Ciao!

What to do:

First, get a good travel bag...something that can hold some volume. Fill it with your necessaries. Not toothpaste and hairbrush, but the real necessary things that make Miguel a happy Miguel. If evacuation comes, you will need to get up and go quickly. Remember Cambodia. Also remember, Red Cross is not your friend. Go with Salvation Army if you have a choice during evac. I don't really understand why you do not have your passport in your posession. Get it into your posession. By the way, what kind of passport do you have? American or Bolivian?

Ok, wish I could sit around and list all the things that I would do during an evac, but I need to go to bed. You stress me out Miguel. If shit hits the fan, I will be really upset with you if you don't get out safely.

Tomorrow is another day,
Love,
Micah

Micah:

Don't worry, buddy. Things aren't really all that bad. Most of the questions were just things that ran through my head last night, worst case scenarios.

I have a US passport. But I had to turn it in to Immigration for my residency visa. It's standard proceedure. But it happened just before all this happened, so I couldn't get it back. I'm a little worried because it's possible protesters set fire to the Immigration office (they've set fire to govt offices in the past).

But I'm a Fulbright Scholar, which means I have special embassy clearance (a pass, I've carried it w/ me since Monday). If shit really does hit the fan, I can get into the embassy w/ that, I also have a liaison person to help me out.

Also, most of my friends have lived in exile during the dictatorships. They know all about leaving the country on a heartbeat's notice.

I just stumbled along to your blog. So you are blogging from the trenches? what are you doing there-relatives?

Yes, I'm the trenches, though they're relatively comfortable. What am I doing here? I should set up a FAQ, eh? Well, I'm a PhD candidate in political science studying Bolivia on a Fulbright Fellowship. But I was born in Bolivia (Santa Cruz) and have family in La Paz.

I actually think the attack on Goni's presidency was a tragedy. Whatever one thinks about him, personally, the assault on electoral representative democracy in Latin America continues. Sure, there's problems w/ the political class. But the solution's not to use populist coups as a solution (just as our parents used military coups as solutions) to political/economic problems. Such populist coups (successful or not) in Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, and now Bolivia signal that the democratic process itself is not yet consolidated in Latin America. The sad thing's that in all these instances, the final arbiter was the military (though in a behind-the-scenes fashion).

Have you thought about doing some USA journalism work while down there. Be a correspondent? Your blog has better, more current information then most other news sources. And I am sure they are not going to let more outsiders in at a time like this.

Just an idea.

Miguel,
I say stick it out until your relatives start to get worried--like you said, I'm sure they'll know when and how you should bug out. Whatever you do, don't rely on the American embassy or the government up here to concern themselves with Bolivia--the last thing they care about is political upheaval in SA. There's been almost no coverage of Bolivia in the news, aside from the scroll at the bottom of the screen. I did a quick survey at work and aside from the other political junkie in the office, no one even knew something was going on in Bolivia. Pretty sad.
I am very envious of you right now--here you are living the kind of political change we used to read about in poli-sci class. These times you are living will define Bolivian politics for the next 10-20 years at least.
Stay safe,
----Patrick

Actually, the embassy here's been pretty great. They called us and made sure we were OK, stuff like that. The lack of coverage on Bolivia is the media's fault, not necessarily the US govt's. The US interest in political stability in the regio is actually quite high, Condi Rice even made a press conference on Bolivia. So the US is interested in South America. It's the news media that's not. Although NPR (a govt radio station) did have extensive coverage.