- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click here to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
(CNN Spanish) - Bolivia is a country of contrasts.
The Andean country, whose length covers just over a million square kilometers, is “the most indigenous nation in Latin America,” according to Lonely Planet, so much so that in 2014 the United Nations Organization recognized this country for protecting and preserving its culture and said that the Andean country is a “reference for the rest of the indigenous peoples of the world”.
However, this country of 11.3 million inhabitants faces a series of social difficulties that were raised by younger citizens in the face of the controversial elections of 2019: unemployment, poverty and social unrest.
- Look: The most shocking images of the protests in Bolivia
Who are the Bolivians?
Bolivia is a multicultural country composed of mestizos (68%), indigenous (20%), whites (5%), cholos (2%) and blacks (1%), however, it is a country that has a very strong indigenous roots and by 2012, 41% of the population feel part of some indigenous group, "a figure that raised doubts due to the large decrease compared to that registered just a decade earlier," according to the UN.
The most representative indigenous cultures of Bolivia are the Quechua and Aymara, according to the CIA FactBook.
Due to its biodiversity, the country not only has one, but 36 official languages (including Spanish, Aymara, Quechua, Guarani) that were incorporated into the political Constitution after the arrival of Evo Morales to power in 2006.
In the 21st century Bolivia has seen a change in politics and representation in government. In the midst of a political crisis between 2001 and 2005, the country had four presidents following the resignation of Hugo Banzer Suárez: Jorge Quiroga (August 2001-August 2002), Gonzalo Sánchez Lozada (August 2002-October 2003), Carlos Mesa (October 2003 -June 2005; who has just participated in the presidential elections) and Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé (June 2005-January 2006).
In 2006, Evo Morales became the first indigenous president in the country's history (2006-2010), and since then he has been re-elected twice (2010-2015 and 2015-2020). He is currently running a fourth term with the opposition Carlos Mesa in a controversial election in which he has been accused of fraud, something that the Morales government denies.
With his coming to power, Morales "assumed a leadership role in the defense and vindication of indigenous peoples and cultures," said the UN, "starting with the 36 native peoples living in their territory, who began to exercise their rights. , among them to speak their languages with freedom ”.
In this country, the majority are Roman Catholic (76.8%), evangelicals and Pentecostals (7.1%) and Protestants (1.7%), according to 2012 data.
- 10 unique things of Bolivians
- The Uyuni salt flat and its three engines for the economy of Bolivia
Unemployment and poverty
The country has a high rate of labor informality. According to data from the National Statistics Institute, the 2018 youth unemployment rate was 8.5%. In general, the unemployment rate for 20% of the economically active population that has a job in Bolivia is 4%. The problem here is that 80% - the majority of the population - is in the informal sector.
On the other hand, reports from the International Monetary Fund reflect the sustained growth of Bolivia in recent years and a significant decline in indicators of extreme poverty from 38% in 2005 to 15.2% in 2018.
However, for the economic analyst Gonzalo Chávez, “Bolivia is a country that economically, despite the boom it has had in the last 12 years, has not been able to diversify its economy and remains very vulnerable to gas prices , oil, minerals, soybeans because we have not made any productive diversification ”.
On gross public debt, it has increased from 38% in 2014 to 53% of GDP in 2019 and in the same period of time, international reserves increased from $ 15.1 billion to $ 8 billion in mid-2019 ( 46% to 20% of GDP), according to recent World Bank data.
Health and Education
Health coverage in Bolivia is precarious. According to the National Institute of Statistics of Bolivia (INE) for August 2018, 65.3% of the population did not have health insurance. In the rural area this lack affects 70.8% of the population and in the urban area, 62.8%.
The Andean country has one of the lowest life expectancy rates at birth in South America. According to data from the World Bank for 2017, life expectancy at birth in Bolivia was 70.9 years, below Venezuela (72.2 years); Paraguay (73.9 years), Peru (76.2 years), Argentina (76.3 years), Ecuador (76.5 years), Colombia (76.9 years), Uruguay (77.6 years) and Chile ( 79.9 years).
Bolivia also has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the region with 206 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the 2018 WHO World Health Statistics report, behind Haiti and Guaya. (Page 23) . And it is the second country with the highest mortality rate for children under five: 36.9 per 1,000 births, according to the WHO report. The first is Haiti. (page 25)
In terms of education, in the last three decades the country has significantly decreased its illiteracy rate, from a rate of 20% in 1992 to 7.6% in 2015. The reduction in almost 20 years was 12.4 percentage points .
However, a 2017 report on Indigenous Knowledge and Educational Educational Policies in Latin America, Unesco says that although at the national level the literacy rate is 92.3%, it is reduced to 81.07% among the population whose language Maternal is indigenous.
"This gap is primarily due to the low level of literacy among women who speak a native language, both in rural and urban areas," says the report. “Thus, if the literacy rate among men who speak a native language is relatively high (88.96% rural and 92.62% urban) among indigenous women, it is well below the national average (64.37% rural to 70.69% urban) ”.
Despite the figures shown by President Evo Morales in 2018, in which he showed the substantial reduction of illiteracy in his country, Unesco and UNICEF have warned about the quality of education, which they say, is one of the “ main concerns ”in the country.
- Bolivia and the value of entrepreneurial momentum in developing countries
Tourism, culture and natural jewels
This country is a jewel in Latin America at a cultural and natural level, since it has achieved an extraordinary balance between its cultural and modern traditions. Bolivia is the cradle of a great cultural, gastronomic diversity and its extraordinary beauty runs from the Andes to the Amazon, according to Lonely Planet.
The World Travel Awards, which are considered the Tourism Oscars, recognized Bolivia in 2017 as the World's Best Cultural Destination.
There you can also find the largest salt desert in the world, the Salar de Uyuni, which together with the production of lithium, the ancestral cultivation of Quinua Real (which only grows in that area of 18,000 km2 of salt), and tourism, It attracts millions of tourists every year.
In addition, it also has one of the jewels of biodiversity in the world: Madidi National Park, the most biodiverse protected area in the world.
This place is a lonely, almost unexplored place, whose jungles and valleys are crossed almost exclusively by wild rivers, and where you can see animals such as otters and tapirs, alligators and chigüiros, the largest rodents in the world. And recently hundreds of species were discovered that until now were unknown, after a scientific expedition led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
And as this country knows very well about mixing culture and tradition with the modern, since it is the home of the Flying Cholitas, a group of indigenous women present weekly with their traditional attire of the Aymara and Quechua nations, and jump and strike with their Layered skirts, colorful shawls and bowlers, as the traditional Bolivian hat is called.
In a show of power and pride, these women make a statement against the historic devaluation and oppression of their communities in South America (the term "cholita" itself was once a slander against indigenous women) and gained notoriety, and A little money at the same time.