LA PAZ, Bolivia, Sept. 27 -- "Sell the gas?"
It was supposed to be a question, but Reynaldo Perdello snarled when he said it, as if he had just swallowed bad meat. The retired 63-year-old brewery worker sat on a curb on the main thoroughfare in this capital as he spoke, one of nearly 100,000 protesters who have effectively shut down La Paz and five other cities across the country over the past six days.
"We already sold our railways, our airline, our oil [and] our electricity, and the government said that privatization would make us all better off for it," he said. "Well, maybe they're better off, but the rest of us are out of work and hungry. We're poorer than ever, and now they want us to sell just about the only thing left in Bolivia that is worth anything."
He leaned over to spit, then sat up again. His scowl hardened.
"And to go through Chile to do it? Chile already stole our seacoast. I am a Bolivian. And a true Bolivian would rather die than pay Chile for the use of what is rightfully ours," he said. "Chile is the enemy."
Gas, globalization and a century-old grudge are at the center of a dispute that many Bolivians believe has created the gravest crisis in their country, Latin America's poorest, since the restoration of democracy 18 years ago.
Bolivia holds the continent's second-largest reserves of natural gas, and President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada wants to privatize the country's gas utility and sell its product abroad, principally to the United States and Mexico. Under the plan, Bolivia would turn over the entire operation to a private firm in return for royalties ranging from 18 percent to 50 percent of all exploration. That, government officials estimate, could add as much as $500 million annually to the Bolivian treasury, money that they promise would be reserved for social programs and development.
Getting the gas to market would require building a pipeline and a coastal terminal in Peru or Chile, which is closer and, consequently, cheaper.
A majority of the country's 8 million people oppose the plan, polls show, largely because they feel burned by privatizations and other free-market reforms that swept Latin America in the 1990s. Opponents of reforms say that the results in Bolivia were that jobs disappeared, utility costs increased by nearly a third, civil service wages were cut by 12 percent and 80 percent of the population remains desperately poor.
But even more troubling for many Bolivians is the notion of cooperating with their neighbor to the south, Chile, which seized Bolivia's entire coastline and its abundant supply of copper along the Pacific Ocean after a bitter four-year war.
That was 120 years ago.
"Bolivians can definitely hold a grudge," said Carlos Toranzo, a political analyst. "The war with Chile and the loss of our seacoast is the demon that Bolivians have never exorcised."
A newspaper poll this week indicated that 52 percent of Bolivians surveyed flatly oppose privatization of the country's natural gas deposits. But nearly two-thirds rejected the proposal if it relies on a Chilean port, rather than the more costly Peruvian one.
Orchestrated largely by Evo Morales, the runner-up in last year's presidential election and head of the Bolivia's Movement to Socialism party, farmers, retirees, workers and students have taken to the streets to protest the government's plans and other issues, including cuts in pension benefits.
Demonstrators stepped up their pace in the past week, with a series of strikes, marches and roadblocks, leaving thousands of businesses unable to replenish supplies, stranding hundreds of tourists and heightening tensions. Seven people were killed 45 miles north of here on Sept. 20 in clashes with troops sent to rescue 800 people, including 40 foreign tourists, who were trapped by roadblocks.
Many Bolivians, political analysts and journalists say they fear the country may have reached its tipping point. With military officers opposing the sale of natural gas through Chile, the possibility of a coup or even civil war is openly discussed.
At the center is Sanchez de Lozada, a millionaire businessman of whom many voters say they "expected little and got even less." He was elected with only 22 percent of the popular vote when he outdistanced a crowded field of contenders. With no candidate capturing a majority of votes, Bolivia's constitution left Congress to choose the president, rather than to hold a runoff. Sanchez de Lozada got the job in August 2002.
In his first six months in office, riots erupted when striking police officers joined stone-throwing youths in storming the presidential palace to protest proposed spending cuts and income taxes. Sanchez de Lozada called in troops, and 27 people were killed. The violence was reminiscent of a populist revolt in 1952, when the police joined miners to topple a government headed by mining magnates.
"The government keeps trying to do the same things over and over again," said Antonio Peredo Leigue, a member of Congress and Morales's deputy in the Socialist party. "It is comparable to having people freezing to death and you keep trying to add a patch to this sleeve and that sleeve. The people don't need patches; they need a whole new coat."
"I believe," said Jorge Carrasco Guzman, a newspaper publisher, "that we are perilously close to a revolution of some kind."
The engine for the growing protest is the poor but newly assertive indigenous population. Descendants of three Indian tribes account for nearly 60 percent of Bolivia's population, and they have historically been poorer and less educated than the Spanish-descended elite.
Morales's party has capitalized on that unrest, and Bolivians who speak native languages now hold a quarter of the seats in Congress.
"If nothing else is clear to Indians," said Felipe Guispe, an organizer for the Movement to Socialism, "we have come to understand just how indifferent the white political class is to our suffering. We have to take control of our country again if anything is going to change."
Jorge Berindoague Alcocer, the minister of hydrocarbons, said the government is aware of the complaints about previous privatizations and the growing joblessness in the indigenous population. That is why he has proposed funneling all government revenues collected from gas concessions into a special fund devoted to health, education and infrastructure, he said.
"We need to get the people to trust us on this, and that is really the most difficult thing to do," he said. "Bolivia really does have a trust issue."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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