Bolivia Rising

Bolivia Seizes Pan American Energy’s Stake in Gas Field

2012-01-25T15:08:00.000+11:00

By Alex Emery and Matthew Craze

Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Bolivia seized Pan American Energy LLC’s stake in the $1.6 billion Caipipendi natural-gas project, saying the Argentine company failed to meet investment targets.

State oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos, known as YPFB, will take over Pan American’s 25 percent stake in the field, Energy Minister Juan Jose Sosa said today. YPFB will evaluate Buenos Aires-based Pan American’s investment to date in a bid to conciliate, Sosa said.

“Pan American hasn’t contributed its percentage, so we’re carrying out an obligatory transfer of the contract to a YPFB subsidiary,” Sosa said in a broadcast by La Paz-based Radio Panamericana.

Oil and gas output has fallen in the Andean nation since President Evo Morales raised taxes and started seizing refineries and fields in 2006 to increase state control over Bolivia’s natural resources. Private investment in the industry plunged 69 percent to $271 million in 2009, the latest data available, from $865 million a decade earlier, according to YPFB.

“Bolivia has been very clear about a state-controlled model,” Moody’s analyst Gabriel Torres said in a telephone interview from New York. “But they need to move to the next level and not make it harder for investors.”

Moody’s rates Bolivia B1, four levels below investment grade.

Argentina Contract

Repsol YPF SA and BG Group Plc control the Caipipendi field, which is slated to begin production this year. Bolivia is counting on the field to help boost the country’s natural-gas output by 40 percent to 66 million cubic meters a day by 2014 to meet its supply contracts with Brazil and Argentina.

Bolivia agreed in 2010 to almost quadruple gas supply to Argentina to 27.7 million cubic meters per day by 2026. Bolivia currently exports 30 million cubic meters of gas a day to Brazil and 7.7 million cubic meters to Argentina, according to YPF.

Pan American won’t comment until it’s officially notified of the government’s decision, a company official who declined to be named citing company policy, said by telephone. Repsol spokesman Kristian Rix declined to comment in an e-mailed response to questions. BG didn’t immediately return telephone calls seeking comment.

Natural gas for February delivery rose 2.9 cents to $2.554 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gas, which is down 44 percent from a year ago, fell to $2.231 on Jan. 23, the lowest price since February 2002.

Bolivia's state airline catapults to market leader

2012-01-22T09:46:00.000+11:00

CARLOS VALDEZ, Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — In just three years, Bolivia's state airline has pushed aside private carriers, bucking an international trend toward privatization while becoming the leader in domestic flights for a poor Andean country where flying remains a luxury.

Boliviana de Aviacion has abolished first class and sells all seats for the same low prices, marketing the flights with a socialist stamp in keeping with President Evo Morales' insistence that "all are equal."

The story of how BoA has managed to fly high while governments elsewhere have been privatizing or bailing out their state-run carriers reflects shrewd timing in filling a void in the market, as well as cut-rate fares that have attracted a growing clientele.

BoA now controls about half of Bolivia's domestic air travel market. As its routes and earnings have grown, it has announced plans to expand its fleet by buying as many as six new Embraer 190 planes from Brazil.

"BoA has been an interesting bet on the government's part," said Armando Mendez, an analyst and former president of Bolivia's Central Bank. "Little by little, it has captured more acceptance and it competes with the private company AeroSur."

Mendez said BoA seems to be bringing healthy competition to Bolivia, where five airlines battle in a market of about 1.5 million passengers a year. The airline has successfully filled a gap left by the 2007 failure of Lloyd Aereo Boliviano, a former state-run company that went bankrupt after failed attempts to privatize it.

The airline has also tried some creative marketing, including teaming up with a lingerie store last month to offer an in-flight fashion show featuring Colombian and Bolivian models parading down the aisles of a Boeing 737 in revealing underwear.

"Let yourself get carried away," BoA urges potential customers.

BoA won over clients by offering two-for-one deals during its first year in 2009. Since then, it has kept fares low, and its main competitor AeroSur has accused BoA of unfair pricing tactics and subsidies.

While AeroSur charges about $245 for a round-trip adult ticket between the cities of La Paz and Santa Cruz this month, BoA charges about $190. It also offers discounts for the elderly and children.

The airline has been a rare success among various attempts by Morales' government to administer state-owned enterprises.

Since taking office in 2006, Morales has increased government revenues by declaring Bolivia's natural gas deposits national patrimony and securing a greater share of royalties for the state. While boosting Bolivia's income, the tactic has also largely discouraged foreign investment.

Bolivia similarly has a wealth of minerals including tin and silver, but mining production has been declining and several small government-run companies haven't managed to reverse the trend.

The country's lithium riches have gone untapped, largely because of Morales' insistence that any extraction partner also manufacture in Bolivia the lithium batteries expected to power the electronic cars of the future.

BoA is an exception in part because air travel is growing in the country as well as in Latin America overall.

Using a fleet of six leased Boeing 737s, the airline now offers international flights to Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Lima, and has plans to add Caracas and Havana.

The number of passengers flying in Bolivia has increased 35 percent in the past six years, authorities say.

Airlines' operating profits grew to $518 million in Latin America during the third quarter of 2011, up from $513 million a year earlier, according to the International Air Transport Association. That contrasted with declining profits elsewhere.

"Right now Latin America is very, very hot in the sense that it's very rapidly growing," said Helane Becker, an airlines analyst at Dahlman Rose & Co. in New York. "You can't get seats on flights, the pricing has gone through the roof and I think the government sees that."

A new state-run airline launch is rare these days, with privatization far more common.

Italy's national carrier Alitalia was privatized in 2008. Greece sold off debt-ridden state carrier Olympic Airlines in 2009.

"State-run airlines are becoming less common worldwide as governments try to get out of the taxpayer costs and union politics of running an airline," said Ray Neidl, an analyst at Maxim Group LLC in New York.

But Latin America's leftist governments have bucked that free-market trend.

Argentina's government expropriated Aerolineas Argentinas in 2008 as it teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. It spent about $760 million on the company during 2011, much of it to cover losses from unprofitable routes and the burden of frequent strikes.

In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez's government has subsidized Conviasa since its 2004 launch and this month announced plans to buy six new planes.

In Bolivia, Morales' government initially spent $25 million to launch BoA in 2009. Vice President Alvaro Garcia said last month that the airline lost $6 million in its first year, "but in 2010 it stabilized and achieved earnings of more than $4 million, aside from the payment of $34 million in taxes."

Economy Minister Luis Arce said that between September 2010 and September 2011, the company's earnings totaled about $90 million, while its operating costs were about $78 million.

BoA's success has added to a bitter political feud with Morales opponent Humberto Roca, AeroSur's majority owner.

Roca fled into exile in the United States in 2010 after Bolivian authorities accused him of illegal enrichment and began investigating his fortune. He denies wrongdoing.

"The government wants to take over the airline market, and that involves sinking AeroSur," Roca said last year.

Bolivia's state transport authority ruled against AeroSur SA in a 2009 complaint, saying there was no unfair competition.

Government officials defend BoA's approach saying it's aimed at creating a bigger state role in the sector. BoA manager Ronald Casso has said the carrier needed to aggressively price its fares to compete with AeroSur's virtual monopoly.

BoA became the top domestic carrier in 2010, while AeroSur has compensated for domestic losses with its international flights. Two other private airlines, Aerocon and Amaszonas, fly in Bolivia, as well as the military-run airline Transporte Aereo Militar, or TAM.

For BoA, the upward trend looks set to continue. Its number of passengers grew 21 percent in the first 10 months of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010.

Morales last month proposed to buy six Embraer 190 jets during a meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Caracas. Two planes would be delivered yearly between 2013 and 2015.

But Mendez warns that investing so much could be misguided. Each jet costs an estimated $35 million.

"The recommendation we make to the government is that while BoA is clearly a company that's growing, don't buy planes," Mendez said. "The business is in leasing them."

Associated Press writers Paola Flores in La Paz, Debora Rey in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ian James in Caracas, Venezuela, and AP Airlines Writer Josh Freed in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

Proposal of Bolivia to Rio+20

2012-01-11T16:21:00.000+11:00

The Rights of Nature

The proposals developed by the Plurinational State of Bolivia bring together and build upon the progress made in the World Charter for Nature (1982), the Rio Declaration (1992), the Earth Charter (2000), and the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (2010):

I. A DEEPER COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY

1. In this century, the central challenges of sustainable development are: on the one hand, to overcome poverty and the tremendous inequalities that exist and, on the other hand, reestablish the equilibrium of the Earth system. Both objectives are intrinsically linked and one cannot be reached independently of the other.

2. It is essential to recognize and affirm that growth has limits. The pursuit of unending development on a finite planet is unsustainable and impossible. The limit to development is defined by the regenerative capacity of the Earth’s vital cycles. When growth begins to break that balance, as we see with global warming, we can no longer speak of it as development, but rather, the deterioration and destruction of our home. A certain level of growth and industrialization is needed to satisfy basic needs and guarantee the human rights of a population, but this level of “necessary development” is not about permanent growth, but rather, balance among humans and with nature.

3. New technologies will not allow unending economic growth. Scientific advances, under some circumstances, can contribute to resolve certain problems of development but can’t ignore the natural limits of the Earth system.

4. The main challenge for the eradication of poverty is not to grow forever, but to achieve an equitable distribution of the wealth that is possible under the limits of the Earth system. In a world in which 1% of the population controls 50% of the wealth of the planet, it will not be possible to eradicate poverty or restore harmony with nature.

5. Sustainable development seeks to eradicate poverty in order to live well, not generate wealthy people who live at the expense of the poor. The goal is the satisfaction of basic human needs in order to allow for the development of human capabilities and human happiness, strengthening community among human beings and with Mother Earth.

6. To end poverty and achieve an equitable distribution of wellbeing, the basic resources and companies should be in the hands of the public sector and society. Only a society that controls its principal sources of income can aspire to a just distribution of the benefits needed to eliminate poverty.

7. The so-called “developed” countries must reduce their levels of over-consumption and overexploitation of resources of the world in order to reestablish harmony among human beings and with nature, allowing for the sustainable development of all developing countries.

8. Developing countries should realize their right to development following patterns and paradigms that are distinct from those of developed countries. It is not sustainable or viable for all countries to follow the example of developed countries without causing the collapse of our Earth system. The ecological footprint of the developed countries is between 3 and 5 times larger than the average ecological footprint that the Earth system can sustain without an impact on its vital cycles.

9. Sustainable development can only be achieved from a global perspective and cannot be achieved only in the national level. The wellbeing of a country is only sustainable if it also serves to contribute to the wellbeing of the entire Earth system. The so-called developed countries are still far from reaching sustainable development.

10. Sustainable development should ensure equilibrium among the three pillars – social, economic, and environmental – which are interrelated, preserving the fundamental principle of common but differentiated responsibility.

II. THE NEW EMERGING CHALLENGE: RESTORING THE EQUILIBRIUM OF THE EARTH SYSTEM

11. The emerging challenges of the 21st Century are the product of exaggerated ambition and accumulation of wealth concentrated in a few sectors, the exacerbation and combination of different contradictions that were present in the last century. The various crises that exist in the areas of food, energy, the environment, climate, finance, water, and even institutions have reached chronic levels and are feeding off of one another, in some cases to the point of no return.

12. We are living an environmental crisis that, as it deepens, threatens the existence of human beings and life as a whole. The Earth is a living system and the source of life. It is an indivisible, interdependent and interrelated community comprised of human beings, nature, the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere. The Earth system has intrinsic laws that regulate its functioning, articulating the physical, chemical, biological and ecological elements in a manner that makes life possible. Through the term Mother Earth, we express this relationship of belonging to a system and respect for our home.

13. Human activity is altering the dynamics and functioning of the Earth system to a degree never before seen. The capitalist system is the principal cause of the imbalance because it puts the rules of the market and the accumulation of profit above the laws of nature. Nature is not simply a sum of elements, it’s not a source of resources that can be exploited, modified, altered, privatized, commercialized and transformed without any consequences.

14. Human beings and nature are at the center of concerns for sustainable development. It is essential to get beyond the anthropocentric vision. Until now, no species besides Man has been able to modify the characteristics of the planet in such a substantial way and in such a short period of time. It is essential to restore and guarantee the existence, integrity, interrelation, interaction and regeneration of the Earth system as a whole and of all of its components in order to achieve a sustainable development that is capable of confronting the multiple crises facing humanity and the planet today.

III. TOOLS FOR FIXING THE PERSISTENT GAPS AND ACHIEVE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

15. To reestablish harmony with nature, we must recognize and respect the intrinsic laws of nature and its vital cycles. Not only do human beings have a right to a healthy life, but so do the other components and species belonging to the system we call nature. In an interdependent and interrelated system like the planet Earth, it is not possible to recognize the rights of just the human part of the system without affecting the whole. Just as human beings have rights, the Mother Earth also has the right to exist, the right to maintain its vital cycles, the right to regeneration, the right to be free from structural alteration, and the right to relate to the other parts of the Earth system. In order to reestablish balance with nature, it is necessary to clearly establish the obligations of humans toward nature, and to recognize that nature has rights that should be respected, promoted, and defended.

16. We have to end the system of consumption, waste and luxury. Millions of people are dying of hunger in the poorest parts of the globe, while the richest spend millions of dollars are spent to combat obesity. Developed countries must change their unsustainable patterns of consumption, production, and waste through public policies, regulations, the conscious and active participation of society, This includes promoting ethics that value human beings for what they are, not what they have.

17. It is necessary to guarantee the human right to water, education, health, communication, transportation, energy and sanitation. The provision of these services must be essentially public and based on efficient social management, not private business. The principal goal should be common wellbeing and not private profit, in order to ensure that these services reach the poorest and most marginalized sectors in an equitable manner.

18. States should ensure the right of their populations to proper nutrition by strengthening food sovereignty policies that promote: a) food production by farmers, indigenous peoples and small agricultural producers; b) access to land, water, seeds, credit and other resources for family and community producers; c) the development of social and public enterprises for food production, distribution, and sale that prevent hoarding and contribute to the stability of food prices in domestic markets, thus halting speculative practices and the destruction of local production; d) the right of citizens to define and to know and have the proper information about what they consume, the way their food is produced, and its origins; e) the right to healthy, varied and nutritious food; f) the right to consume what is necessary and prioritize local production; g) practices that contribute to reestablishing harmony with nature, avoiding greater desertification, deforestation, and destruction of biological diversity; h) the promotion of the use of indigenous seeds and traditional knowledge. Food production and commercialization must be socially regulated and cannot be left to free market forces.

19. Without water, there is no life. Humans and all living things have the right to water, but water also has rights. All States and peoples worldwide should work together in solidarity to ensure that loss of vegetation, deforestation, the pollution of the atmosphere and contamination are prevented from continuing to alter the hydrological cycle. These cause desertification, lack of food, temperature increase, sea level rise, migrations, acid rain, and physical-chemical changes that could provoke the loss of genetic and species diversity, damaging the health of ecosystems.

20. Forests are essential to the balance and integrity of planet Earth and a key element in the proper functioning of its ecosystems and the broader system of which we are a part. Thus we cannot consider them as simple providers of goods and services for human beings. The protection, preservation and recuperation of forests is necessary in order to reestablish the balance of the Earth system. Plantations that are planted for profit and promoted as carbon sinks and providers of environmental services are not forests. Forests are not plantations that can be reduced to their capacity to capture carbon and provide environmental services. Native forests and woodlands are essential for the water cycle, the atmosphere, biodiversity, the prevention of flooding, and the preservation of ecosystems. Forests are also home to indigenous peoples and communities. The preservation of forests should be pursued through integral and participatory management plans that should be financed with public funding from developed countries or specific taxes on the sectors with the greatest consumption.

21. It is essential to guarantee a real and effective reduction of greenhouse gases, particularly on the part of the developed countries historically responsible for climate change, in order to stabilize the increase in temperature to 1°C during this century. We must therefore strengthen the Kyoto Protocol with a second period of commitments by developed countries, instead of replacing it with a more flexible voluntary agreement. It is necessary to eliminate carbon market mechanisms and offsets so that real domestic reductions are made within the countries with said obligations. South Africa should not be another Cancun, delaying once again the central issue of substantive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

22. All forms of violence against women are incompatible with sustainable development. Violence done to women in militarily occupied territories, domestic or sexual violence, and discrimination in the workplace and in public spheres are problems we must solve. We must link the issue of the economic role of women to the protection of nature.

23. In order for sustainable development to exist, it is essential to guarantee the full application of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

24. Under the framework of common but differentiated responsibilities established in the 1992 Rio Declaration, the so-called developed countries must assume and pay their historical ecological debt for having contributed the most to the deterioration of the Earth system. The payment of this ecological debt by developed countries to developing countries and the sectors most affected among their own populations should replace to the greatest possible degree the ecological damage provoked. Developed countries should transfer financial resources from public sources and also the effective transfer of socially and ecologically appropriate technologies required by sovereign developing countries.

25. The enormous resources dedicated to defense, security and war budgets by developed countries should be reduced. These resources should instead be used to address the effects of climate change and the imbalance with nature. It is inexcusable that 1.5 trillion dollars in public funding are used on these budgets, while, to address the impacts of climate change in developing countries, they want to dedicate just 100 billion dollars from public and private funds as well as market sources.

26. A financial transaction tax should be created to help build a Sustainable Development Fund to attend to the sustainable development challenges faced by developing countries. This financing mechanism should generate new, stable and additional resources for developing countries. A tax of 0.05% applied on a global level has the potential to capture $661 billion per year according to ECLAC.[1] The mechanism of the international financial transaction tax can be built in a voluntary and gradual manner with the participation of those developed and developing countries that wish to participate.

27. The Rio+20 Conference should not create market mechanisms with regard to nature, biodiversity and the so called environmental services: a) The logic of the market and monetary valuation applied to environmental services and biodiversity will generate greater inequality in the distribution of those resources, which are essential for humanity and Mother Earth; b) The establishment of these market mechanisms will deepen the imbalance with nature because they are driven by the search for maximum profits and not harmony with nature; c) It will affect the sovereignty of our States and peoples by generating new forms of property rights over the functions of nature that will be in the hands of investors. These mechanisms are uncertain, volatile and the source of financial speculation given that the bulk of the money they mobilize will remain in the hands of intermediary actors.

28. Sustainable development requires a new international financial architecture to replace the World Bank and the IMF with entities that are democratic and transparent, that respect national priorities and national independence in the application of development strategies. These new institutions should have a majority representation by developing countries and should act according to the principles of solidarity and cooperation, rather than commercialization and privatization.

29. It is essential to create an effective Technology Transfer Mechanism that stems from the demand and needs of the countries of the South for technologies that are socially, culturally, and environmentally appropriate. Said mechanism should not be a “show room” for the sale of technologies by rich countries. In order to promote the exchange of scientific and technical knowledge, it is essential to remove intellectual property barriers so that there might exist a true transfer of environmentally friendly technologies from developed countries to developing countries.

30. Intellectual property rights over genes, microorganisms and other forms of life are a threat to food sovereignty, biodiversity, access to medicine and other elements that are essential for the survival of low-income populations. All forms of intellectual property over life should be abolished.

31. Gross Domestic Product is not an adequate means of measuring the development and wellbeing of a society. Thus it is necessary to create indicators for measuring the environmental destruction caused by certain economic activities in order to advance toward sustainable development in harmony with nature, integrating social and environmental aspects that are not aimed at the commercialization of nature and its functions.

32. Respect for the sovereignty of States is essential in the management and protection of nature under the framework of cooperation among States.

33. No identical solutions exist for all peoples. Human beings are diverse. Our peoples have their own unique cultures and identities. To destroy a culture is to threaten the identity of an entire people. Capitalism attempts to homogenize us all to convert us into consumers. There has not been, nor will there ever be, a single model for life that can save the world. We live and act in a pluralistic world, and a pluralistic world should respect diversity, which is itself synonymous with life. Respect for peaceful and harmonious complementarity among the diverse cultures and economies, without exploitation or discrimination against any single one, is essential for saving the planet, humanity, and life.

34. Peace is essential for sustainable development. There is no worse aggression against humanity and Mother Earth than war and violence. War destroys life, and it has a particularly strong impact on the poorest and most vulnerable. Nobody and nothing is safe from war. Those that fight suffer, as do those that are forced to go without bread in order to feed the war. Wars squander life and natural resources.

35. An International Tribunal of Environmental and Climate Justice must be established to judge and sanction crimes against nature that transcend national borders, violating the rights of nature and affecting humanity.

36. To achieve sustainable development, it is necessary to promote public associations, public-public associations among actors in different States, public-social associations among different social sectors, and public-private associations.

37. The problems affecting humanity and nature require the exercise of global democracy through the development of mechanisms of consultation and decision-making such as referendums, plebiscites, or popular consultations so that the citizens of the world as a whole may speak.

38. Sustainable development is incompatible with all forms of imperialism and neocolonialism. In order to stop imperialism and neocolonialism, it is essential to end the imposition of conditionalities, military interventions, coups and blackmail.

39. The collective global response that is needed to confront the crisis we face requires structural changes. We must change the system – not the climate or the Earth system. In the hands of capitalism, everything is converted into merchandise: water, earth genomes, ancestral cultures, justice, ethics and life. It is essential to develop a pluralistic system based on the culture of life and harmony among human beings and with nature; a system that promotes sustainable development in the framework of solidarity, complementarity, equity, social and economic justice, social participation, respect for diversity, and peace.

IV. THE GREEN ECONOMY AND ITS DANGEROUS AND FALSE SOLUTIONS

40. At a global scale, the supposed objective of the Green Economy of disassociating economic growth from environmental deterioration is not viable. Those that promote the Green Economy promote a three-dimensional capitalism that includes physical capital, human capital, and natural capital (rivers, wetlands, forests, coral reefs, biological diversity and other elements). For the Green Economy, the food crisis, the climate crisis and the energy crisis share a common characteristic: the failed allocation of capital. As a result, they try to treat nature as capital – “natural capital.”

41. The Green Economy considers it essential to put a price on the free services that plants, animals and ecosystems offer to humanity in the struggle for the conservation of biodiversity, water purification, pollination of plants, the protection of coral reefs and regulation of the climate. For the Green Economy, it is necessary to identify the specific functions of ecosystems and biodiversity and assign them a monetary value, evaluate their current status, set a limit after which they will cease to provide services, and concretize in economic terms the cost of their conservation in order to develop a market for each particular environmental service. For the Green Economy, the instruments of the market are powerful tools for managing the “economic invisibility of nature.”

42. One of the examples most cited by the Green Economy is the initiative known as REDD (Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which consists of isolating and measuring the capacity of the forest to capture and store carbon dioxide in order to issue certificates for greenhouse gas emissions reductions that can be commercialized and acquired by companies in developed countries that cannot meet their mitigation commitments. In this way, the developing countries will end up financing the developed countries.

43. It is wrong to attempt to fragment nature into “environmental services” with a monetary value for market exchange. We should not put a price on the capacity of forests to act as carbon sinks, nor promote their commercialization as does REDD. The market for carbon credits based on forests will lead to: a) noncompliance with effective emission reduction commitments by developed countries; b) the bulk of resources being appropriated by intermediaries and financial entities and rarely benefitting countries, indigenous peoples and forests themselves; c) the generation of speculative bubbles based on the sale and purchase of said certificates; and d) the establishment of new property rights over the capacity of forests to capture carbon dioxide, which will clash with the sovereign rights of States and the indigenous peoples that live in forests. The promotion of market mechanisms based on the economic needs of developing countries is a new form of neocolonialism.

44. The postulates promoted under the Green Economy are wrong. The current environmental and climate crisis is not a simple market failure. The solution is not to put a price on nature. Nature is not a form of capital. It is wrong to say that we only value that which has a price, an owner, and brings profits. The market mechanisms that permit exchange among human beings and nations have proven incapable of contributing to an equitable distribution of wealth. The Green Economy should not distort the fundamental principles of sustainable development.

45. Not all that glitters is gold. Not all that is labeled “green” is environmentally friendly. We must use the precautionary principle and deeply analyze the different “green” alternatives that are presented before proceeding with their experimentation and implementation.

46. Nature cannot be subject to manipulation by new technologies without consequences in the future. History shows us that many dangerous technologies have been released in the market before their environmental or health impacts are known, or before their social and economic impacts on poor people and developing countries are understood. This is currently the case with genetically modified organisms, agrochemicals, biofuels, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. These technologies should be avoided.

47. Geoengineering and all forms of artificial manipulation of the climate should be prohibited, for they bring the enormous risk of further destabilizing the climate, biodiversity and nature.

48. It is necessary to create public and multilateral mechanisms within the United Nations to evaluate in an independent manner and without conflict of interest the potential environmental, health, social, and economic impacts of new technologies before they are spread. This mechanism must involve transparency and social participation by potentially affected groups.

49. “Green” capitalism will bring about natural resource grabbing, displacing humanity and nature from the essential elements needed for their survival. The drive for profit, instead of reestablishing harmony within the system, will provoke even greater imbalances, concentrations of wealth, and speculative processes.

V. INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTINABLE DEVELOPMENT

50. The institutional architecture of the United Nations for sustainable development should establish a structure to promote balanced and equal treatment of the three pillars: the economic, social, and environmental. This institutional architecture should articulate and coordinate the different authorities involved in order to avoid overlapping efforts and achieve effective coordination.

51. The Economic Pillar should determine the sustainable development agendas of economic and commercial organizations such as the WTO, the World Bank and IMF. Without an effective integration among these entities, the institutional framework will be unable to define the economic policies necessary to achieve sustainable development while respecting national priorities and national independence and with transparent and socially acceptable management.

52. The Social Pillar should coordinate entities such as ILO, WHO, UNESCO, UN-Women, the Indigenous Permanent Forum and others in order to improve their actions and impacts in the struggle for the eradication of poverty.

53. The Environmental Pillar should stem from a better coordination and implementation of the different Conventions (UNFCCC, UNCCD, CBD) and the incorporation of all environmental issues including water.

54. The coordination of these three pillars should be under the auspices of a Council for Sustainable Development that is created on the basis of what is now the Commission on Sustainable Development. It should be at the level of a Council that would function as a subsidiary body of the General Assembly, guaranteeing a fundamental role for States, coordinating with the Economic and Social Council, and with regular functioning to follow up on and implement the goals and mechanisms agreed and resolutions adopted.

55. Developing countries should have a majority representation in said Council, and its functioning should be democratic and transparent.

56. The Council for Sustainable Development should include mechanisms for the participation of civil society and non-governmental organizations especially organizations representing workers, indigenous peoples, farmers, small agricultural producers and fishermen, women, youth and consumers. The private sector cannot have the same amount of influence as the social sectors, given that, by definition, its goal is to create profit rather than social wellbeing. The linking of the Sustainable Development Council with the different social actors should occur through a Consultative Group.

[1] http://www.eclac.org/cgi-bin/getProd.asp?xml=/prensa/noticias/comunicados/3/44323/P44323.xml&xsl=/prensa/tpl/p6f.xsl&base=/tpl/top-bottom.xsl

Climate Change: Should the rich continue polluting? - Pablo Solon, former UNFCCC negotiator and UN ambassador to Bolivia

2011-12-11T16:29:00.002+11:00

Khadija Sharife and Vadim Nikitin

Pablo Solon, former UNFCCC negotiator and UN ambassador to Bolivia, tells The Africa Report that the biggest mistake with the Kyoto Protocol is to allow multinationals to continue polluting in a technically legal manner. "Should the rich be allowed to keep polluting?" Solon asks.

The Africa Report: What is the issue at stake here?

Solon:Here, we have a negotiation at two levels – one is this negotiation (pointing to the ICC) and the other is between the rich sector and the poor sector. It's a pity that it is not being highlighted here. There is the negotiation between nations too - that the countries responsible for 80 percent of historical emissions, US, Europe, Japan, are going to lose only 13-17 percent of emissions from the year 1990. So that is absolutely unacceptable because if they do that then the temperature will increase by more than 4 degrees Celsius. No matter what you do here ... if big emitters don't do what they must do the results will be bad.

This is the issue here – we think that at the UN level – that is, negotiation between nations, this unfair distribution of atmospheric space should end. At the national level, many countries have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and do it in a way that favours the poorest part of the population. You have countries where people don't have electricity... and areas that consume a lot of energy. So there is a problem between nations and the distribution of resources, in our countries, between our populations. How is development going to take shape and how it will benefit the majority – that is the question.

How should civil society approach COP17? What is the right approach – boycott it? Support it? What should our relationship be?

Well, if there is no pressure from civil society, there won't be the possibility to have any kind of agreement that is in some way possible to make a difference. If you want to change it, there has to be a huge movement developed outside of the main structures... The problem with climate change is that you cannot reach an agreement that stabilises the climate unless states are in agreement, and ratify that agreement.

Should the emissions from multinationals that export pollution to developing countries be included as part of the 'home' countries rather than included as developing country emissions?

Yes, absolutely, because we see that some countries, very rich countries, are saying that yes, we have reduced (our GHG), but what they have done is exported their industries and production to other developing countries, and so, in reality, they are not reducing the production of pollution, but shifting the location of it.

Why did the Kyoto Protocol create flexibility mechanisms that would allow for multinationals to continue emissions in a technically legal manner?

That is the biggest mistake of the Kyoto Protocol – because it allows rich countries that don't reduce their GHG emissions to buy polluting permits from developing countries. Our proposal – as part of the People's Agreement built in Bolivia, all emissions reductions should be accounted nationally, inside your own borders, because it is not correct to say I'm going to reduce 40 percent, but in reality you're going to buy it, but only because you have money. Should the rich be allowed to keep polluting?

But if you outsource production, doesn't that increase their industrial development and lead to an increase in investment in those countries, aren't there any positive outcomes of carbon trading?

In carbon trading? No - not at all.... Do we want to have an outcome of neutralisation in developing countries – is that positive? Yes. But another thing is to say that we are going to support this initiative but in exchange we are going to pollute the world. That is not positive at all. Many of those processes of neutralisation will happen anyway - because cheaper labour and raw material is cheaper anyway. So it is not because they want to help you neutralise. Another thing is we need to create jobs and development in the developing world but there has to be another way. Because otherwise we are going to follow the same model and we know that is unsustainable. The need for neutralisation is real but it doesn't have to follow that pathway.

Is the financialisation of ecosystems and resources potentially beneficial?

We are against financialised instruments like REDD – what it will bring. This is rubbish, a process of commodification, of privatization, ie: I'm not selling you the tree, but (rather the) capacity of that tree to absorb C02. So there will be a corporation in another country who owns the right to the tree, in terms of its capacity to absorb C02. It's a new profit of privatisation. Their argument is that we are in crisis because we have not treated nature as a capital. If we treat nature as a capital, then we can let the forces of the market bring some good distribution of resources. But that is not going to happen. It hasn't happened with the people, it won't happen with the environment.

To what extent is the issue of climate crisis a question of power and politics? Should democracy be participatory rather than representative so climate policies can include systemic change of macroeconomic policies causing the crisis?

Precisely, that is why one of the main questions that came out of the climate change conference at Cochabamba... a referendum that would give people their power back. If we keep waiting for representative democracy, in reality, this represents more the interests of corporations, than people.

Republished from The Africa Report

CELAC is an instrument of liberation, says Evo Morales

2011-12-08T10:22:00.001+11:00

Prensa Latina

Bolivian President, Evo Morales, said that the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) will be an instrument that will allow them to be free politically and economically from imperialism.

In an interview with the multinational Telesur, published today by the state-run daily, Cambio, Morales affirmed that he has the hope that the new block of countries will speed the process of decolonization.

"There is one position, as in being free of imperialist domination. This is a profound theme. After 500 years of indigenous resistance, and 200 years of independence, finally we came together to liberate us," he remarked.

Morales assured that in the new regional organization, without the presence of the United States, it will be possible to discuss how to tackle the energy, food and economic crises that devastate the countries of the region.

He also urged the countries that had been annexed to join the decolonization process being undertaken by some nations of the blazing CELAC.

CELAC is made up of 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean without the presence of the United States or Canada.

Morales explained that this alliance will further strengthen the integration process carried out in South America since the creation of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). The first step that CELAC should take is to conform their General Secretariat, then coordinate the work of the ministries in all member states to discuss issues of common interest.

In this respect, he noted that this work must be undertaken by the chancelleries to touch economic and productive issues, among others.

He stressed that the region has all the necessary wealth to consolidate itself as a power.

Morales also opined that the policy of CELAC is universal health and education, since it is a human right, not a private business.

Former chief negotiator for climate change and UN Ambassador of the Plurinational State of Bolivia Pablo Solon on COP17: The Great Escape III

2011-12-08T09:21:00.002+11:00

Pablo Solon (*)

After 9 days of negotiations there is no doubt that we saw this movie before. It is the third remake of Copenhagen and Cancun. Same actors. Same script. The documents are produced outside the formal negotiating scenario . In private meetings, dinners which the 193 member states do not attend. The result of these meetings is known only on the last day. In the case of Copenhagen it was at two in the morning after the event should have already ended. In Cancun, the draft decision just appeared at 5 p.m. on the last day and was not opened for negotiation, not even to correct a comma. Bolivia stood firm on both occasions. The reason: the very low emission reduction commitments of industrialized countries that would lead to an increase in average global temperatures of more than 4° Celsius. In Cancun, Bolivia stood alone. I could not do otherwise. How could we accept the same document that was rejected in Copenhagen, knowing that 350,000 people die each year due to natural disasters caused by climate change? To remain silent is to be complicit in genocide and ecocide. To accept a disastrous document in order not to be left alone is cowardly diplomacy. Even more so when one trumpets the “people’s diplomacy” and has pledged to defend the “People’s Agreement” of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth held in Bolivia last year.

Durban will be worse than Copenhagen and Cancun. Two days before the close of the meetings, the true text that is being negotiated is not yet known. Everyone knows that the actual 131-page document is just a compilation of proposals that were already on the table in Panama two months ago. The formal negotiations have barely advanced. The real document will appear toward the end of COP17.

But more importantly, the substance of the negotiations remains unchanged from Copenhagen. The emission reduction pledges by developed countries are still 13% to 17% based on 1990 levels. Everyone knows that this is a catastrophe. But instead of becoming outraged, they attempt to sweeten the poison. The wrapper of this package will be the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and a mandate for a new binding agreement. The substance of the package will be the same as in Copenhagen and Cancun: do virtually nothing during this decade in terms of reducing emissions, and get a mandate to negotiate an agreement that will be even weaker than the Kyoto Protocol and that will replace it in 2020. “The Great Escape III” is the name of this movie, and it tells the story of how the governments of rich countries along with transnational corporations are looking to escape their responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of becoming stronger, the fight against climate change is becoming more soft and flexible, with voluntary commitments to reduce emissions. The question is, who will step up this time to denounce the fraud to the end? Or could it be that this time, everyone will accept the remake of Copenhagen and Cancun?

The truth is that beyond the setting and the last scene, the end of this film will be the same as in Copenhagen and Cancun: humanity and mother earth will be the victims of a rise in temperature not seen in 800,000 years.

(*) Pablo Solon is an international analyst and social activist. He was chief negotiator for climate change and United Nations Ambassador of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2009-June 2011). http://pablosolon.wordpress.com/

Republished from PWCCC

Bolivia at Durban COP 17 climate summit: ‘Forests are not for carbon stocks’

2011-12-03T17:28:00.002+11:00

Yusuf Omar

Bolivia came out swinging at its first press conference of the climate change conference yesterday, criticising the Green Climate Fund – which is meant to help developing countries adapt to climate change – and opposing the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation scheme (Redd).

“Bolivia is showing strongly against the mechanism of Redd. The role of the forest is not for carbon stocks,” said the head of the Bolivian delegation, Rene Orellana.

Redd is a set of steps designed to use financial incentives to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from deforestation and forest degradation. The forest produces carbon credits and therefore becomes an emissions offsetting scheme.

While most countries have been hesitant to overtly state their positions at such an early stage in the negotiations, the Bolivian delegation took a strong stance against the mainstream consensus of the talks thus far.

“As people who live in the forest, we are not carbon stocks. We disagree with Redd because we oppose the commoditisation of the forest,” said Orellana. Fifty percentt of Bolivia is blanketed in forest, 40 percent of which is in lowlands near the Amazon.

“It’s a complex and dangerous situation to see forests as carbon stocks. The forest provides a role as food security, a water source and biodiversity for our indigenous population. Redd reduces the function of the forest to just one, carbon stocks,” he said. “We have an alternative proposal, not based on market solutions.”

The joint mitigation and adaptation plan mechanism proposal, called “sustainable forest life”, outlines three main principles: to find different sources of finance for climate change mitigation and adaptation (other than carbon credits); the recognition of multiple forest functions such as environment, social, economic and cultural functions; and methodologies for integrated forest management.

“We have put the proposal on the table, but no attention is being paid. We are not saying the system should be the same in Bolivia and South Africa, although we share many of the same environmental issues. Most of the countries are supporting Redd,” said Orellana.

He also went on to criticise some of the details of the proposed Green Climate Fund. “We do not agree with having results-based payments,” said Orellana.

Countries agreed to form the Green Climate Fund during climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico, and a transitional committee was formed.

While Bolivia is somewhat politically unstable, with recent student riots in November, its environmental stand is firm.

In Cancun, Bolivia was the irritating thorn in the side of the US and the EU.

This year, the South American country also passed the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. “We must have respect for the rights of Mother Earth,” said Orellana.

The Law of Mother Earth defines the country’s rich mineral deposits as “blessings”. The 11 rights for nature include the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right not to have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Republished from the Mercury

ALBA nations prepare to fight for humanity at Durban climate summit

2011-11-24T11:50:00.005+11:00

Bolivarian alliance calls for extending and strengthening the Kyoto Protocol and climate adaptation aid to poor countries, and opposes the commodification of forests under REDD

Federico Fuentes, November 23, 2011

Representatives from the Latin American and Caribbean governments that comprise the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) met in Bolivia on November 17-18 to coordinate their battle plan ahead of the international climate change summit scheduled to start in Durban later this month.

ALBA – which includes Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Venezuela – was at the forefront of scuttling attempts at the 2009 Copenhagen summit by rich nations to impose their anti-environmental plans that would set the world on a course towards catastrophic climate change.

This year’s summit will focus on attempts to reach agreement on the commitments for the second period of the Kyoto Protocol, set to begin in 2013.

Rejecting the idea of “voluntary emissions reductions” being proposed by rich nations, which would destroy the Kyoto Protocol and see catastrophic global temperatures rises of more than 5°C, ALBA is proposing the “continuation, preservation and strengthening of the Kyoto Protocol” as the only legally binding international framework in place today.

The conclusions reached at Durban, reads the summit’s final declaration, must be “ambitious, balanced and based on scientific recommendations and evidence, on equity and the rule of law.”

This would require compliance with the principles of the United Nations (UN) convention on climate change, “particularly, the principles of equality and of common but differentiated responsibilities.” Developed nations, the primarily culprits for the current climate crisis, must be the ones to take on the greatest share of the burden in order to reverse current trends.

According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this would require, as a minimum, rich nations implementing carbon emissions reductions of 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80-95% below 1990 levels by 2050 if temperature rises are to be keep at 2°C.

At the 10th ALBA Summit, held in Ecuador in June 2010, ALBA affirmed its position in favour of limiting "the increase in the global average temperature to a level far below 1.5°C, with an ideal stabilisation at 1°C."

To help underdeveloped countries deal with the consequences of climate change, Bolivia raised a proposal, adopted at the ALBA meeting, for a tax to be imposed on international financial transactions. The estimated $400 billion that this would raise annually, would go towards funding technological research and concrete actions that help reduce carbon emissions.

The ALBA bloc also stated that it would fight to ensure that rich nations comply with the agreement reached at the 2010 Cancun summit whereby they would contribute $100 billion a year towards a fund to help underdeveloped countries mitigate and adapt to the challenges of climate change. To date, contributions for 2011 have fallen far short of this target.

ALBA will also demand that rich countries contribute the equivalent of at least 1.5% of their gross domestic product to the Official Development Assistance to help poorer nations.

The ALBA bloc also agreed to Bolivia’s proposal to reject the idea of seeing forests as simply carbon-offsets to be traded on the carbon market, as it is with the currently promoted policy of REDD. In its place, ALBA will advocate a mechanism denominated “sustainable life of forest” in which an integral vision takes into account the role forest play not only in absorbing carbon but also in regards to food production, water, biodiversity, and land.

Following on from the successful October meeting held in Panama between the ALBA bloc, the African Union, and the Group of Least Developed Countries, which combined represent around 100 countries, ALBA pledged to continue strengthening this alliance of underdeveloped countries.

According to Claudia Salerno, who headed the Venezuelan delegation at the October summit, the three blocs resolved to work together to ensure that “all developed countries… close the gap on two issues in Durban: the mitigation gap by reducing emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, and the gap on financing by offering long-term financial support [to underdeveloped countries] for emissions reductions beginning in 2013.”

Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators for Climate Change, stated that while underdeveloped nations “”are doing our part” what is required is for developed countries “to move forward on the issue of financing to combat climate change and reduce emissions… in order to have a successful meeting in Durban.”

Republished from Climate and Capitalism

Bolivia: Solidarity activists need to support process

2011-11-22T18:44:00.000+11:00

Federico Fuentes

The recent march in Bolivia by some indigenous organisations against the government’s proposed highway through the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) has raised much debate among international solidarity activists.

Such debates have occurred since the election of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005 on the back of mass uprisings.

Overwhelmingly, solidarity activists uncritically supported the anti-highway march. Many argued that only social movements — not governments — can guarantee the success of the process of change.

However, such a viewpoint is not only simplistic; it can leave solidarity activists on the wrong side.

Kevin Young’s October 1 piece on Znet, “Bolivia Dilemmas: Turmoil, Transformation, and Solidarity”, tries to grapple with this issue by saying that “our first priority [as solidarity activists] must be to stop our governments, corporations and banks from seeking to control Bolivia’s destiny”.

Yet, as was the case with most articles written by solidarity activists, Young downplays the role of United States imperialism and argues the government was disingenuous in linking the protesters to it.

Others went further, denying any connection between the protesters and US imperialism.

The Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian East (CIDOB), the main organisation behind the march, has no such qualms. It boasted on its website that it received training programs from the US government aid agency USAID.

On the site, CIDOB president Adolfo Chavez, thanks the “information and training acquired via different programs financed by external collaborators, in this case USAID”.

Ignoring or denying clear evidence of US funding to such organisations is problematic. Attacking the Bolivian government for exposing this, as some did, disarms solidarity activists in their fight against imperialist intervention.

But biggest failure of the solidarity movement has been its silence on US and corporate responsibility for the conflict.

The TIPNIS dispute was not some romanticised, Avatar-like battle between indigenous defenders of Mother Earth and a money-hungry government intent on destroying the environment.

Underpinning the conflict was the difficult question of how Bolivia can overcome centuries of colonialism and underdevelopment to provide its people with access to basic services while trying to respect the environment. The main culprits are not Bolivian; they are imperialist governments and their corporations.

We must demand they pay their ecological debt and transfer the necessary technology for sustainable development to countries such as Bolivia (demands that almost no solidarity activists raised). Until this occurs, activists in rich nations have no right to tell Bolivians what they can and cannot do to satisfy the basic needs of their people.

Otherwise, telling Bolivian people that they have no right to a highway or to extract gas to fund social programs (as some NGOs demanded), means telling Bolivians they have no right to develop their economy or fight poverty.

Imperialism aims to keep Third World nations subordinate to the interests of rich nations. This is one reason foreign NGOs and USAID are trying to undermine the Morales government's leading international role in opposing the grossly anti-environmental policies, such as Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).

REDD uses poor nations for carbon offsets so corporations in rich countries can continue polluting. Support for REDD was one of the demands of the protest march.

Young says “our solidarity should be with grassroots revolutionaries, anti-imperialists and defenders of human rights, not with governments or parties”.

But, as the TIPNIS case shows, when governments are trying to grapple with lifting their country out of underdevelopment, the demands of social movements with competing sectoral interests may clash.

In fact, some of the most strident supporters of the highway were also the very same social movements that solidarity activists have supported in their struggles against neoliberal governments during the last decade.

In such scenarios, you can only choose between supporting some social movement demands by dismissing legitimate demands of others, as many did with the TIPNIS case.

Lasting change can only come about when social movements begin to take power into their own hands when social movements become governments.

It is this objective that Bolivia's social movements set. They forged their own political instrument through struggle ― commonly known as the Movement Towards Socialism ― and won a government they see as their own.

Having gone from a position of “struggle from below” to taking government from the traditional elites as an instrument to achieve their goal of state power, these social movements have begun winning control over natural resources and enacted a new constitution.

Converting the constitution’s ideals into a new state power remains a task for the Bolivian revolution.

But its success depends on the ability of “grassroots revolutionaries, anti-imperialists and defenders of human rights” ― operating within and without the existing state ― to struggle in a united way.

Our solidarity must be based on the existing revolutionary struggle in Bolivia, not a romanticised one we would prefer.

A permanent state of protests may be attractive for solidarity activists, but ultimately can only translate into a permanent state of demoralisation unless social movements can go beyond opposing capitalist governments and create their own state power.

Refusing to support the struggles as they exist illustrates a lack of confidence in the Bolivian masses to determine their own destiny. It also displays an arrogance on the part of those who, having failed to hold back imperialist governments at home, believe they know better than the Bolivians how to develop their process of change.

Mistakes are made in any struggle. But such mistakes should not be used to try and pit one side against another. We should have confidence that these internal conflicts can be resolved by the social movements themselves.

Republished from Green Left Weekly

Bolivia: Rumble over jungle far from over

2011-11-21T12:21:00.001+11:00

Federico Fuentes

Despite the government reaching an agreement with indigenous protesters on all 16 demands raised on their 10-week march onto the capital, La Paz, the underlying differences are far from resolved.

On October 24, Bolivia’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly approved a new law banning the building of any highway through the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS).

Many groups supported the highway, which would have connected the departments of Beni and Cochabamba, and provide poor rural communities with greater access to markets and basic services.

However, it was opposed by 20 of the 64 indigenous communities in TIPNIS. It became the central rallying point of the march led by the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian East (CIDOB).

The march gained much sympathy, particularly among urban middle class sectors, after police meted out brutal repression against protesters on September 24.

Bolivian President Evo Morales immediately denied giving any orders to repress the protest. Apologising for the terrible event, Morales ordered a full investigation into the police attack.

Nevertheless, some important mobilisations in solidarity with the marchers were held in the days afterwards.

In response, government supporters took to the streets on October 12. Hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples, campesinos (peasants), miners and neighbourhood activists from El Alto flooded the capital.

Having reached La Paz on October 19, march leaders sat down with Morales and government ministers for two days to reach agreement on their demands.

These demands ranged from opposition to the highway to land reform and the right of indigenous peoples to receive funds in return for converting forests within their traditional lands into carbon offsets.

It did not take long for the dispute to reignite, this time over the word “untouchable”, which was inserted into the TIPNIS law at the request of march leaders.

According to the government, the term “untouchable” required the immediate expulsion of all logging and tourism companies operating within TIPNIS, in some cases illegally.

However, march leaders who opposed the highway defended the industrial-scale logging within TIPNIS.

This includes two logging companies who operate more than 70,000 hectares within the national park and have signed 20 year contracts with local communities.

The government denounced the presence of a tourist resort within TIPNIS, equipped with two private airstrips to fly foreigners willing to pay US$7600 to visit the park.

Of this money, only $200 remains with local communities that have signed the contract with the foreign company.

Rather than defending some kind of romanticised “communitarianism”, much of the motivation behind the march was an attempt by community leaders to defend their control over natural resources as a means to access wealth.

The same is true of many of those groups that have demanded the law be overturned and the highway go ahead. Campesinos and coca growers see the highway as an opportunity to gain access to land for cultivation.

These differences underpin the divergent views regarding the new land law being proposed by campesino groups, but opposed by groups such as CIDOB.

The CIDOB advocates large tracts of land be handed over to indigenous communities as protected areas. Campesino groups are demanding more land be distributed to campesino families.

These differences have led to a split in the Unity Pact, which united the five main campesino and indigenous organisations despite longstanding differences.

This is perhaps the most important divisipn to have opened up within the Morales government’s support base. But is far from being the only one.

The TIPNIS march served as a pretext for opposition parties based among the urban middle classes to break down government support in these sectors.

On October 16, Bolivians took part in a historic vote to elect judges to the Constitutional Tribunal, the Agro-environmental Tribunal and Magistrates Council.

The corporate media used exit poll figures to announce that most had nullified their votes as opposition parties had called for. But the final result showed a different picture.

As votes from rural areas began to be counted, the supposed crushing victory for null votes was whittled away. The final results showed valid and null votes tying at 42%.

The opposition tried to turn the vote into a referendum on Morales.

Despite attempts to portray the null vote as a “progressive” protest vote against Morales, the results clearly showed that opposition to the election of judges was strongest in the right-wing controlled departments of the east and in the urban middle and upper class sectors.

In rural and poor urban areas, such as El Alto, valid votes overwhelming won out.

The null votes came from the same middle class sectors that came out onto the streets of La Paz in support of the indigenous march, and who spat out racist epitaphs against Morales and indigenous government supporters when they marched through the capital.

Meanwhile, territorial conflicts between various departments and local councils scrambling for resources and access to central government funding continue to provide headaches for the government.

Morales called a national summit for December to bring together the country’s social movements to collectively come up with a new “national agenda”.

The likelihood, however, of achieving consensus for a national development plan among competing social organisations, all with their own sectoral interests and who have seen that it is possible to twist the government’s arm by protesting, will no doubt be a difficult task.

Republished from Green Left Weekly

Bolivia-USA: Morbid relations beyond diplomacy

2011-11-02T13:51:00.001+11:00

Ontober 28, 2011

Juan Carlos Zambrana Marchetti

It’s no secret that diplomatic relations between a poor country and a hegemonic world power are frequently a montage. They are a pantomime written and directed by the stronger, showing it as a hero, and the weaker as a victim rescued from poverty, chaos, or ungovernability. Above all, it’s a theatrical piece meant to hide a scandalous degree of interventionism and domination.

This was the case in the relations between Bolivia and the United States ever since the Rockefeller empire seized the oil industry and, in the 1930s, instigated the war against Paraguay, later selling to the latter the oil that it stole from Bolivia. Bolivia lost sixty-thousand men in that war, and fell into starvation, but from that pain was born the patriotic sentiment in favor of defending national dignity and natural resources.

Thus were born the revolutionary governments, and the first of them nationalized John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company for fraud against the state. That set off an interminable cold war waged by the United States against Bolivia, which drove the small Andean country into a vicious cycle of fraudulent elections and dictatorships in order to impose puppet governments with orders to change the laws so as to impose anew the looting; and, later, the periods of merciless exploitation of the Bolivian people, of popular protests against the abuse, and of massacres in order to repress them.

That period of diplomatic relations of submission to the United States was legalized the year 1951, with the establishment of a framework agreement of relations between a donor country that provided “aid” and a petitioner and receiver of that aid, which was always conditioned upon an absolute subordination to Washington’s policies. Despite its disastrous results and humiliating nature, that type of relations was represented through the pantomime of “good diplomatic relations.”

The period of Evo Morales, on the contrary, is the period of decolonization of the form of government, initiated with the re-founding of the country, a new constitution that impedes the looting, and the implementation of a process of profound change toward a more just society. In it, the state assumes fully its social responsibility, something from which Washington’s neoliberalism exempts the governments that it controls. It’s the era, therefore, of the inevitable confrontation with the hegemonic policy of the United States, which led to the expulsion of DEA and of ambassador Philip Goldberg. From then on, the State Department continued covertly its aggressive low-intensity war unleashed against Morales’ government.

Declassified documents obtained by renowned American investigator Jeremy Bigwood (www.boliviamatters.wordpress.com) revealed that from the beginning of the 1990s, long before Evo became president, the United States already identified him as a “danger to its plans for the hemisphere”, and put into effect a campaign against him that implied an “alarming interventionism” in the internal affairs of Bolivia. Documents from 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2006 revealed that the U.S.A. intervened not only openly, through its embassy, calling for a firm hand from the presidencies that it controlled, such as that of Tuto Quiroga, but also covertly, through programs financed by USAID to make contact with the indigenous people of the TIPNIS with the goal of making use of the conflict that they had with the coca growers of the Chapare due to an illegal settlement of those territories.

In this way, it exacerbated rivalry among sectors and articulated a coalition of forces opposed to Morales that included the power groups of Santa Cruz that came together in the CAINCO. The United States financed programs with political goals of that entrepreneurial organization through another of its agencies, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), by means of which it had established with CAINCO a historical political alliance. Finally, it directed the use of the media to systematically discredit Morales, promote discontent, and thus manufacture an adverse public opinion.

These cultivated anti-Evo forces finally converged on Saturday, October 22, 2011 in Plaza Murillo, historic setting of so many lynchings of presidents and the overthrow of popular governments. it was the march on behalf of the indigenous peoples of the TIPNIS demanding to negotiate directly with the President. It was time to clench the teeth, because nobody in Bolivia forgets the river of blood that has flowed in the past in similar circumstances. It was time for the perhaps tragic outcome awaited by the sectors opposed to Morales, stuck like leeches to the cause that they managed to manipulate. When the police denied entry to Plaza Murillo to all of them, the infiltrators in the March began to shout “Villarroel”, “Villarroel”, alluding to the hanging of the former president. Sunday was an important day, which will be studied for a long time at universities, because what happened then was as unexpected as it was surprising.

“We’re screwed,” said on Monday afternoon a bewildered member of the opposition, scratching his head while talking with an Indian, trying to understand in depth what they had done. His concern was understandable. Morales had not only survived the attempt to destabilize his government, but also dissolved in 48 hours the subversive plot, which, according to the aforementioned evidence, the United States had been organizing since the beginning of the 1990s. Evo granted the indigenous peoples of the TIPNIS literally everything they asked for. The indigenous, on the other hand, recognized that several of the points alluding to problems outside the TIPNIS were not their petitions, but those of their “affiliates”, which they had included in the original 16-point petition, in return for the support they received for the march.

Negotiations almost broke down when the Indians saw in writing what they had requested, and decided to back off. The protection of the natural reserve was so absolute that it meant the postponement of any aspiration of integration for its inhabitants. The territory was being declared indivisible, un-attachable, imprescriptible, inalienable, and irreversible, but, above all, untouchable. It was a victory for foreign “environmental” groups, financed from the United States and other developed countries that become rich by polluting the atmosphere of the planet with their deregulated industries; and that now, because the TIPNIS is the “lungs of the planet”, condemned its inhabitants to eternal isolation, and therefore, made them pay for the historical ecological debt that industrialized countries are still accumulating.

The Indigenous who negotiated with Morales were filled with doubts, perhaps for the first time, but they had their persuasive “ecological advisers,” including foreigners, breathing down their neck. The latter persuaded them once again, and the indigenous signed the agreement. Evo passed it to the Legislative Assembly, the Act was passed, and the president signed it in record time. The TIPNIS became, according to the law now in effect, forever cloistered and without roads, thus making very difficult the provision of schools, hospitals, electricity and water, while industrialized countries, led by the United States, still polluted the air of the planet while refusing to reduce their carbon emissions. With regard to the environment, it was once again the old formula of “the clever lives off the donkey, and the donkey eats straw.” The United States’ political objective of boycotting the pole of development of the Chapare, under the community production model that so frightens it, was achieved with the complicity, conscious or not, of some Bolivians. Intervention in internal affairs remains alarming, and that forces us to reflect.

We all want the re-establishment of diplomatic relations based on mutual respect and equality of rights and obligations, but, considering that Bolivia does not conspire against the government of the United States, demanding only mutual respect, it is the Department of State that has to make a conscious effort to change its pattern of interventionist conduct in Bolivia.

This type of asymmetric diplomacy is as unfair as it is unsustainable. It is therefore urgent to sign the new framework agreement for diplomatic relations based on mutual respect, so that the Bolivian ambassador in Washington may finally be a dignified defender of his or her fatherland, and not, as was the case before, a simple agent of Washington working to persuade his own country to submit. It is time for a new type of diplomacy, honest and without paternalism.

Republished from www.juancarloszambrana.com

Bolivia president Evo Morales offers talks with TIPNIS protest marchers

2011-10-19T14:50:00.000+11:00

Gerardo Bustillos (AFP)

LA PAZ — President Evo Morales offered direct talks with almost 2,000 indigenous people about to end a grueling protest march against government plans to build a highway through an Amazon nature preserve.

Morales, the first democratically elected indigenous president of this South American nation, finds his leadership challenged by a thorny national political debate over juggling native peoples' rights and economic development.

"This dialogue would aim to iron out and build consensus on their demands in the framework of broader political action," Morales' spokesman Carlos Romero said in a statement carried by the official news agency ABI. The talks could be held as soon as late Tuesday or Wednesday, Romero said.

Planners want the Brazil-financed road to run through the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory, leveling an ancestral homeland inhabited by 50,000 native people from three different native groups.

Work on the highway, which had been due to be operational in 2014, began in June, although not on the segment running through the protected park.

These isolated peoples from the humid lowlands are not from the main indigenous groups that make up most of majority-indigenous Bolivia's population, the highland Andean Aymara and Quechua.

The lowland people fear their traditional lands may be overrun by landless highland farmers.

Earlier the marchers, weary after weeks of walking but energized ahead of an expected triumphant entry into La Paz, massed in Pongo. It was not immediately clear what their response to Morales offer would be.

"We have no confidence in the Bolivian government. All they do is lie," said Fernando Vargas, leader of the demonstrators, gasping for breath as the group approached the highest-altitude capital city in the world.

The marchers, including women, children and elderly people, left the northern city of Trinidad in mid-August and have endured heavy rains, low temperatures, difficult mountainous terrain and police brutality during their 600 kilometer (370-mile) journey.

Earlier this month, Morales agreed to postpone construction of the roadway, a delay that was later approved by Bolivia's legislature. But the protesters are seeking assurances that the project -- or at least the Amazon portion of it -- will be scuttled for good.

"If work begins, we will fight in the forest until death," said indigenous leader Adolfo Chavez.

Interview: Bolivia senator Adolfo Mendoz (MAS) discusses law to suspend road through TIPNIS national park

2011-10-16T08:46:00.001+11:00

Dario Kenner, La Paz

[Senator Adolfo Mendoza is a member of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party led by President Evo Morales. He played a pivotal role in drafting the law suspending construction of the road through the TIPNIS. This law was approved in the senate yesterday. Bolivia Diary analysis on content of the law – Dario Kenner]

What does the approval of this law mean?

There was the need to establish a law because dialogue between the indigenous march and the executive branch was not working. The Plurinational Legislative Assembly and the indigenous march proposed draft laws. Work began between the indigenous deputies (such as Bienvenido Zacu) and MAS parliamentarians. Five out of the six articles from the indigenous marcher’s proposal are included in the approved law (still to be enacted by President Evo Morales). This was a consensus law for three reasons. Firstly, we agreed to use the indigenous march proposal as the basis for the law. Secondly, the proposal from the executive branch was rejected. Thirdly, the proposed referendum was rejected (see this article explaining why this is important). The only Article there was no consensus on was the one dealing with the suspension of the road.

This law proposes what should always have been done which is respect of the right to consultation of the owners of the territory. No one else can decide apart from the Mojeños, Yuracarés and Chimanes peoples who live inside the TIPNIS. There are several other provisions in the law such as preventing illegal settlements and a comprehensive management plan of the TIPNIS national park. (explained here)

Is this law a solution to the TIPNIS conflict?

I don´t think this is a solution because some of the leaders at the indigenous march have rejected it. It opens up the possibility for a dialogue and eventual solution.

What is strange is that some leaders at the indigenous march such as Rafael Quispe (key leader in indigenous movement CONAMAQ – see his views here) who are not from the TIPNIS reject this proposal to begin a process of free, prior and informed consultation. This is very bad for the Mojeños, Yuracarés and Chimanes.

The press are distorting the issue of whether the consultation is binding or not. This is a false discussion for several evident reasons. The Bolivian Constitution and international norms say indigenous peoples have the right to be consulted by the state. So free, prior and informed consultation is to reach an agreement that does not violate the rights of indigenous peoples. So it is arbitrary to discuss if it is binding or not. The word binding is not in the Bolivian Constitution, ILO Convention 169 or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Like all roads lead to Rome, all the paths to solve this conflict are through consultation.

Pagina Siete (Bolivian newspaper) has distorted what President Evo Morales said yesterday (the newspaperreported Morales as saying consultation would not be binding). What he was actually talking about was the case put before international courts between Saramaka and the state of Surinam that is an emblematic case on prior consultation.

[The question of whether the consultation is binding or not is still not clear. For example this afternoon Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera said the government would respect and guarantee the decision the result of the prior consultation with the indigenous peoples of the TIPNIS]

How can the consultation be prior if work has already begun on the road?

There are some important things to get across here. On 23 September 2011 the United Nations representative in Bolivia said in relation to the TIPNIS issue that it would be convenient to stop road building and do prior consultation. On 28 September 2011 James Anaya, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People on Indigenous Issues, said from Geneva that the way to solve the TIPNIS issue was to do prior consultation. The spirit of this law is to open the process of prior consultation.

The entire road does not go through the TIPNIS indigenous territory. There are two key elements. Two of the sections do not pass through the TIPNIS. The first section between Villa Tunari and Isinuta already exists; it does not touch the TIPNIS. TIPNIS has a boundary but it is not that where the boundary ends it is the moon or some imaginary place, it is part of Bolivia. If the state decided to build a road that was within 1 kilometre of the national park it would still affect it.

In the contract between the Bolivian Highway Authority and Brazilian company OAS it does not mention three sections, just one road. Can you explain this?

The contract with OAS has three sub-credits. Sub-credit A refers to the initial operations. Sub-credit B refers to the first and third sections. Sub-credit C refers to the second section. There is no final design for this second section and road building has not begun.

If there is no final design for the second section how can there be a calculation for the entire distance of the road and total cost?

How was the cost calculated? This was done through technical studies and based on comparing costs of other roads. OAS (Brazilian company building the road) has a proposal for the second section but there is no final design. There are several proposals on the table including going through the middle of the national park and on its borders. Another option would be to build a via-duct 55 kilometres long between Ichoa and Santo Domingo. The sub-credit C will not be disbursed until there is a final design and the results of the consultation.

Republished from Bolivia Diary

Election of judges a key test for Bolivia's Morales

2011-10-14T14:45:00.001+11:00

By Carlos Alberto Quiroga

LA PAZ, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Bolivian President Evo Morales faces an important test this weekend when voters elect judges for the first time, the latest reform aimed at giving a bigger say to the country's indigenous majority.

Leftist Morales, Bolivia's first president of Indian descent, has been hurt by weeks of protests over his plans to build a highway through the Amazon, and Sunday's election is seen as a referendum on his presidency.

The candidates running for election to serve as 28 judges on four national courts do not represent political parties.

Morales' rightist rivals, however, have sought to undermine the election by urging voters to spoil their ballots. That means high turnout and few blank votes will be crucial for Morales as he seeks to regain his political footing after the damaging road protests.

Political analyst Jorge Lazarte said Sunday's election could mark "the beginning of the end" for Morales' hopes for a third consecutive term in 2014 if the ballot is perceived to be a failure for the government.

Morales, a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy who rose into politics as leader of the coca farmers, has hinted at the possibility of running for re-election.

Low turnout and a sense that the opposition's campaign undermined Morales' reform drive could intensify pressure on the president after the road protest debacle and massive protests over a planned fuel price hike late last year.

In a speech at the pre-Colombian ruins of Tiwanaku this week, he said he was confident "a majority of the people will vote, defeating the rightist, neoliberal conspiracy."

He has billed the first direct election of national judges as "the next step in the refounding of Bolivia."

Besides a series of reforms aimed at giving more political power to the country's indigenous people, Morales has also reversed the privatizations of the free-market 1990s by strengthening the state's hand in the economy.

He nationalized the country's vast natural gas resources months after taking office in 2006, steps that proved popular with the country's poor majority.

Voters will choose members of the country's four national courts from a list of 116 candidates. Half the candidates are women and many are indigenous. The opposition rejects them because they were picked by the government-controlled Congress.

Until now, these judges were chosen directly by Congress.

The judicial shake-up is the latest in a series of reforms that Morales says will help reverse five centuries of discrimination against indigenous peoples in Bolivia and domination by a European-descended elite.

Morales managed to push through a new constitution in 2009, a key demand of the rebellious social groups that toppled two governments between 2003 and 2005.

But he has encountered growing resistance over the last year, facing opposition even within his indigenous support base over the fuel price hike and his plan to build a road that cuts through the TIPNIS indigenous territory and national park.

Opponents have urged voters to scuttle the judicial vote to protest the government's handling of anti-road demonstrations.

"A spoiled ballot paper is a vote in favor of the TIPNIS," opposition lawmaker Roy Moroni said last week. "That is the way to reject these undemocratic elections."

(Writing by Helen Popper; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Bolivia lawmakers halt contested highway plans

2011-10-13T09:33:00.001+11:00

AFP, La Paz — Bolivian lawmakers agreed Tuesday to postpone plans to build a highway through an Amazon nature preserve after months-long mass protests from indigenous people.

The Chamber of Deputies approved President Evo Morales's decision to halt the project in order to consult with the local population in the wake of police violence against the demonstrators for which he has apologized.

The Brazil-financed road was due to run through the Isiboro Secure reserve, home to some 50,000 natives from three different indigenous groups.

These isolated groups, from the humid lowlands, are not from the main indigenous groups that make up most of Bolivia's population, the highland Andean Aymara and Quechua peoples.

The lowland people fear their traditional lands may be overrun by landless highland farmers.

Protesters left the northern city of Trinidad in mid-August and are now about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the capital La Paz, though facing high altitude and frigid conditions that have slowed their march.

Once they have reached their destination, the protesters will have marched some 600 kilometers (370 miles).

"We should be arriving next week, Tuesday or Wednesday," march leader Miguel Charupa told AFP.

"We are not particularly in a hurry to arrive in La Paz."

He said protesters now numbered about 2,000.

A counter-protest of about 1,000 government supporters was expected Wednesday in the capital.

Chamber of Deputies president Hector Arce said halting the road project in response to the Indians demands would open the way for an "informed dialogue" with the affected communities.

But protesters ignored the parliamentary vote, just as they have rejected the proposal from Morales. They demand that the project be canceled, not just postponed.

Work on the highway, which had been due to be operational in 2014, began in June, though not on the segment running through the reserve.

Interview with former Bolivia Vice Minister for Rural Development Roxana Liendo: Reflections on TIPNIS and rural development

2011-10-13T09:30:00.001+11:00

[Roxana Liendo resigned on 26 September from her post in the Vice Ministry of Rural Development in protest at thepolice repression of a march by indigenous movements. They are marching against the Bolivian governments plan to build a road through the TIPNIS national park and indigenous territory. I talked to her about why she decided to resign and also about the importance of rural development in Bolivia - Dario Kenner]

What position did you have in the government?

I was Coordinator of SISPAM (Information and monitoring system on agricultural production, prices and markets) in the Vice Ministry of Rural Development. My job was to monitor agricultural production and prices (national and international) to then inform government policy. I was invited to do the job by the Vice Minister of Rural Development in July 2011. I was glad to be there because I believe rural development is very important.

Between September 2007 and March 2008 I was Vice Minister of Rural Development.

Why is rural development important?

It is the way to achieve food security and sovereignty. Agro-industry is important to generate income from exports but the majority of what is consumed in Bolivia is produced by small scale producers, they are the pillars of food security who cover about 60-70% of the family food basket. From the start of the Morales government in 2006 there was more technical support for these small producers. The aim was to reduce imports of products like wheat. Bolivia has great potential because of its varied ecosystems and large land area to first cover internal demand and then export.

The problem is land. There are around 5.5 million hectares of productive land but only half is cultivated, this is partly due to rotation of land. There is sufficient land but it depends on who owns it. The majority of the most fertile land is in the hands of the agro-exporters. There are no up to date studies but we know a lot of the soya production is in the hands of Brazilians, Colombians and Paraguayans. Small plots are common in the western highlands and central valleys.

How can the distribution of land change?

The process of agrarian reform and reversion of lands needs to be deepened. There have been some fiscal (state) lands that have been distributed but there has been little attack on the big landowners in the east. But the problem is how will people adapt if you give lands in the east to people from the western highlands? They find it very difficult to adapt to the tropical climate. Programmes have to be implemented with comprehensive support from the state to support these settlements in their initial years. The lands in the west also have potential. There must also be programmes to increase productivity of lands in the western highlands such as irrigation, making credit available, technical assistance and appropriate mechanisation.

Crops in Bolivia´s western highlands (credit: Dario Kenner)

Has rural development been a priority of the Morales government?

It was in the first few years. There were important changes and from 2006 there was a big push for an alternative way of doing development. But when it got down to the practical ways this would be done we repeated many of the methods and ideas of previous governments such as using tractors and fertilizers. These methods do bring fast results but have negative environmental impacts. What was difficult was to find medium term strategies. I believe implementing a new way of doing things is crucial to deepen the process of change.

When I was Vice Minister of Rural Development there was a policy of state-led rural and forestry development. It was based on a pyramid of state companies at the top (EMAPA), followed by a mixed economy with alliances between the state and small producers (for example seed producers), and with support for small producers at the bottom (CRIAR programme); and that took into account forestry activities as part of a integrated rural development approach. But since I left in March 2008 I saw this integrated approach fragment and now there is little of it left.

Do you think the government will change its position on the TIPNIS issue? Will the government change the route of the road so it does not go through the TIPNIS?

The government must do a deeper political analysis. They need to calculate the consequences of their actions. A road is important but the current route is not justified. We do need a road to integrate and it is important. But we do not just need a major highway that will allow heavy goods vehicles to move goods from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The government should listen to the indigenous peoples who are saying they do need a road. This is a basis for dialogue. What is at stake is not if there will be a road but instead where it goes. Hopefully everyone will agree on a route that is good for all.

I hope the government will listen to more critical voices from inside such as the Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca (incidentally Choquehuanca was a crucial figure who convinced President Morales to reverse the controversial gasolinazo in December 2010).

Indigenous march leaving Caranavi a few days ago on its way to La Paz (credit: Communications Commission of the march)

What is the impact of the government not revealing who gave the order for the police repression of the indigenous march on 25 September?

It is mistaken political calculation. The more time the government does not recognise its responsibility the more mistrust it generates in the population. I don´t know about the rest of the country but this is definitely the case in La Paz. It generates a loss of trust. The government must be transparent and tell us what happened. In community justice the principles of asking for forgiveness and reparation are very important for the indigenous peoples. Evo has asked for forgiveness and I thought it was genuine but then in the days afterwards it didn´t look as much like it was.

Why did you resign?

Many people have asked me and even questioned by decision. For several years I fought from the inside for alternatives and change. But there was no space for debate, no openness. It soon became clear that the hegemonic ideology was to deepen the extractive and modernisation model of development.

At the end of August I said to my colleagues that as a government we cannot go against basic principles such as the cultural identity of indigenous peoples and of Mother Earth. I said I didn´t want to be part of a process of generating conflict between campesinos and indigenous peoples (see this article explaining the difference).

My limit is when people are not respected. As soon as I heard about the violence and repression of the indigenous march I handed in my resignation (letter) the next day.

What impact will the TIPNIS issue have on the future of the process of change?

I hope there will not be clashes between grassroots groups who were crucial to establishing this process of change. It looks like the most negative impact in the long-term will be the polarisation between these groups. They should work together because they have common needs and demands.

The positive effect has been the intense debates about the difference between discourse and practice, on Mother Earth and Vivir Bien (to “Live Well“) as a new model of development. I hope these spaces for debate continue and the government listens to them. We are discussing a lot more what is Vivir Bien. How does industrial and rural development link to Vivir Bien? We don´t really know. We need to get a lot more practical and concrete about what we mean and how we do Vivir Bien.

People abroad need to understand Bolivia is a poor country. We need to generate income and can´t just rely on foreign aid. This is part of achieving our sovereignty. We don’t want to depend on others. We should take advantage of the natural resources from extractive industries to focus on building the foundations for a more sustainable, equal and inclusive development.

Republished from Bolivia Diary

The critical moment for Bolivians

2011-10-10T13:11:00.000+11:00

Cambio- Septemper, 30 2011

Juan Carlos Zambrana Marchetti

Recent events concerning the conflict generated by the construction of the highway through the TIPNIS require a stop along the road to attempt an act of reflection. The media hurried to condemn what it called the brutality of the violent police repression of the march of indigenous people, the death of a child, and a large number of disappeared. Public opinion, including the government’s, swallowed the news without questioning it, because it was not easy to detect such malice in the description of the events.

“Disappeared” is not a term for those who went into hiding or headed out into the wilderness. The term applies to the 30,000 young people who were thrown into the River Plate in Argentina during the right-wing dictatorships. The death of a child was not confirmed, either, but that did not stop the dissemination of the report like a trail of gunpowder. Emphasis was placed on the words “repression” and “brutality,” in order to evoke the memories of the dictatorships and neoliberal governments. With emotions exacerbated, public opinion was detoured from rational analysis and trapped in deceit.

No one recalled, for example, that the indigenous president, yielding to the demands of the marchers, had sent his highest-level diplomat, also indigenous, to negotiate under pressure within a march in which there were indigenous people armed with bows and arrows, and whose attitude was in no way diplomatic; that they acted threateningly towards him and forced him to march along with them, using him as a shield to break the police blockade that had been set up to avoid a confrontation with other indigenous people who waited in their path to stop them.

Under those circumstances, the police, among whom there were surely indigenous officers, were threatened by the marchers. There was no exaggeration in the frequent use of the word “indigenous” in the recounting of these events. The fact is that, since Morales rose to power, giving a leading role to the indigenous and recognizing their rights, their autonomy, and their 36 nations within the new Plurinational State, the Right, unable to defend its postulates, has “discovered” its own indigenism, politically opposed to Morales. The transnationals, the NGOs, the power sectors, the church, the media, and every political aspiration, are now indigenist.

The golden dream of the opposition to Morales is to force a confrontation among indigenous people, obtain a few deaths, and expel the president like Sanchez de Lozada was expelled. So prepared were they for the effort that one of the opposition parties hastened to bring charges of genocide against Morales without there being a single shot, a single killing, or the slightest grounds to support the crime mentioned. They know that the complaint has no possibility of moving forward, but that has never been the objective, which is continuous and sustained disinformation to promote discontent.

Nothing justifies the excess of violence, but one cannot help but notice the sophisticated opposition lattice of plans designed to provoke it, blame it on Morales, exaggerate it, and publicize it. That could explain the government’s fear of committing any violence, due also to the high standard of respect for life and to civil rights to which it is committed. Without a doubt, there is an enormous campaign against Morales, because, while from Chile to Europe and by way of the United States, far less provocative protests are daily repressed with much more violence, the international media concentrates on exaggerating and taking out of context the case of Bolivia.

The conflict, nonetheless, goes far beyond what is seen, for it has at its heart an element too dangerous to remain unperceived. Perhaps due to idealism, and to the opposition’s strategy of calling him “dictator” in order to neutralize his overwhelming majority, Morales committed an error much like that which weakened president German Bush: nullifying the legitimate parliamentary force that supported him. Morales did not shut down Congress, but did reduce enormously its power, making it submit anew, directly and constantly, to the will of the people, not taking into account that fragments of that people remained largely trapped by the same transnational powers that had just lost the elections. Politically defeated, but economically powerful, the Right invested fortunes in the manipulation of that “people” and set off the chaos that has never ceased to strike back at Morales.

Now, if we believe the media, we would get the impression that the people have turned their backs on the president, or even worse. Blockades, strikes, marches, protests and more protests, as if they faced a government that has betrayed the national interests and subjugates the people in order to loot them. That takes place because, by legislating inadequately the mechanisms of consultation and protest, a popular government with two-thirds of parliamentary power has allowed itself to be reduced to the will of its defeated opponents, who act covertly in the name of the people in order to destroy the government’s agenda. It is not the people who protest, as hard as that may be to understand because the disinformation has gained ground and confused various segments of society. The manipulators are few, but very powerful, and know how to broadcast their discourse.

Bolivians must rapidly internalize all of the power that they have achieved with Morales, in order to understand that a government based on the sustained respect of the people requires the participation of a people who think and are free of the ties of colonialism. The moment is critical, therefore, not for Evo and his government, but at bottom for the Bolivian people and the future that it is betting while marching like automatons toward the destruction of their own emancipatory process. Their dilemma is whether to open their eyes to see who is hiding behind the parapets of organizations that tempt some of their leaders with power, or to go off the cliff playing useful fools in a regressive political change that would place the government in the hands of their historical enemies.

The country has been many times in situations where, because of excessive demands from the Left, power ended up in the hands of the Right, which only restored immediately its full structure of looting and illicit enrichment, without the least regard for the indigenous people nor the misguided Left that supported it in subversion. That happened with the governments of Gualberto Villarroel and of Juan Jose Torres, among others.

It is now up to the Bolivian people to make an effort to overcome the old patterns of conduct, and to add political clarity to the courage, tenacity, and extraordinary capacity to organize with which they have won such a grand conquest. That missing element would consolidate indigenous Bolivians not only as formidable combatants, but also as a thinking people capable of sustaining their own success.

Republished from Juan Carlos Zambrano's blog

Bolivia: Reflections on the TIPNIS conflict

2011-10-08T17:32:00.001+11:00

BIF Special Briefing

The most recent BIF Bulletin (number 20, see below) traced the causes and development of the TIPNIS dispute, a conflict between indigenous peoples of the Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure and the government, over the course of a planned road through this protected region. The march, supported by the national indigenous lowland confederation (Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia - CIDOB) began from Trinidad, the capital of the Beni, on August 15. On September 25, it was violently dispersed by the police. The following day, President Evo Morales spoke on national television announcing that the road project would be suspended, at least until after a wider debate on the issue could be held. Meanwhile, the march continues towards La Paz.

The failure to work out a solution to the TIPNIS problem revealed a hardening of the positions on both sides of the argument. On one side, the Morales government sought to push ahead with the road project, which would connect Trinidad with Cochabamba, without carrying out a proper consultation with those likely to be affected. The need for consultation was specified in the new constitution, approved only two years ago. On the other side, the marchers and those supporting them were resistant to heed efforts to negotiate. On eight occasions, ministers had sought to reach a settlement as the march progressed. The last of these involved the foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, himself of indigenous background, who was briefly taken hostage by the marchers and used to force a way through police lines.

The conflict has received wide coverage both within Bolivia and internationally, giving rise to criticisms of the government’s stance. Rather than repeat these, here we seek to identify a number of deeper issues and concerns that arise.

Conflictive positions

Underlying the dispute are a series of different conceptions and understandings of what indigenous rights, particularly vivir bien (living well), are taken to mean. The rift between indigenous people of the TIPNIS and campesinos is serious. It calls into question the future of the Pacto de Unidad (unity pact) which brought together campesinos and indigenous peoples from the highlands and lowlands before Morales became president.

Indigenous organisations from both parts of the country, as well as campesino/settler organisations, worked together as the Pacto de Unidad in helping to draw up the new constitution. Indeed, the proposal to establish the Constituent Assembly stemmed from a march of lowland/highland indigenous people back in 2002. The new constitution highlights the “plurinational” nature of the Bolivian state (which incorporates 36 indigenous nations) and codifies indigenous rights more generally. Such rights include that of self-government and self-determination, collective landownership, community involvement in the economy, the need for prior consultation on matters affecting them (including where non-renewable natural resources are concerned), and the right to benefit from such activities.

Respect for such rights has been highlighted by Evo Morales in his various speeches in the international arena. The positions adopted by Bolivia in the United Nations discussions on climate change suggested that indigenous peoples in Bolivia were providing an alternative path in a post-modern world. At the same time, however, the Morales government is seeking to pull the majority of Bolivia’s population, much of it indigenous, out of poverty and exclusion. It is seeking to do so by redirecting income from natural resource exploitation to poorer parts of the population.

Since their ground-breaking 1990 march from Trinidad to La Paz, lowland indigenous groups have sought to develop recognition of their land and territory, on which they have hunted and gathered since time immemorial. In 2009 the three indigenous groups that historically have inhabited the TIPNIS gained title to over 1 million hectares there.

For highland campesinos and those who have migrated to the tropics in search of an improved livelihood (colonos), the jungle appears free for the taking. Beneficiaries of the 1953 agrarian reform, they tend to see their small plots as individual private property. The large landowners of the Beni and Santa Cruz, many of whom received huge tracts as grace and favour payments from the military regimes of the past, also see landholding in terms of private ownership.

This fundamental difference in view over the nature of landholding between the campesinos/colonos on the one hand and indigenous peoples on the other was what lay behind the dramatic stand-off in Yucumo. There, with several hundred colonos blocking the road, the TIPNIS march was brought to a halt. The colonos disagreed fundamentally with some of the marchers’ demands. The police were brought in to act as a buffer between both groups and to avoid violence breaking out between them.

As well as calling into question the Pacto de Unidad, the issue has also put huge strain on the government’s relations with both the CIDOB and the Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyo (CONAMAQ) which represents highland indigenous groups.

The role of the police

The role of the police in moving in on September 25 to break up the march raises questions about control over police actions. Who was responsible for this decision?

The Vice-minister of the Interior, Marcos Farfán, immediately denied any involvement in giving the order, as did the minister, Sacha Llorenti. Evo Morales himself has also denied prior knowledge of the intervention. Both Llorenti and Farfán resigned and were swiftly removed from office. Since September 25, it has become clearer that the police force may have taken the decision to disperse the marchers off its own bat. It is possible that they took this course of action because of the drubbing they had received the day before at the hands of the marchers, armed with spears. It is also possible that it reflects a deeper malaise. Earlier this year the police force lost control over personal identification and driving licences, both important sources of funding and status for police officers. It was certainly the case that Llorenti was in their sights as the author of these changes. Either way, the question of government control over the police (or lack of it) raises serious concerns going forward.

The role of the media

The TIPNIS dispute has also thrown into relief the role of the press in distorting events and using social conflicts to discredit the government. Initial reports claimed that a baby had been killed during the police intervention, along with seven to nine other deaths and many disappearances. It has since become clear that there were no deaths and, of the people who had escaped into the surrounding forest, all have been accounted for. The media coverage of events has played a major role in mobilising disapproval of the government. In some cases, it may have been just shoddy journalism, but there was almost certainly a conscious attempt to whip up hysteria.

A recent article in the weekly La Epoca newspaper by its editor Hugo Moldiz points to this being part of a systematic plan by opposition groups to denigrate Evo Morales and his government’s policies, with a view to undermining not only the president, but also the process of change. The media is most effective in reaching both the urban population and the middle-class, and it is amongst the middle class that discontent with the MAS government is most in evidence. Certainly the events of the last few weeks, and coverage of them by the media has helped to induce a sense of loss of balance and proportion.

The role of opposition

As was the case with the December 2010/January 2011 protests against the government’s fuel pricing policy (the gasolinazo), the TIPNIS conflict has been a boon for the opposition, which has lost much of the leverage it had enjoyed up to 2008. It is slightly ironical to see the fight for indigenous rights receiving backing from those, like elite groups in Santa Cruz, which had bitterly opposed the granting of indigenous autonomies only three years ago.

Opposition political leaders, such as Samuel Doria Medina (Unidad Nacional) and Juan del Granado (MSM), have benefited from the TIPNIS debacle in their attempt to build support in advance of the 2014 presidential elections. Both are currently seeking to profit from the government’s problems by encouraging people to vote null or void in the elections on October 16 to fill senior posts in the judiciary. They want to turn the elections into a plebiscite against the government. The election is planned as a first step to break the control of the judiciary by traditional elites.

The outcome of the TIPNIS dispute has triggered large mobilisations against the government in several of Bolivia’s larger cities. Organisations like the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) and other social movements have come out in opposition to what they see as government policy. At the same time, there have been marches and declarations in support of the road through the TIPNIS, deepening the divides between different social movements. There are also many that have not proclaimed one way or the other. In rural areas in particular, support for Evo remains strong, even in the face of criticism of the government’s handling of the TIPNIS dispute.

Prior consultation going forward

The TIPNIS issue has brought into focus the nature of ‘free prior informed consent’, as set out internationally by ILO Convention 169. It is probably but the tip of the iceberg for many such disputes in the future, disputes which reflect different views of what ‘development’ is taken to mean. The Constitution lays down clearly the general principles for processes of prior consultation, making it obligatory for the state to carry out such consultation of indigenous peoples and their organisations where non-renewable natural resources on their lands are to be exploited. It ensures them that they will benefit from such activities. However, in line with international agreements and the Bolivian constitution itself, the recommendations that may arise from the process of consultation are not necessarily binding.

The Hydrocarbons Law of 2005 (and the regulations guiding it) lays down the need for consultation in the case of oil and gas exploitation, and the proposed new mining legislation (currently under discussion) includes prior consultation. Still, the details of how to carry out such consultations have yet to be clarified, and this may even require separate legislation.

Meanwhile, there are natural resources projects that are being proposed that cannot move forward and there have been de facto invasions of cooperative or small private mines by members of nearby communities.

Learning lessons

As with the ‘gasolinazo’ last December, there are some important lessons to be learnt if the process of change is not to be derailed:

The idea of vivir bien needs further discussion. What does it mean, and what kind of development model does it entail?
Faced with a politically motivated press, how best to maintain a critical approach to the sort of distortions it generates?
How to ensure wider debate and participation in the political process, even if this means delaying important policy decisions and then living with the consequences of these?
How protests are dealt with and tactics used by police need to be seriously re-examined and ways found to deal with crowd control without resorting to indiscriminate violence.

Five Years of Evo

2011-10-08T17:19:00.000+11:00

Pablo Stefanoni

Less than a decade ago, few people outside of Bolivia could name its president. Today, Evo Morales is not only a global figure; he is an icon for critics of globalization. During the peak of neoliberalism at the end of the 20th century, the Zapatistas in Mexico advocated “changing the world without seizing power.” Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, embodies the desire to change the world while in power—borrowing Subcomandante Marcos’ concept, “to rule by obeying the people” (mandar obedeciendo), a phrase prominently displayed on billboards with the president’s image throughout Bolivia.

Evo Morales took office on December 18, 2005, with an astounding 54% of the vote. He immediately set into motion a nationalist project with two main agendas: the nationalization of oil and gas and a Constitutional Convention. With the first measure Morales proposed to do away with the “plunder of natural resources,” in the words of his party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS); the second sought to do away with “internal colonialism.” Bolivian indigenous movements often use this term to characterize the domestic persistence of the exclusion of the native peoples—the majority of Bolivians—and the covert violence that continued to smolder under the liberal-democratic principles of citizens’ equality. Morales thus appears like the David who confronts the “imperialistic” Goliath, an image that greatly explains his popularity both within Bolivia and abroad.

These developments have transformed Bolivia into a beacon for those who are searching for alternative models to capitalistic modernity and to the present economic crisis. The presence of native peoples as the principal actors in the actual process of change activates a series of imaginaries about an “other” who is capable of providing fresh perspectives, cosmovisions and alternative political, economic and social practices in the face of “Western decadence.” But when one looks at the situation more closely, it becomes much more complicated. Although it is certain that the majority of Bolivians are indigenous (62%, according to the 2001 census), it is just as true that a fierce desire for inclusive modernization emerges forcefully from deep within the Bolivian population. Evo Morales reactivates developmental imaginaries in which “living well” in terms of material welfare is more powerful than any spiritual or non-materialist guidelines allegedly inscribed in indigenous cosmovisions.

For many ReVista readers, Evo Morales is seen as one of a group of emerging “populist” leaders in South America, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, his Ecuadoran colleague Rafael Correa, the late Néstor Kirchner and his widow, current Argentine president Cristina Fernández, and the Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. But this “meateating” left—as Peruvian writer Alvaro Vargas Llosa called it to distinguish it from the “vegetarian” (and good) left—is not homogenous. Morales’ leadership contains a heavy dose of popular selfrepresentation rather than messianic direction (in the countryside, peasants often comment, “he is one of us”). The International Monetary Fund itself has praised his macroeconomic policy for its prudence, and his social policies can be compared without any difficulty to those of the “moderate” Lula da Silva or his successor Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.

In the last five-plus years, Morales has consolidated his power in the midst of a violent dispute with the agro-industrial elite in the country’s eastern region, encouraging the mobilization of peasants and the popular urban sectors. The support he found on the streets also translated into votes: in August 2008, he was ratified in a “recall referendum” with 67% of the votes, and in December 2009, he was reelected with an unprecedented 64%.

Nevertheless, the celebrations of the government’s fifth-year anniversary in January 2011 were tainted. The aborted “gasolinazo,” a fuel hike of up to 83%, had been announced on December 26, 2010, by Vice President Álvaro García Linera while Evo Morales was in Caracas offering help for the floods. The surprise timing and tone of the announcement that gas and diesel subsidies would be eliminated—stirring memories of the neoliberal economic corrections of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s—sparked popular discontent against the government unprecedented in the era of Evo. Until that moment, protest had come from the conservative right; this time, it emanated from the strongholds of “Evoism”—Evo supporters themselves. As a result, a week later, before the discontent grew any stronger, Morales hastened to strike down his own decree. The Bolivian president repeated that the government was “obeying the people” and that although the measure was a necessary one, the social movements had made him realize that the moment was not right for its implementation. Nevertheless, price increases and the uncertainty created by the measure spawned a series of protests about the high cost of food.

Moreover, the mini-crisis made apparent the disconnect between the often eloquent grandstanding that referenced such concepts as communitarian socialism, and changes that had actually taken place—many of them modest—in the daily lives of Bolivians. Moderate successes in the fight against poverty, the implementation of social subsidy bonds and the construction of rural electrification and highways are undeniable accomplishments, but far from being an “anti-capitalist policy.” At the same time, the Bolivian state remains chronically weak, especially because it lacks qualified technocrats and institutional density. This deficit creates many obstacles to the government’s statist projects such as setting up state-owned factories. Official negotiations with small and large producers this year to seek production increases to bring down food prices and do away with scarcity of products such as sugar, along with the announcement of subsidies to oil companies, demonstrate that overcoming market mechanisms is a lot more complicated than what the government and the so-called “social movements” ever imagined.

Evo Morales is suffering from the effects of a “crisis of narrative.” Creativity appears to be declining in terms of thinking about measures with the same—or similar—political-symbolic impact as those taken in the first moments of the Morales administration. The last educational reform law passed with little public debate except among those directly affected (primarily teachers); the same holds for a universal health insurance bill that is being drawn up, and other necessary reforms to guarantee free health care to the majority of Bolivians who today must pay for care in low-quality hospitals—let alone what happens when a Bolivian needs specialized health care. Though these efforts are real, they have not produced a compelling narrative about the social effects of the Morales government.

The transformation is most profoundly noted in the change of elites, the massive inclusion of indigenous, peasant and common citizens in the state apparatus, in the changing self-perception of Bolivians and in the realm of international politics in which Bolivia has allied itself with countries such as Venezuela, Cuba and Iran after decades of uncritical submission to Washington’s dictates.

The purchase of a satellite from China, the bet on megaprojects such as petrochemicals, hydroelectric projects, mining and highways (including in the Amazon region) or the president’s close links with the Armed Forces attest to the different imaginaries in play that—because of the lack of debate among them—at times appear like an ideological mess that muddles together indigenism and hardcore development policies. Among these we may trace two general and schematic lines that could produce several possible combinations. One vision—the hegemonic one, in which Vice-President García Linera participates—proposes a strong state accompanied by “prudent” macroeconomic policies. Another tendency, more philosophical than practical in terms of public policy, is expressed in venues such as climate change summits and anti-summits, social movement forums and courses on political formation. This tendency projects a communitarian perspective, based on political, economic, and even judicial pluralism sanctioned by the new Constitution. The main advocate of this trend is Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, who is highly regarded by the Aymaras of the Altiplano. The tensions between these two tendencies are particularly noticeable in the realm of the environment. While Bolivia has sought to play an international leadership and moral role in the climate summits, domestic policies regarding environmental defense or the struggle against climate change are inconsistent; the environmental costs of becoming a mining power once again—given the boom with its high prices—are not subject to public debate or even of fundamental concern to the government.

In this context, for the first time since arriving in office, Morales not only faces opposition from the knee-jerk right, but from the center-left Movement Without Fear, led by former La Paz Mayor Juan del Granado, a Morales ally until the beginning of 2010. With support from the urban middle class, especially in La Paz, members “without fear” have sought to cast themselves as a more democratic and institutional variation of the present process of change, “criticizing its errors and supporting its achievements.” To garner support, the movement seeks to capitalize on del Granado’s accomplishments as mayor, one of the best administrations in the country in the past decades.

The government reacted to the movement by pressing charges against del Granado and current La Paz mayor Luis Revilla, a mechanism that in the past had allowed it to get rid of its principal conservative rivals. This year, the governor of Tarija (in the south of the country and the principal reservoir of Bolivian gas) was deposed and obtained political asylum in Paraguay; Leopoldo Fernández, the former governor of Pando, is still in jail waiting to be sentenced for the socalled Porvenir massacre in 2008, when pro-Evo peasants were allegedly ambushed by Fernández’ thugs in the isolated Bolivian Amazon region. And several former strong opposition leaders fled to the United States, among them Branko Marinkovic, the former pro-autonomy leader of Santa Cruz region, and former presidential candidate Manfred Reyes Villa. It is not clear, however, whether the government can get the same results with members of the moderate left, even if their movement is weak.

Morales faces a certain ideological stagnation. His second term has been marked with all the wear and tear that a second term implies. From this perspective, Morales’ future—he is planning to run again in 2014—will depend on his capacity to take charge of the process of change and to recover some of the mystique of his first term. Without a doubt, “change” has entered into its most prosaic moment, without great enemies in sight—which is an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. The struggle against the “separatists” had managed to solidify the Morales ranks until 2008. Now Bolivians are expecting Morales’ sweeping discourse to be translated into better concrete conditions in their daily lives. They are expecting a revolution in their pocketbooks.

Pablo Stefanoni, journalist and economist, is the editor of Nueva Sociedad. Until February 2011, he was editor-in-chief of Le Monde Diplomatique Bolivia. He is the author of “Qué hacer con los indios...” Y otros traumas de la colonialidad.

Republished from ReVista

El Alto in Flux: Crossroads Between La Paz and the Altiplano

2011-10-07T16:33:00.001+11:00

Xavier Albó

When I passed through El Alto de La Paz for the first time in 1954, I didn’t even notice. The city—just a few minutes outside of La Paz—consisted of just a few little houses and market stalls at the end of the immense altiplano. La Ceja (the “eyebrow”), reaching some 13,500 feet into the air, suddenly tumbles down toward the river and the city of La Paz, about a thousand feet lower, as if it were another Grand Canyon filled with buildings at the bottom, and on either side, little houses of unprocessed red brick virtually hanging off both sides.

Towards the end of the colony (1780- 81), this Ceja—the border of present-day El Alto—was already conspicuous for having sheltered thousands of Aymara rebels led by Julián Apaza (Túpaj Katari) and his wife Bartolina Sisa. From the vantage of the higher point, they laid siege to La Paz for six long months. Residents in La Paz endured famine and death until the rebels were routed by Spanish troops arrivng from Lima and Buenos Aires. That encircling of La Paz has remained deeply engraved in the collective unconscious, with guilt and fear buried within in the descendants of the besieged population, and as a model and battle flag for the Aymara people, despite the fact they were defeated.

In 1985, El Alto was declared a independent municipality. Since 2007, it actually numbers more inhabitants than the capital city (although El Alto is part of Greater La Paz). In 2011, it is likely that the population will reach a million, 300 times greater than its population in 1950. Although El Alto is already Bolivia’s second most populous city (after Santa Cruz) and although its human development index has improved from 0.59 in 1992 to 0.66 in 2005, it ranks in 47th place among the country’s municipalities, considerably lower than all the department (state) capitals and other smaller cities. But the city is changing. In the 1980s, most of the housing was only one story high. Now, there are more and more highrises, some in an art nouveau style particular to El Alto, in which the lower floors house stores, residences, extravagant event salons and, sometimes, luxurious chalet residences on the higher floors.

In the last census in 2001, 74% of El Alto’s residents defined themselves as Aymara, although only 48% spoke the language. Younger generations born or raised in the city have few incentives to use Aymara. Most alteños own their own lots and are constructing houses; the census also found much self-employment and many family-style businesses there.

El Alto has been strengthening an identity distinct from that of La Paz, which residents refer to as “La Hoyada”— the hollows. But together they make up the same metropolis, the largest in the country, so their interdependence is very strong. About 200,000 workers from El Alto travel down to La Paz every day in the thousands of minibuses that ply between the two cities. And another huge quantity of people travel on Sundays in the other direction to the 70-block 16 de Julio open air market that sells everything from needles to Volvos. If La Paz is the political heart of Bolivia, El Alto is still its lungs. The bureaucracy of La Paz is getting old; El Alto is an adolescent in the prime years. At important moments, La Paz and El Alto have united to function as a single body working together on the political future of the country.

But all this only represents half of the key role of El Alto. The other half is the city’s enduring ties to the Aymara altiplano. There’s been no census to determine how many El Alto residents also maintain a place in the countryside, but it is evident that, on the level of individual families, the bonds between city and countryside are very strong. With the exception of a few very inhospitable places, the altiplano has not emptied out, though it has somewhat stagnated, distributing members of its families between the country and the city, as if the city were another socially complementary productive niche (and one that is certainly privileged). This fluidity between city and country taps into the ancestral Andean strategy of combining access to different microclimates in order to guarantee survival.

The concept of “resident” has emerged as a new and very important social category in the countryside; this is the name locals have developed for those who live in the city. Many of these citydwellers organize associations based on place of origin and keep strong ties with their home communities. Family celebrations help seal these ties through rituals that cement exchanges, rights and mutual obligations. These residents know that if they fulfill their sundry communal obligations— including holding communal offices and sponsoring patronal fiestas— they will maintain their rights to the land. With the 1994 Popular Participation Law, rural municipalities have obtained many more resources, and some El Alto residents also run for mayors and councilmen in their home communities. Quite a few rural municipalities even have a second informal seat in the city—which could be the urban home of the mayor—to attend to the needs of residents from the community paisanos.

The rural origins of many of El Alto’s citizens help us to understand the weight of the neighborhood boards known as “juntas vecinales,” from the street leaders and the board of each zone, neighborhood and area to the powerful Federation of Neighborhood Boards of El Alto known by its Spanish acronym as FEJUVE, which brings together more than 500 of these boards; they are the urban version of a rural community. Some neighborhoods were even originally formed by people from the same place or occupation (such as neighborhoods made up of miners). Over the years, even though people from other places came in, the neighborhood was usually controlled by a board whose membership reflected its origins. There is not a sector of El Alto that does not have some neighborhood association. Because of this community structure, even in the midst of the chaos of new neighborhoods that with only basic services are constantly springing up, El Alto does not seem to suffer the anomie that often afflicts other great urban concentrations in the continent.

In spite of many conflicts, sinecures and scams, these neighborhood boards are recognized by everyone as the local authority. Public works, services and even complaints to the municipal authorities or other public agencies about unfulfilled promises are all channeled through these boards. Many times, the juntas vecinales resolve neighborly disputes and organize to put an end to the bad deeds of thieves and gang members. Effigies are hung from lampposts to warn off anyone thinking about stealing. When someone new comes into the neighborhood, they are expected to win their right to living space by visiting the board with a few cases of beer as a gift.

Just like in the countryside, there are fiestas and celebrations going on all the time in El Alto. It is always surprising to see the number of both traditional and new salons for receptions, parties, dinners, dances or worship services. And in spite of the great number of meeting places, the streets are not only for walking. They are also a blatantly public place for celebrating, dancing, selling, blocking vehicles and protesting.

But a city is not quite a collective entity. Unlike in rural communities, there are many people who live in the same zone or even on the same street and do not know each other or participate in the neighborhood assembies. As in any city, relationships are not always based on physical proximity, but on other factors such as jobs, religion, youth groups and studies. Cellphones also facilitate these relations over distance. In this sense, we can talk about traces of anomie here as well.

Taking into account both perspectives—the city of anomie and that of solidarity—and in both directions—towards La Paz and away from it—the city of El Alto operates as an intercultural and catalyzing hinge between La Paz and the altiplano.

The characteristic of being a hinge, a bellows, a fork in the road, in Spanish, bisagra, has strengthened the political importance of El Alto, with back-and forth fluctuations. Since the return of democracy in the 1980s, the electorate has vacillated between rightist and leftist candidates, generally favoring the most populist tendency because of offers of public works and services.

The emergence of Evo Morales and the MAS party has led to an even stronger internal polarization between neighborhoods because of their distinct histories and options. On the one hand, El Alto is characterized as a great revolutionary city, with very ethnic overtones, particularly since October 2003. After the first road blockades came under Army fire in the countryside, El Alto became the great protagonist of the mobilizations. Its residents suffered the most losses of the 60 killed and 400 wounded by the Army’s violent repression; most of the unarmed victims had mobilized around October 12, El Día de la Hispanidad (the date on which Columbus Day is celebrated in the United States.)

After the bloody events, I accompanied a street funeral wake for a girl who had come from the countryside a few months earlier. The crowd helped me up to the terrace roof of her house, where she had stacked up two bricks to be able to see what was happening out there on the avenue. When she peered out, a war bullet pierced her head, leaving a large lock of hair on the other side of the terrace as a witness to its trajectory. A few blocks down the street, another wake was being held in a church for an unidentified youth and an old man whose bodies had been brought there in a wheelbarrow.

Such vicious repression did not make cowards out of the residents of El Alto. They were infuriated. Neighborhood boards organized thousands from El Alto who converged together like a great flood from different points in El Alto to the center of La Paz. It was like a sped-up reiteration of the 1781 anti-colonial action.

This time, many of the residents of La Paz were themselves quite sympathetic to the movement, and others—such as the mining cooperatives—lent direct support. The march was successful. Finally, the Army gave in. President Sánchez de Lozada resigned and fled the country. Since then, the cry of the people from El Alto, “El Alto on its feet, never on its knees” (El Alto de pie, nunca de rodillas) has become consecrated as a popular slogan.

However, other neighborhoods of El Alto simply did not participate. One of the main representatives of this group, the son of El Alto’s first mayor and now an important leader of the domestic opposition group known as Unidad Nacional (UN) considers that these activists described above reflect only “a minority of leaders” who “impose their intolerant decisions” and who “commit excesses in the name of healthy neighborhood corporatism.” After the events of October 2003, USAID—and other organizations—devoted much more money to the mayor’s office for streets and other basic infrastructure. Since 1999, the mayor’s office has been in the hands of populist Pepe Lucho Paredes, a former member of the MIR party (then in the government) who severed his ties with that party after the 2003 events. Paredes marched with the rebels from El Alto and later founded his own party, “Plan Progreso” (PP). In 2004, he was reelected with 53% of the vote, compared to 17% for the MAS candidate; a year later, in December 2005, while 77% of El Alto voted for Evo as president, Pepe Lucho narrowly won public office, as prefect, this time in an alliance with the rightist party PODEMOS, (although this time with a narrow difference with the MAS candidate, 39% vs 38%).

Evo Morales and MAS have continued to dominate the political stage in El Alto: in December 2009, they gained control of more than two-thirds of the new Plurinational Legislative Assembly, with El Alto reelecting the president and his congressional representatives by an astounding 87%, since the four previous years had been filled with bonanzas, subsidies and comparative tranquility.

But cracks began to appear, and by April 2010 the MAS won the mayoralty with a mere 39% of the vote. In the streets, people were talking about having to choose between a “ratero” (thief ), refering to the MAS candidate who finally won, accused of corruption and a “cholero” (a man who goes after “cholitas”), referring to the MSM candidate who years before had been implicated in a scandalous affair. But in the election the biggest surprise was the unknown 30-year-old Soledad “Sole” Chopetón (UN), whose polls were showing at two percent in February but on April 4, garnered 30 percent of the vote—a very respectable second place. A significant number of El Alto residents opted for Sole, because she emphasized that she was a warmi (woman), young and on the fringes of traditional electoral politics.

At the end of 2010, the Evo government surprised everyone with a decree that immediately raised gasoline prices by a whopping 83% without enacting significant compensatory measures for the majority of the population. The president invoked the problem of contraband as a justification for the measure, but even if his reason was probably valid, the gas price hike set off huge increases in transportation and food prices. Huge mass protests erupted, even in those sectors that had been very loyal to Evo’s political process, including El Alto. Only a few of the leaders of the popular movements (mostly in rural areas) accepted his reasoning. But the disenchantment, protests and loss of credibility were so generalized that Evo, one hour before the celebrations of the New Year, revoked the decree in person, declaring the necessity of “governing by obeying the people.” His new stance was that the measures continued to be necessary, but that neither the moment nor the way of putting them into practice were opportune. In the short run, everything calmed down and New Year’s fireworks also celebrated the reversal of the measure. Yet prices of most goods could not be rolled back, nor did it appear possible to return to a state of unconditional love for Evo and his government. Now not only the opposition was marching—much of the popular sector rediscovered that the old style of protests such as marches and road blockages still got them what they wanted.

In April 2011, the previously weakened Bolivian Workers’ Union (COB) called for an indefinite general strike. Its main demand was higher salaries, especially in the areas of health and education. On the hidden agenda of certain leaders was a desire to strengthen their organization internally in the wake of union elections. The workers ended up with some pay increases, but not as much as they had asked for. In this sense, the government was strengthened more than the COB.

Significantly, all the street demonstrations with their noisy miners’ explosives and inevitable confrontations with the police affected only the city of La Paz, although a few of the marches originated in El Alto and included teachers from that city. This time, El Alto was quiet and most schools kept their doors open, unlike the situation in La Paz. “Why?” I asked a group of youth. They answered, “Here, only a few people earn a salary.”

Thus, in spite of government efforts to reverse the unfavorable new situation of higher prices and prevalent protests, Pandora’s box appears to have been opened. It may be impossible to close it.

Xavier Albó is a linguist, anthropologist and Jesuit priest who has lived for many years in El Alto.

Republished from ReVista

Evo Morales Through the Prism of Wikileaks

2011-10-07T16:28:00.000+11:00

Martín Sivak

A century ago, the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia suggested that coca-leaf consumption, a millenarian tradition among indigenous peoples, was the source of Bolivia’s problems. He proposed instead “plain American chewing gum for everyone.” The gum would be donated by U.S. companies and distributed by the embassy.

At the beginning of this century, another U.S. ambassador interpreted the 2002 elections in terms of the Wars on Terror and Drugs, calling for a massive vote against the coca-growers’ union leader, Evo Morales. This U.S. stance increased Morales’ share of the votes substantially, leading him unexpectedly to finish second. In the wake of the 2002 election, according to State Department documents, the U.S. embassy proposed strengthening opposition parties to offset the growing power in Bolivia of MAS, Morales’ party, calling him an “illegal coca agitator.” Neither the chewing gum strategy nor that of supporting political parties in decline managed to reduce coca consumption or dampen the popularity of Morales, who won the 2005 and 2009 presidential elections by a wide margin.

U.S. State Department documents, made public by Wikileaks and available on the website of Bolivia’s vice president (http://wikileaks.vicepresidencia.gob. bo), demonstrate that during Morales’ first presidency, the United States did not explicitly propose anything it could not achieve. The documents reveal what the United States was most worried about: the president’s anti-imperialist rhetoric: Cuban and Venezuelan presence and aid, the war on drugs, protection of U.S. investments in Bolivia—particularly in the mining sectorand the erosion of democracy.

In August 2007, a cable from the U.S. embassy in La Paz declared that democracy was “in danger,” adding that the support of democracy in Bolivia was the foremost priority. The embassy raised “serious questions” about Morales’ commitment to democracy—understood as separation of powers, checks and balances, an active political opposition and free press—“given his demonstrated impatience with compromise.” The cable defined him as a “leader with strong anti-democratic tendencies,” adding, “over the years he has been known to bribe, threaten and even physically intimidate anyone who stood in his way, including government officials, politicians and cocalero colleagues.” To the embassy, Morales’ project of change and renovation of the justice system exemplified his authoritarianism.

Thus, throughout the Wikileak documents, the United States appears as one of the last defenders of the ancien regime—that of pacted democracy and neoliberal reforms—which had been severely challenged in Evo Morales’ 2005 landslide election victory. Even groups that are moderately critical of Morales concede that the government has begun a process of putting into practice a plurinational state granting social inclusion and increased rights for indigenous and peasant sectors. In other words, democracy has been expanded.

This article attempts to point out the U.S. government’s difficulties in adjusting to new times and, above all, to what I call the “Bolivianization” of bilateral relations (I first used this term in “The Bolivianisation of Washington-La Paz Relations: Evo Morales’ Foreign Policy Agenda in Historical Context, in Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia, London: Institute for Study of the Americas, 2011).

Bolivianization

Starting with the 1952 National Revolution (nationalization of mines, universal suffrage and agrarian reform) to Morales’ inauguration, the United States’ grand narrative framed Washington-La Paz relations as part of the U.S. agenda—particularly the War against Communism, War on Drugs and War on Terror. After the turn of the century, the crisis of the regional neoliberal consensus marked the emergence in Bolivia of a radical political cycle with an ethno-cultural accent. This radical movement began with the 2000 Cochabamba Water War (the successful upheaval that prevented water price hikes by a multinational company, replacing it with a cooperative) and reached a peak with the Gas War in October 2003 (the rebellion against gas exports to the United States via Chile that forced President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to resign). These radical protests introduced a new tone to the notion of national sovereignty and control of natural resources, which proved to be crucial in redefining the relationship with the United States.

The Morales administration has established a new domestic agenda strongly driven by these two wars, especially the Gas War, and by the cocaleros’ active rejection of U.S. intervention with coca crop eradication through the War on Drugs. The government has significantly reduced U.S. participation in the fashioning of public policy—especially in the areas of economics, defense and security, and in the war on drugs. It has rejected free trade agreements proposed by the United States and has proposed to Washington a bilateral relationship based on the communal concept of reciprocity.

The first symbolic step in this reciprocity was to require U.S. tourists to purchase a visa (Brazil does the same). At the same time, the government has established regional alliances with Cuba and Venezuela in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), and with the rest of South American countries through the trade agreements known as UNASUR and MERCOSUR. It has also signed trade agreements with China and Iran, among others.

The president’s anti-U.S. discourse—yet another novelty in bilateral relations—is the most frequent complaint of State Department officials, according to Wikileaks. “We also have to urge the Morales government to temper its rhetoric if it is indeed interested in improved bilateral ties,” says one of the documents. In another, Ambassador David Greenlee warns Vice President Alvaro García Linera that “anti-American remarks may damage Bolivia’s chances for an APTDEA extension.” (APTDEA grants trade preferences to Bolivia in exchange for its commitment to the War on Drugs; formally, it does not include the issue of “rhetoric.”) The cables maintain that Morales’ anti-U.S. stance is being used to cover up domestic problems, leaving out any question about historic reasons for such attitudes in Bolivia.

Echoes of Terrorism, Cold War and War on Drugs

Foreign policy has also been “Bolivianized” by how the Morales administration interprets the new U.S. intervention in Bolivia in terms of domestic dynamics, particularly the conflict between the elites in the Santa Cruz area and the national government. The Bolivian government asserts that the United States belonged to a broad coalition led by these elites that are bent not on saving Bolivia from Communism or terrorism, but from the MAS government agenda. The Morales government expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg in September 2008, accusing him of being the leader of the opposition headquartered in Santa Cruz that seeks to overturn the government. Although no definitive proof supports this accusation, the government was able to create a narrative that enjoys a broad social consensus in Bolivia, in which the United States is seen as intervening at the heart of national politics.

In the days following the expulsion of the ambassador, relates one cable, then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Spanish ambassador to the United States concurred that Morales was “out of his league.” Months later, in a confusing operation in Santa Cruz, Bolivian security forces killed a group of hitmen allegedly contracted by members of the regional elite to defend Santa Cruz or to obtain its secession from the country. The U.S. embassy’s version of the events, as revealed by Wikileaks, is that the Bolivian government itself hired some of these hitmen and tortured the two survivors of the operation. The source, whose name was blacked out on the document, earned the confidence of the officials, who titled their cable “Gob [government of Bolivia] involved in Terror.” In this fashion, the Morales administration received the label of “terrorist.”

The role Venezuela and Cuba play in the Bolivian government also has a dominant place in the Wikileak cables. A February 2, 2007 embassy cable is subtitled “One Place Where We Are Not Big Brother.” The cable charges that “Cuban and Venezuelan advice, interference, and assistance continue to be of serious concern. Cuban doctors and newly inaugurated hospitals bring medical care to isolated communities. Venezuela has agreed to purchase Bolivian soy, has provided microcredit financing to small businesses, has donated tractors to Bolivian farmers, and has funded community radio stations to broadcast the Gob’s messages…The Venezuelan programs receive frequent public acclaim from Bolivia’s poor.”

The presence of the supposed big brother who controls everything brings echoes of the Cold War. The “twins”—Cuba and Venezuela—have replaced the former Soviet Union as rivals to the United States for big brother status. Venezuela is seen as a guide and inspiration for Bolivian policy; a cable of August 2007 states, “Evo seems to be following in Chávez’s footsteps.” As an example, it cites a draft of the Bolivian constitution (“financed by Venezuelan and Spanish advisors”) that contains a clause for indefinite reelection. In the document entitled “Venezuela- Bolivia: how much fire behind the smoke,” Morales is described as acting like a “smitten school girl” when he appears in public with the Venezuelan leader.

Even though Chávez is Bolivia’s ally and offers the country economic assistance, his influence in political terms is much less than what people in Washington and even Caracas think. The notion of the mentor relationship, in any case, underestimates Morales more than it overestimates Chávez’s powers. This mentorship tries to explain the trajectory of the Morales government through the lens of Venezuelan and Cuban influence, completely overlooking the domestic reasons for the radical cycle that began in 2000.

The so-called War on Drugs is a central theme in Washington-La Paz relations since the 1980s. The United States sees the eradication of coca leaf as indispensable and for several decades managed to convince Bolivian governments to share this point of view. The Morales government has implemented a different policy: voluntary eradication of crops and social control (through the cocalero union) of the considerable legal production of coca leaf (a 40x40 plot of land per family and 49 acres in total). It has allowed less participation by the United States (in fact, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was expelled on charges of conspiring against the Bolivian government). The government strategy has not impeded the growth of coca leaf production (about 75 acres—25 above the legal limit), but it has obtained good results in the area of interdiction, a fact recognized in the U.S. documents themselves.

The United States subtly questions the program of voluntary eradication, particularly noting that Morales talks of counternarcotics as a “shared responsibility,” and expresses its concern for the increased production of coca leaf and cocaine exports. At least in the cables revealed by Wikileaks, the United States does not blame Morales for the drug trafficking in Bolivia, as it alleged in the 1990s. It merely criticizes the government strategy.

The Morales government has looked for some continuity in the Washington-La Paz relationship despite significant ruptures. One example is an attempt to reclaim Bolivian certification (tariff preferences for Bolivian exports in exchange for progress in the so-called War on Drugs). But Bolivia was decertified a few days before the U.S. ambassador was expelled.

The second continuity is that Bolivia keeps receiving U.S. aid. The documents show that some $90 million were funneled to Bolivia through USAID to “further social and economic inclusion of Bolivia’s historically marginalized indigenous groups and to support democratic institutions and process, including decentralized governance…” The details of how this money was distributed are unavailable to both the Bolivian government and U.S. taxpayers.

The Morales government has insisted that the money should be channeled only through the Bolivian state, rejecting the possibility that local governments and non-government agencies receive these funds. In meetings with U.S. officials, as noted in the cables, Morales seems to be demanding that aid be unconditional, accusing the officials of conspiracy, while at the same time thanking them for their help during recent floods and alternately telling them that he has received thousands of letters from all over the country asking that USAID be expelled. It is a style that tends to disconcert officials from the United States and many other countries.

In a meeting with Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon in August 2008, Morales asked for the extradition of former president Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada, who has been charged with responsibility for seventy deaths in the Gas War. “Send us back Goni and you will become the mayor of El Alto,” he told Shannon in perhaps the only joke contained in the documents. In November 2009, Shannon became U.S. ambassador to Brazil: everything indicates that the United States will not extradite Goni and Shannon will not govern El Alto.

****

About Martín Sivak’s Evo Morales: The Extraordinary Rise of the First Indigenous President of Bolivia

"Evo Morales is already a historic figure. The best known Bolivian since Bolivar, he is a political leader with a difference because he won office after years of popular mobilization with an unprecedented mandate for political, economic and cultural change. Evo's presidency is the product of mass struggle, but as Martin Sivak's vivid study shows, the president is also a remarkable man. Sivak has plainly gained unusual access through winning Evo's trust, and this is an understandably sympathetic study. But it is also independently-minded, insightful and attentive to the details that do not flatter. This true insider-account is indispensable for understanding 21st-century Bolivia, and it will unsettle a good many easy convictions on both sides of the fence." — James Dunkerley, author of Bolivia: Revolution and the Power of History in the Present
"A vivid and moving portrayal of one of the most fascinating figures of our times, this book is also an entertaining romp through recent Latin American history. Like Morales himself, this intimate story of his life, from Aymara shepherd to powerful President, constantly surprises and enthralls us." — Ariel Dorfman, author of Death and the Maiden
"Nearly five centuries after the Spanish conquest of Bolivia, race-based slavery still remains in force in many places in that high, wondrous country. This is why Evo Morales, along with the indigenous-rights activists, environmentalists and trade unionists who helped elect him, matter enormously for the health of democracy in the Americas. And I can think of no better guide to the hopes Evo represents, and the change he has managed to achieve, than Martín Sivak, one of Latin America's most respected non-fiction writers. Sivak's meticulously observed biography is important and compelling." — Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia and Empire's Workshop
For the Spanish Edition: "The narrative force of a novel and the seriousness of the best journalism." — Tomás Eloy Martínez, author of Santa Evita

Martín Sivak is the author of four books about Bolivia, including a biography of Hugo Banzer (El dictador elegido) and a portrait of Evo Morales (Jefazo, published in English as Evo Morales: The Extraordinary Rise of the First Indigenous President of Bolivia [Palgrave, 2010]. Sivak is completing a doctorate in Latin American History at New York University (NYU).

Republished from ReVista

Is It Police Brutality in Bolivia or Is It Something Much More Insidious to the Current US Press Coverage?

2011-10-05T16:13:00.003+11:00

Lynette Yetter, Sep 30, 2011

Bolivia is in the news. Petitions are zipping through cyberspace. What is going on? Last Sunday police brutally attacked indigenous people peacefully marching in protest of a road being built through their territory known as the TIPNIS (El Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure). Everyone seems to agree on the fact that marchers were horribly injured and killed. But soon the situation gets very murky.

No one is claiming responsibility for ordering the police to attack the marchers. The quickest finger pointing seems to belong to the US press (both mainstream and activist). They say that President Evo is the one responsible.

But I'm not sure that this is true.

As everyone who has read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States knows, the mainstream press historically has supported US business interests under a cloak of populist sentiment, and sometimes has manipulated the activist press to follow suit.

What do I mean by that?

The cloak of populist sentiment changes with the topic and the times; jargon such as "God's will" has been replaced with "protect indigenous people and the rain forest." Of course we want to protect indigenous people and the rain forest. This is vital to our survival as a species. But, is that what we are really doing when we sign one of the petitions that are going around the Internet?

Let's pause a moment, and look at one of the many historical examples of the press manipulating people to support US business interests: the Spanish American War. This war ostensibly was to help the oppressed Cuban people gain liberty from Spain: That was the rallying cry to get well-meaning people of the US emotionally charged so they would join the military and become cannon fodder.

After the war the Cuban people were not part of the decision-making process for their own new Constitution. The US-mandated constitution basically made Cuba a possession of US businesses. Soon about 80% of the island was owned and controlled by US businesses, such as United Fruit. The people of the US were angry and disillusioned at this outcome, but their voices were not heeded.

With that in mind, let's look at what is happening in the press nowadays. Sunday a group of policemen brutally attacked peaceful marchers in Bolivia. Starting Monday and Tuesday the US and UK press ran articles denouncing Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. But, in a far more extreme incident in 2009 militarized Peruvian police massacred hundreds of protesting indigenous people, and the US press was comparatively silent.

Why the difference in reaction?

Could the silence in the US press about the massacre in Peru be because the then-president of Peru, Alan Garcia, was friendly to US business interests, and the road building also benefited US businesses? And could the immediate outcry in the US press over the police attack on the marchers be because president Evo Morales supports the interests of the Bolivian people over the interests of US businesses?

And I have not even mentioned the police brutality that occurs on a regular basis in US cities. No news agency that I have seen has demanded that president Obama be held accountable for the brutal actions of local police.

Police brutality should never be tolerated. I urge that we continue questioning until we reveal the truth of who incited the police to attack the indigenous marchers in Bolivia last Sunday. And I urge that we use the same care in investigating human rights abuses commited, overtly or by ommission, by US business interests.

In the meanwhile, are well-meaning Americans being bamboozled into creating and signing petitions against Evo Morales — the first indigenous president in the Americas, when the real motive is for US business interests to oust President Evo so transnational corporations can control Bolivia's natural resources and indigenous labor like they have in the past?

I don't know. But I do know that I am not signing any petitions while these questions linger.

Republished from BC Politics

Bolivian Organizations Will March for the Change

2011-10-05T15:09:00.000+11:00

La Paz, Oct 1 (Prensa Latina) Bolivian organizations from the Unity Pact ratified Saturday that they will march on Oct. 12 to support the process of change headed by President Evo Morales since January 2006. .

The decision was made after a meeting held with Evo and Vice President Alvaro Garcia, where the current Bolivian situation was analyzed, said Ever Choquehuanca, the director of the Departmental Federation of Inter-cultural Peace Communities

The Unity Pact is made up of the Confederation of Bolivian Farm Workers (CSUTCB), the National Council of Ayllus and Markas del Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), Bolivia's Confederation of Intercultural Communities Unions, and the National Confederation of Indigenous Farmer Women from Bolivia-Bartolina Sisa.

Meanwhile, social sectors from Santa Cruz announced a series of pro-government mobilizations, said the president of the Santa Cruz Parliamentary Brigade, Mauro Pena.

The organizations, he added, are concerned about the impacts of an indigenous walk that started on August 15 in Trinidad rejecting the construction of a route that would link Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, but marked by political tones.

Many sectors agree the protest also aims to boycott the judicial elections on Oct. 16, he stressed.

Evo Morales Expects to Talk with Indigenous Marchers

2011-10-05T14:59:00.000+11:00

La Paz, Oct 4.(Prensa Latina) - Bolivian President Evo Morales expressed his willingness to receive at the Presidential Palace indigenous marchers protesting the construction of an inter-departmental road and now moving to the city of La Paz.

Morales said before starting the process of dialogue with the leaders of the mobilization, obligations must be met with the ministers of state in charge of meeting the specifications of 16 demands.

Morales had already accused the marchers of obstructing Judicial elections scheduled for October 16, an alert that was completed on Monday, when Adolfo Chavez, head of the mobilization, proposed to postpone those elections for November.

According to the radio station Erbol, Chavez admitted that the arrival of the march to the seat of government in defense of indigenous territory Isiboro Secure (Tipnis), a day before the vote, could create some problems.

Consulted in the issue, Communication Minister, Ivan Canelas, said the government did not even consider the matter.

The President of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Wilfredo Ovando, said that the election date is confirmed.

The member of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Dina Chuquimia, also said that the announced social mobilizations will not alter the date of the elections.

The marchers for the Tipnis argue that they defend the biodiversity of the vast Amazon region, while the executive commit themselves to further integration in roads to develop the region and give its residents access to health services and education, among others.

Government suspended construction of that road and proposed a national debate to decide by referendum whether it is feasible or not the road that will link the departments of Cochabamba (west) and Beni (east). (Prensa Latina)

Debate on TIPNIS continues in Bolivia

2011-10-05T13:42:00.001+11:00

Dario Kenner, La Paz

The debate about the Bolivian governments plan to build a road through a national park and autonomous indigenous territory rumbles on. There was a march of a few thousand today through central La Paz in support of the road and in defense of President Evo Morales and the “process of change”. The march was small compared to the 10,000 who protested on Wednesday 28 September. Today Morales speculated that maybe the march by indigenous movements CIDOB and CONAMAQ could be linked to an attempt to undermine historic judicial elections on 16 October. He also said the right wing opposition were using the media and making up lies because they could not accept an indigenous President. Meanwhile the marchers, who were repressed by police on Sunday 25 September are gathering in Quiquibey to then set off towards La Paz, probably tomorrow. They reject any link with the judicial elections and say their march is to defend their rights and ancestral territories.

They will go from Quiquibey which on the road towards La Paz is after Yucumo and before Caranavi. It is crucial the march starts after Yucumo because this is where a social movement of migrant settlers (colonizadores) blockaded the road for over two weeks to stop the indigneous TIPNIS march from advancing. It will be interesting to see what happens once the march gets to Caranavi because there is talk of there being division there amonst the colonizadores social movement with some saying they will blockade and others who want the march to pass through to La Paz.

I was told this by a leader of the colonizadores yesterday who would prefer not to be named. While these are his personal comments and are not on behalf of the social movement he represents some of them are illuminating: “It is getting very politicised. In Beni we know it is the opposition who support the march. There have been nine attempts at dialogue. The government has committed mistakes. Evo has not been sincere and has not told the truth. 90% of the ministers will go. I think it was García Linera (Bolivian Vice President) who gave the order for the police repression”

“The indigenous march affected us with 5 of their demands. They did not want to listen to us at all. We said to them you cant decide for us on these issues but they didn’t want to know. We spoke with the Foreign Minister and told him about the 5 demands that affect us”

“The question we ask is why do the indigenous peoples have so much land and so few families? We have 50 hectares per family. I have four children, what will I do? Many government controlled lands have been given out but the National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA) has done a bad distirubtion of land”. Unequal land distribution is a serious problem in Bolivia and is leading to tensions between colonizadores and indigenous peoples who have obtained collective land titles for their territories. Background here

Republished from Bolivia Diary

Pablo Solon on TIPNIS: There must be coherence between what we do and what we say

2011-10-05T13:40:00.000+11:00

President and Brother Evo Morales

Since 2006, Bolivia has shown leadership to the world on how to tackle the most profound challenges of our time. We have achieved the approval of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in the United Nations and promoted a vision for society based on Vivir Bien (Living Well) rather than consuming more.

However there must be coherence between what we do and what we say. One cannot speak of defending Mother Earth and at the same time promote the construction of a road that will harm Mother Earth, doesn’t respect indigenous rights and violates human rights in an “unforgiveable” way.

As the country that initiated the International Day of Mother Earth, we have a profound responsibility to be an example on the global stage. We cannot repeat the same recipes of failed “developmentalism” that has already brought the relationship between humanity and Mother Earth to breaking point

It is incomprehensible that we promote a World Conference on Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations in 2014 if we don’t lead the way in applying the principle of “informed, free and prior consent” for indigenous peoples in our own country.

The Eighth Indigenous March has some incoherent and incorrect demands such as those related to hydrocarbons ant the sale of forest carbon credits that look to commodify Mother Earth (known as REDD). However their concern for the impacts of the construction of this road is just.

Thousands of the delegates of five continents who participated in the first World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth are deeply upset by the Bolivian government’s actions.

The conflict in TIPNIS should never have happened. Greater physical integration of the country is necessary, but does not need to go through the “Indigenous Territory and National Park of Isibore Secure” (TIPNIS). Obviously building a road that doesn’t go trough the park would be more expensive, but trying to save $200 million or $300 million dollars at any social and environmental cost goes against the very principles of the “Living Well”.

In order to stop the manipulation of the Right who wish to use this protest to return to the past, we must be even more consistent in defending human rights, indigenous peoples’ rights and the rights of Mother Earth.

It’s not too late to resolve this crisis if we suspend permanently the construction of the road trough the TIPNIS, bring to justice those responsible for the repression to the indigenous march, and open up a broad and participatory national and regional debate to define a new agenda of actions in the framework of the Living Well.

28 September 2011

Pablo Solón

Republished from PWCCC website

Letter from CONAIE to Evo Morales regarding TIPNIS

2011-10-01T12:54:00.002+10:00

Quito, September 26, 2011

OF. Nº 0113 CONAIE-2011

Compañero
Evo Morales
President of the Plurinacional State of Bolivia>

Attention.-

Dear Brother,

Receive our cordial greetings on behalf of the Confederation of Peoples of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador CONAIE. We would also like to use this opportunity to send via your person a deep hug of solidarity to the brothers and sisters in the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

During these days we have paid witness to all the events that your government has had to confront in regards to the march by the brothers from the indigenous peoples of the Bolivian east in defence of TIPNIS. In the face of this, we would like to make known out deep concern regarding the events that have transpired, especially the events that occurred yesterday afternoon.

Being faithful to the principles of the struggle of the people, we reject the violent repression that the indigenous brothers from the march have suffered at the hands of the Bolivian police.

For a long time, our people have shared and sought to develop our common struggle against neoliberalism, for sovereignty, for the defence of natural resources and against neo-colonial states and governments. These experiences have shaped and strengthen us in order to defeat the neoliberal model. No doubt on the way we have had multiple difficulties or even committed errors. But before anything else we firmly defend the process constructed between the people, the struggle for the DEFENCE OF MOTHER EARTH, together with the majority of the exploited men and women.

We hope that these differences will be resolved through dialogue, with the aim that they not be utilised by our enemies, the national right wing and imperialism, in order for them to once again persecute our peoples, above all our children.

Dear Compañero Evo, knowing your capacity, experience and knowledge we are sure that you will seek all the possible mechanisms in order to resolve this conflict between brothers and continue on the path of Buen Vivir (Living Well)

A fraternal and optimist hug from the peoples and nationalities of Ecuador

Humberto Cholango
PRESIDENT OF CONAIE

Translated from CIDOB website

Who Really Leads on the Environment? Evo Morales Versus the “Movement”

2011-10-01T11:49:00.004+10:00

Cory Morningstar, September 30^th, 2011

Evo Morales is Bolivia's first-ever Indigenous president. In his January 2006 inaugural speech, Morales's focus was the years of discrimination against Indians, and he compared Bolivia to apartheid-era South Africa. Morales hailed the election as the end of the Colonial and Neo-Liberal Era. In October 2009, Morales was named "World Hero of Mother Earth" by the General Assembly of the United Nations.

In December 2009, the Morales government proved the most progressive of all states (in alliance with ALBA and the G77 nations) at the COP15 climate meeting in Copenhagen. This union, led by Bolivia, aggressively pursued the scientific targets necessary in order for the world to avoid complete ecological collapse and a global genocide of unparalleled proportions. Ironically (and most revealing), these progressive states led leaps and bounds ahead of the environmental movement itself.

The institutionalized environmental "movement" was united under an umbrella organization/campaign titled TckTckTck, a social media giant, contrived by some of the world's most powerful corporations and marketing executives. [1] One such TckTckTck partner (there are 280 partners made public) was the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change consisting of corporations such as Shell, RBF and Coca-Cola. (When this information was uncovered and made public, TckTckTck removed them from their website and scrambled to recover from the PR nightmare.) The Bolivian government's leadership was so incredibly dignified and courageous that it even put the more legitimate Climate Justice movement to shame.

To get a sense of exactly who the corporate greens really represent (hint – it is not you), consider this: Bolivia, ALBA and the G77 demanded that states not exceed a 1ºC global temperature rise. In stark contrast, the NGOs "demanded" that temperatures not exceed a +2ºC and further "demanded" that world emissions peak by 2019! (Meaning that emissions would continue to increase, business as usual, until 2019 at which point we would begin an effort to decrease!) TckTckTck includes over 200 international partners including Avaaz, Conservation International, Greenpeace International, World Wildlife Fund (and many more pro-REDD advocates and profiteers) as well as Climate Action Network International [2] who represents (and speaks on behalf of) over 700 NGOs.

Regarding the issue of human rights, the hundreds of corporate NGOs – by campaigning to get the public to accept the global average temperature further rising up to a 2ºC limit – thereby sanctioned/sanctions most all species on this planet to an unprecedented annihilation within decades. [Note: Consider that at under +1ºC, we are already committed to a minimum +2.4ºC not including feedbacks: Ramanathan and Feng 2008 paper. Consider climate scientist James Hansen's warning that even 1ºC now looks like an unacceptably high risk.]

Considering that the corporate NGOs are leading us to certain species eradication, one must consider what constitutes criminal negligence. In the United States, the definition of criminal negligence is even more compelling: "Crimes Committed Negligently (Article 33.1) A crime shall be deemed to be committed with clear intent, if the man or woman was conscious of the social danger of his actions (inaction), foresaw the possibility or the inevitability of the onset of socially dangerous consequences, and willed such consequences to ensue." "A crime shall be deemed to be committed with indirect intent, if the man or woman realized the social danger of his actions (inaction), foresaw the possibility of the onset of socially dangerous consequences, did not wish, but consciously allowed these consequences or treated them with indifference." "A Crime Committed by Negligence (Article 33.1): A criminal deed committed thoughtlessly or due to negligence shall be recognized as a crime committed by negligence." "A crime shall be deemed to be committed thoughtlessly, if the man or woman has foreseen the possibility of the onset of socially dangerous consequences of his actions (inaction), but expected without valid reasons that these consequences would be prevented." "A crime shall be deemed to be committed due to negligence if the man or woman has not foreseen the possibility of the onset of socially dangerous consequences of his actions (inaction), although he or she could and should have foreseen these consequences with reasonable."

http://youtu.be/qJStS5uIRiA

After the massive failure/corruption of COP15 in 2009, in 2010 Bolivia organized and hosted the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which produced The Cochabamba Accord (April 2010), specifically rejecting REDD: "We condemn market mechanisms such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and its versions + and + +, which are violating the sovereignty of peoples and their right to prior, free and informed consent as well as the sovereignty of national States, the customs of Peoples, and the Rights of Nature."

Compare the Morales Leadership to NGO Avaaz, Which has Launched an International Campaign Against Morales

Avaaz is a member of The Climate Group.

The Climate Group is pushing REDD: http://www.theclimategroup.org/_assets/files/Reducing-Emissions-from-Deforestation.pdf

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund also acts as an incubator for in-house projects that later evolve into free-standing institutions – a case in point being The Climate Group, launched in London in 2004. The Climate Group coalition includes more than 50 of the world's largest corporations and sub-national governments, including big polluters such as energy giants BP and Duke Energy, as well as several partner organizations, such as NGO Avaaz. The Climate Group are advocates of unproven carbon capture and storage technology (CCS), nuclear power and biomass as crucial technologies for a low-carbon economy. The Climate Group works closely with other business lobby groups, including the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), which works consistently to sabotage climate action. The Climate Group also works on other initiatives, such as the Voluntary Carbon Standard, a new global standard for voluntary offset projects. One marketing strategist company labeled the Climate Group's campaign "Together" as "the best inoculation against greenwash." The Climate Group has operations in Australia, China, Europe, India, and North America. It was a partner to the Copenhagen Climate Council.

http://www.theclimategroup.org/about-us/our-partners/

The U.S. backed Avaaz NGO (Soros funding) has never endorsed the People's Agreement of Cochabamba. Neither has any other corporate green group.

http://youtu.be/RtCSB742km8

The environmental movement? It's a movement, all right. A movement to protect the world's wealthiest families and corporations who fund the movement via tax-exempt foundations.

Morales's Position on REDD

Morales produced a statement on REDD (September 2010) explaining in more detail his opposition to REDD (available here in Spanish, pdf file – 734.6 KB).

NATURE, FORESTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ARE NOT FOR SALE
Indigenous brothers of the world:

I am deeply concerned because some pretend to use leaders and indigenous groups to promote the commoditization of nature and in particular of forest through the establishment of the REDD mechanism (Reduction Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) and its versions REDD+ REDD++.

Every day an extension of forests and rainforest equivalent to 36,000 football fields disappears in the world. Each year 13 million hectares of forest and rain forest are lost. At this rate, the forests will disappear by the end of the century.

The forests and rainforest are the largest source of biodiversity. If deforestation continues, thousands of species, animals and plants will be lost forever. More than three quarters of accessible fresh water zones come from uptake zones in forests, hence the worsening of water quality when the forest condition deteriorates. Forests provide protection from flooding, erosion and natural disasters. They provide non-timber goods as well as timber goods. Forests are a source of natural medicines and healing elements not yet discovered. Forests and the rainforest are the lungs of the atmosphere. 18% of all emissions of greenhouse gases occurring in the world are caused by deforestation.

It is essential to stop the destruction of our Mother Earth.

Currently, during climate change negotiations everyone recognizes that it is essential to avoid the deforestation and degradation of the forest. However, to achieve this, some propose to commoditize forests on the false argument that only what has a price and owner is worth taking care of.

Their proposal is to consider only one of the functions of forests, which is its ability to absorb carbon dioxide, and issue “certificates”, “credits” or “Carbon rights” to be commercialized in a carbon market. This way, companies of the North have the choice of reducing their emissions or buy “REDD certificates” in the South according to their economic convenience. For example, if a company has to invest USD40 or USD50 to reduce the emission of one ton of C02 in a “developed country”, they would prefer to buy a “REDD certificate” for USD10 or USD20 in a “developing country”, so they can they say they have fulfilled to reduce the emissions of the mentioned ton of CO2.

Through this mechanism, developed countries will have handed their obligation to reduce their emissions to developing countries, and the South will once again fund the North and that same northern company will have saved a lot of money by buying “certified” carbon from the Southern forests. However, they will not only have cheated their commitments to reduce emissions, but they will have also begun the commoditization of nature, with the forests

The forests will start to be priced by the CO2 tonnage they are able to absorb. The “credit” or “carbon right” which certifies that absorptive capacity will be bought and sold like any commodity worldwide. To ensure that no one affects the ownership of “REDD certificates” buyers, a series of restrictions will be put into place, which will eventually affect the sovereign right of countries and indigenous peoples over their forests and rainforests. So begins a new stage of privatization of nature never seen before which will extend to water, biodiversity and what they call “environmental services”.

While we assert that capitalism is the cause of global warming and the destruction of forests, rainforests and Mother Earth, they seek to expand capitalism to the commoditization of nature with the word “green economy”.

To get support for this proposal of commoditization of nature, some financial institutions, governments, NGOs, foundations, “experts” and trading companies are offering a percentage of the “benefits” of this commoditization of nature to indigenous peoples and communities living in native forests and the rainforest.

Nature, forests and indigenous peoples are not for sale.

For centuries, Indigenous peoples have lived conserving and preserving natural forests and rainforest. For us the forest and rainforest are not objects, are not things you can price and privatize. We do not accept that native forests and rainforest be reduced to a simple measurable quantity of carbon. Nor do we accept that native forests be confused with simple plantations of a single or two tree species. The forest is our home, a big house where plants, animals, water, soil, pure air and human beings coexist.

It is essential that all countries of the world work together to prevent forest and rainforest deforestation and degradation. It is an obligation of developed countries, and it is part of its climate and environmental debt, to contribute financially to the preservation of forests, but NOT through its commoditization. There are many ways of supporting and financing developing countries, indigenous peoples and local communities that contribute to the preservation of forests.

Developed countries spend tens of times more public resources on defense, security and war than in climate change. Even during the financial crisis many have maintained and increased their military spending. It is inadmissible that by using the needs communities have and the ambitions of some leaders and indigenous “experts”, indigenous peoples are expected to be involved with the commoditization of nature.

All forests and rainforests protection mechanisms should guarantee indigenous rights and participation, but not because indigenous participation is achieved in REDD, we can accept that a price for forests and rainforests is set and negotiated in a global carbon market.

Indigenous brothers, let us not be confused. Some tell us that the carbon market mechanism in REDD will be voluntary. That is to say that whoever wants to sell and buy, will be able, and whoever does not want to, will be able to stand aside. We cannot accept that, with our consent, a mechanism is created where one voluntarily sells Mother Earth while others look crossed handed

Faced with the reductionist views of forests and rainforest commoditization, indigenous peoples with peasants and social movements of the world must fight for the proposals that emerged of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth:

1. Integrated management of native forests and rainforest not only considering its mitigation function as CO2 sink but all its functions and potentiality, whilst avoiding confusing them with simple plantations.

2. Respect the sovereignty of developing countries in their integral management of forests.

3. Full compliance with the Rights of Indigenous Peoples established by the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Convention No. 169 of the ILO and other international instruments; recognition and respect to their territories; revalorization and implementation of indigenous knowledge for the preservation of forests; indigenous peoples participation and indigenous management of forest and rainforest.

4. Funding of developed countries to developing countries and indigenous peoples for integral management of forest as part of their climate and environmental debt. No establishment of any mechanism of carbon markets or “incentives” that may lead to the commoditization of forests and rainforest.

5. Recognition of the rights of Mother Earth, which includes forests, rainforest and all its components. In order to restore harmony with Mother Earth, putting a price on nature is not the way but to recognize that not only human beings have the right to life and to reproduce, but nature also has a right to life and to regenerate, and that without Mother Earth Humans cannot live.

Indigenous brothers, together with our peasant brothers and social movements of the world, we must mobilize so that the conclusions of Cochabamba are assumed in Cancun and to impulse a mechanism of RELATED ACTIONS TO THE FORESTS based on these five principles, while always maintaining high the unity of indigenous peoples and the principles of respect for Mother Earth, which for centuries we have preserved and inherited from our ancestors.

EVO MORALES AYMA
President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia

+++

WHAT MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND NGOs ARE NOT REPORTING:

From the article: Bolivia: Amazon protest -- development before environment? by Fred Fuentes:

US interference

As the uprising against neoliberalism grew in strength, overthrowing a neoliberal president in 2003, US imperialism sought to use money to increase divisions within the indigenous movements.

In late 2005, investigative journalist Reed Lindsay published an article in NACLA that used declassified US documents to expose how US government-funded agency USAID was used to this effect.

USAID was already planning by 2002 to “help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors”.

The downfall in 2003 of president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada triggered a step-up in this subversive activity.

A particular target was CIDOB.

The group was in a crisis after Fabricano was accused of profiting from illegal logging and he accepted the post of vice-minister of Indigenous Affairs under Sanchez de Lozada.

Through USAID funding to the Brecha Foundation, an NGO established by CIDOB leaders, the US hoped to further mould the organisation to its own ends.

Referring to comments made by Brecha director Victor Hugo Vela, Lindsay notes that during this time, “CIDOB leaders allied with Fabricano have condemned the cultivation of coca, helped the business elite in the department of Santa Cruz to push for region autonomy and opposed a proposal to require petroleum companies to consult with indigenous communities before drilling on their lands”.

The CSUTCB (divided between followers of Morales and radical Aymara leader Felipe Quispe), CSCB, FNMCB-BS and organisations such as the neighbourhood councils of El Alto (Fejuve), and to a less extent worker and miner organisations, were at the forefront of constant street battles and insurrections.

CIDOB, however, took an approach marked by negotiation and moderation.

It was not until July 2005 that CIDOB renewed its leadership, in turn breaking relations with Brecha.

CIDOB was not the only target for infiltration.

With close to $200,000 in US government funds, the Land and Liberty Movement (MTL) was set up in 2004 by Walter Reynaga.

As well as splitting the Movement of Landless Peasant’s (MST), one wing of which operated out of his La Paz office, Lindsay said Reynaga, like Vega, tried to win control of the “MAS-aligned” CONAMAQ.

Demands

And it is also true that the demands of the Sub Central of TIPNIS, and in particular CIDOB, are far removed from any notion of communitarianism.

Although initially focused on opposition to the highway, protesters presented the government with an original list of 13 demands, then extended to 16, on the day the march began.

Among those were calls for indigenous peoples to be able to directly receive compensation payment for offsetting carbon emissions.

This policy, known as REDD+, has been denounced as the privatisation of the forests by many environmental activists and the Peoples' Summit of Climate Change organised in Bolivia in 2010.

It has also been promoted as a mechanism to allow developed countries to continue to pollute while undermining the right underdeveloped to develop their economies.

Another demand calls for the replacement of functionaries within the Authority for Control and Monitoring of Forests and Lands (ABT).

This demand dovetails with the allegations made by Morales against CIDOB leaders, and never refuted, that they want to control this state institution.

Much focus has been made of the potential environmental destruction caused by a highway that would open the path to future “coloniser” settlements.

But these arguments have only focused on one side of the equation.

Much has been made of a study by Bolivian Strategic Research Program that concluded that 64.5% of TIPNIS would be lost to deforestation by 2030 as a result of the highway.

Few, though, have noted that the same study found that even without the highway 43% of TIPNIS would be lost if the current rate of deforestation continues.

The biggest cause of this is the illegal logging that continues to occur, in some cases with the complicity of some local indigenous leaders and communities.

An environmental impact studies by the Bolivian Highway Authority have found the direct impact of the highway on TIPNIS to be 0.03%.

But this has to weighed up with the fact that the highway would provide the state with access to areas currently out of its reach.

This would enable not only access to services, but a greater ability to tackle illegal logging and potential narcotrafficking in the area.

At the same time, the government has asked the indigenous communities of TIPNIS to help in drafting legislation that would impose jail terms of 10 to 20 years on those found to be illegally settling, growing coca or logging in TIPNIS.

[1] TckTckTck's partners include Galeries Lafayette, Virgin Group, Yahoo! Music, iTunes, Google, Pernod Ricard, EDF, Microsoft, Zune, YouTube, USA Today, National Magazines, HSBC, M&S, Uniqlo, Lloyds Bank, MySpace, MTV, Bo Concept Japan K.K., Volvo, Kipa Turkey, Claro Argentina, Peugeot, NTV, Universal, Tesco, Sina.com, GDF Suez, Centrica, Oxfam, New Zealand Wine Company, 350.org, Handbag.com, Avaaz.org, Lesinrockuptibles, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, EMap, Greenpeace, Commensal, The Atlantic, Fast Company, News Limited, Tesla, Wired Magazine, and RFM Radio.

[2] The founding of the Climate Action Network (CAN) in 1988 can be traced back to the early players in the ENGO community, including Michael Oppenheimer of the corporate NGO, Environmental Defense Fund. CAN is a global network of over 700 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The stated goal of CAN is to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels. This goal is severely problematic in (at minimum) 2 fundamental ways: 1) There is no such thing as "ecologically sustainable levels" of climate change, and 2) as opposed to states having to respond to approximately 700 groups demanding action on climate change, states instead bask in the comfort of having to deal with only one (that of CAN), which essentially demands little to nothing. CAN has seven regional coordinating offices that coordinate these efforts in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Europe, Latin America, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Members include organizations from around the globe, including the largest corporate greens such as World Wildlife Fund [WWF], Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

Republished from NGOWatch

Bolivia: Crisis deepens over disputed highway

2011-09-27T17:51:00.001+10:00

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

By Federico Fuentes

September 25 will go down as one of the darkest day in Bolivia since Evo Morales was elected as the country’s first indigenous president almost six years ago.

After more than 40 days of marching, police officers moved in to repress indigenous protesters opposed to the government’s proposed highway that would run through the Isiboro-Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS).

The controversial highway has been opposed and supported by many of the indigenous and social organisations that make up the support base of the Morales government.

Differences over the project have resulted in tensions escalating between both sides during the past month and particularly in the days leading to the violence. Protesters were set to reach a town were locals were organising a blockade in protest against march demands they felt would negatively impact on them.

After the repression, Morales rejected accusations he was behind events he described as “an abuse committed against our indigenous brothers” and called for an international commission to investigate the incident.

During the police action, which lasted around half an hour, tear gas and rubber bullets sent indigenous marchers, including pregnant women and children, fleeing for safety.

Unconfirmed reports by the media committee of the marchers said one child was killed and that initially several protesters were missing.

A number of march leaders were briefly detained by police, while many more marchers were forced onto buses and sent back home.

Shock and anger at these events led to a wave of mourning and questioning as to how an indigenous-led government could carry out such actions against its own people.

The backdrop to this terrible event is the conflict that has been brewing over months regarding the proposed 306-kilometre highway that would link the departments of Beni and Cochabamba. Currently, the only alternative is the more than 800 kilometre trip that requires first traveling eastwards to the department of Santa Cruz.

Legitimate anger at the failure of the Bolivian government to carry out its obligation in consulting local communities within TIPNIS over the tract of the proposed highway that would cut through their territory, led locals to organise a march onto the capital, La Paz.

By August 15, the march had gained the support of the Confederation of the Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB), which unites the 34 indigenous peoples of Bolivia’s eastern lowlands, and important sections of the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qollasuyu, which groups together 16 rural indigenous organisations mainly based in the highlands to the west.

That same day, these organisations presented a list including 15 further demands on the government, with issues ranging from improving indigenous health and education to calls for halting gas exploitation in the Aguaragua National Park and the right of indigenous communities to directly receive funds from the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program.

REDD is a grossly anti-environmental United Nations program that aims to privatise forests by converting them into “carbon offsets” that allow rich, developed countries to continue polluting.

REDD is also a policy that has been actively pushed by non-government organisations (NGOs) within Bolivia that receive funding from governments in Europe and the United States and have been supporting the march.

The march also garnered unexpected support from a range of right-wing organisations that have campaigned for years to bring down the Morales government. This includes right-wing parties within parliament and organisations such as the Santa Cruz Civic Committee, which spearheaded the September 2008 coup attempt against Morales.

As protesters began to make their way to La Paz, at least nine attempts at dialogue were made by the government to try and resolve the demands of the marchers.

Among the demands that were agreed to by the government, and noted in a document posted on the CIDOB website on September 19, was implementing “the process of consultation with the indigenous communities of TIPNIS involved with section II of the San Ignacio de Moxos — Villa Tunari Highway, as always in compliance with the [constitution], international norms and the participation of observers.”

The government however rejected the possibility of negotiating over the issue of REDD, a policy rejected by the government and participants at the Peoples Summit on Climate Change it hosted in Cochabamba in April 2010.

It also ruled out the possibility of shutting down gas exploitation in Aguaragua National Park as it represents 90% of Bolivia’s gas exports and is fundamental to its ability to fund social programs and industrialise the country’s underdeveloped economy.

Opposition to some of the protesters’ demands also came from other indigenous and campesino groups, such as Bolivia’s largest campesino organisation, the Sole Union Confederation of Bolivian Campesino Workers (CSUTCB).

All up, about 350 organisations have come out in support of the highway.

In Yucumo, a town near the La Paz-Beni border were the march was set to go through, the local affiliate of the “colonisers” union — a term used to refer to indigenous Aymara and Quechua campesinos who migrated to the lowlands in search of land to work — threatened to stop the march unless protesters withdrew five demands they believed would affect them directly.

These included the issue of gas exploitation, disputes over how land reform should proceed, and the protesters’ call to stop the building of two further highways, neither of which were to run through TIPNIS and which local colonisers had been demanding be built.

The tension in Yucumo was palpable, as recorded in one of the press statements issued by the protesters on September 18. In it, a journalist notes the hostile and violent reaction he received when he was surrounded by locals chanting, “the media is biased” and “your trying to make us look bad”.

They were also angered that an interviewer from the same radio as the journalist had referred to the blockaders as coca-growing supporters of Morales party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) — something they denied and demanded he rectify.

With the march advancing on Yucumo, police stopped anti-highway protesters on September 20 in San Miguel de Chaparina, some eight kilometres away, impeding their advance for days in order to avoid confrontations.

Tensions were also visible elsewhere. Reporting on a pro-TIPNIS rally in La Paz, Dario Kenner wrote a September 24 entry on his blog Bolivia Diary that while support for the marchers was clearly visible “not everyone supports the indigenous march... and tensions are running very high”.

Referring to the break out of a fight between opposing forces, Kenner added: “The hostility between groups I witnessed yesterday gives an idea of the polarisation affecting Bolivia at the moment.”

Kenner observed it was evidence of “increasing divisions in the popular movement that mobilised since the Cochabamba Water War in 2000 as the TIPNIS conflict has provoked divisions between and within groups that marched together in the past such as: indigenous social movements, campesino social movements, trade unions, urban social movements, MAS supporters, Bolivian NGOs etc”.

After several days of protesters being held up in San Miguel de Chaparina, indigenous Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca returned for the second time for dialogue with them and Yucumo locals on September 24.

A key focus of discussion was to resolving the impasse between protesters and blockaders.

A September 24 article in La Razon reported on Choquehuanca’s meeting with community leaders in Yucumo. Among them was Rene Huasco, who restated his communities opposition to a number of the marchers demands, adding “it is necessary to bring both sides together in order to explain the points in their list of demands that affect us and find solutions.”

A September 25 article in Pagina Siete on the meeting with the marchers noted that among the options presented by Choquehuanca to calm tensions were continuing dialogue in Quiquibe, on the other side of Yucumo, between committees made up of marchers and blockaders or for the marchers to send a delegation directly to La Paz to dialogue with the government.

According to the same article, “indigenous leaders rejected dialogue with the colonisers” and reiterated their intention to march on La Paz.

Shortly after, as Choquehuanca was about to leave, he was held hostage along with vice-minister Cesar Navarro and police general Edwin Foronda by a group of marchers who proceeded to used them as human shields to break through the police blockade.

With three kilometres to go until reaching Yucumo, the government representatives were released and the march was stopped once again by police barricades.

Choquehuanca told Pagina Siete: “I have been obliged to walk together with the brothers and I have said, we should have resolved this in a different, more peaceful manner based on dialogue.

“We will see if I can help in talking with the intercultural brothers [in Yucumo] and hopefully the climate will not be so tense, so hostile such as when the polices lines were broken.”

Instead tensions rose, with organisations such as the CSUTCB threatening to march on Yucumo.

This was to be expected, as the day before, state news service ABI had reported comments by CSUTCB leader Rodolfo Machaca stating that his organisation had “declares itself in a state of alert and emergency in the face of the imminent politically-motivated mobilisation and convulsion that is being generated in the country ... we ask our indigenous brothers to sit down and dialogue”.

Another CSUTCB leader, Simeon Jaliri, noted its support for Choquehuana’s attempt to resolve the situation through dialogue. “Hopefully” nothing will happen to “our brother from the province of Omasuyos, of the Red Ponchos” he said, referring to the legendary militant Aymara grouping in the altiplano, one of the many that Choquehuanca continues to maintain close contact with.

Tensions however boiled over on the afternoon of September 25, when police moved in to break up the protest.

Reporting on the repression, an article published on Erbol that day said that at least 500 police officers participated in the action which left numerous protestors injured, with some reports saying that the number was as high as 40.

Reporting directly on the events, an Erbol journalist said “there is a lot of nervousness among the police and desperation within the marchers.”

Rodrigo Rodriguez from the National Service of Environmental News (SENA) was quoted in the same Erbol article as saying “all the marchers are being repressed, among them women and children who continue to cry, the police say that they are being transported to San Borja. They are also taking away cameras and are not allowing journalists to pass in order to capture images [of the events].”

There have also been reports of clashes between police and blockaders in Yucumo in both state and private media outlets, though little information has been provided. La Prensa reported on September 26 that tear gas was also used there to clear the road.

Confusion and anger seemed to reign the following day, with La Prensa reporting a government minister as stating that the Public Ministry had issued the order for police to move in. However, the prosecutor in the ministry overseeing the investigation into the repression denied the claim in a separate La Prensa article.

Another La Prensa article reported comments by Minister for Communication Ivan Canelas as saying that the government has ordered an investigation as to whether excessive force had been used.

Pagina Siete reported that the general commander of the police Jorge Santiesteban had assured any police officer found to have used excessive force would be punished.

While Erbol reported that a vice-minister for mining had come out against the violence, the Minister of Defence Cecila Chacon issued a public letter of resignation.

She stated that “the measures implemented, far from isolating the right wing, strengthens it ability to act and carry out manipulation within the [march] with the aim of attacking the process of change that has cost the Bolivian people so much.

Finally, on the night of September 26, Morales rejected claims he had ordered the repression and requested that a commission be established involving international organisations, the ombudsman and human rights groups to investigate the violent acts, reported Erbol.

“We lament, we repudiate the excesses carried out against the indigenous march,” Morales said. “I do not agree with (this police action), nor with violence, it was excessive, an abuse committed against our indigenous brothers who were marching.”

He added people to consider “what would have happened if this march passed through and encountered the blockade in Yucumo”.

Morales also announced the suspension of section II of the Villa Tunari — San Ignacio de Moxos highway, and called for a national debate on the issue.

This debate, said Morales, would have to be carried out specifically among the people of Beni and Cochabamba in order for the competing groups to be able to resolve this dispute.

Earlier that day in a visit to some of the communities within TIPNIS that support the highway, Morales also spoke of a referendum on the question involving the population of both departments, though little more detail was given.

Angered by the events of the previous day, at least 5000 people march in La Paz in what Fobomade, a NGO that has been supporting the protest, described in a September 26 article on Bolpress as the biggest mobilisation registered to date in solidarity with the march

Furthermore, on September 26 the vice-president of the mobilisation committee of the march was quoted in La Razon as saying that once they had recuperated their strength and decided their next steps, the march would restart.

Meanwhile, leaders from a group of MAS dissidents who recently left the government called for the struggle for TIPNIS to be convert into a struggle “for our democracy”, as former vice-minister Alejandro Almarez put it.

Another former vice-minister, Raul Prada, wrote that the actions had proven the Morales government to be an “anti-indigenous tyranny” that has “lost all legitimacy”.

Juan del Granado from the Movement of the Fearless, which was previously in an alliance with Morales, was quoted in La Prensa on September 26 as calling the actions “clearly dictatorial.”

At the same time, spokespeople for the Federation of Campesino Workers of La Paz, FSUTCTKLP, insisted on the need for dialogue between indigenous brothers and sisters in order to avoid violence.

Along with calling on CIDOB to once again sit down to negotiate, the government continued on Monday its dialogue with the Assembly of the Guarani People (APG).

The APG had initially participated in the march but requested on September 2 that the government hold direct dialogue talks with them after they decided to abandon the march.

It is too early to tell what will happen next.

The first test will be on Wednesday September 28, the date for which the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) has called a nation-wide general strike. While the COB’s own ability to mobilise is quite debilitated, the protest could become a convergence point for those opposed to the recent actions by the government.

First published at Green Left Weekly

Bolivia: NGOs wrong on Morales and Amazon

2011-09-25T10:54:00.002+10:00

Federico Fuentes

Statements, articles, letters and petitions have been circulating on the internet for the past month calling for an end to the "destruction of the Amazon".

The target of these initiatives has not been transnational corporations or the powerful governments that back them, but the government of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales.

At the centre of the debate is the Bolivian government’s controversial proposal to build a highway through the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS).

TIPNIS, which covers more than 1 million hectares of forest, was granted indigenous territory status by the Morales government in 2009. About 12,000 people from three different indigenous groups live in 64 communities within TIPNIS.

On August 15, representatives from the TIPNIS Subcentral that unites these communities, as well as other indigenous groups, began a march to the capital city, La Paz to protest against the highway plan.

International petitions have been initiated declaring support for this march, and condemning the Morales government for undermining indigenous rights.

The people of TIPNIS have legitimate concerns about the highway’s impact. There is also no doubt the government has made errors in its handling of the issue.

Unfortunately, petitions such as the one initiated by international lobby group Avaaz and a September 21 letter to Morales signed by over 60 environmental groups mostly outside Bolivia misrepresent the facts and misdirect their fire.

They could inadvertently aid the opponents of the global struggle for climate justice.

Avaaz warns that the highway "could enable foreign companies to pillage the world's most important forest”. But it fails to mention the destruction that is already happening in the area, in some cases with the complicity of local indigenous communities.

On the other hand, the Morales government has promised to introduce a new law, in consultation with communities within TIPNIS, to add new protections for the national park.

The proposed law would set jail terms of between 10 to 20 years for illegal settlements, growing coca or logging in the national park.

Also, Avaaz claims that "huge economic interests" are motivating Morales’ support for the highway. But Avaaz omits the benefits that such a highway (whether it ultimately goes through TIPNIS or not) will bring Bolivia and its peoples.

For example, this 306 kilometre highway linking the departments of Beni and Cochabamba (with only a part of it going through TIPNIS) would expand access to health care and other basic services to isolated local communities that now travel for days to receive medical care.

The highway would also give local agricultural producers greater access to markets to sell their goods. At the moment, these must go via Santa Cruz to the east before being able to be transported westward.

Given Beni’s status as the largest meat producing department (state), this would break the hold that Santa Cruz-based slaughterhouses have on imposing meat prices.

The highway would also allow the state to assert sovereignty over remote areas, including some where illegal logging takes place.

It is facts such as these that have convinced more than 350 Bolivian organisations, including many of the social organisations that have led the country’s inspiring struggles against neoliberalism, to support the proposed highway.

Many indigenous organisations and communities (including within TIPNIS) support the highway. It is therefore false to describe this as a dispute between the government and indigenous people.

Nor is it a simple conflict between supporters of development and defenders of the environment.

All sides in the dispute want greater development and improved access to basic services. The issue at stake is how the second poorest country in the Americas, facing intense pressure from more powerful governments and corporate forces, can meet the needs of its people while protecting the environment.

Given this, surely it makes more sense for those who wish to defend Bolivia’s process of change to support steps towards dialogue, rather that deepening the divisions.

Legitimate criticism can be made of the government’s handling of the consultation process. But the Avaaz petition and the letter from environmental groups simply ignore the government’s repeated attempts to open discussions with the protesters.

Half the members of Morales' ministerial cabinet, along with many more vice-ministers and heads of state institutions, have traveled to the march route to talk with protesters.

The petitioners don’t mention the Morales government’s public commitment to carry out a consultation process within the framework of the Bolivian constitution, popularly approved in 2009. Neither do they mention its offer to have the consultation process overseen by international observers selected by protesters themselves.

The government has also remained open to discussing the economic and environmental feasibility of any alternative route that could bypass TIPNIS. No such alternative has been presented yet.

As a result of these initiatives, a number of the TIPNIS communities that had joined the march, as well as representatives from the Assembly of the Guarani People, have since decided to return home. They will continue discussions with the government.

Sadly, the key opponents of the proposed consultation process are among the march leaders, which includes organisations based outside TIPNIS.

These organisations were also the main proponents of a further 15 demands being placed on the government the day the march began.

Many of these demands are legitimate. But it is alarming that some of the more dangerously backwards demands have been ignored or dismissed by international environment groups.

For example, the letter to Morales raises concerns regarding the Bolivian president's statement that "oil drilling in Aguarague National Park 'will not be negotiated'".

Those gas fields represent 90% of Bolivia's gas exports and are a vital source of funds that the Morales government has been using to tackle poverty and develop Bolivia's economy.

The fact that the bulk of gas revenue is controlled by the Bolivian state rather than transnational corporation is the result of years of struggles by the Bolivian masses, who rightfully believe this resource should be used to develop their country.

The concerns of local communities should be, and have been, taken into consideration. But for Bolivia to cut off this source of revenue would have dire consequences for the people of one of the poorest nations in the Americas.

It would, without exaggeration, be economic suicide.

Initially, protesters also demanded a halt to gas extraction in Aguarague. They have retreated on this and are now focused on the question of plugging up unused oil wells due to the contamination this is could cause to local water supplies.

Similarly, neither of the Internet statements mentions the protesters’ support for the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program.

REDD is a grossly anti-environmental United Nations program that aims to privatise forests by converting them into “carbon offsets” that allow rich, developed countries to continue polluting.

Some of the biggest proponents of this measure can be found among the NGOs promoting the march. Many of these have received direct funding from the US government, whose ambassador in Bolivia was expelled in September 2008 for supporting a right-wing coup attempt against the elected Morales government.

Rather than defend Bolivia’s sovereignty against US interference, the letter denounces the Bolivian government for exposing connections between the protesters and "obscure interests".

These "obscure interests" include the League for the Defence of the Environment (LIDEMA), which was set up with US government funds. Its backers include the US government aid agency, USAID, and the German-based Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which frequently funds actions against governments opposed by the United States and European governments such as Cuba.

Secret US diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks and declassified US government files have conclusively shown that USAID directly targets indigenous communities in a bid to win them away from support for Morales and towards supporting US interests.

Behind these very real interests lies a campaign by rich nations and conservative environmental groups to promote policies that represent a new form of "green imperialism".

After centuries of plundering the resources of other countries, wiping out indigenous populations, and creating a dire global environmental crisis, the governments of rich nations now use environmental concerns to promote policies that deny underdeveloped nations the right to control and manage their own resources.

If they have their ways, these groups will reduce indigenous people to mere “park rangers”, paid by rich countries to protect limited areas, while multinational corporations destroy the environment elsewhere.

Bolivia's indigenous majority has chosen a very different road. They aim to create a new state in which they are no longer marginalised or treated as minority groups that require special protection.

In alliance with other oppressed sectors, they aim to run their country for the collective benefit of the majority.

The Bolivian masses have successfully wrested government power from the traditional elites, won control over gas and other resources, and adopted a new constitution.

Mistakes have been made, and are likely in future. But they are the mistakes of a people of a small, landlocked and underdeveloped country fighting constant imperialist assaults.

Key to the Bolivian peoples’ fight is the world-wide front for climate justice, in which Bolivia is playing a vital leadership role.

One example was the 35,000-strong Peoples Summit on Climate Change organised by the Morales government in Cochabamba in April 2010.

The summit’s final declaration named developed countries as “the main cause of climate change". It insisted that those countries must "recognise and honor their climate debt", redirecting funds from war to aiding poorer nations to develop their economies "to produce goods and services necessary to satisfy the fundamental needs of their population".

To achieve this, the international climate justice movement must focus its efforts on forcing rich nations to accept their responsibilities.

The global movement must explicitly reject imperialist intervention in all its forms, including the “green imperialist” policies of US-funded NGOs.

Only through such a campaign can we support the efforts of poorer countries to chart a development path that respects the environment.

Unfortunately, Avaaz and the organisations that have signed the letter against Morales let the real culprits off the hook.

Their campaign should be rejected by all environmentalists and anti-imperialists fighting for a better a world.

[Federico Fuentes edits Bolivia-Rising.blogspot.com.]

Bolivian president blasts the UN and the “Insecurity Council” on Libya

2011-09-22T16:39:00.000+10:00

Bolivian president Evo Morales blasted United Nations and the Security Council for having approved military actions against Libya, an issue which he promised to consider when he addresses the General Assembly in New York.

Mercopress.com

“What Security Council are we talking about? I’d say it’s an Insecurity Council” said Morales in Havana, Cuba, arguing that the combined NATO attack and bombings on Libya “is a shameful action for humanity”.

The Bolivian president forecasted that once Muahmar Gaddfi has been removed from office by force, Western powers will dispute the control of Libya’s vast oil and gas resources, “which they have always ambitioned”.

“There is much interest in continuing to accumulate capital in a few hands, in the hands of the world’s oligarchy, of the big trans-national corporations”, said Morales.

The Bolivian president arrived in Havana over the weekend to meet Cuban President Raul Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez who is in Cuba for his fourth chemotherapy treatment.

President Morales will be honoured at the Havana University with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Political Science.

Morales from Havana travels to New York for the UN General Assembly where he anticipated “some reflections about the crisis of capitalism, and inhuman interventions such as the one practiced in Libya”.

Bolivia’s first indigenous president said developing nations such as Latin America should take advantage of the current capitalism crisis and cut dependency from the US and the European markets.

Before leaving Morales is expected to meet with the ailing fragile Fidel Castro, father of the Cuban revolution, who stepped down in 2006 and he considers an inspiring “sage old man”.

Bolivia together with the ALBA members (Bolivarian Alternative Alliance of the Americas) have strongly condemned the ousting of Gaddafi’s regime by a ‘gang’ of NATO ‘bullies’ and have refused to recognize the new Libyan authorities.

US, Nato and most multilateral organizations such as the IMF have officially recognized Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC).

ALBA is the brainchild of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and includes, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and several English speaking Caribbean islands (highly dependent on Venezuelan oil)

Bolivia's Morales asks bloc to condemn US on drugs

2011-09-22T16:37:00.001+10:00

By: ANDREA RODRIGUEZ | 09/19/11
Associated Press

Bolivian President Evo Morales said Monday that a regional South American bloc should "decertify" the U.S. in its counternarcotics efforts, hitting back at Washington's criticism of his South American nation on drugs.

Speaking in Cuba while receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Havana, Morales accused the United States of being the root cause of the international drug trade as a leading consumer of cocaine.

"If the United States can certify or decertify, why can't UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations) decertify the United States if the origin of drug trafficking is U.S. consumption of cocaine?" Morales said.

Washington first put Bolivia on its blacklist of nations that "failed demonstrably" to meet counterdrug obligations in 2008, and again renewed the designation last week. Venezuela and Burma are also on the list, which allows for possible sanctions, though President Barack Obama waived any penalties for Venezuela and Bolivia so the U.S. can support programs it says aim to help those nations' people.

Nevertheless, the designation rankles in Bolivia, which is the world's third largest producer of coca leaf, the base ingredient for cocaine. Bolivia's government says it is doing everything it can to fight cocaine trafficking.

Morales, who is still the titular head of his country's coca growers' union, objects to the leaf's classification as a controlled substance. He frequently extols its virtues in traditional uses such as brewed into a tea or chewed as a mild stimulant to ward off altitude sickness.

In 2006, he famously brandished a coca leaf during a speech to the U.N. General Assembly. Two years later he expelled U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents from Bolivia, accusing the DEA of inciting the autonomy-seeking opposition in eastern provinces.

"The drug trafficking (issue), just like terrorism, is fundamentally political," Morales said Monday. "Before, they accused leaders of being communists to persecute them, now its 'drug trafficker' or 'terrorist.'"

Morales' request to UNASUR is apparently symbolic in nature, as it's not clear that any resolution issued by the bloc would have a practical impact on Washington.

___

Associated Press writer Peter Orsi contributed to this report.

How Clara Zetkin helps us understand Evo Morales

2011-09-20T10:22:00.000+10:00

John Riddell

Is Bolivia “a case of a workers’ government in the sense the early Comintern/Zetkin meant it?” The question comes from Pham Binh in a comment on this website. In my view, the “workers’ government” concept is certainly relevant but must be used with caution.

My article “Clara Zetkin’s Struggle for the United Front” states:

Zetkin was an exponent of the concept of a workers’ government, that is, a government based on the mass movement of working people and acting in their interests. This was an application of the united front that originated in Germany and became part of the political tool chest of communists in Lenin’s time.

The government of Bolivia headed by President Evo Morales can indeed be viewed as a “workers’ government” of the type discussed by the German revolutionary Clara Zetkin and the Communist International (Comintern) in the early 1920s.

The “workers’ government” concept is valuable above all to open our minds to the fact that there is more to class rule than the counterposition of capitalist power and workers’ power. There are also situations where – for a limited time – workers form governments ruling within the capitalist state. Here we need to view the working class in an inclusive sense as an ensemble of all toilers and oppressed people.

In a broad, generic sense, that is what has happened in Bolivia. Indeed, Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera has called the Morales regime a “government of the social movements.” (García Linera 2011, p. 12)

Zetkin was ahead of most other Comintern leaders of her time in understanding the need to extend the united front beyond the proletariat (that is, employed industrial workers) and draw in women, farmers, other exploited non-waged workers, and rebellious petty-bourgeois layers. In that sense Zetkin thought in terms applicable to Bolivia today.

The “workers’ government” demand was developed as part of a general policy of building a “workers’ united front.” That suggests Marxists should take a “united front” approach toward the government of Bolivia led by Morales. The MAS — the ruling party in Bolivia — is itself a broad united front of worker, peasant, Indigenous, and allied forces, including Marxists in its ranks. A united-front approach enables any necessary criticism or dissent to be expressed from within the broad movement, not from the sidelines.

Distinctive features of the MAS government

But there are many ways in which the MAS government and Bolivian reality today differ from what Zetkin was writing about in the early 1920s. Her eye was then fixed on the revolutionary ferment in Germany, an advanced industrialized country. In Bolivia, by contrast:

Morales leads the country’s first indigenous-based government.
Bolivia is a very poor country, where peasants played a greater role than employed workers in bringing this government into office.
Informal workers, small family businesses, and small coop enterprises based on indigenous economy have greater weight in the popular movement than unions of employed workers.
Social struggles for sovereignty, democracy, and indigenous rights play a major role in the Bolivian struggle.
The Morales regime rules from within the bourgeois state. It is under pressure not only by the traditional state apparatus but by bourgeois representatives within the government and the MAS, the ruling party.
Bolivia is also subject to enormous pressure from imperialism, its armed forces, and its agencies within the country. Consequently, Bolivia must block with capitalist regimes in Brazil, Argentina, and now Peru as part of a broader non-socialist Latin American initiative, most importantly through UNASUR.
Above all, in contrast to the conditions faced by Clara Zetkin, Bolivia is not now in a revolutionary situation, there is no worldwide rise of revolutionary struggles, and the preconditions for socialist revolution in Bolivia do not yet exist.

It is hazardous to try to fit today’s reality into categories established almost a century ago. This was not the method of the Comintern of Lenin’s time. The Comintern’s list of the possible forms of a workers’ government sought to encompass the variants posed by struggles at that time in Europe and Asia.

Comintern President Gregory Zinoviev specified in 1922 that other types of workers’ governments could occur, and warned that “in the search for a rigorous scientific definition, we might overlook the political side of the situation.” (Riddell 2012, pp. 267–68) The Comintern focused on the reality that it faced; we should take a similar approach.

Zetkin projected that, in the Germany of her time, a workers’ government could rally working people to begin the process of taking state power out of the hands of the capitalist class. That is not taking place in Bolivia. However, the MAS government is a genuine product of workers’ struggle, an experience in attempting to use governmental power to benefit working people, despite all the limitations and contradictions imposed by objective conditions.

Crisis of leadership?

Another comment by Binh regarding “Progress in Bolivia,” is worth quoting:

You are absolutely right that workers will not become convinced of the need to overthrow the capitalist state if the road to reform remains open and that the struggle for reforms and/or to overthrow the system are part of a single process of class struggle. The rigid juxtaposition of the two is one of the mistakes that [Jeff] Webber seems to make, which leads him to denounce Morales for selling out, betraying, reconstituting, demobilizing, containing, etc., and in so doing, the dynamic process of the Bolivian revolution is reduced to the “crisis of the revolutionary leadership” i.e. the lack of a revolutionary party.

Binh is right that the model of a “crisis of revolutionary leadership” is not a good match for what has happened in the past decade in Bolivia.

Such a crisis occurs when objective conditions for socialist revolution are present, the working masses are ready to struggle for that goal, but the road is blocked by pro-capitalist leaderships of their organizations.

In Bolivia, by contrast, the working class is not blocked by a mass Stalinist, social-democratic, or bourgeois nationalist party. The workers’ and people’s movement is fluid, and includes currents opposed to the MAS that are vigorous and influential. And yet, there is no organized revolutionary alternative to the MAS, even in embryo; no alternative socialist project. What is the problem, then? Are the Bolivian masses politically backward?

I’m reminded of Bertolt Brecht’s sarcastic crack at East Germany’s Stalinist bureaucrats in 1953, the year of a workers’ anti-Stalinist revolt: “The leaders have lost confidence in the people. Shouldn’t they simply dissolve the people and elect another?”

Conditions for socialist revolution

“Progress in Bolivia” argued that objective conditions today block the road to a successful socialist revolution in that country. I did not hold that opinion of Bolivia’s prospects in the years following Cuba’s socialist revolution. International conditions today are less favourable.

It would be useful to discuss what could be the shape of a socialist revolution today in a country like Bolivia and what conditions would be needed for its victory and survival. Could a socialist revolution in Bolivia “go it alone” in a small, landlocked country? Or would not such a breakthrough have to come in tandem with anti-capitalist victories in other countries of the region?

I stand by my opinion that the greatest barrier to socialism in Bolivia is the absence of workers’ governments in economically advanced countries (or even in neighbouring Brazil with its enormous resources, population, and industry) that could provide effective support. The existence of such allies would decisively weaken the grip of imperialism.

Bolivia’s ALBA alliance with Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Nicaragua was conceived as an innovative attempt to find allies, but in another way – through an economic alliance of anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, based on principles of solidarity. ALBA doesn’t overcome the international obstacle to socialist revolution, but it’s an inspired step in the right direction.

The MAS regime does not correspond fully to Clara Zetkin’s projection of a workers’ government for Germany in 1921–23. However, ALBA goes much further than any governmental alliance achieved by the revolutionists of Clara Zetkin’s time.

This article forms part of an exchange with Pham Binh posted as comments on “Progress in Bolivia, a Reply to Jeff Webber” on this website. Thanks to Felipe Cournoyer for reviewing and commenting on a draft of this text.

Related articles on this website

On the early Communist International’s method, see “Black Liberation and the Comintern.”
On the Comintern’s 1922 decision on the demand for a workers’ government, see “The Comintern’s Unknown Decision on Workers’ Governments.”

References

García Linera, Alvaro 2011, El “Oenegismo”, enfermedad infantil del derechismo.

Riddell, John 2012, Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, Leiden: Brill.

Republished from John Riddell's blog

Bolivia: US embassy admits 'economic roots of social revolution'

2011-09-19T10:41:00.001+10:00

By Federico Fuentes

Neoliberal policies “which have fed the growing political disaffection of Bolivia's majority poor, have helped fuel the country's rolling 'social revolution.'"

This was how a May 6, 2006, US embassy cable from La Paz recently released by WikiLeaks viewed the powerful wave of struggle that led to the election of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005.

This secret assessment came despite Washington publicly trumpeting neoliberal policies as the way to solve the problems of Latin America's poor.

In 1985, under the advise of US economist Jeffrey Sachs, the Victor Paz Estenssoro government opened up Bolivia’s economy to foreign transnationals.

A number of state-owned companies were privatised, including the crucial mining sector. Restrictions on foreign capital were removed and labour security undermined.

The US embassy admitted in its cable: “Notwithstanding the promises of politicians ... poverty was largely impervious to the liberal reforms of the late 80s and 90s.”

It noted the percentage of Bolivians living below the poverty line remained “virtually unchanged (over 60%) … and even increased during the economic crisis of 1999-2003”.

At the same time, neoliberal reforms “clearly failed to meet public expectations for increased incomes and jobs”.

“In fact, reforms had a palpably negative effect on jobs in the short term, immediately causing a 17 percent drop in public sector employment and triggering the dismissal of thousands of public sector miners when resource draining state-owned mining enterprises were shut down.”

In the countryside, neoliberalism's impact was even more with $966 in urban areas, the cable noted.

“According to INE,” the cable said, “90 percent of the population in urban areas have electricity, while only 29 percent do in rural areas”.

This led to mass migration, in which “between 1999 and 2003 over half a million people or 10 percent of the current urban population migrated to cities”.

One key destination was El Alto, previously an outlying suburb of La Paz. It mushroomed into one of the country's largest cities.

The cable said the “heightened expectations of newly arrived urban dwellers” in El Alto were critical to promoting an “increased sense of relative deprivation due to the wealth they see around them".

“So while ‘better off’ in an absolute sense than they were before, they increasingly view access to such services as water, gas, and electricity as a right that the political and social system owes them a right they are willing to take to the streets to demand.”

This helped transform El Alto into what the US cable described as “a central, volatile element in the successive crises” that forced the resignation of two presidents.

The US embassy cable noted that race was another critical dimension to social and economic inequality.

It said: “Most of Bolivia's majority poor, for example, are of mixed or indigenous origin. Many of the country's wealthiest families, by contrast, are of conspicuously European descent.

“These apparently race-based social and economic differences have exacerbated the sense of racial separation, and amount, in the view of some critics, to a kind of de facto economic apartheid.”

“Moreover,”, it said, “growing ethnic consciousness has fed increasing ‘indigenous’ resentment of the dominant ‘white’ minority and the political system that allegedly sustained it.”

Nonetheless, the US cable maintained that neoliberalism provided Bolivia with “macro-economic stability and a platform for increased private investment.”

The problem, according to the cable, was the widely held “perception that the large amounts of foreign direct investment Bolivia received between 1997 and 2003 as a result of privatization benefited the rich and not the poor”.

The cable, however, conceded: “This perception was not altogether inaccurate.”

The economic impacts of neoliberalism, combined "with the growing political disaffection of Bolivia's majority and largely indigenous poor into an explosive and still largely unresolved mix".

Beginning “with the infamous Cochabamba ‘water wars’ of May (April) 2000”, where protesters forced the government to reverse the privatisation of Cochabamba’s water system to US multinational Bechtel, further “massive protests … led to the ousting of President Gonzalo ('Goni') Sanchez de Lozada” in October 2003.

Goni's replacement, Carlos Mesa, was also forced to resign in June 2005.

A key issue on both uprisings was the “government's management of Bolivia's vast natural gas resources”.

These movements were firmly rooted among the poor, indigenous peoples of the west.

The cable noted these regions also voted overwhelming to bring Morales into power on a campaign platform to "nationalize Bolivia's gas industry, 'refound' the state in a Constituent Assembly, and transform the supposedly failed 'neo-liberal' economic order for the benefit of Bolivia's forgotten majority”.

Bolivia's "ongoing social revolution" continues to move ahead with this program. It has recuperated state control over gas, approved a new constitution and begun to move away from US-backed neoliberal policies.

Bolivia: US worked to divide social movements, WikiLeaks shows

2011-09-19T10:39:00.000+10:00

By Federico Fuentes

WikiLeaks' release of cables from the United States embassy in La Paz has shed light on its attempts to create divisions in the social and indigenous movements that make up the support base of the country’s first indigenous-led government.

The cables prove the embassy sought to use the US government aid agency, USAID, to promote US interests.

A March 6, 2006, cable titled “Dissent in Evo’s ranks” reports on a meeting only months after Morales' inauguration as president in December 2005 with “a social sectors leader” from the altiplano (highlands) region in the west.

The social leader was said to have links with the radical federation of neighbourhood councils in El Alto (Fejuve), the coca growers union in Los Yungas and a peasant organisation in La Paz.

Many of these organisations, in particular Fejuve, spearheaded the wave of revolt that overthrew two pro-US neoliberal presidents in 2003 and 2005. It was also crucial to the election of Morales.

Despite viewing these sectors as “traditionally confrontational organisations”, then-ambassador David Greenlee believed that: “Regardless of [US] policy direction in Bolivia, working more closely with these social sector representatives” who were expressing dissent towards Morales “seems to be most beneficial to [US government] interests”.

Another cable from February 25, 2008 reports on a meeting then-US ambassador Philip Goldberg held with “indigenous leaders (particularly leaders of the eastern lowlands)”.

Most of Bolivia’s two largest indigenous peoples, the Aymaras and Quechuas, live in the highlands and central regions.

The east is home to the remaining 34 indigenous peoples. It is also home to the gas transnationals and large agribusiness.

The east was the focal point of right-wing movements that tried to overthrow Morales.

In the cable, great attention is paid to the “growing tensions” between Aymaras and Quechuas on one hand and the lowlands-based indigenous groups “who feel neglected by a self-proclaimed-Aymara, cocalero president”.

An October 17, 2007, cable titled “Indigenous cohesion cracking in Bolivia” reported that
a leader from the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qollasuyu (CONAMAQ), which groups together 16 rural indigenous organisations in the altiplano, told embassy officials the Morales government was simply using indigenous peoples for to promote its “goal of socialism [which] does not coincide with ‘true indigenous’ goals”.

The US embassy’s heightened interest in all things “indigenous” following decades of supporting governments that repressed and excluded them is explained in a February 6, 2007, cable.

In it, Goldberg said that “only a leftist government that includes indigenous interests … would have a chance to govern divisive Bolivia”.

Since “a right-wing government would likely lead to greater conflict”, the ability to reach out to indigenous leaders inclined to support US interests was necessary.

For this reason, Goldberg concluded his February 25, 2008, cable by stating that meetings with “indigenous leaders outside of the dominant Aymara and Quechua communities will provide useful information and demonstrate that the United States is interested in views of all indigenous peoples”.

An important tool used for reaching out to indigenous communities is USAID.

A January 28, 2008 cable said USAID social programs aimed at the “poorest and marginalized groups” would prove hard for the government to attack. The cable ends by saying USAID programs should “also seek to counteract anti-USG [US government] rhetoric…”

This was facilitated via funding to independent radio journalists to report on “the benefits of USG assistance to rural communities” and various workshops held in indigenous communities.

A June 15, 2009, cable revealed US concerns at its ability to achieve its aims by working directly with the government.

It noted “anti-US attitudes in key leadership positions” and “nationalistic bristling over being treated with ‘dignity’”.

The cable cited Bolivian government opposition to the US agricultural attache having veto powers over proposed programs.

Government officials' recent talk of expelling USAID for their subversive activities may pose a more immediate threat to US imperialism realising its goals in Bolivia.

Bolivia: Amazon protest -- development before environment?

2011-09-09T10:13:00.000+10:00

By Federico Fuentes

The decision by leaders of the Sub Central of the Indigenous Territory and National Isiboro Secure Park (TIPNIS), to initiate a 500-kilometre protest march on Bolivia's capital of La Paz capital has ignited much debate about the nature of Bolivia’s first indigenous led-government.

The Sub Central of TIPNIS unites the 64 indigenous communities within the park.

Much analysis has focused on the supposed hypocrisy of the government headed by Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous head of state. The Morales government has been criticised for pursuing pro-capitalist development and trampling on the rights of its own indigenous people.

Many analysts have also highlighted the contradiction between Morales’ public discourse in defence of indigenous rights and Mother Earth, and the proposal of his government’s to build a new highway that would run through this protected area of the Amazon.

According to Raul Prada, until recently a key figure in the Morales government and now ardent critic, the protests are forcing Morales to choose between “defence of life, of forests, of human beings and the vital cycles of the system of life or the path of narcotrafficking, of corrosive trade, extraction-based dependency, of the highways of dependency on emergent powers [a reference to Brazil ] and the empire”.

However, what the protests have actually revealed is the complicated reality of Bolivia’s social movements. It has shown the deep challenges they face in overcoming centuries of underdevelopment and internal fissures, which both threaten to undermine the process of change underway since Morales was first elected in 2005.

Exploitation

Attempts to counterpose the “developmentalist” policies of the government against the “communitarian” logic of the indigenous marchers fails to take into account the long running tensions that underpin the dispute.

For more than 500 years, Bolivia’s indigenous majority have seen their natural resources and wealth continuously pillaged by foreign powers (Spain, Britain and the United States).

The wealth ripped out from this small Andean nation helped fuel the growth of global metropolises such as London. But its local indigenous peoples were forced into a life of extreme poverty and oppression.

Despite sitting upon the second largest gas reserves in South America, and at one time supplying almost 50% of the world’s tin, Bolivia is general considered the second poorest country in the Americas.

The disaster created by imperialist domination not only impact on the livelihoods of ordinary Bolivians. Through the super-exploitation of its wealth, Bolivia’s economy was subsumed into the world market in a subordinate position.

Its economy revolved around the interests of foreign capital rather than the needs of its people.

To ensure this subordination, the Bolivian state was dominated by foreign interests. The local white oligarchy was entrusted with running it.

The state was successful in putting down numerous internal revolts. But it was ineffectual in asserting any real sovereignty over Bolivia and integrating its far flung regions into a dynamic national economy.

One consequence of this was that since independence, Bolivia has lost more than half of its national territories to neighbouring countries.

This included losing its access to the Pacific Ocean to Chile in the 1879-1883 Pacific War. This has cost Bolivia more than US$30 billion since 1970.

Rolling 'social revolution'

The onset of neoliberalism in the 1980s worsened the situation. It fuelled what one US embassy cable recently released by WikiLeaks called “the country’s rolling ‘social revolution’”.

The cable, dated May 17, 2006, noted that US-imposed neoliberalism led to increased poverty, unemployment, and rural migration towards underdeveloped cities. This left “new urban dwellers clamouring for access to basic services”.

Worsening poverty levels, the cable said, had a “clear rural-urban, a growing regional, and a distinctly racial dimension”.

The cable also noted “growing ethnic consciousness has fed ‘indigenous’ resentment of the dominant ‘white’ minority and the political system that allegedly sustained it”.

“In combination, these factors have undermined the faith of many Bolivians in the old economic and political order”. It said this led to increased support for the Morales government, whose largest support base came from those identified in the US cable as most affected by neoliberalism.

This was the basis for Morales’ election and the displacement of Bolivia’s white elites from their traditional positions of power in the state.

In particular, Morales support base is among the indigenous majority, dividing into 36 peoples that live in the highlands to the west and lowlands to the east.

The two, larger indigenous peoples are the Quechas (2.5 million people) and Aymaras (2 million people). Bolivia’s total population is close to 10 million.

These two peoples have predominately been based in the west.

But the process of internal migration by Aymaras and Quechas indigenous campesinos seeking land in the east (commonly referred to as “colonisers”), has steady increased their numbers in the lowland.

It has also contributed to nearly doubling the size of the city of Santa Cruz in the east over the past 20 years. It is now home to 1.2 million, making it the largest city in Bolivia.

At the same time, rural-urban migration has fuelled the growth of the mostly indigenous city of El Alto, on the outskirts of La Paz.

Its population skyrocketed from around 400,000 in 1992 to current estimates of more than a million.

This overwhelming indigenous city, key to the successive overthrow of two neoliberal presidents, is another heartland of Morales support.

Morales, himself an Aymara, grew up in the altiplano (highlands)> He later moved to the largely Quechua coca-growing region of the Chapare, nestled in the centre of the country.

In the mid-'90s, the Chapare became a battleground of the US “war on drugs”. The cocalero (coca-growers) movement, head by Morales, was the backbone of a rising anti-imperialist movement.

Together with predominately Aymara and Quecha campesinos who made up the country’s largest rural-based organisations -- the Sole Union Confederation of Bolivian Campesino Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB), the Union Confederation of Bolivian Colonisers (CSCB), and the National Federation of Bolivian Campesino Women “Bartolina Sisa (FNMCB-BS) -- the cocaleros formed what today is commonly known as the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in the mid-'90s.

It is important to note that as a result of the land reform carried out by Bolivia's 1952 National Revolution, most of the indigenous peoples in the west were granted access to small land plots (via private deeds).

The traditional union model of organising was imposed upon their traditional communitarian organisation.

This further fractured the communitarian bonds that had already begun to be undermined by centuries of colonialisation.

The result, however, was a certain fusion of elements of both within these organisations.

In the east, where the indigenous population was smaller, land reform was never implemented.

Instead, the east, centred around Santa Cruz, gradually became the new economic motor of Bolivia. This was due to its huge gas deposits and the rise of powerful latifundistas<.em> (large landowners).

This part of Bolivia is home to the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the East (CIDOB), which unites organisations from 34 of the 36 groups of indigenous peoples. It represents about 500,000 people.

CIDOB and the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), which unites some indigenous communities in the altiplano, took part in the founding meetings of the MAS.

But the two groups never became organic components of this “political instrument”.

Instead, relationships were maintained between these organisations in two ways. First, the different campesino and indigenous groups came together to form the Unity Pact. And second, various CONAMAQ and CIDOB leaders, such as its current president Adolfo Chavez, were elected as MAS parliamentarians.

Conflicts

At the same time, conflicts between these groups have emerged at different times.

At the root of some of these divergences have been the differing visions between the lowland indigenous movements, with their strong ties to NGOs and the church and their focus on the environment and indigenous control over territory and natural resources, and those of the highland campesino movements.

The highland groups political and anti-imperialist outlook was heavily influenced by the 1952 National Revolution and the 1980s mass emmigration of mine workers into the countryside in search of work.

These differences have played out in TIPNIS over the past decades, especially since “colonisers” from the west began settling in the area as of the '70s and '80s.

After a historic march by the indigenous peoples of the east in 1990, then president Jamie Paz Zamora declared the 1.2 million hectares that comprise TIPNIS an ancestral territory of the Mojeno, Yuracare and Chiman peoples.

However, this move was unable to put an end to the constant disputes between local indigenous communities and indigenous “colonisers” who have moved in to occupy land for agriculture.

This led to a state of semi-permanent confrontations.

The conflict only subsided after a demarcation agreement was signed in 1992 between Marcial Fabricano, then head of the Sub Central of TIPNIS, and Morales, as head of the cocalero federation that includes the “colonisers” in the southern part of TIPNIS.

The agreement gave existing colonisers the right to land currently occupied while halting further invasions.

These differences were also reflected in the roles played by the various organisations during the period of social rebellion that began in 2000.

US interference

As the uprising against neoliberalism grew in strength, overthrowing a neoliberal president in 2003, US imperialism sought to use money to increase divisions within the indigenous movements.

In late 2005, investigative journalist Reed Lindsay published an article in NACLA that used declassified US documents to expose how US government-funded agency USAID was used to this effect.

USAID was already planning by 2002 to “help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors”.

The downfall in 2003 of president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada triggered a step-up in this subversive activity.

A particular target was CIDOB.

The group was in a crisis after Fabricano was accused of profiting from illegal logging and he accepted the post of vice-minister of Indigenous Affairs under Sanchez de Lozada.

Through USAID funding to the Brecha Foundation, an NGO established by CIDOB leaders, the US hoped to further mould the organisation to its own ends.

CIDOB, however, took an approach marked by negotiation and moderation.

It was not until July 2005 that CIDOB renewed its leadership, in turn breaking relations with Brecha.

CIDOB was not the only target for infiltration.

With close to $200,000 in US government funds, the Land and Liberty Movement (MTL) was set up in 2004 by Walter Reynaga.

All these groups came behind the campaign to elect Morales in 2005.

Gains

Since then, the Morales government has taken important steps towards breaking Bolivia’s dependency on foreign capital. His government has nationalised Bolivia's gas reserves and refused to follow International Monetary Fund-diktats.

The government has also moved quickly to tackle the urgent and deeply felt needs of its base.

Data collated by the Unit of Analysis of Social and Economic Policies (UDAPE), a government think tank from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), show just how much progress has been made.

Poverty levels have fallen from 60.6% in 2005 to 49.6% in 2010.

The biggest drop came in rural areas (77.6% to 65.1%). Extreme poverty also fell from 38.2% in 2005 to 25.4% in 2010.

In 2005, the wealthiest 10% received 128 times the amount of income than the poorest 10%. By 2009, this had been reduced to 60 times.

Recent figures from the IMF back these findings and indicate that 1.1 million Bolivians were lifted out of extreme poverty between 2007 and 2009.

Along with tackling poverty, another priority of the first Morales administration (2006-2009) was focusing on the needs of indigenous communities in the lowlands.

This was seen as essential in nurturing social movements that could help counteract the attempts by the right-wing opposition, centred in the east, to overthrow his government.

In regards to TIPNIS, Morales directly intervened in 2006 to expel colonisers who had occupied further lands in the TIPNIS. Many of them were associated with the cocalero federation he still headed despite becoming head of state.

In 2009, the 64 indigenous communities of the TIPNIS, about 12,000 people all up, were finally handed over the title to over 1 million hectares of land. The remaining 200,000 hectares went predominately to the roughly 100,000 colonisers present in the south of the park.

Former vice-minister of land Alejandro Almaraz, who together with Prada is a key spokesperson of a group of former government members turned dissidents, explained in a July 29 interview posted by Rebelion that of the 25 million hectares of land redistributed under Morales until the end of 2010, 16 million was handed over as communitarian lands belonging to original indigenous owners.

In comparison, the campesino sector received less than 3 million hectares in the form of individual or family titles.

Crucially, the unity forged between indigenous peoples of the east and west, and urban and rural areas, was critical to defeating the September 2008 coup attempt by the right-wing opposition sectors in the east.

It was also vital to Morales record re-election vote of 64% in the December 2009 elections.

'Industrial leap forward'

A big part of Morales’ election campaign was his promised “industrial leap forward”.

Speaking to supporters in El Alto at his campaign closing rally, Morales emphasised industrialisation, the physical integration of the country and social inclusion as key goals of his second government.

The MAS’s election program included a section entitled “roadway revolution for an integrated country”.

This focused on the need to expand and build key highways that could integrate isolated regions, and help promote economic development at the local and national.

Among the proposed roadways was one that would link the northern department of Beni with Cochabamba.

Some have criticised this highway. They point to the fact it is part of the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America, a Brazilian-led project to economically integrate the continent, as proof of Bolivia’s subordination of Brazilian “sub-imperialism”.

Brazil is footing 80% of the bill for the disputed highway.

Others have noted that the highway is critical to breaking the department of Beni’s dependency on Santa Cruz.

At the moment, all agricultural products must go via Santa Cruz to the east before being able to be transported westward.

The proposed highway would directly connect Beni to Cochabamba. This would reduce costs for agricultural producers (and consumers) and travel distance from 848 kilometres to 306 kilometres.

Given Beni’s status as the largest meat producing department, this would break the hold that Santa Cruz-based slaughterhouses have on imposing meat prices.

This is one of the reasons why important sections of the Santa Cruz elite are opposing the highway.

Also, criticisms of subordination to Brazilian interests have not been made in regards to the many other roadways being funded by Brazil as part of IIRSA. These are strongly supported by the communities that will benefit from greater access to transportation and basic services.

In fact, on August 15, the same day marchers from TIPNIS headed off to La Paz, two other protests were held in the important MAS strongholds of El Alto and Potosi.

These protests included in their demands access to basic services, and the building of more factories and highways. Neither protest raised opposition to the proposed highway through TIPNIS.

In many ways, these protests reflect the increased tensions the MAS government has faced since defeating the right-wing coup attempt and winning re-election.

Various sections of its base, feeling their time has come, are now protesting to demand the government turn its attention towards them.

In all these cases, the demands have been for more, not less development.

In some cases, this has led to increased conflicts within the different social movements. This is reflected by the divisions within the Unity Pact over the push by campesino organisations to redirect government attention towards this sector in its land reform program.

Highway dispute

This is also true in regards to TIPNIS. The various indigenous and campesino movements that are part of it are far from united in their opposition to the roadway.

The main campesino groups (comprised overwhelmingly of indigenous peoples), and leaders from the Bolivian Workers Central (COB), have declared their support for an eventual highway, while maintaining that any final plan take into consideration the needs of local indigenous communities.

Important indigenous organisations have also stated similar positions.

Despite the presence of CONAMAQ leaders such as Rafael Quispe in the march against the roadway, its affiliate organisations from La Paz and Potosi have rejected opposition to it.

The Indigenous Council of Communities of the South (CONISUR), which groups indigenous communities in the south of TIPNIS as well as colonisers that inhabit those areas have come out in support of an eventual roadway.

The Yuracare Indigenous Council, that unites the Yucare, Mojeno and Trinitario peoples, has as well.

All these groups have highlighted the benefits the highway will bring in regards to access to basic services, ability to sell products and travel.

Attempts have been made to equate these organisation’s positions with their vested interests in accumulating land.

This is in line with recent moves by the CSUTCB to shift the government’s land reform policy away from prioritising collective indigenous titles towards providing individual or family titles to its traditional base.

There are elements of truth (and much exaggeration) to this claim, but this should come as no surprise.

The same CSUTCB, and other campesino organisations which led the protests between 2000 and 2005, have always defended this position. This is shown by the history of conflict in TIPNIS.

Demands

And it is also true that the demands of the Sub Central of TIPNIS, and in particular CIDOB, are far removed from any notion of communitarianism.

Although initially focused on opposition to the highway, protesters presented the government with an original list of 13 demands, then extended to 16, on the day the march began.

Among those were calls for indigenous peoples to be able to directly receive compensation payment for offsetting carbon emissions.

This policy, know as REDD+, has been denounced as the privatisation of the forests by many environmental activists and the Peoples' Summit of Climate Change organised in Bolivia in 2010.