Bolivia Heads for a National Shutdown

After a weekend of relative calm, the new week brings a renewal of protests and La Paz and threats by social movements to shut down other major parts of the country, such as Cochabamba.

Neighborhood groups in El Alto, coca growers, campesino groups from the altiplano, the national labor federation (COB), and others have focused their demands on the immediate arrangement of a Constituent Assembly to address the gas issue and a restructuring of formal political power in the country. The Congress is supposed to come back into session today to address that issue but many members have demanded guarantees that they will be allowed to meet. The movements have been trying to shut the Congress down.

As I wrote last week, the most obvious of the “exits” from the current confrontation is that the Catholic Church, the Assembly on Human Rights, and the Defensor del Pueblo get the movements and the government to a table to negotiate a “truega” or pause. The most obvious way to do that is for the government to agree to the convening of the Constituent Assembly with no restrictions on what it can take up. I think that anything short of that means that the conflicts will go on and will escalate in ways no one can predict. Hopefully the government will have the good sense to make that announcement soon.