27th July, another Bolivian anniversary

This is a country very keen on its anniversaries and its history, a country with a big chip on its shoulders keen to emphasise national unity and create the semblance of a nation state. This, even though the state does not get to all those corners of the country where there is no health care, no education, no police presence, no justice…

So, anniversaries cover every single important event in Bolivia and in Latin America’s history. It was from current Bolivia after all, that the Latin American liberation from Spain was instigated exactly 200 years ago. There are, however, less memorable anniversaries; Bolivian defeats in the Pacific War, the Chaco War…just some of the many Bolivian defeats at war with her neighbours.

This time the anniversary is mine. I arrived here exactly on 27th May 2008 and I am now only weeks away from leaving (if they let me out of the country but that’s another story). In the interim, political events have been exhilarating (some) and depressing (others). These are some of them.

I arrived in the middle of a political campaign like I have never experienced before. Having taunted the president for endless months accusing him of being a ‘dictator’ scared to put his position under the scrutiny of the electorate, the opposition won the right to expel Evo Morales through a recall referendum – the first such event in Bolivian political history – to be held on 10th August.

I have never seen a more ruthless, unpleasant, vile campaign. One accepts that lies and politics are one and only thing. But in Bolivia, I heard open calls to the military to overthrow the president on live radio and TV, accusations of fraud before, during and after the referendum, in the most biased media campaign I have ever witnessed. It was a truly bizarre experience.

The result in favour of the president (with a 67 % support nationwide, even greater than expected) was followed by a mature call for dialogue with the opposition prefects. Not a chance. Those who before the election took the mantle of guardians of democracy, instigated from the regions a violent uprising led by violent thugs – racists and not a few neo-fascists paid by the opposition and the infamous civic committees in Santa Cruz – designed to destabilise the government, force a military intervention and provoke a few deaths that could serve as the basis to overthrow the same government that two thirds of the electorate had just legitimised with its support. The provocation went as far as to lead to the massacre of peasants in the northern department of Pando in the middle of September.

Fortunately for Bolivia, the events of 2003, when a previous president had to leave the country, did not repeat themselves. Instead, the government chopped off the head of the snake, so to speak, when the US ambassador was expelled from Bolivia, leaving the opposition prefects without a political rudder. Very soon things got back to a tense normality. Along with the ambassador, the DEA and USAID were also soon expelled from the country. The US response was swift and petty, suspending Bolivia’s special trade agreement ATPDA, something that new president Obama has only confirmed. Oh well, no surprises there in spite of some initial high hopes that Obama’s presidency symbolised a new beginning for US-Latin American relations.

For me, the second ‘historic’ moment took place on 21st October in the presidential square, Plaza Murillo. As the country has become accustomed to expect, there was a blocking of the law needed to call a referendum that would put to the Bolivian people the constitution drafted by 255 men and women elected for the purpose in 2006 (after many, some would say illegal changes made on it by Congress and a group of negotiators that included the opposition prefects in October 2008).

I have never seen a demonstration like this. Some estimate that as many as 100,000 people from all over the country marched on to La Paz to demand from congress their right to vote. They came, led by their own president, and they stayed for 30 hours outside congress, chanting, dancing, and listening to speeches. Every now and then the president himself, surrounded by the leaders of the social movements, had to make an appeal for calm, especially at 6 am when a group of miners, dynamite in hand were ready to storm congress. At last there was a law and it would be January 25th 2009 when Bolivia approved the new constitution that many hope will be the basis for refounding the state. We will know how when, after new elections in December, the new plurinational assembly – this is the new name for congress – begins to work.

The shine was rubbed off this process of change when days after the new constitution was approved, the head of the ‘nationalised’ oil and gas company was arrested after being involved in the worst corruption scandal of this administration. That the head of YPFB was someone with the total confidence of the president didn’t help. Oops, the MAS appeared to be not quite as virtuous as we thought.

At last (and at least), after such high level social and political confrontation, you could think that it was time for the country to pacify itself. Not a chance, I’m afraid. Only a couple of months later, antiterrorist police arrested two members of a terrorist cell (three others died in the shooting that ensued during the arrest) in Santa Cruz, just meters away from where I had been staying a couple of weeks earlier. There is more than enough evidence to link them to opposition leaders and businessmen from the Santa Cruz region. It seems that the same forces at work behind the recent Hondurean coup will not give up. Will they ever?

This month we have just celebrated the bicentennial of Bolivia’s role in the war of liberation from Spain. Celebrations are over and now begins the race towards the December elections that will continue the process of change that was set in motion with the victory of MAS in December 2005. It is difficult to know what might happen. All we can guarantee is that this will be another hot pre election period full of surprises.

Genocide once more

The news is sadly familiar. Indigenous people from the amazonian areas of Peru who objected to president Alan Garcia's nine decrees since April, essentially giving their lands to oil transnationals, were massacred over the course of the weekend. In all, more than twenty were killed, bringing back the spectre of genocide to this part of the world.

What is more depressing is the official reaction of Peru, headed by an inflamatory speech by the president himself. Apologies? There were none. Regrets? They were sadly missing. Instead, Alan Garcia launched on a diatribe against 'the forces of anti-development' - presumably those who are unimpressed by his macroeconomic policies - and against 'foreign intervention', a thinly veiled attempt to blame Bolivia for the massacre.

Not only is his position disgraceful and his accusations untrue. Alan Garcia has a knack for reminding Bolivians of the worst racist excesses in living memory that took place last September in Pando. And unfortunately he defends those excesses by condescendingly referring to Peru's 'natives' - a term that denotes not only contempt for indigenous peoples, but that denies them of all citizenship rights. Sounds familiar? The viscerous Bolivian extreme right speaks in exactly the same way and has shown to be prepared to act accordingly too.

Let's be clear. In wanting to make Peru's natural resources available to capital at any price, Alan Garcia, a populist demagogue, has shown to be prepared to criminalise any peaceful and democratic form of protest from civil society and, if necessary, to resort to murder, blaming Bolivia along the way.

But, being the leader of a country that has recently condemned former president Fujimori to 25 years imprisonment, Alan Garcia should be careful. And, Peru being situated next to a country that shows the world the example of a healthy political change with powerful social movements of which the indigenous movement is the spinal column, there is more than enough reasons to be concerned about the contagion effect of progressive politics.
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Alan Garcia, you should be worried.

UN report confirms Pando massacre

In a further blow to opposition leaders who have done their utmost to discredit the UNASUR report on the Pando massacre that took place 11 September 2008, today, Canadian Denis Racicot, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bolivia presented his report in La Paz.
In it, he confirms previous findings that what took place in Pando was a massacre and not an armed confrontation like the Bolivian opposition have tried to argue. His report says that “…the massacre of peasants constitutes a grave violation of human rights perpetrated by employees of the prefecture, Sedcam (a road maintenance service dependent on the prefecture), and members of the civic committee of Pando”.
Not good news for a former prefect – Leopoldo Fernandez – who, from prison, has recently had an unusual degree of access to UNITEL’s news programmes (telephone interviews and all) to present himself as a martyr and political prisoner of what the opposition increasingly argue is becoming a totalitarian state.
The prosecutor’s own investigation is still pending but six months after he was arrested accused of ordering the indiscriminate killing of peasants in Porvenir, it seems that international organisations are speaking with one voice regarding the less than benign political actions of the opposition. Of those, one at least (prefect of Tarija Mario Cossio) is accused both of corruption and of incitement to criminal damage during the attempted coup that took place during the days leading up to the massacre.
We will have to see what a justice system that has always pronounced itself in favour of the rich and powerful delivers this time. Given that 2009 is an electoral year, we can only expect that these political battles will be intensely fought.

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.

‘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.

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/