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Weekly Report - 07 October 2021 (WR-21-40)

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BOLIVIA: Cocaleros dispute explodes

The last two weeks have seen increasingly confrontational clashes between the police and rival factions of the La Paz-based coca growers’ union Asociación Departamental de Productores de Coca de los Yungas de La Paz (Adepcoca). These came to a head on 4 October, when thousands of union members overpowered police and stormed the Adepcoca headquarters, ousting its disputed leader, Arnold Alanes.

The dispute over the Adepcoca leadership stems from a bodged union election on 20 September that ended with three men claiming to be its president. However, the power struggle goes far beyond union politics, and much of the volatility in La Paz can be connected to the decision by President Luis Arce’s ruling left-wing Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government to throw its weight behind the pro-MAS Alanes [WR-21-39].

That support from the authorities, in the form of police intervention preventing Alanes from being removed by his rivals, proved insufficient. After two weeks of smaller clashes with the police, on 4 October thousands of anti-Alanes protesters burst through the security cordon around Adepcoca. They were led by the Comité de Autodefensa (CA), a fourth faction that has been calling for new union elections to resolve the impasse. Launching rocks and small charges of dynamite to force the security forces to fall back, the crowd dislodged Alanes and his cohort from the building and the CA set up base, insisting that it will not leave until the convening of a new leadership election.

On 5 October, at an extraordinary Adepcoca general assembly conducted in the street outside the union building, members agreed to conduct such an election within a period of 20-30 days, with 19 candidates announcing their intention to run. Both Alanes and his main rival, the anti-MAS Armin Lluta, were barred from competing, in an effort to bury the tensions of the past fortnight.

It remains to be seen whether the cracks that have formed between the Arce administration and large segments of Bolivia’s coca sector can also be papered over. Coca growers have been a key pillar of MAS support since the election of the coca union leader Evo Morales (2006-2019), albeit there has always been some residual suspicion of him given that he is the leader of the rival coca union, Seis Federaciones del Trópico de Cochabamba, and dwindling approval for the party among this population could be a bellwether for other MAS bastions.

There is a strong sense among many Adepcoca members that the government overstepped its mandate by backing Alanes. The sight of Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo entering the union building on 21 September to congratulate Alanes well before the Adepcoca election was settled rankled many in the union, and the government has been forced to backtrack – on 5 October, Del Castillo claimed that he “has never backed anyone to lead Adepcoca”, and that he was “supporting the organic leadership that emerged from the [union] assembly…irrespective of Mr Alanes’ political beliefs”.

The MAS’s sway over the coca sector as a whole is unlikely to be significantly eroded, despite the backlash it has triggered in La Paz department. On 20 September Morales was re-elected as the leader of the Seis Federaciones del Trópico de Cochabamba, which he has presided over since 1996. However, the Arce administration has learned the political costs of being seen to intervene in union affairs, and one consequence of the Adepcoca saga may be that it feels less able to intervene in other key reservoirs of MAS support in the future.

Indigenous march

The government is also facing discontent from another of its key voting blocs, with indigenous protesters arriving in the eastern city of Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz department) on 30 September after a 37-day march from Trinidad (Beni). Accusing the government’s agrarian reform institute (Inra) of disproportionately granting land titles to MAS-supporting settler farmers, the protesters demanded action against land invasions, violence, and environmental destruction that they said were being caused by these settlers. Santa Cruz department is an opposition stronghold, and its right-wing governor, Luis Fernando Camacho, sought to exploit the cracks in the MAS support base with a speech urging the protesters to back the decentralisation that his Creemos party is demanding.

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