Bolivia tense as province votes on autonomy

Bolivia tense as province votes on autonomy

By McClatchy Newspapers and The Associated Press
(source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004391156_bolivia04.html)

SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA, Bolivia — This divided country faces a constitutional crisis today when its richest and second-most-populous province votes whether to declare itself autonomous from President Evo Morales' national government, a referendum the president has called illegal.

If the referendum passes, as polls show it overwhelmingly will, leaders of Santa Cruz province say they'll elect a state legislature, organize local police and otherwise set up a government equivalent to that of a U.S. state.

Morales has called the referendum a move to split up this nation of 9.1 million and to thwart his government's efforts to rewrite Bolivia's constitution so that its indigenous majority wins more political power.

Bolivia has a centralized government, where police, taxation and other government functions are controlled by federal officials.

Morales, a leftist critic of U.S. policies in the region, has received the support of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua in the provincial-autonomy fight.

The Bolivian president also has accused the United States of backing the autonomy move, a charge U.S. officials have rejected.

Autonomy advocates, including Santa Cruz business leaders, denied that they wanted to secede and insisted that their goal is modernizing an overly centralized government.

Three other eastern Bolivian provinces, Beni, Pando and Tarija, also are planning to hold autonomy votes in coming weeks, and leaders in two others, Cochabamba and Chuquisaca, are also advocating autonomy. Only three provinces have resisted the idea.

Many white and mixed-race middle-class Bolivians here feel Morales, the nation's first Indian president, doesn't represent them.

"They accuse us of not wanting to be Bolivian," Gov. Ruben Costas growled during a rally last week. "The power belongs to the people, to the forgotten, to the provinces and to the states, where this new Bolivia is born."

Santa Cruz province, which sprawls over the country's eastern flatlands and produces natural gas, soybeans and other exports, is responsible for about 30 percent of Bolivia's gross domestic product while making up about a quarter of the country's population. The province's population is also less indigenous than that of the country's mountainous west.

Since Morales became the country's first indigenous president in 2006, Santa Cruz leaders have slammed government plans to redistribute farmland and seize more state control over natural gas and other industries.

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Morales counters that he needs a strong central government to spread Santa Cruz's wealth to the rest of South America's poorest country. Only by reversing the effects of centuries of racism, he argues, can Bolivia resolve a national identity crisis dating back to the Spanish conquest.

"We were, and continue to be, a profoundly colonial society, where our differences, our jobs, our opportunities are all a function of skin color," said Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera. "Undoing this requires making the problem visible. And sometimes we don't like to look at ourselves in the mirror."

For centuries, Bolivia enforced boundaries between indigenous, mestizo and white through strict laws and customs. Until a 1952 revolution, Indians couldn't even set foot in the plaza in front of the presidential palace Morales now occupies, let alone vote.

His landslide election in 2005 turned the old order on its head.

But Morales' civil-rights crusade came bundled with visions of class struggle and socialist reform — a hard sell for his whiter and wealthier opposition.

A 2001 census found that 62 percent of Bolivians older than 15 identify themselves as indigenous — but mestizo wasn't included as an option. Other polls have found most Bolivians acknowledge a mix of Indian and European heritage.

As Indians abandon the countryside for cities, they build new lives amid the same cheap Chinese electronics, fried-chicken stands and pirated U.S. movies as their mixed-blood neighbors. Some wear traditional bowler hats, others hoodie sweat shirts. Some switch back and forth.

Both Morales and autonomy advocates have called for calm today and canceled potentially incendiary actions by autonomy supporters and the president's indigenous activists. Last week, the government prohibited civilians from carrying arms, and Morales has pledged not to send troops to Santa Cruz to block the referendum vote.

On Wednesday, the Organization of American States sent Political Affairs Secretary Dante Caputo to Bolivia to initiate last-minute dialogue between the two sides, but he left with only pledges to keep the public peace. The OAS held its second meeting in less than a week on Friday to discuss the crisis in Bolivia.

At the heart of the conflict is a July 2006 referendum in which Bolivians nationwide rejected allowing provincial autonomies, while voters in the four provinces now pushing referendums approved the proposal.

Those provincial leaders have said that the vote lets them pursue their separate paths despite the national rejection, while federal officials insist that only a national approval allows for provincial autonomy.

Political scientist Fernando Mayorga said that despite the tensions, both sides would have to negotiate after the referendum because "they can't maintain this political tension for much longer."

The goal, Mayorga said, would be fitting regional autonomies into a draft constitution that Morales allies hurriedly approved in December, without the presence of most opposition representatives.

That constitution would allow Morales to be re-elected once, claim more state control over natural resources and grant autonomy to indigenous communities and cities, among other actions.

Morales' congressional allies had originally scheduled a national referendum, also for today, on the draft constitution, but canceled it after the country's top electoral court said the vote couldn't be adequately organized in time. The president's activist allies had surrounded the national legislature in February and blocked opposition legislators from voting on the referendum date.

The electoral court also has declared the Santa Cruz referendum illegal, saying only the national legislature could schedule such votes, and announced it won't certify today's results.



Video in Spanish regarding the possible role of the American ambassador in the Bolivian conflict.

Bolivia, Phillip Goldberg "Limpieza Etnica" Santa Cruz.