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Latin America: Venezuela and Bolivia Cut Diplomatic Ties with Israel
Sunday, January 18 @ 00:27:33 UTC |  by Erik Sperling
January 15th 2009
Venezuelanalysis.com
Venezuela and Bolivia both broke off diplomatic relations with Israel Wednesday, citing its refusal to heed recent UN resolutions regarding the attacks on the Gaza strip, which have killed over one thousand Palestinians and injured nearly 5,000.
"Israel has repeatedly ignored the calls of the United Nations, consistently and shamelessly violating the resolutions approved by overwhelming majorities of member countries, increasingly placing itself on the margin of international law," Venezuela's foreign ministry said in a statement.
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Latin America: Venezuela Declares Solidarity with Bolivia's Govt
Tuesday, May 06 @ 22:32:07 UTC | Venezuela Declares Solidarity with Bolivia's Government in Face of Separatist Effort
By Kiraz Janicke
May 3rd 2008
Venezuelanalysis.com
The Venezuelan government reaffirmed its support for the territorial integrity of Bolivia and the government of Evo Morales in the face of moves by rightwing oppositionists in the state of Santa Cruz, to hold an unconstitutional referendum on autonomy this Sunday, May 4.
The referendum in Bolivia’s wealthiest state has provoked fears that rightwing governors opposed to President Morales’s policies of wealth distribution, in the states of Tarija, Pando and Beni, - which possess large fields of crude oil, natural gas and other minerals and represent Bolivia’s most productive agricultural land – could convoke similar referendums, potentially leading to a civil war and the break up of Bolivia.
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Latin America: Break up of Bolivia planned by bosses
Monday, December 17 @ 23:33:16 UTC | December 17, 2007
socialistworker.co.uk
Several provinces of Bolivia have announced that they are to breakaway from the central state in protest against the left wing policies of the country’s leader Evo Morales. Mike Gonzalez assesses the threat
Ever since Evo Morales was elected to the presidency of Bolivia in late 2005, the country has lived through permanent tensions. It was only to be expected.
Morales was carried to power by a movement that, in the six previous years, had got rid of three presidents in the battle to control Bolivia’s natural resources.
The existence of vast gas and oil reserves could have transformed the lives of the two thirds of the population who are still living in poverty – a poverty intensified by the previous decade of neoliberalism.
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Latin America: Bolivia moves toward new constitution
Sunday, December 16 @ 00:37:07 UTC | Saturday, December 15, 2007
By: Gloria La Riva
www.pslweb.org
Amid threats of coup and secession
By the required two-thirds vote, a new Bolivian Constituent Assembly approved a draft constitution on Dec. 9. It passed despite obstacles, including violence, by the right-wing, which tried desperately to derail the process.
As the assembly deputies met in Sucre in lat November, fascist thugs attacked the participants and set public buildings on fire. Several people were killed, and the meeting had to be moved to Oruro in the highlands on Dec. 8. Two days later, it was approved.
The draft's passage is a step forward for the most oppressed of Bolivian society, the people of the 36 Indigenous ethnicities, all peasants and the workers. It would grant greater rights and autonomy to the Indigenous and lay the basis to keep state control of natural resources.
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Latin America: Reconquering the Collective Patrimony of the Nation
Friday, June 10 @ 21:43:30 UTC | Recovering Bolivia's Oil and Gas
By Oscar Olivera, counterpunch.org
Petroleum and natural gas are riches found in our territory; they represent national wealth. The presence of oil and gas provides an objective condition that can permit the expansion of the national economy and the raising of the quality of life and work using our own Bolivian resources. Bolivia possesses a great wealth of petroleum and natural gas, but these resources do not currently benefit the Bolivian people. Despite the current situation, these deposits are important for the future economic viability of Bolivia.
The sheer value of the oil and gas is important to the future of the Bolivian economy. The 52.3 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in Bolivia-reserves presently in the hands of foreign capitalists-are minimally worth $120 billion.1 This means that financial resources exist in Bolivia for improving the living conditions of the whole population. The resources exist for job creation, better salaries, and expanding free services.
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Latin America: For Bolivia, Neoliberalism is Not an Option
Friday, June 10 @ 15:21:48 UTC | by Gretchen Gordon, commondreams.org
June 9, 2005
As the Organization of American States completes its three-day session debating the role of free trade and neoliberalism in fostering democracy for the continent, the country of Bolivia is on the brink of a civil war over that very question.
The sound of firecrackers and dynamite blasts punctuated the beginning of the fourth week of paralyzing protests in the Bolivian capital of La Paz, Wednesday. Tens of thousands of indigenous, miners, workers, students, and others once again flooded the streets to vocalize two immediate demands: a new constitution, and the nationalization of Bolivia's oil and gas resources.
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Latin America: Venezuela: Knocking over Dominos in Latin America
Friday, May 27 @ 18:46:35 UTC | By Sarah Wagner - Venezuelanalysis.com
On Monday, May 16th tens of thousands of Bolivian Indigenous descended from the shantytowns surrounding La Paz, the capital, demanding that the government of Carlos Mesa increase royalties on foreign transnational corporations from 18% to 50%. By the time the march ended that night in a shower of tear gas, rubber bullets and water hosing, their demands had changed. Protesters, known as the "Pact of Unity,"[1] were back on the streets on Tuesday, but now they demanded the outright nationalization of gas and oil companies, the closing of Congress and the impeachment of the President.
The protests continue under their new battle cry for accountable government, and an oil policy that ensures that the country's vast natural gas reserves – the second largest in Latin America – will be used to respond to the social needs of the Bolivian people.
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Latin America: Bolivia - Congress Rejects Mesa's Resignation
Sunday, March 13 @ 15:14:08 UTC | Agreement Alienates Indigenous Parties and Blockades Continue
By Kathryn Ledebur, www.ain.org.bo
On May 6, President Carlos Mesa caught Bolivia off-guard. He announced that as a result of continual protests and growing blockades, he was no longer willing to, "govern based on the crazy things different sectors demand," and planned to submit his resignation to Congress the next day. The unexpected announcement generated uncertainty throughout the nation that was paralyzed by 57different road blockades to obtain diverse and sometimes contradictory demands. Ironically, high levels of protest do not reflect inflexibility of the administration. Instead, the greater openness of the Mesa government, compared to its predecessors, heightened disenfranchised group's hopes that there long-postponed needs might finally be met. At that time, strongest protests had been going on for six days in the Chapare coca-growing region and in El Alto. The resignation announcement represented an impromptu mini- referendum to generate public support for his administration, as well as a reaction to a genuinely untenable situation.
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Latin America: Washington Pressure on Drugs Jeopardizes Survival of Battered Bolivian President
Monday, February 24 @ 14:56:59 UTC |
- President Sanchez de Lozada about to announce expansion of "legal" coca crop
- Political stability sometimes comes before drug eradication
- The heavy price of U.S. intervention
- Bolivia's civil society becoming increasingly potent
- Viability of Sanchez de Lozada presidency at stake
The administration of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is balanced on a knife's edge, as after less than seven months into his presidency, violent protests, calls for his resignation, and rumors of coup plots have been circling through the streets of La Paz, Bolivia's capital. Tension has been gathering in the country since the beginning of the year when a widening throng of voices from all walks of life began calling on the Bolivian leader to reform or resign. But, in reality, Sanchez de Lozada's fate will be as much determined in Washington as La Paz, as the Bush administration decides whether Bolivian national interests are as important to respect as its own.
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Latin America: Working-Class Revolt In Bolivia
Friday, February 14 @ 14:45:22 UTC | by Forrest Hylton
February 14, 2003
Dual power has come to Bolivia most suddenly: not, as expected, in the form of a coordinated uprising of coca growers, highland Aymara peasants, and Quechua speaking peasants under the direction of Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People; instead, high school students and the working class of La Paz and its satellite city, El Alto, rose up spontaneously in the largest urban insurrection since the National Revolution of 1952.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, February 12, students from Ayacucho high school attacked the Presidential Palace in the Plaza de Murillo with stones, and after the Military Police shot and killed members of the police's Special Group, crowds burned the headquarters of the major neoliberal political parties (MNR, MIR, ADN) as well as a privately-owned television station, the vice-president's office, the Ministry of Labor, and the Ministry of Sustainable Development, the last of which was created under the first Sánchez de Lozada administration (1993-97).
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