Bolivian Indigenous Town Mourns Protesters Killed by Military

“They weren’t criminals,” reads a sign outside a church in a largely Indigenous Bolivian highland city, where nine civilians were killed a week ago during a military operation targeting the protesters against the coup d'etat and the interim government.

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Located in El Alto’s Senkata neighborhood, the church has become a makeshift morgue and a place where dozens of relatives of those killed, wounded or arrested mourn and comfort one another, while fighting the label of terrorists or criminals that the coup supporters are trying to give them.

On Nov. 19, the demonstration was blocking a major gas plant in El Alto to protest the ouster of longtime Indigenous president Evo Morales were fired on by the security forces.

Some of the people killed by the military forces in Senkata were not even protesting, like Antonio Ronald Quispe Ticona, 24.

He was traveling from his mother’s house in El Alto to his sister’s home in the neighboring city of La Paz, taking a route through Senkata, his sister Gloria recalls in an interview with Efe.

No one in the family knew what had happened to him until photos began circulating on Facebook showing a young man in a red shirt and green pants who had suffered a bullet wound, his uncle, Pascual Ticona, the first to recognize his nephew in the images.

The relatives allege that Antonio Ronald died when soldiers flying in a helicopter began firing on the crowd below.

“A bullet struck him in the head, from above. It wasn’t straight ahead. He was hit twice. One (bullet) passed through his neck and the other stayed inside” his body, the young man’s uncle said.

Doubts remained after the autopsy, because even though Ticona was present for that post-mortem examination he was not allowed to witness the moment when forensic pathologists removed the bullet.

Officially, Antonio Ronald was hit by a “small bullet,” Ticona said, though adding that his wounds indicate an impact by a larger round.

The autopsies have confirmed that the deaths were caused by gunshots but have not determined who fired them, while Añez’s government denied that the military was to blame.

A 75-year-old woman who asked to remain anonymous told Efe amid tears that she has been harassed after seeing three people shot and killed during the events in Senkata.

She said she was heading to a medical appointment when she was frightened by shouts of “They’re shooting! Run!” amid an apparent attack by the security forces.

“I saw three,” she recalled, referring to people struck by gunfire.

The first was a “woman who was running,” while the second was a man who was shot in the head with a bullet and the third was a person who was shot first in the arm and then in the chest, she said.

The elderly woman, who walks with a cane, said her image was recorded and went viral on social media. She said that as a result, she started being harassed with phone calls and being identified as one of the protesters.

Morales, who had been in office since 2006, won the first round but was forced to flee the country on Nov. 10 by the military forces.

The Ombudsman’s Office says at least 33 people have died since the election – many of them of gunshot wounds during security force operations – and more than 800 have been wounded.