Bolivia: the Convulsed Country

March 7, 2005

Bolivia is still in deep waters. Indian communities keep blocking roads of the country, in the proletarian city El Alto thousands of citizens keep requesting that state control over water supply be re-established, secret and manifest separatists in the departments of Santa Cruz and Tarija keep insisting on setting up an ‘autonomy’. The threat to lose control over Bolivia is showing more and more evidently.

President Carlos Mesa makes wonders of political dancing to stabilize the situation. However, the country has utterly go red-hot.
Indian leader Evo Morales (the Movement Toward Socialism party) claimed the support of President Mesa, but criticized the inclusion in the new government key positions of the Santa Cruz representatives.
The Army serried ranks round the president and its command again stressed the inadmissibility to split the country.

The Bolivia crises is estimated to be boosted by the transnational oil companies that try to establish control over oil and gas fields in the ‘autonomy’-oriented departments.

That is where the most burning problem of the future law on energy supply comes from, as it is to determine who is to control the cherished gate – either the state or the officials. Any new attempt to privatize national energy supplies is evident to lead to the more acute domestic confrontation.

In the second half of 2005 the Constitutional assembly is to be assembled. It is to review a lot of provisions of the acting constitution, in particular, in relation to certain decentralization, introduction of the autonomy institution.

Additional acuteness of the situation is brought by the USA position in respect of the law on energy supply – if it meets the Washington interests, Bolivians may count on signing of the mutual agreement on the free market; otherwise – the idea of such a market is given up for lost.

International politicians state it is no improbable that Evo Morales, in whose blood there is a blood of the aboriginal population of Bolivia – Aymara, will win the 2007 presidential election. Is he to become the first Indian president? The oligarch circles from the far end are trying to upset the election, to create a permanent-crisis situation, to urge the army to set full control over the country that took times more than once in the past.

The Bolivian destabilization is beneficial to the domestic and international reaction forces that may negatively affect the integration processes in Latin America, consolidation of Latin American national communities, formation of international oil cartel Petrosur and etc.

The struggle over Bolivia is getting more and more severe. It is understood by the progressive leaders of the continent that support the constructive democracy-oriented political forces in Bolivia

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