Civil war in Bolivia

Time:

Despite the frantic efforts of Latin American diplomats to broker a truce, many Bolivians see the political violence that has shaken their country over the past week as the opening salvos of a civil war. "There isn't a bone in her body that's not broken," says Narda Baqueros, a mother of three who traveled 15 hours to the town of Cobija to retrieve the body of her niece Belki Paz Baqueros on Monday. In her mid-20s and three months pregnant, Belki was beaten to death early Friday morning by opponents of Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales. "Everyone is armed and everyone is saying this is war," Baqueros says. "I saw patches of blood-stained grass everywhere, like there have been massacres."

At least 30 supporters of President Morales, and possibly a lot more, have been killed over the past week as an opposition campaign to obtain autonomy for the resource-rich eastern regions they control turned violent. The opposition Prefects are demanding greater control over policies ranging from land reform to the allocation of the earnings of Bolivia's natural gas exports, which originate in their regions. Earlier this year, the departments of Tarija, Santa Cruz, Pando and Beni voted overwhelmingly in favor of opposition-drafted autonomy statutes, but since those referenda were not sanctioned by the national electoral court, the central government refuses to recognize the results.

The confrontations escalated a few weeks ago when President Morales, having won last month's election with a resounding 67% majority, scheduled a vote on a new constitution drafted by his government. The opposition cried foul, demanding that the new constitution incorporate the autonomy statutes, and their supporters in the outlying regions began violently seizing control over state buildings. For weeks, TV images showed outnumbered policemen cowering from armed mobs of opposition supporters ransacking government buildings and randomly attacking indigenous people. (Morales is Bolivia's first indigenous president, and the indigenous people remain his strongest support base.)

With the police apparently unable to maintain order, in some parts of the country government supporters began to organize themselves to defend the government, sparking increasingly bitter confrontations. It took until last Friday for Morales to declare martial law and send troops into the regional department of Pando. There, on Tuesday, they arrested Leopoldo Fernandez, the Prefect of the Pando department, accusing the opposition leader of spearheading violence.

The event that may have triggered the declaration of martial law in Pando was last Thursday's attack on unarmed government supporters marching near the town of Porvenir. "They ambushed us as we neared Porvenir," says one survivor, who preferred to remain anonymous. At least 14 Morales supporters were killed in the incident, and dozens more were injured. "They came out of nowhere and started shooting with rifles. They didn't even care that there were women and children with us."

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Morales has been a polarizing figure who has not been able to work well with others. His support of the command economy will be disastrous for Bolivia. It has been a failure everywhere it has been tried.

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