In my old job as a Web strategist in DC, I had the pleasure to work with the really smart and friendly (and prolific) folks at the Pew Internet Project.
They publish, with amazing regularity, top-notch research on how people use the Web. Their latest article, which I’m happy to see is getting a lot of attention among bloggers, is called “Spam: How it is hurting email and degrading life on the Internet.”
Evan, from the interesting Anarchogeek Weblog, asks whether or not there’s an RSS feed for Newley.com. The answer: No. But I’d like to have one installed in the coming months. (Here’s some technical info on RSS, an emerging Web communications channel. A more basic overview is here.)
I took yesterday off from covering the happenings in Bolivia; there’ve been some new developments, though, and I’ll get to them after a couple personal notes.
First, congrats to my kid brother Colin and the Beaufort (South Carolina) Academy high school soccer team, who won their second straight state championship yesterday. BA triumphed 2-1 over Greenville’s St. Joseph’s. And Colin, I’m proud to say, scored the winning goal. Josh Erikson, our neighbor and Colin’s good friend, had two assists and the other tally.
Second, just a few words about what I’ve been up to, as I’ve been devoting this space to the events further south of here.
Things are, as ever, tranquilo in Cuenca–I’ve got four classes and I’m taking a Spanish course of my own. Last weekend was fun: among other things, a group of my friends and I attended a Deportivo Cuenca (the local pro soccer team) match. Our side beat Liga de Quito 3-0.
And that’s about it. Things are low-key here in Ecuador’s southern Andes. Just how I like ’em.
Okay, on to Bolivia:
The AP’s Vanessa Arrington reported yesterday that new president Carlos Mesa is being pressured not to hold a referendum on whether or not the natural gas pipeline project should be completed:
Civic leaders and businessmen in Tarija, a southern Bolivian state that is home to most of the nation’s underground natural gas reserves, rejected President Carlos Mesa’s plans to hold a referendum on the idea.
They are demanding that the government move ahead with plans to export gas to the United States and Mexico.
And today, she tells us that Evo Morales, leader of Bolivia’s coca leaf growers, says Mesa has one month to show the nation’s poor that the he intends to help them.
Time Europe‘s Tim Padgett has written a tidy article about what Goni’s ouster means for the rest of South America. He mentions the new left-leaning administrations in Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela, but doesn’t mention Ecuador.
(And Ecuador should surely be considered a nation that’s drifting leftward, although Lucio Gutierrez, our prez, has, since being elected last year on a pro-Indigenous plank, become pals with Dubya. But more on Ecuador later; Al Giordano, as I mentioned yesterday, predicts Lucio will be the next South American head of state to fall. But people I’ve talked to here feel the Indigenous movement in Ecuador lacks the organization to cripple the country should their disillusion reach Bolivian proportions.)
There’s more incisive analysis from The Lincoln Plawg (he’s really on a roll, and even links to this humble blog): John Smith, doing his own speculating and commenting on Miguel Centellas’s intriguing thoughts, says of Mesa:
I get the impression of a Mr Smith Goes To Washington with a salsa beat: a guy with no party political background who thinks politics is usual is both corrupt and dispensable, and chooses to go amongst the people, cutting out the pesky middle-man of constitutions and elections, and such.
And, finally, Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano argues that Goni got the boot because Bolivia’s people refused to let natural gas, yet another natural resource, be gifted to foreign interests. He also has harsh words for Goni, a gringo-in-disguise:
As for the fugitive Sanchez de Lozada, he lost the presidency but he won’t be losing much sleep. Though he has the crime of killing more than eighty demonstrators on his conscience, it wasn’t his first bloodbath. This champion of modernization is not bothered by anything that can’t turn a profit. In the end, he speaks and thinks in English–not the English of Shakespeare but that of Bush.
My thoughts: this is more anti-globalization rhetoric that has little basis in reality. (Though some fervent us-versus-America ranting can be expected; the US has just invaded and toppled and occupied another third world country; the rest of the world is just as vulnerable as Iraq.)
The bigger issue for the Bolivian protesters, it would seem to me, wasn’t the somewhat abstract notion of a pipeline pumping gas to the rich Yankees via the hated Chileans’ coastline. It was the very real condition the Indigenous population finds themselves in every day–suffering from abject poverty. And living with a biting sense of alienation.
Bolivia’s new president, Carlos Mesa, is scrambling to assemble a Cabinet following his rise to power; the mood is festive in La Paz.
Reuters says: “Bolivia’s new president was forming his Cabinet on Sunday as support grew from key power brokers, including some Indian groups that led a bloody popular revolt that toppled his predecessor.”
Another Reuters dispatch says former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is trying to get over his “shock and shame” at being kicked out of office. And Al Giordano takes the US governement to task for sheltering “Goni The Butcher.” (For more info, check out Andres Oppenheimer’s account of what the ousted president had to say just after arriving in Miami.)
ABC News tells us people are happy in the Andean capital: “Tear-gas and bullets have been replaced with smiles and celebrations, La Paz airport has reopened and streets are being cleared.”
And finally, for a sense of how the Indigenous parties feel about Goni fleeing, take a gander at this illustration (and read the corresponding article in Spanish, if you’re so inclined).
For an in-depth and well-researched (and delightfully snarky) examination of the political implications of Mesa’s transition to power, go to The Lincoln Plawg Weblog. John Smith describes the situation in La Paz:
At first glance, it’s a cartoon with characters from Central Casting: a class/racial struggle between the white, upper-class, gringo-fied president and the charismatic Indian peasant leader; riots, tanks, blood – the whole nine yards. The Latin equivalent of Errol Flynn versus Basil Rathbone – and the result is similar, too.
Then gradually, the subtleties become more apparent, questions spring to mind…
In other news, the State Department, Knight Ridder reports, has thanked Goni for his work.
But officials “stopped short of congratulating new President Carlos Mesa, whose position on U.S. interests in Bolivia, particularly an unpopular coca eradication program, remain unclear…Mesa, a former television journalist, has been critical of many of Sanchez de Lozada’s reforms, including a proposed new income tax and a U.S.-backed effort to eradicate the production of coca, the leaves of which are used to produce cocaine.”
Al Giordano, CNN Espanol, AP, and Reuters are reporting that Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada will resign this afternoon. Giordano says Vice President Carlos Mesa will assume power. Developing…
My brother reports from Sucre that he’s safe and, happily enough, enjoying himself. But things in La Paz remain tense, with “tear gas…being dispensed in the streets like mayonaisse from a fritte stand.” He says:
Well after the 3-day trip to Sucre got a bit extended due to the airport being shut down in our absence, we came down from Sucre to Santa Cruz today. Back to the heat, it’s great! Love the lowlands. Anyway, people here aren’t nearly as upset as elsewhere in the country. The biggest division in Bolivia is between the mountain and lowland people.
This is safest place in the country and is where people are evacuated to if they get out of La Paz. We have decided that we are very glad that we took the chance on leaving for the weekend because it sucks more and more each day for those who are in La Paz. We are staying at a very posh place.
All my friends in La Paz are stuck and can’t leave by land or air and veggies are running short but tear gas is being dispensed in the streets like mayonaisse from
a fritte stand. And things are getting worse, or at least not better. The whole situation is probably not going to get better soon, like certainly not in the next few days. They may be trying to evacuate Americans from La Paz soon (as Brazilians,
Germans, and Brits already have been), but the problem will be getting them to the airport, the road to which has become increasingly blockaded and dangerous in the
past few days. Food is becoming the main concern for the people I know there, as grocery stores are now empty.
At a certain point, I suppose the government ill have to declare martial law everywhere around La Paz (it’s only in El Alto right now) and start really cracking down in order to get basis necessities into the city. I don’t want to be around when that happens for sure. At least only one side seems to have weapons, and if it really comes down to it, I think it’s better for everyone that wholesale street warfare will almost certainly not happen. Everyone wishes the police and military would stop shooting people though, because that’s just making it worse.
If bad feelings extend all the way down here (which is highly unlikely), we are working on plans to head to Buenos Aires.
Turning to other news sources, Al Giordano proclaims Goni may resign soon: “Either Goni Goes Today, or Bolivia Explodes.” (Giordano is really on top of things in La Paz, but in my book, he loses credibility when he uses breathless, over-the-top languge–for example, he calls David Greenlee, the US ambassador to Bolivia, a “war criminal.”)
The AP is running an article devoid of major new developments: “Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada inherited a country suffering a deep economic crisis and long-simmering class and racial tensions when he became president of Bolivia.”
Reuters says 1) “Bolivian lawmakers tried to make their way into the blockaded capital for an emergency session of Congress on Friday to find a way to end a month of protests against a deeply unpopular president” and 2) “chief coalition partner of embattled Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada withdrew his support Friday, robbing the leader of key legislative support as a popular uprising intensifies.”
The New York Times is running a largely derivitave piece about, as we’ve read plenty of times, Indigenous leaders’ gripes about the evil G-word: globalization.
CNN reports that the State Department (surprise!) says Americans should steer clear of Bolivia–or hit the road if they’re already there: “Citing the ‘unstable political and security situation’ in Bolivia, the State Department Thursday urged Americans not to travel there and suggested that U.S. citizens already there leave immediately.” Leave immediately? Tell that to the tourists who’re stuck there. La Paz is locked down. It’s impossible to leave.
CounterPunch has published an excellent background piece from Newtown Garver, who’s in La Paz. He concludes: “It is well to recognize that change is not always for the best. But it is for the best to recognize change when it is at hand and to adjust policies to accommodate it.”
Today’s award for the most interesting story comes from yesterday’s Miami Herald. Columnist Andres Oppenheimer intereviewed the Bolivian president recently. Goni claims that the opposition leaders are being financed by Libya and Venezuela.
Stay tuned for more…
Bloody protests continue in and around La Paz, and pressure is mounting on president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to step down. Today’s notable stories:
—New York Times: “Despite moves by the military to tighten its control of the capital, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s hold on power grew more tenuous on Tuesday, as demonstrations demanding his resignation spread to provincial cities, and important political allies scrambled to distance themselves from him.”
—Miami Herald: “President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s hold on power weakened Tuesday as the capital’s airport remained closed and food and fuel supplies ran short amid bloody street protests that have sparked Bolivia’s worst political crisis since the return of democracy 21 years ago.”
—AP: “Protesters promised a new wave of demonstrations against Bolivia’s president, putting more pressure on his increasingly fragile coalition government after deadly street riots swept this poor Andean nation.”
And there’re also stories from Financial Times and Reuters.
Today’s best big-picture analysis comes from The Economist. They’re running an interesting look at “the Andean countries’ deep malaise.”
And don’t miss “Coca Culture,” a New York Times op-ed by an indigenous Bolivian coca grower. She says the real issue isn’t the (now abandoned) plans for a natural gas pipeline, but the plant the US says she shouldn’t cultivate:
I am a cocalera. I owe my life to coca. My father died when I was 2 and my mother raised six children by growing coca. I was a farmer myself, growing coca for traditional purposes. But the United States says it is better for us to just forget about coca.
Turing to the world of Weblogs, AlphaPatriot has posted some thoughts of the situation: “Revolution is Brewing in Bolivia.” And Randy Paul comments, as well.
For first-person reporting and photos from La Paz, go to Miguel Centellas’s excellent blog:
Most of the neighbors here understand the frustrations of the people from El Alto and the campesinos. But they also support using democratic means to affect change, not violence. La Paz is still tense, while the protests are gaining steam in Cochabamba. Things are still utterly quiet in Santa Cruz.
UPDATE (1:32 p.m. EST): Glenn Reynolds disagrees with Al Giordano, who says true democracy is coming to Boliva.
Vintage David Brooks in today’s New York Times:
If a Martian came down and landed in the stands of a Yankees-Red Sox game, he would get the impression that human beings are 90 percent men and 10 percent women in tight T-shirts, and that we reproduce by loathing in groups.
News is spreading fast that 1) battles between police and protesters killed 20 yesterday, and 2) Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada announced today that plans for a natural gas pipeline have been temporarily cancelled.
The BBC has published a concise piece of analysis that says the protests aren’t just about gas, but about globalization. And the Guardian and MSNBC are running stories, too.
But that’s not it–Al Jazeerah, a media outlet that makes Fox News look, well, fair and balanced, weighs in thusly: “Crisis deepens as death toll mounts in Bolivia: Yes, it’s oil again.” (If you like that article, you’ll love “Zionism, an effectively organized world wide fascist system.”)
My brother, meanwhile, writes from Sucre, in the middle of the country, where he went for a weekend getaway. He’s stuck there and not sure when he’ll be able to return to La Paz:
Goni, the president, is under more and more pressure to step down, and there has been increasing violence up on the altiplano above La Paz. Unfortunately, that´s where he airport is, so we are probably not going to be able to take our flight back today since the airport is temporarily closed.