Context Bolivian Repression

Context to Bolivian Repression

 

When the Bolivian government overturned the law outlawing the construction of a road that was signed at the end of the first march to protect the TIPNIS by signing into law a “prior” consultation with indigenous communities (despite having signed contracts for the construction of the road in 2008) the main indigenous organizations of both the lowlands and highlands decided to march again, starting at the end of April (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ultimas_noticias/2012/04/120427_ultnot_bolivia_tipnis_carretera_evo_fp.shtml).  They have now marched peacefully more than 600km from the Amazon to the Andes in 62 days, enduring great hardship and vulnerability, provoking serious health problems which eventually to led to the death of a baby on arrival in La Paz (http://www.lostiempos.com/diario/actualidad/economia/20120629/de-luto-por-una-bebe-dejan-acciones-para-hoy_176718_372949.html).

 

Pro-government groups sought to undermine the march from the outset, by blocking the routes to the planned starting point (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ultimas_noticias/2012/04/120426_ultnot_marcha_indigenas_bolivia_bd.shtml ), and then threatening the march and preventing access to water and other provisions in specific locations along the route.

 

Despite these adverse conditions, the march arrived in La Paz on Wednesday 27th June and again received great support from the population of La Paz.  However, the government is doing everything it can to undermine the credibility of the march and divide and weaken the movement.  Specifically it has done the following:

 

– Accused the march of plotting a coup d’etat before it arrived in La Paz.  (http://www.paginasiete.bo/2012-07-03/Nacional/Destacados/5Nac00303-04.aspx http://www.paginasiete.bo/2012-06-25/Nacional/Destacados/Tipnis-rechaza-golpe.aspx)

– Did not provide fair conditions for dialogue in good faith during the march and continuing up until now.

– Promoted conflict with pro-government mobilisations, creating high risk of physical confrontations (http://www.plataformaenergetica.org/content/3376)

– Criminalized leaders and activists, for example by jailing two young people from the environmentalist anarchist movement who had a strong presence in the mobilizations around the first march.  (http://www.bolpress.com/art.php?Cod=2012053101)

– Accused the leaders of the march of being connected to narcotraffic and being funded by opposition political parties.  (http://www.paginasiete.bo/2012-07-03/Nacional/Destacados/5Nac00303-04.aspx)

– On Saturday 30th June signed an agreement with a false leader of one regional indigenous organization and under this agreement offered marchers $150 and the air fare to return to their communities.  (http://www.erbol.com.bo/noticia.php?identificador=2147483960678)

– On Tuesday 3rd July signed an agreement with 45 community authorities, of which only 18 are from the TIPNIS and the rest are from a coca-growing area outside the TIPNIS boundaries. (http://www.erbol.com.bo/noticia.php?identificador=2147483960837)

– Bribed communities to accept the consultation by giving them motors and telecommunications equipment.

http://www.noticias.com.bo/2012/07/04/morales-dota-generadores-de-luz-radios-y-motores-fuera-de-borda-a-8-comunidades-del-tipnis-adelanto/

 

Through these tactics the government is weakening support for the movement and clearly aiming to exhaust the marchers in order to avoid effective dialogue for long enough to get to the start date of the “prior” consultation, scheduled for 29 July.  We are now at a tipping point because the march has not achieved open dialogue with the government despite having been in La Paz for one week, and if nothing happens before that date then it will become impossible to stop the project.  Considering the Bolivian government’s good relationship with grassroots and activist movements, an urgent international outcry against this illegitimate consultation process could make the difference and tip the balance in favour of the indigenous peoples’ demands.

 

By updating and re-launching this petition, we can show Evo Morales that the world wants him to “walk the talk” after being named “Defender of Mother Earth” in 2009.  This is not simply an internal political issue: the protection of the Amazon rainforest is vital for the future of our planet and if this project is allowed to go ahead then it will set the pace for others to follow.  Equally, the illegitimate “prior” consultation violates the article 32 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that sets out: “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.”

 

Final Declaration of the People’s Summit in Rio +20

Friday, June 22, 2012

the southern entrance bridge

 Note this is a Google Translation of the original Portuguese-language Declaration from http://cupuladospovos.org.br/2012/06/declaracao-final-da-cupula-dos-povos-na-rio20-2/

The final document of the Summit of the peoples summarizes the main points discussed during the plenary sessions and meetings, as well as express the intense mobilization that occurred during this period – 15-22 June – that point of convergence around the structural causes and false solutions, solutions to the crises facing the people, as well as the main axes of struggle for the next period.

The syntheses were approved in plenary  integrate and complement this policy document for the people, movements and organizations can continue to converge and deepen their struggles and building alternatives in their territories, regions and countries all over the world.

You can also read the letter here (pdf).

Flamengo Bay

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Final Declaration

Peoples’ Summit in Rio +20 for Social and Environmental Justice
in defense of the commons, against the commodification of life

Social and popular movements, trade unions, people, civil society organizations and environmentalists from around the world present at the Peoples’ Summit in Rio +20 for Social and Environmental Justice, lived in the camps, the mass mobilization, in the debates, the construction of the convergences and alternatives, conscious that we are subjects of a different relationship between humans and humans and between humanity and nature, taking the urgent challenge of halting the next phase of restoration of capitalism and build through our struggles, new paradigms of society.

The People’s Summit is the symbolic moment of a new cycle path in the global struggles that produces new convergence between women’s movements, indigenous peoples, blacks, youths, farmers / peasants and the family, trabalhadore / as, traditional communities and peoples, Maroons, fighters for the right city, and religions around the world. The meetings, demonstrations and great march of Peoples were the moments of maximum expression of these convergences.

The multilateral financial institutions, the coalitions in the service of the financial system, as the G8/G20, corporate capture of the UN and most governments have demonstrated irresponsibility with the future of humanity and the planet and promoted the interests of corporations in the official conference. In contrast to this, the vitality and strength of demonstrations and discussions at the Summit of the Peoples strengthened our conviction that only the people organized and mobilized can rid the world of corporate control and financial capital.

Twenty years ago the Global Forum, also held in Flamengo Park, denounced the risks which humanity and nature ran with privatization and neoliberalism. Today we say that, besides confirming our analysis, there were significant setbacks in relation to human rights already recognized. The Rio +20 repeats the script failed false solutions advocated by the same actors who caused the global crisis. As this crisis deepens, more corporations move against the people’s rights, democracy and nature, kidnapping the common property of mankind to save the financial-economic system.

The multiple voices and forces that converge around the Summit of the Peoples denounce the true structural cause of the global crisis, the capitalist system of patriarchal, racist and homophobic.

Transnational corporations continue to commit their crimes with the systematic violation of the rights of people and nature with impunity. Likewise, advance their interests through militarization, criminalization of livelihoods of people and social movements promoting deterritorialization in the field and in the city.

Likewise denounce the historical environmental debt that affects mainly the oppressed peoples of the world, and it should be assumed by the highly industrialized countries, which at the end of the day, were the ones who caused the multiple crises we have today.

Capitalism also leads to loss of social control, democratic and communitarian them on natural resources and strategic services, which continue to be privatized, turning rights into commodities and limiting the access of people to goods and services necessary for survival.

The so-called “green economy” is one of the financial terms of the current phase of capitalism that also makes use of old and new mechanisms, such as deepening of the public-private debt, the super-stimulus to consumption, ownership and concentration of new technologies , carbon markets and biodiversity, land grabbing and land foreignization and public-private partnerships, among others.

The alternatives are in our people, our history, our customs, knowledge, practices and production systems, we must maintain, upgrade and achieve scale project as counter-hegemonic and transformative.

The defense of public spaces in cities with democratic governance and popular participation, cooperative and inclusive economy, food sovereignty, a new paradigm of production, distribution and consumption, the change of the energy matrix, are examples of real alternatives to the current system agro-industrial-urban.

The defense of the commons is guaranteed by a series of human rights and the nature, solidarity and respect for different worldviews and beliefs of peoples, for example, the defense of “Living Well” as a way to exist in harmony with nature, which presupposes a just transition to be built with workers / and the people.

We require a just transition which implies the expansion of the concept of work, recognition of women’s work and a balance between production and reproduction, so this is not an exclusive assignment of women. Still passes for freedom of organization and the right to collective bargaining, as well as the establishment of a broad network of social welfare and protection, understood as a human right as well as public policies that ensure decent work forms.

We claim feminism as a means of building equality, women’s autonomy over their bodies and sexuality and the right to a life free of violence. Likewise we reaffirm the urgency of the distribution of wealth and income, combating racism and ethnocide, the guarantee of right to land and territory, the right to the city, the environment and water, education, culture, freedom of expression and democratization of the media.

The strengthening of diverse local economies and ensure the territorial rights of the community building the most vibrant economies. These local economies provide sustainable livelihoods local, community solidarity, vital components of ecosystem resilience. The diversity of nature and its associated cultural diversity is the foundation for a new paradigm of society.

People want to determine what and whom they are intended for common goods and energy, and take control of their democratic and popular production. A new energetic model is based on decentralized renewable energy and making energy for the population and not to corporations.

The convergence of social transformation requires action, joints, and schedules from the resistance against hegemonic and alternative to the capitalist system that are underway in every corner of the planet. The social processes accumulated by social organizations and movements that converged in the Peoples’ Summit pointed to the following axes of struggle:

• Against the militarization of states and territories;
• Against the criminalization of social movements and organizations;
• Violence against women;
• Violence against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgender people;
• Against large corporations;
• Against the imposition of unjust economic payment of debts and popular of these audits;
• To guarantee the right of peoples to land and territory urban and rural;
• For consultation and free, prior and informed consent, based on the principles of good faith and binding, according to ILO Convention 169;
• For the healthy food and food sovereignty, against pesticides and GMOs;
• For the guarantee of rights and conquest;
• For solidarity with the peoples and countries, especially those threatened by military coups or institutional, as is happening now in Paraguay;
• The sovereignty of the people in control of the commons against the attempts of commodification;
• By changing the matrix and current energy model;
• For the democratization of the media;
• In recognition of the historical social and ecological debt;
• For the construction of the WORLD DAY OF GENERAL STRIKE.

Let us return to our territories, regions and countries to build animated required to follow convergences fighting, resisting and advancing against the capitalist system and its old and renewed ways of reproduction.

Standing still struggling!

Rio de Janeiro, 15 to 22 June 2012.
Peoples’ Summit for Social and Environmental Justice in defense of the commons, against the commodification of life.