I PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In the frame of the struggle for the autonomies, in January, 2005 important events

rushed in Santa Cruz, which culminated with the multitudinous and unpublished open chapter of 28 of the same month, assembled to the feet of Redeeming Christ. In this act, which was provided with the assistance of more than 300 thousand persons, the shape of an assembly was proclaimed pre autonomic and the achievement of a departmental referendum on autonomous governments. From there, the topic of the autonomies happened to occupy the forefront in the national debate. In such a virtue, the demand of information about the topic increased greatly and made possible that the first edition of this book, thrown on November 4, 2004, was becoming exhausted in a few months. The intention of this second edition is that Autonomas Ya! (AUTONOMIES ALREADY!) be useful for professionals, students of average level, university students, trade union and political civic, leading leaders. That is of fluid reading, skylight and of easy comprehension. In order to improve its content, the following adjustments have interfered to the text: a) writing corrections to give him better coherence and clarity b) has updated it, including new topics and recent information c) some topics of less interest were eliminated and others were highlighted. The main target of the book, is to demonstrate the viability of the autonomic process and its irreversible character. For it one resorts to experiences lived in other latitudes that must to us be useful to extract lessons. The analysis of several cases and the observance of the emergence of peripheral nationalistic movements in Bolivia, has led us to concluding that the current model of the centralized State, is not adapted to the profile of our multiethnic and multicultural society, as we happen to explain. At present there exists a clear world tendency, directed to achieve the overcoming of the old scheme of the State Nation homogeneously and the adoption of new models of the Multinational States (or multicultural). To understand the idea of the multicultural State, we need to understand firstly the old model of the State - nation and why this one has been pushed back. In this senile model, the groups installed in the power - based on the idea of popular sovereignty - try to give legitimacy to the State arguing that this one belongs to the population and that also only one people corresponds to the State. Namely the national elites try to create the illusion of which in the territory dominated by the State only there exists a community of interests, from which the idea of homogeneity arises. Of this one forms, the speech that it proclaims that "we all belong to the same nation", facts, the existence of culturally differentiated groups denies in them. Under the above mentioned figure, this national hegemonic group has always used to the State for to privilege its identity, to impose its language, to tell its history, myths, and legends; coming to the point of defining it and of confusing it like the expression of its nationality. In several countries, the homogeneous State has been questioned, firstly for the peoples indigenously and then for nations or different communities, which want to maintain its own ones

institutions and distinctive cultural features. In this second slope nacionalitario cruceo locates civic movement. In the years later to the Second World War (continuing with the considerations general) the current of reforms begins taking body in favor of the new model of the State and the process of change towards the Multinational States. Then, the end of the war cold accelerated the development of the democracy and produced a transformation of the nature of the conflicts. At present, these conflicts already do not raise exclusively between the States, and the ideological rivalries stopped being the center of the scene internationally. An increasing number of local, regional or national claims, that earlier were remaining under the control of the States, outcrop and can be evident today in open form. An experience about the grade of danger that the internal conflicts shut up, worthy of study, is the complex history of Yugoslavia (described in the relative chapter IV to the bloody war in the Balkans) and the consequences derived from the imposition of nacionalismos minority. In this area, to be born in mind, essential lesson turns out to be the importance that the personal attitudes receive and even the politicians' egoism obsessed by the power and the manipulation of the existing differences (ethnic and cultural) inside the States - nations, for the sake of its own mean advantages and cortoplacistas. The same situation been on the point of being re-edited in Bolivia them the first days of June, 2005. Also the example of Canada, exhibited in the Chapter II under the Separatism title in Qubec, is extremely useful. He allows us to remind that not only the African "tribes" need a solution to the very predictable antinomies of the religion, the language, her ethnic identity, the culture and the economic ties. : And how is it possible to avoid the disintegration originated from the threat of the nacionalismos radicalizados in Bolivia? Cultivating a national image so attractive that the separation or the repudiation leaves the State of being of interest, making to feel the citizens that only in I mark of the modern State, it is possible to protect to the cultures of the minorities, its languages and its sacred institutions, in the internal and external planes. Amen of which to the youth he must be inculcated by the idea of a better future and which the limitations and poverties must be solved based on the work I do not block - and to the rational, honest use and intelligently of our resources. 6 However. A characteristic of the contemporary societies of whom it is not foreign Bolivia - is the emergence of new movements that fight to exist and be recognized. The growth of minority social groups that defend its right to there be accepted how different, it has created a generating situation of a demand of major pluralism in the current society. A condition so that it is possible to give a stable pluralism must be the tolerance towards the minorities. In other words, this is the acceptance of the groups and social movements that defend its right to be different without impairment of its full rights like members of the biggest society. For the exposed thing, it is convenient to wonder: is not it legal of that time, to include between the fundamental rights the recognition of the diversity, which protects both the identity of every individual and the existence of the different "collective identities"?. In our country, an important step has happened in the sense of recognizing the existence of several nations and ethnic groups in its bosom, since in accordance with our CPE Bolivia, it is in theory free, independent, sovereign, multiethnic and multicultural constituted in Unitary Republic, he adopts for its government the representative democratic form and participativa, founded in the union and the solidarity of all

the Bolivians. It is the Social and Democratic State of Right that it supports like top values of its juridical arranging, the freedom, the equality and the Justice . (art. 1 CPE). Be read well: he does not say that it is centralized. Nevertheless, Bolivia is a highly centralized country, being that nowadays We Are in an epoch of recognition of the defeat of the centralized system of government, its alienation of the people in whose name was developed or been invented by the society and, hence, the State. The unfeasibility of the centralism has remained in abundance demonstrated, not only for the collapse of the Soviet Union like political body, but also for the clear defeat of its economic system of centralized production . In order to correct so harmful situation, up to the most centralist governments responsibilities are yielding to the subnational governments, they marking a strong tendency towards the constitution of autonomous regional governments and the strengthening of the existing ones. In Europe two important successful models exist: Spain and Italy, the same ones that are exhibited in the present essay. Many countries of Latin America are covering similar ways, transferring responsibilities and financial resources towards the different government levels and leaving behind the archaic forms of centralized administration. The process of deepening of the democracy does not limit itself to the popular election of national authorities. Every day they are more the regional and local leaders chosen by its communities, and there are the institutions that they represent those who give support and impel the development of the decentralization. The need to form smaller and autonomous political bodies comes from the desire to have governments more sensitive and near to the citizens and from giving expression to the basic ties of a group that constitute the signs of identity of a community and of its aspiration for its free determination. Bearing in mind that these two tendencies 7 contradictory spread in the whole world, it is no wonder that every time there are more countries that have gone so far as to adopt some type of the advantages that stem from a system federal politician without coming to the federalism in itself - that supposes the existence of a government shared for certain common tasks and a few self-governments that maintain its regional differences, since these systems allow a major proximity of institutions the multinational reality. Anyhow, the new State can adopt diverse forms, since apart from the autonomy, several guys or quasifederal models exist. In this essay one raises the regional autonomies. : What does it mean when the people protest promptly, to restructure or to re-found country? Simply it means that it is necessary to re-examine the relation between the parts and quite, and between them, but this time with entire freedom, in equality foot and with the target of to reveal the advantages of remaining together and of acting firmly to eliminate the obstacles that are opposed to a peaceful coexistence. The development of the claims of regional autonomy does that this question considers with an every time major urgency. The increasing complexity and heterogeneity of the modern societies demand that simultaneously there should plan the axes of the piece of news solidarities and flexibilicen the too rigid positions of the schemes unitaristas and centralist. The right to the autonomy derives from a natural and internal beginning, and from the right to the free one determination, established in some democratic constitutions (in addition to mentioned in the international law), which forms the popular sovereignty, or government of the people. If the sovereignty is the faculty that possesses the village for autodeterminarse, to choose or to modify the form in which it has to be governed, in the State pluritnico or multinational each of its peoples or ethnic communities must enjoy this prerogative. The form in which they should exercise this right

debit to result from one agreement or agreement between the different peoples and the State based on the redistribution of to be able territorialmente. Finally, we must make quite clear that in Bolivia there stays out of place any pretension sheltered by some political, ethnic bias or of any other nature of to want to dominate by the force other peoples, or try to use the Constituent Assembly to design the State to its taste and measurement and even more if this people (or peoples) to the one that he wants to subjugate and/or subjugate, he is strong, close, dedicated to the productive work and in Franc ascent and economic and political promotion, as it is the case of Santa Cruz and others peoples of the south and of east. That understands himself well: Santa Cruz will allow more neither enslavements, abuses nor affront, come from which it avenges, although they qualify us of racist for defending ours.