Tag: CONAMAQ

Manifesto of Mesa 18, the “rebel session” at the 2010 Tiquipaya Climate Summit

Carwil Bjork-JamesLeave a comment

In April 2010, as the Bolivian government hosted the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Tiquipaya, movements within the country pressed for a forum to talk about these how the environment is treated within the country. The tens of thousands of summit attendees had their conversations structured around 17 working groups or “mesas” (literally, tables) on topics from ºthe root causes of climate change” to forests to the rights of Mother Earth. The Bolivian indigenous federations CONAMAQ and CIDOB proposed Mesa 18, an eighteenth working group on domestic environmental problems in Bolivia.

As the summit approached, they and the government got into a very public dispute with the over whether it would be included. Officially, the five Pact of Unity organizations—including CONAMAQ and CIDOB—were co-hosting the Summit, and they met to formally approve the structure of the meeting. Nonetheless, Evo Morales and the Foreign Ministry vetoed any discussion of “internal matters” in an official track. “I don’t know why we’re talking about Mesa 18,” Foreign Minister Choquehuanca blistered as the press questioned him about the issue.

In the end, Mesa 18 was held two blocks outside the gates of the Universidad de la Valle campus, separate and apart from the official sessions. CONAMAQ, four smaller indigenous organizations, one campesino federation, and the Landless Workers’ Movement joined environmentalists and academics to organize two days of sessions before an audience of hundreds of people. Dozens of community groups presented their experiences and concerns about the impacts of “the extractivist development model based on the export of hydrocarbons, hydroelectricity, mining, agribusiness, and lumber” (in the words of a Mesa 18 promotional flyer). These conversations took place in a room with simple concrete floors, a borrowed Brazilian restaurant. Many of the sessions were offered twice, first at the Water Fair commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Water War and again in Tiquipaya.

Called the “rebel” session by the press, Mesa 18 drew a spotlight on the “double talk” of the government, as critiqued by leaders like CONAMAQ’s Rafael Quispe: “This government speaks of respect for Mother Earth, but it simultaneously pollutes the land, and there are the cases of Corocoro, Mutún, the San Cristóbal [mining] company, and projects like Cachuela Esperanza [a planned hydroelectric dam], which also damage the Earth.” Like its official counterparts, Mesa 18 consisted of dozens of short presentations on environmental threats, projected on a screen. A small team compiled the issues presented and formulated a resolution on behalf of the gathering. They declared, “the development plans of these governments, including Bolivia’s, only reproduce the developmentalist schema of the past” and called instead for “the peoples to decide directly the destiny of their natural wealth in accord with their own organizational structures, their self-determination, their own norms and procedures, and their vision of the holistic management of their territories” (my translation, see text below). Outside Mesa 18, participants covered a brick wall with placards in preparation to march. Each detailed a different environmental crisis or contradiction. Unlike the official sessions up the road, these results were not included in the Tiquipaya People’s Accord that concluded the week, but the collective document advanced the same environmental critique, denouncing “mega-infrastructure projects … extractive projects, water privatization and militarized territories.” The massive scale of the summit had offered an opportunity for national visibility around the country’s growing series of socio-environmental conflicts.

Nine years have passed and Mesa 18’s concluding resolution, called the Final Manifesto of Table 18 in Defense of the Peoples and the Earth / Manifiesto Final de la Mesa 18 en Defensa de los Pueblos y la Tierra, has slipped off the internet. I post the complete version below for future reference. A PDF version of the Manifesto is available here.

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As he ordered attack on indigenous march, Bolivian Vice Minister saw raid as a fight to industrialize the country

Carwil Bjork-James2 Comments

Nearly six years ago, members of the Bolivian Army and National Police carried out a raid on some six hundred indigenous marchers at Chaparina. In a startlingly frank conversation addressing members of the National Police, Vice Minister of Police and the Interior Regime Marcos Farfán described the next day’s raid as a battle to preserve the government’s economic program and political future. (A video recording of his conversation was leaked to the press, and published this week by the Fundación Solón as part of an article by Pablo Solón). The Eighth National Indigenous March had as its first demand the defense of Isiboro-Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS), and put forward a general right of indigenous communities to say no to destructive projects within their territories.

On September 25, police mounted an attack on the indigenous marchers, beating and teargassing them, seeking out and arresting prominent leaders, and leaving behind a chaotic scene of injury, flight, and fear. Marchers, including prominent leaders, were grabbed, tackled, and handcuffed in front of network television cameras. Between 70 and 280 were injured in the assault, including Celso Padilla (president of the Guaraní People’s Assembly), hospitalized with multiple hematomas. Hundreds of marchers were taken on buses overnight in a frustrated attempt to return them by land or airplane to the starting point of the march. The raid at Chaparina was the breaking point for the lowland Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia’s alliance with the government.

While the motives of the raid have long been evident, this forthright statement crystalizes the government’s motives in carrying it out. It will appear in any future historical account of when and how the Evo Morales government shifted from a rhetorical embrace of indigenous rights to a committed advocate of putting extractive industrial development first.

One must have a global, integrated vision of the matter, although it can be reduced to just the operation that we will carry forward tomorrow, it has to do with overall issues in terms of what our Constitution and program [of government] have proposed, which is rooted in industrializing, highways, hydroelectric dams, electricity, and energy.

But they [the indigenous marchers, presumably] are with their program attempting to avoid that going forward. They have their own political objectives behind it. The less able this government is to fulfill its programs, the fewer possibilities it will have in the future to gain votes.

Because if we don’t produce, if we don’t create industries, if we don’t build highways, if we don’t diversify our production, if we don’t transform our gas into other products, if we don’t generate added value from our raw materials, this government will fail. Everything will be ruined. This is the bottom-line objective that it [the march] has, to say that they were with Evo and his lovely proposals, but he didn’t carry them out. And he didn’t carry them out because of these kind of elements who put up hindrances and obstacles against carrying out that which is the job of nobody else in the country [but us]. A country in which we have been reduced to backwardness, to economic dependence, and to political dependence over years and years and years.

What we need to do is consolidate our sovereignty as a nation. To be sovereign, we must be productive, rich as a nation, and to be rich we need to produce and industrialize our country.

Thank you for listening to me. It doesn’t have much to do with the matter [at hand], but I believe it’s important to clarify those elements that have to do with all Bolivians, police officers or not, with the whole country. But it is within this framework that we, lamentably, are entering into carrying out this operation… Tomorrow, we will be working.

“Hay que tener una visión global, integral del tema, aunque se reduzca al operativo que vamos a llevar mañana adelante, pero tiene que ver con temas de fondo en relación a lo que establece nuestra Constitución Política y el programa por supuesto que se ha planteado, que radica en industrializar, carreteras, hidroeléctricas, electricidad, energía.

Pero están con este programa tratando de evitar que se lleve adelante. Tienen sus objetivos políticos ahí atrás. (Mientras) menos pueda dar cumplimiento a sus programas este gobierno, menos posibilidades va tener en el futuro de ganar más votos.

Porque si no producimos, no creamos industrias, no construimos carreteras, no diversificamos la producción, no transformamos nuestro gas en otro elemento, no generamos valor agregado a nuestro producto, este gobierno va a fracasar. Todo se viene al tacho. Este es el objetivo de fondo que se tiene, para decir estuvo el Evo con sus lindas propuestas pero no las cumplió. No las cumplió porque hay este tipo de elementos que ponen trabas y obstáculos para que se pueda dar cumplimiento a eso que no es en función de nadie mas que del país. Un país que hemos estado reducidos al atraso, a la dependencia económica, a la dependencia política durante años y años y años.

Lo que necesitamos es consolidar nuestra soberanía como nación. Para ser soberanos tenemos que ser productivos, ricos como nación, para ser ricos tenemos que producir e industrializar nuestro país.

Gracias por escucharme no tenía mucho que ver con el tema pero creo que es importante aclarar estos elementos que tienen que ver con todos los bolivianos, policías no policías, con todo el país. Pero en ese marco es que estamos, lamentablemente, entrando a realizar este operativo… Mañana vamos a estar trabajando”.

Within 48 hours, Marcos Farfán resigned his post as Vice Minister, reportedly to facilitate a public inquiry into the raid. A report leaked in 2013 revealed that prosecutors found that the raid was carried out in accordance with the chain of command. Interior Minister Sacha Llorenti, who was involved in the decision, was reappointed to serve as Bolivia’s Ambassador to the United Nations. In April 2015, prosecutors relieved Farfán, Llorenti, and other senior officials of criminal responsibility for Chaparina. Six officials then indicted have yet to face trial.

[2014] CONAMAQ in crisis: Pro-government faction seizes headquarters by force

Carwil Bjork-JamesLeave a comment

This post was originally written in January 2014, and went unpublished while I was on parental leave with my first child. I’m posting it now to make it available for others to reference.

The highland indigenous movement CONAMAQ entered a profound organizational crisis in December over the organization’s relationship to the Evo Morales government. The group, whose full name means the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu, represents over a dozen highland indigenous communities dedicated to restoring self-governance through traditional community structures. It diverged politically with the government in 2011 over the right to exercise free, prior, and informed consent over projects in indigenous territories and its participation in the Eighth National Indigenous March in defense of the Isiboro-Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS). Soon after the march, CONAMAQ withdrew from the government-aligned Pact of Unity. In the past year, it has made preparations to run an independent slate in the 2014 parliamentary elections.

A faction of pro-government leaders within CONAMAQ, led by Hilarion Mamani of Chichas waged a campaign for new leadership of the organization, which included six attempts to occupy its headquarters. In December, Mamani’s faction and the existing leadership held separate gatherings of the Jach’a T’antachawi, a large gathering that is the organization’s highest authority. Late on December 10, after the pro-government gathering elected Hilarion Mamani, a crowd of his supporters burst into the organization’s La Paz headquarters and beat three CONAMAQ leaders and a member of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights. Bolivian police took control of the building for the next month, while supporters of the existing leadership maintained a vigil outside the building. Hilarion Mamani’s supporters attacked that vigil and took control of the headquarters on January 14. Both the Defensoria del Pueblo and the UN’s human rights office in Bolivia issued statements of concern following the violent takeover; the UN particularly criticized the failure of the police to safeguard the vigil from physical attack.

The Jach’a T’antachawi aligned with the incumbent leadership elected Freddy Bernabé as the new head of the organization on December 12 and 13. The regional indigenous confederation of the Andes (CAOI) and the Amazon Basin (COICA) recognize him as the leader of CONAMAQ. The government-aligned Pact of Unity, which also include the CIDOB faction led by Melva Hurtado, views Hilarion Mamani as CONAMAQ’s leader. The newspaper Pagina Siete and community radio network Erbol report that grassroots leaders in most of the organization’s base back Bernabe.

For Hilarion Mamani, the split is a repudiation of the incumbent leadership’s political alliances, including with CIDOB, the Green Party, and “free thinking” dissidents within the MAS. Conversely, the incumbent leaders have denounced his actions as nothing more than government interference in the organization. The government claims to distance itself from an “internal” conflict in the organization, but state media immediately recognized Hilarion Mamani as its leader and Vice Minister Alfredo Rada has blamed the split on the government’s critics in the movement. Dissident MAS legislator Rebeca Delgado denounced government interference, citing documentation of Rada’s Vice Ministry paying the logistical expenses for Mamani’s election (see also this signed budget posted online). Since his election, Mamani’s faction has vowed to mobilize for Evo Morales’ re-election as president.

Post-script: CONAMAQ’s headquarters before and after the takeover by the pro-government faction, as tweeted by a Bolivia journalist.