The organizations of the municipality of Cuatro Cañadas yesterday lifted the blockade of roads that, for five days, kept the route that links Santa Cruz de la Sierra with the department of Beni and various production centers in the region closed. This put an end to a 10-day conflict that began with the court in San Julián.
The pressure measure was lifted after a negotiation that lasted about nine hours and ended with the signing of a 14-point agreement that was initialed by the governor, Luis Fernando Camacho, the mayor of Cuatro Cañadas, Hugo Gutiérrez (MAS) and representatives of the intercultural communities, who led this pressure measure.
Despite the understanding, the municipality and the social organizations maintain latent threat of new mobilizations in case of non-compliance by the departmental authorities. Gutiérrez announced that he will go to the government of President Luis Arce (MAS) to finance the projects due to the “weaknesses” he found in the Governor’s Office.
“We do not see beyond their capacity and from now on we have to look for resources through the national government for our municipalities and we will bet on that because I believe that the governor one more year and will not to have more management, because it does not have the capacity to attend to the people”, said the mayor.
Camacho yesterday assumed the commitment to distribute 1,185 bags of food to 237 older adults in the municipality and agreed to carry out a technical-legal analysis to “coordinate balances and determine the royalties” derived from the Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons (IDH) for Cuatro Cañadas. A schedule was also set for the maintenance and inspection of the trucks.used by the producers of the municipality and deadlines were established for the preparation of the project for the asphalt paving of Cuarto Cañadas – Puerto Pacay, as well as other infrastructure works in the area.
The Departmental Road Service (Sedcam) promised to sign an agreement with the Mayor’s Office of Cuatro Cañadas to make dump trucks available for transport of rubble and the maintenance of its routes for an amount of up to Bs 95,000.
On the health issue, items will be jointly requested from the central government and work will be done on the construction of a health center for this municipality. The procedures for granting legal status to local social organizations will be analyzed.
“I thank those who have come with real problems according to our competence. This gives Santa Cruz a great relief that they could have yielded as they have done by making this agreement viable, Camacho said.
“In the event that you fail to comply with this commitment to our municipal government, unfortunately we are going to get up again”, affirmed Juan Peñaranda, leader of the intercultural groups of Cuatro Cañadas. On his side, Gutierrez criticized that Camacho “has only come for the signing”, and that he did not participate in the dialogue.
On Friday the livestock fair was inaugurated in Guarayos and yesterday the producers they breathed a sigh of relief because they will have visitors that they were waiting for without the blockade.
