The Narco News Bulletin
"The
Name of Our Country is América"
--
Simón Bolívar
Briefing
Paper on Bolivia
October 3, 2000
By Jim Shultz in
Cochabamba, Bolivia
THE DEMOCRACY
CENTER ON-LINE
"U.S.
DRUG WAR AT CENTER STAGE IN RENEWED BOLIVIAN VIOLENCE"
Volume 35 - October
1, 2000
Dear Readers:
I am sorry to report that, once again,
I am writing from a Bolivia in the
midst of conflict. A series of national strikes and highway
blockades
which began two weeks ago has been met with 20,000 government
troops using
tear gas and live rounds in abundance. At least ten are dead,
more than a
hundred injured and many jailed. The U.S. State Department has
publicly
declared its support for the government's actions. Below is my
dispatch
from Bolivia, which will be circulated to news outlets in the
U.S.
by Pacific News Service. I hope you will share it with others
to
keep Bolivia in the U.S. public eye.
The only help I am asking for at this
time is the following. Many of the
injured are children, many mamed beyond Bolivian medicine's ability
to help
them. This includes a six year old girl whose nose and face
was decimated
Saturday morning by a government tear gas canister. If any of
you have
contacts or suggestions of resources to help these children with
appropriate medical attention, please contact me at:
Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center
"U.S.
DRUG WAR AT CENTER STAGE IN RENEWED BOLIVIAN VIOLENCE"
by Jim
Shultz
Cochabamba, Bolivia
October 1, 2000
While
Colombia and Peru have been catching more of the world's Andean
attention for the past few weeks, Bolivia suffers one of its
worst
political and social crises in decades. Two weeks ago an informal
alliance
of teachers, farmers, rural water users and others began a series
of
national protest actions aimed at forcing the Bolivian government
to the
table over a mix of issues including teacher salaries, eradication
of the
last remaining coca crop, and the construction of three new,
U.S.-financed
military bases.
A nationwide teachers strike has left
virtually the entire Bolivian public
school system idle during the final weeks of the South American
school
year. Blockades of the major national highways have brought
virtually all
overland travel and commerce to full stop. Bolivia's President,
Hugo
Banzer, who ruled the nation as a dictator during much of the
1970s, has
deployed more than 20,000 soldiers and police in an effort to
stop the
protests by force.
U.S. BACKS CRACKDOWN,
DESPITE KILLINGS
At least ten people have been killed by government fire, more
than 100
injured, and an unknown number jailed. Eye witnesses have reported
that
much of the shooting is being carried out by army officers, including
long-distance sharp shooters. The current crisis comes just
six months
after President Hugo Banzer declared a national "state of
emergency" in an
unsuccessful effort to stop a civic uprising over water privatization.
Those protests forced the departure of a subsidiary of the U.S.
Bechtel
Corporation which had raised rates as much as 300%.
On Friday in Washington, US State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher
declared the U.S.'s support for Banzer's actions, saying, "We
share and
fully support President Hugo Banzer's call for communication
and
reconciliation." Hours later, just before dawn on Saturday,
Banzer's
government sent 1500 troops into the small town of Vinto, in
an attempt to
remove a highway blockade there. Soldiers killed a 25 year old
taxi
driver, Benito Espinoza Saravia, injured 29 others, including
six year old
Ximena Zenteno who had her nose destroyed by an army tear gas
canister.
US DRUG WAR
AT ISSUE
On Saturday, Bolivian government officials
sat down for negotiations with
various movement leaders, convened by the Catholic Archbishop.
Sources
close to the talks say that the hardest issues deal with the
Bolivian
government's US-financed plan to eradicate the last remaining
5% of the
country's illegal coca leaf crop. That plan involves building
three new
military bases in the Chapare region, the chief coca growing
area. To be
built with $6 million in U.S. assistance, the bases would permanently
deploy 1,500 troops in the area, a move bitterly opposed by local
residents
and many human rights groups.
"These bases were never debated
in the Bolivian Congress or by the
Bolivian people," says Edwin Claros, Vice President of the
Assembly on
Human Rights in Cochabamba. "The role of the military is
to protect our
borders, not to wage war with our own people. The bases will
definitely
mean more use of the military in the region and more violations
of human
rights." Late Saturday the government announced that it
would back away
from its hard-line insistence on the bases, but only with the
alternative
of expanding the military's presence at an existing base in the
area.
Arguing for a permanent military presence in the region in a
televised
speech to the nation last Wednesday, Banzer proclaimed, "We
can't leave
those areas unprotected to be retaken by the black market of
narcotrafficking."
Despite U.S. Ambassador, V. Manuel Rocha's
public declaration last week
that the bases were, "not an imposition by the US government
but a decision
by the Bolivian government," many here question whether
the US is voicing
that same flexibility behind closed doors. An Embassy official,
speaking
on condition of anonymity, admitted that if Bolivia should back
way from
the US-financed base plan, it could create doubts about the Bolivian
government's much-touted pledge to make the country "free
of illegal coca"
by 2002. Said the official, "That would leave open the
question: If you
are committed to eradicate coca using the military, how are you
going to
continue it without a military presence?"
In September the Bolivian government's
coca eradication efforts were cited
by President Clinton as his main reason for proposing that the
U.S. and
other lenders forgive the nation's multi-million dollar foreign
debt. U.S.
officials would very much like to use Bolivia as a model of a
successful
eradication effort, especially with the Clinton Administration's
new $1.3
billion military-led coca eradication plan in Colombia.
Even with the apparent government concession
on the bases, it is unclear
how long the conflict may continue between the government and
coca farmers
in the Chapare region. Blockades there have cut off highway
passage
between the nation's second and third largest cities, Cochabamba
and Santa
Cruz. Representatives of farmers are demanding that they be allowed
to
continue growing small plots of the plant (less than 1/2 an acre).
With
nearly 95% of the crop already eradicated in the region, they
argue, the
small crops that remain would be for traditional uses, including
the
wide-spread Bolivian practice of chewing coca leaves. Talking
about the
eradication program this week, a top Bolivian official admitted,
"We've
also wiped out the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands, maybe
one million
people.''
While the coca leaf is the base ingredient
for cocaine, it only takes on
the drug's effects after being substantially processed with powerful
chemicals. Unprocessed coca leaves are legal, sold and chewed
widely and
also used for commercial production of coca tea, popular as a
treatment for
stomach and altitude ailments. Coca farmers also note that small
plantings
are allowed under the nation's coca-eradication law approved
under U.S.
pressure in 1988.
FOOD SHORTAGES
AND PATIENCE WEARING THIN
Meanwhile, food shortages caused by the
blockades have started to take
effect in some cities and many Bolivians are growing weary of
the protest,
lobbing criticisms and more at both sides. A collection of
children's
drawings pasted to the wall of one Cochabamba school shows images
of
soldiers opening fire on people and trucks stopped at blockades,
along with
writings such as: "I want peace; Don't throw rocks; and
Don't kill people."
A week ago, angry chicken producers dumped a pile of 1000 dead
and rotting
birds on the front steps of the Cochabamba state governor and
of one
protest group. The birds died when their food supplies were
cutoff by the
blockades. An informal poll by a daily newspaper here of 1440
readers
voiced a 51% level of support for the protesters and their demands.
Following the end of negotiations Saturday,
representatives of the various
groups returned home to their local bases to consult on possible
accords.
Over the weekend some coca farmers announced that they were prepared
to
take up firearms if needed to protect their land if the government
did not
reach an acceptable agreement. The highway blockades, public
mobilizations, and military deployments continue throughout the
nation,
creating a palatable air of tension and with no immediate end
in site.
_________________________________________________________________
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CA 94122
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TEL: (415)564-4767
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