Morales rallies disrupted ahead of Bolivia recall

[underpants]

Source: Reuters


TRINIDAD, Bolivia, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Anti-government protesters on Wednesday mounted roadblocks and surrounded an airport, forcing Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales to abandon rallies days before a recall vote.

Morales is at loggerheads with right-wing opposition provincial governors who are pushing for autonomy and blocking reforms he says will help the poor.

He and eight of Bolivia's nine provincial governors face the recall vote on Sunday, which he ordered hoping to undermine his opponents.

Morales is betting a victory will relaunch his nationalization and land redistribution policies and pave the way for a new constitution to empower Bolivian Indians.







Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0627910720080807

---

Edward Bernays-Guatemala in the mid50's (as well as other examples)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays


Overthrow of government of Guatemala
Bernay's most extreme political propaganda activities were said to be conducted on behalf of the multinational corporation United Fruit Company (today's Chiquita Brands International) and the U.S. government to facilitate the successful overthrow (see Operation PBSUCCESS) of the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Bernays' propaganda (documented in the BBC documentary, The Century of the Self), branding Arbenz as communist, was published in major U.S. media. According to a book review by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of Larry Tye's biography, "The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PR,"

"the term 'banana republic' actually originated in reference to United Fruit's domination of corrupt governments in Guatemala and other Central American countries. The company brutally exploited virtual slave labor in order to produce cheap bananas for the lucrative U.S. market."
Chilean poet Pablo Neruda would later denounce the dominance of foreign-owned banana producers in the politics of several Latin American countries in a poem titled "La United Fruit Co."


SEE ALSO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kp24ZeHtv4

[RethugAssKicker]

1. Its a shame what the RW colonial/imperialists are trying

to do down there. They'd rather break the country apart than share power with the indigenous people.

[David__77]

2. They need a popular militia to deal with this.

Arm the peasants and working people to seize control of the situation on the ground. Institute capital controls to prevent capital flight, arrest and try the main fascist ringleaders, show no mercy to those disturbing the public order, and let the rats flee to Miami.

[underpants]

3. Arm the peasants

I agree but pretty much across the board people in power get nervous when they hear things like "Arm the peasants "

:scared:

They didn't come up with the WTO for nothing you know

[struggle4progress]

4. Bolivia: Summit Cancelled Due to Social Unrest (Upside Down World)

Written by Franz Chávez
Thursday, 07 August 2008

(IPS) - A meeting between Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Cristina Fernández of Argentina and Evo Morales of Bolivia was called off because of violent protests by anti-government demonstrators in the southern city of Tarija, while clashes between miners and the police left two dead and 30 injured in the western province of Oruro.

The presidents had planned to sign energy integration agreements and launch a project for the construction of a natural gas separation plant in Tarija, a province with a strong right-wing opposition movement pushing for regional autonomy.

The ceremony was also to include the delivery of housing to poor families, built with financial support from the Venezuelan government.

Tension is running high in the last week before the Aug. 10 recall referendum that will decide the fate of Morales, his vice president and eight of the country’s nine provincial governors ...

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1410/68/

[struggle4progress]

5. Clashes in Bolivia halt talks before Morales referendum (Guardian)

Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
The Guardian,
Thursday August 7 2008

... Demonstrators hostile to the president besieged an airport and clashed with police in Tarija, in southern Bolivia, forcing authorities on Tuesday to abandon a summit between Morales and his South American allies. The clashes underlined combustible tensions on the eve of Sunday's referendum, which will ask voters whether Morales and provincial governors should stay in power.

The Andean nation's first indigenous president hopes the vote will shore up his leadership and revive a faltering effort to "refound" Bolivia as a socialist state that champions the rights of the long-neglected indigenous majority ...

Opposition activists tried to storm Tarija airport as it prepared to receive Morales' regional allies, Argentina's president, Cristina Kirchner, and the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez ...

As the crowd clashed with riot police, who used tear gas to regain control, a decision was made to cancel the meeting to avoid further inflaming the situation ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/07/bolivia

[struggle4progress]

6. Bolivia Denounces New Anti-Recall-Vote Actions

La Paz, Aug 6 (Prensa Latina) The Bolivian government denounced on Wednesday new opposition maneuvers to hinder the recall vote scheduled for Sunday, including occupation of the departmental electoral court buildings.

Presidential spokesman Ivan Canelas told Prensa Latina those plans are based on actions by violent groups, protected by regional authorities opposed to the process of changes boosted by President Evo Morales.

The right, desperate, expects that stopping the August 10 recall vote, it will be able to reach power, a strategy devoted to failure, he stated. Canelas also criticized the position by leaders of the COB (Bolivian Central Union), who are promoting mobilizations to demand a new pension law, which is under debate in Congress ...

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BB8D0081F-EED5-44D8-A4FE-FFDCB7CFE8D0%7D)&language=EN

[struggle4progress]

7. Bolivian president urges citizens to vote in recall referendum

LIMA, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales Wednesday urged citizens to vote in the recall referendum on Aug. 10 and called on the opposition to respect the result, according to reports reaching here from La Paz, the administrative capital of Bolivia.

The recall referendum is to decide whether President Morales, Vice President Alvaro Garcia and eight of the nine regional governors should stay in office ...

Some opposition groups requested the referendum and the government accepted it, Morales told thousands of people at the Murillo square in La Paz.

The opposition Democratic National Council (Conalde) has been challenging the referendum, raising legal questions including possible fraud and problems with an electoral census ...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/07/content_9014166.htm

[struggle4progress]

8. Morales Says He `Doesn't Fear' Results of Recall Referendum

By Bill Faries

Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales said he ``doesn't fear'' the results of an Aug. 10 recall referendum facing his administration and eight regional governors.

Morales, speaking in La Paz on Bolivia's independence day, said opposition groups have used a series of autonomy votes this year to seek ``independence'' from the central government ...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aTL0HdyfWH3U&refer=latin_america

[Joanne98]

9. Is the racist right going to make the brown people strip again?

There's needs to be a global attack on the right-wing in Bolivia. These people are beyond disgusting.

[struggle4progress]

10. Bolivian Perspectives: Two Views from Sucre

... Democracy Center Interview with Ronald B. Céspedes, Executive Secretary of DIVERSENCIA ...

... Prefect <(the title for departmental, or regional, governors in Bolivia)> Cuellar is erasing all the vestiges of MAS within the prefecture of Chuquisaca. I know about real cases of people who testify that the Prefect tells them, “You can keep working <here> only by renouncing MAS <affiliation>.” Some continue because they need the work or because simply, their political convictions are not very important to them.

The fight that exists between Prefect Cuellar and the Federation of Campesinos of Chuquisaca is well-known. One example of it is Sabina Cuellar’s choosing of subprefects without the consent or consensus of the rural areas. <Prefect Cuellar won elections in only one of the ten provinces of Chuquisaca. In the other nine provinces where MAS won, the campesinos have named subprefects, invoking indigenous autonomy. This has brought conflicts with Prefect Cuellar, since by law, only the Prefect has the authority to name subprefects.>

Now, the Prefect says that she will not be responsible for the arrival of the President in Sucre. <Evo Morales, in fact, will not be going to Sucre to celebrate Bolivia’s Independence Day, August 6.> Behind that I think there is an intimidating attitude, I say again, to attack the presence of President Evo Morales in Sucre.

That is worrisome because we hope that there will not be another May 24, because it would be much more aggressive. Sadly the Falange is growing. <The Socialist Bolivian Falange is the extreme right in Bolivia. It had disappeared for the last decade but has revived since the blatant racist acts in Sucre on May 24 and in late 2007.> Little by little they recruit people… and they have made themselves into a group for conflict for the Prefect and Interinstitutional Committee ...

http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2008/08/bolivian-perspectives-two-views-from.html

<edit: smilies off>

[BrotherBuzz]

11. Do these provincial governors understand....

that the possibility of their disappearing during the quiet of the night could become a reality.

The Times They Are a-Changin'

[struggle4progress]

13. Really? Who's suggesting that disappearances would be a good thing?

[BrotherBuzz]

14. Not suggesting anything beyond the fact that it's no longer business as usual

Some people would do well to keep their ears to the ground.

[struggle4progress]

12. Morales calls for Bolivian unity

... The head of the Organisation of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, has said he is "deeply concerned" about the political violence and has appealed to all sides to allow Sunday's recall referendum to go ahead peacefully ...

Amid security concerns, Mr Morales was forced to hold Wednesday's independence day celebrations in his power base of La Paz rather than the opposition-run city of Sucre ...

Under the rules decided by the National Electoral Court, President Morales and Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera will lose their mandate if more than 53.7% of voters support their removal ...

The regional governors need more than 50% of the votes to remain in office ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7546753.stm