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Today's
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October
17, 2003
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
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The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
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Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
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Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
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Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
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|
October
17, 2003
A Report from La Paz
Boliva
in Turmoil
By
NEWTON GARVER
La Paz.
I arrived in La Paz on Saturday October 11, just
in time to witness the showdown between the campesinos and the
government. These days have been, as Dickens famously wrote of
the French Revolution, the best of times and the worst of times.
I am writing this on Wednesday the 15th, the third day of a total
shutdown in La Paz. Schools, banks, shops, and restaurants remain
closed, and transport is shut down, but the kids are playing
soccer and volleyball in the streets. In the tension of uncertainty,
there is now peace and calm after the confrontations of Sunday
and Monday, confrontations that left 54 people dead, raising
the total since the confrontation started in August to about
70. This is the second major set of confrontations of the year,
the other having occurred in February when 32 people died. So
the total for the year is over 100, almost all campesinos.
Since Bolivia is little more than a name
for most of us, it will be useful to provide some background
and then discuss the issues that divide the country at the present
time.
Background
Like most of Latin America Bolivia can
be divided, with a little simplification, into city (ciudad)
and country (campo), and the campesinos are the part of the population
who identify with the country rather than the city. They may
have moved to the city but still have roots in the country. There
are also, of course, younger people, children of campesinos,
who were born in the city and even have advanced degrees and
who do not fall easily into either group; they are no longer
real campesinos but identify more with them than with the government.
The division between city and country
is accompanied by an ethnic difference, the difference between
the indigenous peoples and the people with substantial European
(mostly Spanish) heritage. The campesinos are wholly indigenous,
and it has always been the people of European descent who have
ruled the cities and held the reins of political power. During
the Spanish period the indigenous peoples were mostly slaves
on estates _bought and sold as part of the estates--and it was
not until the revolution of 1952 that they could legally be educated.
For decades Bolivia has been the poorest
country in South America, with the possible exception of Guyana.
The poverty is of course not equally distributed, falling most
oppressively on the campesinos. The economic disparities are
enormous. The downturn in the world economy, and especially the
economic troubles in Brazil and Argentina, have wreaked havoc
with the Bolivian economy, and especially with the campesinos.
The current president, Gonzalo Sanchez
de Lozada, is of course of European descent, as are all the members
of his cabinet who appeared on television last night. He is not
prejudiced, and during his previous term (1993-97) both the Minister
and the Under-minister of Education had indigenous rather than
European roots. But Sanchez de Lozada is further distanced from
the population here by having spent his formative years in the
USA, graduating from a Quaker boarding school in Iowa and then
studying at the University of Chicago. He speaks Spanish with
an American accent.
Campesinos.
The campesinos are people with roots
in the country rather than the city, wherever they may live.
El Alto is city of some 800,000, all of whom should be considered
campesinos. The campesinos are all lower-class indigenous people,
and their mother tongue is generally one of the 23 indigenous
languages rather than Spanish. Some indigenous people are no
longer campesinos, those who were born in the city, have Spanish
as their mother tongue, and have become doctors or lawyers or
other middle-class professionals.
Even though Bolivia has the largest proportion
of indigenous people in the hemisphere--about 70%, followed by
Guatemala--the campesinos have never had any significant political
power. They mostly eke out a living on small farms, bringing
goods to market in the city. They are the oppressed of the oppressed,
with an average annual income under $600, and with houses lacking
running water and electricity. A huge proportion are malnourished,
and education and health services are primitive. But they are
lively and industrious and not generally sullen.
There have been campesino protests or
uprisings each year for the past eight or ten years, over different
issues. The campesino tactic has been to block highways, generally
highways on the Altiplano that are used to supply La Paz. The
blockades are primitive, made of local rocks, but they have become
increasingly effective politically.
Over the past half-dozen years the two
most effective campesino leaders (both now members of Congress)
have been Evo Morales, president of the cocaleros (farmers in
Chapare who grew coca leaves for export to Colombia), and Felipe
Quispe (also known as "el Mallku," which means boss
condor in Aymara), whose power base is among the Aymara campesinos
in the Altiplano (around Lake Titicaca). They are the spokesmen
to whom the media turn. But in fact they are able to speak for
only a small fraction of the campesinos. One Bolivian friend
put it this way: "Evo and Mallku were calling the shots
last week, but they lost control on Sunday night; the mass movement
we are witnessing today has many, many leaders, but no coordinated
leadership overall."
The Issues
There are two issues in the current showdown.
One is how to use the enormous reserves of natural gas that have
been discovered in Bolivia. This is the issue around which the
showdown began in August. The other issue is the president himself,
and it is this issue that has moved into the foreground in recent
days.
Gas
The first gas was discovered in 1924.
There were further discoveries over the years in the southern
part of the country and the full extent of the reserves gradually
has gradually become known. A dozen years ago plans were begun
by the multinational Repsol-YPF to pipe the gas to the coast,
liquify it, and sell it to California. Much pipeline has now
been built, but it does not reach the coast. In the intervening
years, especially in the past half dozen years, it has been determined
that the reserves are some fifty times larger than originally
estimated, and there has been increasing discussion about selling
off the national riches.
There are two main issues about the envisaged
sale. One is that the exploitation of the mineral wealth of the
country would mostly enrich Chileans and international corporations
rather than Bolivians. The other is that the proposed route of
the pipeline would benefit Chile, an historic enemy since Chile
took away Bolivia's outlet to the sea in the Charko War 125 years
ago.
Quispe galvanized the campesinos around
this issue in August, arguing it was time to put an end to the
wealth of Bolivia being used to enrich the rest of the world,
time for it to be used to enrich Bolivians. So the campesinos
demanded that the sale of gas to, or through, Chile be canceled,
and that the gas be used instead for industrialization within
Bolivia. To enforce the demands they blockaded the roads north
of La Paz, through the Aymara strongholds of Warisata and Achicachi
to the tourist center of Sorata.
The first serious confrontation took
place later in the month when the army forcibly evacuated some
hundred foreign tourists from Sorata, leaving six dead in Warisata.
Facts about the gas.
The facts are not easy to come by, and
I rely largely on a manifesto from the "consejo universitario"
of the Universidad Mayor de San Andres, the main public university
of Bolivia, which is dated yesterday and was published in today's
edition of La Razon. The proven reserves are now 60 trillion
cubic feet (TCF) and likely to reach 150 TCF, a quantity sufficient
to supply an industrialized Bolivia for 600 years. When the reserves
were contracted to Repsol-YPF some years ago, the sale was on
a lump sum basis rather than on the amount of gas extracted,
and the lump sum was based on only 2 TCF, the proven reserve
at the time but a very small fraction of the true reserve as
it is now known. Furthermore Bolivia was to receive only 18%
of the proceeds.
The terms of the sale were not based
on legislation but on a presidential decree, DS 24806, issued
by President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada just two days before he
left office at the end of his first term in 1997. The manifesto
calls this decree unconstitutional and says that its revocation
is essential to a solution of the problem about gas.
The dispute about gas becomes clearer
when we see that there four distinct issues that affect the national
pride and national well-being:
* that the gas is being exported rather
than used locally,
* that the exportation takes place through
Chile,
* that the contract price was based on
only 2 TCF of gas,
* that Bolivia receives 18% rather than
50% of proceeds.
This are powerful issues that are being
articulated with increasing clarity and cogency.
The President
"Goni", as he is called, is
not a cruel or evil man, but he is not politically astute and
seems to have got himself into an impossible position. He is
a wealthy man, he believes in free enterprise and free markets,
and he takes the US as a model for what he would like Bolivia
to become. His most powerful support seems to come from abroad;
and though he won about 23% of the vote in the election last
year, he lacks a natural political base in the country.
His first problem is that he is seen
as the father of the nefarious gas deal. It is a rather typical
sort of free enterprise deal; it will, if implemented, bring
money to Bolivia, and he probably has trouble seeing that there
is anything wrong with it. I doubt that George Bush or Dick Cheney
would see anything wrong with it either. Perhaps his belief in
free enterprise amounts to what Paul Krugman has called "free
enterprise fundamentalism." At any rate, it is what left
the opening for Quispe to begin the confrontation in August.
The president then used force to break
through the blockade. Most US officials would have done the same,
and the casualties were considerably fewer than when Janet Reno
decided to use force to end the stalemate at Waco. But Reno's
victims were an insignificant sect with no political power, whereas
Goni's victims were Aymara campesinos whose death inflamed Quispe's
power base. Furthermore the evacuation of the tourists worsened
the main problem: it made dialogue more difficult, so that the
road remains closed to traffic to this day.
Again last Sunday the president decided
to use force to replenish gasoline supplies in the capital, and
this time there were 34 deaths. Mallku and others were already
calling for his renunciation of power, and now the calls increased.
His vice-president publicly withdrew his support, and the mayor
of La Paz has called for him to step down. Whereas at first it
seemed as though it was the campesinos against the establishment,
now the establishment is divided with a substantial part calling
for his resignation.
On Tuesday the president made a firm
statement, praised by La Razon, calling for dialogue, urging
national unity and support of democratic institutions, insisting
that all the terms for the sale of gas were open for discussion,
and refusing to resign. But the opposition had hardened, dialogue
was just what he had spurned when he broke through the blockades
in Warisata and El Alto, and the massive popular movement calling
for resignation considers itself the voice of democracy. The
president was scheduled to make a statement at 9 this morning,
but he canceled it, and this afternoon there are again massive
demonstrations in the center of the city, this time with huge
explosions, since the Bolivian miners use dynamite for firecrackers.
The Events
Sunday was tense, with rumors that something
was going to happen. I went to the Quaker church in the morning,
but the Friends insisted that I go right home. In the evening
there was the confrontation in El Alto, with 34 deaths. There
were immediate calls for the president's resignation and for
marches on the capital the next day. Monday the marches began
in mid-morning, converging on the center from several directions,
and there were another 20 people killed. By Monday evening things
were more calm, but there were bonfires at many intersections.
There seemed to be a stand-off: the armed forces remained loyal
to the president and had turned back the militants, but the city
remained paralyzed.
On Sunday night the opposition had called
for an indefinite shutdown of the whole country as well as of
La Paz, and the transport workers called for a 72-hour shutdown
of transport. Even though Goni won the show of force on Monday,
he has not been able to end the shutdown. According to the paper,
Sucre, Cochabamba, Oruru, and Potosi are all paralyzed, as well
as La Paz and El Alto. That leaves Santa Cruz and Tarija as the
only major cities leading a more or less normal life.
This morning there was activity in the
market three blocks away, cut flowers and camomile being especially
plentiful. Tonight I heard that the airport will be closed tomorrow
for the fourth day.
The Outcome
There is such uncertainty about what
will happen next that many embassies have urged that all tourists
leave La Paz. I wonder how that could possibly be done. It now
seems that the only thing that would restore calm, at least for
a moment, is the president's resignation, but most international
organizations continue supporting him as the legitimate democratic
leader. The past two days have relatively calm, but there is
an underlying tension caused by the uncertainty.
The opposition, especially the campesinos,
refer to the president as an "assassin" and speak of
the killings; they call for an end to killing and also for the
"assassin" to acknowledge his wrongs ad step down.
The president and his cabinet regard the blockades as a form
of violence, and call for an end to violence. There is truth
to both sides. Neither such killings nor such blockades can be
part of civilized society. Nor can this eerie shutdown. So far
there seems blame enough to be shared around, and not much in
creative innovation.
Tonight the president made a joint declaration
with two of his opposition candidates in the 2002 election, Jaime
Paz Zamora (a former president) and Fernando Villa Reyes (head
of a right-wing party). More than anything else it represents
a last-ditch coalition to hold on to the old order. It may succeed
for now, with its international backing and its claim to legitimacy.
But it was immediately rejected by campesino leaders, and the
massiveness of the marches and protests shows that change is
exactly what cannot be avoided for long.
The issue about gas has now been demoted
to second rank, though it is of first importance in the long
run. There are bound to be legal complications about it, including
the status of DS 24806 and of the contract with Repsol-YPF, and
the WTO could end up penalizing Bolivia for any revocation or
substantial revision. But these events have dramatically heightened
a sense of national treasure and national heritage, as well as
of opportunity, and the issue is not likely to disappear. The
best chance for the current plans to proceed would be for Gonzalo
Sanchez to overcome his opposition, and that may partly explain
his international support.
It is difficult to see how the city can
return to normal without the president resigning. His resignation
would end the shutdown and begin the return to normal. The president
has called for dialogue, which is not likely to occur, but has
given no indication of what steps he could or might take to end
the shutdown. He has the police and the military, but they failed
to end the shutdown on Monday, and it difficult to see how they
could do so now. The president lacks the political power necessary
to use his military power, and the new coalition announced tonight
seems insufficient to the tasks.
However the current issues are resolved,
one inescapable result of the events of 2003 is the enormously
increased political power of the indigenous people. For that
alone this year will go down as a banner year in Bolivian history.
No indigenous politician will assume the highest office just
now, but the establishment has much to fear. Redistribution of
wealth is only one of the threats. Evo believes in free market
policies for coca and cocaine, and would rescind the eradication
of coca for export that has been achieved over the past ten years.
And Mallku has fomented an Aymara nationalism that not only calls
for an independent Aymara nation but also insists that all "gringos"
leave Bolivia. (Vague threats connected with this last point
were a factor prompting the evacuation of the tourists from Sorata.)
Fortunately events seem to have overtaken these now somewhat
stale campesino leaders, but we have little idea what will come
next.
It is well to recognize that change is
not always for the best. But it is for the best to recognize
change when it is at hand and to adjust policies to accommodate
it.
Newton Garver
is a philosopher, in La Paz on a Quaker educational project.
He is distinguished service professor emeritus at University
at Buffalo. This dispatach originally appeared on The
Buffalo Report, edited by CounterPuncher Bruce Jackson.
Addendum--10.16.03.
Two points. (1) Reports abroad that the
necessities of life are unavailable in La Paz need qualification.
The neighborhood where I am staying is one where no foreigners
or middle-class Bolivians live. Here there are no supermarkets,
but the large market down the street has everything one might
need, other than bread, albeit at vastly elevated prices: meat
has doubled and eggs tripled in price. (The higher prices go
directly into the pockets of campesinos.) There are no long lines,
as there are at supermarkets. Supermarkets, on the other hand,
have limited supplies (no transport to resupply them), limited
hours, and long lines. So the middle class and expatriates may
be suffering more than the lower class.
(2) Thousands more campesinos marched
into the capital today in an amazing demonstration of their determination
that the president resign. Among other there were 4,000 who arrived
in the morning from the Yungas and 8,000 who arrived mid-day
from El Alto. I watched the second march, which took some 20
minutes to pass. It was entirely peaceful, with no shots or explosions
or vandalism, and it was composed of campesinos of both sexes
and all ages; later I encountered a small part of them resting
in front of my hostal, and sensed no reason at all for fear.
Seeing these people heightened my sense that Goni cannot outlast
the shutdowns that he cannot end.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
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