Inca Kola News did a smashing final summary of Bolivia’s recent recall referendum, with lots of charts. The conclusions are not incredibly surprising, but they highlight just how ridiculously isolated the separatist media luna (“half moon”) movement is. Within the department of Santa Cruz (which is far more populous than the other media luna departments), practically all the opposition to Evo Morales is based in the city of Santa Cruz and its tiny province, which account for 65% of the departments’s entire population. One city!!
Take this rebel city/province out of the equation, and the department actually supports Morales.
Of course, political divides in countries transitioning to some form of social justice are based exclusively on wealth. The central concern of elites is maintaining the presiding economic system and its inherent inequality, which is the fundament of their privileged societal and political status.
What is spectacular in Bolivia is the extreme geography of the wealth divide. In countries such as Venezuela there is no major population center that the rich have all but claimed for themselves. The nearest comparison would be the Western state of Zulia, whose capital of Maracaibo is famous for its connections to the oil industry. But even Zulia will be fiercely contesting the outcome of its gubernatorial election this November.
It is amusing that while every leader following the leftist current in Latin America is accused of the standard list of offences, the real ‘crime’ is obvious after a mere glance at the prosperity of the accusers. If it really were the case that a leader was accumulating power for power’s sake, and the rhetoric did not match the reality for the underprivileged in society, you can bet the opposition would be infinitely more diverse than the counterrevolutionary movements in either Venezuela or Bolivia.
