fulfilling this campaign pledge will keep the hard leftists in his coalition happy, it won't really antagonize the petty bourgeoisie, and it'll set a great example for peru and other countries in the area.

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"The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources," Morales said in a speech from the San Alberto petroleum field in southern Bolivia to decree what he called a nationalization of the natural gas industry.

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Originally posted by guy cybershy:
If Morales gets away with this it means that globalization (the north stealing the resources of the south} may finally be on the run.

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Characterizing the situation in Bolivia as "the north stealing from the south" is somewhat inaccurate, given the following: "Brazil's state-controlled energy company, with over $1 billion invested, is the biggest single investor in Bolivia's natural gas industry." (NY Times, May 4, 2006, "In Brazil, Anger at Leader's Mild Response to Bolivia's Bold Move")

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Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):
Characterizing the situation in Bolivia as "the north stealing from the south" is somewhat inaccurate,

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Morales rejected suggestions he should have consulted with investors or neighboring governments.

"There is no reason why I should have to ask and consult about a country's sovereign policies," he said.

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While Bush’s hostility towards Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is well known, his critical comments about Bolivia came as somewhat of a surprise, given that Evo Morales has served only four months as the country’s first Indian president and has done nothing to thwart the democratic process. As Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca noted: “We are creating a participatory democracy and the world knows it. I don’t understand how the United States can say democracy is eroding...”

Bush’s true agenda is reflected in his call for “respect for property rights.” A change is taking place in South America as Morales and Chavez move to exert greater control of their energy resources and challenge US plans for a hemispheric free trade zone. As the president of the Bolivian Senate, Santos Ramirez, noted: "Bolivia and Latin America are no longer the servile democracies that tolerate...poverty and the surrendering of sovereignty."

Early in May Morales announced that Bolivia would nationalize its energy resources, particularly its natural gas exports. While no foreign corporations were expropriated out right, Morales made it clear that “the looting of our natural resources by foreign enterprises is over.”

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Where is the redbaiting fury, the racist gibes about the Indio Presidente being in over his head? Surprisingly, Morales's May 1 nationalization decree is hardly controversial here. Even large sections of the Bolivian business class support the move.

To be fair, this "nationalization" is really only a limited takeover of three key companies that together control the heart of the Bolivian energy industry. Nor is it radically precipitous. Morales's decree is the culmination of a process that started with the "gas war" of October 2003, which brought down President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and later his successor, Carlos Mesa. In all, the new moves should earn the government more than $700 million a year in revenue.

The three firms in question were partly sold off--or "capitalized"--during the 1990s. Under the new rules, the government's petroleum company will gain a 51 percent stake in Transredes (owned by Shell), which manages most gas and oil transport including pipelines, as well as in Andina (owned by the Spanish-Argentine firm Repsol YPF) and Chaco (BP and Britain's BG Group), both of which do exploration and primary production. The government is also taking over Bolivia's two main refineries, formerly controlled by Brazil's Petrobras. The twenty or so other foreign companies are left untouched.
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Despite these moves, many on the Bolivian left still consider Morales a sellout. They point to the 600,000 or more children who go to bed malnourished every night and demand more. One social movement-connected think tank, CEDLA, issued a hyperbolic report blasting the MAS government's first 100 days as "a ratification of neoliberalism." At the offices of CONAMAQ, one of several large Bolivian indigenous federations made up of autonomous ayllus, or communities, of Quechua-, Aymara- and Guaraní-speaking people, the critique of brother Evo is more abstract: "He doesn't have an indigenous vision," says the group's president, Anselmo Martinez Tot, who approves of the nationalization but worries that the MAS vision of economic development will erode traditional ways and draw off young people to the city.
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Looking for the class war and panicking capitalists, I head to the offices of the National Industrial Chamber, but all I find is reasonableness. In retrospect, that makes sense, as this chamber of commerce represents 1,500 mostly small and medium-sized firms involved in textiles, food processing, furniture, metalwork and agriculture, all of which are threatened by free trade on US terms and none of which are oil companies.

"Evo had to nationalize the gas," says Daniel Sanchez, the chamber's president. "We had a referendum in July 2004 and nationalization won overwhelmingly. This is democracy." In two weeks of canvassing politicians, businesspeople and the social movements, I hear this sentiment again and again: Nationalization had to happen because of the July 2004 referendum. If Morales had been any more restrained, he would have faced the wrath of street mobilizations. Even some right-wing ranchers in Bolivia's lowland eastern province of Santa Cruz--where Morales won a stunning 33 percent of the vote--told me that though they disliked nationalization, it was inevitable.
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If there are dark clouds on the horizon for MAS, they come from two directions: a discontented far left and a bellicose, possibly US-backed lowland-rancher-based right wing. But the two threats are almost mutually exclusive. If the right moves against MAS, the left will likely unite. If the right sits by and tolerates a few defeats, then the left could make Morales's term hell with demands for accelerated social change and economic redistribution.

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Morales nationalizes Bolivia natural gas

President Evo Morales signed into law Sunday contracts giving the government control over foreign energy companies' operations, completing a process begun May 1 with the nationalization of Bolivia's petroleum industry.

The deals, signed by the companies last month, also grant Morales' government a majority share of the foreign companies' revenues generated in Bolivia. Companies that signed contracts include Brazilian state energy giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras), Spanish-Argentine Repsol YPF, France's Total SA, and British Gas, a unit of BG Group PLC.

Morales also announced Sunday that Royal Dutch Shell PLC had agreed to transfer to his government majority control of its Bolivian subsidiary Transredes, which operates the country's largest network of gas pipelines.

Bolivia's natural gas reserves are South America's largest after Venezuela's.

"We thank the Bolivian people who have struggled to recover their natural resources," Morales said in a signing ceremony at the presidential palace in the capital of La Paz. "We have now completed the first step. This process will continue next year with the recovery of other natural resources benefiting the Bolivian people."

Morales has said he also plans to nationalize Bolivia's mining sector.

Bolivia's first Indian president, Morales has vowed to reverse centuries of dominance by the country's European-descended minority, granting greater political and economic power to the poor indigenous majority.

Morales recently returned from a trip to Nigeria, which like Bolivia remains bitterly poor despite its vast petroleum reserves. On Sunday he said he hoped that nationalization initiatives similar to his own might lift oil-rich African nations from poverty.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:

"If we want to free ourselves as a people, if we want to resolve our social and economic problems, we must both liberate human beings and liberate their economies - their natural resources, especially," Morales said. "Only then will there be justice and equality."

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Africa is one long appallingly dreadful human rights tragedy, and western corporations from Raytheon to Haliburton to Belgian arms dealers and mercenary outfits are complicit today in those same nations where the cold war was fought. Mortality rates in countries Angola to the Congo are said to be far worse than what existed in Iraq at the height of the U.S.-led medieval siege.

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Viva la revolucion![/QB]

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including submitting NAFTA to a vote of the will of the Canadian, and Mexican, people.

as it is, Canadians are NAFTA-bound to use Canadian natural gas to heat up Canadian tar sands to make oil for American consumers.

how will it be in 5 years when Canadians have to choose between a hot bath and fueling American cars, American industries, and American military fuel consumption ?

Mexico's largest oil field, Cantarell, is depleting/ water filling at a rate that will take it out of production by the end of 2008 (April 2006 data point; 825 well top to bottom, water rising at the rate of 300 feet per year - 2 3/4 years before the water gets to the top of the well).

Mexico has other large oil fields. Should the benefits of those oil fields go to Mexicans ? I'm an American. why should i get first dibs on Mexican oil ?

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Originally posted by Abdul_Maria:

including submitting NAFTA to a vote of the will of the Canadian, and Mexican, people.

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The little people would only reject it. Some things are just too important to be left to democracy.

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how will it be in 5 years when Canadians have to choose between a hot bath and fueling American cars, American industries, and American military fuel consumption ?

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In that case, our colonial administrators in Ottawa would likely forfeit all resource rights to U.S. corporate control entirely for the sake of American national security and then free market prices really kick-in in the event we start running out of enough to supply ourselves. Picture Puerto Rico with Polar bears . Our two old line parties in Ottawa and Queen's Parks often have minor tiffs over how best to carry out these very colonial administrative tasks without placing undue taxation and other burdens related to bureaucratic inefficiencies on marauding multinationals, like: green taxes, per barrel oil royalties on par with other nations, or encouraging excessive free trade in softwood lumber to corporate America's comparative disadvantage etcetera.

[ 03 December 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]