Where in the world is Bolivia, anyway?

Ok, we´re now at least a week behind on posting, so it is time to catch up on what we´ve been up to in Bolivia. Do all the readers out there know that this is a homecoming of sorts for me? My Mom was born in Bolivia, so I´ve actually visited this country several times throughout my life, but this is the first time that I´m seeing more than just my family´s tropical home city of Santa Cruz.

Bolivia´s geography has fundamentally shaped the character of the different regions, so it is probably best to start with a quick lesson in the lay of the land. Starting from the West, from where we entered Bolivia in Copacabana, it is highland mountain territory. The huge steppe that runs north to south along and in between some ranges of the Andes is known as the Altiplano. This whole area is at a consistently high altitude, ranging from 9000 to 14000 feet (the peaks range much higher with the highest, Nevado Sajama at 21, 463 feet). La Paz is at around 12,000 feet, but luckily we´d already been altitude acclimated in Cuzco at about 11,000 feet.

Moving from West to East, the Altiplano gradually loses altitude until the sparse high plains transition into arable desert lands and canyons in the middle altitudes (very similar to New Mexico and Arizona), and continuing East into the tropical lowlands. (Continuing East all the way past Santa Cruz would land you in Brazil´s tropical plains). Roughly speaking, the Amazon areas are in the North and Northeast, and the excessively dry desert plains (such as the Salar de Uyuni) are in the Southwest.

Ok, that´s enough of a geography lesson. The quick take-away is that Bolivia is incredibly diverse: geographically, and by extension, culturally. You might imagine that this diversity would cause some rifts in Bolivian society, and you´d be right. Very roughly speaking, and very crudely labelling, there are at least two axes on which to place any given Bolivian: Indigeno or Mestizo, referring to whether someone has indigenous Andean blood (e.g. Quechua or Aymara), or whether they come from mixed blood (Spanish/European--¨white¨) descent. I must repeat that these are tremendously crude distinctions, because over the course of centuries, these two cultures have lived together, humped and intertwined, and have thus adapted to each other, so that the racial distinction is most informative only at the two opposite ends of the spectrum, and my opinion is that most Bolivians (at least in the major cities) fall somewhere in between.

The other gradient on which to describe Bolivians is geographic: The crude terms for these are ¨Collas¨ from the highland states, and ¨Cambas¨from the lowland states. Although each area uses the terms for the others somewhat derogatorily, in my mind these are meaningful distinctions because you can definitely notice the differences between Cambas and Collas in terms of their style of speech and mannerisms.

More recently, all of these geographic and cultural differences have manifested themselves in a great deal of political turmoil. Without a doubt, this is nothing new. Just about all of Bolivia´s history has been characterized by unrest, uprisings, overthrows, and instability. I´ll only mention the most recent conflicts with the most recent President, since this stage of history is particularly interesting, and for our visit, quite omnipresent. It will also inform several upcoming Blog posts. And I will only give the Cliff´s notes version. Let´s see how quickly I can summarize:

In 2005, Bolivia elected its first indigenous Aymara president, a guy named Evo Morales. This made international news. Given his broad political base (about 60% approval rating nationwide), he had the latitude to start shaking up the status quo, especially with regard to giving more to the historically underrepresented (yet majority) indigenous, poor population. On paper, this was obviously a good power-to-the-people story. But there´s a lot more to it. Several observers (including my family) hold quite a bit of concern about Evo´s reckless style of governing, his appointment of cronies to important technocratic cabinet positions, regardless of expertise or education, his past as the leader of the coca grower´s union (linked to cocaine trafficking), his very intimate alliance with Venezuelan populist-turned-dictator Hugo Chavez, and his cavalier and confrontational relationship with the United States. (By the way, I´m not offended that he booted the U.S. ambassador out of the country or that he blasts U.S. imperialism in his rhetoric--that´s fair. What isn´t fair is that these actions, for such an economically dependent country, have serious consequences for his own people). As always, it is difficult to sift through the rhetoric on this--U.S. newspapers probably don´t give the man a fair shake, and leftist/socialist news outlets don´t ever acknowledge the risks and downsides of what he is doing. Sift through it yourself at http://news.google.com, and enter search terms such as ¨Evo Morales¨or ¨Santa Cruz, Bolivia¨or ¨Bolivia constitution.¨ Just one caveat--most of the news refers to Santa Cruz as the ¨rich and white¨part of the country--know that it isn´t that simple, as there are plenty of poor and middle class people in every corner of the country. I don´t think that particular label for Santa Cruz is fair.

What Evo is doing is pretty wide-ranging, and it is at the heart of the recent turmoil. It is a classic federal vs. states´rights issue. With a national majority (centered in the highland states), he has nationalized big chunks of the energy industry and also proposed a big land redistribution program, as well as a pension program for the elderly. Within his base, these are tremendously popular reforms. But they come at the expense of the Camba lowland states, which have been developing their economies based on gas and agricultural revenues. So when Evo says he wants to break up large landholdings to give to the nation´s poor, he´s talking about agriculturally productive land that gives jobs to many middle class Camba Bolivians (including some of my cousins). Similarly, the lowland states used to have more of a say in where their oil and gas revenues went, but now those revenues are being controlled at the federal level and being distributed disproportionately to Evo´s friends and supporters around La Paz and other highland states. All of this is being debated in the lens of a constitutional referendum where Evo wants to make these seismic shifts in redistribution permanent. The lowland states, known as the ¨Medio Luna¨--(¨half-moon¨see the crescent of states from Northeast to Southwest on the map--Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, and Chuquisaca) have opposed the constitutional changes under the grounds that a) the reforms unfairly favor the highland majority, so the minority protection of federalism is at risk, b) their prior autonomy over locally produced economic growth is being stripped away, and c) that the new constitution gives far too much power to the executive branch, with fears of a full-socialist agenda under a very popular Evo Morales.

This conflict resulted in some violence this past September, and the country was in a a very tense state of panic and instability which had Matt and I worried about whether we´d even be able to visit. It got resolved in recent weeks, with the biggest concession to the Camba states being that Evo would not seek a third presidential term. That seemed to diffuse the violence at least until January, when the new constitution gets put to a vote by the people. It is expected to win, at the expense of lowland autonomy.

Ok, that should give all of you lovely readers a good base of understanding to know where we are in Bolivia and what we´ve been encountering. I promise future posts won´t be nearly this egg-headed. To be sure, most of what we´ve been doing has been our usual fun hijinks and silliness. But some of the most meaningful moments in the country have had all of this in the background.

I´m particularly interested in seeing some comments! (yes, we get lonely when we don´t hear from you). So pipe up and send us a note on any of the posts you read. It really means a lot to us. More stories to come!