??" and "Madre mia, Dios mio, protegenos!! Protect us!!" and calling everyone she knew to try to locate her missing son, hoping he had gone to a relative's house. I was doing my best to keep her as calm as possible, assuring her that it would be very hard for him to call, but that I was sure he was all right, that he would be okay. In addition to everything, Chichi had just lost her father, and had gotten back from the funeral in Santa Cruz only days before I arrived. So when he called and she heard that he was right next door, she was understandably relieved. However, her nerves did not calm until much later in the evening, when everything had calmed down. In the meantime, we continued looking out the second floor windows from behind curtains to watch what was going on, and Chichi continued praying that nothing would happen to us. I tried to tell her, "Chichi, there are worse things than a broken window, no?" She agreed but continued praying.
Groups of young men alternately ran each other out from the side streets of the Prado by our house. At one point, the police or military took the Prado and guarded the entrance on Chuquisaca. Next to our house they're doing construction, and there was a pile of rocks on the road outside, which served as ammunition thrown and fuel for slingshots. About 6 or 6:30, when the day was just starting to turn into evening (remember - it's summer here), the confrontation had moved away from us and closer to the Plaza Principal, and there was no one around, Jose Miguel came over from next door, gave Chichi a hug, and recounted his version of the events of the day and the motivations behind it.
Who were they? Problematizing both groups and misconceptions on either side.
Not all the juventud were pro-Manfred. Nor were they all for autonomy. And they were not all upper-class nor were they all light-skinned. Nor were they a bunch of cruceños (from Santa Cruz) come to stir up trouble in Cochabamba, by several accounts, they were definitely cochabambinos. Nor were they all racist, though there were definitely some racial epithets and slurs shouted from that side. Some were angry about the prefectura being burned. Some were upset and afraid of the campesino group's days-long occupation with the city. Some were tired of marches and blockades. Some were angry at what they saw as a power grab by "the people already controlling the presidency."
When the juventud said, though, that they were "defending the law," I got this awful feeling. When people start saying that they are defending the law, or even taking the law into their own hands, through violence, too often it means defending their own historical privilege: the Minutemen in the US right now, and (do I even have to say it?) the Ku Klux Klan.
Not all the campesinos were from MAS. Nor were they mostly cocaleros. Nor were they all from the campo (countryside, ie outside the city). As one joven from the campesino side said, most (or many?) had been living in the city of Cochabamba just as long as the juventud's families. Nor were they in any way unclear about why they were there: to them, Manfred's wish to have another referendum for Cochabamba on the autonomy isse was outrageous and out-of-line and was reason enough for his resignation, saying that he no longer represented the wishes of the people. Even though everyone had known Manfred was more likely to side with Santa Cruz than La Paz, he had been fairly quiet about it as governor up until comments he made about a week ago.
Personally, I'm not sure that taking to the streets is the right tactic to make this point. Couldn't they make themselves heard through other means? Maybe not, often the press here can be pretty biased (not like this is a problem anywhere else in the world). Then there's also the question of whether or not they are being heard now. But perhaps a group of people emboldened by the (fairly recent) success of throwing out a president (Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, though at a much larger cost of lives) see from their experience that the easiest way to make change is by throwing out an elected official. Roads being blocked and the prefectura having been burned (rumors are flying that the prefect-burners were Manfred people infiltrators, though I think it's more likely that it's the trouble-making chicos that the campesinos have been trying to keep in line since the beginning) isn't winning their side any points from an outside perspective.
And my judgement?
Look, both sides had palos. Lots of palos. Both sides threw stones (though the campesinos with their slingshots were apparently much more effective). Some people had put knives on the ends of their palos. There were a good number of pistols on the juventud's side. There were machetes on the campesinos' side. There were injured on both sides, over 200 total. Andres told me that in sheer numbers, there were more campesinos injured at the hospital, and that the injuries that he saw sustained by the juventud were worse. Each side had someone killed, a campesino killed by a bullet, and a juventud strangled and killed by machete. There was a lot of pointing out of the victims on one side or the other. The fact that one side had victims, however, does not relieve it of its guilt. As Gretchen said to me: It seemed like a bunch of fraternity guys got out of hand, like a contest of testosterone gone horribly horribly wrong.
Watching the footage later, there were two images that struck me. At one point, you had the juventud one one side and the campesinos on the other, with police holding each side back. Both sides have palos. The campesinos, brown faces, felt hats, and older-style pants, are standing, chanting, and holding their palos. The juventud, lighter faces, many wearing white, wearing more American-style clothes, are chanting and yelling and jumping up and down with palos, looking like they belong at a football game more than a political march. The two groups could not be more different, could not be more alike.
The other image is from when the two groups meet. All I could see was a mass of people and sea of palos coming up, coming down, over and over. Why such hatred? Why such rage? Why such violence?
After Thursday: Life goes on
Friday was very quiet. The number of dead has remained at two, and the official count of wounded went from 68 Thursday night to over 200 by Friday. There was an assembly of the campesinos in the Plaza Principal in the morning to discuss the previous day's events (Gretchen made the point that when the juventud was not there, there was no violence. Coincidence?). Gretchen and I went to the hospital to donate blood. It was Gretchen's birthday, and we celebrated with vegetarian lasagna for lunch and chocolate cake at teatime (Much to my chagrin, Chichi insisted on making me something as well, and ended up deciding on pancakes.) At Chichi's request, we did not go to any of the sites of conflict the day before and, other than donating blood, did not leave the house until the majority of the day was over to make phone calls to our families.
Manfred and Quintana, one of the Ministers, have been blaming each other. Evo made a speech calling for peace. The blockades have been lifted (perhaps at Evo's request? I think I heard that somewhere). Manfred came on TV last night saying that apparently a governor can't call a department-wide referendum, which of course he didn't know until yesterday, so "Sorry guys, forget about that autonomy referendum thing, Oops!" (dramatic license taken). Perhaps that will calm things down for good. A truce has been called for this weekend. Perhaps we have reached the eye of the storm and the conflict will resume next week. No one I've talked to has a really good read on the situation. I think we have seen the worst of it. I don't think anyone wants any more deaths or injuries.
Regardless of what happens, don't worry, I will stay safe and be careful. I am very aware of what is happening at any given moment, and generally staying wherever you are is the best action.
Word (Grouping) of the Day:
fuegos artificiales - fireworks
petardo - firecracker; bore; persona fea
cohete - rocket, firecracker
desesperar - despair, to be desperate
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