Prosecutor says Bolivian opposition backed plot

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Prosecutor says Bolivian opposition backed plot
Tue May 5, 2009 5:45am BST

LA PAZ (Reuters) - The Bolivian prosecutor investigating an alleged plot to kill leftist President Evo Morales said a witness had implicated leading opposition figures in the conspiracy.
Last month, police raided a hotel in the opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz, killing three people and arresting two suspected of planning assassinations.

Marcelo Sosa, the prosecutor leading the probe, told reporters on Monday evening a person linked to the group, Ignacio Villa, testified that Santa Cruz businessman Branko Marinkovic and the province's right-wing governor offered financial aid.

Marinkovic made Villa "an economic offer" and Governor Ruben Costas "offered him a house and land," said Sosa.

"The aim of both offers was to (encourage) them to finish what they had started, a string of attacks," said Sosa, adding that Costas, Marinkovic and several other businessmen from Santa Cruz had been summoned to testify.

~snip~
Sosa said a second witness declared that Marinkovic, a fierce critic of Morales and a prominent political activist, gave the group $200,000 (135,000 pounds) to buy weapons.


Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE5440X820090505?rpc=401&

[peacetalksforall]

1. Once again, why are we hearing about this from a London newspaper?

$200,000 in weapons. A businessman and a regional governor. So did they have money passed to them from the oil, gas, and minerals people?

[harmonicon]

3. they are the oil, gas, and minerals people

for all intents and purposes.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Branko Marinkovic, fascist leader, is connected to oil and attended university in Houston 6 years.

Here's a quick look at this guy:

One of the most controversial figures of the autonomous movement is a member of FULIDE: the large landowner Branko Marinkovic. Marinkovic is FULIDE's spokesperson and at the same time, president of the Comité pro Santa Cruz, an association of large landowners favoring autonomy. Its youth organization is known for its violence and fascist behavior. The display of swastikas has been documented at several of their political rallies. Bolivian observers point out that Bolivia has its own history with the swastika. After 1945, numerous Nazis had taken refuge in this South American country, among them the mass murderer, Klaus Barbie. Barbie had served several Bolivian dictators - in their counter insurgency efforts.<8> Barbie was in contact with several fascist circles.<9> Nazi affiliated Croatian Ustashi had fled also with him to Bolivia, including some, whose families are among the autonomy supporters. According to the media, the father of Branko Marinkovic, the large landowner and president of the autonomists had also been a member of the Croatian Ustasha before coming to Bolivia shortly after the war.<10>

http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2008/10/profit-and-autonomy-20081014-la.html

~snip~
Branko Marinkovic is one of the Cruzano heavies. He is president of the Federation of Private Industries in Santa Cruz, a big rancher and like many elites in Bolivia's east a descendant of Croatian immigrants. He tells me he's made his peace with the gas nationalization, but he sounds ominous, if conflicted, on other issues. "Land reform could lead to civil war," says Marinkovic in Texan-flavored English, the product of six years studying at the University of Texas, Houston. When I ask if he is building a private militia, as is rumored, he is dismissive. "That's BS. Just BS. I am running a huge business here. I am not involved in anything like that." What else could he say?

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060619/parenti/4

~snip~
Leading the opposition in Santa Cruz is the region's governor Ruben Cruz - one time head of the santa Cruz Civic Committee - who owns 15, 000 hectares of land. The current head of the Committee, Branko Marinkovic, is the son of an Ustashi Croat. The Marinkovic family is estimated to own 90,000 hectares of land. From the 1950s, successive Bolivian governemtns and military dictatorships funnelled money into
Santa cruz supporting the vast latifundia devoted to soya bean production and cattle ranching. Bolivia's Institute of Agrarian reform (INRA) says that 400 individuals own 70% of the country's productive land, whilst in Santa Cruz, 25 landowners hold 22m hectares - 60% of the entire territory. A 2005 UN report calculated that 100 families controlled over 20 million hectares of land. (Clough, Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism, Issue No 203 - June/July 2008).

Clough: "Systematic settlement of Santa Cruz started after the Second World War with pro-Hitler Ustashi Croats driven out of socialist Yugoslavia and Nazis fleeing a defeated Germany. They created a virulently racist culture which expresses itself in a violent hatred of indigenous people. During the Hugo Banzer military dictatorship of the 1970s, vast tracts of lands, some exceeding 100,000 hectares, were handed over to political cronies regardless of whether indigenous people occupied them or not. Much of this land was left idle; where it was worked, landowners established a system of indentured labour which continues today. Banzer even offered 800,000 hectares of land to
Rhodesian and South African farmers, his Immigration Secretary telling them 'you will certainly find our indians no more stupid or lazy than own blacks'. Banzer also protected the development of the Bolivian cocaine trade; drug wealth flooded into Sant Cruz, financing a coup in 1980 and causing a US State department official to declare
'for the first time the mafia has bought itself a government'. The discovery of large gas reserves in Santa Cruz and neighbouring Tarija areas further augmented the wealth of the eastern part of the country."

Bolivia is a country that used to be ruled by three families (the barons of tin), who thought the country was their property.

More:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/09/408634.html?c=on

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0apf0lBbve4ww/610x.jpg

http://www.radioiyambae.com.nyud.net:8090/images/stories/civivcos_crucenos.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/05OW9nJ0Xp69Q/610x.jpg

Branko Marinkovic

~snip~
Officials in Mr. Morales’s government accused him of becoming one of Bolivia’s richest men partly through illegal land grabs in areas inhabited by Guarayo Indians, a charge he has contested in court. Seizing on his origins and foreign-sounding name, some here have called him a foreign meddler. (Mr. Marinkovic holds both Bolivian and Croatian citizenship.)

STATE news media also suggest that Mr. Marinkovic is seeking to foment a civil war to create a breakaway country in the lowlands, much as Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia. They also insinuate that Mr. Marinkovic’s late father, Silvio, was connected to Ustashe members who fled to South America along with their Nazi patrons.

“The Croat Marinkovic,” Bolivia’s state news agency said this month, “is promoting the division of Bolivia with fascist opposition to Evo.”

In Mr. Morales and Mr. Marinkovic, divided Bolivia has found strikingly different adversaries. The president, who halved his own salary to less than $2,000 a month upon taking office, is a former coca grower who espouses state-guided development from La Paz and the redistribution to indigenous peasants of large estates owned by people like Mr. Marinkovic.

Mr. Marinkovic commands a multimillion-dollar fortune and promotes a vision of unfettered enterprise combined with weaker ties to the central government. While Mr. Morales thrives in Bolivian politics, which are increasingly characterized by confrontation and intimidation, Mr. Marinkovic still seems more at home in an air-conditioned executive suite.

“My father was a Communist who fought with Tito against the Nazis,” an exasperated Mr. Marinkovic said in an interview here, referring to the Croatian peasant’s son who cobbled together Yugoslavia. As a child of privilege growing up in Bolivia, Mr. Marinkovic would be taken by his parents on family visits to Zagreb, now the Croatian capital, and points beyond in the Balkans.

“They’re calling us neo-Nazis, when that’s the farthest thing from the truth,” he continued, switching briefly into English with a slight twang, which he picked up while studying engineering and finance at universities in Texas. “There’s too much lying going on blatantly.”

BUT where the truth rests in Santa Cruz is also hard to determine.

This city remains a bastion of openly xenophobic groups like the Bolivian Socialist Falange, whose hand-in-air salute draws inspiration from the fascist Falange of the former Spanish dictator Franco.

~~~~~~~
But as to the possibility of renewed violence on the streets of Santa Cruz and other Bolivian cities, Mr. Marinkovic is clear. “If there is no legitimate international mediation in our crisis, there is going to be confrontation,” he said. “And unfortunately, it is going to be bloody and painful for all Bolivians.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/world/americas/27bolivia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

[Peace Patriot]

2. Did Rotters ever call Bush Jr the "RIGHTWING President of the U.S."?

No, they didn't. That's why they are, to me, not journalists at all, but rotten toadies to the rich and the corporate.

:puke:

[David__77]

5. I hope these rabble are cleared out of office.

Santa Cruz should be placed under direct federal rule and the fascists should be rounded up and imprisoned. Bring people from down the mountain to set up a new power structure.

[ronnie624]

6. "Four of Bolivia's nine provinces

voted last year for greater autonomy from the central government, underscoring a sometimes violent power struggle between the mostly indigenous western highlands -- represented by Morales -- and wealthier eastern regions."

I wonder why the author failed to mention that the "vote" was completely illegitimate. It must have just been an accident.
:sarcasm: