Militias in Bolivia Are Burning the Indigenous Flag in Public Plazas

[Judi Lynn]

Militias in Bolivia Are Burning the Indigenous Flag in Public Plazas



Supporters of Bolivian ex-President Evo Morales take part in a march outside the Congress in La Paz on November 12, 2019.
AIZAR RALDES / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY
Claudia Korol, Truthout
PUBLISHED
November 13, 2019

Editor’s Note: The interview below offers a feminist, anti-colonial perspective on the coup in Bolivia. Conducted by Claudia Korol, an Argentine feminist writer, the Q&A that follows presents the analysis of Bolivian feminist Adriana Guzman, an Indigenous Aymara activist. This interview originally appeared in Spanish in Pagina/12. Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle translated this interview into English for Truthout.


Adriana Guzmán is part of Feminismo Comunitario Antipatriarcal de Bolivia (Community of Anti-Patriarchal Feminism of Bolivia) and Feministas de Abya Yala (Feminists of Mother Earth). She joined the struggle in Bolivia along with other sisters during the Gas War of 2003, and says she learned in the streets what patriarchy is all about and why feminism is a key tool to create other ways of life.

Guzmán is currently resisting the advance of the militias who have delighted in burning the Indigenous wiphala flag in public plazas, a gesture of symbolic violence whose very mention is heartbreaking. In this interview, she describes the coup d’état and calls on others to confront it and support the resistance against it.

Claudia Korol: How would you characterize the coup d’état in Bolivia?

Adriana Guzmán: There is profound pain over the triumph of this civic, military, fundamentalist, corporate coup. The opposition’s mobilizations started following the October 20 elections and the claims of electoral fraud after Evo Morales received 10 percent more votes than the second-place candidate Carlos Mesa. There was discontent in some sectors of society over Evo’s re-election bid. We at [Feminismo Comunitario Antipatriarcal] are self-critical about that. We think that the re-election bid by Evo should have been reconsidered because of the importance of creating space for other leaders. But on the other hand, there were a ton of impositions by the other parties. For example, Carlos Mesa (who is genocidal and one of the actors responsible for the Gas Massacre of 2003) was running in the elections as a candidate. If someone who is genocidal can go to elections, why can’t another person run against him for a third time?

Adriana Guzmán: There is profound pain over the triumph of this civic, military, fundamentalist, corporate coup. The opposition’s mobilizations started following the October 20 elections and the claims of electoral fraud after Evo Morales received 10 percent more votes than the second-place candidate Carlos Mesa. There was discontent in some sectors of society over Evo’s re-election bid. We at [Feminismo Comunitario Antipatriarcal] are self-critical about that. We think that the re-election bid by Evo should have been reconsidered because of the importance of creating space for other leaders. But on the other hand, there were a ton of impositions by the other parties. For example, Carlos Mesa (who is genocidal and one of the actors responsible for the Gas Massacre of 2003) was running in the elections as a candidate. If someone who is genocidal can go to elections, why can’t another person run against him for a third time?

Who are the main players in the coup?

On the one hand there’s the opposition who in “democratic” terms would be the ones affected by the supposed fraud, led by Carlos Mesa. He was the vice president under [former president] Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and was jointly responsible for the Gas Massacre. He was the last person left for the political opposition to use, being an anachronistic opposition without proposals … left in shambles after these years of the process of change. Parties whose names don’t even exist anymore joined together and put up Carlos Mesa as their candidate. That is the “political opposition.” They are the votes against the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, the Movement toward Socialism).

More:
https://truthout.org/articles/militias-in-bolivia-are-burning-the-indigenous-flag-in-public-plazas/

Adding this paragraph, it's important:

The others are the fascist right-wing groups led by the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, with Luis Fernando Camacho as president. It’s a formation created by the business elite to make decisions together and create laws to defend their interests. The Civic Committee represents the business elite, the oligarchs, the landowners and the partners of transnational corporations in eastern Bolivia. Eastern Bolivia is controlled by the landowners whose lands were gifted to them during the years of dictatorship and who have subjugated the Indigenous peoples there — the migrants from La Paz and other states, the Aymara and Quechua migrants — to serve them, as their peons. That is the economic opposition that headed up this coup d’état. Luis Fernando Camacho is also linked to the drug trafficking cartels. He is the son of a paramilitary leader who had served the dictatorship. That is what the people leading this coup d’état represent.

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Judi Lynn.