I never underestimate the ability of the so-called “yokels” to speak for themselves. No doubt there are differences between the Bolivian and Peruvian sides of the Titicaca, but at the risk of being a tedious institutionalist I would personally look first for differences in the two regions’ institutional contexts. I freely admit I do have a philosophic bias against culturalist explanations – I am willing to concede the point when other explanations fail, but for me they have two strikes against them from the start, so yes they do start out behind on the count so to speak.

The first strike against explanations of this type is that even when they do contain a certain kernel of truth, they only serve to excuse bad behavior, do not lend themselves to practical solutions, and too easily careen to the bottom of that slippery slope where people simply “deserve” whatever (mis)rule they live under. The second strike is simply that in many cases such explanations do not stand up to scrutiny and have been proven wrong time and again. Taiwanese farmers are meek and quiescent because their Confucian habits of mind are too deferential to authority and they lack class consciousness because of their petit-bourgeois aspirations you say? Well, lift the martial law and be astounded by the explosion of farmer protests. I wonder what one made of those allegedly submissive habits of mind clambering over the mountain of rotten cabbages dumped on the steps of the Legislative Yuan.

As much as I am heartened by your reports of Bolivian civic energy, I wonder whether this says more about the responsiveness of the country’s political institutions than about the exceptional hardiness of the Bolivian peasantry. Vivid imageries of the Manichean struggle between orderly consumers and active citizens notwithstanding, as Frances Piven and Richard Cloward (1977; p.24 – if you wish) pointed out in their seminal study of poor people’s movements, the poor resort to disruption not for the pageantry of the barricades, but only when disruption is the last recourse they have.

Speaking to a veteran Dangwai activist in Taiwan I remarked on the relative placidity of Taiwanese society since the heady days of the late 80’s, compared to, say, the constant ferment in the Philippines. That’s because the government in Taiwan works, he shrugged. Mind you, he was an otherwise trenchant critic of the political system. What he meant was simply that the government in Taiwan was responsive enough to resolve some of the most glaring, most long-pent-up complaints, so that society could return to its normal state of affairs, which is to say that the powerful get away with what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

But the choice is not so stark as one between heroic barricade-manning and sheep-like consumption. Elated though I’d be by such a ready excuse for all manners of tardiness, most people would like to find predictable parking even as they plot their novus ordo seclorum. Perhaps when the Bolivian peasants are genuinely more empowered, when they have a genuinely more equal say in their country’s political, social and economic institutions, they will be busy redirecting the legislations in Parliament, rather than the traffic in the streets around it.

Finally, a word on your equally eloquent post from last week. With the passage of time I gain an increasing appreciation for Kateb’s assessment of you as an “aesthete”. There is of course nothing wrong with being an “aesthete”. In fact it’s highly commendable and worthwhile for one to promote one’s aesthetic vision. The problem with aesthetic standards, however, is their very elastic nature. So once again, I repeat my earlier call, raised in my comment on your first article, to identify those values central to your vision. Without doing so, any project to promote the virtues of tradition too easily slides into some pointless and entirely subjective campaign against rock, rap, jazz, or some other sinister invention of modernity. Such campaigns rarely do justice to the very diversity of traditional cultures or the robustness of traditional virtues themselves. And they often fail to recognize the continuity of contemporary cultural forms with key elements of traditional culture.

It’s unfortunate that traditional Andean folk music is finding it difficult to compete against modern pop music. Should it be supported? Probably. Should modern music be banned? Certainly not. After all, Beethoven was wildly popular in his days, and his very popularity was met with clucking disapproval from the musical elders of the era, who found his bravura vulgar compared to the cerebral intricacies of Baroque counterpoints. On the other hand, is the tattoo-covered, booze-loving Chinese punk rocker Bian Yuan a typical modern nihilist with no sense of connection to the Chinese past? Well, he considers the famous Tang Dynasty poet Li Po his artistic hero, and can recite lengthy passages of Li’s poetry, as well as commentaries on Li’s poetry through the ages. Li of course was a notorious carouser and alcoholic in his days, and even died a death worthy of a true rock-star by falling out of his boat in a drunken stupor. None of these details is apparently important to the legions of suburban Chinese-American parents who send their children to Chinese language schools where they learn to recite reams upon reams of Li’s immortal verses.

My point is certainly not that such behavior is to be encouraged or even that it’s harmless. Rather, I merely wish to point out that much of the parade of human follies that we witness today has long been with us and that the core of traditional virtues has proven remarkably resilient through history’s up’s and down’s. It’s a Pyrrhic price to pay to take oneself “off the grid” on account of Jerry Springer – To borrow your road building metaphor, all roads lead to Rome for the simple reason that road-building is an expensive proposition, and without some means of paying for the road it will be a very, very long time indeed for the road to be built. And just as surely the legions can march out to the villages along the roads, the peasants can also march on Rome along the same roads in the other direction, and the peasants are much greater in number. And this is no mere idle banter in this information age when communications technology makes small-scale local industries (not to mention IT-based enterprises in the future) closer to reality than ever. Jerry Springer is surely distasteful, but is his freak show really that different from the village-idiots-cum-carnival-kings of an earlier era? I doubt anyone would consider the parade of freaks to be anything other than objects of mockery – At any rate, surely not worth throwing an adobe brick into somebody’s hard-earned television set over.

In this relatively short visit, I have seen many peasant marches, including demonstrations in La Paz on one or another issue.

What have been some of the issues and causes you’ve seen them demonstrating on behalf of? At some point, we must descend from meta-level reflections, and ask what indigenous and poor people really want–that is, we must inquire into what the actual substance of the populist action so essential to a healthy civil society consists of. You seem basically dismissive of “leftist populism” and “short-term redistributive policies,” but I can only assume that in dismissing such, you are acknowledging their potential strength and appeal in Bolivia. Is that–higher taxes on the wealthy, land redistribution, more roads and hospitals and schools in the countryside, etc. (you know, the whole Huey Long package)–for the most part what you have seen pesant groups demonstrating on behalf of? If not, then what? And if it is, then we confront one of the central dilemmas of an active civil society: do we, in fact, trust the people to demand what they truly, and what is truly best for them? (And if we don’t, then why are we bothering with democracy and citizenship in the first place?)

I ask these questions not to play gotcha, but because posts as excellent as yours, it seems to me anyway, make avoiding them impossible. In any case, do keep up the good work.