Native Bolivians Rising Up: Indigenous People Uniting in Rage against Discrimination, Poverty

Americas - Bolivia
21 Mar 2005 - Chicago Tribune

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Pascual Condori steeled himself with a cheekful of coca leaves and poured drops of beer as an offering to Pachamama, Mother Earth. As citizens gathered in the central square of this dusty Andean town, he raised a voice that had been muzzled for five centuries.

"As indigenous people, we will not be discriminated against!" he told his fellow Aymara Indians at the rally last fall. "We all have rights, my brothers!"

Across Latin America, many of the region's 40 million indigenous citizens are raising similar voices of discontent, angry that greater political freedom and free-market economic policies fostered by the spread of democracy have not lifted them out of poverty. And in Bolivia, they have brought President Carlos Mesa's government to the brink of collapse.

Faced with road blockades by indigenous activists to protest foreign investment in the energy sector, Mesa offered to resign earlier this month. Such a move would have made him the second Bolivian president to leave office in 18 months because of protests by indigenous people.

Congress rejected Mesa's offer to quit, as well as his call for early elections so he could step down. Mesa said Thursday he would stay until his term ends in 2007, but analysts said the crisis has not passed.

U.S. and Bolivian officials worry that the protesters' approach is winning out over activists, like Condori, who want to achieve inclusion through the ballot box. Last fall, he ran for the city council under the banner of his Inca forefathers, leading a wave of first-time indigenous hopefuls that produced a record number of municipal candidates.

In recent years, native peoples also have toppled a president in Ecuador and mobilized in Chile, Mexico and Guatemala. In January, indigenous militants in Peru took over a police station in a failed attempt to force the resignation of President Alejandro Toledo.

Two decades after democracies replaced longstanding dictatorships across much of Latin America, indigenous peoples remain some of the region's poorest citizens, having failed to translate their numbers into economic and political power.

The political climate is especially volatile in Bolivia, a poor nation and the only one in South America with a majority indigenous population.

Mesa still plans to convene a assembly this year to rewrite the constitution, arguably the most important demand of indigenous activists. Politicians are split over whether the assembly will be a chance to right wrongs or a forum for revenge and recrimination.

Even before this month's protests, some U.S. officials had feared that a failed national assembly would cause indigenous leaders to steer the country off the democratic track or, at the very least, install a government that would end Bolivian cooperation with the U.S. on drug eradication and free trade.

"People are questioning democracy," said Liliana Ayalde, mission director for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Bolivia. "If they see that no results come out of the formal system, then they will say, `Forget this. We'll go to the streets.' This is an important test for Bolivia."

Last year, Bolivia joined Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan and five other hot spots on a U.S. list of "conflict-prone" countries. That triggered a $50 million emergency infusion of U.S. aid.

To ease the pressure, Bolivian leaders are rushing through changes. In addition to the constitutional assembly, the National Congress passed a law letting candidates for local and national office bypass traditional political parties and run for office under the banner of an indigenous community.

Invoking Incan ancestry

Condori and fellow candidate Genaro Mamani chose that avenue. They unfurled a wiphala, a rainbow-colored checkerboard flag flown by their Inca forefathers. Their party is Jach'a Suyu Pakajaqi, Aymara for "Territory of the Eagle Men," a label that resonates with the people here.

In the most recent census, about 62 percent of Bolivia's citizens described themselves as indigenous, mainly of Aymara, Quechua and Guarani descent. Experts say nearly all Bolivians, including those who identify themselves as indigenous, are mestizos--a mix of European and native bloodlines.

But the ruling class is disproportionately of European descent. Bolivian politics historically has required a sizable financial investment that is used to secure the loyalty of party leaders and pay candidate fees. Because indigenous residents are most likely to be poor, they generally cannot compete with the mining barons, beer executives and other elite who have dominated politics.

The native people of Latin America have been disenfranchised since the arrival of Spanish conquistadors. Millions of the indigenous people died because of forced overwork, disease and massacres. The Spanish also drained natural resources, including the bountiful silver mines of Potosi, a frigid Bolivian city more than 2 miles high in the Andes.

Many historians say the exploitation by outside interests continued into the 20th Century when rival foreign oil companies helped pit Bolivia against Paraguay in the Chaco War of the 1930s, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of indigenous soldiers.

So in 2003, when Bolivia's then-president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, unveiled a plan to export natural gas through a pipeline built by foreign investors, some indigenous citizens thought history was repeating itself.

Many were especially suspicious because the president was a University of Chicago-educated mining baron who grew up abroad and spoke Spanish with an American accent.

With anger mounting, Aymara militants rallied llama herders, farmers and other residents of Santiago de Callapa and surrounding towns. They, along with coca growers, labor union members and miners with dynamite sticks, joined the "Gas War" by blockading major roads and stormed to La Paz, site of most governmental offices.

When the dust cleared, 60 to 80 people had died in clashes with the military. Parts of La Paz were in flames, and Sanchez de Lozada fled the presidential palace by helicopter, later finding haven in the United States.

Bolivia's indigenous majority had reawakened.

Today the crossroads for Bolivia's democracy lies in outposts such as Santiago de Callapa, a town of 8,000 in the altiplano, a bleak Andean plateau in western Bolivia, where 100 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to the United Nations.

Felix Tantacalle, a 54-year-old farmer, said he joined the 2003 uprising out of frustration with the government. As he waited to listen to the speeches of city council candidates Condori and Mamani, he sounded like a defeated man.

"How many years has this town been without help?" Tantacalle said. "[Government officials] don't care about us. So why should we care about anything?"

Many other Bolivian voters express similar distrust of politicians. Indigenous residents are especially suspicious; a UN poll in 2002 indicated that only 21.2 percent of Bolivia's native people believed their rights were valued.

Up the highway from Santiago de Callapa, Aymara Indians in Ayo Ayo became so infuriated with their mayor and allegations of his corruption that they lynched him last year.

Many indigenous candidates insist that they will clean up politics, invoking an Aymara credo that says, "Don't lie, don't steal, don't be lazy."

As they hit the campaign trail late last year, Condori and Mamani preached reform but relied on old-style Bolivian politics.

Brewing support

For their first campaign event, they lugged in 24 liter-sized bottles of beer. This is the practice of prevenda, loosely meaning "for sale," in which Bolivian candidates are expected to pass out goodies to voters--packets of rice, bottled water, even cash.

"We can't go in with empty hands, give a speech and say `goodbye,'" Condori said.

But neither had much to say to the curious voters. With the crowd losing interest, Condori grabbed a microphone and tried to gain applause by using a pejorative Aymara term for white people.

"We should not look for confrontations with each other. We should confront the k'aras!" he shouted, ignoring a detailed campaign platform that called for the merging of the city council with rural communal groups called ayllus.

Their political group ended up winning one council seat.

The two candidates were taking a page from Evo Morales, a coca grower of Aymara and Quechua ancestry who nearly won the presidency in 2002 by focusing his ire on multinational corporations and the U.S. government.

U.S. and international officials in Bolivia said they must encourage moderate indigenous leaders. But it is not easy.

Guido Luna, an official with the Brecha Foundation, a Bolivian non-profit group that promotes democracy, worked with indigenous candidates such as Mamani and Condori to create detailed platforms for agriculture reform and financial transparency.

Even though the foundation's work to train indigenous candidates was supported by U.S. funds, Luna said most of his candidates still preferred to fall back on rhetoric attacking multinational corporations, including Aguas de Illimani, the subsidiary of a French company that provides water to several large cities.

David Tuchschneider, a World Bank analyst in La Paz, said he could not think of one indigenous activist in Bolivia he would consider a visionary.

"This absence of leadership promotes radicalism," said Tuchschneider, who has worked with indigenous groups for 15 years. "I don't see that this indigenous mobilization is leading to an open, intercultural dialogue. On the contrary, it is leading to hardened positions where both sides see things as `them or us.'"

For the U.S., the fact that indigenous politicians now make up a third of the National Congress provides a new field of potential partners. The U.S. has invited about a half-dozen indigenous members of the Congress for formal visits to Washington.

Wigberto Rivero, Bolivia's former vice minister for indigenous affairs, said he recalls when indigenous activists couldn't even get an invitation to cocktail parties with U.S. diplomats in La Paz.

"I see an understanding that wasn't there before," Rivero said. "I think the Americans see that the viability of Bolivia rests on including the indigenous population, not marginalizing them."

Last fall, the U.S. Embassy in La Paz hired two Aymara speakers to be liaisons with indigenous leaders. One, a journalist, also monitors radio programs to keep U.S. officials informed about any simmering tensions.

More significant, after the 2003 revolt, USAID approved an emergency allocation of $5 million, most targeted to indigenous groups, for voter education and rural development.

But U.S. support doesn't always translate into popularity.

Walter Reynaga, executive secretary of the Movement for Land and Liberty, a fledgling indigenous group slating candidates, has received U.S. assistance. He supports privatization and tax breaks to help Aymara and Quechua entrepreneurs, who hawk wares on La Paz's hilly sidewalks.

Reynaga has written scholarly platforms on using indigenous traditions to reform Bolivia's political and economic system. But he is frustrated that most indigenous citizens have tuned out his message, often overshadowed by radicals who make headlines with protests and inflammatory rhetoric.

"Sometimes we think about making a ruckus, blowing up some dynamite. Why not? At least that way, we'll get some attention," Reynaga said.

By contrast, U.S. officials say they will not provide funds to Roberto de la Cruz, a firebrand union official who as a leader of the 2003 protests threatened to hang anyone who cooperated with the government. He spoiled his ballot in a recent referendum on exporting natural gas by scrawling "nationalization" on it.

De la Cruz's new civic group pulled an upset in last fall's municipal elections, winning a city council seat in El Alto, a sprawling suburb of La Paz dominated by indigenous voters.

Even as U.S. officials forge links with indigenous activists, Ayalde of USAID said she fears "manipulation" of indigenous leaders by countries and non-governmental organizations from outside Bolivia.

Chavez called `destabilizing'

U.S. officials in La Paz privately have accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and foreign activists who oppose globalization of trying to hijack Bolivia's indigenous movements. A U.S. military official recently told a Miami newspaper that meddling by Chavez might become a "destabilizing factor."

In interviews, Morales and other indigenous leaders acknowledge an alliance with Chavez but insist he is not funneling money to their causes.

Bolivia's future is likely to hinge on whether indigenous politicians can cooperate with the Bolivian government, business interests and U.S. officials without being seen as a sellout by their own people, experts say.

"That is a problem that all indigenous leaders in Latin America face," said Donna Lee Van Cott, an assistant professor of political science at Tulane University in New Orleans and author of an upcoming book about ethnic politics in Latin America. "When you enter the state, you legitimize the state. It's more difficult to speak as an outsider and criticize institutions with which you form a part."

Luna of the Brecha Foundation said he remains optimistic that his country's native peoples would see the benefits of political participation.

"We didn't come into this with the idea that democracy would solve all our problems," he said.