culture

With cheers from the US Embassy in La Paz, the right-wing Cuban exile movement, sections of the Panamanian oligarchy and some US-based multinational oil companies, the eastern Bolivian department of Santa Cruz recently held a secessionist referendum. Basically the predominantly white part of the country where most of the oil and gas is wants to break away from the indigenous-majority country now that they no longer control it and voted for an "autonomy" plan that would essentially break up Bolivia. The national government, led by President Evo Morales, says that the referendum was illegal and noted that among abstention, "no" votes and spoiled or blank ballots a substantial majority of the Santa Cruz electorate didn't support secession. The Bolivian electoral court has declared the referendum null and void and Morales says that if he has to he will send in troops to suppress any attempt to divide the country.

We shall see whether the Bush administration can engineer a diplomatic breach among the countries that surround landlocked Bolivia that might permit this secessionist movement.

Meanwhile, across Latin America and particularly in the Bolivarian countries of northern South America --- "Bolivarian" being the countries that were liberated by or threw their lot in with the independence movement led by The Great Liberator Simón Bolívar, among which are counted Bolivia and Panama --- there is a groundswell of support for Morales and Bolivian unity that expresses itself in a number of forms.

On the cultural front the Andean music scene that has long existed in Panama has a natural affinity for the indigenous people who invented that genre of music and who more recently voted Morales into power in Bolivia. Thus it was not a big surprise to find Grupo Llama, a band that plays indigenous music in the Andean tradition, providing the entertainment at an April 30 event at the University of Panama, at which various Panamanian campus organizations, leftist groups, labor unions and indigenous groups joined with the Bolivian ambassador to give a show of support for Bolivian unity.