The tears are finally drying ”“ the tears of the Bush years, and the tears of awe at the sight of a black President of the United States. So what now? The cliché of the day is that Barack Obama will inevitably disappoint the hopes of a watching world, but the truth is more subtle than that. If we want to see how Obama will affect us all ”“ for good or bad ”“ we need to trace the deep structural factors that underlie United States foreign policy. A useful case study of these pressures is about to flicker on to our news pages for a moment ”“ from the top of the world.
Bolivia is the poorest country in Latin America, and its lofty slums 13,000 feet above sea level seem a world away from the high theatre of the inauguration. But if we look at this country closely, we can explain one of the great paradoxes of the United States ”“ that it has incubated a triumphant civil rights movement at home, yet thwarted civil rights movements abroad. Bolivia shows us in stark detail the contradictions facing a black President of the American empire.
More like, the rest of the world is about to take a bigger advantage of America than it did during Bush 43.
The situation in Bolivia is a little more complicated than Mr Hari describes.
A few factoids
Morales is Aymara (“Indian”). It is sadly true that Bolivia has wretched conditions, especially in terms of health care, and that previous governments have not put the welfare of their people (especially the indigenous tribes such as Aymara and Quechua) at a high priority at all — to put it as mildly as possible.
However. Mr Hari’s use of the term, “pink tide” is a euphemism for Marxism. Marxism has never lifted the standard of living in any country where it had been tried, and now Bolivia’s Morales is trying it again. Hari’s use of the term “extreme privitization” in regard to business simply describes attempts toward a free market economy which apparently Hari finds distasteful.
I would like to see our government support efforts toward a prosperous Bolivia. The conditions there are appalling in many ways. However the situation there is far more complicated than Hari wishes us to believe, and there is no easy fix. Bolivia has, on the average, changed it’s government approximately every 2 years since gaining independence from Spain.
Final factoid. Morales is actively promoting a return to the Incan religion of sun worship. Pagan priests participated in his inauguration, doing sacrifices to obtain success for him. There is pressure against Christianity on the grounds that the conquistadores killed Indians, in just the terms used by Hari in this article. This unfortunate history is used to promote rejection of Jesus and Christian people.
Pray a lot for Bolivia and her people — especially for the Anglican and other Christian churches there, our brothers and sisters.
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Lumen Christie, you wrote: However the situation there is far more complicated than Hari wishes us to believe, and there is no easy fix.
I would be very grateful if you could expand a little about these complexities.
Can’t for the life of me figure out why Kendall posted this Marxist screed.
It would take an enormous amount of time and effort to summarize even a little of Bolivian history.
The country is almost competely vertical with the east being at the back of the Amazon jungle and the west topping out at about 22,000 feet in the “Alti-Plano” in the Andes. Catholicism is mostly either semi-pagan, semi-Marxist or both at once. The indigenous tribal people have been treated very badly by the European and Euro-Indian mezitos, and on and on.
While it is true that the economy is the poorest in S. America, and the need for health care and education are astonishing, the Marxist answer will probably only slap some bandaids on deep wounds. The country is divided into states each of which have different cultures and languages. There are border checkpoints between them which are indicative of the relations between them. The history has been a continuous parade of small revolutions and changing oligarchies, dictatorships and half-hearted attempts at democracy. No government has ever lasted long enough to effect real change, and it would take a team of geniuses and a lot of venture capitalism to make the whole thing really get moving.
The most important thing — I believe — is the need for genuine conversion from an essentially pagan way of thinking to the real community of a genuinely Gospel way of life for the majority of people. So many of the people are really good folks; they have great strength and endurance. The Christians there have a great spirit. But the demonic lies very close to the surface. Much alcoholism and family dysfunction in the general population.
That’s all I have time for. Pray for the folks there.
Thank you Lumen Christie. I understand that you do not want to say more. I am a little taken aback, though, at the casual use of the word ‘Marxist’ by you and by a previously rather more hysterical poster. The original article spoke simply about redistributing wealth from the natural resources. We all know that at one point 100 years ago Bolivia was rich in tin. Fortunes were made out of tin; little remained in the country. Is it really Marxist to seek to make sure that this does not happen again? I take your point about the structural difficulties in Bolivian society. I join you in praying for a truly Christ-centred metanoia although we could do with that too here in the UK.
No hysteria. People all too often regard the use of the word, “Marxist” as some kind of witch-hunting accusation. There are still plenty of people on this planet who (proudly) describe themselves as adherents of Karl Marx’ philosophy and political practitioners of the same.
Evo Morales ran on an unabashedly Marxist ticket, calls himself a Marxist and promises to implement Marxist policies — which he has already begun to do.
I was in Bolivia, I watched their TV and read the paintings on the walls.
These are facts. Why do you feel that presenting facts represents hysteria?
Morales might be a “Marxist” but does that mean he’s a democratic one like Allende? More like Lula? Or like Chavez? He was elected in part because of the exploitation of natural resources where bolivians weren’t getting a dime. It doesn’t help that our general support has been by helping their military destroy their agriculture.
I’m interested in the “Sun God” part. Did Morales actually leave Christianity? Or is this like Williams becoming a Druid? Can Episcopal native Americans participate in dancing? I’m not sure if this is different than having all different faiths at the national prayer breakfast. I’d like to know more.
I do think the article is wrong about Greg Craig, however. Greg Craig is counsel, and I don’t think he’s the Bolivia adviser. That won’t be his role.
It will be enough if the US respects Bolivian democracy and stays out of it. Marxists get realistic when they get into office. I’m not much afraid of Bolivia, and I think the people should be trusted….
Terry wrote to me: “I understand that you do not want to say more.” What does this mean? I am born and raised in this country, and I have never had my Constitutional rights to free speech denied me by anyone other than the occasional elf at any time in my life. (In spite of the clap-trap fed to gullibe Europeans about our social structures by our more radical liberal press).
I am genuinely pressed for time right now and had not intended to get into a long discussion on Bolivia. However, [sigh] here we are. So ok.
Has Bolivia and its resources been horribly exploited? Undoubtedly. This has been going on since the days of the Incas: I was told by my Aymara friends that “Inca” actually translates as the small goup of people who were the aristocracy who enslaved the other tribes, such as the Aymara. There are still Aymara left because the Spanish concentrated on wiping out the Inca as the controllers of power while pretty much ignoring the Aymara, who were slaves of the Inca. The Spanish then embarked on a project of looting everything of value and exporting it all to Spain. Bolivian tin lines the ceilings of many square miles of U.S. American houses and for many years held millions of gallons of our soups and vegetables. Bolivia has little to show for this in [b]part[/b] because a few Bolivian families (Spanish/mestizo) skimmed off all the Bolivian profit. The Aymara have survived many hundreds of years of exploitation by successive waves of conquerors by bravely keeping on keeping on.
Morales is Aymara. He is actively trying to help the poorest people of his country by making available to them the resources they have been denied in the past. I saw first hand the appalling lack of health care in a burn ward for children in a hospital in La Paz. That experience will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. Do I want to see that change? Probably more passionately than anyone else posting on this board. If Morales can change the worst conditions in his country, then Hooray! for Morales.
However, the 20th century supplies us with abundant examples of the failure of Marxist economic and political practices actually to raise the standard of living of the people of any country where it has been in power. Justice is not an exclusively Marxist idea. Christians should certainly support economic justice where- and whenever we can. Morales was democratically elected and has been in office (if I remember correctly) less than 5 years. Do I want to see him succeed in helping Bolivians life better? Sure. Am I convinced he can succeed? Maybe — we’ll have to wait and see. At the end of the day, it is up to Bolivians, and many Bolivians themselves do not like him for a variety of reasons, with no pushing from the USA.
Although I could be mistaken, it is my understanding that Morales may have been nominally baptized in the RC Church as an infant, but was raised without much religion at all — which is common there. Some Aymara have never been Christians, continuing to resist conversion to the “religion of the conquistadores.” Morales’ government has disestablished and disenfranchised the RC Church, separating it from the privileges it once held under previous regimes. There was not any kind or version of an “ecumenical prayer breakfast” at his inauguration. Some priests of the Sun god made sacrifices and offerings [b]in[/b] the Bolivian equivalent of the White House on Morales’ behalf — a rite in which (I am told) he participated. The Anglican Christians in La Paz are very distraught because the worship of the sun god is actively promoted with public displays. I have seen offerings on altars to the sun god in various places. The RCs counter attack with festivals and offernings to Nuestra Senora de Copacabana (no, not the nightclub, the town on Lake Titicaca).
So pray for the efforts of the Anglicans and other Christians in Bolivia to bring the true light of the Gospel to their country.
Really — gotta go.
Deaer Lumen Christie. Peace. I meant nothing more than a respectful recognition that you might be busy and not want to give time to a fuller explanation. My comment on hysteria was directed to Evan Miller, because I found it sad that he regarded a well-argued article, copious with facts, as ‘Marxist screed’. He disagreed with the article, but seemed incapable of giving any reasoned rebuttal and reached lazily instead for a pejorative adjective. All of us have done the same at some time. I appreciate your fuller posting and am very grateful. Interesting to ruminate that next door in Paraguay there is a former RC bishop who is President, and similarly promoting social reform, although in his case without the trapppings of pre-Columbian religion and from a more Christian social democratic base. I hope that these countries manage the transformation to a fairer social system without becoming mired in socialist rhetoric. Thank you again for filling us in.