Union headquarters, media offices, and buildings belonging to indigenous-led organizations have come under attack in recent days as deadly protests in Santa Cruz, Bolivia entered their fourth week.
Demonstrations largely consisting of violent roadblocks have been gripping the streets of the wealthy Bolivian city, with anti-government protests led by the paramilitary-style Union Juvenil Crucenista leaving multiple people dead. Offices perceived to be aligned with pro-government forces – including the Departmental Federation of Peasant Workers of Santa Cruz, the Departmental Workers’ Union, and a public television channel – have been torched or ransacked.
“Up to now we’ve counted: four dead, close to 180 wounded, and $720 million in economic activity lost,” Government Minister Eduardo Del Castillo wrote on Friday. “All for the whims of a person who doesn’t want to reach a democratic and dialogue-based resolution.”
He is most likely referring to wealthy industrialist and current Santa Cruz Governor Luis Fernando Camacho. Alleging a shortage in central government funding for the region, Camacho has marshaled Santa Cruz’s longstanding elite disdain for the largely-indigenous ruling Movement Towards Socialism party to demand the planned 2024 census be moved up by a year.
But the call has come to be seen as an effective declaration of war against the central government, which managed to restore democratic rule back to Bolivia following the 2019 US-led coup d’etat against the country’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales – a coup which Union Juvenil Crucenista forces loyal to Camacho played a chief role in instigating.
Independent Bolivian journalist Tania Aruzamén told Sputnik News that the violence being meted out toward perceived MAS sympathizers in Santa Cruz is even worse now than it was in 2019.
When the UJC is “shutting down the street, it doesn’t just mean they’re not permitting free transit, it means they’re controlling public spaces, and that’s something really dangerous,” because they’re “people who say you don’t even have the right to leave your house,” she says.
“So now you can’t open your store. They go and destroy your windows, they make you close shop, and every day the Union Juvenil Crucenista sends messages telling you when you can go out and feed yourself, at what time you can’t go out. They even do rounds in the city to tell people to close their stores, and they don’t let anyone sell in the street.”
Now their latest round of street violence has even drawn the ire of the Organization of American States’ Interamerican Commission of Human Rights, which issued a statement Friday night declaring that it “condemns new acts of violence in Santa Cruz” by the anti-government forces, including what they called “physical attacks and attacks against journalists; sexual violence; harassment of staff and users of #Women’sHouse and the burning of a union federation [building].”
“There’s a level of violent, aggressive control of the streets and the public spaces,” Aruzamén laments. “They won’t even let the ambulances through.”
She emphasizes there’s a “huge class divide” between those “who can afford to strike,” and those “who need to get to their jobs, and aren’t represented” by those shutting down Santa Cruz.
“The government has made three unsuccessful attempts to hold a dialogue with these people,” she says. “We’re not talking about” people with “a legitimate demand – it’s the demand of a very powerful minority.”
With Governor Camacho accused of pressuring local security forces not to intervene, it appears now that for most working Bolivians hoping to get to work, normalcy may not be restored until the central government steps in.