(Later in the article) They
"demanded an investigation into the deaths of four of their members, who they believe were killed by police."The article is not very clear on the context of this situation, and it could be an editorial decision to emphasize the police corruption and blackmail as the motive for the tribes killing the police, rather than anger at police killings of tribal members. It wouldn't be the first time that the BBC distorted a story about Latin America, especially in a country that now has a hugely popular,
leftist Indigenous president one whose policies is respect for tribal law. Capital punishment, however, is forbidden in Bolivia. The lynchers are guilty of murder no matter what the police did. But if YOU saw four of your family killed by police and the police then extorting large sums of money from local people, whether the locals were smuggling or not smuggling, would you not be very angry, indeed? Smuggling cars is not violent. And smuggling itself is often the entrepreneurship of choice for poor people. It does not at all necessarily involve other crime. Poor people smuggle food, clothes, DVDs, soft drinks, beer and numerous other goods, to make a living--and have done so for millennia! It does not even necessarily involve theft--it's often just an informal economy. So if the police started killing people for this--possibly people who refused to be extorted for bribes?--that could lead to this kind of very rough "justice."
As I said, capital punishment is ILLEGAL in Bolivia. The new Constitution grants respect to traditional Indigenous justice WHILE RESPECTING HUMAN RIGHTS and excluding harsh punishments and death. This kind of incident could be used by corpo-fascists to try to tarnish Evo Morales--one of the most peaceful leaders ever to rise to power in the world--who has held Bolivia together through a bloody, U.S. supported, white separatist coup attempt in September 2008 and through a vast social and political change from white minority rule to democratic rule by the Indigenous majority. The white separatists wanted their own country (and Bolivia's gas reserves) and the Indigenous tribes are smarting from centuries of violent racial prejudice and efforts to destroy their communities, including virtual enslavement of the Indigenous to serve the whites. This is not an easy country to hold together. Morales has performed political miracles in this respect, but he also believes in social justice, in corporations serving the common good, in sharing the wealth and in bootstrapping the poor--which makes him and his government anathema to our corporate rulers. Corpo-fascist news outlets like the BBC (and, believe me, on Latin America, they serve US/British corpo-fascist interests) go sniffing around countries that the CIA wants to destabilize, looking for stories like this and spreading them far and wide--WHIILE IGNORING HUNDREDS OF MURDERS OF UNION LEADERS, POLITICAL LEFTISTS, HUMAN RIGHTS WORKERS, TEACHERS, COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS AND OTHERS in the U.S. client state of Honduras and THOUSANDS of such murders in the U.S. occupied country of Colombia. Indeed, there is a possible UK military connection to an horrendous massacre of up to 2,000 people in La Macarena, Colombia, nearby to a US military base*. Did the BBC cover it? They have not, that I can determine. Instead we get articles on TOURISM in La Macarena from the BBC!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8266415.stmIt would be interesting to find out if the local tribespeople had tried to get attention to the murders of local people by the police and were ignored by the BBC and other corpo-fascist newswriters. It would also be interesting to go back and review the BBC coverage of the white separatist insurrection in Sept 2008, for not covering or de-emphasizing the white separatists' murders of some 30 unarmed peasants and beatings and other violence and mayhem, and the U.S. funding and organizing of those crimes right out of the U.S. embassy. The corpo-fascist press
routinely disinforms its readers, viewers and listeners about such events. And the BBC is no exception. Beware of their habit of distortion. Beware of subtle messaging. And always, always question the choice of news stores, the wording of the headline and the lede, and the emphasis and framing of the story, as well as handling of quotations and facts, and OMISSIONS. The latter is the hardest to discern. You have to know a lot about a given topic to suss out the black holes where information should be. In this case, I'm wondering why the local community's accusations of police killings did not merit a story, prior to this one. I'm wondering about the lede--whether murders of locals by the police was the first motive for the lynchings and police extortion secondary. The BBC reverses them in importance. And I'm wondering where their story is on the far worse and likely official massacre in La Macarena, Colombia--a region of special interest and activity by the U.S. military and a news story with a UK military connection.
-----------------------------------------------
*The La Macarena massacre (includes a description of, and links to docs about, U.S. ops in La Macarena)
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303The UK military connection
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/02/04/silence-on-british-army-link-to-colombian-mass-grave/U.S. and Colombia Cover Up Atrocities Through Mass Graves, by Dan Kovalik 4/1/10
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/us-colombia-cover-up-atro_b_521402.htmlColombia: Mass Grave Discovered In La Macarena 5/1/10
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1005/S00001.htm 
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