BOLIVIA: Colourful Kick-Off to a “New” Bolivia

By Franz Chávez Reprint | | Print |

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Aug 7 2006 (IPS) - Indigenous people, who have suffered discrimination since Bolivia won its independence from Spain 181 years ago, represent a majority in the new constituent assembly based in Sucre, which President Evo Morales has put in charge of “refounding” South America’s poorest country.

The historical capital of Sucre, some 1,000 km south of La Paz (the seat of government), is now the stage for in-depth debate and a major rewrite of the country’s constitution.

On Sunday, the 255 assembly representatives elected Jul. 2 came together with political leaders, special guests and members of 40 indigenous groups from the country’s Andean highlands and Amazon regions, in a fusion of colours, traditional music and customs.

More than 30,000 people arrived from all reaches of the country, filling the streets and plazas of the small colonial-style city to get a glimpse of the inauguration of the assembly, which has one year to redraft a constitution that empowers and better protects the rights of indigenous peoples, who represent 60 percent of the country’s 9.2 million people.

The event honoured indigenous groups from the eastern province of Beni, who in 1990 led a 700-km march for dignity and land redistribution that helped pave the way for the constituent assembly, as well as the 67 people killed in the month-long protests known as the “gas war” of 2003, which put an end to the privatisation of the country’s natural gas production and forced the resignation of then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.

Evoking these events, Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, called on assembly representatives to make substantial constitutional changes and avoid superficial reforms.

In the midst of popular celebrations of independence day, Aug. 6, Morales recalled the importance of the social struggles fought by trade unions and indigenous organisations to recover control over the country’s natural resources and to defend their rights, which culminated in the creation of the constituent assembly.

“The assembly must have all the power – greater than Evo Morales, Congress and the judicial branch. This is not minor constitutional reform – this is a re-founding of Bolivia,” said the president.

“I am willing to submit to the constituent assembly’s authority,” said Morales. His vision of the assembly’s task involves regaining control of the country’s natural resources, rebuilding the dignity of native peoples and ending the humiliation and discrimination faced for centuries by indigenous groups.

Morales entrusted the assembly with “decolonising” the country and dismantling the free-market economic model while upholding justice and freedom and fighting poverty. Approximately 63.7 percent of Bolivians live in poverty, and the country’s foreign debt totals 4.8 billion dollars.

Bolivia’s vice president and president of Congress, Álvaro García Linera, said Sunday marked “a revolution in which the majority has reclaimed its legitimate right to political power. The marginalised are exercising their rights and demanding a redistribution of wealth,” he said.

García Linera said the peaceful and democratic nature of the “revolution” were the keys to its success. “Those who were downtrodden for 514 years – since the Spanish colonialists arrived – are now making themselves heard with votes, words and leadership,” and they are ready to fight discrimination through ideas, proposals and consensus, he said.

The challenges outlined by the vice president focus on eradicating “political inequality between co-existing peoples.” For generations, the descendants of Europeans and indigenous or mixed-race people were not viewed on the same level, “and now we have to make sure that both are valued equally,” he stated.

García Linera also called for the creation of a country that is both international and multicultural, with a solid foundation of justice for the people within an indigenous-style model of coexistence among different communities, resistant to external pressure.

He said that what is needed is a new state capable of industrialising its natural riches in order to put an end to the raw-materials export model, which he blames as the root of poverty.

In addition, he defended a position against “colonial centralism” and supported a broad regimen of regional “autonomy” and “self-determination,” but warned emphatically that “no one will divide Bolivia. We are here to hold it together.”

The assembly began its work with a surprise that caught the attention of political analysts. Silvia Lazarte, a 42-year-old indigenous woman from the country’s interior with a long history of union struggles for coca-leaf growers, was elected president of the new body.

Clad in traditional dress, her first speech included a description of her life, typical of many rural dwellers who face marginalisation and discrimination. “One day my father decided I wouldn’t go to school because I was a girlàso I did not have access to education,” said Lazarte.

The armed forces, which according to protocol usually lead the independence day parade, ceded their place to indigenous representatives.

Festive, multicolour indigenous delegations from around the country spilled through Sucre’s narrow streets and its main public squares, amazing onlookers with their originality and cultural richness in the first indigenous display of its kind in recent memory. Some were clad in traditional loincloths and necklaces, while Andean campesinos walked in rough shoes and many Indians from the Amazon jungle wore no shoes at all.

Onlookers included assembly representatives, legislators and special guests like Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage. Others, certain South American presidents in particular, were conspicuous in their absence, having declined the invitation. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, who is also a personal friend of Morales, cancelled his plans to visit Sucre.

Arrows with stone heads and colourful feathers, taut bows made from vegetable fibres, machetes for working in the jungle and bunches of wild bird feathers mingled in joyful displays with the wool hats of dwellers of the icy Andean highlands region, parading before foreign journalists, TV cameras and Sucre residents, some of whom were moved to tears at the sight of so many men and women celebrating the variety of cultures, languages and customs.