What starts badly, cannot end well

The census turned out to be another scam by the government against the country, not just against Santa Cruz. It could not have been otherwise, since it was a heroic act of sacrifice by civil society in Santa Cruz, which snatched a right from the state. The census was not convenient for the government because of the political and economic effects and the change in the population matrix in the country.

So, unable to prevent the census, he manipulated the results in a rude, criminal and fraudulent manner.

The tense relationship between the eastern region, headed by Santa Cruz, and the central state is not only marked by the successful mode of production that we Santa Cruz residents have, but also by the political spaces that we are willing to dispute with the central power, in how we understand the role of the State in society, how we understand democracy and how we understand the way to produce wealth and improve the quality of life of our inhabitants.

Santa Cruz is the department they despise the most, the one they have become obsessed with defeating, not only politically but also in its development model, its cultural essence and our history.

This tension is not new, it has occurred throughout the entire republican life, but with the MAS government it has been aggravated because, as in every dictatorship, they do not admit dissenters, neither people, nor institutions, nor political parties, nor regions. And since we are unruly, rebellious, sometimes irreverent with the central power, their objective has been and will be to defeat us.

This way of seeing life is what causes tensions and will continue to cause them with the central power.

The strength of Santa Cruz has been in its institutional unity, and the government knows this, which is why it has tried not only to divide, but also to weaken the Santa Cruz institutionality. When I speak of institutionality, I am referring to public and private institutions: the Government, the university, municipal governments, the Civic Committee, business entities, etc. The Machiavellian methodology of ‘divide and you will reign’ is always used by totalitarian governments.

Dictatorships, in their inability to create better living conditions for their citizens, create internal enemies by accusing them of the vices they suffer, constructing narratives full of falsehoods. The epithets of oligarchs, separatists, racists, have the political objective of denying the existence of a society like that of Santa Cruz, successful, with a production model that can achieve food sovereignty for the entire country, with a political history of articulated demands such as the fight for royalties of 11%, the election of mayors and municipal councils, the election of governors, the fight against the narco-dictatorship of García Meza.

The historical struggle in the department of Santa Cruz is seen by the MAS as a threat to its criminal presence in the government, to its authoritarian temptation to remain in power forever.

It is time for unity if we want to succeed. Let us understand that it is not just Santa Cruz that has been scammed, it is the entire country. The fight for the census is a political fight. Only by recovering democracy, justice, and freedom can we know how many Bolivians there are.

The Bolivian State is so putrid that we must be able to form a counter-power from the regions that prevents them from consolidating their dictatorship.