[Marxism] Roger Burbach on Bolivia

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Confronting Right Wing Rebellion, Bolivian President Evo Morales'
Commitment to Democracy Evokes Memories of Salvador Allende
By Roger Burbach, September 15, 2008

As Bolivia teeters on the brink of civil war, President Evo Morales
staunchly maintains his commitment to constructing a popular
democracy by working within the state institutions that brought him
to power. The show down with the right wing is taking place against
the backdrop of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the overthrow of
Salvador Allende, the heroic if tragic president of Chile who
believed that the formal democratic state he inherited could be
peacefully transformed to usher in a socialist society.

Like Allende, Morales faces a powerful economic and political elite
aligned with the United States that is bent on reversing the limited
reforms he has been able to implement during his nearly three years
in power. Early on, Morales--Boliviaâs first indigenous
president--moved assertively to exert greater control over the
natural gas and oil resources of the country, sharply increasing the
hydro-carbon tax, and then using a large portion of this revenue to
provide a universal pension to all those over sixty years old, most
of whom live in poverty and are indigenous.

The self-proclaimed Civic Committees in Media Luna (Half
Moon)--Boliviaâs four eastern departments--have orchestrated a
rebellion against these changes, demanding departmental autonomy and
control of the hydro-carbon revenues, as well as an end to agrarian
reform and even control of the police forces. The Santa Cruz Civic
Committee, dominated by agro-industrial interests, is supporting the
CruceÃo Youth Union (UJC), an affiliated group that acts as a
para-military organization, seizing and fire bombing government
offices, and attacking Indian and peasant organizations that dare to
support the national government.

Moralesâ efforts to transform the institutions of the country have
focused on the popularly elected Constituent Assembly to draft a new
constitution. The assembly was convened in mid 2006 with
representatives from Moralesâ political party, the Movement Towards
Socialism (MAS) holding 54 percent of the seats. In the drafting of
the new constitution, the right wing political parties, led by
Podemos (We Can), insisted that a two-thirds vote was needed even for
the working committees to approve the different sections of the
constitution. When they were overruled and a new constitution was
close to being approved in November, 2007, members of the assembly,
including its indigenous president, Silvia Lazarte, were assaulted in
the streets of Sucre, the old nineteenth century capital where the
assembly was being held.

Using words that evoked Allendeâs last stand in the Chilean
presidential palace, Evo Morales declared âdead or alive, I will have
a new constitution for the country.â He quartered the assembly in an
old castle under military protection where it adopted a constitution
that has to be approved in a national referendum. Labeling Morales a
âdictator,â the civic committees and the departmental prefects
(governors) of Media Luna were able to stall the vote on the
referendum, and instead organized departmental referendums for
autonomy in May of this year that were ruled unconstitutional by the
National Electoral Council.

Taking recourse in democracy rather than force, and searching for a
national consensus, Morales then held up the vote on the new
constitution, and instead put his presidency on the line in a recall
referendum in which his mandate as well as that of the prefects of
the departments could be revoked. On August 10, voters went to the
polls and Morales won a resounding 67 percent of the vote, receiving
a majority of the ballots in 95 of the countryâs 112 districts with
even the Media Luna department of Pando voting in his favor.

However, the insurgent prefects also had their mandates renewed.
Based on the illegal, departmental plebiscites held in May, they
moved to take control of Santa Cruz, the richest department. UJC
shock troops roamed the streets of the city and surrounding towns,
attacking and repressing any opposition by local indigenous movements
and MAS-allied forces. Not wanting to provoke an outright rebellion,
Evo Morales did not deploy the army or use the local police, leaving
the urban area under the effective control of the UJC.

Simultaneously, the right wing--led by the Santa Cruz Civic
Committee--began sewing economic instability, seeking to destabilize
the Morales government much like the CIA-backed opposition did in
Chile against Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. As in Chile, the
rural business elites and allied truckers engaged in âstrikes,â
withholding or refusing to ship produce to the urban markets in the
western Andes where the Indian population is concentrated, while
selling commodities on the black market at high prices. The
Confederation of Private Businesses of Bolivia called for a national
producersâ shutdown if the government refused âto change its economic
policies.â

The social movements allied with the government have mobilized
against this right wing offensive. In the Media Luna, a union
coalition of indigenous peoples and peasants campaigned against
voting in the autonomy referendums, and have taken on the bands of
the UJC as they try to intimidate and terrorize people. In the Andean
highlands, the social movements descended on the capital La Paz in
demonstrations backing the Moralesâ government, including a large
mobilization in June that stormed the American embassy because of its
support for the right wing. In July, the federation of coca growers
in the Chapare, where US anti-drug operations are centered, expelled
the US Agency for International Development.

This past week the Civic Committees stepped up their efforts to take
control of the Media Luna departments. In Santa Cruz on September 8,
crowds of youth lead by the UJC seized government offices, including
the land reform office, the tax office, state TV studios, the
nationalized telephone company Entel, and set fire to the offices of
a non-governmental human rights organization that promotes indigenous
rights and provides legal advice. The military police, who had been
dispatched to protect many of these offices, were forced to retreat,
at times experiencing bloody blows that they were forbidden from
responding to due to standing orders from La Paz not to use their
weapons. The commanding general of the military police, while angrily
denouncing the violent demonstrators, said that the military could
take no action unless Evo Morales signed a degree authorizing the use
of firearms.

What was in effect occurring was a struggle between Morales and the
military over who would assume ultimate responsibility for the
fighting and deaths that would ensue with a military intervention in
Media Luna. The armed forces do not support the autonomous rebellion
because it threatens the geographic integrity of the Bolivian nation.
Yet they are reluctant to intervene because under past governments,
when they fired on and killed demonstrators in the streets of La Paz,
they were blamed for the bloodshed.

On September 10, as violence intensified throughout Media Luna, Evo
Morales expelled US ambassador Philip Goldberg for âconspiring
against democracy.â The month before, Goldberg had met with the
prefect of Santa Cruz, Ruben Costas, who subsequently declared
himself âgovernorâ of the autonomous department and ordered the
formal take over of government offices--including those collecting
tax revenues. Costas is the principal leader of the rebellious
prefects, and the main antagonist of Evo Morales.

September 11, the 35th anniversary of the coup against Allende, was
the bloodiest day in the escalating conflict. In the Media Luna
department of Pando, a para-military band with machine guns attacked
the Indian community of El Porvenir, near the departmental capital of
El Cobija, resulting in the death of at least 28 people. In a
separate action, three policemen were kidnapped. The Red Ponchos, an
official militia reserve unit of Indians loyal to Evo Morales,
mobilized its forces to help the indigenous communities organize
their self defense.

The next day Morales declared a state of siege in Pando and
dispatched the army to move on Cobija and to retake its airport that
had been occupied by right wing forces. Army units are also being
sent to guard the natural gas oleoducts, one of which had been seized
by the UJC, cutting the flow of gas to neighboring Brazil and
Argentina. General Luis Trigo Antelo, the commander in chief of the
Bolivian Armed Forces declared: âWe will not tolerate any more
actions by radical groups that are provoking a confrontation among
Bolivians, causing pain and suffering and threatening the national
security.â In signing the order authorizing the use of force in
Pando, Morales stated that he felt responsible for the humiliation of
the military and the police by radicals and vandals because he had
not authorized them to use their weapons. This was the quid pro quo
for getting the military high command to act.

After sustained fighting with at least three dead, the army took
control of the airport and moved on the city. An order for the arrest
of the prefect of Pando was issued for refusing to recognize the
state of siege and for being responsible for the massacre in El
Porvenir. In Santa Cruz, the police arrested 8 rioters of the UJC.
Peasant organizations have announced they will march on the city to
retake control of the government offices. The dissident prefects, led
by Costas, are still demanding departmental autonomy and refusing to
accept a national vote on the referendum for the new constitution.

Evo Morales refuses to back down, declaring in a meeting with
supportive union leaders, âwe will launch a campaign to approve the
new constitution.â He did, however, indicate he may modify the draft
to accommodate some of the demands for autonomy by the prefects. Like
Allende, Morales continues to search for a democratic solution to the
crisis in his country. For the moment, he has the backing of the
Bolivian armed forces along with overwhelming popular support,
thereby avoiding the ultimate fate of the Chilean president.

Roger Burbach is Director of the Center for the Study of the Americas
(CENSA) based in Berkeley, CA. He has written extensively on Latin
America and is the author of âThe Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism
and Global Justice.â

See: http://globalalternatives.org/news


=========================================
     WALTER LIPPMANN
     Los Angeles, California
     Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
     "Cuba - Un ParaÃso bajo el bloqueo"
=========================================

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