Bolivia, March 2008
Senator Gastón Cornejo Bascopé

Dear Juanita Pérez Montero of the Global Humanist Movement.
I send a warm hug.

I’m writing to you some of the broad details about the present delicate moment.

  I don’t know if I will be able to send you the power point file of my conference, the one I will prepare for a seminar on Latin-American Integration organised by the Andean Parliament in Cochabamba, a work that contains a good part of the response that you are requesting.  I will try to send it in spite of it being very large due to the images that it contains, maybe it won’t arrive in time.  It turns out that, as you must know, the profound people of Bolivia, above all the excluded, indigenous, native and farmers, after many sacrificial marches, injuries, deaths and demonstrations over a decade, managed to win the elections of 2005 with a 54% share of the vote – unprecedented in the history of Bolivia and other countries of the continent.  

The Indigenous President was installed and with him, those of us who wished to support a transformational process using all possible peaceful means, slightly similar to the project of President Salvador Allende[1] in Chile.  The programme was not offering an enormous transformation in tune with the peaceful and verbal indigenous World View; it had to be and must be, through peace and civilized democratic political coalitions.

 

But, underlying this, the demand of the humble and poor people, it is too serious and unacceptable for the landowners and oligarchies of the Bolivian Right.  As we are talking about breaking structural schemas and with that, questioning all the globalised neo-liberal system of America and the world, the expected resistance will be of identical dimensions, the same re-action as the action attempted.   

We started with recovering our hydrocarbons, without eliminating the transnationals, we simply recovered the ownership of the hydrocarbon resources.  Then we signed legitimate and dignified agreements or contracts with the gigantic oil companies.  Before they were taking 82% and leaving behind 18%; now it’s the reverse, 82% stays for Bolivians and they remain with 18%.  Before they were owners of our resources, now they are our “partners” and they must continue to invest because of the established legal commitment.  We entered into a chain, starting from exploration, extraction, transportation, commercialisation and, in the near future, industrialisation.

Subsequently we debated the Land issue.  We approved the Law of Agrarian Reform.  This really hurt them because our irreversible choice is to title the land, to clean the land and to achieve that the Social Economic Function is fulfilled by farming ownership.  Otherwise it must be returned to the State for distribution to the land workers who have no lands.  No more unproductive or speculative lands, we also opposed latifundia[2].

  While this was happening, the Constituent Assembly went ahead with the election of 255 representatives; the majority of whom came from MAS[3].Right from the start, they felt offended and vowed to block any project of a new Constitution.

They put a thousand pretexts: the Rules, the 2/3rds majority, autonomy, the Church, Education, finally the Capital city.  This was treacherous as they were reviving regional sentiments that have lain dormant since 1898 when a Federal War transferred the Capital from Sucre to La Paz[4].

  

There were injured people, ambushes, violence, burnt out vehicles and homes, beatings and spitting at “Indians”, insults for daring to ask for inclusion in the Constitution and demand land to work on.

Racism flourished, that had also lain dormant for years, but which was still there inside the middle and professional classes who, are almost all of mixed race; the children or grandchildren of chicken farmers and peasants; Quechua, Aymara or Guarani speakers, but now evolved through Greco-Roman North American contemporary post-modern education; transformed defenders and soldiers of Western culture, rejecting all native identity and indigenous roots.

Finally, the MAS assembly members and those of 10 non-extremist political forces approved the project of the new Constitution.  It was the result of an arduous process, full of obstructions to those entrusted with delivering it, with enormous snags, and finally approved in Sucre, in a Military University Institute, surrounded by explosions and circled by violence.  (They couldn’t continue in the city centre in the Gran Mariscal De Ayacucho theatre because of the violent attacks by the organised mob).  They had to leave La Glorieta to approve it and secretly escape at 2:30 pm through dangerous paths, pursued by the armed mob from Santa Cruz under the direction of the Santa Cruz Youth, something similar to the Hitler Youth.  They burnt police and military installations, documents, but the assembly members managed to escape.  (All of this is based on the testimony of an assembly member who suffered vexations, Dr Rebecca Delgado).

Later on, and thanks to us approving a law to change the venue and date, accepting that a dissolving and approving referendum be effected, in a single time or different times to then return to the Constituent Assembly and conclude the delivery of the new text to the President or his promulgation.

The product of the Constituent Assembly is a new Constitution which is EXCELLENT, just, complete, pacifist and above all transforming for the country.  For the tastes of the policies of the extreme Left it seems lukewarm in deepening the hoped-for classical revolution with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Class Struggle, of course with violence and civil war.

  Almost at the same time that the process of the new Constitution was progressing, the extremists started another malign chess move: Bolivian Separatism, creating rebel Departments in the crescent regions[5] of Tarija, Santa Cruz, Ben, Pando, those who threaten separatism in the case that the new Constitution is approved.  Since we approved the Law to form the Constituent Assembly, two years have passed, we already have the project and we are at the point of working on the points in dispute through a constitutional referendum.When we want to call the Referendum to resolve, in only one article, those issues that were without consensus, in reality, there is only one, it deals with the size of private land, either 5,000 or 10,000 hectares.  There are those landholders who own 100,000 hectares, how will they not be violent!  How can they not react?  

So they had a last master stroke, they prepared their own “DEPARTMENTAL STATUTES”.  They have a seditious and separatist character.

The opposition fixed the date of the 4th May to hold the referendum.  TOTALLY ILLEGAL, ILLEGITIMATE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL.  THEY ARE TRYING TO CREATE SOMETHING MORE THAN A FEDERALISM, A CONFEDERATION, separatist, a State within a State.  To have for themselves, for each department, all the attributes and competencies of the Nation State making their own, the exclusive benefits of all the natural resources, their own armed forced, own police, legislation and legal system, taxes, land redistribution, nationality, citizenship and right of the Governor to redistribute lands to achieve the opposite of what we want to achieve: latifundia.

  We accept that there are economies of scale in farming, if it’s productive, non-speculative, but more importantly we want to strengthen the small and medium land owner so that we can save the nation from food insecurity.  We find ourselves in this point.  They are deceiving us and we have naively sinned for two, almost three months from January to March, by not approving the date of the referendum for the new Constitution in Congress.  The opposition in the form of the landowners and latifundia-owners fixed the data to approve their Departmental Statutes on the 4th May.  It was an attitude of rebellion with a look of sedition punishable by law.  We bent over backwards to come to the table for talks, called by Evo Morales.  They had everything to gain by pressuring with the set date; we hadn’t even summoned Congress to approve the referendum.  They won in giving their illegal Statutes the same status as the new Constitution.  It was urgent that we approve in Congress a specific law.  In addition, they didn’t put forward different possibilities for dialogue, with Prefects, with prefecture technocrats, with political groupings, civic leaders and representatives of the principal opposition political forces, everything failed because of the lack of intentionality by those most affected.

Frustrated dialogue for two and a half months and then they reached the conclusion and the achievement of some alternative consensus.

So it was that we became aware that, if we allow the opposition Crescent to reach the 4th of May and approve the Departmental Statutes, it will be impossible to go back and Bolivia may divide.  We can never allow this to happen!

  As we are far away from taking and exercising violent acts like a State of Emergency, or any measure of force, all that remains is to also fix the same date to approve the new Constitution on the 4th May.  

The clothes were torn off two Senators because we called for approval in a session of Congress, who turned in favour of the people a year ago.  One of them had their house burnt in Pando for having voted in favour of Agrarian Reform.
We had a quorum.  The main square was full of social movements who demanded that the Law be approved in a referendum.

  When the moment arrived, the Vicepresident, gave no opportunity for debate and we approved the law on the table.  There were a minority of Deputies and Senators screaming; with punches and pushing they tried to take the front but we didn’t let them.  We concluded the session rapidly.

The directive of opposition members ran to the press denouncing dictatorship.  We were fully aware that this parliamentary act was a risk that we took when facing the option of Bolivia being divided.

On entering Congress, a deputy of PODEMOS, an imprudent journalist screamed at all the social movements that had come from various points of the altiplano[6] and valley to hold a vigil for three days and nights.  Of course she was not received well when it was known who she was, they almost beat her, in truth they pushed her but she was imprudent.  I imagine that if hypothetically I were to travel to Santa Cruz for a town meeting and presented myself as Evo Morales, I believe they would kill me.

  Well, dear Juanita, we are going through a difficult moment, they are decided in continuing to the 4th May in spite of having to know how delicate and irrational their purpose is, and more over, how illegal their call is.  They will hold their referendum one way or the other on the 4th May.  We are not sure whether to continue or to accept this separatist pressure because they don’t react to anything, not even in front of the proposal for mediation by the Catholic Church that was called for by President Morales during a visit by Cardinal Terrazas.

The Prelate asked Archbishop Juarez to intervene but it has been vetoed.

  The Armed Forces have already pronounced that they will not allow any division but this warning doesn’t move them.  The Government and the Electoral Court say they will not provide policing but they don’t care and say that they will organise civil forces to protect the Departmental Referendum.

We believe that the majority of the people of our homeland will show reason and we will pronounce against de facto Autonomy.

First we must approve the new Constitution and afterwards will come Departmental, Regional, Municipal Autonomy and Autonomy of the indigenous, native and land workers.  The latter are not accepted by the prefects and civic rulers of the Crescent because they want to keep all the benefits for the Departments, to decentralise all the defects of centralisation.

  We want autonomy to be a political instrument of social justice that, in recognising the competence of municipalities, regions and communities, all the benefits may reach the furthest citizen in the most remote corner of Bolivian geography.  The opposition has behaved shamelessly.  For them, there can not be a new Constitution but, yes there can be separatist autonomies with Departmental Statutes.It’s a total rebellion, sedition and separatism fed by opposition forces.There is already, Aznar of Spain, Bush from the USA, ambassadors, oligarchs, civic leaders of the Crescent, Prefects and the national and international MEDIA.

USAID, an American NGO, is intervening with economic measures and actions against the government to finance meetings, statutes and violence.

I can’t accept this dilemma.  We won’t accept it.  We can’t allow the return of neo-liberalism, privatisation of resources, land ownership with servitude and in many cases with slavery; and once again the colonial stage of seeing our indigenous brothers as pariahs, fifth-class citizens.

  We will keep on with dialogue and the possibility to achieve consensus, it’s difficult with traditionally racist enemies who have the strong support of the eternal enemies, those that are at the service of the stewards and the patrons.

We will see what the role of the church is.  They have already pronounced against the new Constitution, but we have hope that, in Jesus Christ, the humble carpenter Master, who said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; they will be illuminated and their mediation can open the right door.

  During the remaining time, the paid enemy media are protesting because in the new Constitution there is an article that says: Every Bolivian has the right to information “VERITABLE AND RESPONSIBLE”.  They say that it goes against freedom of speech, therefore the Government, Evo, the Assembly Members are enemies of freedom of speech.  To this end, Juanita, we received an excellent note from a respected professional, don Alfonso Gumucio Dagrón that I’m also sending you.

Juanita, receive my warmest affection, hoping that the Global Humanist Movement understands our anguish and patriotic aims.

  Gastón Cornejo Bascopé.  Your brother in the best humanist meaning.
Peace, Force and Joy.