Bolivia rebellion?

New poll!! To hell with California!
There has been a lot of unrest in Bolivia directed towards their president, because he has taken pro-US policies in trade and drug control, as well as attempted to build a natural gas pipeline. So now the capital is under siege as protesters (a great part of whom are indigenous farmers and coca growers) swarm around. About 50 have been killed in violence. It's interesting how South American politics works: where it's so poor, the coca growers have a real slice of the economic activity (as they have for centuries) and they just don't accept U.S. dominance over their culture. On the other hand, maybe they are just immoral narcotraficantes. Latest Reuters:

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Bolivia's army fought to stop columns of protesters from streaming into the food-starved capital on Wednesday as a popular uprising against the president spread.

Catholic Church officials reported that two miners were killed and six other protesters injured 50 miles (110 km) outside of La Paz. Protests also raged in the eastern city of Cochabamba, where marchers threw rocks at police and Molotov cocktails at a government palace.

Analysts predict President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, whose coalition is crumbling, will have to make concessions to protesters to prevent more violence from toppling his administration. The monthlong revolt against his U.S.-backed policies have left at least 53 people dead.

The government in South America's poorest nation, where six out of 10 people live on less than $2 a day, is under attack for a host of grievances ranging from its U.S.-led eradication of coca to a plan to export natural gas to the United States.

A more radical interpretation via ZNet says that

Once again, this time ironically, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada has summed up the situation succinctly: a tiny minority is trying to divide the country. Sánchez de Lozada?whose approval rating stands at 8%--and his inner circle have dug in their heels, raised their voices in contempt, and adopted bellicose postures. The US Embassy, the media, and the upper layers of the military and police are the only remaining supports of the regime. The opposition sectors insist on the resignation of Sánchez de Lozada and his draconian ministers, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín and Yerko Kukoc, as well as a change in the law regulating petroleum multinationals.

It remains to be seen whether the opposition movements, led by the highland Aymara, will succeed in overthrowing Sánchez de Lozada, implementing a Constituent Assembly, and forging a new Bolivia, or whether rightwing authoritarianism a la Uribe will be imposed with the aid of the US Embassy. The situation is unfolding with such rapidity that predictions are of marginal utility, but one thing is certain: the Aymara working class and peasantry of the western highlands; the coca growers of the eastern lowlands; the Quechua-speaking Indian peasantry of the southern highlands and valleys; the working class of La Paz and Cochabamba; in other words, the people who produce Bolivia?s wealth are demanding an end to 511 years of looting, exploitation, and political domination. They insist on becoming the beneficiaries of their labor, on taking the political decisions that affect their lives and exercising sovereignty over natural resources.

Here is another ZNet article.

Posted by HongPong at October 15, 2003 02:46 PM
Listed under International Politics , Military-Industrial Complex , News .