26 reported killed
Bolivian troops massacre strikers
By César Uco and Bill Vann
14 October 2003
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Bolivian army troops backed by tanks killed at least 26 workers and peasants and wounded some 90 more Sunday, as the US-backed government of President Gonzalo Sanchez Lozada unleashed murderous repressive force in an attempt to crush a month-long rebellion against his government’s International Monetary Fund-dictated austerity policies.

The army moved into the industrial suburb of El Alto, outside La Paz, which has been the center of the movement of strikes and protests that has challenged the government. Witnesses said that troops opened fire with machine-guns on residents of the town, who had nothing more than sticks and stones to fight back.

“They are massacring us,” reported Roberto de la Cruz, a union leader and organizer of the strike in El Alto. “There is no battle. They shoot at us at will, firing at the crowd.” Among the dead was a five-year-old boy cut down by machine-gun fire. Local hospitals were overwhelmed by the number of wounded, and appeals were made for donations of blood.

An attack helicopter was also used in the assault, which was aimed at breaking a virtual siege of La Paz by strikers and protesters. The army’s immediate objective was to resupply the capital’s dwindling fuel and food reserves.

El Alto is Bolivia’s third-largest city, with a population of 600,000. Located 12,000 feet above sea level, it is a center for both oil refineries and food warehouses. It is also one of the poorest districts in the country. The bulk of its population is made up of indigenous people who have migrated to the city from rural areas in search of work. The majority of Alteños live in a sprawling shantytown.

A statement issued jointly by Bolivia’s Catholic Church, human rights organizations and the main press association called upon the government to immediately withdraw all troops and police from El Alto. “We cannot speak any more about confrontations but rather of a true massacre,” the statement said. It cited numerous reports that “have confirmed the use of large-caliber weapons, including heavy machineguns against the Bolivian people.”

Opposition leaders charged that the US Embassy played a decisive role in urging the government to drown the protest movement in blood. US Ambassador David Greenlee served in the 1980s as the chief CIA agent in the country. He is widely blamed in Bolivia for the implementation of draconian repression against coca growers and in particular for a 1988 massacre at Villa Tunari that claimed the lives of 28 peasants.

In the present confrontation, the US Embassy is promoting violent repression to further the interests of the same handful of politically connected energy corporations whose interests have driven US aggression in Iraq and elsewhere.

Over the past month, hundreds of thousands of Bolivian workers, peasants and students have staged a series of struggles against the pro-Washington government of Sanchez Lozada, in what has been referred to locally as the “gas war.”

The demonstrators are demanding the resignation of the president and that the natural gas, the last Bolivian national resource not in the hands of transnational corporations, not be exported to the US via a Chilean port.

As in the rest of Latin America, over the past two decades Bolivians have seen their country’s resources auctioned off to the transnationals, leaving the people in abject poverty. Bolivians justifiably fear that with the proposed natural gas deal, history will repeat itself. The country was devastated by the experience with its silver and tin mining industries, which were exploited by US corporations throughout the 20th Century and then abandoned once they proved unprofitable.

The proposed export of natural gas is a $7 billion operation assigned to Pacific LNG, an export consortium that includes the Bechtel Group, Amoco, British Petroleum and several other international energy giants. Under a previous deal negotiated on petroleum exports, the foreign oil companies earn $1.3 billion a year while Bolivia receives just $70 million in taxes and royalties.

The spark that ignited the present mass upsurge against the government was the September 20 massacre of indigenous people at Warisata that left seven dead and dozens injured.

Following the Warisata massacre, the Bolivian Workers Central (COB), the country’s main union federation, called an indefinite general strike.

At the same time the Trade Union Confederation of Rural Workers (CSUTCB), the largest peasant organization, intensified its policy of road blockades, succeeding in isolating La Paz, the largest city and the center of government.

The coca growers led by Evo Morales, leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), the main opposition party to the government, had not supported the strike and was limiting its actions to roadblocks.

In La Paz, the call for general strike received the immediate support of merchants, butchers, cargo and passenger transport workers, miners and peasants. Markets closed and the city came to a standstill.

Over the past two weeks, support for the strike expanded to health workers, schoolteachers, university students, and community groups. There have been daily mass marches in the streets of La Paz demanding the resignation of Sanchez Lozada. Many have been arrested in confrontations with the police. On October 10, thousands marched in downtown La Paz banging pans.

In La Ceja, the most important hub in the Bolivian road network, CSUTCB militants blockaded the roads, paralyzing national and international transport. There are reports that truck drivers threw their cargo into the river in order to return home. There are 17,000 tons of cargo in the Chilean port of Arica that cannot be transported because the railroad between Arica and La Paz has been paralyzed.

Other cities witnessing marches by workers, peasants and students are Cochabamba, El Alto and the mining centers of Oruro and Potosi, the latter one of the poorest regions in the country.

The government responded by militarizing the region around La Paz and El Alto. The 12-kilometer road between La Paz and El Alto was taken over by the army. Meanwhile, soldiers have encircled the international airport to keep it open. In several cities, the army has surrounded university campuses.

In El Alto there had been many confrontations between the residents and the police and army before Sunday’s massacre. In what was clearly an uneven struggle, the Alteños fought with stones, sticks, slings and dynamite, while the army and police had special combat gear and armored vehicles.

After a little girl was killed by a soldier’s bullet during a confrontation with the army last month, thousands of angry Alteños called for arms to attack army barracks located in the region. The people of El Alto declared a “state of siege” and said that they could not guarantee the lives of the soldiers and police.

There are increasing predictions of a full-scale civil war in Bolivia. In a symbolic act, the widows of the war of El Chaco took out the Mauser rifles that had been saved in honor of those who died fighting against Paraguay in 1932-35. The only other time these outmoded rifles were used was during the revolutionary struggles in 1952.

A five-year economic recession has deepened what was already grinding poverty for the vast majority of the Bolivian people. Bolivia is the second-poorest country in all of the Americas after Haiti. Nearly 60 percent of the population lives in outright poverty. In the rural areas, where 40 percent of the population lives, nine out of 10 are poor.

Bolivian peasants live under pre-industrial conditions. Lacking electricity, they depend upon oil lamps, guano as fertilizer and wood to cook. They use coca, urine and medicinal plants to heal because there are no doctors or health clinics. Many children die of diarrhea or malnutrition, or are simply abandoned.

Studies show that during the past 15 years the average income of peasant families has dropped by 50 percent. According to government figures, five out of 10 peasants go hungry and another four out of 10 have barely enough to eat.

Over 80 percent of Bolivians are indigenous. These people not only constitute the large majority of peasants, but also a large majority of miners, historically the most militant section of the Bolivian working class, and many more are rural teachers. They are to be found in large numbers in most sections of the working class.

The indigenous population is the most exploited and oppressed sector of the Bolivian people. Their Aymara and Quechua roots go back to the Inca Empire that was conquered by the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago. They have a long history of struggle against oppression during colonial times and against the governments that have ruled since independence from Spain in 1825.

As in the rest of Latin America, there are two Bolivias: one the Bolivia of the oppressed and poor, and the other that of a thin layer of the population that profits from its relations with US banks and multinationals.

The current president, Sanchez Lozada, 73, is a prosperous mining businessman educated in the US who feels more comfortable speaking English than Spanish, not to mention Aymara and Quechua, the other two official languages of Bolivia.

The president’s popularity has sunk to a meager 9 percent. The demands raised by the Bolivian masses in opposition to the sale of natural gas to the US represent a repudiation of the free market policies applied over the last 15 years. During that period, all Bolivia’s resources and infrastructure except for natural gas— from oil and energy to railroads and communications—were sold off to the transnationals,.

The US embassy played a central role in having Gonzalo Sanchez Lozada installed as president in August 2002, after winning just 22 percent of the vote. To prevent the leader of the coca growers—Evo Morales of the MAS—from gaining the presidency, Washington help create a coalition between the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) of Sanchez Lozada, the Left Revolutionary Movement (MIR) of former president Jaime Paz Zamora, the National Democratic Action (ADN) of former president and dictator Hugo Banzer, and two other smaller parties.

Washington feared that had the MAS won the presidency, it would have expelled the US coca-eradication apparatus as well as the Pacific LNG from the country. After Colombia, Bolivia is the recipient of the second-largest amount of US funds to fight coca growing.

Sanchez Lozada is committed to implementing IMF-dictated measures that include new taxes, drastic reduction in pensions and incomes, the elimination of consumer subsidies for gas and gasoline, reduction of government spending and increasing exports.

Among the most drastic measures demanded by the IMF is the Law of Citizen’s Security, designed to create a peaceful environment for foreign capital to operate in Bolivia. This law permits the government to jail peasant leaders and militant workers who oppose the free market program.

Sanchez Lozada was put in power by the US Embassy and the oil transnationals with the support of the Bolivian army. He remains in power, however, thanks to the timidity and betrayal of those who pose as the leadership of the Bolivian workers and peasants.

Following a mass upsurge in February 2003 that could have toppled the government, the leaders of MAS and the COB signed a social pact with Sanchez Lozada, giving him much-needed breathing space and betraying the struggles by teachers, health workers, landless peasants, miners, and other sectors of the working class.

Because none of the promises included in the social pact was ever carried out, one section of workers and peasants after another has entered into struggle, culminating with the massive march of 150,000 people in La Paz on September 19, the day before the Warisata massacre.

Once again, with the Bolivian masses in a state of open rebellion, these leaderships are making conciliatory gestures to the government.

Evo Morales and the COB leader Jaime Solares are asking the government for a dialogue, which the government thus far has rejected because their demands cut across the interests of its US backers.

In an apparent attempt to defuse the rising anger in the wake of the El Alto massacre, Sanchez de Lozado issued a decree Monday morning announcing that “no natural gas will be exported to new markets” until the end of the year. He claimed that until then, his government would organize “consultations and debate” over the proposed gas deal. Immediately after the decree was issued, however, a government spokesman made it clear that the results of any consultations or debate would not be binding. The government also attempted to organize a “dialogue” with civic leaders from El Alto.

There was no indication that these paltry and tardy gestures have had any effect in dampening the mass protest movement. Public and private transport workers went on strike Monday in solidarity with the people of El Alto. Bakers prepared to follow suit. The coca farmers, who had yet to join the protests, indicated that they would march on La Paz and block the roads. Mass protest demonstrations were called in La Paz, Cochabamba and other areas.

In El Alto itself, despite the government order militarizing the area, protests continued after the massacre, with residents lighting bonfires and throwing rocks at army patrols.

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October 14, 2003
Bolivian President Remains Defiant as Protests Intensify
By LARRY ROHTER

A PAZ, Bolivia, Oct. 13 — Thousands of demonstrators marched in Bolivia's capital and other nearby cities on Monday, calling for the president's resignation. But they were dispersed by military units firing tear gas canisters, and at a midafternoon news conference President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was defiant and pugnacious.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said, citing his determination to remain in office and vowing that "order will be restored." He added, "It is not possible that democracy be replaced by a dictatorship of the unions" that will "pit region against region, class against class and ethnic group against ethnic group."

Clashes between demonstrators and the military have killed at least 42 people. At least 14 of them were killed Monday, according to Bolivia's Permanent Human Rights Assembly.

With popular revulsion growing, leaders of two parties that have been part of the precarious governing coalition said Monday that they were thinking of pulling out. But the clearest indication of weakening support came when Vice President Carlos Mesa announced that he was breaking with the government, which had the support of only 8 percent of those asked in recent polls.

"Neither as a citizen nor a man of principles can I accept that, faced with popular pressure, the response should be death," Mr. Mesa said, although he said protest groups bore part of the blame.

Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, has been racked since mid-September by antigovernment protests initially organized by groups representing the Indian peasants who are the country's impoverished and marginalized majority. But labor unions, student and neighborhood groups and opposition political parties have since joined and helped strengthen the movement.

In recent days, with many people angry over a government-backed proposal to export natural gas that opponents say would not benefit most Bolivians, the protests have grown increasingly confrontational, with demonstrators armed with sticks of dynamite blocking highways. Over the weekend, Mr. Sánchez de Lozada called out the troops, an action that has raised the level of violence even further.

The immediate cause of the unrest is the proposal to build a $5 billion pipeline to begin exporting Bolivia's vast reserves of natural gas to the United States and Mexico through a port in Chile. Opponents worry about corruption and complain that the royalty rate on gas shipments is so low that the project will end up offering more financial benefits to foreigners than to this Andean nation of eight million people.

"We've always exported our natural resources, like silver and tin, to others, so that they get rich and we remain poor," said Luis Alberto Javier, 30, a plumber's helper who supports the protests. "That gas should remain here to create jobs in Bolivia for Bolivians rather than be sold abroad, especially through Chile."

Chile is viewed as an enemy here because Bolivia has been landlocked ever since it lost its outlet to the Pacific Ocean in a war with Chile in 1879. Rapid economic growth in Chile during the past two decades has increased Bolivians' resentment. Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, a 73-year-old millionaire businessman, is seen as being overly cozy with Chilean business interests.

In a television address to the nation early on Monday, he promised that no new gas exports would be permitted until the citizenry was consulted, and he called for negotiations "to try to reach a consensus." Opposition leaders, sensing that his position was rapidly deteriorating, quickly rejected his call.

"We are not going to have dialogue with the murderers of the people," said Evo Morales, who leads the powerful coca growers union and who finished a close second in the presidential election last year. After the "massacre" over the weekend, he added, the opposition's attitude toward the president is one of "resignation or nothing."

Police officers in some outlying areas of the capital have joined demonstrators, according to local news reports. The loyalty of the police has been in doubt since a nationwide mutiny in February.

Mr. Sánchez de Lozada apparently decided to take the police off the streets in working class suburbs like El Alto and replace them with army troops backed by tanks and helicopters for precisely that reason. But even the prospect of continued military support for his government was being questioned.

"The Armed Forces are reaching the limit of their tolerance for a situation in which they are being blamed for these deaths," said Juan Ramón Quintana, a former military officer who now leads a private institute called the Bolivian Program for Strategic Research.

With roads in and out of the capital blocked, gasoline scarce and renewed violence a threat, many residents of La Paz stayed home from work on Monday. Most flights from the main airport, in the area that has experienced the most violence, have been canceled or postponed, airport officials said, and many stores are running out of supplies.

At a small butcher shop here, the proprietor, Estela Mamán, said on Sunday that she was about to run out of meat, and would soon be forced to close down. Nevertheless, she said she supported the protests.

"The government is going to have to give in if there is to be a solution," she said. "None of this would be happening if they just listened to us, the people, but they never do, and now they are paying the price."



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October 15, 2003
Bolivian Leader Loses Allies as Demonstrations Spread
By LARRY ROHTER

A PAZ, Bolivia, Oct. 14 — Despite moves by the military to tighten its control of the capital, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada's hold on power grew more tenuous on Tuesday, as demonstrations demanding his resignation spread to provincial cities, and important political allies scrambled to distance themselves from him.

"If the solution to preserving Bolivian democracy passes through the resignation of the president, we cannot put that aside," said Manfred Reyes Villa, leader of the conservative New Republican Force, a crucial part of the president's fragile governing coalition. "I've been clear: We have to listen to the people."

Three cabinet ministers from the New Republican Force announced that they were suspending their participation in the government, though not formally stepping down, and a minister representing another party has formally resigned. Their actions came after Vice President Carlos Mesa broke with Mr. Sánchez de Lozada on Monday, accusing him of the indiscriminate use of force to quell the growing protests.

More than 50 people have been killed here since Saturday in clashes between mostly Indian demonstrators carrying sticks and slingshots and the heavily armed troops the president ordered into the streets.

A spokesman for the coroner's office here said "nearly every last one" of the victims had been shot to death, some at point blank range.

The antigovernment demonstrations began nearly a month ago, initially to protest a proposal to build a $5 billion pipeline to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico via a port in Chile.

Groups representing poor Indian peasants who make up a majority of the country's population organized the effort and were soon joined by labor unions, student and community groups and opposition political parties like the Movement Toward Socialism. The forces of globalization have affected every Latin American country in one way or another, but nowhere other than in Bolivia has the conflict erupted with such intensity between the government and the indigenous poor.

But as a result of the recent bloodshed, the focus of the protests has now shifted to demanding the resignation of Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, a 73-year-old millionaire businessman. Elected last year with only 22 percent of the vote, the president has accused his opponents of being part of "a seditious plot" supported by drug lords and leftist guerrillas.

Demonstrators and weeping relatives carried the bodies of some of the dead through the streets of the capital and the nearby suburb of El Alto on Tuesday, chanting "murderers, murderers" and "Goni must go," referring to the president by his nickname. Family members said they were refusing to bury the victims until the coroner's office had certified the cause of death as gunshot wounds, making them eligible for a government indemnity.

Of those known to have been killed, only one has been confirmed to be a soldier. Citing witness accounts, local news organizations reported that he was executed by his commanding officer after refusing to fire on demonstrators.

All of the casualties thus far have occurred in the La Paz metropolitan area, but there were signs that the movement to topple Mr. Sánchez de Lozada was spreading to other parts of the country. Demonstrations took place in Cochabamba and Sucre, two important provincial cities, and labor unions in Oruro announced plans to march on the capital.

As support for Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, a staunch ally in the American war on drugs, was ebbing here, his allies abroad were trying to shore up his position. In Washington, the State Department issued a statement warning that "the United States will not tolerate any interruption of constitutional order and will not support any regime that results from undemocratic means."

With roadblocks having shut all six of the main highways in and out of the capital, La Paz has become a city under siege. Tanks and armored cars moved into position around key buildings, and the military high command issued a statement warning the people to avoid any confrontation with the troops patrolling the eerily quiet streets. As a result, a de facto state of martial law prevailed in many parts of the capital.



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POPE ASKS THAT DIALOGUE PREVAIL IN BOLIVIA CRISIS

VATICAN CITY, OCT 15, 2003 (VIS) - At the conclusion of today's general
audience in St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul stated his "great concern
over the news that is coming from Bolivia where there is an ongoing, serious
crisis, with dead and wounded.

"I wish to express my spiritual solidarity with those who are suffering
and I invite everyone today to pray that the Lord inspire the parties
involved to give a privileged place to civil dialogue and to look for
equitable solutions, in respect for law, to the problems that afflict the
Nation."
AG/APPEAL BOLIVIA/... VIS 031015 (100)


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Bolivia: Mass upheavals topple US-backed president
By Tomas Rodriguez and Bill Vann
21 October 2003
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Following a mass revolt that paralyzed the country and the deaths of at least 86 people shot down by security forces, Bolivia’s US-backed president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, was forced to resign last Friday and flee to exile in the United States.

Sanchez de Lozada was replaced by Carlos Mesa, his vice-president, who withdrew his support from the former government after massacres of unarmed protesters had brought Bolivia to the brink of revolution. Mesa announced the formation of a new cabinet of “technocrats,” which he cast as a government of national unity.

In reality, the new president represents the same privileged social layer as his predecessor, whom he had supported until it became evident that the government faced a full-scale insurrection. The millionaire owner of a Bolivian television network, Mesa, like Sanchez de Lozada, is a member of the MNR, or Revolutionary Nationalist Movement. This right-wing party has ruled in a series of Bolivian coalition governments that have implemented economic austerity and privatization plans dictated by Washington and the International Monetary Fund since the 1980s.

During his first term in office—1993-1997—Sanchez de Lozada sharply accelerated the privatization of the state sector, particularly with the denationalization of the country’s petroleum industry. His policies were proclaimed a success based on figures showing increased investment and economic growth that stemmed almost entirely from the auctioning off of the country’s resources and essential services, including telephone and railroads, at bargain prices. Meanwhile, unemployment and social misery grew far faster than investment.

Mesa, like the former president, has been a strong proponent of privatization in general and, in particular of the proposal to build a $5 billion pipeline to export Bolivia’s natural gas reserves to the US and Mexico via a port in Chile. Critics of the deal charge that it will yield super-profits for energy transnationals and enrich a small group of local businessmen, while robbing Bolivia of its most valuable natural resource.

Mass opposition to the proposal and to the privatization of Bolivia’s energy resources drew masses of peasants, urban poor and workers into struggle against the government. The issue of Bolivia’s natural gas became a focal point for unleashing pent-up rage over the immense poverty and social inequality that have deepened uninterruptedly for the past two decades.

The roots of the revolt go far deeper in the historic memory of the Bolivian people, who have from the days of Spanish colonialism seen the uninterrupted looting of the country’s resources—silver, tin, oil and now gas—by foreign capitalism, combined with the brutal oppression of the miners, peasants and other working people.

An attempt to drown the mass protests in blood—apparently coordinated by US military officers operating out of both the US Embassy and the Bolivian Defense Ministry—backfired. The army’s massacre of peasants staging a protests on the highway in the region of Warisata and then its gunning down of scores of workers and poor in the sprawling shantytown city of El Alto, an industrial suburb of La Paz, provoked outrage throughout the country, leading to an expansion of a general strike and the blockading of roads that cut off the country’s capital and other major cities.

On the day that Sanchez de Lozada resigned, columns of miners, armed with sticks of dynamite, and thousands of peasant farmers had poured into La Paz, joining the mass protests and street barricades that had already paralyzed the city.

The change at the top appeared to have been worked out in consultation with Washington. Among Mesa’s first acts as the new president was to meet with US Ambassador David Greenlee, who formerly served as the CIA’s chief of station in the volatile country.

In the midst of the rebellion, the US Embassy and the State Department in Washington had issued explicit threats of US retaliation if the mass movement succeeded in toppling the existing government. Greenlee told the Bolivian press, for example, that “in the case of a government arising out of pressure from the street, the international community will isolate Bolivia.”

Now the aim of both the Bush administration and the local oligarchy is to gain a breathing space in which to defuse the social explosion in Bolivia and prepare for another political offensive against the masses. Mesa has repeated promises made by Sanchez de Lozada before his resignation to hold a popular referendum on the gas deal and to rewrite the country’s energy law. He has also pledged to convene early elections. There was no indication, however, that any referendum would be binding, and no date has been set for electing a new president.

In the short term, the reshuffling at the top appeared to have the desired effect thanks to the conciliatory policy of the trade union and peasant leaders. Evo Morales, the former leader of the coca growers and a deputy of the opposition MAS, or Movement towards Socialism, had proposed Mesa’s election to the presidency as a “constitutional solution” acceptable to Washington. “We will give a breathing space to President Carlos Mesa, a truce, so that he can organize himself and carry out his promises to the country,” Morales declared.

The leader of the United Union Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia, Felipe Quispe Huanca, dismissed Mesa’s promises as lies, but the leader of the indigenous peasants said his organization would give the new president 90 days to carry out changes.

And, finally, the Confederation of Bolivian Workers, or COB, announced that it was suspending its general strike, while the union federation’s leader, Jaime Solares, went to the presidential palace to meet with Mesa and present a list of 20 demands. “We indicated that he will have support as long as he energetically fights against corruption,” Solares said after the meeting.

Despite the climbdown by the existing workers’ and peasants’ organizations, Mesa exhibited no great confidence that his government will be able to contain a resurgence of revolutionary upheavals. “The abyss is still close at hand, and any mistake, any lack of perspective, any stinginess can push us over that abyss,” he told members of his new cabinet Sunday.

The Bush administration immediately granted political asylum to Sanchez de Lozada, a multi-millionaire businessman known to Bolivians as “the gringo” because of his heavily accented Spanish, the product of his upbringing and education in the US.

In an interview with the Miami Herald Sanchez de Lozada lashed out at the mass movement that had overthrown him, declaring it a “conspiracy to create the first narco-trade union state in South America.”

In Bolivia, the Human Rights Commission of the Chamber of Deputies announced that it intends to bring charges against Sanchez de Lozada, demanding that he be tried for the nearly 200 deaths that have resulted from acts of repression ordered by his government during barely 14 months in office.

In addition to the latest killings, the government unleashed the military against mass protests that broke out against an IMF-mandated increase in income taxes and other austerity measures last February. Known in Bolivia as “black February,” the protests turned exceptionally bloody after police went on strike and were shot down by troops. At least 33 people were killed during the protests. The demands for the removal and trial of Sanchez de Lozada began after the February massacre.

Mesa made it clear that he has no intention of seeking Sanchez de Lozada’s extradition for crimes in which he himself was complicit. At the same time, he announced that there would be no changes made in the command of either the military or the police.

The US Southern Command in Miami, meanwhile, confirmed Friday that it was sending a “security team” of military advisors to Bolivia. A spokesman said that the team would “perform a technical assessment of the situation down there,” and advise the US Embassy and the US Military Group in the country.

The Bush administration is determined to prevent the Bolivian events from spinning out of control for fear that the defiance of the economic policies demanded by the IMF and the US-based multinationals could spread throughout the continent.

Bolivia is South America’s most impoverished country and has faced the harshest impact of the “free market” policies of privatization and draconian cutbacks in social spending that have been imposed throughout the region. While the country’s official unemployment rate stands at 12 percent, according to Bolivia’s Center for the Study of Labor and Agricultural Development, fully 45 percent of the economically active population lacks any steady work, forced to survive on part-time jobs or in the so-called informal sector.

The United Nations World Food Program places Bolivia last in South America in terms of nutrition indices, despite the fact that the country’s agricultural sector is easily capable of supporting the population of 8.8 million people. According to the UN agency, at least two million Bolivians are facing chronic hunger, while only 12 percent of Bolivian families are able to consume the minimum daily requirement of calories.

A report by a Bolivia research organization, the Unit for Analysis of Economic and Social Policy, found that the number of people living in poverty in the country had risen from 5,076,000 in 1995 to 5,448,000 in 2001.

While conditions in Bolivia are among the most extreme, they are by no means unique. A recent World Bank report on inequality in Latin America, for example, showed that the richest tenth of the people in the region earn 48 percent of total income, while the poorest tenth earn only 1.6 percent.

According to a report issued by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean at the end of August, the number of Latin Americans living in poverty rose to 220 million (43.4 percent) last year, with 95 million (18.8 percent) described as indigent. “Progress toward overcoming poverty ground to a halt in the past five years,” the report said, while warning that current low economic growth rates ensure that conditions will only worsen. Last month, the IMF lowered its projection for regional economic growth for this year to 1.1 percent.

There are growing indications that the social revolt that erupted in Bolivia could spread as the cumulative effects of decades of economic austerity programs and the looting of the region’s wealth by the international banks and transnational corporations become ever more intolerable.

In Ecuador, the government of Lucio Gutierrez is facing mass protests as it attempts to impose an IMF-dictated austerity plan that demands sweeping attacks on labor rights, social conditions and pensions. Public employees have staged repeated protests, while organizations representing indigenous peasants that previously supported Gutierrez have denounced his government’s policies. Economic growth has continued to decline in Ecuador, while the country’s debt has risen to an amount equal to nearly 42 percent of its annual gross domestic product.

Meanwhile, in Honduras, another of Latin America’s poorest countries, thousands of people blockaded highways last week in protests over economic measures proposed by the government as part of its negotiations with the IMF. The Honduran government is planning to privatize the country’s water supply, while slashing salaries for some 100,000 public sector workers. Fully 80 percent of the Honduran population lives in poverty.

As the Bolivian events have already demonstrated, Washington is prepared to support and carry out on its own the most brutal forms of repression to defend US economic hegemony over the region and control over its energy supplies and other strategic resources. Despite this repression, the vast social crisis that is gripping the continent is bringing US imperialism face-to-face with a revolutionary explosion in what it has long regarded as its “own backyard.”






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Larry Luxner An indigenous Bolivian woman nears the mikvah at the Circulo Israelita de Bolivia synagogue in La Paz. AROUND THE JEWISH WORLD Bolivian Jews keep low profile amid new anti-government violence By Larry Luxner WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (JTA) — Bolivia´s Jews are keeping a low profile in the midst of the worst bloodshed the landlocked, desperately poor country has seen in 20 years. Last Friday, Bolivia´s 73-year-old president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, was forced to resign following weeks of anti-government protests in La Paz that left at least 65 people dead and hundreds injured. It was the country´s most widespread political violence since the overthrow of Bolivia´s military dictatorship in 1982. The new leader, former vice president and TV journalist Carlos Mesa, has pledged to hold a referendum on the issue that sparked the immediate crisis: the building of a $5 billion pipeline to export natural gas via Bolivia´s archenemy, Chile, to the United States and Mexico. Mesa, 50, also promises to give the Latin American country´s Quechua- and Aymara-speaking native peoples a bigger voice in the government, which has historically been run by wealthy Spanish-speaking whites of European descent. Alberto Senderey, director of Latin American programs for the New York-based American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, said he´s been in contact with community leaders in La Paz — which had been under martial law during the protests — and that not a single Jew in Bolivia was harmed. Bolivia has about 700 Jews. "There was no looting of shops, just demonstrations against the government," he said. "I don´t think it´s a high priority for people to attack the Jews, since it´s such a small community and not very prominent at all. The big landowners in Bolivia are all non-Jews." On the other hand, the leader of Bolivia´s indigenous movement, Evo Morales, is seen as a possible threat to Jewish interests. The coca farmer turned politician, who came within 1 percent of defeating Sanchez de Lozada in last year´s presidential election, led many of the violent protests that finally forced his political adversary out of office last week. "Morales is a populist figure, and unfortunately, one aspect of populism is anti-Semitism," said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "He represents the kind of person who looks upon foreigners as devils using the country´s own national wealth to conspire against Bolivia. "In a sense, Jewish communities throughout Latin America want predictability," he said. "They want to be assured that they won´t be singled out." So far, Morales — much like Venezuela´s populist president, Hugo Chavez — hasn´t specifically mentioned the Jews in his frequent diatribes against imperialism and globalization. But Gabriel Hercman, executive director of the Circulo Israelita, noted that last year, Morales received a $50,000 "peace prize" from Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi. "We don´t know why, and it´s not clear," Hercman said in a phone interview from La Paz. "But acts like these, along with the closing of the Israeli Embassy at the end of this year, make us feel afraid." Long before the current unrest began, Israel announced that it would shut its diplomatic missions in Bolivia and Paraguay by Dec. 31 for budgetary reasons. That could further isolate the Jewish community of Bolivia, which already is one of the smallest in South America. According to Hercman, around 500 Jews live in La Paz, the administrative capital of the country, with another 150 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia´s largest city. In addition, 50 or so Jews live in Cochabamba, which was once home to hundreds of Jewish families and boasts Bolivia´s most beautiful synagogue. The country´s Jewish presence — which began in the 16th century and reached its zenith right after World War II — has been dwindling for decades. Started by Marranos arriving from Spain to work in the vast silver mines of Potosi, the Bolivian Jewish community never grew very large. As late as 1933, there were still only 30 Jewish families in the entire country. But after the rise of Hitler, Bolivia became a haven for Jews fleeing the Nazis. Unlike neighboring Peru, which kept a tight lid on immigration before and during World War II, Bolivia granted thousands of visas to stranded German, Polish and Russian Jews in search of refuge. After the war, between 1946 and 1952, another wave of Jews — Holocaust survivors from as far away as Shanghai, China — settled in Bolivia. But besides becoming a home for Jews, Bolivia also opened its doors to some Nazi war criminals, stoking fears of anti-Semitism among the country´s Jews. "During World War II, there was very strong anti-Semitism here, even a Nazi political party," said Marek Ajke, a Polish-born Jew and survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. "Now, acts of anti-Semitism are very rare. Sporadically, people put swastikas on the walls, like when they showed ‘Schindler´s List.´ Happily, this is disappearing." Nevertheless, Jewish institutions in Bolivia — like their counterparts in much of Latin America — keep a very low profile, with armed guards protecting unmarked Jewish buildings and visitors carefully scrutinized before being allowed to enter. A typical Friday night service at the Circulo Israelita in La Paz attracts no more than 30 or so men speaking Spanish and Yiddish, most of them well over 60 years old. They pray in an old sanctuary on the building´s fourth floor. Behind the synagogue is Bolivia´s only mikvah, or ritual Jewish bath. The well-known Jewish school Colegio Boliviano Israelita, founded in 1940, counts only 20 Jews among its 500 students — the result of emigration by many Bolivian Jews to Argentina, the United States and Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. Print This Story Back to top ^

Non-Turkish Crimes Against Humanity

Bolivia's Coca Farmers Stand Up for Their Rights, Bring Down a President

Oct. 23, 2003 The toppling of the administration of Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada is a potentially crippling blow to Washington's controversial “Drug War” policy in the Andean region. Mass protests led by thousands of cocaleros - indigenous Bolivians whose main cash crop is coca - rocked the streets of the capital, La Paz, and lead to de Lozada’s resignation. Cocaleros, who account for more than half of Bolivia’s population, have been marginalized throughout the country’s history. They use coca for chewing and for products like shampoo, medicinal teas and toothpaste - uses that predate cocaine and the “War on Drugs.” According to human rights groups, cocaleros have been beaten or killed by Bolivian troops enforcing U.S.-mandated coca-eradication policies that aim to eliminate coca throughout the Andean region. The effects of de Lozada’s ouster are already being felt in Washington, which loses a strong ally in the “War on Drugs.” New president Carlos Mesa, a former journalist who was de Lozada’s vice president, has said he will call elections before the 2007 deadline. Likely to run is Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and head of a coca grower’s union, who narrowly lost the 2002 election to de Lozada. Morales is expected to push for the legalization of coca farms, thus ending the country’s U.S.-supported coca eradication efforts. Eradication and crop substitution - where coca farmers are “encouraged” to shift from coca other crops – have proved futile. Substitution crops are less useful and profitable, and the crops that are used to manufacture illicit drugs are almost always displaced – rather than replaced – simply moving the problem from region to region. Bolivians farmers are not alone in seeking an end to the failing and often brutal “War on Drugs” in their country. Coca legalization efforts in neighboring Peru are being led not just by the indigenous farmers but also by big business. The National Coca Company (ENACO) is one of a handful of companies worldwide that legally sell commercial and medical coca and cocaine products abroad.

Non-Turkish Crimes Against Humanity