Native Groups Express Solidarity with Bolivian Leader

[Judi Lynn]

Source: IPS News

LATIN AMERICA: Native Groups Express Solidarity with Bolivian Leader
By Kintto Lucas

QUITO, Sep 22 (IPS) - Indigenous organisations from several countries in Latin America declared their solidarity with Bolivian President Evo Morales with respect to the crisis in his country, and are preparing a major gathering in La Paz, Bolivia within the next few weeks.

Humberto Cholango, the head of Ecuarunari, which groups Quechua communities from Ecuador’s highlands region, warned that an attempted coup against Morales could trigger a generalised uprising by indigenous people throughout the Andean region.

"The indigenous movement in Ecuador and other countries is on the alert to any attempt to overthrow our brother Evo (Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president) by economic power groups backed by the government of the United States," Cholango told IPS.

"The U.S. government has always meddled in the affairs of the countries of Latin America, and lately has supported attempts to organise coups in Venezuela and Bolivia," said the native leader.


Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43958

[amyrose2712]

1. Gotta keep this stuff in the news

ther are lots of important things going on in Latin America,

[judasdisney]

4. Use Colombia to stage False Flags, which boxes-in Obama or unleashes McCain's invasion

Ironically, Uribe's birthday is July 4. How symbolic -- the beginning and the end.

Latin America's bananas , so to speak, are all that's left for Neocons to rape after the dollar collapses.

Which means: Time to attack Venezuela & Bolivia.

And Colombia's Uribe is just the fascist to help us do it.

Uribe meets with Palin this week.

Uribe met with McCain during July's staged "hostage rescue".

The plan is coming together just fine.

[High Plains]

2. Buncha goddamned commies. Just ask DU's very own Red Squad.

Where are they?

[provis99]

6. busy hanging out in the gun nut forums, I presume.

Crackpots tend to congregate together.

[trthnd4jstc]

3. I support President Evo Morales. If we were so lucky to have more people like him here in the US.

The Tyranny of the Few over the Many is an Injustice. Fascist, liars, and murderers need to be thwarted.

[judasdisney]

5. Morales & Allende

http://www.counterpunch.org/burbach09152008.html

http://www.counterpunch.org/hylton09172008.html

[Judi Lynn]

7. There's a particularly helpful description in the 2nd link you've provided which would illustrate

Morales' situation very capably to someone unfamiliar with the elements of what has happened in Bolivia:

~snip~
The massacre in El Porvenir was the worst in Bolivia since right-wing President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada presided over the slaughter of more than 70 unarmed protestors in October 2003. This time, however, the violence was not orchestrated by the central government, but by regional officials: departmental prefects in league with civic committees. Administratively organized similar to France, Bolivia is divided into nine departments, each run by a prefect, while civic committees are made up of a handful of unelected, local, commercial-landed elites who preside over one of the most unequal distributions of land and wealth in the world. These public- and private-sector authorities, in turn, are allied with cypto-fascist paramilitary youth gangs armed with baseball bats, clubs, chains, guns, and in the case of the massacre at El Porvenir, official vehicles. These groups have made Bolivia’s eastern lowlands ungovernable for the Morales administration.

It may be helpful for U.S. readers to consider Bolivia’s eastern lowlands as analogous to Dixie. In the 1950s and 60s, working with governors and mayors of states and localities, white supremacist paramilitary groups terrorized African Americans. The campaign of terror was intended to preserve a status quo that benefited a tiny class of wealthy white landowners, against which the federal government—under Eisenhower and Kennedy—hesitated to act.

Imagine, though, that African Americans had comprised an overwhelming majority of the U.S. population, that Kennedy was Black, and that he had come to power on the back of serial insurrections led by African Americans. Imagine that, in response, white supremacists not only massacred Blacks, but also blockaded roads, blew up oil pipelines, and burned and looted federal government offices and installations.

The limits of the analogy with the Jim Crow south are significant, but another analogy—from a century earlier, the 1850s and 60s—transcends them. The southern secessionist movement sought to preserve the republic of slavery and extend it through the west to the Pacific. The movement mobilized a mass following and mounted an armed challenge to the federal government. Such analogies help convey the virulence of what one commentator has labeled a “revolt of the rich,” as well as the scope of the challenge posed by a wealthy white minority to a government backed by a majority of workers and campesinos of Indian descent, a government without historical precedent.

Once people start following the information on Bolivia, they will be horrified realizing their U.S. pResident has actually been encouraging, bolstering, and sponsoring these racist, filthy, violent monsters against their own constitution, their own country's landslide-elected President.

[judasdisney]

8. It's no accident that Bush's Nazi roots shine in helping Bolivia's Nazi expats

There is a direct link between the Nazis (including Klaus Barbie) who committed the 1980s Cocaine Coup in Bolivia, and the Nazi-affiliated landed gentry who are trying today's coup.

Surprise, surprise. The Underground Reich never went anywhere.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Is a U.S.-Approved Coup Under Way in Bolivia?

Is a U.S.-Approved Coup Under Way in Bolivia?

By Benjamin Dangl, AlterNet. Posted September 23, 2008.

Bolivian President Evo Morales announces that a coup d'etat by right-wing regional governors is under way.


On Monday, Sept. 15, Bolivian President Evo Morales arrived in Santiago, Chile for an emergency meeting of Latin American leaders that convened to seek a resolution to the recent conflict in Bolivia. Upon his arrival, Morales said, "I have come here to explain to the presidents of South America the civic coup d'etat by governors in some Bolivian states in recent days. This is a coup in the past few days by the leaders of some provinces, with the takeover of some institutions, the sacking and robbery of some government institutions and attempts to assault the national police and the armed forces."

Morales was arriving from his country, where the smoke was still rising from a week of right-wing government opposition violence that left the nation paralyzed, at least 30 people dead, and businesses, government and human rights buildings destroyed.

During the same week, Morales declared Philip Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia, a "persona non grata" for "conspiring against democracy" and for his ties to the Bolivian opposition. The recent conflict in Bolivia and the subsequent meeting of presidents raise the questions: What led to this meltdown? Whose side is the Bolivian military on? And what does the Bolivian crisis and regional reaction tell us about the new power bloc of South American nations?

Massacre in Pando

On Sept. 11, in the tropical Bolivian department of Pando, which borders Brazil and Peru, a thousand pro-Morales men, women and children were heading toward Cobija, the department's capital, to protest the right-wing Gov. Leopoldo Fernández and his thugs' takeover of the city and airport.

According to press reports and eyewitness accounts, when the protesters arrived at a bridge 7 kilometers outside the town of Porvenir, they were ambushed by assassins hired and trained by Fernández. Snipers in the treetops shot down on the unarmed campesinos. Shirley Segovia, a Porvenir resident, recalled to Bolpress, "We were killed like pigs, with machine guns, with rifles, with shotguns, with revolvers. The campesinos had only brought their teeth, clubs and slingshots, they didn't bring rifles. After the first shots, some fled to the river Tahuamanu, but they were followed and shot at." Others reported being tortured; days later the death toll rose to 30, with dozens wounded and more than 100 still missing. Roberto Tito, a farmer who was present at the conflict, said, "This was a massacre of farmers; this is something that we should not allow."

More:
http://www.alternet.org/audits/99832/is_a_u.s.-approved_coup_under_way_in_bolivia/

[Name removed]

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[Judi Lynn]

11. Ecuadorians march to support Bolivian president

Ecuadorians march to support Bolivian president

2008-09-24 11:26:15

QUITO, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of Ecuadorians went on a peaceful demonstration here Tuesday to express their support for Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was facing a political crisis at home as the opposition-controlled provinces demanded more autonomy.

Different social groups gathered Tuesday in El Arbolito Park near the House of Ecuadorian Culture, and then marched to Bolivia's embassy in Ecuador to deliver a document in support of Morales' government.

Juan Javier Zarate, Bolivia's ambassador to Ecuador, received the document amid acclamations of support to the Bolivian government and posters reading "Bolivia with Evo and without (U.S. Predient George W.) Bush," "Yes with Bolivia and Evo, No fascism," and "Latin America united with Bolivia."

Among those who joined the march were delegates of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, one of the regional organizations that summoned an international rally to support Morales, which is scheduled for Oct. 23-25 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

More:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-09/24/content_10102010.htm