So long Bolivia, I hardly knew ya

After a couple days enjoying the sights of Lake Titikaka (yeah I know, I like saying it too) I crossed the border and headed to Peru. This wasn´t my original plan. I was thinking of taking my time and slowly working through Bolivia and seeing all the sights and enjoying the terrible shape the Bolivian economy is in.

But for reasons that I still don´t really understand I´ve got to get to Lima faster than I originally thought. And that means running through Bolivia and Peru. Bolivia is truly a beautiful country, well atleast the parts of it that I´ve seen. It´s stuck right in the middle of the Andes mountain range and the Amazon jungle, and is home to the birthplace of the once great Incan Empire.

But even with these things going for it, Bolivia is the poorest country in South America and there is evidence of that everywhere you look. The people are generally pretty nice, which has actually been true of just about everywhere I´ve been. And based on the people I talked to they seem a little more optimisitic these days since they elected their latest President, Evo Morales.

Morales´ election is interesting for several reasons, but I find myself happy for the Bolivians because for the first time since the conquistador Pizarro ordered Atahualpa to be strangled an indigenous Andean is the head of state of this land. Given that something like 60% of Bolivia is ethnically categorized as indigenous I find this quite fascinating.

Actually Morales is the 2nd head of state in Latin America of indigenous ancestry, after his only real ally Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. And like Chavez, Morales rode to election victory by appealing to the downtrodden populus of his country and promising to defy the will of the latest would be conquistadors, the United States of America and especially our President George W. Bush.

Morales has already halted the coca erradication programs that Bolivia previously participated in and has nationalized his countries oil and gas supplies, although it remains to be seen what exactly that means. Given Morales´pedigree as a former coca-grower and current socialist none of this is too suprising.

And given my long standing history as a believer in the innate goodness of the free-market I initially felt disdain for all of this. But after talking with several Bolivians it´s hard not to sympathize with them.

They say that coca is a form of life in the harsh Andes. It helps the locals deal with the altitude, hunger and harsh weather or the this region. And just because the western world seems to love putting a refined by-product of a mostly harmless plant up their nose they don´t want have to have their lands poisoned and their way of life taken away from them.

They point to the ¨liberalization¨ of the 80´s forced upon them by the IMF and WorldBank, two institutions basically controlled by the US Government, and wonder how someone can justify the fact that the same conglomerate that forced their country to put all it had of value up for sale came and bought it that stuff on the cheap. So when Morales talks about nationalization, it resonates with the people. Even though they know they don´t have the money or expertise to truly control their own energy suplies.

Of course it´s tempting and even politically correct to point to the evil imperialists as the source of all the problems in South America, especially countries like Bolivia, but that neglects the fact that the people themselves seem to keep putting these charasmatic strong-men in charge, who lack any idealogy and inevitably degrade to being corrupted by their own power. Like most things I think the answer is not so simple that it can be summed up in the time I´m willing to devote to thinking about it.

I still believe in the power of the free-market. But sometimes I forget the inherent assumptions that underlie liberal economic theory. Economists tell us that the free-market leads to the most efficient distribution of goods assuming that all the players act rationally, perfect information is available and capital is readily available. Of course none of this holds true in the real world, and even less so in Bolivia.

Ultimately I think capitalism is a lot like democracy. The worst form of economy that exists, except all the others. I´m not sure where this leaves us, but as long as one sides continues to exploit the advantages they have, there will always be a backlash from the otherside who resents this and that will lead to what we have today. While Bolivia might not have any real ability to harm the mighty empire of the US of A, grudges last a long time and the death of a thousand pin-pricks is not any more desirable than going out with a bang.