Our Status and Crisis Plans

Summary: Half of Bolivia is at war, but not our half. We don’t know whether it will spread. Bolivia is fully unpre­dictable. We’re stay­ing for now.

Issues:

• The Anti-Evo region is in vio­lent protest, pos­si­bly even secession.
• They’re not doing it intel­li­gently — so they have made ene­mies of Brazil and Argentina.
• MAS (Pro-Evo, sim­plis­ti­cally) is pos­si­bly incit­ing fur­ther violence.
• Evo might send in mil­i­tary troops.
• Chavez has stated that if Evo is deposed, he will send in Venezuelan troops.
• Brazil and Argentina are sid­ing with Evo because the oppo­si­tion have shut down vital nat­ural gas exports to those nations.
• Brazil is prepar­ing an evac­u­a­tion for its citizens.
• Bolivia and the United States have expelled each oth­ers’ diplo­matic teams. Venezuela has expelled the U.S. ambas­sador as well.
• The U.S. embassy is closed over the week­end for “training”.
• The DEA has been expelled from the country-side.
• It’s pos­si­ble that the DEA will leave entirely.

The DEA is the only offi­cial evac option we have. If they leave, so does our pro­tected evac. The State Department have already stated that no evacs will be con­ducted here. We, and the other grin­gos here, will be on our own.

Evacuation requires:

• Spending $10,000–20,000 to go… nowhere. Maybe the US, maybe Brazil (tem­porar­ily), maybe Paraguay. Unknown.
• Putting our dogs to sleep.
• Losing our home, vehi­cle, and any prop­erty not taken with us.
• Possibly not being allowed to return to Bolivia.
• If we’re gone for more than 90 days, then my family’s 4-year visa process to earn per­ma­nent visas will have to be com­pletely restarted, which is a loss of over $7,000.

All of which would prob­a­bly be for noth­ing. Cochabamba doesn’t usu­ally get hit with the vio­lence. What we are def­i­nitely going to expe­ri­ence, and are already expe­ri­enc­ing, is trans­porta­tion and food shortages.

No gaso­line exists in the city. We’ve got 3/4 of a tank in the mini­van. Most of the taxis here, luck­ily, oper­ate off of nat­ural gas. As of yes­ter­day morn­ing that was still avail­able. No beef is being imported. One store received beef by plane yes­ter­day, and we pur­chased about twenty kilos at a 420% rise above usual costs. These are both very sur­viv­able problems.

Our prob­lem, here, is that the cost (prac­ti­cal more than money… God always pro­vides the money when nec­es­sary, we’ve seen that time and again) for the safety of leav­ing for a lit­tle while is pos­si­bly our entire min­istry and life here. Do we bank on safety and lose every­thing (plus putting down the dogs), or do we hun­ker down in faith? Further, in which area does God want us to have faith — our safety (if we stay) or the preser­va­tion of our min­istry (if we go)?

One ele­ment for prayer is that we’ll work out some solu­tion for my pass­port. I don’t have it — it’s in La Paz, Evo cap­i­tal. If we go, then the embassy will have to get an emer­gency pass­port to me. If we don’t go, then it’s not a prob­lem. If I take it out now, we risk my hav­ing to spend an addi­tion $250 to restart my stu­dent visa. On a gamble.

We will evac­u­ate if:

• Physical dan­ger exists.
• We are unable to obtain basic food or water.
• We are expelled by Bolivian government.
• We are ordered out by the US government.

But like I said. Right now, all is well, and that prob­a­bly will not change for Cochabamba city.