Cochabamba's Day of Bloody Conflict, Six Months On

Yesterday, Cochabamba marked six months since that bloody Thursday in January when a standoff of rival political positions turned into a violent melee between rival mobs, leaving two men dead (and later a third) and more than 100 other people injured. As with the conflicts, the city marked its sad anniversary divided.

At a church in the city's wealthiest neighborhood, Recoleta, a crowd gathered to mourn Cristian Urresti, the 17-year-old killed that day as he joined with backers of the local governor, Manfred Reyes Villa. A mile away, a group of about 100 people joined with the widow of the coca farmer slain that day, Juan Ticacolque, at La Plaza de las Banderas, where a simple monument was erected for those killed and wounded in January (the photo above).

Both sides continue to demand justice for the brutalities committed by the other. Loyalists to the slain youth from the city's affluent north still demand punishment for whoever wielded the machete with which he was killed. None make mention of the footage showing crowds of youth from the city's north breaking through police lines to initiate the beatings that turned the standoff into violence.

At the erection of the monument, a 14-year-old youth spoke; a boy who had four bullets pierce his leg that day.

The rich want to keep earning more and we work for them. Manfred Reyes Villa doesn't have a conscience about anything. Before he wanted to sell the water and then he wanted to kill us. The people who have power don’t have a conscience. Look how they kill people who are humble.

Here none make mention of the blockades and the burning of the state building that provoked the conflicts.

While Cochabamba appears relatively quiet and peaceful on the surface, the memories of January remain raw in many quarters and reconciliation and middle ground are hard to find.

Local politicians, who on both sides did a good deal to provoke the violence and nothing to stop it, seem still intent to fan the flames. Reyes Villa quickly denounced that no one had permission to erect the monument on public space – it sits on a small patch of lawn on an island in the middle of the street. Passing city youth yesterday pledged to tear down the Andean Cross. Neither seemed to voice similar objections to the monument erected six months ago to Urresti on a downtown street corner. That monument has never been the target of any objection or vandalism to my knowledge. Nor should it.

Podemos Senator Tito Hoz de Vila took the spirit of reconciliation a step farther, vowing to wage a battle in the Bolivian Congress to take down the new monument. As if the nation's Congress has nothing better to do than debate the artistic merits of a ten-foot tall plaster cross.

Stepping back, January 11th represents that place where Bolivia could go in this hard moment of political transformation, a place where the political process can no longer contain the conflicts and those spill onto the street and into bloodshed. Since January 11 the political conflicts at hand have gone back into the world of negotiation and public rhetoric and that is a good thing for the nation.

Honoring the right of both sides to mourn and remember the costs paid that day may also help remind all sides of the cost if they don't find a way to negotiate political change in Bolivia.

In a Bolivia where unity is hard to come by, politicians who seem intent to fan the flames of division over the trivial, regardless of party or side, clearly have something else at heart than the nation's interests. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that both sides have a right to mourn and to have a physical symbol of that mourning.

Now both sides do – until some of Cochabamba's protectors of democracy decide to tear it to pieces in the dark of night.