Overview of Land and History 37TUNUPA Makes a Point
Historians and political scientists at the Solón Foundation
newsletter, TUNUPA, study such issues. In a 2001 newsletter,
TUNUPA raised several questions: ‘After fi ve years of
capitalisation, why are the returns from capitalised companies
only 3 per cent? [Prior to its privatisation, the Bolivian oil
company made signifi cant enough profi ts to contribute 57
per cent of the government budget.] Why do the capitalised
enterprises, as a whole, provide less in tax revenue to the State
than they did before they were capitalised? Why are we Bolivians,
who own 49 per cent of the shares, not allowed to name our
representatives to the boards of directors of the capitalised
companies? Why do the Pensión funds issue documents saying
that they own these shares when Bolivian citizens are supposedly
the owners (of these shares)?’The Political Landscape
Prior to the time that Nelson Mandela was being elected
president of South Africa,
Victor Hugo Cárdenas, a full-
blooded Aymara Indian who
speaks various indigenous and
European languages, was elected
vice-president, and Remedios
Loza, a Chola woman who wears
the traditional bowler hat and
rounded, ornate skirts of her
culture, was elected to parliament.
Neither the neoliberal Cardenas
nor the populist Loza were
sustainable political forces, but
they were indicators of an inevitable future.
These events signalled a direction in contemporary Bolivia
which downgraded the respect attached to assimilating to
Creole ways, replacing it with the undigested slogan ‘Unity
in diversity.’ As a rigid economic stratifi cation bordering on a
caste system begins to be dismantled, the barriers between
Bolivians have been slowly but surely breaking down.
It used to be that a white or not-
so-white Bolivian would deny any
indigenous background. Today,
it is typical for most Bolivians
of Spanish heritage to proudly
affi rm that they, like all Bolivians,
have Indian blood. But balanced
race relations ultimately depend
on the sharing of political and
economic power. Happy slogans
and demagogic public relations
campaigns can only go so far. The
shift in power inevitably involves
confl ict, for the privileged do not
give up their positions gleefully.