political culture – Carwil without Borders

Pablo Solón Romero was the most important face of the Plurinational State’s environmental and human rights diplomacy from 2006 to 2011. Last week, he became the latest critic of that same government to suddenly face criminal charges. On Friday, June 30, authorities delivered Solón a subpoena in a case against him and journalist Rafael Archondo. The pair had been designated Bolivia’s permanent and alternate representative to the United Nations. Now, they each face two charges of corruption for Archondo’s succession to the role after Solón resigned. The government alleges that Solón’s letter presenting Archondo to the United Nations constituted an unlawful usurpation of the President’s power to designate ambassadors.

For Solón, the investigation is an act of retribution.

In a statement released Monday, he declared:

The news wasn’t a surprise. Due to our critical analysis of the El Bala and El Chepete hydroelectric megadams, various friends had warned me that they would search underneath the stones to find something to accuse me of, to intimidate me, and to make me shut up. […]

I won’t refer at this time to the supposed crimes that we are accused of, since I will refute every one of them in a formal and public manner when I go to declare before the Prosecutor’s Office.

What I can say is that we will continue to think and we will continue to speak. Wherever we find ourselves, we will not renounce our ability to criticize and to state our opinion. It is most lamentable that rather than refute us with arguments, they seek to frighten us with this kind of accusations.

La noticia no fue una sorpresa. A raíz de nuestro análisis crítico de las mega hidroeléctricas de El Bala y el Chepete, varios amigos y amigas me habían advertido que buscarían debajo las piedras para acusarme de algo, intimidarme y hacerme callar.

…

En esta oportunidad no me referiré a los supuestos delitos de los cuáles se nos acusa ya que de manera formal y pública refutaré cada uno de ellos el día que vaya a declarar a la fiscalía.

Lo que si puedo decir es que seguiremos pensando y seguiremos hablando. Donde quiera que nos encontremos no renunciaremos a nuestra capacidad de criticar y decir lo que opinamos. Es muy lamentable que en vez de refutarnos con argumentos busquen amedrentarnos a través de este tipo de acusaciones.

Pablo Solon — Pablo Solón speaking in March 2017

Pablo Solón, a Bolivian with a long history of radical and progressive activism, served first as its ambassador to UNASUR and later to the United Nations (Wikipedia biography|2010 Democracy Now interview). When the Bolivian government attacked the 2011 indigenous march in defense of the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS), Solón was one of several government officials to speak out, urging President Evo Morales to reconsider the proposed highway through the territory, a position he amplified once he stepped out of public service in 2012. After several years at the head of Focus on the Global South, Solón returned to working on Bolivian environmental issues at the La Paz-based Solón Foundation. Now, he has put his expertise to use challenging the government’s drive to build massive energy infrastructure projects in the Bolivian Amazon.

While sitting in the midst of the massive coca chew-in in Cochabamba’s central square, the overwhelming mass of people was cris-crossed by two types of vendors: sellers of cloths on which to dry coca leaves, and a ubiquitous Bolivian sight, the hawkers of copies of new laws recently passed by the Plurinational Legislative Assembly. The hot seller of the day was last year’s Law 045, the Law Against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination.

Bolivian laws are a widely circulated commodity. Newspapers, both broadsheet and tabloid, publish copies of both draft laws and their final versions as free supplements. Wednesday’s Los Tiempos had the draft statute of autonomy for Cochabamba Department stuck in alongside the sports and fashion sections. On the streets of downtown La Paz, Cochabamba, or Potosí, you can buy bound versions of all the major laws in Bolivia—the laws on criminal procedure, the labor code, and indigenous legal process, for instance—at all the main newsstands. Just by attending social movement conferences, I’ve accumulated three bound copies of the 2009 Constitution.

And that Constitution is surely the most cited text at Bolivian political rallies. You can count on the text of the constitution being referenced (though rarely directly quoted) when a series of political speakers lines up. Always referred by its formal name, the [New] Political Constitution of the State, it is a touchstone of legitimacy for protesters. It comes up as much as the so-called October Agenda, the combined political demands embodied in the 2003 Gas War, the first protests to topple a neoliberal government.

So, it was most surprising to read how America’s diplomats think about Bolivia’s political literacy, as revealed by the Wikileaks release of cables:

Although the opposition is making a mighty effort across the country to rally against the constitution, the forces of inertia seem to be conspiring against them, particularly in the form of a largely uneducated rural base in the Altiplano. Leading daily La Razon interviewed several community leaders from the Altiplano, and their supporters, and reported on January 18 that neither the leaders nor the supporters had read the Constitution. Instead, the repeated message was that rural communities would take their marching orders from the MAS, and vote for the constitution. … In the countryside, the number of those reading the constitution is much lower. Post suspects disinterest, blind faith in Evo Morales’ political project, and illiteracy, despite the Cuban literacy program, all play a role. (Cable 09LAPAZ96)

While the length of the new Constitution—literally hundreds of articles—no doubt limited the number of people who read it through, it’s clear that American diplomats have yet to clue in on Bolivia’s grassroots political culture. No one who has sat through a campesino rally, or the well-attended presentations on technical details of pensions or gas production, or who even sat with coca chewers ready and willing to buy the new anti-racism law, could look down so easily on alleged popular ignorance.