“They will say that the only perpetrators of violence come from the MAS and the government, but the real fact is that they have to violate the situation in order to achieve their goal,” Richter said in an interview with Kawsachun radio station’s Taypi program Coca.
As evidence, he debunked the warnings of committee spokesmen who threatened to block President Luis Arce’s Oct. 24 visit to Santa Cruz to initiate payment of the Bono Juancito Pinto to tax and treaty unit students.
“It’s very complex,” Richter reflected, “but we experienced this tension and violence at the moment in 2019 and (…) during the attempted coup in 2008, violence, causes confrontations, tensions and, if it’s possible, even when it’s about the loss of life, this is the quest to be able to find and reach the greater goal”.
He recalled that in 2008 a prefectural coup against then President Evo Morales, promoted by the authorities of Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni and Tarija, was broken up.
In 2019, he added, the breach of the constitutional order was completed with the self-appointment of the second vice-president of the Senate, Jeanine Añez, as president, who gave guarantees to the armed forces to repress the population, with a tragic outcome in the massacres of Sacaba and Senkata with more than thirty dead.
According to Richter, it wasn’t the population present at City Hall on Sept. 30 that “drafted the conclusions,” setting “the ultimatum” for the government to complete the census and housing construction by Oct. 21 set 2023.
He clarified in this context that it was an elite linked to Governor Luis Fernando Camacho and the President of the Citizens’ Committee of Pro Santa Cruz, Rómulo Calvo.
He believed that what was done was “the instrumentalization” of this council “to say that at the request of this group” they should go to this measure, already supported by different social sectors, mayors, businessmen and different groups of Santa Cruz is rejected population.
Richter stressed that had the committee had a genuine interest in the census, it would have heeded the government’s calls for dialogue and would not come up with “excuses” to explain its proposal.
“Let the committee understand if it is the census that worries you that the door to dialogue is open, without threats or injunctions. If they want the census, then the way is a quick fix: dialogue on a clean table to find a date, a month by consensus,” the spokesman concluded.
jha/jpm