Development: On 11 January three people were killed in Yapacaní, on the western borders of the province of Santa Cruz.
Significance: Protests are everyday occurrences in Bolivia but they rarely produce fatalities. When they do, ministers are sacked and governments totter. The protests and deaths in Yapacaní are doubly dangerous for the central government led by President Evo Morales because they appear to be the result of a feud inside the ruling Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) which the government may have allowed to fester.
Yapacaní is also in a politically sensitive geographical location, at the extreme west of the department of Santa Cruz, in the valley of the River Ichilo, bordering Morales’s political bastion of Chapare, which is the main coca producing zone in the country.
The three people were killed, reportedly, when about 4,000 protesters tried to prevent a MAS mayor, David Carvajal, returning to municipal office. Carvajal was recently reinstated after getting corruption allegations against him overturned by the courts. Carvajal, who comes from the same Chapare village as Morales, was being protected by 400 police officers, but it is not clear who was responsible for the deaths. The interior minister, Wilfredo Chávez, claimed that all the deaths occurred after the police had withdrawn from Yapacaní, early in the afternoon of 11 January.
Key points:
• A local MAS congressman, Franklin Garvizú, claimed that he had warned the central government, and specifically Carlos Romero, the minister of the presidency, that trouble was brewing in Yapacaní between the radical wing of the MAS headed by Carvajal and a more moderate, business-friendly wing. Romero denied that he had been warned but said that he had asked Garvizú and Carvajal to come in and discuss the problems in Yapacaní.
• Carvajal, elected 18 months ago, was ejected from office in December, after corruption allegations were levelled him by members of the municipal council. He has now formally resigned because of the deaths.
• The president of the local council, Federico Ortiz, said that the dispute was internal to the MAS and to say that the (opposition) Movimiento sin Miedo was involved was wrong. The protests against Carvajal’s return were organised by the Comité Interinstitucional, which is largely composed of social activists.
• The three victims were Abel Rocha (27), Maicol Sosa (23) and Eliseo Rojas (22). Sosa was killed by a 9mm gunshot to the chest (so possibly by the police); Rocha was killed by a shotgun and Rojas was electrocuted when he tried to enter the municipal building, which was on fire.
• Local politicians and activists are already calling for the resignation of the interior minister and the commander of the Santa Cruz police, Colonel Lily Cortez. The police station in Yapacaní was burned down after the police withdrew on 11 January.
• The local media reported that dozens of people had also been injured. The interior minister, Wilfredo Chávez, claimed that at least 25 police officers were wounded in an ambush by the protesters as the police were making their way back to Santa Cruz, the departmental capital.
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