Morales supporters protest La Paz Sept. 12
A visit to a roadblock
Steve Wagstaff (currently living in Cochabamba) 17 September 2008.
In my last report ("Bolivia, September 2008") I described the build-up of tensions in the country as the media luna prefects led their followers on a campaign of street violence, attempts to sabotage the oil and gas industries, and roadblocks to prevent exports and supplies to the rest of the country. The social movements responded with plans for a march on La Paz to demand the legislation needed in order to hold a referendum on the draft new constitution, and announced and encirclement of Santa Cruz with blockades of all highways. The encirclement was quickly implemented, forming 31 roadblocks in all. While this was happening, terrible news arrived from Pando, the department in the far north of the country, and part of the media luna. Campesinos en route to a demonstration had been ambushed by armed men and it was initially reported that 8 had been killed. The next day, the government declared a state of emergency, in Pando only, sending troops and imposing a curfew between midnight and 6am. The death-toll figure became 16 the following day, and evidence emerged that the killers had been using official vehicles of the prefecture. Then film footage appeared showing the campesinos trying to escape from the ambush by swimming across a wide river, whilst being shot at with rifles and machine guns. The government estimates 30 killed including at least one child. But 109 people are said to have disappeared. The millionnaire prefect of Pando, Leopoldo Fernández, has been arrested, taken to La Paz and charged with homicide.
Unasur met in Chile, and, with Peru absent, unanimously issued strong support for the Bolivian government.
Demonstrations have been held outside the buildings of two privately-owned TV stations in La Paz, to complain about biased reporting. Residents of El Alto are organising solidarity shipments of food and other goods to Pando. The government is also sending food there.
On Wednesday 17 September, I visited the nearest of the social movements' roadblock. I travelled for 5 hours from Cochabamba, right across El Chapare, one of the two main coca-growing areas and a stronghold of the social movements. The journey was quick, owing to a dearth of traffic. Usually there are many large trucks grinding slowly up or down inclines, but the blockades put paid to all that. We passed through Bulo Bulo, the last pueblo before the border of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz departments, and soon came upon a long line of about 100 parked trucks. Finding a parking place fairly near the roadblock, we got out and walked.
The start of the blockade was marked by a symbolic single line of small boulders neatly arranged across the highway, guarded by half a dozen young men. The blockade is situated on a long bridge over a wide river, perhaps half a kilometer long. The entire length of the bridge is lined on each side by makeshift – but very effective – shelters made simply by leaning together three or four large tree branches each retaining its smaller branches and all of the foliage. A gap at the front provides a low entrance way. Inside each shelter, 6 or 8 campesinos and campesinas were sitting or lying on blankets and pillows, some preparing food. Many of the shelters had a makeshift sign above the doorway naming the branch or unit within the "Six Federations" of the cocaleros of El Chapare to which the shelter, and the people inside it, belonged.
Each shelter is more or less the same size and shape, and they are evenly-spaced and exactly lined up, giving a very neat appearance and an impression of orderliness and efficiency. The space between the two rows is about three meters wide and there was a constant coming and going as if in a bustling market, with people shifting food and gas canisters in wheelbarrows or on their backs. Looking out from the bridge, I saw about 50 people along the stony riverbank, bathing and washing clothes.
I received many curious stares from the bloqueadores. They have been on the receiving end of much racism over the years (centuries indeed), and are not used to receiving friendly visits in such circumstances from white people. I made some attempts to explain why I was there, but for many of them, Spanish is their second language (after Quechua), so I wasn't sure if I was well understood. I also told the people I spoke to about the picket of the US embassy in London which was happening that very day (organised by the Boliva Solidarity Campaign). The leader of the Six Federations, Julio Salazar, was there. I had met him about a month previously, in Cochabamba, so we had a friendly chat.
The bloqueadores were prepared to maintain the blockade as long as necessary. Each one spends two days and two nights at the blockade, and is then relieved by a different "shift". At any one time, there are perhaps three hundred people on or around the bridge. The atmosphere is completely calm. There are no police or soldiers present. The nearest police, apparently about half a dozen of them, are about two kilometers along the road at a permanent checkpoint of FELCN, a police department dedicated to combatting narco-trafficking.
The blockade is not actually 100% impermeable. People arriving on motorbikes are allowed through, and they thread themselves carefully along the "market street". Also, while I was there, long-distance coaches arrived (most would normally go all the way between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz – 10 hours). Passengers disembarked, picked up their luggage, and walked across the bridge – again, along the "market street" – and presumably caught a bus or hitched a lift from the other side.
Formal negotiations between the government and the media luna prefects started on 18 September, with government ministers, congress deputies and foreign observers present. Meetings lasted 12 hours on the first day and it was agreed to form three tables to discuss the IDH (taxation of oil and gas), the proposed new constitution and departmental autonomy, and the designation of authorities in the National Congress. The oppositionists have relinquished control of all of the government and state buildings which they had occupied, and the Santa Cruz headquarters of the state-owned TV channel 7 and of Entel, the recently-nationalized mobile phone company. Channel 7 is therefore back on the air in Santa Cruz, in spite of the wrecking of their office and the theft of computers. However, the oppositionists have remained in occupation of the offices of INRA (National Institute for Agrarian Reform), the government department charged with implementing modest reforms inland ownership. This points up that land reform is always a crunch issue within revolutionary processes in Latin America.
It was quickly agreed in the negotiations that Pando would not be discussed. The government is therefore maintaining the state of emergency in Pando, and the prefect of Pando is in prison awaiting due process. Apparently, the other prefects are willing to negotiate under these circumstances.
Thousands of campesinos and workers from the western side of the country are gathering in Cochabamba to demonstrate outside the buildings where the negotiations are taking place, and thousands more are arriving to join the blockades surrounding Santa Cruz.
Meanwhile, more corruption is being uncovered by the government-appointed interim prefect of the department of Cochabamba. On 18 september, he intervened the Rural Electrification Project, in order to hold an investigation. Phase 3 of this project started 3 years ago, and was supposed to last one year. Money was advanced to contractors, but many communities are still without electricity and some official documents appear to claim that the work has been completed.
Shortages of gas remain in Cochabamba, and queues at filling stations can still be seen.