Bolivian Lawmakers Convene Under Guard

[struggle4progress]

Tuesday May 31, 2005 6:28pm

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - Bolivian legislators protected by police waded through groups of angry demonstrators on Tuesday to begin their first session after a weeklong recess forced by street protests. Each day for two weeks, demonstrators have taken to the streets by the tens of thousands, blocking traffic at main avenues and repeatedly isolating the city from the rest of the country. Their demands range from the nationalization of the oil industry to a constitutional assembly.

They also oppose referendums called by four of the nation's regions to decide on greater autonomy.

As the legislators arrived in the congressional building at the central Murillo plaza, elsewhere in the city police used tear gas and water cannons to scatter protesters.

The demonstrators - peasants, miners, students - blocked traffic at one of the city's major intersections with pieces of pavement and burning tires. <snip>

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0505/232447.html

[IndianaGreen]

1. And all of this because of an increase in the utility rates

This is what happens when people get fed up with their government for kow-towing to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

[Robbien]

2. Violent protests derail Bolivian Congress session

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Violent clashes between police and protesters and massive marches by indigenous groups in La Paz on Tuesday paralyzed the capital, scaring lawmakers and forcing suspension of a key session of Bolivia's Congress.

Riot police posted outside Congress lobbed tear gas and fired water cannon to repel dynamite-throwing protesters, while thousands demanding nationalization of the energy sector took over the city of 700,000 and blocked access to the airport.

Only 62 of the 130 deputies dared to venture into the city's narrow colonial streets and past heavily guarded police barriers, prompting Lower House chairman Mario Cossio to suspend the session for lack of quorum.

Even Congress President Hormando Vaca Diez did not appear and the main opposition and indigenous leader Evo Morales accused him of conspiring against democracy. "I am sure that with this maneuvering he aims to become president of the republic," Morales told Reuters.

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5834012&cKey=1117590646000

and a report from an eye witness:

The People Take La Paz

In a march even bigger than yesterday's, the residents of El Alto and the Aymara peasant farmers returned to La Paz this morning. More than 50,000 people covered an area of nearly 100 square kilometers: this time they didn't just limit themselves to surrounding the Plaza Murillo, where the president makes his speeches and congressmen decide Bolivia's fate without taking the people's desires into account. Now they have spread out to the neighborhoods bordering the city center, where the middle class, exclusive merchants, and several embassies are located. The pressure on Congress and the administration, though not looking for confrontation, is now coming from dozens of vital intersections.
. . .

For several hours the streets were only rivers of people, flowing in all directions. In some cases, as in that of the students of the Autonomous Public University of El Alto, the people endured gas grenades the police launched to disperse them.

But they're still there: there is no order, no coordination, but the urban space is theirs for the moment: the rural Aymara, the people of El Alto (urban Aymara), the farming communities from south of La Paz, the miners and the public school teachers, who decided to march to the rich neighborhoods and are now several kilometers south of downtown.

The university students and the Movement of Unemployed Workers have installed barricades in the Plaza de Héroes. The people of a few El Alto neighborhoods, together with the Aymara peasant farmers of the Omasuyos province, have managed to shut down Plaza Isabel la Católica (fifty meters from the United States embassy!)

. . .

What comes next, kind readers, amid all this chaos? It's difficult to say; the people of El Alto and the Aymara peasants will not be leaving for the rest of the day (and the number of demonstrators has now reached something like 100,000)… and the MAS continues the pressure on all fronts, including through their representatives in Congress. For now, more out of weakness than prudence, Mesa's government is not leaving the small plaza where the military defends a few buildings adorned with doves.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0506/S00009.htm

[bennywhale]

3. Power to the People. Good luck to them all. They are

brave and have strong convictions. I just love to see mass popular protests such as this putting the shits up the powerful and corrupt.

The shame is i think intransigence and Police brutality may eventually win the day. I hope not and Good Luck.

[Karenina]

4. Kick!

:kick: