Cocalero Week Part 1: Racism

Dear Laifers I hope this paper to be an extension of the screening of Cocalero and an attempt to highlight some of the points, which I believe, make Evo Morales's presidency significant, not only for indigenous Bolivians but to all Bolivians. I will divide this paper in three sections: Racism, Slavery and Solutions for a New Bolivia. I will post each section separately allowing for them to be unique documents and hoping that a shorter version of the paper will be easier for the reader to follow.

This will also buy me some time since I've promised many people that I will have something posted here soon. Is just that this paper is taking me longer than I expected to complete and is turning out to be quite long.

I also encourage you to point out any discrepancies and/or things that you find unclear or difficult to understand and maybe add bits that you think I missed in the hopes of updating an improved and full version of it.

Cocalero Week

Part 1: Racism

What has doomed our country is the continuous aspirations to become a modern western society. Ignoring our ancient indigenous laws and labelling them as backwards.

Introduction

Simon Bolivar is often seen as a hero throughout Latin America, including Bolivia whose name honours him: Bolivar=Bolivia. He is the 'father' of many nations, the freedom fighter who has freed us from the Spanish colonial tyranny. But I struggle to view him as such, if we think a bit deeper than that all he has done, at least for Bolivia, was to give our nation away to a much more cruel and frivolous tyrant: the white and mestizo oligarchy. This started from Bolivia's humble beginnings when in 1826 Bolivar's constitution recognises only those who can read and write in Spanish, those with property and those who fought in the battles of independence as Bolivian citizens. Making 90% of people, who lived within the geopolitical borders of Bolivia, nationless. And ever since they've continued, with fervent passion, the work of the Spaniards: to move indigenous history and tradition backwards. They have done so in such a powerful way that today's indigenous people want to distance themselves as far away as possible from their indigeneity and be as European as one can be. This ideology is so intrinsic to our culture that the word indio (indigenous) has become our worst insult.

The struggle for human rights, since the Spanish colonial period, has been a latent aspect of Bolivia's indigenous history. But significant laws that would allow for some rights have not appeared until the 20^th century. Being the constitution of 1938 promulgated by German Busch the first one: the abolition of slavery. But this happened only on paper; because the colonial mindset of our governors of the time would not allow for these laws to be put into practice. The second major move was the indigenous congress of 1945 when President Gualberto Villarroel recognised for the first time the existence of an indigenous political voice. In this congress indigenous people from all over Bolivia marched to La Paz where they would share their problems and discuss the solutions. But only in 1952 we see the three real moves that will attempt to fold Bolivia's history. The first being universal suffrage which makes all of the Bolivian population political citizens; the second was the 'abolition' of slavery with the introduction of an agrarian reform; and lastly a real move towards economic independence with the nationalisation of the mines. Sadly the only true success was the universal suffrage and the other two have been nothing but utopian ideologies that never materialised. Slavery still exists in Bolivia today and we are far from being economically independent.

Racism

We are a racist nation. Because we are raised upon the principle of emulating the west in order to be good; and today, we expect to be called a western nation. How do we achieve this? By distancing ourselves from the 'primitivism' of our indigenous traditions; by accepting, as the righteous way, the west's standards of wealth through individual capitalism, their standards of culture through Hollywood and their standards of beauty through silicone. This western expectation has not only divided and confused our nation but has also killed our self-esteem and our dignity. Hence our worst insult: indio. The consequence of this is that we live our lives without realising that this is what has kept us doomed in constant poverty. Because we have failed to ask ourselves: is this the right way to be?

I hope that my own personal experience would help illustrate what I said above. I went to an elitist school in the Santa Cruz suburban area of Las Palmas. I was thought in English and had 15 classmates. One year, out of those 15 students one was an indigenous person, Fidel, the son of a police coronel. He was infamous for not attending class and one day our teacher cleared our suspicions as to the reason for this constant absence: a struggle to fit in. To which our teacher demanded an effort from us to make him feel more accepted.

Santa Cruz is an interesting city; if you visit some parts of it you would have never guessed that you are in Latin America's poorest country. Some areas have huge marble mansions, country clubs filled with green golf courses, clear olympic pools and huge four wheel drives. But if you adventure yourself to the city's boundaries you will see the reality in which most people live in. Needles for me to describe them to you, you've seen them being exploited by hundreds of NGOs such as World Vision, Children’s' trust and Oxfam...

But a question that you often ask yourself and could never quite answer is why such contrast exists? We live in a feudal nation where a handful of oligarchs, descendants of our colonial lords control Santa Cruz's fertile soil and all its produce. And racism has been one of their most important weapons.

Anyway, back to Fidel and my school. Mario, a classmate and a future oligarch, in a sarcastic tone tells us that he saw Fidel hanging around Pampa de la Isla (one of those poor areas) with some indios. After experiencing such shame how can Fidel ever came back to school? Hence why we've never seen him again.

The Slavery section is coming soon.