Bolivistan: Bolivia

Intro, but this needs to be edited into a coherent flow. It will be soon.

added to 25 Oct

This section fun sting in tale intro..

section 2 the start from scratch

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LOTS to be put in here.

Watch the movie Even The Rain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_the_Rain

though it is a tad sexist (being a Spanish director) in that it does not emphasise how the babes of Bolivia bravely fought the nasty corporations....and won. Many giving their lives in that fight.

My own film - there is much more.

The most amazing people i have ever had the pleasure of just BEing among.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17oeuEhvgjp0KLUKklSn30OvT1RjJHH6L?usp=sharing

In the above mega.nz folder the film clip at the bottom - 20171215_193646

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tqMsSGiclzQt0_uPFa9S74xYMysPMmHA/view?usp=sharing

and those a little earlier that wonderful day 15 December 2017, me I am in paradise. Having had a lifelong 'affection' for a certain dark haired darkish lady Ms Baez - i would often say " i brought myself up on the songs of Joaney.." and it is true. Though one must also mix in the greatest of European thought, Thomas Bernhard, Hannah Arendt, Kafka, Mann, Hesse and especially Slavenka Drakulić

Croatian journalist

who's book They Would Never Hurt a Fly should be enforced reading for anyone with a mind

Here is THE thing, of 'politics' that in this country seemed to me above 'politics'. And the only time in my life i was truly stumped.

My feeling from the moment I arrived in this country a few days earlier was one of what a truly happy place - and i don't mean some façade of tourist knickknacks and bullshit, because i have all my life been a nomad and real 'traveller' - A Rough Guide type. off the beaten track. But his place really was different, from the smile on the face of the immigration officer in his military fatigues having had a bit of a peer at my passport lifts his head .." " Shhhimmonnn.. [please ...not not even 'Mr C'] ...welcome to Boliviahhhh..." And his wide smile was the first sincere one i had seen for many a year. And it seemed to be the only currency that was welcome in this bizarrely part utopian "poorest country in South America" according to bourgeois bullshit thinking like Wikipedia..

Anyway...having arrived and soon becoming aware of an 'opposition' movement very prominently protesting the fact that Morales hadn't seemingly accepted a referendum 18 months earlier which limited his presidency to no more, off you go... constitutionally, one was very conflicted: obviously by all measures this remarkable "farmer boy" president had done something remarkable with his people. The first stable lasting 'indigenous' president of any South American country. One is automatically on his side. And the place ticks over fine. But on hanging around on the JB pickup in the "square of revolutionaries" (XXX fill in name later) i started to meet wonderful happy people saying or shouting "NO ES NO" = no you lost the referendum, pack your bags now... of course i added my mobile phone number to every petition i can find mainly so the JB in charge of the petition had it 'on file.'..in a red pen with my hotel room number next to it

having done a little speech at each petition trestle table as to why i had the right to take part... (i have recordings this aint no fantasy memoir) - and paradise is a place where no fat bossocracy buts in with reasons like not avin the right fuckin papers you CANNOT join their petition...every single one was thankful... that kind of sincere 'thankful' the cynical west doesnt believe in any more...

"please... yes... can we take a photo of you nice man from West signing our petition ... says we are better than his people we have balls... ['cojones' sounds so much nicer when a spanish native is saying it to you face if she is a gorgeous JB...]"

Unfortunately it wasn't at the level a few years later of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Bolivian_protests but as all the JBs were milling around the trestle tables of "No Es No" and one couldn't see any No es YES demonstrators (i.e. = splendid chap, and we will allow you one little faux pas as in ignoring the 48/52 referendum, stay on for another term if you want...)

which really would have been my own position - as long as there wasnt evidence of tyrannical unpleasantness; as long as the momentum was being kept going of his Movement Towards Socialism party (i mean what an intelligent name is that!!) . And this clearly was the case as USA had virtually put Bolivia on the same sanctions travel ban level as Cuba.

And anyway real change - moving his vey poor country from a crony capitalist bossocracy, and all the bosses whitey - most with such Yankee Imperialist backing they may as well be working for the CIA, a huge change required, that had only started a decade earlier, takes time.

Politics should be [fun]:

Having spent several days wandering around

" oh my ... she is an even more beautiful Joan than the last one i chatted up on the last street corner... i am dead and in heaven....

".... but hark what is this...a whole fuckin square of 'em millin' around... loitering....and not a whitey in sight..."

Only a little later, having managed to chat up ones very very most beloved Joaney - love at first sight, and then....doing my speech in the square of revolutionaries directly into her eyes... "ladies.... yes feminism is a fine word and i wish you well tonight you feminist Marchers of the No es No... especially with those big motherfiucker machine guns trained on us all from around the square... big proper ones and we can see the fingers on the triggers twitchin.... but forgive some wise words from a mere gringo.... and a male one at that.... feminism is a fine word, but ... what is it REALLY...if you ask me [turning to JB # 1] its just making sure he does half the bloody housework...always..."

(the last laugh on me being a few weeks of Facebook stalking later turns out the last laugh is on me,

as it should be

that JB

# 1 didnt have that problem being she was the only lesbian in Bolivia..)

But ... having had the most paradise day and evening of life - 'politically' - meaning the real version. Running around WITH a whole gang of gorgeous JBs... it SHOULD be fun...

it brings into relief the sort of questions that are always in the 'West' confused and overcomplicated, and even in Bolivia, hard, being utterly in heavenly love with a whole gang of JBs...from the 'other' side... and not having met any JBs from the No es Yes side...

One is biased.

But.. must somehow try to retain ones mind...

Which only a fool will say is possible - its all just a game...

However. This is also a story which i need to research how it can be simplified for you: 2019 the ONLY mad hairdyed barby bimbo [ relevant - THE symbol of beauty in Bolivia is all the babes especially the older ones show off their gorgeous long undyed hair!!!!!] Christian fundamentalist madwoman [ relevant - i never saw one bit of loony religion anywhere!!!] harridan nutjob is shoehorned in by CIA - Morales threatened he will go the way of Allende... now who in their right mind is going to resist the same ole....

death sentence.

But they did...to some extent (supporters of MAS) .. but all the 'left' in Europe even Tariq if i recall, late 2019 basically said "that's it... Bolivia fucked up the wrongun by CIA as usual...oh well wonderful 'experiment' but destined to fail as it has.... "

And then ... 2020...something happened...

And i don't quite know how it happened but there were elections and they seemingly were 'fair' and that 48/52 ...well of course it wasnt quite like that it was a referendum about one chappie being just a tad full of himself, and in fact the referendum 'failed' in that the constitutional item it was set up to maintain (time limitation on any individual presidency number of terms) in fact was overturned in courts a year later as against most basic human rights (not to be time limited), so Morales could have stayed in 'legally'..

Anyway.... the fuckers went and did it... all those bowler hatted babes... mustv put the fear of god even up the CIA's jaxis....

because they were 'allowed' to have an election in the year everyone else was moaning... and i believe quite bloodlessly they voted out the CIA and went back to supporting MAS even more than before...

And i was right to chase around the No es No babes ... even if i really couldnt for a moment decide which on earth way to 'vote' had i one...

politics just: no one has the first idea of what will happen next

so...

do your best

and smile when you are on the wrong side

that maybe turns out to have BEEN right

but never be smug

And above all though of course lives depend on politics, never ever take it, or oneself if operant politically, too seriously

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24 Oct 2022

Right to business:

The day is relevant.

Sat in a library somewhere in England.

Listen to audio XXX (recording of the mad disgrace even a library is in this awful country where no one any more can remember to shut the fuck up and be QUIET -)

It could be any library in England, or wales.

It should be either sex, but it rarely is.

My long long experience is that it is the women of this land who have taken it upon themselves to destroy that which was a rule for millennia - when we need to read, we need to also think and concentrate. And yet as if Harvey Weinstein and co seemed somehow to rise them above the rule of natural lore - nope...not any more. And god forbid if someone especially male says "shhhh.."

In fact that perhaps is a starting point.

Why? And in one word 'what'? ...was it about the place.

In one word - though inadequate, soul.

And here is the hard bit.

So, I will need to likely do a lot of work on this. But it is not ancient history, even if the way 'media' has become perverted by the clickbait and self publicist crowd, even in respect of the one place i have known where that five years ago had not yet overwhelmed.

'Planning', which would be the wrong word, a trip to Bolivia at the last minute almost five years ago to the day, and using the internet then (a reminder of how it has changed), there were only 4 or 5 films on youtube relating to Bolivia. And they were about the politics.

Yuck...you will think.

Again that is almost the project here.

There were several citizen made films about the women of Bolivia and how they were leading the movements you will see described in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_gas_conflict

From the former

Between January 1999 and April 2000, large-scale protests erupted in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third largest city, in response to the privatization of water resources by foreign companies and a subsequent doubling of water prices. On 6 August 2001, Banzer resigned from office after being diagnosed with cancer. He died less than a year later. Vice President Jorge Fernando Quiroga Ramírez completed the final year of his term.

However it is almost as if some rewriter of history has swept through all this more 'official' material. Because in 2017, quite correctly as i subsequently discovered, especially the initial spark to gradual revolution throughout the first half of the 2000s, was set by mainly extremely brave wonderful ordinary working class women.

We can have all the fine sounding scholarship of pages like the gas conflict page but none seem to credit the fact that Bolivia was a country almost entirely owned by American capital and henchmen, still, in the late 90s, as it had been in reality, for more than a century, and it was that initial stand taken by these women that gave 'LICENSE' to all the future mini revolutions that within half a decade had entirely transformed their country.

These magnificent women many who were seriously injured or killed, set THE example to everyone else. And without that example likely the country would still be as it was prior the turn of this century.

And then there was film - mysteriously on youtube no more - of how women (from the early 2010s) would angrily (and amusingly) face down any modern liar politician who they thought was betraying their fine political evolution.

All very well. And a story that visiting the pace December 2016 I would hear from the women i met there repeated. truth. And I don't like it that the rewrites of wikipedia the last few years seem to have neglected to retain that truth of that crucial period.

But then what. As that is ten or fifteen years ago - how the stand these fine women took resulted in relatively rapid and relatively bloodless total societal political change. Prior mid 00s whitey owned almost everything. And as is usual in countries like this (Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Love in The Time of Cholera wonderfully riffs upon) the 'upper classes', though preferring to breed with light skinned, sometimes let the odd wiggly one slip and the 'mulatto' arose as a class among themselves, which everyone knew meant of wealthier part ancestry - even if the white half would deny ancestry, as the whitey was always of some relative wealth, compared to his dark skinned bedmate.

In short in Bolivia over a few hundred years a stable whiter section arose who to the corporate colonisers of the early 20th c were more acceptable as their local managerial class and thus wealth followed even subtle skin tone. The darker majority (70 or 80%) hardly got a look in.

Wonderfully - as i heard with my own ears, often, that whitey overclass almost entirely accepted the darker 'indigenous' new political ruling class arising in the mid 00s. I put 'indigenous' so as it is all very mixed up - one could be a tad eugenically inclined and say that one can wander around seeing the obviously original Andean face and the rest but it seems near on half the people don't wish to be identified as anything along 'racial' lines. How wonderful - a post 'racial' society in the making perhaps.

Anyway to business. As it is in my opinion what took place from around 2017 that is why this country is for the second time the most interesting and NON cynical place i know of in respect of 'politics'. What it is for.

They too had a referendum in 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/22/bolivia-evo-morales-president-national-referendum-fourth-term

it too went 48 / 52

And the parallels could not be more perfect - Most 'soulful' people (or we may have said in UK 20+ years ago 'right thinking people') knew Morales had been a force for true wonderful 'good' than any minor negative traits.

But then to hear as I did the people - many, say, without cynicism " he was our new fresh start - start as we mean to go on..we loved him...... he may have been good for us, and of course he was, but we must hold him to perfect standards or we become like all the rest of you..he lost the vote......'No es No'.. democracy must be pure here..."

And then what.

Well in short - to be written up later, but the 'forces' of business - ie CIA backed, quite clearly had him and his party ousted - 2019, and in a effect subject to partial coup.

But...only a year later while the world moaned, these magnificent people managed to resist (what even I thought was an inevitable return to CIA dominant politics) and held a general election which Morales' party won hands down.

An almost entirely peaceful re-revolution. Never mind 'handling' of the delicate matter of such a near draw referendum, and hardly anyone said a thing about this. Not even on the 'left'.

Well fuckem...i love that place. I shall. Though only as an example to stuck whiteys....such as the Brits.

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online resources BUT there is so little good stuff

A few films i saw 4 years ago of hilariously vicious ranting bowler hatted babes attacking a woman politician who turned out to be a dodgy crony capitalist have gone...

And one good one about what REALLY happened in mid 00s gone...

i must track them down if possible. I have great record keeping skills

quick first smattering:

will be much improved later on.

treat the NGO woman with caution. All intelligent thinkers knew by early 00s NGOs with white Messiah complex almost always do no real good. Except for their CV and expensive de riguer Discovery 4wd sales . I have included her as there is almost no film from pre about 2017

Maybe i need to go back there and make a real film..... companera required !! .because women - brave wonderful dont fuck with me or i will strangle you with my gorgeous long unhairdyed hair women...were the true warriors who started all this from about 2003... and they won! Against (defacto) THE most Goliath of all Goliaths in this modern era.

And guess what Western women! It seems to me that because of that - everyone knew in 2017 that the whole of their wonderful new politics was started largely by these courageous women who lost lives .. the total 100% full respect and acceptance automatically in society for women as pure equals is something i have never encountered anywhere..they dont need your metoo, or if in uk, Olympic gold medal in false allegations (i do lore - it is winner !!) because they are esteemed for the RIGHT reasons, they equally took part..in fact begun, what was then won. And were prepared to go all the way no matter what.

Thats what i call a REAL woman...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Bolivian_general_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_gas_conflict

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Socialism_(Bolivia)

BOLIVIA, AN ELECTED REVOLUTION (English subtitles)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAjqpp-xawo&ab_channel=RichardPallas

Report on Bolivia's revolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgKmfiSGPk4&ab_channel=TheRealNewsNetwork

Bolivia: The Grassroots Revolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhUiWqNGl3I&ab_channel=CAFOD

Bolivia: The Melting Glacier