yahoo.comnyu.eduDear Friends, please support this call for international solidarity and circulate this message as widely as possible. Thank you.
We call for the immediate cessation of state violence against the civilian population, and repudiate the Bolivian government's authoritarian response to legitimate popular demands.
We express our profound regret at the loss of life and extend our condolences to the family members and communities of those who have been affected by the violence.
We support a prompt and pacific democratic transition, with the resignation of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and the establishment of a transition government to restore a legitimate political order and to address widespread popular grievances and the fundamental social and economic problems that urgently concern the Bolivian population.
*****************************
TO INDICATE YOUR SUPPORT, PLEASE WRITE TO:
yahoo.comnyu.eduPlease include your name, address, and institutional affiliation. Thank you.
*****************************
Since last week, Bolivia has entered a phase of critical social and political upheaval. Numerous sectors of civil society – most notably Indian community members and peasants, urban workers, and the residents of popular urban neighborhoods – have risen up in protest, particularly against the Bolivian government's stated intentions to export its natural gas reserves. They have called instead for the responsible and sovereign management of the country's natural resources, in keeping with the Bolivian constitution.
Their demands have fallen upon deaf ears and popular demonstrations have met with brutal repression that has been coordinated with U.S. military advisors. While the numbers continue to rise, state repression has left over 60 civilians dead, more than 150 wounded, and an unknown number disappeared and detained. While the government has labeled protestors as "vandals" and attributed the massive popular mobilizations to foreign subversion, the actions it has taken against the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of its own population have provoked shock, outrage, and consternation within the country.
Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada has one of the lowest levels of public support of any ruler in Latin America. Over the course of this year alone, more than 120 people have died as a result of social conflicts in the country, a figure unmatched even during the dark days of military dictatorship. The current wave of state violence, which shows no sign of abating at this moment, is the culmination of a process of profound political deterioration.
Given the lack of legitimacy of the current government and the impossibility of its restoring legitimate political order, there is now widespread support for a prompt democratic transition. Pres. Sánchez de Lozada is being called upon to step down in order to bring an end to the social unrest and make way for a legitimate transition government. This is the demand of mobilized popular sectors and it has been taken up today as well by participants in the hunger strike organized by the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights in the city of La Paz.
Bolivians abroad and the international community concerned about the welfare of the country are urged to express their support for the basic set of declarations indicated above.
Related News:
===================================================================
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada inherited a country suffering a deep economic crisis and long-simmering class and racial tensions when he became president of Bolivia.
Now those problems have exploded into deadly street riots that threaten his presidency a little more than a year after he took office.
For weeks, poor Bolivian miners, peasants and indigenous groups have taken to the streets, demanding Sanchez de Lozada's resignation in a burst of animosity directed at a government plan to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico.
Highly unpopular, the proposal tapped deep discord with Bolivia's decade-old free-market experiment, which has brought punishing price hikes and austerity programs.
The proposal also underscored spreading popular distrust with his administration's U.S.-backed anti-coca growing policies, which have deprived thousands of poor Indian farmers of their livelihood and plunged the president's popularity ratings into the single-digits.
A 73-year-old mining magnate, Sanchez de Lozada is a U.S.-educated millionaire elected with 22 percent of the vote in August 2002. He previously served as president from 1993 until 1997.
It didn't take long before his government was put to the test.
In February, protests over a government austerity plan provoked two days of riots that left 31 people dead.
Striking police officers clashed with soldiers in a groundswell of invective over proposed tax hikes and salary cuts that sparked demonstrations, roadblocks and widespread looting.
After escaping from the besieged presidential palace in an ambulance, Sanchez de Lozada gave a nationally televised speech appealing for calm and announcing he would suspend the tax increases. His decision calmed the furor in the streets, but it laid the foundation for the latest crisis.
Politicians in the coalition government began to distance themselves from Sanchez de Lozada after he began floating an ambitious plan three weeks ago to export natural gas to a North American market that is hungry for the fuel.
The president called those resources “a gift from God” that would bring millions of dollars annually to a cash-strapped Andean country. But few here believe his claims that average Bolivians, many of whom earn only a few dollars a day, would benefit.
Bolivia, which declared its independence from Spain in 1825, is a majority indigenous country where many speak Spanish haltingly. The country yielded its vast mineral wealth to its colonial rulers - and many see the gas-export project as a return to that legacy.
Opponents also object to the use of neighboring Chile, a longtime rival, to export the fuel and argued the $5 billion project would only benefit wealthy elites.
Soon street clashes ensued.
Human rights groups report that as many as 65 people have been killed in the clashes between police and government opponents, a group that includes miners and rural peasants.
The government will not confirm a figure, but critics say heavy-handed government tactics in quelling the dissent have only furthered the aims of labor and indigenous leaders arrayed against the president and his U.S.-backed investment policies.
Where once he was the butt of jokes among some Bolivians because he speaks Spanish with an American accent, now his nickname “Goni” is being chanted by angry marchers in the streets who are demanding his ouster.
Sanchez de Lozada was raised in Washington, where his father was a diplomat. He went on to study philosophy and English literature at the University of Chicago.
“How can we have a president that sounds like that?” said Jorge Carrasco, a 31-year-old waiter who joined thousands of demonstrators Thursday chanting “Goni, you have to go!”
But Sanchez de Lozada has said he would not consider resigning, saying “it has not even passed through my mind to step down.”
10/17/03 08:22 EDT
===================================================================
Here, I also explain how Narco News will manage our final 36 hours of "reporting on the drug war and democracy from Latin América."
(Don't forget to subscribe for free BigLeftOutside alerts, as after Saturday night, Narco News ceases reporting new stories and this mailing list that you are presently subscribed to will be utilized infrequently if at all.)
Blog entry:
There is nothing on the English-language wires yet, but Immediate History is sweeping Bolivia right now as I type...
Primero: After standing with the embattled president two nights ago in a last-ditch show of unity, the New Republican Force Party and its leader, Manfred Reyes Villa have called upon Goni to consider resigning today.
CNN Español reports:
"One of the parties that sustains the Bolivian administration proposed, on Friday, to President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to think about resigning as a 'democratic solution' to the crisis that the country is living, said a party spokesman.
"The proposal was communicated to the president by the maximum leader of the New Republican Force party (NFR, in its Spanish initials), Manfred Reyes Villa, during a meeting that was held in the leader's home, in the southern section of La Paz.
"'The NFR chief proposed to the president the urgency of a democratic solution, said party press secretary Carlos Millares..."
Segundo: The Bolivian Congress has scheduled a meeting for 4 p.m. in La Paz.
Tercero: Marcio Aurelio Garcia, special envoy from the Lula government in Brazil, arrived in La Paz an hour ago, together with an envoy from the Kirchner government in Argentina, Ricardo Scuiglia.
Lula and Kirchner met yesterday and, in a brazen rejection of Organization of American States boss César Gaviria (the former Colombian president and bat boy for Washington), have unilaterally sent their aides in to monitor and, behind the scenes, mediate a solution to Bolivia's standoff.
Aurelio Garcia is one of Lula's closest, most trusted, and smartest advisors. And he's very enlightened on the need to reform drug policy in Brazil and throughout América. Bolívar's dream of a united Latin America takes a new leap forward.
Cuarto: Members of the Bolivian and foreign press corps now widely refer to the US Ambassador to Bolivia, David Greenlee, as "El Virrey" or "The Viceroy," a nickname first, and repeatedly, assigned to this war criminal by Narco News.
Quinto: One of the factors that has sealed the fate of Goni was his tantrum last night on CNN Español, in which he launched an unprovoked, Washington-scripted, attack against Venezuela President Hugo Chávez. Other Latin American heads of state believe that Goni's continuance now works against the construction of the South American Union. (Colombia's increasingly isolated narco-president, Alvaro Uribe: take notice.)
Sexto: Thus, tonight being our last night of publication in the Narco Newsroom, it looks like we may be going out with a bigger bang than we had thought.
Authentic Journalists Luis Gómez, Alex Contreras, and Andrea Arenas are on the scene in Bolivia to chronicle the Immediate History underway. Three more of our Authentic Journalism scholars are headed, as I type, to Bolivia. Charlie Hardy has just filed a related update from Venezuela (which may explain Washington's desperation to get Goni to attack Chávez last night). Webmaster Dan Feder and I are preparing for what could be a long night, if history breaks out in this afternoon's Bolivian Congressional session.
The Narco News swarm is hereby activated one last time.
I recall the immortal words of King Henry V prior to the battle of Agincourt:
"Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more..."
Al Giordano
albigleftoutside.com
This report appears with links at: http://www.bigleftoutside.com/
guerra del gas | bolivia | www.agp.org (archives) | www.all4all.org