Massive marches are unleashed in Bolivia by the mother Law

Another political emergency shakes the roads of Bolivia

This Wednesday, the South American nation plunged into the third consecutive day of struggles against the government that, so far this week, have caused conflicts between protesters and police; in addition to events identified with the decision of the Movement to Socialism (MAS).

The greatest conflicts have occurred in the towns of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Potosí, Tarija and Cochabamba. There have also been fighting in La Paz, Oruro and Beni.

The protest begins with the rejection of the questioned law 1386, also called "mother law", endorsed in August and scrutinized by commentators and rivals who consider that it gives the public power an exorbitant and optional power.

From the party of the decision, in any case, the protest is dismissed, and it is considered an instrument with which to "undermine" the public power of President Luis Arce. Monday was the busiest day with more than 100 captures and a few injured.

The protest, which has been described as an "endless strike", has been portrayed by the various barriers that the protesters have made and by the mediations of the police to disperse them, which have been censured for their obvious cruelty.

What is the "mother law"?

Law 1386 on the National Strategy to Fight the Legitimization of Illicit Profits and the Financing of Terrorism, also called "mother law", was sanctioned last August and, as its name recommends, its official objective is to combat illegal tax evasion.

The law contains 7 articles, including one that establishes that this procedure can be altered by the president through a pronouncement.

Likewise, it encloses the real methodology, which is a specialized file of 54 pages that establishes the preparation for its execution.

For what reason are you causing conflict?

The National Committee for the Defense of Democracy (Conade), one of the associations that scrutinizes the law, published a list of 11 problems with the law and mentioned its annulment, claiming that its motivation is "to create monetary knowledge activities against the population, control of the financial exercises of individuals, mistreatment and terror, excluding from this interaction super-criminal behavior that produces illegal profits, which is drug trafficking".

For its part, the Confederation of Cooperatives of Bolivia (Concobol) proposed altering the article that provides for the possibility that the leader change the rule by pronouncement to prevent it from being used by the legislatures "to produce states of political abuse".

Preparations against this rule have been driven primarily by developments in workers' associations and organizations.

"They are the small merchants, the vast majority of them in business and road sectors, the transporters, who are drivers and owners of the transport method, and currently the helpful miners are going to participate," Roberto Laserna, social specialist, told BBC Mundo associated with the Center for the Study of Economic and Social Reality (Ceres).

Laserna clarifies that these areas are demographically huge and financially significant due to the fact that they handle many assets, but that they mostly work in the informal economy, which is why they fear being impacted by the new enactment.

The police have been approached by the way they have dealt with the protesters.

Laserna says that the norm he considers is an examination of a wide range of exchanges in any dubious ledger, and not as in different regions of the planet, where only one of each odd record can be investigated, however, only those whose tasks exceed explicit sums.

Then, at that moment, it could be associated with the doubts and, because of them, an examiner could arrange, for example, to freeze the records, whether there is motivation to do so, it draws attention.

Also, this occurs in a nation where a huge part of the population has a place with the casual area of the economy.

That is, they are individuals who do not have exceptional papers, who work a lot without a contract, so it is more difficult for them to clarify where or how they received the money to buy a house, a truck or a vehicle and that makes the individuals very furious and are exceptionally doubtful.

What does the public authority say?

President Luis Arce on Wednesday shielded the legitimacy of the mother law and blamed the "conservatives" for instigating fights over the norm to prevent the legal examinations from advancing and achieve "the exemption for what happened in 2019 with the rebellion."

The supposed "married rebellion" is an open examination against the pioneers of the resistance due to the political emergency that occurred in 2019 that caused the abdication and the take-off of the force of the then president Evo Morales.

You have to be crazy to believe that our administration is going to influence the less fortunate, said Arce, as audited by neighborhood media.

Last week, the Minister of the Presidency, María Nela Prada, rejected that Law 1386 influences associative workers or transporters and guaranteed that a few commentators have wanted to decipher it as such to undermine public authority.

Other government spokesmen, such as the Deputy Minister of Coordination with Social Movements, Juan Vilca, have explicitly said that this law does not influence the occasional sphere, but rather the individuals who advance illegally.

Despite this, experts of the law have brought out that one of the marks of the technique endorsed together with the law refers to the "issue of chance" and explicitly states that "familiarity produces several freedoms for the offender to enter to the economy with the proceeds of the illicit and can do it secretly and without leaving any type of record that allows its location by the specialists. "

How do these struggles contrast with those of 2019

The struggles against the mother law have been considered from the public power as a destabilization effort promoted by the conservatives, to whom the decision party also attributes the obligation regarding the political emergency experienced in 2019.

In an article distributed in the newspaper La Razón, columnist Rubén Atahuichi makes some comparisons between what happened in 2019 and what is happening at the moment.

In one of his speeches, the leader of the Pro Santa Cruz Committee, Rómulo Calvo, summoned the Armed Forces and the Bolivian Police to unite with individuals, as did his archetype Luis Fernando Camacho, current legislative chief of Santa Cruz.

On November 2, 2019, when he promoted the fights that ended with the defeat of President Evo Morales, he composed via model.

To conclude later that it is not the removal of the law that drives them.

"We definitely know the content. It is not the vote that they do, they seek to twist the country for their own closures, under the guise of anything," he adds.

Former Americanist Roberto Laserna agrees that it is conceivable that among those who advance the shows now there are "certain individuals" eager to weaken the public power, however, he believes that there is no correlation with what happened two years earlier.

The 2019 dissent was much more grounded, it was much more explicit. There was a great drowsiness for an administration that had endured 14 years and had not looked at the Constitution, had not looked at the mandate.

From now on, we will trust that this danger does not exist. Maybe some groups have the fantasy of bringing down the Luis Arce administration with this kind of tension, but I accept that this will not happen and should not possibly happen, he says.

Laserna guarantees that the public authority has political and popular authenticity, having won the elections and acquired a greater part in Parliament.

Nor does the teacher consider that the fundamental issue is Law 1386 and rather focuses on a question of added doubt in the public power, within the framework of equity and in the establishments.

"The law is a trigger for an issue of trust in the seriousness of public power based on voting and trust in the institutional bodies that ensure the freedoms of the inhabitants," he tells BBC Mundo.

It testifies that the law contains various instruments of coercion and mistreatment that could be mishandled for political oppression and that it was passed in a scenario in which residents have lost all confidence in the general set of laws.

Laserna says he misses a seriously discursive attitude towards the Arce government, which he came to control "by offering a compromise and offering a change in equity, which have not been seen this year."

The teacher considers "unusual" how this contest could develop, but focuses on the fact that it is not correct to move towards what would be a conflict between public authority and political resistance, in light of the fact that the genuine engine of the struggles is not it is the resistance but the developments of the workers in the informal economy.

They are developments of exceptionally famous, indigenous extraction, ordinarily framed by rustic travelers to the city, as well as the vehicle area and the cooperatives.

The public power should pay close attention, since they are not minorities, they are exceptionally wide and surprising areas, which are exceptionally coordinated, he warns.