> Wikileaks Cable Lays Bare Washington's Stance Toward Bolivia
Dear Relatives,
We have known for many years this is only the tip of the ice berg! We very clearly warned of these kinds of actions by the USA and their potential results in The Fourth Way! There is more to share in the next few days that will make Iraq and Afganistan look like a very “minor conflict” compared to what is unfolding in this Hemisphere if the USA and their allies don’t have a major wake-up call and turn to Indigenous Peoples for guidance!
Indigenous Peoples and their allies are not going to allow “Manifest Destiny” to occur again! We have a collective choice! The Fourth Way or deeping conflict! There is more to follow to fully support these words of heart-felt compassion and experience.
Warm Love and Greetings,
Brother Phil
Wikileaks Cable Lays Bare Washington’s Stance Toward Bolivia
The Ambassador Has No Clothes
By BENJAMIN DANGL
A
classified cable from the US embassy in La Paz, Bolivia released by
WikiLeaks lays bare an embassy that is biased against the Evo Morales
government, underestimates the sophistication of the governing party’s
grassroots base, and out of touch with the political reality of the
country.
The recently released January 23, 2009 cable, entitled “Bolivia’s
Referendum: Margin of Victory Matters,” analyzes the political
landscape of the country in the lead up to the January 2009 referendum
on the country’s new constitution, and was sent to all US embassies in
South America and various offices in Washington.
In 2006, the leftist union leader and politician Evo Morales was
inaugurated as Bolivia’s first indigenous president.
Since his election he and members of his party, the Movement Toward
Socialism (MAS), have partially nationalized gas reserves, enacted
land reform and convoked an assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution.
Following years of debates among assembly members, this constitution
was passed in a national referendum on January 25, 2009.
The US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks that was written during
the politically-charged days leading up to this vote shows a
mischaracterization on the part of embassy officials of the MAS
government and its supporters.
The cable cites Bolivian newspaper reports that many community
leaders and their supporters in the Altiplano, the high plains of
western Bolivia, where much of the MAS support lies, had not even read
the constitution, and instead would simply “take their marching orders
from the MAS, and vote for the constitution.” Many had not read the
document out of, according to the US embassy, “disinterest, blind
faith in Evo Morales’ political project, and illiteracy.” The cable
describes one meeting between members of the US embassy and Bolivian
political officials who “lamented the way the MAS had ‘cheated’ and
‘fooled’ campesinos into believing Morales was himself truly
indigenous or cared about indigenous issues.” The officials said the
MAS popularity was due to “‘vertical control’ in the countryside…”
These are all inaccurate portrayals of the dynamics of the MAS party
and its grassroots base. Support for the constitution and the MAS did
not simply grow out of illiteracy, disinterestedness, blind faith or
the vertical control of the MAS over its members, as embassy officials
would have those reading of this cable believe.
While many social sectors in Bolivia had serious critiques of the
new constitution, the writing and passage of it was largely the result
of years of discussions and consultations with constituents. The
political consciousness among the MAS party base, both rural and
urban, is highly sophisticated and has benefited from years of social
mobilizations and a first hand understanding of the needs of the
impoverished majority of the country. People support the MAS because
the party speaks to those needs, has opened up political participation
to marginalized sectors of society, and has developed a political
project that seeks to empower disenfranchised and indigenous
communities.
Such democratic tendencies challenge the economic interests and
political power of Washington and the Bolivian right. It is telling,
therefore, that many of the sources the US embassy drew from in this
cable are members of the Bolivian right and critics of Morales.
For example, in the cable, the embassy officials cite Bolivia’s
Santa Cruz Civic Committee as a source on the supposed electoral fraud
of the MAS. Since Morales’ election, this Civic Committee has risen to
notoriety as a fierce critic of the MAS government, and is tied to
Bolivian business elites, racist youth groups, and acts of violent
repression against indigenous activists and MAS supporters.
According to the released cable, US embassy officials were told by
members of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee that they did not trust
international electoral observers – including those from the
Organization of American States, the Carter Center, the United Nations
and the European Union – because they had “blessed” a August
2008 recall vote which empowered Morales with over 60% of the vote.
Therefore, members of the Civic Committee did “not expect an honest
review of the constitutional referendum” in January of 2009.
These views are illustrative for a couple of reasons. For one thing,
the US embassy, in this diplomatic primer on one of the most important
votes of the decade in Bolivia, emphasized electoral fraud on the part
of the MAS where leading international observers saw none. Secondly,
it looked to the Civic Committee, an organization that is totally
unrepresentative of the views of the majority of the population, as a
source on the topic.
Such misdirection and detachedness from Bolivia’s political reality
was also demonstrated in a section of the cable which described a
conflict in the department of Pando, Bolivia in September of 2008.
Here, the embassy shares the views of an unnamed source:
“In a conversation with PolOff, xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx alleged
the MAS deliberately fomented unrest in Pando in September to justify
a military siege, depose Prefect Leopoldo Fernandez, and arrest
opposition-aligned leaders to swing the balance of power to the MAS in
the Senate. Besides disabling the opposition’s ability to campaign by
arresting many of its leaders,xxxxxxxxxxxx alleged the government
crackdown changed Pando’s electoral map by causing hundreds of
opposition voters to flee to Brazil while importing 2,000 new security
forces, which xxxxxxxxxxxx claimed were likely MAS voters from the
Altiplano (Reftel B).”
This is an egregiously inaccurate portrayal of events. In September
of 2008, in what Morales called a civic coup attempt, right forces in
the country mobilized against the MAS government, ransacking human
rights offices, attacking indigenous people and MAS supporters, and
destabilizing the country. The most violent manifestation of this
uprising occurred in Pando, where paramilitaries hired by Pando
Prefect Leopoldo Fernandez fired on unarmed campesinos marching in
support of the MAS. Following this upheaval, the US ambassador to
Bolivia was kicked out of the country by Morales for “conspiring
against democracy” and funding right wing opposition groups in
Bolivia.
This cable provides useful insights into the inner workings of
Washington’s diplomacy toward Bolivia, and will hopefully be one among
many more such cables that become available to the public, thus
spreading awareness about the true tactics of Washington in
international relations. These revelations have contributed an already
extensive lack of trust among citizens around the world toward the US
government.
According to Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera, this lack
of trust toward Washington won’t be erased by castigating those who
downloaded and leaked the documents. It will only be erased, said
Linera, through “a change of attitude on the part of the North
American government.”
Benjamin Dangl is currently based in Paraguay and is the author of
“The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia” (AK
Press) and the forthcoming books: Dancing with Dynamite: Social
Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press) and, with co-author
Chris O’Brien, Bottoms Up: A People’s Guide to Beer (PM Press).Email:
Bendangl(at)gmail(dot)com.