Indigenous groups of Indians, called the Aymara, blockaded large sections of Bolivia, leading to food and fuel shortages in the capital, La Paz. The protestors gathered against the pipeline to show their disbelief at the government’s inability to improve living standards, ignoring its people to better court foreign investors.

As the blockades showed no signs of breaking, the Bolivian government broke through in El Alto, with tanks and heavy machine gunners guarding convoys of oil trucks. The Bolivian government and military was condemned for the resulting 63 deaths. The events came to be known as Black October.

           
On August 30, 2011, the Bolivian Supreme Court began the process of sentencing 7 individuals guilty of genocide 7 years prior, in the mountain village of El Alto.

The verdict was praised by human rights leaders and regular citizens alike, who were happy to see that Morales’ presidency was producing punishments for those guilty of long past crimes.

“Evo Morales’ government is doing a good job compared to the old, he has some social failures but at the least he hasn’t allowed a crime like this to happen again” said Sandra Escalante, a Bolivian landlady who immigrated in 2001.

The genocide and crimes discussed in the court were not of the scale typically associated with the word. Genocide is usually used when considering the wide scale murder of a group. But according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it is defined as any amount of murder and purposeful death, so long as it is the attempted eradication of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. It is so in this case, where 63 people, part of a larger group opposed to the foreign influence in the building of a natural gas pipeline, were killed.

The acting president, Sanchez de Lozada, was forced to step down, and as the socialist movement gained momentum, full nationalization of the gas reserves was eventually achieved. It is not until now that the leaders responsible for Black October were sentenced to pay the price for their actions.

"The trial that recently concluded…demonstrates that the Bolivian justice system is highly politicized,” were the dissenting words of Sanchez de Lozada’s defense team. “No objective observer could take the sentences announced by the Attorney General seriously.”

The Defense team sought to defend officials involved with the breaking of the blockade and the bloodshed in El Alto. The statement was released from within the United States, where Sanchez de Lozada and other officials now live to avoid trial by the new government.

The 5 convicted military officials received sentences between 10 and 15 years, and the ministers 3 years for complicity.

As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay’s response to the case was in the hope that it would set a precedent:

“Those who carry out torture, extrajudicial killings and other such crimes on other continents would do well to reflect on this very healthy and accelerating trend towards combating long-standing impunity in Latin America.”

http://jurist.org/paperchase/2011/08/bolivia-high-court-convicts-7-officials-for-genocide.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pitt%2FvLdl+%28JURIST+-+Paper+Chase+%5Bfull%5D%29

http://ain-bolivia.org/2011/09/response-to-the-bolivian-ex-president%E2%80%99s-defense-team%E2%80%99s-press-release/

http://suprema.poderjudicial.gob.bo/