My brother reports from Sucre that he’s safe and, happily enough, enjoying himself. But things in La Paz remain tense, with “tear gas…being dispensed in the streets like mayonaisse from a fritte stand.” He says:
Well after the 3-day trip to Sucre got a bit extended due to the airport being shut down in our absence, we came down from Sucre to Santa Cruz today. Back to the heat, it’s great! Love the lowlands. Anyway, people here aren’t nearly as upset as elsewhere in the country. The biggest division in Bolivia is between the mountain and lowland people.
This is safest place in the country and is where people are evacuated to if they get out of La Paz. We have decided that we are very glad that we took the chance on leaving for the weekend because it sucks more and more each day for those who are in La Paz. We are staying at a very posh place.
All my friends in La Paz are stuck and can’t leave by land or air and veggies are running short but tear gas is being dispensed in the streets like mayonaisse from
a fritte stand. And things are getting worse, or at least not better. The whole situation is probably not going to get better soon, like certainly not in the next few days. They may be trying to evacuate Americans from La Paz soon (as Brazilians,
Germans, and Brits already have been), but the problem will be getting them to the airport, the road to which has become increasingly blockaded and dangerous in the
past few days. Food is becoming the main concern for the people I know there, as grocery stores are now empty.
At a certain point, I suppose the government ill have to declare martial law everywhere around La Paz (it’s only in El Alto right now) and start really cracking down in order to get basis necessities into the city. I don’t want to be around when that happens for sure. At least only one side seems to have weapons, and if it really comes down to it, I think it’s better for everyone that wholesale street warfare will almost certainly not happen. Everyone wishes the police and military would stop shooting people though, because that’s just making it worse.
If bad feelings extend all the way down here (which is highly unlikely), we are working on plans to head to Buenos Aires.
Turning to other news sources, Al Giordano proclaims Goni may resign soon: “Either Goni Goes Today, or Bolivia Explodes.” (Giordano is really on top of things in La Paz, but in my book, he loses credibility when he uses breathless, over-the-top languge–for example, he calls David Greenlee, the US ambassador to Bolivia, a “war criminal.”)
The AP is running an article devoid of major new developments: “Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada inherited a country suffering a deep economic crisis and long-simmering class and racial tensions when he became president of Bolivia.”
Reuters says 1) “Bolivian lawmakers tried to make their way into the blockaded capital for an emergency session of Congress on Friday to find a way to end a month of protests against a deeply unpopular president” and 2) “chief coalition partner of embattled Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada withdrew his support Friday, robbing the leader of key legislative support as a popular uprising intensifies.”
The New York Times is running a largely derivitave piece about, as we’ve read plenty of times, Indigenous leaders’ gripes about the evil G-word: globalization.
CNN reports that the State Department (surprise!) says Americans should steer clear of Bolivia–or hit the road if they’re already there: “Citing the ‘unstable political and security situation’ in Bolivia, the State Department Thursday urged Americans not to travel there and suggested that U.S. citizens already there leave immediately.” Leave immediately? Tell that to the tourists who’re stuck there. La Paz is locked down. It’s impossible to leave.
CounterPunch has published an excellent background piece from Newtown Garver, who’s in La Paz. He concludes: “It is well to recognize that change is not always for the best. But it is for the best to recognize change when it is at hand and to adjust policies to accommodate it.”
Today’s award for the most interesting story comes from yesterday’s Miami Herald. Columnist Andres Oppenheimer intereviewed the Bolivian president recently. Goni claims that the opposition leaders are being financed by Libya and Venezuela.
Stay tuned for more…