Bloodshed in Bolivia
Article published: Monday, December 1st 2008
Andy Lockhart analyses political turmoil in Bolivia and sheds light on turbulent times ahead for President Evo Morales.
‘September 11th’ seems a day destined to be steeped in tragedy. This year, on the 35th anniversary of General Pinochet’s bloody coup in Chile, Bolivia, almost unnoticed, suffered its own ‘9/11′ when thirty peasants were massacred by right wing groups in the northern Pando province.
Since Evo Morales’ landslide election victory in 2005, the country has been plagued by violence. While hostilities have eased for the time being, Bolivia remains highly volatile.
Evo Morales
Bolivia’s first ever indigenous president swept to power with an unprecedented 54 per cent of the vote in December 2005. His election followed five years of serious civil unrest, during which popular uprisings had forced two presidents out of office. Morales, former head of Bolivias militant coca growers’ unions, pledged the nationalisation of the petroleum industry, as well as land and wealth redistribution. He also promised an elected Constituent Assembly, specifically to draw up a new constitution. Crucially, it was to formally recognise the social and cultural rights of the two-thirds indigenous majority.
Eastern elites
Bolivia is the seventh most unequal society on Earth, and the poorest in South America. The wealthy are typically those descended from European colonisers, who are used to being in charge. They certainly don’t like Morales. Santa Cruz Governor Ruben Costas, for example, has called him an “animal” and a “monkey”. These elites mostly live in the eastern regions of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija, where vast natural gas reserves (the second most abundant in the western hemisphere) and large-scale agribusiness are situated. During the 1970s they supported the brutal dictatorship of Hugo Banzer, and in 1980 directly financed the ‘cocaine coup’ of General Luis Garcia Meza, whose government housed a number of Nazi war criminals.
The Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee are a prominent elite group, headed up by Branco Marinkovic, the largest landowner in the country and reportedly have strong links to the notorious proto-fascist youth group Union Juvenil Crucenista (UCJ).
When elites get angry
The Pando massacre in September was the culmination of three years of regional and racial tensions. Mounting antagonism between pro and anti-government groups resulted in clashes in the last months of 2007, which left four dead in Sucre, the colonial capital. The opposition groups had consistently challenged Morales’ attempts at reform. Firstly, they boycotted the proposed constitution over land and wealth redistribution and presidential powers. Then, in June, the four eastern regions staged referendums to vote in autonomy statutes demanding control over natural resources and economic policy. Further protests and clashes ensued when the electoral commission refused to recognise the legality of the polls.
On 10 September, the UCJ and other youth groups attacked government institutions and began terrorising Morales supporters in Santa Cruz and Pando. Marinokovic described the move as a “peaceful takeover”. The next day 1,000 government supporters marching toward Cobija Pando’s capital were confronted some thirty kilometres outside the city by hundreds of armed followers of Governor Leopoldo Fernandez. A short battle ensued, which quickly turned into a rout, leaving thirty indigenous peasants dead. Morales declared martial law in the province, and Fernandez was arrested and now awaits trial.
International reactions and negotiations
The regional response was unequivocal. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) unanimously expressed their “strongest condemnation of the massacre” and vehemently refused to recognise “any attempt at a civil coup” while UN human rights officials condemned the violence “against indigenous and rural people”.
Relations with the US deteriorated fast. Bolivia claimed the US had covertly supported the autonomists. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, who denied the accusations, was expelled from the country. Washington in turn ejected the Bolivian ambassador. The Bush Administration then removed Bolivia from the ATPDEA trade agreement likely to cost 20,000 Bolivian jobs, blacklisting it as one of the countries not cooperating in the ‘War on Drugs’. Morales then threw the US Drug Eradication Administration out. The US stayed silent on the Pando massacre.
The military, traditionally one of the most right-wing and racist establishments in Bolivia, has rallied behind Morales, and fears of a coup seem unfounded, for now. The parliamentary right have tried to distance themselves from the violent mobs in the wake of international condemnation. During tense talks in Congress, overseen by international observers, the Morales’ government made a number of concessions. Most important of these were greater regional autonomy, restrictions on land appropriations and, crucially, that Morales would not stand for a third consecutive term after elections in December 2009. These are significant scalps. A national referendum on the new constitution will be held in late January.
The future
Efforts to provoke Morales’ government into violent repression have failed until now and the right wing elites appear internally divided. But deep racial and regional tensions remain. Morales has welcomed the election of Barack Obama, expressing hope of greater cooperation and friendship between the two countries. Only time will tell whether Obama will bring ‘hope’ to Bolivia as well.
Many have applauded Morales’ diplomatic efforts to bring the nation’s warring factions together. However, significant groups including the trade union federation and more radical indigenous groups say the party leadership acted too slowly and indecisively, and conceded too much in the negotiations. Morales relies on followers willing to come out in their thousands to defend his government in the streets and at the ballot box, but unless standards of living improve in the near future that support may dwindle.
Morales will almost certainly win the referendum in January and the new constitution or some version of it will be passed into law. This may be a step in the right direction, but Bolivia’s poor will likely see it as just that, a small step. The right are likely to regroup, and the last few months have shown the lengths they are willing to go to unseat the government. “Any extreme measure is an option,” according to Ruben Costas. Expect to see more violence in the future – the conflict in Bolivia is far from over.
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