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Today's
Stories
October 21,
2004
Lisa Britto
and Lucía Suarez
Bolivia:
a Year After the October Insurrection
October 20,
2004
Yitzhak Laor
"Did
You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian
Child
Jason Leopold
Sinclair
Broadcasting's Air War: a Long History of Journalistic Deception
Jesse Sharkey
A
Teacher's Account of How Military Recruiters Prey on High School
Students
Col. Dan Smith
Choking
Free Speech About the Draft
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Using My Religion
David Vest
If
Bush Wins, Blame Me
Jack Random
The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny
Ron Jacobs
Time
to Kick It Up a Notch
James Brittain
Plan Patriota and the FARC: a Change in the Countryside?
Christopher
Dols
Bombing Madison: Michael Moore's Fright Fest
Dave Lindorff
First They Came for the Nurses...
Website of
the Day
Banana Republican Catalogue
October 19,
2004
Jeff Taylor
Confessions
of a Swing State Voter
Matt Vidal
American
Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"
Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For":
Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum
William Loren
Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around
Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims
CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
October 21, 2004
A CounterPunch
Special Report
From "Goni
Go Home!" to "Goni a Chonchocoro!":
Bolivia
a Year After the October Insurrection
By
LINA BRITTO and LUCIA SUAREZ
Translated by Forrest Hylton
La Paz/Chukiyawu.
Leaning against a concrete tombstone,
nine men dressed in denim overalls of various colors drink beer
and soda, taking care to pour the first sip on the dry and dusty
ground as an offering to the Pacha Mama -- Mother Earth. A few
meters away, on the high plain that extends between the two hills
covered with crosses and tombs, coffins of equal size are spread
out in a row. Together with them, almost a hundred men, women,
and children, seated and standing, most dressed entirely in black,
mourn the dead for a second time. "On a day like today,
October 12, the armed forces fired on unarmed people," a
young man with brown skin and straight black hair says to the
assembled through a microphone marred by static. "It is
time, as relatives, to show that this is not over, that we are
mourning our dead again," concludes Nestor Salinas, the
president of the Association of the Relatives of the Fallen Martyrs
in the so-called "Gas War" in El Alto, sister city
of La Paz. Then Salinas passes "the word" to a priest
who, in mixed Spanish and Aymara, presides over the Eucharist
that begins the exhumation ceremony for twenty-two of the sixty-seven
people who died during "Black October."
Dug Up from
the Bowels
Exactly a year ago, a caravan
of tanks, truckloads of soldiers, and trucks full of gas passed
through the better part of El Alto, leaving in their dusty path
thirty-one dead and twelve injured. Five days after the military
incursion, in a country exploding with protest, hunger strikes,
and indignation, what had seemed impossible happened: then-President
Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, a leading member of the political-economic
elite and the second-richest man in Bolivia, flew to Miami after
presenting his resignation to Congress, due to the non-negotiable
demand of the majority of the country's inhabitants, who refused
to stand for the government's brutal repression of protests against
the export of Bolivian gas to California via a Chilean port.
Now, a year later, the hundred
or so people gather around the coffins of their dead to summon
up energy and hope so that the impossible happens; so that Sánchez
de Lozada is extradited to Bolivia to receive punishment for
genocide -- among other charges, including corruption -- that
will be presented now that Congress has approved the "trial
of responsibilities." As relatives and volunteers from the
different organizations tried to convince the nine men in overalls
to charge the widow of the last body exhumed eighty Bs. ($10),
Nestor Salinas made the position of alteños abundantly
clear: "Now we'll see who's for and who's against the people,"
he said, referring to the parliamentary vote that would take
place the following day, October 13.
Without bars, signs, or walls,
the cemetery in the alteño neighborhood of Villa
Ingenio extends over an immense, undulating plain as far as the
eyes can see, from which one can glimpse the largest indigenous
city in Latin America on one side, and, on the other, the cordillera
of the Andes, with its snow-capped peaks. The previous day, October
11, a similar scene had been enacted in Santiago I, another of
El Alto's neighborhoods. While rumors of hot money designed to
buy votes in parliament circulated through offices and corridors
of power, the families that lost loved ones a year ago had to
deal with the painful process of disinterring the bodies and
transferring them to the two mausoleums built for the "Martyrs
and Heroes in Defense of Gas."
For over twelve hours, relatives
and members of the commissions made up of delegates from different
organizations determined to obtain justice waited patiently for
the DA's Office to comply with the order from the Ministry of
the Public. While some, finally, were able to let their dead
rest in the humble mausoleums built for them, others, like Nestor
Salinas, saw their pain prolonged due to the obstacles functionaries
from the DA's Office put in the way -- they put off the necropsy
and digging up of Nestor's brother, David, until the cold, early
morning hours. "The doctors have handed out incorrect certificates,"
said Marcial Canaviri, President of the Association of the Injured
in Defense of Gas, thus clearing up the issue of the necropsies,
and the urgency of performing them as part of the process of
gathering evidence to be used in the much-awaited trial against
Sánchez de Lozada and his ministers.
The Long
March
In the second week of October,
commemorative acts began, and in order to exert pressure, social
organizations and the organizations of those directly affected
by the bloody days of October were on the march, not only to
demand the nationalization of gas and petroleum in a new Hydrocarbons
Law, but also to let legislators know that the perpetuation of
impunity would not be tolerated. From Monday, October 11, as
a dozen cadavers were disinterred in Santiago I, some three thousand
coca farmers and workers, led by Evo Morales and Roman Loayza,
carrying only what was strictly necessary on their backs, started
off for the long march to La Paz, planning to arrive in the capital
on October 18. While the exhumation ceremony took place in Villa
Ingenio on the 12, the Mixed Constitutional Commission approved
debate on the "trial of responsibilities," which --
according to Rogelio Mayta, Legal Coordinator of the Committee
for a Trial of Responsibilities demonstrated that "the
first hurdle has been overcome."
Like Mayta and the legal team working in co-ordination with the
Justice and Peace Commission, the Mixed Constitutional Commission
in charge of parliamentary debate feared the maneuvers that would
be utilized by Sánchez de Lozada's party, MNR (National
Revolutionary Movement), which pushed for, and got, the trial
of all fifteen ministers. There was hope that the two other coalition
partners in October, MIR (Revolutionary Left Movement) and NFR
(New Republican Force), would vote against the trial of fifteen
ministers, thereby refusing to judge their own. The Commission
therefore pushed for the charge of genocide to be brought against
Sánchez de Lozada and his closest collaborators, ex-Minister
of Defense Carlos Sánchez Berzaín and ex-Minister
of Government Yerko Kukoc, in order to get the parliamentary
majority needed to bring them to trial. On Wednesday, October
13, parliament initiated debate on the Commission's proposal.
From the beginning, the desperate attempts of the MNR to save
their jefe from standing trial led them into a trap. After
discussing procedure and following an intermission taken in order
to decide what course of action to pursue, the MNR decided to
vote. The party was so sure that a two-thirds majority would
not approve either of the proposals that during the discussion
of the first, the majority of deputies argued publicly that they
would vote for the second, given that the entire cabinet, rather
than the MNR itself, was guilty for October, whether directly
or due to "the responsibilities of solidarity" that
came with agreeing with the former president's decisions.
The first vote ended with 103
votes in favor, 13 against, and 25 blank, two votes short of
the number required to put the Constitutional Commission's recommendations
into effect. Once voting on the second proposal took place, and
in spite of what they had pledged during the discussion of the
first proposal, only one MNR senator voted in favor of the trial.
Although it was feared that senators from MIR and NFR would vote
against judging an entire cabinet, each and every one of them
voted in favor. 126 votes determined the authorization that parliament
gave to the Supreme Court in order that the judicial process
begin, thus opening a period of calm and momentary truce in a
country that was ready to burn had impunity been officially approved.
"Muddy
Terrain"
With the "trial of responsibilities"
already approved, on Friday, October 15, some fifteen to twenty
thousand people marched down from El Alto to the seat of government
in La Paz shouting, "Goni a Chonchocoro!" Miners from
Huanuni, factory workers, water warriors, and activists from
Cochabamba, neighborhood associations and vendors' associations
from El Alto, and trade unionists and the unemployed from La
Paz and El Alto arrived in the Plaza San Francisco, where last
year's concentrations forced Sánchez de Lozada from power.
Another, smaller contingent composed of coca farmers, mining
co-operativists**, the Regional Workers' Central (COR) from El
Alto, and students from Warisata -- a town in the province of
Omasuyos where a political-military incursion on September 20,
2003, left four dead, including an eight year-old girl -- arrived
in La Paz on Monday, October 18. For the next three days, the
city center was shut down as it had been during the early afternoon
hours of the 15, as co-operativists and Indian communities as
well as coca growers arrived to stay. The co-operativists, demanding
a reactivation of the dormant mining sector, began to blockade
Caracollo, the crossroads town that unites La Paz with Cochabamba
and Santa Cruz, and promised to continue until a suitable Hydrocarbons
law was approved in parliament, which began debate on President
Mesa's proposal on October 20, the date of the infamous 1904
treaty with Chile, which ratified Chile's territorial and commercial
conquests over Bolivia in the War of the Pacific (1879-80). In
his address to Congress, Mesa did not fail to play the nationalist
card, which he favors whenever domestic social protest is on
the rise.
On October 20, in contrast
to what happened in the mobilizations of a year ago, when mining
co-operativists arrived in San Francisco as last-minute reinforcements,
this year they acted as a vanguard, descending from the city
center to blockade the exclusive neighborhoods Calacoto and the
Zona Sur, even as they expanded their blockade out from Caracollo
to Acayhuasi and Coral. Unlike last year's uprising, this year
the militant action of urban, peasant, and mining sectors did
not spread to progressive urban middle classes, who are firmly
behind the Mesa regime, which, for the first time since it came
to power on the back of the October insurrection, found itself
with serious "public order" problems, and close to
home -- Mesa, his friends, and his family live in the Zona Sur
and Calacoto. By nightfall of October 20, the Mesa administration
had negotiated a deal with the co-operativists and the roads
were once again transitable. The chief of police had earlier
made it clear that he did not plan to repress protests, as Mesa's
political legitimacy (his approval rate, 44%, is dramatically
lower that what it was two or three months ago) depends upon
his willingness to negotiate with protestors rather than kill
them.
Though two coca growers have
been killed recently in confrontations over forced eradication,
with the backing of US AID, President Mesa came to a formal agreement
about the legitimacy of the major cocalero demand: a cato
(.5 hectares) of coca per family -- in spite of US Embassy
insistence on the maintenance of forced eradication programs
in accordance with Law 1008***. Mesa's ties to Evo Morales, leader
of the coca growers and the chief opposition party, MAS (Movement
Toward Socialism), remain strong, though the issue of nationalization
will divide them as long as the social movements insist on it.
The coca growers maintain that they will not leave La Paz until
parliament approves a law that asserts sovereignty over Bolivian
gas and petroleum, reversing Sánchez de Lozada's 1997
Hydrocarbons decree. While nationalization via parliamentary
decree seems an unlikely outcome of this round of the contest
for the right to rule, the point to note is that direct action
on the roads and in the neighborhoods of the capital will have
a considerable influence over the vote in parliament on October
21, just as direct action influenced the vote on the "trial
of responsibilities" on the 13.
The judicial process has now
passed to the Supreme Court, which will dictate the initial summary
-- the gathering of evidence to establish the existence (or not)
of culpability. Thereafter, the Ministry of the Public will determine
how many people are to be judged. The court then has twenty days
to dictate the initial summary, which can be prolonged on the
basis of the judicial principal of the right to defense. Once
the initial summary is over, the trial will begin in the Supreme
Court, and the sentence handed down will not be subject to appeal.
Although the procedure sounds simple, the fear shared by those
who filled the center of La Paz on October 15 stemmed from the
number of people to be tried. Eulogia Tapia, a leader from the
Gregoria Apaza Center for the Promotion of Women in El Alto,
and one of those who marched, sat on the stone steps of Plaza
San Francisco, trying to bring down the swelling in her legs,
caused by the heat of the pavement, before heading home. Fixing
her hat over her braids, Tapia spoke of her fear that with fifteen
people to be tried, the process could get bogged down in and
people's attention distracted from the issue of impunity. Like
Tapia, Rogelio Mayta is convinced that the most complicated phase
of the process has just begun. "Now we begin to walk through
muddy terrain," Mayta explains, as the new penal code is
anything but clear with respect to the procedure for such cases.
Plus, the majority of Supreme Court justices are MNRistas.
Going over recent history, it is apparent that in Bolivia
political influences can draw such trials out to the point where
they are archived, as happened in the "trial of responsibilities"
initiated against Hugo Banzer Suárez, the dictator who
died in impunity after being elected president in 1997. The trial
against former dictator Luis García Meza, who currently
resides in Chonchocoro with a life sentence, took longer than
ten years to conclude.
With injuries still fresh and
the dead buried once again, rage and pain are felt with great
intensity. "If they hadn't approved the trial, I was prepared
to blow myself up into a thousand pieces in Congress, taking
people with me," asserted Luis Villca from Villa Ingenio,
who lost his right eye and had a leg crippled last October 12.
With a tattoo on his right hand reminding him of the time he
served as a military policeman some twenty years ago, Villca
explained why he was willing to blow himself up: "October
was painful, ugly, and I've been tremendously traumatized. Why
would I go on living if not to struggle for justice?" Although
Villca's inclinations are far from general, the people who filled
San Francisco are sure that only popular pressure and control
over authorities can guarantee the trial of Sánchez de
Lozada. Thus the public assemblies, people's tribunals, meetings,
debates, and vigils that greeted the first anniversary of Sánchez
de Lozada's flight to Miami. And thus the painful need to exhume
the bodies of loved ones turned almost to dust -- to find out
what types of weapons perforated their bodies and killed them,
so that forgetting doesn't win out over justice, and so that
a country that remains injured doesn't burn again.
Lina Britto and Lucía Suarez are
journalists and movement activists living in La Paz. Forrest
Hylton can be reached at forresthylton@hotmail.com.
Translator's Notes:
* Chonchocoro: Bolivia's Maximum
Security Prison.
** Co-operativists: unlike
other miners, cooperativistas do not work for private
enterprise, and would likely be classified by economists as "independent
contractors." Though some cooperativistas become
rich, most depend on intense self-exploitation in order to survive,
and conflicts between miners working for private enterprise and
cooperativistas have at times been intense.
*** Law 1008: a US-dictated
anti-drug law, which, in 1988, installed forced eradication as
part of the neoliberal status quo (See: http://www.natlaw.com/pubs/spbocs1.htm).
In promising the US Embassy that he will comply with Law 1008
while simultaneously negotiating the cato, Mesa follows
in the footsteps of Jaime Paz Zamora (1989-1993) and the first
Sánchez de Lozada administration (1993-1997). It is interesting
to note that in terms of counterinsurgency, US AID and the US
Embassy are not on the same page (State Department vs. Pentagon-CIA?),
reflecting the overall incoherence of current US foreign policy
toward Bolivia.
Weekend
Edition Features for October 16 / 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
/
Weekend
Edition Features for October 16 / 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
/
|