The strike in Santa Cruz has already exceeded 20 days amid the crises of the Arce regime and the opposition

Santa Cruz faces this Friday its twenty-first day of civic strike demanding the realization of a national census of population and housing in 2023, which the Arce regime had promised and assured would be carried out on November 16, and which now intends to postpone unjustified until 2024.

Despite the fact that the intensity of this serious conflict has diminished, since there are no longer any fences or direct confrontations between violent movements related to the Movement for Socialism (MAS) and neighbors from Santa Cruz in favor of the strike, the protest continues to spread.

Of course, the objective of this generalized peaceful strike, which is not exclusive to Santa Cruz, although it is where it finds its epicenter, and which is not limited to having up-to-date and reliable statistical information on different aspects of the country and its economy, and a reallocation of resources and seats in the Legislative Assembly, but to know the reality behind an electoral roll that remains in a fraudulent state since the resignation and flight of Evo Morales in 2019, to face the general elections of 2025, is further deteriorating the institutional framework of the country and aggravating the crisis that is identified in different areas, especially in politics.

DIVISIONS AND CONFRONTATION IN THE MOVEMENT FOR SOCIALISM

It is not new that there are deepening divisions in the MAS, at least since Evo Morales decided to simply ignore the mandate of a referendum that in 2016 had denied him a new reappointment to the highest position in the country, and also indefinitely, until a spontaneous 21-day national rebellion the citizenry expelled him from power at the end of 2019 for having committed a monumental electoral fraud.

However, the most recent divisions arise from the resounding failure of the ruling party in the departmental and municipal elections of March 2021, which were led by Morales himself, and in which Arce conditioned the provision of vaccines against Covid-19 for the population in exchange for their vote.

Currently, the fractures are increasingly dense and have even manifested themselves in a brawl in rooms of the Legislative building. Masista deputies Rolando Cuéllar and Gualberto Arispe, who respond to Arce’s and Morales’ sides respectively, staged a confrontation on Wednesday due to differences in the appointment of the party’s caucus leader in the Chamber of Deputies.

But even more, the fact that Bolivia is also going through an undeniable economic crisis translates into the difficulties that the MAS faces in continuing to give life to the model of public spending hand over fist that was complemented by prebends with different interest groups: the resources that during the boom of raw materials abounded for each member of the party, today are scarce.

DIVISIONS ALSO IN CITIZEN COMMUNITY

However, there is also a crisis in representatives of an opposition widely known to be functional to the objectives of the Arce regime and different from those of the MAS, either because they share values ​​or simple ineptitude.

For example, assembly members of the Citizen Community (CC), led by Carlos Mesa, voted in favor of the then new Tax on Great Fortunes, and even Andrea Barrientos, a senator from Cochabamba, stated in full session when she was head of the bench, that her group has greater affinity with the MAS than with Creemos (We believe).

On the other hand, Luisa Nayar and Luciana Campero, CC deputies for Santa Cruz and Tarija, respectively, are today considered dissidents by this bench and stay away from CC, although they are the most visible faces at work and in the protests in favor of the Santa Cruz demands for a census in 2023.

CREEMOS ALSO SUFFERS FRACTURES

Likewise, in Creemos, a group led by the Santa Cruz governor Luis Fernando Camacho, there have also been problems since at least 2021, when 4 deputies were expelled for being functional or directly for having cast votes in the Legislative along with the MAS bench.

More recently, Camacho was involved in a new division that has generated controversy with the representative from Santa Cruz for the same group, José Carlos Gutiérrez. The former accuses the latter of having betrayed Santa Cruz in appointing Mercado as the new president of the House of Representatives -the reason for which they also clashed in the MAS- as well as the ratification of Andrónico Rodríguez in Senadores, as representative of the cocalero force of the Chapare.

In the same way, Gutiérrez defends himself against Camacho’s accusations, affirming that the governor, being advised by Walter Chávez, who in other times used to guide the chief coca grower of the Chapare in strategic political aspects, makes decisions that only weaken the Santa Cruz cause.

VIGILS REMAIN FIRM IN SANTA CRUZ

Unfortunately, reprehensible facts have also been recorded that can lead the Santa Cruz cause to frustration. For example, in different roundabouts where some citizens keep vigil, it has been seen on numerous occasions that passers-by have been forced to get off their bicycles or even physically attacked, treating their citizens in the same way as the regime of Arce treats the department.

Likewise, in recent days supporters of the Civic Committee have been seen touring the city in search of businesses that are open outside the days and hours designated to stock up, to force them to close with threats or even resorting to the crudest vandalism.

Of course, it is important to identify these contradictions and recognize that this only gives the Arce regime arguments to qualify the Santa Cruz citizen movement as violent and intervene, when it is really legitimate and peaceful.

However, it is also important to note that these events are isolated and do not illustrate the resistance of the great generality of citizens from Santa Cruz (and now also from Tarija, who are carrying out another civic strike in their department for four days), who have suffered the siege masista, the shortage of fuel, the suspension of exports, death threats to its civic leaders and authorities, and the confrontation in different vigil points in peri-urban areas of the department.

THE LEGISLATIVE AS A POSSIBLE NEW NEGOTIATION SCENARIO

Despite the fact that it should have been this way from the beginning if the country were not going through a deep institutional crisis, fundamentally due to the incapacity and ineptitude of the vast majority of opposition legislators and the stubborn obsequiousness of the ruling legislators with which they simply raise the Hand before any initiative of his party, the Legislative Assembly could become a new scenario where the conflict over the census could be resolved, given that the efforts of the Santa Cruz Inter-institutional Committee have not achieved their objective.

Although it has just happened after 21 days of civic strike, at least three proposals have been made known to “take the conflict from the streets to the Legislature.” The former presidents and former candidates for the presidency Jorge Tuto Quiroga and Carlos Mesa have coincided in proposing that the discussions so that the definition of the date of the census be established through the promulgation of a law that overlaps the Supreme Decree that Arce could sign very soon for the census to take place in 2024 and not in 2023.

Along the same lines, Paul Antonio Coca, an independent political analyst, proposed a Bill that, at least initially, appears to be an element that allows starting the initiative to convert the Legislative Assembly as the most appropriate scenario to move forward.

Moreover, the optimism that this could be beginning to cause has motivated deputies Nayar and María René Álvarez, deputy from Santa Cruz for Creemos, have already demanded that the new president of the Chamber of Deputies who answers to Arce, Jerges Mercado, convene and install exclusive discussion sessions on the census with the Coca bill in hand, or the one that Mesa himself has also presented.

THEY CONVENE A NEW COUNCIL AND START HUNGER STRIKES

In the meantime, after their work in the technical tables that were installed in Beni to try to reduce the times in the official census schedule was frustrated this week, the Santa Cruz Interinstitutional Committee convened this Thursday night a new council for this Tuesday, where new measures will presumably be taken.

Similarly, Vicente Cuéllar, rector of the Gabriel René Moreno University (UAGRM), leader of the Committee, announced that he will lead a hunger strike together with other university authorities starting this Friday in demand for the census, an initiative that is added to which is being carried out for the second day by three CC deputies in the Legislative Assembly building in La Paz.

Finally, and how could it be otherwise, the Arce regime has reacted by sending a strong contingent of police and military to the capital of Santa Cruz, as well as the Minister of the Presidency, María Nela Prada, threatened promoters of the civic strike with starting criminal lawsuits against them.

With information from La Gaceta (Mauricio Ríos García)