Paro Cívico

Yesterday was the first day of what is turning out to be an indeterminate-length strike in five of the nine departments of Bolivia. These departments, where Evo Morales lost in the referendum, are all pissed off because they have not received IDH (money from hidrocarbon taxes) since May. The prefects, who are like governors but with less power since Bolivia is a highly centralized state, want the money and the central government, which is obviously opposed to the demands for greater autonomy by the prefects, has refused to hand it over. I believe the current amount of money that is owed, or that has not been handed over, is in the ballpark of $166 million. The central government says that the money is for the municipalities and not for the prefect, however the municipalities do not have the structure and capacities to manage all the money that should be going their way, which is why the prefectures step in...Basically it is a horrible situation and the responses by both sides guarantees that nothing is going to be resolved any time soon. This cartoon was put up on the blog of one of the guys at CEPAD and it says ´I should not fuck my country any more...atte: Rubén (the prefect of Santa Cruz), Evo, Branco (another player here in Santa Cruz who is leading the strike), etc.

Yesterday was declared a full strike and everything in the town was shut down, not a shop was open and the highway was closed all day. I went down to see the blockade, which was two tractors across the highway (which granted, is a two lane paved road). There were some signs demanding the IDH and a ton of people drinking. A psychologist who works for the mayor´s office started talking to me and said how these Strikes that occur are political issues for people in power, but that for people in town they are an opportunity for people to come together and shoot the shit. Aude, who was with me, asked why they couldn´t just have a party, and she has a point. In the distance all I could see was trucks parked on the side of the road waiting for the blockade to be lifted to get to their destination. And imagine, the blockade in Buena Vista is just one, every town that is sympathetic to Rubén and autonomy has one too. In the evening some restaurants and stores opened and it was decided that the strike would continue indefinitely, but only the highways. As such, today stores were open but the the highway once again closed from 12am to 12am. Tonight we´ll find out how much longer it is going to last. Some people say it´ll be over tomorrow, and are making plans, but I have heard that we can expect at least til Friday to not have open highways.

This does not mean that one cannot get around. Motorcycles, which are used like taxis here, are making TONS of money getting people around blockades (to go to Portachuelo, 30km from Buena Vista costs 5 bolivianos normally in a cab, mototaxis are charging 50 bs). Clearly some people are benefitting from the strike. What is really sad is that while the politicians on both sides argue and are getting rich themselves, the economy of Bolivia is getting completely screwed. Yesterday I wrote emails asking coffee importers if they would be interested in the coffee associations that I met with and one of the responses that I got was from a trader who said his company used to import 75% of the Bolivian coffee to the U.S. and no longer does so due to the political situation. It is pretty depressing to sit here and not be able to do much besides translate things to English and hang out in the office in my second to last week at work, but such is life...