Mob rule taints Bolivia indigenous law

ACHACACHI, BOLIVIA — They picked the wrong town.

Arriving by van in this solidly indigenous city on the night of an annual festival, the gang may have thought that drunk, reveling townspeople would be easy marks.

Residents said that in a series of attacks, the gang of 11, including five women, grabbed 30 victims on darkened streets and forced them into their vehicle, where they stripped, sexually assaulted and robbed the victims before local youths spread the alarm.

A mob quickly formed, took all the suspects to the city's soccer field and tied them to the goal posts. Although several of the suspects professed their innocence, they were beaten and spit upon for 10 hours, then doused with gasoline and set afire. Two died.

The November incident, seen around the world on YouTube, provoked outrage here and abroad. It was not an isolated instance. At least 54 people were killed in mostly indigenous Bolivian towns and suburbs last year by mobs taking the law into their own hands.

Among other lynchings last year, three policemen accused of extortion were killed by a mob in the town of Epizana in February. The incident prompted a United Nations warning that Bolivia's "weak judicial apparatus and the slow reaction of authorities favors an impunity that only encourages a repetition of these acts."

Incidents of mob rule are rising as Bolivian society is empowering as never before indigenous communities, which make up a third or more of the population. Last week voters approved a new constitution that elevated local indigenous justice to a status equal to traditional law, leaving Indian and peasant groups to run their own legal systems.

The new charter capped a two-year effort by President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, to promote "indigenous campesino justice." It's part of his broader campaign to give indigenous Bolivians more rights and autonomy.

The question in the minds of many legal experts is whether incidents such as the lynchings here will decrease as the Indians sense that they have more legal recourse, or increase as they legally dispense the summary justice that characterizes their approach.

Petronilo Flores, the Justice Ministry's community justice director, said that indigenous justice had been in effect for centuries and that the new constitution was an attempt to address "persistent colonial attitudes in Bolivia that indigenous justice doesn't work, that anything associated with Indians is no good."