[Marxism] Readable Version Democracy Now - The Rebellion Grows in Bolivia]

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Subject: [Marxism] Democracy Now - The Rebellion Grows in Bolivia 
Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2005 11:10:07 -0400 (EDT) 
From: Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx 
Reply-To: Activists and scholars in Marxist
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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 

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us
provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV
broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. 

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
itâ??s 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, itâ??s 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 â??Thou 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 itâ??s 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. Itâ??s a small book. It
traces  very clearly how the International Monetary Fundâ??s 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
Ché Guevara. This is not even an ideological rebellion. Itâ??s 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 itâ??s the same trend in Brazil -- I was just there
not long ago  -- people are basically saying, â??This 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, â??Todo es posible,â?? everything is
possible. Usually when people say it they mean, â??Can you bring a 1982
Toyota Corolla back to life after itâ??s died?â?? Now when people say,
â??Todo 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 Boliviaâ??s  Black February. 

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, _click here
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