[Marxism] Democracy Now - The Rebellion Grows in Bolivia

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Friday, June 3rd, 2005
Indigenous  Uprising: The Rebellion Grows in Bolivia

 
____________________________________
Rebellion is in the air in Latin America's poorest country, Bolivia. For 
weeks,  indigenous-led protests have rocked the country and have brought the 
government  to a near shutdown. The protests began as demonstrations calling 
for  
nationalization of the country's natural gas resources but that was just the  
spark for a much bigger war; a war over the rights of the country's majority  
indigenous population. We go to Cochabamba for a report from human rights  
activist Jim Shultz of the Democracy Center. [includes rush transcript]   
____________________________________
 Bolivia's US-backed President, Carlos Mesa, is scrapping to maintain control 
of  the government and there are rumors in the air of coup plots.  
Late yesterday, Mesa signed an emergency decree ordering a referendum on  
greater autonomy for the richest area of the country and a vote in mid-October  
to elect members for an assembly to rewrite the constitution. The protests have 
 cut off the capital from the airport and blockades have shut down two-thirds 
of  the country's highways.   
____________________________________
 RUSH TRANSCRIPT  
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JUAN GONZALEZ: We go now to Bolivia where we are joined by Jim Shultz,  the 
Executive Director of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba. He writes a blog  on 
the developments in Bolivia that can be found at _DemocracyCtr.org_ 
(http://www.democracyctr.org/) . Welcome to Democracy  Now!  
JIM SHULTZ: Good morning. Thanks for having me on, and thanks for  continuing 
to keep this important story alive in the United States and for your  other 
listeners.  
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, the story has gotten very little coverage here in  the 
corporate press. I'd like to get some sense from you what's been going on in  
the last 24 hours and your sense of some of the underlying factors that haven't 
 yet surfaced.  
JIM SHULTZ: Well, let's start with sort of looking at what's happening  on 
the ground. To orient people, the capital of Bolivia, La Paz, is this city of  
a 
million people basically at the base of a bowl, 12,000 feet high. It is  
surrounded by this plain 2,000 feet higher than that called El Alto and the  
Altiplano outside of that. What has happened for the last 2 1/2 weeks is the  
indigenous Aymara communities from the Altiplano and from the twin poor city of 
 El 
Alto have descended onto the capital and essentially shut it down. I mean,  
there isn't food coming in and out. There isn't bus transport in or out. A  
number of the airlines have cancelled their flights. And there is, you know,  
10-20,000 people that have been coming in every day and trying to literally 
shut  
the government down by taking over the heart of the city, which is Plaza  
Murillo, where the congress and the presidential palace are located. This has  
spread to other parts of the country, as well. Here in Cochabamba, the center 
of 
 the city has been blockaded now every day for the last three days. There's  
limited bus transport out of Cochabamba today, as well. All of this is aimed 
at  forcing the government to take back control of the nation's oil and gas  
resources, which were privatized under I.M.F. pressure in the mid-1990s. And  
really what's happening is this is the end of a process that has been in motion 
 
for more than two years. This is the same issue over which Bolivia kicked out 
 its last president, Gonzales Sanchez de Lozada, in very similar uprisings in 
 October of 2003.  
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, but at the same time there's also a developing  autonomy 
movement in the richest state or province of Bolivia. Could you talk a  little 
bit about that?  
JIM SHULTZ: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, part of what's going on here is  
traditionally the mineral resources of this country, silver, tin, have been in  
the 
highlands where the indigenous communities are strongest and most  
represented. The oil and gas -- and we're talking about a lot of oil and gas.  
We're 
talking about 53 trillion (with a T) cubic feet. This is the  second-largest 
reserve on the continent after Venezuela. This is a lot of  natural gas. It's 
in 
Santa Cruz [inaudible] on the other side of the country,  the lowlands, the 
jungle lands, as well, which is a wealthier part of the  country. The response 
to 
the demand by the people in the highlands for  nationalization and public 
control has been an effort, especially in the  province of Santa Cruz, to 
demand 
autonomy, essentially to demand that the  national government stay out of 
certain affairs, and it doesn't take a lot of  reading between the lines to 
understand what itâs really about is the people who  are sitting on the land 
where 
the gas is located really want to make sure that  they get the biggest share 
and 
the most control. And the oil companies have very  clearly been manipulating 
this. This is not an uprising in Santa Cruz of the  poor. This is an uprising 
of the business class. And it is very simple for  foreign oil companies to 
manipulate that process and foment that discontent, and  so -- I mean, it's 
interesting every time the indigenous community has an  uprising, the U.S. 
government likes to blame it on narco-traffickers but they  don't seem to pay 
attention to the fact that you have this uprising on the other  side of the 
country 
for autonomy that has oil company fingerprints all over it.  
JUAN GONZALEZ: We're talking with Jim Shultz, the Executive Director  of the 
Democracy Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He writes a blog on developments  on 
Bolivia that can be found at _DemocracyCtr.org_ (http://www.democracyctr.org/) 
. We're going to return  and talk with him about the role of the United 
States and the I.M.F. in the  current crisis in Bolivia.  
[break]  
JUAN GONZALEZ: We're talking right now on the phone with Jim Shultz,  the 
Executive Director of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia, about the  
crisis in Bolivia. Jim, could you talk to us a little bit about the U.S. role 
in  
the current crisis and in Bolivian politics, in general, and that of the 
I.M.F.?  You have been writing quite a bit about that on your blog that can be 
found at  _DemocracyCtr.org_ (http://www.democracyctr.org/) . Can you talk to 
us  
about that?  
JIM SHULTZ: Well, Juan, itâs important to put the story in the context  both 
of sort of U.S. and I.M.F. policy but also in what's happening in Latin  
America more broadly. Bolivia has for the past 20 years been the lab rat for 
the  
I.M.F. and the World Bank's economic policies. Bolivia did it all, 
privatization  of water, privatization of oil and gas, relaxation of labor 
standards, all 
of  the deficit reduction coming in from the backs of the poor. All of this 
has been  done at the command of the I.M.F. and the World Bank. And Bolivia 
doesn't have a  lot of choice. When the I.M.F. and the World Bank tell Bolivia, 
â
Thou shalt  privatize your waterâ or âThou shalt privatize your oil and 
gas,â 
those are  commandments that are very difficult for a poor country like 
Bolivia to say no  to. The fact is it hasn't worked. I mean, this is a country 
that 
has had two  major civic uprisings over water privatization, both of which 
have kicked big  international companies out of the country, and now itâs 
having 
this uprising  over gas privatization. It just hasn't worked.  
I think this is related to what's happening all over Latin America. If you  
think about the last 30 years in Latin America, South America in particular, 
you  know, we went in the period in the 1960s and 1970s of right-wing 
dictatorships  and left-wing insurgencies and then we went through a period of 
elected  
governments that were very conservative, very tied to the United States and 
very  dedicated to the policies of the World Bank and the International 
Monetary 
Fund,  and what's happening now is this movement from the left to, you know, 
take over  governments in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela through the political 
process, and  in the streets in Bolivia, it is a practical rebellion against a 
practical  failure of the economic policies imposed on these countries from 
abroad by the  International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.  
We just released a report in April called Deadly Consequences, which  people 
can find in its entirety on our website. Itâs a small book. It traces  very 
clearly how the International Monetary Fundâs demands in this country two  
years 
ago for tax increases to reduce its deficit to pay its foreign debtors off  
more quickly, how that descended into 34 people being killed in the country's  
capital, a shooting war between the police and the army in front of the 
national  palace, directly, directly the result of I.M.F. economic policy. So 
what's 
 happening in Bolivia is not just the story of Bolivia. It is absolutely the  
story of Latin America and South America and it is the story of indigenous  
peoples rising up against a set of economic ideologies imposed on them  
completely against their will, completely without their consent from  
institutions 
abroad.  
JUAN GONZALEZ: Jim, in your analysis, why has this been happening at  this 
particular time? Is it that Latin America moved forward with the neoliberal  
program faster than other parts of the world, and therefore the populations  
began to recognize sooner the total bankruptcy of that approach? Is it that the 
 
United States and the Bush administration are so distracted and overextended by 
 their battle to control the Middle East that they have not been paying  
attention? What's been the particular reasons, in your opinion, why it seems 
the  
whole continent, the democratic vote and the whole continent is rapidly 
turning  against U.S. policies?  
JIM SHULTZ: It is -- again, Juan, I think it's a very practical  rebellion 
against the effect of these policies. It's important to note because  you know, 
the new article du jour of the press is to talk about the rise of the  left in 
South America. This is not the second coming of Chà Guevara. This is not  
even an ideological rebellion. Itâs more interesting than that. You know, I 
live  
in this country. I have lived here for eight years. These are my neighbors. 
By  and large, people who live on the margin don't have the luxury of ideology. 
What  they want is practical solutions to their practical problems like: Can 
they get  water? Can they find a job? And what's happening is, people in 
Bolivia, in  particular, and itâs the same trend in Brazil -- I was just 
there not 
long ago  -- people are basically saying, âThis whole package of economic 
policies, it  isn't working. It hasn't delivered the goods.â If it had, if 
privatization of  water, for example, had delivered water, if privatization of 
oil 
and gas had  actually increased public revenues and made it possible to lift up 
people's  lives, I think people here would have embraced it. That's the point 
to me that's  the most important, is what's going on is a reaction to these 
policies that is  not rooted in ideology, by and large. It is rooted in the 
absolute practical  failure of those policies to do anything but make the lives 
of 
the poor more  miserable.  
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the current situation now in Bolivia, if President  Mesa 
is forced out of office, given the fact that you have a very strong  right-wing 
autonomy movement in the richest province and that Evo Morales, the  popular 
leader, has been almost sidelined by this indigenous revolt that  continues to 
grow, what do you see as the potential developments that could  occur once 
Mesa steps down, if he does?  
JIM SHULTZ: Right. Well, you know there is an expression in Bolivia  that 
people use a lot called, âTodo es posible,â everything is possible. Usually 
 
when people say it they mean, âCan you bring a 1982 Toyota Corolla back to 
life  
after itâs died?â Now when people say, âTodo es posible,â they are 
talking 
about  politics, and everything is possible. We could have a coup. That is 
entirely  possible, although I'm optimistic that won't happen. We could have 
the 
conflict  in the streets turn deadly and violent. That has happened. I think 
that the most  likely scenario at this point is the following: I think that 
there will be some  negotiation through which there is the convening of an 
asemblia constituente,  and we haven't talked about that, that the president 
has 
called for it in  October. We need to see the details. But I think there will 
be 
some sort of  settlement in which this issue of gas will be turned over to a 
constituent  assembly, elected at large from the grass roots across the 
country, 
and that  that's where the gas issue will be decided. And the side issue to 
that is to  make sure that this call for autonomy doesn't pre-empt some 
national  decision-making about how to develop the gas. I think we're headed 
toward 
some  sort of a negotiated settlement. That is generally what happens here. 
Usually  the Catholic Church, the Human Rights Assembly step in and are able to 
sort of  pull people together. We are at the brink of not being able to do 
that, but I  suspect that's where this will go.  
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I want to thank you for being with us. Jim  Shultz, the 
Executive Director of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia.  He writes 
a blog on developments in Bolivia that can be found at _DemocracyCtr.org_ 
(http://www.democracyctr.org/) . His latest book is  called Deadly 
Consequences: 
The International Monetary Fund and Boliviaâs  Black February.  
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