BOLIVIA: Compulsory use of indigenous flag sparks controversy

Record ID: 718988

  • Title: BOLIVIA: Compulsory use of indigenous flag sparks controversy
  • Date: 19th August 2009
  • Summary: EL ALTO, BOLIVIA (AUGUST 17, 2009) (REUTERS) GIRL HOLDING WIPHALA FLAG SITTING WITH HER MOTHER DURING CELEBRATION OF 184 YEARS SINCE CREATION OF THE FLAG CHILDREN IN CEREMONY WITH FLAGS
  • Embargoed: 3rd September 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA1EKCL3QSS2J3PHNK9ACHVNX2W
  • Story Text: Bolivian school children, their parents and education department officials took part in a ceremony celebrating the 184 years since the creation of Bolivia's tricolor flag was created on Monday (August 17).
    Alongside the traditional flag was also hoisted a multicolor flag that represents the country's indigenous people, called the wiphala.
    Since a new constitution brought in by President Evo Morales earlier this year, the wiphala has been ordained a national symbol, as important as the traditional, national flag.
    Morales is Bolivia's first indigenous president, and over 60 percent of the country's large indigenous population voted for the constitution and which introduced the wiphala.
    "Bolivia is one [nation]; it shouldn't be divided. It needs unity and the wiphala is something that is going to start uniting it even more," said one father at the ceremony, Edgar Manzaneda.
    But a controversy has now been sparked in Bolivia after Morales signed a presidential decree that makes it compulsory for the wiphala to be always used alongside the traditional flag, especially in public buildings and schools.
    The Ministry of Culture says the decree -- which also states the wiphala should always be placed to the left of the national flag -- is simply implementing the constitution, which was voted on by the Bolivian people in a referendum in January and aims to give Bolivia's poor, indigenous majority more power.
    "This is the first constitution in 184 years that has been approved by the people and the approval was over 60 percent. So not only has the implementation of the patriotic symbols and the whole text of the constitution been legalized, but it has been legitimized [by the vote]. And that for us a lot more valuable and much more important," said the Minister for Culture Pablo Groux.
    Some Bolivians have taken offense to the decree, however, and are worried that the president plans to completely do away with the traditional, tricolor flag in the future.
    Regional leaders in the country's east, a stronghold of government opposition, have warned they will not abide by the new decree.
    "From what I can see, the objective is that over time gradually we will end up losing the tricolor [national] flag and the wiphala will end up as the only symbol of national identity. And why would that be? Because the current president of the republic believes, although he doesn't say it openly, that the tricolor flag represents the old, colonial state," said constitutional lawyer Carlos Alarcon.
    "So everything must be destroyed, the republican justice system doesn't work, the republican principles of autonomy don't work, the symbols of the republic don't work and they have to be replaced by new symbols and by a new state that isn't colonial," he said.
    Critics believe that the two-flag system also highlights Bolivia's ethnic tensions: which are divided roughly between the poor indigenous Aymara, Quechua and Guarani groups living in the country's west and the richer European-descended or mixed-race elites living in the east.
    "There are people that have mystified the [wiphala] and use simply as a protest flag, like the red [communist] flag was for the workers. But turning it into a national symbol alongside the tricolor and other symbols is to disintegrate the image of Bolivia in the world," Aymaran political analyst, Fernando Untoja, said.
    The controversy is not unexpected however. When Morales won the constitutional referendum he knew it would be a long fight to actually implement many of the reforms included in the document.
    At the time he estimated Bolivia would need to pass about 100 laws in the process, and to do so he would have to work with the opposition, which is dominated by the country's eastern capitals that at times have pushed for greater autonomy.
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