AP’s Report on the Violence in Pando

In 2008 Bolivia joined Chile in and the U.S. in having 9/11 etched into their national histories as dates associated with violence and bloodshed (in Chile, for those who don’t know, September 11, 1973 was the date of the bloody U.S.-backed coup of General Augusto Pinochet).

On September 11 of this year, as parts of Bolivia’s eastern departments were in open, violent rebellion against President Morales, that violence spread to Pando. A caravan of Morales supporters, 1,000 or more, was headed to the department’s capital city, Cobija. There intent has been described differently by different reporters, to meet and discuss strategy, or to retake the public buildings seized by Morales opponents.

Whatever their intent, some 30 kilometers out of the city they were met by a crowd of several hundred heavily armed backers of the region’s Governor, Leopoldo Fernandez (cuurently in jail in La Paz). Among other weapons, the mob from the city brought machine guns.

For weeks there have been differing accounts of what happened on that road on that bloody day. Yesterday the Associated Press, a news organization that produces solid reporting here, published the first thorough foreign press account based on travel to the site of the violence and extensive interviews with eyewitness.

Here is the link. I encourage you to read it.

AP Examines Deadly Clash on Bolivian Jungle Road

By PAOLA FLORES The Associated Press

PORVENIR, Bolivia (AP) — A deadly clash on a jungle highway has become the newest and bloodiest symbol of Bolivia's political crisis, pitting President Evo Morales against an autonomy movement in the eastern lowlands that is bitterly resisting his leftist reforms.

The shootout capped rioting across half of Bolivia, violence that Morales alleges was inspired by opposition governors and supported by the United States — a charge denied by U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg as he was expelled from the natural gas-rich country this month.

Morales, pushing for deep socialist reforms guided by traditional Bolivian indigenous values, says groups organized by his political opponents machine-gunned 16 of his poor Indian supporters in the Sept. 11 confrontation.

Lowland opposition leaders, guarding their region's frontier capitalism and more Euro-centric heritage, say they lost two of their own in a pitched battle to defend their provincial capital from marchers directed by Morales.

The Associated Press traveled to Bolivia's remote Amazonian province of Pando and interviewed police, witnesses, and participants on both sides. Their testimony and evidence from the scene suggests that the blockading of the marchers exploded into a shootout, and that the shootout quickly devolved into a one-sided rout.

Read the full account here.