Let's get out of lockdown

Miriam Suárez Vargas

From my confinement due to the pandemic, I hear music that sometimes comes closer and sometimes fades away. I look out the window; it's a band, musicians with their families, pulling a cart to collect whatever donations people can offer. They carry containers, knocking on doors, not imposing, just asking for help to survive another day. In the afternoon… I hear drums again. Are they the same ones? They seem to be walking the streets. It's a small drum group, and its members look tired; luck and good weather aren't always on their side. The scene is dramatic. I don't feel the joy that makes you want to dance; instead, I'm overcome by a feeling of loss, of sadness. The musicians walk the streets, hoping for the neighbors' kindness and support during these times of COVID.

This is my country, my people, unequal, diverse, plural, controlled by coup-plotting castes who vie for political power, needing it to continue "exploiting" and selling off the natural resources of Bolivians. The coup plotters don't care about life; democracy is a shield to cover their misdeeds and forcefully suppress the libertarian spirit of social movements. They seek to complete their extractive and repressive project by silencing the voices that condemn the coup and its policy of death.

Under the pretext of protecting public health, the authorities accompanying the self-proclaimed president are unleashing their repressive forces on the streets—those uniformed officers whose only known record is so sinister that it instills fear in the people. Any social movement, gathering, or act of disobedience is and will be penalized (criminalized), one minister shouts, countered by another: “The terrorists will be prosecuted for endangering public health; we have them identified. To jail with them for sedition!” Since when is the right to protest labeled sedition? Since when has repression extinguished the yearning for freedom? The strength of the mobilized is the force that inspires people to march toward the goal of living in freedom, sheltered by a horizon of equality that respects diversity, without anyone considering themselves or placing themselves above anyone else.

In the unbearable solitude of confinement, faced with episodes of hatred, institutionalized terror, and the daily thefts, I decided to become another activist. With the few resources available, I see myself as an activist who condemns the culture of death, closing the doors on the patriarchs of obscurantism, dressed in white to hide their true faces of contempt for those who are different, unmasking the indifferent authorities who dictate measures not designed for a country with so many diverse peoples coexisting in this vast territory.

They have their arguments; they stole the words of social movements to mislead the listener. However, depending on the background of those mobilized, they selectively apply cruelty. If they are poor, indigenous, or rebels opposed to the transitional government: they have no souls, no spirit, they are savages, there is no consideration for them whatsoever. If they are young, urban, white, with stable finances, mobilized to ensure the transition lasts a long time, they are democrats, even if they promote racism and criminality in the streets, committing the worst humiliations against women, indigenous people, the poor, and the unemployed mobilized in defense of their rights.

Neither the COVID-19 pandemic, nor the threatening speeches of the coup plotters in collusion with the Santa Cruz Youth Union and the so-called Cochabamba Youth Resistance, will break the fighting spirit of the social movements.

Enough!! Let's break out of confinement, let's strengthen the hope of our people, united against any attempt to return to the old republic indifferent to the nations and diversities that coexist in this Plurinational territory.

We condemn violence, no matter where it comes from!