U.S. Outburst at OAS Meeting: Chavez and the Bolivian Crisis By Al Giordano,
Posted on Wed Jun 8th, 2005 at 09:16:29 AM EST Towards the end of the two-day session by the Organization of American States (OAS) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the U.S. ambassador to the organism, Roger Noriega, threw a temper tantrum.
After all, Washington had just received a stunning rebuke from the other countries around the table against its proposal to create mechanisms for foreign meddling in the affairs of other countries (read: Venezuela), and Bolivian President Carlos Mesa had just offered his resignation in the face of a massive popular movement to nationalize the Bolivian gas industry.
Noriega, not used to losing gracefully, simply blew his top, spitting loudly that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is to blame for Bolivia's crisis.
Noriega has a point, but not in the way he thinks he has it...
Check out this account in Oligarch's Daily, er, The Miami Herald:
As Bolivia drifted toward political chaos Tuesday, Washington's top diplomat form Latin America hinted that Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chávez was somehow responsible for the worsening situation. "Chávez' profile in Bolivia has been very apparent from the beginning,'' Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega said in response to a question about Chavez' influence on the turmoil in Bolivia.
''His record is apparent and speaks for itself,'' Noriega told reporters atthe Organization of American States's general assembly in Fort Lauderdale. He adding that the situation "was worrisome.''
Noriega had no hard facts to back up his claim - something even the staunchly anti-Chávez Herald acknowledged - and Venezuela issued an effective rebuttal (quoted, here, below the fold), but I can translate for you what Noriega was really trying to say: Noriega is angry that the Bolivian Armed Forces has refused to violently put down the demonstrators, and he blames that on the example Chávez has set for a pro-people, non-repressive, military in Venezuela... which has more and more admirers among military brass in other countries.
The Herald continued:
In reply, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Alí Rodríguez ''indignantly'' denied allegations circulated by U.S. officials for several months that his government has provided financial assistance to one of the leaders of the Bolivian opposition, Evo Morales. Asked about Noriega's comments, Rodríguez said, ''It seems that he [Noriega] goes around seeking to throw fuel on the fire'' and added that diplomats should try to put out fires, not fuel their flames.
''The problems in Bolivia are problems that belong to Bolivia and it is up to the Bolivians to solve them,'' Rodríguez said. ''Venezuela is scrupulously respectful of the sovereignty of all countries.'' Bolivian government officials and Western diplomats in the region have told the Herald that while the allegations of Chávez financial aid to Morales are widespread, there's been no hard evidence to support the charges.
In a combined wire from the French and German press agencies, Mexico's daily La Jornada filled in the blanks this morning.
Under fire to provide proof of Noriega's bombastic claim, the U.S. Department of State put out a statement later in the day:
At the end of the afternoon, the State Department distributed press releases to justify its accusation. Among them was an interview published by the conservative Argentine daily La Nación last May 16, titled: "Evo Morales: We Want to Join with Fidel and Chávez." They also distributed wire reports that announced that Morales had invited Chavez to Bolivia, or that (Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party backed President Chavez."
These are hardly proofs of anything, not like, say, Julio Mamani Conde's report yesterday about the United States' meddling role in Bolivian affairs this week... And certainly not on the scale of the hard evidence, based on the U.S. government's own unclassified documents, that the U.S. had directly meddled fomenting unrest in Venezuela!
That said, I think Roger Noriega has a point, although his logic is convoluted. Let me explain:
According to well placed sources in La Paz, yesterday, prior to the resignation of Bolivia's president, heir apparent to the Bolivian throne, Congressional leader Hormando Vaca Diez, had gone to Bolivia's military brass with a plan already written for how the military will declare martial law and ruthlessly stamp out the social movements when Vaca Diez becomes president. (Who wrote that plan, Mr. Noriega?).
But the Bolivian generals told Vaca Diez to pound sand: They said, according to our sources, that they were tired of being the villains of history, causing coup after coup, massacring their own people. (This - and perhaps copious amounts of alcohol - explains Vaca Diez's crestfallen voice during his Monday night press conference, heard around the world via Radio Erbol.)
US Ambassador Roger Noriega is red-faced angry that the Bolivian military won't get to work assassinating Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe, Oscar Olivera, the entire city of El Alto, and Authentic Journalists who are covering the story. And Noriega blames Chavez!
Noriega blames Chavez because Chavez - a military soldier admired by many just like him across the hemisphere - has set the gold standard of how to put an Armed Forces to work on behalf of the people instead of against them. And simply by surviving the coup attempts against him, and by continuing his kinder-gentler non-repressive military model, Chavez has showed by example that Latin American military organizations need not be repressors as they have historically been.
That is why, kind readers, Noriega and Washington blame Chavez: not because of any evidence of direct involvement, but because the Bolivian military is balking (so far) at murdering its own people. Damn Chavez! Let one Latin American president reform his military and before ya know it, others are gonna wanna do the same! And then democracy breaks out all over the place, and what is a decaying Empire to do?
14 June 2005 Over the week of June 6, Bolivia passed through a sharp uptick in its ongoing cycle of political instability that is rooted in the overlapping regional, ethnic and class divisions of the Andean country.
After a month of mounting mass protests throughout Bolivia, including large demonstrations and road blockades, President Carlos Mesa's offer to resign on June 6 set off four days of intensified direct action in the streets and a flurry of desperate efforts within the country's political institutions to find at least a patchwork solution to the crisis and hold off the civil war that Mesa had warned was looming.
The issues at the heart of Bolivia's severe domestic conflict run so deep that any compromise on them by the contending social groups will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. The wave of direct action was initiated by a diverse coalition of the poor indigenous peasantry of the country's northern and western highlands; indigenous migrants to El Alto, the mushrooming suburb of Bolivia's political capital La Paz; coca growers led by the country's most charismatic politician Evo Morales; mine workers who have traditionally been Bolivia's core left-revolutionary force; public workers, especially teachers, discontented with their meager salaries; and students. [See: "Cycle of Instability in the Andes: Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru"]
Despite their varied interests, the anti-establishment coalition united on a common program dominated by the demand that Bolivia's potentially lucrative oil and gas industry be renationalized. The protestors also called for the formation of a constitutional assembly to rewrite the country's fundamental law to enhance the rights of indigenous groups that comprise a majority of Bolivia's population of nearly nine million, and for Mesa's resignation.
On the other side of the divide were the major groups in Bolivia's southern and eastern lowlands, centered in the province and city of Santa Cruz. The population of those regions has a lower indigenous composition and is relatively prosperous due to favorable conditions for agriculture and the presence of the coveted gas reserves.
As unfavorable to Mesa as was the coalition of protestors, the elites of the south and east, and their middle class allies, had been threatening for several months to declare autonomy from the central government or even to secede from the country. In stark opposition to the protestors, they demanded that the hydrocarbons industry remain private. They also favored a constitutional assembly, desiring a new fundamental law that would grant more autonomy to Bolivia's provinces and would provide for the direct election of provincial governors. Although the autonomist forces did not mount mass demonstrations -- as they had done in the past -- they formed self-defense committees to resist any incursions by their opponents.
Dynamics of the Crisis
Mesa, one of Bolivia's few centrist leaders, had assumed the presidency in 2003 after a similar period of civil disorder resulted in the fall of the previous right-oriented administration. Upon taking office, he attempted to be a reconciler, ordering the armed forces and police to refrain from using deadly force against protestors, and attempting to persuade the country's opposing social forces to reach a compromise on the issues dividing them. As time went on, it became clear that Mesa did not have the political clout to conciliate successfully.
Facing a sharply divided Congress and mounting protests over the lack of movement on core issues, Mesa offered to resign in March 2005, but was given a vote of confidence by Congress, based on a calculation by the left, led by Morales' Movement Toward Socialism bloc, that conditions were not yet favorable for its victory. In an attempt to appease rising sentiment for nationalization of the hydrocarbons industry, Congress passed a law in May raising taxes on private energy companies that discouraged foreign investment, but did not have the intended result of blunting the demands for nationalization. When he tendered his resignation offer again on June 6, Mesa had lost his support and Bolivia's political class was forced to find a satisfactory replacement for him.
The next in line constitutionally to succeed Mesa was Hormando Vaca Diez, the president of Bolivia's Senate who was unacceptable to the dissident coalition because he represents Santa Cruz and shares the interests of its elites. Nonetheless, Vaca Diez was prepared to assume the country's presidency and moved congressional deliberations to Sucre, Bolivia's ceremonial capital, when demonstrators overwhelmed La Paz and, according to Vaca Diez, made it impossible for Congress to convene there.
As the protestors followed Congress to Sucre and a miner was killed by police, Mesa warned that Bolivia was on the brink of civil war and the country's military, through Admiral Luis Aranda Granados, announced that it was prepared to intervene in the crisis if Congress did not "respect the will of the people."
Faced with clear indications that he would lack support and legitimacy if he assumed the presidency, Vaca Diez backed down, as did the next in line after him -- the leader of the House of Representatives -- paving the way for Eduardo Rodriguez, chief justice of Bolivia's Supreme Court, to become president. Rodriguez said that his major task would be to prepare for presidential elections to be held no later than December 2005. With the crisis temporarily defused, Morales called upon his supporters to lift their blockades and the overt conflict had subsided by June 10.
The Bottom Line
With Washington-backed Mesa out of the picture and a caretaker administration in power, Bolivia's day of reckoning has been deferred, but its underlying social conflict remains unresolved. The removal of Mesa has emboldened the left and has provoked a corresponding defensive backlash on the right. Fresh elections are unlikely to produce a reconciler, with the highest probability being an increase in power for the left, which will harden the drive for autonomy in the south and east. Expect continued instability in Bolivia that will slow development of its energy sector and possibly lead to a left-populist regime, spurring bids for secession by its opponents.
Report Drafted By: Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an independent organization that utilizes open source intelligence to provide conflict analysis services in the context of international relations. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader. This report may not be reproduced, reprinted or broadcast without the written permission of inquiries@pinr.com. All comments should be directed to content@pinr.com.
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