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discontent in bolivia
Below is an article recently published in the L.A. Times newspaper. We are reprinted it here to show the enormous discontent amongst the population in that country for their capitalist government.
October 7, 2003
Waves of Protests by the Poor Keep a Divided Bolivia on Edge
Fueled by poverty and Indian discontent, demonstrations have been
turning violent. Many fear the unrest may lead to a civil war.
By Andrés D'Alessandro and Héctor Tobar, Times Staff Writers
EL ALTO, Bolivia — Parts of this impoverished, teeming community on
the outskirts of La Paz are a kind of liberated territory, patrolled
by men in helmets emblazoned with "Workers Police." Their leader is
Felipe Quispe, an Aymara Indian leader who has announced that he and
his followers might soon carve an "Aymara Republic" out of the
western half of Bolivia.
Down the road, in La Paz, the country's biggest labor confederation
has gone on strike, demanding the president's resignation. "We can't
negotiate with this government," says Jaime Solares, a union
leader. "If the president doesn't quit, there will be blood on the
streets."
A series of protests has left 64 people dead in Bolivia this year,
and many fear that the scattered violence may be the prologue to a
more violent and widespread conflict. The words "civil war" are
increasingly on people's lips here, with talk of bands of youths
arming themselves and training in guerrilla tactics in the Altiplano
highlands.
The strife is being fed by this country's rampant poverty, the
growing restiveness of its Indian majority and also by a plan to
export natural gas through Chile. The gas plan has stirred Bolivian
nationalism — Chile invaded and annexed Bolivia's corridor to the
Pacific Ocean in the 19th century.
Food shortages and almost daily demonstrations rock La Paz, the
administrative capital, which is occasionally cut off from the rest
of the country due to blockades set up by protesting peasants. In
recent weeks, the prices of vegetables and other foodstuffs in the
city have risen by 50% to 100%.
In the face of so much disorder, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada
has remained defiant.
"Sure, there are problems, but the protests are being created by a
radicalized group of society that thinks it can govern from the
streets," the president told foreign journalists last week. "There
are radical elements who don't want me to finish my term. But I will
not resign."
Sanchez de Lozada, a Chicago-educated former film producer who speaks
Spanish with a noticeable American accent, took office last year.
Under Bolivia's arcane electoral system, he was elected president by
Congress after getting just 23% of the vote.
A recent poll put his approval rating at 9%.
Goni, as the president is known here, assembled a loose coalition of
centrists and moderate leftists to win the vote in Congress. The
election left Evo Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism as the
largest opposition party in Congress.
Morales' base of support is among the Quechua Indians and the coca
farmers of east-central Bolivia. A strong critic of globalization and
neoliberal economics, he has called for the nationalization of
Bolivia's gas reserves.
The natural gas fields have been developed by an international
consortium, Pacific LNG, which is backing the Chilean pipeline plan.
The gas could be shipped, in liquefied form, to electricity plants in
California.
"Our demand is the same as that of the majority of Bolivians,"
Morales said last week. "We don't want to see our wealth usurped by
multinationals again."
Morales announced Friday that his supporters would join the growing
blockade of the nation's highways, a move that could worsen the
shortages in the capital.
Quispe, the Aymara leader whose base is here in El Alto and other
towns near La Paz, has promised to step up his own group's protests
too. He said his movement is "preparing people, little by little" for
a revolutionary war should the government fail to accede to his
demands for expanded social services and employment.
"The whites and the mestizos are going to have to respect us in this
country," he said.
A week ago, an estimated 60,000 people marched in La Paz carrying red
flags, one of a series of demonstrations organized by the Bolivian
Workers Central labor federation demanding the government's ouster.
The class and ethnic divisions of Bolivian society were on display,
as the demonstrators — many in traditional Aymara clothes — taunted
passersby in suits and ties with cries of "filthy rich!"
and "Chileans!" A few protesters threw rocks and engaged in
fistfights with business owners who had declined to close their
stores in solidarity with the labor federation's strike.
"The government shouldn't sell the gas like that, at a giveaway
price," said one of the protesters, Eleuterio Paudimani. "We're doing
this for the future of our children. That's why the people are very
mobilized."
The government says it has uncovered evidence of armed guerrillas
training in the Altiplano and Chapare regions. Bolivian television
broadcast images last week of teenagers training in the use of rifles
and submachine guns.
The footage was jolting in a country that hasn't seen a serious
guerrilla movement in decades.
In 1967, Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia and his followers crushed.
Attempts to revive a resistance movement in the years that followed
were also failures.
On Sept. 20, five peasants and two soldiers were killed in the town
of Warisata about 80 miles north of La Paz when protesters tried to
block an army caravan escorting tourists who had been trapped in the
Lake Titicaca region by a weeklong Aymara roadblock.
The army said the soldiers were ambushed. The protesting peasants
said the soldiers opened fire on them first.
Javier Gomez Aguilar, an economist with the La Paz-based Center for
the Study of Labor and Agrarian Development, fears that the violence
will only intensify. The poverty rate in Bolivia stands at 70%, and
the government has launched an austerity program that precludes
investment in health, education and other needs.
"Bolivia historically has not been fertile ground for the development
of guerrilla groups, but the lack of a government plan to address
these inequalities is helping to generate these very serious
confrontations," he said.
"The government's ability to stay in power is based increasingly on
the armed forces."
