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Translated by: ClajadepCanada
La Paz.-One and a half million residents of the cities of La Paz and El Alto paralysed all public and private activities and in silence condemned the cruel massacre that tainted with blood the Highlands and broke the soul, but not the spirit of the poorest and most rebellious country of South America.
Deserted streets, doors and windows painted in black, flags at half mast and the hurting that penetrated the skin, marked midday today. In popular neighbourhoods people are keeping vigil over their dead. Smell of coca, smell of poverty, smell of war. In the middle class neighbourhoods, infinite sorrow and cry. In the residential neighbourhoods, sadness and fear.
The strike called by the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) and the Federation of Neighbourhood Assemblies of El Alto, is spontaneously obeyed by everyone. They are only just about a couple of thousand, those who have gathered and march on the higher end of the city’s downtown near the government quarters. There are some public assemblies, yelling accusations and condemnations. Small barricades are raised. A funeral procession weeping their pain on the streets. The great majority, though, are in their homes and neighbourhoods, in mourning for the 26 dead this Monday and the other 28 gunned down by machine gun from sharp shooters this last Saturday and Sunday.
On the radio stations the name of those dead are remembered as well as the names of the hundreds of wounded. At four thousand meters of altitude, life is not worth anything. Even though the local priest, Guillermo, does not believe so: “life is a gift from God, and thus we shall preserve it”, he says through the radio network Erbol, heard throughout all the neighbourhoods, those on the hills and those downhill as well. There, were people are breathing truce, a tense truce.
“It is the truce that precedes the final battle”, sustains the analyst Alvaro Garcia, who believes that, behind the massacre of poor people, there is only two ways out; a political one, with the resignation of president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and the military, the bloody one, that of the massacre.
From the south perimeter area of la Paz, in the urban-rural limit, the peasants keep vigil over their dead, but there is much anger. “We are all going out on the streets until the evil gringo resigns” they say, and get ready to resume the combat of the unarmed masses against the tanks and machine gun.
In the neighbourhoods of El Alto, the most radical ones, they are not putting their guard down, specially the youth of the Public University, the street vendors, miners and peasants. They are still awaiting the reinforcements of their brothers of near by Viacha, the ones from Oruro, who are getting ever closer, of those from Achacachi and Potosi. From Yungas, a wide number of settlers, peasants and coca growers order their counterparts: everyone to the city of La Paz. The people know that only the multitude will be able to defeat the massacre.
On the presidential residence, Sanchez de Lozada also meets with his closest collaborators. No one wants to talk to the media about the military topic, no one says a thing. From Trinidad, on the northern corner of the country, almost at the border with Brazil, other two contingents of armed soldiers arrive. There is total alert.
“It is the truce that precedes the final battle”, repeats the analyst. From Cochabamba, in the center of Bolivia, another front opens up. There are some fighting between civilian protesters and the police in several points of the third most important city of the country. There are many blockades from the coca growers and peasants who are already making themselves heard in Chapare and several provinces. There are road blockades, tear gas and rubber bullets.
In the orient, in Santa Cruz, in the economically strongest and most important region of the country, there are popular mobilizations, still small but growing. From the north, from Yapacani a march approaches, there are blockades. In Potosi, in the south corner of the west, there is total mobilization. The marches repeat themselves and multiply in each town where there are peasants and workers, all over the wide geography of the national territory.
All of these popular actions are showing that the poorest civilian population of Bolivia is making a giant effort to mobilize around the whole country, attempting thus, to halt the massacre that is nearing once again in the Highlands. It is the enormous rebellion of the stone and the wooden stick, it is the mobilization of the masses against the tanks. Until one o’clock in the afternoon, the truce as well as the silence of the innocence were still on.