Prada on the fences to Santa Cruz:"The brothers who have reacted have been demonized, since they have been affected since the first day of the strike"

The Minister of the Presidency, María Nela Prada, read the five points proposed by the “great town hall” held last Friday (against the census strike) and regretted that the people who surrounded Santa Cruz in La Guardia and Pailón were “demonized”and valued the original indigenous nations for offering themselves as mediators of a dialogue for the census.

The authority stressed that those attending this meeting “expressed their different realities, economic, social, cultural, their opinions about the census”, as well as that they had presented their proposal to find a solution to suspend “this strike that is harming the economy of the sectors that are affected in their daily lives, in their jobs, in their families, in their income”.

“We all agree that we want a census, that we are working for a census, but that it must be of quality, and inclusive, of the word of the original indigenous nations. That no indigenous nation be left unregistered,” he added.

Prada began to detail each of the five points and began: “By order of the town council, They demanded that the right to work and free movement be guaranteed.. The right to face-to-face education for girls, boys, adolescents and young people in our department is also being restricted.

In the second point, he stated that everyone agrees that “we have the right to protest, which is guaranteed in our multinational State, but the right to work must also be guaranteed,” stressed. “This means that those who want to stop can do so. But at no time has the council carried out by the Civic Committee for Santa Cruz determined a forced blockade of the Santa Cruz families.. The right of those who want to stop is guaranteed, but without blocking and harming the right that all of us from Santa Cruz have to work.”

Its third point calls for justice for the murder of Julio Pablo Taborga in the municipality of Puerto Quijarro and for a prompt investigation to be carried out, determining responsibilities so that perpetrators pay for the crimes they committed.

The item touches “the commitment to the defense of intercultural democracy, with life, with the economy and with the work of all Bolivians, not only in the case of Santa Cruz.”

Finally, he explained that the unions, social organizations, the productive economic sectors, native indigenous nations, representatives of professionals, university students and people with disabilities, have presented a proposal regarding the census and in it they asked for the realization, as soon as possible, of a great multinational meeting“for a census with consensus”, indicating that since the census is national in scope, the 9 governors, all the mayors, the authorities of the rural autonomies, and all the rectors of the public universities should be summoned to this meeting “for build a census date based on technical criteria, taking into account the diverse economic and cultural realities of our Plurinational State of Bolivia”.

He lamented that the governor’s position “has nothing to do with the census, it has nothing to do with the datewith the resources, which was the main demand of the people of Santa Cruz.” He stressed that the Government has already given a response in relation to the resources, proposing that they be distributed with preliminary results six months after the census is carried out in 2024, that is, , “in the same year we will have the resources to redistribute them for the benefit of the people of Santa Cruz.”

“They told us not to determine the date of the year 2024, in order to make possible a dialoguewe proposed that the deadline be based on an agenda and leave the census date open, we work on a draft standard, which is a new draft of a supreme decree, where we leave the date of the census openso that it is a technical commission that determines (the date), even so they sought to impose a year, that cannot be done, putting the cart before the oxen, it is precisely the technical work and the oxen that have to guide the cart”, explained the minister.

Prada lamented that today “the brothers who are reacting have been demonized because at this moment they are already being suffocatedthey have already been surrounded since the first day of the strike, forcing them to abide by a strike that is actually a forced blockade”.

Regarding the Church’s offer to be a facilitator of the dialogue, he said that all the instances that want to contribute genuinely to reaching an agreement will always have open spaces, and at the same time he stressed that “the working people, to social organizations and peoples native indigenous people”, emphasizing that the latter can be the mediators of this dialogue“because they have absolutely all the morals to be able to reach an agreement based on what they have shown us ancestrally, on how coexistence should be respecting and listening to us.”