At 1:30 p.m. on June 14, an individual or individuals in a white van abducted Benjamín Altamirano Calle, exiled mayor of the Bolivian town of Ayo Ayo, off the streets of La Paz where he was walking with council member Plácida Quispe and community leader Wilfredo Vásquez. Quispe and Vásquez immediately reported the incident to the Technical Judicial Police (PTJ) and urged police to send a unit to Ayo Ayo, where they believed Altamirano would be taken. Ayo Ayo is a community of 7,000 people in the Altiplano region of La Paz department, about 85 kilometers from the capital.
Back in Ayo Ayo, a crowd of villagers subjected Altamirano to a "people's trial," demanding that he confess to acts of corruption. After he repeatedly refused to confess, the crowd apparently beat Altamirano to death before burning his body at around 3 a.m. on June 15. Ayo Ayo council member Saturnino Apaza Aro—who the council designated as interim mayor in May—was arrested in connection with the crime; he was being held in Chonchocoro prison as of June 16.
After learning of the lynching, La Paz governor Nicolás Quenta sent a commission of at least 50 officials from the police and attorney general's office to Aro Aro. Police removed Altamirano's remains but were unable to get any information, since the villagers refused to talk. As the commission was preparing to return to La Paz, police heard that a group of journalists was under attack and returned to rescue them. "When we wanted to ask about the causes that brought about the incident, someone rang the church bell, and almost like magic hundreds of villagers appeared and . . .began to attack us," said one of the journalists. (El Diario (La Paz) 6/16/04; Los Tiempos (Cochabamba) 6/16/04, 6/17/04; AP 6/18/04)
Altamirano and his lawyer had escaped a previous lynching attempt on March 26, 2002. Days later, local residents burned his home, forcing him to move to El Alto, adjacent to the capital. The villagers brought charges against Altamirano for acts of corruption in the court of Sica Sica, but the judges ordered his release for lack of evidence. (LT 6/16/04)
The Altamirano family is blaming the murder on Apaza and Landless Movement (MST) leader Gabriel Pinto, among other community members. Pinto said the entire community carried out the lynching. At a community assembly in Ayo Ayo on June 16, which several reporters were allowed to observe, residents blamed prosecutor Federico Candia, the Sica Sica judges, Sen. Bellido, Finance Ministry adviser Inés Vera and the Constitutional Court for creating the conditions that led to the lynching. (LT 6/17/04 (from La Prensa, La Paz), 6/18/04)
At another community assembly on June 17, Ayo Ayo residents insisted they would not allow a single community member to be arrested, and warned the government that if it does not drop all charges against community members for the killing by June 21, they will shut off an oil pipeline, destroy the road that links La Paz and Oruro and blow up electrical towers. (ED 6/18/04; LT 6/18/04)
In a discussion of the lynching in the Chamber of Deputies on June 15, deputy Gabriel Bautista of the Indigenous Pachacuti Movement (MIP) expressed regret for the incident, but noted that "community justice" is generally applied when the ordinary justice system fails to work. (LT 6/16/04) Speaking on June 16, Defender of the People Waldo Albarracín pointed out that police failed to respond to the kidnapping, presumably because Altamirano was an indigenous mayor from a small, impoverished community. If a person with economic or political power had been abducted, police would have acted immediately, Albarracín said. (ED 6/17/04) On June 17, Bolivian presidency minister José Galindo Nedder announced the formation of two commissions of representatives from the Catholic Church and human rights institutions, one to resolve the Ayo Ayo conflict, and one to seek out alternative solutions to conflicts over corruption in other communities. Galindo urged communities to avoid violence; he noted that in the Peruvian Aymara community of Ilave, where the mayor was lynched on April 26, the conflict which led to the lynching has still not been resolved. (LT 6/18/04)
Meanwhile, on June 17 the Bolivian government began negotiations with campesino unions to end a blockade which for 16 days has halted traffic on a strategic route linking the capital of landlocked Bolivia to Peruvian ports. Aymara campesinos are blocking the road to Desaguadero, on the border with Peru, to demand nationalization of Bolivia's national gas, among other economic and social demands. According to AP, the government managed to negotiate an end to most of the other blockades which have erupted since the beginning of May. (AP 6/17/04).
