Reply #41: You will be thankful for the chance to read this background article on the autonomy referendum,

[Judi Lynn]

which was posted in the Latin America forum by DU'er "magbana:"

Bolivia in flames
April 27, 2008

The Bolivian crisis is much more serious than many people realize. Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega and Carlos Lage (standing in for Raúl Castro) had an emergency meeting last Wednesday, April 23 in Caracas; that’s how serious it is. Machetera is running to catch up with a series of interrelated translations, to shed more light on the events from a Latin American perspective. This is the first in that series.

Pablo Villegas explains for Rebelión why April may be the last month of life for many Bolivians, young Bolivians in particular. The article is long, so you may wish to copy, paste and print.

Bolivia in flames
April 27, 2008 ·

The Colombia/Santa Cruz Axis

To the “Mothers of Santa Cruz..we’ll spill their children’s blood responsibly.”

Pablo Villegas - Rebelión
Translation: Machetera

An Autonomy Without Law or Reason

The problem between the government and the autonomists is that the latter demand greater prerogatives than the states , comparable only to those assumed by Kosovo in its secession from Serbia.<1>

The autonomy movement confirmed its separatist character on April 3, with the presentation of a Governing Program for Santa Cruz to begin on May 4. This includes, among others, the creation of an Autonomous Assembly - a parliament in reality - a regional police force, autonomous exports and a self-contained tax system. Given the separatist character of the future government, an attempt to suspend the provision of fuel to departments outside Santa Cruz is a troubling possibility, one which would generate an extremely dangerous situation.

The autonomists, who’ve gone ahead with their openly secessionist actions, have hypocritically argued in their statute, their willingness to continue strengthening the unity of the Bolivian state and recently assured an OAS delegation that they were not trying to divide the country, yet days later, in a presentation of their governmental program, a prefect said: “After May 4th, I don’t know if the name of the highest authority in this Department will be Governor, President or simply Prefect.”(2)

The seditious position of the autonomists was radicalized after the call for a referendum on May 4, without respect to established norms, for which it was declared illegal by the National Electoral Court. Faced with this situation, people of such stature as the Prefect of Beni, E. Suárez (3) and the Secretary General of Beni’s Civic Committee, J.J. Hurtado, refused to recognize the president of the Court “because he is just another government employee.”(4) They also refused to recognize the Electoral Law, establishing their own “legality,” as acknowledged by the Vice President of the Parliamentarians of Beni, C. Velasco, who said, “What more legitimacy is wanted if many citizens are signing the books…in support of autonomy?” (5)

The autonomists also refuse to recognize any international law or organization. In their Statute, the only legal body they invoked was the OAS’s Inter-American Democratic Charter, but having selected this organization on the basis of its respect for legality, now according to Senator R. Yáñez of the Podemos party: “The OAS is not a credible organization due to the fact that it is run by Señor Miguel Insulza, Hugo Chávez’s acolyte and anointed one.”

The European Union also refused to send election observers because of the illegality. Therefore, the aforementioned senator stated that the agency “cannot decide hastily because it doesn’t know what’s really going on…”(6) and Klinsky, a Podemos parliamentarian, said that the referendum doesn’t need anyone’s recognition in order for the results to be valid.(7) The Senate President Ortiz (Podemos), for his part, stated that “there’s no ambassador anywhere who can say what is legal or illegal in Bolivia, and if they have said this, they would be meddling in internal affairs.” (8.)

More:
http://machetera.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/bolivia-in-flames/