THE COCHABAMBA CLIMATE SUMMIT AND THE INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE IN BOLIVIA & PERU

On Earth Day this year, Bolivia hosted the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of the Mother Earth (CMPCC) in the central city of Cochabamba. Some 30,000 people from over 150 countries attended the CMPCC, which sought to bring governments and civil society groups together to work to address climate change. Ironically, the days around the Cochabamba summit saw a wave of campesino and indigenous protest over development projects and land rights throughout Bolivia, and the immediate aftermath of the CMPCC saw a nationwide general strike by workers who rejected the government's offer of a 5% wage increase. These conflicts bring home the contradictions that Morales and his ruling Movement to Socialism face as they try to balance the dictates of state power and economic reality with an indigenous and ecological sensitivity. Meanwhile, in neighboring Peru, Washington's free trade ally in South America, general strikes have repeatedly paralyzed the country this year as peasants and indigenous peoples continue to protest plans for massive resource exploitation on their lands.

Journalist Bill Weinberg, who covered the Cochabamba summit for NACLA Report on the Americas, reports back and leads a discussion on indigenous, peasant and ecological struggles in Bolivia and Peru, and the challenges of building solidarity.