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007 Bolivian socialist?

Published 14 November 2008

The plot of the Quantum of Solace makes reference to a real struggle carried out by the social movements of Bolivia - but it wasn't an action hero that secured changes, it was ordinary people

Has Evo Morales found a new comrade in 007?

A rusty pipe hangs from an improvised water tower, and drips miserably into the desert air. A crowd of simple-looking people in traditional Andean clothes, their dark faces furrowed with worry, surround it with empty buckets and containers, waiting for the water to come gushing out, but the pipe has run dry. They turn away in dismayed resignation.

This is one of the silent set-pieces in the new Bond film Quantum of Solace, set in Bolivia, which takes as its inspiration the struggle to control water and other natural resources in the developing world. Bond is on a mission to stop a faux-environmentalist billionaire from secretly appropriating all of Bolivia’s water supply by replacing its left of centre president with a handpicked despot, in a coup which the USA blithely ignores.

As in most Bond films, the ‘Bolivian’ extras (no footage was shot in Bolivia) provide a voiceless, picturesque background against which the heroics can be played out. The plot of the film makes reference to a real struggle carried out by the social movements of Bolivia to resist privatisation of water supplies, and while it is broadly sympathetic, it is also based on a central conceit: that the Bolivian people need the intervention of a suit-clad British action hero to save them from grasping transnationals and corrupt governments.

However, recent history in Bolivia contradicts this: the long struggle to reclaim sovereign control over natural resources has been fought by everyday women and men, through direct action and democratic participation, and control has been won with nary a high-octane plane chase in sight.

One can’t help imagining an alternate version of the scene described above, which would more closely reflect the Bolivian reality. The conversations happening underneath the plaintive music might go as follows. ‘Compañeros’, an old lady might shout, ‘the transnational has taken our water! Something must be done!’ More voices rise in protest, ‘A march on the capital! We should blockade the road! Demand a meeting with the President! This cannot continue!’

In this astonishingly politically active country, this would be a standard response, not muted resignation. Grassroots-led protests stopped the privatisation of water in Cochabamba in 2000, marking a significant point on the journey to power of current President, Evo Morales. Under his watch, the Bolivian constitution has been rewritten to include access to water as a basic human right, and this stands to be passed into law in January 2009.

As for attempts to topple his government and install a business-sympathetic autocrat, this would meet with short shrift in today’s South America, even if the depiction of the US authorities covertly supporting the coup skates uncomfortably close to reality.

After a wave of violence in September which various international bodies recognised as an attempted coup d’etat, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) threw their weight behind Morales in a resounding declaration of solidarity.

They recognised that he was recently affirmed in his post by 67 per cent of the popular vote, and stated that any attempt to destabilise or overthrow his government was anti-democratic and would not be tolerated.

When the villains in Quantum of Solace affirm ‘we have twenty neighbouring governments ready to recognise the incoming administration as legitimate’, it rings false.

Not only has the Morales government secured natural resources for the benefit of the Bolivian people, but it has also cultivated a strong base of regional support which provides a counterweight to interventionism from the USA or elsewhere.

Isolated left-wing governments falling prey to US-backed coups only to be replaced with bloody dictatorships? Too bad the updated Bond didn’t take into account the political changes in Latin America: like his martinis and speedboat chases, the plot of Quantum of Solace all looks a bit dated.

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12 comments from readers

PPBB
14 November 2008 at 22:51

If only you knew what was really going on in Bolivia! For

a peek look at the Human Rights Foundation:

http://www.thehrf.org/media/100808.html

dgerrard12
15 November 2008 at 01:11

I have been following events in Bolivia from early September, using Google alerts from around the world. The hrf site indicates, in its own way, a "central conceit" that seems to be as unrealistic and, dare I say, simplistic as the one in the movie reviewed above.

Ian Crause
15 November 2008 at 02:50

I'm glad PPBB is concerned.So am I.

Since Morales came to power, the Santa Cruz opposition have - as i witnessed first hand when I lived there and when not one single anglophone press outlet cared to report it, the following occurrences:bomb planting outside TVB, the state broadcaster in the city by a youth in a flak jacket.He was later let off without questioning by the local authorities - not the Federal ones, note; the TV broadcast on the morning of a perfectly legal pro government demonstration in the south of the city by peasants and lefties by the leading junta of the unelected Comite Civico Pro Santa Cruz - we all know who they are by now, I'm sure - who claimed the 'traitors' to Santa Cruz ran the risk of 'provoking' violence against them if they met.An indigenous woman later appeared on the TVB breakfast show and told the audience in quechua not to meet.She held her hand over her own mouth to signify what I assume was aquiescence.I took it to mean the govt in La Paz had told her to tell the govt supporters in the east to avoid confrontation.Fancy deciding to hold a legal public meeting.I can see why Morales and his people are a danger to the civilised whites.

Is this what you mean, PPBB?Are you the only socialist down the yacht club, then?

I know people who had their heads smashed in - in excess of 70 stitches, in fact - for 'looking like the President', ie being a wog.Fancy abusing the human rights of the affluent white boys by parading their brown skin in a taunting fashion.

Yes, I can see your point.

I had a family friend who worked as a low level civil servant in an agricultural dept have his office burst into by what the LA Times recently called, and I quote, 'freedom fighters' and who, once they had pushed the women out of the way who had dived to his protection, held him by the throat, whips and bats in their hands, and forced him, terrified for his life, to denounce the govt and Evo Morales.

Please qualify your earlier post.

Ian Crause
15 November 2008 at 05:16

Sorry, I forgot to mention: the attempted military coup; the assassination plots (which according to long serving and senior Bolvian military officers loyal to Morales originated in Langley, VA); the petrol bombs thrown at Cuban medics treating hitherto too-poor-to-treat Bolivians in the barrios; the staggeringly well coordinated barrage of lies and misinformation poured into the ears of the Cruceño populace, almost as if it was a propaganda exercise carried out by people with prior experience.....hmm...; the massacre of 18 peasants on their way to one of those pesky aforementioned MAS rallies.I went to a few.I wasn't threatened or singled out as a gringo spy.I found the people there to be very civilised, in fact.Quite the opposite of the image of an idelogically whipped up ignorant peasant class á la Cambodia that you, the White House, and indeed the local whites seem to be trying to portray.

Is it possible the right could have set up a Human Rights Foundation to try to redress the balance against those bastard liberals who keep banging on about, err, human rights and other such unprofitable bollocks?

Or are they impartial?

Feel free to reply.Becasue I still may feel, as you pointed out, that I don't really know what's going on in Bolivia.

Riaz Ahmad
15 November 2008 at 18:04

The moral of the story is abudently clear. If you want to live in peace, if you want the poor of your country to share the benefits of the country's wealth then keep America light years away from your shores, they have nothing but mischief and misery to offer.

sinini
16 November 2008 at 14:31

Juan R.

That suffers qque nobody could find out about what really happened in bolivia and that actually keeps on happening, news that are put by the government so that the people of the world believe that nothing is happening, nevertheless the villain of this Evo Morales doing of theirs together with his ministers, arresting to civil innocent only for belonging to the opposition (the same that in venezuela and cuba) embezzling the profit of the gas in bullshit com defence spendings expenses in publicity against the party of opposition leaving that the drug traffickers are walked by the country without the due control and the worst thing that there is no gas in a country where we have reservations for 100 years there is no gas that irony, I think that more movies should do for this motive so that him of shame to the racist this government that the world is not of him afraid.

stibbsy
16 November 2008 at 14:47

It is woefully naïve to think that as the actions of the

right have been reprehensible, the left has been pure.

There is racism, violence and intimidation on both

sides. I know Swedish NGO workers—female

socialists but with blond hair—who have been chased

by Morales supporters; Bolivian NGO workers who

have been attacked—as they were affiliated to USAID.

I’ve had Death to the Yankees! chanted at me; I’m

white and English, not that it would be any less racist if

I was from the States. If you want propaganda, you

need look no further than the government-owned

media.

I think the MAS government is 60% a very good thing

but they’re far from faultless. To suggest pointing out

its democratic deficiencies is a right-wing plot (Ian

Crause) is blindly partisan and a long way from

impartial. I dare say you are very well informed but

you seem to view events through politically censoring

spectacles.

taghioff.info
18 November 2008 at 12:09

The international council of HRF does rather tell the story

http://www.thehrf.org/internationalcouncil.html

And their unwillingness to name their funders is also fairly interesting.

Ian Crause
19 November 2008 at 00:53

I became more partisan by living in Bolivia.I was a labour voting liberal when I went there, but nothing further left than that.

I accept there is a militant left affiliated to the MAS which rarely surfaces in the lowland East, where I was and I understand it has a stronger presence on the altiplano, most famously in El Alto.

This extremist faction which is a militant reaction to the abuses they and their people have suffered for centuries etc, etc,(abuses the Bolivian opposition appear to exist primarily to continue) are not in government at cabinet level.Unless, of course, you pick Alvaro Garcia Linera, probably the most militant member of Morales' cabinet but someone who happens to be a highly educated white middle class intellectual.

The leftwing extremists are scattered through the pressure groups.Whilst the MAS government was elected on the shoulders of these pressure groups as it's core vote, events have shown they do not control it and Morales, due to his elected authority, has on many occasions used his position to tell them to calm down and, literally, to hold fire.

I've had experiences where indigenous people have given me or my partner crap (she's a lightish-skinned girl from the valleys), but I just tell them to stop being stupid because I'm not a rightwinger.I used to tell them 'stop acting like the camba'.That always made them blush with shame.

I don't doubt in La Paz there is more of an attitude against gringos and I don't blame you.I would tell them to fuck off as well.

What I saw in Bolivia is crystal clear in my mind.Systematic and expert attempts to undermine a 'hostile' democracy.If you've read some 20thc latin american history - which I only actually began to do after I'd formed my opinions on the matter purely from first hand experience - then it becomes truly sinister.

Your post seems naive.

Isn't it convenient that after the Morales govt has been given a clean sheet by all reputable electoral and human rights orgs, these guys appear.

Ian Crause
19 November 2008 at 01:06

http://www.counterpunch.org/burbach11182008.html

There you go, son.There's another more detailed account of US coup mongering in Bolivia.Feel free to chase up any of the points made within it.

How can you live in Bolivia and turn a blind eye to this?I couldn't live with myself if I was like you.

Aquiyonomas
03 December 2008 at 21:01

As an Aymara woman in Bolivia, 1st, I concur with stibbsy that the MAS led government is about "60% a very good thing", and I note I was part of that 67% who approved our Brother President's administration to continue and deepen the changes. 2nd, I also attest to the fact that although I am educated or mis-educated in various universities throughout Europe and the USA, I often get little or no attentiveness from city people in any of the 9 Departments in Bolivia when I am on my own or with my own, however- when accompanied by "gringos" or yellowed-hair siblings, whether they be friends, acquiantances or even newly arrived tourists, it seems my city-bretheren topple over themselves to be nice to me and mostly "my group". I realize this internalized racism will take years to change but I am willing to walk the path beside my government, unfettered by what those "opinionologists" of the Miami Herald or the questionable foundations might advance. After all, la Pachamama allows everyone to walk on her, not asking merits but rather providing her generosity.

daggett
05 December 2008 at 14:55