Clashes over Bolivia constitution

[bemildred]

Source: al Jazeera

Clashes have broken out for a second day between police and students in Bolivia amid ongoing protests over the rewriting of the country's constitution.

The clashes broke out in the central city of Sucre where delegates from across Bolivia have spent more than a year trying to formulate a new charter.

The violence left more than 60 people injured after students attempted to break into the building where the delegates are meeting.

Evo Morales, Bolivia's president, and his supporters say the country needs a new constitution to right centuries of inequality.

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EA8738CC-C458-416A-9B95-47BDCFEA1DFD.htm

[DetlefK]

1. a complicated conflict

Bolivia has an official capital (La Paz), situated in the poor Indio-dominated north. And it has an unofficial capital (Sucre), situated in the rich european-dominated south.

Morales' aim is, to write an new constitution, to ensure that (for the first time) the Indios get a fair share of the wealth.

His opponents are the capitalists and the former political elites from the south. They control the media and several student organizations from the south. And of course they are trying to slow any changes to the constitution.
For instance: That's why they demanded, that the topic "Sucre for capital" should be added to the agenda of the constitutional meetings. Morales refused and said, that question had to be solved later in a parliament. So his opponents had an excuse to stage demonstrations and street riots. And that's their goal: create enough chaos to stop this process and maybe topple Morales.

[bemildred]

2. Sounds almost like Venezuela a while back.

:hi:

[Judi Lynn]

3. Some comments on Bush's interference in Bolivia:

~snip~
BUSH BRINGS THE FALSE INTELLIGENCE GAME TO SOUTH AMERICA
On Tuesday the Rev. Pat Robertson called for the US government to suspend the Fifth Commandment and assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. While the Bush White House quickly distanced itself from the suggestion, the fact is that Robertson’s outburst builds on months of White House tale-spinning and conspiracy theories about South American politics.

From its highest levels the Bush administration has been trying to convince anyone who will listen that Chavez and Fidel Castro are trying to launch a Marxist rebellion right here in Bolivia.

After four years of largely ignoring Latin American politics the Bush administration wants back in the game and it using the same card that it used to get us into Iraq, false intelligence.

EVOLUTION OF A WHITE HOUSE TALE
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice started off the administration’s new tale of concern in February. In testimony before the Senate, commenting on the political rise of Bolivian socialist party leader Evo Morales, she announced, “We are very worried.” Since then, the White House’s rhetoric about the threat in Bolivia has continued to escalate, in ways remeniscent to the rhetorical run up to the invasion of Iraq.

In July, a senior pentagon official speaking off the record told the Associated Press that the recent citizen uprisings in Bolivia were the result of a joint effort by Chavez and Castro, “to steer this revolution toward a Marxist-socialist populist state.” Chavez was providing the cash, he explained, and Castro the direction and organization.
(snip)

FOREIGN INTERFERENCE, YES, BUT FROM WHERE
No US official has ever presented any actual evidence about all this foreign interference in Bolivia, despite repeated requests to do so from the press. But as we sadly know, in the Bush White House actual evidence is not required before the US acts. Hunches and accusations will do just fine. As Rumsfeld himself argued in the debate over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, “Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist."

The US press is also up to its old game of swallowing the evidence-free bait. Yesterday a CNN report repaeated the Bush tale – hook, line and sinker: “ is spending Venezuela’s vast oil wealth to support other leftist leaders in the hemisphere, like in Bolivia, indermining US efforts to spread democracy.”

That said, I believe that the White House is right on the mark about two things. First, there is indeed a populist revolt underway in Bolivia and, second, that revolt is very much a product of foreign interference. The problem with the Bush-Rice-Rumsfeld picture is that the real sources come not from Havana or Caracas, but from Washington.
(snip)

It may well be that somewhere along the way we discover that some Venezuelan cash found its way into the coffers of activists here, though certainly it would be dwarfed by the US’s own years-long heavy hand in Bolivian politics (In 2002 the US Ambassador here famously threatened voters agasinst supporting a candidate not to the US’s liking.).
(snip/...)

http://www.democracyctr.org/newsletter/vol66.htm

[Peace Patriot]

4. I have little doubt that Bush/USAID-NED/CIA is pouring money (our tax dollars) into

this radical, riot-prone, fascist opposition in Bolivia, just as they have done in Venezuela.

Bolivia is a few years behind Venezuela, in writing a real Constitution (one that is not just a tool of the fascist elite), and in establishing and strengthening democratic institutions and grass roots citizen participation (as a formal aspect of government). The fascist (and Bushite) strategy in Bolivia is to split off the resource-rich (oil, gas, minerals, forests, fresh water), rural provinces, into to semi-autonomous states, in order to better serve global corporate predator profit, and to deny any benefit from those resources to the vast poor urban population (who have been pushed off the land and into shantytown squalor by the rich landowners).

I also have little doubt that this split-the-country-up "opposition" is almost entirely phony--the artificial creation of the Bush-CIA. Like the "opposition" in Venezuela, it has the classic signs of U.S. instigation. Riots, for one thing. Why are "students" rioting--over a change in the capitol? You'd think students would have more important things to worry about. And how does this contribute in any constructive way to writing the Constitution? I'm sure there is a fascist core group, who sincerely believe that they were born to lord it over everyone else, and have a right to ungodly wealth at the expense of the poor, and which is rife with rightwing paramilitary thugs and would-be dictators. What I think is phony is the surrounding "political" groups--like these "students"--who are trying to destabilize their country. It's a CIA handbook item: how to create conditions for a fascist military coup? (--you start with naive, manipulable, and buyable student groups...).

I do think, however, that the leftist (majorityist) revolution that is occurring throughout South America is unstoppable. This is not to say that fascist groups and the Bushites can't cause a lot of disruption and grief. They can. But their time is past. There has been a sea change in South America, with leftist governments elected in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Chile and soon to be in Paraguay (and a little later in Peru). This revolution is also stirring in central America, with a leftist (and Bolivarian) government elected in Nicaragua, a leftist coming within a hairsbreadth--0.05%--of winning in Mexico last year, and a leftist likely to win in troubled Guatemala this year. This peaceful, democratic, leftist revolution is sweeping Latin America. It's time has come. And the rightwing minority had better learn to compromise and live with it. It will be hugely beneficial to Latin America in the long run. The better governments are talking about (and taking action toward) a Latin American "Common Market" and common currency. They are throwing off U.S. domination and exploitation. Latin America could be an economic powerhouse if these countries pull together.

But critical to that happening is mobilizing the talents of ALL Latin Americans--who have been greatly hindered by social injustice. This is the core truth that the Bolivarians have advocated. You MUST educate the poor, and provide health care and other assistance toward upward mobility. A society in which 50% of the people are dirt poor--hopeless, landless (cannot even feed their families with farming), undernourished, sick and oppressed--and another 40% or so are struggling, and only 10% or less control all the wealth--a traitorous 10% that gives the country's wealth away to global corporate predators--CANNOT be prosperous and fun to live in. It is not just. It is not right. It is not life-enhancing. And it is not enjoyable. Only justice and fairness bring joy.

These asshole CIA "protesters" in Bolivia had better smarten up. Some of them may want a society in which union leaders, peasant farmers and political leftists are chainsawed and their body parts thrown into mass graves, by rightwing paramilitary death squads--as has been happening in Colombia (the Bush-backed dinosaur of the continent)--but I can't believe that most Bolivians, on the right, really want that kind of country. I hope the better people within their ranks prevail, and that they settle down to a reasonable process of power-sharing and wealth-sharing, and writing a constitution that everybody can live with.

[David__77]

5. There is a domestic fascist movement in Bolivia.

It's the oligarchy, and the desperate "middle classes," who are so fearful of losing the crumbs which distinguish them from the largely non-white working classes. Some story of every fascist movement since Mussolini. Of course the US is playing a key role, as they did in Indonesia in 1965 and Chile in 1973. The list of crimes of that type is long, indeed. Luckily, the US is not nearly so competent in such matters as it used to be. See for instance Venezuela in 2002.

I hope the progressive forces in Bolivia act strongly and aggressively against this destabilization attempt, and change the political system so as to disempower the oligarchy is set the country on an entirely new course with a new social system.

[Judi Lynn]

6. There's some info. which is so horrendous it almost seems impossible on Bolivia,

concerning a U.S.-supported monster, Hugo Banzer:

COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia
In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.
(snip/)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Concerning Bolivian racism:

Bolivia: Political Racism In Question

By Idón Moisés Chivi Vargas

02 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org


Bolivia is living through a time of political transition where the verbal masks used prolifically by the television, radio, and press to cover up reality and, as Galeano would say, lie in what they say and lie even more in what they don't say.

We live in a country where reality is one thing and what the media says is another, the media racism is a close relative of political racism, and it constructs a country where paradoxes have the perversity of showing us the world upside down.

In this context, born democrats are those with white skin; born dictators are the ones that have dark skin and that's why:

Democracy is when the political minority govern; dictatorship is how the social majority govern.

Democracy is the savage market where the only ones that are saved are those than can and those that have the ability to; dictatorship is the search of a society of equals.

Democracy is beating Indians, mestizos or progressive intellectuals with impunity; dictatorship is when the Indian, or the mestizo, or the progressive intellectual does not allow this to happen.

Democracy is the failure of deliberative mechanisms to find the solution to a historic crisis; dictatorship is the success of these mechanisms.

Democracy is the infamous sell out of the nation to the transnationals; dictatorship is the recuperation of those resources for the nation.

Democracy is being an accomplice to the transnationals; dictatorship is to not be one.

Democracy is being an accomplice to the corrupt judges; dictatorship is justice for all.

Democracy is protecting the privileges of the powerful; dictatorship is not doing this.

Democracy is being the privileged owner of the state; dictatorship is when the state belongs to the entire nation

Democracy is telling lies; dictatorship is telling the truth

Democracy is the exacerbated racism of the white; dictatorship is the diversity of colours.

Democracy is the media justification of racial violence; dictatorship is preserving social peace.

This is because majestic democracy sustains itself on skin colour, on the most simple, and at the same time most grotesque and perverse, racism

This string of political facts is not fiction, rather the reality of a country that has decided to decolonise itself and put things in their rightful place. They are the reverse of what is occurring today.

Bolivia is facing the task of saving the Constituent Assembly, of saving democracy, the state of law and the plurinational republic.

The oligarchic minorities persist in the protection of old privileges, of old forms of impunity and infamous domination.

Bolivia is facing the challenge of giving to the world hope of renewing its paradigms of life.

The minorities have no other paradigms than those that scorn life and diversity.

The indigenous peoples of Bolivia are facing the task of being included in the Political Constitution of the State, just that.

The same privileged ones of always, are the same racists of always and their idea of democracy has the colour of their skin, violence as a culture of domination; that is the majestic paradox, it is the persistence of colonialism.
(snip/...)

http://www.countercurrents.org/vargas020907.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For some reason, the link in the article immediately following this one takes you off the D.U. page you're reading, and you must click "back" to return to this D.U. thread. I don't know what causes it: it's a first!

[Judi Lynn]

7. One more article, concerning racism:

Bolivia’s Strife Intensifies: The Autonomy Being Sought by Santa Cruz Departmental Leaders Threatens Political Stability


~snip~
The pro-business Santa Cruz Civic Committee, which is spearheading pro-autonomy efforts, already has taken action by seizing control of the department's land reform agency in an effort to curb the resettlement of peasants onto presently un-worked huge tracts of arable -- and extremely valuable -- federal territory. "Mostly poor Quechua and Aymara-speaking peasants have migrated to Santa Cruz over the last 50 years to colonize what was once state land and try to make a go of small-scale agriculture production," said anthropologist Lesley Gill, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., in an interview with COHA.

Power grabs by Costas' committee will unquestionably yield dire consequences for subsistence farmers who are attempting to eke out an existence from small plots of land and are already stressed out by neoliberal policies. Such moves would be rendered far easier under an autonomous regional government unaffected by federal oversight from La Paz, 338 miles to the west.

Cries for Autonomy Far From Representative While the white-elite of Santa Cruz contends that its actions are in the best interests of the country's population, including even poor cruceños, neither the region nor the nation is united over Costas' pro-autonomy bent. The Coordinator of Ethnic Towns of Santa Cruz (CPESC)—an anti-autonomy movement comprised mainly of peasant farmers, teachers and human rights activists—staged a counter protest on January 27 that drew 5,000 opposition demonstrators to a rally in protest of the game plan of the department's oligarchy. Furthermore, nine out of ten recently elected mayors representing Bolivia's major cities have thrown their collective support behind Mesa and the central government, acting as a counterweight against Costas and his pro-business and land owners' constituency. While perhaps wary about Mesa's ever-changing politics, the mayors prefer the embattled president as at least a "democratic" alternative to Santa Cruz's current offering. Infuriated Bolivians across the country contend that the prosperous and predominantly white southeastern region's desire for self-rule is rooted—economic motivations aside—largely in racist beliefs.

Secession to Maintain Ethnic Divide Santa Cruz's European-descended business elite has long desired a separatist rupture with the largely indigenous populations of the western highlands, comprised mainly of Quechua and Aymara-speaking peoples. Accounting for 55 percent of the country's 8 million citizens, the Andean nation's indigenous rely predominantly on subsistence farming and coca production as a means of survival, contributing little to the nation's industrial economy. Predominantly white and mestizo Santa Cruz, home to 2.4 million, is reputed to be the country's economic engine and historically has been chauvinistically proud of its European roots, which date back to the Spanish conquest. "The wealthy, 'white' agro-industrialists <...> view themselves as racially superior to the poor peasants of the highlands. They view the as contributing little or nothing to the national wealth," commented Gill. While recent protests by the elite demonstrate frustration on the part of the prosperous lowland's over the historical split in Bolivia's economy between poor and rich, they also highlight deep racial tensions.

Santa Cruz plays host to two fiercely right-wing groups—the Cruceñista Youth, whose para-fascist ideals and actions have been broadly juxtaposed by some to the Nazi Hitler Youth movement, and the Movement for the Liberation of the Camba Nation (Nación Camba). Both groups are known for carrying out violent attacks against members of the Landless Movement, as well as subsistence peasant farmers. The larger and more vocal Nación Camba, which boasts 40,000 predominantly white and mestizo backers from both Santa Cruz and Tarija, advocates the creation of a "new Bolivia" by means of regional separation. Despite claims on the Nación Camba website that the group "rejects any form of racism," the movement's Youth Group branch was responsible for the October 2003 stoning of a large group of indigenous people attempting to enter the city of Santa Cruz in protest of former president Sanchez de Lózada's decision to export natural gas reserves.
(snip/...)

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:v_zMa_tVvisJ:faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/~charvey/Teaching/BA456_2005/TWC/TWC_news%2520releases%2520and%2520articles.pdf+Bolivia%E2%80%99s+Strife+Intensifies:+The+Autonomy+Being+Sought+by+Santa+Cruz+Departmental+Leaders+Threatens+Political+Stability&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us