In the City of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, capital of the department of Santa Cruz in the Republic of Bolivia, there is a zone named Plan 3000. It is one of the youngest citadels in Latin America, as its first inhabitants were the parties injured in a maelstrom of the Piraí River which took place a bit over two decades ago.

Eighty percent of its citizens live in conditions of poverty, and even dire poverty. More than half its inhabitants are migrants, or descendants of migrants, which come from the western part of the nation. The rest come from the eastern part of the nation.
Because of those conditions they share, whether by reason of being poor and/or migrants, they find themselves in a situation of multiple economic, social and political disadvantages with regard to the petty “kings” that govern Santa Cruz. They are the object of mockery, scorn, racism, discrimination. They are the ones who produce wealth for others and poverty for themselves.

There are entire neighborhoods in this area whose inhabitants are washerwomen, masons, drivers, domestic employees, and small merchants, pliers of multiple trades; teachers and other professions. Many of them, if they go without working a single day, on the next they do not have enough to eat, and this is not a simple saying, it is one of the most common daily realities in these parts. And it was, as well, a very daily reality to have suffered for a very long time the harshest and most humiliating verbal insults, the most violent physical assaults, the pillaging of selling stands of small merchants, the shameless theft, the permanent and cowardly beatings, the intimidation, the persecution, in other words, all the worst that can be expected of the racist governing caste of Santa Cruz.

These governors, who now openly show their true fascist faces, thought that things would continue to take place with the same impunity as always. But there is a limit to everything, the accumulation of contained rage of the Three-Thousand folks had to break sometime, and it happened a few days ago, when hundreds and thousands of anonymous combatants of Plan 3000 not only said “Enough!” but showed it in a battle against the fascist youths of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee (Comité Cívico de Santa Cruz), of the Bolivian Socialist Phalanx (Falange Socialista Boliviana), of the Indigenous Nation Autonomous Movement (Movimiento Autonomista Nación Camba), of many “brave bars” of some football teams in Santa Cruz, of the Cruz Youth Union (Unión Juvenil Cruceñista); against gang members paid by the prefecture of this department, by the Civic Committee (Comité Cívico), and with resources originating in COTAS, CRE and SAGUAPAC (the cooperatives —companies— for telephones, electricity and water, respectively).

The anonymous combatants of Plan 3000, are that, combatants in a singular battlefield, an urban battlefield where hunger, thirst, anxiety are ever present. Where the enemy’s harassment is present, where sometimes the lack of understanding of the friend is also present. Where the constant bombardment of the other enemy must be withstood: that of the media, which often hurts more than the shots of the enemy in front of you.

A battlefield where, in several battles and skirmishes, even the police took the side of the enemy group; where our injured had no further cure or consolation than that found in each of the homes, or in the street itself.

This is a new kind of combatant. They have no military or paramilitary training such as that of the hired ruffians of the Santa Cruz oligarchy; they have no guns as these same; no one gives them a cent to fight, as these others. But they have a great spirit of solidarity, brotherhood, and mutual cooperation. They are so unique, that women, children and elders belong to these troops of combatants. To belong to the ranks of the Plan 3.000 combatants you need no inscription or registry; it is enough to be at the site of the battle when the situation calls for it. To belong to these ranks it is necessary to have in the depths of your heart not scorn for the other (as the hired ruffians of the oligarchy of we know where), but rather a great love for the other.

To be a part of the ranks of the “Three-Thousand” residents, you have to have felt in your own flesh the contempt of racism, the lacerations of exploitation, the understanding of human misery; or, simply, to have a pure heart, or feeling of solidarity, or a desire to change this world for a better one.

The pressures from within and without are not so important; what is important is to fight for a cause, the cause of Plan 3000, which is the cause of a better world. And for this reason the battle has been fought with the fury of the one who is right, with the disinterestedness of the one who feels, with the belief of he who knows he will overcome.

And the successes attained, as for every combatant, feed the desire to keep on fighting.

All the best to the anonymous combatants of Plan 3000!

Santa Cruz, September 16, 2008.