[R-G] Is Evo in danger after the August 10 referendum?

[Anthony Fenton]

Is Evo in danger after the August 10 referendum ?
My impressions of Bolivia

MICHEL COLLON

Bolivia has certainly changed. In La Paz, I attended a large reception  
given by the Cuban ambassador. Mojitos, buffet, dances... Where was it  
held? In the ceremonial hall of... the Bolivian army. Yes, the one  
that killed Ché.

Bolivia has certainly changed, but not everyone wishes it well. We had  
come to get an idea first hand with some progressive intellectuals  
from about 15 countries. Frei Betto, Ernesto Cardenal, Ramsey Clark,  
François Houtart, Luis Britto Garcia, Pascual Serrano... A few days of  
meetings and exchanges with Bolivian intellectuals, representatives of  
the Indian communities, artists...

It's a sensitive moment. The rightwing is trying to split away the  
wealthy regions of the country's East. To frustrate this operation,  
President Evo Morales, in the middle of his mandate, has called for a  
revocatory referendum, this Aug. 10. It's a sort of vote of  
confidence. It puts his legitimacy in play, but also that of the  
prefects of departments, including those who belong to his opposition.  
The rightwing is trying to sabotage the referendum and people fear  
incidents...

We will see who is behind these incidents, which role the United  
States plays, and the CIA, and a really strange ambassador, and also  
Europe...


Strong impressions

Strong impressions. Physically, first of all. La Paz is at an altitude  
of 11,800 feet. Its airport at 13,100. We arrived in the night, short  
of oxygen, at the brink of passing out. Very attentive, the young  
people who welcome us have us sit down calmly, while they deal with  
our luggage and let us catch our breath.

The first day will be devoted to rest and acclimatization. With Luis,  
a Venezuelan friend, we take a small tour, taking small steps from one  
bench to the next, in one of the most beautiful capitals of the world.  
Imagine an immense basin, bordered by the imposing mountains Huayna  
Potosí (20,000 ft.) and Nevado Illimani (21,200 ft.), not far from the  
lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake of the world. Here, water  
boils at 176° F instead of 212° F at sea level. And no street is flat.

What is striking about La Paz, in winter in any case, is the gentle  
climate, sunny and fresh. And the gentle people. Everywhere, you are  
welcomed with kindness, with a kind of quiet serenity. Indians wear  
heavy clothing with superb multi-coloured shawls. And of curious small  
"bolo" hats, black, brown or gray. Sometimes, they also carry  
impressive loads. Two-thirds of the population are Indians.


The importance of the Indian communities

"An Indian president? The white racist oligarchy still won't accept  
it," Evo confides to us. I began to understand all the wealth of this  
Indian heritage while visiting with Bolivian friends in Tiwanaku, the  
capital of an old Incan empire...

We are on the very high plateau of the Altiplano, bordered by  
mountains. Here, Indians live under difficult conditions, from farming  
and raising animals. Not a cloud in the sky, an incredibly pure air,  
you can still feel the nighttime chill.

Tiwanaku was an immense city, whose excavations have hardly begun. A  
hundred local Indians are busy restoring the temple, an enormous  
pyramid in terraces. It was a very advanced civilization, which  
constructed its buildings based on a thorough knowledge of astronomy.  
It had created a metallurgical and textile industry. It cultivated  
more than 200 different kinds of corn and 400 kinds of potatoes, of  
which one species could be frozen and remain edible for ten years. The  
system of irrigation was very sophisticated with a very precise slope  
so that the stones would heat the water enough to prevent it from  
freezing. This system was so sophisticated that today the Agriculture  
Ministry will revive it to develop agriculture on the terraces. Water  
is rare here, a treasure.

An Indian elder carries out a ritual ceremony with our group, a sort  
of sacrifice of small symbolic objects, to celebrate the unity with  
the cosmos and to gather the wishes that we form. Emotion.

It is no about glorifying the past for its own sake, but to preserve  
the common memories and values and integrate them into the new  
society. A Bolivian journalist explains the importance of community  
here: "It is a strong element of Bolivia. Look here, according to  
international statistics, a Bolivian peasant has an average income of  
50 dollars per year. You may as well say that he is dead! Except if  
one understands that the communal economy is the basis of our life  
here. "

In short, it's an invaluable heritage that must not be lost.


One Bolivian in four must emigrate

Strong impressions also regarding social realities in this country. In  
La Paz, the upper classes live at the lower end of the city, below  
10,000 feet, where one breathes more easily. Lower classes, on the  
other hand, in El Alto: at over 13,000 feet. Small trade, small craft  
industries, a little animal husbandry in the high plateaus... Life is  
hard.

The second poorest country of Latin America, Bolivia has seen one of  
four of its children emigrate. Why? For centuries, this land was  
colonized by Spain. And all the benefit of its mining wealth,  
extracted at the cost of a murderous labor in semi-slavery, were  
carried to Europe. For decades, its gas and its oil benefited only a  
handful of rich people, but most of all some transnational  
corporations, especially European-based. The North bled the South  
thoroughly, leaving behind only misery.

And conflicts. Evo Morales, president for two-and-a-half years, did  
not fall from the sky. His presidency is the fruit of long years of  
worker and peasant resistance. The Indian communities have always been  
exploited, excluded and scorned by a white racist elite, dependent on  
the United States and Europe.

That's where poverty and underdevelopment arise. But when the  
Bolivians, to survive, take care of housework in Europe, they are  
treated like criminals and thrown into prison. Even children! Evo  
Morales courageously denounced the recent "Directive of Shame" which  
will make it possible all European countries to imprison the  
criminals, sorry, the immigrants, for up to 18 months.

Precisely, before leaving, I met with immigrant workers in Brussels,  
in particular the Latinos and Latinas. In struggle for months to  
obtain papers, i.e., their rights, their dignity. Confronting  
ministers who completely ignored them, they had to risk their lives:  
hunger strike, climbing cranes... Since they greatly appreciated Evo's  
letter to the E.U., they asked me to give a small message of gratitude  
to the Bolivian president. I did. It brought a smile to his face.

In fact, when you see the poverty here, the very low wages, the lack  
of industry, one understands why so many Bolivians must emigrate. But,  
when investigating further, one also understands that Europe is a  
dirty hypocrite who bears a heavy responsibility for this emigration.  
We will return to this later...


What has Evo accomplished?

But first of all let us take a look at what Evo accomplished in two- 
and-a-half years ... He nationalized oil and gas. Would you like to  
know why the corporate media calls the Colombian President Uribe  
"good" and Evo Morales "bad"? Very simple. The former cut the taxes of  
the transnational corporations from 14 percent to... 0.4 percent. To  
help these transnationals get installed locally under optimum  
conditions, the Colombian paramilitaries drove four million peasants  
off their land. The latter, Morales, in order to combat poverty, dared  
to return to the Bolivian nation the wealth it owned.

By nationalizing its hydrocarbon resources, Evo multiplied the public  
revenues by five and gave himself the means for relieving the most  
urgent evils: illiteracy has dropped by 80 percent, a part of the  
children working in the streets have returned to school, schools  
teaching in the Indian languages Aymara and Quechua have been  
established (20,000 graduates), free health care is already available  
for half of the Bolivians, a "Dignity" pension for those over 60,  
credit with zero-percent interest for products like corn, wheat, soy  
and rice. Thanks to Venezuelan aid, 6,000 computers were made  
available, especially at schools. Thanks to Cuban aid, 260,000 people  
had eye operations. Elsewhere in Latin America, they would be  
condemned to be blind, because they are poor.

Moreover, the public investments to develop the economy increased  
greatly. Bolivia eliminated its fiscal deficit, repaid half of its  
foreign debt (now down from $5.0 to 2.2 billion), reconstituted a  
small financial reserve, multiplied employment in the mines and the  
metal industries by four, and doubled the production and the incomes  
of these industries. The industrial GDP passed from $4.1 to $7.1  
billion in three years. A thousand tractors were distributed to  
peasants. New roads were built.

In short, Bolivia advances. Not quick enough, some say. For these  
people, Evo is not moving hard enough against the rightwing and the  
big landowners. It is a debate that must be carried out among those  
who live on the spot and can appreciate the situation, with all its  
possibilities and dangers. And by understanding that it is not enough  
to say "Do it" to bring a country out of poverty and dependence. By  
knowing that it is necessary to take account of the relationship of  
forces with the rightwing, which is agitating and sabotaging. By  
taking account of the army (Will all its generals be loyal to the  
government under all conditions?).

Another negative factor: "The legal system remains completely  
corrupted," was confided to me by... the highest ranking magistrate in  
La Paz. "It is an old caste that protects itself and the interests of  
the rich. It's a business, truly. However, we have threatened the  
immediate recall of any judge caught in an obvious crime. But it is a  
difficult battle."

And precisely, when I was there, the courts came rushing to help the  
rightwing by trying to prevent by a legal battle the holding of the  
referendum.

But there is danger much greater than the legal system...


Behind the rightwing, the United States prepares a civil war

It is the new tactic of the United States. Finding themselves unable  
to win a war of occupation, Washington is resorting to indirect war,  
war by proxies. Currently, strategy of Washington is to try to foment  
a civil war in Bolivia. For that, the provinces controlled by the  
rightwing and which contain the greater part of the oil and gas  
reserves along with the large agricultural properties tied to the  
transnationals, these provincial regimes are multiplying their  
provocations to prepare to secede.

Having personally studied the secret actions of the great powers to  
break up Yugoslavia (1), I made a point of drawing the attention of  
the Bolivians, during some interviews: today, Washington will try to  
transform their country into a new Yugoslavia.

Here are the ingredients needed for this deed: 1. Massive CIA  
investments. 2. An ambassador specialized in destabilization. 3.  
Experienced fascists. With these ingredients, you can prepare a coup  
d'etat or a civil war. Or both.

First ingredient. As in Venezuela, the CIA is investing a lot in  
Bolivia. Through its usual covers: USAID, National Endowment for  
Democracy, Republican International Institute, etc. The right-wing  
separatist organizations are abundantly subsidized. USAID, for  
example, financed Juan Carlos Orenda, adviser of the extreme right  
Civic Committee of Santa Cruz and author of a plan envisaging the  
secession of this province.

But they also support the more discreet organizations charged to sow  
confusion and to prepare an anti-Evo propaganda. At the University of  
San Simon of Cochabamba, the Thousand-year Foundation received  
$155,000 to criticize the nationalization of gas and defend  
neoliberalism. Thirteen young Bolivian right-wing leaders were invited  
for training in Washington: $110,000. In the popular districts of El  
Alto, USAID launched programs "to reduce the tensions in the zones  
prone to social conflicts." Read: to discredit the left.

In all, millions of dollars have been handed out to all kinds of  
organizations, student groups, journalists, politicians, judges,  
intellectuals, businesspeople. The Spanish Popular Party, around Jose  
Maria Aznar, takes part in these operations.

Second ingredient. Where does Philip Goldberg, the current ambassador  
of the United States to Bolivia, come from? From Yugoslavia. Where he  
accumulated a rich personal experience in how to split a country  
apart. From 1994 to 1996, he worked in Bosnia for Ambassador Richard  
Holbrooke, one of the strategists of disintegration. Then, he stirred  
up conflict in Kosovo and fomented the split between Serbia and  
Montenegro. An expert, you could say.

And not inactive. As the Argentinian journalist Roberto Bardini tells  
it: "On June 28, 2007, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen, Donna Thi of Miami,  
was held at the airport of La Paz for trying to bring into the country  
500 45-caliber bullets that she had declared to customs were 'cheese.'  
Waiting for her at the terminal was the wife of Colonel James  
Campbell, the chief of the military mission of the U.S. Embassy in  
Bolivia. U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg immediately intervened to  
obtain her release, saying that it was only an 'innocent error.' The  
ammunition, he declared, was to be used only for sport and show. In  
March 2006, another U.S. citizen, Triston Jay Amero, alias Lestat  
Claudius, a 25-year-old Californian, carrying 15 different identity  
documents, set off 660 pounds of dynamite in two La Paz hotels." (2)

Why did the U.S. export Goldberg from the Balkans to Bolivia? To  
transform, I am sure, this country into a new Yugoslavia. Washington  
favors the method of promoting separatism to retake control of natural  
resources or strategic areas when governments act too independent, too  
resistant to the transnationals.

Third ingredient. Experienced fascists. In Bolivia, Goldberg openly  
supported and collaborated with Croatian-origin businesspeople in the  
leadership of the secessionist movement. Particularly with Branko  
Marinkovic, member of Federation of Free Entrepreneurs of Santa Cruz  
(the secessionist province). A very big landowner, Marinkovic also  
pulls the strings of the Transporte de Hidrocarbures Transredes (which  
works for Shell). He manages the 3,750 miles of oil and gas pipelines  
that feed out to Chile, Brazil and Argentina.

And when did these people come from Croatia? It should be recalled  
that, during World War II, the German leader, Nazi Adolf Hitler  
established fascist Greater Croatia where his collaborators, the  
Ustashis, set up death camps (including one especially for children!)  
that carried out a terrible genocide aimed at Serbs, Jews and Roma  
("gypsy") people. (3) After the Nazi defeat, the Croatian Catholic  
Church and the Vatican organized "ratlines," paths for the Croatian  
fascist criminals (and for German Nazi Klaus Barbie) to escape. From  
Croatia in Austria, then onto Rome. And from there towards Argentina,  
Bolivia or the United States. (4)

When it became known that Franjo Tudjman and the leaders of the "new"  
Croatia born in 1991 had rehabilitated the former Croatian World War  
II criminals, one would like to know if Mr. Marinkovic disavows all  
this past or if, quite simply, he employs the same methods where he is  
now. As for the United States, one knows that it rehabilitated and  
recycled a large quantity of Nazi criminals and spies of World War II.  
The networks are always useful.


What hides behind separatism

There. All the ingredients are ready to blow Bolivia apart... The  
dollars of the CIA, plus the experts in provoking civil wars, plus the  
fascists recycled as businesspeople. A civil war that would serve the  
interests of the multinationals, but that international public opinion  
must absolutely prevent. The Bolivians have the right to decide their  
fate themselves. Without the CIA.

Because a secession would benefit only the elite. The Brazilian writer  
Emir Sader has just written very precisely: "Today, one of the methods  
that includes racism is separatism, the attempt to delimit the lands  
controlled by the white race, by adapting and privatizing the wealth  
that belongs to the nation and its people. We already knew these  
intentions in the form of the rich districts that sought to be defined  
as municipalities, with the goal that a share of the taxes taken by  
law from their immense richnesses remains under their control to  
increase the revenue to their split-off districts, behind which they  
sought to insulate and to use a privately controlled security  
apparatus to guard their privileged life styles.(...) The separatist  
referendum is an oligarchic, racist and economic device used because  
they want to keep the greatest part of the wealth of Santa Cruz for  
their own benefit and because the oligarchs want, moreover, to prevent  
the government of Evo Morales from continuing the process of land  
reform and extending all over the country." (5)

This autonomy, indeed, that means that the rich white people who have  
always controlled Bolivia refuse to listen to the non-white majority  
in its West. When one speaks about autonomy, Evo Morales answers: "Let  
us speak about autonomy, not for the oligarchy, but for the people  
with whom we struggle. These separatist groups which have just lost  
their privileges were for a long time in the palace, they controlled  
the country and allowed the plundering of our country, our natural  
resources, including its natural resources, and the same with the  
privatization of our companies, and now they once again want to  
reestablish this system which exposes their true interest: economic  
control."

But it's not only the United States that intervenes in Bolivia...


The hypocrisy of Europe :
who thereby caused, "all the misery of the world"?

While hunting down undocumented workers, Europe slips into a sigh from  
the genteel nobility: "We cannot after all give succor to all the  
suffering of the world." Ah, well? But, actually, this misery, it is  
you who created it! Your Charles the Fifth, your Louis XIV, your  
Elisabeth I and your Léopold II happily massacred the "savages" to  
steal their wealth! This plundering was the basis of European  
capitalism's rapid economic growth. And today still your mining,  
agricultural and other corporations have not ceased to plunder the raw  
materials without paying for them, have not ceased dominating and  
deforming the local economies and blocking their development! Isn't it  
you who have the debt--to repay the South?

Would this be dredging up the past? In the media, the Europeans in  
charge like to say that today, they want only the best for Latin  
America and the Third World...

"Completely false," confided to me with indignation Pablo Solon, who  
represents Bolivia in the trade negociations between Latin America and  
the E.U: "Bolivia exp-lained it to the E.U. Before the negotiations,  
we had said that we would not negotiate a Free-Trade-style treaty. And  
we had communicated our points of divergence regarding services,  
investments, intellectual property and public property. The commission  
promised us that these points would be on the table during the  
negotiations. That in contrast with the "others," they would not try  
to impose a unique format on us. But, when we met with Peter  
Mandelson, European commerce official, he told us in a categorical and  
imperative way: 'This is a Free Trade Agreement. Accept it or you're  
out of the talks.' I answered personally that we were not going to  
exclude ourselves and that we were going to defend our points of view  
until the end. Because Bolivia has many industries which it must  
defend: steel, plastic, paper, which need mechanisms to protect  
themselves, as was done for the emergent European industries in the  
past."

Indeed, Europe showed that it is hyper-dominating and arrogant. It  
claims it will impose on all of Latin America and the Caribbean the  
end of subsidies that help to develop the local products, the  
suppression of the import duties (but it refuses to do the same at  
home!), suppression of every limit for European exports (refusing the  
reverse), the transfer without limits of the qualified European labor,  
and the modification of all laws protecting the local economies.

And moreover, the E.U. wants to impose the privatization of all state  
services, goods and enterprises. Although already in 2000, out of the  
500 largest companies of Latin America and of the Caribbean, 46  
percent already belonged to foreign corporations.

And moreover, the E.U. wants to impose patents on living things  
(Bolivia has a very rich biodiversity coveted by the chemical and  
pharmaceutical transnationals). But aren't living things, and water  
also, goods essential for survival, an innate property that should  
remain with those who always protected them and used them with care?

Ultimately, the E.U. wants to impose completely unbalanced treaties  
which will wipe out the Bolivian companies. All that it seeks is that  
the European companies can invade the markets freely. Thus they will  
ruin these countries. Thus they will provoke emigration. An absurd  
system, no?


Who chooses immigration and why?

I wrote that Europe drove out the Latino immigrants. That is less than  
accurate. Europe does not treat them all the same way.

On the one hand, European bosses import the best brains of the Third  
World, and also the very qualified technicians. They are under-paid to  
increase company profits. It is what Sarkozy and others call "selected  
immigration". The boss selects those who will be likely to work for  
him. But this brain-drain deprives the Third World of people whom it  
taught (at great cost) and who would be necessary to its development.  
A new form of plundering.

On the other hand, Europe also welcomes a part of the non-qualified  
workers. By leaving them without papers, therefore without rights, it  
forces them to live in fear, to accept wages and working conditions  
that constitute social reverses. It's an effective way to divide the  
working class and pressure the other workers. That's how the  
"competitiveness" of this virtuous Europe is manufactured. How Europe  
treats undocumented workers is no aberration, but an essential moving  
part of an economic system.

To sum up: Europe stole from Latin America. Europe continues to steal  
from Latin America. It stops the continent from nourishing its  
children. But when those children are forced to emigrate, it imprisons  
them. Then, it offers lessons of democracy and morality to the whole  
world.


The time has come

I could not remain in Bolivia a long time, but these people deeply  
impressed me. I remember the thousands of demonstrators who went down,  
this Sunday, towards the center of La Paz, crammed into their  
minibuses, cars or taxis, Indians and whites, from the fairest to the  
darkest.

With astonishing calm and much less noise than in any demonstration in  
any other part of the world. With a simple and noble determination.  
And in their eyes you could read a determination: the time has come to  
put an end to centuries of humiliations, the time has come for dignity  
for all, the time has come to make misery disappear.

And I thought once again of those undocumented friends in Brussels,  
who also demonstrated for their future and their dignity. The problem  
is obviously the same one, in Brussels and La Paz: for whom must the  
wealth of a country be used? And if this problem is not resolved in La  
Paz, the millions of undocumented workers will continue to knock on  
Europe's doors.


And tomorrow?

How will this evolve? For August 10, an pro-U.S. polling institute,  
like the majority of my contacts in La Paz, predicted a victory of Evo  
with 60 percent. On the other hand, some feared the influence of the  
problem of the inflation and the increase in the cost of living. Still  
others fear that the rightwing will launch violent provocations.

Whatever happens, the referendum itself will resolve nothing, neither  
in one direction, nor the other. Evo Morales will still face the same  
problem: the government is on the left, but it does not control the  
country's economy, nor its media (which is in the hands of the big  
landowners and the Spanish multinational Prisa), nor its universities,  
nor the Church, which is on the side of the rich as usual on this  
continent. One cannot do everything in two-and-a-half years. But, to  
advance, Evo will have to succeed more than even in mobilizing the  
popular masses. His only strength.

In any event, after the referendum, the question will remain the same:  
will the wealth of the country be used to enrich the wealthy and the  
transnational corporations or to develop the country and overcome  
poverty?

To resolve this question in its favor, Washington is ready to do  
anything. And the international progressive movement? How will it  
react against disinformation and the preparation of a civil war?

The answer depends on all of us.


Michel Collon
La Paz - Brussels
August 2008

Translation from French: John Catalinotto

If you want to send to your friends, French and Spanish versions  
available at :

[1] Test-media Yugoslavia y Kosovo, http://www.michelcollon.info/archives_testm.php
[2] Roberto Bardini, el embajador de la secesión, traducción francesa  
vuelta a ver B.I., nº 133, junio de 2008.
[3] Michel Collon, Liars' Poker, IAC, New York, 2002, p. 78
[4] Operación Ratlines, documental de David Young amargo Chanel 4  
TVES, 1991. Citado en El Juego de la mentira, p. 83.
[5] CEPRID, la CIA allí la oligarquía en contubernio contradijo a  
Bolivia, ww.nodo50.org/ceprid/spip.php?article169