6 April 2010 | News | People’s Conference on Climate Change | Climate Justice and Energy
Towards consistency
Interview with Gloria Ajpi Jalja, of the Cry of the Excluded Bolivia
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The social movements of Bolivia have a “good dialogue” with Evo Morales’ administration, but that does not mean that “all problems are solved”. Many years of struggle will be necessary to overcome the heavy heritage left by the harsh years of neoliberalism, said Gloria Ajpi Jalja, of the Cry of the Excluded Bolivia.
The activist said in an interview with Real World Radio that her grassroots organization has worked for years on issues like the external debt, migrations, militarization and the struggle against free trade agreements of all kinds.
She recalled that the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) of Bolivia emerged as a “pact of social movements” based on the struggles of indigenous organizations and workers and admitted that the government’s political will to promote deep changes has been resisted by a “difficult internal context”.
The next World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights, to be held in Cochabamba from April 19 to 22, will be an important event for the Bolivian movements.
The representative of the Cry of the Excluded said that the event will be a platform to strengthen the debate on nature’s rights and to begin discussing which will be the bases of the new model the grassroots organizations aim to build.
“We know that our national economies depend on the extraction of natural resources, but we have to think of how to achieve a balance to avoid damaging our mother earth and the native peoples”, she explained.
Ajpi Jalja warned that unregulated extractive policies have led to “permanent displacement” of communities in the recent years, that is why it is important that Morales’ administration implements economic policies that are consistent with the demands of the social movements.
