Mestizo politics

Serene Assir looks into the more prominent debates in the Spanish-language press

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The various revolutions -- some foreseeable, others not -- that have taken place across the Spanish- speaking world over recent months continue to reshape the face of public debate today. With Bolivia's President Evo Morales still very much in the limelight, questions of terrorism in Spain and how to deal with it resurface, and so too do the issues of poverty, political viability in countries of relative instability and, of course, immigration. In a sense, surveying the Spanish-language media provides one with a sense that the regions in question, ranging from Spain, to Latin America, and, if we stretch things a little, the Philippines, are struggling hard to come to terms with the fact that they have changed internally, for good.

One month after the unprecedented election of an indigenous leader in Bolivia, the comfort of anonymity, criticism from the sidelines of power and generous doses of populism are starting to give way to something more palpable and to real debates over the future of this Latin American country under a president who refuses to wear suits. In an article published by Bolivian news agency Bolpress, an unnamed writer balances the pros and the cons of Morales' rule one month in, using recent opinion polls as the main resource. Pointing out that the president remains "optimistic", the author nevertheless says that there are implicit faults in his strategy. For one, Morales "complicated matters unnecessarily by becoming over-concerned with unproved conspiracy theories," and promised voters a minimum salary his government budget could not actually afford. In addition, some respondents, the article notes, felt that although "the government has included members of all social classes," it has "not managed to resolve the country's main problems." One of the faults the author mentions is the fact that a number of ministries, including the ministries of defence and mining, remain under old guard rule. The author also cites rightist officials, who have criticised Morales for "not having presented us with his agenda yet".

Morales responded with a speech to mark his month-long tenure of power. Published on Sunday in leftist Web site www.rebelion.org, the speech acts as a strong indicator that Morales is not quite ready to take the somewhat easier road out of populism and pro-poor politics. He states that "we're still planning on ruling by obeying," and that he has taken a wage cut of 57 per cent, in an attempt to put more resources towards "working for the nation". Like long- time Cuban President Fidel Castro, Morales too appears to be up and working from the break of dawn, "just like the peasants", and although there are setbacks -- for no new power can completely unseat an old one by the stroke of an election -- he also states that his new, 30-days-old government has so far held "300 meetings with syndicate leaders". And, perhaps to reaffirm a stance that has characterised his political style ever since he came into the spotlight, he urged listeners to "push me if I don't make enough progress."

And the pushing continued in Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez is known to be Morales' mentor and friend. According to a report by a Spanish news agency EFE writer in Caracas, the government decided to reduce, as of 1 March, the number of flights to and from the United States, following a similar restriction by the US. And while the Venezuelan press has cited Delta and Continental as two airlines that will be totally left out of the loop, while American Airlines will see their flights cut by 70 per cent. The Venezuelan flight authorities insist that their carriers have been modernised in compliance with international standards, but the US has not repealed its ban.

Meanwhile, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo underwent her deepest political crisis since she came into power. In a country whose recent history is riddled with coups -- most of them staged by the closer military divisions to the presidency, as political irony would have it -- Arroyo expressed her alarm by announcing a "double red alert," according to El Pais and New York Times reporter Carlos Conde. While the country was plunged into a state of emergency, the president assured that the danger of a coup had been averted. But what the mood is indicative of, according to analysts cited by the reporter, is a long-term, deep-seated dissatisfaction with the ongoing state of affairs in this increasingly impoverished country. And a state of emergency, as is understood through a reading of international political history, is no way to resolve crises that last decades and outlive presidents.

Over in Spain, a multitudinous anti-ETA demonstration swept Madrid Sunday, with former President Jose Maria Aznar and his wife Ana Botella at the helm. Protesting against unprecedented overtures by left-of-centre President Jose Maria Rodriguez Zapatero for ceasefire talks with the Basque separatist group, demonstrators held up sanguine banners that read "they killed my son" and "no to terrorism", according to Madrid-based daily El Mundo. While the government put the number of demonstrators at 110,000, the Madrid provincial authorities -- which are dominated by right-wing officials -- said the protesters totalled a whopping 1.4 million. The question of terror and how to deal with it has, over recent months, become the main crux of polarity separating left and right in Spain, with the right refusing any kind of dialogue and the left seeing it as the only plausible way to solve the decades-long problem.

And Internet-based Spanish publication Diagonal again explored the issue of immigration, and how to manage it. In an interview by Decio Machado with Enrique Santiago, head of the Spanish Commission for the Assistance of Refugees, the interviewee said, "Whether you like it or not, our societies are already mestizas (mixed race)," and added that "short-term solutions such as positive exceptional regularisation do not provide permanent answers to the question of how to integrate new citizens." He also urged for the creation of a far wider, more comprehensive national debate on the issue of immigration, leading up to a government pact.