Violent protests against Bolivian President Evo Morales have shaken the Andean nation and cut it in half, with rebel provinces blocking government attempts to regain control and tensions running dangerously high between the country’s Indian majority and inhabitants of the richer and whiter eastern provinces.
Militia groups armed with clubs and shields took to the streets last week to impose a strike that paralyzed much of the eastern lowlands and deepened a political crisis. Youths opposed to Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous leader, beat up senior police commanders in front of TV cameras, underlining the brazen challenge to central government authority.
Five eastern provinces, where the people are paler and richer than in the indigenous western highlands, have vowed to resist the president’s attempt to “refound” Bolivia as a socialist state which champions the long-neglected Indian majority. Protesters have halted beef supplies to the west, blockaded highways and made moves to create a new police force to assert their push for autonomy from the capital, La Paz.
Morales, flush with victory in a recall vote which renewed his mandate, has ordered the police to be on alert and hinted he would soon call a referendum on a new constitution to entrench his reforms. Some of his supporters threatened violent retaliation against what they termed “oligarchs” and “fascists.” Peasants blocked roads leading to the city of Sucre to isolate the opposition stronghold.
Analysts said that South America’s poorest and most turbulent country was edging closer to being a failed state. Security concerns have rendered almost half the country a no-go zone for the president. No one knows whether Bolivia will retreat from the abyss, as it has managed in previous crises.
“This division is not new, but it is more radical than before. As well as the east-west division, we have an increasing city-countryside division,” said Carlos Toranzo, a political analyst at the Latin American Institute of Social Research.
Radicals on both sides had seized the agenda in the hope of crushing the other, he said.
“This constant violence will not cease. We are hearing confrontational language from the president and the [opposition]. It seems they are all pushing for more violence,” he said.
The landlocked nation has been turned upside down since Morales, a former coca farmer and llama herder, swept to office in 2006 on the promise of empowering the indigenous majority and reversing 500 years of colonial injustice. A member of the so-called “pink tide” of left-wing leaders spearheaded by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Morales has extended state control over the economy, including lucrative natural gas reserves, and thumbed his nose at the US.
His popularity was reaffirmed when he won 67 percent support in a recall referendum earlier this month, a thunderous endorsement from the impoverished western indigenous highlands, including La Paz and its satellite city, El Alto. The margin of victory emboldened supporters to demand a referendum on a new constitution to cement what they term a “cultural revolution.”
“There are two Bolivias now,” said Damian Caguara, a pro-Morales member of a popular assembly. “The Bolivia of the traditional, conservative, right-wing governments and the peasant one, the poor one, the indigenous one that has been in a state of submission for years. The latter is the one that is now running the political scene and this is provoking a harsh reaction from the bosses that cannot stand their servants, the Indians, to be ruling. For them, this is simply humiliating.”
The eastern lowlands however, which have the richest gas reserves and farmland and a freewheeling capitalist spirit, see Morales as a power-hungry autocrat with ruinous economic policies. They are especially enraged by an attempt to redistribute land and to funnel gas revenues away from the provinces and into a state pension fund for those aged over 60, seen as a populist ruse to weaken the provinces.
“If there is inflation, it is because the elderly poor are now having money to eat chicken,” one man grumbled on TV.
The recall referendum, which applied to provincial governors as well as the president, bounced two opposition leaders from office, but the governors in Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija, flying an autonomy banner, emerged stronger. A rare meeting to try to bridge the gap between the two sides flopped. Santa Cruz Governor Ruben Costas called Morales an “assassin” and gave the green light to ramp up the province’s rebellion.
Youths waving green and white Santa Cruz flags have added insignias to the shields they use to fight riot police. Many belong to the Union Juvenil Crucenista, a pseudo-militia. To date, the rebels have not dared seize the gasfields, which would seriously escalate the conflict.
But Carlos Pablo Klinsky, an outspoken opposition leader in Santa Cruz, said events could turn bloody if Morales pushed for a referendum on the Constitution.
“People here are very angry and it would not surprise me if soon they started seizing state institutions. If the president keeps pushing his reforms, violence will get harsh, very harsh,” he said.
You wish every Taiwanese spoke English like I do. I was not born an anglophone, yet I am paid to write and speak in English. It is my working language and my primary idiom in private. I am more than bilingual: I think in English; it is my language now. Can you guess how many native English speakers I had as teachers in my entire life? Zero. I only lived in an English-speaking country, Australia, in my 30s, and it was because I was already fluent that I was able to live and pursue a career. English became my main language during adulthood
The international women’s soccer match between Taiwan and New Zealand at the Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, scheduled for Tuesday last week, was canceled at the last minute amid safety concerns over poor field conditions raised by the visiting team. The Football Ferns, as New Zealand’s women’s soccer team are known, had arrived in Taiwan one week earlier to prepare and soon raised their concerns. Efforts were made to improve the field, but the replacement patches of grass could not grow fast enough. The Football Ferns canceled the closed-door training match and then days later, the main event against Team Taiwan. The safety
There are moments in history when America has turned its back on its principles and withdrawn from past commitments in service of higher goals. For example, US-Soviet Cold War competition compelled America to make a range of deals with unsavory and undemocratic figures across Latin America and Africa in service of geostrategic aims. The United States overlooked mass atrocities against the Bengali population in modern-day Bangladesh in the early 1970s in service of its tilt toward Pakistan, a relationship the Nixon administration deemed critical to its larger aims in developing relations with China. Then, of course, America switched diplomatic recognition
The National Immigration Agency on Tuesday said it had notified some naturalized citizens from China that they still had to renounce their People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizenship. They must provide proof that they have canceled their household registration in China within three months of the receipt of the notice. If they do not, the agency said it would cancel their household registration in Taiwan. Chinese are required to give up their PRC citizenship and household registration to become Republic of China (ROC) nationals, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. He was referring to Article 9-1 of the Act
RSS