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What does Bolivia have to do to make the front page?
As far as I can tell, there has been a partial secession in Bolivia. (This story makes it sound more like "autonomy" than secession, but that line is a fine one, try this story too.) The wealthier, more business-oriented, lighter-skinned, and natural gas-rich provinces near Santa Cruz wish to control their own fate. But as of 8 a.m., there is nada on the front page of The New York Times. So far it doesn't make the front page of news.google.com either. Nor The Washington Post. Here is a Spanish-language account from Bolivia, it does make the front page there. Here's a blog report as well.
It is not an accident that Bolivia has lost territory to Paraguay and also to Chile. When it comes to Schellingesque focal point purposes, those events aren't as long ago as clock time might make them seem. I might add that both conflicts were over resource wealth, just as today's conflict is in part over natural gas. I would not be surprised if Bolivia lost territory again. If there is any trend over the last five hundred and fifteen years, it is that indigenous peoples in the Americas are losing control over natural resources. Every squib in Kosovo gets reported, why not this too?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 16, 2007 at 08:01 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
You can thank/blame America's obsession with Islam. If a country isn't Muslim, Americans aren't interested.
Posted by: Peter at Dec 16, 2007 9:48:47 AM
I'm with Peter, though I'd amend his generalization just a little: "If a country isn't Muslm, American *editors* aren't interested."
Posted by: MIchael Blowhard at Dec 16, 2007 10:08:18 AM
My friend's trip to Bolivia got cancelled at the last minute; I was wondering why. Oh well, as long as it makes the front page of MR.
Posted by: Raghav at Dec 16, 2007 10:27:46 AM
It would have to be a couple of left-wing groups seceding from a right-wing dictatorship, of course. Preferably a secession supported by Chavez.
Posted by: Robert Olson at Dec 16, 2007 10:28:04 AM
I follow German sites (for professional reasons), and saw a reference to events in Bolivia on the German Wikipedia site this morning: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite
I expect it will be covered in the European papers in the morning. South America certainly deserves more American interest.
I just discovered your site. Your books on capitalism and creativity sound interesting, and I will look into them. My work concerns, from a literary angle, the conjunction of capitalism and literary autonomy.
Posted by: goethe girl at Dec 16, 2007 10:32:37 AM
I don't even see anything on univision.com
Posted by: Aaron Fix at Dec 16, 2007 10:44:01 AM
I don't even see anything on univision.com
Posted by: Aaron Fix at Dec 16, 2007 10:44:25 AM
Look below the surface and we'll probably find American intervention. This is the same sort of thing the Bush government tried to pull on Chavez. Part of the strategy is to keep it out of the news until it's a fait accompli.
Posted by: Stephen Downes at Dec 16, 2007 10:48:55 AM
Find an angle to blame it on USA/Bush and stand back, puhlenty of coverage then....
tsk,tsk
Posted by: Bob From Boston at Dec 16, 2007 10:56:39 AM
The NYTimes did cover this on Saturday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/world/americas/16bolivia.html
Alex
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Dec 16, 2007 11:02:40 AM
A lot of south american strife has had leftist ideological leanings. Does the systematic US-Media underreporting have any causality there?
Posted by: anon at Dec 16, 2007 11:15:36 AM
LOL..... Bolivia is Christian.. just a small country in the middle of no where... and no.. no one really cares about what happens there... it has been paradise for many years, and now you have a few fools that are destroying it.
Some here really have no clue where their head is.
Posted by: No one at Dec 16, 2007 11:22:36 AM
[If there is any trend over the last five hundred and fifteen years, it is that indigenous peoples in the Americas are losing control over natural resources.]
Was that merely a statement of fact or did it have a hint of a judgmental overtone? Just curious. The torch of socio-political control is frequently peripatetic.
Posted by: ross at Dec 16, 2007 11:25:48 AM
To answer the question, "why not this one too?", I can think of a few reasons:
1) American readers do not, in general, like reading about how lighter-skinned people peoples recently divested a native population of the natural resources on the lands the natives used to occupy. We would prefer not to think about that too closely.
2) To write this story in the usual "group A vs group B" manner means siding with Evo Morales, who has been written up heretofore as another Chavez and that makes some readers uncomfortable. The alternative is to side with... the light-skinned guys who get all the resources. See (1) above.
3) The majority of U.S. citizens are white, and deep down, we care about other white people more than darker-skinned people because they remind us of ourselves. The light-skinned people make out okay here, so why care?
4) The dark-skinned people are not involved in terrorism linked with terrorists who practice Islam. They are not that exciting to read about.
I like all of them, but y'all are free to pick and choose.
Posted by: jared at Dec 16, 2007 12:00:24 PM
"It is not an accident that Bolivia has lost territory to Paraguay and also to Chile. When it comes to Schellingesque focal point purposes, those events aren't as long ago as clock time might make them seem."
Indeed, I have it on decent authority that, when loading firearms, Bolivian soldiers chant, "un Chileno, dos Chilenos, tres Chilenos,...." as the bullets are inserted.
Posted by: angus at Dec 16, 2007 12:03:52 PM
The wealthier, more business-oriented, lighter-skinned, and natural gas-rich provinces near Santa Cruz wish to control their own fate.
True, but it's also worth noting that this was immediately proceeded by a new constitution giving Morales more power pushed through over their strident opposition-- though it still faces a referendum.
American readers do not, in general, like reading about how lighter-skinned people peoples recently divested a native population of the natural resources on the lands the natives used to occupy. We would prefer not to think about that too closely.
Yes, but that's not relevant to this issue, unless you stretch the world "recently." This issue is more about how mixed-race (lighter-skinned) people pushed native populations away from lands with natural resources many years ago, and the native populations are now recently trying to take it back through both nationalization and direct confiscations, and the lighter-skinned people are resisting. The analogy would have to be even less palatable to Americans-- imagine American Indians being a slight majority of the population (but still quite poor) and voting to redistribute the wealth back to themselves out of retribution for past transgressions.
In this case it's even more complicated because Santa Cruz and the nearby provinces are underrepresented in Bolivia's Congress by population. They have been growing in population, and the poorer west declining, but there hasn't been fair reapportionment to reflect that. (Something familiar to Canadians, no doubt.)
Posted by: John Thacker at Dec 16, 2007 12:33:39 PM
No one should be shocked that something like this happens. How many people do you know that think that democracy is a goal worth striving for, rather than a means to an end?
Democracy (or a democratic republic, or whatever) in and of itself is nothing more than two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. If a democracy does not have as part of its DNA that liberty must be protected (indeed that is the whole point of a democracy, unless you are a tyrant), then that democracy has already begun to implode and lost any moral right to exist.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Dec 16, 2007 2:01:00 PM
And yet Bolivia is, right now, on the front page of the Washington Post webpage.
Posted by: Brad Holden at Dec 16, 2007 2:14:20 PM
(Bolivia) has been paradise for many years, and now you have a few fools that are destroying it.
Yes, the fools are Hugo Chavez and his dimwitted stooge Evo Morales.
Posted by: John S. at Dec 16, 2007 2:29:54 PM
Thanks to Alex's link, we now have a natural experiment on our hands: Will the people who cited the non-existence of a NYT story as confirming evidence for their Freeper or Chomskyoid theories now accept the existence of the NYT story as disconfirming evidence for same?
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek at Dec 16, 2007 3:02:13 PM
John-
Yeah. What you said. Replace (1) with that.
happy-
Whose liberty? If I were one of the poorer natives of Bolivia, I'd see this as "gee, the descendants of the people who took this stuff from us are very well off. We are not. If we took it back, we'd be better off. Let's take it back!" Why should I respect property rights today that are based on transactions of previously stolen property?
Posted by: jared at Dec 16, 2007 3:05:16 PM
And Paul-
Sure. None of those arguments suggest that this stuff shouldn't get covered, but that'll it get covered less and less broadly than conflicts where people who are more like the majority of us. Conflict is still a good story, and we will read it; it's just a better story when the protagonists remind us of ourselves.
Posted by: jared at Dec 16, 2007 3:10:38 PM
The reason is that we have crappy papers. Peter says it is because they are not islamic. Not true!
When the current round of trouble between the Turks and the Kurds started with the ambushing and killing of a dozen Turkish soldiers (the worst violence in a decade) it was front screen news on the BBC site. I turned to the Washington Post, hoping to find out the US government response...
There was nothing on the front page. Nothing on the world page or any other section. Finally I found a tiny mention buried in the ap wire report listing.
I sent a letter to paper asking for an explanation and got this from
Foreign Editor Keith Richburg:
"....we can't claim that every incremental development makes its way into our pages...."
Posted by: RobbL at Dec 16, 2007 3:29:12 PM
Paul: Don't hold your breath, mate...
Posted by: Erik at Dec 16, 2007 3:42:42 PM
Hello Tyler.
No secession happened because the "autonomic" provinces governments nor can neither want to reform their regional institutions without the previous approval of their proposals in a national referendum. And an eventual approval would install the same rules for each one of the nine regions. So, secession isn't in Santa Cruz leaders' plans. Anyway, rethorics in Bolivia are bit extreme and incediary, as those news show.
-Excuse me for my English.
Posted by: Joaco at Dec 16, 2007 5:35:08 PM
It's now on the front pages of both US versions of Google News. More prominently on the "Estados Unidos" edition (see the bottom of the English-language US page for the link.)
Posted by: Dan Goodman at Dec 16, 2007 5:38:34 PM
It may be noteworthy that Bolivia's leading daily, La Prensa, put a story about FIFA banning official soccer games played above 2750 meters altitude without prior acclimatization higher than this news: http://www.laprensa.com.bo/noticias/16-12-07/portada.php
Posted by: Josh at Dec 16, 2007 6:03:33 PM
Compare the small amount of coverage of Mexico (109 million people right on our border) in the American media to the extensive coverage of Israel (6 million people across an ocean).
Basically, American elites see Mexico as boring and depressing, but it's politically incorrect these days to say that, so it's best to ignore the whole place, even though it's more important to America's future than any other country.
Similarly, there are now quite a few more Latinos in the U.S. than blacks, but blacks continue to get many times more press coverage. America's elites basically aren't interested in Latinos.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Dec 16, 2007 6:43:46 PM
Another obvious reason is that the racial struggle in Latin America between the whiter elites and the darker masses that has been spreading for the last decade might make readers worry about what massive immigration from that part of the world portends for America. But, the official motto of the media when it comes to immigration is Don't Worry, Be Happy!
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Dec 16, 2007 6:47:10 PM
"Why should I respect property rights today that are based on transactions of previously stolen property?"
Jared, let me toss it back at you. If I were one of the folks with the current property rights, why would I give the tiniest rat's behind how those property rights were initially developed 400 years ago, or under what circumstances? If some guy tried to take them away from _me_, _today_, I'd react as per Rudyard Kipling. i.e. "Order the guns and kill." If history isn't dead, somebody should take care of the job. :^(
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at Dec 16, 2007 8:54:47 PM
On the La Prensa comment:
See, this news aren't really as significant for Bolivians as a foreigner might think.
By the way, I'm Bolivian and live in Cochabamba.
Posted by: Joaquín Mayorga at Dec 16, 2007 9:55:49 PM
It's astounding that Bolivia is still bitching over the loss of a small thinly-populated coastal territory to Chile in a war almost 130 years ago.
By contrast, Europe suffered much larger, much more recent, and much, much, much bloodier territorial and boundary changes affecting much bigger populations and much larger percentages of total national territory, and within a decade everyone just decided to get along and prosper. Or we could point to the example of good neighborly relations (and NAFTA) between Mexico and the United States today despite the long-ago Mexican-American war. Or we could point to Paraguay's devastating war with its neighbors which led to enormous territorial loss and the death of well over half the population, including so many men that a form of polygamy took hold in the aftermath.
Why is Bolivia alone harboring ancient grudges, to the point of refusing economic cooperation with its neighbor? For instance, Chile would be a natural market for Bolivian natural gas.
Posted by: Anonymous at Dec 16, 2007 10:30:13 PM
So let me get this straight. Americans don't care unless the people are:
-Muslim
-White
-Black
-Not Latino
-Rich
-Christian
Hmm. Well this is better than the usual complaint about not caring unless there are natural resources involved. Oh but wait there are, and we still don't care; there goes that one.
Please tell us what your real complaint is; then don't call us, we will call you.
Posted by: Keith at Dec 16, 2007 10:59:13 PM
How about this: Americans don't care because Bolivia isn't important. What happens there won't affect us regardless. Seems rational not to care.
Posted by: jim at Dec 17, 2007 12:17:34 AM
Paul: Told you. ;)
Posted by: Erik at Dec 17, 2007 2:30:32 AM
It is rational for us not to care much, because we in the US has little chance of influencing the outcome. By contrast, we have had troops in Kosovo and an enormous role in Israel and Palestine. We have very little ability to influence Mexico's politics without a backlash, let alone Bolivia. (as pointed out above, our attempt to intervene in Venezuela was a backlash).
If there were a greater prospect of US intervention in Bolivia, interest groups would spring up, congresspeople would hold hearings, and leakers would rapidly shift the press' attention to the subject.
A corollary is that countries like Bolivia are better off with less attention in the US media, as it is a signal of lower odds of hamfisted and counterproductive interventions.
Posted by: DK at Dec 17, 2007 6:45:18 AM
That you did, Erik, that you did.
On the plus side of the ledger, the hispanophobic threadjacking attempt doesn't seem to have found any takers.
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek at Dec 17, 2007 7:46:48 AM
Indians and blacks are poor everywhere due to either culture or IQ or both. So in a democracy they will try to take wealth from the whites. This is something whites will increasingly face in the US as they become a minority. It might not be so bad if it were kept peaceful, but there is the risk of riots, etc.
Posted by: Robert Hume at Dec 17, 2007 9:32:14 AM
I like it that people think that wealth can be taken from one group of people and handed to another, just like a basketball or cookie or something.
The value of wealth exist, in part, because of the people who control it and how they control it, and because it can be purchased and/or sold.
In most cases, nationalization produces less revenue for governments than if they simply left the resources in private hands and modestly taxed it.
No matter how sympathetic we might be to the plight of poor Bolivians who had their land stolen 400 years ago, no matter how "understandable" their modivations might be, no matter how outraged we might be at the injustice... nationalizing industries is going to be a disaster. Bolivia is going to kill the chicken that lays the eggs. The Chavez inspired policies are going to lower the standard of living for everyone in the country, and after the economy implodes Bolivia will be even weaker and more exploitable by foreign policies.
It doesn't matter if self-destructive policies are cooked up by well-meaning leftists... they are still self-destructive.
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Dec 17, 2007 2:05:14 PM
There are two questions here:
1) Does what happens in Bolivia have much impact on US national interests?
2) Are there lessons to be learned from what happens in Bolivia?
The questions seem easy to answer? 1: No. 2: Yes.
The market dominant minority feels a need to take extreme measures to protect itself from the far less successful majority. This is a recurring theme around the world as Whites in America are on the road to becoming a market dominant minority. Amy Chua's observations seem highly pertinent:
There exists today a phenomenon - pervasive outside the west yet rarely acknowledged, indeed often viewed as taboo - that turns free market democracy into an engine of ethnic conflagration. I am speaking of the phenomenon of market-dominant minorities: ethnic minorities who, for varying reasons, tend under market conditions to dominate economically, often to a startling extent, the indigenous majorities.Market-dominant minorities can be found in every part of the world. The Chinese are a market-dominant minority throughout southeast Asia. Whites are a market-dominant minority in South Africa - and, in a more complex sense, in Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala and much of Latin America. Indians have historically been a market-dominant minority in east Africa, the Lebanese in west Africa and the Ibo in Nigeria. Croats were a market-dominant minority in Yugoslavia, as Jews are in post-communist Russia (six of the seven biggest "oligarchs" are of Jewish origin). India has no market-dominant minority at the national level but plenty at the state level.
Market-dominant minorities are the Achilles heel of free market democracy. In societies with such a minority, markets and democracy favour not just different people or different classes but different ethnic groups. Markets concentrate wealth, often spectacular wealth, in the hands of the market-dominant minority, while democracy increases the political power of the impoverished majority. In these circumstances, the pursuit of free market democracy becomes an engine of potentially catastrophic ethnonationalism, pitting a frustrated indigenous majority, easily aroused by opportunistic politicians, against a resented, wealthy ethnic minority. This conflict is playing out in country after country today, from Bolivia to Sierra Leone, from Indonesia to Zimbabwe, from Russia to the middle east.
...
I believe, rather, that in the numerous societies around the world that have a market-dominant minority, markets and democracy are not mutually reinforcing.
Posted by: Randall Parker at Dec 17, 2007 10:26:11 PM
If Evo Morales cannot change a corrupt political system run by the minority ladinos, then there needs to be a true revolution in which the whole government is pulled up by its roots and a new one created to serve the majority Indian population which has endured this form of apartheid for more than four centuries.
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