This cartoon appeared May 9, 2011 in La Razon newspaper. It represents how the larger union (COB) received 11% salary increase as opposed to YPFB, the hydrocarbon state-owned company who gets 70% for this calendar year.

In the earlier years of this government, it had a policy that no public servant should have a greater salary than the president, at that time president´s salary was around 15K Bolivianos. Which meant that many solid technicians at YPFB or the newly state-transformed companies had to flee to other job opportunities, here and abroad. This government´s economic driving force was to consolidate markets and generate more businesses in the hydrocarbon sector. After almost six years, that assumption proved to be wrong by far. Not only did no new investments appeared in hydrocarbons but also our proven natural gas reserves went down dramatically.

Now the government has finally realized that regardless their so-called populist, socialist regime, they had to implement competitive salaries to bring back or at least retain experienced professionals for YPFB.

The cartoon reflects how Bolivian society, specially the lower class identified by the COB, feel rejected and mistreated by this government. Although, Bolivia does not have the capacity nor the productive force to implement higher salaries, this government is now being accused by its not-so-log-ago former allies as being “capitalist” for not awarding higher salary increases. It appears that what this government officials used to criticize before, now they have to use same logic.