So, you may have noticed that I haven’t posted here since October. But don’t worry, this blog ain’t dead, it’s just asleep. I’ve got this thing called a PhD to finish, so I’ve been paying attention to that and to earning a living rather than scouring the Bolivian papers for items of interest. My thesis is due in in a matter of weeks and once it’s bound and sent to the examiners we’ll celebrate with a few chelas and a pique macho. Promise. See you on the other side.

-T.W.

This might have gone on a lot longer had it not been for the single darkest day, the 11th of September in El Porvenir, Pando. A group of indigenous peasant colonisers, who were allied to the MAS government, were on their way to a meeting in a neighbouring town. On the road, they were met by pickup trucks and armed men, some of whom were from the governor’s office (prefectura). There was a bloody confrontation which left 20 peasants dead and several unaccounted for. Investigations by the ombudsman’s office and a commission from UNASUR would later refer to it as a ‘massacre’ in this report (.pdf), and directly implicate Leopoldo Fernández , the governor of Pando, as being at least partially responsible given that many of those arrested answered to him. Fernández was swiftly arrested and jailed, and has been incarcerated for the last 10 months. The horror of El Porvenir brought swift condemnation, internationally, and a rude awakening for domestic politicians who saw that armed confrontation wouldn’t get anyone anywhere and came to the dialogue table, sharpish. Fernández’s incarceration has continued, somewhat controversially – as far as I know he has yet to be officially charged, and his lengthy jail time has made him something of a poster-boy for the opposition. But let’s not get away from it – he’s on remand in jail because of alleged direct involvement in a massacre. The lack of formal charges and a prompt trial also means that he’s legally entitled to run for office because he has not been convicted of anything.

But it looks like he’s planning to get out of jail soon! How else can you explain his nomination as Manfred Reyes Villa’s vice-president of choice? Yes, that’s right – Manfred, kicked out by the voters of Cochabamba, has thrown his big white kochalo hat into the ring again and is running for President in December, one of a large number of cats-in-a-sack divided opposition leaders who think they’ve got a chance. And he’s chosen Leopoldo Fernández, currently awaiting trial for his role in a confrontation which led to the murder of 20 peasants, as his running mate. According to this story in Opinion, they’re expected to announce their candidacy under the banner of Jose Luis Paredes’ political group. Manfred, in a way that would be endearingly optimistic if he weren’t a stone-hearted power-hungry neoliberal bastard, has described the fragmented opposition as ‘not a united front, but a broad one’. Bless.

The conflict between the former media luna governors and the MAS administration has passed from drama to tragedy to farce. What on earth is next? A doomed love story?

Article 5. The official languages of the State are Spanish and all the languages of indigenous and peasant First Nations and peoples, which are: Aymara, Araona, Baure, Bésiro, Canichana, Cavineño, Cayubaba, Chácobo, Chimán, Ese, Ejja, Guaraní, Guarasu’we, Guarayu, Itonama, Leco, Machajuyai-Kallawaya, Machineri, Maropa, Mojeño-Trinitario, Mojeño-Ignaciano, Moré, Mosetén, Movima, Pacawara, Puquina, Quechua, Sirionó, Tacana, Tapiete, Toromona, Uru-Chipaya, Weenhayek, Yaminawa, Yuki, Yuracaré and Zamuco.

Whew!

Franklin’s article in the Grauniad adopts a scandalised tone to expose the world of cocaine lounges in La Paz, painting a picture of small salons of depravity filled with moneyed Euro-American tourists paying to get high. The title of the piece is ‘The world’s first cocaine lounge’, which you could say was the first indication that the hyperbole of the article doesn’t quite live up to reality. World’s first? What, really? Has Mr Franklin ever been backstage at a music or film industry awards do? Has he ever been to some of the wilder parties in Bogotá, or even L.A? Not that I have, mind, but it doesn’t take a wild leap of the imagination to deduce that discreet nightclubs where a line or two is available alongside your drinks as a main feature of the place is hardly a global novelty.

But let’s not let that get in the way of a pleasant moral-high-ground buzz. There’s a whole wrap of misinformation to get through, so let’s start chopping.

The waiter arrives at the table, lowers the tray and places an empty black CD case in the middle of the table. Next to the CD case are two straws and two little black packets. He is so casual he might as well be delivering a sandwich and fries.

And then what happened? The waiter goes back to ‘calmly slicing straws into 8cm lengths’, and telling stories, while the journos quietly sweep the chopped-out lines onto the floor with their sleeves and, having gotten their story, go home for a mug of warm milk and an early night. Obviously. Because no-one actually pitches a story to a national newspaper about the time they went out with the aim of taking a load of cocaine, right? And I’m sure it would be libellous to suggest as much.

La Paz, Bolivia, at 3,900m above sea level – an altitude where even two flights of stairs makes your heart race like a hummingbird – is home to the most celebrated bar in all of South America: Route 36, the world’s first cocaine lounge.

Mm-hmm. Slippy with the details – LPZ is 3,600m above sea level, not 3,900 – and prone to exaggeration (“the most celebrated bar in all of South America” – so famous no-one I know has heard of it or mentioned it in 7 years of learning about Bolivia). Either someone’s been at the naughty salt, or the Grauniad needs a new fact-checker. The ‘world’s first’ claim we already dealt with. There’s a whole load more, ‘um, what?’ on the way, though!

Much of the article is given over to describing the international backpacker clientele of the bar – Australians here, a Geordie lass here, tables full of gringos of all stripes taking advantage of the availability of cheap, pure coke. In fact, Franklin does a very convincing job of making Route 36 sound like a standard stopover on a gap-year tour of South America. With such clear and focused demand, no wonder places like this are operating. So who does he attribute their existence to?

This new trend of ‘cocaine tourism’ can be put down to a combination of Bolivia’s notoriously corrupt public officials, the chaotic “anything goes” attitude of La Paz, and the national example of President Evo Morales, himself a coca grower

Oh, I see! It’s not, in fact, that there are thousands of disproportionately-wealthy foreign tourists with a desire to take drugs. Turns out it’s all Evo’s fault after all, not to mention the general chaos and city-wide collective ‘attitude’ of La Paz. (This, two sentences after he quotes one of his Bolivian journalistic counterpart as saying ‘Since they are an after-hours club and serve cocaine the neighbours tend to complain pretty fast‘). But nobody can blame cokeheads for their habit when the president is a coca farmer – after all, if my prime minister were a potato farmer, it would be completely justified if people here ate nothing but chips. And if my prime minister used to be a neoliberal economist, well, I’d consider it my duty to go out and rack up as much consumer debt as possible! Um…

As for Bolivia’s indisputable reputation in the foreign press as a world drug-manufacturing hotspot, I can’t do better than my cumpa Otto Rock at Inka Kola News for pointing out the inconsistencies. But before looking at what he has to say, let’s check out the UN data. According to this .pdf on coca and the cocaine market, acreage given over to coca cultivation, and megatons of coca leaf for sale, not destined for traditional markets, has gone up slightly in recent years. It’s still very little, quantity-wise, compared to Colombia, which produces 51% of the world’s cocaine (and where, I am convinced, cocaine bars are probably spoken of with barely a raise of the eyebrow) and Peru at 36%, compared to Bolivia’s 13%. Moreover, while the amount of leaf destined to be made into powder has increased, it’s nothing on the numbers recorded in the mid-90s when nice US-friendly neoliberal Goni was in power.

Otto, ever a handy man with the numbers, points out that this mild increase in cocaine production in Bolivia has been met by another increase, namely a leap in cocaine seizures since Evo kicked out the human-rights-abusing DEA and formed bilateral joint anti-narcotics teams with neighbours and encouraging small-scale community action against traffickers.(and I’m sorry for the immaturity but I still can’t help giggling a bit at the phrase ‘joint anti-drugs taskforce. Heh heh heh, he said ‘joint!’) Here’s a handy table of Otto’s showing the increase in seizures since domestic anti-drug forces took over narco-control duties from foreign forces – also note that a lot of labs are in the not-famously-Evo-loving east of the country. And if you like shiny bar charts, here are some more for you, showing that cocaine production in Bolivia has been fairly constant in recent years, and that global increases have mostly been down to Colombia.

I think the crux of reading data like this – and I do mean crux, because it’s like one of Alvarito’s famous points of bifurcation, you emerge from it with one of two understandings of the same situation – is whether or not you believe that seizures of large amounts of cocaine mean there is less or more cocaine available on the street. If you’re in Otto’s camp you can argue that busting cocaine labs, shutting down their operations and confiscating large quantities of drugs mid-traffic means that you are significantly lowering the amount of blow available through anti-narco action. When we’re considering hauls from drug busts that go into the megatons, then this can be convincing. On the other hand, if you measure the success or failure of drug control policies by how much coke is being manufactured in the first place, then you probably consider large-scale seizures to be symptomatic of the fact that there’s a lot more cocaine being produced, and attribute this rise in production to the political state of affairs, ignoring the considerable effort and money which the Bolivian government and its allies are putting into anti-narcotrafficking patrols and controls

All of which has to be considered while bearing in mind that Evo’s administration is extremely unlikely ever to return to the bad old days of Banzer, in lots of ways, but specifically with regard to the early 2000s when coca plantations were being forcibly eradicated on a grand scale. While I understand there has been eradication of coca plantations, and probably will be more, it’s logical to expect that anti-drug efforts will be concentrated on actually preventing drug manufacture and distribution rather than wiping out coca cultivation – the coca si, cocaina no approach. The UN’s data rests on an estimate of how many hectares are being given over to cultivating coca which is not destined for traditional usages, and one of the great challenges, of course, is to work out some non-narco, non-traditional usages for coca leaves. With its uniquely rich nutritional makeup and many interesting chemical and medicinal properties, it’s high time coca was put to use in arenas beyond its customary religious and social functions -something that would be a lot easier if the UN would hurry up and take it off the list of internationally controlled substances, so that it could be taken across borders. Returning the the Bolivian government’s reluctance to eradicate fields of coca by spraying toxic chemicals on them it seems logical that the means of controlling narcotrafficking is to make seizures of cocaine shipments.

Anyway, where did we leave friend Franklin? Back in La Paz, with his CD case of Guardian-purchased marching powder, which, dear reader, I am sure he was too scrupulous to touch, surrounded by other foreign visitors snorting away. He concludes with a vague condemnation of the failure of prohibitionist policies to “protect the lives of millions of users worldwide who will snort whatever white substance is placed before them.” Well, personally, I think it’s probably a losing game to try to look out for the interests of someone who will snort anything up to and including caustic soda, not to mention pretty insulting to self-respecting cokeheads to describe them as such. No government makes the decisions on behalf of an idiot in a nightclub, or a stockbroker in the loos adjoining the trading floor. But it’s his final remark which rankles most:

La Paz, without intending it, seems to have mutated into the front line of this failed drug war..

Failed it might be, but the frontlines of the drug war have been drawn in far fiercer places than Sopocachi. Get your thrill-seeking jollies in a bar full of gringos in La Paz, by all means, but don’t compare it to the viciously-fought-over drug supply routes in Mexico where assassination seems to be becoming a leading cause of death, or the Colombian jungles where government-linked paramilitaries routinely murder entire villages in the constant, bloody attrition of the drug war there. People are coming to discreet little bars in La Paz to get coked up precisely because, despite its loveable chaos, it’s fundamentally a safe place. It’s a city of hard-nosed, but ultimately good-hearted people who are less likely to kidnap you or shoot you in the head for no reason than in, say, Colombia. _That’s_ why the tourists go there to get their fix: not because of some coca-farming President and not because Bolivia’s drug industry is ZOMG a burgeoning threat. The reason cocaine bars exist is to cater to self-styled adventurers and would-be-tough-guy Guardian journalists: if it weren’t for you and your backpacker pals, Route 36 would not be. Additionally, special points for hypocrisy: it’s one thing to file an alarmist, scandalise-the-maiden-aunt story about a rise in drug production: it’s quite another to write it from the perspective of a customer of said drug production, buying a couple of lines to go with your rum and coke. If you’re going to take a moral high ground about drug production and consumption, it helps to not start your article by describing the purchase of cocaine.

Mientras tanto, in Bolivia election year is heating up! It looks like the opposition may crystallise its resistance around the candidacy of Victor Hugo Cárdenas, although at the moment the election is a 14-horse race, including the well-known figures of Samuel Doria Medina and (yawn) Manfred Reyes Villa, for whom apparently running for President is a habit he just can’t kick. There have also been some ugly incidences of the not-so-democratic opposition making itself known again in the form of letterbomb attacks against civilian targets. Well, if you can’t get elected, you can always attack the people who will, right? Violence is a loser’s game. More soon, my friends, more soon.

I was saddened to find out today that Abraham Bohorquez, one of their key rappers, died recently after being run over on the road – although the causes of his death are still unclear. La Mala Palabra blog has a great post about his all-too-short life here. He was born and brought up in El Alto, but emigrated to Sao Paolo in search of work at the age of 11, and when labouring in the textile sweatshops there got hooked into the hip-hop scene of the favelas, where kids rapped in Portuguese about racism, struggle, work and life on the streets. He brought hip-hop back with him to El Alto and started off rapping at open mikes, becoming one of the first people to throw down rhymes in his native language, Aymara, and the group went on to garner significant acclaim and interest from all over the world – for example this NYT article . There’s even a piece that he himself wrote here. In his own words:

We can’t, and don’t want to, talk about the same things as American rappers -sex, cars, gold jewellery. We talk about our poverty, our people and our fight against imperialism. We want to wake up young Bolivians. Politics got too corrupt and it needs to be talked about in a fresh way so that young people are interested.

In the same article, he mentions opening up for Manu Chao in 2006. I was there, and I can tell you, they were great. Politically-attuned indigenous hip-hop is one of the freshest and most exciting indicators of a class of young, urban indigenous people proud of their roots but also engaging with other currents of culture from around the globe. It’s a sad day for hiphoppas in La Paz, El Alto and all around the world. QEPD.

Edited to add: after my last post here pondering the bad side to the Bolivian press and the way the government has chosen to deal with them, a colleague emailed me to point out that the newspapers aren’t always bad, but that the media includes TV and in Bolivia the TV is terrible, hysterical, counter-productive and racist. This turns out to be precisely the message of Ukamau y Ke’s latest track. Check it out, it’s really very good. What a horrible unfair shame to have lost such a sharp, talented young guy.

I don’t know what you think of state-owned media. Myself, I spend way more time reading the Bolivian newspapers than anyone should, and there’s a perceptible right-wing (or at least anti-left-wing) bias which isn’t helped by the government’s hostile relationship with the papers. There’s no doubt that some sectors of the press are nothing but bought-and-sold anti-MAS mouthpieces, but a lot of them aren’t, and they’re not all to blame for how much Evo seems to dislike them. The MAS’s attitude to media management seems to amount to: since it’s not possible to shut them down, shout them down. This fortnight’s news contains plenty of examples: journalists condemn lack of press freedom, the government talks about research (carried out by third parties) which shows that people trust the press less than they did five years ago and there are ongoing rumbles about the government’s court case against La Prensa. According to this report, Evo hasn’t met with the domestic press since January and only does press conferences with foreign journalists. How is that patriotic? This is the same leader who said in his inauguration in Tihuanaco, ‘I will commit errors, I ask you to correct me if I make mistakes’. He was specifically addressing fellow indigenous leaders, but it would have been more heartening to believe that he was addressing civil society as a whole. Which begs the question, is Evo still as radically accountable to civil society as he once claimed to be? And if he is, then why aren’t the press accepted as the legitimate nosy parkers of civil society, controlling by reporting critically and informing the public? Something’s broken here and I don’t know if it’s the government – which has been criticised by former allies recently for drifting from its platform of accountability and direct democracy – or the bad behaviour of the press.

And let’s face it, the press have hardly been upright keepers of the moral tone all this time. Reporting of the Pando massacre was particularly patchy back when it took place, because of links between those accused of carrying it out and newspaper owners. Even Reporters Sans Frontieres have criticised elements in the Bolivian media for inciting hatred, urging responsibility and restraint as well as reminding us that several attacks on media installations (TV channels, newspaper offices) were carried out by right-wing thugs in Santa Cruz. The newspapers tend to reflect the interests of their owners, like anywhere in the world, and since they are comparatively expensive to buy, it’s my experience that they’re not widely read among working class and rural people, so there’s no sense of writing for that audience or indeed reporting on rural life except in colourful culture and tourism supplements. There are major swathes of the population who are not considered newsworthy, and endless glossy magazines reproducing stock images and stories from the foreign press, featuring people who look nothing like most Bolivians.

Anyway this is all a roundabout way of saying that, when possible, I don’t get news from state sources like Abi, Radio Erbol and now Cambio. It’s not that I think they’re Pravda and Evo’s a big nasty censor, but neither do I think Evo has been particularly mature in his attitude towards freedom of the press. Like a lot of things in Bolivia, it’s difficult to stake out a position between ‘The MAS are authoritarian, press-smothering dictatorial Stalinists!!1′ and ‘The press is so far in thrall to the right wing that it’s not even bothering with’. When I tell people that I filter and compile stories from the Bolivian media, they often react with skepticism if they know the country well. A certain well-known filmmaker’s reaction was swift and brutal, ‘No hay periodismo verdadero en Bolivia’. I disagree with him, but I can see how he got that opinion: what with nasty incitement-to-racial-hatred stories and clear facts about newspaper ownership among opposition politicians, it’s easy to conclude that the papers have all got it in for the government. But then every government assumes that the press are gunning for them, unless carefully controlled, and my own government has been a black example to the whole world in how to prioritise the management of messages, rather than formulating policies of substance. At least their cynical management of the press suggests a bitter respect for it, though. In Bolivia, respect for journalists and journalism seems thin on the ground, and that’s a sad thing given how important the smooth functioning of a free press is to any healthy democracy and the professionalism and vocational zeal of many Bolivian journalists. But it’s also up to the press to earn that respect: perhaps they could start doing so by giving equal column space to attacks on indigenous people by right-wing youths as well as brutal examples of justicia comunitaria, or not reposting, verbatim, press releases by nakedly poltical lobbying groups like the Human Rights Foundation, now discredited like whoah. I don’t know. But the constant government-press feuding makes my life more vexing, because sometimes the only good material is on official sites, and like a proper hack (and activist), I never quite trust the official version of events (“Why is this lying bastard lying to me?” etc) like the above. Please do discuss in comments, I’ve got no solutions, just a vague and scratchy sense of discontent.

ETA: more on this from la Razón.

A video report telling us that large landholders don’t like the new agrarian reform much. You know what? British MPs don’t like the new focus on their expenses much, either, because it shows some of them to be grasping, out-of-touch toerags who think they’re above the reach of the law. Much the same thing’s happening here. Just let me say it again: Bolivia’s latest land reform is moderate and reasonable. It doesn’t confiscate land from anyone who can prove that they acquired it legitimately, and who isn’t committing human rights abuses on it or using it only for property speculation. It limits new land purchases to 5,000 Ha, which if you think about it, is an enormous stretch of land, and it’s not retroactive.

The misrepresentation of the land reform isn’t really what annoys me about this, though. What gets me is the airtime and attention paid to the viewpoints of people who are already amply represented in the foreign media. Ron Larsen is an appealing character to feature, because he’s a hero to those who see the Morales government as barbaric, xenophobic expropriators of foreign investment, and a ideal bad-guy figure to the Bolivian press (and whisper it, government) who seize on his (no doubt carefully cultivated) cartoonish cowboy persona – north American, wealthy, cheerfully racist and closely linked to the autonomista leadership in Santa Cruz. He’s probably being interviewed because his estate was most prominently highlighted as the place where many Guaraní people were living in conditions ‘analogous to slavery’. So why not interview some of the people who were analogous to slaves, eh? One of the many human rights abuses shown to have been committed in Alto Parapeti was that the serfs living there weren’t allowed to speak with journalists or human rights organisations, but that particular right doesn’t matter so much if the press don’t take an interest in talking to them anyway. By giving interview time (and a sympathetic airing) to Larsen and to a representative from the government, but not interviewing any of the serfs of the estate, it denies them a voice, leave them as background and end up perpetuating the silent Indian stereotype which is so infuriating.

Andres Schipani, on the other hand, has provided us with a story which does call on indigenous voices, and makes the Guaraní people of Alto Parapeti more than mere scenery. In this piece for the BBC, he actually goes and talks to some of the people kept in conditions of servitude on Larsen’s ranch. Their stories are distressing, but inspiring, and the statements from Victoria Tauli Corpuz, representative from the Un Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues are worth your consideration. She has this to say:

We find this situation of domination and violent rule of the landlords over the indigenous people unacceptable … we think this is a gross violation of the basic political, social, economic and cultural rights

She’s also on record as saying that the Cruceño Autonomy Statutes of last year ‘promote, conceal, strengthen and reproduce the practice of servitude’.

Fellow travelers of the autonomy movement in Santa Cruz should be well aware that their political aims are determined by business interests, not popular ones, and that these are the autonomy statutes which were ‘approved’ in bogus, non-recognised, privately-funded ‘referenda’, so no-one should really be taking them seriously anyway. Even so, there are still those who are inclined to be sympathetic to any region trying to break away from the OMG!eebilmarxistdictatorship of Evo Morales, and hopefully this announcement, as well as April’s assassination plot, will make them wake up to a fairly basic truth: it’s not a good idea to give massive feudalist* landlords control over their own pet autonomous Ministry for Agriculture, let alone their own organisations for the defence of human rights. Do you think someone could send a memo to the folks at WorldFocus.org?

*Alright, Jarrett, you win that one.

Look at this rather wonderful portrait of her. Would you get in a bar fight (let alone a transcontinental war of independence) with this woman?

You’d be very foolish to do so. She commanded a guerrilla army of several thousand against royal troops and was quite decisive in laying out the frontiers of Bolivia. (Well, before the borders were monkeyed around with by losing wars against every neighbouring country over the next 120 years, anyway). You can some rather romantic accounts of her life in Spanish here and here. To summarise: she was sent to convent school for being a hellraiser, kicked out for being a hellraiser, went and married this Padilla guy, had four children, fought several decisive battles during 1812 – 1817 in the revolutionary wars of Alto Peru, specifically in the area of Chuquisaca, which is now Sucre, was recognised by Sucre and Bolivar as a major military hero and lived to be 82. She is said to have spoken Quechua and Aymara as well as Spanish: certainly fluently enough to command a batallion of up to 6000 indigenous troops. Her four children died during her military campaigns: she became pregnant again and engaged in battle with her daugher in utero, handing the kid over to a nurse as soon as she was born and returning to combat.

Then I noticed that as well as having a little parade of horsemen in homage to her around Sucre, the government’s extended its recognition too, by naming something after her. To be more specific, they’ve introduced a new payment aimed at helping to reduce maternal and infant mortality. This is all very laudable, but possibly not too thoroughly thought through. Let’s recap: Juana Azurduy de Padilla was fearless, bloodthirsty, a good tactician, a capable commander and handy with a sword. In other words, she was a badass. Devoted mother? Not so much. My own mother, with whom I went to the Casa de la Libertad in Sucre, commented as we stood looking at that painting, ‘You get the feeling she saw these endless children as a bit of an inconvenience, when she would have much rather been off fighting wars.’ Now, I wouldn’t want to impugn a revolutionary hero, but neither would I want to belittle her. If you’re going to name something after Lt Col. Azurduy, name a military installation. Name a tank. Name a batallion (Argentina have). Name a country – Bolivar apparently said that the altoperuano republic should have been named after her, not him. Don’t name a fricking child health programme. That’s a bit like the Harold Shipman Pension Supplement, isn’t it? Or like appointing Tony Blair as a peace envoy to the Middle East! Oh, wait…

Look, Bolivian government. Your history is full of heroic, badass women. They accomplished things far beyond making sure that their bairns grew up healthy and bien cuidado. So why use their names only for things associated with childbearing? That’s not just patronising and sexist in the here and now, it’s also revisionist. It’s a great idea to try to reduce Bolivia’s alarming level of infant mortality, but in the words of Zaphod Beeblebrox, plus ten points for altruism, minus several billion for good thinking, yeah?