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Author Topic: Thousands of Bolivian Protesters March Into Capital
majorvictory
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posted 17 October 2003 01:47 AM      Profile for majorvictory     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of poor indigenous Bolivians marched into the capital on Thursday as their leaders rejected President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada's attempt to defuse a deadly revolt, declaring they would protest until the "butcher" quit.

quote:
The demonstrators filed downhill from the poor outskirts of La Paz, exploding dynamite sticks and shouting slogans such as "Goni (a nickname for the president) is a murderer." Indigenous leaders said his offer to change some of his hated U.S.-backed, free-market policies was too little, too late.

Other marchers, including old indigenous women in their traditional bowler hats and farmers wielding sticks, waved the multicolored flag of the Incas as they marched past boarded-up banks and shops in the paralyzed city center.

"The only thing the people want is this butcher's resignation," indigenous leader Felipe Quispe told local radio.



From: Toronto | Registered: Jul 2002  |  IP: Logged
majorvictory
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posted 17 October 2003 11:55 AM      Profile for majorvictory     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Bolivia's Battles

quote:
The Bolivian president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, was still hanging in there, barely, on Wednesday, as violent protests involving thousands of people swept across the country, leaving at least 70 dead.

The immediate cause of the unrest is a proposal to build a $5 billion pipeline through Bolivia to export natural gas to the U.S. and Mexico via a port in Chile. Protestors want the president to step down because they think the pipeline project would give little to Bolivia, already Latin America's poorest country, with profits going mainly to foreigners.

But the unrest has deeper causes, tied to economic malaise and dissatisfaction with a government that Bolivia's numerous poor feel neglects them. Bolivia was already a tinderbox; the pipeline proposal just provided the spark.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the U.S. has contributed to the growing discontent in Bolivia.



From: Toronto | Registered: Jul 2002  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 17 October 2003 02:02 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
The demonstrators filed downhill from the poor outskirts of La Paz, exploding dynamite sticks

I remember representing a refugee claimant from Bolivia who testified that all "peaceful" demonstrations in Bolivia involve the throwing of dynamite. Dynamite symbolically represents the fact of support for the demo by the Tin Miners' Union, who use that substance in their work.

On the other hand, he also said that you could always tell if the government knew about miners' demonstrations, because they would send jets to strafe the marchers with live bullets.

[ 17 October 2003: Message edited by: jeff house ]


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 17 October 2003 02:13 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
God jeff, and I thought our logging workers here in Québec who demonstrate brandishing chainsaws were tough!

An interesting aspect of this very hard struggle seems to be the development or renewal of pride in their identity among Bolivia's downtrodden Indigenous majority.


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 17 October 2003 03:06 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
No, those Quebec lumberjacks were outed by Monte Python some time ago.
From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Sara Mayo
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posted 17 October 2003 05:08 PM      Profile for Sara Mayo     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Bolivian President to resign

!!!!!

There's also a headline on cyberpresse about US troops being sent to Bolivia, but no story yet.

!!!!!


From: "Highways are monuments to inequality" - Enrique Penalosa | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged
pogge
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posted 17 October 2003 05:15 PM      Profile for pogge   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sara, your link takes me to a page with no content. Here's the CNN International version of the story.

quote:
Bolivian President Sanchez de Lozada is expected to resign Friday, following weeks of violent protests throughout the country, a political official said

The protests have virtually paralyzed the country, causing public transportation and many other services to grind to a halt.

U.S. forces were on their way to the troubled country to evacuate U.S. personnel, if necessary.



From: Why is this a required field? | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged
Briguy
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posted 18 October 2003 12:03 AM      Profile for Briguy     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Bolivian President to resign
!!!!!

Wow! Does Bolivia have a Hugo Chavez who can do something for the poor?


quote:
There's also a headline on cyberpresse about US troops being sent to Bolivia, but no story yet.

I guess so.


From: No one is arguing that we should run the space program based on Physics 101. | Registered: Nov 2001  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 18 October 2003 12:33 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I don't know. I don't even know if they have a "Lula" type individual. I am very pleased, however, that Bolivians have been able to mass this kind of support to convince the President he should resign as his policies have clearly failed the majority of the people in his country.

I only hope the military does not get involved.

By the way, an article here says that another motivating factor is that the Bolivian government is actually a coalition of two parties and one of them has decided to back out.

On a more optimistic note, people like Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, or Gutierrez in Ecuador (a Chavez-like General who, in fact, holds up Chavez as his model for government reform in that country), or even Lula in Brazil are proving that South America is getting tired of having the United States, in the form of the IMF, dictate what economic and social policies they must follow.

Even Chile routinely elects Socialist Presidents and has done so since Pinochet stepped down (or got kicked upstairs, if you're cynical like me).


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 18 October 2003 03:43 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Update!

The Bolivian President has resigned.

quote:
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Embattled Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resigned today, a presidential aide said, hours after losing the support of his last key ally following weeks of deadly street protests triggered by a government plan to export natural gas.

From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
April Follies
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posted 18 October 2003 12:49 PM      Profile for April Follies   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Further update: meet the new boss.

Political Unknown Takes Over Bolivian Presidency

quote:
Carlos Mesa, a moderate political unknown, took over Bolivia's presidency on Saturday...

Mesa immediately proposed a binding referendum on a gas project that is opposed by Indian groups who say it will only benefit neighboring Chile, the United States and foreign investors.

The 50-year-old leader also promised a reform of an energy law criticized by Indian groups who say foreign firms' profits are too high.

He asked Congress to shorten his mandate and call early elections -- effectively asking to be a caretaker leader. He also said his Cabinet would be made up of independents like himself and include no party members.


Not a bad start, but we'll see. I found something else rather more interesting:

quote:
Local TV reported that the ex-president, guarded by more than 300 troops, had flown from La Paz to the eastern city of Santa Cruz, where he was due to board a flight for Miami. The reports could not be immediately confirmed.

The State Department issued a statement on Saturday commending Sanchez de Lozada "for his commitment to democracy and to the well being of his country.


"Our man in Bolivia"?


From: Help, I'm stuck in the USA | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 18 October 2003 12:56 PM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
After Chavez, I suspect any US praise of a South American leader might be the kiss of death for him or her for the people in that leader's country.
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majorvictory
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posted 19 October 2003 01:31 AM      Profile for majorvictory     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Bolivia's New Leader Takes Over a Chaotic and Angry Nation

quote:
By LARRY ROHTER

Published: October 19, 2003

A PAZ, Bolivia, Oct. 18 — One of the books that Carlos Mesa wrote when he was a historian is titled "Bolivian Presidents: Between the Voting Booth and the Gun." Mr. Mesa is about to experience that situation himself.

Mr. Mesa was sworn in as president of South America's poorest and most unstable country late Friday night, following the resignation of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who immediately left for the United States. The country has been paralyzed since mid-September by antigovernment protests that Mr. Sánchez de Lozada had tried to quell with force, leaving more than 80 dead.

"Few times has the nation confronted a moment like this," Mr. Mesa, 50, most recently a television journalist highly regarded for his ability to communicate, said after being sworn in. "Give us some space, some time to work," he pleaded.

But his practical political experience is limited. He belongs to no political party and had never held public office until Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, looking for someone to bring an image of independence and probity to a seamy environment, asked him to be his running mate.

Mr. Mesa tried to make a virtue of that deficiency in his inaugural address on Friday, vowing to lead a government that would be above partisan politics. But in his 15 months as vice president, he seemed to clash with old-style political leaders, including his patron, as often as he was able to compromise with them.



From: Toronto | Registered: Jul 2002  |  IP: Logged
majorvictory
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posted 21 October 2003 01:06 AM      Profile for majorvictory     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Poor flex muscle in Bolivia

quote:
LA PAZ, Bolivia -- For Bolivia's growing army of Indian protesters, it never was a question of whether the nation's president would resign but when.

Thousands of chanting demonstrators armed with crude slingshots streamed into the besieged capital of La Paz for weeks in a bid to regain power, which they said was seized from them long ago by a powerful minority.

The poor majority's call for change has echoed across Latin America, as unpopular democratic governments face a backlash against globalization and a decade of U.S.-backed free-market reforms that failed to bring promised economic progress.

Bolivia's turmoil ended Friday with the resignation of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and the installation of a new caretaker president, Carlos Mesa, who immediately called for elections.

Bolivian officials confirmed Saturday that Sanchez de Lozada left the country for the United States.

The outcome was reminiscent of the unseating of several governments across the region, from Argentina to Ecuador to Peru, in recent years.

"For most of the peasantry in Bolivia, they feel there is a strong cause behind their unrest," said Frank Boyd, a Bolivia scholar and political scientist at Illinois Wesleyan University. "The neoliberal economic reforms of the 1990s were successful to some extent, but they did not deliver much to the poorest Bolivians."

Bolivia, which gained its independence from Spain in 1825 and is South America's poorest nation, was one of the most ardent followers of the U.S.-backed reforms.



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Briguy
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posted 21 October 2003 02:51 PM      Profile for Briguy     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Peter Goodspeed at the Pest misunderstands democracy...

quote:
After decades of being left out of the country's power structure, Bolivia's native peoples took the lead in weeks of violent protest that left dozens dead and the country paralyzed before former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada finally resigned on Friday and fled to Miami.

...

For most farmers, who overwhelmingly are natives, the future holds hope for nothing more than a hardscrabble existence. Twenty per cent of indigenous children die before their first birthday and 14% more die before they reach school age.

Nearly two decades of economic liberalization, in which successive governments, under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund, have privatized public companies and mines and moved to modernize the oil and gas industries, has failed to improve the lives of ordinary people.

...

By removing Bolivia's president through street protests, democracy may already be damaged right across Latin America.

Huge swaths of Central and South America are vulnerable to just the same combination of opportunistic populism, economic despair and racism. Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Mexico and most of Central America all have racial and class tensions similar to those of Bolivia.


His conclusion? Poor and indigenous people should've waited until 2007, and let their voices be heard at the polls. The problem with that conclusion is that their voices were largely ignored after the last election. Indigenous, farm, and labour leaders are aware of what keeps Bolivia poor - the destructive policies of the IMF. They are voting with their feet, rejecting the President's inability to improve conditions in the country. This is democracy in it's purest form - the rejection and ouster of another in a long line of corporatist, lame duck presidents.

quote:
Bolivia's revolution could be the spark that ultimately ignites something far more significant than a simple reform movement.

We can only hope. South American countries need desperately to break free from the yoke of the IMF. Perhaps these protests will allow Bolivia to succeed in doing so?


From: No one is arguing that we should run the space program based on Physics 101. | Registered: Nov 2001  |  IP: Logged
pogge
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posted 23 October 2003 01:06 AM      Profile for pogge   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Bolivian Leader's Ouster Seen as Warning on U.S. Drug Policy

quote:
On a visit to the White House last year, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada told President Bush that he would push ahead with a plan to eradicate coca but that he needed more money to ease the impact on farmers.

Otherwise, the Bolivian president's advisers recalled him as saying, "I may be back here in a year, this time seeking political asylum."

Mr. Bush was amused, Bolivian officials recounted, told his visitor that all heads of state had tough problems and wished him good luck.

Now Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, Washington's most stalwart ally in South America, is living in exile in the United States after being toppled last week by a popular uprising, a potentially crippling blow to Washington's anti-drug policy in the Andean region.



From: Why is this a required field? | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 23 October 2003 02:33 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
How prophetic. I hope this is a signal to the US that it needs to get serious about abandoning unproductive Drug Warrior attitudes that simply exacerbate problems in the Latin American countries - such as failing to even think about the logical result of forcing farmers to stop growing marijuana or coca, which is that they needed the money and would have no source of it otherwise.

I wonder if those State Department officials are eating crow right now.


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
April Follies
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posted 23 October 2003 12:50 PM      Profile for April Follies   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Let's not forget that one of the triggers was yet another plan to sell off Bolivia's natural resources (in this case, natural gas) to Western interests.

A Chilean man once told me, "When I was a boy, the ships would always be going out with boatloads of [metal] from the mines. Always things went out, and nothing came back." (I forget what metal he said it was - maybe tin? - but anyhow, you get the gist.)


From: Help, I'm stuck in the USA | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 20 August 2004 02:02 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Probably copper. Can someone give us an update on Bolivia, by the way?
From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Holy Holy Holy
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posted 23 August 2004 02:49 PM      Profile for Holy Holy Holy     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This Toronto Star piece isn't half bad.

A little more sympathetic to Mesa then I would have been but I think the central question is interesting: can the centre hold?

The polarization in Latin America seems to be reaching a boiling point. Whereas a leader like Ricardo Lagos in Chile was considered well to "the Left" just a few years ago he now seems relatively neo-Liberal. Mesa would have been a "radical" in 1997 - now he's a centrist. And there's doubts that he can hold on.

Interesting times.


From: Holy | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged

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