Massacre of 30 campesinos by "civicos" in Pando, Bolivia

Biceca.org

In the worst violent act in the history of Bolivia's democracy, a campaign by opposition Prefects in Bolivia seeking to destabilize the MAS government, took the lives of as many as 30 people, and wounded dozens more, in the Amazonian province of Pando. Most regional governments expressed condemnation, while the United States remained silent.

As United States officials complain about the expulsion of one of more incompematent ambassadors in the region, Latin American presidents are meeting in Chile on Monday to find a more meaningful response to the crisis in Bolivia -- what some are now referring to as the most significant attack on democracy in the region since the U.S. sponsored coup of Salvador Allende 35 years ago.

On Sept 11, the anniversary of Allende's murder, at least 30 people were killed and as many as 100 were injured, when paramilitaries with the Civic Committee attacked a peaceful gathering of farmers on their way to an Assembly in the town of Porvenir. The attackers were reportedly trained and financed by the Prefect of the Bolivian department of Pando, Leopoldo Fernandez.

According to witnesses, which occurred at 3:00 am near the town of Tres Barracas, the unarmed victims were gunned down by machine gun fire from attackers perched in trees, who then pursued victims on foot. A total of 17 deaths, among them women and children, have been confirmed, but local authorities expect the toll to rise above 30. Some of the wounded were pursued to a nearby hospital, where they were subsequently killed. Others escaped into the nearby forest or crossed into Brazil, but are in danger due to lack of medical attention or continued attacks.

The Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, whose organizational members have led the campaign to block the Brazilian Madeira hydroelectric dams (San Antonio and Jirau) from impacting Bolivian territory, denounced the disappearance of more than 50 members and 26 wounded by gunfire. Many other people are unaccounted for.

Some 15 persons were captured by the attackers and turned over to the police in Cobija as if they were the criminals. At least 40 armed employees of Prefect Fernandez held the 15 as hostages before fleeing in anticipation of the Bolivian security forces.

For over a day after the attacks were first reported, neither the Bolivian government nor the Red Cross was able to respond to the emergency. Late Friday evening, the government declared a state of siege and sent forces to secure the capital city of Cobija. Two people were killed in the government's pacification of the airport. The municipality of Filadelfia was reportedly burned by assailants on Sunday.

The government announced that judicial processes were underway to detain Prefect Fernandez as the intellectual author of the Tres Barracas massacre, although his whereabouts were not known.

Land inequality: Backdrop to the political crisis

A press statement released Friday by Amnesty International stated, “the escalation of violence in the area known as the half moon (“media luna”) departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Chiquisaca, Beni and Pando over recent days gives serious cause for concern for the situation of human rights in the country. Violence has flared up at several stages of a process to reform the constitution that began in 2006, as regional sensibilities around the issue of autonomy have led to polarization in responses. Discrimination and racism against the indigenous population of Bolivia has been an underlying feature of these tensions."

The Tres Barracas massacre is the latest in a long string of violent provocations carried out by organized youth gangs in conjunction with the “media luna” departmental governors and other opposition leaders from the departments that have opposed the MAS government despite a recent referendum that endorsed the ruling party with 67% of the vote. Recent violence includes sabotage of a natural gas pipeline, vandalizing government offices, and threats to cut off natural gas exports to neighboring Brazil and Argentina.

Groups of vigilantes in Santa Cruz, including the Union Juvenil Crucenista, have targeted media outlets and NGOs, in particular those working with indigenous communities in defense of their human rights. One NGO, Centro de Estudios Jurídicos e Investigación Social (CEJIS), has been the subject of 15 attacks over the past five years, culminating with the storming of their office on 9 September, leaving many wounded. Another, Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia (CIDOB), was attacked and the organization’s members were beaten. Both organizations are at the forefront of the government's land redistribution program.

Government officials estimate that a few thousand large landholders control at least 60-70% of the potentially productive land in the east, while only 5-10% of the agricultural land is in the hands of hundreds of thousands of largely indigenous farmers. The new proposed Constitution for which elections are planned in early December, sets limits on landholdings at either 5,000 or 10,000 hectares.  

Leopoldo Fernandez has enriched himself as a client of Bolivia's largest landholders, at the same time doing very little to reduce poverty in the province despite rising to become one of Pando's most senior politicians since the dictatorship of Hugo Banzer. Fernandez was an official with the dictatorship of Banzer (1971-78), and Garcia-Meza (1980-81) under whom it is believed that Fernandez acquired land illegally. He later served as the head of the national land reform agency (INRA) in Pando, as well as Parliamentarian, Minister of Goverment and Prefect under the government of Hugo Banzar-Jorge Quiroga (1997-2002). His businesses include Brazil nut and cattle production, with a declared wealth of over $US 1.4 million. (see Fernandez: Butcher of Porvenir). 

Descendant of the rubber bosses that enslaved the indigenous population of the Bolivian Amazon since the 19th century, Fernandez is closely associated with some of the largest loggers and sawmill operators in the Amazon (Brazilian and Bolivian), including several of the largest landowning families: Sonnenschein (21.773 hectáreas), Hecker (12.498 ha), Vaca Roca (1,000 ha), Vargas Rivera (4.890 ha), Peñaranda (4.167 ha), Barbery Paz (14.820), all of whom received land during the Agrarian Reform. (La Prensa, 12.3.07).

Former Minister of Government, Alicia Muñoz, denounced Fernandez' training of paramilitaries in Cobija in 2006. After UN Senator Abraham Cuellar voted to support the President's Land Reform bill (Ley de Reconducción Comunitaria de la Reforma Agraria), Fernandez sent thugs to burn down Cuellar's house.

Pando: Facade of the Autonomy Movement

The media has presented the Tres Barracas massacre as an episode of "tit for tat" armed confrontations within a larger constructed narrative that places equal blame for the spiral of violence on both the MAS and the media luna. This is not only false, but more importantly a strategic component of a pattern of mainstream media coverage in Bolivia that presents Bolivia as "a country equally divided". In fact, the recent referendum proved that President Evo Morales enjoys popular support in six of the nine departments and won a majority of the votes in 95 of the 112 electoral districts that make up the country. Two out of every three Bolivians voted for him to continue as their President. The autonomy or separatist movement support is limited to parts of the cities of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Sucre and Trinidad and small rural segments of those same departments.

Increasingly stripped of the perception of legitimacy conferred to claims of autonomy prior to the disastrous vote on Aug. 10, the Prefects have attempted to foment provocations in the form of mob violence against the police, organizations associated with the government, and public institutions. The objective is to trigger a violent government response to create fear and sympathy for the apparent victims. Efforts by media luna leaders to draw parallels to the 60 deaths in El Alto (Oct 2003) perpetrated by Sanchez de Lozada have been frequent but ungrounded.

The hypocrisy of the media luna strategy exposed by the Tres Barracas massacre was not only inevitable, but now the cover up has become the primary cause of Bolivia's mainstream press. Consider the fragility of the political situation in Pando after the August referendum. Of the mere 26,400 people that voted in Pando (compared to 1 million in La Paz alone), Fernandez won 56.2% of the vote in the August 10 Referendum, up from the rather shaky 48% he received in 2005. However, 52.5% of Pando voters endorsed the Presidency of Evo Morales, up from a mere 21% in 2005. The tremendous momentum in Pando (over 30% increase in the share of the overall vote) predicts that Fernandez days are numbered. Similar, although relatively smaller gains were made by Morales in other opposition departments.

Branco Marinkovic, the president of the Comite Pro-Santa Cruz, has been the only leader of the media luna to publicly defend Fernandez. Marinkovic's defense of Fernandez is understandable if we see that the conflict in Pando and most of separatist provinces are at their root land conflicts, in part because so many of the lowland political elite, such as Marinkovic and Fernandez, appear to have benefited from corrupt land grants and fraudulent purchases of land.

Marinkovic is a businessman of Croatian descent, the owner of a major cooking oil factory, and a director of the Banco Económico. Marinkovic has claimed parcels of land totaling 27,000 hectares within the indigenous territory of the Guarayo people. The government says that the land was purchased in an illegal transaction and that until recently Marinkovic only farmed a few hundred hectares and grazed 40 head of adult cattle.  Marinkovic and other Santa Cruz landed elites have repeatedly used violence to block government efforts to assess the social and productive use of large holdings to in turn determine if the lands should be redistributed as required under the law.

Political Reactions Highlight the Gap between North and South

The Bolivian government has called for dialogue, but until the astonishingly violent acts carried out by paramilitaries in Pando, the media luna leaders have shunned formal negotiations. The tension in Bolivia was exacerbated earlier this week, when Bolivia expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg after accusing him of contributing to divisions in the country.

"We don't want people who are separatists, who foment divisions, who conspire against unity," President Morales said, referring to Goldberg.

Goldberg has demonstrated a consistent lack of competence as a diplomat, frequently provoking the Morales government, as with open meetings last week with opposition prefects that were presiding over violent attacks on public institutions and civil society organizations. Goldberg was informed of his "persona non grata" status and forced to leave. In retaliation, Bolivian Ambassador to the U.S., Gustavo Guzman, was also kicked out.

Venezuela also expelled its U.S. Ambassador and Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has postponed the reception of credentials of the new U.S. ambassador to show solidarity with Bolivia.

"We believe that ... in the defense of the principles of solidarity of countries, we should be supportive with Bolivia's current problem and present a protest voice to the nations of the world," Zelaya told a news conference.

Statements by U.S. Congressional Representatives Dan Burton and Elliot Engels have severely criticized the Bolivian government for the expulsion of Ambassador Goldberg, but overlooking his provocative acts that are widely perceived to be associated with support of media luna leaders. Whether Goldberg conspired with destabilizing actions is unclear. However, the incendiary reactions provoked by his obvious lack of diplomatic sensitivity during a long string of unilateral meetings with opposition officials is probably enough reason for the government's decision. Social movements in support of the government have demanded a harder line by the government, calling for the resignation and prosecution of Fernandez and a deadline for opposition leaders to negotiate. 

In contrast to the somewhat obtuse statements from U.S. officials, regional governments such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela, the Community of Andean Nations and MERCOSUR have all condemned the violence, and underscored provocative role of the Media Luna Prefects. UNASUR will convene an emergency meeting for Monday to discuss the crisis and how best to support the Morales government.

However, beyond rhetorical gestures of support, UNASUR perhaps now faces its first true test as an alternative deliberative space for addressing the roots of South America's challenges that largely revolve around the privileges of economic elites. The crisis draws into sharper relief the contrast in diplomatic and development strategies of Brazil and Venezuela vis-a-vis the United States as well as the more ambitious calls for change from the region's population. After months of enjoying positive news coverage and on the heels of an announced increase in economic growth, President Lula da Silva will again be entangled in the more complicated internal and external threats to sovereignty of Bolivia (and the growing regional power of Brazil).

Indicative of these internal contradictions, the government of Brazil, in particular, has given mixed responses to the crisis. The Cochabamba based Democracy Center notes that a Brazilian newspaper, Correio Braziliense published a report that that the Brazilian government is preparing an evacuation plan for its citizens in the embattled regions of Bolivia. The Brazilian government has also called on its citizens visiting Bolivia as tourists to leave and for those planning to go to cancel their visits. Many in the Bolivan lowlands associate Brazil with the impunity exercised by provincial authorities due to the widespread presence of Brazilian landowners and loggers. The government reported that the assassins included Brazilians associated with criminal trafficking syndicates in Brazil and escaped to that country. 

On Friday a statement by Brazilian Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, suggested that if Bolivian gas exports were not stabilized to Brazil (a country that depends on Bolivia for 50% of gas imports), the government might be forced to negotiate with media luna prefects. Energy Ministry, Edison Lobao, argued that the instability in Bolivia was ever more a pretext for accelerating plans in Brazil to build 50 nuclear power plants in the future. How these statements by senior government officials lend support to a struggling ally is not at all clear.

Reportedly allied with Brazilian illicit economic interests, Fernandez represents a poster child for the wrong type of regional integration that initiatives such as Initiative for Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) have only strengthened, rather than replaced. After eight years of road building to promote regional integration and in turn the development of isolated populations, the Tres Barracas massacre only punctuates the failure of IIRSA to address the real obstacles of development in lawless, frontier regions where caudillos such as Leopoldo Fernandez and weak government presence conspire to perpetuate enclaves of poverty and injustice. One wonders whether the new highways, financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF), under construction in Pando and planned to link the region with distant markets (Corredor Norte) will derail or continue this perverse trend.

Bolivia continues to represent a test for the direction of Latin America for both the United States and UNASUR.