Will Phillips is a fifth-grader in West Fork, Arkansas, who has decided that he cannot in good conscience say the Pledge of Allegiance, which involves swearing that the U.S. is a country with liberty and justice for all, because there is not liberty and justice for all as long as gay couples are unable to marry. He is an extraordinarily thoughtful and articulate 10-year-old, and he tells his story to CNN here. (CNN's embed code doesn't work, and I'm not tech-savvy enough to fix it.)
Several of my friends have seen this or commented on it on Facebook, and many specifically mentioned how happy they were to see the obvious pride, love, and support of his father, Jay, sitting next to him during the interview. I tracked his dad down and wrote a note to both of them, telling them of my admiration and wishing Will strength in the face of the criticism he will undoubtedly receive. Jay wrote me a note back thanking me, and I am happy to report that he said they have received overwhelming expressions of support. Go Will!
Of course, kids at school can be cruel, and Will mentions in the interview that he's been picked on and called "gaywad" in the halls and cafeteria. These are moments where perhaps mere moral support such as a note from a stranger in Bolivia is not always enough. So I was happy to see this today:
Jon Stewart has called in the big guns, and now professional wrestler Mick Foley has put the bullies on notice:
If I find out that anybody has hassled this young man or teased him or called him a wad of any sort, I and perhaps a few of my friends will come to his school and bring a world of pain.
Wads of any sort. World of pain. It might not bring about liberty and justice for all, but hopefully it will bring a little peace - or at least a little laughter - to Will Phillips.
My own position on gay marriage, by the way, is that everyone should have access to civil unions, but perhaps the state shouldn't perform civil marriages for anyone, gay or straight. On the one hand, people say that a reason for having gay civil unions but not gay marriage is that marriage is a religious, even Judeo-Christian institution. Then shouldn't "civil unions" be the only kind of unions performed/recognized by the state?
I think there's plenty of evidence to suggest that marriage has its roots in secular legal/economic systems, but the idea of marriage as a primarily religious institution seems to be the prevailing one in the context of the current debate. It baffles me, then, that anyone - especially conservatives, who are the first to make this argument in the case of gay marriage, but are otherwise the first to argue against government involvement in nearly any facet of our lives - would want the state deciding what marriage is and who should have access to it. Besides, there are churches and other religious clergy and institutions that do allow for and perform gay weddings, so doesn't this become a church-and-state issue for them?
I know that my own Roman Catholic Church is a long way from ever changing the sacrament of marriage to include gay couples. But if the state only recognized civil unions, and people who wanted to be "married" were free to pursue marriage through a church, ship's captain, or other authorized figure, then gay couples would have both the same access as straight couples to the legal rights that come with civil union, and the option of getting married by seeking out a church or individual willing and able to perform a same-sex wedding. Gay Catholic couples would have to decide whether to stay in the Church as an unmarried couple, civilly united or not; stay in the Church but get married outside the Church; or leave the Church. All tough options as far as their faith life and community is concerned, but that's the reality of the Catholic Church right now and likely will be for quite some time. Meanwhile, at least they'd have the same legal rights as their fellow citizens.
Equal rights under the law is the main point here, though, and I think Will Phillips is a hero.
There are days when it's hard to be a Catholic because secular society is ignorant about and sometimes hateful towards the church. But there are other days when it's painful to be Catholic because our Church, as a hierarchical institution, is just wrong. Today, for me, is a case of the latter.
An article in today's Washington Post describes how, because the Church refuses to recognize gay marriage or offer any support to the gay community that it deems to condone homosexual activity, the Archdiocese of Washington, DC is threatening to end all partnerships between Catholic Charities and the city if gay rights legislation is passed there.
The issue is not that they don't want to offer services to poor gay people, per se. But - just as indefensibly, in my book - they do want to be able to work with the city to offer those services without having to give benefits to same-sex partners of people in their employ, or to "rent a church hall to a support group for lesbian couples."
What's interesting about the situation this has created, though, is that I actually admire the Church's stance in form, if not content. I wish they would do this around other issues, like the war. The Church should be willing to forgo public funds and partnerships if it means violating Church doctrine or ethical principles. I just don't happen to agree with the particular (discriminatory) rules the Church is defending here.
One of the DC City Council members involved said the city will "not legislate based on threats." They shouldn't. Another, Democrat Phil Mendelson, correctly points out that
"(t)he problem with the individual exemption is anybody could discriminate based on their assertion of religious principle... There were many people back in the 1950s and '60s, during the civil rights era, that said separation of the races was ordained by God."
Amen.
But when another Council Member refers to the Church's stand as "childish," she misses the point. The Church here is not being childish. It's being bigoted. The point is not that the Church should simply bite the bullet and give in on its principles in order to be a good partner. This would not be a sign of the Church's maturing. In fact, the US Church has too often allowed its identity to be weakened in an effort to assimilate and prove itself an all-American institution - a kind of organizational good citizen. Jesus of Nazareth was a terrible citizen, and Catholics should be careful about allowing patriotism to trump faith. The point critics should be making with regard to the Church's current stand in DC, though, is that the Church is wrong about homosexuals.
An activist quoted in the article refers to the Church's position as "blackmailing" the city. I don't know if that's quite accurate, because a blackmail victim is supposed to be so horrified of the other party's threatened action as to be willing to do otherwise unthinkable things to avoid it. In this case, it seems clear that most of the city council members quoted are willing to part ways with the Church in providing social services in order to pass legislation they see as necessary. Good for them.
Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday... "The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem."
Ms. Gibbs is absolutely right. The Church should not try to be secular in order to provide social services. When I worked as a Campus Minister overseeing several volunteer programs at a Catholic University, I came up against this all the time. For example, we couldn't use government work-study money to pay student volunteer coordinators because we expected them to lead volunteers in prayers and reflections on how their faith shaped their service work, or even to engage in activism and advocacy. But the university was clear in its commitment to come up with other funds to pay those students, rather than waver on our principles.
Things got stickier with issues such as ROTC on campus. The university participated in the recruitment, training, and commissioning of students to be sent to fight in wars the Church deemed unjust and immoral. I argued that it shouldn't. The counterargument I always heard was that ROTC money allowed us to achieve our goal of recruiting poor and minority students who would otherwise not be able to afford to go there. Talk about blackmail!
I remember, around the start of the current war in Iraq, hearing that the US bishops were afraid to speak out too strongly regarding their adamantly anti-war position, because they felt they had lost so much public credibility in the wake of the priest abuse scandal, and had no right to be lecturing society at large on moral issues. But at the very same time, the Archbishop of Boston - Boston! - was on the statehouse steps protesting gay rights legislation, and bishops around the country spoke out on the same issues in the 2004 (and other) elections. This double standard has got to stop.
It pains me deeply to watch as the leaders of my Church - so timid on the issues, like war, where their prophetic voice is most needed - seem consistently to find the courage of their convictions on the issues where they are so lamentably wrong.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. But what happens on Wall Street sends ripples around the world. Sometimes it results in people going hungry.
Below is a video produced by my good friend Dave Kane, who works in the Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns and is one of the smartest, most driven activists I've ever met (perhaps most people who spent 10 years living in a Brazilian dump, accompanying the people who scrape by picking through trash, and going to sleep at night to the sound of screaming torture victims at the nearby prison, would tend to ask some hard questions, read up, and do what they could to change things). The video addresses some root causes of the recent global food crisis, and its connection to other crises such as recent inflation of gas prices, and the home foreclosures and recession plaguing the U.S. of late.
The website for the video has other good information, too, including practical ways to get involved and have a positive impact on this situation right away.
Here in Bolivia, the effects of the food crisis have been double: they have impacted people by making household basics harder to afford, and this, in turn, has been used by the political opposition to attack the government of Evo Morales. When food prices went up, it was blamed on the government. Nevermind that, in addition to the global upward trend in food prices, some of Morales' most prominent opponents owned things like the largest cooking oil and sugar refineries and the largest cattle farms in the country, and were rushing to export their products even as shortages at home hit every supermarket in the country. The fact is that people will always tend to place at least a significant portion of the blame for any rise in costs of food staples at the feet of their current government. Even today, as we gear up for elections here in December, the fact that food prices went up under Morales is often the last argument his detractors will cling to when the otherwise defenseless and destructive acts of his political opponents are exposed. It's not always easy for most of us to explain what, if not the incompetencies of the nearest political leader, could be behind something like skyrocketing food prices. This video helps a lot.
So, watch the video, read the website, and do what you can to get common sense regulation returned to food commodities markets.
Great AP article today on the various indigenous movements around Latin America and their struggles and victories of late, with a focus on the Andes and Bolivia. Be sure to check out the pictures, all of which are from Bolivia.
UPDATE: I see the Washington Post picked up the article, photos included. Good to see.
Reuters has posted an interesting article about a day spent with Bolivian president Evo Morales. It is a fascinating and, from everything I’ve heard, representative day-in-the-life snapshot.
As mentioned in the article, Morales is up for re-election in December, and is leading in the polls by a large margin (he’s beating his next-closest rival, ousted Cochabamba prefect Manfred Reyes Villa, roughly by a factor of three, 47% to 17%). So, it’s good to see an article in the international press that gives readers a portrait other than that of a bombastic Mini-Me to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. The U.S. and Bolivia have had a rocky relationship since Morales’ election, and especially since September of 2008 when the US Ambassador, the DEA, and a good chunk of USAID were booted from the country. The two countries are reportedly close to patching things up, though, and it would be nice to see the reality on the ground here treated with a little more nuance by the media.
Morales is not perfect. His party, the MAS (Movimiento Al Socialismo – Movement Toward Socialism), less so. Even on the Left, most people I know, including people fairly high up in the government, would describe themselves as supportive of the process of change in the country (which is led by Morales), but not as “MASistas.” Most of them will vote for Morales (a few will likely vote “blank” or “null,” essentially complying with the mandatory voting laws while refusing to support a candidate), even if they’re not crazy about him. Morales has been unnecessarily adversarial with some groups. To be fair, the same groups – The U.S. government, the Catholic Church hierarchy, the political opposition in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands – have been equally combative with the president. The MAS has no clear up-and-coming leader to follow in Morales’ shoes, and he has largely fit the mold of the traditional Latin American caudillo or strongman. He has allowed for some strange conflicts of interest - for example, not stepping down as head of the national federation of coca growers unions, even as he heads government anti-drug efforts, which include going after any coca growers who are not a part of that federation of unions, sometimes with fatal results. Critics say that he has fallen flat in promises to bring about greater equality for women. He has been overly dependent on certain members of his cabinet who are extremely unpopular both with his political enemies and with the nonpartisan left. The list goes on. Like most presidents in most countries, Evo Morales is flawed and his government produces mixed results.
Morales has, though, it should be noted, governed in the face of unprecedentedly aggressive, well-funded, and powerful opposition. The most popular president in Bolivian history in terms of votes – in his 2005 election, in a 2008 recall referendum, and in polls – has at times been unable even to land a plane in half the departments (regions/provinces) in the country. Bolivian media include 1 blatantly propagandistic state-run television channel, and a handful of private channels, all of which are skewed just as blatantly or more so against the president. Just among opposition prefects (akin to departmental governors), there have been public calls for military coups (including one by the above-mentioned opposition candidate and former military officer, Reyes Villa), racist name calling, and credible allegations of ties to armed groups of oppositional political shock troops. Much like the Republican party in Washington, most opposition politicians have few or no substantive proposals for alternative policies, but rather spend all of their energy simply trying to bring about Evo’s downfall, or at least ensure his failure.
Meanwhile, Morales has accomplished quite a bit. He has quasi-nationalized hydrocarbons and other national resources in ways that have irked corporate-market-capitalists, but not enough to scare away most investment, and he’s drawn praise from such mainstream and credible, if left-leaning, economists as Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. He has worked with other left-leaning governments from around Latin America to create regional counterbalances to dominant Washington-led global economic institutions, including hosting the ALBA summits here in Cochabamba. He got an imperfect but popular new constitution passed earlier this year. He has begun social security payments to the elderly, school support payments for children, and other social programs. A government literacy program has been carried out throughout the country. The economy, though still far from strong, is more stable than it’s been for years.
It’s also worth pointing out that certain accusations often lobbed at Morales from the North are based on powerful distortions. Whenever a Latin American country wants to write a new constitution or touch term limits in any way, the effort is immediately painted in the international press as a president’s attempt to follow Hugo Chavez’s folly and open the door to being president for life. I’ve talked to several recent arrivals from the U.S. here who’ve told me that was exactly the impression they had of Bolivia’s recent constitutional makeover. In fact, Bolivia’s old constitution allowed presidents to be elected an unlimited number of times, but not consecutively. Victor Paz Enstenssoro, the founder of the MNR party – the nation’s largest until Paz’s protégé, president Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada, fled the country in 2003 after massacring about 70 indigenous protesters over his secret plan to export gas to the U.S. via Chile – was president nearly half a dozen times between 1952 and the late 1980s. Goni was president twice. Hugo Banzer was a dictator in the 1970s, and elected president in the 1990s. His VP, who took over due to Banzer’s health, ran again unsuccessfully in 2002 and 2005. Between turns in this revolving door system, former presidents were still often highly placed in the government, since the old electoral system resulted in multi-party coalitions, many of which were formed by all of the losers in an election cobbling together a coalition to equal 50% +1 of the votes and beating the plurality-winner. Evo Morales was the first president in modern times to be elected directly to the presidency with over 50% of the vote, and his new constitution in fact allows for only two terms, for a total of 10 years in the presidency, but says that they can be consecutive. Now, what constitution does that sound like?
There are other elements of the Morales presidency that loom large, but are perhaps more difficult to appreciate from far away. Two, in particular, stand out: Morales’ racial and ethnic identity, and his work ethic. They are hugely significant, and they are not unrelated.
The world did take note of Morales’ being the first self-proclaimed Indigenous president in Bolivia – the most indigenous country in South America, with over 60% of the population identifying as indigenous, and another ~30% as mixed/mestizo. Notice quickly turned to befuddlement and some outright ridicule as Morales made a pre-inaugural tour to visit foreign heads of state wearing a crew-neck sweater instead of a suit and tie. Even Morales soon switched to a custom-designed collarless jacket made with traditional Bolivian weavings, and a white shirt, but what was not well explained during the sweater tour was that this was also Morales’ first highly visible post-election act, and his base was watching very closely. Wearing a suit and tie – something he’d never done before, nor would other union leaders here – would have been widely interpreted in Bolivia as a sign of having sold out. Such symbolism would have hurt him at home more than ruffling a few fashion feathers would abroad.
Sweatergate aside, since his inauguration Morales has been engaged in so many conflicts, both here and with the U.S., that it’s easy to forget how huge his Aymara indigenous identity still is. In him, the majority of Bolivians are able to see someone like themselves running the country for the first time. Consider the fact that until 1952, the indigenous majority was not allowed to vote, most lived in feudal conditions, and rural campesinos were not allowed in the city centers. Perhaps African Americans, especially in the South, can best understand the significance of this change. South Africans would relate to it as well. But perhaps all U.S. Americans can appreciate it better in 2009 than they could in 2005.
And Morales is not only like the majority of poor indigenous Bolivians because of his birth. He is like them now. His informal style is no political put-on. He’s never not been that way. Today’s Reuters piece may make more sense to anyone who has spent time in Bolivia – in its description of Morales, I see my neighbors. Morales plays soccer. He plays trumpet. He drinks chicha – a popular fermented corn drink. He speakes with an Aymara-tinged accent. He is truly one of the people.
And the incredible work-ethic Morales displays in the Reuters article is part and parcel of his Indigenous identity. There is a simple, central, tripartite moral code in Andean society: Don’t lie. Don’t be lazy. Don’t steal. Political opponents will claim that Morales regularly breaks rule number one. I’ll leave it to them to provide proof. Cynics will claim that he breaks rule number 3, because it is assumed that all Bolivian politicians will, but I’ve never seen a credible claim of corruption extending all the way to Morales himself. And I’ve heard many of his staunchest critics admit that there is nothing to suggest he ever steals. He lives humbly. His private home, which is here in Cochabamba, is in a poor barrio of internal migrants where several of the Maryknoll missioners here live and work. As for rule number 2, nobody has ever even attempted to claim that Morales is lazy. It would be like claiming Pavarotti was an anorexic.
It should be noted that Morales’ new campaign slogan is “Bolivia avanza, Evo no se cansa!” (Bolivia advances, Evo never tires --- it rhymes in Spanish).
Everyone I know who has met with President Morales has done so at the Presidential Palace at 5 am. Even when Morales goes home, it is to a Presidential residence he shares with the Vice President and the head of the Congress. People may disagree vehemently with Morales’ revolutionary political vision, and many do, but it is clear that that vision is what drives his political career. He may enjoy the power, but he is not in politics for money or an easy life. He is working harder than most human beings ever could in an effort to change a country that has been plagued since its inception by gross inequality, injustice, colonialist oppression, and racism.
I believe the passion and commitment with which Morales works to advance his political agenda is shared by many others in the government. Anecdotally, I can report that I have one close friend fairly highly connected in the government – he headed the president’s office to train MAS constituents to the Constitutional assembly, and then to promote the new constitution to the general population – and he never stops working. He is in meetings at 7am, and still going at 11pm. He travels around the country constantly, and struggles to find time for family. He still dresses about like he did when he was a political prisoner in the mid-1990s. He is actually one of the friends I mentioned who does not consider himself a MASista per se. But for him and for his co-defendant, Morales’ Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, this is the first, best, real chance they’ve had to bring about, nonviolently, the change they were willing to fight and die for 20 years ago.
A final note regarding translation: Whenever I see Morales or other Bolivian leftists quoted as saying “comrade,” I cringe. Comrade, in the self-satirizingly hackneyed Soviet Communist sense of the word, is probably best translated as “camarada” in Spanish. I am 99.9% sure that what Morales was saying to this Reuters reporter was “compañero,” which is a very common, not-necessarily-political term of affection here. Like “camarada,” in literally denotes a companion, partner, or colleague. But it is used much more in the sense of “brother” (another popular term which Morales also uses, “hermano”) or “friend” or perhaps even “partner in the struggle,” and does not carry the same connotation of “fellow-communist” that “comrade” tends to imply.
UPDATE: Got my haircut yesterday, and my barber had an interesting take on Morales that seemed relevant to this Reuters piece: he said that Evo has good intentions but is surrounded by people who lie and mislead him, and tell him, "Evo, you just go play soccer, you fly around in your airplane, we'll take care of things here, we'll decide the heavy policy stuff." Of course, he also referred to them as "a bunch of gays," which, aside from making me wonder if I need to find a new barber here after nearly 14 years, may cast some doubt on his theory.
Interesting article in TIME about how Bolivian kids have been getting the message about washing their hands in light of the H1N1 virus, and in turn are also experiencing a decrease in other illnesses.
There was a huge scare here in July/August re: H1N1, after a rash of incidents - all kids had to wear masks to school, as did employees of government agencies, many stores, everyone working at the airport, etc. Some large public events were canceled, and some schools closed. More recently, things have relaxed significantly. A friend's kid's school closed last week for a few days because of a case of H1N1, and you still see the occasional mask (I noticed more in La Paz on a recent trip there than I see in Cochabamba).
Now, I keep hearing about friends and acquaintances or their kids in the U.S. getting the virus, and I'm not hearing about a ton of cases here. I don't know the per capita data, but I gather it is at least as big a problem in the U.S. at this point as it is in Bolivia. Of course, here we're nearing the end of the school year, and we're in springtime, so the weather is warming up but the rains haven't yet started (they're heaviest in summer, January/February). The North is getting colder and school has recently started, so it's a typical time for kids to get and spread viruses there.
Either way, this hand-washing thing is good. Much more effective than the masks. And as the article suggests - and it's also true in the U.S. - increased handwashing (with soap and water, for 20 seconds or so; not with anti-bacterial cleanser, unless you're somewhere where soap and clean water aren't available, or in a hospital or someplace that requires antiseptic measures) is a simple, important way to combat various illnesses.
It's always interesting and encouraging to me when Bolivia is highlighted in the international press for something positive like this.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm heading to the nearest lavamanos...
After 2 years of bureaucratic hoop-jumping, I finally have dual US-Bolivian citizenship. I picked up my Bolivian national ID card on Friday, and today I "made my mark" (the slogan of the national voter registration campaign - "Pon tu huella"), registering to vote in Bolivia's general election in December. There's a new "biometric" system that involves every voter having a digital photo, digital fingerprints, and digital signature recorded. The people at our neighborhood registration center, just around the corner from our house in Chilimarca, were very polite and it was a fast, easy process. So, come election day, I'll be walking down to the public school at the bottom of the hill with my family, and casting my vote! Exciting.
Next up: apply for Bolivian passport. It will be cool to vote here, but I have most been looking forward to having two passports. It will undoubtedly ease travel between Bolivia and the US. But even better, it will make me feel like Jason Bourne.
I think these are very important questions to be examining as our war-time, Nobel Peace Laureate president considers changes in the strategy in Afghanistan. I was opposed to this war from the start, and it's good to be reminded that the reasons why are still relevant to ongoing debate 8 years later.
Television news seems to be terrible wherever you go in the world. Many Bolivian stations seem to have taken FOX News as their model, and are terribly politically skewed. But sometimes - and this, too, is hardly unique to Bolivia - the basic reporting is laughable. Here's my favorite example in a while.
A Bolivian television station aired photographs from the television drama Lost presenting them as images of an Air France airliner that went down in the Atlantic, the station's news director said on Monday.
I have been meaning to write something about bureaucracy in Bolivia for a while. Bureaucracy, in general, pretty much tops the list of Things I Hate. I can’t think of a place I’ve been where I didn’t have some rage-inducing experience with bureaucrats. I just happen to be in Bolivia now, so Bolivian bureaucracy – government bureaucracy in particular – is the particular brand of dehumanizing, organized chaos I deal with nowadays.
I’ve been dealing with a particularly substantial amount of bureaucratic paperwork the last couple of years as, in addition to buying land and a car, I’ve gone through the process of becoming a dual (US-Bolivian) citizen. I have technically achieved that, but of course the paperwork has not ended. Not even close.
I have learned to expect that, however simple the request, transaction, or other bureaucratic process I need to complete may be, there will be a twist, things will become increasingly and illogically complicated, and I will fail to get what I need in the manner and time I was led to believe I would get it.
And one of the many maddening elements of this phenomenon is that I do fully expect to be thwarted in my attempts to accomplish anything involving bureaucracy, and yet the endless new and absurd ways bureaucrats invent to be stupid always, ALWAYS leave me completely exasperated. I tell myself to expect it. I prepare mentally, even spiritually, to accept my fate with stoicism. But in the end this only serves to double my angst, because I inevitably do get upset, and then I get upset with myself for getting upset with the situation.
The challenge in writing about my encounters with the monster Bureaucracy is that they are often so convoluted that recounting them tends to bore rather than communicating my own sense of Lewis-Carroll-meets-Franz-Kafka-and-Albert-Camus-in-a-film-by-Terry-Gilliam awe at just how poetically inhuman a human construct can be. That’s probably why the phrase “Kafka-esque” is so overused: because everyone can deeply relate to the nightmarish absurdities common bureaucratic systems can create, but so few people have ever been able to do them real justice when recreating them in art. And it does seem to require art. A blog post is unlikely to capture what great minds have required science fiction to express.
One of the few good, straight tellings of a horrid encounter with bureaucracy I’ve heard was on Ira Glass’ PRI show, This American Life. It involved one of the most evil bureaucracies commonly encountered in the U.S.: the phone company. And it had an element of fantasy to it, as the power of the radio was actually harnessed to hold the bureaucrats accountable – the very feat that bureaucracies exist to make impossible – and get at least a little bit of justice.
But my most recent encounter with bureaucracy in Bolivia struck me for a few reasons. It isn’t over yet, but so far it does not stand out based on duration – usually a key factor. This one was more, well, cinematic. Also, it partly became remarkable precisely when the bureaucracy ceased to exist, sweeping away the labyrinthine façade that normally serves to keep warm-blooded creatures at a safe, befuddled distance, and revealing the quotidian human funk that necessarily undergirds “the system.” Also, I got pictures.
My wife, Rocío, and I are in the process of getting our Bolivian driver’s licenses. There are several factors that make this a recipe for bureaucratic absurdist drama. First, there is something ridiculous from the get-go about having to embark upon what will presumably be a process overwrought with rules, formalities, and the repressive imposition of order for order’s sake, so as to participate in a process – driving in Bolivia – that is characterized by its absolute lack of rules, formality, and order. Interestingly, though, the end result of both processes is basically the same: a clusterf#&$. Because in getting a license, rules are indeed presumed to exist, but don’t seem to be written anywhere. Formality, as you’ll see, superimposes itself over the proceedings in fits and starts, like the light from a loose neon tube. And while some order is imposed, it is shifting and arbitrary.
It’s taken us a few months to even begin this process, mainly because we’ve been undecided about whether to follow instead the process so many friends have recommended of spending twice as much to get the whole thing done in a day or two via bribes. (Even yesterday, just before finally taking and passing a written driving test, Rocío was told in the Transit Police building by the man who teaches the official driver’s ed courses and administers the normal written tests – but not the test we are being asked to take – that she was going to a lot of unnecessary trouble, and for about US$120 he could get her license for her with no additional effort on her part). In deciding, we’ve tried to find out exactly what going the official, legal route would entail, and we’ve gotten different, equally confident answers from almost everyone we’ve asked, including lawyers, police officers, and professional drivers. Finally, though, two weeks ago, Rocío went to the Transit Police building across town and asked them directly, and was told that because we had foreign (US) licenses already, we could skip the weeklong driving instruction course and go right to the exams. “Come back this Friday, 6:30pm, upstairs classroom.” We decided to go the legal route. Rocío signed us up for the written exam.
Friday came along, and we headed back to Transito, arriving about 25 minutes early. The first thing that struck me was the weird, abandoned feel of the big block building itself. There were a handful of police officers in uniform walking around on the first floor, none of whom really paid us any attention. Rocío pointed me to the cement stairs and we started up. The second floor had a meeting area with plastic seats bolted to the floor, surrounded by doors to offices. On the next floor, there was a large open area like a hospital waiting room/lobby. Nobody seemed to be around, but there was a television set suspended from the ceiling facing the empty room, turned on and tuned to static, with the volume all the way up. A man in a tie walked out of one of the surrounding offices and disappeared down a hall without acknowledging us or the TV. The fourth floor had a huge empty auditorium to the right of the landing, with wooden floors bereft of any furniture, picture windows with views of the city around two sides, and a wall at one end with a giant seal of the Transit Police that I assume is used as a backdrop for academy commencements and other official ceremonies. A silent tedium seemed to hang in the air, the ghost of speeches past. To our left was the door to what looked vaguely like a classroom with a light on, but Rocío was fairly sure they had told her the exam was on the top floor, so we kept climbing the stairs. The next floor was still under construction. Pigeons squawked from darkened corners as a cold wind blew through the pane-less windows and bounced off the unpainted cinderblock walls. We headed back down in search of someone who could tell us where we were supposed to be.
We went down to the second floor, where we saw someone official-looking in civilian clothes, and he told us the test was on the top floor, which we now assumed to be the top constructed floor, and we climbed once again to the classroom door we’d seen next to the auditorium. The room was trashed. Empty 2-liter coke bottles littered the floor, and an empty wine bottle sat on a table. We were early, but it was hard to imagine a test taking place in this room twenty minutes later.
We walked back down to the first floor, and noticed three policemen in olive-drab uniforms lounging behind an information desk. The oldest of the three, a man in his fifties who was leaning back in his chair against the wall, sat upright but did not stand as we approached. “¿Si?” We told him we were there for the test. “Oh, there won’t be a test today. It’s our anniversary.” Well, that accounted for the emptiness of the place, and the empty bottles. But Rocío explained that she had just signed up a few days earlier and been told to come that very Friday. “I don’t think so. You can ask, but I don’t think so,” he said, pointing toward the back of the building with his chin, and went back to his conversation with his colleagues.
We walked to the back door, which opened onto a large, empty parking lot/soccer court. At the far end of the court, some people were eating under a tarp. A couple of cops were near the door, and Rocío asked one of them about the exam. “Oh, sure. Fourth floor. It’s at 6:30.” We took a walk around the block, came back at 6:30, and once again climbed the stairs. There were two other young men, about 19 or 20 years old, waiting outside the classroom. We asked if they were there for the test, and they said yes, but that they weren’t sure there would be a test because it was the Transit Police’s anniversary. We all went into the classroom to wait.
This time I got a better look around. There was a bag of ice on one of the student desks that had barely begun to melt. I looked back toward the table at the front of the room, with the wine bottle and the soda bottles scattered around it on the floor. Beyond it, on the floor in a corner behind a low table with more soda bottles, were 40 or 50 liquor bottles: Ballantines Scotch, cheap rum, and singani – a Bolivian distilled grape liquor similar to Peru’s more-famous pisco. They were all empty; judging from the still-frozen ice, they had likely been emptied quite recently.
It suddenly occurred to me that I was surrounded by drunk cops. Then I remembered how empty the place was, and I realized that most of them had probably left already. Then I wondered how many of them had driven. Indicating the bottles, I asked the two other guys waiting for the test, “I wonder how many questions they’re going to ask us about the dangerous effects of alcohol.” I thought back to this page in the booklet we’d been given to study for that night’s exam:
No unit of measurement is given to explain the 0.0, 0.5, 1.0, etc. listed in the table. But the drawings and descriptions are instructive. I wondered how many of the traffic cops who’d recently abandoned the premises were “alegres” (happy), how many were “mareados” (dizzy), and how many were “totalmente borrachos” (direct translation: totally drunk; interpreter’s translations: wasted? ¿Cómo se dice s#@*faced?).
After a few minutes of standing around, the two young guys decided there would be no test, and left. The clock in the room, as if it, too, had played a part in emptying the bottles on the floor beneath it, was about ten minutes slow. We waited until it said 6:30, pretty much knowing nobody would show up, and when nobody did, we trudged downstairs again. Before leaving, though, I took out my phone and snapped the above photos.
Downstairs, we walked past the three officers chatting behind the information counter, into a room where one male and one female officer seemed to be doing some actual work at desks. We explained our situation and they told us that there would be no exam that night, due to the anniversary, but that we should come back the following morning at 6 a.m. with our car for the practical (driving) exam. They said the theoretical exam (meaning written exam, although I was beginning to wonder if it didn’t also exist merely in theory) would be given immediately after the practical exam, since it wasn't being administered the night before, due to the anniversary (they kept repeating the fact that it was their anniversary, as if to say, “of course you understand”).
I tried hard to imagine all the law officers who had just polished off 10 gallons of booze and had no doubt now moved the party to a more festive location, all showing up crisp and bright-eyed at 6am Saturday ready for a morning of repeated parallel parking and weaving through traffic cones with strangers. Rocío and I decided to wait and come back the following Friday.
One week later, we arrived at 6:30pm and climbed again to the classroom. It was full of people, and a teacher was standing outside. He explained that the driving class was at 6:30, and the exam would be given afterward, at 8 o'clock. At this point, we had little fight left in us, so we thanked him and stepped away, prepared to wait. Rocío said she had to pay my registration fee, as she hadn’t had the money when she’d signed up the first time, so we crossed the hall to a tiny office tucked into a corner. Rocío told the two officers sitting inside what we were there for, and handed them my ID card. Seeing that it was a foreigner’s ID, they said, “Oh, he can’t take this exam. He’s foreign. That test is Monday at 2:30 pm.” After some discussion about my immigration status and the fact that both of us actually had U.S. licenses already, they said that we could both come back Monday afternoon, and would be given a separate, longer written exam (3 pages instead of 1) administered by “the Colonel himself,” and would not be required to take the practical test. “New administrative order,” they explained.
I had a work appointment Monday at 2:30, but Rocío took the test and passed. Now the license is hers. Kind of. All she needs to do is go back to Transito with an ID card, a letter from a lawyer requesting the license, a copy of her high school diploma, a letter from the National Police saying she has a clean record, and a copy of a recently issued birth certificate.
The only snag: a recent clerical error changed her date of birth in the Civil Registry’s computer records, so she is in the midst of compiling documents with the old date, in order to appeal to the Registry to change it back. Until then, she can’t get a birth certificate. We were hoping to get the driver’s license as one more document to present in her appeal.
UPDATE: We both finally got our licenses, mine after only 5 trips across town to the Transit Police building. Makes the DMV look like a trip to, well, someplace that's pleasant and efficient. I'd like to end with this:
Okay, that's an obscure title for this post, because it's a reference to a Vietnam movie and I'm talking about Bolivia. But I don't think you can ever really overquote (or overparaphrase) Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now. In fact, I think quoting Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now always smells like... victory.
My point being that I am pretty plugged into U.S. popular culture while living in Bolivia. Not only because I can quote a 30-year-old movie, but because I have a blog I post to constantly (read: nearly monthly), I Facebook, I use "Facebook" as a verb, I have a cell phone (something I didn't have in the U.S.), and I'm on email (yes, E-MAIL) constantly, not to mention video chat, MagicJack phone - the list goes on. Even so, I was very much struck by two articles on the New York Times' "most e-mailed" list this week. See here and here. Read them. Or at least skim them. I'll wait...
Done?
Okay: WHAT THE #*%$*!?! What is going on up there?! Both articles just made me so glad I live in Bolivia, where, for at least ten or eleven more minutes, people have not yet reached quite that level of insanity with regard to the gadgets in their lives. I just wonder, since both articles were on the most-emailed list, how many people read them at the dinner table and then got divorced.
My wife and I have actually talked often about raising our kids here in Bolivia for their earlier childhoods, and then maybe returning North for their teenage years, mainly because U.S. schools would give them more options after high school, including the option to attend non-Bolivian universities (Bolivian universities, you may have noticed, are not prominently featured in U.S. News & World Report; more importantly, they suck. Believe me, I've taught at one). Reading these articles, though, I'm now thinking that if we move anywhere for their teenage years, it will be to somewhere decidedly God-forsaken, in hopes that it might also be unlimited text plan-forsaken.
I also wonder if the same people who emailed those two articles to their loved ones (probably during an opera, or their daughters' weddings) also read this one.
Bolivians, if I may generalize, are not (generally) particularly critical in their approach to new consumer items. Cell phones are ubiquitous, and cell phone etiquette is basically non-existent (not only do movie-goers take calls during movies and students take calls during class, but TEACHERS take calls in the middle of their own lectures!). At the same time, I'm serious when I say that the phenomena I'm reading about regarding the impact of texting, iPhones, etc. in U.S. culture strike me as truly alien, and I'm grateful for that.
I'm sure some Bolivian middle-class and upper-class youth already live the reality described in these articles, and I'm just an ignorant gringo. And I know that a lot of people in the U.S. will read these articles with the same surprise I did. But I am reminded that the kind of godly happiness described in the third article is at least a little bit more readily available here. Life still does move at a slower pace. Family, relationships, and the person standing in front of you are still given priority (although cell phones do seem to be challenging the third of those priorities). This is one of the main reasons we're here. I hope we're not clinging to a doomed reality.
This AP report just came out saying Israel is claiming that both Bolivia and Venezuela are supplying uranium to Iran for the latter nation's controversial nuclear program.
I am aware that Bolivia has uranium reserves, and that this issue came up in 2008 when Ahmadinejad came to Bolivia and met with Evo Morales to forge a diplomatic friendship between the two states. At that time, Morales strongly affirmed his support for Iran's nuclear program and his faith in the Iranian government's claims that it is purely a peaceful, civilian program.
But I am not aware of Bolivia actually mining uranium, and indeed, as reported here (in Spanish), the Morales administration has already rejected Israel's claims as false. The Minister of Mines and Metallurgy here, in what would appear to have been a rather testy presser, told journalists that Bolivia "does not produce uranium. Do any of you from the (economic) sector know of, or have you ever seen the production of uranium in the country? You have to know what comes from Bolivia. Or are you foreigners? You have to know what Bolivia produces - the country has never produced uranium." The article does go on, though, to outline some of the ways in which Bolivia has begun to at least explore opportunities for exploitation of its nuclear resources.
It's hard to know exactly what to think of all this. On the one hand, I believe there are definitely some real dangers in making nice with the revolutionary government of Iran. I wrote about this some here. On the other hand, I agree with the observations Fareed Zakaria made in Newsweek the other day regarding Iran's nuclear program. If I'm allowed a third hand, though, I'd point to Iran's missile test last week. I suppose the question is, can anyone be positively sure about what Iran is up to or what their objectives are? And how much of a risk is worth taking here?
I'm not sure what Morales' intentions are, either. But, particularly with all the complexities presented by gas and oil and the country's massive lithium deposits to worry about, I think the nuclear game is one Bolivia should sit out for now.
I was interviewed for this article on the history of US presidential appearances at Notre Dame. I don't remember saying "the Lord's work," although I suppose that is what I meant -- I've met too many fundamentalists who pepper their speech with weirdly frequent "the Lord"s, so I tend to opt for other divine monikers (I feel funny saying Jehova, too, as much as I would like to after seeing The Life of Brian) -- and my wife doesn't actually work with me on the Maryknoll Bolivia Mission Immersion Program, but otherwise it's a good article.
The BBC has a good article about a recent visit by UN officials to ranches in south-eastern Bolivia, where they met Guaraní indigenous workers living in conditions of virtual slavery. The accusation of slavery in these regions has existed for a long time. Catholic Church reports have denounced it, as have human rights groups. Evo Morals' government has accused ranchers of holding indigenous workers in servitude, and confiscated some lands. The ranchers and opposition leaders, of course, deny any injustice. And even the head of the Bolivian Catholic hierarchy, Cardinal Julio Terrazas of Santa Cruz, has now questioned the existence of slaves. He is pretty openly aligned with the political opposition to the Morales government. So, this is an interesting development. These are very remote areas, and ranchers have been known to use arms to keep investigators off their land. The more credible reports on the reality there, the better.
Over at the Democracy Center blog's discussion on USAID and anti-government violence in Bolivia, Dan Beeton has responded to some reader comments, including mine, which I also posted here the other day. Among other things, he says:
In response to Dan’s comments on the nature of USAID activities in collaboration with prefectures in Bolivia...We do not know the full extent of these or other projects. Also, money is fungible. It’s possible that some of the recipients of USAID assistance in these and other projects did not simply use these funds for technical training and support and the like. That’s why it is important for USAID and other U.S. government agencies (and the NED) to be careful not to partner with anyone who’s shown a proclivity towards violence or hatred.
I responded again in the comments section, and am copying my response here:
Dan Beeton is correct that, despite transparency regarding the general allocation of funds, it is not always easy to figure out exactly how USAID money is actually spent in the end - especially given that there is so much of it in Bolivia.
An interesting note here, which gets back to my point about not taking the Bolivian government's lead in assuming USAID is at the center of US meddling in Bolivia: I originally began our research assuming that the Bolivian government had, as they claimed to have, some form of evidence to back up their claims of USAID support for the opposition. We were committed to talking with all sides and evaluating the evidence for ourselves, but I did think the Morales administration would at least happily cooperate with us, and provide us with evidence we could then present to USAID for comment. Instead, we got absolutely zero official cooperation from the Bolivian government. Officials were not allowed to speak about the issue without cabinet-level approval, and that approval never came, despite over a dozen requests.
Meanwhile, USAID was very open in talking with us, providing documents, and encouraged us to meet with the recipients of their grants, the people served by those agencies, etc. A difficulty we then ran into was figuring out which programs to dig into. Our first question to the Bolivian government was going to be exactly that: whom/what should we investigate? We never got to ask the question.
One argument US officials were unable to respond to, though, was that of indirect strengthening of opposition figures - even potentially violent ones. The example given was, again, Cochabamba's Manfred Reyes Villa. I pointed out that the then-prefect (who may or may not have backed the bat-wielding, murdering throngs of "youth for democracy" on January 11, 2007, but who absolutely, publicly called for a military coup against Morales) had built his political career on public works, and was working to position himself as a national opposition leader. I asked if co-sponsoring the prefecture's public works (while USAID wouldn't give cash to the prefectures, they would spend money on projects -- e.g. bridge-building, etc. -- on which the prefecture was also spending money) wasn't ultimately strengthening his political position. They admitted it could be, but that they figured the value of the projects themselves outweighed any political unease they might cause. A cynic might point out that this is particularly true if the political effects of the projects, uneasy as they might make things diplomatically, are actually part of the reason the projects exist in the first place.
Another example of insensitivity (or calculated political maneuvering, but I'm in a generous mood) on the part of AID is in programs aimed at strengthening political parties. Even if all the money of these programs was spent as claimed, on things like improving transparency, accountability, and responsiveness to issues of poverty, the problem is that such programs were being carried out at a time when a majority of Bolivians were rejecting the traditional party model and the traditional parties themselves. Regardless of the myriad ways in which the MAS itself may fail, stumble, or replicate flawed systems (if not that of political parties, then perhaps that of Bolivian syndicalism), it was widely seen by voters as an alternative to the old, failed, revolving-door system of MNR/MIR/ADN-PODEMOS-controlled government. For the US to then jump in and attempt to bolster those parties seems impolitic at best, and aggressively political at worst.
I concluded that, given the sensitivities here and USAID's own history, the US ought to tread more lightly than it does. Almost everything is political. And the US has made it quite clear, particularly under Bush, that it views Morales' government and agenda as problematic, even anti-democratic. There is a lot of good work that the US can do to assist Bolivia in economic development and even related areas of justice and peace without getting involved in partisan politics here. They claim they don't. I think they may be sincere, but mistaken. Beeton is right that the US should avoid dealings with the kinds of leaders who have openly supported violent anti-government action.
Direct talks between USAID and the Bolivian government regarding the kinds of projects AID does here would be a good, obvious way to start. I also think that USAID could be more proactive by applying an overtly political lens to their own planning - one aimed not at advancing US political interests, but at better understanding the political landscape here so as to avoid the kind of firestorm in which it's found itself since 2007. A mix of actors - local, international, state and non-state - could participate, forming a kind of advisory or oversight committee for this process.
Naive? On the one hand, USAID exists to promote US interests and advance US foreign policy abroad, and history shows us that this is not always a good thing for Latin Americans. On the other hand, it is an agency made up of a lot of good, well-meaning people who are here to promote development (and we decided, in our research, not even to get into the massive, different-but-related debate about appropriate models of development, or even the very concept of "development"), to be friends to the people of Bolivia in a way that is apolitical/nonpartisan. I think vigilance is always warranted, but I'm hopeful that progress can be made.
There is also something to be said, given US history in the region, for an approach that focuses more on disengagement. What if suggestions aimed at de-politicizing USAID only serve to make its political maneuvering more stealthy? Why trust USAID at all? Let them leave. I think this may be a good approach for certain areas, such the Chapare with its history of "alternative development" programs bound up in the problematic US "war on drugs."*
But the flipside to why the Morales government only kicked USAID out of that one region is because the government finds so much of what USAID does here desirable. Even in the area of "democracy building," MAS officials and MAS-led agencies participate in and benefit from all kinds of USAID projects. There is a certain "Mexican stand-off" quality to the public squabble between the Morales government and USAID, as Morales boldly states that USAID is free to leave whenever they want to (but doesn't kick them out), and USAID replies that Morales is free to kick them out (but they don't leave). Another film-inspired analogy would be that of a disfunctional couple in a hackneyed romantic comedy. "I'm leaving!" "Fine, go!" "I will!" "So go then!" In the end, while these two may not always end up embracing, they can't seem to walk away from the fight. Call it love, or call it co-dependency, but they seem to need each other.
* or perhaps some "democracy-building" programs like the party-strengthening mentioned above.
