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.