Bolivia Readies Charges Against Autonomy Leader

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivia Readies Charges Against Autonomy Leader
By Carlos Alberto Quiroga
November 30, 2008

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia's leftist government said on Sunday it was preparing to charge a top leader of an autonomy movement with "terrorism" after violent protests in September.

The government of President Evo Morales said Branko Marinkovic, who helped lead an autonomy push by Bolivia's four richest provinces, would be charged for instigating attacks in which at least 17 people were killed.

"We have enough evidence in this investigation to allow us to link Mr. Marinkovic with the acts of terrorism that occurred in several parts of the country in September," government minister Alfredo Rada told state radio.

Twenty people, including a governor and another civic leader, are already behind bars for the violence that erupted in four opposition-controlled regions when anti-Morales protesters stormed government buildings, sabotaged natural gas pipelines and battled with the president's supporters.

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=6362286

[Judi Lynn]

1. The Rise of Food Fascism in Bolivia

The Rise of Food Fascism in Bolivia

Allied to global agribusiness, the agrarian elite of Bolivia are fomenting a coup as they struggle for control of the life-blood of the economy, writes Roger Burbach.

2nd July - Roger Burbach, Transnational Institute

~snip~
Branko Marinkovic, the powerful head of the Civic Committee whose parents migrated to Bolivia from Croatia in the 1950s, is the largest landowner in the country with 300,000 hectares, much of it obtained for pennies or fraudulent maneuvers under past dictatorial and oligarchic governments.(9) He also has considerable business investments, including IOL S.A., one of Bolivia’s largest soy and sunflower processing plants. A political ideologue of the autonomy movement, Marinkovic funds and sits on the board of the think tank Fundacion Libertad y Democracia that has ties to the Heritage and Cato Foundations.(10)

The Cruceño Youth Union (UJC), a junior men’s organization affiliated with the Civic Committee, is the strong arm of the Civic Committee, often acting as shock troops for the autonomy movement. During the plebiscite in May its members, mainly in their teens and early twenties, roamed the streets of the city of Santa Cruz and surrounding towns violently attacking and repressing any opposition to the referendum by local indigenous movements and MAS-allied forces. Not wanting to provoke a violent confrontation, Evo Morales did not deploy the army or use the local police, leaving the urban areas under the effective control of the UJC when the voting took place.

The other less densely inhabited provinces in the east that make up what is called the Media Luna—Pando, Beni and Tarija--have held referendums calling for autonomy under similar conditions. On the national level, the major political party of the right, Podemos (We Can) tied up the efforts of a popularly elected Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution for over a year and it is now maneuvering with other political forces in La Paz to block a national referendum to enact the constitution.

Simultaneously, the right wing lead by the Civic Committee is sewing economic instability, seeking to destabilize the Morales government much like the CIA-backed opposition did in Chile against Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. As in Chile the business elites and allied truckers engage in “strikes,” withholding or refusing to ship produce to the urban markets while selling commodities in the black market at high prices that cause alarm among the poor. The national Confederation of Private Businesses of Bolivia is calling for a national producers’ shutdown if the government “does not change its economic policies.”(11)

More:
http://www.stwr.org/latin-america-caribbean/the-rise-of-food-fascism-in-bolivia.html

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[Judi Lynn]

2. The Rise of Food Fascism: Allied to Global Agribusiness, Agrarian Elite Foments Coup in Bolivia

02/07/08
The Rise of Food Fascism:
Allied to Global Agribusiness, Agrarian Elite Foments Coup in Bolivia
by Roger Burbach

Like many third-world countries, Bolivia is experiencing food shortages and rising food prices attributable to a global food marketing system driven by multinational agribusiness corporations. With sixty percent of the Bolivian population living in poverty and thirty-three percent in extreme poverty, the price of the basic food canasta -- including wheat, rice, corn, soy oil, and potatoes, as well as meat -- has risen twenty-five percent over the past year with prices gyrating wildly in the local markets.

As in most other countries affected by the food crisis, the overall rise in food prices is attributable to the workings of the free market -- when the price of one or several commodities goes up, the consumers turn to other foodstuffs, thereby driving up these prices as well. In an effort to halt the effects of this unregulated market, the government has enacted price controls and even prohibited the export of beef, most of which is produced on haciendas. But these measures have been largely ineffective: a black market flourishes as agrarian commercial interests openly flout the central government's price controls, even directly exporting commodities like beef and cooking oil at higher prices to the neighboring countries of Chile and Peru.

This is taking place as Bolivia's first Indian president, Evo Morales, is facing a sustained challenge by a right-wing movement for autonomy that is integrally linked to the very agribusiness corporations that are profiting from the upsurge in food prices. Based in the eastern province of Santa Cruz, a powerful agrarian bourgeoisie is determined to upend the government's agrarian reform program and to halt Morales' efforts to more equitably distribute the wealth that flows from Bolivia's oil and gas fields. Its ultimate goal is to topple Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) that backs him.

More:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/burbach020708.html

[Judi Lynn]

3. More on Marinkovic: Indigenous Peoples Rising in Bolivia and Ecuador

30/11/08
Indigenous Peoples Rising in Bolivia and Ecuador
by James D. Cockcroft

~snip~
Several of the fascistic right-wing leaders of the opposition movement are anti-communist fanatics whose pro-Nazi families came to Bolivia from Eastern Europe after World War II, often protected or encouraged by the US government, as in the case of Klaus Barbie. One current leader, Branco Marinkovic, a Croatian-Bolivian, is widely believed to be in the pay of the man in the government of "elgringo" who ordered the El Alto massacre of 2003 and later fled to the United States with "elgringo" and other top government officials.

Over the years, the fascist leaders of the four breakaway departments routinely have hired Brazilian gunmen, some of whom joined Bolivian and Peruvian gunmen in the Pando massacre of September 11, 2008. Pando is the department that gave refuge to the murderers of Chico Mendes, the world-renowned trade-union and environmentalist leader of Brazilian rubber tappers assassinated in 1988. Ever since then, these assassins and their henchmen have been operating on behalf of Pando's elites to help maintain labor discipline and political loyalty, but with decreasing success.

Even though momentarily defeated in their attempt to topple Bolivian democracy, right-wingers of all varieties have not stopped their pressures on Evo. The social movements and native peoples continue to mobilize in defense of Evo´s government

More:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cockcroft301108.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. How Bush Tried to Bring Down Evo Morales

November 18, 2008

How Bush Tried to Bring Down Evo Morales
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia
By ROGER BURBACH

Evo Morales is the latest democratically-elected Latin American president to be the target of a US plot to destabilize and overthrow his government. On September 10, 2008 Morales expelled US Ambassador Philip Goldberg because “he is conspiring against democracy and seeking the division of Bolivia.”
Observers of US-Latin American policy tend to view the crisis in US-Bolivian relations as due to a policy of neglect and ineptness towards Latin America because of US involvement in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. In fact, the Bolivia coup attempt was a conscious policy rooted in US hostility towards Morales, his political party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and the social movements that are aligned with him.

“The US embassy is historically used to calling the shots in Bolivia, violating our sovereignty, treating us like a banana republic,” says Gustavo Guzman, who was expelled as Bolivian ambassador to Washington following Goldberg’s removal. In 2002, when Morales narrowly lost his first bid for the presidency, US ambassador Manuel Rocha openly campaigned against him, threatening, “ if you elect those who want Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the future of US assistance to Bolivia.” Because he led the Cocaleros Federation prior to assuming the presidency, the US State Department called Morales an “illegal coca agitator.”Morales advocated “Coca Yes, Cocaine No,” and called which for an end to violent U.S.-sponsored coca eradication raids, and for the right of Bolivian peasants to grow coca for domestic consumption, medicinal uses and even for export as an herb in tea and other products.

“When Morales triumphed in the next presidential election,” says Guzman, “it represented a defeat for the United States.” Shortly after his inauguration, Morales received a call from George Bush, offering to help "bring a better life to Bolivians." Morales asked Bush to reduce US trade barriers for Bolivian products, and suggested that he come for a visit. Bush did not reply. As Guzman notes, “the United States was trying to woo Morales with polite and banal comments to keep him from aligning with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.” David Greenlee, the US ambassador prior to Goldberg, expressed his "preoccupation" with Bolivia's foreign alliances, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others at the Pentagon began talking about "security concerns" in Bolivia.

Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, the highest ranking US official to attend Morales’ inauguration, declared a willingness to dialogue with Morales. In fact, what followed were almost three years of diplomatic wrangling while the U.S. provided direct and covert assistance to the opposition movement centered in the four eastern departments of Bolivia known as “La Media Luna”. Dominated by agro-industrial interests, the departments began a drive for regional autonomy soon after Morales, the first Indian president in Bolivian history took office. (About 55% of the country’s population is Indian.) Headed by departmental prefects (governors) and large landowners, the autonomy movement has been determined to stymie Morales’ plans for national agrarian reform, and bent on taking control of the substantial hydro-carbon resources located in the Media Luna.

The Bush administration has pursued a two-track policy similar to the strategy the United States employed to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. The diplomatic negotiations initiated by Shannon centered almost exclusively on differences over drug policies, with the Bush administration continually threatening to cut or curtail economic assistance and preferential trade if Bolivia did not abide by the US policy of coca eradication and criminalization. At the same time, the United States through its embassy in La Paz and the Agency for International Development (USAID), funded political forces that opposed Morales and MAS. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), with 37 in-country agents, appears to have acted like the CIA in Bolivia, gathering intelligence and engaging in clandestine political operations with the opposition.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/burbach11182008.html