Santa Cruz 1, Mesa 0

11.13.2004

After a paro that paralyzed the city of Santa Cruz, turning the 1.4 million metropolis into a virtual ghost town, Bolivia will have a national referendum on regional autonomies. President Mesa said so. After months of back-and-forth between leaders of the comités cívicos from Santa Cruz, Tarija, and other eastern departments vs. the central government, there's finally going to be a referendum. It's currently planned for April 2005.

The Comité Cívico de Santa Cruz demanded a December referendum, but was told it'd have to wait until April, following a formal announcement in January. That would ensure the 90-day campaign period. Nation-wide municipal elections are already scheduled for December.

This is perhaps the last major fallout of the 2003 October "guerra del gas" that overthrew Goni. The October protests, centered around La Paz & the altiplano, demanded radical changes to the economic policies, and a halt to natural gas exports. In response, the gas-rich departments of the eastern lowlands (mainly Santa Cruz & Tarija) re-launched their historical demands for political autonomy. The eastern provinces are also doing better economically than the western altiplano. Thus, the ethnic, economic, and ideological cleavages overlap & enforce each other. Dangerous.

If you want more coverage on this, Eduardo Avila has more here.

My personal opinion? I think regional political autonomies are about the only reasonable solution left, if Bolivia's will continue to exist as a nation-state. The internal divisions in the country are too strong, and unable to oppose the mounting pressure for democratic decentralization. And since I support democratic decentralism, I support movements to increase the rights of local communities to order their own futures. Overly-centralized states are no longer viable in the 21st century.

Posted by Miguel at 06:04 PM

Comments

Few days before the general strike in Sta. Cruz, there were polls which said, the campesinos and general population were not in favor (overwhelmingly) of this strike.

Next thing we know, the paro is a total success.

How much of this success is the doing of the comite pro-Sta. Cruz and its Juventud Crucenista and how much of it is real support for the movement?

Posted by: MB at November 17, 2004 10:00 AM

By the paro being a "success", I only meant that it managed to shut down the entire city (if not also the department). Despite their frequency, paros in La Paz & El Alto rarely have that much sheer power. Of course, measuring popular support — much less, legitimacy — from such actions is extremely problematic. And one wonders how much support the civic "leaders" actually have.

But political mobilization through threats of violence, unfortunately, aren't rare or limited to Santa Cruz. Same for other means of coersion. How many people in the Altiplano or urban paceńos really want to partcipate in pro MAS or MIP or COB rallies — and how many are forced to by threats of kerosene, dynamite, etc — we'll probably never know.

All that really matters in this context (or at least what matters most) is that the Comite Cívico is able to mobilize such effective opposition to the central state's political authority.

Posted by: Miguel [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 17, 2004 07:58 PM

Yes, that is exactly my question. How were they able to bring out so much support, when earlier polls were showing so little.

Something doesn't add up there. Either those pollsters are doing a really bad job and are asking the wrong people, or the people who they asked were plainly lying.

Posted by: MB at November 18, 2004 05:22 PM