Reply #2: It all started with Enron!!! [View All]

"At U.S. urging, Bolivia sold off majority control of its oil and gas company to Enron and Shell in December 1996 for $263.5 million, well less than 1 percent of what the gas alone is worth today. A decade later, indigenous Bolivians have the receipt and are demanding a refund."

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2158/

The "constitutional changes" referred to above--the points of controversy between pro- and anti-government groups--are land reform and nationalization of Bolivia's newly discovered huge gas reserves. Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, was elected on a platform of land reform and nationalization of gas. Why do nearly 80% of the Bolivian people support nationalization? Largely because of this Bush-Enron/Shell ripoff. The big coalition behind Evo Morales has also been bolstered by brutal US "war on drugs" tactics against the extremely poor peasants/indigenous of the Andes mountains. And if they can't grow coca, what are they going to do? They are peasants. They till the land, and MUST do so to feed their families.

The land reform controversy in the eastern province of Santa Cruz pits starving, landless peasants against the wealthiest people in Bolivia. The poor move into and till a few acres. This rich farm land was historically THEIRS. They are indigenous. But the rich land owners claim otherwise--their colonial era property rights. The poor majority vs. the rich few. And like the rich few elsewhere, the land owners are hiring paramilitary thugs to enforce their right to own all the land and to control all of the country's wealth--and to drive the peasants out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5303280.stm

I would suspect that these minority anti-government demonstrators were no innocent crowd of citizens, but beat up some Indians on behalf of the rich landowners--as Evo Morales seems to be saying. (The BBC article quoted in the OP is not very clear on what happened.) I have seen too many instances where the peaceful poor or other peaceful protesters are slandered by the corporate media. Fascists and police forces instigate trouble for the sake of headlines like this one--"Protests Spark Clashes in Bolivia." BBC, while better than our corporate news propagandists, nevertheless often play along. And of course the article provides no context, for instance, nothing of the history of fascist brutality that evicted the indigenous from their land, and that has continued over the last century to keep the majority poor impoverished and without political power.

Control of the country's land and resources is the overall issue. Do the rich get it all? Or does everyone in society benefit from land and resources? Same issue in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. (Peasants being pushed off the land, by big corporations and the rich, is one of the chief issues in the Oaxaca uprising in southern Mexico as well.) South America is at the same time undergoing a huge democratic revolution, with the poor majority at last coming into rightful power through transparent elections. For the rich to own everything requires a fascist state to enforce it. The US has always supported fascism in South America, in collusion with US-based corporations and the wealthy. The question is, can a peaceful democratic process achieve more equity for the vast poor population of South America--impoverished and brutalized for decades and centuries. They are not asking to become rich. They are asking for bottom line sustenance--land, schools, medical care, some benefit from their country's natural riches.