Evo with Silvia Lazarte, president of the Constituent Assembly, August 6, 2006 Plaza 25 de Mayo, Sucre
 
 
 
"Even in the Chapare, when I was young and would go to the union meetings, they'd tell me to get out because I was a woman." (Silvia Lazarte in her inaugural address to the Assembly)
constitutional assembly > installation
 
       
   
On August 6, 2006 - exactly 181 years from the date Bolivia declared its Independence from Spain – the Constitutional Assembly convened to formulate a new Magna Carta for the Republic. The inaugural ses-sion opened with speeches by pre-sident Evo Morales, vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera and by Consti-tutional Assembly president Silvia Lazarte. Underlining the varied forms of social exclusion that have characterized the Bolivian state since the foundation of the Repu-blic, the three inaugural addresses called for an end to partisan divi-sions in order to advance towards national unity.
Silvia Lazarte, president of the Constitutio-nal Assembly, surrounded by its board of directors


After the inaugural session, representatives of the Originary Peoples and social organizations gathered at Plaza 25 de Mayo in Sucre, a manifestation that instilled “a rare emotion” among all spectators, a press report noted. “It was as if everyone shared with each of the representatives from the ayllus of Sud Lopez, from the coca growers of Cochabamba, from the castañera communities in Pando, the pride they felt as they came before the House of Liberty." (Pable Ortiz, El Deber, August 7, 2006)


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Photo credits : Fernando Molina Cortes, Marcela Isaza
 
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