Treating Bolivia as a Sovereign Partner
Burbach, Roger
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 report: u.s. policy Treating Bolivia as a Sovereign Partner The scene outside Santiago, Chile’s la Moneda in September, as an emergency meeting of unaSur took...
...war on drugs, steeped in violence, is destroying the social fabric of several countries— Colombia and Mexico in particular—and has not reduced the flow of cocaine into the United States...
...From 1998 to 2003, coca growers had access to USAID funding for alternative crops, but only after the complete eradication of their coca crop...
...More importantly, the war on drugs should not be used to penalize the Bolivian government because of its political differences with Washington...
...However, the insurgent prefects also had their mandates renewed...
...The day after Goldberg was expelled, the prefects’ rebellion began to unravel as they overplayed their hand with violent actions...
...policy Treating Bolivia as a Sovereign Partner The scene outside Santiago, Chile’s la Moneda in September, as an emergency meeting of unaSur took place to discuss the bolivian crisis...
...The “Declaration of la Moneda,” signed by all 12 unaSur governments, expressed their “full and decided support for the constitutional government of President evo Morales...
...The UNASUR declaration was instrumental in compelling the prefects of the Media Luna to call off their rebellion, accepting the Morales government’s call to open a dialogue over the new constitution and the issue of autonomy...
...available at mama radio.blogspot.com...
...President-Elect Barack Obama,” Santander de Quilichao, Cauca, Colombia, November 10, 2008...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 The Minga of Resistance 1. “An Open Letter From the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, ACIN, to U.S...
...9. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Collective Action, Social Movements and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1994...
...That is important...
...On October 5, the negotiations collapsed...
...Through Washington’s embassy and the Agency for International Development (USAID), the United States funded anti-Morales social movements, along with political forces that opposed Morales himself and his political party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS...
...He has written extensively on Latin America and U.S...
...See Douglas McLeod and Benjamin H. Detenber, “Framing Effects of Television News Coverage of Social Protest,” Journal of Communication 49, no...
...those who have advocated the corporate “comprehensive” bills have claimed that legalization for the undocumented was possible only if we agreed to move backward, transforming immigration policy into a much more overt labor-supply system...
...from the leaf for illegal export...
...2. Shira Gordon, “Bolivia: Beyond the Rhetoric,” Columbia Political Review 7, no...
...embassy and intelligence agencies in trying to destabilize the Bolivian government...
...and rejecting free trade treaties and structural adjustment policies that displace people and force them to leave home...
...2. We base our riot-suppression narrative on McLeod and Detenber’s “protest paradigm...
...Above all, a progressive U.S...
...administration needs to emphasize incentives and partnerships rather than sanctions...
...They instead formed parallel associations and demanded that farmers leave the unions...
...During his administration, Morales has encouraged and supported local industries that make coca leaves into teas, foods, and health products, while carrying on a campaign to destroy cocaine-processing labs.5 Agreements have been reached with small-scale growers in the coca regions of Chapare and Yungas that limit coca producers to about one third of an acre per family...
...On August 10, voters went to the polls and Morales won a resounding two thirds of the vote...
...lovato argues that the sole economic motivation of enforcement is giving fat contracts to administration cronies like Halliburton...
...As a re mental autonomy...
...embassy is historically used to calling the shots in Bolivia, violating our sovereignty, treating us like a banana republic...
...Ambassador Philip Goldberg flew to Santa Cruz on August 25 to meet with Rubén Costas, the prefect of Santa Cruz and the principal leader of the rebellion’s prefects and Morales’s main antagonist...
...3. LAPD report, 9, 50...
...Csn chapters develop a relationship with organized rural communities, which are pursuing nonviolent resistance in the countryside, through establishing peace communities, constitutional assemblies, or movimientos campesinos...
...policy strategy the United States employed to overthrow the government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973: diplomatic negotiations and destabilization...
...After Goldberg left, Costas declared himself the “autonomous governor” of the department and ordered the formal takeover of national government offices, including those collecting tax revenues...
...The “Declaration of La Moneda,” signed by all 12 UNASUR governments, expressed their “full and decided support for the constitutional government of President Evo Morales” and warned that their respective governments “will not recognize any situation that entails an attempt for a civil coup that ruptures the institutional order, or that compromises the territorial integrity of the Republic of Bolivia...
...Ambassador Philip Goldberg from Bolivia in September), added: “The U.S...
...4. Tony Phillips, “The Bolivian Crisis, the OAS, and UNASUR,” Americas Policy Program Discussion Paper, September 30, 2008, americas.irconline.org/am/5567...
...policy toward bolivia must confront three major thrusts of Washington’s current Latin America policy: (1) the war on drugs, which is linked to the global war on terror, (2) the effort to expand U.S...
...migration is a human right, but people should have alternatives for economic development that make migration voluntary, and not the sole means of survival...
...The events in El Porvenir precipitated a national mobilization of the indigenous peoples and social movements as well as a sense of outrage in neighboring countries...
...Morales cited Goldberg’s visit to Costas as the reason for declaring the U.S...
...line.3 The destabilization took the form of direct, covert assistance to the opposition movement centered in the Media Luna region, which comprises the country’s four eastern departments (states) dominated by agro-industrial interColombia Support Network About the Campaign: the Colombia support network is always seeking more involvement...
...MALA: Framing Peace as Violence 1. The full report, titled “An Examination of May Day 2007 MacArthur Park,” was issued in October 2007 and can be downloaded at lapd online.org/assets/pdf/final_report.pdf...
...Guzmán, who was expelled from Washington by the Bush administration (in retaliation for Morales’s expulsion of U.S...
...to justify this, these advocates (including many democrats) claim employers face vast labor shortages if they don’t get the labor they want at a price they want to pay...
...Second, a progressive U.S...
...Due to the entrenchment of the national security state under the Bush administration, of course, this will be a difficult task...
...The new U.S...
...1 (November 2007...
...assistance to Bolivia...
...Chilean president Michelle Bachelet called an emergency meet JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 report: u.s...
...for three years progressive immigrant rights activists have fought proposals in Congress that would eliminate those changes in immigration policy that were won in 1964–5 by the Chicano civil rights movement—establishing family reunification as the centerpiece for immigration policy, ending the bracero program, and moving away from contract labor...
...For more information and to get involved: Cecilia Zarate-laun, program director Colombia support network phone: (608) 257-8753...
...Treating Bolivia as a Sovereign Partner 1. Author interview, October 2008...
...In coming days, it will become clear what transpired...
...economic and corporate influence through free trade agreements, and (3) a determination to counteract the growing influence of leftist leaders and the social movements that are militating against neoliberalism and the historic U.S...
...Joining our delegations to Colombia...
...On September 11, in the department of Pando, a paramilitary band with machine guns attacked Indians from the community of El Porvenir near the capital of El Cobija, killing at least 13 people...
...ambassador in La Paz Manuel Rocha openly warned Bolivians to vote against him, saying that “if you elect those who want Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the future of U.S...
...Morales announced that he would go to Congress to get the date set for the public referendum on the new constitution...
...60, (May 2008): 27...
...Allow me to quote it here...
...2 After Morales’s inauguration, the Bush administration pursued a two-track policy similar to the Roger Burbach is the Director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA), based in Berkeley, California...
...it is not enough to criticize the repression of the raids while ignoring the broad program they are intended to advance, or alternatives to it...
...3 (1999): 3–23...
...Seven weeks later the U.S...
...there’s more to the war than that, and there’s more to immigration enforcement than contracts and the growth of a repressive bureaucracy...
...Beyond the Four Freedoms 1. See the group’s self-published document, “Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy,” available at cnas.org...
...if you feel a deep commitment toward Colombia and its tragedy, you can start a Csn chapter in your community...
...policy ing in Santiago of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to discuss the Bolivian crisis...
...33 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: u.s...
...3. Roger Burbach, “The Rise of Food Fascism: Allied to Global Agribusiness, Agrarian Elite Fomenting Coup in Bolivia,” Global Alternatives News, June 30, 2008, globalalternatives.org/node/87...
...policies and a challenge to see if the United States could bend itself to the new realities of Bolivia...
...The Confederation of Private Businesses of Bolivia called for a national producers’ shutdown if the government refused “to change its economic policies...
...Washington’s negotiations came to center almost exclusively on differences over drug policies, with the United States continually threatening to cut or curtail economic assistance and trade preferential programs if Bolivia did not closely follow the U.S...
...He never mentions the bills...
...UNASUR production that the Morales government is implementing in Bolivia...
...7. Ibid...
...Democracy Promotion’ in Bolivia,” Americas Policy Program column, October 31, 2008, americas.irconline.org/am/5638...
...These growers have collaborated with the government in eradicating plots that exceed this amount...
...Help us to grow this movement of grassroots solidarity with the people of Colombia...
...It must see to it that the United States no longer condition assistance by USAID on the prior eradication of coca plants...
...despite the regrettable error, the disagreement between lovato and Bacon—on how to interpret the immigrant deportation raids—stands...
...They proceeded to call for autonomy, moving first to take control of Santa Cruz, the richest department...
...we have sister community delegations and fact-finding delegations, which we have been making continually for the last 21 years...
...All three came into play when Evo Morales was inaugurated as Bolivia’s president in January 2006 and therafter pursued anti-neoliberal economic policies, a strengthening of South-South foreign relations, and a more nuanced approach to controlling the illicit drug trade...
...As Gustavo Guzmán, former Bolivian ambassador to the United States, put it in October: “Morales’s victory represented both a defeat of past U.S...
...AnA luCíA jiménez Hine by roger burbach A progressive u.s...
...what is disturbing about lovato’s misstatement of my work is that he uses it to dismiss the idea that the raids advance any political program beyond the growth of the enforcement bureaucracy itself...
...The failed U.S...
...this was wholly my own editing blunder, not lovato’s...
...Given this history, a progressive attempt to repair the situation should focus on the following: First, to overcome this hostile Washington environment and the Washington-generated misconceptions of the recent Bolivian events, it would be important for the new U.S...
...progressive immigrant-rights organizations and most of the labor movement today advocate alternatives that focus on ending employer sanctions, raids, and the criminalization of work and migration...
...policy would need to seriously consider adopting the model of controlling coca sult families with no other income went hungry before the new crops were funded and harvested, compelling many to replant coca.6 USAID refused to work directly with the coca growers union in the Chapare region, then headed by Morales...
...guaranteeing real legal status (permanent residence visas) for the undocumented...
...Until then there should be no rush to judgment.’ ” KNBC Channel 4 News at 5 p.m...
...Just before Morales’s inauguration in 2006, he declared “Yes to Coca, No to Cocaine,” making a distinction behind the widespread use of coca leaf as an integral part of indigenous culture, and cocaine, the highly processed drug that is produced appointed a commission to go to Bolivia “to accompany the legitimate government of Bolivia” to establish and clarify the facts of the El Porvenir massacre, and to facilitate a dialogue with the opposition to preserve national unity.5 Morales, who participated in the meeting, thanked UNA-SUR for its support, declaring: “For the first time in South America’s history, the countries of our region are deciding how to resolve our problems without the presence of the United States...
...5. Laura Carlsen, “The Failure of U.S...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 report: u.s...
...and KCBS 2 News at 5, both on May 2. 7. As in: “The president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League released this statement earlier today...
...history of trying to uproot all coca production in Bolivia...
...e-mail: csn@igc.org www.colombiasupport.net ests intent on capturing revenue from the hydrocarbon resources located in their departments...
...3. Council on Foreign Relations, “U.S.–Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality,” Independent Task Force Report no...
...we are already seeing the resurrection of the corporate “comprehensive reform” proposals...
...6. The Andean Information Network, “Bolivian Coca Growers Cut Ties With USAID,” June 27, 2008: available at ain-bolivia.org...
...that’s like saying the iraq war was fought to profit Halliburton...
...notes (continued from page 2) Bush is simply implementing that program on the ground...
...See also Kathryn Ledebur and Coletta A. Youngers, “ONDCP Reports No Increase in Coca Cultivation in Bolivia in 2006,” May 23, 2007: available at wola.org...
...6. KCAL 9 News at 4 p.m...
...But the discussion went nowhere, even though the government agreed to incorporate some limited constitutional amendments around departMorales declared: “for the first time in South america’s history, the countries of our region are deciding how to resolve our problems without the presence of the united States...
...this gives a free pass to the backers of the corporate reform of immigration policy, and drops out any connection to displacement caused by trade and economic policies abroad...
...1 In 2002, when Morales narrowly lost his first bid for the presidency, then U.S...
...Therefore, absent hearings by a congressional panel, it would behoove the progressive nonprofit organizations in Washington concerned with Latin American policy, along with interested academic groups, to come together and sponsor a set of public forums on what happened in Bolivia...
...The United States became directly involved in orchestrating this revolt of the wealthy...
...4 In August, Morales put his presidency on the line with a recall referendum in which his mandate as well as the mandates of the departmental prefects (state governors) of the Media Luna could be revoked...
...Efforts to curtail coca growing need to be done in cooperation with the coca farmers to prevent violence and human rights violations...
...lovato will reply in the next issue...
...2. See “Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of Colombia and the Region (A Center for Preventive Action Report)” (January 2004...
...KTTV-FOX Ten O’Clock News aired a similar report...
...As in Chile under Allende, the business elites and allied truckers engaged in “strikes,” withholding or refusing to ship produce to the urban markets in the western Andes, where the country’s indigenous population is concentrated, while selling commodities on the black market at high prices...
...The prefects also demanded that all the agrarian-reform clauses in the new constitution be eliminated, but in this case Morales, backed by MAS and the social movements, refused to back down...
...available at cfr.org...
...policy regime should simply recognize the outcomes of democratic elections...
...available at cfr.org...
...8. Hillel Nossek, Annabelle Sreberny, and Prasun Sonwalkar, “Introduction,” in Media and Political Violence (Hampton Press, 2007), 1–22...
...Our officer gave a legal dispersal order and were met with the violence...
...Drug Enforcement Agency was expelled from Bolivia as the government presented evidence of the agency’s involvement in supporting the rebellious departmental activities of August and September...
...David Bacon Berkeley, California Editor Pablo Morales replies: the sentence that Bacon quotes from lovato’s article does indeed misstate Bacon’s view, as expressed in the Dollars & Sense article that lovato cited (“the real political purpose of the iCe raids,” January/february 2007...
...This contrasts sharply with the U.S...
...You can help by: • Joining our urgent action lists to help with solidarity related to issues happening at the moment and also to receive our newsletter and editorial comments...
...expanding ways for people to come to the united states with rights (not as guest workers...
...ambassador persona non grata on September 10...
...foreign policy...
...the sentence should have read: “david Bacon posits that the crackdown is purposefully meant to trigger a political crisis that will pressure Congress to approve the migration policy the government has been pushing for all along: a temporary guest-worker program...
...The clash at MacArthur Park started when officers tried to disperse demonstrators that moved off the sidewalk into the street threw rocks and bottles at officers.’ They go to say: ‘The officers gave a legal dispersal order...
...4. See Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphoric Representations of Latinos in Contemporary Public Discourse (University of Texas, 2002), chapters 2 and 3. 5. These latter figures do not add up to the overall totals since we do not refer to so-called minor metaphors (which rarely occur) and metaphors that are neither violent nor peaceful...
...Congress to hold hearings on the role of the U.S...
...Community promoters were goaded into becoming informers, generating deep divisions and conflict, as the U.S.-funded special military units to carry out raids to uproot coca plants.7 The new administration needs to reverse course on the drug policies of the Bush administration...
...domination of the region...
Vol. 42 • January 2009 • No. 1
