Happy King’s Day!



In King’s Day children are offered a gift, as in Christmas. This King´s Day will not be celebrated the same way this year in Bolivia, because one more time, the life of a little boy has been stolen from us.



His name is Sebastian Pacha, aged 7, who is the older brother of a little boy with different capacities. They are the sons of a single mother, who entered a march of disabled people who are walking 700 km from up north Bolivia in Pando, to the political center in La Paz. Two hundred disabled people and their families are marching. They are now halfway their destination and while they rested in a small town in Cochabamba, near the river at Puente Roto, some of them were washing their clothes when the boy drowned.



The march began on December 7th 2011, because this underprivileged group got tired of asking the government for a special bonus of around US$400 a year, which was promised to them by Evo Morales when he was asking for their vote. Morales has given extra bonuses to almost everyone but this group, and they will not give up until they meet the government in the city of La Paz.



Bolivia has become the land of marches. Everyday people in the streets march in almost every city, but especially in the city of La Paz, where the government resides. Recently, the biggest march we have had is an indigenous one, in opposition to the construction of a road that divides the rainforest of the Bolivian Amazon rainforest in two, killing hundreds of species and millions of trees, leaving the land open to coca leaf cultivation. In a very painful march, the indigenous people gathered the support of common people in every city they touched, and ended up making the government pass a law stating that no road should be constructed there today, or in the future. The support of people was so big, that Morales was afraid of losing his presidency, so he signed the law.



Now it is the turn of the people with different capacities. Will the government continue his way against these people? If so, will they win and get the bonus? Only time can tell. It is like a soap opera for us here. We cannot see the ending of the infinite marches asking for fair and for unfair things that stress out common people every day though dynamite explosions, slashing in the streets, and street violence of all kinds, but we can see that marches like this one, with social injustice showing off, have the power of uniting all civilians against the government.



The ball is, then, in the field of the government. Will they score?



See the news in Spanish at http://eldia.com.bo/index.php?c=Portada&articulo=Menor-fallecido-en-marc..., a newspaper that also shows the picture I present to you.

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