News of interest from Latin America by David Morris
Vol. 1, No. 13. Monday, November 26, 2007
Bolivia: division, violence
While demonstrations outside its meeting place grew larger and more violent and while some activists on both sides called openly for civil war, the Bolivian Constituent Assembly on November 24 approved the basic structure of a new national constitution, leaving the details of individual articles for later discussion. The Assembly has until December 14 to finish the document, which will then be voted on in a referendum.Since beginning work last year, the 255 members of the Assembly, a bare majority of whom belong to the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) and other parties allied with President Evo Morales, have met the unrelenting obstruction of opponents, most violently since last August when they voted not to take up the question of moving the legislative and executive branches of the government from La Paz to the historical capital of Sucre, the site of the judicial branch. The Assembly itself also meets in Sucre, which is a center of rightist opposition.
Another serious conflict in the country concerns a proposal to use money from a tax on hydrocarbons for a pension fund for the elderly. The lower house of the legislature, which is controlled by MAS and its allies, approved the original proposal but the senate, controlled by Poder Democrático Social and other opposition parties, passed its own version, which provides for funding from other taxes. Critics of the senate version say it would shift the burden of paying for the pension from the oil companies to the poor. The governors of the five states in the east where rightist opposition is strongest protested the potential loss of the hydrocarbons tax money, which had been going directly to the state treasuries. They called for resistance to the government and civil disobedience if the tax money is taken from them.
In response to senate resistance to the pension plan and to other proposals, government supporters reportedly numbering more than 10,000, mostly indigenous people from the western high plains, marched to La Paz on November 22 to attach a large cardboard padlock to the doors of the senate and to declare it closed.
One of the five governors calling for civil disobedience, Wilfredo Reyes Villa of Cochabamba, a former army officer, publicly urged the military to “be guardians of the country’s sovereignty and not to allow interference or meddling by outsiders with foreign ideas.” He said MAS had brought in Cubans and Venezuelans to run the government.
Morales expressed alarm at Villa’s comments, which he said suggested a coup d’état. A statement from the armed forces condemned Villa’s remarks, saying he had no authority to speak for the Bolivian military.
Supporters and opponents of the government have both expressed fear that the country is headed toward serious confrontations, with more violence likely to occur. Opponents demonstrating against the Assembly in Sucre, some reportedly carrying firearms, detonated Molotov cocktails and other explosives. Some representatives of a pro-government indigenous group, the Ponchos Rojos, which promised at least 1,000 of its members would join the march to Sucre, call for armed struggle. Shouts of “Civil War” were reportedly heard during the demonstration at the senate building in La Paz.
One demonstrator was shot to death in Sucre. The opposition claims he was killed by the police or the military, but the government says they used rubber bullets and teargas but no lethal weapons and that in any case he was killed by a 22- or 25-caliber bullet, a size not used by either agency.
The head of the armed forces, General Wilfredo Vargas, said there was little danger of serious widespread violence in the country because there are no well organized armed groups but that in any case the military will act in accordance with its constitutional mandate and will obey military regulations and the law.
Morales has welcomed the support of the Ponchos Rojos but has made it clear that only the military have the right to bear arms.
Violence and harassment by opponents at its original meeting place in Sucre was serious enough to force the Constituent Assembly to move to a school on a military base several kilometers away, where it has been encircled during its sessions by soldiers and police officers and by several thousand supporters, many of them indigenous campesinos who marched considerable distances to protect the Assembly. Charging that meeting at a military base violates the constitution, many Assembly member representing opposition parties refuse to attend the sessions at the new site, leaving more than the two-thirds majority of government supporters required to approve the proposed constitution on November 24.
Opponents, saying they will refuse to recognize any document written by the popularly elected Assembly, declare they will form a “parallel Constituent Assembly” of their own.
(Sources: El Mundo, Bolivia; El Diario, Bolivia; El Nuevo Diario, Bolivia; Jornada, Bolivia; Aporrea, Venezuela; Los Tiempos, Bolivia; La Razón, Bolivia; El Potosí, Bolivia; Agencia Boliviana de Información, Bolivia; La Jornada, Mexico)
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