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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
