On the 35th anniversary of the military overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile on September 11, 1973, which had the overt support of the United States, the presidents of Bolivia and Venezuela have asked the US ambassadors accredited to their countries to leave.

The Bolivian government has communicated that a civil coup has been put into action in the departmental capital city of Santa Cruz, led by the President of the Civic Committee, Branco Marinkovic, and supported by Prefect Ruben Costas. Two weeks of anti Morales protests in four of the country's nine provinces escalated to open rioting and killings with roads blocks in much of eastern Bolivia, causing fuel and food
shortages in the opposition-controlled city of Santa Cruz. Students and activists of the [neo-fascist] group the Santa Cruz Youth Union (UCJ) and shock groups of thugs paid by the business-led civic movement from Santa Cruz attacked on Tuesday offices of Internal Revenue, the National Institute of Land Reform (INRA) and the National Company of Telecommunications (ENTEL).

Violent clashes have continued between students and activists of the UCJ and indigenous supporters of Morales and members of the social movements.

Bolivia's President Evo Morales also ordered emergency measures in the north-eastern state of Pando after youths in the territory ransacked government offices Friday, following the deaths there of eight pro-government demonstrators on Thursday.

Defense Minister Walker San Miguel announced the order, saying bars would close early, the carrying of firearms or explosives was prohibited, and demonstrations were outlawed without police permission. He added that several Peruvians were suspected to be among those who opened fire on some of the eight victims from Thursday.
(Source:
 http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/375605/1/.html ).

Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president repeated accusations that the opposition was following orders from US Ambassador Philip Goldberg, whom he threw out of the country this week. The Organization of American States condemned the pro-autonomy violence and rioting and praised President Morales for his "prudence and patience". (Source: 'Full support for Bolivia's Morales from regional leaders' - Mercopress, 12/09/08
Direct Link:
 http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do?id=14536&formato=html ).

On 10th August, Evo Morales won a recall referendum on his Bolivian presidency, winning the vote with a 60.7% majority, a near-7% increase in his popular vote when he was elected in December 2005 (54%). The vote was aimed to secure Morales' electoral mandate of partial (51%) nationalisation of Bolivia's gas and oil reserves, the renegotiation of these multinational contracts with much higher tax and royalty rates (82% as compared to the 18% rate set following privatisation in 1997), and perhaps most contentious issue of all, the government's aim to award 20 million hectares - a fifth of the total land area - to some 2.5 million farmers. Determined resistance to the reforms by the wealthy class of Bolivia predominantly of European extraction has been
led by the people in the region of Santa Cruz, coming to a head with an 'autonomy referendum' which took place on the 4th May, with the proponents of the vote claiming a 79% majority in favour of 'autonomy', such as ending any attempt at land reform and the
protection of existing property rights by a new provincial government. Further referenda were held in the regions of Beni, Pando and Tarija in June.

Evo Morales, an indigenous politician from the Andes in the west of the country, has organised a referendum on a new constitution to which the rightwing (and white racist) politicians in the eastern lowlands are bitterly opposed. The atmosphere of violence has now broken into the open, with endless political demonstrations and several deaths,
the seizure of provincial airports, and sabotage of the oil and gas installations on which the country's economy depends. Morales has accused the regional governors of the five eastern regions of creating the conditions for a coup.

Leading the opposition in Santa Cruz is the region's governor Ruben Cruz - one time head of the santa Cruz Civic Committee - who owns 15, 000 hectares of land. The current head of the Committee, Branko Marinkovic, is the son of an Ustashi Croat. The Marinkovic family is estimated to own 90,000 hectares of land. From the 1950s, successive Bolivian governemtns and military dictatorships funnelled money into
Santa cruz supporting the vast latifundia devoted to soya bean production and cattle ranching. Bolivia's Institute of Agrarian reform (INRA) says that 400 individuals own 70% of the country's productive land, whilst in Santa Cruz, 25 landowners hold 22m hectares - 60% of the entire territory. A 2005 UN report calculated that 100 families controlled over 20 million hectares of land. (Clough, Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism, Issue No 203 - June/July 2008).

Clough: "Systematic settlement of Santa Cruz started after the Second World War with pro-Hitler Ustashi Croats driven out of socialist Yugoslavia and Nazis fleeing a defeated Germany. They created a virulently racist culture which expresses itself in a violent hatred of indigenous people. During the Hugo Banzer military dictatorship of the 1970s, vast tracts of lands, some exceeding 100,000 hectares, were handed over to political cronies regardless of whether indigenous people occupied them or not. Much of this land was left idle; where it was worked, landowners established a system of indentured labour which continues today. Banzer even offered 800,000 hectares of land to
Rhodesian and South African farmers, his Immigration Secretary telling them 'you will certainly find our indians no more stupid or lazy than [your] own blacks'. Banzer also protected the development of the Bolivian cocaine trade; drug wealth flooded into Sant Cruz, financing a coup in 1980 and causing a US State department official to declare
'for the first time the mafia has bought itself a government'. The discovery of large gas reserves in Santa Cruz and neighbouring Tarija areas further augmented the wealth of the eastern part of the country."

Bolivia is a country that used to be ruled by three families (the barons of tin), who thought the country was their property.


Morales in power
Politically, the most important measure of the government has been the establishment of a Constituent Assembly. Convened in August 2006, its purpose has been to refound Bolivia as a state that represents the indigenous majority rather than the priviledged white and mestizo minority.

The Morales government has also sought to restrict US economic and political domination in a number of ways. It opposed a free trade agreement with the US and in March 2006 refused to renew its standby agreement with the IMF which had been responsible for imposing the neoliberal policies that devastated the country in the 1980s and 1990s. It also withdrew from the World bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, an arbitration system characterised by its lack of transparency and bias towards multinationals. On 14th May 2008, the government accused US multinational Hewlett Packard of failing to pay $12m import duties on computers brought into the country.

Given NATO's insistence on maintaining the "territorial integrity" of nation states (with the exception of Serbia) it should be impossible to believe that the US would encourage or condone separatist currents in Bolivia; However, America's post-war history of foreign
intervention abroad not least in it's Latin American backyard betrays the voracity of such an assumption.


Further Information:

The fascist coup has started in Santa Cruz:
 http://www.boliviasc.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=324&Itemid\
=44

& Solidarity with the people of Bolivia:
 http://www.boliviasc.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=4\
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