[Marxism] Hylton: The Paramilitary massacre in Bolivia

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

September 17, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/hylton09172008.html

The Paramilitary Massacre in Bolivia 
Reactionary Rampage 
By FORREST HYLTON 

Bolivian President Evo Morales? expulsion of US Ambassador Phillip Goldberg
on September 10 for alleged coup plotting sparked the latest diplomatic
crisis in the Americas. But the diplomatic fallout has overshadowed the
internal dynamics that led to the massacre of some 30 campesinos with
perhaps as many as 40 more disappeared in El Porvenir, Pando, near Bolivia?s
northeastern border with Brazil. The massacre coincided with the 35th
anniversary of the violent overthrow of socialist president Salvador Allende
in Chile.

The massacre in El Porvenir was the worst in Bolivia since right-wing
President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada presided over the slaughter of more than
70 unarmed protestors in October 2003. This time, however, the violence was
not orchestrated by the central government, but by regional officials:
departmental prefects in league with civic committees. Administratively
organized similar to France, Bolivia is divided into nine departments, each
run by a prefect, while civic committees are made up of a handful of
unelected, local, commercial-landed elites who preside over one of the most
unequal distributions of land and wealth in the world. These public- and
private-sector authorities, in turn, are allied with cypto-fascist
paramilitary youth gangs armed with baseball bats, clubs, chains, guns, and
in the case of the massacre at El Porvenir, official vehicles. These groups
have made Bolivia?s eastern lowlands ungovernable for the Morales
administration.

It may be helpful for U.S. readers to consider Bolivia?s eastern lowlands as
analogous to Dixie. In the 1950s and 60s, working with governors and mayors
of states and localities, white supremacist paramilitary groups terrorized
African Americans. The campaign of terror was intended to preserve a status
quo that benefited a tiny class of wealthy white landowners, against which
the federal government?under Eisenhower and Kennedy?hesitated to act.

Imagine, though, that African Americans had comprised an overwhelming
majority of the U.S. population, that Kennedy was Black, and that he had
come to power on the back of serial insurrections led by African Americans.
Imagine that, in response, white supremacists not only massacred Blacks, but
also blockaded roads, blew up oil pipelines, and burned and looted federal
government offices and installations.

The limits of the analogy with the Jim Crow south are significant, but
another analogy?from a century earlier, the 1850s and 60s?transcends them.
The southern secessionist movement sought to preserve the republic of
slavery and extend it through the west to the Pacific. The movement
mobilized a mass following and mounted an armed challenge to the federal
government. Such analogies help convey the virulence of what one commentator
has labeled a ?revolt of the rich,? as well as the scope of the challenge
posed by a wealthy white minority to a government backed by a majority of
workers and campesinos of Indian descent, a government without historical
precedent.

Massive support for the central government was ratified as recently as
August 10 in the recall referendum in which Morales increased his overall
share of the vote to 67%?up from 54% when he was elected president in late
2005. Morales improved his standing in his strongholds?the cities and
countryside of the western highlands and valleys, as well as the
coca-growing regions in the Yungas and the Chapare. But more importantly, he
made inroads in the heart of opposition country in Beni, Pando, and Tarija,
where he won an additional 20% compared to 2005. In Pando, nearly half the
population voted in favor of Morales. No Bolivian president has ever has
ever had such broad appeal across the nation.

On the heels of victory, Morales spoke of dialogue and reconciliation with
the opposition. But opposition prefects, led by Rubén Costas from Santa
Cruz, and empowered by their substantial gains in the same recall vote,
announced their intention to implement the ?statutes? approved in ?autonomy
referendums? in May and June 2008. The ?autonomy referendums? were de facto
voting exercises, lacking any legal standing in Bolivia, were not recognized
by any foreign government, and were not overseen by international observers.
Yet opposition prefects claimed a mandate to install their own police, tax
collection services, and departmental legislature. The implementation of
this mandate could only come about through the use of force.

Then came September 11. Death squads armed with sub-machine guns massacred
unarmed Morales supporters on their way to a mass meeting in El Porvenir.
The meeting had been called to discuss possible responses to increasingly
violent attacks on government supporters. The central government was slow to
react and hesitant when it finally did. It could not safeguard the property
and lives of its supporters or defend its own offices and functionaries; it
could not even offer humanitarian aid to survivors, many of whom, fearing
for their lives, hid in the mountains. In a televised interview, the
presidential delegate in Pando, Nancy Texeira, asked in a halting voice
choked by pain and sadness, ?Why doesn?t the government in La Paz do
anything? We have been abandoned here.?

Over the past several years, Morales has cultivated good relations with the
police and armed forces, yet he has been mostly unwilling or unable to use
either since the crisis that began in August. Armed opposition forces have
overwhelmed both police and military in the lowlands, thus far with
impunity. The Bolivian security forces have therefore been humiliated
according to their shared institutional code. And yet, as the opposition ups
the ante of violence and illegality, the central government becomes
increasingly reluctant to monopolize legitimate use of force, and the
opposition becomes ever more brazen in persecuting Morales supporters.

This, at least, has been the dynamic in Pando. Opposition prefects in Beni,
Santa Cruz, and Tarija have pulled back to some degree from their onslaught,
and ostensibly agreed to ?dialogue? with the Morales government, but the
damage is done. Morales declared martial law in Pando and ordered the arrest
of the departmental prefect Leopoldo Fernández on September 12. Many of
Morales? supporters will be asking why he is pursuing dialogue with
opposition prefects in Beni, Santa Cruz, and Tarija, when they?and their
supporters?could be legitimately brought to trial for their crimes.

The emergency meeting of the South American Union (Unasur) convened in by
President Michelle Bachelet in Chile on September 15 is a sign of changing
times in the Western hemisphere. Military dictators like Chile?s Augusto
Pinchet, Bolivia?s Hugo Banzer, and their bastard offspring, such as
Leopoldo Fernández?who got his start in the late 1970s as a paramilitary
operative under successive dictatorships?belong to the past.

This new regional diplomacy exercised through the Organization of American
States (OAS), the Rio Group, and now Unasur has successfully confronted
diplomatic crises triggered by the U.S. government and its local allies on
the right. Although Hugo Chávez?s expulsion of the U.S. Ambassador from
Venezuela grabbed headlines in the United States, the Bolivian crisis played
quite differently in the regional media. Bolivia sells most f its natural
gas to Brazil and Argentina, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez denounced the separatist
movement in unusually strong terms. The outcome of the Unasur meeting
further proved that Morales has robust support from neighboring governments
and the major inter-state organizations to which they belong

Given regional repudiation of secessionist movements in Bolivia and Morales?
overwhelming support at home, opposition forces have little chance of
toppling Morales and installing a right-wing government. Furthermore, they
must contend with formidable and rising resistance within their own
departments, not only in the countryside but also in the cities: the
northern part of Beni is controlled by indigenous groups that back the
Morales government, for example, while peasant supporters of Morales fought
pitched street battles against the opposition in Tarija (the capital city of
the department with the same name).

The reactionary rampage in the lowlands is the result of a desperate,
cornered minority that has been given considerable breathing room by a weak,
vacillating central government that nevertheless enjoys massive popular
backing. Since it can?t take back the central government and is isolated
internationally, the opposition?s last weapon is to bleed the Morales
administration of legitimacy by making the country ungovernable.

The opposition has demonstrated the central government?s inability to impose
the rule of law amid public-private terror against its supporters?a
spectacular triumph for any right-wing movement. Since August?s recall
referendum, the arc of illegality and violence traced by the opposition has
been unmistakable. While no one anticipated the scale of the massacre in El
Porvenir, it was all but certain that one would occur.

What if the Bolivian government had tried to prevent this tragedy by sending
in the army and riot police before any of its supporters were killed,
instead of reacting weakly and hesitantly ex post facto? Will the government
rise to the occasion in the future, or are there more massacres to come?
If the Morales administration is not able to guarantee the lives and
property of supporters, some of them may be tempted to take justice into
their own hands, in which case the media cliché of pending ?civil war,?
until now a mere figure of rhetoric, could become reality. Regardless of
what happens in the future, there is now one more massacre to commemorate on
September 11, and the dilemma signaled by Allende?s tragic example remains
as daunting as ever. 

Forrest Hylton is the author of Evil Hour in Colombia (Verso, 2006), and
with Sinclair Thomson, of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in
Bolivian Politics (Verso, 2007). He is a frequent contributor to NACLA. 




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