The Battle for Bolivia: Prensa Latina, Roger Burbach
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The Battle for Bolivia: Prensa Latina, Roger Burbach
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com
Bolivia for Talks, Tables Headquarters
La Paz, Dec 1 (Prensa Latina) Uncertainty about the fate of the
Constituent Assembly, the leadership of which has not been
agreed, on Saturday closed a week marked by a government call for
dialogue.
The people expected on Friday a definitive decision about the top
legislative forum's headquarters, but its upper echelons postponed such
decision for Monday, although cities as Oruro, El Alto, Cobija, and
even the Chapare region, are among options.
The Congress approved a change in the Special Law for Summoning, which
authorizes the Assembly's leadership to change the headquarters if
Sucre does not guarantee security of sessions, as proven by
disturbances last weekend.
In this respect, the government demanded immediate clarification of the
murders in the so called Ciudad Blanca, and asserted that it would turn
to international experts if the ballistic tests took too long.
Police forces withdrawn to Potosi returned this week to Sucre due to the
violence that flared again, despite lack of a proper infrastructure and
hindrances by local authorities interested in destabilizing the
atmosphere.
Similar incidents occured in Cobija on Friday, after several days of
vandalism and incitement to violence, headed by Governor Leopoldo
Fernandez.
hr iom cmv mf PL-3
***
New America Media - Dec 1, 2007
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=101ee0132f68cc98e7e8265b63ef6445
The Battle in Bolivia:
'New Left' President Evo Morales Faces Opposition to New Constitution
by Roger Burbach
While international attention is focusing on President Hugo Chavez and
the Sunday referendum on the Venezuelan constitution, a conflict that
is just as profound is shaking Bolivia. Evo Morales, the first Indian
president of the country, 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
a constitution for the country to vote on by popular referendum.
A violent conflict that left three dead and hundreds injured erupted
over the past weekend in the city of Sucre where the Constituent
Assembly has been meeting. After more than a year of obstructionism by
the right wing parties, Morales' Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and
its allied parties that control 60 percent of the Assembly's vote,
approved the broad outlines of a new constitution designed to alleviate
economic inequalities, codify a new agrarian reform program and end the
apartheid system that the indigenous population has lived under for
centuries.
The "New Left" presidents that have emerged in Latin America in recent
years reflect a social insurgence that is challenging the old political
leadership and demanding an economic alternative to the neo-liberal
policies of Washington that favor foreign interests and the
multinational corporations. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador and
even Chilean leaders are carrying out social and economic reforms,
although with the possible exception of Ecuador under President Rafael
Correa, these reforms are taking place with little or no defiance of
their country's dominant business and financial interests. Upheavals
verging on a revolution are taking place in Venezuela and Bolivia.
In Bolivia the upheaval is very different from Venezuela's in that it is
lead by the Indian majority against the historically dominant "k'aras,"
meaning whites and mestizos. The opposition to Morales is lead by the
eastern city of Santa Cruz where the business elites and the right wing
parties exercise political and economic control. In Sucre and some of
the other major departmental (state) capitals where the whites and
lighter-skinned peoples tend to concentrate, Santa Cruz has recruited
allies, particularly among young university students who are acting as
shock troops to confront indigenous organizations and members of the
Constituent Assembly.
In Sucre, the opposition demanded that the new constitution move the
executive and congressional branches of government from La Paz to Sucre,
which used to be the center of government until the late 19th century.
This was clearly a spoiler strategy that plays heavily to racist
sentiments - as La Paz and its nearby sister city of El Alto are at the
heart of the country's majority Indian population that supports Morales
and mobilized in 2003 to topple a "k'aras" president in La Paz who
murdered Indian demonstrators in the streets.
When the Assembly passed a draft of the new constitution last weekend,
the opposition violently took over the streets and all the major public
buildings in Sucre using dynamite and Molotov cocktails, demanding the
resignation of "the shitty Indian Morales." Parts of the city were in
flames as the Assembly members fled, followed by the police a day
later, who had been ordered not to use live ammunition against the mobs.
The right wing and the business organizations in Santa Cruz and allied
cities are threatening to declare autonomy and even talking of
secession. A special assembly convoked by the Santa Cruz Civic
Committee declared that it would only recognize Sucre as the "location
of all the powers of the state." Branko Marinkovic, a major business
magnate and the head of the Santa Cruz committee, declares, "The fight
has begun for our autonomy and liberty.. " Along with Santa Cruz, civic
committees in five other major departmental capitals are calling for an
economic boycott to withhold basic consumer commodities from the market
and sow economic chaos. A move is afoot by the Civic Committees to
"declare de facto autonomy" on December 14.
A massive mobilization of the Indian population in La Paz and the
western highlands is taking place in support of Morales and the new
constitution. Even in the eastern departments where the opposition
controls the major cities, rural indigenous organizations are on the
move, including in the department of Santa Cruz. The leader of
Bolivia's largest peasant workers confederation, Isaac Avalos, is
calling for a blockade of the cities, declaring, "we will seize their
lands .if they impose de facto autonomy."
"We are at a national impasse," says Miguel 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.
The radical upsurges in Venezuela and Bolivia have very different
roots. In Venezuela, where over 80 percent of the population lives in
the cities, it is primarily an urban upheaval that predates the rise of
Hugo Chavez. In 1989, the "Caracazo" threw the existing political order
into crisis when tens of thousands of people from the outlying slums of
Caracas descended on the center of the city where the rich lived. The
social and economic transformations of the past eight years under the
presidency of Chavez have been carried out in tandem with the popular
classes. The main battle has centered over the control and distribution
of oil revenues, while in Bolivia the struggle over land and the right
of the Indians to grow coca plants are major areas of conflict.
While a close rapport exists between Chavez and Morales, the
transformations in each country will assume distinct trajectories. They
are part of the broader process of social change occurring at different
paces and intensities throughout Latin America as the old models of the
20th century and the historic dominance of the United States are
disputed.
*
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