The killings, blamed on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, come less than three weeks before Colombians vote on Oct. 26 in local elections that have been dogged by a wave of assassinations, kidnappings and death threats.
Orlando Hoyos, mayor of the southern village of Bolivar, was shot dead on Monday as he left a secret meeting in the mountains with FARC rebels and other officials. Jaime Zambrano, mayor of neighboring Santa Rosa, was killed on Tuesday, police said.
Mayors and councilors in Colombia's lawless countryside are common targets of illegal armed group fighting in a four-decade war. Local war lords, often the real authority in towns with little state presence, frequently summon councilors and mayors to intimidate them and check on their platforms.
Perhaps such notions seem ridiculous, but Morales and the MAS believe in their rhetoric and seek to "liberate" their fellow Amerindians and coca growers throughout Latin America. In the same October 2002 interview, Morales acknowledged that "of course, sometimes it is the coca growers that set off the spark" if there is still violence and military repression. The advent of MAS will make it harder than ever for Bolivia, with its nationalist military, a tradition of about one coup d'état every ten months since it gained independence in 1825, an unstable government coalition of ex-leftists, opportunists, and the simply corrupt, to function as a democracy or achieve economic development. La Razón columnist José Gramunt de Moragas put it well when he recently described Bolivian politics as a pendulum eternally moving between unsolved problem to violence and back to the status quo.
Bolivia is not alone in this predicament. Ecuador's recently elected president, Lucio Gutierrez, a former coup-making colonel, lost the support of the powerful Indian socialist organizations when he tried to impose some economic common sense. He is in danger of becoming the fifth elected president in so many years to lose his job before the end of his mandate. In Peru, another former officer and (failed) coup-maker is also increasing his popularity on an indigenous/socialist platform. All in all, and considering also the pseudo-indigenous Zapatista socialists of Mexico (led by a Marxist, blue-eyed former academic), it appears that the indigenous Latin American peoples' growing political power represents not progress but simply anti-democratic socialist nostalgia and a profoundly reactionary and illiterate approach to economics. The tragedy, of course, is that these people are the most likely victims of the type of politics they advocate. Their future seems destined to look much like their past of poverty and backwardness, all in the name of a "progressive agenda."***