MY taxi is stuck behind Indian roadblocks. Three hundred farmers, many For three weeks, the country has been paralyzed by blockades and protests; Of all the countries we have visited, Bolivia is the wildest, the most We can never forget our first visit to Bolivia, as an aspiring ethnographer, Entering Bolivia was like entering another dimension. In part, In La Paz, second highest national capital in the world if you, like Until we arrived at Santa Cruz, the end of the line, the legendary White City half-hidden Santa Cruz was also known as "The City That Never Sleeps"; on multiple occasions we Of course, as responsible scientists our only interest in the packets Unfortunately, there are only two ways out of Santa Cruz in the direction Bolivia, together with Peru, Ecuador and Guatemala, the only countries Despite centuries of neglect, destruction of all cultural context or This is no guaranteed palliative. Examples abound of Presidents elected Will this revolution be any different? Will the temptations of This would obviously be unacceptable to the United States, which would An opinion column in today’s New York Times throws the spotlight on Bolivia. Soundtrack: Lamento Boliviano by the Enanos Verdes: MY taxi is stuck behind Indian roadblocks. Three hundred farmers, many of them Quechua in colorful ponchos, just took control … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/boliviana.jpg\")
An opinion column in today’s New
\n York Times<\/a> throws the spotlight
\n on Bolivia. Soundtrack: Lamento Boliviano<\/a> by the Enanos Verdes:<\/p>\n\n
\n of them Quechua in colorful ponchos, just took control of the only highway
\n near this small town in central Bolivia, right below a jaguar-shaped
\n Inca temple. I can escape neither east to the sweltering boomtown of
\n Santa Cruz nor west toward the windswept Andean capital, La Paz, where
\n tens of thousands of Aymara Indians are on the march. I get through,
\n but only after abandoning my taxi and making my way on foot.<\/p>\n
\n a few days after my experience at the roadblock, the uprising forced
\n the president, Carlos Mesa, to resign. The protesters want to nationalize
\n Bolivia’s vast natural gas reserves, South America’s second largest;
\n BP has quintupled its estimate of Bolivia’s proven reserves to 29 trillion
\n cubic feet, worth a whopping $250 billion. The Indians are in a showdown
\n with the International Monetary Fund and companies like British Gas,
\n Repsol of Spain and Brazil’s Petrobras that have already invested billions
\n of dollars in exploration and extraction. (by William
\n Powers<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n neglected, and the most inaccessible. It is also the most Indian. With
\n about 2\/3 of the population self-identifying as Indians, it is the poorest,
\n least developed country in the western hemisphere. To a degree exceptional
\n even in Latin America, global champion in inequality, power in Bolivia
\n is in the hands of a few elite families with European roots and their shadowy
\n cartels. These same families have been running things in this corner
\n of the globe for the past 500 years, since the Conquistadors wrested
\n control from the Incas.<\/p>\n
\n coming overland from Cuzco in a complicated train-bus-boat combination
\n involving an overnight stay at a hotel on stilts over Lake Titicaca,
\n the highest navigable body of water in the world, and a strangely disconcerting
\n and nauseating trek across an island of intertwined vines growing over
\n the surface of part of the lake.<\/p>\n
\n it was like being on another planet, with austere lunar landscapes and
\n freakish flora and fauna, and in part it was like taking a time machine
\n back about 150 years, to about the time Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
\n Kid tried robbing banks down here.<\/p>\n
\n the Dowbrigade, consider Tibet to be a nation, we were astounded to see
\n the erect and distinguished elderly Germans gathering at the Hotel Roma,
\n looking every bit the fugitive Nazi’s they were rumored to be. As we descended
\n into the Bolivian Amazon from the frigid Andean redoubts, the vegetation
\n became more tropical and the ambiance more savage, as civilization and
\n contact with the outside world faded in the rearview mirrors of a succession
\n of trucks, busses and collectivos.<\/p>\n
\n in the Eastern extreme of Bolivia, hot, humid and indolent, shrouded in conspiracy and continually
\n fighting off the encroaching overgrowth of the hothouse plant life of the upper Amazon. This
\n is where Che Guevara found his revolution at the wrong end of a gun, betrayed
\n by a local warlord and hunted down in the jungle by a CIA hit squad. It
\n is a land without law, ruled by the whim and impulse of a series of strongmen,
\n colonels mostly, although their nominal rank in the Bolivian military has
\n little to do with the true extent of their absolute power and corruption.<\/p>\n
\n were approached on the streets by twitchy, furtive individuals
\n and handed small paper packets, which on closer inspection contained several
\n grams of pure Bolivian flake and a phone number. It seems that Gringos
\n were so rare in the city, except for officially sanctioned international
\n drug smugglers, that they couldn’t believe that even an obtusely intellectual
\n social scientist would be so stupid as to wander in.<\/p>\n
\n was as a cultural and economic phenomena, and we quickly destroyed the
\n contents. We were forced to abandon Santa Cruz after three or four days
\n when Jane, our girlfriend at the time, became convinced there were people
\n on the roof our our hotel at night, watching us. <\/p>\n
\n we were going (Paraguay): the Santa Cruz Airport or the Train of Death,
\n and we decided the Train of Death sounded like fun. But that’s another
\n story for
\n another
\n time.
\n Besides, this whole episode happened almost thirty years ago, so things
\n down there may have changed. But we doubt it.<\/p>\n
\n with native American majorities, are the last battles in a 500-year race
\n war which one culture has turned into its creation myth, and another has
\n quite correctly taken it for the End of History. However, like the State
\n of Israel, the Indian rebellion in Bolivia is an eloquent reminder as
\n to how difficult
\n it is to really erase a people, a culture, a race. Genocide is not a
\n simple thing to accomplish.<\/p>\n
\n support, ethnic discrimination, starvation, cultural domination, religious
\n conversion, racial bigotry,
\n lack of education
\n and
\n health care, economic exploitation and destruction of their environment,
\n the Andean Indian culture survives, smoldering in hearts and minds, towns
\n and villages, streets and plazas. There now appears to be no alternative
\n to giving significant power to the people in the streets, the native
\n Americans.<\/p>\n
\n or imposed in the above-mentioned countries, with varying degrees of Indian blood or electoral support,
\n but in every case they turned out to be puppets or sell-outs, adopted confederates
\n of the elite, corrupt in that way that only lost souls who have sold
\n their souls to the enemies of their people can be.<\/p>\n
\n power and privilege, the siren song of the Global Elite, seduce another
\n generation of indigenous leaders? Unfortunately, in our opinion, the only
\n way to prevent that from happening would be the creation of a completely
\n anti-Multinational, anti-IMF revenue-sharing government which would distribute
\n the billions in gas money honestly to the people by sponsoring immediate
\n massive programs in education, health, rural development and social support. <\/p>\n
\n condemn the emergent Native American state as socialists, anti-American,
\n and a treat to hemispheric security. We have a lot of experience in putting
\n down native uprisings.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"