IPS-English BOLIVIA: Threat of ‘Secession' from the East
 
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:09:44 -0800

 
Franz Chávez

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, Nov 27   (IPS)  - The protests against the draft
constitution approved by Bolivian President Evo Morales' supporters
in the constituent assembly continued Tuesday in the country's eastern
regions with an announcement by a large landowner and local civic
leader, Branco Marinkovic, of measures aimed at winning regional autonomy.



Speaking to hundreds of middle-class demonstrators, students, landowners
and members of the business community in the central square in the
eastern city of Santa Cruz, Marinkovic urged people to ”make sacrifices”
to oppose the draft constitution passed by the constituent assembly
in a preliminary vote Saturday in Sucre.

The session, which was boycotted by the delegates of rightwing opposition
parties, sparked violent protests in the city of Sucre by those opposed
to the Morales administration's rewriting of the constitution, which
is designed to give greater participation in decision-making to the
country's impoverished indigenous majority.

Four people -- three protesters and one policeman -- were killed
in the clashes between demonstrators and the security forces over
the weekend in that southeastern city.

For four months, the opposition had kept the constituent assembly,
which has a Dec. 14 deadline to come up with a new constitution, from
reconvening. On Saturday, the representatives of the governing Movement
to Socialism (MAS) party and their allies decided to hold a session
in a military academy in Sucre.

But the protesters attacked the police and military cordon set up
around the academy, torched local police stations and stormed a jail,
setting 100 inmates free.

The call for ”sacrifices” issued by Marinkovic Tuesday in Santa Cruz
was interpreted in different ways, ranging from an ”economic blockade”
against the government to the cut-off of basic services and food supplies
to the population, to apply pressure to overturn the initial approval
of the draft constitution, which was voted by 138 of the 255 constituent
assembly members.

President Morales, who is the leader of the country's coca farmers,
joined a march Monday by campesinos (peasant farmers) and other poor
demonstrators calling for the Senate to pass a bill that would provide
a lifelong income of 25 dollars a month to people over 60. He walked
18 km at the head of the column of protesters.

Meanwhile, Marinkovic, one of the largest landowners in Bolivia's
wealthier eastern region, called for greater provincial autonomy.

His demands, described by the government as ”secessionist,” include
strict controls to curb the inflow of Bolivians from the poor western
highlands, self-determination and greater regional control over revenues
from the country's vast natural gas reserves.

Bolivia, South America's poorest country, is basically divided between
the western altiplano, home to the impoverished indigenous majority,
and the richer eastern departments, which account for most of the
country's natural gas production, industry and gross domestic product.
Much of the population of eastern Bolivia is made up of people of
partly or predominantly European (primarily Spanish) descent.

Marinkovic's calls for autonomy are shared by six of the nine departments
(provinces) that make up Bolivia.

The demonstration in Santa Cruz was the start of a renewed political
battle against the Morales administration. Similar protests are planned
for Wednesday in the departments of Beni, Pando, Chuquisaca, Cochabamba
and Tarija, where, as in Santa Cruz, ”civic committees” are aligned
with the rightwing opposition and are preparing a 24-hour business
strike.

Santa Cruz Governor Rubén Costas said the strike will be held in
homage to the victims of what he called ”the massacre of La Glorieta”,
in reference to the protesters killed in Sucre, and against the draft
constitution.

Since Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, took office
nearly two years ago, the country has grown increasingly polarised
over the changes he is attempting to push through.

The leftwing leader renationalised Bolivia's natural gas reserves,
strengthened agrarian reform efforts aimed at providing landless indigenous
campesinos with small farms, and created social assistance mechanisms
for the poor, such as a 25-dollar monthly subsidy paid to families
for each child who stays in primary school, and the monthly pension
for the elderly.

The stepped-up land reform has drawn ire in the east, and especially
Santa Cruz, where much of the redistribution of rural property will
occur. The land to be granted to campesinos will be state-owned property,
privately-owned land that has been left unproductive, and property
that was illegally acquired by large landholders or handed out to
them by dictatorships in the past.

Morales is aware that the changes he is promoting, which touch on
the privileges long enjoyed by the middle- and upper-class elites,
have made him unpopular among those sectors, who call him a ”totalitarian
tyrant” and accuse him of being a ”servile” follower of Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez.

Addressing some 30,000 people in a plaza in La Paz, the president
pointed out that under his government, the country's foreign reserves
have grown from one billion dollars to over five billion dollars.

”We no longer have to ask for a loan to pay the Christmas bonus”
of public employees, he said, while wondering where so many millions
of dollars had gone during previous administrations.

”In Santa Cruz they refuse to accept that their cushy deal is over,”
said Morales, who blamed ”economic warfare” against his government
for the difficulties faced by homemakers in the country's poorer regions
due to the rising prices of food.
                  
Presidential spokesman Alex Contreras said Bolivia was experiencing
”a democratic revolution” to enfranchise the country's indigenous
people, which he said is being interpreted by the people of Santa
Cruz as an effort to exclude those who own vast expanses of land in
forestry, ranching and cash crop export areas in the east.

Far from his home region, the head of the Confederation of Indigenous
Peoples of Eastern Bolivia (CIDOB), Adolfo Chávez, said in La Paz
that under the new constitution, the land that was taken from the
country's native people will be restored to them.

Thousands of people gathered in La Paz to celebrate the initial approval
of a new constitution, which must now be debated article by article
before being put to voters in a referendum.

The Aymara indigenous drums and panpipes in La Paz contrasted with
the banners and fire crackers of the students, landowners, loggers,
shopkeepers and other business owners, professionals and local government
employees called out by the Civic Committee in Santa Cruz.


*****
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