Three dreams turn into a nightmare

Carlos Alberto Montaner

What's surprising about Bolivia is the tranquility. Roughly speaking, the conventional ethnic breakdown is 55 percent indigenous population -- divided between Quechuas and Aymaras, two Andean groups -- 30 percent mestizo, and 15 percent white.

One third of the Bolivian population, whether poor, wealthy or middle-class, lives in the 21st century, perfectly adapted to modernity. Another third is mentally ensconced in a hazy historic past sweetened by legend and embittered by rancor.

The remaining third, the rowdiest of the lot, mired in communist superstition, attempts to unify and remodel the whole of the population in accordance with Marx's ideas, soiled by the bizarre disorder of Castro-Chavism.

If we had to put names and faces on those three thirds, they would be:

• Quiroga: Jorge ''Tuto'' Quiroga, a 44-year-old industrial engineer, graduated with honors in Texas and was Bolivia's president for one year in 2001, after the death of Gen. Hugo Bánzer. Quiroga, a pro-Western, intelligent man, is an advocate of the market economy, of Bolivia's opening to the world and of the nation's integration into international financial circuits. He is the hope of those Bolivians who dream that their country, far from opposing the First World, should do everything possible to integrate decidedly into it, as their Chilean neighbors did so successfully.

• Quispe: The radical indigenous dream is incarnated by Felipe Quispe, Aymara leader of the Pachakutik Indigenous Movement, a former guerrilla and one-time political prisoner accused of terrorism. Quispe maintains that his fellow Aymaras (two million of them, with some presence in Ecuador and Peru) together with the Quechuas (three million) must destroy the white, republican institutions derived from the Spanish colonial period and return to pre-Columbian historic tradition.

He believes in communism, not exactly in Marx's version but in the one developed in the Andes, within the world of the Incas. If Quispe came to power, the outcome would likely be a replay of the Pol Pot era in Cambodia.

• Morales: The third Bolivia is the one dreamed by Evo Morales, an Indian who speaks only Spanish and whose popular backing amounts to 20 percent. He is a Castro-Chavist revolutionary. His communism is not the pre-Columbian version favored by Quispe but the ''scientific'' communism of Karl Marx.

Morales would like the state to seize all foreign and national property. He is profoundly anti-American, and the topic that pits him most vehemently against Washington is coca. The United States hopes to eradicate that crop in the Andean zone so that it won't reach the streets of Los Angeles or New York. But Morales, leader of the coca growers, maintains that the plant is the cultural and economic heart of the region.

To the collision between those three mutually exclusive dreams, add the separatist tensions. Some regional groups want to save their parcel of land because they think that the rest of the country is beyond salvation.

The elements at play suggest that the outcome will once again be violent, because the three options are exclusive. If the winner of the upcoming presidential election is Jorge Quiroga and if he tries to play the card of Western modernity, Quispe and Morales would immediately launch their hordes against the public institutions and the public order, forcing the government once more to decide whether to kill or surrender.

If Quispe manages to articulate an ethnic insurrection on a grand scale, the third of the country that cherishes the values represented by Quiroga -- the army included -- would respond with bloodshed and fire.

Finally, if Morales attempts to impose a collectivist model, he will have to confront all democrats and some of the indigenous activists who consider him a traitor to his race.

The final summary is very sad: Bolivians do not agree upon a vision of the nation where they live. For that reason, the likely outcome is that that nation will explode into pieces.

June 21, 2005

Imprimir esta página