SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE GLOBE BLOG
BOLIVIA: Challenging the Status Quo
By Ali Ahmed
Bolivia has been getting a lot of Western media coverage over the past year. Why, you may ask would the media be interested in a country that might as well be a fictional banana republic as far as most Americans are concerned? Well, according to the media, Bolivia’s political leadership is part of an emerging ‘leftist’ backlash in Latin America against American capitalism.
Yes, Bolivia has been going through some radical changes: first they elected a Native American, Evo Morales, as their President, second he’s a socialist, and third he’s decided to have the national government take over certain local industries that used to be privately owned and redistribute of wealth to help the 2/3 of the country who are poor.
This is pretty surprising since, the classic case of the ‘have somes’ (middle class) vs. ‘have nots’ has existed for a long time in Bolivia – with the haves playing referee and still going skiing on weekends. But finally, the lower class indigenous population (in other words, the Native American population) have one of their own in the top government post, one Evo Morales, and are challenging the status quo long maintained by the smaller mestizo middle class and even smaller white upper class (Mestizo refers to “mixed race” citizens – like in many other countries, mixed race citizens usually have a better social status than those who are mainly of indigenous ancestry). There is a history of mistrust on all sides and a desire to not share (where’s Mom to tell them to share with your brother?) and of state repression.
What led to this sudden change-up? – the activism of the indigenous people, which culminated in the election of Evo Morales. People just got tired of getting the short end of the stick and, suffice it to say, people are protesting in ways one can only analogize with spontaneous combustion. Bolivia has literally become a country of activists and protesters (imagine anti-Iraq war protests in the US, only this time with successful results) who take to the streets to get fair wages and things that their rulers used to tell them they didn’t need like food and clothing.
Unfortunately, tragedy has struck many times during this social drama, as with the Cochabamba protests in early 2007 (Cochabamba is a city in the south of the country). The protests involved pro-Morales indigenous groups on one side and mestizo groups supporting local governor Manfred Reyes Villa on the other. The mestizo groups, afraid of President Morales’ goals to redistribute the wealth of the country (which currently belongs mainly to white and mestizos), would like to separate off from the rest of the country. The class between them resulted in the deaths of one indigenous and one mestizo protestor.
Well, as things stand, Bolivia’s being transformed, for better or worse, and the redistribution of wealth and resources may hurt for a while, but seeing as how free for all capitalism wasn’t exactly putting a turkey in everybody’s cooking pot, it might be time to wait and see what happens next.
NOTES
1. Read more about what about this ‘Supremo’ banana republic: http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/11/the_cias_new_banana_republic.html.
2. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aUDK7yJqYAOk&refer=latin_america
3. http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={D7E35A4E-DDD1-49BA-A754-15DBCE88790A})&language=EN
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6786199,00.html
5. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0402/p06s01-woam.html
