[News] Morales Confronts the Insurrection

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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

September 15, 2008


Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende


Morales Confronts the Insurrection

By ROGER BURBACH

As Bolivia teeters on the brink of civil war, 
President Evo Morales staunchly maintains his 
commitment to constructing a popular democracy by 
working within the state institutions that 
brought him to power. The show down with the 
right wing is taking place against the backdrop 
of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the overthrow 
of Salvador Allende, the heroic if tragic 
president of Chile who believed that the formal 
democratic state he inherited could be peacefully 
transformed to usher in a socialist society.

Like Allende, Morales faces a powerful economic 
and political elite aligned with the United 
States that is bent on reversing the limited 
reforms he has been able to implement during his 
nearly three years in power. Early on, 
Morales--Bolivia’s first indigenous 
president--moved assertively to exert greater 
control over the natural gas and oil resources of 
the country, sharply increasing the hydro-carbon 
tax, and then using a large portion of this 
revenue to provide a universal pension to all 
those over sixty years old, most of whom live in poverty and are indigenous.

The self-proclaimed Civic Committees in Media 
Luna (Half Moon)--Bolivia’s four eastern 
departments--have orchestrated a rebellion 
against these changes, demanding departmental 
autonomy and control of the hydro-carbon 
revenues, as well as an end to agrarian reform 
and even control of the police forces. The Santa 
Cruz Civic Committee, dominated by 
agro-industrial interests, is supporting the 
Cruceño Youth Union (UJC), an affiliated group 
that acts as a para-military organization, 
seizing and fire bombing government offices, and 
attacking Indian and peasant organizations that 
dare to support the national government.

Morales’ efforts to transform the institutions of 
the country have focused on the popularly elected 
Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. 
The assembly was convened in mid 2006 with 
representatives from Morales’ political party, 
the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) holding 54 
percent of the seats. In the drafting of the new 
constitution, the right wing political parties, 
led by Podemos (We Can), insisted that a 
two-thirds vote was needed even for the working 
committees to approve the different sections of 
the constitution. When they were overruled and a 
new constitution was close to being approved in 
November, 2007, members of the assembly, 
including its indigenous president, Silvia 
Lazarte, were assaulted in the streets of Sucre, 
the old nineteenth century capital where the assembly was being held.

Using words that evoked Allende’s last stand in 
the Chilean presidential palace, Evo Morales 
declared “dead or alive, I will have a new 
constitution for the country.” He quartered the 
assembly in an old castle under military 
protection where it adopted a constitution that 
has to be approved in a national referendum. 
Labeling Morales a “dictator,” the civic 
committees and the departmental prefects 
(governors) of Media Luna were able to stall the 
vote on the referendum, and instead organized 
departmental referendums for autonomy in May of 
this year that were ruled unconstitutional by the National Electoral Council.

Taking recourse in democracy rather than force, 
and searching for a national consensus, Morales 
then held up the vote on the new constitution, 
and instead put his presidency on the line in a 
recall referendum in which his mandate as well as 
that of the prefects of the departments could be 
revoked. On August 10, voters went to the polls 
and Morales won a resounding 67 percent of the 
vote, receiving a majority of the ballots in 95 
of the country’s 112 districts with even the 
Media Luna department of Pando voting in his favor.

However, the insurgent prefects also had their 
mandates renewed. Based on the illegal, 
departmental plebiscites held in May, they moved 
to take control of Santa Cruz, the richest 
department. UJC shock troops roamed the streets 
of the city and surrounding towns, attacking and 
repressing any opposition by local indigenous 
movements and MAS-allied forces. Not wanting to 
provoke an outright rebellion, Evo Morales did 
not deploy the army or use the local police, 
leaving the urban area under the effective control of the UJC.

Simultaneously, the right wing--led by the Santa 
Cruz Civic Committee--began sewing economic 
instability, seeking to destabilize the Morales 
government much like the CIA-backed opposition 
did in Chile against Salvador Allende in the 
early 1970s. As in Chile, the rural business 
elites and allied truckers engaged in “strikes,” 
withholding or refusing to ship produce to the 
urban markets in the western Andes where the 
Indian population is concentrated, while selling 
commodities on the black market at high prices. 
The Confederation of Private Businesses of 
Bolivia called for a national producers’ shutdown 
if the government refused “to change its economic policies.”

The social movements allied with the government 
have mobilized against this right wing offensive. 
In the Media Luna, a union coalition of 
indigenous peoples and peasants campaigned 
against voting in the autonomy referendums, and 
have taken on the bands of the UJC as they try to 
intimidate and terrorize people. In the Andean 
highlands, the social movements descended on the 
capital La Paz in demonstrations backing the 
Morales’ government, including a large 
mobilization in June that stormed the American 
embassy because of its support for the right 
wing. In July, the federation of coca growers in 
the Chapare, where US anti-drug operations are 
centered, expelled the US Agency for International Development.

This past week the Civic Committees stepped up 
their efforts to take control of the Media Luna 
departments. In Santa Cruz on September 8, crowds 
of youth lead by the UJC seized government 
offices, including the land reform office, the 
tax office, state TV studios, the nationalized 
telephone company Entel, and set fire to the 
offices of a non-governmental human rights 
organization that promotes indigenous rights and 
provides legal advice. The military police, who 
had been dispatched to protect many of these 
offices, were forced to retreat, at times 
experiencing bloody blows that they were 
forbidden from responding to due to standing 
orders from La Paz not to use their weapons. The 
commanding general of the military police, while 
angrily denouncing the violent demonstrators, 
said that the military could take no action 
unless Evo Morales signed a degree authorizing the use of firearms.

What was in effect occurring was a struggle 
between Morales and the military over who would 
assume ultimate responsibility for the fighting 
and deaths that would ensue with a military 
intervention in Media Luna. The armed forces do 
not support the autonomous rebellion because it 
threatens the geographic integrity of the 
Bolivian nation. Yet they are reluctant to 
intervene because under past governments, when 
they fired on and killed demonstrators in the 
streets of La Paz, they were blamed for the bloodshed.

On September 10, as violence intensified 
throughout Media Luna, Evo Morales expelled US 
ambassador Philip Goldberg for “conspiring 
against democracy.” The month before, Goldberg 
had met with the prefect of Santa Cruz, Ruben 
Costas, who subsequently declared himself 
“governor” of the autonomous department and 
ordered the formal take over of government 
offices--including those collecting tax revenues. 
Costas is the principal leader of the rebellious 
prefects, and the main antagonist of Evo Morales.

September 11, the 35th anniversary of the coup 
against Allende, was the bloodiest day in the 
escalating conflict. In the Media Luna department 
of Pando, a para-military band with machine guns 
attacked the Indian community of El Porvenir, 
near the departmental capital of El Cobija, 
resulting in the death of at least 28 people. In 
a separate action, three policemen were 
kidnapped. The Red Ponchos, an official militia 
reserve unit of Indians loyal to Evo Morales, 
mobilized its forces to help the indigenous 
communities organize their self defense.

The next day Morales declared a state of siege in 
Pando and dispatched the army to move on Cobija 
and to retake its airport that had been occupied 
by right wing forces. Army units are also being 
sent to guard the natural gas oleoducts, one of 
which had been seized by the UJC, cutting the 
flow of gas to neighboring Brazil and Argentina. 
General Luis Trigo Antelo, the commander in chief 
of the Bolivian Armed Forces declared: “We will 
not tolerate any more actions by radical groups 
that are provoking a confrontation among 
Bolivians, causing pain and suffering and 
threatening the national security.” In signing 
the order authorizing the use of force in Pando, 
Morales stated that he felt responsible for the 
humiliation of the military and the police by 
radicals and vandals because he had not 
authorized them to use their weapons. This was 
the quid pro quo for getting the military high command to act.

After sustained fighting with at least three 
dead, the army took control of the airport and 
moved on the city. An order for the arrest of the 
prefect of Pando was issued for refusing to 
recognize the state of siege and for being 
responsible for the massacre in El Porvenir. In 
Santa Cruz, the police arrested 8 rioters of the 
UJC. Peasant organizations have announced they 
will march on the city to retake control of the 
government offices. The dissident prefects, led 
by Costas, are still demanding departmental 
autonomy and refusing to accept a national vote 
on the referendum for the new constitution.

Evo Morales refuses to back down, declaring in a 
meeting with supportive union leaders, “we will 
launch a campaign to approve the new 
constitution.” He did, however, indicate he may 
modify the draft to accommodate some of the 
demands for autonomy by the prefects. Like 
Allende, Morales continues to search for a 
democratic solution to the crisis in his country. 
For the moment, he has the backing of the 
Bolivian armed forces along with overwhelming 
popular support, thereby avoiding the ultimate fate of the Chilean president.

Roger Burbach is Director of the Center for the 
Study of the Americas (CENSA) based in Berkeley, 
CA. He has written extensively on Latin America 
and is the author of 
“<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1842774352/counterpunchmaga>The 
Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice.”




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20080915/573825c9/attachment.htm>