Statement on Bolivia from the participants of the First International Encounter of Solidarity and Resistance of Indigenous Peopl

Bolivia, a country located at the heart of the American continent, is currently going through a difficult political, economic and social situation, the product of the neoliberal and genocidal administration of the government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and of the imperial and war mongering pressure of the United States. The 12th of October of 2003, a day consecrated to the indigenous and peasant resistance on a world-wide level, in El Alto de La Paz, troops and police assassinated more than 29 Bolivians, children and seniors, men and women, who spilled their blood to defend their natural gas, their resources, the people’s dignity, and the sovereignty of a people. In only a year and a month of governing, the neoliberal coalition of the Revolutionary National Militia, MIR, UCS and NFR, 101 Bolivians were assassinated. No one is guilty, impunity reigns.
In the present conjuncture, the Bolivian government tries to export the gas resources to the United States and Mexico, it criminalizes the social protests, unjustly arrests union leaders and popular leaders, obediently follows the mandates of North American imperialism through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), unconditionally adheres to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), and obeys the aims of the World Trade Organization (WTO). While in Bolivia’s democracy a dictatorship and a virtual state of siege are lived in practice, in Venezuela, a land of profound revolutionary changes, we met more than 3,000 representatives from different countries in the Encounter of Solidarity and Resistance of Indigenous Peoples and Peasants. In the face of this unjust and cruel situation of internal and external colonialism that is being imposed for external aims, the Bolivian people has said enough! and, for that reason, reclaims just and horizontal participation in the decisions and the future for its children.
Due to the dramatic situation that the Bolivian people are facing, the Encounter of Solidarity and Resistance of Indigenous Peoples and Peasants, which is taking place in Caracas (Venezuela), between the 11th and the 14th of October of 2003, declares:
1) We express our profound solidarity and commitment with the Bolivian people that is made up of 37 indigenous and peasant peoples and nations.
2) To condemn at a world-wide level the massacre committed by the Bolivian government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and the impunity that exists in that regime.
3) To also demand of the Bolivian Government the exemplary punishment of the ones guilty for the murders and immediate attention to the demands of the popular sectors.
4) To bring about a campaign of denunciation at a world-wide level on the attacks on human rights that are being committed in that country and in others of our continent.
5) To materially and morally support the national deputy and coca grower leader, Evo Morales Ayma, for his untiring fight in defense of the natural resources and life itself.
¡Let's Globalize the Struggle!
¡Let's Globalize Hope!
Caracas, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, 13th of October of 2003. Signed by Indigenous the National Council of Venezuela (Conive), National Agrarian Confederation Ezequiel Zamora (Canez), Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), Indigenous Confederation of the Amazonian River basin (Coica), Via Campesina, Latin American Coordinator of Organizations of the Field (Cloc), Landless Movement of Brazil (MST) and representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, the United States, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and other countries ".