This has been a crazy week here in Sucre. I don’t know how much everyone hears about Bolivian news, but what is happening here is worthy of International attention. For more than a year now, there has been a Constituent Assembly held here in Sucre. This Assembly is working on writing a new Constitution for Bolivia, one that supposedly will champion the poor, bring more equality to the people in Bolivia.

The problem is that the actual government, and the majority of those writing the new constitution are members of a socialist movement, and are trying as hard as they can to turn Bolivia into a socialist nation. Just to give you an idea, the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales has the closest international relations with Venezuela (Hugo Chavez) and Cuba (Fidel Castro). Evo is trying to do what Hugo Chavez has already done in Venezuela.

This has not gone over well with a large part of Bolivia, including Sucre, where we are. The Constitutional Assembly has been blocked from working by different protesters and others who claim (and are correct) that those in the governments political party have broken the law in several of the things that they have tried to get done with this assembly. Well, this past Thursday, the majority party decided to move the location of the assembly to a military base outside of Sucre. They began sessions on Friday morning with only a little more than half of the constituents. Those from other parties decided to boycott the sessions because of the illegality of it all, but those who were there did meet the quorum, so they were able to continue. Since Friday, there have been huge protests, and thousands of protesters tried to get to the place where they were meeting to stop the assembly from continuing. There was violent police repression, tear gas and rubber bullets being shot at the protesters, wounding hundreds. This pushed the protesters to outrage, which brought even tougher repression. Last evening (Saturday), those from the presidents political party voted and approved unanimously the whole of their new constitution. Those who did this then escaped the city about 12:00 AM this morning, but protests and police repression didn’t stop.

Overnight, two people had been killed by bullets, and there is rumor that one police had been killed also. This morning the national director of the police in Bolivia directed that every person who works for the states police department to leave the city and to go to Potosí. After leaving, protesters took over all police headquarters in the city and literally burned all they could find. Prisoners in the jail escaped, and only a handful remain there now. Several TV stations went there and even interviewed those who had stayed, asking them why. They said that they wanted to finish off their terms without any other problems.

As of now, Sucre is without law, and things are crazy. We have suspended our normal 6:00 pm worship service, and will only meet there to pray with those who show up. We will be asking several of the single men in the church to stay there overnight to protect it from vandalism, something that is sure to happen in the city with the anarchy that we are living in right now.

Please keep us and Bolivia in your prayers… we need it. May God’s will come out of all of this.

Jason