...the very day he was inaugurated, hours before he was inaugurated. It was THAT important to him and his RW billionaire, transglobal corporate and war profiteer allies, including, of course, our own corporate rulers. What was so important about this to them?
The agreement was negotiated by Pinera's predecessor, socialist Michele Batchelet, providing Bolivia with a tiny slip of land on the coast for a Bolivian harbor on the Pacific, thus settling a dispute that had gone on for more than a hundred years. The context for this agreement is very important to understanding why Pinera was so anxious to cancel it.
In September 2008, the Bush Junta ambassador to Bolivia funded/organized a murderous insurrection by white separatists against the government of Evo Morales, the first Indigenous president of Bolivia (a largely Indigenous country). Bolivia's majority has suffered apartheid-like conditions throughout Bolivia's history. The election of Morales, by a big majority, and the passage, by popular vote, of a new constitution, also by a big majority, represented a revolution for democracy in Bolivia, akin to the leftist democracy revolutions in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay and other countries. This political revolution in Bolivia was inspired by massive protests against Bechtel, a U.S. transglobal corporation that had privatized the water system in the city of Cochabama, Bolivia, and was charging hugely jacked up prices for water--as much as a third of the incomes of very poor people and including trying to charge the poor for collecting rainwater!
So, a) the political revolution in Bolivia had very much to do with the U.S. and its corporations' predatory practices, and b) the Bush Junta method of choice for destroying Bolivia's democracy was to split Bolivia in two, with the white separatist minority (the landed elite) in control of the eastern provinces where Bolivia's main resource, gas, is located.
Michele Batchelet, Chile's president at the time, was the key player in preventing the split-up of Bolivia. She was head of Unasur, a new, EU-like structure that included all South American countries and specifically excluded the U.S. and Canada, and that had been formalized only three months before the white separatist insurrection in Bolivia. When Morales--who had been elected president with over 60% of a national vote--threw the U.S. ambassador and the DEA out of Bolivia for their collusion with the white separatists (who were rioting, sacking/burning government buildings, sabotaging a gas pipeline and beating up and murdering Indigenous people), Batchelet called an emergency meeting of this new South American organization, Unasur, and brought the political/economic weight of its member states to bear on the Bolivian situation.
This was Unasur's first important action. Bolivia's biggest gas customers--Brazil and Argentina--were especially important in what followed. Basically, they told the white separatists that they would not do business with a white separatist split-off state. Also, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela provided Bolivia with various kinds of aid, to help the Morales government. This included providing Bolivia with access to the sea, and providing Bolivia with a spur of the great highway that was being constructed across South America, to connect trade between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The idea, it seems, was a Bolivian gas pipeline, on the Pacific coast, and tying Bolivia into the increased "south-south" trade that the new highway will foster. In addition, Venezuela provided Bolivia with aid in their negotiations with the big gas companies, which resulted in the Morales government doubling Bolivia's gas revenues (the profits, of course, going to social programs--education, pensions for the poor, etc.)
The Bolivian situation--with the U.S. deeply involved on the wrong side as usual--was a key test for Unasur. And Unasur's swift action represented fundamentals of the new political philosophy of the region: cooperation, a united front, having each other's backs against outside interference, "we're all in this together," and "raising all boats" (the have's helping the have not's).
The U.S. (Bush Junta) failed in their coup attempt in Bolivia. Unasur is why.
Unasur represents South America's "Declaration of Independence." And who did they declare their independence from? The U.S., of course--and its transglobal corporate rulers.
THIS is why Sebastian Pinera cancelled the Chile/Bolivia agreement on Bolivia's access to the sea, on his first day in office. He serves the same transglobal corporate elite that is ravaging our own country, that is ravaging Europe, and that is desperately trying to restore its ability to ravage South America and to hold on to its client states in Central America. Its headquarters is in Washington DC. The U.S. government is its political front, no matter which party is allegedly in control here.
It's interesting to ask how/why Batchelet, who had an 80% approval rating (!) when she left office, could not get her chosen successor elected (as Lula da Silva did in Brazil)--i.e., how it is that RW billionaire Pinera won that election. He's not likely to be in office for a second term. Last I read, Pinera's approval rating had sunk to 25%. He has attacked and is trying to de-fund the educational system and is a corporate privatizer. There are huge student protests in Chile and the students have inspired big electoral victories in recent by-elections. Some analysts say that Batchelet's socialist party had played too much footsy with corporate interests (like our Democratic Party) and some of its traditional voters stayed home in the last presidential election, to protest worsening conditions for Chile's poor. I frankly don't know what most Chileans think of Batchelet's regional activism/foreign policy. I would guess that they approve of it. Something accounts for that 80% approval rating for Batchelet, and if it wasn't domestic economic issues, what else could it have been?
In any case, to hamper Unasur, to "divide and conquer" this remarkable, historic independence movement, by trying to undo its first and most important action--saving Bolivia's democracy--was Pinera's FIRST PRIORITY in office. To cause completely unnecessary trouble for Bolivia was Pinera's FIRST PRIORITY in office.
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