Bolivia's Battle of Wills (Page 4)

To the left of Morales and MAS are myriad other organizations and leaders. One of the most important is the Aymaran nationalist and former guerrilla Felipe Quispe (a k a "El Mallku," the Condor), who now heads a large peasant union called the CSUTCB.

I meet Quispe in the CSUTCB's chilly and barren La Paz offices in a brick building with a round facade. He wears a dusty black fedora and a heavy leather jacket. His face is set in a permanent, take-no-crap frown. He begins the interview by offering a small pile of coca leaves and sweet herbs. Throughout the discussion he methodically strips the stems from the small leaves.

Quispe's worldview is nothing if not radical. Forget the presidency, the Parliament, the squabbles over gas royalties and tax rates. He sees a future indigenous nation run by a council of elders and encompassing Bolivia along with parts of Peru, Argentina and Chile. Quispe tried his hand at liberal democracy; he was a congressman from the indigenous party, MIP, but walked out, dismissing Parliament as a decadent talking shop.

"My mother was a slave," says Quispe with a blunt stare. Indeed, many indigenous Bolivians were serfs, tied to the land they worked until 1946. "I am accustomed to living dirty. Eating simple food. How much money do those pigs in Congress spend? One deputy could pay the salary of ten or twelve teachers. While I was there my brethren continued to live in poverty. The deputies are supposed to start work at 8 but show up at 11." He strips and chews more coca.

Quispe insists his vision of an Aymaran nation is not atavistic or fanciful. "We want technology; we will have relations with other countries." And as for white people?

"The foreigners can stay as long as we get 90 percent of the power. If not, there will be war. But the foreigners will have a hard time here. They don't own any land. We don't want to exterminate white people. We just want power."

As for Evo Morales's more mundane quest to be president, Quispe is dismissive. "Evo is like [President Alejandro] Toledo in Peru. Nothing will change for the Indians if he is president." Getting back to the big picture, he sums up: "We will rewrite history with our own blood. There will be a new sun, and even the rocks and the trees will be happy."

Another radical, but pragmatic, vision comes out of the Cochabamba Water War of 2000, in which Bechtel's privatization bid was defeated. Oscar Olivera is one of the most respected local leaders in this region, known for his humility, honesty and hard work. Like many others he sees elections and the quest for state power as distractions.

"We need self-management," says Olivera. "That is what we are trying to do with the water company here." Later I tour the outlying self-managed water districts. As in the Chaparé, the movements here function as a de facto government and do so with remarkable efficiency.

But what about Bolivian elections in a hemispheric context--doesn't Olivera think adding another country to Latin America's new left bloc is important? He pauses, then almost apologetically says, "It's true. We become very regionalized and localized here in Bolivia and do not think about the wider context much. Maybe we should."

And how would self-management work in relation to a highly complex oil and gas industry? In El Alto, some activists with the powerful neighborhood organization FEJUVE tell me of plans to occupy and "self-manage" the gas fields. But later the head of the engineering and technicians' organization supporting them says that such occupations would not involve pumping and selling gas.

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