The Bolivian People 59Demonstrators and Street Vendors
In the mid 1980s, hyper- infl ation threatened to tear the
country apart. The programme of invited Harvard consultant,
economist Jeffrey Sachs, was free of demagoguery. “If you
are brave, if you are gutsy, if you do everything right,” he
said, “you will end up with a miserable, poor economy with
stable prices ... only with stable prices do you have any sort
of chance at surviving into the future.”
Bolivians understood that such shock treatment would
leave massive layoffs and grossly inadequate social services
in its wake. But both government and opposition agreed that
it had to be done.
Bolivians were bracing themselves for the short-run
consequences of the neoliberal shock treatment. Two decades
later, with monetary stability a concrete achievement, the
short run had become the long-run and unemployment and
lack of social services continued to stifl e Bolivians, from the
working middle class on down. Government representatives
were heard rephrasing Jeffrey Sachs’ admonishment: “Before
we had hyperinfl ation and misery,” they would say.
Two main characters emerged from the orthodox free
market austerity experiments—the subsistence street vendor
and the political demonstrator. Both of these personages have
been present throughout Bolivian history, but today they have
evolved into a more tenacious version of themselves.
Both street vendors and demonstrators will be a
fundamental part of the visitor’s image of Bolivia.
The (Mostly) Peaceful Protester
Grand marches may occupy various parts of a city
simultaneously, rendering an accurate crowd count impossible.
In rural areas, well-planned roadblocks can paralyse the
country. Those vehicles lucky enough to lose themselves from
urban bottlenecks, take alternative routes only to encounter
another throng. It’s even more diffi cult for truck and bus
drivers in rural areas, where no alternative route from the
blockaded one may exist. Marches and demonstrations are
militant but typically peaceful. Occasionally members of
splinter groups heave rocks at police or at vehicles that try