La Paz Bolivia: "“Tomorrow, we will sack this place"

international | anti-capitalism | other press Wednesday June 08, 2005 09:39 by eeekkkk

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Are they afraid of the more than 100 blockades around the country. Because, for example... Santa Cruz is now living through its third day with all the highways connecting it to the rest of the world blockaded… the region’s peasant farmers and indigenous have not moved. In La Paz as well, the shortages are now obvious… since yesterday there is no bread being sold, no gasoline, no gas for cooking…

Or are Hormando Vaca Diez and the other politicians afraid of the groups fighting in the streets of La Paz? Today, one of the slogans was clear: “Send Vaca to the slaughterhouse!” (“Vaca” is Spanish for “cow.”)  The shouts of “die!” hurled against the Congress president (who seemed quite excited yesterday at the prospect of taking power) were no joke… the leader of the Movement of Unemployed Workers of La Paz, Jaime Alanoca, told us at the beginning of the day: “This is the big one…  we won’t allow Hormando to govern for even two hours.”

“Tomorrow, we will sack this place,” was one of the slogans heard among the Aymara… and, surely taking that as a warning, the police tried to disperse the people unsuccessfully. This, and, for example, the march of more than 20,000 people today in Cochabamba (which the local farmers, the same ones behind the “water war” of 2000) have also blockaded, is what Hormando Vaca Diez is afraid of: he knows that we are now in outright civil war, and that if he assumes the presidency, it could get worse.

The basic demands on the Bolivian state, which have caused it its worst crisis in two decades, have not changed… as the Aymara leader said, nationalization (and, for many, going ahead with a constitutional assembly) remain the most important.

A few blocks from where Carlos Mesa sits in turmoil, while the guillotine of fate falls on him, the demonstrators are regrouping, enduring the teargas, raising barricades, and nothing can stop them…

What is next? We don’t know, but in these moments we are heading towards the front lines of combat to find out what the people, fighting for democracy from below, have to say… prepare yourselves, readers, because the teargas can take your breath away…