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<font size=3><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>September 17, 2008<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>The Paramilitary
Massacre in Bolivia <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Reactionary Rampage
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By FORREST
HYLTON <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">B</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>olivian President Evo Morales’ expulsion of
US Ambassador Phillip Goldberg on September 10 for alleged coup plotting
sparked the latest diplomatic crisis in the Americas. But the diplomatic
fallout has overshadowed the internal dynamics that led to the massacre
of some 30 campesinos with perhaps as many as 40 more disappeared in El
Porvenir, Pando, near Bolivia’s northeastern border with Brazil. The
massacre coincided with the 35th anniversary of the violent overthrow of
socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile.<br><br>
The massacre in El Porvenir was the worst in Bolivia since right-wing
President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada presided over the slaughter of more
than 70 unarmed protestors in October 2003. This time, however, the
violence was not orchestrated by the central government, but by regional
officials: departmental prefects in league with civic committees.
Administratively organized similar to France, Bolivia is divided into
nine departments, each run by a prefect, while civic committees are made
up of a handful of unelected, local, commercial-landed elites who preside
over one of the most unequal distributions of land and wealth in the
world. These public- and private-sector authorities, in turn, are allied
with cypto-fascist paramilitary youth gangs armed with baseball bats,
clubs, chains, guns, and in the case of the massacre at El Porvenir,
official vehicles. These groups have made Bolivia’s eastern lowlands
ungovernable for the Morales administration.<br><br>
It may be helpful for U.S. readers to consider Bolivia’s eastern lowlands
as analogous to Dixie. In the 1950s and 60s, working with governors and
mayors of states and localities, white supremacist paramilitary groups
terrorized African Americans. The campaign of terror was intended to
preserve a status quo that benefited a tiny class of wealthy white
landowners, against which the federal governmentunder Eisenhower and
Kennedyhesitated to act.<br><br>
Imagine, though, that African Americans had comprised an overwhelming
majority of the U.S. population, that Kennedy was Black, and that he had
come to power on the back of serial insurrections led by African
Americans. Imagine that, in response, white supremacists not only
massacred Blacks, but also blockaded roads, blew up oil pipelines, and
burned and looted federal government offices and installations.<br><br>
The limits of the analogy with the Jim Crow south are significant, but
another analogyfrom a century earlier, the 1850s and 60stranscends
them. The southern secessionist movement sought to preserve the republic
of slavery and extend it through the west to the Pacific. The movement
mobilized a mass following and mounted an armed challenge to the federal
government. Such analogies help convey the virulence of what one
commentator has labeled a “revolt of the rich,” as well as the scope of
the challenge posed by a wealthy white minority to a government backed by
a majority of workers and campesinos of Indian descent, a government
without historical precedent.<br><br>
Massive support for the central government was ratified as recently as
August 10 in the recall referendum in which Morales increased his overall
share of the vote to 67%up from 54% when he was elected president in
late 2005. Morales improved his standing in his strongholdsthe cities
and countryside of the western highlands and valleys, as well as the
coca-growing regions in the Yungas and the Chapare. But more importantly,
he made inroads in the heart of opposition country in Beni, Pando, and
Tarija, where he won an additional 20% compared to 2005. In Pando, nearly
half the population voted in favor of Morales. No Bolivian president has
ever has ever had such broad appeal across the nation.<br><br>
On the heels of victory, Morales spoke of dialogue and reconciliation
with the opposition. But opposition prefects, led by Rubén Costas from
Santa Cruz, and empowered by their substantial gains in the same recall
vote, announced their intention to implement the “statutes” approved in
“autonomy referendums” in May and June 2008. The “autonomy referendums”
were de facto voting exercises, lacking any legal standing in Bolivia,
were not recognized by any foreign government, and were not overseen by
international observers. Yet opposition prefects claimed a mandate to
install their own police, tax collection services, and departmental
legislature. The implementation of this mandate could only come about
through the use of force.<br><br>
Then came September 11. Death squads armed with sub-machine guns
massacred unarmed Morales supporters on their way to a mass meeting in El
Porvenir. The meeting had been called to discuss possible responses to
increasingly violent attacks on government supporters. The central
government was slow to react and hesitant when it finally did. It could
not safeguard the property and lives of its supporters or defend its own
offices and functionaries; it could not even offer humanitarian aid to
survivors, many of whom, fearing for their lives, hid in the mountains.
In a televised interview, the presidential delegate in Pando, Nancy
Texeira, asked in a halting voice choked by pain and sadness, “Why
doesn’t the government in La Paz do anything? We have been abandoned
here.”<br><br>
Over the past several years, Morales has cultivated good relations with
the police and armed forces, yet he has been mostly unwilling or unable
to use either since the crisis that began in August. Armed opposition
forces have overwhelmed both police and military in the lowlands, thus
far with impunity. The Bolivian security forces have therefore been
humiliated according to their shared institutional code. And yet, as the
opposition ups the ante of violence and illegality, the central
government becomes increasingly reluctant to monopolize legitimate use of
force, and the opposition becomes ever more brazen in persecuting Morales
supporters.<br><br>
This, at least, has been the dynamic in Pando. Opposition prefects in
Beni, Santa Cruz, and Tarija have pulled back to some degree from their
onslaught, and ostensibly agreed to “dialogue” with the Morales
government, but the damage is done. Morales declared martial law in Pando
and ordered the arrest of the departmental prefect Leopoldo Fernández on
September 12. Many of Morales’ supporters will be asking why he is
pursuing dialogue with opposition prefects in Beni, Santa Cruz, and
Tarija, when theyand their supporterscould be legitimately brought to
trial for their crimes.<br><br>
The emergency meeting of the South American Union (Unasur) convened in by
President Michelle Bachelet in Chile on September 15 is a sign of
changing times in the Western hemisphere. Military dictators like Chile’s
Augusto Pinchet, Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer, and their bastard offspring, such
as Leopoldo Fernándezwho got his start in the late 1970s as a
paramilitary operative under successive dictatorshipsbelong to the
past.<br><br>
This new regional diplomacy exercised through the Organization of
American States (OAS), the Rio Group, and now Unasur has successfully
confronted diplomatic crises triggered by the U.S. government and its
local allies on the right. Although Hugo Chávez’s expulsion of the U.S.
Ambassador from Venezuela grabbed headlines in the United States, the
Bolivian crisis played quite differently in the regional media. Bolivia
sells most f its natural gas to Brazil and Argentina, and Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Argentine President Cristina
Fernandez denounced the separatist movement in unusually strong terms.
The outcome of the Unasur meeting further proved that Morales has robust
support from neighboring governments and the major inter-state
organizations to which they belong<br><br>
Given regional repudiation of secessionist movements in Bolivia and
Morales’ overwhelming support at home, opposition forces have little
chance of toppling Morales and installing a right-wing government.
Furthermore, they must contend with formidable and rising resistance
within their own departments, not only in the countryside but also in the
cities: the northern part of Beni is controlled by indigenous groups that
back the Morales government, for example, while peasant supporters of
Morales fought pitched street battles against the opposition in Tarija
(the capital city of the department with the same name).<br><br>
The reactionary rampage in the lowlands is the result of a desperate,
cornered minority that has been given considerable breathing room by a
weak, vacillating central government that nevertheless enjoys massive
popular backing. Since it can’t take back the central government and is
isolated internationally, the opposition’s last weapon is to bleed the
Morales administration of legitimacy by making the country
ungovernable.<br><br>
The opposition has demonstrated the central government’s inability to
impose the rule of law amid public-private terror against its
supportersa spectacular triumph for any right-wing movement. Since
August’s recall referendum, the arc of illegality and violence traced by
the opposition has been unmistakable. While no one anticipated the scale
of the massacre in El Porvenir, it was all but certain that one would
occur.<br><br>
What if the Bolivian government had tried to prevent this tragedy by
sending in the army and riot police before any of its supporters were
killed, instead of reacting weakly and hesitantly ex post facto? Will the
government rise to the occasion in the future, or are there more
massacres to come?<br>
If the Morales administration is not able to guarantee the lives and
property of supporters, some of them may be tempted to take justice into
their own hands, in which case the media cliché of pending “civil war,”
until now a mere figure of rhetoric, could become reality. Regardless of
what happens in the future, there is now one more massacre to commemorate
on September 11, and the dilemma signaled by Allende’s tragic example
remains as daunting as ever.<br><br>
<b>Forrest Hylton</b> is the author of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1844675513/counterpunchmaga">
Evil Hour in Colombia</a> (Verso, 2006), and with Sinclair Thomson, of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/184467097X/counterpunchmaga">
Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics</a> (Verso,
2007). He is a frequent contributor to
<a href="http://news.nacla.org/">NACLA</a>. <br><br>
<br><br>
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