Bolivia, being a small, largely forgotten country, in a mostly unknown continent (to us, at least) on an uninteresting planet, orbiting a small, unregarded yellow sun in the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy, doesn’t get in the news all that often. Today, however, there I was idly cruising the BBC news site (what else) and I see a name that’s become more familiar to me over recent weeks: ‘Morales’
Evo Morales is the president of Bolivia, the first indigenous president elected by that country (with nearly 54% of the vote, which if you know anything about national elections is pretty impressive) after decades of military juntas, coup d’ etats, counter-coups and latterly, leaders elected from the white/creole minority who were intent on selling off every last scrap of Bolivia’s natural resources they could find in the raw state (tin, silver, oil and gas, and so on). A hilariously corrupt scheme to sell off the country’s water reserves to a western multinational (backed up by the IMF, who threatened to cut Bolivia’s financial aid if they didn’t) and make people pay western-style water rates – somewhat more than the average monthly salary per month – was the final straw. If that incident seems familiar, by the way, that’s because it inspired a fair bit of the plot of the last Bond film.
Various workers’ groups got together and indulged in the Bolivian national sport, protesting via roadblock. Such were the volume and popular support of the protests that in La Paz, when the military fired tear gas at crowds of protesters and the protesters threw rocks back, the city police got their riot gear and gas masks on, lined up and surrounded the protesters. Facing outwards, to protect them from the military.
Anyway, after much wrangling Morales was duly elected, the first real ‘People’s President’. He’s something of a cultural phenomenon all by himself – he regularly appears for his public engagements (by which I mean memorial speeches, meetings with foreign leaders and public addresses, not staged ‘casual’ photo-ops) in shirtsleeves. After he was elected, Bolivian office wear changed completely, with men discarding jacket and tie for shirts and jeans. Can’t quite see Dave and Gideon pulling that one off.
Anyway, he popped up in the news today, as I mentioned. Here’s the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15409447
Just fancy that. A national leader proposes a scheme that has some benefits and some downsides. The people duly consider it, thumb their collective noses at it, and by the same means that got him elected (blocking the roads, which in a country with Bolivia’s infrastructure, effectively paralyses the country), say No. El Presidente, taking the hint, goes ‘Fair enough, if you don’t want it, we won’t do it’. That, folks, is how politics is supposed to work.
I’m reading a book called Culture Shock! Bolivia, which is a fascinating brief history of the place and its politics and culture. I learned about many of the incidents related above from there, so I suppose it’s only fair I give it a plug. http://tinyurl.com/6exgdo6 is the link. If the whole series is as interesting, informative and drily humourous as that one, then they have my hearty endorsement.
From said book I have one more bit of wisdom to share. Since Bolivia already had it’s economic crisis back in the 80s (the reason for the absurdly low cost of living – Bolivia is regularly cited as the second-poorest country in Latin America, ‘saved from disgrace only by Haiti’, but in actual fact, many indigenous rural areas are self-sufficient without contributing to the GDP, and while said GDP may be low, the cost of living is a fair degree lower. You can get a three-course lunch for the equivalent of $0.50), and is only now beginning to develop into a ‘modern’ nation, whatever the hell one of those is, it has a chance to learn from the mistakes of all the nations that got there first and boy, do they seem hell bent on doing so.
They’re nationalising the natural resources, which are plentiful. Value-added goods have overtaken raw materials as the primary export. And they’ve elected a leader who, when his people say ‘No’, goes ‘Okay’. Wouldn’t that be something.
