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Protests of the opposition and marches in support of Evo Morales convulsionan to Bolivia, The bitter victory of Evo Morales The wear and tear of Evo Morales arrives to the grassroots indigenous
While the bolivian Government tried several measures to address the protests in a country convulsed for two weeks by the protests against the outcome of the elections, some radical sectors have begun to dominate the movement back to the political parties and to Carlos Mesa, the opposition candidate who gathered the highest number of votes in the elections. The demands in the streets has changed: if before raised to correct the election result for that Evo Morales was not declared the winner and had to be measured in a second round with a Table, now seek the immediate resignation of the Government and the call for a new election in which Morales does not participate.
At the start of the bridge of All Saints, in the rural communities of several days, the president asked for an interval in the mobilization until the completion of the audit of elections that is conducting the Organization of American States (OAS), which will last approximately two weeks. Only obeyed the representative, the groups that had been mobilized for himself, the peasants who cut roads, and “strike-breakers” in front of the opponents. However, the situation has relaxed, after reaching its peak of more serious last Wednesday, when they killed two militants and “civic” in a shootout in Montero.
The opposition, which rejected the audit of the OAS, sought to maintain their positions during the holidays: several cities are completely paralyzed and other very neighborhoods by numerous marches, vigils, assemblies, blockades of streets and concentrations of mass, which here are called town councils, in memory of the town meetings of the colonial period. On Thursday, town council meetings organized by so-called civic committees –or partnerships of organizations, the urban– approved by acclamation a list of demands and positions; among them was to maintain the independence of the movement with respect to the Table. “Neither Evo nor Table,” chanted the attendees at these meetings.
Some analysts believe that the civic leaders, there is now a new election because they want to participate in them with nominations of their own. In Peace, these leaders have been proposed, at the same time, the “fence” and, eventually, the decision of the public institutions. Several state offices of Santa Cruz are “guarded” by such civic groups. However, the main executive offices and legislative, which stand around the plaza Murillo, in La Paz, are isolated from the conflict by a ring of police and another of the miners and peasants of the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS). After the council, a group of university students tried to get to the plaza Murillo, but was repulsed after fighting for hours against the police.
Luis Revilla, mayor of La Paz and spokesman for the party Table, Community of Citizens (CC), announced that the mesistas would not be attending the town council meetings and civic criticised the “irresponsible” idea of taking institutions. CC is being pressured to accept the slogan of new elections “without Evo”, which is very popular at this time, but it is also very difficult to apply. In contrast, it may be agreed, a second round between the Government and the CC if the OAS found indications of a bad counting of the votes and cancelled the ruling of the Electoral Court of bolivia, who gave the victory for Evo Morales by a very small margin. The people mobilized, however, does not believe that the revision procedure of the voting will be fair.
“The only thing that pacificará the country is the resignation of Evo,” he said on television a woman who blocked a roundabout in Santa Cruz. The anger against the president is very much extended, and expresses something more than suspicion by the election result. It is also boredom for the duration of his Government, unparalleled in the national history, for their style, polarizer and by the personality cult.
Some co-workers of Morales does not believe that this has lost its capacity of control in the cities and natural way to representations of the facts to a conspiracy carried out by Washington and the right national. The minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramón Quintana, has called in to defend the government by the creation in Bolivia of a “new Vietnam”. The middle classes dominating the demonstrations are proving that, if you are truly motivated, don’t give up quickly and are not skittish, as he believed the ruling. The core of the movement lies in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the most prosperous city of the country, which is completely paralyzed from 11 days ago, which has no historical precedent in Bolivia.
Fernando Camacho, president of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, an entity regionalist, controls the city through groups of young people acting on his behalf and define who circulates, reviewed the passersby that pass through the blocking points and are surrounded and immobilized the neighborhoods to be pro-government, as the populous Plan 3000.
Camacho is a young conservative politician without a party and a fervent catholic. Belongs to the elite social and political of Santa Cruz, which fought Morales until 2008, the year in which he managed to consolidate his hold on power. Since then, this region was ruled by opponents of moderate, next to the powerful entrepreneurs in santa cruz, came to an agreement of coexistence with the “process of change”. Such kind of opposition is weakened to the rate at which Morales lost weight among the middle classes, mainly by their desire to be re-elected for the fourth time, ignoring a constitutional referendum that rejected such a claim in 2016. Was created, then, the void that was once occupied by the “macho Camacho”, as it is called. In a display of his power, recently refused to receive a Table when the candidate visited him to talk about the direction of the movement, which now seems to be in their hands.
