Morales Rejects Ousting of Manfred

For those following events here in Cochabamba who think the politics of it all are getting complicated, it is because it is getting more complicated by the day.

Yesterday the mass rally in the city’s Plaza Principal voted (in the not really an actual vote way that 5,000 people in a plaza decide anything) that Manfred Reyes Villa is no longer the governor of Cochabamba. Soon afterwards the Morales government, via the Vice Minister for Coordination with Social Movements (we don’t have one of those in the US) announced that the national government did not recognize that ousting and that Reyes Villa is still the legal governor of the department. The government affirmed that governors (and now presidents, presumably) can only be ousted by elections.

The rally also named a “popular government” to now lead Cochabamba, an act that, from what I can tell, isn’t even taken seriously by many social movement groups here.

For his part, there are rumors that Manfred Reyes Villa is back in Cochabamba, but nothing I have been able to confirm. Manfred has said again that he won’t push for the re-vote on autonomy that was the catalyst for all this. Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera reiterated yesterday that the national government is ready to give Reyes Villa all the protection he needs to return to Cochabamba, including 24-hour police and military guards.

Many of the people who have come to Cochabamba have gone home, at least for now, including a good number of the cocaleros, according to my sources.

In other words, no resolution as of yet, but a return to normalcy for the most part.