2019-10-26_The_Economist_UserUpload.Net

32 The Americas The EconomistOctober 26th 2019

2 national guard is composed mostly of sol-

diers trained for combat, not policing, with

a new logo on their uniforms, says Alejan-

dro Hope, a security analyst. It does not al-

ways go to areas with the most violence. A

tenth of the force is nabbing migrants to

please President Donald Trump.

amlo’s crime-fighting plan is “not a

broad strategy for improving law enforce-

ment”, says Mr Hope. Elements of such a

strategy, such as raising the quality of state

and local police forces and strengthening

the judiciary, are missing from it.

Chapo junior had barely been whisked

to safety when the internet began flooding

with narcocorridos, flattering ballads about

gangsters that often featured his father’s

audacious escape. “The reckless govern-

ment went to wake up the child,” crooned

one singer. “Now they woke him up and

they don’t know what to do.” With a few

small changes, it is the same old song. 7

A

mong pablo escobar’sfewendear-

ing qualities was his love of animals.

In the 1980s the drug lord brought per-

haps a half-dozen hippos to join the

rhinos, giraffes, zebras and camels at his

zoo at Hacienda Nápoles, his mansion

east of Medellín. After he was killed in

1993, anti-narcotics agents moved the

camels and zebras to other zoos (the

giraffes predeceased him). They did not

tangle with the big, aggressive rhinos

and hippos, which went free.

The rhinos, which are less hardy,

quickly died out. The hippos, though, are

thriving, in part because big cats and

hyenas, their predators in Africa, are

absent from Colombia. At least 50 adult

hippos wallow happily in the Magdalena

river, 18km (11 miles) from Hacienda

Nápoles. “We might be dealing with 200

hippos in 20 years,” says David Echeverri,

a biologist at the Regional Corporation

for the Negro and Nare Rivers (Cornare).

Other species are not faring so well.

The hippos are competing for food and

destroying their habitats. That is a threat

to the local manatees, an endangered

species in Colombia. Hippo dung sucks

oxygen from riverside marshes, doom-

ing some fish.

The easiest answer would be to deal

with the hippos the way Escobar did with

people who got in his way. But after

hunters, acting on government orders in

2009, shot Pepe, one of Escobar’s original

hippos, because he was stomping on

crops, animal-rights activists sued the

government.A courtrulingnowprohib-

itshuntinghippos.Zoosdon’twant

them.Localauthoritiesdon’thavethe

moneytosterilisehipposquickly.Bythe

timetheyneuterone,fourorfivemore

areborn,saysMrEcheverri.Sending

thembacktoAfricaisnotanoption.The

Colombianpopulationisinbred.Noone

knowshowtheirgeneswouldaffectthe

Africanherd.Andtheymightcarrydis-

easeslethaltoAfricanfauna.

Thelasthopeisbirthcontrol.Scien-

tistsareworkingonit,andsaythatif no

hippo-specificcontraceptiveisreadyby

theendoftheyearthey’lltryoutonethat

worksonpigs.Theyexpectopposition

fromanimallovers.Thescientists’re-

sponse:thinkofthemanatees.

How tohandleEscobar’snarco-hippos

Colombia

BOGOTÁ

Scientists are workingona contraceptive

Escobar’sheaviesarestillscary

J

ust weeksafter rains extinguished wide-

spread forest fires, Bolivia is burning

again. Convinced that President Evo Mo-

rales is trying to steal the presidential elec-

tion held on October 20th, supporters of

the opposition set fire to the headquarters

of the electoral authorities in at least five

provinces, clashed with police and govern-

ment supporters and toppled a statue of

Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s late socialist

leader. On October 23rd, with no winner de-

clared, civic organisations throughout the

country held a general strike. They said the

protests would stop only if the electoral

court called new elections or declared that

a second round would be held in December

between Mr Morales, a leftist, and Carlos

Mesa, his centrist rival.

Hours after polls closed the electoral

court stopped publishing the results of the

rapid count, which is based on photo-

graphs sent from voting stations. With 84%

of ballots counted, it showed Mr Morales

with a seven-point lead over Mr Mesa. The

president needs a ten-point gap to avoid a

runoff. When reporting resumed a day lat-

er, Mr Morales had his ten-point lead. The

head of an observer mission from the Orga-

nisation of American States (oas) said he

was “profoundly concerned” about the “in-

explicable” change in the tally.

As The Economistwent to press, Mr Mo-

rales’s lead had narrowed again, to 9.3%

points with 98% of the ballots tallied in the

official count. If the gap does not widen

again, there should be a second round. Mr

Mesa, who could unite the opposition,

would have a good chance of ending Mr

Morales’s 13 years in power. Even if that

happens, the anger on both sides caused by

the confused vote tally is likely to linger.

The electoral court, which is manned

mainly by Morales loyalists, has given no

convincing explanation for the pause. On

October 22nd its vice-president resigned,

saying the decision to stop the rapid count

had “resulted in the discrediting of the en-

tire electoral process, causing an unneces-

sary social convulsion”. The oashas now

accepted an invitation from the govern-

ment to audit the election.

Tensions were high before the poll.

Hundreds of thousands of Bolivians took

to the streets to protest against the candi-

dacy of Mr Morales, who is running for a

fourth term in defiance of the constitution

and of a referendum vote. The candidates’

responses on the night of the election fu-

elled the flames. When the rapid count

stopped, Mr Mesa accused the government

of electoral fraud. Mr Morales declared out-

right victory.

The interruption in vote-counting re-

minded many of what happened in Hondu-

ras in 2017, when the president, Juan Or-

lando Hernández, went from laggard to

leader after a mysterious lull. Mr Hernán-

dez’s victory sparked months of protests in

which at least 23 people died.

No one has been killed in Bolivia’s prot-

ests. But tempers are still high. While Mr

Mesa’s supporters fume, the president’s

fans see the smouldering buildings that

house the electoral court as evidence of an

attempt to disenfranchise them. Mr Mo-

rales said the narrowing of his lead showed

that the opposition and foreign powers are

staging a coup. Just half of Bolivians will

accept the legitimacy of the next president,

whoever he is. Bolivia may burn again. 7

Is the government trying to commit

electoral fraud?

Bolivia’s election

Evo just won’t go