Bolivia: A Stew Pot Of Anti-Americanism, Natural Gas And Cocaine
By Ann Huggett (10/28/03)
For most Americans Bolivia is a Third World South American country last robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. However this impoverished nation made headlines recently with massive civil unrest, riots, protest demonstrations, arson, and road blockades culminating on October 18 with the capitulation and stepping down of its President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in favor of his vice president, Carlos Mesa.
According to ex-president Lozada," My departure was the product of a conspiracy, of sedition by armed groups, 'narco-syndicalist' groups, terrorist groups and cartels who created a confrontational situation, leaving me no way out but to resign."
What started off the month of riots and demonstrations, which left at least 60 dead, food shortages in La Paz, and an unstable government facing constitutional crisis was controversy over the United States replacing Brazil as Bolivia's main consumer of its natural gas, sending that gas through Chile over what was once Bolivian coastline lost to Chile in 1883 through a disastrous war initiated by Bolivia, and Lozada's arrangements with the US on its war against drugs.
This fight against drugs is being purposely misinterpreted by the Movement for Socialism's (MAS) leader, Evo Morales, into being an assault on Bolivia's Indian coca farmers whose main crop ends up on American streets as cocaine. So completely has Morales manipulated the Indian farmers that they refer to themselves not just as farmers (granjeros) but as coca growers (cocaleros).
Morales not only claims that the Bolivian coca crop is the equivalent of Bolivia's natural gas resources but that America's war on drugs is a form of colonialism. Claiming that the coca leaf is the equivalent of a national flag of unity, Morales wants to weld all the cocaleros of South America into a pro-socialist, anti-American force.
Modern coca farming for criminal gain in Bolivia was started by out-of-work tin miners in areas where it was not traditionally grown. By pushing the illusion that all coca growing is a sole Indian ancestral way of life and that the natural gas resources of Bolivia should stay in Bolivia, or be sold exclusively to neighboring states whose demand has dropped, Morales is further entrenching and condemning to poverty those very people he purports to help. The construction of a natural gas pipeline to the Pacific coast would bring thousands of jobs to a Bolivia that has over 10% unemployment with 60% of its people living in poverty. Many protestors expect that governmental corruption will keep the natural gas pipeline profits from benefiting Bolivians.
While President Lozada's pro-American and pro-free market orientation worked for the ultimate good of Bolivia, he did not attack the root causes of poverty in Bolivia. According to the Peru based Institute for Liberty and Democracy's founder, Hernando de Soto, the poor, not only in South America but around the world, can not participate in wealth generation because they do not own title to the properties or businesses on which they live, farm, and make a living. In the first chapter of his book The Mystery of Capital, de Soto states, "The poor inhabitants of these nations -the overwhelming majority- do have things, but they lack the process to represent their property and create capital. They have houses but not titles; crops but not deeds; businesses but not statutes of incorporation. It is the unavailability of these essential representations that explains why people who have adapted every other Western invention, from the paper clip to the nuclear reactor, have not been able to produce sufficient capital to make their domestic capitalism work."
In other words, the cocaleros own their crops but do not own their land. The American war on drugs, when it goes after coca, goes after the only thing that the Indian farmers actually own by their very labor and that is their crops. Attacking those crops attacks the only real asserts the cocaleros can call theirs. That is a very real source of their hatred of America and that is why they claim America is a colonial bully. The inability to raise capital through ownership also makes the poor ripe to be politically manipulated by socialist and Marxist insurgents like Evo Morales and his MAS party. President Lozada came into office promising reforms and referendums but he would have done better by establishing clear titles to land and businesses for Bolivians. It worked in Peru and it can work in Bolivia.
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