As Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, begins talks with rebel state governors in an attempt to end the political turmoil that paralyzed the nation last week, analysts are questioning the implications for the distribution of Bolivia's natural wealth - and the success of U.S. intervention in support for rightist elements and neoliberal economic policies.
The
alleged support by the United States of wealthy landowners, business
leaders, and their organizations tied to the violent uprising in
eastern Bolivia has led U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg's expulsion
from La Paz and the South American government's demands that the United
States stop backing the illegitimate rebellion. Goldberg had met with
some of these right-wing oppositionist leaders just a week before the
most recent outbreak of violence against the democratically elected
government of Evo Morales, who won a recall referendum in August with
over 67% of the popular vote.
U.S. subversion
has assumed several forms since the leftist indigenous leader became
president in 2005. For example, the U.S. embassy — in violation of
American law — repeatedly asked Peace Corps volunteers, as well as an
American Fulbright scholar, to engage in espionage, according to news reports.
Bolivia gets
approximately $120 million in aid annually from the United States. It's
an important supplement for a country of nine million people with an
annual per capita income of barely $1,000. Presidential Minister Juan
Ramón Quintana has accused the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) of using some of this money to support a number of
prominent conservative opposition leaders as part of a "democracy
initiative" through the consulting firm Chemonics International. A
cable from the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia last year revealed
a USAID-sponsored "political party reform project" to "help build
moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a
counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors" (MAS stands for Movimiento al Socialismo,
the party to which Morales belongs.). Despite numerous requests filed
under the Freedom of Information Act, the Bush administration refuses
to release a list of all the recipient organizations of USAID funds.
The history of
U.S. intervention in support for rightist elements in Bolivia is long.
The United States was the major foreign backer of the dictatorial
regime of René Barrientos, who seized power in a 1964 military coup.
The CIA and U.S. Special Forces played a key role in suppressing a
leftist peasant uprising that followed, including the 1967 murder of
Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a key leader in the movement.
When leftist
army officer Juan José Torres came to power in October of 1970, the
Nixon administration called for his ouster. When an attempted coup by
rightist general Hugo Bánzer Suárez was threatened by a breakdown in
the plotters' radio communications, the U.S. Air Force made their radio
communications available to them. Though this first attempted takeover
was crushed, Bánzer was able to seize power by August of the following
year in a bloody uprising, also with apparent U.S. support. Thousands
of suspected leftists were executed in subsequent years.
The United
States largely supported Bánzer and subsequent dictators in the face of
a series of protests, general strikes and other largely nonviolent
pro-democracy uprisings, which eventually led to the end of military
rule by 1982 and the coming to office of the left-leaning president
Hernán Siles Zuazo. The United States refused to resume economic aid,
however, until the government enacted strict neoliberal austerity
measures.
A series of
center-left and rightist civilian governments ruled the country over
the next 20 years, most of which were corrupt and inept and none of
which could come close to meeting the basic needs ordinary Bolivians,
who — with the exception of the Haitians —
are the poorest in the Western hemisphere. Despite the restoration of
democracy, the strict austerity programs pushed by the United States
and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) resulted in the Bolivian
people, more than two-thirds of whom live in poverty, having little say
in the decisions that most impacted their lives. Furthermore, even
though the majority of the population is indigenous, the country's
leaders continued to be white or mestizo (of mixed-race heritage).
The 2005
election of Evo Morales, a left-wing activist and the first indigenous
leader in the nearly 500 years since the Spanish conquest, marked a
major shift in Bolivia's politics. His commitment to a radical reform
of the country's inequitable social and economic system has proven to
be even more critical than his racial and cultural identity.
To understand
Bolivian sensitivities to U.S. aid and its conditions, as well as
concerns regarding U.S. intervention, it is important to look what
happened to Bolivia's first leftist government, which governed back in
the 1950s.
In 1952, a popular uprising against a rightist military regime led to the left-leaning nationalists of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario
(MNR) coming to power promising political freedom and radical economic
reform. As with Morales and MAS, his political party, that
revolutionary government had strong support from militant worker and
peasant political movements. And, also like today, the new government's
policies were strongly nationalistic, particularly in regard to the
country's natural resources, in which U.S. investors had substantial
interests.
It wasn't long, however, before the United States forced a dramatic shift in the regime's priorities.
With its
landlocked location, dissipated gold reserves, increased costs of
production and imports, and huge trade deficits, Bolivia's
revolutionary regime couldn't counter the economic power of the United
States. U.S. aid wasn't enough to improve the standard of living in
Bolivia, but it did manage to make the country more dependent. The
Bolivian Planning Board noted that "rather than an impulse to
improvement, the aid has represented a means only of preventing worse
deterioration in the situation as it existed."
The ruling MNR
recognized that it couldn't afford to anger Washington. Their fear
stemmed not just from the threat of direct intervention (like what took
place in Guatemala against the nationalist Arbenz government less than
two years later), but also from the fear of economic retaliation, not
an unimportant concern given Bolivia's dependence on the U.S. to
process its tin ore and provide needed imports.
Indeed, it was
clear from an early stage of the revolution that the economic weakness
of Bolivia, combined with the economic power of the United States,
allowed the U.S. to establish clear parameters for the revolution. For
example, the United States forced Bolivia to pay full compensation to
the wealthy foreign owners of recently nationalized tin mines rather
than use the funds for economic development. The Petroleum Code of
1955, written by U.S. officials and enacted without any public debate
or alterations by Bolivian authorities, forced the Bolivian government
to forego its oil monopoly. Bolivia was then forced to sign an
agreement to further encourage U.S. investment in the country. It was
due only to this desperate need for an additional source of foreign
exchange and pressure from the U.S. government that the once strongly
nationalistic MNR agreed to these concessions.
The following
year, the U.S. took more direct authority over Bolivia's economy by
imposing an economic stabilization program, which the Bolivian
government agreed to, according to U.S. officials, "virtually under
duress, and with repeated hints of curtailment of U.S. aid" (This quote
is from Inflation and Development in Latin America: A Case History of Inflation and Stabilization in Bolivia,
a book by George Jackson Eder.). The program, which bore striking
resemblance to the structural adjustment programs which have since been
imposed on dozens of debt-ridden countries in Latin America and
elsewhere, consisted of the devaluation of the boliviano; an end to
export/import controls, price controls and government subsidies on
consumer goods; the freezing of wages and salaries; major cutbacks in
spending for education and social welfare; and an end to efforts at
industrial diversification.
The result,
according to U.S. officials which forced its implementation, "meant the
repudiation, at least tacitly, of virtually everything that the
Revolutionary Government had done over the previous four years." It not
only redirected the economic priorities of the revolution, particularly
its efforts at economic diversification, but altered the revolution's
political structure by effectively curbing the power of the trade
unions and displacing socialist-leaning leaders of the MNR.
In the end, the United States was able to overthrow the Bolivian revolution without having to overthrow the government.
In many
respects, U.S. policy towards Bolivia proved to be a harbinger for
future U.S. domination of Latin America in this age of globalization,
where the so-called "Washington consensus," backed by U.S.-supported
international financial institutions, created a situation where even
wealthier Latin American countries had as few choices in choosing their
economic policies as did impoverished Bolivia during the 1950s.
This has begun
to change, however. Thanks in part to Venezuela's oil wealth and the
willingness of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, in the name of Latin
American solidarity, to help its poorer and financially-strapped
neighbors, a number of Latin American governments have had their debts
reduced or eliminated. The strengthening of regional trade blocs and
increased trade with Europe and China has also made it easier for South
American nations to wean themselves from dependency on the United
States.
Under Morales,
Bolivia has attempted to strengthen the Andean Community of Nations and
the signing last year of a "People's Trade Treaty" with Venezuela,
Nicaragua, and Cuba is indicative of the desire to strengthen working
economic and political alliances outside of direct U.S. influence in
order to be better able to stand up to Washington.
As a result,
Morales and the MAS seem better positioned to withstand economic
pressure from the United States. Unlike the MNR in the 1950s, Morales
comes out of a popular mass movement of the country's poor and
indigenous majority, which is very different than the predominantly
white middle-class leadership of reformist officers under the previous
government. Combined with economic support from oil-rich Venezuela and
Morales' efforts at strengthening its economic relationships with
Bolivia's Latin American neighbors, MAS has made it possible for the
Bolivians to resist buckling under the kind of pressure imposed by the
United States a half-century earlier.
It's this very
ability to better withstand the kind of economic pressures the United
States had until recently been able to exert, either directly or
through international financial institutions, which has led to recent
violence in Santa Cruz and elsewhere in the wealthier white and mestizo-dominated
eastern sectors of the country. As a result of the reduced leverage of
their friends in Washington, which had previously enabled them to rule
the country, certain elite elements now appear willing to violently
separate themselves and the four eastern provinces in which they are
concentrated.
With much of
Bolivia's natural gas wealth located in the east, and taking advantage
of the endemic racism of its largely white and mestizo
population against the country's indigenous majority, now in positions
of political power for the first time, these right-wing forces appear
ready to either bring down Morales or secede from the country. Earlier
this year they sacked and burned government buildings, murdered
government officials and supporters, attacked journalists, sabotaged a
key natural gas pipeline, and renounced any allegiance to Bolivia's
democratically elected government.
While the
leadership of the Organization of American States and virtually every
Latin American president has condemned the uprising the U.S. government
has not, adding to concerns that United States may indeed have a hand
in the violence.
The apparent
triumph of the neoliberal model of globalization in the early 1990s and
the resulting hegemonic domination by the United States over poorer
countries — for which Bolivia served as the prototype 40 years earlier
— made it appear as if the days of cruder forms of U.S. interventionism
in Latin America were a thing of the past.
Recent events in Bolivia, however, may be a frightening indication that this is no longer the case.
Morales was arriving from his country where the smoke was still rising
from a week of right-wing government opposition violence that left the
nation paralyzed, at least 30 people dead, and businesses, government
and human rights buildings destroyed. During the same week, Morales
declared US ambassador in Bolivia Philip Goldberg a "persona non grata"
for "conspiring against democracy" and for his ties to the Bolivian
opposition. The recent conflict in Bolivia and the subsequent meeting
of presidents raise the questions: What led to this meltdown? Whose
side is the Bolivian military on? And what does the Bolivian crisis and
regional reaction tell us about the new power bloc of South American
nations?
Massacre in Pando
On September 11, in the tropical Bolivian department of Pando, which
borders Brazil and Peru, a thousand pro-Morales men, women and children
were heading toward Cobija, the department's capital to protest the
right wing governor Leopoldo Fernández and his thugs' takeover of the
city and airport.
According to press reports and eye witness accounts, when the
protesters arrived at a bridge seven kilometers outside the town of
Porvenir, they were ambushed by assassins hired and trained by governor
Fernández. Snipers in the tree tops shot down on the unarmed
campesinos. Shirley Segovia, a Porvenir resident recalled to Bolpress,
"We were killed like pigs, with machine guns, with rifles, with
shotguns, with revolvers. The campesinos had only brought their teeth,
clubs and sling shots, they didn't bring rifles. After the first shots,
some fled to the river Tahuamanu, but they were followed and shot at."
Others reported being tortured; days later the death toll rose to 30,
with dozens wounded and over a hundred still missing. Roberto Tito, a
farmer who was present at the conflict, said "This was a massacre of
farmers, this is something that we should not allow."
In 2006, Fernández, who denies orchestrating this violence, was
denounced by then Government Minister Alicia Muñoz who said the
governor was training at least a hundred paramilitaries as a "citizen's
protection" force. These paramilitaries are believed to have
participated in the massacre. Fernández is one of the opposition
governors that form part of the National Democratic Council (CONALDE),
an organization which includes governors from Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando,
Tarija, and Chuquisaca who are organizing for departmental autonomy
against the Morales government and his administration's redistribution
of land and natural gas wealth, and other socialistic policies.
After the massacre, President Morales declared a state of siege in
Pando, sent in the military, and by September 15 a tense peace had
reportedly returned to the region. Morales also called for the arrest
of Fernandez who fled across the border, into rural Brazil. [Update:
Fernandez has since been arrested and taken to the Bolivian capital.]
This massacre took place just weeks after an August 10 national recall
vote invigorated Morales' mandate: he won 67% support nationwide,
showing that his staunch, violent opponents are clearly in the
minority. In Pando, Morales won 53% of the vote, an increase of 32%
from the 21% he received from Pando residents during the presidential
election in 2005.
A few key political developments led to this recent increase in
regional tension. On August 28, Morales announced a presidential decree
establishing a constitutional referendum on December 7. This referendum
would apply to the constitution which was re-written and passed in a
constituent assembly in December 2007. On September 2 of this year the
electoral court said it opposed the referendum because it had to first
be passed by Congress and the opposition controlled Senate. The debate
revived existing conflicts, and opposition leaders began to block major
roads and seized an airport in Cobija on September 5.
The days leading up to the September 11 massacre in Pando were full of
anti-government protesters ransacking businesses and human rights
organizations across the country. On September 10, an explosion
reportedly set off by opposition groups disrupted the flow of gas lines
to Brazil from Tarija, Bolivia.
US Ambassadors Expelled
Following these tumultuous events, Morales demanded that US ambassador
to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg leave the country. "Without fear of anyone,
without fear of the empire, today before you, before the Bolivian
people, I declare the ambassador of the United States persona non
grata," Morales said. "The ambassador of the United States is
conspiring against democracy and wants Bolivia to break apart."
The announcement came after a private meeting Goldberg had with the
right wing governor of Santa Cruz on August 25, and a later visit to
the opposition governor of Chuquisaca. Throughout Goldberg's time as
ambassador, which began in 2006, the Morales government has accused him
of orchestrating US funding and support to opposition groups in the
eastern part of the country. [See the February 2008, The Progressive
Magazine article "Undermining Bolivia" for more information on Washington's destabilization efforts in Bolivia.]
Before coming to Bolivia, Goldberg worked as an ambassador in Kosovo
from 2004-2006 and consular in Colombia. At a press conference Goldberg
held in La Paz before leaving for the US, he said: "I want to say that
all the accusations made against me, against my embassy... against my
country and against my people are entirely false and unjustified."
Following the US ambassador's expulsion from Bolivia, Venezuelan
president Hugo Chavez announced that the US ambassador in his country
had to leave: "He has 72 hours, from this moment, the Yankee ambassador
in Caracas, to leave Venezuela." The US responded by asking the
ambassadors of Venezuela and Bolivia to leave the US. This all took
place during a tense few months in US-Latin American relations in which
the US Navy re-instated its Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean after decades
of inactivity, Chavez announced joint exercises with Russia in the
Caribbean and Bolivia strengthened its ties with Iran.
On September 15 in Santiago, Chile, the nine presidents within the
Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), including Argentina, Ecuador,
Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile - even Colombia, a close US ally -
met to come to a resolution on the Bolivian crisis. This organization
is one of the newest in a series of regional networks that are making
increasingly collaborative political and economic decisions throughout
South America. All of the leaders backed Morales, condemned the
opposition's violent tactics and emphasized that they won't recognize
separatists in the country.
Bolivian Military Alliances
Though the threat of a "civic coup d'état" Morales spoke about in
Santiago still looms, the Bolivian military is unlikely to back the
opposition. I asked Kathryn Ledebur, a human rights specialist and
director of the Andean Information Network
in Cochabamba, Bolivia, if the military might side with the opposition
to overthrow Morales. Lebedur said, "No way, they are in a tough bind,
and CONALDE is trying to set Morales up, drive a wedge between him and
the military. But in spite of their frustrations, they [the military]
have received more materially and in terms of a positive discourse from
the Morales government than any other civilian one, and that makes a
huge difference."
"CONALDE has intentionally created a messy catch 22 for the Morales
administration, a tense, provocative violent situation, in some cases
targeting the security forces," Ledebur explained. "If Morales orders
repression, or there are clear cut violent acts by the security forces,
his legitimacy as a socially conscious president erodes. But if the
security forces don't [act], as they didn't for a long time, the
vandalism escalates, and the military and police get humiliated and
attacked - which in the long term erodes what, at least for the armed
forces, had been a mutually beneficial marriage of convenience, with
friction along the way."
This past June the Andean Information Network released a report
analyzing the Bolivian Armed Forces' growing mission in the country
under Morales. According to this report, part of the military's support
stems from the fact that Morales has given the military popular and
lucrative jobs such as "enforcing customs regulations and confiscating
contraband at the borders, including authorization to arrest
offenders." The AIN report explains that "traditionally military
officers look forward to border postings as ‘the most profitable part'
of their careers." In addition, "under the Morales government, the
armed forces are in charge of baking subsidized bread (the regular
price has gone up 270 percent in the past year), as well as passing out
bonuses to schoolchildren and senior citizens." Improved wages among
some officials and better equipment have also kept the military on
Morales' side.
The AIN report also stated that the Bolivian military institution "will
continue to categorically reject aggressive regional autonomy
initiatives or threats of secession as risks to both national
sovereignty and the budget they receive from the national government."
As one high ranking officer explained to AIN, "The only way the
military would even remotely consider a coup, is if they took away most
of our budget; at the core, we're really a bunch of bureaucrats."
US Influence in a Changing South America
The current crisis in Bolivia and the ongoing diplomatic drama between
the US and Latin America says a lot about the future of the region and
its cooperative handling of economic and political questions. In an
interview via email, Raúl Zibechi, a Uruguayan journalist, professor
and political analyst who writes regularly for the Americas Program,
said he believes the expulsion of US ambassadors, and the regional
leaders' response to the conflict in Bolivia, "is the manifestation of
the fact that the USA can no longer impose its will on Latin America,
and very concretely in South America." He says there are two reasons
for this change: "the birth of a regional power that seeks to be a
global player, such as Brazil, a capitalist power but with different
interests from the USA, and the existence of governments born of the
heat of the resistance of social movements in countries that are large
producers of hydrocarbons, as in Venezuela, Bolivia and perhaps
Ecuador."
Zibechi emphasized Bolivia's importance as the leading supplier of gas
to Argentina and Brazil, and how this contributes to the support
Morales receives from these nations. "Brazil has big stakes in much of
Bolivia and it already announced that it would not permit a
destabilization of the country," Zibechi explained. "The key alliance
in the region is between Brazil and Argentina. They have problems, but
in this topic they are very united."
Back in Santiago, Chile, after six hours of talks between the nine
South American presidents, the UNASUR group issued a statement which
expressed their "full and firm support for the constitutional
government of President Evo Morales, whose mandate was ratified by a
big majority." In the statement, the leaders "warn that our respective
governments energetically reject and will not recognize any situation
that attempts a civil coup and the rupture of institutional order and
which could compromise the territorial integrity of the Republic of
Bolivia." They also decided to send a commission to Bolivia to
investigate the killings in Pando.
Though working to overthrow leftist governments is unfortunately
nothing new in South America, region-wide cooperation between
left-leaning governments, without the presence of the US, is new. As
Morales and other regional leaders forge ahead with progressive
policies, there may be no turning back for this changing continent -
regardless of the challenges posed by the Bolivian opposition. The
geopolitical map of the hemisphere is being redrawn, in large part by
the new alliances between South American nations, and the region's
increased resistance to Washington's political and economic
interference.
The economic and agricultural powerhouse of Brazil is a key part of
this new regional defiance and independence. "In Brazil, the right wing
in the parliament questions very strongly the [US Navy's] Fourth Fleet
because they say it is to control the new oil fields in Brazil,"
Zibechi explained. "In Brazil, things don't depend just on Lula being
in the government. Brazil has autonomous politics that go beyond who
governs... Because of this, imperial policy is to overthrow Chavez and
Evo before there are changes in these countries that are so profound
that they no longer depend on who is governing."
In Bolivia, much still depends on what happens on the ground, outside
of the presidential meetings and negotiations. The opposition has
lifted their road blockades for now, and meetings between the
government and representatives from the opposition continue. Meanwhile,
many of Bolivia's social organizations and unions have pledged their
support for Morales and against the right wing. On September 15
thousands of workers, families and students marched in La Paz, the
nation's capital, against the massacre in Pando and the right's
violence. "We are against the massacre of campesinos which has taken
place in Pando," Edgar Patanta, the leader of the Regional Workers'
Center, told ABI, "We will not permit the repetition of these acts. We
will defend democracy and life as we have in the past."
Benjamin Dangl is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia
(AK Press), and is the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a progressive
perspective on world events, and UpsideDownWorld.org, a website
covering activism and politics in Latin America. Email:
BenDangl(at)gmail.com
Link to original source
Bolivia nears the precipice
17th September 08 - Justin Vogler, Open Democracy
When both Evo Morales and his adversaries
cried victory in the "recall referendum" on 10 August 2008, it was widely
predicted that an already critical situation in Bolivia would get worse. Two
months later, with the eastern half of the country in chaos and dozens dead,
there is real fear in South American capitals that Bolivia could be on the
verge of territorial disintegration and civil war.
The Bolivian president's winning margin in the recall vote - he received
67.4% - encouraged him quickly to
announce a further referendum for 7 December to push though Bolivia's new constitution, the product of intense and divisive debate
in a special assembly in the city of Sucre in 2006-07. This would allow
immediate second-term presidential re-election, extend state control over the
economy (particularly the oil-and-gas sector), and legally empower the country's indigenous majority. However,
the prefects from the resource-rich eastern departments of Tarija, Beni, Santa
Cruz and Pando - the media luna that
constitutes a territorial block of opposition to the Morales government in La
Paz - also had their mandates ratified in the recall vote and came out
fighting.
The opposition has three basic demands:
* modifications to the draft constitution,
which they say is excessively statist and slanted towards Bolivia's indigenous
majority
* effective regional autonomy from La Paz, above all with regard
to natural-resource management
* the derogation of an energy tax, which the
central government levies on gas exports to pay a yearly pension to all
Bolivia's senior citizens.
It is clear then that the 10 August vote, far
from resolving Bolivia's crisis, set the two camps on a collision-course.
By the second week of September, there were running street-battles between
government supporters and opponents in cities throughout the east of the
country. Much of Santa Cruz was cut off by roadblocks, regional
government buildings and shops were ransacked, and columns of smoke curled over
urban skylines.
In Pando it is reported that somewhere between
sixteen and thirty government-aligned farmers have been killed, prompting
Morales to declare a state of emergency and send the army in to
retake the regional capital, Cobija. The government says the prefect, Leopoldo
Fernandez, hired Peruvian and Brazilian hitmen to carry out the murders.
Fernandez's arrest on 16 September annoyed other opposition prefects and
threatened to derail tentative talks aimed at bringing the immediate crisis to
a peaceable conclusion; though by the morning of 17 September tempers had cooled
sufficiently for agreement to hold talks to be confirmed.
The international
arena
What marks the latest phase of Bolivia's
ongoing political troubles is its international dimension. This became apparent
on the potent date of 11 September, when Evo Morales accused the United States ambassador in La
Paz, Philip Goldberg, of funnelling USAID recourses to the opposition and declared
him persona non grata.
This outcome had been signalled in August,
when Bolivian officials had publicly chided Goldberg for meeting with the Santa
Cruz prefect and opposition leader Rubén Costa. At the time, the diplomat
dismissed calls for him not to liaise with government opponents, saying that he
would continue "visiting different parts of the country because that is part of
my job". He left Bolivia on 14 September, saying that the charge that he had
meddled in the country's internal affairs was "completely false" and that La
Paz's actions would have "grave consequences".
By 16 September, Bolivia had joined Venezuela on a US blacklist of countries not cooperating with
counter-narcotics efforts; a decision Morales scorned as "blackmail".
Yet Washington scarcely had time to "regret"
Goldberg's expulsion and tell the Bolivian ambassador in Washington to pack,
before Hugo Chávez jumped on the bandwagon and gave the US's man in
Caracas, Patrick Duddy, seventy-two hours to get out and "go to hell 100
times". After railing against the "empire, the CIA, and the bourgeoisie
Creole", the Venezuelan president - resplendent in full dress uniform - called
on the head of the Bolivian army, General Luis Trigo, to stand by the legitimate president of Bolivia; because
if "they defeat or kill Evo, I am not going to stand by with folded arms".
A more diplomatically worded statement from
Itamaraty, the Brazilian foreign ministry, amounted to the same thing: "We will
not tolerate a breakdown of the institutional order in Bolivia". However,
Brasilia has to perform a balancing-act when dealing with La Paz - for Morales
is wary of his giant neighbour's intentions and Itamaraty diplomats are
regarded more as imperialists than comrades. Morales apparently rejected an
offer of Brazilian mediation, a move which is said to have angered his
Brazilian counterpart, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Much of Sao Paulo's industry
is fuelled by gas pumped from Tarija and Santa Cruz, and Brasilia has an
interest in safeguarding supplies. There have been tensions between
the two governments since 2006 when Morales announced the nationalisation of
Bolivia's gasfields and expropriated installations, some of which were owned by
the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.
Once Brazil's mediation failed, Chile's
President Michelle Bachelet - acting as leader pro tempore of the fledgling Union of South American Nations (Unasur)
- proposed an emergency summit in Santiago on 15 September. Morales welcomed
the initiative; Lula is said to have agreed while expressing reservations;
while Chávez annoyed Santiago by broadcasting and taking credit
for the proposal before Bachelet's official announcement.
From the start, Chilean diplomats worked
nervously to ensure that the Venezuelan did not turn the event into a rally
against "The Empire" or repeat his performance at the Ibero-American summit in
November 2007 when he eclipsed the hostess Bachelet and was eventually told to
"shut up" by King Carlos of Spain (see "King Juan Carlos vs President
Hugo", 13 November 2007). With
the exception of the leaders of Surinam and Guyana, the only South American
head not to reschedule and fly into Santiago for the
event was Peru's Alan García.
The regional test
The Bolivian crisis is the first test for
Unasur, which was formally launched in Brasilia in 2007 and is due to open its secretariat in
Quito shortly. Since the first South American presidential summit in 2000,
Brasilia has been piecing together the elements of this new bloc, which fuses
the existing Community of Andean Nations with Mercosur/Mercosul.
Unasur's initial emphasis is on cross-border
infrastructure and the consolidation of a series
of "bi-oceanic corridors". The first paved road to link Pacific to Atlantic -
running from the Brazilian port of Santos, through the Bolivian heartland and
down to the Chilean ports of Arica and Iquique - should be finished by the end
of 2008. The project highlights the importance Brasilia attaches both to
improving its access to the Pacific and incorporating Bolivia into its
hinterland. A second initiative launched by Brazil is the South American
Defence Council, which aims to foment security cooperation in areas of common
concern, particularly the Amazon basin; and to coordinate regional peacekeeping
efforts like the ongoing Minustah mission in Haiti.
But what, if anything, can Unasur actually
achieve in Bolivia? Three criticisms were voiced as the summiteers gathered:
that a meeting that excluded the country's opposition leaders evades the
problem and is little more than a presidential talking-shop; that Unasur simply
duplicates existing forums, principally the Organisation of American States
(OAS); and that it provides Chávez with a regional platform from which to
harangue Washington.
In the event, the 15 September meeting did serve to express full regional support
for Morales. The first article of the summit declaration
expressed "full and decided backing for the constitutional president Evo
Morales, whose mandate was ratified by an ample majority in a recent
referendum". There was also call for all sides to negotiate peacefully and to
compromise. Nevertheless, the written and verbal declarations spelled out to
the opposition that regional leaders would not tolerate a coup, secession, or
other violations of La Paz's sovereignty or the rule of law.
The shadow combat
Two points of consensus underpin the Santiago
declarations, one region-wide and one specific to Bolivia:
* that the breakdown of constitutional
democracy anywhere in South America cannot be permitted.
* that Evo Morales - whatever his radicalism,
diplomatic shortcomings and taste for confrontation - is probably the only
person who can stabilise Bolivia and guarantee its territorial
integrity over the long term; a judgment reinforced by memories of the
disastrous governments of Sánchez de Lozada and Carlos Mesa that preceded him.
On a practical level a Unasur commission is to
investigate the precise circumstances of the deadly incident in the department
of Pando. This is the kind of thing South American statespersons - well
schooled in national reconciliation and the investigation of human-rights abuses
- thrive on. But beyond such fact-finding missions, accompanied by heavy moral
persuasion and some limited economic incentives, it is not clear what else
Unasur can do. After all, a refusal to "tolerate"
constitutional rupture and secession relies ultimately on a willingness to send
troops to Bolivia. For South America's republics such a measure would be
fraught with ideological, economic and political problems; and it would be
unthinkable without a clear United Nations mandate.
As for Hugo Chávez, despite his best efforts
he was unable this time steal the summit limelight or cast the proceedings as a
struggle against Yankee imperialism. Indeed, the most stinging rebuke to
Washington actually came from the fact that (Chávez himself excepted), no one
in Santiago bothered to mention the ambassadorial expulsions. Moreover, since
this was a Unasur rather than an OAS convocation, the United States was not
even represented. It is, perhaps, a sign of the times that even in what it has
long regarded as its own "backyard" Washington appears to be losing the respect
or fear awarded a hegemonic power and is instead being politely ignored.
Beyond this large strategic consideration, it is not yet clear whether
the Unasur effort can produce anything beyond a diplomatic whirlwind. The
coming days will be crucial. Will Evo Morales offer concessions on the
constitutional package? Are the opposition leaders willing or able to keep the
mob off the streets? Will the army stay loyal to the government? Will Bolivia
at last start to heal; or will it teeter over the edge into chaos?
Link to original source
Reactionary Rampage: The Paramilitary Massacre in Bolivia
Sep 16th 08 - Forrest Hylton, NACLA
Bolivian 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.
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.
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
government—under Eisenhower and Kennedy—hesitated to act.
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.
The limits of the analogy with the Jim Crow south are significant,
but another analogy—from a century earlier, the 1850s and
60s—transcends 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.
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
strongholds—the 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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 they—and their supporters—could be legitimately
brought to trial for their crimes.
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 Fernández—who got his start in the late
1970s as a paramilitary operative under successive dictatorships—belong
to the past.
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
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).
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.
The opposition has demonstrated the central government’s inability
to impose the rule of law amid public-private terror against its
supporters—a 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.
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?
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.
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