SANTA CRUZ, BOLIVIA — Bolivia’s largest state voted Sunday on a sweeping autonomy referendum that leaders said would forge “a new Bolivia,” defying leftist President Evo Morales who called the vote unconstitutional.
Minor clashes across Santa Cruz state injured at least 25 people during the politically charged vote, which sought to separate the state’s freewheeling capitalism and mixed-blood heritage from Morales’ vision of a communal state ruled by indigenous Andean values.
Relatives of a 70-year-old man said he was killed when police fired tear gas to break up one scuffle between pro- and anti-autonomy factions. The information could not be confirmed with authorities.
Pre-election polls showed the referendum drawing as much as 70 percent support, though they were conducted by local news media sympathetic to the cause.
“This is a peaceful revolution,” Santa Cruz Gov. Ruben Costas proclaimed Sunday. “A new Bolivia is reborn from our decision.” Morales, in an interview with The Associated Press, called the measure illegal, unconstitutional and dictatorial. The vote went ahead despite an order to postpone it by Bolivia’s top electoral court, and few international observers were present.
A celebratory mood prevailed Sunday in most of the state capital, which is also called Santa Cruz. The state’s green-and-white flag fluttered from cars and shop windows, while pro-autonomy graffiti and anti-Morales slogans fought for space on walls. The smiling host of a local television cooking show fried bananas for a dish called “Autonomy Stew.” But residents in the poor Santa Cruz neighborhood of Plan 3000 — a bastion of Morales support populated by Indian immigrants from the poorer western highlands — burned ballot boxes Sunday morning.
“If I voted, that would give it legitimacy,” said Alfredo Blanco, 35. “We’re against the referendum because the humble people, the poor people — nobody asked us.” Long isolated from Bolivia’s high-altitude capital of La Paz, rural Santa Cruz has aspired to greater self-rule for generations.
The movement caught fire after Morales’ 2005 election as Bolivia’s first indigenous president.
Santa Cruz leaders want autonomy to keep a bigger slice of the state’s key natural gas revenues, which they say are needed to keep up with the booming state’s infrastructure needs.
But their declaration also aims to shelter the state’s vast soy plantations and cattle ranches from Morales’ plan to redistribute land to the poor.
Morales argues that he needs a strong central government to spread Santa Cruz’s wealth to the rest of Bolivia, South America’s poorest country.
Three more eastern lowland states — Beni, Pando and Tarija — hold autonomy votes in June, and two other states are considering similar referendums.
No one is clear on exactly how autonomy would alter Bolivia’s heavily centralized government, under which state governors were appointed by the president until 2005. The statutes up for approval Sunday would create local powers common in many countries, including a state legislature and police force.
But Morales particularly objects to ambitious clauses that bear the distinct ring of nationhood: control of the state’s land distribution and the right to sign international treaties, among others.
Santa Cruz leaders insist that they have no intention of seceding. Secession would be an unlikely prospect for a right-wing state wedged between Morales’ leftist allies in Brazil and Argentina and whose main trading partner would still be Bolivia’s highland west.
Both sides have dismissed concerns by some international observers that the vote would drive a bitterly divided Bolivia into violence.
Morales told the AP on Friday that he would meet autonomy demands with “patience” and would consider working some of Santa Cruz’s wishes into his proposed constitution.
Many here expect the vote to precipitate a new round of talks between the president and the opposition over how to proceed with some form of decentralization.
