In Cochabamba on Wednesday May 2nd, Governor Manfred Reyes Villa made his first sworn statement regarding the January 11th events. The ex-military officer, ex-mayor, ex-member of oppressor Sanchez de Lozada’s coalition government, washed his hands of responsibility and blamed the entire event on Evo Morales’ government and some of his party’s legislators, according to the local media. The egomaniac that he is, Reyes Villa believes that January’s violent events were “about trying to destabilize the Governor of Cochabamba and overthrow democracy.”
Reyes Villa’s primary evidence (of vindication?) was a 5 minute documentary video with which he attempted to demonstrate that everything that occurred was instigated by the government, according to the media that criminalized the people during January. The video itself was comprised of news images taken during those terrible days.
Cochabamba’s Governor seemed to forget the interesting fact that anyone who has read this series could point out: the great majority of the injured and mis-treated people on January 11th were indigenous and campesinos. Similarly, the great majority of those armed in the videos we found were determined to be Reyes Villa supporters—white or with links to the immense group of strongmen armed that day in the city’s rich northern section.
We should also mention that, according to an anonymous source, something significant happened that day: among the speeches given by civic and political leaders linked to Manfred Reyes Villa on the 11th, a public statement of support put out by the Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee made its way to the microphone. The Committee is a group of businessman, politicians, para-militaries and large farm owners in eastern Bolivia and after the statement’s reading—according to our source—pick-up trucks appeared distributing sticks, tubes and baseball bats to the crowds that would go on to hunt Indians.
Of course, Reyes Villa seems to have not mentioned this in his declaration. And if we follow his foolish logic that the government holds the blame, then it was the intolerance demonstrated by the coca growers and the rest of the social sectors that readied these people to defend, their Governor? the city? the democracy that allows them to maintain their privileges? This continues to be unclear.
In all, that the Governor and ex-military officer forgot to mention that three men were arrested on the 11th for carrying fire arms—three belonging to the faction that “defended the democracy that day” Reyes Villa style. Surely, the government was at fault for that too, especially since the attorney in charge of investigating the case has determined that one of those three gun-men, Alex Rosales, was the one who killed coca grower Juan Tica Colque just minutes before being arrested that day.
Tica Colque is certainly dead, if we’re talking about in the memory of Reyes Villa, who in his declaration before attorney general Mario Uribe, doubted the coca-grower’s cause of death. Insisting that he, Reyes Villa, is the real victim, the Governor negated the veracity of the two ballistic reports carried out after Tica Colque’s autopsy.
Reyes Villa’s spokesman, Erick Fajardo Pozo, continues doing his job with fervor and tries to exonerate his boss from this incident; the same goes for his invented news agency (a façade for propaganda called the Cochabamba News Agency). Fajardo publishes columns from time to time in the Bolivia daily newspapers. Amidst his deliriums, Fajardo Pozo says that the protests against the Cochabamba Governor were “the most brutal coup attempt since the recuperation of democracy,” assuming a similar position to that taken by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to justify the October 2003 massacres that left 67 dead and hundreds wounded.
But within the spokesman’s nonsense, there are some affirmations that, disgracefully, must be mentioned and be analyzed with care—in particular those that have to do with senators, Ministers and leaders of the governing party, Evo Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS in its Spanish initials). Basically because, even though Fajardo uses them to hide his boss’ cowardice, they are accurate.
Among the questionable or serious things that MAS politicians did during those days, we begin with the food distributed by the back-up Senator and coca-grower leader Leonilda Zurita. On Friday January 12th, as the mobilization continued though irreversibly fractured, Zurita delivered sacks of flour belonging to the government to her bases. The flour was technically property of the Defense Ministry specified for use in civil emergencies.
Owned by the Spanish transnational PRISA, the two media outlets that documented the act provoked the firing of one Justice Ministry functionary. But Senator Zurita—who the opposition accused of being of the brains behind the mobilization against Manfred Reyes Villa—slipped away unharmed. Moreover, Zurita made the statement that all she had done was distribute the food: “I didn’t go there to give it out. The trucks kept arriving and so it couldn’t just be refused.”
And that’s that. Weeks later, during Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s visit to the city of El Alto, Leonilda Zurita gave an address and was seated—at this and other events—to the right of Evo Morales. In the midst of the spectacle, no one remembered that on the night of January 12th a television camera filmed the Senator handing out sacks of flour that indicated their source in big letters, telling the reporter that she was handing out government food because “we are in an emergency.” This statement was corroborated that same night by General Lora, in charge of civil defense in Cochabamba, who accepted that the food was released by him. That is to say, Zurita knew perfectly well where that flour came from.
Wrong? Well, it’s debatable whether or not the senator committed a crime or an administrative error. But two things remain in this journalist’s mind:
a) In those days, despite the rightwing aggression towards the mobilized in Cochabamba, all of state’s civil defense food supply would have been undoubtedly better destined for the regions where the rain and floods were causing reeking havoc.
b) The opposition’s main denouncement—that the Evo Morales government financed the mobilizations against Reyes Villa—found in Zurita’s contradictions, the perfect argument to confirm their claims.
Similarly, the role played by another MAS woman—the current Justice Minister Celima Torrico who in January was state council member and a protagonist in the mobilizations—deserves some attention. No one, much less Reyes Villa, forgets that Torrico encouraged the people to attack the Cochabamba Governor’s headquarters on January 8th. There is more than one press report that cites this, and various videos show her encouraging her comrades.
It was the Minister and the Senator (and campesino leader) Omar Fernández who, together with Cochabamba’s State Workers Union (COD in it Spanish initials) would organize a disastrous public meeting after January 11th that instead of achieving Reyes Villa’s withdrawal from power, ended in hoopla and with many people angry at the government and MAS.
Celima Torrico’s role in all of this has not been analyzed nor has the Minister helped shed light on the matter. In the on-going judicial process initiated by Senator Fernández, Torrico and two other of Evo’s Ministers have declined to make sworn statements. Moreover, Minister Torrico has hidden, with the help of her office staff, to avoid being given an appointment to make her sworn statement, according attorneys assigned to the case. Why?
Many questions remain up in the air, as does the judicial investigation under way. Many ignoble acts and everyone want to get of guilt-free: Reyes Villa, the government, its Ministers, Senator Fernández—who we owe a recount of his actions on the 8th and 16th of January when the people had the desire to lynch him in the public meeting that he directed so ineptly.
For now, while the tragedy’s protagonists make their statements and their lackeys applaud them, more than 200 wounded and three dead await justice…and deserve the truth.
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