Bolivia this week inaugurated museum of Banzer's torture chambers

[rabs]

Bolivians rounded up during the first dictatorship of Hugo Banzer.



Bolivia Turns Old Torture Chambers into Museums
martes, 23 de agosto de 2011

23 de agosto de 2011, 15:31La Paz, Aug 23 (Prensa Latina)

Minister of Government of Bolivia, Sacha Llorenti, stressed on Tuesday the initiative to turn into museums old torture chambers of military dictatorships.

Llorenti said that this is one of the most heartfelt tributes to the victims of the actions of Hugo Banzer (1971-1978) and to the desire to rescue the historical memory.

Many people were harassed and humiliated in these torture chambers, which were discovered in the basement of the Ministry of Government, recalled Llorenti.

Ministers of Mining and Cultures, José Pimentel and Elizabeth Salguero, respectively, and human rights activists and the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared and Martyrs for National Liberation (Asofand) participated in the inauguration of the new exhibition.

The opening was also attended by former government minister Alfredo Rada, who had the initiative in setting up this museum to honor the martyrs who gave their lives for a Bolivia with dignity and sovereignty.

Emotional testimony was also offered by the current deputy interior minister, Marcos Farfán, one of the survivors of the tortures of military regimes.

mh/as/gpm-lac/Ga

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The Bush Doctrine in Latin America, edited by Gary Prevost and Carlos Oliva Campos, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 272 pp., $22.95 paperback

In a 1998 commencement speech at Texas A&M University, Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, an alumnus of the school and then the vice president of Bolivia under the former dictator General Hugo Banzer, told the graduates, “I can tell you that was the best U.S. president Bolivia has ever had.”

Tuto’s enthusiasm for Bush was no accident. In 1991, Bolivia became one of the first countries to accept the conditional aid and debt relief of George H.W. Bush’s Enterprise of the Americas Initiative (EAI), a set of policies designed to encourage trade, private investment and structural adjustment in Latin America.

The EAI’s conditionality, which included massive privatizations, consolidated the neoliberal reforms in Bolivia that were first promoted in the early1980s by Northern economists like Jeffrey Sachs and implemented in 1985 by the government’s planning minister, Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada.

The history is now familiar—the privatizations that led to the Water War in Cochabamba were negotiated and announced almost exactly one year after Tuto’s speech in Texas—and the consequences of these policies are now clear. The “best U.S. President Bolivia ever had” was instrumental in promoting and consolidating the policies that led to the massive mobilizations that have changed the course of Bolivian, and perhaps Latin American, history.

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(The Cochabamba Water War -- Bechtel raised water rates threefold, and imposed a tax on RAINWATER. Protests (with heavy loss of life) drove the company out, as well as then President Sanchez de Lozada, who is now living comfortably in Maryland, just outside Washington. Bolivia has asked for his extradition for the massacre, but Clinton, dubya and now Obama have ignored it.)

[Judi Lynn]

1. If it hadn't been for the election of a progressive President this matter would have stayed buried

forever, as it has been since the 1960's, and the suffering, and grief of all those people affected by Hugo Banzer's genocidal, sadistic racism would have been in vain.

It's going to bring fresh air and sunlight into Bolivian life, to acknowledge this before the whole world, instead of allowing the oligarchs to smugly pretend nothing wrong has ever happened to the actual descendants of the original people of Bolivia at their hands.

How grotesque it was Hugo Banzer, again, who threw open the doors to Bechtel's subsidiary to rape and torment the Bolivian poor by inflating the cost of water until they found themselves unable to pay, went to the streets to protest only to meet death, torture, persecution all over again, and the reinstallation of another police state while they kicked down doors looking for protest leaders, dragging people off to prison to be tortured, just as if time had stood still.

What an important step forward. Hope it will be followed by exposing the rest of the history of what happened to Bolivians at the hands of true monsters who thought their reign would never end.

[rabs]

2. Thanks for the correction.

It was Banzer who was president at the time of the Bechtel affaire, not "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada.

Btw, the "Black October" verdicts/sentences are due any day now, maybe even this weekend.

The trial is to determine responsibility/punishment in the massacre in 2003 of more than 60 people in El Alto (upper La Paz) and La Paz during the Sanchez de Lozada presidency, and which toppled his presidency and forced him to flee into exile in Maryland.

Five former military officers and two former cabinet minister are on trial. They could be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison.

Three years ago the Bolivian government asked for the extradition of Sanchez de Lozada, but Washington had not heeded the request. The government also is seeking the extradition of another two former Cabinet ministers, one living in Lima, Peru and the other in Spain. No action on those requests either.

Will be on lookout for the verdicts.

[Judi Lynn]

3. I always was confused about these two. After seeing your comments,

I looked for a clear answer, discovered Banzer and the World Bank created the Water War problem with the Bechtel subsidiary, and Goni was responsible for slaughtering all those citizens protesting his natural gas debacle.

Thanks so much for letting us in on the coming verdicts. It would be sublime if some sort of justice actually came from this. Keeping those fingers crossed.