Bolivia: The Networks of Liberty



In a world filled with ambition and pride, I found the path to touch people´s hearts and change their vision of our country, Bolivia. They were living in the deep darkness of a dictatorship that taught them how to express themselves, how to think, how to live, but most importantly, how to keep their mouths shut about anything they would consider "against the revolution".





Five years later, the instrument has a name; Social networks. The voices have names, and the names have spaces to speak up. People have stopped fearing and have started talking about their lives, their dreams, their country, even if their lives were in jeopardy by doing it. They understood that life has no meaning if they are not able to speak up for themselves.





When we began in 2009, we were thirty people on line. By 2011, we reached our first thousands, and were able to win an outrageous judicial election where all judges were to be voted by the people, but had already been appointed to be voted by vicepresident Alvaro García Linera, and acknowledged as "members of the revolution" by president Evo Morales. In this scenario, we the people, had no choice. Voting for any of them would be accepting the election, so we decided to annull our voting. Through active social networks having no more than 3,000 people on line, we were able to reach an 80% of annulled and white voting. The government could not believe they had put millions of dollars into this election and had lost it. So they decided not to take into account the annulled votes, in the most anti democratic decision ever taken. After this, we could not do anything but call the Morales' administration, a modern dictatorship.





Since that judicial election, the government has the Supreme Court, the judges and attorneys at law by their side. They also have 2/3 of the Congress, due to a preposterous fraud on the last national election, where Evo Morales run for president for the third time, against the Constitution but turned legal through the Supreme Court judges that he had elected for this purpose.





Even in this impossible battle against a most powerful crew of the dictatorship, we the people won some battles: We voted No in two referenda, one for autonomic rules, and another to say No to a fourth reelection of Evo Morales and Alvaro García in 2019. We also won local authorities elections, in most of the country.





It is tougher now for the dictatorship to go on with its frauds in every election, but they try their best. They have announced that they will never again lose another election because they will renew the voting methodology. They have also created a new state ruled Direction of Social Networks, hiring 70 people to stop our braves and shut the voices in the people´s networks.





They have added money to the propaganda machine they have always used to make themselves look good, especially in rural areas where internet is not yet used very much. They now use US$150,000 in propaganda, every day.





They do not care if people are marching every day in the streets, like the People With Disabilities, who have marched to La Paz, our government offices city and the most important of the country, for more than 40 days now. Evo has banned them from the main square of the country, using jail like doors in the four corners, with disabled people begging to talk to the president and sleeping in the street to make themselves visible, with high risk of their lives. Evo and Alvaro just look away, and put a very nice spot on TV saying that this is the only government that gave money to them. But, they give them US$150 a year. They are asking for US$70 a month, from a government that spends just in publicity, twice what they need to fulfill their need. This is the richest government we ever had.





So, at present, we are millions of people in the networks. Resilient, savvy, creative people. We have a crucial time ahead. Four years to come up with a new badge of leaders who have to win the election with more than 80% of the voting to escape the fraud, or oherwise Evo will remain on power for five more years. We need to think clearly, act out our best estrategies, and most of all, we need to win the Congress. Not an easy task, given the amount of money spent to buy what should never be marketable: Lives.





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