Bolivia Announces Car Import Ban

Japan's cheap hand-me-down cars have flooded Bolivia's narrow streets, where empty cabs honk pleadingly for fares and lines at gas stations often stretch down the block.

Now President Evo Morales has announced a ban on all imports of cars more than five years old, hoping to call time-out on an automotive binge that has given South America's poorest country a crash course in the joy, pain and traffic of car culture.

"Look, there's another taxi in front of me. Behind me there's another one. There's a taxi behind that one, and another way up in front," sighed taxi driver Franz Renato, 23, pointing through his well-worn Toyota's windshield at the afternoon traffic stopped dead on a narrow block of downtown La Paz. "We can't let any more cars in."

A 2003 rule change allowing the import of Japan's right-hand-drive cars — even as other South American nations were tightening restrictions — sent an ever-growing number of higher-quality compact sedans and minivans swarming into Bolivia's cities.

The cheaper, more durable vehicles have spawned a cutthroat public transport market now gobbling up streets once ruled by stately Dodge buses and a handful of private new cars for the rich.

Bolivia now counts 821,000 vehicles for the country's fewer than 10 million inhabitants, nearly double the 418,000 in 2002. Most are packed into the three largest cities, and the total does not include legions of unregistered cars fanning out across the remote and unregulated countryside.

Morales' ban will effectively shut down a rapidly growing industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The decision has outraged dealers who buy used Toyotas, Nissans and Suzukis off the boat in Chilean ports and drive them across the desert to Bolivia, where mechanics then convert the Japanese models from right- to left-hand drive.

"This is humanly, technically, and economically impossible for us," said Luis Vargas, head of a union representing La Paz mechanics who perform the steering wheel conversions. He pointed out that most cars under five years old are still in their home countries — and most Bolivians couldn't afford them even if they were shipped overseas.

Vargas' group joined used-car dealers and other mechanics' unions in briefly blockading a key highway Monday outside La Paz. The group battled with riot police sent to clear the way with tear gas, and one mechanic was killed by a bullet to the neck.

The cheap used cars they are fighting to sell have already transformed Bolivia. Public transport has exploded as many first-time owners simply painted "taxi" on their car and hit the streets of even the smallest towns. Fiercely competitive minibus lines now reach into every last neighborhood, feeding Bolivian cities' rapid growth by providing rides to hard-to-reach jobs across town for as little as 15 cents.

And the road trip to bless a new used car at a popular Catholic shrine on Lake Titicaca — where proud owners splash their new wheels with beer and tape flowers to the side mirrors — has become a regular rite of passage.

But the growth has come at a price.

The combination of unreliable used cars and first-time drivers has driven a 240 percent increase in deaths and injuries from automobile accidents since 2000. The crumbling colonial buildings in Bolivia's city centers now sport a gray smear from the automobile exhaust, and on dry winter days, air pollution levels in the central valley city of Cochabamba (pop. 600,000) can rival Los Angeles.

Managing the thundering four-wheeled herd has tested Bolivia's weak public authorities as well.

Taxi and bus drivers' unions have repeatedly shut down La Paz to protest government-mandated insurance. The capital hopes next year to cut down on the tangle of 535 overlapping bus routes city hall has registered for its less than 1 million residents.

But Bolivia's regulatory power will face its toughest test under Morales' new ban. Analysts say as long as the cars continue arriving in northern Chile, Bolivian police will struggle to stop their advance across the remote Andean border. Peru's postponement last week of its own proposed used-car import ban only guarantees further pressure along Bolivia's northeastern frontier.

"The moment we start tightening the restrictions, contraband starts to grow," said Freddy Koch, who monitors the Bolivian auto trade for a national air quality program run by the Swiss aid organization Swisscontact. "Now it's war."

Meanwhile, Bolivia's capital continues its own cheerful battle against automotive chaos. La Paz's city hall pays college kids to dress in floppy zebra suits and scold new drivers for blocking downtown crosswalks.

When the program was expanded to La Paz's chaotic satellite city El Alto this month, a zebra was run over the first day and spent three days in the hospital.

"We're totally saturated here," said Gonzalo Verdeja, 24, as he edged his taxi into a tiny downtown intersection clogged with other aging Toyotas.

The light changed, leaving his station wagon stuck in the crosswalk. A zebra stuck its plush head in the window to scold him in mime.