Barely a month ago, some 4 million Bolivians went to the polls to cast ballots in an historic recall vote to see who was boss and who would be shown the door in South America's poorest and easily its most conflagrated nation. Now we know the outcome: Exactly nothing has been settled, which is far from good. In Bolivia stalemate is a heartbeat from conflagration.

You'll recall that after the ballots were counted three provincial governors, including the outspoken  Manfred Reyes, of Cochabamba, were sent packing by voters sympathetic to president Evo Morales. Beyond that, the result was a wash. A garlanded Morales emerged from the voting booths boasting a solid majority in the national tally (67 percent in the official count, much less according to independent sources) and enormous support in the highland provinces, where he is still immensely popular among the indigenous majority. Morales dedicated his triumph to "the revolutionary peoples of the world." At the same time, the dogged opposition governors handily won their own votes of confidence in the country's lowland provinces of Tarija, Beni, Pando and Santa Cruz, a wealthy crescent (aka, Media Luna) of territory blessed with natural gas and fertile soils.

In other parts of democratic Latin America, such a standoff might lead to a spasm of pique and protests, giving way to truce and eventually dialogue, with all parties acknowledging the plusses of entente over implosion. Not in Bolivia, where too often civil disobedience comes with the whiff of tear gas and a body count. A surge of roadblocks and pickets in La Paz, starting in 2003, ended up in bloody street clashes that claimed some 70 lives and toppled two presidents in as many years.

So inflamed were protesters in the Media Luna the other day that they swarmed the landing strip where a presidential helicopter was scheduled to land, literally driving Morales out of the country. (La Paz chalked up the detour to "technical problems" with the presidential helicopter.) He landed instead in Guajará Mirim, a town in the Brazilian Amazon, where he was rescued by a Bolivian air force and flown back to La Paz. "Never have I seen the country so close to civil war," a Latin American official with the World Economic Forum told me the other day.

Civil war may not be in the cards. But neither is bonhomie or reconciliation. The Morales administration has already won enemies in the wealthy lowlands by commandeering what his foes say is an inordinate share of taxes on gas and oil. Now Morales is upping the ante by trying to muscle through a referendum on the new constitution, a document which was drafted behind closed doors (the opposition was locked out of the assembly hall and then boycotted the final revision proceedings) earlier this year. The new charter calls for a sweeping land reform program and political  "autonomy" for the indigenous majority. Wary of the impedimenta of democracy, Morales recently issued an executive order--Supreme Decree 29691--to make sure the constitution comes to a popular vote in December.

The Bolivian electoral court saw things differently and, in a rare sign of independence, overruled the initiative on September 2, arguing that only Congress has the authority to call a referendum. Morales has pledged to overturn the court ruling.

For anyone wondering what a seemingly arcane and partisan dustup in the rarefied Andean air has to do with the rest of the planet, these recent events are instructive. "The fate of the continent will not be written in the Andes," I once heard a senior Brazilian diplomat announce, whiskey in one hand and the other waving out the window at the snowcaps of La Paz. That was then.

Bolivia sits on some 1.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, the second largest reserves in the continent, making this nation stretched between tropical jungle and towering glaciers into the newest Latin energy sultanate. Half the natural gas burned by Brazilian industry is pumped from the Bolivian fields, where protesters routinely threaten to cut off supplies and sabotage pipelines. Petrobras, the Brazilian oil monopoly, and Bolivia's biggest investor, has been scrambling to ramp up alternative sources for its awakening economy. Energy strapped Argentina would be in dire straights if the Bolivian pipeline was shut down. No wonder foreign investment has slowed to a trickle.

Diplomats in both nations downplay the threat, arguing that even the hottest heads will pause before cutting the country's lifeline; after all, all the natural gas in the world is good to no one unless it is retrieved and sold for precious foreign exchange. But in a land where tear gas often trumps confetti, few people are betting on the outcome.