State Autonomy Vote May Reshape Bolivia

"It's a new path, and one where we will have to work toward a consensus and have a lot of dialogue," said Marinkovic, president of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee. "It's not going to be a short road. But hopefully it will the easiest and fastest possible course for Bolivia to develop and get the investments it needs to reduce poverty, more than anything else."

If the referendum passes, many analysts say, the leaders of Santa Cruz -- as well as the other states planning referendums -- could gain considerable bargaining power in those negotiations.

"The government won't really have a way out of this -- they'll have to negotiate and talk about how a new Bolivian state, including the autonomous regions, will function," said Gonzalo Chávez, a political analyst at Catholic University in La Paz. "And that's a complicated process that could take a lot of time, maybe months or years."

The cornerstone of Morales's presidency has been an effort to rewrite the constitution, but that process has been mired by infighting. Late last year, Morales's supporters passed a rough draft of a new document without any members of the political opposition present, an act that sparked deadly street protests.

The difficult negotiations that followed led directly to this weekend's referendum.

Some fear that the years of built-up frustration could spill into the streets Sunday. Both sides have vowed that they won't start a fight, but it's not hard to find evidence of a combative edge to the conflict. Buildings all over the city are covered with graffiti that speaks the words few Cruceños -- the term for people from this region -- are saying aloud:

"Resist or Die!"

"To Your Guns, Cruceños!"

"Evo Morales Will Die in Santa Cruz."

At a rally Friday, about 3,000 people -- many of them waving indigenous flags -- railed against the referendum, handing out fliers that compared the leaders of the autonomy movement to members of the Ku Klux Klan.

"They will be killing us -- the indigenous -- with this statute," said Alejandro Antezana, who opposes autonomy. "We are going to fight to the death if we have to. We are not going to let them set up their ballot boxes this Sunday, even if that will lead us to confrontation and bloodshed. We have too much to lose."

But on the eve of the vote, Santa Cruz looked nothing like a city on the brink of chaos. Leo Alvarez, a shoeshine man in the city's main square, watched the feet of hundreds of passersby as the day wore on. All walked calmly. A few even danced.

"It's more like a party than a revolution," Alvarez said. "That's the way it is in Santa Cruz."

Special correspondent Andres Schipani contributed to this report.