Author: Carwil Bjork-James

Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. (My opinions are my own, and not my employer's.) Author of The Sovereigns Street: Making Revolution in Urban Bolivia (sovereignstreet.org). I conduct immersive and historical research on disruptive protest, grassroots autonomy, state violence, and indigenous collective rights in Bolivia.

Deaths during Bolivia’s 2019 crisis: An initial analysis

Carwil Bjork-James

Since 2015, I have been working systematically to compile a database of people who lost their lives in the course of Bolivian conflict, though I had been collecting detailed on a variety of deadly post-2000 events for years before that. Never before this year, however have I had the responsibility of adding so many new, present-day entries to database: at least 35 people died in the conflicts that followed the October 20 election and the November 10 overthrow of Evo Morales. November alone proved to be the bloodiest month in sixteen years, and the third deadliest month of the democratic era. And it is thanks to the database that I can make simple factual statements like those.

The database enumerates individual deaths in Bolivian political conflict since 1982, the end of military rule in the country. It is compiled by myself and a research assistant based on multiple sources, including media reports, governmental, intergovernmental, and private human rights reports, and use of the research literature on political conflict. The dataset now includes nearly all of the deaths identified by a Permanent Assembly of Human Rights-Bolivia (APDHB) study of deaths from 1988 to 2003, and a study of the coca conflict from 1982 to 2005 (Navarro Miranda 2006; Llorenti 2009; Salazar Ortuño 2008). Unlike prior compilations by human rights organizations, however, this database includes a variety of qualitative variables designed to understand how and why the deaths occurred and what policies and patterns underpin them.

I designed the database to both catalog the lethal consequences of participation in social movements and political activism, and to assess responsibility, accountability, and impunity for violent deaths. All deaths are significant as signs of the price that has been paid to seek social
change. Some deaths are also significant as elements of repression or violence for which someone might ultimately be held accountable. Rather than begin by asking, “Is this death someone’s fault?,” we are coding each death according to multiple factors that enable us to extract different
subsets of the overall database for different purposes. We estimate there were 550 to 580 deaths associated with Bolivian political conflict from October 1982 until the current crisis. As of October 2019, the project had identified 530 of these deaths, including those of 496 named individuals.

Through this process, I have become familiar with reading multiple and conflicting reports, evaluating official denials (we have created a data column for such denials), collecting narrative accounts, coding what we can based on the information, and signaling remaining questions. One thing that I have learned through this process is that making informed judgements, rather than marking all disputed facts with some kind of asterisk, is absolutely foundational to being able to do comparative work. It was with that experience that I spent time over the past month reading and processing reports of Bolivia’s deadly November.

This blog post presents Part I of this analysis, which describes the deadly events involved and explains some of my coding decisions in assessing responsibility for them. A second part will put the 2019 into comparative perspective against other periods covered by the database.

Who killed and who died in the 2019 crisis?

This table (click to expand) shows my initial analysis of the affiliations of the victims and perpetrators of violence and other deadly incidents during October and November. Overall, thirty-five people died in the conflict, including two people killed in their attempts to avoid violence against them.

Crisis deaths and affiliations of victims and perpetrators.
Deaths during the crisis and their causes.

Below, I break down the events involved and describe what we know about who was responsible for and who suffered these deaths.

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“Three hours of terror in Senkata”

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There has been relatively little in-depth journalistic coverage of the sequence of events at the blockaded Senkata refinery, which ended in the deadliest day in Bolivian political conflict since 2008. This report is a significant exception. The article was originally published as “Las 3 horas de terror que sufrieron en Senkata,” by Jorge Quispe, La Razón, December 2, 2019. The photos shown below accompanied the original article; their captions are also translated from the original article.

In October 2003, a convoy that would later be named as “the death caravan” outwitted the blockade at the Senkata plant. On Tuesday, November 19 [of this year], between 10:20 and 10:30am, [blockading] Alteños tried to prevent fifty tankers from exiting their cordon. The result was fatal.

Pedestrian overpass from which soldiers had fired. Photo: Álvaro Valero

On Saturday, November 9, ten days before the 19th, the neighbors of District 8, which includes Senkata, were the first to follow the El Alto Neighborhood Council Federation’s instructions and blockade their main road, which leads to Oruro. Days later, the blockade was transferred to the hydrocarbon plant, which supplies natural gas, gasoline, and diesel to La Paz and El Alto.

That Tuesday morning, there were only a few neighbors taking part in the vigil at the gates of the Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) installation, which is an hour’s walk away from the Ceja [the central market in El Alto], since (according to leader Juan Luis Chipana) a dialogue had begun to bring [the protesters] closer to the new government.

The majority of the people were at the Senkata Crossing, in the heart of the giant El Alto neighborhood, but at around 10:20, they could see in the distance a cloud of smoke near the plant. The news spread like wildfire. “The tankers are escaping!,” they shouted.

The protesters ran towards the plant, some fifteen minutes away from the Senkata Crossing, arrived there, and were received by a rain of tear gas fired by some fifty policemen. Some tried to set up and light bonfires, other looked for stones, and the boldest among them threw the gas canisters back. That was the first moment in this tense day.

After 11:15, the crowd surrounded the Senkata plant. And so began the second moment of that fatal day. Some of them threw stones at the windows and entry gates of the facility, but others, in groups of 20 or 30 people, appeared along the perimeter wall and began to push. That his how seven sections of that wall fell, the largest hole being 100 meters long, and the smallest some ten meters.

A segment of the pushed-over wall; the site remains guaraded today.

At that instant, according to family members [of those killed], witnesses, and David Inca, the representative of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia (Asamblea Permanente de Derechos Humanos de Bolivia, APDHB), the shots began. “The people recounted that from behind the wall, they began to launch tear gas over it, the people appeared, and pushed and made the wall fall. That is when the military troops came out directly to shoot,” as the activist Inca described.

One of the first victims, according to the family member, was Edwin Jamachi. “He left the house to cash a check and passed by the [Senkata] plant where he was shot,” recounted his sister, who for fear of reprisals did not give her name. The loved ones of those killed, wounded, and detained are fearful, because they believe that they may be accused of sedition.

Shots. Between 11:00 and 12:00, according to his family members, Clemente Mamani also died.

“Clemente was shot near the rail (the old railway that passes by 50 meters from the plant). That happened after the tankers had gotten out, he wasn’t even blockading,” detailed another family member who requested anonymity.

Families of the dead in the San Francisco parish church.

The people ran to the left, close to the old rail line; others to the right, towards the town of Achocalla, and many retreated towards the Senkata Crossing, where the blockade was born on November 9.

The third moment came between 12:00 and 1:30pm, according to the version related by Inca and the families of those wounded and killed. “The military troops came out of the plant towards the pedestrian bridge (in the center of Senkata) to carry out the work of dispersing [the crowd], advancing and firing gas canisters. Others fired their guns,” Inca denounced. According to the APDHB representative, there were 60 wounded and at least 11 killed (a girl died on Wednesday). Officially, there are ten known deaths.

“The helicopter that was flying over Senkata also fired gas,” affirms a family member of Juan José Tenorio, another of the victims that may have died near that pedestrian bridge. Others were wounded on the highway that leads to Vela Bridge. “A bullet passed through the arm and the right leg of my wife,” described a husband of one of those wounded.
Some victims fell near the plant and others by the Senkata Crossing and the San Francisco de Asís parish. “My son Pedro Quisbert died near the church,” his mother said.

The long night of Tuesday, November 19, while five bodies were laid out under veils in the parish, Defense Minister Fernando López assured the public that not one shot was fired by the Armed Forces. … The Forensic Investigations Institute (Instituto de Investigaciones Forenses; IDIF) reported in La Paz that four of the dead in El Alto were wounded with 22mm and 9mm bullets. They ruled out [standard issue] military munitions.

On Tuesday November 26, Wilson Santamaría, the new Vice Minister of Citizen Security, said that after viewing the security cameras at Senkata, they identified the use of explosive by some blockaders and that some of them were not from El Alto.

Inter-American Commission puts a spotlight on Sacaba, Senkata massacres

Carwil Bjork-James2 Comments

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which visited Bolivia November 22 to 25, has released a visually and emotionally arresting video that highlights the testimony of survivors of the Bolivian government’s massacres of protesters in the town of Sacaba and the El Alto neighborhood of Senkata. The video interweaves survivors’ pleas with crowd shouts for “justice” and does far more to humanize the participants in protests than nearly any coverage in the mainstream Bolivian press. (Click on “CC” for English subtitles, and on “vimeo” to see a larger version.)

The Commission’s report on its visit, currently available only in Spanish, includes extensive discussion of these two massacres. What follows is my translation of a relevant portion of their text:

Massacres and murders

In the context of the crisis, and as of November 27, the IACHR received news of 36 people who lost their lives in Bolivia. During its visit, the IACHR delegation received abundant information about two massacres committed in Sacaba and in Senkata, on November 15 and 19, respectively, in which at least 18 people lost their lives.

The Sacaba massacre occurred on November 15. The Commission received information from witnesses, according to which members of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba arrived in a peaceful demonstration to the Sacaba municipality, demanding the return of Evo Morales to the government and recject the interim government. At the Huayllani bridge, located at kilometer 10 of the highway from Cochabamba, the combined forces of the Police and Armed Forces had established a security cordon. At the moment the demonstrators attempted to pass through, they were first contained and told verbally that the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría del Pueblo) was on its way to mediate; nevertheless, according to information received, a few moments later the police and military agents would open fire against the civilian population gathered there, which they also would attack with tear gas, beatings, and kicks. In these acts, nine people were killed: Omar Calle, César Sipe, Juan López, Emilio Colque, Lucas Sánchez, Plácido Rojas Delgadillo, Armando Carvallo Escobar, Marco Vargas Martínez, and Roberto Sejas. Numerous people were wounded, including by bullets, who were received by various hospitals in Sacaba and Cochabamba.

The commission takes note of the existence of different versions of how these events unfolded. On one hand, some state authorities, including the Forensic Investigation Unit (Instituto de Investigaciones Forenses; IDIF) and the police command, have accused the demonstrators of having shot one another, proposing reasons such as the caliber of the bullets that were recovered from the bodies of the dead and wounded. On the other hand, the numerous testimonies received by the IACHR are consistent in indicating that the demonstrating people were unarmed, advanced peacefully by their own initiative, and were attacked with fire arms, teargas canisters, batons, and other weapons by the security forces, in a sudden and surprising manner. Security force helicopters participated in the operation, as even the Police Commander of Cochabamba testified before the IACHR.

The Senkata massacre occurred on November 19. According to information received, a group of partisans of the MAS carried out a blockade around the oil and gas plant of the Senkata sector, in El Alto. That morning, sixty container trucks of gasoline and natural gas were allowed to leave the plant, after which the demonstrators had knocked down one of the walls on the perimeter of the plant, at which time they were contained by the firearms of the combined forces of the Police and Army. In these acts, nine people were killed by gunshots: Devi Posto Cusi, Pedro Quisberth Mamani, Edwin Jamachi Paniagua, José Colque Patty, Juan José Tenorio Mamani, Antonio Ronald Quispe, Clemente Mamani Santander, Rudy Cristian Vásquez Condori, and Calixto Huanacu Aguilar. Among those who were killed are several people who do not seem to have participated in the blockade, but rather were simply passing through the zone on the way to their homes or workplaces. There were also numerous people wounded by gunshots, beatings, inhalation of gas, and other related causes, who were attended in various hospitals in El Alto. Just as in the Sacaba massacre, some public functionaries, both forensic and police, have questioned whether the bullets that killed these citizens had been shot by the regulation weapons of the security forces. With respect to that, according to public declarations and those made before the IACHR, insistently reiterated by the victims themselves, these people were publicly demonstrating without violence and were the object of repression by state agents using firearms. There have also been public denunciations of the disappearance over various lifeless bodies of people who had died in the the same massacre, which would have been taken by state agents so that no one would have word of these dead people. In particular, cases of [such disappearances] denounced before the IACHR include that of a peasant woman, and of a girl around 12 years old, among others. The victims of this massacre consistently signal that the number of those killed is much more than the nine that have been reported up to now.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights emphatically condemns the massacres of Sacaba and Senkata, in which [the perpetrators] incurred in grave violations of human rights. According to the Commission’s criteria, these acts can be characterized as massacres given the number of people who lost their lives in the same way, time, and place, and because they were committed against a specific group of people. In addition, the patterns of the wounds that have been recorded offer serious indications of practices of extrajudicial execution. The right to life, protected under the American Convention [on Human Rights], is inviolable, and due to its essential character is the precondition for the exercise of all other human rights. The organs of the Inter-American System [of Human Rights] have reiterated that the use of force by the state must be bound by the principles of exceptionality, legality, necessity, and proportionality. As well, the Bolivian state is reminded that lethal force many not be used merely to maintain or re-institute public order; only protection of life itself and physical integrity against imminent and real threats is a legitimate objective for the application of deadly force by state agents. In this sense, the IACHR urges the [Bolivian] state to immediately and urgently implement mechanisms to prohibit and effectively impede the use of lethal force as a control measure for public order in cases of public demonstrations. The Commission also reiterates that firearms and their munitions must be excluded from control operations of social protest, and that police or military functionaries that may enter into contact with a demonstration should not carry fire arms or other lethal weapons. Additionally, the Commission urges the state to rapidly carry out its international obligation to investigate, judge, and sanction those responsible for these criminal acts.

Image above: Relatives of Antonio Quispe lead the procession of the victims killed during clashes with police at the Senkata fuel plant. Photograph: Getty Images.

Añez government redefines “sedition” and “terrorism” in its mission to arrest Evo Morales

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Today, December 18, the Bolivian government issued an arrest warrant against Evo Morales, charging him with sedition, terrorism, and financing terrorism, for his efforts to encourage and organize protests within the country after his November 10 ouster from the presidency of Bolivia. Specifically, the charges seem to stem from a single phone call between Morales and Faustino Yucra, the only named co-defendant in the arrest warrant and the initial investigative documents released in November (see below for details). The call was recorded in a cell phone video first revealed by Government Minister Arturo Murillo (photo above, by APG).

The December 18, 2019, arrest warrant for Evo Morales

The charges represent a dramatic, and extremely one-sided, redefinition of the basic contours of legality in Bolivia, where widespread mass protests frequently use road blockades as pressure tactics and demand the resignation of presidents, and where neither “sedition” nor “terrorism” have regularly been used as means to criminalize such political acts. Insofar as these charges are directed at Morales, three-times elected president and currently the “campaign chief” for his party in as-yet-unscheduled 2020 elections, they represent an attack on the country’s largest political party, the Movement Towards Socialism–Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples. As signals of a new legal standard for protest, they represent a dramatic shift in the behavior of prosecutors that could criminalize common forms of protest. (Similar charges have been levied against demonstrators arrested in Sacaba and Senkata after their fellow demonstrators were massacred.) In both cases, the current government is overlooking the similar practices of the movement that challenged Morales for alleged electoral fraud in October and November, demonstrating a double standard that could compromise free and fair elections.

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From Seattle to Bolivia: My Journey from Protest Participant to Ethnographer of Revolution

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Twenty years ago today, I joined a massive direct action protest to stop the World Trade Organization from making neoliberal economic policy into a virtual treaty for most of humanity. In time, my involvement there drew me to the movements in Bolivia that challenged the same policies, and to a decade of work documenting their capacity to overthrow governments in South America. Here’s a bit of how I followed that path… The following is excerpted (with some small revisions) from my forthcoming book The Sovereign Street: Making Revolution in Urban Bolivia. Available in spring 2020 from University of Arizona Press.

You can get updates on the launch of The Sovereign Street: Making Revolution in Urban Bolivia, and a monthly digest of writing and photography on Bolivia, social movements, indigenous rights, protest tactics, and revolution from Carwil Bjork-James. Sign-up here.

I first encountered Bolivia’s remarkable political upheaval as part of the movement against corporate globalization. The nongovernmental organization that had just hired me, Project Underground, was one of dozens of international solidarity groups weaving bonds among community leaders from the global South, American union workers, environmental activists, and direct-action protesters, in preparation for the Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. My first day on the job, I boarded a bus in Oakland, California, to bring about eighty environmental rights activists directly to the protest against the WTO.

Just before 7:00 a.m. on November 30, 1999, the N30 Global Day of Action, about two dozen of us formed three circles where Pike Street and Boren Avenue cross. In each circle, we linked arms through long tubular “lockboxes.” Sliding our arms into the tubes, and clipping our wrists to a concealed pin, we made circle a unit, breakable only at the risk of serious harm to the limbs concealed within. I got to know my coworkers while helping to occupy this intersection and thereby block the delegates from reaching the meeting. We shared the crossing with dozens of other protesters ready to link arms at a moment’s notice. Any delegates looking for a way into the Ministerial Meeting would have to push their way through us or another group of protesters ringing the Seattle Convention Center. By nightfall the first day of talks had been canceled, and Seattle’s mayor had declared a state of emergency. Surrounded by this display of North American resistance, long-skeptical delegates from the global South saw that U.S. and European negotiators lacked the support of their own people. Many African, Latin American, and Asian delegations then emerged as critics of the WTO’s plans for the seamless flow of capital and commodities, and the talks collapsed. The Direct Action Network, the coordinating body that orchestrated the blockades, mushroomed into a movement of tens of thousands of activists eager to converge upon summits of the powerful, including the World Petroleum Congress, Democratic and Republican political conventions, and the World Economic Forum. Seemingly overnight, challenges to the power and global reach of corporate capitalism became front-page news.

The collapse of the Ministerial Meeting led to cancellation of the Millennium Round of free-trade negotiations just as Bolivians were facing the real effects of corporate-designed trade and investment policies. The government had been aggressively seeking foreign buyers for public enterprises and utilities since 1993 and had found one for the municipal water company of Cochabamba in September 1999. The privatized company’s first water bills—some of them double or triple the previous rate—came out on December 1, 1999. Protests in downtown Cochabamba on that day coincided with the arrest of more than five hundred protesters—including me—in Seattle. By April three waves of mass protests had rocked Cochabamba and thrown out the foreign owners of Aguas del Tunari, restoring public ownership of the city’s water utility.

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Division in El Alto follows militant anti-coup protests

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Following the forced resignation of Evo Morales last Sunday, El Alto has taken a unique path. The city of one million people maybe the most indigenous large city in the world: 76% Aymara and 9% Quechua in the lastest census. United in by the September and October 2003 protests, it ensured the downfall of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, the last hardline Bolivian president to order deadly repression on a massive scale. Ever since, El Alto has a reputation for ethnic and working-class militancy. And yet this very militancy is often radically skeptical of political parties, prone to division, and adverse to being a pawn in others’ games.

And so, the city’s reaction to Morales’ overthrow has been complicated. Some angry crowds have circulated at night, targeting police installations, infrastructure, and other politically connected targets in self-proclaimed resistance to the coup. (An incendiary text by Ivan Apaza Calle, “They are not Evo supporters! They are Alteños, dammit!,” takes up this position.) As I’ve described on Twitter, these protest cut a wide swath of property destruction, especially on the first night of November 10. These attacks seemed destined to deepen divisions rather than unite Alteños in a common effort.

Other daytime protest events have mobilized “in defense of the wiphala,” but with more ambiguous views on President Morales himself. Judith Apaza wrote “So we can understand each other a bit…” from within this context.

A substantial but not overwhelmingly large cabildo of the mobilized, claiming to represent El Alto’s 14 districts and La Paz department’s 20 provinces met Saturday in El Alto. The gathering, which numbered in the low thousands, made a broad list of national and local demands, including the resignations of both Jeanine Añez and Soledad Chapetón.

The circulating crowds, property destruction and arson, have left other Alteños terrorized and there are many testimonial and interpersonal reports of neighborhoods dwelling in fear of overnight reprisals on them. For an example see, “El Alto overnight: Bolivia seems to be an animal that chases its tail.” This weekend, this perspective emerged into a public current of dissension from the stance of hardline mobilization. Alteños are divided between a pro-MAS-IPSP Federation of Neighborhood Councils (FEJUVE) and an opposition FEJUVE contestaria that organizes separately. Some of these divisions have already proved very costly in human lives, notably in the 2016 protest and arson at El Alto’s city hall, which killed six people.

La Razón reported Saturday:

Since that day [November 9], mobilizations with blockades began and there were actions by groups engaging in vandalism who burned almost all of the police stations.

In opposition, the alternate FEJUVE, led by Néstor Yujra, instructed [its constituents] to raise the wiphala in their homes and asked the neighbors to take actions to safeguard their homes, making it clear that the sector does not support any political party.

The lootings divided many neighborhoods. Hence, in many sectors, it was decided not to march or blockade.

The first to demonstrate their rejection [of the “citywide” blockade] were the neighbors of Villa Esperanza, who resolved not to participate in marches or blockades. They were followed in this determination by the Pacajes-Caluyo zone, whose inhabitants decided to go out and un-block the roadways. A similar decision was undertaken by the October 12 neighborhood. The Túpac Katari neighborhood, who de-recognized their [pro-blockade] leadership and Huayna Potosí zone (Porvenir sector) who rejected “being used by MAS partisans.”

Another sector resisting the mobilization by the FEJUVE leadership is District 3. There, barricades have been put up and every night there are vigils to safeguard the Integral Police Station, which is the only one that has not been burned down.

http://www.la-razon.com/nacional/Divergencias-surgen-El_Alto-respecto-movilizaciones_0_3258874098.html

El Alteño newspaper ran the headline “El Alto closes week of protest divided” today. It also reports that neighbors pleading for peace marched with white flags on the city’s Avenida Cívica. Aside from these demobilization initatives, there are statements and manifestos like this feminist text rejecting the “fascism” of Jeanine Añez while refusing any partisan takeovers of grassroots organizations.

Each region and city in Bolivia seems to have a different dynamic at the moment. Just as the national situation is reaching its bleakest moment yet, this pivotal city is working out its own longstanding divisions. It remains to be seen whether and how Alteños can claim the political initiative, and participate in an effective struggle to keep the gains they have won and reverse the damage currently being done.

El Alto overnight: “Bolivia seems to be an animal that chases its tail”

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Since the forced resignation of Evo Morales, angry crowds have circulated in El Alto at night, targeting police installations, infrastructure, and other politically connected targets in self-proclaimed resistance to the coup. The circulating crowds, property destruction and arson, have left other Alteños terrorized and there are many testimonial and interpersonal reports of neighborhoods dwelling in fear of overnight reprisals on them. Thus, just as some foreign media outlets have celebrated El Alto as a heroic center of resistance, many of the updates coming directly from the city speak of fear, uncertainty, and division. Neighbors debate how they will respond to calls to mobilize that also paralyze and sometimes damage the city they live in. They debate risks to their own lives, reprisals from those who insist on mobilization, and the presence or lack of a common purpose with political parties like the MAS. This unease came into public focus this weekend in El Alto, and is also present in the writings coming out of the county.

I offer a brief text here that gives the flavor of such late night conversations in an uncertain time. Anthropologist Amy Kennemore (@KennemoreAmy) has translated this text by Rodrigo Urquila Flores shared via El Alto-based Colectivo Curva. It first appeared here in Spanish.

Since one (o’clock), we are in the streets of the neighborhood, in vigil, because we didn’t want them to surprise us.

It’s been years since I attended a neighborhood meeting.  The one yesterday at night was carried out in emergency because of the panic that we lived the day before.

Yes, there were people disguised as police. Yes, when they spoke foreign accents were recognized, presumably Venezuelans. And they seemed to know the territory well.

A woman told us that around noon, when she was preparing lunch for her family, someone beat on the door of her house. It was a tall man, all dressed in black, with a black helmet on too, on a motorcycle. He had a foreign accent she told us, and only asked vague questions, pointing to the closest light pole: “Does this light pole work well?” Scared, she responded; “Yes, youngster,” and took refuge in her house. Several neighbors, in the meeting, called him out at the same time for not having advised, to catch him between everyone. The motorcycle went away and didn’t return.

Another neighbor shared that he had to pay someone fees of their debt in a bank. All of the branches nearby were closed and he had to go all the way to the center with his wife and baby. Paid. Later, he saw an agglomeration of protestors, the majority of whom were Alteños, by Camacho Avenue. He wanted to get close. A policeman told him he should not take children to the march, that it was better that he went to his house and he wasn’t able to go further. “Then, a choca[1] passed, similar to the president [Áñez] and she said to my woman, ‘What are you doing here shitty chola,[2]’ and I responded, ‘What happened to you lady, are you drunk or drugged?’ And the police saw but they didn’t do anything.” When he finished speaking, there was concern. And shared pain. Until someone said “But not all qharas (white people) are like that, you have to turn the other cheek too, certainly this choca was ignorant, don’t pay attention to them.”

What can we do to get closer to all Bolivians? How to educate ourselves, to put ourselves in the place of the other?

Those that since victory do not do so resoundingly, they understand that there are joys that can hurt the losers, they understand that there is not a total victory unless it is a victory for all. And that the apparent losers of today can be the victorious tomorrow, again. And thus, the eternal circle, Bolivia seems to be an animal that chases its tail always, of the national absurdity.

Burning barrel during a night scene in El Alto

[1] Colloquial term for person who has features associated with whiteness.  

[2]  In the Andean region, term referring traditional clothing worn by Aymara women.

Bolivia enters nightmare scenario with Sacaba massacre, impunity decree, threatened detentions of MAS-IPSP leadership

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Given the fast pace of events in Bolivia, my most responsive and up-tod-date commentary is available on Twitter, where I tweet as @CarwilBJ. However, it’s time for a brief summary of the disastrous, unfolding scenario.

President Jeanine Añez, a right-wing senator took power in a parliamentary maneuver late on Tuesday, November 12. A political unknown whose party Bolivia Dice No had received just 4% of the vote on October 20, Añez had a very limited mandate, both from the three-week mass movement that unseated Evo Morales and under the Bolivian constitution: restore public trust in the electoral system and convene elections within 90 days. Instead, Añez has presided over a rapid and deadly slide towards authoritarian rule that echoes the worst moments of early 2000s uprisings, 1988–2005 drug war, and the mass detentions that followed military coups in 1980 and 1981.

Three unmistakable signs of this disastrous turn have come this weekend:

The Sacaba Massacre: The mass shooting came amid police repression that wounded over 100 protesters at Huayllani Bridge, nine of whom were killed, in Sacaba (Cochabamba Department) on Friday. The shooting came about when military troops armed with guns replaced police who were keeping a coca growers’ march from entering the town on the east side of the Cochabamba metropolis. According to reporters on the scene, police teargassing touched off a two-hour confrontation. Security forces have claimed that some in the crowd had guns and fired them, showing several bullet holes in police windows. Journalists estimate that “nearly ten” police were evacuated from the scene for injuries; evidently, none of them have bullet wounds. The police have recovered a single shotgun and five bullets. Meanwhile their use of force was overwhelming, caused massive injuries, and ended nine civilian lives. Opinión offers the most complete initial narrative of the day (es).

Autopsies have confirmed that all nine people killed died from gunshot wounds; ballistic analysis was not yet complete as of Saturday. The dead in Sacaba are:

Armando Carballo Escobar, de 25 años, falleció por un trauma torácico penetrante por Proyectil de Arma de Fuego (PAF).

Plácido Rojas Delgadillo, de 18 años, murió por shock hipovolémico, trauma hepático y trauma torácico abdominal penetrante por PAF.

Omar Calle Siles, de 26 años, falleció por choque hipovolémico por hemorragia interna, laceración cardiaca por traumatismo y PAF. 

Lucas Sánchez Valencia, de 43 años, falleció laceración encefálica y traumatismo cráneo facial por PAF.

Emilio Colque, de 21 años, murió por choque hemorrágico, laceración de órganos vitales y trauma torácico por PAF.

Juan López Apaza, de 34 años, falleció por shock hemorrágico, laceración aortica y trauma torácico penetrante por PAF. 

César Sipe Mérida, de 18 años, murió por choque hipovolémico y traumatismo abdominal por PAF.

Marco Vargas Martínez, se desconoce su edad, falleció por lesión de centros nerviosos superiores, laceración de masa encefálica y trauma cráneo encefálico por PAF.

Roberto Sejas Escobar, de 28 años, murió por laceración de masa encefálica y traumatismo cráneo encefálico por PAF.

https://www.opinion.com.bo/articulo/cochabamba/autopsias-confirman-personas-murieron-armas-fuego/20191116211426737221.html

With at least 19 deaths, November has now become the deadliest month in Bolivian political conflict since October 2003, the time of the Gas War under Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. Deaths in the current crisis initially occurred among civilians, but in recent days a clear pattern of military gunfire killing civilians has become the predominant cause of death.

Supreme Decree exempts military from prosecution: Saturday afternoon, Añez signed Supreme Decree 4078. Among other provisions, it exempts the military from criminal prosecution for actions carried out during the current efforts to “restore order” in the country:

Personnel of the Armed Forces who participate in the operations to restore internal order and public stability will be exempted from criminal responsibility when, acting in fulfillment of their functions, they act in legitimate defense or out of necessity.

El personal de las Fuerzas Armadas, que participe en los operativos para el restablecimiento del orden interno y estabilidad pública estará exento de responsabilidad penal cuando en cumplimiento de sus funciones, actúen en legítima defensa o estado de necesidad

https://www.lostiempos.com/actualidad/pais/20191116/decreto-exime-ffaa-responsabilidad-penal-caso-legitima-defensa-estado

While the decree technically reiterates the validity of exisitng guidelinse on the use of force, this exemption effectively eliminates any penalties for systematic human rights abuses, up to and including murder. Passing it the day after the Sacaba massacre only underscores how shameless and violent the Añez government is.

Crackdown announced on MAS-IPSP leadership: Today, Sunday November 17, Minister of Government Arturo Murillo announced he will detain MAS-IPSP legislators for “sedition” and “subversion” (effectively, for supporting anti-government protests), starting this week. The MAS-IPSP legislative delegation, who still hold a majority in both house (and won a continuing majority in the October elections) had emerged as a center of moderation and calm this week. On Thursday, November 14, they called for “mobilized sectors of social movements to allow us to achieve peace” and asked “equally, of the Armed Forces and the police: no bullets, please.” The Sacaba massacre was a grim response.

Over the weekend, the same legislators issued a call for the full Senate and Chamber of Deputies to hold sessions on Tuesday (Noveber 19) to convene new elections. Murillo’s new crackdown threatens to undermine this call and/or unseat the MAS-IPSP from its majority. The Minister, who supervises the security forces and prosecutors, said Sunday:

“There are senators and deputies (male and female), not all of them, just some; I will begin to publish their names who are fomenting subversion. Starting Monday, I already have the list which the leaders of the various zones themselves are passing to me. [We] will begin to detain them with prosecutorial orders.”

“Hay senadores y senadoras, diputados y diputadas, no todos, unos cuantos, que voy a empezar a publicar sus nombres, que están haciendo subversión. A partir de lunes voy a ordenar, ya tengo listas que los mismos dirigentes de varias zonas me están pasando, los van a empezar a detener con órdenes fiscales”

https://www.europapress.es/internacional/noticia-nuevo-gobierno-boliviano-detendra-diputados-mas-responsables-subversion-sedicion-20191117194230.html

At the beginning of the week, I argued that when “the military signaled limits to further state repression, stayed out of the presidential chair, and did not substitute its choice of leaders for one determined at the ballot box,” their political interventions in Bolivia have not been remembered as coups d’ètat. We have crossed those lines.

This is a coup.

“So that we can understand one another a bit, from the point of view of El Alto”

Carwil Bjork-James1 Comment

Bolivian Judith Apaza (@judith_apaza) wrote this important thread “So that we can understand one another a bit, from the point of view of El Alto.” The document was written in the context of the Alteño march into La Paz “in defense of the wiphala.” It first appeared on Twitter, starting with the tweet below. My translation follows…

So that we can understand one another a bit, from the point of view of El Alto. The people of El Alto and the provinces convened by the CSUTCB peasant confederation, are mobilizing today because they feel that the process of inclusion and respect for indigenous and native campesinos is currently in danger.

This is seen in part to be exacerbated by:

  • Acts of aggression upon a patriotic symbol, the Wiphala, which is a symbol of indigenous peoples.
  • Acts of discrimination and racism that were carried out during the so-called “defense of democracy”
  • Minimization of [our] protest on social media by means of mockery and disrespect

There are ways that we can help to solve this tense situation:

  • Support the prosecution, under the law, of those who broke the law and burned the wiphala
  • Be more tolerant of those who think differently. This respect will bring us to genuine democracy.

Among us all, we need to guarantee:

  • That respect for indigenous peoples and native peasants is promoted, as well as their participation in building Bolivia
  • That spaces of dialogue are generated to seek out joint solution that don’t respond to personal interests.
  • The violence that we are currently living through is condemnable from anyone’s point of view. Let’s collaborate to avoid passing on message of hate and differentiate between the struggle of indigenous peoples and the vandalism that some are taking advantage of in order to do crime and destroy.

Finally, it’s necessary that the society as a whole be aware that dialogue is the only solution to heal the social fracture that we are living through, and to guarantee that what has been built in these years, as the Bolivian people, will not be lost.

I want to signal that this thread, with some modifications, was the result of a collective conversation within El Alto, and that it is hoped that it can help mutual understanding of that which has been broken apart in recent days.

Judith Apaza
November 12, 2019

“Beyond Dichotomies”: One Bolivian voice on the present moment

Carwil Bjork-James1 Comment

I’ve translated the following essay by Roger Adán Chambi Mayta, a Bolivian living in Brazil, because it speaks directly to many of the questions that my friends following current events Bolivia are asking. I will be sharing multiple pieces here and linking to others. Not every thought aligns with my own, but I think it’s vita—now, more than ever—I that we hear from Bolivians who are wrestling with the future of their society. And that we slow down our desires to put the Bolivian situation into a pre-defined schema, at least until we understand it well and hear from those on the frontlines. This piece appeared on the Colectivo Curva Facebook page, which is filled with a vocal and diverse debate among grassroots Bolivian voices.

Beyond Dichotomies

“They have lost their best leader!” “Now the Right will come back!” “The poor indigenous!” These are some of the comments that I have received from my friends in Brazil after Evo’s resignation. For many here, Evo Morales represented a government that was of the left, progressive, anticapitalist, and above all: the principal defender of indigenous peoples and of the political vision of Vivir Bien [Living Well: in sufficiency, community, and harmony with nature]! The moment I utter my first criticism, they have already branded me as being a defender of the coup against the indigenous former president. “If the left goes down, the right comes back. Are you from the left or the right?,” a friend asks me on messenger. Once again arises the typical and simple dichotomy that seeks to put some on the “revolutionary” side and the rest among the reactionaries. As if things were that way, so simple, as if there was only a single question of taking on one ideological title. Well now, I understand that these readings respond to a Brazilian idiosyncrasy, my friends ask me questions and make their judgments in an exercise that is an analogy to what they have experienced with Temer and Bolsonaro, and I don’t judge them for it. But we are talking about Bolivia, a country that has a long tradition of indigenous struggles and where the left and right have always met the expectations of the white-mestizo sector, which is racist and discriminatory against its racialized others. That is why I tell my friends that, it shouldn’t be strange that there are Aymaras who are critical of the “left” government of Evo Morales and who are not because of that defenders of the right.

Are there reactionaries that want to claim hegemony of the current violent conjuncture for their own benefit? Evidently so. Aren’t Bolsonaro and Trump celebrating this context? I have no doubt. But, out of fear of that, should we have continued with Evo for fourth term? For that, did we have to keep watching as more white-mestizo become newly rich in the name of the indigenous government? For that, do we have to bear the instrumentalization of our history, of our culture for the benefit of a precious few?

“But think on the structural level, of the world system, of imperialism!,” my friend questions me, and it’s certain that we must think of the macro level. But the first to think of the consequences should have been the government! It was they who sacrificed the so-called “process of change” by not building new legitimate leaderships that could continue their government. A fourth term, besides being illegal was intolerable! Once I heard an Aymara grandfather say to me, “Evo says he’s indigenous, but he doesn’t carry out the practices of the community; the authorities must always rotate, for the health of all.” And now I ask myself, for all that they talk of being the government of Vivir Bien, To what degree would a fourth term bring us closer to Vivir Bien? Would my friends have asked the MASistas that question? Of course not! It wouldn’t even have mattered to them!

But now, Evo is no longer in the country and has left his people that he said he loved, in the midst of a fierce social convulsion. The wiphala, the historic flag of the Andean peoples, has been erroneously labeled as a synonym of the MAS. The people who supported it so much on social media now say nothing.

It seems that they are happy how the people carries on confronting one another after their manipulative tactics. The reactionaries who want to take advantage of the moment will not hesitate to burn the wiphala so as to strike fear in all those people who are racialized.

It’s important to say that Evo in his last days in the presidency called upon indigenous communities to protect his government (filled with non-indigenous people), and now that he is no longer in the country, left behind a people confronting one another, with pain and sadness in the streets.

But there is resistance, I see on the screen my Aymara brothers and sisters in the streets of El Alto, supporting demonstrations against the discourse of discrimination, and they shout: No more racism! Respect our symbols! El Alto on its feet, never on its knees! After the resignation of the president, the population did not stand back with its arms crossed. Evo is gone, but we won’t accept a Camacho either! “Evo is the hope of Latin America,” they say to me here. Was it just Evo? Was it the person? I think that this reading was wrong; it wasn’t that Evo, the caudillo, was the Latin American hope, but rather that he represented the beginning of that hope. A racialized person of the lower middle class, part of an indigenous nation with an insurrectionary tradition that arrived in power.

The hope of Latin America comes from those peoples who, like the Alteño people in this moment, have pushed beyond those simple dichotomies of left and wright and who go out into the streets to defend their rights, their family, their work, their symbols, their history, and their country.

Roger Adán Chambi Mayta, Brasil
12/11/2019