A long night.

I´m not sure when we missed the path. At first, I did not notice because the joy in the beginning of 2006 clouded all, and I still remember the celebrations in the Plaza San Francisco. Nor does the confusion was apparent when one after the other, some important achievements of the people became a reality enshrined in the new Constitution; or when we voted with pride for the defenders of Mother Earth. Now I remember the words of a friend of mine, when all this started: “this will be a long night”. This government is slowly turning into that, and the intentions of building a road through the TIPNIS has a lot to do with the total debacle of this administration.

The projected road has, in my view, two intentions less clear that the supposed territorial integration. On the one hand there is the need to make way for oil companies, which have been conditioned their investments to the establishment of a “more favorable” business environment. To this determination also respond the frustrated increase in the price of gasoline earlier this year.

The other intention, would be to broaden the base of support of the Government in the Chapare area, through the increase of areas for coca crops, which also will increase the number of growers. Once achieved, it will be a must to integrate them to the federations allied to the government that are currently unable to control the growers established into the red line area.

With these two “fundamentals”, the “champions” of Mother Earth will begin the process of clearing 600,000 hectares of one of the best preserved rainforests of America, and the last remaining forests of the southern boundary of the Amazon. Inevitably they will destroy three indigenous cultures, will plant thousands of hectares of coca impossible to monitor and will open the door to oil companies that five years ago were the neo-liberals enemies.

The range of treacheries (or stupidities…) that the government is about to commit with the road is really integral. Will liquidate the principle of its own Constitution, the Right of Self-Determination of the People;  will end once and for all its international support built around its image as a defender of the rights of Mother Earth, to commit one of the most important environmental crime of the last century in Latin America; will destroy the basis of its foreign policy to combat drug trafficking, showing how flexible really is, and in the process, will sentence to death any aspiration to legitimize cultural consumption of the sacred leaf, which was one of the main foundations of our multilateral relations.

But what is worse, it will end up with the national dignity that we had conquered after centuries, bending knees to the oil companies, and multiplying the savage capitalist model. As regards the national government, does not seem to care to put a price on everything, including our Pachamama, or not? The road is a 400 million dollars gift to some companies which have historically never benefited anyone but themselves (we should ask the people of Nigeria, Peru or Ecuador).

With a fraction of that money we could give work to the hordes of frustrated unemployed people of El Alto. For them, there is not even a reduction of the price of the alcohol with which they are killing themselves every day. With another fraction of that money, we could turn the Yungas region in a dignified food production center, contributing to food security in the country, based on a model of harmonious development, protector of Mother Earth. Another fraction could be used to preserve our national parks and turn them into huge generators of resources based on applied scientific research and tourism, and who knows, maybe some money left to exercise control in the cities where the facility for washing resources has increased the drug bussiness to alarming levels, and to promote by example the respect for the cultural use of coca and to value their producers.

Our leaders seems to be unable to understand that in August 15, when the march of the CIDOB (Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia) starts for the TIPNIS, will come from the rainforest the only people that are able to teach them how to return to the path they should not have lost, and who knows, we will go back to the Plaza San Francisco once again full of hope. But I´m afraid that today, is more possible that this night will be longer than we thought.