[Fwd: Shit hitting the fan in Bolivia]

From: Derek Seidman <[email protected]>

United Press International
June 7, 2004 Monday
LENGTH: 935 words
HEADLINE: Bolivia Threatened by Mob Rule
BYLINE: By MARTIN AROSTEGUI
DATELINE: LA PAZ, Bolivia, June 7 (UPI)

BODY:
Bolivia appears inexorably headed towards chaos as
radical unions and peasant organizations carry out
their threat to blockade the capital. The death
of an army officer at a roadside ambush has exposed
serious divisions within governing circles as another
eight members of the security services and several
anti government protestors are reported wounded in
shooting incidents throughout the country.

President Carlos Mesa has so far proved highly
reticent to use force against protestors moving
boulders and laying carpets of rocks to block roads to
La Paz, even as commerce becomes virtually paralyzed.
Hundreds of trucks carrying important provisions and
merchandise have become stuck for days along
the highways leading to the capital. The tendency to
appease the protest groups has led to calls by the
business community on Mesa to "govern."

But police just stood by last Friday as a mob of
striking teachers seized deputy education minister
Celestino Choque from the entrances to his office,
and hustled him several blocks to their union
headquarters where they held him hostage overnight to
press demands for better pay. Apparently cowed,
some police units are reported to be refusing to
intervene against the massive marches by striking
teachers, oil workers and miners which threaten to
paralyze the capital. Police officers complain about
exhaustion and deficient riot control equipment.

Mesa fears that a show of force by the government
could alienate the main leftist Movement Towards

Socialism (M.A.S.), whose leader Evo Morales has until
now supported key government initiatives such as a
proposed referendum on the nationalisation of natural
gas. But government efforts to forge an historic
coalition with indigenous based revolutionaries are in
danger of breaking down.

Following a serious gun battle in the southern city of
Beni last Tuesday, when armed peasant groups shot at
soldiers trying to break up a mob of 1,500 indigenous
protestors blocking a bridge, Morales told a press
conference that "Mesa is going the same way as Gonzalo
Sanchez de Lozada", the right wing president who was
toppled by a popular revolt last year. He called for
an investigation of the incident and accused Mesa of
trying to "massacre the people."

The M.A.S. leader also opposes the wording of
questions in the referendum which Mesa plans to put to
a popular vote on July 18. He is insisting that voters
be specifically asked if they want the
"nationalisation" of energy resources instead of
technical and vaguely worded proposals which trade
union and peasant leaders denounce as "trick
questions."

Mesa admits that he believes an outright
nationalisation of Bolivia's gas resources would be
"disastrous" for the country. But opinion studies show
that 80 percent of Bolivians favour nationalising
energy resources.

"Morales is bowing to pressure from extremist and
highly dangerous
elements," says Filemon Escobar, a M.A.S. Senator who
is considered the party's
elder statesman and describes himself as a "bridge"
between the new indigenous
left and Bolivia's traditional ruling elite.

His moderation has made him the target of an internal
party purge.
Morales is
accusing Escobar of betraying the party and of
accepting a $60,000 bribe
to allow passage of a bill last month granting
immunity to U.S. citizens
from criminal prosecution in international courts.

Escobar says that he was holding a meeting in his
office with the
party's other seven senators when the vote was
convened. "I was informing them that
government ministers had warned of a military coup
unless the bill was
passed", he told United Press International,
explaining that Senate president,
Vaca Diez, took advantage of his absence to call the
vote.

The U.S. is conditioning $8 million in military
assistance on passage of
the immunity law which remains blocked in the lower
chamber.

Only days before the Senate vote, a group of generals
had held an tense
meeting with Mesa. They also insisted on legal
protection for four army officers
accused of killing demonstrators during disturbances
last year.

"A coup in Bolivia would cause a chain reaction in
Latin America. It
would encourage a coup against Chavez in Venezuela and
block the progressive
programs of Lula in Brazil and Kirchner in Argetina",
says Escobar who compares
the current regional situation to that of the 1970s
when a succession of
South American countries came under military
dictatorships. "We cannot allow
that to happen again," he said.

But ignoring calls for moderation, Bolivia's
Confederation of Workers
(COB) is
threatening the further "radicalise" protest actions
throughout the
country
until the current government is toppled. "We will not
stop until Mesa
leaves,"
says C.O.B. leader Jaime Solares.

In a further show of defiance, the Aymara Indian
leader and head of the
Bolivia's farm workers union, Felipe Quispe, has
resigned his
congressional
seat on the grounds that he "cannot be the member of a
body that's
accomplice
with multinationals and the U.S."

Quispe faces prosecution on terrorist charges and
tells the press that
he is prepared to loose his congressional immunity and
go to prison. "Mountains of
cadavers may be necessary to transform Bolivia," says
the leader of the Tupac Atari guerrilla army who under
went military training with the extreme
left Sandinista government in Nicaragua during the
1980s and fought with insurgencies in El Salvador and
Guatemala.

The Bolivian army reports that it's searching for
terrorist training
camps which Quispe has allegedly set up in mountains
around LaPaz





	
		
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