(Thueringer Allgemeine of 02/17/2011)
By Paul-Joseph Rough
the Indians in Bolivia is granted, according to oral tradition centuries old rules of justice. Banishment from the community and the whip are popular terms for the offenses.
There is no joy in Bolivia to be president. If the people unhappy, it is building barricades, making a revolt and chasing the President shall - most recently as eight years ago. The sequel was more or less voluntarily after one and a half years.
He brought the campesinos, in democracy. They were given posts in government service, could say and govern. But so little Morales Party, the Movement to Socialism, a party in the Western sense, but a coalition of unions and social initiatives, as little is democracy in a Western sense.
She is a direct democracy. It feeds on mood reports of the initiatives, neighborhood committees and unions.
to the bill, barricades prevented the establishment has become a kind of popular sport. What in the sporting public will not quite succeed. Will be taken by Bolivia, the most exciting experiment in the world: a socialism with a democratic face, a slow parting of economic liberalism. Whether this can succeed in one of the poorest countries in the world? Does democracy also different from Western-style? Or it suggests how to most in South America, dictatorship? On the outline of the footbal field hundreds of villagers had brought folding chairs to sit on. You look at the waters of the mighty Lake Titicaca, the mighty mountains of the Cordillera, on the other side, on potato-beds and water plants. Perched on a mound, the other half of the meeting, looking at the village Huatajata. They all wear hats, white and light blue, women, brown and black men. It might be called an idyll: the colorful costumes, the gently rippled waters of Lake Titicaca. But tourists are far and wide to be seen. And idylls tend to be deceptive.
So take the village and holds court. On the shore of the lake, it debated the beautiful lake house that belongs Victor Hugo Carden and his wife. Card was 15 years ago, the first Indian Vice-President of Bolivia. When he recently fought against the new Constitution, and thus against the socialist government, he said that under the hand of a public enemy.
I'm afraid. You tried to kill my family, had told Card to a visit to the city government of La Paz, they have burned my house in the country. The house still stands, the windows are smashed, the devastated areas, the walls daubed with slogans Property of the people! House of the Third Age to hinting that this will set up the village meeting, a retirement home. A nursing home? In a village community in which the family is sacred and the old will never be deported?
The village assembly decide on the sports field at the lake, take away Cardener the house. not adjust to us, some say softly. We need the land, say the officials, they point to the times of the landowner and explain, Cards' house had arrived illegally in his possession. With the house, the village will immediately confiscate the associated lands.
In the case of card has the sports field assembly is not the last word, the case probably comes before a court probably independent judges. They will have to decide on the expropriation.
When the village meets and depends on a citizen, is the exclusion from the community, the banishment from the homeland, a popular punishment, another the whip. The mayor is also the sheriff of the village. He carries a whip around the shoulder as a sign of power, adorned with feathers in shades of Bolivia - and with some white feathers to make a statement: I am not corrupt!
If one is lying or stealing in the village, the mayor proposes to his whip, spontaneous three blows to the legs. As he talks about it, he demonstrates how to whip swinging, singing: He takes her by the shoulder and beating the air with the air of the powerful, the authority has - with a slight smile of satisfaction. He is visibly proud.
Each village has its own assembly, its own law. The governor of Sucre, the capital, speaks of chicken thieves who are going to the collar, only chicken thieves, nothing serious. So we solve small problems quickly, cheaply. We do not need expensive processes. Whether there is also the death penalty?, We ask the governor. No, he says. The majority speaks in a village of just punishment, as a fine, expand the school to be able to work or to the community.
But in a small city in Bolivia, the residents have made short work of pickpockets. They dragged the thieves on the sports ground and lit it. Two died. There was no due process does not exist. Indigenous Justice justified in the city of the murderer. That's it.
In the mountains near the Chilean border, where they like to smuggle cars, police officers took too much time on his hand and threatened the villagers with ads. They were summarily killed. There was a process it before. Judged to be in the villages sometimes quickly, and in any case for other morality than those found with the general Human rights based sets. Lake Titicaca has been a bad hand in the Justice of the village, not from the area, lives alone and is not too hard. For, as saying the powerful secretary of the union, who are something you have to be healthy, hard-working, married and one of us. And corrupt, it may not be.
Bolivian president is an Indian, but he has no wife and two illegitimate children. The authorities of Lake Titicaca twitch briefly with his eyes when the conversation turns to the President. The man with the whip, says: In the big city may well be a single, and added menacingly: But he must be good. If he is not good, be we throw him out if he is president or not. Evo, our president knows not just what it means to have children and a woman.
In La Paz you can see near the doll market at some lights, they have a rope around his neck and a bowed head. So it goes as thieves, and a notice that they were hung around his neck. In the Indian city of Alto on the cold plateau near La Paz, the dolls hang by the dozen. They hang for months. None of them is decreasing.
The trip organized by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, in its Project America Latina recalls 200 to the liberation of South America from colonial rule.
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