Tag: Santa Cruz civic movement

Fifteen Bolivians were killed in social movement conflicts in 2022

Carwil Bjork-JamesLeave a comment

Violent death cast a shadow over multiple social movements in Bolivia during the third calendar year of President Luis Arce. Deliberate killings came in clashes over land, mining, and the planned census, claiming eight lives, while tear gas detonated in a student meeting led to a stampede in which five were killed. A government bureaucrat who exposed a major corruption scandal died of years of mistreatment in prison. A motorcyclist was killed by a wire strung as part of a road blockade. And a brutal stabbing killed another participant in road blockades. Altogether, fifteen Bolivians lost their lives in or around Bolivia’s often charged movement conflicts.

The deadly events were as follows:

  • La Estrella land clash, March 19: Intercultural farmers had moved on March 12 to occupy lands on the “La Estrella” ranch, owned by Jacob Ostreicher and subject to claims of money laundering in a 2011 case that attracted international attention. These land occupiers were attacked on March 19 by armed people, either farmworkers or hired attackers presumibly sponsored by in-country landowner Claudia Liliana Rodríguez. (Ostreicher remains in exile.) The attackers confronted the Intercultural squatters around 22:00, shooting rockets and firing firearms. Franklin Delgadillo, son of Intercultural leader Ricardo Delgadillo, was shot and killed. The Interculturales maintained a multiday blockade demanding justice afterwards. Police arrested at least nine people for the killing in March 2022.
  • Death of imprisoned Indigenous Fund official, April 19: Marco Antonio Aramayo, the former director of Bolivia’s Fondo Indígena, died in custody following seven years of detention under an abusive avalanche of investigations in a scandal he himself brought to light. The Fondo Indígena, which Aramayo headed from 2013 to 2015, was intended to provide independent funding to indigenous communities for development and self-representation. Aramayo denounced in 2016 that the Fund was instead used by Minister Nemesia Achacolla as a slush fund during an election year.
    While many have been accused of corrupt acts, Aramayo has borne the highest weight of prosecutions (over 250 investigations begun); he was convicted and sentenced to 5 years in 2017. ITEI, a Bolivian organization that supports victims of torture and state violence, issued a statement: Aramayo’s “death is the tragic conclusion of a series of violations of [his] fundamental rights,” “which affect [him] and also affect people deprived of liberty in general.” According to the ITEI, which has provided medical and psychological attention to him since 2017, police and penal authorities tortured Aramayo physically with beatings and stress positions; biologically by depriving him of food, water, or medicine; psychologically with threats, extortion, insults, and humiliation. Aramayo was repeatedly required to travel to attend new cases across the country, with the final one filed two weeks before his death. Exhausted from his ordeal, Aramayo died of multiple organ failure, aggravated by diabetes and hypertension.
    While police announced an investigation into his death, his legal representative denounced that no actions had been taken three weeks later.
  • Potosí university stampede, May 9: A nightmarish stampede ensued at Potosí’s Tomás Frías University after a tear gas grenade was set off during an indoor meeting to convene university federation elections. Some five thousand students were reportedly in the coliseum. Many were injured in the rush to flee, including four who were killed that day and one more who died on June 15. Reportedly two of the dead were mothers who leave behind children. Six were sent to intensive care. Between 71 and 83 were wounded. The tragedy was apparently amplified by the locking of the main exit doors.
    Bolivian student politics operates in close coordination with national political parities and is often highly contentious. The tragedy also put attention on student leaders who maintain student status over decades and accumulate patronage and power in on-campus political organization.Four students, at least two of them involved in student politics, have been arrested in connection with the gas release and its deadly consequences. The Minister of Justice names Manfred Flores Canaza as the “principal and material author” of the crime.
  • Tinguipaya clash, May 15: Two men died in fratricidal violence in the town of Tinguipaya, Potosí. The brawl between differently organized Indigenous people—ayllus vs. campesinos—followed a visit by Vice President Choquehuanca and involved stones, sticks, slingshots, and rockets. Ironically, Choquehuanca’s speech, marking the opening of a political training school, had called for cross-cultural unity and fearless speech. The cause of the conflict remains totally disputed: national MAS-IPSP official attributed it to a local land conflict, while some local figures and opposition politicians blamed internal partisan disputes within the MAS-IPSP linked to the local mayor. Police attempting to investigate the incident had difficulty entering the area in the following days.
  • Chiñijo land clash, June 23: On June 23 a confrontation over land ownership in the community of Tamiplaya Tolapampa in Chiñijo, Sorata resulted in the beating deaths of two local campesinos and injury to an additional five. A group of 60 land-grabbers, hired and led by Gabriel Callisaya Toledo, Mario Luque, and Genaro Quito attacked the community in attempt to take their land, intimidating them with dynamite, dogs, and firearms. The General Secretary of Chiñijo, Susana Silva, claimed that Sorata police refused to provide assistance or to remove the bodies of the victims and only arrived at the on the 26th. Communities members protested by taking the victims’ bodies to Sorata in a protest march in order to demand justice. The community members possessed a resolution from the National Institue of Agrarian Reform (INRA) that recognized their right to the property and instructed the police to forcefully evict unlawful occupants.
  • Mapiri mining cooperatives clash, June 24: A group of expelled members of the Hijos de Pueblo gold mining cooperative attacked the cooperative in the community of Charobamba, Mapiri, in an attempt to regain leadership. A local teacher, Faustino Nestor Maqui Chambi, was killed when he was hit in the head by a stone, causing him to fall from his boat and drown. Police arrested 7 or 8 of the agressors, but their convoy was attacked in Aguada while transporting the arrested persons to La Paz and one the arrestees escaped.
  • Santa Cruz census strike, deaths on October 22, November 9 and 10: The Santa Cruz Civic Movement mounted a 36-day department-wide strike in protest of the delay of the Census to 2024, and demanding it be held in 2023. Clash between supporters of Santa Cruz general strike and those attempting to open blockades. During an October 22 clash on the Amistad bridge that connects Santa Cruz with Brazil, a municipal employee of Arroyo Concepción, Julio Pablo Taborga, suffered injuries from blows to his head. He was transported to a hospital in Puerto Quijarro where his death was recorded early the next morning. According to Taborga’s wife, he was demonstrating against the blockade when supporters of the strike arrived with dynamite and homemade bombs and began to beat him. Video of the confrontation appeared to show victim succumbing to tear gas rather than a beating. The Santa Cruz Civic Committee released a statement blaming the MAS for the conflict.
    Eduardo Arancibia Barrancos was killed in the early morning of November 9 while driving a motorcycle to work. He attempted to drive through a blockade point in the Tres Lagunas neigborhood of Santa Cruz. He did not notice that a coaxial cable was stretched across the road between two poles. This cable cut through his upper neck as he drove, causing his death. Police arested five men who were maintaining the blockade point.
    Overning on November 11, a group of four or five people attacked two men who were maintaining a blockade in the Barrio Latino of the Los Lotes zone of Santa Cruz. The attackers assaulted Jairo Montero, 21, and José Eduardo Sosa, 28, with knives, leaving Montero hospitalized with criticall injuries and Eduardo Sosa dead. The Sosa’s heart was reportedly cut out of his chest by the attackers. Two of the attackers were arrested on November 15.
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Arrest of Luis Fernando Camacho prompts fiery new Santa Cruz protest wave

Carwil Bjork-JamesLeave a comment

Luis Fernando Camacho, governor of Santa Cruz department and regional leader in 2019 protests against Evo Morales, was arrested on December 28, 2022, as a suspect in the Golpe de Estado I (Coup d’état I) investigation. Camacho, whose public statements suggest that he and his father coordinated with the military and police prior to Evo Morales’ ouster, has been named as a suspect as well as convened to testify in the inquiry. The formal charge against Camacho is “terrorism,” though its specifics are more akin to insurrection against elected authorities. Camacho was sentenced to four months of preventative detention, during which time prosecutors promise to deepen their investigation of the nexus among Camacho’s Civic movement, the incipient Áñez government, police mutineers, and military conspirators in November 2019. (For today, I’m not blogging my thoughts on the legality, strategic wisdom, or ethics of this arrest.)

Camacho’s arrest was widely expected. He was known to be the subject of at least eight criminal investigations. As it turned out, the arrest order had been issued on October 31. Three days before, he had issued a video publicly challenging Justice Minister Iván Lima:

Ministro, usted que encabeza esto, que está buscando incriminarme con casos de violencia, no sea cobarde: si quiere, deténgame, deténgame, venga, deténgame
Minister, it is you who are at the head of this, who are seeking to incriminate me in cases of violence. Don’t be a coward: if you want, detain me, detain me, come here and detain me. [my translation]

Molina, Fernando. “Detenido el gobernador boliviano de Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, por la crisis que llevó al derrocamiento de Evo Morales.” El País, December 28, 2022.

Almost immediately, the arrest itself kicked off a new wave of protests in Santa Cruz department, headed by the department‘s civic movement. Camacho previously headed the Comité Cívico Pro-Santa Cruz in 2019 and was Vice President of the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista in 2002–2004. These institutions, joined by the public voice of governor Camacho since his April 2021 election, have engaged in waves of protest challenging the MAS–IPSP governments of Evo Morales (2006-2019) and Luis Arce (2020–). While demands have varied widely—rejection of the constitutional assembly and departmental (2006–08), rejection of judicial elections (2012), of penal code reforms, of alleged electoral fraud (2019), an anti-money laundering law (2020), and a census delay (2021), the mechanisms of regional protests have been relatively stable.

Like other regions, Santa Cruz goes on strike through road blockades and a city-wide work stoppage. And during the 2006-09 political standoff and since 2019, these tactics were enhanced by peaceful or forcible takeovers of national state institutions, as well as direct physical attacks on institutions associated with the governing MAS-IPSP party, such as labor unions and Indigenous organizations, and attacks upon so-called “traitors” to the region, which is to say local MAS-IPSP politicians.

While used only sparsely between 2009 and 2019, arson has been an important tactic for the Santa Cruz Civic movement during the so-called catastrophic stalemate of 2006 to 2009, during the October–November 2019 political crisis, and in protests since Luis Arce’s October 2020 election. (I detail the broader use of arson in the 2019 crisis and the catastrophic stalemate in a forthcoming article in the Bolivia Studies Journal.)

Immediate Responses to Camacho’s Arrest

A crowd of civilians on the tarmac of Viru Viru International Airport

The first responses by the Civic Movement to their leader‘s arrest were attempts to prevent his transport out of the region. Protesters flooded into the terminals and runways at Viru Viru International Airport and El Trompillo Airport. Per El País (of Madrid):

A group of hundreds of the governor’s sympathizers, led by regional authorities and [parliamentary] deputies, headed to the Viru Viru airport in Santa Cruz. There, they overwhelmed and beat security personnel, invaded the runway, entered some of the airplanes waiting to take off, and obliged the passengers to disembark, to prevent Camacho from being taken from Santa Cruz. They didn’t find him. Despite this, they decided to paralyze the airport after [Camacho’s] detention.

Molina, Fernando. “Detenido el gobernador boliviano de Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, por la crisis que llevó al derrocamiento de Evo Morales.” El País, December 28, 2022

Among the elected officials present was Paola Aguirre, who reportedly vowed, “No sale ni un avión de este aeropuerto [Not one plane will leave this airport.” Aguirre posted a 33-minute video to her Facebook page beginning with her atop a boarding staircase to an airplane, including an impromptu press conference on the tarmac, live questioning of the airport director about whether Camacho had boarded a BOA flight (at 15m50), and vows that any damage or inconvenience caused to the airport is the responsibility of the national government who ordered Camacho’s arrest (at 30m50).

Flights from Viru Viru resumed on December 29. Airport officials reported 5,000 travelers were affected, with 350,000 Bs (~ $50,000) in material damages and 900,000 Bs. ($130,000) in accommodations purchased for inconvenienced passengers.

The New Daily Protest Cycle

With Camacho successfully removed from the department, the protest mood turned to rage.

Pro-Civic Movment newspaper El Deber reported a “night of fury” that consumed three buildings: the prosecutor’s office, a drug control office that has been used for negotiations w/ the national government, and the home of Minister of Public Works Edgar Montaño.

In its public pronouncement, the Cruceño civic movement called for road blockades to begin at midnight (December 28/29) and the takeover of public institutions, both key tactics in past protests, including the 36-day strike in October–November of 2022. It, along with former centrist presidential candidate Carlos Mesa, qualified the arrest as a “kidnapping” and the act of a “dictatorial” national government. It has convened mass gatherings to mount a new regional mobilization until Camacho is freed.

What is apparent after three nights is that this new wave of mobilization has a daily cycle with a daytime phase focused on blockades and calmer occupations held at/in front of national institutions and a nighttime phase of confrontations with police during which protesters attempt to seize and burn the same class of institutions.

Here are daytime actions, as photographed by the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista:

And night-time attacks on the same class of public institutions, sometimes literally the same ones (like the ABT, the Administration of Forests and Lands) pictured in peaceful protests.

The logic of these actions is twofold: first, a public repudiation of the legitimacy of the national government and second, the assertion that only MASistas work in such instutions and they are “traitors to the region.” A widely shared “order of expulsion” posted by a non-official(?) UJC account urged MAS supporters to leave Santa Cruz. It was “shared” over a thousand times and widely reposted beyond that.

The formal leadership of the Cruceño organizations has been careful to label the arsons as the work of “infiltrators” in their ranks or so-called “self-inflicted attacks” by MAS-led institutions. The claim that a small number of closeted pro-government arsonists are hiding themselves nightly in anti-government crowds who only want to fight the cops is, to say the least, not especially credible. The will and capability of the Santa Cruz civic movement to carry out both crude and sophisticated arson attacks was demonstrated amply in the October 2019 burnings of electoral offices in protest over alleged voter fraud, and numerous attacks during the 2006-09 political crisis.

What is the actual relationship between the daytime pronouncements of the Comité Pro-Sana Cruz and the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, and the nighttime actions of arson? Is there a real split over tactics, or merely an effort to deny responsibility for arson and insurrection, which might be distasteful to potential foreign allies?

Here’s how Camacho-aligned congressional deputy Paola Aguirre answers that question:

La ciudadanía cruceña, como en su momento lo dijen, no tiene patrones. Ellos se han autoconvocados desde el momento en que se enteraron que el gobernador Camacho estaba siendo secuestrado por el regimen del President Luis Arce. Y han tomado acciones por iniciativa propia. El Comité Cívico Pro-Santa Cruz prácticamente el día de ayer [29 de diciembre] ya la ha dijo a la ciudadanía, ‘ya, tomen ustedes las determinaciones que consideren convenientes.’

Este paro de 24 horas definitivamente es una de las menores medidas que se va tomar. Santa Cruz está convulsionada y no va a volver a la normalidad en cuánto no se restituya la libertad del Gobernador Luis Fernando Camacho. Por que no se trata de encarcelar a Camacho, se trata de encarcelar el voto popular de cientos, miles, y millones de Cruceños que han decido elegir a Camacho como Gobernador.

Translation: “The Santa Cruz citizenry does not, as is sometimes said, have bosses. They have convened themselves from the moment they knew that Governor Camacho was being kidnapped by the regime of President Luis Arce. And they have taken actions of their own initiative. The Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee practically said to the citizenry yesterday, ‘Alright, you take the determinations that you find convenient.’
“This 24-hour strike is definitely one of the smallest measures that will be taken. Santa Cruz has been convulsed and normality will not return so long as the freedom of Governor Luis Fernando Camacho is not restored. Beacuse they are not just trying to imprison Camacho, but they are trying to imprison the popular vote of hundreds, thousands, and millions of Cruceños who have decided to elect Camacho as our Governor.”

Paola Aguirre, interview with Radio Fides, 30 December 2022. At 7m30 in video posted on her Facebook page.

What is clear is that, today, the daytime organizations are now mobilizing for the freedom of protesters imprisoned for confrontation and arson.

And that the night-time factions are promising a New Years’ Eve of escalated confrontation, and inviting Cruceños to equip and prepare themselves for confrontation, starting at 10pm tonight.
A Facebook invite from Unión Juvenil Santa Cruz (not the official account of the UJC), reads, "Gran Bienvenida del 2023 / Recibamos este nuevo año a los pies del cristo / Desde los 22 horas / Entrada: Vinagre, mascara antigas, agua, balde, bicarbonato, palos, piedras, escudos, pinturas, petardos, etc. / Te esperamos!" "Great Welcome to 2023 / Let's receive this new year at the feet of the Christ [the Redemeer statue] / From 10pm onwards / Entry fee: Vinegar, gas mask, water, bicarbonate, sticks, stones, shields, paint, rockets, etc! We're waiting for you!"

Santa Cruz cabildo: Bolivian fires prompt right-leaning region to mobilize “in defense of the land”

Carwil Bjork-James1 Comment

On Friday, October 4, the Santa Civic Committee (Comité pro Santa Cruz) convened what will almost certainly prove to be the largest political gathering in Bolivia this year. Estimates of the crowd, while unverified, hover around one million people, including large numbers bused in from outside the city. Sixteen days before the 2019 presidential election, this “Cabildo for democracy and the land” follows in the footsteps of regional cabildos in 2004 and 2008, at a time when the department of Santa Cruz was the leading center of opposition to the grassroots left movement in the country and to indigenous president Evo Morales.

Now fifteen years after the first major cabildo put proposals for autonomy and federalism (that is, the devolution of national powers to the level of Bolivia’s nine departments; the analogue of states in the USA), the same movement has reconvened and added new demands to platform. First, the Santa Cruz movement remains a pole of opposition to Evo Morales, but it now frames that opposition in terms of defending the democratic vote cast in the February 21, 2016 referendum, when 51.3% of voters denied Morales the right to run for a fourth presidential term. The Cruceño movement views the judicial and electoral decisions to allow Morales to nevertheless participate in the October 20, 2019, election as illegitimate.

But the cabildo, and the election, have been reshaped by the ecological crisis of the Bolivian fires this year. While every year sees deliberate burning of future agricultual lands in Bolivia, the fires this year spread into a regional disaster of unusual (if not unprecedented) proportions. Over the past ten weeks (and these figures are likely underestimates since they run through September 25), fires have consumed over 5.3 million hectares of Bolivia’s land, and some 3.9 million hectares in Santa Cruz alone. This is over 10% of the department. Nearly all of the 2 million hectares of forest that burned was inside the department, including at least one sixth of the Chiquitano dry forest (1.4/8.6M ha) has burned in the last two months. Cruceños have watched as news of the disaster came in daily, including devastating losses in twelve natural protected areas and the deaths of five people engaged in fighting the fires.

On one hand, the political fallout has been predictable: existing regional grievances that divide Santa Cruz from the federal government have been reactivated. These fall into there areas: Cruceños (at least as led by the free-market-oriented, agribusiness-connected elites) perceive themselves as culturally and politically distinct from the more Andean, indigenous, and socialist central government. Their government and administrative officials have long chafed at the centralization of the Bolivian state. And, the tensions around racial identity spark hottest around the steady migration of Aymara- and Quechua-speaking highlanders to both urban and rural Santa Cruz. Which is to say that economics, administration, and race are all part of the conflict.

Now add the fires to the mix.

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