Bolivia out of balance
By Annie Murphy Posted Feb 7 2009
NOAH FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY
Bolivian President Evo Morales is surrounded by the press. Morales and the press have had a complicated relationship as some of his supporters have atttacked press in the streets during protests. The local press has complained that there is a danger of lessening press freedoms in the country.
Photo Gallery
Links
In September, civil violence shook Bolivia. Looting and takeovers of government institutions escalated. Almost two dozen people were killed. The events revealed an increaingly polarized country, as well as the delicate and divided state of Bolivian journalism.
During the conflict, both anti-government groups and government supporters attacked journalists. Pablo Ortiz is national editor of the center-right newspaper El Deber, the largest publication in Santa Cruz.
“As the political climate polarizes, we don’t feel that there are any guarantees for members of the press in conflict situations,” Ortiz said.
“To make the situation worse, most of the press is picking sides, too, rather than striving for balance. Objectivity is hard to come by in Bolivia.”
September’s violence began in Santa Cruz, the heart of Bolivia’s resource-rich tropical lowlands and the center of opposition to indigenous president Evo Morales. The departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Pando and Beni form a region commonly called the Half Moon, where local governors lead increasingly radical anti-government movements.
Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, is an Aymara Indian and former coca farmer who rose to power on promises to redistribute natural resources to better serve his country’s impoverished indigenous majority. Since then, Morales has nationalized oil and gas resources, telecommunications and parts of the mining industry. Meanwhile, an assembly of 255 elected delegates drafted a new constitution that sets the stage for a broad redistribution of land and resources. The violent protests were an effort by opposition to block the calling of a general referendum to approve the Magna Carta, now scheduled for Jan. 25, 2009.
In the midst of the crisis, Reporters Without Borders issued a letter addressed to both President Morales and departmental prefects, urging both parties to protect journalists following incidents that included fascist, pro-autonomy youth group Union Juvenil Crucenista (UJC) setting fire to the state television offices in Santa Cruz, the kidnapping of a journalist in Beni by opposition supporters and press intimidation by pro-government groups.
Bolivia is ranked 115th out of 173 countries in press freedom by Reporters Without Borders; in 2007, it ranked 68th out of 169.
In its letter, Reporters Without Borders condemned opposition violence and also asked the government to show more resolve “in the face of excesses by some of its most radical supporters. The dialogue which is beginning between you must lead to a clear joint will to save public freedoms.”
The question of who exactly is responsible for threats to those public freedoms sparks impassioned debate in Bolivia. Government opposition often uses pro-democracy rhetoric to blame the Morales administration for a political situation that frequently hovers near chaos. When President Morales made a trip to Washington in mid-November to address the Organization of American States (OAS) and give thanks for its support during the September conflict, he was met by a small group of protestors. According to the Washington Post, protestor Elena Abolnik made the following accusations:
“We are here to denounce what Evo is doing to our democracy, to our freedom of the press, to our constitution, to our human rights,” said Abolnik, who is the vice president of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee, an opposition group based in Virginia.
The current constitution explicitly protects freedom of the press, as would the new constitution if passed in January. An August recall vote showed the president’s approval rating at 67 percent, while organizations from the South American Union of Nations to the OAS strongly back Evo Morales as the face of democracy in Bolivia and condemn opposition groups for destabilizing the country.
Left- and right-leaning journalists alike say problems facing the press are not caused by the government, but by civil society. Though Pablo Ortiz pointed out that the government should indeed be held accountable for any inaction in processing citizens who attack journalists, he stressed that the state isn’t the source of the aggression.
“Any journalist is a target, and the attacks come from civil society groups,” he said.
María Eugenia Rojas, a print and radio journalist and former editor of the progressive weekly Alerta, which is published from a pro-government neighborhood in Santa Cruz, says that she was covering mounting tension in Santa Cruz for the government affiliated radio station Erbol in early September. Amalia Pando, who has a popular political talk show on the state television station, invited Rojas to appear on her show in La Paz.
As soon as the show was over, Rojas received a string of anonymous phone threats in which callers insulted her, accused her of being a “traitor to Santa Cruz,” and dared her to return to the city. Rojas arrived in Santa Cruz as street riots began, and like many others sympathetic to the government, went into hiding during the week of violence that followed. In recent months, the offices of Alerta were ransacked twice, and the paper now operates out of the director’s home.
“All of us are taking sides here,” said Rojas, who has also been asked to leave certain restaurants and businesses when conservative press members requested she be removed. “I happen to be one of the few journalists with a leftist perspective in a place that is militantly conservative.”
Even journalists who work for mainstream publications feel the pressure. Gerson Rivero is a Santa Cruz-based journalist who writes on culture and society for El Deber, as well as for local and national magazines. He says he used to focus on political writing, but feels uncomfortable adopting a party line. According to Rivero, that usually means a dead end for a journalist in Bolivia today.
“There’s a pressure here to have the same politics as everyone around you, and in Bolivia, journalism is enormously political,” Rivero said. “I now write only about culture and avoid talking politics with my colleagues.”
“At a certain point, you begin to self-censor if you want to continue working here.”
Ortiz, Rivero, and Rojas agree that Bolivia needs greater respect for journalism as a profession, which means protecting the press as well as establishing and adhering to journalistic standards that make it possible to work even in a politically charged environment.
All three journalists also recalled Bolivia’s recent history of dictatorships and its even more recent return to democracy as vital to understanding their country’s press.
From the late ‘60s to 1982, Bolivia endured a series of military dictatorships that targeted and often tortured or killed anyone deemed subversive. There was no independent press to speak of. Following the return of democracy in 1982, a handful of traditional political parties managed leadership.
Then came the Water War in 2000; a fight for public control of the water system in the city of Cochabamba was fought in the streets across the country. The event is widely regarded in Bolivia as a sort of explosion of political and ethnic tensions, and signaled the need for unity amongst the country’s numerous social movements. It changed the face of Bolivian politics, paving the way for the ousting of two presidents—Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in 2003, and Carlos Mesa in 2005—as well as the election of Evo Morales in December 2005.
Rivero described 2003 as the moment everyone—journalists included—was implicitly told to choose sides.
“We hadn’t seen the expulsion of a president in a long time, and all of a sudden we all became political actors with political aims. Including journalists,” said Rivero.
Rojas believes what Bolivia needs now is fair and free press that strives for balance.
“[The Uruguayan writer and activist] Eduardo Galeano talks about journalist-soldiers,” she said. “But Bolivia has seen enough martyrs. Right now what we need are simply well-trained journalists who are accountable to a certain code of ethics, and who enjoy a certain degree of security.”