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The Final Battle in Bolivia
By Roger Burbach
11/30/07 "Counterpunch" --- -
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 statewith 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 Boliviasmall 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) and a Visiting
Scholar at the Institute of International Studies, University of
California, Berkeley. He is co-author with Jim Tarbell of "Imperial
Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire," His
latest book is: "The
Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice."
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