The Bolivian region of Santa Cruz, the largest in the country, celebrated this Sunday 16 days on strike so that the population census happens in 2023 with the warning that the protest will spread to other departments from Monday, while a technical commission works to set the final date of registration.
Street blockades continue in the regional capital and activities were almost nil, unlike on Saturday, when the markets opened for a few hours for people to stock up. Demonstrations were announced for tomorrow throughout the region.
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The fuel supply problems persist despite the fact that neighbors managed on Friday to push back a group related to the ruling party that kept blocking the way to the main Santa Cruz refinery against the census strike.
The blockade of the refinery was part of the “siege” of Santa Cruz with road closures that began 13 days ago in response to the strike by government sectors, which made food and fuel scarce in the region.
The “fence” was lifted momentarily in some areas pending the resolutions of the technical commission installed in the Amazonian city of Trinidad to define the date of the census.
POSSIBLE ESCALATION
The president of the Pro Santa Cruz Committee, Rómulo Calvo, spoke about the 16-day strike in a video broadcast on the social networks of that entity, one of the promoters of the strike.
Calvo pointed out that the region has been on “16 days of strike in a legitimate and peaceful struggle” in which its inhabitants have “had to endure violence” exercised by militants of the government Movement to Socialism (MAS), “a fence, needs, police abuse and the Government’s lies.”
“Our rights are not negotiable and Santa Cruz never gives up. Let’s stand firm,” he said.
Calvo later told the media that it is expected that the country’s president, Luis Arce, “wants to put an end” to the conflict and prevent the strike from continuing and that “other populations join in taking de facto measures.”
The leader recalled that in other departments mobilizations have been announced since Monday for the census in 2023.
In some regions, civic movements announced hunger strikes, 24-hour and even indefinite work stoppages, while sectors such as health workers plan to stop on Tuesday.
The coca growers of Los Yungas warned to start roadblocks this Monday for the census and to demand the release of their colleagues detained in a conflict with a group of producers related to the Government.
THE PROBLEM
The census was to be carried out this November, but the Arce government announced in July its postponement to 2024, arguing for technical reasons, which led to protests, especially from Santa Cruz.
The technical table celebrates this Sunday its second day of work in Trinidad, without a time limit to define the date of registration.
The Minister of Development Planning, Sergio Cusicanqui, told the media that “so far” it has not been shown that it is feasible to carry out the census in 2023, which was denied by the spokesman for the Interinstitutional Committee for the Promotion of the Census in 2023 and rector of the state Autonomous University Gabriel René Moreno, Vicente Cuéllar.
In an interview with the state media, the presidential spokesman, Jorge Richter, insisted that the conflict seeks a “constitutional rupture” as, according to the ruling party, happened in 2019 when Evo Morales resigned the Presidency, claiming to be the victim of a coup d’état, amid complaints of electoral fraud in his favor in the failed elections of that year.
However, Evo Morales himself indicated on Twitter that he does not believe that behind the protests over the census there is an intention to carry out a “coup d’état”, but rather a “plan” to weaken the ruling party and damage the economy.
With information from EFE/Infobae