The War on Democracy Page #8

There are thousands of unemployed,

And those who work,

their money isn't enough,

So how can they pay for electricity?

How can they pay for water?

They have to buy gas -

everything must be paid for,

Every day a mother asks,

"How am l going to feed the children? "

How can I afford it?

We found this couple

living and freezing in the shanty town

They're homeless

and have a week-old baby

(Woman) What's it like

to live in these conditions?

The cold at night is hardest for the baby,

Do many people live like this in Chile?

There are plenty, and worse off than we are,

They don't get any help from anyone,

Where will you go?

Back to the streets,

We've slept rough before,

Abroad, in Europe and the USA, it's said that

life in Chile is rich and comfortable - is that so?

It's true for the well off, but not for us,

Chile is a democracy now, in theory

A complicated voting system splits the vote

and discourages real reform

It's a product of General Pinochet

based on a constitution

that's also a product of Pinochet

The general may be dead

but the power of the military remains

It's all very modern the media is safe

and many believe it's wise to be silent

Like the graves of their forgotten compatriots

It's Washingtons ideal democracy

The dictatorship was a great success in Chile

in that it established

the political, economic and social model

that prevails to this day,

Basically, the constitution imposed in 1 980

has not been changed,

We don't belong to a democracy

because that word has been so badly used,

It's not understood,

Here there is a persecution against the poor,

and not just in Chile,

but this is happening all over Latin America,

I think. educated people realize

that this is reaching a breaking point,

I believe the people will wake up

and say, "That's enough,"

This is Bolivia

another laboratory experiment

The majority of the population of this spectacular

brutalized country high in the Andes

have also been invisible until recently

The indigenous people

the Aymara and Quechua

carry memories of a culture

and civilization and wealth

Iong before the Spanish arrived

They remember how a single hill of silver

underwrote the entire Spanish empire

while they became the poorest

This is the National Congress of Bolivia,

Until recently,

the faces here were almost all white,

the descendants of a tiny Spanish elite

which plundered the nation's riches

and reduced the indigenous majority

to serfdom.

It was a pattern of control

repeated all over Latin America,

The pattern has been broken in Bolivia

with the rise of social justice movements

of a kind never seen before,

and whose democratic home

is not Westminster or Washington,

or any other so-called model,

but in the streets, the minds,

the barrios, the fields,

Governments that defy this popular power,

this true democracy,

do so at their own peril,

This is El Alto the highest city on earth

and perhaps the poorest

The occupants of this cemetery

on the roof of the world are mainly children

Protected they say

by the sacred mountain, Illimani

El Alto overlooks Bolivia 's capital La Paz

Juan Delfin, a priest and a taxi driver

has lived here for most of his life

This is Villa lngenio,

It's the cemetery of northern El Alto,

There is a sorrowful bitterness here,

Our brothers, our children,

our grandparents

are dead and buried here,

There was one family

that poisoned themselves,

the whole family,

because of lack of work and lack of money,

First the husband poisoned his wife

and children, and then he poisoned himself,

We have seen cases like this,

(Car horns)

When I first came too Bolivia in the 1 960s

El Alto barely existed

The million people living here

are peasants run off their land

and miners made redundant by policies

similar to those imposed in Chile

Infrastructure that didn't make a quick buck

was privatized

The message was clear -

sell it, strip it or scrap it

The indigenous people were scrapped

(Juan Delfin) We wonder why,

If I am Bolivian, born rich,

why am l begging?

We had the sea, silver and gold,

We had everything, Why are we still suffering?

And yet the people here have held together

their sense of identity their community

(Singing)

In the year 200000, the people

of Bolivias second city Cochabamba

fought an epic struggle to win back

their most basic resource, water

from a foreign consortium dominated

by the American corporation Bechtel

and they won

Three years later, in 20003,

Bolivia 's power brokers

were about to get another shock.

This is Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada

Known as Goni

he was brought up in Washington

His English is better than his Spanish

They knew him here as El Gringo

I saw him as a fat man

sitting on a golden chair,

Arrogant,

Perhaps he was arrogant because of

the power he had, which was his wealth,

When Goni was elected president of Bolivia

in 20003,

he backed a law that amounted too

a fire sale of the countrys resources

Almost everything was up for grabs

including Latin America's

second-biggest gas reserves

We know we have gas

and it's being sold abroad to the almighty US,

yet still I use wood for cooking,

This is why the war starts,

We will block, strike and demonstrate

until we get a response,

The people of El Alto fought back.

blocking the roads leading into La Paz

(Atencio) There were calls to start blockades,

Not even a fly would move,

We stopped traffic and so on, but it gradually,,,

What's the word?

It gradually intensified,

Gooni's response

was the traditional Latin American way

He sent in the army too crush dissent

(Shouting)

(Screaming)

Scores were shoot dead

(Gunfire)

Many were brought too Juan Delfin's church

The tables were here,

The bodies were here,

They removed the bullets with nails even,

It was sad to see this,

The place was full, There were doctors

everywhere, The smell of death was intense,

All the orphans were crying and shouting,

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!

Tens of thousands of people

poured down into La Paz

Like the people of Venezuela's barrios

demanding the return of their president

they demanded their country back.

If the rich and powerful of Latin America

had a nightmare

this was it

Suddenly we heard

that Goni was about to resign,

With one down, we felt inspired,

It gave us strength,

That was the aim. To make him resign,

Goni fled to the United States

and is today living in a smart suburb

of Washington

In October 20004

the Bolivian Congress ordered his arrest

on charges of bloody massacre

George Bush has said

"Governments that harbour terrorists

"are as guilty as they are"

(Speaking Spanish)

This extraordinary mural

was painted by Juan Delfin

It's a cry of freedom

from an entire continent

They killed us all, but we defend

the Aymara people with the pututo horn,

with our voice, with our fist, with the flag,

We wave the Whipala

against the United States,

This is the United States flag,

We are against this,

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