The
Final Battle In Bolivia
By
Roger Burbach
26 November,
2007
Countercurrents.org
Evo Morales, the first Indian
president of Bolivia, is forcing a showdown with the oligarchy and the
right wing political parties that have stymied efforts to draft a new
constitution to transform the nation. He declares, “Dead or alive
I will have a new constitution for the country by December 14,”
the mandated date for the specially elected Constituent Assembly to
present the constitution.
Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linares states, “Either we now consolidate
the new state…with the new dominant forces behind us, or we will
move backwards and the old forces will again predominate.” A leading
trade union leader, Edgar Patana, put it bluntly: “The final battle
has begun, and the people are prepared for it.”
For over a year the oligarchy centered in the eastern city of Santa
Cruz has conspired to frustrate the efforts of the Constituent Assembly
in which the governing party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), and
its allies hold 60 percent of the seats. First the right wing parties
in the Assembly, led by Podemos, insisted that a two-thirds vote was
needed even for committees to approve the different sections of the
new constitution.
When the opposition was overruled on this point, the oligarchy then
won allies in the city of Sucre, where the Constituent Assembly is being
held, by asserting that the executive and congressional branches of
government should be moved from La Paz to Sucre, which used to be the
center of government until the late nineteenth century. This was also
a racial strategy as La Paz and its sister city El Alto are at the heart
of the country’s majority Indian population that support Morales
and mobilized in 2003 to topple an oligarchic president in La Paz who
murdered Indian demonstrators in the streets.
In Sucre in recent months right wing militants have menaced and assaulted
delegates of MAS, including Silvia Lazarte, the Assembly’s indigenous
women president. The Assembly has been effectively prevented from functioning
since August 15.
Then in a move to more equitably redistribute the country growing oil
and gas revenues, Morales in mid-October declared that a retirement
pension equal to the minimum wage would be extended to all Bolivians
that would come directly out of a special hydrocarbon fund. Morales
simultaneously cut the payments from the fund that go to municipal governments
like Santa Cruz with no congressional oversight. This caused an uproar
in the Media Luna (Half Moon) region, comprised of the department of
Santa Cruz and allied departments, with many of the business interests
of the country threatening to create shortages and sew economic chaos
by withholding their produce from the market.
Three hundred peasants, who came to Sucre last week to protect the Assembly
members in its efforts to reconvene, were violently expelled from their
sleeping quarters at the Pedagogical Institute by right wing students
and Lazarte was prevented from convening the Assembly. Then Morales
moved the Assembly meeting site to an old castle on the outskirts of
Sucre that also serves as a military school and barracks. The head of
the armed forces, General Wilfredo Vargas, backed the meeting of the
Assembly at the castle, saying “it has to meet to continue …to
modernize the state in all its features.”
Then Vargas in a swipe at one of the regional political leaders allied
with the Media Luna who claimed that Cuban and Venezuelan military units
where in the country, declared: “No information exists of such
units. And if it were the case, they are military units of the State
and as part of the State they represent the Bolivian people.”
The Bush administration is also jumping into the fray. Earlier this
year Morales denounced that US backed agencies and non- governmental
organizations that are providing direct support to right-wing political
parties and allied institutions, ordering that all such funding would
now be channeled directly through the government. Then at the recent
Ibero-American Summit in Santiago Chile, Morales declared that “while
we are trying to change Bolivia…small groups of the oligarchy
are conspiring in alliance with the representative of the government
of the United States,” referring to the US ambassador to Bolivia,
Philip Goldberg. To support his claims a photo was shown of Goldberg
in Santa Cruz with a leading right wing business magnet and a well known
Colombian narco-trafficker, who had been detained by the local police.
On November 15, the US State Department spokesperson, Sean McCormick,
responded by demanding that Morales stop launching “false”
and “unfounded” allegations of conspiracy by the ambassador.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the Bolivian ambassador in
Washington to deliver the same tough message.
The delegates of the right wing parties led by Podemos boycotted the
meetings at the castle, declaring that the Assembly is “illegal.”
On Friday 139 of the 255 Assembly members met and approved the broad
outlines of a new constitution to carry out the reforms championed by
Morales and the country’s social movements. The next step is for
the Assembly to adopt the specific clauses and content of the constitution.
But before that process could begin, the opposition in Sucre, led mainly
by students and young people, violently took over all the major public
buildings using dynamite and Molotov coctails, demanding the resignation
of “the shitty Indian Morales.” Parts of the city were in
flames as the members of the Assembly abandoned the castle on Saturday,
and by Sunday rioting mobs controlled Sucre, forcing the police to retreat
to the mining town of Potosi, two hours away. Three people, including
one policemen, are dead, with hundreds injured. The right wing and the
business organizations in Santa Cruz and allied departments are threatening
to declare autonomy and even talking of cession.
“We are at a national impasse” says Manuel Urisote, a political
analyst and director of the Land Foundation, an independent research
center in La Paz. “The right wing led by the Santa Cruz oligarchy
is in open rebellion, but Morales, the Movement Towards Socialism and
the popular movements will not back down. The military is supporting
the president. As a national institution it intends to maintain the
territorial integrity of Bolivia and it will not accept decrees of cession
by Santa Cruz.”
Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study
of the Americas (CENSA). (http://globalalternatives.org) His most recent
article is, “Ecuador’s Popular Revolt: Forging a New Nation,”
NACLA’s Report on the Americas, Sept.-Oct., 2007. He is a Visiting
Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
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