Civil Unrest in Bolivia

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Civil Unrest in Bolivia

MP4 Video - 1080p (262.64 MB)
MP4 Video - 720p (158.43 MB)
MP3 Audio (3.3 MB)
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Darris McNeely talks with special guest Mario Seiglie about growing problems in Bolivia and what is behind the crisis.

Transcript

[Darris McNeely] In many areas of our world right now it seems like civil unrest has erupted on a continual basis, Europe and Latin America. With me on our "Beyond Today" set today is Mario Seiglie, one of our ministers in the United Church of God and a contributor to the "Beyond Today Magazine" who also looks after a number of United Church of God congregations throughout Central and South America. And Mario has brought to our attention recently the impact of a lot of the riots in streets that are impacting those areas and upon the members that he serves in those areas. Mario, I appreciate your being with us once again here. Why don't we put our attention on the nation of Bolivia at this time? You go there and travel there regularly, you have members that you serve, they've also been experiencing a great deal of civil unrest.

[Mario Seiglie] Yes, that's the case. We have a congregation in La Paz, Bolivia, around 20 brethren that meet and they have not been able to meet after the feast (Feast of Tabernacles).

[Darris] So their services have been just canceled?

[Mario] Yes, because there's so much civil unrest. In Santiago, it has been mainly the city areas, center of towns and so we meet in the suburbs, but in the area of Bolivia, even the suburbs have been overwhelmed by this and so the transportation has broken down, the foodstuffs are not supplied enough and you can have spontaneous riots anywhere and so they just tune in through the internet.

[Darris] Have any of our members there have been suffering without food as a result?

[Mario] I would say they don't have as much food as they had before but their supplies have slowly been increasing but during this period of like two or three weeks after the feast, supplies were very scarce, it was a breakdown of society because of their fraudulent elections.

[Darris] You wrote about that and you described that this all came about as a result of a stolen election. Maybe you could talk about that.

[Mario] Yes. Evo Morales who was a former coca dealer and became the head of the coca sellers in Bolivia came to power in 2005. And he is a 100% Indian stock and there are about 30% of the Bolivian populace which are completely of Indian stock. And then you have the mixture...

[Darris] Native Indian to Bolivia, South American.

[Mario] Yes. And so he was swept in this populist movement and he was swept into power. And I would say he served three terms of four years during that time. And then they had a plebiscite or referendum to see if he could be elected a fourth time or not because the constitution did not allow it. And he was defeated at that time. So they thought, "Okay, he's not coming back into power." But since he had basically stocked the supreme court with his own people, they ruled that he could go ahead and go for a fourth term because they were violating his human rights. And so he went ahead and did so. And during the evening when they were tallying the votes, there were periods of times, sometimes an hour long where no reports of certain areas where he was being defeated. And all of a sudden, after an hour or so, the tally came back and he was winning. And so there was so many protests.

[Darris] I think I just saw a fictional movie with a fictional plotline with that very thing in there. So this stuff is very real going on that you see in certain movies it's actually happening with elections in that region.

[Mario] Yes. And the frustrations grew to a level where there was this massive uprising to the point where he no longer had the backing of the armed forces. And then when he realized even the armed forces, he was about ready to be arrested, he fled to Mexico.

[Darris] To Mexico. So you've got...I take it that perhaps another large segment of the population is kind of an elite European-based and then you've got the native population. So you've got some tribalism, you've got some class distinctions that's going on at the root of that particular area.

[Mario] Correct. Since I traveled to that area in 1985 was the first time and basically established the church there over the years. Of course, I have a very deep and loving relationship with them but ever since I've been there, there've been these protests. Many of them are Indian miners that go on strike and they actually take their dynamite where they use in the mines. And so they start throwing dynamite to the police and to just destroying things. And when you see those miners starting to come into La Paz, everybody flees. And again, you get a taste of this flesh that you can get away with this, that you can bully people.

[Darris] Nothing stops.

[Mario] Exactly. And so again, the principle is in Ecclesiastes 8:11 that if evil and crime is not dealt with in time then people will take advantage of the situation.

[Darris] So we're seeing also just a lot of basic human nature work and frictions between people, economics, injustice, unfair treatment. So we appreciate that you're coming on telling us about this. It's something that certainly we can be praying about for the safety of people that you serve, as well as the entire situation there, that ultimately the word of God can have do its work where God intends it in that area. So we appreciate you talking about that. Mario is gonna be coming back for another Beyond Today Daily where we will talk about one additional country in Latin America that we need to be aware of, and that is the nation of Colombia.

So join us for that. That's "BT Daily."