While I haven’t taken the time to post about Santa Cruz and the issue of regional autonomy in a while, MABB has (including providing a direct like to the Estatuto Autonómico put out by the Asamblea Provisional Autonómica). Having been recently back in Santa Cruz, I’m well aware of just how “serious” this issue is.
One can’t help but observe a marked tendency towards all things “autonomous” in Santa Cruz public life. From the extremist graffiti downtown urging armed resistance (surely a minoritarian view), to the not-so-subtle television slogans of the prefecture (“Autonomía al andar [Autonomy in the making]”), to the more subtle phrasing of “Gobierno Departamental” (painted on prefecture buildings & vehicles). In La Paz it’s called a “prefecture;” in Santa Cruz, it’s a “government.” The nuanced difference is, of course, important.
But I left Bolivia (back to Michigan) near the end of June, just before the latest round in the conflict over regional autonomy. And now there’s a self-proclaimed “autonomy statute” that a “provisional” regional assembly has issued. So this issue isn’t going away. We’ll see where this goes in the next few weeks. It may just be that inflation could be a distraction—or the match that lights the fuse. And the Constituent Assembly’s clock is ticking.
