Rambar Bólivía á barmi borgarastyrjaldar?

Justin Produr ræðir við kólumbíska aktivistan Manuel Rozental um ástandið í Bólivíu og vandamálin sem Evo Morales stendur frammi fyrir.

Bolivia on the Brink

JP: So most of the land is just privately owned?

MR: Privately and also outright illegally owned, but owned. The clearest example is a fellow called Branco Marinkovic. He’s Croatian in origin, his family came to the flatlands, the eastern part of the country, where all the gas and soy is, around the time of WWII. He owns millions of hectares of land. The titles are illegally or irregularly obtained and wouldn’t hold in any court but he has an enormous amount of power and is one of the greatest enemies of Evo and his government.

The eastern region, is called the ‘media luna’. It is half of the country, Santa Cruz city and six other provinces, consisting of lightly populated, resource-rich lowlands essentially owned by 19 families (See for example in Spanish, Raul Bustamente’s article “En Santa Cruz ya reina el fascismo” in Argenpress, and “La Rebelion de los 100 clanes” in Econoticias Bolivia). Most of these families are of European ancestry or call themselves ‘whites’ even if they’re mestizos.

They are profoundly racist and well known to be. While we were in Bolivia, we were told by several people that these people still sell people with the land, a feudal practice. They have economic power and control over the media – all of the mainstream media is controlled by them except for one TV channel and one radio station that are government run. The judicial system within the government is still in the hands of the right. They won the ‘prefecturas’ -- the local governments in five of the six provinces in the media luna. Evo had the majority for the presidency, even in that region, but the right, or the 19 clans, won locally. They retain control in the eastern region.