Our last week in La Paz is quickly coming to an end, as we prepare to fly to Santa Cruz, and then back to Chicago. Javi seems to have recovered from his stomach thing (but has now picked the sniffles), though that seemed to hardly discourage him from enjoying the city (especially Plaza Avaroa), w/ all its fascinating sights. My research advanced well enough, though not nearly as far as I would’ve liked (the CNE archives still aren’t ready).
Overall, La Paz seems to have calmed down, though still tense. People don’t seem too preoccupied (yet) w/ the upcoming elections, though the running tally of potential presidential candidates (it’s now well over a dozen) grows & is increasingly discussed in the media.
Today’s relatively quiet bombshell news was that MSM (Movimiento Sin Miedo), the small party that controls the La Paz municipal government, has decided to end its alliance w/ MAS at the end of this year. Through it’s earlier alliance, MSM provides the (city of) La Paz deputies for MAS. In the 2004 municipal elections, MSM placed second (after MAS), becoming the country’s second largest party (in terms of electoral reach across the national territory). MSM leaders still haven’t defined whether they’ll still back MAS in the December 2009 elections, but they’ve already made clear that they’ll campaign independently in the 2010 prefectural & municipal elections. It’s unclear what impact this latest defection will have on the December elections. My guess is that Evo will still win reelection, but (the city of) La Paz may become less likely to vote for MAS than it did in 2005.
The other big electoral news has to do w/ the government’s decision to move as many as 4,000 rural families from Cochabamba & La Paz to the department of Pando. The opposition denounced the move as electorally calculated: the regions where the new “colonizers” (as internal migrant communities are commonly known) come from are pro-MAS, while Pando is an opposition stronghold. But because Pando is sparsely populated, the move could easily tip the balance. Already the National Electoral Court (CNE) has verified that voter registration in Pando jumped 50% between June & August of this year.
At play, for both sides, are precious senate seats. In 2005, despite Evo’s broad victory at the national level, department-level results gave the opposition a majority in the Senate (MAS won a comfortable majority in the Chamber of Deputies). The new constitution now gives each department four seats (as opposed to three), as well as the possibility of winning all four seats. If the opposition stays divided & presents a large number of candidates, it’s possible that in many departments MAS could pick up 3-4 senate seats because of the new electoral rule that gives seats using a the D’Hondt “natural dividers” method that benefits large parties. By shifting the electoral landscape in Pando, MAS could potentially win a slim majority in the Senate.
Regardless of government claims that this is just a way to provide land to rural peasants (though most “landless” peasants are in the lowlands, not in the highlands), it’s impossible to hide some electoral calculations. Santa Cruz, which has more fertile land ripe for land reform, wouldn’t work for electoral reasons, since 4,000 families would make hardly a dent in the department’s 2.5 million population (by contrast Pando only has about 61,000, making it the country’s least populated department). Of course, there’s nothing illegal about this. The government is free to provide state lands to its citizens, and to pay to move them to another part of the country if it chooses to. There’s also nothing new about this, as a political move. In the 1950s, the MNR did the same thing, boosting the population of Santa Cruz (which was then sparsely populated) to break the power of local opposition. It will be curious, though, to see what happens over time. One of the remarkable things about camba regionalism is that the bulk of the regionalist rank-and-file are 2nd or 3rd generation descendants from previous migrants. Will the Aymara & Quechua campesinos who move to Pando become pandinos over time?
The last electoral question I have involves Alvaro García Linera, Evo’s vice president. Most assume he’ll run for reelection as vice president in December. And there’s no indication to suggest otherwise. And yet, I’m curious. He’s not been heard from lately (he was previously one of the most visible members of the government, often seen/heard more frequently than Evo). The historical electoral trajectory of Evo has been to discard (whether they left him, or he left them, is often unclear) his previous allies: Alejo Véliz, Filemon Escobar, Roman Loayza, and others. I don’t think picking another VP candidate would necessarily help/hurt Evo electorally, but I’m curious to see if he does. The deadline for parties to register their candidates is still quite ways away.
Finally, the last interesting news is that Garcia Meza’s (military dictator from 1980-1982) interior minister, Luis Arce Gómez, was just returned to Bolivia form the US (where he was serving a 30-year drug-related sentence). Arce Gómez (71) will serve a 30-year sentence for human rights abuses & other crimes related to the brutal Garcia Meza dictatorship (a dictatorship that made up w/ its connections to cocaine trafficking what it lacked in ideology). He arrived today at the El Alto international airport, after finally being deported by the US (he’d been in an INS detention facility since 2007). The new development may force a deeper reflection on the difficult democratic transition of the 1980s, as well as give impetus to calls from families of victims of the dictatorships (there were several) who’re demanding that Evo follow through on his promise to force the armed forces to declassify their documents, particularly regarding the many “disappeared.”