Bolivia in turmoil over socialist leaders attempts to grab wealth
There is more.Violent protests against President Evo Morales have shaken Bolivia and cut the Andean nation in half, with rebel provinces blocking government attempts to regain control and tensions running dangerously high between the country's Indian majority and inhabitants of the richer and whiter eastern provinces.
Militia groups armed with clubs and shields took to the streets last week to impose a strike which paralysed much of the eastern lowlands and deepened a political crisis. Youths opposed to Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous leader, beat up senior police commanders in front of television cameras, underlining the brazen challenge to central government authority.
Five eastern provinces, where the people are paler and richer than in the indigenous western highlands, have vowed to resist the President's attempt to 'refound' Bolivia as a socialist state which champions the long-neglected Indian majority. Protesters have halted beef supplies to the west, blockaded highways and made moves to create a new police force to assert their push for autonomy from the capital, La Paz.
Morales, flush with victory in a recall vote which renewed his mandate, has ordered the police to be on alert and hinted he would soon call a referendum on a new constitution to entrench his reforms, a red rag to the opposition. Some of his supporters threatened violent retaliation against what they termed 'oligarchs' and 'fascists'. Peasants blocked roads leading to the city of Sucre to isolate the opposition stronghold.
Analysts said that South America's poorest and most turbulent country was edging closer to being a failed state. Security concerns have rendered almost half the country a no-go zone for the President. No one knows whether Bolivia will retreat from the abyss, as it has managed in previous crises.
'This division is not new, but it is more radical than before. As well as the east-west division, we have an increasing city-countryside division,' said Carlos Toranzo, a political analyst at the Latin American Institute of Social Research. Radicals on both sides had seized the agenda in the hope of crushing the other, he said. 'This constant violence will not cease. We are hearing confrontational language from the President and the (opposition). It seems they are all pushing for more violence.'
The landlocked nation has been turned upside down since Morales, a former coca farmer and llama herder, swept to office in 2006 on the promise of empowering the indigenous majority and reversing 500 years of colonial injustice. A member of the so-called 'pink tide' of left-wing leaders spearheaded by Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, Morales has extended state control over the economy, including lucrative natural gas reserves, and thumbed his nose at the United States.
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Morales appears to be determined to make a mess out of Bolivia. He is on a course to make everyone poorer and run off the most productive and intelligent people. It appears that his opponents are prepared to violent resist his moves, but Morales has the power of the state on his side. I think he can seize control through coercion, but what will be the value of what he seizes if there is no one there to manage it? He is like a dog chasing a car at this point.
Merv,,,
ReplyDeleteYou are somewhat right at least--there is a lot more.
Your characterization of Morales being "determined to make a mess out of Bolivia", is an insult to the intelligence of anyone even remotely familiar with Bolivian politics and social movements. I challenge you to provide a factual basis for your assertion. That is the first absurdity.
Next, you claim that he is on a course "to make everyone poorer and run off the most productive and intelligent people", and you have the audacity to make that outrageous claim despite this: in a relatively short period of time the Morales governance has led to a marked increase of disbursements to all the prefects; has established an ‘old age’ social security benefit; has markedly reduced the national debt; has raised the minimum wage; and if but for the resistance of the US-assisted autonomists, would have done much more for all Bolivians. Go ahead. Try to deny or refute the above. Any of it.
Those who are bent on destroying Bolivia and Morales' attempts to provide some degree of equity for the indigenous majority are the ones who are provoking and instilling an atmosphere of violence, not MAS or Morales. They have been remarkably effective, especially with all that help from the EEUU estimated to be over $125 million US dollars over the last 3 years in the form of monetary and strategic help. Every effort is being made by the elite to prevent the real reform of Bolivia from occurring. Addicted to stealing Bolivia's natural resources (as they and their ancestors have done for 500 years) and living well due to/creating the misery of others—I imagine that it must be hard to stop—and really work for a change. To claim that this is anything other than an effort for the elite to keep getting richer, while the exploited poor work hard for little and die young, will require an explanation from you that I would really like to hear.
As the lead story indicated, the ones orchestrating the artificial beef shortages, and some of the blockades, and with aspirations of creating their own fiefdom-like police forces in their own ‘autonomous’ state—they are the instigators. Remember the violence in Sucre? More recently, look at the videos of the thugs with clubs exiting Branko's offices. Listen to the seditious statements of Costas and others, and compare that to the offers of mediation from Morales that were rejected by those who aspire to maintain the good-for-them ‘old status quo’. Then tell me—who is pushing for violence?
Ultimately we are all left with a choice--do we support US-style modern-day imperialism or the concept of free democracies, not only for ourselves, but others too?
Regards,,,John