Bolivia special Report

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Contents

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Interview of The Ambassaor of Bolivia, Jorge Cardenas

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Scope for Improvement in Bolivia India Relations

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Identity Versus Unity Solving Common Problems in a Country With 36 Nations

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Information Society in Bolivia

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Evo Morales The Travel So Far

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On the Quality of Democracy Bolivia’s Challenges and Lessons From India

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Opportunities in Bolivia - New windows of Trade and Investment

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Bolivian Tourism on the Rebound

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Bolivians Demand the Right to Chew Coca Leaves

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Photo Feature

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Bolivia - India Bilateral Relations

Published by Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine in association with the Embassy of Bolivia in India.

Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine S-442, Shakarpur School Block, New Delhi - 110092 India Tel. No. 011-32316194 Email : editor@diplomacyandforeignaffairs.com

Disclaimer The opinions/ comments from writers are their own and Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs magazine does not endorse the claims made therein.

MESSAGE Ambassador Jorge Cardenas

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olivia is pleased to open an embassy in the Republic of India and reach one of our main goals to develop deep and better relations with other friendly countries with strong focus on relationships including traditional south to south cooperation and also with non-aligned ones.

It is also important to show India and the region what we are doing as a government. Politically we have defined our future actions in the beginning of this new Pachacuti era, with an important Declaration done in the Island of the Sun on Lake Titikaka called “Manifiesto de la Isla del Sol.” And a long process of consultation to our social movements, indigenous people, working unions and other sectors of the country to plan our future actions with the “Patriotic Bicentennial Agenda for 2025, with 13 ambitious objectives to be achieved in different areas like social, environmental, cultural and economical levels, to grow and be at a higher stage with no illiteracy, full health care, productive areas spread through all over the country in sustainable ways, export energy and value added products and so on.

It is difficult to do it alone. So finding proper partners for fair trade is my mission, as well as being a key player to narrow these gaps between Bolivia and India.

Media is a key partner, so working together will help us to reach India’s audience, step by step in this giant and also diverse country. I thank Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine for bringing this special report on Bolivia.

Best Regards, Amb. Jorge Cardenas Jorge Cárdenas Ambassador of Bolivia A - 2 / 7 Ground Floor, Vasant Vihar New Delhi 110057, India Phone: 11 4606 0934 Fax: 11 4606 0935

May 2013 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | 5

Bolivia Special

Interview

of The Ambassaor of Bolivia, H. E. Jorge Cardenas Y

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our Excellency, President Evo Morales recently said that “since we are also called Indians, India may help us”. What sort of help and cooperation Bolivia would want from India?

Since India being a multicultural and diverse country, we look for tools of development in fields such as agriculture, pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, information technology and telecommunications. We also look forward to people to people engagement. hat are your priority areas regarding your engagement with India?

Developing a fair South to South relationship, being historical partners on the non-aligned movement for years.

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olivia is keen to attract investments in the sectors of hydrocarbon, mining, leather, textiles, etc. Do you see interest from Indian entrepreneurs? What you have to say about the exit of Jindal Steel?

Bolivia is looking for proper partners who understand her people and the government. We look for partnership in both public and private sectors. In the case of Jindal Steel issue, which is under arbitration now, both Bolivia and Jindal Steel want the best solution. My mission is to put both sides on the table and to bring a solution at the earliest.

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here have been hardly any delegation level visits of Bolivians to India. Do you have plans for official visits to India in the coming days?

Latin America in general was not in the agenda of India until recent years, while other Asian countries did. Our Bolivian government decided to move forward with opening an embassy in India and move forward towards improving mutual relationship very quickly.

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resident Morales also talked about visiting India. Are there any plans?

I am sure, our President Evo is travelling more than any previous president. First he started travelling within Bolivia to be in touch with his people, mainly in the rural areas. Then he started visiting places such as Africa, Fiji etc. We are looking for partnerships with like-minded people and sure, India is a priority.

lthough you encourage private institutions, the focus seems to be on public institutions. How do you want to engage with India, a country focusing more on privatization?

There are no limits on business opportunities and relations.

Our priority is to change and improve the living conditions, incomes and production capacity of our people with the Patriotic Bicentennial Agenda for 2025, with clear goals to be reached.

To achieve them we can’t do it alone and we need many partners from the state as well as the private sector to do it together with clear and common objectives, and to conduct business on the right way.

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o you plan to organize trade missions to bring together entrepreneurs from both countries?

Yes, but one has to compare the size and population of both the countries. So we’ll play an active role using the potential areas and businesses in both sides.

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ndian companies can, for example, invest in factories to sell their products to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Chile and other countries. Bolivia has commercial agreements with all countries from South America. Do you have plans to capitalize on the connectivity advantage to attract investors / businesses from India?

Now the market is global and each country plays its own active

role. Being neighbor with Brazil for example is important and many of our border towns are growing faster now due to the small and growing businesses with states like Acre, Rondonia and Mato Grossos North and South. So it’s not only commerce. But energy, food supply, pharmaceutics, mining and others being produced in our country can be sold in the area using Bolivia as a hub.

Here the geographical position of Bolivia in the heart of South America plays an important role, as well as pricing. Cheaper and quality of human resources due to investments in education and training can be utilized.

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he interaction between Bolivians and Indians is limited. How do you want to improve the dialogue process particularly in terms of people-to-people contact and bridge the information gap?

First with the central government has to draw the guidelines and develop an active bilateral agenda that will bridge the needs in both sides.

Then working at the regional level is one of the main objectives that our mission wants to work upon. We also want to show what Bolivia is doing, like Living Well, the Diplomacy of the People for the Life and the defense of Mother Earth, where we have already our own law; rights and social inclusion of indigenous people, woman, elderly and so on.

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s you know India is very strong in telecom, information technology and communications. How do you want to use Indian expertise which is very cost efficient as well?

Information Technology is one of the main advantages of India.

So exploring the industry and the knowhow to work together at all levels is one of the main objectives.

There are already companies in Bolivia like VNL from India building telecommunication towers in the rural areas with solar energy using high-technology, competing with big names with competitive pricing.

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here are accusations that a group of elites controlling the Bolivian economy and that is leading to increasing inequalities. For example, infrastructure in rural and interior areas are very poor as compared to cities. India also had a similar history, however, there are significant improvements. Do you think India or Indian model could help you?

That was in the past, our mission is to show here what Bolivia is doing now. We had a strong colonial legacy that in the last seven years was fought under our government and breaking all the chains of dependency to build a new country for its people till now. Recuperating our strategic resources, products and

services like water, energy, land, and properly managed by our government and its people is mandatory now.

So we want to learn what India is doing now, how it is solving its big contradictions and how it is organizing at the state level for example.

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espite its mineral and hydrocarbon wealth, Bolivia continues to be one of the poorest countries in South America in per capita terms. The Bolivian government is taking a lot of fiscal measures to rectify the issue. Will you please elaborate about your plans to boost the economy?

Not anymore. Bolivia had changed a lot in the past years. With only 10.6 million people, a rich and diverse land in culture and nature our future through our current policies will be better. With the help of hydrocarbons, mining and structural changes, we are investing in social and other productive areas to reduce the social and poverty inequality. This surely did change the poor image and the standard of the country before. Our GDP growth in 2012 was 5.2% and we are in the top five of the region. Our GDP per capita is 2,470 USD, which is 145% more than 2005; exports in 2012 was $11.794 million which is 311% more than 2005; annual inflation in 2012 was 4.2% and other measures like yearly improvement of salaries (20% for 2013). There are investments in social issues like mother and child care, elderly, education, as well as the construction of new modern roads, more schools, and hospitals. A new and modern cable car transportation system will be running the public service of the city of La Paz, to give an example.

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hat are your measures or mechanisms to protect foreign investors in your country?

By assuring proper business with fair trade and let the international investors abroad know that we are in the final stage of designing our new investment law that will give them guarantee.

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hat are your plans for improved India- Bolivia relations?

To be the key connection between the government, industry and its people at all levels, we have an office that will be always open to build mutual relations and bridge the gap of connectivity.

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ast but not least, how do you see your relationship with the US going forward?

It is finding new ways of development but always highlighting the sovereignty and respect for Bolivia. Surely good at people to people relation that you can see in tourism. US is among the top 10 to send visitors to our country.

May 2013 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | 7

Bolivia Special

Identity Versus Unity Solving Common Problems in a Country With 36 Nations

by Katie Kuhn

What is Plurinationalism?

On February 7, 2009, Bolivia changed its official name from the Republic of Bolivia to the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

The name change was one of many reforms brought on by the new constitution, and one which the country’s indigenous had been demanding for years. The indigenous, who make up approximately 70% of the population, have long fought for greater legal recognition of the country’s indigenous heritage, and that recognition is now plastered across monuments, airport welcome signs, and the Presidential Palace. Bolivia is plurinational and proud of it.

Plurinational = Many nations. The problem with this arrangement of society is that it tends to interfere with the creation of one nation. Do Bolivia’s citizens feel nationalism

8 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | May 2013

or patriotism toward Bolivia? Often not. Plurinationalism describes Bolivia all too well, as people identify first as members of a certain tribe, community, or region, with “being Bolivian” as a distant second, third, or fourth. This is particularly true for the indigenous whose communal identity and pride runs especially deep. I asked one indigenous man whether he felt more connection to his indigenous nation or to Bolivia. He started at me blankly, barely understanding the question. “I am Mosetén,” he said. “I have moved to La Paz for work, but I am from the Mosetén pueblo and I will always be Mosetén. Bolivia is an abstraction, but Mosetén is how I grew up and who I am.”

Identification with some entity other than Bolivia extends beyond just indigenous tribes, though. People are paceños, natives of La Paz, they are cruceños, natives from Santa Cruz.

They are collas from the Western highlands or cambas from the Eastern lowlands. But rarely are they Bolivian first. Even in the capital of La Paz, flags representing the La Paz department (a department is equivalent to a US state) line the streets, but Bolivia’s national flag is strikingly absent. Children learn their department anthems in school and sing about their loyalty and pride to their regions and cities. To many, Bolivia is simply a collection of these regions, departments, tribes, and nations.

The indigenous celebrate Bolivia’s label as a plurinational state for the very reason that they feel so little connection to that state: they want recognition for their individual nations.

But the bond citizens have to nations, tribes, cities, and regions limits their patriotism for Bolivia. Nationalism can bring citizens together with a sense of pride and duty to their country and a willingness to work together for the good of society. Because Bolivians feel more loyalty to their tribes or cities than to their country, though, they do not have a common national identity which inspires collective progress.

Indigenous Unity Ironically, though, it is the very indigenous nations that have fought so hard for plurinationalism to be recognized who are now creating a new kind of unity for their country. Each of the thirtysix nations wanted to be recognized as a distinct part of the state through the labeling of Bolivia as plurinational. The celebration of their diversity was a common goal, one which they joined together to achieve. There is commonality in their uniqueness.

The changing of Bolivia’s official name is not, however, the only goal which various indigenous groups have come together to fight for. The indigenous have several common demands all related to their rights as diverse nations. They want territorial autonomy, the recognition of their native lands as independent

entities yet operating within the framework of the state. They want to practice their own native justice systems on these lands.

They want environmental protection of ancestral territories and for the government not to undertake development projects that could damage their forests and parks.

Though each nation is most concerned with its own land’s territorial autonomy, justice system, and environmental protection, the communities know that they cannot face the government individually to demand that their land rights be respected. They must support each other because they know that any individual community’s dispute with the government could soon affect them too. The indigenous are currently embroiled in a bitter dispute with the government over a proposed highway through the indigenous national park TIPNIS (Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure) and have conducted two 600-kilometer marches in as many years to protest the road project. It has not just been TIPNIS residents marching, though.

Leaders and members of indigenous communities from around the country participated, expressing that they were marching against the road through TIPNIS because they knew that it could be their park at risk next.

Protection of ancestral lands is extremely important for the indigenous, because land for them means more than just physical territory; it symbolizes a spiritual connection to an area and an identity. To oppose development projects that could damage a nation’s ancestral land is to fight to preserve that nation’s history and culture. What the indigenous have in common, then, is a desire for the state to recognize and preserve their individual nations and lands. Their core political demands are identical: each community wants its unique identity and territory protected, and the indigenous nations unify to help each one achieve these goals.

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Bolivia Special

The indigenous recognize that the state must balance broader economic concerns with protection of indigenous lands and that environmental protection must not be a narrowly defined issue if the government is to address it. Economic development projects such as highways that will increase trade and benefit the country overall are a priority that the government cannot sacrifice for any individual nation. Because the government must address the concerns of its whole population over those of any one nation, the indigenous know that their best strategy is to demonstrate to the government that environmental protection of indigenous lands is a broad goal that interests a majority of Bolivia’s citizens.

“This is why we need the alliance,” one leader of the indigenous organization CONAMAQ (Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Quillasuyu) explained, “to join forces and fight for a common cause, to defend the dignity and the life and the rivers and the water and the environment.” If the indigenous movement is going to persuade the government to address its goals, it knows that it must in fact be a unified movement rather than individual uncoordinated nations.

Unity of the Broader Public It is not only the indigenous who are unifying to fight for their rights as nations, though. In the last few years, the broader public has joined the indigenous struggle for protection of their lands and rights. Because environmental protection is one of the main demands of the indigenous movement, the public knows that indigenous concerns are its concerns as well. “TIPNIS belongs to all Bolivians, not just to the government and not just to us,” one indigenous leader said during the a protest march lately. “The park is the heart, the lungs of the country - the biodiversity, the flora and the fauna.” Development projects in national parks like TIPNIS affect all citizens who have access to the parks, so the public has risen up to support the indigenous nations in their fight to preserve their ancestral lands.

Several groups who do not share an identity with the indigenous have nonetheless united with them toward the common goal of environmental protection. Non-indigenous activists have joined the long marches themselves or set up vigils in the cities to drum up further support for the indigenous.

People of every skin color and identity have donated food, water, clothing, and medical supplies to the marchers and held rallies in central plazas to support their cause. Student associations, teachers’ unions, women’s organizations, and other social groups have joined in on smaller marches through La Paz. Bolivia’s national labor federation, COB (Central Obrera Boliviana) even threatened to hold a general strike across the country to demand

“Several groups who do not share an identity with the indigenous have nonetheless united with them toward the common goal of environmental protection. Non-indigenous activists have joined the long marches themselves or set up vigils in the cities to drum up further support for the indigenous” that indigenous lands be protected.

At the end of the two-month protest march against the TIPNIS road in 2012, the indigenous occupied La Paz for two weeks while waiting to negotiate with the government. Public support grew over the fortnight, as even those La Paz residents who could not join the occupation wanted to help the indigenous fight for their lands. One group of elderly women brought soup and hot chocolate to the marchers every morning to help them recover from the bitterly cold nights they spent in their tents. I asked one of the women if she was indigenous herself or had family who lived in TIPNIS or other native lands. “Oh no,” she laughed. “I’m from La Paz. I have lived here all my life and so has my family.”

Why was she so dedicated to supporting the indigenous, then?

“These poor marchers, they are trying to defend this country’s nature, its heart. I’m too old to stay with them [outside in La Paz], but I can at least warm them up with a little vegetable soup.”

The small part this woman played in supporting the land rights of Bolivia’s indigenous nations shows that common identity is not necessary for unity. The indigenous and the public work toward the common good through the state, despite their loyalties lying mainly outside of it. La Paz resident, TIPNIS resident, nonindigenous, indigenous, Moséten, Aymara, Quechua, Guaraní - a myriad of primary identities, none of which is actually “Bolivian” does not stop Bolivians from coming together peacefully and constructively to solve common problems. That is unity, and that is the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

about the author Katie Kuhn is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at George Washington University.

She earned her B.A. from Oglethorpe University in 2008, and will complete her Ph.D. in August 2013. She is also a research and teaching fellow at George Washington University, assisting in classes on Comparative Politics and Research Methodology.

Her areas of expertise include Latin American politics, indigenous politics, and social movements. She has conducted fieldwork in Bolivia, and her dissertation focuses on the relationship between the indigenous movement and the government of Evo Morales.

10 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | May 2013

Evo Morales The Travel So Far

by Ruby Pratka

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olivian president Evo Morales has said that in his mother’s time, indigenous people like himself were forbidden to set foot in Bolivia’s cities. Since 2006, however, Morales, 54, has been the man in charge in La Paz. While several other Bolivian leaders in modern times have had some indigenous ancestry, Morales, of the Aymara people, has certainly been the first to brandish his own identity as a flag for a political movement—sometimes literally, with the wiphala—the colourful chequered Aymara flag—fluttering from the windows of his campaign vehicles; sometimes in more subtle ways, preferring a traditional Aymara jacket, or chompa, to a suit and tie and totally refusing to wear the latter.

Morales’ rise to the top is as atypical as his style. Young Evo grew up in a rural village in western Bolivia, living in a cottage with a dirt floor, attending a one-room primary school and speaking mostly Aymara, one of the main languages of Bolivia’s indigenous people. His first leadership experience

came from organizing a community soccer team as a 13-yearold, and years later trade union colleagues would call him “the young ballplayer.”

Morales finished university, although he was not the best of students; he paid his way through school working as a baker, a day labourer and a trumpet player in a military band which travelled around Bolivia. After two years of mandatory military service from 1976-78—during which he was stationed as a guard at the presidential palace he would one day live in—he went to work on a farm run by his family, who were now living in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands after a series of violent storms had forced them from the west. For the Morales family and many others in the region, coca leaf—a legal stimulant which Bolivians chew or brew into a tea to combat fatigue and altitude sickness—was a major crop. Coca leaf is also the main ingredient in cocaine. Morales and other opponents of the “war on Drugs” have stressed the difference between coca leaf and refined cocaine. “I am not a

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Bolivia Special

drug trafficker. I am a coca grower. I do not refine (coca into) cocaine, and neither cocaine nor drugs have ever been part of the Andean culture,” he told reporters in 2005.

Morales joined the regional cocalero (coca grower) union in 1980 as secretary of sport, but his role grew much more political as US intervention, aimed at stopping the cocaine trade by eradicating coca, increased in the region. He became general secretary of his local growers’ union in 1985 and by 1988 became executive secretary of the Tropics Federation, a confederation of unions- a position he still holds even while serving as president.

As an increasingly well-known political dissident, Morales was jailed several times and once beaten and left for dead by officers of UMOPAR, the Bolivian drug enforcement police.

Morales and his union colleagues entered electoral politics in 1995. He was elected to Bolivia’s Congress in 1997, but expelled in 2002 after declaring that coca growers targeted by a police eradication operation had a right to defend themselves militarily.

Instead of ending his career, Morales’ expulsion turned him into the rock star of resistance to an increasingly unpopular government and to US intervention in the region; he came a shock second in the presidential elections of 2002 and won the top job in 2005 – deigning to wear a suit for his inauguration but still refusing to wear a tie. He declared at the time that “500 years of colonialism have come to an end”. One of his early actions was to give himself a 57 per cent salary cut. In office, he nationalized the oil and gas industries and channelled much of the profits into old age pensions and cash incentives for mothers to send children

to school and to the doctor.

But not everyone was satisfied. Diversion of the profits made Morales few friends in the resource-rich east, where clashes between supporters and opponents of nationalization led to 20 deaths, although Morales and his government survived the recall referendum that followed. In September 2008 Morales cut off diplomatic relations with the US, accusing Uncle Sam of interference, although relations were restored under the Obama administration.

In 2009 Morales won re-election with a 64% majority, although since then he has been the target of protests from his own political base over plans to cut fuel subsidies and build a highway through the Amazon Basin region, as well as use of violence to quell protests. Although both projects were later scrapped amid protests, there’s no real question that Morales’ star has dimmed somewhat at home—some polls have listed his job approval ratings as low as 30 per cent.

Morales’ reforms in Bolivia have drawn comparisons with those of his late friend Hugo Chavez in Venezuela—equally empowering for some segments of the population, equally polarizing for those who are dispossessed by their results or opposed to their principles. So far the forces opposed to parties opposed to Morales remain fragmented; no equivalent has emerged to Henrique Capriles, the charismatic Venezuelan opposition leader who has rallied half his country behind him.

In the event of a consensus among the Bolivian opposition, Morales’ unique brand of Andean socialism could be on its way down the mountain.

about the author Ruby Pratka is a freelance foreign affairs reporter based in Quebec, Canada. She speaks English, French, Russian and some Spanish. She enjoys learning new languages and dreams of returning to East Africa.

12 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | May 2013

Opportunities in Bolivia - New windows of

Trade and Investment

by Malvika Kareer and KV Vidya

La Paz, Bolivia

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rade, Investment and financial relationships between developing regions are deepening. There is no better example than the relationship between India and the Latin American & Carribean (LAC) countries. Both India and LAC have demonstrated strong resilience and rapid recovery following the global economic crisis and have many useful lessons to share with each other. Both regions also have unique strengths— in natural resources, industry and services. Building on these complementaries will continue to underpin their inter-regional relationship.

India’s renewed economic growth has brought a dramatic amplification in the country’s domestic consumption. One can, to some extent, attribute this to the Indian government’s focus on building out the nation’s infrastructure. Initiatives in India have been extensive. From the ultra-modern metro line in New Delhi, a metro rail system in Bangalore and new airports and airport terminals across the major metropolitan cities have been established. The demand for food products has also increased manifold with rising per capita income levels in the urban areas.

“Both India and LAC have demonstrated strong resilience and rapid recovery following the global economic crisis and have many useful lessons to share with each other”

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Bolivia Special

A Quinoa Bean Plantation

The augmented consumption and production has put immense pressure on the demand for raw materials and resources.

Moreover, Indian companies have been exploring all over the globe for coal and iron ore mines to feed expanding capacities back home. Many of these companies are now venturing into developing regions like Africa and Latin America, while looking for a cost advantage and to ensure a sustainable supply of the resources.

Investment Climate in Bolivia With Indian companies seeking investment and trade opportunities in new unexplored virgin territories, Bolivia comes out as a very attractive investment destination. Indian companies will be able to find a favorable business environment, a fairly stable economy that has seen a sustained economic growth, one which has one of the lowest inflation rates in Latin America.

Moreover foreign investors also have the same rights, rules, and regulations etc. that govern a local investor. A free exchange system is guaranteed and there are neither capital import or export restrictions nor on the remittance of dividends, interests or royalty proceedings resulting from technology transfer or other mercantile concepts. There is a simple and attractive taxation system existing in Bolivia. Moreover, investors have access to local fiscal loans.

A lot has already been done to promote trade and investment between the two countries. CADEX (Chamber of Exporters of

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“A lot has already been done to promote trade and investment between the two countries. CADEX (Chamber of Exporters of Santa Cruz) are exploring avenues through Indian chambers like FICCI�

Santa Cruz) are exploring avenues through Indian chambers like FICCI. Indian Chambers can help provide better insight of the business environment in India and vice-versa. India has proposed a BIPPA (Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement) and is awaiting a response to the draft from the Bolivian side.

The total bilateral trade between India and Bolivia in 2011-12 was $28.89 million, marking an increase of 28% over 2010-11.

India’s exports to Bolivia were $24.85 million (a growth of 58%).

While India’s imports from Bolivia amounted to $4.04 million (a decrease of 39%). However, if Indian companies were to invest and set up operations in Bolivia then the import from Bolivia can show an increase. Although at present there is minuscule volume of trade, there lies immense scope for trade opportunities between the countries. It is suggested that businessmen of both the countries should explore various business opportunities that exist for boosting bilateral trade. The opening of the Bolivian Embassy in New Delhi, India in 2012 is a testimony to the fact that efforts are being made to amplify the investment and trade avenues for both the countries. Jorge Cardenas Robles, ambassador of Bolivia to India, in his comment to Financial Express (Jan. 2013) said, “For our country, ties with the South Asia are very important and that is what we’ll be concentrating on. While we are interested in connecting with other countries in the region, India as an emerging economic power in the region is with who we want to establish strong relations.”

Bolivian Products Bolivia has a wide variety of products to offer to India, which includes minerals, forest products, agro products, soybean oil, and food among other products. The demand for fuel in terms of oil, gas and petroleum products both for infrastructural purpose, personal and commercial consumption has been constantly increasing and has caused a rapid hike in the prices with its increased dependency on import of crude oil and natural gas.

It is time to explore new markets for import of such essential resources so as to keep the adverse impact of market prices at bay. Bolivia also has proven reserves of 140 million barrels of crude oil and 50 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas in addition to some 66.6 TCF of potential reserves which has kindled international interest.

GAIL (India) had expressed interest in this sector. This would be an opening to get Indian companies in both upstream and downstream operations, especially in areas such as gas liquefaction, pipeline construction, gas-based electricity generation.

Similarly, Bolivia has a long history and tradition of mining, but with only an estimated 10% utilization. Bolivia is the second largest producer of tin in the world. It produces and exports gold, silver and zinc. The mining sector is receiving the second largest investment after the energy sector. Given India’s ever-increasing demand and the volatile iron ore prices, there is a rat-race between companies to make foreign investments in resource rich economies to ensure raw material security, and Bolivia is one such virgin territory. There are great mineral reserves in the region near the Chilean border with characteristics similar to those found in the La Escondida and Chuquicamata mines belonging to Chile. Similarly Bolivia has half the world´s reserves

of Lithium amounting to about 5.4 million tons. It is already predicted that the demand for lithium would increase with increased production and demand of electronic equipment like cell phones/smart phones, laptop etc.

Similarly India also has a lot to offer to Bolivia. Bolivia has commercial agreements with all countries from South America.

Indian companies can, for example, invest in Bolivia to sell their products to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Chile and other countries.

Scope of Trade Between India and Bolivia There is a huge potential for strategic investment opportunities and trade linkages between India and Bolivia. Of the total 30% land area available for agriculture in Bolivia, only 3% of it is actually utilized. A wide range of climate makes it suitable for a variety of crops such as corn, quinoa, cotton, soy etc. Bolivia has the largest certified tropical forest in the world, with over 200 different tree species, making the forestry sector an attractive proposition to the investors. They offer excellent business prospects for companies that are environmentally conscious, and those which promote sustainable development.

Bolivia’s mining industry has given a push to the Bolivian economy. The mining industry was a major force behind recovery post the global recession, aided by the rising prices of minerals.

The government has developed policies to provide tax incentives for companies seeking to invest in the mining sector. The San Cristóbal Mining Project has been made possible because of this initiative of the state. This project is a US$ 413 million investment project and was started in 2002. It is an open pit operation processing 40 thousand tons/day, and will double the Bolivian production of zinc, silver and lead. San Cristóbal is currently the world’s largest open pit silver reserve.

A healthy investment environment can be observed from the recent trends of foreign direct investments made in Bolivia. The Plurinational State of Bolivia received foreign direct investment flows totaling US$ 859 million in 2011. This is 28% more than in 2010 and way more than the US$ 390 million average for the previous decade (2000-2010).

A large chunk of the Foreign Direct Investments in Bolivia during 2011 was into hydrocarbons and mining (40%), while the industrial sector comprised of 39%. It is also interesting to note that a developing country like Bolivia received 21% of its FDI in the services sector.

India and Bolivia have numerous business opportunities which are yet to be explored and capitalized on with a win-win situation for both the countries. Efforts are being made to bridge the gap between the two countries and foster new relations. This should provide a mutually conducive business environment for both.

about the author Malvika Kareer, Research Associate, Latin America and Caribbean Division, FICCI, India

K V Vidya, Head of Latin America and Caribbean Division, FICCI, India

May 2013 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | 15

Bolivia Special

Bolivians Demand the Right to

Chew Coca Leaves

“The growing of coca leaves is legal and licensed in Bolivia. The policy has been credited with a fall in cocaine production in the country, leading some experts to see the Bolivian model as a way forward for other countries” 16 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | May 2013

C

oca has been cultivated in medium-altitude parts of the Bolivian Andes since at least the Inca era, primarily in the north Yungas at the eastern rainforests of the Andes Range in La Paz. Cultivation expanded in the 1980s into the Chapare region of Cochabamba. The US-backed efforts to criminalize and eradicate coca (outside the Yungas) as part of the ‘War on Drugs’ (as coca is used to make the powerful stimulant, anaesthetic and illegal recreational drug called cocaine) were met by the cocalero movement’s growing capacity to organize and retaliate.

Violence between drug police and the Bolivian armed forces on one side and the movement on the other occurred frequently between 1987 and 2003. The cocaleros became an increasingly important political force during this period co-founding the popular movement called Movement for Socialism which ultimately became the Political Instrument for the Sovereignty

of the Peoples party. Coca growers from both the Yungas and the Chapare have advocated for policies of ‘social control’ over coca growing, maintaining a pre-set maximum area of cultivation as an alternative to drug war policies. In 2005, Cocalero union leader Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia. This was eight years ago. Since then Morales has pursued a combined policy of legalizing coca production for the traditional use in the Yungas and eradication of the crop elsewhere.

Right to Chew Coca In January this year, Bolivia obtained a special exemption from the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the framework that governs international drugs policy which then allowed its indigenous people to respect the traditional use of chew the leaves.

Bolivia had argued that the convention was in opposition to its new constitution adopted in 2009, which obligates the government to ‘protect native and ancestral coca as cultural patrimony’, and one that maintains that coca ‘in its natural state coca is not a narcotic’.

South American Indians have chewed coca leaves for centuries. The leaves reputedly provide energy and are said to have medicinal qualities. Supporters of Bolivia’s position praised it for standing up for the rights of indigenous people.

“The Bolivian move is inspirational and ground-breaking,” said Danny Kushlick, head of external affairs at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, an organization which promotes drug liberalisation. “It shows that any country that has had enough of the war on drugs can change the terms of its engagement with the UN conventions.”

The right of indigenous communities in South America’s Andean region to chew coca leaf was removed in 1964 when Bolivia was under a dictatorship and it signed up to the convention. But under the terms of the agreement Bolivia was given 25 years to implement the ban. This expired in 1989, and since then the issue has been under dispute.

In 2011, Bolivia – whose president Evo Morales is a former coca producer – formally notified the UN of its withdrawal from the convention. In January this year, it reacceded to the convention, but with an exemption on the prohibition on the chewing of coca leaves.

The move is the first of its kind in the history of UN drugcontrol treaties and has sparked concerns that other countries may apply for amendments. The Russian government has argued that the move will lead to an increase in illegal circulation of cocaine and warned that it would also set a dangerous precedent that could be used by other states in creating a more liberal drug-control regime.

The British parliament’s home affairs select committee recommended last month that Bolivia’s request should be backed by the UK government, arguing that it was important that countries remained within the single convention.

Bolivia’s re-accession was clean, supported by 169 countries, with only 15 countries which votes against. There are suspicions that the US and UK were frantically lobbying other countries to gain sufficient numbers to block Bolivia’s request.

Nancie Prud’homme, projects director at the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, criticised the coordinated opposition to Bolivia’s demands. “These objections

are legally questionable,” she said. “They support an arbitrary and over-broad provision and apply international drug laws in a vacuum. This is not appropriate. No state has paid any attention to decades of developing international norms on cultural and indigenous rights which support Bolivia’s efforts.”

The decision to ban coca chewing was based on a 1950 report produced by the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Coca Leaf, which proponents of drug liberalisation say was not based on supporting evidence.

The War against Coca In its fight against drugs, the US government has declared war on coca and thus on the peasant families who grow this prodigious plant in the subtropical areas of the Andes. Presenting coca as the equivalent of cocaine when it is only one of many alkaloids contained in coca leaves and equating coca growers as the equivalent of drug traffickers, the United States has launched this ‘crusade’ to ‘save humanity.’

Bolivians however believe that it is their right to grow and chew coca. Coca nourishes, takes away hunger, serves as an anesthetic, favors digestion and helps overcome the altitude sickness one feels when living in or climbing high up the mountains. Just 100 grams of coca, which is what indigenous people traditionally consume in a day, supplies 305 calories, 10 grams of protein, 3-5 grams of fat, 46 grams of carbohydrates and the adult daily requirement of iron, phosphorus, calcium and vitamins A, B2, C and E. Coca thrives at high altitudes, in shade, with little water. It has been there in the subtropical areas of the

Coca Tea

May 2013 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | 17

Bolivia Special

Andes much before they were inhabited by human beings. For thousands and thousands of years, the Quechua and Aymara people used coca as medicine, food and money. In the culture of the vast Andean region that made up Tihuantisuyo - the Great Inca Empire that included what is now Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and part of Colombia - people are known to believe that they would have no hope without land alright, but on the other hand without coca there would be no spirit left in themselves. “The people of Central America are the children of corn, the people of Asia are the children of rice and we are the children of coca”, say Andeans.

The Double Standards Cocaine is not coca. Its characteristics are different. Coca is the central crop of a millenarian culture and has been consumed from time immemorial. Cocaine’s history is a short one. Not until the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th did people begin to extract cocaine from the coca leaf as the result of chemical and pharmaceutical progress made in the developed countries of the North. Sniffing cocaine soon became fashionable for artists and certain people of high society in Europe and the United States. In 1931, the use and sale of cocaine were declared illegal all over the world.

Sources Jamie Doward, Guardian, January 13, 2013 René Mendoza Vidaurre, researcher at Nitlapán-UCA. Wikipedia

18 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | May 2013

Cocaine is a processed product, a stimulant that endangers the body, like alcohol. Alcoholism is a vice with harmful consequences, and is far more widespread than drug addiction.

But to put an end to alcoholism, should we declare war on the producers of sugar cane, the raw material for rum, or the producers of barley, the raw material for beer? Should we imprison those who drink beer or whiskey? The questions seem ridiculous. It will be just as ridiculous to attack coca growers in the name of eradicating cocaine.

Coca is a product of the South, but the products needed to make cocaine come from the countries of the North. The airplanes that carry Bolivian-made cocaine to the United States return to Bolivia carrying ether made in the United States. Ether, a chemical product indispensable for making cocaine, is produced in only a few factories in the United States. The Latin American drug traffickers send cocaine and the US drug traffickers send ether. Since both take part in the same business, why punish only one? Why the double standard that prohibits in the South what it allows in the North is the question that the indigenous people ask. Bolivian government is against the drug business and its production and shown its success in battling this menace, but it fights for the right of its people on the legal use of the coca leaf.

Bolivia - India

Bilateral Relations

by Prof.B.Krishnamurthy

T

hough the Republic of India and the Plurinational State of Bolivia enjoy friendly and fraternal relations, interactions between the two countries have been very minimal so far.

There have been no major bilateral official visits from either side. There is no Indian Embassy in Bolivia and the one in Lima, Peru, is concurrently accredited to Bolivia too. There are two Honorary Consul Generals of India in Bolivia - one in La Paz, the administrative capital and the other in Santa Cruz, the commercial capital. India and Bolivia agreed to start Bilateral Foreign Office Level Consultations and an agreement to this effect was signed in November 2001 in La Paz. The first round of consultations was held in August 2006 with no further follow up.

In 1997, both the countries have signed a cultural agreement.

However, overall cultural interaction between them has been limited. The Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) sponsored a couple of visits of Bharathnatyam and Odissi dancers to Bolivia who have given few dance performances. India has also extended humanitarian assistance to Bolivia whenever it faced some natural calamities. Bolivia, in turn, has been supportive of Indian claim for a permanent seat in the United Nation Security Council (UNSC) and is one of the few countries that had agreed to co-sponsor the G-4 resolution calling for an expanded UNSC.

Diplomatic Mission in New Delhi Till now Bolivia has no diplomatic mission in India. The present government of President Evo Morales, in its quest for

May 2013 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | 19

Bolivia Special expanding political and business ties with India, has recently decided to open a resident Mission in New Delhi and H.E. Jorge Cardenas Robles has been appointed as the first Bolivian ambassador to India. Establishment of consulates in Mumbai and other key metros in the country is also in the offing.

Business Opportunities There are considerable opportunities for business partnerships in diverse fields and at different levels for India and Bolivia to take benefit of. In May 2003, Jorge Torres, the then Minister of Economic Development of Bolivia, welcomed the Indian companies to invest in sectors like textiles, leather, and logging and to take advantage of the preferential tariff given by the US to Bolivia through the ATPDEA Act. Bolivian authorities have also expressed their interest in having Indian companies enter Bolivia in the IT sector. India can certainly gain from Bolivia from projects in developing logistic services. Indian companies can, for example, invest in factories to sell their products to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Chile and other countries in South America, with whom Bolivia has commercial agreements. The Morales administration is working on developing a ‘New Bolivia’ and is looking at possible investments in the education, energy, telecom, pharmaceuticals and IT sectors. There is a clear prospect of alternative medicines to be a big hit in Bolivia and India can take benefit from this trend.

In September 2005, for the first time India participated in the annual Santa Cruz Trade Fair in a big way. Several companies from various sectors like handicrafts, tractors and other agricultural equipments, food items, kitchen items, tires and others participated in the fair. There was tremendous response

for Indian products. From a modest figure of US$ 10.83 million in 2004, Indian exports to Bolivia have increased to US$ 24.85 million in 2011-12. Likewise, India’s imports from Bolivia too have increased from US$ 0.32 million in 2004 to US$ 4.04 million in 2011-12 and thus, the balance of trade was US$ 20.81 million in favor of India. However, India-Bolivia bilateral trade is still at a nascent stage and it represents less than 0.25% of total Bolivian trade. While India exports to Bolivia vehicles, transport equipments, pharmaceuticals, iron and steel products, machinery and instruments, chemicals, man-made yarn, rubber products, and plastic and linoleum products, it imports from Bolivia include leather, crude minerals, wood and wood products, metalifers ore and metal scrap, precious or semi-precious stones, forest products, agro products, soybean oil and meal and wool. Recently the Indian Government offered a credit line to Bolivia to fund certain projects and to procure some goods and services from India. The Government of Bolivia has readily accepted the offer and utilized it to finance some projects and to import from India goods and services in IT sector, railways, agriculture, helicopters, vehicles and so on.

Cooperation in Energy Sector Recent discovery of large reserves of natural gas in Bolivia (second largest in Latin America) has opened up new vistas to the economic development and opportunity for the country to develop projects for its export to other countries. At present, most of Bolivia’s gas exports are to Brazil and Argentina, but given the size of the reserves, Bolivia is keen to export natural gas to other countries, far and near.

India, given its quest for energy resources to fuel its economic

Samaipata compressor station in Santa Cruz province, Bolivia

20 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | May 2013

development to sustain its present growth rate and to ensure its energy security, is very much interested in diversifying the import of energy resources like petroleum and natural gas from different regions and countries. For India, Bolivian offer of gas is quite welcome. Gas Authority of India Ltd. is keen on developing contacts with Bolivia, which also offers opening to get Indian companies in both upstream and downstream operations in sectors like gas liquefaction, pipeline construction, and gas-based electricity generation. Possibilities of evaluating the viability of transporting Bolivian Petroleum and natural gas to India needs to be carried out in right earnestness.

Bolivia and India’s Jindal Steel & Power Ltd., one of the leading global steel manufacturers, signed in 2007 a contract worth US$ 2.1 billion to exploit 50% of the deposits the El Mutún iron ore mine, one of the world’s largest unexploited iron ore deposits estimated at 40 billion tons and to set up a steel plant in Bolivia.

This is the biggest project ever awarded to an Indian company in Latin America and the only project an Indian Company is having in Bolivia. Unfortunately, the relations between the Indian corporation and the Bolivian government sore when the latter decided to cash the 18 million US dollars guarantee deposit for the steel project alleging Jindal was behind in its promised investments’ timetable. On the other hand, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd. alleged certain hindrances mounted by certain individuals/agencies which instead of being facilitators instead of detractorsand decided to terminate the project on July 16, 2012.

Bolivia and Jindal are scheduled to sign an addendum to the contract for the exploitation of the Mutún iron ore reserves with the purpose of unlocking the “lack of investments”. Earlier resolution of the problem will help both the contending parties and the Indian Government’s positive actions in this regard may help in cementing the relations between the two countries.

Reactivation of the project and the fulfillment of the Bolivian dream of producing steel by 2014 is now the need of the hour.

The Bolivian Government is willing to exploit the whole Mutún deposits and already has started negotiating with China Development Bank which has offered the state 15 billion US dollars to develop the remaining Mutún iron-ore deposit. In this situation, resolution of the Jindal issue and signing a fresh contract for the exploitation of the whole deposit is the need of the hour and an early action in this regard will be highly appreciable.

As of now, India cannot compete with China as concerning the depth of its pocket and prove to be as attractive as the other Asian giant. Likewise, the China does not have a track record of excelling as a partner in growth and sustainable development vis-a-vis the land of Mahatma Gandhi. Indian cooperation in the

land of Simon Bolivar without any neo-colonial policy strings attached may prove to be a very good test case of developing political and economic relations that are of mutual benefit as against the normal case of an economically strong power exploiting a comparatively weak country . President Morales expects that since Bolivians are also called Indians, India may help them. Fulfilling that expectation may certainly prove to be mutually beneficial.

Though India and Bolivia have a lot to offer to each other there are certain bottlenecks and problems, information gap being a prominent one. Need of the hour is to bridge this gap, by disseminating information on the process and nitty-gritty of getting good and reliable trade partners in India and Bolivia.

An information interchange and interaction between CADEX (Chamber of Exporters of Santa Cruz) and other chambers in Bolivia with the Indian Industry chambers including the FICCI, CII, ASSOCHAM and PHD is called for. There is a need to organize a trade mission to bring together entrepreneurs from both countries and to promote delegation level visits between them.

The efforts of the government to diversify Bolivian exports and to secure market for their products in India can be supported and encouraged by organizing business conferences, trade missions and other export promotion activities between the two countries.

Close and active relations between the two countries will be a win-win relation for both.

A couple of draft agreements from one to the other are pending for quite some time now. Positive and speedy response of Bolivia for the Indian proposal of the BIPPA (Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement) and of India to the Bolivian plan for signing an agreement on visa exemption for diplomatic and official passport holders will help in improving the relations between the two countries.

In March 2012, Sunil Khilnani and other authors of the policy paper titled “Nonalignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty-first Century” rightly maintained that fundamental source of India’s power is going to be the power of its example and the core objectives of Non Alignment which ensures that India did not define its national interest or approach to world politics in terms of ideologies and goals that had been set elsewhere; that India retained maximum strategic autonomy to pursue its own developmental goals; and that India worked to build national power as the foundation for creating a more just and equitable global order. Bolivia is a non-aligned country and there is a need for mutual support. It is befitting for India to respond positively and constructively to Bolivian overtures.

about the author Prof.B.Krishnamurthy, Associate Professor, Department of Politics and International Studies, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India.

May 2013 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | 21

Bolivia Special

Scope for

Improvement in

Bolivia India Relations

by Dr.Onkar Marwah

I

n thinking of India-Bolivia relations, the first thought that comes to mind is: how little the peoples of the two countries know about each other and of their individual concerns and national aspirations. Both are distant in geographical location, on different continents, and with different cultures. While assessing the differences and distances, it is equally appropriate to consider the similarities. Both are developing countries, albeit on varying planes and sizes, with an interregnum of colonial pasts - and the negatives or positives flowing from that past.

22 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | May 2013

The territory that we now know as Bolivia was a major part of the pre-Spanish Inca Empire stretching across the Andes Mountain and the Pacific coastline from northern South America to Chile in the south. The Spanish invasions and take-overs of the continent in the sixteenth century led to a ruthless destruction of the pre-Columbian civilizations of the two American continents.

Every Indian is aware of the fact that Christopher Columbus had sailed to find the sea-route to India, bumped into the ‘New World’ – and mistakenly termed the local inhabitants ‘Indians’

(in North America) and ‘Indios’ (in South America). Indeed, they all deserve to be called, respectively, by their indigenous names.

Under the Spanish, Bolivia was ruled from the their primary base in present-day Peru – until the Venezuelan Simon Bolivar’s liberation wars in the early nineteenth century ousted Spain and led to the creation of a number of independent countries in northern South America. Bolivia came into being as a state separate from Peru in 1825, and derives its name from Simon Bolivar. India, on the other hand, was progressively and eventually colonized by the British who ousted other European contenders beginning in the eighteenth century, and their full control of the subcontinent being established only by the midnineteenth century, i.e., 1857. Precisely ninety years later, India achieved its Independence in 1947.

The Bolivian - as well other Latin Americans’ - experience with Spanish colonialism was somewhat different from that of India and its native inhabitants. The formers’ indigenous societies, native customs, cultural traits and religious forms were totally destroyed, to be replaced by Spanish-Catholic-European imports and imposition. Local aristocracies and large portions of the peasantry were decimated, to be replaced by a substantial Spanish-Iberian elite class of landowners, administrators, militaries, religious ministries, and the like. All the land was confiscated from the local populace and distributed to the new upper-class imported-immigrant European ‘gentry’ in huge estates; Catholicism and Christian names were imposed upon or required to be adopted by all the indigenous inhabitants; local languages were suppressed in favor of Spanish as the only lingua franca; and the original populations were converted

into serfs if not slaves, excluded from the state’s activities and largesse. Further, they were required to toil for a pittance in the vast ‘ranches’ and organized state-structures of the new SpanishEuropean feudal, administrative and religious overlords.

While there was much tyranny and racism inflicted by the British in colonizing and controlling India, it could not and does not match – for a variety of reasons – the sweep and scale of the Iberian-European onslaught, destruction and dominance visited upon the indigenous populations of South America. It is for the preceding differential in colonial experience that India and all Indians need to internalize and profess an abiding sympathy for all the indigenous peoples of South America – presently, for the peoples of Bolivia, led since 2005 for the first time in its history by an indigenous leadership as personified by its President, Evo Morales. Evo Morales represents, along with the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (and now Nicolas Maduro), Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Dilma Rouseff in Brazil – and some others on the horizons in other countries – the ‘revolt and reassertion’ of the rights, legitimacy and role of the majorities that form the original inhabitants of South America. The latter were long denied their power and place in the scheme of things in their respective countries. Their change in status – still unfolding – should be applauded, welcomed and aided wherever and whenever possible

by India.

Some Facts About Bolivia At approximately 1,000,000 square kilometers, Bolivia is about a third of the size of India (3,300,000 square kilometers) with a population of a little under 10 million, and a density of 8

May 2013 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | 23

Bolivia Special per sq. kms. India’s Thar Desert alone has a per. sq. kms density of 83 (Rajasthan, one of India’s least-densely-populated states, has more than 200 per sq. kms.). By Indian standards, then, Bolivia is, more or less, an empty land – especially if one deducts the numbers collectively residing in its few major urban centers – the administrative capital La Paz (1.65 million), the historic and judicial capital Sucre (218,000), Santa Cruz (1.6 million), Cochabamba (815,000), El Alto (728,500) and Oruro (212,000), i.e., a little over half of the total population. Spanish, Quechua and Aymara (President Evo Morales’ language community) are the three official languages. Ethnically/racially the Quechua are 30%, Mestizos (mixed race) 30%, Aymara 25% and Whites 15% of the population. Roman Catholicism is practiced by 95% and Protestantism by 5% of the total numbers. Despite the recent political changes, most of the economy continues to be controlled by the ‘whites’. Redistributive balances – and justice – have been sought to be provided to the earlier-excluded indigenous people through socialistically-inclined policies instituted by the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) led by Evo Morales.

In particular, action has been taken to nationalize a number of resource-extraction enterprises controlled by European and American entities. Compensation terms are being worked out.

Bolivian leaders have been quoted describing the change-ofownership as an ‘Andean’ or an ‘Amazonian’ form of Capitalism – or as ‘moralizing existing capitalist elites’. Whatever the terminology, one must view the new policies as the Latin American indigenous peoples’ desire to take control of their significant natural resources or enterprises for the welfare of their own citizens. India has been similarly-inspired – especially in the early phases of its independent existence – and would be

24 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | May 2013

well aware of the nationalist sentiments that drive such policyactivities.

The geography and recent history of Bolivia is of great contrasts. The major topographical marker is that of the two high-spine chains of the Andes range enclosing a vast plateau, 12000 ft. (3700 meters) high called the Altiplano – majestic, mighty, empty, cold, dotted with scattered small villages as well numerous ruins of the country’s Inca past. Lake Titicaca, the highest grand but lonely lake in the world, (12500 ft., 3800 mts.) is shared by Bolivia and Peru on its two sides (there is an overnight ferry service between the two countries, which this writer had the opportunity to experience when he visited Machu Picchu in Peru as a student in the US in the Sixties). In the north and east, the Oriente province comprising 2/3rds of the country bordering Brazil, the physical environment descends and transforms into equatorial rainforests and similar lowlands, mostly unexplored. Bolivia has no direct access to the Pacific Ocean, having lost part of its coastal territory in a war with Chile in the late nineteenth century. Beset with internal strife in the ensuing years, Bolivia also lost substantial rich territories in similar wars to Brazil and Paraguay. Thereafter, Bolivia experienced the rule of many short-lived authoritarian regimes.

The latest significant reminder of the country’s turbulent past is the death of the Argentinean-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara when his guerilla war was smashed by the-then Bolivian Army, aided by foreign advisers, and ‘Che’ himself executed on October 8, 1967 in the jungle highlands.

During the early years of its independent existence India gave primary attention to its internal stability. Its external relations involved near-neighbors and legitimizing its role vis-à-vis the

Great Powers who dominated the postwar international system.

Likewise, Bolivia at the time was experiencing turbulent and militarized structures, with coups and counter-coups engulfing its political life – as well seeking a modus vivendi with the overwhelming presence of the US in its own, and generally, in Latin American affairs. Additionally, India and Bolivia were, geographically, the ‘back of beyond’ for each other in those years.

Formal diplomatic relations existed between the two via the Indian Embassy in Lima (Peru) and the Peruvian Embassy in New Delhi. Nothing much transpired between the two countries in the intervening years – until both agreed to a reciprocal exchange of Ambassadors in the current decade. Credit for the latter is due to President Evo Morales who has made a special effort to reach out to many countries beyond Latin America, especially in Asia – and particularly to India and China. China had set up an Embassy in La Paz in 1985 but relations remained moribund until 2003 when China turned its attention to acquiring/investing in the varied natural resources of countries in South America.

It appears that President Morales is seeking to garner aid, skill and expertise exchanges from the wider world for his country’s development. Asia’s two major developing economies will play a significant role in his plans – as long as the terms are mutually advantageous to both sides.

China’s footprint in Latin America, as elsewhere, is much larger than India’s – and will remain so until India is able to match in some measure the former’s overall financial resources and ‘global outreach’ framework. The two Asian states’ approaches are further conditioned by their dissimilar political and economic structures. China’s heft in foreign exchange surpluses and its ready availability to the country’s large state-owned enterprises is a major challenge to the less wellendowed Indian private-or-public-sector companies. Despite their difference in capacities in relation to Bolivia, both the Asian countries have run into local legislative and contractual difficulties – SINOPEC/Shengli Oilfield and others, in the case of China; and Jindal Steel in India’s case. President Morales in 2006, - and a spate of his governmental representatives since, have visited China. Recently, leaders of the La Paz state government offered a list of ten projects to China’s Ambassador to Bolivia covering a range of activities from industrial to food production for execution by Chinese companies.

President Morales had also, earlier, expressed a wish to visit India – and has been invited to do so by the President of India.

Contacts between senior government officials, however, have taken place mostly on the side-lines of international conferences.

Now, with full diplomatic relations established, there is a much better opportunity to explore and extend mutually-beneficial

economic, political and cultural contacts between the two countries. It is necessary to ensure that the legislative and contractual rules are streamlined and understood on both sides for the smooth functioning of future intra-country investment projects. While having only 3% of arable land, Bolivia is a rich country in other natural and mineral resources awaiting recovery – natural gas (second largest reserves in South America), iron ore, silver, tin, tungsten, petroleum, antimony, lead, zinc, timber and hydro-power. It is a member of various important South American economic organizations, and has free-port facilities in maritime ports of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.

It has also sought a free-trade agreement with India. A Cultural Agreement has been signed between the two countries.

Current trade between the two countries is of a modest value of about $30 million, so there is a vast scope for improvement.

GAIL(India) has expressed an interest in tapping Bolivian sources of natural gas. The Morales government is expected to develop a ‘New Bolivia’ and is looking for investments in education, energy, telecom, pharma and IT sectors. India is well-placed for entrepreneurial activity in all the preceding areas. According to Jorge Cardenas Robles, Bolivia’s first Ambassador to India, “Indian Alternative Medicines are going to be a big hit in Bolivia.

It will be a win-win relation for both countries”. In the special seminar on “Business Opportunities in Bolivia” convened by the Federation of Indian Export Organizations in New Delhi on December 8, 2012, the Bolivian Envoy had colorfully stated, “Bolivia is the place where the Fantastic is Real”. Having travelled in his youth to Bolivia, Peru and Chile, the preceding remark, according to this writer, may apply to both India and Bolivia.

For instance, a greater emphasis on sustainable tourism would showcase, without destroying, the natural and historical beauty in both countries.

It is early days in the active relationship between our two countries. There is much to admire in the yearnings and hopes of Bolivia’s new leadership for the future development and welfare of its people. Evo Morales was declared as “True Hero of Mother Earth” by the UN General Assembly in 2009. Bolivia’s new Constitution provides ‘Rights to Mother Earth’ on par with humans, which must be a first in the world – while exhibiting, simultaneously, the true sentiments, attachment and care of the country’s indigenous peoples to their living environment.

President Morales dresses simply even in formal settings – indeed, always wearing a ‘chompa’ in the style of a Bolivian campesino, which he was and is. He also must possess the wry humor of the peasant when he apparently stated in relation to India: “Since we are also called Indians, India may help us”.

India should bring true Evo Morales’ preceding statement.

about the author Dr. Onkar Marwah is a former Member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), and currently Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Peace & Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi.

May 2013 | Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs Magazine | 25

Special Report

Information Society in Bolivia

by Gonzalo Aramayo-Careaga

I

nformation and Communication Technologies (ICTs) present a revolutionary approach to addressing developmental questions due to their unequaled capacity to provide access to information instantaneously from any location in the world at a relatively low cost. This has brought down global geographic boundaries faster than ever thought possible. The resulting new interconnected digital world heralds the fluid and seamless flow of information, capital, ideas, people and products. Bolivia’s path towards an information society has been long but is generating results.

The Supreme Decree 26553 of April 9, 2002, established the legal and institutional framework for building the Information Society and to strengthen ICT. To implement the strategies and to coordinate actions to reduce the digital divide through the promotion of ICT in all areas, the Agency for the Development of Information Society in Bolivia (ADSIB) was created as a decentralized body under the custody of the Vice-President.

Bolivia’s Digital Agenda The path was set up in the year 2002, when the Government of Bolivia presented “Digital Agenda-Bolivia - The Guidelines for a Bolivian Strategy in the Digital Age”. This document

laid the foundations for creating a guideline for countrywide ICT that allows people to be part of the Information Society.

Within this framework, ADSIB, Vice Ministry of Electricity, Alternative Energy and SITTEL (former Superintendence of Telecommunications), with support from the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP) imposed the important task of coordinating and preparing the National Strategy and Information Technology Communication (ETIC).

During the period 2003-2006, the country developed an inclusive and participatory strategy finding models for ICT appropriation in the various strata of society in order to accelerate the reduction of the digital divide in Bolivia and thus increase levels of the information dissemination within the Bolivian society. The central objective of ETIC was “Develop and implement policies, programs, initiatives and propose use of ICT for human capacity development in a participatory and inclusive process with emphasis on low-income groups along with the peri-urban and rural”.

From ETIC was born the National Digital Inclusion Plan (PNID) that addressed first the challenges and the desire to close the digital divide in the country. The digital divide is conceived as the dividing line between communities, cities,

regions or individuals that use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and those that do not have access or do not know how to use them thus reducing their chances of individual and collective development.

ICT Trends The Ministry of Development Planning through the Department of Science and Technology in exercise of its powers assumed leadership of ICT in the country through the implementation of PNID to create a knowledge society with the country’s own characteristics. The Ministry acknowledges ICT as an important factor of economic and social development. The main pillars of ICT are, providing access to and use of information and telecommunications infrastructure, improve the capabilities of the population in the use and application of ICT tools, generate and share content relevant to reality and national development needs, implement appropriate legislation and regulation and improve the participation of citizens in access to information and public services and government decisions.

The incorporation of ICT came to be about for guiding government actions on the needs and demands of the population in a relevant and timely manner, and at the same time, allowing better access to information and services in sectors such as: health, education, science and technology, production, rural development and government. Furthermore, stimulating economic activity, supporting the dissemination of projects and development programs, providing mechanisms for transparent governance, and opening new communication channels for internal and external social empowerment aiming to eradicate poverty and social exclusion were also incorporated into the ICT’s purview.

Improving Communication Infrastructure Currently Bolivia is aiming to increase the penetration of access to telecommunications services in rural areas from a new public policy framework under the principle of “universal right to access and telecommunications” recently established in the new Constitution. Although this is a recent constitutional status in the country and is largely rural in its scope, there were already a number of important ICT initiatives that facilitated the creation of community telecentres driven by some municipalities, private banks and NGOs. Meanwhile, private enterprise and service operators were not considered primary nor a priority to invest in telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas profitably thus considering them irrelevant to the issue at hand. Although the state has a regulation that provides for the introduction of

incentives for the construction of telecommunications networks in rural communities, large operators do not fully meet these regulations. As a result of this and following the government’s policy, the National Telecommunications Company (ENTEL) was nationalized from STET Telecom and has invested for granting communication access in the less privileged areas. Along the same lines in February 2010, President Evo Morales signed the decree creating the Bolivian Space Agency with the aim of “building and sending into orbit the Túpac Katari satellite for the benefit of the country.”

Technologies that comprise within the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) domain enable people, organizations of all type of companies and public institutions to enhance internal process (automatization/digitalization), to find information, to create knowledge and share in real time, which means cost savings and resources optimization.

In the modern world, the most prosperous economies are based on the skills of citizens, businesses, organizations, government, academia and the private sector to generate, store, retrieve, process and transmit information and knowledge, functions that are applicable to all activities of humans.

Technology can be a powerful tool for human development in reducing poverty because it provides a bridge to the creation of new employment opportunities and trade. In this sense, the implementation of services based on information technology, and in particular mobile applications, represents a significant potential for developing countries, given the extent to which information technologies are appropriately adapted to the specific needs of these nations.

The trend to mobility and social networks, are completely transforming the way we think and solve business problems in organizations through the use of ICTs. According to the site CheckFacebook.com, there are 1,988,220 Bolivians who have active accounts on Facebook. According to the website, the country has 19.9% penetration and is placed 67th globally. Also, in its the composition most users of the platform’s biggest Social Web is between 18-24 years (806.120 users). Interestingly, Bolivia also has more male users (56%) than women, in opposition to the global trend. This is all thanks to ICTs, Bolivia is part of the global village. ICTs are not just used by big business, but also by small and medium producers, organizations, indigenous communities, settlers, rural economic organizations, producer associations and NGOs, among others.

Bolivia is a sample on how technologies could be used to improve access, use and adopt ICT-based applications to fulfill needs, impart skill to communities through education programs and to promote economic growth and development.

about the author Gonzalo Aramayo-Careaga has extensive experience with the design of management and accountability tools and systems, particularly at the country office level. Has developed activities for consultancy in the areas of: management, telecommunications, marketing, project management, knowledge management, and ICTD for international organizations such as: ALADI, World Bank, DGF, IICD, GBF, and UNDP. Has extensive international experience with increasing managerial responsibilities in development area in Latin America and Africa.

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Bolivia Special

On the Quality of Democracy

Bolivia’s Challenges and Lessons From India

by Dr. Martin Mendoza-Botelho

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W

hen one thinks of a stable democracy in the developing world, India is among the first countries that come to mind. Since its independence in 1947 and its later transition to a republic in 1950, India has demonstrated the endurance of democratic governance, values and institutions, even in times of distress. On the other hand, Bolivia has been one of the most unstable countries of Latin America during the past century. It suffices to observe the 1978-1982 period when the country saw the dismissal of one president due to fraudulent elections, the overthrowing of two constitutional provisional governments, four military coups d’état, one military ‘junta’ (in addition to other two transitional juntas) and three other unconstitutional seizures of the presidency. But despite this turbulent past, democracy has progressed in Bolivia over the past three decades. Liberal theorists might argue that this advance is the reflection of the expansion of Western style values through

“The democratic values in this society are not necessarily a cultural imposition but a reflection of a communitarian ethos that is finally emerging to formal processes of representation and governance” forces of globalization and the dominance of a particular cultural model of state-formation rooted on the liberal state. These ideas are much in tune to what Fukuyama proposes with his “last man”, Sir Anthony Giddens’ “third way” or Huntington’s (more extreme) notion of the “clash of civilizations”. But these liberal views do not entirely portray the kind of democracy that is progressing in this country, where social forces are finally finding a more responsive state under a more radical notion of democracy. But what is also relevant, is that similar to India, the democratic values in this society are not necessarily a cultural imposition but a reflection of a communitarian ethos that is finally emerging to formal processes of representation and governance.

A broad overview of the basic institutional structure in these two countries helps to illustrate these arguments. Evidently, it is hard to compare a country as large as India, in terms of population and size, with much smaller Bolivia. But there are also many similitudes that stand out. Bolivia and India are ethnically diverse countries; this implies the existence of a great variety of languages and cultural patterns. These two countries also inherited particular colonial political and economic models, which have shaped their history and has created a unique sense of collective identity. Some of the democratic efforts in these nations therefore, have been aimed at molding the state to satisfy a multiplicity of citizenships. While historically the Indian state has been relatively most successful at these tasks, Bolivia is also making substantial progress and is becoming a much more responsive state. But first, a simple comparison of the basic structure of the governments of these countries is in order.

Since its foundation, a large country such as India required the implementation of a federal system that creates some sort of “natural” political barriers to the potential dominance of certain groups and regions. But its political design is very unique.

Different than most federal models, and of parliamentary ones for that matter, its intricate system of checks and balances is a good reflection of some sort of democratic compromise between the state, the many regions and society at large. The indirect election of the Primer Minister, perhaps the most influential political figure in this system, is a case in point. Bolivian political scientists, like me, always find it difficult to understand a seemingly long distance that exists between the electorate and the most important leader. But a further scrutiny shows that

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Bolivia Special

The seat of Bolivian Government

this is not necessarily the case. Part of the explanation lays in an institutional design that favors broad, but indirect, political participation at different levels. At the regional level, State Assemblies not only represent regional political and economic interests, but also influence (directly) the formation of the executive, making it accountable to this body. Specifically, the Assemblies participate in the conformation of India’s Upper House, the Rajya Sabha, which in turn appoints the President.

But the Lower House, the Lok Sabha (directly elected by the citizens) also participates in this process. The Prime Minister, therefore, is accountable to several institutions at any given point in time. This means that his or her actions are always scrutinized. It is not my intention to provide a basic description of the conformation of the Indian government, but instead point out how an intricate system has been made functional because of its strong emphasis on broad participation and a regional balance that allows a diverse representation. But this system works for India, and it works because ultimately the high level political actors are accountable in many ways to the population.

But what can Bolivia learn from this model?

Improving Participation of Grassroots In the case of Bolivia, the growing emphasis of political participation at the grassroots has marked the difference in terms of the quality of democracy. At the national level, the

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Bolivian system is much simpler. A President directly elected by the population but accountable to a relatively less powerful legislative, in this case the Plurinational Legislative Assembly (Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional). At the intermediate level, Bolivia has regional governments that represent the nine Departments (the equivalents of Indian States), with governors at the head. But it is at the municipal level where democracy has been able to consolidate and flourish. The municipalization of Bolivia, however, is a relatively recent story.

In an effort to redistribute political power, curb corruption and promote government efficiency, Bolivia embarked on ambitious decentralization reforms in 1994, which came to life with the signing of the emblematic Law of Popular Participation. It would be lengthy to describe the evolution of this law, but what is relevant to contemporary Bolivia is that decentralization, now in the form of regional, municipal and indigenous autonomies, has granted political participation to groups that were neglected in the past, opening in the process many spaces for civic activism and the emergence of a new civic-minded leadership. The Bolivian democratic governance model, therefore, although it does not have the complexities of the Indian one, it also relies on direct and indirect forms of participation at different levels.

With these general ideas I now move to provide some comments on recent political and democratic challenges in Bolivia in recent years. A good starting point is the historical election

of Evo Morales Ayma to the Presidency in December 2005, the first President of genuine indigenous background. The election of Morales, and of his party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS is the acronym in Spanish), with 53.7 % of the vote, brought many hopes to Bolivia as they symbolized not only the arrival to power of indigenous and social groups but also the emergence of a new paradigm in Bolivian politics. His arrival, therefore, signaled a historical opportunity to not only consolidate democracy but also to strengthen a model of state more responsive to the needs of this highly diverse society. But Morales’ tasks were monumental.

Not only Bolivia continues to suffer from poverty and inequality (with one of the highest Gini coefficients of Latin America of 57.2 in 2011), but it hasn’t also been able to materialize the objectives of its historical 1952 Revolution that sought to promote equal rights for all citizens. An initial step taken for Morales, therefore, was to address one of the most important pending issues in the political agenda, the re-writing of the Bolivian constitution. At this point, another broad comparison with India is necessary. Since the conformation of the Republic in 1950, India has had a single constitution. Of course there have been several amendments along the way, but what is important to this comparison is that perhaps the endurance of the Indian constitution is related to its inclusive design from its inception. The current constitution, for example, recognizes 21 scheduled languages and 212 tribal groups. It took Bolivia 183 years and 17 constitutions to reach a similar point in which the state acknowledges the social diversity within the territory. The last constitution finally makes explicit the recognition of at least 37 languages still spoken throughout the territory and the ethnic diversity in the country, much of it indigenous. The effects of the constitutional re-writing in Bolivia on the quality of democracy, however, were mixed. The overall goal: A new, inclusive and progressive constitution was achieved.

This new Constitution was approved through a referendum in 2008 with 61.4% of votes; therefore it brands as one having indisputable electoral legitimacy. But it was not Constitution itself that was the problematic aspect, but instead the way in which this process was carried out, in which many of the institutional settings -precisely created for this purpose- were bypassed for the achievement of this final objective. There are many details to this story, but for brevity sake it suffices to mention a couple of cases. One of them was the election of Assembly members through electoral circumscriptions rather than allowing the direct representation of interest groups. This is a paradox in itself, as those groups that perhaps needed the constitutional changes the most, were not necessarily incorporated in the process. At least not in a direct and formal way as these groups were not concentrated around single electoral districts. Some examples are: smaller indigenous groups, Afro-Bolivians, gay and lesbian activists and particular associations such as miners, etc. Also, the Constituent Assembly did not operate as an autonomous body as it was expected. Instead it suffered from the continuous interference from both official and opposition forces. The agenda was also simplified in the pursuance of a particular set of political objectives, leaving aside important demands that might resurface in the future, such as those claims by the Department of Chuquisaca to regain control of the executive and the demands for higher political and economic autonomy in the Lower-land Departments in the East. This recent event,

“The election of Morales, and of his party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS is the acronym in Spanish), with 53.7 % of the vote, brought many hopes to Bolivia as they symbolized not only the arrival to power of indigenous and social groups but also the emergence of a new paradigm in Bolivian politics” therefore, helps to illustrate the difficulties in enhancing the quality of democracy in Bolivia. In terms of lessons learned, on the one hand there is a seemingly more responsive state one that takes into account longstanding social demands, but on the other hand the institutional settings are still too weak to allow the efficient functioning of relevant organs of the state in a truly democratic manner.

But Bolivian democracy has moved forward in other fronts.

As mentioned before, at the grassroots there is a stronger sense of civic participation and local governments (339 in total at the moment) have proven to be resilient institutions despite its recent creation. The emblematic 1994 Law of Popular Participation has been replaced by a new Law (Ley Marco de Decentralización y Autonomías), which building on the initial model, has added the notion of regional, municipal and indigenous autonomies to the mix. The challenges are many, as the issue of autonomy also means a new conception of a territorialized state. Once again, perhaps there is more to learn from the experiences in India. The practical aspects of this country, perceived as a “quasi-federal” state, have shown that the conception of state-building is not necessarily static. While the larger national political agenda is still controlled in New Delhi, other states in the country have shown that certain political autonomy is feasible. One of the commonly cited examples is that of the state of Kerala, and the relative political success of India’s communist party. Kerala showed the world the first victory for communism in a democratic election in 1957. The dismissal of the communist government a few years later, showed the limits of ideological aperture during the cold war period. But eventually communist parties returned not only to this region but also to other states such as West Bengal, which has had one of the longest serving democratically elected communist governments anywhere in the world. Of course, this is an oversimplification of a complex political evolution (which must include the different views and objectives of different communist factions in India) that has had many significant events, some successful and some tragic, along the way. But the important thing is that this particular experience teaches a great deal in

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Bolivia Special

The Parliament of India

terms of political tolerance, particularly to a country like Bolivia that is trying to find a sound balance between political, territorial and economic autonomy at different levels. An important lesson in terms of democratic quality, therefore, is that the notion of autonomy implies a great degree of flexibility at the center, which has to accommodate many ideological, political and social demands that co-exist within a territory. This has been precisely another problematic issue in Bolivia. An interesting, but tragic example was the confrontation near the community of Porvenir in the Department of Pando between personnel of the regional government (under the hands of an opposition political force) and peasant sympathizers of MAS in 2008, an episode that left at least thirteen people dead. Although it is still unclear where most of the responsibility lies (the Bolivian authorities continue to work on this case), an important repercussion was the arrest of this department’s governor for his alleged participation, but without proper due process, and following a state of siege imposed only to this region. What this case illustrates is that Bolivian democracy not only is still prone to levels of political intolerance -that in

many cases lead to strong confrontations and violence- but also that the rule of law is still elusive.

In general terms, therefore, it is hard to make substantial claims on the quality of democracy in Bolivia in recent years.

There have clearly been improvements in terms of allowing direct participation through democratic channels, the expansion of decentralization is certainly a good example. Also, the use of referendum is a new phenomenon in Bolivian politics and the few instances in which it has been used have proven to be relatively effective such as the approval of the new Constitution. On the other hand, the pursuance of particular political objectives and the sometimes existing political intolerance still hinders the potential of democratic governance. It is not that India has a perfect system - after all democracy is a philosophically flawed notion - but instead that further understanding of some of the successes from the world’s largest democracy might help smaller countries like Bolivia find that fine balance between participation and tolerance, which are perhaps the most important values of democratic governance.

about the author Martín Mendoza-Botelho is Assistant Professor of Political Economy at Tulane University in the US and specializes on issues of institutional strengthening and social and economic development in developing countries. His academic experience includes work at the University of Cambridge in the UK and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor among other academic centres. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, a Masters’ degree in Economic Development (MPhil) from the University of Glasgow and a Bachelor’s in Economics from the Catholic University of Bolivia. He has received several teaching and research awards, including a national research award from the Programme for Strategic Research in Bolivia (PIEB) and was recipient of the British Chevenning Scholarship and several awards by the Overseas Cambridge Trust.

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Copacabana

Chincaca Ruins

Bolivian Tourism on the Rebound

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Bolivia Special

T

ourism in Bolivia is on an upward rise since the 1990s.

Endowed with the sheer natural beauty of the Andes mountain range, which adds to the geographic diversity of the region and despite being a part of the tropical zone, its climate can range from hot and humid to cold and dry. One of the two completely landlocked countries in South America (besides Paraguay), Bolivia offers a range of natural and man-made tourist attractions.

Bolivia’s tourist industry has grown gradually since about 1990. In 2000 Bolivia attracted 306,000 tourists, compared with 254,000 in 1990. Tourist revenue peaked at US$179 million in 1999. Tourism in Bolivia declined in 2001.Tourism has been steadily on the rise in Bolivia since 2001 (83%). Running campaigns such as “Bolivia Te Espera” (Bolivia Awaits You), the country is trying to attract more visitors. The government’s objective for to become a major tourist destination by 2025, precisely involves reversing this trend. As the Vice Minister of Decolonisation Félix Cárdenas states, “Communitarian tourism would involve an equal exchange; for an English family, for example, to live alongside a Guaraní family, and for this process to be managed by the family itself, instead of a tourism agency.

I believe that we have to show that we’re not a museum piece, we’re a reality.”

Bolivia is in a unique situation, though. Tourism in the country didn’t become popular in the second half of the twentieth century like it did in other South American countries, such as Brazil, Trekking to the Condoriri

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Argentina, and Peru. But tourism is now increasing at a frenetic pace. According to the Vice Ministry of Tourism, the industry generated $378 million in revenues last year and was responsible for 250,000 jobs. Now, with the popularization of ‘eco-tourism’, or ‘good-conscience tourism’, Bolivia is becoming an increasingly popular country to visit. ‘We’re not going to start selling beaches, casinos, and partake in that type of consumerism’, says Minister of Culture Pablo Groux, who oversees the work of the Vice Ministry of Tourism. ‘What we can sell are landscapes, history and identity.’ To that end, Bolivia’s latest campaign focuses on community and nature tourism, which it hopes will create an integral experience that shows the world what it is that makes Bolivia so special.

Adventure Tourism and the Dakkar Rally Be it trekking to the worlds highest lake or spelunking in the deepest caves, rappelling across sheer cliff faces, or just to catch a glimpse of one of the world’s most gruelling car rallies, the Dakkar rally, Bolivia is one of the most exciting adventure sports destinations in the world. In fact, the Dakkar rally is expected to profit more than it did in 2013 since the inclusion of Bolivia.

Bolivian President Evo Morales and Amaury Sport Organization (ASO) did officially launched the 2014 Dakar Rally on April 16 in La Paz. However, the Dakar Rally in Bolivia will only be included in the motorcycle and quad race in a two-day competition, while the cars and trucks will have a different route. The race will enter

through southern Bolivia one day after the rest day (Jan. 11) in Salta, Argentina. This will be the competition’s 7th day which will probably end in Uyuni. The 8th day will also travel through Bolivian territory to continue later in Chile.

The Dakar rally is also expected to showcase the best of Bolivia. In the words of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, “We are going to prove that Bolivia is ready to meet these types of world challenges, such as the Dakar Rally. We are going to invest resources and logistics to show the best of the country.” So far, Bolivia’s neighbouring country Peru was the starting point of the Dakar rally in 2012.

Major Attractions For those who are looking for a more tranquil getaway, Bolivia has a number of national parks where wildlife lovers. Sometimes referred to as the Tibet of the Americas, Bolivia is one of the most remote countries in the world. There are 22 national parks in Bolivia, being the main ones: Amboró (area: 2,630.9 km2/1,016 sq mi) Carrasco (area: 1,372,180 ha/(5,298 sq mi) Isiboro Sécure (area: 15,234 km2 /5,882 sq mi) Madidi (area: 18,957.5 km2 /7,320 sq mi) Noel Kempff Mercado (area: 15,234 km2 /5,882 sq mi) Sajama (area: 1,002 km2 /387 sq mi) Torotoro (area: 165.7 km2 /64 sq mi) One of the most popular adventure tourism activities that

attract visitors from all over the world is the old section of North Yungas road, the “World’s Most Dangerous Road” Yungas Road runs from La Paz to Bolivia’s Amazon rainforest region in the north of the country. From La Paz, the road climbs around 15,000 feet before descending around to 4,000 feet to near the town of Coroico. The road has proved dangerous for those traveling in vehicles, but Yungas have become a favorite travel attraction for mountain bikers who rave about the 40-mile-long stretch of downhill riding.

Madidi National Park Next most attractive to adventure seekers is the Madidi National Park stretches from the Andes to the Amazon.

Encompassing over 7,000 square miles, Madidi is known as one the most biologically diverse parks in the world. Visitors to Madidi may spot an elusive jaguar, a giant otter or the titi monkey, a species of monkey found nowhere else in the world. More than 11 percent of the planet’s 9,000 species of birds can be found in Madidi National Park.

Potosí The city of Potosí is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is claimed to be the highest city in the world at 4,090 metres (13,420 ft). The city is also the site of silver mines that produced fabulous wealth for the Spanish Monarchy; 45,000 tons of pure silver were mined from Cerro Rico from 1556 to 1783. The Salar

Indigeneous Festival

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Bolivia Special

“One of the highest and most remote countries on earth, much of Bolivia remains untouched by the passage of time”

de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat at 4,085 square miles (10,580 km2), amazing architecture of salt was created like salt hotels and is a big attraction. Madidi National Park contains the upper Amazon River basin and is one of the most biologically diverse regions in the world.

Lake Titicaca Bordering Bolivia and Peru, Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in world. Incans, as well as a number of other native peoples, are thought to have originated in the region.

Near the south-eastern shore of the lake lies Tiwanaku, ruins of an ancient city state that scholars believe was a precursor of the Inca Empire. Lake Titicaca is a popular vacation destination.

The original Copacabana is a favorite resort for both tourists and locals.

Lake Titicaca Located between La Paz and Lake Titicaca, the sleepy town of Sorata serves as a base camp for visitors who want to hike in the mountains of the Cordillera Real. The granite slopes of the Cordillera Real lie in the Altiplano, or “high plains,” of the widest part of the Andes Mountains. Six of the towering peaks of the range are over 20,000 feet high. Hikers come to Sorata to plan and prepare for mountain-climbing treks.

Charcas Known as the “City of Four Names”, Sucre is also called Charcas, La Plata and Chuquisaca. Founded in the 1500s by Spanish colonials, Sucre offers visitors a clear glimpse of life in aristocratic Spain in the 16th century. Sucre has many important historical buildings worth visiting, including La Casa de la Libertad, where Simón Bolívar wrote the Bolivian Constitution, and Bolivia’s National Library, which features documents dating to the 15th century. The city was also declared a Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO. Each year in Oruro, just before Ash Wednesday, the city of Oruro hosts the Carnaval de Oruro, one of the most important

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folkloric and cultural events in all of South America, declared an Intagible Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO. The festival features over 28,000 dancers, performing a broad variety of ethnic dances. Around 10,000 musicians accompany the dancers.

Unlike carnival in Rio where a new theme is chosen each year, carnival in Oruro always begins with the diablada or devil dance.

It is considered to retain most of the artistic expression coming from pre-Columbian America.

Uyuni Located in the southwest of Bolivia about six hours from the grim, dusty town of Uyuni (which lies at the edge of the salt flat), and roughly an 11-hour bus ride from La Paz, Tupiza is a pleasant, relaxing place to hang out for a few days. Local outfitters offer a variety of activities, including horseback riding, hiking (you can also opt to do this on your own), volcano climbing across the border in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and four-day Jeep trips to the salt.

For a truly out-of-this-world travel destination, it’s hard to match the Salar de Uyuni. One of the flattest places in the world, the 4,000-square-mile salt flats was formed by a prehistoric lake.

Visitors travel in 4×4 vehicles across the expanse of the salt flats to visit locally fashioned structures made entirely from bricks of salt. The salt flats are at their most spectacular after a rain, when water sitting atop the cemented salt acts like a mirror, perfectly reflecting the sky above.

La Paz is the administrative capital of Bolivia, while Sucre is the constitutional capital. Situated on steep hills at an elevation of roughly 3,650 meters (11,975 ft) above sea level, La Paz is the highest “de facto” capital city in the world.

Bolivia has 37 official languages -of which Spanish (often called Castellano), Quechua, Aymara and Guarani are the main ones. In rural areas, many people do not speak Spanish.

Bolivia has more indigenous peoples than any other country in the Americas, with 60% of its population being of pure Native ancestry. One of the highest and most remote countries on earth, much of Bolivia remains untouched by the passage of time.

Bolivia Special

Amb Jorge Cardenas participates in various events in India including business and culture

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