Goni is gone from La Paz -- reportedly

["Jose G. Perez" <jg_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

AP is reporting that soon to be ex-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada
has fled from LaPaz in a secret operation that involved at least one
helicopter and several cars. He left a resignation letter in the hands
of his collaborators.

The story being put out is that he went to the city of Santa Cruz, where
he is supposedly still popular.

>From on the scene reports by wire and TV reporters, my impression is
that if the people got a hold of him, this mister would greet the dawn
as a street lamp decoration.

Deputies from the Indian opposition are demanding all airports be closed
so that this criminal at whose orders dozens of protesters were murdered
in recent days can be brought to justice. 

That "sources" close to the President would so cavalierly leak his
escape route to the press suggests to me this is probably a cover story,
and that probably the United States is in the midst of carrying out the
extraction of their puppet.

Goni is a rich white kid who grew up in the United States from the age
of one, speaks Spanish with an American accent, and views
"narcotraffickers" and "cocaleros" (the coca-growing peasantry) as being
almost as evil a trade unionists, who have been the bane of his life as
a mine magnate. He styles himself a philosopher and amateur economist,
and was such a clumsy and stupid American satrap that a few months ago
he even succeeded in having the cops rise up against him as part of a
popular movement to drive him from power.

There also seems to be some question as to whether the vice-president's
ascension into the presidency will go smoothly. At least some opposition
Indian deputies are demanding the formation of an "indigenista"
government -- a government of the Indians, who make up the big majority
of Bolivia's population and close to the totality of the proletariat,
poor peasantry, small business owners and artisans.

Evo Morales, the leader of the Cocaleros, a movement whose central
demand is an end to cooperation with the U.S. "war on drugs"
(translation into Bolivian: war against the Indian peasantry) got 20% of
the vote in the presidential elections a year and a half ago, only 2%
less than Goni, and I think we can safely assume THAT was with white
folks counting the votes.

The reports of Bolivian Congresscritters having a hard time making it to
the Congress to have the session to receive the resignation letter and
swear in the v-p as the new President thus assume a certain importance.
If the masses let through their barricades the Indian representatives,
who seem to be their leaders, and block a bunch of the white ones,
Congress, which elected Sanchez de Lozada president, may suddenly have a
majority of those present who want to revisit the issue of who should be
president.

At any rate, NOW we are seeing the importance of the U.S., European
Union and OAS demands voiced earlier this week that the crisis be
resolved without a break in the continuity of "democratic" institutions.
They desperately want this vice-president guy in as president to put a
lid on the developing revolution.

I have seen no reports of anything that seem to be institutions of dual
power arising, but these must exist in this situation, people have been
battling in the streets against a murderous army for a week and carrying
out a systematic blockade of the capital for much longer, something that
requires an organization that has already taken on to itself authority
normally associated with the State. 

Whether that is the group of indigenista deputies to Congress or some
other body, what is really needed in Bolivia now that Goni has been
overthrown is someone clear headed enough to say all power to the
Indigenista Council or whatever the name of the group is.

For centuries the white and mestizo layer, perhaps 20% of the
population, have dominated the country economically and politically.
Although Indians and people who did not have property did gain the right
to vote as a result of the nationalist revolution in the early 1950's
(and I think women, too, but don't quote me on that one), these majority
layers did not have any political representation in Congress until
recently.

A middle-class Bolivian mestizo journalist of my acquaintance came back
a year or so ago from a visit to La Paz after the last election full of
stories about how impossible things had become there, the Congress was
full of Indians and they didn't bathe, they stank, and they gave
speeches in Congress in their own languages even though they could speak
Spanish and they knew there was no interpretation available. 

This is a person who considers themselves progressive, anti-U.S.
domination of Latin America, against Bush, the Iraq invasion, the whole
nine yards, which gave me an idea of how deeply ingrained and absolutely
savage the repression of the indigenous majority in Bolivia must be --
and that someday there would be payback for 500 years of this bullshit. 

That day may be dawning.

José






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