February
8, 2002
Update, February
9th:
Hardline
Collapses
In the predawn Saturday
negotiations with coca growers' leader Evo Morales, the embattled
Bolivian government, faced with national paralysis from the blockades
reported on below in Narco News, suspended
Supreme Decree # 96415 this morning, relegalizing
the sale of coca leaf in the Chapare region, reopening the Sacaba
Coca Market and
the coca farmers' independent media outlet, Radio Sovereignty.
The agreement, signed
by the government, by Evo
Morales, by indigenous
leader Felipe
Quispe and labor
leader Oscar
Olivera, calls
for a 90 day truce between the government and coca farmers. Calm
returns to Bolivia... for now. Congress will reopen case of expulsion
of Evo Morales. U.S. Embassy, silent
on the failure and collapse of its hardline anti-coca policy.
Yesterday's report by
Narco News Andean Bureau Chief Luis Gómez, chronicling
the immediate history leading up to this popular victory, appears
below...
Narco News '02
Government
Loses
Ground
Blockades
Multiply
Across
Bolivia
By Luis
A. Gómez
Narco
News Andean Bureau
With
the face of a young boy and a peaceful
smile, the current president of Bolivia has never had the aura
of firmness that the ex dictator Hugo Banzer maintained until
the end of his last command. But the image of Jorge Quiroga is
more deceptive, because his refusal to negotiate with the coca
growers has become a new model of authoritarianism, accompanied
by a hefty quantity of repressive acts in Cochabamba (don't forget,
readers of Narco News, that in the last 13 months 59 farmers
in the Chapare region have died in this dirty war and almost
50 leaders continue being held prisoner illegally in the jails
of Cochabamba).
But let's take this story step by step.
The first thing is to remember that it's already been two weeks
since they expelled Evo Morales Ayma from Congress. Evo spent
14 days in a hunger strike and the social protests did not stop
in the City of Cochabamba. Even the Viceroy Manuel Rocha (the
United States Ambassador) has celebrated the expulsion of Evo
(according to what has become known in recent days, everything
indicates that the Viceroy coordinated the legislators on the
floor of the Congress from his office and later called various
political leaders to congratulate them for the "success.")
In general, the government officials have
dedicated themselves these days to reinforcing their rigid words,
accusing Evo and his allies of being narcos and disqualifying
all criticism without importance to its validity, even ignoring
a query from a member of the European Parliament, the ultra radical
Italian representative Marco Capatto, under whose initiative
the Steering Committee of the European Parliament has sent a
written series of questions to the Bolivian government regarding
the expulsion of Evo, the aggressive policies of repression in
recent years, and demanding a revision of the failing alternative
development programs in the Tropic of Cochabamba. But during
this time, all the progressive forces had time to reorganize
and fight in solidarity alongside the coca growers of the Chapare
and their top leader.
Blockades
Paralyze the Bolivian West
Last
Monday, tired of so much bullying, the coca growers began anew to close the highways of the country.
Since then, there is almost no land travel between Cochabamba
and Santa Cruz, the eastern capital of Bolivia. At the same time,
Cochabamba's social organizations, among them the youth group,
"Water Warriors," has begun to organize lightning strike
blockades inside the city limits, stopping traffic for various
minutes at different locations. And every day in the mid-morning
grand contingents of peasant farmers and urban workers organize
a demonstration in the Central Plaza.
On the other end of the map is the United
Farmworkers Federation, led by el Mallku, which has initiated
the blockade of the principal routes in the Andean High Plains.
On Tuesday, Felipe Quispe authorized the farmers' unions to begin
the general blockade of highways, the suspension of the transport
of food, and a march toward La Paz to surround the City.
From the small rural communities the farmers
have so far succeeded in closing the principal access routes
to the city of Ororo, to La Paz, to the exits into Chile and
even the new highway that unites the country with Perú.
Yesterday the urban peasants, the people who due to poverty had
to migrate to La Paz, closed the road the joins La Paz with the
city of El Alto for a half hour. Blockades are happening a kilometer
from the office of the President!
Imagine the most vast and peaceful plains
that you can. In the distance, snowcaps and flat land, the Andean
peaks guard the scenery. In the pastures, some sheep and llamas
pass the day calmly. And in the middle of all this, various dozens
of peasant farmers, furious, "cushion" with tens of
asphalt rocks, enormous trunks that cross the road, impeding
the passage of any vehicle. Until the soldiers come a few minutes
later to shoot the farmers and clean up the highway, throwing
tear-gas grenades (with a type of gas prohibited by the various
International Conventions on armaments, and purchased, certainly,
with United States military aid).
These conflicts already have their first
casualty: Last Saturday they killed the Aymara farmer Facundo
Varcaye in the Ororo region, 500 kilometers south of La Paz.
But the people don't give up. Only hours later, when the soldiers
had retreated from the place, the farmers reinitiated the blockade
and returned the stones to the road.
Today, with nearly all the Aymara and
Quechua farmers conducting blockades (this indicates, at least,
two million people), and threatening to continue them until Evo
Morales is returned to Congress, there are already four cities
affected by the struggle: Cochabamba, where even the market shopkeepers
and the public transportation workers have stopped working; Potosí,
the mining city in the country's South where new groups of peasant
farmers have appeared who support El Mallku and the coca growers
unconditionally; Ororo, where there probably won't be that much
tourism for Carnaval this year (it is supposed to begin on Monday)
and this means a loss of six million dollars for the local economy
("We are those who always lose our money and our lives,
it is they who should lose now," is what El Mallku said
when they asked him to lift the blockades to be able to conduct
the fiesta in peace); and La Paz, particularly the Las Yungas
region, where another large region of coca cultivation and also
embattled campesino associations and in solidarity with their
compañeros of the Chapare.
The government has finally begun to cede
ground, cornered by the protests. But the blockades grow, they
multiply and paralyze the economic activity in strategic points
(remember, kind readers, that Bolivia ships almost 80 percent
of its internal commerce by land). Tonight there has been a curious
compass of hope…
Evo
Returns
Yesterday,
around noon, the coca growers' ranks
asked Evo Morales to desist in his hunger strike, after 14 days.
The leader agreed and decided to incorporate himself into the
active fight. In the afternoon, Government Minister Leopoldo
Fernández again rejected negotiating with Evo, insisting
on calling him a murderer (remember Sacaba) and narco-trafficker.
Some hours later, in a consensus achieved in an assembly of the
Six Federations of coca growers in the Tropic of Cochabamba to
ratify Evo Morales as its principal spokesman. And they had won
this round with the authorities, with the surprise help of Ana
María Romero de Campero, the Public Defender.
In an open letter Señora Romero
wrote two days ago to President Jorge Quiroga, urging him to
renew talks and criticizing his closed mindedness, she said:
"the tactical errors in the application of your policies
are bringing the country to an unsustainable violence. Some expressions
of this attitude are the reluctance to open spaces of dialogue,
(and) the refusal to recognize labor leaders…"
Tonight, the Public Defender has announced
that the government accepted, finally, to sit down with Evo as
representative of the coca growers, which, in any light, is a
triumph. Tomorrow, maybe the mediation by the Public Defender
and the Catholic Church will begin between both parties. The
government also acceded to review the content of Supreme Decree
26415, that impedes the commercialization of coca leaf produced
in the Chapare. There is hope that Evo Morales will be reintegrated
into Congress.
What is certain is that something has
been moving within the apparently closed structure of power in
Bolivia... Stay tuned, because the stage is moving… The
President and his accomplices are beginning to notice that their
tactics have only provoked more ire on the part of the people…
And not a word out of the U.S. Embassy… The War on Drugs
(Bush's Andean Initiative) begins to unravel in the hands of
the Bolivian people… Evo returns and fights anew alongside
his troops… It's not the end, but the beginning…
for
more Narco News, click
here
Unraveling
Tyranny With the Hands of the People
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