How they got rid of a tyrant in Bolivia (report from NarcoNews)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, NarcoNews gets to go out with a bang! Here's their report on
Bolivia.
Fred Feldman

The A-B-C of Popular Revolt
Or, How They Got Rid of a Tyrant in Bolivia


By Andrea Arenas Alípaz and Luis Gómez
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
October 18, 2003

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA; OCTOBER 17, 2003: It wasn?t a coup. It was the
people.

And nobody, not even Viceroy David Greenlee, could stop it.

Gonzalo ?Goni? Sánchez de Lozada had to resign from the Bolivian
presidency after weeks of popular mobilizations, for having massacred
the people, for lying and trying to hang on to power by all means
necessary. Now, vigilant and festive in the streets, the Bolivian
people are the live expression of a democracy constructed from below.

In these sentences, kind readers, we will try to give you the clearest
picture possible of what has occured in this country where the people
have rewritten history...



A. Who and How


?If Goni wants money, let him sell his wife,? the women and men of
deep ?Bolivia Bronca? began to chant two months ago. It all began
there: The sale of the country?s natural gas reserves, a multi-billion
dollar business deal that the administration of Gonzalo Sánchez de
Lozada tried to make with the multinationals Pacific LNG and Sempra,
passing a gas pipeline through Chile to the Pacific. ?Not the
multinationals, nor the Chileans, should benefit from the Bolivian
people?s wealth... We are going to recover our natural resources,? was
what Congressman Evo Morales, leader of the coca growers, said during
a session of the national Congress.

Congressman Felipe Quispe, national peasant farmer leader, began, in
the first days of September, a hunger strike demanding that the gas
not be for sale. The well-known ?El Mallku? made it clear: ?This is a
personal business deal for Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.?

The national labor union ? Central Obrera Boliva, or COB in its
Spanish initials ? led by Jaime Solares (a miner with 35 years of
experience in the union struggle), launched a series of marches in
different regions of the country... But the government, that didn?t
see any strength in the mobilizations, thought they weren?t
important... That was a mistake.

After the first blockades, confrontations, and deaths in the high
plains of Sorata and Warisata (the Athens of the Aymara world, because
the first indigenous school was built there), the movement from the
towns and neighborhoods snowballed. The leaders of the principle
popular organizations began to instruct their bases: radicalize the
fight with pressure tactics.

On Wednesday, October 8th, in El Alto, with 800,000 residents, the
majority indigenous migrants, awoke semi-paralyzed. The neighborhood
councils began to adhere to the COB?s action plan, based on an
indefinite General Strike. That set the course for the fight, because
to paralye this city of poor people, where the median age is 22 years
old, is the same as leaving the City of La Paz without resources,
without workers, without communication, and without food.

The massacres of the following days brought determination to the
people. El Alto resisted, with sticks and stones, the rain of teargas
and bullets. And nearly all the cities of Western Bolivia then
mobilized. While Goni insisted that he would not go, because the
Bolivian people were with him, the general strike hit Cochabamba,
Oruro was paralyzed, Potosí too, and Sucre saw 25,000 people take to
the streets day after day. In La Paz, the residents came out to
receive the marches from El Alto, and, together, they took the Plaza
of San Francisco various times, demanding the exit of ?the gringo? ?
as they called the president, raised in the United States, who spoke
Spanish with a North American accent, who had assassinated them...



B. What


Well, kind readers, first it was the gas and the call not to sell it
to the multinationals so that they could pump it out through Chile.
But when the massacres began, all the leaders joined together under
one banner: The resignation of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. The now
ex -president called for a dialogue without conditions on Tuesday
morning and issued a decree to have a non-binding referendum regarding
the gas and hydrocarbons. But it was already too late. The snowball
was closing in on his house...

?How can we have talks with an assassin,? said Felipe Quispe.

?The people know. The people think. The people decide. There will be
no talks until the president resigns,? added Evo on Wednesday
afternoon, from the war room of the ?Coordinadora? for the Defense of
Gas and Sovereignty, in Cochabamba. Via radio, the voice of the people
began to be heard, plus the voices of their leaders and some analysis
committed to the social movements: NO... he must go.

Yesterday morning, thousands of coca growers from the Yungas region
arrived in La Paz, with hundreds of miners from the South. El Alto
came down from the hills again, into the city. An open meeting was
held to decide what to do, and the popular clamor was to refuse to
move one step from the demand that the president resign.

Never in the history of the young (21-years-old) democracy of Bolivia
had there been a demonstration like this one: 200,000 people chanting,
marching, deciding, from below, the future of their country.

There had been other factors that ended up placing Sánchez de Lozada
off balance. He was already thinking of causing a ?self-coup? and
maintaining himself in power through the Armed Forces. On Thursday
afternoon, intellectuals and artists, journalists, and the middle and
upper classes began to join the opposition. The former Public Defender
of the nation, Ana Maria Romero, launched a hunger strike, also
demanding his resignation, and, together with her, six intellectuals
and human rights defenders, and a Catholic priest. Ten hours later,
there were already 400 people in the hunger strike from diverse points
throughout Bolivia.

?Goni, you bastard, we want you to resign...?



C. When


When the popular sectors of Bolivia march, there is common call and
response: One of the marchers asks the contingent: ?What do we want??
The response varies according to the demands of the mobilization. The
demonstrators begin to call out, ?When?? And then the response, ?Now!?
Today, there was no time for that... The ?now? of the popular revolt
became reality. After killing more than 80 Bolivian citizens, after
wounding more than 400, and receiving the rejection of more than 400
hunger strikers, Sánchez de Lozada literally flew out of his post...
toward Miami.

This day in history, that feeds our last words on Narco News with
happiness, was overwhelming.

It was 9:00 a.m. and the envoys from the Brazil and Argentina
governments entered the presidential palace, which had become, since
Monday, the office of the entire administration. At 10:00 a.m., the
mediators sent by Lula and Kirchner headed from there to the house of
Vice President Carlos Mesa, who minutes before had bid Viceroy
Greenlee goodbye. ?We will not permit that democratic institutionality
be violated,? said the viceroy, assuredly terrified at the panorama of
Indiands that watched him from afar. At 4:00 p.m. on this day, dozens
of soldiers arrived at the United States Embassy to protect it.

At 11:00 a.m. the leader of the New Republican Force party (NFR, in
its Spanish initials), Manfred Reyes Villa, left the house of his
ally, the president, and announced to the national press that he was
resigning from the governing coalition of Sánchez de Lozada. While
these events occured, the Bolivian people continued marching and
breaking all records (today, there were 350,000 in the streets of La
Paz, coming from everywhere).

Today, October 17, 2003, Bolivia celebrated two victories. One, the
anniversary of the nationalization of the Gulf Oil Company, and the
other: the defeat of the administration of Sánchez de Lozada. At
midday, another march began, by the coca growers of Yungas, arriving
in La Paz from Calahahuira. Simultaneously, another march, by 10,000
homesteaders, who broke the military barricade and passed,
triumphantly, onto the Gualberto Villarroel Plaza.

Under such pressures from the Bolivian people, and in spite of the
fact that, hours earlier, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, had declared to
Telefé of Argentina and our ?dear? CNN, that he would not resign from
the presidency, he was already preparing his resignation. However, he
did not show his face in the halls of Congress. Instead, he sent a
letter and a video.

The airport of the Military College, located in the Southern Zone of
La Paz, was utilized to help Sánchez de Lozada and Defense Secretary
Carlos Sánchez Berzaín. Two small helicopters transported the
ex-president and their suitcases. Each time that someone came down off
a helicopter, the soldiers, their chests to the ground, pointed their
guns at the tumult of people gathered behind the fence: Some
journalists recording the scene, and women with placards that said, in
English, ?Goni Go Home!?

Evo Morales told Narco News, after the exit by the ex?president, that
this has been a great triumph by the Bolivian people. He asked all the
people to avoid confrontations and said that we are beginning to
recover democracy, and that, ?we are going to defend the
 Constitution.? He said that Carlos Mesa will have to answer to the
Bolivian people. The new president will have to comply in the
formation of a Constitutional Convention, education, and health, and
amending the hydrocarbons law, now that ?we can?t lose so many lives
and still not win back our fuel...?

In the same vein, Morales corrected, to CNN, the accusations made by
Sánchez de Lozada, in which he was accused of having connections with
the Colombian FARC rebels and of being a narco-trafficker. The coca
growers? leader denied all of it and said that Goni had always accused
the popular movements with words like those. And with the new
president, we asked Evo in a telephone interview after he spoke with
various members of the Commercial Media: ?What about the coca leaf??

?He will have to accept the fact that there will never be ?zero coca?
in this country. We have sat down five times with the ex-president
without winning anything, and now we hope that things will change and
that Mesa will not subject himself to the imperialist interests of the
United States,? was the firm response.

?We, of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba,? Evo
challenged, ?will not permit the situation to continue like it has.
The issue that the new president will have to analyze comes down to
two words: forced eradication. We know that the Ambassador (Greenlee)
has been trying, since this morning, to put pressure on Carlos Mesa.
But we hope for a new policy, more open, more human, that leaves
behind the attacks and assassinations that we have suffered for a long
time? If he tries to repeat them, we will go out into the streets
again to force Mesa to leave.?

Given that one of the most combative parts of Bolivia is the Chapare,
and that the new president, a former leader of the La Paz journalists?
union, is, as Miguel Pinto said, the ?new prisoner of the palace? (the
palace of the people, of course), a colleague from Radio Erbol asked
Evo if he was thinking of becoming part of the administration. The
Congressman and coca grower replied: ?The MAS (his ?Movement Toward
Socialism? party) doesn?t seek jobs in the new government. It will not
co-govern with Carlos Mesa or anybody else because we have great
differences in culture and ideology.?

During our telephone interview, Evo confirmed that the MAS doesn?t
think about becoming part of the administration. ?Gómez,? he said,
?you?ve already seen what the people can do. For what do we need the
government? If they threaten the coca leaf again, we?re sure the
people will come forward to defend it?" And before hanging up,
because, of course, he was quite busy, he asked me to send his regards
to his compañero Al Giordano?

But his final words were particularly special, in response to this
question: ?Are the issues of gas and the coca leaf related??

?The defense of our natural resources is an issue that affects the
entire Bolivian people. This is our wealth. And we should benefit from
it. The same for the coca leaf, because it has been part of our
culture for millennia,? he said. Plan Colombia, said Evo, is no more
than a plan to colonize us. ?I?m remembering that the Colombian and
Gringo troops dedicated to combating the narco are also guarding oil
pipelines, for example.?

And, kind readers, can you guess where they have ?discovered? a lot of
oil and gas in this country? Aha! In the Chapare: Well, okay, we?ll
continue with this report on this day in history?

At 9:30 p.m. tonight the Congress began its session to ratify the
resignation of Sánchez de Lozada. The party bosses had agreed,
beforehand, that this session would simply read the letter signed by
Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and transfer power to Carlos Mesa. In the
letter, Sánchez de Lozada said that democracy ?was being used for the
convenience of some.? (Does ?some? wish to say ?millions??) And that
?the issue of gas has been used as a pretext? with the goal that
democracy would be disrespected? As if it had been the citizens who
shot the soldiers in cold blood.

A while ago, at 10:25 p.m., Carlos Mesa was sworn in and became the
president, thanks to the people. In his first words as head-of-state,
Mesa, who of course is a journalist, said that he would put the gas
issue to referendum, a ?binding? referendum, so that the will of the
people would be respected. ?We must be able to understand the country
beginning with the ethnic groups like Quechuas, Aymaras, and
Guaraníes, who have constructed the history of inequality with their
blood, a history that we are obligated to repair,? he said. Now, at
10:45 p.m., on October 17, 2003, Bolivia has a new president, and from
the street the fireworks sound and this nation is celebrating its
triumph.

The people came, they spoke, and they decided. A new victory for
Authentic Democracy has been constructed, but with deaths and with
rage. And your correspondents, although tired, we are going to drink a
toast to the health of Bolivia, which begins rebuilding from the
streets. Eh, and another toast, because we may not see each other
again, kind readers? To Dan, to Al, it has been a pleasure ending on
this happy note? The War on Drugs, imposed by the gringos, has
suffered a brutal defeat with what has happened here? There is no
doubt? The maximum leader in El Alto commented to us tonight, with
tears in his eyes, that the people ?have delivered a huge punch to the
United States.?

Well, see you next time, with a bold smile, somewhere else ?in a
country called América.? See you in the next battle. Cheers!



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