A message from the Maryknoll Global Concerns Bolivia group
September 2008
The following statement was prepared by Maryknoll missioners living and working in Bolivia.On Wednesday, September 10, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales pronounced the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Phillip Goldberg, persona non grata, a step that required Goldberg to leave his post. President Morales has accused Ambassador Goldberg of meddling in the internal affairs of Bolivia by supporting the opposition groups and fomenting violent conflict among the Bolivian people.
In response, on September 11 the United States government asked the Bolivian ambassador in the U.S., Gustavo Guzman, to leave. On September 14, Morales restated Bolivia’s desire to have full diplomatic relations with the U.S. and reiterated that his concerns were the result of actions that Goldberg had engaged in his diplomatic capacity.
During Goldberg’s tenure as the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia:
- We have witnessed a lack of respect for President Morales, his government, and for the overwhelming majority of Bolivians who support him by Goldberg.
- Embassy officials asked Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar in Bolivia to gather intelligence information on behalf of the U.S. Embassy, violating U.S. and Bolivian law.
- Goldberg has acted imprudently and callously when the internal situation clearly called for wise and skillful diplomacy.
Lack of respect
In September 2007 when President Morales traveled to the United Nations in New York, he was made to sit on the tarmac of Kennedy International Airport for two hours for unexplained security reasons. Upon recounting the experience President Morales suggested that if this was the way the foreign leaders were to be treated in New York then perhaps the United Nations should be moved to another country. When asked by the Bolivian press about the event, Ambassador Goldberg flippantly commented that Morales will complain that Disneyland ought to be moved to Oruro (a city in the Bolivian high plane). For most Bolivians the comments were seen as an insult to their president.
Many of us have attended the “town meetings” that the ambassador holds periodically for U.S. citizens in Bolivia. In this forum, we have listened to Goldberg make disparaging remarks and use inappropriate humor when speaking about Morales and Bolivians in general. At one such meeting he made jokes about the public lynching two women.
Intelligence gathering
In December 2007 a New York Times article reported that in November a Fulbright scholar in Bolivia was asked by an Embassy official to gather intelligence information about Venezuelans and Cubans in the country, including their names, their activities, and their movements. It then was further revealed that in July 2007 the same embassy official asked a handful of Peace Corps volunteers to gather similar intelligence. At the time Peace Corps officials registered a complaint with the Embassy, but no action was taken at the time to remove the person under Goldberg’s command even though his request was in clear violation of Peace Corps policy and rules.
Imprudent diplomacy
Recently, as a very tense and volatile situation was developing between the Morales administration and opposition groups, Goldberg took the highly controversial step of meeting in private with the prefect of the Department of Santa Cruz and major opposition leader Ruben Costas on August 25. Costas himself is a highly polarizing figure who has publicly called Morales a “small monkey” and “murderous.” Bolivian media sources say that the youth unions involved in violent and racist activities act on orders from opposition leaders like Costas. Goldberg met with the prefect of the Chuquisaca prefect, also an opposition leader, around the same time. Soon after these meetings youth unions and other opposition groups began to destroy and sack state institutions, blew up a natural gas duct, and blocked the major roads connecting the eastern lowlands with the rest of the country. It was the suspicion that Goldberg created by holding these meetings that resulted in the Bolivian president’s decision to pronounce him persona non grata.
Recent events behind the conflict
This feud between the U.S. and Bolivia unfolded as opposition groups began a violent campaign across the eastern lowlands in the wake of the August 10 recall referendum in which the Bolivian people validated their support for President Morales by giving him 67 percent of the vote. While opposition leaders also won their referendums reflecting the regional support they hold, it was clear that Morales and his government have widespread and national support, representing what the vast majority of Bolivians want for their country.
Immediately following the referendum Morales invited his political opponents to dialogue. However, opposition leaders in the eastern part of the country rejected dialogue as a means to resolve differences and began to provoke conflict. It was in the days following the referendum that Costas gave incendiary speeches laced with racist overtones in which he called Morales a “monkey” and “murderous” and labeled Morales’ politics as trying to impose an “Aymara fundamentalism” (the Aymara are a large indigenous group from Bolivia’s high planes). He and other opposition prefects also continued to openly violate the nation’s constitution by refusing to fulfill their legal duties as departmental prefects and began to threaten to take over state institutions justifying these actions based on their own self-imposed autonomy statutes.
On August 28, Morales decreed a referendum on the proposed new constitution for Bolivia. Calls for a new constitution began in 1990 and became part of the national agenda in 2003. Two keys issues that the new constitution addresses are de-centralization of the government through departmental and other forms of autonomy, and land reform. The opposition in the eastern part of the country, made up of a small wealthy elite who controls most of the land, seek to impose their own form of departmental autonomy that would maintain their political and economic privileges and resist any kind of land reform.
When the National Electoral Court ruled that such a referendum could not be decreed the Morales administration began to work out an agreement with the Bolivian congress for advancing the referendum on the new constitution. Furthermore, Morales offered concessions on a key issue regarding hydrocarbons revenues in attempts to again open dialogue with the opposition prefects. However, instead of reining in the protests of their supporters, the opposition prefects in Santa Cruz, Beni, Tarija, and Pando escalated the conflict. On September 7, 8, and 9 groups with direct links to opposition leaders, in a series of actions, destroyed and sacked state institutions, blew up the natural gas duct between Bolivia and Brazil, and violently blocked major highways. They also assaulted individuals who they suspected to be Morales supporters. For example, they beat women who work as vendors in the main plaza of Santa Cruz simply because they wore the indigenous dress of the Quechua and Aymara Indians. During these attacks police and military showed restraint and did not fire a single shot.
On September 11, in the rural community of Porvenir in the northern department of Pando, the conflict turned deadly when local farmers and supporters of Morales, heading to the departmental capitol, Cobija, were intercepted by a well armed and organized group – some say a paramilitary force - aligned with the prefect of Pando, Leopoldo Fernandez, a wealthy landowner and an opponent of Morales. The violence left at least 25 dead and reports of 106 missing, overwhelmingly the rural farmers. In the face of such death and violence the Morales administration had to act and therefore began to impose a state of emergency affecting only the department of Pando. As military forces retook the airport in Cobija, they met armed resistance from supporters of Fernandez which resulted in the death of one soldier and two civilians.
More:
http://www.maryknollogc.org/regional/latinamerica/100708.htm
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