Síla nenásilí

The Invisibles against US missile defense

Supporting Bolivia

The Bolivian people are preparing to decide whether to approve or reject their new Constitution through a referendum. This Constitution will protect human rights, freedom of individuals and deepen real democracy, establishing levels of participation and autonomy that reaches down to the municipalities and communities. This Constitution that recognises in its multi-nationality, the original peoples, discriminated and exploited for centuries and that, without eliminating private property, includes the right of the communities to a collective economy and to recover the sovereignty of the Nation over natural resources. This advanced Constitution that rejects War as a method of conflict resolution – A Humanist Constitution.

It has been an admirable process that Evo Morales has lead with intelligence and courage, confronting the violence of economic power with the methodology of nonviolence.

Nevertheless, radical right-wing groups are forcing things in order to provoke a division of the country. They want to achieve their objectives with bad faith, circumventing democracy and legal process and with total irresponsibility towards the lives of their fellow countrymen. Their objectives are to recover their privileges and appropriate resources that are for all. They call Autonomy what in reality is secession, a separation of the Nation. Separation that of course will leave them with control of the riches and the population abandoned.

Latin American Governments showed great stature in resolving the recent conflict between Ecuador and Colombia and latterly in prioritizing the democracy of each country when it has been in danger. It is necessary that they pronounce once more in support of Evo Morales and the referendum on the New Constitution.

It is important to make the Bolivian people feel that their Latin American brothers and sisters and people around the world are supporting them and that we will not accept fragmentation of the Bolivian State.

The people must proclaim to the four winds that it is no longer possible that someone comes along and subjects them to massacres, because there is a Latin American and Global community that will not allow it. They will not accept that, with interventionist pretexts, like those used in Iraq and in so many other places, democracy is interrupted when it is no longer convenient to the interests of the powerful.

The United States has to understand that Latin America will no longer be a mere object of greed for their businesses and their geopolitical convenience. They must comprehend that our peoples must be treated with respect, valuing the life of every person, because everyone is important.

The response that populations and governments give to the people of Bolivia is very important. If secession is a valid path, soon violent economic groups that do not like the limits imposed by the State will resort to this mechanism to disintegrate nations. It is not indifferent what happens in Bolivia as other liberation processes set in motion in the region will also be affected by the results.

Humanists of the world, in solidarity with the Bolivian people, call on the international community to make statements and other actions to influence those leaders who defend division to renounce their seditious objectives and to sit down and dialogue, taking the process along the path of unity and peace within a legal framework.

We request your support for the Bolivian Government and its president Evo Morales and we ask that you refuse to recognise any referendum that puts Bolivian unity in danger.

Tomás Hirsch
Spokesperson for Humanism in Latin America

Giorgio Schultze
Spokesperson for New Humanism in Europe

3rd April, 2008