Convenient Realities in Bolivia’s Blogs

We have gaso­line again in Cochabamba, but at a heavy price; the inter­na­tional lead­ers of South America agreed to allow the Media Luna to par­tic­i­pate in nego­ti­a­tions only on the con­di­tion that they remove all of their block­ades. The block­ades were the only peace­ful bar­gain­ing chip avail­able to the Media Luna, and block­ades were in extremely heavy use by MAS dur­ing the Gas Wars of 2004/5 and in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 2005. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Meanwhile, although the Media Luna has com­plied and ceased all block­ades, the MASistas have con­structed block­ades of their own. Classy.

Pando, the north­ern­most depart­ment of Bolivia of the Media Luna, has fallen mil­tar­ily and polit­i­cally. A major attack (by Bolivian stan­dards) occurred last week which resulted in a few dozen dead, more injured, and over one hun­dred miss­ing. The news out­lets here offer two polar accounts of what happened:

Pando Ambush Version #1:

The prefect/governor of Pando hired men to ambush a group of peace­fully marching/traveling campesinos and MASistas. The group was attacked and slaugh­tered in a massacre.

Pando Ambush Version #2:

Members of the prefect’s staff (plural?) were trav­el­ing when a group of armed MASistas and dis­guised Venezuelans ambushed and killed them. They then entered a non-MAS area and killed one of the lead­ers of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion. The town gath­ered its resources and went on the offen­sive against the invaders. The MASistas, et al., fled into the ter­rain and escaped.

Elements for Analysis:

• Naval mil­i­tary cre­den­tials were found on one of the bod­ies of the “campesinos”.
• Venezuelans were in the group campesinos and MASistas.
• Why would the pre­fect of Pando order an attack on a peace­ful group of pro­test­ers? What could he pos­si­bly gain by that when he had every­thing to lose?
• Earlier in the year a cable tele­vi­sion pub­lic build­ing was stormed and attacked by a group under the ban­ner of the Autonomy forces. The truth was soon revealed and hushed up — the “oppo­si­tion” attack­ers were actu­ally mem­bers of Evo’s pri­vate guard, incit­ing vio­lence and attempt­ing to make the oppo­si­tion look unruly and actively violent.

Edited for clar­ity and source pro­vi­sion. Two of the sources which I can track down sev­eral days later are: La Razon and El Deber. The prob­lem with trust­ing any of the papers, mind you, is that they’re biased. The chief source for ver­sion #1, for exam­ple, is Red Erbol. Everything else I have is either from TV I can’t prop­erly cite from mem­bory or hearsay from sources I mostly trust but on whom I couldn’t state their words as fact. What does seem clear is that both sides were involved, but we don’t really know who “started” it. Joy.

At the very least, indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions who value truth — regard­less of who turns out to be on top — should be pre­sent­ing and thor­oughly inves­ti­gat­ing both sides of this incident.

The Results of the Ambush Incident:

The pre­fect of Pando has been arrested and charged with geno­cide. The announce­ment has been made that he “will be given a trial in thirty years.” The inter­na­tional scene is only hear­ing Version #1. One of the the­o­ret­i­cal advan­tages of the blo­gos­phere and inde­pen­dent media is that a broader set of pos­si­bly truths can be pre­sented. The English-speaking blog­gers in Bolivia whose words are mon­i­tored by inter­na­tional news agen­cies, plus the A.P./Reuters set of reporters, appar­ently have no inter­est in objec­tive truth-seeking.

This week I’ve seen words like “racist”, “fas­cist”, “democ­racy”, and “geno­cide” tossed around to no end. Over the next cou­ple of days I will attempt to ana­lyze those words as they apply to this situation.

People need a real­ity check.