Oct 10 2014
Some of these cars, like the one Mr Martinez drives, are brought in legally. But others are smuggled across the borders from Chile, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil without paying the required tariffs. The provenance of these chutos, or undocumented vehicles, is often highly colourful. There is even a Bolivian joke: "If you buy a used car from Paraguay, you'd better check to make sure its old owner isn’t tied up in the trunk.” Payment methods can also be shady; anecdotal evidence suggests that cars are sometimes swapped for drugs.
The Bolivian government has dithered over how to deal with the influx of chutos. In 2011, President Evo Morales offered amnesty to the illegal car owners, arguing that many were not criminals but impoverished citizens who couldn’t afford documented vehicles. But he gravely underestimated the problem. While the government had expected 10,000 car owners would register, ultimately over 70,000 did.
Owners of cars that have been smuggled into Bolivia since then want a repeat of that process. Their audacious union, the Association of Undocumented Autos, has pressured Mr Morales by blocking highways. They claim they are unfairly persecuted and that Marlene Ardaya, the customs chief, should be the one punished, for the influx of illegal vehicles. Most cheekily, the miscreant drivers said they would surrender their ill-gotten cars, but only if the government was willing to pay $5,000 per banger.
After hailing a taxi in La Paz recently, your correspondent was intrigued to see that the car’s centre console was in Japanese. Luis Martinez, the driver, chuckled when asked if he was proficient in the Asian language. “Oh, no no. I just messed around until I learned how to work it.” The majority of the cars that clog Bolivia's roads are imported from other countries in a well-used state. In view of their reputation for durability, Japanese brands are especially popular. Mechanics in the country’s border towns are well practised at changing steering wheels of Japanese cars from the right side to the left.
Mr Morales has insisted that he will not re-instate amnesty, but does admit there’s a problem. Bolivia’s customs agency suspects there are over 30,000 undocumented vehicles still circulating in the country. And if past experience is any indication, that guess could be much too low. But forgiving the transgressor can mean upsetting those who have been law-abiding from the beginning.
“We would be willing to turn in the cars, but they’ve cost us $5,000 and we’re not going to lose that money, therefore [the government] would need to deposit this money in the bank account of the importer Toyota, because these are cars of the Toyota brand,” according to the tortuous logic of Humberto Silvestre, a union member, as explained to a Bolivian newspaper, El Deber.
“It’s really unfair,” complains Mr. Martinez. “I paid a big sum to get my car into the country and now pay annual taxes. They don’t pay any of this.” So how do you spot a chuto? “Often they don’t have licence plates,” says Mr Martinez. “But of course, sometimes they fake those too.”
