On this episode of China Uncensored,
when Chinese state media brag about
deeper ties between China and Bolivia...
...you know Bolivia is deep trouble.
Hi, welcome back to China Uncensored
I’m your host Chris Chappell.
I want to share with you an exciting story
of resistance against an oppressive regime.
I’m not talking about China.
And no, I’m not talking about the Last Jedi.
There are some controversies I just will not touch.
I’m talking about the resistance in Bolivia,
against President-for-life Evo Morales.
Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America.
So what is propping Morales up?
Well, like many countries,
Bolivia is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
And that could be bad news
for a lot of ordinary citizens in Bolivia.
I sat down with Bolivian activist,
member of the resistance,
and possible Jedi Jhanisse Vaca-Daza
on the sidelines of the Oslo Freedom Forum in New York.
Well thank you for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
So, for people who don't really know
much about the situation in Bolivia,
what's going on there right now?
Okay, Bolivia is in the middle of South America,
and we are a country that is currently going through
a democratic crisis that has been seen previously
in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador,
we're just not at the tipping point quite yet.
But, you have a president, so it's a Democracy right?
It's a competitive authoritarianism
so it's a weird hybrid between Democracy and Dictatorship.
We do have political-
That sounds awesome.
opposition parties, it's so great but everything
is controlled by the state at the end of the day,
and there is a big resistance movement,
a citizen movement because the president asked the country
in a referendum if we wanted to have a change to the constitution
to make it legal for the president to be re-elected indefinitely.
We said no.
We won.
We had a high percentage of the vote,
but then he turned to the constitutional court
and had them make it legal to be re-elected indefinitely.
Okay.
Our elections are next year.
People are protesting we want him
to obey the results of the referendum
but we're not quite sure where it's gonna go yet.
Why wouldn't you want a president for life?
Why wouldn't we-
They have that in China, it's great.
It's works so well right?
It does.
I think it's worked very well for other countries too but,
the funny part,
the irony out of all of this is that
our president is an indigenous president,
which has worked very well in his favor.
Our country was the first one to have
the rights of the environment
as mother earth recognizes part of the constitution,
but then again there are several human rights violations
to indigenous people in Bolivia.
They are being displaced off their
national and natural parks right now.
Even under the current-
Under the current president-
President Morales.
and purposefully, he applied the supreme decree,
1366 on May this year,
which says that our natural parks and indigenous areas
can be opened for hydro carbon exploration,
and guess which companies are doing such explorations right now.
Nicaragua?
Definitely, no.
China.
Oh, hey that was my second guess.
Yup.
So, China has taken an interest in Bolivia?
A high, high, high, interest.
China is actually on a bilateral level,
China owns 80% of our external debt.
80%?
80%, yes.
We used to receive a lot of funds from Venezuela,
because our economy is very much-
They don't have much to give for funding-
Then things changed for those guys,
and we were like where should we go.
That's funny they were also getting
a lot of investment from China.
Weren't they?
I'm sure it'll work out for Bolivia though.
That's what I'm saying,
there's a pattern that's being repeated and
that's why we need to raise awareness about this
because we already have a huge crisis in Venezuela,
we have a very violent crisis in Nicaragua,
you don't want Bolivia to go there especially because Bolivia
is in the middle of South America.
We're very well connected to the countries around us,
and then at the same time
there's a high level of Narco traffic
and coca production in Bolivia,
because it's actually legal to grow coca in my country.
It's legal?
It's legal, yeah-
Are there non cocaine reasons you can have coca?
Most definitely,
there are a lot of typical ways to use coca for tea,
for medicine,
but this current government, again,
president indigenous and also leader of the coca growers unions,
that's where he came from.
He's taking the permits
to grow coca and giving it only to
the areas that take it to Narco traffic.
There is a UN study that says that those areas,
97% of the production goes towards Narco traffic
and the areas where they actually use it for the typical legal ways
to produce coca are not getting the permits anymore,
so they've been protesting and we've had several coca growers
protest under this government,
which was unthinkable when he rose to power.
President Morales is sort of using his image
as an indigenous person representing the coca growers
to basically use this as a propaganda.
Yes, most definitely,
both inside and outside of the country.
Outside of the country he's really appreciated
by the international community because of
the respect for indigenous rights and mother earth,
while again inside the country we've seen terrible,
terrible damage to our natural areas.
To take it to more specific examples,
we've found in Chinese citizens and companies
that are illegally trading our jaguars teeth and skin,
and every time we try to take this to trial
because it's illegal and jaguars are endangered in my country,
we haven't been able to have them process.
There's just, there's no rule of law in the country at the moment,
everything is co-opted by the executive branch
but it's affected even more because most of our natural resources
are being taken by Chinese companies.
Can we just go back for a moment?
Jaguar teeth and skin?
What is that used for?
It has a high value for collectors, I guess.
The statements that were given to the press;
farmers are getting paid $100 per jaguar
and then the skin is being taken illegally to China and Europe
and other markets and it's being sold (by) ten times the price.
So China is taking a real interest in Bolivia.
Besides the poaching that's happening,
what else are they investing in?
From 2013 until right now,
$609 million have been invested by the Chinese government in Bolivia
and by 2025 it'll be over $1 billion
that are invested but here's the catch:
We invest in projects to create infrastructure but we select,
China says, who's going to be the company that carries
and executes these types of projects
and it's normally always Chinese companies.
Bolivian companies, business people and Bolivian workers
have absolutely no access to these projects.
We are losing jobs,
if you want to see it that way, we have absolutely no control.
There is no way to oversee these contracts
and it's a lot of money that's being used and at the same time,
most of these projects either haven't been carried to the end
so there are a lot of unfinished projects
or they've been executed poorly
and you have bridges that fall within a month.
One of the biggest issues with this is, given the morale,
this government has successfully eroded the independence
of the different branches of government.
You can't hold them accountable.
There's no way to take this to trial
because the trial's just not going to work
and if you make too much noise around it,
like some of our environmental activists have done,
they get sued and persecuted judicially
and they're not able to continue doing their activism.
So you're in a crossroads that's
really affecting our environment mainly,
but also it's part of a mission that is supporting
my governments erosion of democracy
which is going to have it's tipping point
in the elections next year.
So Chinese investment.
It's not helping the local economy,
it's helping prop up what is essentially a dictatorship
and Bolivia's one of the poorest countries in South America.
How are you going to pay back this debt?
That is the main question that everyone has right now.
The current government rose to power with a speech,
and a rightful speech in a way,
that we had been often selling our natural resources
to big external forces such as the empire,
which is what they call the U.S.
and right wing governments all the time.
It's like we just switched empires from one to the other.
China's owning most of what we do.
It's the money that we're getting from China
is going to really unnecessary stuff.
We've spent over $40 million buying two MA60 military airplanes
which we absolutely don't need,
we're not at war right now.
Yeah but those are really cool.
They are cool.
And so there are $150 million that have been spent on buying
6 helicopters for the president.
And more thing I'd like to mention,
we've spent over $250 million buying a satellite from China
and this happened recently after the government nationalized
the biggest telephone company in Bolivia
which they are using through this satellite.
At the same time,
the satellite is allowing the national T.V. station
to be able to reach even more rural areas than it could before.
May I add this national T.V. station states to be,
is giving nothing but propaganda about the government
and it never reports on stuff
like the crisis in Venezuela or Nicaragua,
you don't hear about that in this news.
I am shocked.
Can you believe?
Do you see any similarities with any other government
that we may have been talking about?
Interesting.
So really in Bolivia you're seeing the same thing
that you're seeing in countries around the world,
particularly in Africa,
but also in other places in South America and Central America
where China's basically acting as sort of modern day colonial power.
Exactly.
So China is extracting resources as well?
What do they want from Bolivia?
Our natural resources for sure
and then you also have to keep in mind,
Bolivia has the highest lithium reserves in the world.
Around 70% is estimated to be there,
so you want to be in good relations with us, in a way.
At the same time,
it's a great way for China to expand
it's geo-political power in South America.
Again we're in the middle of everything.
There's a reason that Che Guevara wanted to
start his revolution in Bolivia specifically.
Very strategically located.
It is very strategically located and then you also
have a country that has no rule of law
so you can get away with not paying your workers properly,
not finishing the projects that you're working on,
and also I should add, this is very important;
there have been, not just Bolivian's denouncing this,
but we also know the Chancellor of Bolivia
spoke about this with the Chancellor of China.
There are Chinese convicts that are taken to Bolivia
to finish their term in my country while working on
infrastructure projects or mining projects.
They're basically slavery conditions.
They're really doubling down on the colonialism.
They are really going back to it
and it's really bad and at the same time,
there's no way to have it.
Check and balance to oversee all this.
Is China playing a direct role in the drug trade?
I wouldn't dare say directly
but there's this one case that was really big for my country.
It's about the TIPNIS.
TIPNIS is the name of a national park that
was also an indigenous territory that's
incredibly important for the ecosystem of the entire country
so it's very protected by law, for years already.
The TIPNIS is really close to the places where
you grow coca and suddenly the government came up with this plan
that they were gonna build a road,
executed by Chinese companies through the middle of the TIPNIS
which was not only unnecessary but suspicious as it would make
transporting coca a lot easier for them.
Indigenous groups that live there,
they had this big march towards La Paz,
the city capital, and there was heavy, heavy, violent repression
against indigenous groups including children and the elderly.
It became a big problem and the government tried to shut it down
and after that they started persecuting the activists
and indigenous people that were talking about this.
China's not necessarily clamping down on our indigenous people
but they are being the economic provider
for all of this actions to happen
otherwise we wouldn't have these companies going in.
I wouldn't dare to say that China is the one strategist
behind my government because we know that it is Venezuela and Cuba
that are sticking their nose inside my country.
We do know that it is Chinese money, again,
80% of our external debt is to China only.
They are the ones that are sustaining the system,
the authoritarian system that we have in Bolivia right now.
What's even worse,
no one's is paying any attention.
Well the audience of China Uncensored will be paying attention.
Well they better do-
So what's your role in all of this.
As one of many activist in the resistance movement,
to Morales attempt to hold onto power for even longer,
we are trying to educate the citizenship of Bolivia
about what's happening.
Why these elections that are coming are really
a very important moment for our democracy
and at the same time we are doing that through nonviolence.
We're really committed to nonviolent actions from the citizenship.
We're really committed to strategic work
and including different areas of Bolivia.
If there is something that I do give to Morales's government,
is that he brought representation to many minorities
that were previously ignored by the system.
So we want to keep this,
we want to keep this inclusion,
this union that we have in the country
but at the same time we want democracy.
Most people from my generation have known
no other president than Morales and it's so difficult
to explain both to the international community
and sometimes to people within the country
that despite being an indigenous president,
you have heavy violation to indigenous rights,
environmental rights and you also have
absolutely no rule of law.
We're trying to work with what we have.
The movement I'm in is called Standing Rivers,
Rios de Pie and again,
we're trying to translate all of this information
through social media,
nonviolent mobilization and education to other people.
If somebody wanted to learn more about your group,
what you're doing or just the situation in Bolivia,
where would you point them to?
To our Facebook page, Rios de Pie, Standing Rivers.
If you want to look out for me on social media
or just checkout our many activists
talking about Bolivia at the moment.
It shouldn't be difficult to pin us down on the internet.
We can definitely provide a link in the comments section below.
Yes please do and check our movement.
You're going to have such good laughs.
We do a lot of relativism.
We try to use humor as a way to educate people
so our activities tend to be really funny and strategic too.
So you're a laughtivist?
Activist if you want because you need more than laughter,
you need to mobilize people on the street.
Well thank you so much for joining us.
That was very interesting.
Thank you so much.
It's great to be able to bring some light to
this situation.
Good luck to you
Thanks!
Hope you enjoyed that interview; but there's more to know!
Why don't you give us a rundown of some of the things you talk about on the China Unscripted podcast?
Yes, in this podcast we have a second Bolivian so it's not just me.
And we will be two Bolivians telling you about
how the president is the reincarnation
of indigenous gods.
And also many other things, including corruption,
as well as the influence of China within our elections and how that
and how the played out for the election of the president indefinite, so
there's a lot more material to cover.
Plus the story of a lovechild, and miners who throw dynamite!
Yes, and how we're using nonviolence to counter that.
Effectively - They're not using dynamite.
No, we're not using dynamite. Effective nonviolence we're using though.
...which is the best kind of dynamite.