This past Sunday the Department of Santa Cruz (departments are basically like our provinces in Canada) voted wether or not they wanted autonomy from the national government of Bolivia. 85% said that they did. That result was never really in question. Every third car here has an “Autonomia!” or “SI!” sticker on it. Autonomy rallies consistently shut down the city (most businesses just close) and bring out hundreds of thousands of people (last year nearly a million people out of a city of only 1.3 million). 

This means the leadership of Santa Cruz is now moving ahead with establishing a legislature, taking control of funds that normally are collected and distributed by La Paz (our capital) and building a police force (separate from the National Police)…among other things. Three more departments will hold the same vote over the coming weeks, and the outcome is pretty much guaranteed to be the same. 

We weren’t sure what to expect going into the vote. There were reports of groups planning to come down from La Paz and Cochabamba (the highland areas) to try to disrupt the vote. They vowed to burn the boxes the votes were being collected in, and generally to try to intimidate those voting and cause disruption. In what was maybe one of the more entertaining moments in the past week (at least in my eyes) there was a report from La Paz where a reporter was interviewing a group of men that were vowing (ranting) that the vote in Santa Cruz would lead to civil war if they had anything to say about it. This is not new here. What was new, was the submachine gun the leader was waving around as a “symbol of their solidarity”. I couldn’t believe that I was seeing a guy waving a machine gun around on the streets of La Paz. Then the video cut back to the reporter and then a few seconds later back to the “leader”….who now laying on the ground with three cops sitting on top of him. I’m not sure what he expected exactly…waving an illegal gun around on national television. But I guess that civil war was a little short lived.

So then came Sunday. We hunkered down in the house to ride out whatever happened. Most missions here were warning that violence was guaranteed. I’d made sure we were well stocked for food and I had some extra cash on hand. In the end, there was some fighting in outlying areas of the city and in some of the towns nearby, but for the most part it was a sunny, peaceful day. We even went to a movie that night (Ironman…great movie) when everything reopened and we were allowed to drive again (everything shuts down on voting days, including public transportation and driving until after 6:30 PM).

So what this means now for Santa Cruz and Bolivia is anyone’s guess. It’d difficult to imagine that the leadership here will be able to move ahead with everything they’re planning. And they are waiting for the other lowland departments to vote as well. For sure this will give them some bargaining power when it comes to negotiating with our President. No matter what Evo (our President) believes about this vote, the reality is, his country is deeply divided and over half his population is not willing to continue with the status quo.

Another decision of the government here recently, that’s hit home a little more personally, was to nationalize the oil industry. What that means is that the oil companies where Isabel (my girlfriend) and her sister work are more or less being taken over by the government…and that means that they will likely both lose their jobs in the coming weeks. Some of the oil companies have National Police officers posted at the doors refusing to let anyone remove anything from the offices. It’s still up in the air, what exactly is going to happen, but it doesn’t look very good right now.

So please pray for Bolivia and for it’s leadership. I have to admit that I often find the decisions of the President here…confusing to say the least. I do believe that he has a heart to help the poor here, and to alleviate the suffering that so many people experience here everyday. But it’s hard to see how his decisions will benefit the country and from there, the people of Bolivia. He seems to be very short sighted in much of what he’s trying to do. President Chavez of Venezuela is Evo’s mentor and guide to all things presidential, and if Venezuela is any example of what the future of Bolivia looks like…we’re in for some difficult days.

Thanks for reading and for taking the time to pray. I’ll keep you updated on what happens.