Cochabamba: Our Next Few Days

Bolivia, frankly, is batty. Is it any won­der I love it so?

Yesterday’s elec­tion was a curi­ous affair. The day was quite and calm. The evening, though, was a race of num­bers in the news. Jim Shultz, a polit­i­cal blog­ger (strong left bias) based here in Cochabamba, has a good run-down of the elec­tion num­bers released by the media last night.

I’ve not found out how these num­bers that were released were formed. I’m assum­ing exit polls; but while those are more or less reli­able in the States, I see far less cred­i­bil­ity for them here. The polling loca­tion near us is a gov­ern­ment civil reg­is­tra­tion office a block down the street (one block west of Plaza Cala Cala). The entrance was guarded by approx­i­mately 25 armed (by Bolivian stan­dards — the ammo doesn’t always match the weapon) police in a 50 foot radius. More trucks and cars with police were at the near inter­sec­tions. Directly in front of the doors through­out the voter reg­is­tra­tion period dur­ing the week, but not dur­ing the actual vote-taking yes­ter­day, campesinos held a sit-in/sleep-in. The envi­ron­ment was not dan­ger­ous, but I would not think it con­ducive to an hon­est exit-poll envi­ron­ment which would not share the anonymity of the offi­cial ballot.

Regardless of how the esti­mates were gen­er­ated and how accu­rate they are, the world heard that Evo had an over­whelm­ing major­ity (between 60–68% depend­ing on the paper/blog) and that three gov­er­nors, La Paz, Oruro, and Cochabamba, were deposed. Cochabamba’s gov­er­nor is the only one of the three who is refus­ing to acknowl­edge the valid­ity of the election.

As of 10:00am this morn­ing accord­ing to Los Tiempos, a local news­pa­per, only 23% of the nation’s votes and 12% of Cochabamba’s votes have been offi­cially cal­cu­lated. With those cal­cu­la­tions, Evo, the pres­i­dent has 52% sanc­tion to remain in office, and Manfred, the gov­er­nor of Cochabamba, has 55% sanc­tion to remain in office. We’ll see how those num­bers stand when all is said and done.

For Cochabamba this week, how­ever, the real num­bers may not mat­ter too much.  Everyone heard last night that a) Manfred lost, and b) Manfred is ignor­ing it. The pro-Evo con­tin­gent sees this as an oppor­tu­nity to cham­pion democ­racy. The mod­er­ates will advo­cate polit­i­cal action. The more enthu­si­as­tic… well…

At the moment, large num­bers of cocaleros are march­ing from the Chapare into Cochabamba and are sched­uled to arrive today. We’ve no idea where the goal is. If a direct and pos­si­bly vio­lent protest is intended, then the plan will prob­a­bly be to head for the gov­ern­ment offices at Plaza Principal as hap­pened in January 2007. If a strictly peace­ful protest is intended, then I’d bet on a repeat of the May 2008 march down Blanco Galindo (the equiv­a­lent to a freeway).

If Evo is wise, he’ll try to main­tain the flashy inter­na­tional sup­port that a Yes Stay In Office elec­tion result pro­vides, and choose the peace­ful protest. Evo is con­sis­tently not wise, how­ever. Mind you, Manfred shares this par­tic­u­lar lack of polit­i­cal wisdom.

So. Peace or Violence? Bolivia is batty, after all, so it’s anyone’s guess.