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Who do you look to for inspiration? What kinds of people or events do believe have shaped your outlook on life? What is it that keeps you going and gives you hope? Important questions for us all. Yet when I was on the train the other day I began to despair at the lack of effort our corporate media and governments seem to put into inspiring us to do better. I was listening to two youngish women sitting beside me talk about the new Big Brother series and wondered why it was that they (and most people I know) don’t spend the same time and expend the same passion discussing the news and world events.
What the two young women on the train got me thinking about was how much they knew about the four (or is it five?) Big Brother series and how they could do a pretty good deconstruction of the program. Obviously they made the program a focus of their TV viewing regime. What led me to despair was the fact that while in the small South American nation of Bolivia a revolution was taking place the main talking point around the water cooler was who would sleep with whom next. In Bolivia the working class and poor were exerting their right to self governance and sending a clear message to their political overlords that they would not allow them to oversee the plunder of their common wealth any longer. Here our ‘most watched’ cultural exercise seems to be staying up late to see the rude bits.
Bolivia has been in a state of perpetual conflict from the time the Spanish invaders first arrived in the mid 1500s. In what has been described as a “plunder economy” the indigenous Bolivians have seen the natural wealth of their land removed under the barrel of guns. These guns were supplied by the wealthy foreign tin, copper, oil and gas barons who had no compunction in installing or de-installing governments to do their bidding. Nothing has really changed and today the population is rebelling.
In what should be expected, I guess, the western media has been complicit in perpetuating the lies and deceit about the true conditions under which most Bolivians live. For the best part of the 20th century, the US made its position on Bolivia clear. Supplying guns and military intelligence, supporting corrupt and despotic dictators, successive US governments assisted in the rape and pillage of its natural resources. Under the guise of a ‘war on drugs’ the first Bush administration flooded the corrupt regime of Hugo Banzer with guns and cash. Clinton continued the faux war. By closing down the legitimate coca industry millions of Bolivians were thrown out of work. In turn many turned to the drug lords and pledged allegiance to them in order to gain whatever benefits were being offered.
While multinational companies benefited from the privatisations of the 1990s, the poor and land bound suffered from extreme poverty. Rising prices for basic goods and the withdrawal of public services (or the resulting increase in prices following privatisations) fed a growing resentment and a festering popular rebellion. By the time the Bolivian “water wars” commenced, the people of Cochabamba had had enough. As the government sold off their water supply, they took to the streets and in 2000 forced the government to back down on the deal they were cooking up with the US company Bechtel. In response the government called out the army and hundreds of ordinary Bolivians ‘disappeared’.
However, the factory workers joined with women’s groups who linked up with church leaders who formed associations with peasant groups and together they drove the foreign robber barons from their city and forced their government to renationalise the water supply. With nothing more than a sense of community and justice, the unarmed poor and working class began and victoriously concluded a revolution in their own country. By the end of 2000 the government backed down a little and granted some small relief to the poor. However, by 2003 about 60% of the population were still living in poverty. While some in the US and in other western nations were trumpeting about the way Bolivia was ‘developing’, the real situation was nothing of the sort.
Gas and oil had always played a big part in the Bolivian economy. As one of the three “hydrocarbon gusher states” of South America, the reliability of supply and low price of the oil fed the growing demand of US gas guzzlers. ‘Reforms’ introduced by the government under the orders of the IMF, saw gas and oil production ramped up and a program of rolling privatisation of the industries was ordered. Over a decade later, to quote the Christian Science Monitor, “It's no wonder … that the poor are demanding more of their governments. Oil and gas wealth is not trickling down to them.” This comment was made in relation to the social and political conditions that Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador all share. These three nations are rich in natural resources but each suffers the same chronic disease, western greed and indifference.
The indifference is fuelled by the complicit reporting that is distributed as ‘news’ and regurgitated by a lazy press and electronic media. The greed is fuelled by the promise of richness if we invest in this or that fund without asking what the funds themselves are investing in. While our news feeds lead with the story of the resignation of the latest Bolivian president, Carlos Mesa, what we don’t hear about are the brave acts carried out by the thousands of ordinary Bolivians who have decided to take back what is rightfully theirs.
Walking for hundreds of kilometres peasant ‘armies’ marched to the capital, La Paz, and blockaded the presidential palace. Putting themselves between the barrels of guns and the walls they defied the military and sustained their calls for the re-nationalisation of their oil and gas industries. A referendum called by the outgoing president on this matter revealed that 87% of the population backed the renationalising of the oil industry and 92% want to see both oil and gas fields renationalised as well. That means the oil companies would be paid for the service of pumping the resources out of the ground but the profits of their sale would go back to the state. In a little over 12 months the present crisis has reached its crescendo and set a dangerous precedent.
With their backs to the wall Bolivians declared that nothing could be taken from them because they already had nothing. The biggest problem now facing the US backed developers, the western corporate media and governments like ours, is the problem of the good example. This small, impoverished nation is doing what many others want to do. Unlike Venezuela where Hugo Chavez can be painted as a renegade individual, it’s fairly hard to paint a whole population as being renegade. With no apparent central leadership (although there are some emerging leadership figures such as Evo Morales) there can be no ‘target’ of vitriol as such. The Bolivarian Revolution is usually associated with the Chavez reforms in Venezuela but we should not forget that it takes its name from the founder of the state we now know as Bolivia. While our young people lie in quiet repose watching Big Brother and thinking about how they wish they were Greg or Christie the youth of Bolivia and Venezuela are making history.
The problem of the good example is something the producers of Big Brother have no problem with – it doesn’t enter their collective head. On this count alone one could despair and lose hope but to do so would be to miss the point. The opportunities for quite repose and the freedom to enjoy the vicarious pleasures of Big Brother are numbered. The growing number of Australian unemployed and the ongoing attacks on the basic wage should be our clarion call. While our governments croak on about the need to inspire youth and so called ‘community leaders’ bleat about the need to offer young people positive experiences, why is it they don’t promote the great work being done by those with very little in places far far away? Oh, I forgot. To do that would mean the water cooler talk might turn from watching Big Brother to getting rid of the Big Brother in the executive suite. Can’t have that now can we? Or perhaps that is exactly what we need.