A Fairly Normal Cochabamba

Since the elec­tion 8 days ago, every­thing has been rather… nor­mal. The early days were a bit quiet, but oth­er­wise one wouldn’t gen­er­ally know that any­thing was dif­fer­ent. I haven’t any idea what hap­pened with the folks march­ing on the city from the Chapare — as far as I could tell, they never arrived.

I almost regret that. I’m not advo­cat­ing vio­lence; I am advo­cat­ing res­o­lu­tion. Sometimes res­o­lu­tion requires a set of con­fronta­tions which causes the var­i­ous involved par­ties to kick into gear and get things done. Very lit­tle of that really hap­pens in Bolivia, and too often when it does the other side cow­ers in fear and caves under manip­u­la­tion. The prob­lems are sim­ply left to fes­ter until a later date, which means that some dig deeper into cul­tural and polit­i­cal bit­ter­ness and oth­ers just become accepted whether they’re healthy or not.