Crash

Now that we can count our remaining days in Bolivia on our fingers, it's obvious that we're going to go out with more of a bang than a whimper.

On our way home from one of our farewell parties, when we were just five blocks from home, a taxi crashed into us on our left rear fender. I immediately stopped the car (blocking in the taxi) and swooped down on the driver of the offending taxi – Leslie hopped out of her side of the car and took up a flanking position in front of the taxi. All the driver of the other car could say was that he just wanted to make a left turn and that the crash wasn’t his fault and that maybe the crash was his fault but that he really didn’t hurt our car. I got him out of his car so he could really see the damage that he’d caused, up close and personal, and then I realized that he was drunk – well, that explained a lot. He didn’t have a driver’s license or insurance and when I was noting down his car’s license plate number he hopped into his taxi and tried to flee, but Leslie threw herself in front of his car and wouldn’t let him escape. Then I escorted him as he moved his car out of the middle of the road, over to the curb, and got him out of his car so he couldn’t attempt to run away again. It was all I could do to not pound him into the ground; it’s been a long time since I really smacked anyone, but it was a very near thing just then. I was so mad! Four years of dodging traffic in La Paz without so much as a scratch and now this in our last two weeks!

I looked over to the next intersection where there’s a traffic light which is manned by a traffic officer, but since it was already 11:00 at night the policeman had already gone home. I didn’t have my cell phone with me so I couldn’t call anyone – I was really at a loss of what to do. A couple of other taxi drivers, who were sober and who had witnessed the crash, were very helpful. One offered to drive Leslie down to the police station to bring back the traffic police while I secured our culprit, so that’s what we did. So while Leslie went and fetched the police, I listened to our drunk driver explain that he’d get our broken (plastic) mud guards “welded” just like new. The remaining (sober) taxi driver kept telling our drunk to just pay me for the damage so he could avoid going to jail, but our villain didn’t have a single peso on him. Since the police station is only seven blocks from the crash site it wasn’t very long before Leslie got back with the police in their little green and white Volkswagen Beetle with a red light on top. Having done her part Leslie walked on home while I explained to the policemen what had happened. Then we all had to go down to the police station to fill out the paperwork. I used to think that it was an advantage to have a diplomatic drivers’ license, but these days, with the new anti-foreigner government (even those who are donor nations), I’m not so sure. Even so, the police seemed to do their job in a professional manner, took down all of the data, and then had me witness as the offending driver was administered a breathalyzer test (the results were 2.01 – whatever that means.) Back home I called my insurance company and made a report.

The next morning, on Sunday, I got a call from the drunk guy - ?! – he said that he wanted to come to my house to talk to me. I put him off until the afternoon because we have church in the morning, but I was dismayed that he had my phone number. I had made a rookie error in giving the police my home address and phone number – you’d think that someone with ten years of experience living overseas would know enough to not trust the police. I should have given them my office address and phone number (I guess I’m a slow learner.) While we spent the whole morning at church I worried that the guy had my home address too and was going to break in to the house and take out his frustrations on our personal effects. But, back home after church, we found everything still locked up tight and nothing out of place. That afternoon I agreed to meet the man at my office (not at home – I’m slow but not stupid.) At the office I took comfort in the presence of the armed police sergeant who provides our security; before my visitor showed up I took an opportunity to fill in my policeman on what had happened. When the taxi driver and his wife arrived at my office, I kept them out in the parking lot, with my car to use as a visual aid and my policeman to be the “bad cop.” Actually, in the light of day and away from the heat of the moment, I noted that the now less-drunk taxi driver was a very little pathetic man and I felt sorry for him, but told him that there was nothing to discuss because I hadn’t spoken to the insurance, or to a body shop and didn’t have any information yet.

The next day (Monday) I took the car into Toyota for a quote – they’d have to import the replacement parts from Japan, which would take at least 35 days. Since I only had two weeks left in Bolivia that wasn’t going to do me any good. Even so, the following day (Tuesday) I took the quote down to the police station, to comply with the requirements of the law, and paid them my 50Bs. for the official police report to the insurance company. The drunk guy and his wife begged me not to submit the claim to the insurance company because he didn’t have any money and he was afraid that the insurance company was going to take it out of his hide. I told him that I knew that he didn’t have any money, which was why I was making a claim to the insurance company rather than directly against him. But he wouldn’t quit; he and his wife followed me back to the office and I had to have our policeman send them off. That day I made the mistake of walking to lunch with my local engineers as usual because the drunk guy and his wife followed us along the way; this time the guy asked me to give him the damaged parts off my car so he could go find the replacements. I told him that I wasn’t giving him anything and that we were done talking because it was up to the insurance company what was going to happen. When he wouldn’t cease or desist, my engineers interposed themselves and sent him on his way. It’s obvious that this drunk guy is not going to be able to pay for any of the damage that he’s caused and he doesn’t have any insurance, and my local insurance is going to be too slow to help me out in the next week or so, so I’ll be stuck with repairing my car when I get to the States. I’m just glad that no one was hurt, the car still works, and that the repairs are not more extensive. So, even though I’m not happy about the crash, I feel blessed that it all worked out as well as it did.

And since no one wants to see a photo of a crashed car, I've attached another photo that I took in the Galapagos. All I can figure is that these two gulls must be brothers, and the little brother is on the bottom.

We're in the news again

I reported on Tuesday that my company had been mentioned on the TV news cast Monday night and Tuesday morning (on Bolivision only) regarding the looting of our warehouse in Caranavi. That news report was initiated by our insurance agent who was trying to incite some response from the government. And then yesterday, on Wednesday morning, I saw on the TV news cast essentially the same report with the addition that the government officials were stating that they’d only learned of the situation from the news cast and hadn’t received or read the letters that we and the US embassy had been sending.

Then this morning, Thursday, our story was printed in one of the local newspapers (La Razón: http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20060518_005546/nota_256_287842.htm.) This article was again initiated by our insurance agent. The article incorrectly states that we are now considering whether or not to abandon Caranavi all together; whereas the reality is that we’ve already been instructed to leave and, according to our CTO, it’s extremely unlikely that we will ever feel like returning to Caranavi. This latest article correctly adds the fact that our employees in Caranavi have been threatened with death and aren’t allowed to even come close to our former warehouse. In this article they quote the Viceminister of Internal Government as saying that: “Bolivia is not a secure state; security here is just a label. In the whole area of Caranavi the capacity of the police is restricted.” They also quote the executive secretary of the neighborhood association, Rosendo Vargas, the Evo Morales of the Yungas and ring leader of the mobs stealing our poles and threatening to kill our employees, as denying stealing our poles. He does admit, however, that they took over our warehouse because, he says, the poles had come in the name of the people of Caranavi. He's wrong of course - the poles aren't for him or anyone else - they belong to the US government and would have gone to benefit somewhere in rural Bolivia. Now they'll just turn into mulch in someone's front yard.

In the same newspaper on the very next page they report that Evo will be going to Caranavi on Saturday the 20th to sign an agreement with the coca farmers of Caranavi (http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20060518_005546/nota_256_287844.htm.) The agreement will supposedly reduce the coca plantations in Caranavi. Why they’ve decided to take this step AFTER the Alternative Development program has left the area is not yet clear to me. It is clear, however, that the Alternative Development program won’t be coming back, so I doubt that any reduction in coca production will be sustainable since they won’t have the infrastructure (electricity, roads, processing plants, etc.) to do anything else.

The photo at the top of this log entry is of a pair of Nazca/Masked Boobies; I took it during our Spring Break trip to the Galapagos this year.

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.

Lawless Bolivia

Evito is really on a roll now. When last we saw him here in Bolivia he was limping off to Vienna in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan-flagged airplane to attend a summit of leaders from the European Union, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Then all of a sudden he shows up on the evening news doing what he does best – shooting off his mouth and sinking the whole country of Bolivia even deeper. He started off his road show with the statement that Bolivia was NOT going to pay for any of the petroleum infrastructure recently confiscated under the banner of “nationalization.” He explained that the petroleum companies were in Bolivia illegally and were thieves and smugglers – that they were stealing the gas out of the ground and smuggling it into Brazil and Argentina. He totally disregarded the existing contracts under which the Brazilian, Spanish, Argentine, English, and Italian firms are presently operating. You can bet that Brazil and Spain, the two largest investors in the petroleum sector in Bolivia, have taken exception to that! Brazil has said that they’re considering pulling their Ambassador out of Bolivia. In the same summit meeting in Austria, Tony Blair weakly asked Morales and Chavez to “act sensibly” – as if there were any hope of that.

During his rant Evo complained that Spain had been looting Bolivia for 500 years already and that it was time to stop. And then (here comes the good part – I swear I’m not making this up) Evo comes out and chastises Spain for not coming forward with more charity for Bolivia. He complained that when he’d made his Rainbow tour of Europe back in December & January, Spain had promised to forgive Bolivia’s debts and send more financial assistance. Then he demanded that Spain honor their word and cough up the money. And he did all of this with a straight face. I guess he didn’t know that it’s customary to wear a mask and brandish a firearm when stealing from someone and then demanding more money.

My Bolivian friends are mortified that such an ignorant man is representing them to world at large. One of my friends said that he was going to stop watching the evening news because it kept him up at night (he’s not the first to say that to me.) I insisted that he NEEDED to stay informed because it’s obvious that the majority of his countrymen are ignorant of what’s happening and how it’s going to affect every Bolivian when all international aid, investment, and commerce is cut off. Furthermore, with the deterioration of law and order situation in Bolivia, and with the outright if not condoned looting going on in Caranavi, my Bolivian friends have expressed concern that Evito and his roving mobs are going to start sacking the homes and businesses here in the Zona Sur (where I live and have my office.) I told them that it was certainly what would come next – that they only needed to study Russian history to see what turn comes next.

Note: I'm tired of seeing Evito's face on my own blog so the photo above is of a Blue-footed Boobie - I took it on our recent trip to the Galapagos.

Deteriorating security in Bolivia

The security situation here in Bolivia continues to deteriorate on a daily basis. Down in Caranavi, the center of the Yungas and where my rural electrification project was centered until the recent evacuation, there are now two warring factions – those who want the Alternative Development projects to come back and those who are glad to see the ‘yanquis’ go home. So far the war hasn’t involved shooting, but there has been some fisticuffs between the two factions. And with regard to my project evacuation – I managed to get out all of my wire and hardware that I had in my warehouse and over 3000 poles, but I still have over 2000 poles remaining in Caranavi. But on Monday, the 1st of May, a gang from the local neighborhood association hijacked our outbound truckload of poles. They said that all of the remaining poles had to stay in Caranavi. So then the mobs, directed by the Mayor’s employees, started openly stealing poles from my warehouse and distributing them around town. They my warehouseman who was taking photos of the theft and then stole his camera too. They even went to the homes of my employees living in Caranavi and threatened them with bodily harm if they tried to interfere with the looting of my poles. We appealed to the police and then to the army, but the only opposition to this theft of the power poles came from the rural colonizers’ organizations who wanted a share of the poles for themselves too. And just to add insult to injury, my construction contractor was foolish enough to warehouse the material that I’d advanced him in one of the community centers, and now they’re refusing to let him get it out to be returned to me (I guess I’ll be cashing his materials bond.) So, whether they meant to or not, the leaders of the mob in Caranavi are proving the point that there is in fact no law and order and no security in Caranavi and that’s why the projects are all shutting down and leaving town.

Also in Bolivia these days, since Evito confiscated the private petroleum infrastructure from the wells to the gas pumps, largely owned by Brazil, the president of Brazil is starting to complain that Evo is controlled by Hugo Chavez. ?! Ya think?! In fact, last night on the evening news, he said that Evo was acting like Chavez’s “pet.” I almost fell out of my chair. Now rumors are rampant that perhaps Brazil will send in troops to Bolivia to recuperate and safeguard the billions of dollars of investment that they have in the petroleum section. Maybe that’s Bolivia’s strategy all along – maybe they’re hoping that Brazil will conquer them and then fix their problems as part of a war reparation scheme. Maybe the future language of Bolivia isn’t Aymara – maybe it will be Portuguese.

Having checked nationalization of the petroleum resources off his list of things to do, Evito is now dabbling in land redistribution. He’s decreed the confiscation of a land mass larger than the country of Greece down in Santa Cruz, to be redistributed to poor people from the Altiplano. I guess that’s how he intends to pay back Santa Cruz for their opposition to his party.

As for Evito, he’s flown off to Europe to try to drum up support for his policies. Good luck with that, I say – he’s confiscated property from investors in Spain, England, Italy, France, and Germany – I’ll be curious to see how well he’s received in the European Union now. And, as if to thumb his nose at his own country, Evo flew off in a Venezuelan flagged airplane (which immediately broke down and had to come back, get repaired, and take off again.) His countrymen are furious and insulted that he didn’t fly his own Bolivian flagged presidential jet which, according to the Bolivian air force, is perfectly functional. In defense of their power grabbing policies, the new vice-president/terrorist/acting president of Bolivia said that it would be impossible to impose a Cuban or Venezuelan-style dictatorship on Bolivia – he said that here in Bolivia the masses rule. Right…!

Nationalization of petroleum: check!

Emperor Evito continues to consolidate his power here in Bolivia. As an outsider who is imminently fleeing the country, it’s interesting to observe. But my Bolivian friends are terrified of the future, and rightly so.

First, on April 29, Evito traveled to Havana, Cuba to sign agreements with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro to guarantee Bolivia’s sale of soy beans and coca leaves to Venezuela in exchange for the supply of diesel from Venezuela. The three presidents are trying to create a block of countries to oppose the United States and the spread of capitalism in Latin America. They’re calling their alliance the ALBA (Spanish for “dawn”) which stands for Bolivar’s Alternative for the Americas (Simon Bolivar is the general who liberated Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela – Hugo Chavez claims to be the reincarnation of Bolivar.) Cuba, which has neither petroleum nor agriculture products to contribute to the alliance, is providing doctors, teachers, and other indoctrinators – presumably with diplomas from the Soviet Union. You can read more about this at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/04/29/samerican.pact.ap/index.html. Note: if you don't want to buy gas from Hugo Chavez, avoid Citgo gas stations.

Then on the 30th it was revealed that the MAS has a formal ten point program for maintaining power in Bolivia. The existence of the document has been acknowledged by the government, specifically by the Viceminister of Social Movements, but I haven’t found any publication that reveals what’s actually in the document. The closest thing to such a revelation was in one of the local newspapers (http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20060430_005527/nota_276_281393.htm) that revealed that the document states that “votes alone don’t maintain power” and specifies the first few strategies supposedly contained in the MAS’s strategic plan. Those strategies are:

1. Organize brigades of hooligans so that there can’t be any spontaneous protests against the government.
2. Mobilize the militant elements of the party to ensure that the populace embraces everything proposed by the party.
3. Control the media (I’ve seen a lot of propaganda for the MAS and their programs on the evening news lately.)
4. Place party idealists at every level of the government to ensure that everyone is toeing the same party line (these are the guys from Cuba and Venezuela.)
5. On May 1st, when the masses typically march against the government of the year, the MAS should reveal some great important social program.

Then right on cue on May 1, the international Labor Day, with the support of the armed forces, Evito and the MAS seized all petroleum assets in the country. Under Evito’s new rules, foreign-based companies will be forced to sign new contracts within 180 days and to hand over their stockpiles to the government, which will be in charge of the retail sales. If the companies refuse to sign the new contracts they will be forced to leave the country and abandon their investments after the 180-day period. In addition, foreign companies must surrender shares that they acquired during the capitalization process of the last decade without compensation. The new law also decrees that Bolivia will receive 82 percent of the profits while foreign companies will receive 18 percent. After Evito’s announcement, the military occupied two refineries operated by Brazilian-owned Petrobras and 56 oil wells operated by other foreign-companies in order to prevent any acts of sabotage in response to the decree. (See also: http://www.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/05/02/bolivia.gas.reut/index.html.)

It was impressive to see on the evening news last night the soldiers surrounding the gas plants and even the petroleum company offices with their combat gear and bayonets fixed. Also on the evening news, they showed that before Evo read his manifesto the group decided to sing the Bolivian national anthem. The Minister of Hydrocarbons told everyone to take off their hardhats for the hymn, but Evo wouldn’t take his off and was the only one standing there in a hat while they sang the national anthem. After confiscating the petroleum industry, Evito tried to calm the Bolivian people with promises that Venezuelan technicians have been training Bolivian technicians for the past three months on how to run the petroleum plants if Brazil and Spain, the "owners" of the seized plants, just cut their losses and abandon the country. But it didn't work - there was a run on the gas stations with lines of cars several miles long - everyone is expecting to run out of fuel in the coming days. The gas stations, most of which are now closed, all sport new banners that read “Nationalized.”

I’m not the only one who has noticed the MAS slowly taking control of the country and leading it down into the abyss. The Catholic Church denounced the MAS last week, on April 29, saying that they were using old tactics and policies that have already been tried and failed, and that the current government’s strong-arm tactics have been proven to “produce death and pain.” See: http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20060429_005526/nota_247_281259.htm.