Bolivia's Battle of Wills (Page 5)

It's late May, and week two of protests is under way. A general strike has been called. At a huge march descending from El Alto to La Paz I meet a young street vendor named Ricardo. He supports nationalization, but adds: "If I didn't march I would be fined by the union. The union controls everything--where you can sell, if you can sell."

When some of his fellow merchants find a few street stalls still active in La Paz, they knock down the offending merchants' umbrellas. The laggards quickly close up. "We are fighting for everyone's rights," says one of the stick-wielding women merchants. "They have to respect that."

The next day the cadre of the CSUTCB, along with miners, teachers and landless peasants from the Movimiento Sin Tierra, march down from El Alto. In typical highland dress of heavy jackets, bowlers and felt hats and bearing sticks, pipes, shepherds' whips and the colorful wiphalas, the weather-beaten columns of Aymara farmers move fast through the narrow streets of old La Paz, occasionally tossing dynamite down empty streets for effect. Their destination is Plaza Murillo, where the Congress and the presidential palace sit. Nervous police in riot gear have blockaded all the key entry points.

The marchers smash in the windows of the few minibuses that have ignored the strike. A journalist appears on a balcony with a camera. Rocks are let loose and just miss his head as he ducks back inside. These rugged peasants are furious--it's been 500 years, and the bill is due.

At a standoff with police there is some yelling in Aymaran, and people back away. Someone tosses a small charge of dynamite in front of the cops, who fall back and block the blast with their Plexiglas shields. The police answer with volleys of tear gas and shotguns firing rubber bullets. Ryan Grim and I sprint with the crowd up a narrow colonial side lane, sucking in the harsh gas as we go. Rubber bullets ricochet through the toxic clouds. One catches Grim in the back and we get separated in the mayhem. Hours later the police and protesters clash again. This time the gas is extremely thick. It's like drowning on dry land. The streets are cramped and chaotic.

The next day brings more of the same. Protesters and journalists rely on the Bolivian remedy for tear gas: smoking cigarettes. Strangely, this actually cuts the effect of mild gassing. At one point, when we are standing among cops with a few other journalists, a man uphill tosses what looks like a potato down toward the police lines. The cops scatter. The potato detonates in the biggest dynamite blast yet. The collision of air is deafening; windows shatter up and down the block. The cops regroup and fire more gas and rubber bullets.

The battle goes on like this for three weeks, with La Paz and most of Bolivia's other major cities blockaded, with food and fuel running low, the buses and taxis idled. Seven gas fields and a pipeline station are seized. Before bowing out, Mesa agreed to take the first steps toward a constituent assembly; the new president, Eduardo Rodriguez, will have to organize emergency elections. The blockades have just now started to lift but Bolivia is still locked in stalemate; the core issues are unresolved and the path forward unclear.

Many in the social movements dismiss elections as a trap; they attempt to go around the machinery of government by turning protest into what Oscar Olivera calls self-management, and they critique Evo Morales and MAS for being fixated on the presidency. But making radical demands on the old political class is insufficient. Nationalization and a reconstruction of the political order are projects so massive that they may require the left to take power, ready or not.

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