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"Felcy Guzman, president of the Civic Committee of Beni province, said they would stage protests against the law in several provinces." --from the OP
Reminds me of the fascists in Venezuela who threatened to boycott the last National Assembly elections. When the electoral commission asked them why, they couldn't think of anything, so they threw a dart at a board covered with potential objections and picked the fingerprinting ID for voting. The electoral commission, bending over backwards to accommodate their complaints and include them in the election, suspended the use of fingerprinting. Then they boycotted the election ANYWAY. (Dumb move, as it turns out.)
The rich landowners and white separatists in the eastern provinces of Bolivia (where Bolivia's main gas reserves are located) tried riots, destruction and murder, trying to split off the eastern provinces in 2008 (funded and organized right out of the U.S. embassy). Morales, backed by all of Latin America, said no. The compromise worked out was this autonomy law--semi-autonomy made possible for the provinces and for indigenous tribes, under the umbrella of the national government, which, a) protects everybody's human and civil rights, and b) controls Bolivia's natural resources for the benefit of all.
Not good enough for the rich landowners and white separatists, I guess. They want to return to the old days, when they ran everything, enslaved the indigenous and kept all of Bolivia's land and resource wealth for themselves.
This article is not informative as to why they are now protesting getting some of what they wanted, just not all power, all wealth and impunity for slavery. Morales threw the US ambassador and the DEA out of Bolivia, back in 2008, for their collusion with the white separatists, and was recently considering throwing the USAID out as well (arm of the CIA which funds rightwing groups throughout Latin America), but I don't think he's done it yet. So maybe these rightwing protests are an assignment, to earn their USAID payments. (USAID subcontractor provides the dart board.)
The last thing any U.S. administration wants--whether they hold power by Supreme Court coup or by permission of Diebold/ES&S--is a peaceful solution to a problem in Latin America. Our multinational corporate rulers and war profiteers thrive on conflict and bloodshed. That's what the U.S. "war on drugs" gravy train is all about. The blood and body parts of union leaders, indigenous farmers and others in Colombia, for instance, fertilize the ground for U.S. "free trade for the rich." Profits for the super-rich grow from this ground like bananas or coca plants. And the Pentagon lurks behind it all with their "Big Board" war plans ("full spectrum" military ops in the "southern cone").
So the U.S. will use any convenient funnel that it has--USAID, DEA, Peace Corps, embassies, consulates, military contractors, 'christian' missionaries or other private groups, or even more covert funding--to instigate or exacerbate conflict in countries whose democracies it wants to overthrow--the very countries that have worked so hard for clean elections and good government, the countries where human and civil rights are protected--and to try to "divide and conquer" countries with good governments from each other--for instance, to destroy all this unity that emerged in Latin America against the split-up of Bolivia. They thereby turn people who would otherwise accommodate themselves to democratic compromise--to getting some of what they want, but not all--into "protestors," not to mention rioters, sackers of public buildings and murderers. These people know that, when the time is ripe--when the plot is mature--as in Honduras, 2009--the U.S. will back their U.S.-designed coup. They just have to bide their time, bank their pay and do their assignments in the meantime.
The U.S. does not create every conflict in Latin America. There are plenty of honest conflicts that occur, and plenty of fascist criminals, sick with greed for money and power, who create hell for others. But the U.S. does instigate conflict and more often opportunistically seizes on conflict and infuses vast amounts of cash and arms, always to the wrong side, to make conflicts worse--much worse--than they need to be. It is awesome that countries like Bolivia have gained the democratic strength, at long last, to resist these tactics, and are pulling together with other Latin American countries, to collectively resist them. The U.S. multinationals and war profiteers, and their operatives in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, are frantic to destroy this resistance, and it is reasonable to presume--until proven otherwise--that rightwing "protests" that make little sense, like this one, are designed in Washington DC and implemented by U.S.-paid operatives.
Another possibility is that Guzman is angling for U.S. funding. Their coup attempt in 2008 was a disaster, and resulted in even more unity than before, among Bolivia's allies, and yet greater political success for Morales. Also, the new U.S. regime--as evidenced in Honduras--wants more democracy cosmetics to cover up what is really going on (vast U.S. corporate/war profiteer exploitation). Maybe his funding got cut off and he's trying to regain it?
But I favor the first possibility--that Guzman is already in U.S. pay--and his instructions, for the time being, are to appear more civil (no riots, sacking of buildings and murder). As in Venezuela, the new U.S. tactic is to legitimize the right--to get everybody to forget that the first thing the rightwing coupsters did, in Venezuela, for instance, was to suspend the Constitution, the courts, the National Assembly and all civil rights; and to forget that the rightwing separatists in Bolivia open fired on some 30 unarmed indigenous farmers, beat people up, sabotaged a gas pipeline, seized the airport, etc. When they get into positions of power (as in Colombia and now Honduras), they can freely murder anyone they consider the "opposition" (union leaders, teachers, human rights workers), but while democracy holds up, in a country, and the rightwing elite is out of power, they need to lie low and only get into the newstream as political dissidents, using any excuse to hand (i.e., protesting the compromise that they had agreed to, or objecting to fingerprinting ID).
It's kind of like here. The Bushwhacks murder a hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq (and a million, all told), get thousands of U.S. soldiers killed, torture prisoners all over the planet, rip up the Constitution, and loot and plunder the U.S. government on a truly unprecedented scale, and now we're supposed to treat them respectfully as a "legitimate" opposition? We're supposed to listen to these psychos as they criticize small (and I mean SMALL) reforms? The corpo-fascist press tries to create public memory loss. That is what I think this "protest" in Bolivia is all about. Forgetfulness. Until next time.*
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(Stanley Kubrick caught this U.S. hypocrisy/insanity so well, in "Dr. Strangelove," with his use of the song "We'll Meet Again.")
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