Bolivia

Throughout the week, some people in Cochabamba had worried about how September 13, a date expected to involve confrontation between the supporters of the government of left-wing, indigenous President Evo Morales and the right wing, would turn out. People at work talked of a coup. Others remembered the protest on January 11 when three people were killed and some buildings burnt, worrying that the same would happen again. Some of the most right wing spoke of a campesino “invasion”.

On August 28, a Tuesday, the centre of the city of Cochabamba was unusually quiet, even compared to Sundays. Most shops had their shutters down, and the chaotic combination of small street stalls was replaced by a few women selling orange juice on one corner, another selling nuts. Some young boys played with a ball on the main road — normally alive with trufis, micros and taxis, but on Tuesday almost empty. The quiet was a product of a strike organised by the right wing, targeting the government of Bolivia’s indigenous president, Evo Morales.

Having come out of an intense period of political confrontation, including the biggest mobilisation in Bolivia’s history, this landlocked country situated in the heart of rebellious South America seems on the verge of plunging into a new phase of open conflict. At the centre of this is the country’s Constituent Assembly — a central plank of Bolivia’s cultural and democratic revolution, led by the country’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales — which was convened over a year ago with the goal of achieving a new social pact between Bolivia’s conflicting sectors and drafting a new constitution that would for the first time include the country’s indigenous majority.

She stood out at the table crowded by journalists and onlookers who kept entering the room. Her white hat with an intricate band of weaving shadowed her face as she spoke out in the constituent assembly’s Vision of the Country commission: “I will never forget how they killed our ancestors like Tupac Katari [an indigenous rebel leader], the way indigenous people have been treated like fleas, discriminated, excluded. That is why we are here, to call for profound change. We need a state that is plural, made up of many nations. But you, the slaves of multinationals, want no change at all.”

Not for the first time in recent years, politics in Bolivia has spilled out of the official institutions and onto the streets. With the constituent assembly entering into its decisive phase — less than two months from its official deadline to draft a new constitution to present to the people in a referendum — Raul Prada, a delegate from the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS, the party of Bolivia’s indigenous president, Evo Morales), told La Razon on June 18: “it has become sufficiently clear that the issues this assembly is dealing with will not be resolved only inside the assembly, but rather outside”.

The breaking of a six-month deadlock in Bolivia’s constituent assembly has paved the way for the opening of an intense debate on the future of this politically polarised country nestled in the heart of South America. Beginning to lose the battle within the halls of the assembly, the right-wing opposition has threaten to take the fight onto the streets, announcing that it may reject any new constitution that emerges out of the body.

Nearly 16 months after the election of indigenous President Evo Morales, vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera is an authorised spokesperson on the strategic objectives of the unfolding process. In this role, he affirms that his government aims for “a capitalism with a big state presence”. The vice-president spoke to Pablo Stefanoni.

Prensa Latina reported on April 11 that more than 100,000 Bolivians have already learned to read and write through the Cuban “Yes, I Can” literacy program since it began early last year. According to education minister Victor Caceres, in La Paz, more than 40,000 of the 286,280 people in the program have already graduated. The national program aims to teach more than 1.2 million illiterate people how to read and write so that the country can be free from illiteracy in 2008. President Evo Morales has already declared Tocata municipality, in Cochabamba, the first locality to be illiteracy-free.

For the fourth time during his 14-month government, Bolivian President Evo Morales swore in a new president to run state petroleum company YPFB on March 23. This followed the eruption of a scandal that has cast doubts on the government’s most popular measure to date — the nationalisation of the country’s gas resources.

They are the children of “cholos” — the disrespectful name given to urban indigenous people in Bolivia. They refer to themselves in English single-syllable words and the names of their songs speak of indigenous pride; they criticise capitalism and demand a radical social change. This mix, so appropriate for these times, characterises the “hip hop” movement of El Alto, which is expanding and channelling youth rebellion in this large city of poor migrants, located at a height of 4000 metres and surrounded by impressive snow covered peaks.

Commenting on the natural disaster that has left large swathes of Bolivia’s lowland east underwater after months of flooding, and much of the Andean region covered in ice, in late February Bolivian President Evo Morales called for a global debate on the effects of climate change and environmental destruction on poor nations.

Walter Chavez, an adviser to Bolivian president Evo Morales, has found himself in the centre of a well-orchestrated corporate media campaign aimed at delegitimising the Morales government internationally by linking it to “terrorist” groups. This accusation comes only a week after attempts by the Spanish media to link Morales’s party — the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) — with the Basque separatist group ETA.