Divide and conquer is a strategy essential to the success of imperialist powers throughout world history. You can give this policy a new name, such as “neo-conservative” or “neo-liberal” (which are essentially the same thing), and excuse it as a necessity for fighting communism and now terror, but it’s still the same shit.

The US is financially supporting division in Iraq, has managed to split the West Bank and Gaza between the parties of Fatah and Hamas, has planned to fracture Venezuela with the help of the Colombian military, and has also sparked division in Bolivia by appealing to the overtly racist white oligarchs which are trying to enact an unconstitutional autonomy referendum in the rich province of Santa Cruz. Pepe Escobar of The Real News gives us the truth about this referendum, which was not sanctioned by the National Electoral Court or the Bolivian Congress.

As Bolivian Minister of Foreign Relations David Choquehuanca has said, the US-backed separatist movement is “a true conspiracy against a democratically elected government.” This autonomy referendum isn’t just illegal; its foreign-funded terrorism against the poor indigenous population to keep what is rightfully theirs concentrated in the hands of white landowners.

In another video on the subject, Pepe notes that Evo’s government has “nationalized gas. They have called for a constituent assembly to re-found the country. They have invested in social programs. And the major taboo: they have transferred hundreds of thousands of hectares of land from big landowners to poor campesinos—peasants. No wonder the elite in Bolivia wants to bring this government down. And, yes, this is a war of whites against Indians, a war of rich against the poor. And it’s also part of a huge, ambitious plan B: break up Bolivia and have a gas-rich independent state in the eastern part of the country—a dagger in the heart of South American integration. Now, guess whom the Bush administration, the State Department, and the CIA is supporting?”