Everybody knows that the governors of the “Media Luna” (Half Moon) of the richest (and crookedest) regions of Bolivia first began to conspire in 2008, after Evo was in power (and as an attempt to get him out of power by killing him in 2009) — right?
Well, not quite. Evo just revealed that the conspiracy is older than his reign, which began in 2006. Three years older, to be precise:
President Evo Morales assured on Sunday that there are documents which reveal that the governor of Santa Cruz, Rubén Costas, planned separatism in Bolivia in 2003, when he was acting president of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz.
“Rubén Costas, who has been president of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, had already planned in September 2003 to separate Santa Cruz from Bolivia. It’s no lie — the documents exist, the recordings exist. I thought that separatism came recently, as of 2008, but no, it came as of 2003,” said Morales, during a speech in the municipality of Laja in commemoration of the 465th anniversary of the founding of La Paz.
Morales explained that this fact was found while reviewing publications and recordings about the so-called “Black October Massacre”, in which at least 67 persons died and more than 500 were injured, after a military repression of movements which opposed the exportation of Bolivian natural gas to the United States through a Chilean port, as proposed by former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who later fled the country.
Morales stated that vice-president Álvaro García Linera “is reviewing all the previous documents, the publications, re-examining the documents,” because he will be presenting a conference on this topic in the coming days.
Morales insisted that the documentation reveals that the intention to separate from the country began in 2003 and not in 2008, as previously thought due to the Bolivian federal police breaking up a gang of European mercenaries which was attempting to ignite a civil war in the country and promote, as in the Balkans during the 1990s, the secession of the Department of Santa Cruz from the rest of Bolivia.
Translation mine.
So, it looks like in addition to consorting with crooked US ambassadors, the crooked governor (and former leader of the shady-as-fuck Civic Committee) of Santa Cruz has been an unpatriotic conspirator for a very, VERY long time. And indeed, as Evo’s presidency was getting its feet under it in 2006, at least one deeply silly right-wing English language “news” site was prematurely toot-tootling the horn for the “new nation” of Media Luna, the roughly half-moon-shaped conglomeration of the corruptos’ respective departments. Which, after all this time (and money) has consistently failed to materialize. (Pardon me if I chuckle, but I know why. And so does The Dude Who Abideth in Bolivia.)
The hilarious irony of it is, back then, these weasels were conspiring against “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada, who was just as greedy, crooked, and fascistic as they themselves were (and still are). I’m guessing that the real reason behind that was the dinero. Bolivian natural gas comes from Santa Cruz. With the Media Luna suddenly a separate “nation”, that would have meant that they stood to receive all the profits that would have gone to YPFB, the Bolivian national gas company. And of course, white Cruceños weren’t so much against the gas pipeline per se, nor for legitimate reasons such as national sovereignty, respect for local indigenous peoples, safety, or the environment, but rather that they couldn’t make all the easy bolivianos off it, and render their department (and themselves) even more obscenely rich.
Yeah, NOW we can see why two bands of crooks were at war with each other, eh?
Only — ha, ha — Goni got run out of power by angry Bolivians, not white ones from Santa Cruz or anywhere else in the Loony Moon, but brown ones from Cochabamba and La Paz, who were pissed as hell that he had sold their water out from under them to foreign corporations, who would graciously sell it back to them at preposterous markups. Even rainwater collection was suddenly illegal, because it would prevent Bechtel’s local subsidiary, Aguas del Tunari, from taking its pound of flesh from mostly poor, mostly indigenous locals who were already damn near starved to death by 500 years of capitalism. One of whom, by coincidence, was a certain young Aymara dude — once a coca farmer, then a cocalero union leader, then an elected congresscritter, and eventually the president of the land.
Yup, THAT guy. The same one who nationalized Bolivia’s gas company for real, so that the profits would finally trickle down to those not part of a small band of crooked corporate execs and corrupt governors. The same one who truly made Bolivia’s gas Bolivian, not Cruceño. The same one whom Rubén Costas, later governor of Santa Cruz, would conspire with a band of Balkan fascists and the US ambassador to have assassinated in the name of Media Luna-cy.
And, that said: I can hardly wait to read more about all these documents and recordings, and their connection to the Black October Massacre — yet another epic fail fine product of capitalistic greed, resource plundering, and imperialism in Bolivia.
It should be noted that Phillip Goldberg was just the man for the job of organizing the secession of the Media Luna. He had been the US diplomat in charge of the secession of Kosovo from Serbia.
Indeed.
Unfortunately for him, Bolivia is not the Balkans. They smell rats much more quickly there. And a collection of corrupt big landowners does not a government make, any more than a band of hired mercenaries makes a revolution. Even if those clowns had succeeded in seceding, they would still have faced ostracism from UNASUR, the Parlatino, and a host of other non-US international orgs who take a dim view of imperialistic fuddleduddle.