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The Bolivian president called for calm to the leaders of Santa Cruz, who have kept the territory considered the economic engine of the country on strike for more than three weeks.
Luis Arce, president of Bolivia, called for “calm, peace and normalcy” for the Santa Cruz region. These are three difficult demands to achieve after the president announced that the population and housing census in the territory will be carried out in 2024, ignoring the claims that the Santa Cruz protesters have maintained for 21 days.
After midnight on Friday, November 11, Arce announced his decision. “First: the national population and housing census will be held on March 23, 2024. Second: based on these preliminary results, the distribution of resources will be made in September” of that year, he pointed out.
The date of the census is at the center of the dispute between the Bolivian government and the protesters. The Santa Cruz region, one of the economic engines of the country, has grown exponentially since the last population census in 2012. That is why part of its inhabitants are demanding a new count by 2023, something that would grant them more economic resources and also more seats in legislative bodies.
“A no-deal position”
The opposition argues that the government delays the population registry from 2023 to 2024 to avoid giving more resources and political power to a region traditionally opposed to the Movement for Socialism (MAS), the party of Arce and former president Evo Morales.
That is why they have been holding a strike for more than three weeks that has silenced the Santa Cruz region and has seen several clashes between supporters and detractors of Arce. Four dead and at least 170 injured is the balance of victims according to the Government since the start of the protests.
Arce’s arguments are the lack of technical resources to carry out the census in 2023, in addition to the interruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The president, in his address, criticized the lack of dialogue on the part of the opponents.
“We can no longer continue to delay, especially when leaders who represent a part of Santa Cruz, not all of it, maintain the position of not reaching agreements. In a democracy, different positions coexist, but democracy is also the decision-making process for the benefit of the majority,” the president asserted.
According to the president, “a technical act such as a census in no other country has become a political pretext to destabilize a government and confront the population.” Economic losses from the strike now reach 700 million dollars.
A crisis with electoral overtones for 2025
One of the main defenders of the strike is the Civic Committee of the department of Santa Cruz, leader of the actions that truncated the re-election of Evo Morales and that finally led to his subsequent resignation in 2019.
If the census is carried out in 2023, the results must be taken into account for the 2025 elections and Santa Cruz would add a small number of deputies.
Precisely, on Friday it was three years since Morales left the country, denouncing a “coup d’état” by the military forces that pushed him to leave the presidency. A presidency that he had achieved, according to opponents, with “fraudulent” elections.
Three years later, the MAS is back in power while Jeanine Áñez, the opponent who held the interim presidency when Morales left, is in prison. However, the confrontation between the two political factions is still just as lively.
With Reuters, EFE and local media
