The ugly truth about the Bolivian opposition

El Duderino and El Gaviero have both been busy blogging the sugary propaganda videos of the “No” side in tomorrow’s Bolivian constitutional referendum. Judging strictly the commercials and music videos, you’d assume that the opposition were a nice, harmless bunch of dissenters who care about freedom and democracy, and for that reason don’t want the new constitution to pass. The truth, however, is a lot uglier:

Four-part documentary video in Spanish, showing the Porvenir massacre of September 11 of last year in detail. The trouble began when a campesino group supporting Evo tried to march to the town hall in Cobija to demonstrate for land rights. They were met at a roadblock by a group of oppos, who had dug a trench across the road. Rather than engage in dialogue, the oppos told the campesinos to go back, or else. A computer simulation shows the oppos, in green, chasing the indigenous campesinos, in white, into the woods. Then the campesinos stop, round on their pursuers, and a confrontation takes place–a very unequal one, since the oppos have guns and the campesinos don’t. There are numerous killings, as well as torture and terrorism inflicted by the oppos on the campesinos. The shooting only stops when a second campesino contingent arrives from the opposite direction, riding trucks and tractors; then the oppos make a run for it, with the campesinos chasing them. But the confrontation doesn’t end there; a group of armed oppos chase some unarmed campesinos to the river, forcing them to make a swim for it. And then they take shots at them while they’re in the water. Several more campesinos were killed this way. Since the river is infested with piranhas, there are several missing bodies which have not been found. The official count is something like 16 to 18, but the actual death count is much higher.

If you wonder why the opposition side, the “No” to the constitution, is going to lose big-time tomorrow, your answer is above. They are violent punks, and they have a major hate-on for democracy. Especially when it leads to progress for indigenous campesinos like the people they abused and killed in the video above.