This homeland of love that hurts…

If we had to describe today with a single word the Bolivia that we all love, we would probably have more doubts than in the past, when we had chosen some optimistic expression that conveys hope. Today it would be different, because feelings, as that popular expression says, are against each other and put together their own debate to impose who knows if a pessimistic and hopeless adjective.

Perhaps we have already lost count of the years that have passed since August 6 was just a celebration and a party; Today they are a reason for homage, yes, they can never be absent, but also for a deep reflection about where we are going as a country, what directions the leaders who have in their hands this giant tricolor ship called Bolivia are leading us, and a sense of concern of that there are no winds of good omen blowing in these times.

The country arrives on this August 6 with a deep division of its children; and although there was it before, today it is deeper than ever. The dominant power has chosen by administrative logic division and confrontation, the one that gives it political benefits in its adherents, but that in the perspective of the country only postpones indefinitely the possibility of a single construction of the country with a common objective, in the that all its citizens feel part of the same project for the future.

And almost as proof of how we are moving forward (or going backwards), the celebration of the 197 years of independence of our Republic of Bolivia coincides with a blockade of routes that has already been going on for a week in the department of Santa Cruz, by ‘intercultural’ peasants (read emigrants from the West of the country) who want to legalize the illegal occupation of land and the invasion of national parks with the easy argument of the right to land.
At the same time, the national holiday precedes a 48-hour strike in Santa Cruz, the most productive region, the one with the largest growth and population in the country, against the two-year postponement of the Population and Housing Census that would have to have been held next November.

The Government turned a deaf ear to the clamor of the department and continues with its plan to carry out the Census in 2024, a year before the national elections, with which the results of the statistical survey will not be applied even in the proportions of the distribution of participation politics of the regions, nor in the distribution of resources according to the criteria of population.

The Homeland belongs to everyone, like in a big house where some brothers and sisters are equal children of their parents and with the same rights, regardless of whether some are taller or darker than others; achieving equal attention for all should not be a concession from anyone, but only the democratic, equitable and respectful exercise of command of a country. Just as it would not be fair to celebrate the birthday of some and not others, it is also not fair to govern looking at some brothers and turning their backs on others.

Even so, with adverse conditions for the construction of a country where wisdom prevails, the rule of law, justice, respect for others, the right to escape from poverty, we Bolivians look at each other every August 6, we recognize each other diverse, complex and divided, but also capable of overcoming these historical adversities that at times seem to want to take us to the past, to look up and dream of a better and peaceful future. And that’s not asking too much. Happy Independence Day of the Republic of Bolivia!