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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Interview-A-Little-Piece-of-Heaven-in-Bolivia-20200429-0017.html">https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Interview-A-Little-Piece-of-Heaven-in-Bolivia-20200429-0017.html</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Interview: “A Little Piece of Heaven in Bolivia”</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Cindy Forster - April 29, 2020<br></div>
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<p><em>On April 14, the
daughter of Teresa Subieta was arrested by the coup regime and accused
of sexual procurement. Teresa Subieta insists that her daughter is
innocent. Mother and daughter</em></p>
<p><em>demand an
exhaustive investigation that reveals the truth in all its clarity. In
the days before the coronavirus quarantine, a delegation from the
Caribbean -- from Jamaica and Belize -- and from the Chiapas Support
Committee that was founded in Los Angeles, including a person born in
Zimbabwe who organizes in the African Diaspora, had the great honor of
speaking with Teresa Subieta. These were her words:</em></p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>RELATED:<br> <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Trump-Zealots-White-Supremacists-Evangelicals-New-Civil-War-20200427-0013.html" target="_blank">Trump’s Zealots: White Supremacists and Evangelicals Gearing up for a New Civil War?</a></strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Bolivia, the United States is now governing us. Why am I saying
this? Because the CIA is deeply involved in the coup government of Mrs.
Jeanine Añez. And the U.S. state is preparing to back us into a corner
and destroy a 14-year "Process of Change" guided by the political party
MAS, the Movement toward Socialism. Our Process of Change began long
before that, logically. I am a woman who has been in the struggle since I
was 17 years old, and I am now 65, so I understand what this process of
liberating our peoples' means. </p>
<p>We are in a situation
of terrible confrontation. The coup regime is articulated with the most
reactionary and fascist right-wing forces in Bolivia. The media have
been silenced. Here it seems that we are living peacefully, but outrages
are being committed just below the surface. The problem of the Mexican
embassy and our asylees is enraging, and it's an aberration with respect
to human rights. Even during the Banzer dictatorship from 1971 to 1978 –
under which I suffered persecution, was detained, and almost killed –
asylees were respected and provided safe passage out of the country. Now
the asylees cannot even leave, and the embassy suffers continual
harassment; the regime wants to invade the embassy itself.</p>
<p>President Evo Morales
Ayma was forced out of office because he had led the transformations in
our country together with the mass organizations – including the
miners, the peasants, the Indigenous, or Original Peoples. For the first
time in our history, a poor Indigenous man became president. Men and
women from the popular sectors were elected to our Legislative Assembly,
not to take advantage of power as the right-wing has, but to serve the
majority. They made some mistakes, as people make mistakes everywhere,
but the more important fact is that U.S. imperialism has always wanted
to put an end to Bolivia's Process of Change because we were following a
path of liberation.</p>
<p><strong>"We have not suffered such outrages even during the Banzer dictatorship."</strong></p>
<p>I am a delegate or
defender of the people's human rights in the department of La Paz [that
reaches from the Peruvian border toward the center of the country, and
from the Andes to the Amazon]. My work, with 18 other people in this
office, has been to denounce the atrocities that have been committed in
all this time since the coup: The murders of 36 people, including 12 in</p>
<p>El Alto and five in Ovejuyo, a total of 17. </p>
<p>It is said that many
more have been killed because there are people murdered and disappeared
who were not counted. Indigenous Campesinos among the dead were taken to
the countryside to be mourned in their home communities. We are still
investigating the correct number of these deaths.</p>
<p>There are more than
one thousand wounded by the coup government: 890 who are identified, and
we include those who preferred to leave without recording their names.
In addition, there are close to 560 people detained because they joined
marchers in protest, or were innocent bystanders.</p>
<p>Who caused this
violence in La Paz? The middle class of the area called the Southern
Zone. It was not really understood by the former government that the
position of this middle class had not changed in these 14 years: They
are racist, thoroughly discriminatory. And very unhappy for the fact
that the Process of Change [initiated by the Movement toward Socialism
or MAS, that kept winning elections] was bringing to power the poorest
sectors, the Indigenous and peasants, and the more impoverished sectors
of the middle classes. </p>
<p>The coup government
continues to detain people. They put people in jail on trumped-up
charges. They say that the accused are guilty of a breach of official
duties, or that people have stolen money. It is claimed they are drug
traffickers. They accuse them of committing sedition, or assert they are
common criminals; these are the charges they throw against our
comrades.</p>
<p>I recently visited a
woman in detention who is not even political. She is the wife of a
Russian; I believe he is a diplomat. They linked the woman to the
previous Minister of the Interior, Carlos Romero, and claimed she is his
lover. They're employing these kinds of falsehoods and accusations.
They arrested her and she had a pre-embolism, she could not swallow. She
should have gone to the hospital but they kept her in detention until
she developed pernicious anemia. She is now in the hospital. They are so
callous -- to a degree, we did not see during Banzer's dictatorship,
which I lived through -- they even have her chained to her bed. She is
chained. Only because we made her situation very public did they take
the chains off her foot, but they still have her chained by her arm to
the bed.</p>
<p>What fools they are,
how brutal and cruel they are: violating international treaties and the
Constitution, which recognizes the rights of those deprived of liberty. </p>
<p><strong>"We have been persecuted."</strong></p>
<p>There have been very
serious problems: The coup regime has attacked the head of the national
system of human rights defenders, Dr. Nadia Cruz, as well as a
departmental delegate from Cochabamba. They have tried to take over
their offices and succeeded in doing so in</p>
<p>Cochabamba. Who,
exactly? Those middle classes who are now called 'pititas' because they
put up their pitas or cords to block the streets. They say that we are
MASistas, from the Movement towards Socialism that governed from 2006 to
2019.</p>
<p>We've been chased by
vigilantes, who were joined by individuals from the police and military.
With three of the lawyers from our office, we went to El Alto after the
Senkata massacre to assist 40 people who had been arrested. The middle
classes had put up blockades in the streets because they oppose the
Indigenous Campesinos as well as the government of Evo. </p>
<p>It was about 6:30 in
the afternoon when we arrived at the police station. We asked about the
40 detainees. The police know me very well, and they told us, "No,
they're not here anymore, we've sent them down to La Paz to another
police station."</p>
<p>When we first arrived
in El Alto, we had seen fires on every street corner that we passed,
but we didn't think anything of it until, as we were leaving the police
station, we were blocked by the group at the bonfire. At that point, we
realized they were civilians -- people like us -- and police, military,
and paramilitaries with helmets and sticks wrapped with barbed wire. </p>
<p>"Who are you?" they asked.</p>
<p>And I said to them, "We are from the office of the human rights defenders. Here's my credential." </p>
<p>"Ah! You bastards."
Epithets. "Whores, shits. MASistas, you are defending criminals. You're
not defending us; you've not defended the police who are already dead."
Because yes, there has been a police death, one of the police booths was
burned and unfortunately a policeman died. "Get out of here now, we're
going to kill you!"</p>
<p> And the cops: "Get them, take their cell phones! Take their wallets, get them!" </p>
<p>When we entered
earlier, they didn't do anything to us. They let us in; they didn't even
ask us anything. But when we were leaving, "Who are you?"</p>
<p>And I said to them, "I don't understand why we're being treated this way."</p>
<p>They made us walk,
insulting us from corner to corner, throwing sticks and stones. Earlier,
we had passed corners with very few people, but now more people had
appeared, and a man came up next to me with a stick. I thought, "They
are going to kill us."</p>
<p>It was terrible. But
can you believe the goodness of God and the Pachamama, at the last
bonfire they were going to beat us, then as they were shouting, a tall
lady recognized me, and she said, "What are you doing here?" It was a
lady who had come here to the office, which I received as I received you
today. </p>
<p>And I explained: "I've come for the people arrested in Senkata, and look at the state we are in now."</p>
<p>And she says to everyone, "She has helped me. Please calm down."</p>
<p>They answered with the same insults. </p>
<p>"Calm down!"</p>
<p>This lady with her
group kept the vigilantes from attacking, but they kept shouting: "Don't
turn around, MASistas!" One of my comrades who was helping me, they
beat him on the leg.</p>
<p>So I ask you if this
is what happened to the defender of the people's rights, imagine what
has happened to young people, ordinary people, peasants. Imagine what
they have suffered. When the brothers and sisters from Senkata and from
Ovejuyo denounce how they were seized by mobs, beaten and insulted, I
believe them. Because I have lived it, too, they are not lying.</p>
<p><em>Question: This was in El Alto?</em></p>
<p>In a sector called
Ciudad Satelíte, which fancies itself to be like the Southern Zone of La
Paz, it's the rich sector of El Alto. They believe themselves to be
superior. The national defender of the people's rights, my superior, has
been harassed in her own office. The departmental delegate of
Cochabamba has been attacked, and even his family was made a target.
Right-wing government ministers like [Wilson] Santamaria and [Arturo]
Murillo accuse me of being a MASista and a communist. </p>
<p>In terms of our
values and our governing framework at the office of the Defenders of the
People, we defend the human rights of everybody, but mostly of the
vulnerable people from the poorest sectors. Those who cannot get lawyers
since here they don't pay, we don't charge them. </p>
<p><em>Question: With all the threats and harassment, is the government trying to remove the budget or wages of your office?</em></p>
<p>There is designated
funding from the Evo Morales government earmarked for this year that
lasts until May. Then there will be a convocation for the human rights
defenders office, and the right-wing will fight to get their people in.
But they can't because there is still a two- thirds majority of the MAS
party in Parliament.</p>
<p>We know the coup
regime will cling to power. If they don't win the elections, the United
States is sure to do something to prevent the return of the government
of the poor.</p>
<p><strong>"Torture is practiced."</strong></p>
<p>I ask that you to
help us denounce that this was a civil-military a coup. The right-wing
says it is "a transitional government, and that Mr. Evo Morales has
resigned and gone happily on vacation." That's a lie. It is an ongoing
military coup, Morales was threatened and could have been killed. In
effect, they had a pistol at his head, and the same was true for his
vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, and the Minister of health,
Gabriela Montaño. There is political persecution, international treaties
are not being respected, and the right to asylum is respected even less
for people like the seven authorities who are in the Mexican embassy.
And in the case of the woman who I visited in the hospital, it is an
outrage that torture is practiced, it is torture! To have a person
chained to the hospital bed, chained!</p>
<p>I think that our
alternative is that we must win the elections. It is not going to be
easy because the CIA is in Bolivia. U.S. imperialism has seized control
of the country. When the previous government was in power, they were
able to kick out USAID and the CIA. However, the CIA remained in ways
that were very well camouflaged. </p>
<p><strong>"In my country, there is a bitter fight."</strong></p>
<p>The U.S. government
is now running Bolivia, and the people are enraged by that fact. The
reality of class struggle is exceedingly strong. The same is true of the
resistance of the Indigenous sectors against the fascists. </p>
<p>The popular classes
know that the right-wing used false claims of electoral fraud to
implement a systematic plan that the United States is trying to impose
on the entire region. The United States has expressed its will, saying,
"This is who we are. You will not advance any further. You will not
govern yourselves. We own you." They are trying to put an end to the era
of popular rule. They are challenging the people, saying, "We'll see if
you're strong enough to stand against us, we'll see if you can
withstand the power we wield."</p>
<p>It is an unequal
fight. But my people are determined to struggle. We have very
deep-rooted cultures: the Aymara, the Quechua, the Guaraní, the 36
nationalities that makeup Bolivia. Marxism cannot be imposed like a
straitjacket; it has to be understood through our realities so that,
from the roots, we will one day see the transformation to a new and more
just society.</p>
<p>And the lovely sister from Belize? [She's crying.]</p>
<p>[Teresa Subieta, a
diminutive woman, rises and goes to stand directly in front of her, then
addresses her with great tenderness:]</p>
<p>I lived through
prison during the dictatorship of Banzer [in the era of Domitila Barrios
de Chungara and the miners, and the martyred priest Luis Espinal]. From
1976 to 1977, we went on a hunger strike. We were almost disappeared,
my husband and I. We had fallen in love at the university. My husband
was sent to the prison of Chonchocoro, then to Achocalla, where some
houses of adobe and stone are built in a row, maybe five, six houses
that lead to a chapel, where they tortured us. They disappeared people
there; they killed them, they applied electricity to them as they did to
me, in my intimate parts. And the "submarine," hanging by the feet and
one's head is submerged in a receptacle of water, the tortured person is
beaten with sticks, and in the end, they would kill the prisoner. They
finished people off with a bullet.</p>
<p>I was saved because the miners -- the proletarian class of my country -- had gone on strike for</p>
<p>three days, stopped
working. In that era, to stop mining was to halt the country's foreign
earnings. The government had to give in to the miners' demand for our
release. We were ten university leaders. They brought us to La Paz and
said we were criminals, and they put us in prison.</p>
<p>My father is a lawyer
– I'm an only child – and my father and attorneys from the university
filed a lawsuit on the grounds of violation of our constitutional
rights. They released us after six months.</p>
<p>So we have to fight.
We have to keep fighting because humanity can change, even if I don't
live to experience it. I was already seeing a little piece of heaven in
Bolivia. A little piece. My Indigenous comrades, my mining comrades, my
humble comrades were beginning to move forward.</p>
<p><strong>"My people are determined to struggle."</strong></p>
<p>There was something
that surprised me. Do you know what it was? The domestic workers, here
there are families who have domestic workers and always, in the time of
the colony and of the republic, there was servitude, and the workers
were never paid. From 1952 to 1970, they just served and served; they
ate and lived in the house of their boss. From 1970 onwards, they were
paid, but it was a pittance, fifty bolivianos, which is 7 dollars a
month for their work, day and night, day and night. For other workers at
this time, the minimum monthly wage was forty or fifty dollars.</p>
<p>Because Evo took
office, workers now earn 2,120 bolivianos, which is 300 dollars a month.
From fifty dollars to 300 dollars. What a change! Now, workers are
respected because the law says you have to pay them that amount.</p>
<p>Fourteen years ago,
there were statistics reflecting the death of 65 per thousand women, who
died unnecessarily. Of what? Of childbirth. They died from giving
birth! With Evo, the government offered the Juana Azurduy bonus. Azurduy
was a woman who fought against the colony, against the Spanish in the
days of the independence struggles. The bonus consisted of giving a
pregnant woman a good diet, plus a cash bonus. She was given health care
free of charge, both pre and post-natal. This program has caused infant
mortality to drop tremendously.</p>
<p>Before, children in
the countryside did not go to school for long. What did Evo decide to
do? He gave the Juancito Pinto bonus, which began to redistribute
national wealth among the poor. Where did that money come from? From the
profits generated by state ownership of natural resources. He gave 200
bolivianos to the children, in return for attending school. He provided
school breakfasts and free health care for the children. </p>
<p>But now, with
everything we are living through, ciao! To these programs. They do not
want to give the Juana Azurduy bonus; they do not want to give the
Juancito Pinto bonus. Another bonus went to seniors: I have a cousin who
has no retirement pension. But the bonus of 250 bolivianos a month is
what helps him survive.</p>
<p>Before, that money
lined the pockets of the rich. Since 2006, it has been redistributed to
the poor. And the same was true for housing construction, likewise to
help with peasant production, and in the process of industrialization
and the idea of creating a community-based economy. All this had been
advancing, which was not to the liking of the empire. Nor the rich.
Because they want everything for themselves. </p>
<p>In our country, after
so many years of capitalism, of neoliberalism, for the first time the
rural area received drinking water, the countryside now has electricity.
In the peripheral neighborhoods of the cities, conditions have been
improving. For the first time, our Gross Domestic Product rose and was
shared with the poor. We built one of the region's strongest economies,
without asking the World Bank, UNICEF, or international banks for loans.
There were significant changes in the economic structure.</p>
<p>We are not saying
that capitalism disappeared. You are aware that this is no easy task
because capitalism is a monster that has been created across years and
years. Of course, the CIA, or more broadly, the U.S. empire is very
powerful, but I believe that the strength, the will, the struggle, the
unity and the organization of our people have to be more powerful still.</p>
<p><em>(Many thanks to Jenny Bekenstein for the transcript of the interview.)</em></p>
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