Manifesto: Call For Militant Support For Marchers Defending Tipnis, Bolivia

MANIFESTO!
CALL FOR MILITANT SUPPORT FOR OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS MARCHING IN DEFENSE OF TIPNIS , BOLIVIA from Oscar Olivera & others

To the brothers and sisters, old and young, men and women, boys and girls that march and are 4 km from Yucumo, in the community of Limoncitos, swarming with hordes of MAS supporters sent by the bad government of Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia Linera:
To the men and women of Bolivia, to the indignant of the whole world:
To the people of our planet, who see in this process the hope to build a new world, a new society, a process that is of the people and not those that today act more like rulers, function as Kings and Vice Kings:
A handful of common people, we have made the decision, collectively, to gather almost 2,000 people, as our Zapatista brothers and sisters say, from August 15 and although from before 1990, they have decided to choose to walk their Word, to communicate with those like them in the world.
These sisters and brothers, August 15, made the decision to march more than 600 KM., today they have completed more than 270 Km. and have 330 to go.
The government has decided to surround them, besiege them, for this they are using the Police and groups affiliated with MAS, part of the people, like us, but pressured by bad leaders that want to create a climate of terror and fear between the marchers and general population.
This reminds us of the fear, anguish, powerlessness of the surrounded miners and workers in Calamarca in 1986, Amaya Pampa and Capasirca (miners’ camps) in 1996, when the dictatorships, like this, did the same thing, they surrounded the people, acting to suffocate the Word and the Hope, with the difference now they use our own brother and sisters, like they already did in Porvenir-Pando, in Huanuni, in Caranavi, in Cochabamba and other conflicts, where already more than 60 died. Today already 2 children died and 2 sister marchers grieve miscarriages.
Today they hack our telephone lines, computers, email of “opponents and dissidents” and if they don’t find anything “abnormal”, they invent calls to the “gringo embassy” or the Santa Cruz oligarchy.
When this bad government dialogs and makes pacts with the powerful of the world, plans to sack and destroy our Pachamama, through BM, BNDES of Brazil, the FMI, the CAF, the BID, the transnational mining and oil companies, European banks and business organizations of the right wing oligarch of Santa Cruz, this government refuses to meet face to face the brothers of the low lands of our country.
This government has tried, by all means to demonize this movement that opposes the construction of a Super highway of more than 400 Km. that would destroy indigenous territory and national park named Isiboro-Secure TIPNIS.
The construction of this Highway, not only has violated our own Constitution, driven by this bad government, passed Agreement 169 of the OIT, but also violated a series of laws and standards that protect this area.
In the next 5 years they will have destroyed more than half a million trees, they will have destroyed species of animals and plants unique in the world, they will have reduced drastically water production by the disappearance of humidity concentrated in this tropical zone, tree products, and extractive activities that this government wants to carry out there.
Also they have violated contractual procedures, taxes in the interest of the Brazilian oligarchy, they have decided to sack the Bolivian Amazon and construct an inter-ocean route (Atlantic-Pacific) to continue the plundering and exploitation of our common good, to say, our life, from a plan IIRSA made in the interests of transnationals since 2000.
They have criminalized and stigmatized this demand NO to the construction of this Super highway; they ignore and depreciate alternatives that the indigenous communities and general society have formed for the construction that would respect the Park and indigenous Territory. They haven’s listened to us, even more they have said this dignified march of men, women, old, children, all and all indigenous, is a march financed by the U.S. Embassy and reactionary forces in Bolivia. Before, when we would march with Evo Morales and others now they are saying this, they would say to us that we were financed by the Narcotrafficers or the FARC, What difference is there in these criminal stigmas?
This stigmatizing and disqualifying of the march in defense of this territory, the telephone interventions, the persecution of concerned friends, the scorning of the demands, the deafness of this bad government, isn’t more than the fear of the true power that is in the sincere people and worker of our people, that from centuries come fighting to be heard, to construct a world of reciprocity, of respect, of solidarity, transparency, justice, work, to say, a happy world.
We denounce to the International Community these depths, this government not only has done this, but for many days has prevented the arrival of assistance of food, medical supplies, clothes and water for people on this march. This is a criminal act, that violates the most elemental Human Rights, of dignity, the right to protest and makes an attempt on the lives of hundreds of people of all ages that have mobilized.
For this, because we love life, because we are in a struggle to the death for life, this handful of men and women from the cities and country, we have decided to gather our brothers and sisters, because like them, we have our sons, our daughters, our sisters and mothers, our grandmothers and grandfathers, that are in the march and they have decided to defend the land, the culture, the water, the trees, the animals, the rocks, the birds, the Word, the hope, dreams, this Pachamama and the way of life so generous she has granted us to live well, al of us, not just some.
We have mobilized because we exist, because our brothers and sisters of TIPNIS, they aren’t alone nor the only ones, because we have cried together and together many years, we have suffered, we have fought, we have been afraid and anguished, and because our gathering promotes we continue dreaming, for us, for you, for all, because today all of us are the TIPNIS, from Indigenous Territory and National Park Isiboro-Secure.

Against the deafness and blindness
Against the authoritarianism, for the generosity
Against the contempt, for equality
Against ignorance, for our wisdom and ancestral values
Against arrogance, for humility
Against repression, for freedom
For Dignity, against discrimination
For Mother Earth that you don’t sell or rent
For the Word, against Silence and Forgetting

Cochabamba, land of struggle and dignity, Sept. 19, 2011

Oscar Olivera
Marcelo Rojas
Maria E. Flores
Alejando Alamaraz
Gabriel Rodriguez
Fredy Villagomez
Fernando Machicao
Yajaira San Martin
Gaston Zeballos