Evo's opening ceremony

Hot, loud and colorful! That was the order of the day at the Tiquipaya Stadium and the opening ceremony for the People’s Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights in Bolivia. Quite a contrast to the UN conference in Copenhagen last December. It was more like attending a rock concert than a group gathering to ignite a global people’s revolution to save the planet…

We arrived at 8am on a hot fall day and managed to find seats close to the front. I guess most people knew that there would be several hours of painfully loud music and people yelling slogans like “Fatherland or Death” and chants to stimulate and activate the crowd. I won’t forget my earplugs next time. But, with all the hype and noise it was also refreshing to be with people from all over the world — regular people, indigenous people, concerned people — gone were the somber suits and oh so perfect structures of Denmark. This was pure South American chaos at its best…

About a third of the roughly 20,000 attendees were from indigenous tribes and fully decked out in their traditional clothing. This was not a hype, as they always wear them. However the opening itself seemed short of content and long on typical political rhetoric! There were speakers from indigenous people’s of Alaska, Bolivia, New Zealand,  Spain, Africa and India that shared their invitation to connect with mother earth and learn from their culture, experience and tradition. They burned incense, danced and  blessed Pachamama (the earth, the sky and all time) in thanksgiving. While the smoke was pungent and choking, their sincerity and warmth was touching and a highlight of the morning.

Just before President Morales came on stage a representative from the United Nations was booed (actually whistled) off the stage. While what she was saying was really about working together and partnership, this crowd was clearly not interested in what the UN or Capitalist Governments had to offer. The people here do not think that the 20% of the world that produces 80% of the pollution and damage to the earth have much to offer them. Their is also a great deal of anger over the issue of what they consider the environmental debt that the rich colonial empires own the poorer developing countries. They just wanted to hear Evo!

By the time we finally got to hear Evo Morales’ speech we were all fairly well fried by the high mountain sun and deaf from the loud music and shouting, but that in no way dampened the crowd’s enthusiasm. When Evo came in the crowd rose and screamed as if Elvis had just come on stage.

Evo as most people call him, has a very soft, folksy, down home style. He said that he called this conference because the UN had not figured it out — if they had respected the Kyoto Accord, we would not be here — that the people, all people, need to be heard. He talked about what we could expect if we did not take action on reducing greenhouse gases immediately. He said that from 1997 and 2007 CO2 in our atmosphere had increased by 11% and that Capitalism was the enemy of the earth and needed to be stopped. In his folksy style he gave examples of our food and how it is big, bright and beautiful, but lacked the nutrition for good health. His examples were often humorous like the perils of Coca Cola and how you could unstop drains with it. He suggested that the reason men “Turned” was because of the hormones in our food and that even baldness was a product of industrialized agriculture. He offered himself, with his very full head of hair as an  example of good living.

While his speech was short on solutions, he proposed that the papers the working groups were preparing would be presented to the UN climate change conference being held in Cancun, Mexico this coming December. He has managed to make a ripple in the fabric of global complacency and perhaps his charm, charisma and commitment will be the beginning of a new revolution as we meet increasing challenges brought on by our separation from Pachamama? Stay tuned!