We're on the news!

My project was in the evening and morning TV news casts today and yesterday: our insurance agent went before the broadcast media and complained about how the mobs in Caranavi are looting our power poles and about how the police, army, and government are not only NOT doing anything to stop it, they’re also not even receiving our petitions for protection. My company was mentioned by name, as a US-based organization doing electrification in and around Caranavi free of charge. We were referred to as another example of an American institution being driven out of Caranavi, in addition to all of the other US-financed projects. Our insurance agent also said that if the government doesn’t start imposing law and order in Caranavi, all of the insurance companies will withdraw from the area and leave everyone down there uninsured. It was a pretty solid report – I guess we’ll see if it causes any reaction. There is a march scheduled today in Caranavi, by those who are in favor of the Alternative Development programs. The local news station has determined to film the event and one of my friends in Caranavi has promised to tape the TV report for me. I’ll let you know how it goes.

By way of background information: before this flurry of looting started and since the US government gave us the order to evacuate Caranavi, we managed to sneak out all of our hardware and wire and at least 3000 of our 5000 poles stockpiled. But, as we were moving the last 2000 poles, the mobs mobilized and decided to hijack our (hired) trucks and confiscate our poles. It started with the neighborhood associations of Caranavi expropriating our poles for their neighborhood projects. Then the municipal employees, at the direction of the mayor, stepped in to allocate the distribution of our poles. Our warehouseman and guards tried to protect the poles, but were rebuffed – the mobs even went to the homes of my guards and threatened them to stay away. Our warehouseman was photographing the organized looting of our poles, but was spotted by the mob, which then violently stole his camera. We sent appeals for protection to the police and then to the army and finally to the federal government, but they wouldn’t lift a finger – it’s obvious that the looting of the American-financed projects is government sanctioned. The first opposition to the theft of our poles came from the rural colonizers’ association who didn’t want the city folks hogging all the poles – leave some for them they whined. There were some good citizens of Caranavi who didn’t want the city to be branded totally lawless and they tried to confront the thieves, but after a small skirmish in the city square, they were silenced.

Also in the news today:

Evito performed a 180 degree flip in Vienna. Last week, in front of the summit meeting of leaders from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the European Union, Evo publicly denounced Brazil as thieves and smugglers; he said that they were stealing Bolivia’s gas and illegally smuggling it out of the country and that he wasn’t going to reimburse them one penny for the petroleum infrastructure that he nationalized a couple of weeks ago. Now, with a straight face, he blames the fallout from his remarks on the media. (Local joke: In what way is Evo like “Mission Impossible”? – Every time he speaks, he self destructs.) Now, Evito says that Brazil is a good neighbor and an important ally and that Bolivia is going to pay the foreign petroleum companies for their shares up to the point that the State of Bolivia owns 51% of all of the oil companies functioning in the country. Where will he get the money? The government has ordered all of the private pension companies to invest in YPFB, the government’s petroleum company, up to an amount of nearly $1 billion. Any pension fund that doesn’t make the required investment by Thursday will be “nationalized.” Also in the petroleum sector, Total, a primarily French-owned petroleum company, is the first to throw in the towel and leave Bolivia.

Also while in Vienna, Evito criticized the European banks for not doing more to eliminate the flow of drug money. At the same time, back here in Bolivia, the government has eliminated the agency responsible to track and prevent money laundering by the drug lords. However, since Evito's logic is that anyone who has money must be running drugs, he's started making noise that he's going to take over all of the banks in Bolivia. The banks are circling their wagons to see what they can do to save themselves.

Yesterday the new government imposed fixed tariffs on all buses around the country; the new tariffs include taxes, so the tariffs are higher to the user but the income is lower to the bus owners. In response to the new controls, the bus owners have declared a strike and blockade of the highways next week. The government has responded that they won’t allow any blockades of the highways and that anyone caught blockading will be arrested. However, the government’s firm statements were undercut by their own actions yesterday, when they failed to break a blockade of the highways by a group of 1500 vendors of used clothes. The used clothes vendors are blockading because the sale of used clothes has been outlawed by this new government. As of this morning, the roads out of La Paz are all still blockaded.

Flying in or out of La Paz is not an option today either. Starting last night there was a strike by the airport workers, including security and air traffic controllers, over the government imposition of a new board of directors (hand picked by the government.) The government has threatened to break the strike today by putting their own people to work in the airport – I guess we’ll see what happens today. Last night they had to cancel all air traffic around Bolivia.

There is also a lot of important news that isn’t making the evening news broadcasts:

This new government is firing every employee who ever worked for a previous administration. In fact, one of my Bolivian friends was fired from his post because his sister’s husband had been in a previous administration. There is no pretext of incompetence – just out and out firing. Out of my personal acquaintances, everyone with an American or European passport, or even an American visa, are leaving town – they can no longer work under the present regime. Also, I have a first hand account that now Bolivians are being denied passports – now they have to have a letter from a lawyer justifying why they need a passport – I guess this is a measure to stop a mass exodus. Also, the Venezuelan and Cuban “advisors” placed in all of the government agencies are so thick that it’s impossible to work. A friend of mine at the IDB has told me that they are cutting back to a skeleton crew in the Bolivian office, as they don’t expect to do any more work in Bolivia until after a change of regime.

Continuing my boycott of Evito photos, the photo at the top of this installment is of the Red-footed Boobie; I took it during our recent Spring Break trip to the Galapagos.