Bolivia Votes Sunday on a New Constitution that Affirms Indigenous Rights

Approval Would Create New Autonomies but Social Movements Say It Doesn’t Go Far Enough to Nationalize Water and Other Resources


By Erin Rosa
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
January 24, 2009

Cochabamba, Bolivia; January 24, 2009: Tomorrow Bolivians will go to the polls to decide whether to approve a new constitution that will permit and recognize greater rights for indigenous groups, which make up a 60 percent majority of the Andean nation’s population. If approved by voters, the new text will replace a current constitution that dates back nearly two centuries to Spanish colonialism.

Unlike the colonialist text, the new constitution officially recognizes the existence of the indigenous, and gives indigenous municipalities greater autonomy to govern the lands where they live, allowing a say in the management of natural resources and permitting a level of communal justice that can be decided on by the municipalities. These groups will also be permitted to form regional alliances with other municipalities to democratically govern the country’s rural areas and zones where many indigenous people live.

Under the new constitution, Catholicism will no longer be the official religion of the country. Instead, the national government will not be tied to any official religion and at the same time recognizes the diversity of religious beliefs—indigenous and non-indigenous—throughout the country. In the text, water, health care and telephone access are declared to be human rights, and new purchases of land in the nation will be regulated by the government and limited to 5,000 or 10,000 hectares, depending on an additional ballot question on Sunday in which the voters will also decide how much land property owners will be allowed to purchase.

The constitution, projected by most polls to pass, is the result of a drafting process that lasted over a period of two years. In 2006, a Constitutional Assembly was created to solicit input from lawmakers and social movements about how the constitution would be created. Such assemblies have also been used recently in countries like Ecuador and Venezuela to compose new constitutional texts. The creation of the Constitutional Assembly has been demanded by indigenous groups in Bolivia for decades, and its creation was also one of the major issues President Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, championed before we was elected in December 2005.

Continued>>>
http://www.narconews.com/Issue55/article3361.html

Viva Morales!

Viva Bolivia!