IN BRIEF
IT IS EASIER TO WIN THE WAR than win the peace, the saying goes. That truism applies perfrl t tLh oLnht months following Bolivia's "Gas War," last October's popular insurrection that cost...
...Meanwhile, on May 13, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe conceded to AUC demands that his government not enforce U.S...
...According to official government reports, on May 9, Venezuelan intelligence officers discovered the unarmed Colombians dressed in Venezuelan army uniforms at the ranch of Robert Alonso, one of Chavez's most vocal adversaries and a leader of the rightwing opposition group known as the Democratic Bloc...
...This number could become even higher if those who are demobilized join Uribe's new peasant soldier program, which would thereby institutionalize the paramilitary project under a new guise...
...Although he further claims that most of the captured men are reservists in the Colombian army, ChAvez has not implicated the Colombian government in the alleged plot...
...In elections that attracted a record 77% voter turnout, Torrijos won with 47% of the vote...
...It was Torrijos' second presidential bid as the candidate of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), once led by Manuel Noriega...
...Filem6n Escobar, another MAS stalwart who has an often-antagonistic relationship with Morales, went so far as to publicly scold Solares' strike attempt, calling it "suicide...
...And that's what we have now, a total dispersion of objectives," said Puente...
...To many Bolivians, Mesa's apparent betrayal of the "October agenda" is reason enough to take to the streets again...
...Chavez claims the men are members of the United SelfDefense Forces of Colombia (AUC), that country's most powerful paramilitary group, and that several confessed to planning an attack on a military base in Caracas...
...Also wounded in the post-October era is the party led by Evo Morales, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), which is the second most powerful force in Congress...
...The concentration zone agreement came about unexpectedly following the April disappearance of Carlos Castaflo, one of the AUC's main leaders...
...This episode has seriously, perhaps fatally, injured MAS...
...After his first bid failed, Torrijos became Secretary General of the PRD and initiated reforms to purge some, though not all, party members tied to Noriega...
...The rebellion also articulated new political demands-most importantly, for a binding nationwide referendum on the nationalization of the country's oil and natural gas reserves and infrastructure...
...Omar Torrijos, who governed Panama from 1968 until his death in a plane crash in 1981...
...MARTIN TORRIJOS, the son of a military dictator and former manager of a McDonald's restaurant in Panama's presidential election May 2 in a campaign that combined nostalgia for his father's popular rule with promises of a new kind of politics in Panama...
...The Torrijos campaign carefully balanced a pro-democracy, anti-corruption platform with memories of the jobs and schools created under the dictatorship of his father, Gen...
...Optimism soared when, upon taking office on October 17, 2003, President Carlos Mesa declared he would spearhead the referendum process himself...
...That truism applies perfrl t tLh oLnht months following Bolivia's "Gas War," last October's popular insurrection that cost over 60 lives and forced neoliberal President Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada to resign and relocate to Miami...
...Since Panama gained control of the Canal Zone in 1999, it has increased its revenues from $600 million under U.S...
...The communiques of MAS regarding the president's controversial referendum have been confused and contradictory...
...extradition warrants against paramilitary leaders accused of drug trafficking if they move to the concentration zone in the northern COrdoba department...
...It has since become clear that the scope of Mesa's referendum, scheduled for July 18, does not encompass the possibility of nationalizing petroleum or gas infrastructures already contracted to foreign entities...
...Castafo was directing the AUC toward a more accommodating deal with Uribe that included jail time for AUC members guilty of committing crimes...
...IN THE SAME WEEK THAT Colombian paramilitary leaders agreed to move into a "concentration zone" to conduct peace negotiations with the government, nearly 90 alleged paramilitary fighters from Colombia were arrested just outside the Venezuelan capital of Caracas...
...A true state nationalization, like the one that took place in Mexico in 1938, would require violating binding contracts and the appropriation of property belonging to private entities...
...The Gas War spontaneously united a broad mobilization of labor, indigenous and political movements in the shared mission of quashing a government plan to export natural gas to California through a Chilean port...
...Paramilitaries are responsible for hundreds of political assassinations and brutal massacres of civilians over the past two decades...
...Torrijos will face several major challenges after his inauguration on September 1, including fixing an unsustainable pension system and widening the Panama Canal...
...A commission of high-level representatives from civil society, academia and international governments, including the United States, is to oversee the negotiations, while observers from the Organization of American States monitor the zone...
...Analysts predict that the social security system will go bankrupt within 10 years if it is not reformed, but the new president will likely face protests if he attempts to cut costs by raising the retirement age or decreasing benefits...
...The 40-year-old economist graduated from Texas A&M and has worked as a business consultant for various transnational companies in Panama...
...However, the canal's locks are too narrow to allow the passage of the world's largest ships, and a project to widen them could cost up to $10 billion...
...As a free trade supporter who pledged to promote foreign investment, Torrijos was the pick of Wall Street...
...His critics say he is beholden to the interests of wealthy supporters, compromising his independence, but during the campaign Torrijos vowed to reduce the 13% unemployment rate and the proportion of Panamanians living in poverty-currently, 40% of the population...
...However, the unity that characterized last year's uprising has steadily eroded in 2004...
...For their part, AUC leaders promised to disarm 13,000 of the country's 18,000 paramilitary fighters by the end of 2005...
...Colombian paramilitaries have occasionally crossed into Venezuela in the past, allegedly to transport drugs, and last year seven members of the Venezuelan National Guard were killed in a border clash with the AUC...
...President Hugo ChAvez accused members of Venezuela's opposition of bringing the Colombians into the country to initiate a coup against his government...
...Former-President Guillermo Endara (1989-1994) came in second with 30%, while the ruling oartv's candidate Jose Miguel Aleman placed a distant third with 16...
...control to $900 million last year...
...According to Rafael Puente, an analyst at the Bolivian Center for Documentation and Information, a leading think tank in Cochabamba, the failure of Bolivia's social movement is due to the lack of vision and clarity of its leaders, including Solares...
...While Torrijos will begin planning the expansion when he takes office, he has promised to hold a national referendum before beginning construction...
...Such infrastructures account for 80% of Bolivia's 900 million barrels of oil and 54 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, rendering the referendum largely symbolic...
...Analysts speculate that rival AUC members who are heavily involved in the group's narcotrafficking activities killed Castafio for fear that his dealings with Uribe would threaten them and their trade...
...By the time COR leaders agreed to join the strike, momentum had fizzled and the effort was seen as a fiasco...
...Despite the harsh words, few labor groups have heeded the COB's recent call to action...
...The president-elect also drew on his father's legacy of national pride, embodied in the 1977 treaty that turned the Canal Zone over to Panama in 1999...
...It is a scenario Mesa and his ministers have insisted is not on the table, even though polls show eight in ten Bolivians support precisely this kind of act...
...Abandoned mid-strike by most miners, due mainly to accusations that he was a paramilitary spy for the brutal, anti-labor dictatorship of Luis Garcia Meza in 1981, Solares has nonetheless stood steadfast in calling on Mesa to resign...
...Those under suspicion are the same leaders who signed the May 13 deal with Uribe...
...The movements have been hobbled by the emergence of deep fissures between major leaders, crippling internal squabbles and an inability to mobilize cohesive popular support...
...Since the 1990s, these have been administered by a handful of transnational companies who profit hugely while the average Bolivian earns about $1 per day...
...The sad thing about social movements is that when their leaders don't coordinate with other sectors, then each social movement spontaneously defends its own immediate interests...
...They also point out that, by the very terms of the deal, some 5,000 paramilitaries will remain armed and engaged in the country's civil conflict...
...An uneasy peace set in...
...Most analysts concur that MAS's strategy is a naked attempt to "perpetuate the current regime in order to make gains in the upcoming local elections in December and the presidential elections in 2007," as Maria Hilda Rodriguez, political analyst and economist at the University of San Sim6n in Cochabamba, believes...
...The agreement with the AUC also suspends, for at least six months, arrest warrants against its leaders for other crimes, including murder...
...Most recently, MAS has been embroiled in a very public spat between Morales and his senators, who he accuses of accepting bribes...
...Opposition leaders in Venezuela say the Chavez administration planted the Colombians and concocted the story to undermine their movement and to provide the government with justification for cracking down on political dissent...
...This was evident in the failed nationwide strike declared on May 3 by Jaime Solares, chairman of Bolivia's largest and oldest labor union, the Bolivian Workers' Confederation (COB...
...On April 16, Castafio was reportedly killed, along with seven of his personal guards, in an apparent shoot-out at an AUC camp, though reports of his death remain unconfirmed...
...Critics argue that the concentration zone negotiations will only increase the political clout of paramilitary leaders and will do little to reduce narcotrafficking and violence, particularly if the AUC leadership evades serious punishment for past crimes...
...If he doesn't want to nationalize the nation's hydrocarbons and doesn't want to comply with the mandate of the people, then he should go home," declared Solares in early May...
...Mesa and other status quo elements in Bolivia are now contending with an even weaker and more fractured opposition...
...MAS is considered Bolivia's first authentically leftist party to enjoy real electoral promise in decades, but MAS disillusioned many of its supporters in May when it openly sided with the Mesa administration...
...In El Alto, the rebellious city near La Paz that fronted last year's Gas War, the leading, but increasingly divided, local union, the Regional Workers' Confederation (COR), deliberated for weeks on whether to obey Solares' convocation...
Vol. 38 • July 2004 • No. 1
