A final de mes (y de año) otra de resumen

Resulta que empezamos el mes con los últimos ramalazos de aquella masacre en Porvenir, Pando, ocurrida un 11 de septiembre y que la prensa internacional ha hecho muy poco por destacar. Decía en este blog el 4 de diciembre que por fin la comisión investigadora de aquellos hechos luctuosos nominada por UNASUR y liderada por el abogado argentino Rodolfo Mattarollo le hacia entrega de su informe al presidente. En el informe se decía claramente lo que todos sabíamos y la oposición boliviana de ultraderecha se negaba a reconocer. En breve, no existió enfrentamiento entre dos grupos armados sino una cacería de campesinos indígenas por parte de grupos cívicos de Pando ligados y organizados por la prefectura liderada por Leopoldo Fernández. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_7763000/7763930.stm

Es ésta la noticia del mes y del año, pues los acontecimientos de septiembre y la violencia desatada en el oriente boliviano representan sin ninguna duda el momento más oscuro de la gestión de Evo Morales y el peor ejemplo de violencia desde el octubre negro del 2003 que se denominó como ‘la guerra del gas’. La tan rumoreada guerra civil no se llegó a producir sino que la paciencia interminable del gobierno y la intervención de UNASUR, así como la expulsión del país del embajador estadounidense Philip Goldberg que alentaba a la oposición, tuvieron como resultado una pacificación rápida de las poblaciones afectadas y un fracaso rotundo de la estrategia golpista de la ultraderecha de la que aún no se ha restablecido.

La segunda noticia de importancia este mes ha sido el trabajo de la justicia boliviana que por fin ha empezado a arrestar a aquellos que instigaron y participaron en la violencia organizada para intentar derrocar al gobierno más popular de la historia republicana del país. Por fin!! Pudo decir la población mayoritariamente apoyando a los procesos legales que tienen que acabar con la impunidad en el país. Han sido más de tres meses de aquellos hechos y la idea de que Leopoldo Fernández y sus secuaces vayan a pasar la navidad en la cárcel es algo que nadie hubiera imaginado meses atrás. Por fin, grita la población, pero no la minoría opositora que aún declara a Leopoldo como un perseguido político y mártir de su causa política y que tiene la capacidad mediática de hacer resonar sus rebuznos en la mayoría de periódicos y canales de televisión que no hacen sino repetir las mismas mentiras.

Por cierto que la sarta de calumnias que se imprimen en los periódicos todos los días contra este gobierno ha sido tema de discusión este mes, no porque se reconozcan como tal, sino porque el presidente arremetió públicamente contra un periodista del periódico La Prensa cuyo titular le acusaba directamente de ser un contrabandista. Resulta que la noticia durante más de una semana ha sido que el gobierno atenta contra la libertad de prensa y tiene instintos autoritarios. Si estuvieran en Inglaterra, ese periodista estaría en la cárcel.

Las otras noticias del mes han sido más positivas. Por una parte, el día 20 de diciembre se declaraba a Bolivia país libre de analfabetismo y por otra, este mes se reunían en Bahia, Brasil, los jefes de estado de todos los países de America Latina, reunidos por primera vez a instancia latinoamericana sin Estados Unidos que siempre ha manejado el cotarro en la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA). Las resoluciones adoptadas en esta reunión también son importantes porque marcan una mayor independencia del continente en relación al imperio del norte en cuanto a sus economías (se está hablando de una integración económica con moneda única), política (la integración política de UNASUR, con base en Cochabamba es imparable) e incluso militar. Para mostrar esta nueva confianza internacional de un nuevo bloque liderado por Brasil, se decidió invitar a Cuba a formar parte del grupo de Rio, restableciendo así su condición como país de primera en la comunidad de naciones latinoamericanas, después de aquella expulsión vergonzosa de Cuba de la OEA en 1962 a instancia de los Estados Unidos.

Dicen que Porfirio Díaz, Presidente mexicano, una vez se compadeció de su país que estaba ‘…tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos’. Parece ser que por fin su país, como el resto de América Latina, está dispuesto a distanciarse un poquito de su vecino del norte.
Feliz navidad. Nos vemos en el 2009.

Bolivia, tercer país latinoamericano libre de analfabetismo

Por fin, en un acto celebrado ayer día 20 de diciembre en Cochabamba con la presencia de personalidades internacionales, el Presidente de la republica pudo declarar a Bolivia país libre de analfabetismo, algo que la UNESCO ha calificado como de evento ejemplar.

El esfuerzo, que ha contado con el apoyo de cientos de especialistas y consejeros tanto cubanos como venezolanos, ha costado más de 60 millones de bolivianos y casi tres años de trabajo intenso para llegar hasta las 825.000 personas analfabetas del país que, de acuerdo con el censo de 2001 constituían un 14 % de la población.

Es fácil denigrar el hecho de que alguien no sea capaz más que de firmar su propio nombre y leer de manera básica. También es fácil ignorar el alcance de la campaña de alfabetización como lo han hecho los prefectos de Oriente que no atendieron las celebraciones de este logro en sus propias regiones o que critican este momento de orgullo nacional como mera propaganda.

Sin embargo, para Julio, un alfabetizado de 76 años, el aprender a leer y a escribir es una questión de dignidad que le confiere el derecho a tener un carnet de identidad con su propia firma en vez de uno con su huella digital y le convierte, por primera vez en su vida, en un ciudadano de primera. ¿Acaso se ha preocupado algún gobierno en la historia del país en llegar a este punto? Por supuesto que no, pues su poder estaba basado en la opresión y exclusión de una clase analfabeta y pobre, frecuentemente de zonas rurales, y en su mayoría compuesta por mujeres.

Bolivia cambia y lo hace de manera acelerada. El siguiente paso de esta campaña comenzará pronto en Paraguay donde el nuevo presidente Lugo ha mostrado interés en replicar la campaña de alfabetización. En cuanto a Bolivia, la campaña de post-alfabetización ‘yo si puedo seguir’ se pone en marcha en febrero de 2009 para conseguir que toda la población llegue a cursar estudios de primaria.

¿Es este el primer paso hacia una recuperación nacional de dignidad? Sin duda alguna.

Wake up, Latin America, it’s time to start dreaming: Towards a new Latin America of the 21st century

There is no better example of the degree of anger the Bush administration generates around the world than this week’s shoe attack against the President of the United States at his last press conference in Baghdad. But if this zapatazo as the Latin American Press has referred to the incident, was a literal attack on the President, there are signs of many more metaphorical zapatazos to the US and its sense of might. This week, Latin America finally stood up to its neighbour with a single voice. It is now President Obama’s turn to outline the next US administration’s policy towards Latin America.


Kepa Artaraz
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1674/1/

It is not only Egyptian journalists that are angry with the world’s superpower. The entire world is angry with reputedly the worst American administration in living memory. The blunders have gone far and wide, from its Middle Eastern policy and the invasion of Iraq, the so called war on terror that was seen as justification for secret detention centres, human rights abuses, the use of torture as a legitimate questioning method, Guantanamo Bay and rendition fights, to the imposition of a economic regulatory light touch that has led to the biggest financial crisis since 1929.

Clearly the world has a lower opinion of the US now than it did in 2000, even after the biggest presidential election shambles in history that saw George W. Bush appointed as the new US president by his father’s friends. Neocons wanted to impose US might around the world – shock and awe was the name of their bombing campaign that began the invasion of Iraq – and yet, eight years later America appears weaker, not mightier, than ever.

A sign of that weakness is the superpower’s powerlessness to stop a new correlation of forces taking place in the world. The United States is, by far, the most powerful military force in the world, something that is not going to change any time soon. However, the geopolitics of capital point in the direction of China, the new creditor of the United States, currently holding the biggest reserves of US dollars in the world, and to other emerging nations such as India and Russia. Is the post-communist unipolar world led by the US about to change?

The answer is yes, and no. In a recent article Serge Halimi complains that the G20 is useless because its most recent meeting in November not only did not challenge the established international financial order but it supported it. So the new emerging powers of India, Brazil and Russia, led by China, did not overturn the sacred truths of the Washington Consensus but reinforced them, calling for more, not less, free trade, and an emergency agreement in the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation.

It would be foolish for the emerging economies to attempt to overturn the economic system that has seen them become global economic players in the last two decades. No, they will do anything to return to the situation we were in before the ugly sub-prime monster reared its head, in part because, as is the case with China, its economy is joined at the hip with that of the US. One produces what the other consumes so the current financial crisis affects everybody.

But on the other hand, it seems obvious that the global power centre of gravity is rapidly changing to the East on the one hand, and towards the South on the other. A case in point is Latin America, where a newly found assertiveness and unity of voice might well be the direct result of US weakness.

This week, a similar attempt on the dignity of the US as that perpetrated by the infamous shoe attack has taken place in the city of Bahia, Brazil, where, led by world statesman and President of Brazil Lula, a mega summit brought together the meetings of the organisation of Latin American and Caribbean countries, MERCOSUR and UNASUR. As president Correa from Ecuador argued, the gathering was symbolically important as it was the first time in history that all Latin American countries met by themselves in a meeting agreed by themselves without the presence of the US.

Three key resolutions at these various meetings can be seen to challenge US power in the region. The first is the decision to accept Cuba as member of the Rio group. Coming on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and after 46 years as a political pariah in the continent when, following US demands, Cuba was expelled from OAS in 1962, the tide is finally turning, thus beginning the political rehabilitation of the country at Latin American level.

It could have gone further as President Morales of Bolivia demanded that the US either accepts Cuba back to the OAS or leaves the organisation. Lula disassociated himself from that position arguing that the new president of the US needs time to outline his policies towards Latin America before Latin America either welcomes or condemns these views. He did, however, condemn the US embargo on Cuba and joined a chorus of support for the island and expectation that the new US administration will review this policy.

Secondly, the presidents of UNASUR officially received the report by the investigative commission they themselves set up in September to look into the murder of 20 peasants in the northern region of Pando, Bolivia. They unanimously confirmed that what took place in Pando was a massacre and a serious breach in human rights and were united in supporting the democratic process of change in Bolivia and in declaring impunity a thing of the past. The declaration is a clear affront to extreme right wing groups in Bolivia and to their supporters in the US who, through the expelled US ambassador in the country, were fomenting civil strife and violence in August and early September. The United States has been conspicuously quiet about these events.

Thirdly, the meeting in Bahia creates a Latin American Security Council and common defence programme. Does this mark the last rites for a US Monroe Doctrine that, since 1823, has given itself the right to intervene in any number of Latin American countries, both directly and indirectly, supporting every dictatorship as long as it defended American interests? Is this a salvo to the IV fleet re-established this year to patrol Caribbean and Latin American waters?

Clearly, the events this week in Bahia mark a new departure for a region that is proceeding towards an accelerated process of political, economic and military integration. In the process, Latin America also aims to be more independent from the US. And so the proposals first discussed barely a month ago at the ALBA meeting in Caracas of creating a single Latin American currency are reinforced by the creation of a development Banco del Sur that replaces dependency of countries in the region on the World Bank and the IMF.

Clearly there is a new correlation of forces in the world and some of the more assertive and self-assured – even hostile and rancorous – views expressed in Bahia are an indicator that the countries of Latin America are starting to question every bastion of US power, from its self-appointed role as the world’s policeman, to that of defender of the international financial institutions that countries like Ecuador claim have inflicted on them illegitimate, immoral and illegal debts.

They say that former Mexican President Porfirio Diaz once lamented that his country was ‘so far from God and so close to the United States’. This week, that distance to the United States seems to have increased just a little bit.

Yo si puedo (Yes I can): Bolivia pais libre de analfabetismo or the end of illiteracy for Bolivia

20 December is the date when Bolivia will be declared free of illiteracy, something not many countries in the world can boast about. After three years of work with close to a million people, almost one in every nine Bolivians currently in the country, Bolivia is prepared to receive the best possible Christmas present for 2008.

Illiteracy figures in Bolivia, just like all other human development indicators are (or were) rather terrible, only surpassed in Latin America by those found in Haiti. This realisation was acted upon by president Evo Morales within days of being elected in December 2005 who asked Cuban officials for help in the implementation of a literacy campaign similar to that conducted in Cuba in the early 1960s.

The campaign benefitted from the collaboration of Cuban and Venezuelan specialists who managed the programme called ‘Yo si puedo’ (Yes, I can). But it was the consistent effort of about 60,000 people that permitted the programme to advance and reach this critical stage.

In the process, the Bolivian state had to bring solar panels to thousands of isolated communities so that people could follow their literacy lessons in the evenings. The Bolivian government also had to issue hundreds of thousands of glasses for those people who could not see or afford the glasses that would allow them to join the campaign.

The declaration of Bolivia as only the third country in the Americas free of illiteracy just in time for the approval of the new constitutional document by national referendum next January is certainly a propaganda coup for the MAS government. But it is the human dignity of those hundreds of thousands of people who can now sign their own names that we should remember. Just like in Cuba 57 years ago, their ‘veil of ignorance and darkness’ was lifted to join a sunnier future.

After Poznan and the EU climate change summit, has anything changed?

It seems not, unfortunately. At the time the biggest economies are spending trillions of dollars trying to keep business as usual (in every sense) it appears that climate change summits continue to be talking shops for defending short-term narrow economic self-interests.

And so after Poznan, European leaders were arguing late last night about whether to agree on cutting CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020 or not, with Poland and Germany dragging their feet because of their reliance on coal generators in the case of the former, and massive manufacturing output, in the case of the later.

Nobody seemed to remember that the Kyoto agreement signed all those years ago committed them to cut emissions by 5% by 2012. So far, those emissions have increased by 9% (on 1990 levels), not decreased, so it seems highly unlikely that meagre target will be reached on time.

The obvious problem with high-level political ‘efforts’ to save the world from cooking itself is that they pretend to be able to do so whilst challenging none of the premises on which our current predicament is based. They pretend that CO2 emissions are the only culprit to our current situation and that somehow, we can reduce those without affecting our current consumption levels and promise of endless economic growth. This really is a case of having your cake and eating it.

Like with the global economic crisis, Bolivia is one of those little countries that has done least to exacerbate the current global climate crisis but also one of those that is already paying a heavy price for it. According to the UK’s ambassador in Bolivia, average temperatures here are increasing 70% higher than in the rest of the world and the effects of climate change could cost 7.3% of GDP in the next 30 years.

In a recent open letter, president Evo Morales put the blame for climate change on capitalism itself, because ‘in the hands of Capitalism everything becomes a commodity: the water, the soil, the human genome, the ancestral cultures, justice, ethics, death … and life itself. Everything, absolutely everything, can be bought and sold and under Capitalism. And even “climate change” itself has become a business.’

So, as you can imagine, his proposals go a little further than those paper promises of reductions in CO2 emissions. What to do?:

a) Challenge the root causes of the problem. As he sees it, this is driven by a capitalist system in which economic growth is all, even at the expense of the planet’s survival. We need to change that before it is too late, and we need to decrease our unsustainable consumption levels.

b) We need to meet CO2 reduction targets and to do it now, not at some unspecified future date. Overall reduction by 2050 should reach 90%, instead of the UK’s current target of 80%.

c) The worst polluters need to address their ecological debt to the world, creating an international fund that transfers at least 1% of their GDP to poor countries to help them adapt to, and mitigate, the worst effects of climate change.

d) Future technological advancements expected to aid the process of adaptation need to be made available to all and not subject to a private regime of patents.

e) Politically, the planet’s survival will require more than market and carbon trading mechanisms for it to work. It will require the participation of global citizens in a way that current efforts don’t envisage. At the top of the political hierarchy, it will require a new UN for climate change to which all financial and trade global institutions are subordinated.

That’s it. It sounds easy, right?

‘Cómo gasto paredes recordándote’ (How I waste walls thinking about you): Graffiti and its uses in Bolivia

There is a famous book by Eduardo Galeano that contains sentences, statements and maxims painted on walls (I can’t remember the title right now, I’m sure my friend Jose would) that he has collected over the years during his trips around Latin America. The one contained in the title is precisely one of those I remember because it sounds a bit like the first verse of one of Silvio Rodriguez’s songs.

The writing of political slogans on walls is nothing new, not even of the type shown in the picture: ‘Collas, raza maldita’ (Collas, damned race). We collected this one last year in Santa Cruz. ‘Colla’ is the term generally used to refer to those from the highlands and I guess this one leaves little doubt as to the racism that festers in the country.

Another one I read recently in Sucre was ‘Abajo con la dictadura narco comunista cubano-venezolana’ (Down with the Cuban-Venezuelan narco-communist dictatorship), another beauty that comes from the same political positions as the one in display in the racist slogan above.

But the best slogans have a different characteristic, one that takes us back to the days of May 1968 when French students would write ‘Be realistic, demand the impossible’. Recently, I read on a wall in La Paz ‘Despierta ya! Es hora de empezar a soñar’ (Wake up! It’s time to start dreaming) and ‘Si no dices lo que piensas, para qué piensas?’ (If you don’t say what you think, why bother thinking?).

Like with a poem, these one-liners leave us pondering about the many-layered truths contained in them and always make me smile. I wonder what it is about Bolivia that has brought these back into fashion. Revolutionary times may be?

I leave you with another beauty written by a local feminist group Karen told me about: ‘Despues de limpiarte la casa, lavarte la ropa y hacerte la comida, se me quitaron las ganas de hacerte el amor’ (After clearing the house, washing your clothes and cooking for you, I don’t feel like making love to you). Ouch!

Some of the latest news about Bolivia

News in and about Bolivia continue to be dominated by the Pando massacre that took place in Porvenir on 11 September as leader of the special commission created by UNASUR, Rodolfo Mattarollo, finally handed over to President Evo Morales, the investigative report on the events, declaring the killings a massacre that was planned by the prefecture and made use of the prefecture’s resources, including its staff, to conduct the killings. The Bolivian opposition have tried to dismiss the UNASUR commission’s report declaring it partial and biased because, among other things, ‘it does not give credibility to reports that claim that indigenous peoples in Pando killed each other’.
More on this can be found on:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_7763000/7763930.stm


The other main issue dominating the news headlines in Bolivia is that judicial processes are finally being pursued against some of those who instigated and participated in the acts of violence that preceded the Pando massacre and which we reported here as ‘el golpe civico prefectural’
http://boliviandiaries.blogspot.com/2008/10/golpe-cvico-prefectural-attempted-coup.html


At the time, (in October) I could not personally believe that the government appeared to be rewarding the violent tactics of the opposition led by the prefects of the ‘media luna’ with talks geared to reaching a consensus on the new constitutional text that will be put to referendum on 25th January. With the benefit of hindsight, it now seems that was a ploy to pacify the country and reach the consensus necessary to ensure that this referendum goes ahead next month. However, those who participated in the siege of public buildings, the explosive attack against a gas pipe in Tarija and the killings of indigenous people, are now starting to be caught and brought to justice. This, of course, is seen as a witch hunt and political persecution by the opposition who seem more interested in defending murderers than the victims of murder. Here is an example with these accusations coming from Branko Marinkovic, president of the ‘civic committee’ of Santa Cruz and one of the main instigators of violence in September as well as defender of the corporativist interests of the soya barons:
http://senderodelpeje.com/sdp/contenido/2008/10/14/55702


This is an interesting debate. Clearly dividing those on the side of justice from those on the side of perpetuating impunity, it defines the lines of support and opposition to the government. In that process, the cardinal of Bolivia, Julio Terrazas, has been found wanting after openly criticism the government and offering protection to violent thugs in his church. I wonder if the man really believes in hell…And Spanish newspaper ‘El Pais’? They have just nominated him as man of the year!
http://abnoticias.info/2008/12/01/%e2%80%9cbolivia-pais-sin-dios-ni-ley%e2%80%9d-el-narcotrafico-inquieta-al-cardenal/

A fin de mes, otra de resumen

Empezamos el mes con la suspensión de Bolivia de la agencia norteamericana contra la droga. Esta es una decisión tomada por Bolivia que acusa a la DEA de ser parte de un entramado norteamericano de espionaje en el país que involucra también a agencias como USAID y el ‘Peace Corps’ (cuerpo de paz) y que ya trato de apoyar a la derecha fascista y violenta de este país a través de su embajador.

Recientemente los Estado Unidos decidieron terminar (solo con Bolivia) el tratado preferencial de comercio para los estados andinos acusándoles de no hacer lo suficiente el su ‘guerra contra la cocaína’. Cuando Bolivia ha interceptado una cantidad record de cocaína este año, unos 27 toneladas de acuerdo con las últimas noticias, es difícil pensar que esto es algo más que una decisión política para castigar a un país que ha osado expulsar a su embajador.

La guerra diplomática entre los Estados Unidos y Bolivia no es la única preocupación del gobierno. La otra es una guerra económica entre Bolivia y esos países que insisten en los ‘tratados de libre comercio’ (TLC) que sólo son libres para los poderosos. La Unión Europea es partícipe de estos abusos de poder si creemos la acusación Boliviana de que Benita Ferrero Waldner ha hecho todo lo posible para no negociar con el bloque constituido por los países andinos (Bolivia, Perú, Colombia y Ecuador) y forzar un TLC de forma bilateral con cada uno de ellos. Los gobiernos de Perú y Colombia acceden a esto gustosos, claro, aunque sus poblaciones en general no están tan entusiasmadas a juzgar por las protestas que se han dado lugar en ambos países este mes.

Y es que Bolivia rechaza muchas de las bases de estos TLCs como la privatización de necesidades humanas básicas (el agua, la electricidad, el alcantarillado y la vivienda) o la producción de patentes de especies biológicas como ciertas semillas. Y yo creo que tienen razón en resistir esta interpenetración del capital que esta forzando la Unión Europea. Por eso es que Bolivia argumenta estar más interesada en el bienestar de sus ciudadanos y es por eso que está haciendo todo lo posible para que el acceso a la educación sea verdaderamente universal con un bono para todos los niños de hasta octavo de primaria, el bono Juancito Pinto, del cual hablábamos el 10 de noviembre.

La elección de Barack Obama como presidente de los Estados Unidos ha sido otra gran noticia para el mundo este mes. Por fin, alguien inteligente y no un tarado en la casa blanca. Las esperanzas para una mejora de las relaciones entre Estados Unidos, cuyo embajador en Bolivia tradicionalmente ha sido el verdadero poder detrás de la presidencia, son grandes pero los obstáculos también; veremos lo que pasa.

Mientras tanto, Bolivia esta intentando mejorar su situación de falta de poder económico y político en la región, haciendo amigos con países ideológicamente cercanos como Venezuela, Cuba o Ecuador. Resulta que el miércoles 26 de noviembre se juntaron en Caracas todos estos presidentes y otros para discutir, entre otras cosas, la creación de una moneda común, el Sucre, como parte de un proyecto de integración económica a largo plazo que pueda resistir los embates de las crisis creadas por el capitalismo y mejorar de verdad el bienestar humano en la región. El ALBA, la Alternativa Bolivariana de las Américas promete una visión distinta a la del ‘libre’ comercio. Sin duda hacen falta alternativas en el mundo que vayan más allá de darles billones y billones de dólares de los contribuyentes a los banqueros (no eran ellos los que no querían intervención del estado en la economía?) para que todo vuelva a donde estábamos antes de que la crisis empezara. Pues estamos buenos.

Y por fin terminamos el mes con dos noticias deprimentes de la manera de hacer política de la oposición de derecha en este país. La primera era referente al aniversario de tres muertes en Sucre que se dieron después de enfrentamientos con la policía por grupos de estudiantes manipulados por un grupito de racisto-fascistas que no quieren que nada cambie en el país y que se quejan de que “estos ya no son nuestros indios”, aquellos sumisos que bajan la cabeza al pasar al lado nuestro o que no voy a permitir que entren a la plaza central de Sucre. Su demanda de capitalía plena para Sucre estaba destinada a descarrilar el trabajo de la Asamblea Constituyente precisamente para que todo siga igual. Falló como esperamos que fallen todas las alzadas violentas que se le avecinan al país el año que viene.

La otra noticia era sobre la manera cínica de la oposición de negar que una masacre de indígenas tuviera lugar en Porvenir, Pando, el 11 de Septiembre pasado. No sólo lo niegan sino que además son lo suficientemente arrogantes como para pensar que están en su derecho de actuar de esta manera en Pando, el ‘lejano oeste’ de Bolivia, porque así se han portado toda su vida y nadie les ha parado los pies.

Termino con el mismo deseo de mi último ‘posting’ de que esperemos que la impunidad por fin desaparezca del país. Es absolutamente necesario que las instituciones del estado y el estado de derecho se impongan en esta batalla. De lo contrario, el MAS se va a encontrar con una derecha armada y envalentonada que le va ha hacer la vida imposible durante el año de elecciones que se avecina.

UNASUR only listened to Evo or “UNASUR solo escucho a Evo”

This is at least the main headline used by news TV channel UNITEL last Friday 21 November to greet the unveiling of some of the main conclusions reached by a high-level special commission tasked with conducting an enquiry on the Pando massacre of indigenous people on 11 September.

You will remember that the current president of UNASUR, Michelle Bachellet appointed this group of investigators led by a human rights expert, Argentinian Rodolfo Mattarollo in the wake of the September massacre and at a time when the political situation in Bolivia looked extremely delicate.

The final UNASUR report was delivered to Michelle Bachellet on Tuesday 25 November. It is interesting to check the main conclusions of this report because they contradict every single argument presented by the opposition to deny the events ever took place, question the veracity of the accounts, even pretend that the video evidence of the events was constructed. What are its main conclusions?

First: Contrary to arguments by the opposition, there are 18 deaths that have been confirmed. Another 70 people are still unaccounted for, presumed dead. Because many of the bodies were thrown in the river, it is thought these bodies will never be recovered.

Second: Contrary to arguments by the opposition, there was no armed confrontation between two groups. Instead, there was an ambush of hundreds of unarmed indigenous people travelling to a nearby community.

Third: Contrary to arguments by the opposition, this ambush was perpetrated by an armed militia consisting of employees of the prefecture and members of the local ‘civic committee’.

Fourth: Contrary to arguments by the opposition, there is more than indicative evidence to suggest that the ambush was premeditated and executed according to a plan masterminded from the prefecture.

It is horrifying to see civilians in public positions armed with submachine guns shooting at defenceless indigenous people. It is absolutely unbelievable that elected opposition MPs like José Villavicencio should appear on the video, not trying to stop the shooting but, ‘interrogating’ one of the kidnapped survivors of the massacre to try to extract a confession on camera that incriminates a local MAS MP and ‘proves’ that the victims were armed.

And to top it all, we have that a number of news organisations were present in the town of Porvenir at the moment the massacre took place. A microphone of the TV channel ‘Pat’ is clearly visible during the ‘interrogation’ of one of the people kidnapped. It seems, some of these organisations had been warned previously of what was coming, the same organisations whose video has now been aired by the public prosecution against the accused and who deny the events ever took place or argue the video has been shot in a studio.

The videos (4 of them), are available on the following link and make chilling viewing:
http://foro.univision.com/univision/board/message?board.id=190097542&message.id=47376

The opposition, aided by a majority of TV channels, have begun a propaganda campaign against this report and the judicial measures against the main accused, ex-prefect of Pando Leopoldo Fernandez, in prison since September, and another 20 people who worked for him. These are 20 of the more than 3500 who worked for him in a department with a population of no more than 60000.

The first part of the campaign included the headline in the title, followed by interviews with two opposition MPs who denied any legitimacy to the high-level UNASUR commission, accusing them of partiality, lacking any mandate to conduct their investigation and attempting against Bolivia’s sovereignty.

The second is the interviewing of some of those responsible for the massacre who escaped to nearby Brazil, to claim their status as ‘political refugees’ persecuted by a tyrannical and authoritarian state. And thirdly, some TV ‘analysts’ have brought out their ‘experts’ to continue to claim that the video evidence of the massacre has been manipulated to justify the political persecution of the opposition.

UNASUR president Michelle Bachellet has announced that impunity cannot be left to reign in Latin America like it has done for too long. The commission’s enquiry on the events in Porvenir is part of this process. Yet, given the current events in the judicial process against Leopoldo Fernandez and his lackeys (this is for another day, I’m afraid) it is difficult to believe justice will soon arrive to Bolivia.

A year on, those killed in La Calancha - Sucre, have found no justice

One year ago yesterday (24 November) three people were killed in Sucre during an escalation of violence by those who were demanding that the city is given full capital status.

In fact, the campana por la capitalia, as it became known, came out of nowhere to the surprise of many. It was, in retrospect, the last attempt by a virulent opposition to the government based in the lowlands, to derail the constituent assembly, elected for the purpose of writing a new constitution for the refoundation of Bolivia.

And this they did very well. After the events of the day in which hordes of young people commanded by the ‘civic’ committee of Sucre and led by key personalities in the city such as the major and the university vice chancellor, hundreds of people attacked the police station, stole dozens of cars and weapons and set fire to the prison, before attempting to invade the palace where the constituent assembly was in session.

The day’s events are yet to be fully clarified, in part because of the refusal to collaborate with any investigations on the part of the city’s leadership. The one fact that is known is that two people were killed by bullets not used by the police or the military.

What is shameful is the way in which, one year on, the events, and the dead, have been appropriated by the same virulent, unpleasant, and deeply racist opposition to the current government that organised the violence in the first place, and presented them as ‘our martyrs’ in order to launch a campaign against the new constitution that will be approved in referendum next January.

And so it was that a demonstration yesterday repeated the same chants of “Esto es Sucre carajo! Sucre se respeta!” that have become characteristic in the city and that we would witness again on the racist attacks against indigenous people of 24th May 2008. These events were witnessed and recorded by local theatre director Cesar Brie. His film, “Ofendidos y humillados”, gives a pretty clear idea of the type of people we are talking about here.

Thinking the unthinkable: Can we solve the global economic crisis?

According to Larry Elliot in the Guardian Weekly (21st November) the G8 (and the US that leads it) have lost their economic leadership in favour of a much more diverse G20 that met last weekend to tackle the calamitous collapse of the global economy.

Thank God for that, I hear you say. The only problem is that the meeting ended reaffirming the same principles of ‘free’ trade and light-touch financial regulation that got us in this mess in the first place.

Instead, what the leaders responsible for 80 per cent of global trade suggest to save the world from financial meltdown is more of what has already been taking place: the subsidy of those zillions of losses by the richest section of the world with more zillions of dollars from you, me and everyone else, so that we can go back to where we were two years ago.

Are they kidding? No, I really don’t feel sorry for the US and its loss of economic leadership. Instead, I feel sorry for the hundreds of millions of the world’s poor who are suffering, and by the looks of it will continue to suffer, the consequences of the global economic and financial policies that led to this mess because they did the least to produce the crisis but will end-up paying the consequences.

And the consequences are pretty dire. Listening to president Evo Morales in New York at the UN this week, we learnt that, in a matter of weeks, leaders of the richest nations have authorised spending 30 times (yes 30 times) the amount spent so far in (not) reaching the Millenium Development Goals. At least one thing is clear and that is where the priorities lie for the wealthiest nations.

No, thinking the unthinkable will have to go beyond the mere reform of the international financial system proposed by the G20 meeting. If will Hutton is right, it has to “overhaul the way we do capitalism” (Hutton, W. The Failure of Market Failure: Towards a 21st Century Keynesianism www.nesta.org.uk ). I’m not sure anyone has told our G20 leaders yet. And the problem is that no alternatives of any worth seem to be coming from the left. Anyone there?

Obama versus Morales, Part II (see previous post)

So let’s go back to yesterday’s question: What is the significance of an Obama victory for future US-Bolivian relations?

Let’s say that Bolivia welcomes Obama’s victory but does not expect a turnaround of diplomatic fortunes in the US any time soon.

It is not that anyone doubts about the political honesty of the man himself; it is just that it is difficult to see how he can turn the super-tanker of a US foreign policy driven by imperialist ideological aims and capital-driven interests.

And things really are not very good at the moment between the two countries.

First there is an official Bolivian ideology that is not particularly warm to neoliberal dogma. At least in Bolivia they know why, as the socioeconomic effects of the structural adjustment and shock therapy of the1980s are yet to be forgotten.

One sometimes hopes the US did what it preaches to others to get a taste of the consequences of economic dogma. But when we have a republican president like George W. Bush nationalising half of all American mortgages and becoming, in effect, more ‘socialist’ than Morales himself, you know there is no chance of that.

So, instead, the new Bolivian constitution talks about the state’s responsibilities towards the well-being of its population; the recuperation of sovereignty in the management of the country’s natural resources; the principles of solidarity in its relations with other countries; and the pacifist aims of its military, ruling out any foreign intervention and forbidding foreign military (read US) installations in its soil.

None of these positions is likely to warm the country towards US interests in the region.

Secondly, we have a diplomatic row between Bolivia and the US that has been escalating since September, when the US ambassador to Bolivia was expelled from the country following evidence that he was supporting a right-wing, opposition-led civil coup backed by violence and civil unrest that ended with the massacre of dozens of peasants in Pando.

Things have escalated since then. The US immediately responded by expelling the Bolivian ambassador to the US. Then came accusations that USAID had been involved in intelligence gathering, supporting a disingenuous US foreign policy in the country. USAID have already left; the Peace Corps evacuated their staff following the ambassador’s removal and are yet to come back.

And the trouble between the two countries didn’t end there. First the US president decided to de-certify Bolivia’s anti-narcotics efforts in spite of evidence that the country’s cocaine seizures this year are the biggest ever. This was used as justification to bring to an end, for Bolivia alone, the special tax privileges given to Andean nations so that their products can reach US markets. Bolivia has responded to this by expelling the DEA, citing again that dark foreign policy aims were at play in some of the DEA’s activities.

So the diplomatic situation cannot possible get any worse between the two countries. But will it get better any time soon? Over to you, Mr president.

Obama versus Morales (Part I)

Quite a few people have been asking me about the significance of an Obama victory for future US-Bolivian relations. Rather than in the ideas professed by both countries, this is a question that seems inspired by the significance of two such unlikely presidents who seem charismatic, intelligent and honest (not characteristics apparent in George W. Bush, unfortunately).

The symbolic significance of a first black president of the US is difficult to miss. Obama was, after all, born before the Civil Rights Movement that brought to the world the image of a divided America that didn’t afford constitutional rights to its black population. Nobody could possibly have dreamed then that a generation later they would have one of their own as president.

Even Evo Morales has commented on the significance of a member of the ‘oppressed black population’ (his words) becoming president of the most powerful nation on earth. But I still think that his own rise to the presidency of Bolivia is much more significant for being so much more unlikely.

Significantly, Obama never campaigned on a black-issues ticket. Instead, he emphasised his credentials as representative of the American people and the American dream. He has, however, made much of his being an outsider of the Washington-style cronyism and built a campaign on the need for change and hope.

And yet, it is difficult to see him as an outsider when, after all, he belongs to an educational elite, having studied at Harvard school of law. Donors to the presidential campaign also know when to back a winning horse and made him the highest spender ever in a presidential campaign. In this regard he represents a black middle class with the intelligence, skills, determination (and the means) to aspire and reach the highest office. But this, he has done from within the system and in any case, we already have the cases on Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice as examples of black political achievement.

No, the rise of Evo Morales to the presidency of Bolivia is much more significant because he truly represents the abandoned majority of the country. He is one of them, someone whose family survived the economic penuries of the 1980s; he is someone who had to work from a very early age – like hundreds of thousands of children do in Bolivia – to contribute to the household’s economy; and he is someone who, in spite of never having reached university, was able to lead a political coalition of social movements that did away with the old ‘partidocracy’ – a corrupt and self-serving political system – to create something truly new in Bolivia’s political history by bringing new forms of citizen participation and engagement to politics.

For these reasons, I think Evo Morales is the true outsider both socially and politically.

Do as I say and not as I do: How the EU helped derail the process of integration of the Andean community of nations

So, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU’s external affairs commissioner is alone responsible for ruining Bolivia’s chances of entering trade negotiations with the EU as part of the regional bloc of Andean nations made up of Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador.

This is at least the accusation coming from Bolivia who argue that both Peru and Colombia have ignored agreements made between the presidents by all four Andean countries in Guayaquil as recently as four weeks ago. They have accepted an invitation by Benita Ferrero-Waldner to enter bilateral trade negotiations with the EU. On the table, the possibility of free trade treaties between the EU and these countries.

In addition, they argue that Benita Ferrero-Waldner prevented the Bolivian ambassador to the EU from participating in the meeting that took place this week in Brussels with the chancellors of Colombia and Peru.

It is very interesting that in a EU in which the executive negotiates foreign trade policy on behalf of the EU's 27 member countries, the priority seems to divide other blocs and enter into bilateral talks instead, against the express mandate of the EU, I might add. This undermines the process of, in this case, Andean integration and marginalises those heretics with constitutions that explicitly forbid the privatisation of basic services (water, electricity…), the deregulation of the financial services (who would want that in the current global financial climate?) and claim that natural resources are for the benefit of the people, not multinational corporations.

That Peru and Colombia have orthodox neoliberal agendas that believe in this type of free trade and are prepared to be steamrolled by a much more powerful bloc into signing an agreement that gives away their assets to international business is not in question. But we have to remember the political capital that Colombia especially, hopes to gain from this free trade agreement when, after many years of negotiations with the US to achieve this precisely, Congress has vetoed the agreement concerned about human rights abuses in a country in which the state is one of the main culprits. Does the EU concern itself with these trifles? It seems not.

Juancito Pinto el tamborrero y el bono que lleva su nombre or an Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) with a difference

They say that Juancito Pinto was a 12 year-old drummer who took part, like many other children of yesteryear and of today, in the Pacific War that in 1880 saw Chile easily defeat Bolivian forces annexing Bolivia’s coastline and access to the sea.

This national tragedy cemented the country’s sense of identity and Bolivia’s highest foreign policy priority — recovering access to the sea — ever since. For Juancito Pinto, it meant his death when after seeing his friends killed, he chose to abandon his drum and take a weapon. It also meant his rebirth, many years later, as a national hero whose name today is symbol of a different campaign to ensure that every child attends school in Bolivia.

It is a tall order since as UN figures show, secondary education enrolment levels are below 70 percent, a problem that affects girls in even higher numbers. What the Bono Juancito Pinto does is give each school child up to grade 8, 200 bolivianos (around $ 30) at the end of each year providing they meet a minimum attendance requirement.

It is a key form of economic support that erodes the need for work, a need omnipresent in the streets of La Paz where children as young as nine are seen working as shoe shines, street sellers or as fare collectors in private minibuses.

In this regard, the Bono Juancito pinto shares its aims with the British Educational Maintenance Allowance for secondary school children who qualify according to a means test criteria. It is, in the President’s words, part of the country’s effort towards achieving the goal of ‘vivir bien’, literally ‘living well’ (another entry on vivir bien to follow soon).

Bolivia suspends DEA activities

OK, you might not have known this but the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been operating in Bolivia on the so-called war on drugs, eradicating illegal plantations of coca leaf for about 35 years. Until now, that is.

This is because President Evo Morales has just asked DEA to suspend its operations in the country, after accusing it of supporting the near-coup that took place last September.

Whether or not this is the case, the fact is that the US recently accused Bolivia of not doing enough against cocaine trade and removed the country’s commercial status — shared with other Andean countries — that allowed textile exports to the US to receive preferential trade terms.

This, at a time when Bolivian authorities have announced record levels of cocaine seizures — at more than 25 tons this year — and illegal plantations destroyed. It is therefore difficult to avoid thinking that the expulsion of US ambassador on 11 September is behind this latest escalation in the diplomatic war between the two countries.

Which means that the work is already piling on the new US President’s in-tray.

A fin de mes, una de resumen

Bueno, se nos acaba el mes y es hora de resumir las noticias más importantes de las cuatro últimas semanas.

En primer lugar, parecen ya distantes las noticias con las que empezábamos el mes de octubre, con esos aniversarios de muerte y masacres tanto en Pando, donde el cómputo actual es de 18 muertos, 24 desaparecidos y decenas de heridos, como en el Alto en el 2003. Si bien sólo hace unas semanas de su muerte, la televisión Boliviana parece estar más preocupada de montar una campaña para la liberación del principal imputado, el ex-prefecto de Pando Leopoldo Fernández, quien parece haberse portado más como un cacique y jefecillo paramilitar de película del oeste que como un político.

Los muertos de Octubre del 2003 fueron muchos más y no han sido olvidados pues ellos dieron el pistoletazo de salida a un proceso político de cambio que continua en el país. Esta misma semana, por fin un grupo de víctimas de aquella violencia de Estado pudo acudir a Miami y sentarse frente al ex-presidente de la república Goni y a su ministro de interior Carlos Berzaín, en un caso que determinará si procede su extradición a este país para ser juzgados por genocidio. No existen grandes esperanzas pero al menos es importante que los políticos tengan que confrontarse de vez en cuando con las consecuencias de las decisiones que toman.

En el plano político, dos hechos importantísimos han tenido lugar este mes. El primero es la aprobación por dos tercios de los votos en el congreso y el senado de la ley que lleva a referéndum la nueva Constitución Política del Estado, una Constitución que incluye todo tipo de propuestas herejes para las viejas democracias europeas como la de la participación y control social del gobierno (más allá de dejarnos votar cada pocos años), como la creación de autonomías indígenas, como la elección de un modelo de desarrollo que cuestiona el modelo capitalista neoliberal que tantos problemas ha creado en Bolivia y esta creando en el resto del mundo... El proceso de creación de la nueva Constitución ha sido denominado como de parto doloroso por Amalia Pando, el parto de un niño que recibirá su certificado de nacimiento el próximo 25 de enero.

El otro aspecto político importante es la reunión de Cochabamba que dio comienzo a la construcción de la sede de UNASUR. No es que la construcción de un gran parlamento sea tan importante como el significado simbólico de una unión latinoamericana de naciones que puede mirar al norte sin complejos. Ya demostró UNASUR tener utilidad cuando le quitó el oxígeno al golpe cívico-prefectural de septiembre que, apoyado por la embajada estadounidense, buscaba descarrilar el proyecto de cambio constitucional del país. Sin embargo, su misión más importante está por venir. En un futuro de declive imperial, América Latina se alista como otro gran bloque con poder económico, potencial humano incalculable y todas las riquezas naturales deseables.

Todo esto en un mes en el que el gran desplome del sistema financiero internacional apunta a una crisis económica mundial de la cual hasta el futuro del mismísimo capitalismo está en entredicho. Esta es la gran oportunidad de paises como Bolivia, críticos del sistema por haber sufrido sus consecuencias antes y más severamente que ningún otro, para deletrear claramente sus ideas sobre el desarrollo sostenible, el vivir bien, y la complementariedad entre los pueblos. Escucharán en el mundo?

About the health benefits of Quinua and Cañawa

I am back!! Sorry it has taken me so long to write since the last posting. The thing is, I have been KO in bed for the last five days with a rotten cold and a temperature that wouldn’t go. What can one do when one is of a delicate disposition…?

Oh yes, I am back and the proof of this is that I went with Karen and two other friends to the valle de las ánimas, a beautiful place outside of La Paz famous for its weird rock formations that make it look like I imagine the surface of the Moon to be.

We left early-ish this morning and thank God we had a 4x4 because the climb up to the starting point itself would have been enough to dampen the spirits of even the keenest of ramblers. But after starting lazily we got on with a good pace and walked up this valley of what I imagine to be an old glacier all the way to the very end. And just when it looked that it couldn’t get any steeper, we made summit at 4,660 metres above sea level and gazed at the most impressive view of Illimani, now looking really close at us. “Definitivamente im presionante”, like some famous bullfighter once said (you’ll have to keep reading. One day I’ll explain the bullfighter comment).

OK, so what cured me was a combination of bed rest and sopita de quinua (hummmm….yummy) and refresco de cañawa. These are both related grains that grow at these altitudes. I can’t breath so I don’t know how anything can grow this high but they do. According to Eduardo Galeano, the Gods once left a fox fall from the heavens and on falling, it hit one of the high peaks in the Andes, rupturing its stomach and spreading its contents all over the mountains. And from that grew the Quinua and this little, unassuming, grain has been a blessing for the Andean people as it is now recognised to be highly nutritious like its cousin the cañawa which you mix with water and simply drink both hot or cold.

OK, so now you know how people stay healthy at these altitudes… OK, and then there is chocolate, coca leaves and other blessings from the Gods I’ll tell you about some other time.

El cambio avanza…..Change is in the air

20 October is a historic day for La Paz , not only because it is the 460 anniversary of the city but because this day will be remembered as the day when the biggest ever political march descended on the city from every corner of the country. The social movements mobilized hundreds of thousands who came from the Yungas, from the altiplano and from the farthest reaches of a vast country, to demand that Congress approves the law that will put to the national vote the new political constitution of the country.

This is a constitution that is being regarded as necessary to re-found the state because it guarantees the equality and inclusion of all Bolivians, including the historically marginalized majority that belongs to the indigenous community. The constitution also recognizes various types of economic activity (community-based, cooperative), various forms of autonomic government - including autonomies that will guarantee the cultural reproduction possibilities of indigenous groups - and a number of economic and social rights that protect vulnerable groups in society and upholds the state ownership of key natural resources.

After a march of more than a week, the president himself joined his supporters and led their entrance in La Paz to the seat of government in Plaza Murillo where they sang, cheered and stood in preparation for a long vigil until congressmen and women inside approved the required law. In the event, they had to stand there for more than 24 hours until 1pm today Tuesday 21 October when finally the two thirds support necessary was reached after last minute concessions. Of them, and one that demonstrates the political stature of the president, the biggest was the acceptance by the President to seek only one reelection in December 2009 instead of the two that affords him the new constitution.

It was a long and painful wait and one that tested the patience of miners who, armed with dynamite, threatened to enter Congress and take it by force. In the event, the President himself had to appeal to the civility of all those congregated who, as if choreographed, would break in spontaneous shouts of cambio, cambio, cambio…(change, change, change...).

In the end, by 1 pm local time, the vice president Alvaro Garcia Linera was able to emerge on the square holding in his hands the document that calls for a referendum on the new constitution. And as befits a government of social movements, the president signed the document in front of the thousands who at that time cheered in the plaza ushering a new political phase of peace and equality in spite of the last minute attempts to derail this process of democratic change by the last remaining oligarchs with political representation.

Change…(we can believe in). Now, where have I heard this political slogan before?

Cooperativist miners in Llallagua

Llallagua is a 35,000–strong mining community situated seven hours drive from La Paz in the northern part of Potosi region. Well, this is not quite right. First was Siglo XX, a tin mine that gave work to thousands of miners and millions of dollars to people like Patino, the richest man in the world back in the 1930s. This mining camp, that’s all it was, was soon shadowed by Llallagua, the town that grew to service the needs of men in dangerous jobs and short life expectancies with money to burn (you get the idea). Eventually Llallagua grew to engulf the mining camp and walking through its streets you would not know you are entering into miners’ living quarters were it not for the characteristic housing – tiny, without water supply, or, in its day, sanitation – arranged in straight rows and resembling nothing more than a concentration camp. Now, where have I seen something like this? I know: Viloco, another mining camp high in the Andes that is home to 2,500 people, and, I have to say, the extreme corner of Runcorn in the UK.

Reaching this God-forsaken place is no small feat as the road, asphalted all the way past Oruro eventually reaches Huanuni - another important mining community an the site of many a political battle - before taking a sharp left up the mountain and a dirt track that keeps climbing for what seems the heavens. Close to an altitude of 5,000 metres, where the air is thin and despite the deep blue skies and the shining sun the cold is apparent, we stop for an all too quick gaze at nature before heading down to our final destination.

Llallagua is not what you could consider beautiful. At the entrance to the town all we can see are the artificial hills created by slagheaps, the remnants of excavated mountain in the form of poor grade mineral piled 20 or 30 metres high. Beyond the bend on the track, the first glimpse of the town is provided by a succession of pools in steps that follow downhill and serve the purpose of manually extracting the mineral brought out in individual sacks by miners on their backs. This is a process of mineral extraction that seems to have changes little in five centuries.

It wasn’t always like this. Siglo XX mine was a key mining town and workplace in Bolivia until, in 1985, following to the letter the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund to stem a runaway inflation, the state basically gave away to private investors all aspects of the economy under its control. Private investors came, chose the richest pickings, and where investment was needed, they simply walked away. The social consequences of this ‘Silent Revolution’ as Duncan Green put it in a very readable book, were enormous. Not only were thousands made unemployed, many of them left the mines and relocated to the area of Chapare where, lacking any alternative economic activity, they became coca growers (tell that to the highly skilled economic advisers who designed the privatisation policy).

However, many miners simply stayed behind and became cooperativistas. The name belies the reality of their work. Without state employer, these miners were simple left with the same mines they had always worked in, except this time without a salary, a pension, an insurance, equipment to do their job….All that was left for them to do was to continue to work in the mine, as individuals, and to sell any mineral they brought out to middle men. This they continue to do today but the consequences of that policy are there for all to see. Mechanisation of extraction and refinement have simply disappeared and miners have gone back one century at least in their working methods, hammering away at the rock with their bare hands. Safety standards are virtually inexistent. In many cases, it isn’t clear who is and who isn’t a miner, who is in the mine and who is out at any given time, how much dynamite or when it is used….you can imagine that if mining is in itself dangerous, these practices make it lethal.

Progress? Not something one could say for mining practices in places like Siglo XX.

‘Octubre rojo’ or ‘guerra del gas’; Five years on

During the August visit to Bolivia of a delegation from UNITE the Union, we had the opportunity to meet social and political actors from El Alto who were key to developments in October 2003. Red October, as it is often referred to, was witness to some of the worst excesses of state power during the history of Bolivia. It was also, crucially, the point at which the current process of political change the country is now living became unstoppable. Five years on, although much has changed in Bolivia, relatives of those who died at the hands of the military are still fighting for justice.

Juan Delfin Mamani looks after the church from El Ingenio in El Alto. As those of you who have watched the film ‘The War on Democracy’ by John Pilger will recognize, he is one of those witnesses whose testimony brings to the fore the full horror of the events of October 2003 in El Alto (he is wearing a hat in the photo).

It all began with a generalised opposition from all social quarters to a presidential plan to export, rather, give away, natural gas to the US and Mexico via Chilean ports, this, in a country in which there was no full internal supply of gas and a large percentage of the rural population have to burn wood in order to cook. However, this initial protest soon escalated into demands for a wholesale reversal of a neoliberal, export model of (under)development and in favour of a policy of natural resource sovereignty destined to increase the well-being of the Bolivian people.

After weeks of strikes, blockades and uninterrupted protests, President Sanchez de Lozada, popularly known as Goni, and his interior minister Sanchez Berzain sent the army to the city of El Alto, including tanks and helicopters carrying snipers. By 16th October, the result of the imaginable carnage was 65 victims and countless injured. Such was the reaction of the international community as well as of every political and social sector in Bolivia that on 17th October the president fled the country bound for Miami, leaving his resignation letter behind. He still lives there and has so far managed to evade justice.




His church being close to the violent events of those days, Juan Delfin was witness to the highest single massacre and led the process of recovery of the bodies, washing them, displaying them for the families and for the community that in the following days paraded through the church to pay homage to those killed.

We walk in silence, listening as he recalls the horror of bodies lying on display in an outbuilding next to the church. At the entrance, a huge mural on one of the walls depicts Juan Delfin’s emotions at what he experienced: there one can see represented all the protagonists of the events. On one side, the miners, the peasants, the indigenous peoples in protest. On the other, a bankrupt political class shielded by the army and it weaponry. And yet, in the midst of this darkness, we can catch a glimpse of hope and rebirth for the future.

Five years on, we have inaugurated October with the memory of those massacred in Pando barely a month ago. Certainly much has changed since 2003 but not enough to say this is a country at peace with itself.

Bruno Racua

Watching TV last night I learnt that 11 October is the anniversary of the battle of Bahia (1902-2008). As expected, 106 years after the battle all manner of civic groups in the town of Cobija, capital of Pando, were out celebrating a famous victory against Brazilian forces that had wanted to annex their territory.

Of all Bolivian heroes, no one was most celebrated than Bruno Racua, a local peasant who fought against the Brazilian forces with more heorism than most. Local history says that he distinguished himself in battle to such an extent that the national Congress, on hearing of his exploits, named him a national hero.

Watching TV last night, I was unaware that 11 October is also another anniversary. It is exactly one month of the massacre of 18 peasants by right-wing paramilitaries near the city of Cobija. Among the dead was one Bernardo Racua, great grand child of the national hero. Nobody remembered his death last night.

El diario del Che en Bolivia… o….El Che en su 41 aniversario

Vamos a hacer un experimento en este blog. Nunca habría pensado escribir en castellano pero resulta que estamos hablando de Bolivia. Además, el nombre del blog evoca, deliberadamente, el título del libro basado en el diario escrito por el Che en sus once meses de periplo revolucionario por las tierras bajas de Bolivia después de su fusilamiento hace exactamente 41 años (9 Octubre 1967) en la Higuera, Bolivia. Así pues, me ha parecido más que adecuado escribir esta vez en castellano. Si aprendo a usar la tecnología necesaria, es posible que algún día introduzca uno de esos ‘gizmos’ (cómo se dice eso en castellano?) que hacen la traducción al instante y le dan al lector la oportunidad de ver paginas web en diferentes idiomas. Si algún lector sabe cómo hacer esto, le agradecería mucho su ayuda.

Tengo que admitir que no me había acordado del aniversario de la muerte del Che. La que me lo hizo recordar fue la periodista Amalia Pando en su programa diario llamado Cabildeo que, francamente, es lo mejor de la televisión Boliviana en cuanto a análisis tanto de la realidad política de este país como de eventos internacionales. Amalia, tienes un fan declarado.

Bueno, a lo que iba. Estaba pensando que como bien se discutió en el programa de ayer noche, algunos de los escritos del Che en su diario hacen referencia a ideas totalmente inconcebibles en aquellos años, como las de la igualdad entre la población blanca y esa mayoría pobre, explotada e indígena. Cuatro décadas después, estamos en una situación en la que las bases para una nueva sociedad más justa están ya en su lugar a pesar de la pataleta racista de una minoría oligárquica. El curso de la historia esta de la parte de ‘los oprimidos de la tierra’, como dijo en su día Frantz Fanon. Sin embargo, en el caso Boliviano, aún quedan obstáculos en el camino. Buena suerte y hasta la victoria…

Algunas noticias relevantes sobre el Che:
http://www.kaosenlared.net/buscar/CHE+Guevara

The ‘golpe cívico prefectural’: An attempted coup with a difference

In what was a unique event in Bolivian political history, on 10th August more than 67% of the Bolivian population voted in support of the president’s administration, winning in 95 of the total 112 provinces of the country. At the same time, the prefects of the main opposition regions were also confirmed in their posts; Costas in Santa Cruz, Suárez in Beni, Fernández in Pando and Cossio in Tarija.

The size of the victory was enough for the president to call for a referendum on the draft constitution that was the result of over 18 months of work by a constitutional assembly and which the opposition prefects did so much to block and derail during the first two years of Morales’s administration.

What happened at this point was, with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps not unexpected but not for that less shocking. Following a well-coordinated move and orchestrated by the prefecturas of the dissident regions, violent and armed groups of thugs who call themselves movimiento cívico went on the rampage and took over all manner of NGO offices-seen as supporters of the country’s process of change-institutional buildings, including of companies that have been nationalised under the current government like the telecommunications one Entel, and buildings belonging to anyone suspected of having sympathies with the current government. In addition, a number of terrorist attacks took place against gas pipes exporting gas to Brazil, the houses of peasant leaders were firebombed, and individuals were chased from their homes.

The high point of this organised violence took place on 11 September in Pando when a paramilitary group blockaded the road outside the municipality of Porvenir, stopping a number of lorries carrying men, women and children, and shooting at them indiscriminately. The latest balance is 18 dead, with 25 disappeared and hundreds injured, dispossessed and exiled in La Paz.

This is the point at which the international community, led by UNASUR, called an emergency meeting hosted by current president Bachelet and expressed its full support to the democratic process in Bolivia. This timely intervention might well have taken some of the oxygen away from the oligarchy-funded and US supported armed insurrection, what MAS has referred to as the golpe civico prefectural, as the presidetn denounced on 23 September at the UN. We have to remember that 11 September was also the date when the US ambassador in Bolivia was declared persona non grata and given 72 hours to leave the country after being accused of supporting the armed insurrection. You might wonder what the US role has been in all this given that American Airlines continues to have an irregular service citing civil unrest (see my previous blog) and American authorities are telling their citizens to get out of the country.

However, the UNASUR intervention also led to a move in favour of dialogue with the political leaders of the opposition, a process of dialogue that international observers have monitored and participated in. This is why these prefects have seen their violent manipulation recompensed with an opportunity to dialogue with the government and to negotiate those aspects of the draft constitution they object to the most; the question of the level of resources from the export of gas and oil they will receive and the scale of powers and competencies they will hold in an autonomic future.

The deadline expired on Sunday 5th October. We waited with baited breath for the press conference that would announce that both parts had reached an agreement after 10 and 12 hour long daily sessions. The prefects emerged, flanking both president and vice-president, they waved to the cameras and photographers, and left. In the post-mortem that followed the failed process of negotiation, it was clear that nothing MAS could offer the opposition-and it offered a lot of autonomic competencies including legislative powers- would be enough to a group that exists only in so far as it opposes. If it ceases to oppose, it ceases to exist because it obeys to landowning families and agro-business interests who will never give up their lands for a process of land reform, no matter how illegitimate their ownership.

The key for the future might be in bringing the individual prefects round by feeding their political ambitions while expecting them to perform the political tightrope process of convincing some of their most radical bases that this is in their interest. For the time being, however, where does this leave us? Basically, it is now for Congress to call for a referendum on the draft constitution, something for which it needs two thirds of the votes in a single vote that brings both houses together. MAS does not have this level of representation so we can expect a lot of political manoeuvring there.

In the meantime, we are bracing ourselves for an occupation of La Paz by thousands of marchers representing the social movement for change. From different parts of the country, they are planning to converge on La Paz next week to demand that the draft constitution is put to the vote on a national referendum by, among other things, surrounding congress until this happens. We have already started the process of stockpiling food for the coming siege of La Paz.

On another note, recent municipal elections in Brasil have given Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party, PT, a landslide win with a greater share of the vote than previously. Only three main cities are having to go to a second round; Belo Horizonte, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, where there is no clear winner. The result of these votes will inform the future battle for the presidency of the country which will determine whether the PT continues in power with Lula’s successor or whether the main opposition party, the social democratic party of former president Cardoso will take the baton.

See http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/cronologia-golpe-estado-anunciado-golpe-civico-prefectural-bolivia

Another week in Bolivia

Just as ever more gruesome details of the massacre of peasants in Pando continue to emerge, the opposition media - that is to say, most of the Bolivian media - have chosen to ignore these disgraceful events and the survivors. Instead, they have been crying foul of the police’s arrest of the main accused, Leopoldo Fernández, whom we introduced in our previous posting. In addition, they have concentrated on the arrest of a police woman who is accused of having given the critical sign to shooters to start the massacre, and of two other people who have been charged with terrorist charges for blowing up a gas pipe used to export gas to Brazil last August.

These are the ‘canalladas’ (cynical lies) - as well-known journalist Amalia Pando has called them - that have been used by the opposition to refer to the events in Pando:

-The massacre was not such thing. It was a confrontation by two armed groups. The fact that only peasant men, women and children on their way to town have died has to do with the fact that the other side were bad a shooting.

-The video circulating on You Tube (see:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFvRGemlv3k) is fake. It has been doctored by government agents to put the opposition on a bad light. Would you agree??




Instead, accusations have been flying from the opposition that the government is persecuting them and their supporters (read Leopoldo Fernandez, or Mr Vaca, who has confessed his part on the gas pipe attack). Senate members of the opposition have even had the audacity to go on record to show their dissatisfaction with the UNASUR-led human rights commission investigating the events in Pando. So they have proceeded to send their own ‘investigative commission’, but only to Brazil, to visit their political supporters who fled after committing or instructing the killings.

To top it all, the opposition prefects, whose violent shenanigans that culminated in the massacre opened up a series of talks with government about those aspects of the proposed Constitution they find less palatable, have used this supposed ‘persecution’ to pull out of talks, further delaying the approval of a new draft Constitution and throwing the entire process into disarray.

Just another political week in Bolivia.

At the same time, Rafael Correa, a political outsider who two years ago surprised everyone by winning the Ecuadorean presidency, has managed to lead the process of writing a new constitution that was approved with a large majority in a national referendum that took place last Sunday 28th September. He calls it ‘a constitution that will bring 21st century socialism to Ecuador’. I bet MAS are looking north with envy right now.

Leopoldo Fernández

Leopoldo Fernández (in the middle) used to be the prefect of Pando, one of the various prefects from the east of the country who have become the official opposition to the democratically elected government of Evo Morales. Two weeks ago, the international press widely reported the situation of civil unrest in the region due to ‘confrontations between supporters of the government and opposition forces’.

It now seems clear that the so-called confrontations were in fact violent and organised assaults on government institutions and NGOs in the region by a small and armed opposition funded paramilitary groups. The worst excesses of these groups took place in Pando where 18 indigenous MAS supporters were ambushed and massacred-with more than 100 unaccounted for-resulting in the state of siege for the region.

What has occurred since those events beggars belief. Thankfully, the main accused of instigating the massacre, Fernández himself, has been arrested and is awaiting trial. There is also in situ a commission from UNASUR led by a renowned human rights lawyer who is currently investigating the events surrounding the massacre. However, supporters of the prefect feel aggrieved enough to cry they are being persecuted by the state because their leader has been arrested whereas the Supreme Court appears to be more interested in perpetuating a tradition of impunity than in bringing about charges against the main suspect. Meanwhile, ‘death lists’ are being posted in town squares against indigenous leaders, peasants and elected members who are seen to support the current process of change. A sign of how far things need to change in this country.

See below for more on the massacre:

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/this-is-what-a-coward-and-a-murderer-looks-like/

American Airlines Staff

You will have heard that 35 years to the day a US-sponsored coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile, the US ambassador-this time to Bolivia- was asked to leave the country after being accused by President Evo Morales of conspiring with the opposition to bring about a civil coup against the elected government.

The expulsion was linked to a spate of violence led by armed thugs funded by the opposition that has resulted in the ambush and deaths of around 30 indigenous people in the Pando region, all clearly part of a wider strategy to derail the process of political change the Bolivian people have consistently demanded through the ballot box.

The news has not received the attention it deserves as the world’s financial system stood on the brink of collapse for most of last week. But for those of you interested in US-Latin American relations, you might want to know about the reaction of American Airlines to this. Citing a state of civil unrest in the country, the company stopped all flights to Bolivia-the only airline to do so-and kept this for about a week.

Thankfully flights have resumed and I have been able to return to Bolivia but not before hearing through Karen what one unidentified staff member of American Airlines in Miami had to say about the reasons for the company’s stance. ‘As long as he [Evo Morales] is alive, I don’t think American Airlines will be flying to Bolivia’. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Shoeshine boys (La Paz)

On the way to Hotel Plaza, a very posh-looking place in Avenida Arce, close to La Plaza del estudiante, Karen and I are making time before I go in to meet some members of the UNITE delegation in Bolivia for whom the plan is that I do some interpreting while their visit lasts. This evening, they are meeting Nila Heredia, the ex-minister of health and currently an academic at UMSA, the state university at La Paz. At this point, one of the many face-balaclavaed shoe shines roaming the streets in central La Paz, points at my shoes-which frankly, have never had one rub, never mind a smear of shoe polish, and Karen being Karen, convinces me that not looking smart enough, the least I could do is to have polished shoes. This, of course, is something that I resist initially because of my white-liberal sense of guilt at having, what I consider anyone serve me. This is the same debate we have had two or three times in my first week in Bolivia and in relation to Nati so I won’t repeat myself here. Let’s say that Karen nods to the boy and we sit on a park bench to have my shoes polished. Very soon we are joined by another boy who looks not older than six or seven who points at Karen’s shoes this time and sits down to give them a rub.

‘So where are you from’, the first boy enquires, and we spend the first few minutes explaining Belgium’s position in the map of Europe in relation to countries that he obviously knows like Spain, his future destination as he informs us. If he did, he would follow in the steps of many of his compatriots to work in those jobs that Spaniards can’t or don’t want to work in.

I ask him about his job and the answer surprises me. ‘It is a dignified job’. The word dignified is one that one encounters everywhere in Bolivia at the moment, from this boy to the ex-minister of health, whose presentation to the delegation is “Bolivia, dignified, productive and sovereign so that we can all live well”, which just about sums up the ambitions of the current MAS government. ‘It is OK for me now but it won’t pay to keep a family or anything like that in future’, says the boy. ‘So do you go to school then?’, I ask, worried at the sight of children at work everywhere in Bolivia, from the hostel in Coroico to the supermarket down the road to everywhere in the streets of la Paz. ‘Yes’, comes the answer. ‘I have three more years left at school’ (which makes him 15, a surprising age given his size, but then he must be at least 14 in order to be able to work legally and with parental permission. The fact that he sells us a copy of ‘Hormigon Armado’, Bolivia’s shoeshines’ equivalent of the Big Issue in the UK seems to suggest this). And then? ‘I am going to get a scholarship to study further, may be in Spain’.

It seems to be testament of the current government’s message, ethos and approach to the national development plan that the only-too-real changes that are taking place in terms of delivering food security, safe drinking water, decent housing, spreading the provision of free health care to key groups in society, delivering economic benefits to over 60s, children of school age and so on, are being matched by a regained sense of dignity and worth, not just on the part of the state that swears never to bow again in front of the United States, but on the part of the population, its most disadvantaged population from indigenous peoples to street shoeshines.
http://www.boliviasc.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=198&Itemid=50