Un-Justa for sale

Two days ago, I decided to check twitter to see what was happening in Bolivia. And the first thing I found was the tragicomic story about the new "subalcaldesa" of Paurito, Justa Cabrera (the name "Justa" means "fair")

Cabrera was one of the leaders of the riots that in December 2011 brought together tens of thousands of indians, "mestizos" and some "criollos" in protest against Evo Morales' government plans to build a road, without consulting to communities affected, that in its original design was going to go through the Indian and Peasant Territory Isiboro-Secure (TIPNIS). The road would connect the Bolivian road system with Brazil, and thus become a key part of the bi-oceanic corridor that would link the Brazilian economy and territory wiuth the Pacific Ocean and the Asian economy. It is, therefore, a fundamental tool for the Bolivian-Brazilian integration.

The protests led by indigenous peoples, Justa Cabrera among them, were a response to government failure to fulfil new Constitution's article 30 (no. 15) which establishes that indigenous and peasants have the right to be consulted when implementing a policy that affects them directly or indirectly. And as the road should go through the TIPNIS affects, in theory, several indigenous communities, the government was forced to ask the TIPNIS communities before the route of the road was designed.

Protests was conceptualized by official press and authorities as a new attempt by the oligarchy opposition and foreign powers to destabilize the government and create another crisis of governance. And by opposition press and authorities as a break in the block that holds the current Indian government, and thus, as an important sign of weakening.

Justa Cabrera's appointment as subalcaldesa, so far President of the National Confederation of Indigenous Women, in a jurisdiction controlled by the mayor and staunch opposition critic of the government, Percy Fernández, confirms the official interpretation of the pro-TIPNIS mobilizations: the forces of the oligarchy were involved and / or complicity in the riots in late 2011.

For now, other leaders of the riots have rejected the appointment. According Erbol, President of the Coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples of Santa Cruz (CPESC), Rosendo Alpiri, described the event as "a betrayal":

"... She always preached that she wouldn't sell, much less would join with the right, but now she betrayed the indian people ..."

Source: AhoraBolivia

Rules for judicial elections

Yesterday was discussed the rules for judicial elections. As always, the opposition complained about everything it could. It complained about the form of legislative debate. It complained about the terms of legislative debate. And, as always, too, demanded political consensus.

Childish doubt: isn't it better that the opposition is bent more on building political majorities to control the legislative process? So diminished and cornered is that it is incapable of doing this work, which is the most basic of democratic politics?

The sad thing is that opposition will complain anyway about government's political "rodillo" (roll), about that government uses it the most despotic form it could, about totalitarianism here, authoritarianism there, and all president's and indigenous' cursed ancestors yonder...

Few times Bolivia had the chance to see an opposition as mediocre as the present one: it's useless to articulate forces, but champion to complain and disqualify...

Bolivian opposition ... RIP

4 April marked one year since the last election held in Bolivia. After almost five years (18 December 2005 - April 4, 2010) with at least one electoral event every 10 months, a whole year without campaigns, conflicts, and polls is evident, very evident.

In my tenth kilometer wondered: has the opposition learned something of electoral competition in the last year without making a fool of in the polls? To obtain a reply, I sought what was said about it online and found the surprise that opposition not only has learned nothing, but every day is more and more stupid.

Living proof HoyBolivia.com appeared in a "mamarracho" of analysis titled "Lecciones de abril". Which would be the lessons according to the "brilliant analysis "? That government lost votes, that that the public has punished him, blah blah blah ... In other words, the same bunch of mindless crap that appeared after the April 4, 2010. Not a single neuron added to the awkwardness and deployed last year ...

The bottom line? Easy. The Bolivian opposition has been reduced to a minimum, to its current level of insignificance not only because doesn't have a project to offer to Bolivia, not only because the lack of leadership capable of articulating forces, not only because the total lack of organic base for minimum territorial work to create and align forces behind a project ... It's in the current plight because instead of analysis capabilities it overflows of political opinología crude and without any understanding of what is a force, how it behaves and how it manifests its power in the election results ...

Bolivian opposition ... RIP

Bolivian opposition on the canvas

Today are now three months since Evo Morales took the policy decision most adverse to his position of power (reverse the "gasolinazo") without the opposition could capitalize on the situation whatsoever.

Indeed, the reversal of the sample gasolinazo was the act of showing the lack of power to impose a government decision more impressive since the time of the numb with conceit of statesman that from "neoliberal journalist" agreed to become "president by hazard" just for the sake of make history, which, for himself, means being included in its cheap and mediocre handbook of Bolivian history. So radical was what happened on December 31, 2010: almost at the level of Carlos Mesa's decision, the individual (would he reach for "individual"?) of greater political stupidity of the recent history of Bolivia. But the opposition is so weak, entrenched and immobilized that could not take a step forward to conquer just one single political position.

Bolivian current opposition lacks political leadership, but, above all, lacks a project to offer to Bolivia. It also appears that the politicians who could assume a leading role, like Del Granado, are meassuring political times. He had a golden opportunity to launch his leadership to the national field commanding social protests or articulating the forces that resistance to gasolinazo made emerge. But apparently he decided to take care of their leadership capital for a more propitious time.

The truth is that success gasolinazo citizen resistance has not resulted in a political victory for the opposition. And that indicates that the Bolivian opposition is truly on the canvas ...

Racism and Human Rights

This is a fabulous post by Professor Walter Mignolo. I really recommend it to you all.

The series of events that unfolded in Sucre, Bolivia, since May 24 have not receive much attention by the international press; and in some cases, the report contributed to obscure the facts. The events invite us, all of us, to think about racism and human rights; who are the perpetrators, who are the victims, what is at stake when human rights are violated? The events in Sucre are not isolated. Below I provide some elements of a larger context of which the events in Sucre are part of a long and complicated process that unfolded since Evo Morales Ayma was elected president of Bolivia.

1) On Tuesday, January 26, 2008, the Human Rights Foundation (with offices in New York) sent a letter to President Evo Morales Ayma expressing their concern for the violation of Human Rights in the New Constitution. The Human Rights Foundation underscored two areas in which violations of human rights were taken place: the violation of the rights to property and the violation of the rule of law in Indigenous communities who were taking law in their own hands. The first violation—the right to property–was a violation of the landowners rights, particularly in Santa Cruz. The Human Rights Foundation was taking a step in defense of landowner rights to keep their extensive masses of land. The second violation, was the indiscriminate application of “communal law,” the violating the “liberal state law” by actors implementing indigenous law. The first violation made of landowners, indirectly landowners in Santa Cruz, victims of human rights violations. In the second case, Indians were the perpetrators of human rights violation.

Vice Minister of Coordination with Social Movement and Civil Society, Sacha Sergio Llorenti Solis responded to the Human Rights Foundation. Now this letter is difficult to find on Google. It doesn’t matter how you do the search, you get the letters from the Human Rights Foundation to President Evo Morales and Vice Minister Sacha Llorenti, but not the letter from Sacha Llorenti. Thor Halvorssen replied and summarized some of the points made by Sacha Llorenti. There are indeed several versions of it on Google, including dramatic pictures in which civil society has been attacked by Indian mobs.

I have in front of me a hard copy of the official letter from Sacha Llorenti’s letter, dated January 28, 2008 (MPR-VICCORD. MS-SC N0015/09) addressed to Thor Halvorssen. And there is a summary in Spanish published by Agencia Boliviana de Información.

I have not found yet a similar expression of concern, by the Human Rights Foundation, of the attacks perpetrated by the civil society, in Sucre, against Indians and peasants. There is not much available information in English either. Indians and peasant injured are as dramatic as the picture of white victims shown in the letter from Human Rights Foundation posted on Google (shown in the previous paragraph). Documentation of civil society violence and violation of Indian and peasant human rights abound in Spanish. Here are some examples:

Several videos can be found in YouTube; and articles in Terra Magazine, as well as in Indymedia.

Sacha Llorenti’s letter to Halvorssen defended the democratic process in the writing of the New Constitution and focused on Human Rights concerns in the “indiscriminate” application of communal justice. The case invoked in the original letter by the Human Rights Foundation to President Evo Morales was the case of Benjamin Altamirano the Mayor of Ayo-Ayo, indigenous himself. The set of events that ended in his death are very complex and controversial. The Human Rights Foundation letter simplified the case to make it fit their own argument and interest.

The basic narrative is the following. The community of Ayo-Ayo accused Benjamin Altamirano of corruption and mistreatment, and they denounced to the State department of Justice. This was in 2004; much before Evo Morales became president. The year 2004 is quoted in the original letter from the Human Rights Foundation to President Evo Morales. The Bolivian President, at that time, was Carlos Mesa. The Bolivian court of justice followed suit after the accusations by the community and initiated a legal process. In the end, Altamirano was declared innocent. When returning to his community he was captured and assassinated. Anti-Indian prejudices, among Bolivians (mainly creoles and mestizos/as of the middle class) and main stream international press, made the quick assumption that the killing of Altamirano was an act of communitarian justice by the Ayllus (Indigenous socio-economic organization similar to oykos in ancient Greece), of Ayo-Ayo.

Jumping to the conclusion that Altamirano’s assassination was an act of communal justice, and not a crime, will be like linking the rhetoric and the acts of the KKK to the United States government. Saying that the government of the United States supports the rhetoric and the acts of the KKK is equivalent to saying that the government of Evo Morales, and Evo Morales himself, as an indigenous, supports un-ruled acts of violence. Since the reader has access only to the Human Rights Foundation reply to Sacha Llorenti, but not Sacha Llorenti himself, the reader is “forced” to believe in the summary presented both in the Spanish and in English.

The main point of contention is Sacha Llorenti’s charge, to the Human Rights Foundation, of lack of information and understanding of Bolivian history and social situation. Such charges are, in fact, common among experts in Indigenous laws in South America and in Spain. See, for instance, the report written by Bolívar Beltrán Gutierrez on the indigenous penal system in which, interestingly enough, Benjamin Altamirano’s case is referred.

In personal conversation with Aymara intellectual, Marcelo Fernández Osco author of La Ley del Ayllu, he stressed the unawareness from the side of the Human Rights Foundation that the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State is an obvious case of juridical coloniality, regulating the State according to the interests of a minority of European descent, and modeled after the spirit of the French Revolution; which is the case for all the Political Constitution of all Latin American States. The community of Ayo-Ayo is an obvious case of why the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State needed to be re-written in such a way that Liberal and Ayllu conceptions of the State and Democracy can co-exist in armony. The letters from the Human Rights Foundation made evident the lack of knowledge of the other side of the equation, the law of the Ayllu. The ranchers and land owners of the low lands, as well as the elite in Sucre, in accordance with the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State are violating, with their demand of autonomy and property rights, Indigenous human rights by disavowing the rights Indians communities have to live in armony with the land; not the land as property. The letter from the Human Rights Foundation is also mute about the slavery living conditions of many Indian families working under landowners rule.

2) The events in Sucre are not “directly” related to Altamirano’s case and Indigenous violations of human rights. They are indirectly related. The special rapporteur on human rights of Indigenous individuals and communities posted a strong sign of alert. In this case, it is the civil society of Sucre who is violating indigenous and peasant human rights. The international press is denouncing the outrageous barbarism perpetrated under the leadership of the “Band of Four” in the very civilized city of Sucre.

The events in Sucre are indeed signs of radical global changes. And the Human Rights Foundation’s misinterpretations are also evidence that the changes taking place are making obsolescence of entrenched ways of thinking and revealing how feelings and group interests taint our views of what constitute legal violation of human rights; who is violating property rights; and who is denouncing the violation of both as an superior, objective, and transcendent observer who is not tainted itself by its own subjective view of justice, law and property. Property rights violations, one of the concerns expressed in the letter from the Human Rights Foundation to Evo Morales, were not addressed in the letter by Sacha Llorenti. The issue should be brought into the picture because it is not unrelated to Altamirano’s case and to racist violence against Indian and peasants, in Sucre. The very day in which Santa Cruz province was voting on the referendum for its autonomy, the New York Times published a revealing article about a US citizen, named Larsen, a native of Montana, who bought land in Santa Cruz in 1969, and now he seats on an extension of about 350,000 acres.

The article is titled: “American rancher resists land reform plans in Bolivia”. Think of it. Imagine a science fiction world in which an article is published saying “Indigenous Bolivian resists tax reduction in the United States.” Now it so happens, according to the Human Rights Foundation’s interpretation, that the New Bolivian Constitution is violating property rights. That is, is violating Mr. Larsen’s rights to his property, which was acquired through “legal” procedures between the Bolivian government in 1969. These were turbulent years. Military controlled the state and although promised to maintain land reforms implemented by the revolution of 1952, there were obviously some loop-holes. Most likely Mr. Larsen benefited from them and was able to acquire the land.

At stake here is for Mr. Larsen and the Human Rights Foundation that land is a commodity and that it can be economically possessed. For Indigenous people that is not the case: land is not a commodity, and nature is not a passive entity that shall be dominated and exploited, as Sir Frances Bacon stated at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in his Novum Organum. The idea that land is property and that is that was imprinted in the literature of the conquest in the sixteenth century. Dominican legal-theological Francisco de Vitoria, a balanced mind comparable to today’s honest liberals, struggled to find a legal and moral way justifying Spaniards taking possession of Indian lands. He went through complicated but very compelling arguments, stating that just because Indians were unbelievers, unbelief was not a good reason to deny that Indians have rights to property. Vitoria finally found reasons to legitimize Spanish expropriation of land: Indians were not mature enough. A racist decision, enveloped in ethical language, stamped for even both that the idea that land property is a universal of the human species and that Indians are an inferior race of the human species.

The unprecedented situation in Santa Cruz and in Sucre, is that land owners and Mestizo State officers and members of the Civil Society, rebels against the government. The ethno-class that came to power, in all South America, gaining independence from Spain and Portugal, are resisting the coming into being of ethno-classes (peasants and indigenous), who have been dominated and exploited since the glorious days of Spanish independence. And Sucre was the city that witnessed the beginning of struggles for emancipation.

But there is still an issue that Vitoria took for granted and has been accepted since: that Vitoria’s Indians (indeed, people from Tawantinsuyu and Anáhuac), would have to accept their relation to land as that of property, as a commodity. It did not occur to Vitoria (and none of the Spanish missionaries from different religious order), to ask that question. If they would have asked and listened to the answer, they would have understood that property was not the way Vitoria’s Indians related to land and nature.

3) Sacha Llorenti is right in pointing out that members of the Human Rights Foundation who wrote the letter misunderstand (it would be more exact to say “ignored”) the other side of the coin: that there is an Indian rationality which is not compatible with the rationality manifested in the Human Rights Foundation’s letter. Sacha Llorenti did not address the question of property rights, but the same charge could be made, on this matter, to the short-sided and partial view of the Human Rights Foundation.

Indeed, one cannot but be surprised to an statement appearing in the Human Rights response to (paragraph #3 of the letter dated 31 de enero de 2008), to Sacha Llorenti. Thor Helvorssen (President) and Armando Valladares (Secretario General), who signed the letter, accused President Evo Morales of making public a false accusation against the Human Rights Foundation. Helvorssen and Valladares’ letter transcribe the following allegedly Morales’s statement, pronounced in Chanel 7 (a state managed TV channel):

“Esta ONG tiene una clara filiación derechista y entre sus miembros aprece el hijo de Vargas Llosa”

The counterargument is interesting to say the least. The first counterargument is to dispel the accusation that Vargas Llosa’s son (both, father and son are well known for their neo-liberal positions and harsh criticism to leftists as well as Indigenous movements in Latin America), is to say Nobel Prize Elie Wiesel is one of the member of the committee whom, the letter clarifies “was prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.” With all due respect to Mr. Elie Wiesel, who has nothing to do with the situation, one wonders to what extent having been prisoner in a concentration camp is a warranty for the statements and accusations made by the Human Rights Foundation (or by the signers Helvorssen and Valladares).

The second counterargument is more philosophical but equally questionable. The signers of the letter address the accusation that the Foundation is a right wing institution: “For the Human Rights Foundation, human rights are neither from left nor from right; as human rights they are just human rights and as such they shall be respected, protected and guaranteed by all and every democratic state in the world, with independence of the political ideology of their government” (translation into English mine, WM).

Who speaks indeed for “human” in human rights? The signers of the letter are apparently assuming that “human rights” are a transcendent entity, some kind of dive or natural law, and that the Foundation has direct access to them. As such, the Foundation arrogates to itself the transcendental power of the observer who observed without being observed. The Foundation really knows what “human rights” are and the “human rights” they know (such as the right to private property), shall be respected. The Foundation operates under the assumption of an epistemology without parenthesis: and objectivity of “human rights” that cannot be contested; that can only be obeyed.

The point I am trying to make is not to advocate in favor of President Evo Morales and Sacha Llorenti’s arguments. My point is that Evo Morales and Sacha Llorenti have a point and that the Human Rights Foundation is reluctant to hear. The Human Rights Foundation is not the proprietor of “human rights”, and since they are not, their role will be enhanced and more helpful if they step down from their role of observer from above and be more aware of what interests they are defending and representing. The fight for human rights is a noble cause in which we all should be involved.

And it is in such spirit that I am here writing.

An institution such as the Human Rights Foundation shall not assume that because it is a Foundation it has the right of property to human rights; and that it is an institution from where you can observe but cannot be observed–what Chilean scientist and intellectual Humberto Maturana calls “objectivity without parenthesis.”

Walter Mignolo

To oppose or not to oppose in Bolivia

A quick look at the Oxford dictionary offers several definitions for the word 'opposition' as well as varied uses in different areas of universal knowledge. One of all of the possibilities which, our beloved opposition leaders would chose for themselves, says that 'opposition is a party that opposed to the party or parties in government' or 'belonging to a party opposed to the government,' which is in some extend true. Granted. However, a deeper look into the behavioral attitudes of our beloved ones will clear more the vision and draw an even more far fetched definition of this word -not only politically- which is very loyal to its most primary implication: to oppose for the sake of plainly opposing.

The current office -Evo Morales' office, not somebody else's as the opposition tend to think- has tried several times to implement several measures during the past two years, notwithstanding Morales' intention to fulfill electoral promises (let's say 'to try to fulfill' in order not to induce the opposition to tear their vestments). Numerous examples of laws and projects of law -boycotted by the opposition- has been seen passing by Evo Morales and his cabinet, some of them with dubious modifications, and others plainly turned down for the simple fact of being 'totalitarian projects,' copied from 'communist countries' such as Cuba or Venezuela and similar but varied excuses and invented reasons. Hilarious! They oppose because they oppose, full stop. They oppose because they weren't the ones who thought about it. They oppose because they don't have the power they need, as an evident and hindering stereotype of the word itself.

The opposition opposes everything that comes from the 'Burned Palace' in La Paz, maybe wishing this should naturally come from the Oval Office far overseas, or, in the best of cases, from Santa Cruz (not even Sucre, considering the opposition has no interest to defend Sucre as 'Bolivia's Capital City,' just a plot thought to distract public opinion). Let's not forget that the leaders of the opposition were part of previous offices in Bolivia, i.e. Jorge Quiroga, Manfred Reyes, Mario Cossío (just to tell some of them) and powerful businessmen from the eastern parts of the country who were also bound to earlier military regimes as well as some 'democratic' ones. Many of them -civilians-, are playing a determinant role in the Bolivia's present economy movements; they are not only responsible of the price rising but also the main authors of ecological damage by introducing non-native species of animals and plants but also to the introduction of GMO's to Bolivia (GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism). Being soy bean the 'king product' they plan to use to launch their investments (campaigns) farther than all their dreams, considering that the prices of food and oil to make fuel is on the rise. Clever, but unethical. But worst of all, they want to keep the status quo per secula seculorum (the blessing coming from the Bolivian bishops' words.)

The opposition is now the plutocrats of Santa Cruz (plus some mimetic politicians from Cochambamba, Tarija, Beni, Pando, and, recently, Chuquisaca). The opposition are the civilians that believe they have the right to disobey whatever legal regulation there is in Bolivia to carry out a illegal -though maybe legitimate- consult regarding a document produced overnight by the elite, and used to lure the people of the eastern sides of the country in order to received their support, which is already happening -and as always had happened in Bolivia- to remain on top of the golden chair which sadly resembles more and more the colonial Spain and they feel closer day by day.

As a simple citizen, the most I can do is to generate discussion on this regard, hoping that the rest of citizens, and myself, will consider the best way to help the country our politicians seem to have forgotten. Because it happened that Morales' opposition turned to be Bolivia's opposition as well and all of this just because our brainless opposition's only job seems to be to oppose, as a ridiculous stereotype of the word itself.

Janus, the mythological character able to change in opposite directions at once, like our politicians, great masters of disguise!

Photo: PublicDomain

The Process of Change

I wanted to share this post with everybody, it was written by Mauricio, a member of the Montoneros Collective. You can visit him here.

By visiting different Bolivian blogs I found several citizens disillusioned, betrayed, discomforted, and even with a sense of revenge. Some of them say things like this about the current government ‘And we believed they were going to be the changing force,’ ‘We have to unite to defeat this babblers of the left.’

What surprises me, is not the government actions, not their legality, neither their legitimacy. What surprises me most, is the low levels of education, perception and short sightedness, of the opposition, which are supported by the economic interests of the elites and not by national interests. What really surprises me is the existence of a middle class particularly afraid, a middle class that believes in any rumor of communism, a middle class that things Hugo Chavéz will take their second set of TV away because of its inability to accomplish a ‘social function.’

I do not pretend, nor am I so naïve, to justify ALL of the actions taken by individual people or political parties of the government and opposition, that are imperfect. To do it would be a terrible mistake, as terrible as the levels of dishonesty and un-nationalism that we have in our country.

This post, pretends instead, to make clear that it is important to understand the words of the President of Bolivia, Mr. Evo Morales, who said to all of us Bolivians: ‘I want to tell the Bolivian people that the road we have began to walk through is a one way road, there is no return, the past cannot be repeated (…) I am convinced that this is an irreversible process.’

That is why, ALL OF US, as citizens of Bolivia, must understand the reality of the country, its opportunities and deficiencies. There will be a good fellow who will propose a SOWT Matrix (Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, Threats) that will help us analyze and describe the performance of our country. Of course, the systematization of information and the rigorous analysis of causes and effects is important, I believe it is basic to understand that:

• Bolivia is one of the poorest countries of Latin America and the world.
• Bolivia shows high levels of social inequality and tremendous disparities in the distribution of income.
• Bolivia has low levels of quantity and quality of education.
• There are high levels of racism and intolerance.
• Bolivians cannot conceive the idea of Nation-State. We have a fragmented State.
• The Bolivian people are highly corrupt.
• In Bolivia to obey the rule of law is fallacy.

Bolivians need Employment, but above everything we need Unity and Coexistence. Which element should be the priority? The current government prioritized the new legal reality with the new Constitution. Now, the process of approving or disapproving the new constitution is just another instrument in this process of change.

The process of change DOES NOT imply:

• Luxury cars for everybody in the country, not in two years, neither in ten.
• To give up one’s house so it will be occupied by the communists.
• Rates of unemployment of 0% within the next five years.
• Access to Science and Technology in the medium term.
• Hugs and Kisses to all your neighbors, regardless of their skin color, and gifts exchanges.
• That all Bolivians will begin to pay their taxes on time.
• That the public offices will receive everyone with smiles.
• That indigenous peasants will become nuclear physicists overnight.
• That all public employees will stop being corrupt.

I am sorry to say to all of those who feel betrayed because those hopes have not materialized, that you were too naïve.

The process of Change simply consists of:

• To solve pending issues with the different ethnic groups of Bolivia. This does not mean that money will be taken away from those who have taken the big part of the pie until now, and will be later given to the poor.
• To create a different playfield where ALL can have the same opportunities, rights and obligations.

To solve those pending issues, requires that all citizens recognize a national identity, a dialogue in which everyone recognizes their neighbor as their equal. Everyone should recognize that we need to live together and respect each other, accepting differences of color, culture and tradition.

The crisis that we are living through now, shows that this is a painful and uneasy process of change, not everyone wants to play by the same rules, it is very convenient to some people that things remain unchanged, static. And others acting in desperation, try to accelerate the process. If it is convenient to some that things remain unchanged, just as they were until now, then why if this process irreversible?

Simply, because those ‘some’ ARE not the MAJORITY.

While the country is totally inhabited by poverty, misery, discrimination, and racism, the process of change with or without Evo Morales will be irreversible, and permanent.

Let us not make this process more painful than it already is. Bolivia is still a PACIFIST country; let us maintain it like that. We must adjust the inequalities of our country to then focus on a future of dignity, employment, social justice, health, less corruption. Those will be the fruits of this process of change.