Blatant, violent racism in Bolivia

[Joanne98]

Monday, May 26, 2008
blatant, violent racism in bolivia
This weekend, as the city of Sucre approached the 199th anniversary of its decisive role in Bolivian independence from Spain, President Evo Morales was scheduled to arrive for an event. Many of his supporters from the campo (countryside) came to the city to receive him. They were met with some of the most blatant and obscene acts of racism Bolivia has seen in modern times.

The Inter-institutional Committee - a self-appointed group of opposition leaders in Sucre who were instrumental in orchestrating the violence there around the constitutional assembly in December - led protests against Evo coming. The rector of the public university there is the leader of this group.

It is also worth noting that Cochabamba Prefect (governor) Manfred Reyes Villa made a point of being there, marching alongside Inter-Institutional Committee leaders.

University students and other protesters attacked campesinos, and beat them, and took a group of them and made them march several kilometers to the town center, stripped off their shirts, and made them kneel in the main plaza and sing pro-Sucre slogans and ask forgiveness for coming to see President Morales.

I am amazed at how little coverage this is getting outside Bolivia. Today on Google, the only news sites I can find covering it are in Cuba. For those who read Spanish, some information is available here.

Some of the public leaders have expressed regret today at the way things "got out of control." But they still blame it on Morales himself. Morales ultimately canceled his trip. But he had also asked military and police to stay away from the marches there. Organizers now say he abandoned the city. But in Sucre and elsewhere, it has been made clear that one constant goal of protesters is to provoke violence on the part of police and soldiers so that they can then label Morales an authoritarian and a murderer.

Some on the left are now saying that Morales should
begin using the police and military more. He has been loathe to allow his government to be sucked into violent confrontations, but some critics now say that this is allowing his opponents to take advantage of him, and that poor and indigenous groups pay the price.

The racism of some Bolivians is overwhelming, and it is being manipulated by political interests who seem hellbent on forcing a larger confrontation with the government. Morales has shown impressive restraint regarding the use of state violence. Unfortunately, he has also shown little ability to otherwise deal with the kinds of scenes witnessed in Sucre this weekend.

Posted by Dan at 1:00 PM
http://danmoriarty.blogspot.com/2008/05/blatant-violent-racism-in-bolivia.html

[Joanne98]

1. La Vida Tranquilla

Well I must be becoming a Bolivian without even knowing it because I promised a entry in the “near future” and it has been close to a month. The integration process must be working. Really I have just be busy and maybe a bit lazy. I don’t know how much Bolivian news makes it to the mainstream media without actually searching for it but on May 4th was the vote for “autonomia” in the Santa Cruz department. Autonomia means basically that the departments want to have there own type of government that would give a little more power over their own resources. Basically, it would be equivalent to the state rights that we have in the United States. Right now a majority of the money made in natural gas and oil goes to the federal government. It is not that they want to separate and start their own country (though there are extremists). The problem with all of this is that a lot of it is fueled by racism. I don’t know if I talked about this but there are Collas and Cambas. The collas have more indeginious and are usually poorer and live in the “altiplano” and “valle” regions. Here in Santa Cruz it is the heart of the “camba nation”. They tend to have more money and lighter skin but these of course are not always true. The people who live in the campo of Santa Cruz are just as poor as people in other departments. On May 4th Santa Cruz had a vote for automonia. Peace Corps anticipated problems in my site which is pretty politically active, and where both Collas and Cambas live so something was bound to happen. A couple blocks from house in a school there were voting boths set up. I live in a “barrio” where mostly Collas live. So the Collas being against automonia went to the school and tried to close it down. I guess it worked my host-parents could not vote because of this. The Cambas caught wind of this and sent people to open the school up. Well naturally they started fighting… throwing rocks and dynamite
http://bnebolivia.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/la-vida-tranquilla/

[pretzel4gore]

2. if they all were white, it still go down like that...

I understand where you're coming from, but, there are too many heart-rending examples of equally horrible actions when both oppressors and oppressed were the exact same colour...what brought this on for me was reading about Kim Philby recently, the famed Soviet spy. Philby was talking about Vienna Austria, where he lived with a Jewish girl just before the 'anschluss,' or forced union, with nazi germany in 1938. The Vienna left was fairly well organised, controlled the city, but the national left leadership feared angering the nazis if they armed their folowers, kept putting it off, hoping ...and...well when the horror started, there were mad scenes where housewives were frantically digging up stashes of guns in backyards etc, using their bare hands, and 'we' were rolled over by the laughing austrian nazis and the germans who seized control. Being white never saved anyone in those type situations, just like in South America some of the worst death squad killers often were people who grew up in mud huts, iow indios or campesinos.
Morales, and indeed Chavez etc, are very smart guys, and know (almost certainly) about what happend to the Austrian left in '38, and why.....

[Judi Lynn]

3. Indigenous Bolivians were not allowed to walk on the sidewalks their taxes paid for until the 1950's

Richard Nixon assisted General Hugo Banzer in violently overthrowing the democratically elected President of Bolivia and taking his place, lending him material support. Here's a very quick but descriptive thumbnail sketch:

COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia
In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

[Joanne98]

6. Thanx

[Judi Lynn]

4. More on that REAL racism in Bolivia:

Home » Columns » View From...April 2006 • Issue 388

The second founding of Bolivia

~snip~
Long before the expulsion of Evo, his people, the indigenous, had been expelled from the official nation. They were not sons of Bolivia; they were merely its labour force. Until just over 50 years ago, the indians could neither vote nor even walk on the sidewalk in cities.

More:
http://www.newint.org/columns/viewfrom/2006/04/01/bolivia/
Eduardo Galeano is the author of The Open Veins of Latin America and Memories of Fire.

The year was 1952 when there was a revolution, and the indigenous citizens were allowed for the first time to walk on the same sidewalk with the European descended people living in their country.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Bolivian Racism Runs Amok in Sucre

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Bolivian Racism Runs Amok in Sucre

Racism Run Amok

On Saturday May 24th President Evo Morales was scheduled to visit the city of Sucre on the commemoration of the 199th anniversary of Latin America’s first steps of independence from Spain, General Sucre's "first shout of liberty (May 25, 1809)." The President planned on delivering ambulances for Chuquisaca’s rural communities and to announce development projects for the region, all actions typical of what Presidents do here on such dates. The events were to take place in the “Patriotic” Stadium, surrounded by and under the protection of indigenous people from different parts of the province.

However, the night before the event, organized groups antagonistic to Morales began to provoke disturbances around the stadium and stoned a house where a fundraising dinner was taking place for a MAS candidate for Governor, Walter Valda.

Then on Saturday, the day of the anniversary, the anti-Morales violence went into racist overdrive. Mobs armed with sticks and dynamites confronted the police and military. The government retreated the public's armed forces, cancelled all scheduled parades (of the military and police), and President Morales’ visit.

With the police and military presence gone, the indigenous peasants who had come to see the President were left face-to-face with armed civilians from urban Sucre, among them university students of the public University of San Francisco Xavier. More than two dozen indigenous peasants were beaten and captured, their few possessions were taken away and they were forced to walk for three miles and then kneel shirtless in front of Sucre’s House of Liberty. Sucre mobs humiliated their indigenous captives in a repeat of a ritual from the most brutal pages of colonialism. Under threat of violence, and half naked in a public square the captives were forced to apologize for the offense of coming to the city to receive President Morales. "Llamas, ask forgiveness," the mob ordered. Among the captives was the mayor of the rural town of Mojocoya.

Video footage of the abuse can be seen here.*

*This is the link:
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=iDNRhLKQyzk

Journalists in Sucre who bore witness to the racism unleashed also became targets. Yesterday, Red Erbol, a prominent association of radios and various institutions of communication denounced the attack of Red Erbol affiliated journalist María Elena Paco Durán of ACLO. Ms. Durán was attacked and insulted, prevented from carrying out her work as a reporter. According to Ms. Durán, at one point, the aggressors threatened to drench her with alcohol and set her on fire.

The Campesino Federation of Chuquisaca demanded the resignation of Jaime Barrón, Vice-Chancellor of the University, and of the President of Sucre's Interinstitutional Committee, a civic group that has been a leading force in anti-Morales protests. Threatening to block roads and close off valves of gas pipelines (if Barrón didn't resign), the Campesino Federation accused Barrón of promoting violence and racism.

Leaders of the Inter-institutional Committee, though denying any role in the violence inflicted upon the campesinos, have pleaded forgiveness for the degrading act committed in front of the House of Liberty.

More:
http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2008/05/bolivian-racism-runs-amok-in-sucre.html