Bolivia Turns to Other Suitors

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivia Turns to Other Suitors

By JUAN FORERO
Published: May 14, 2006

EL PALOMAR, Bolivia, May 7 — For decades, the United States has given hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Bolivia, spending on everything from roads to rural health care. But these days, to Washington's dismay, it is Cuba and Venezuela that Bolivians in places like this small farming community are embracing because of new assistance programs from those countries.

Aid from Havana and Caracas has been flowing into Bolivia since a Socialist union leader, Evo Morales, became president in January, and it signals a deepening partnership with the Bush administration's most prominent regional antagonists.

It also highlights Washington's seeming inability, despite its formidable spending, to win over Bolivians. Many Bolivians have come to associate American aid almost exclusively with a generation-old anti-drug policy to wipe out coca, the raw material for cocaine, which has led to years of political unrest here.

"The United States just subordinates Latin America and Bolivia, and it bothers me, it really bothers me," said Enrique de la Cruz, 25, a medical student who was waiting for a bus in El Palomar, where many people live in simple adobe homes. "The alliances with Venezuela and Cuba are super."
(snip/...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/world/americas/14bolivia.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Judi Lynn]

1. Bachelet defends Morales and Chavez, indirectly mocks Bush

Mercosur
Friday, 12 May

Bachelet defends Morales and Chavez, indirectly mocks Bush

President Michelle Bachelet defended fellow Latin American leaders Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez Wednesday and asked world leaders not to “demonize” Latin America.

Bachelet is in Europe to attend the European Union and Latin America and Caribbean summit in Vienna on May 11 to13.
“I would not want us to return to the Cold War era where we ‘demonize’ one country or another. What we have witnessed in these countries (Bolivia and Venezuela) is that they are looking for governments and leaders that will work to eradicate poverty and eliminate inequality,” said Bachelet.

Bachelet was speaking in defense of the left-wing “power axis” between Bolivian President Morales, Venezuela’s Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, an alliance which alarms many conservative nations like the United States. Her allusion to a “power axis” is read as an indirect slam on U.S. President Bush, who has invoked similar phraseology in vilifying nations like North Korea and Iran.

Bachelet’s support provoked Chavez to eulogize his Chilean counterpart. “Michelle Bachelet is an extraordinary human being, an extraordinary friend. Woman, socialist, ‘allendista.’ We all support her. I am a ‘michellista,’” he said during his visit to Rome on Wednesday.

Bachelet has promised an open dialogue with her Latin American counterparts during the fourth summit of the European Union and Latin America and Caribbean on Thursday and Friday.
(snip/...)

http://www.mercopress.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=7861

[cliss]

2. That "aid" is tainted money.

I used to think the US was so unbelivably magnanimous.....giving to countries....all over the world. Just wanting to help.

Maybe not. After about 5 years of looking into the situation, and hearing radio interviews from people like John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man) the fog began to clear.

That was tainted money. We held out goodies, but the money was on a fishing line. They took the bait, and we reeled them in.

Today, the situation is changing.

The world is re-arranging itself, according to energy reserves. The country which has oil, natural gas = the new leaders.

[Robbien]

3. I still worry about this because Morales' party does not have

enough seats in congress to control what happens to oil/gas proceeds. The election next month will hopefully shed some light on where the politics of Bolivia is headed.

[Peace Patriot]

4. I am so glad to see Latin America's leftist leaders sticking up for each

other. I had hoped this would happen, and it is happening. Michele Batchelet was tortured by the US-backed dictator Pinochet, and is now the first woman president of Chile--a country where the US colluded in torture and death squads, including the infamous death of socialist president Salvador Allende.

One of the most amazing things about this huge, peaceful, democratic, leftist revolution that is sweeping South America (and also parts of Central America) is the new relationship with Cuba, a strong pointer to the South Americans' independent and self-determined foreign policy. South Americans have their OWN assessment of Cuba and Castro, and it is pragmatic and mutually beneficial. Why should they let the US nutsiness about "communism," and the Bush fascists in collusion with the Cuban fascists in Florida, dictate Latin American policy on Cuba, a peaceful country with a whole raft of beneficial policies for the poor and a thriving Latin culture?

SANITY has come to South America! And sanity--as is so often the case--comes from the people. It is a democratic value. It is something that Thomas Jefferson--and Simon Bolivar!--believed in ferociously. Let the people rule--and sanity will prevail!

How do you "let the people rule"? TRANSPARENT, VERIFIABLE elections! That's how this revolution is happening in South America. That's how it can and will happen here, when enough people here wake up to the fact that the we DON'T HAVE transparent elections, and that the non-transparent elections run by Bushite corporations under a veil of secrecy, here, has been a quite deliberate plan to destroy our sovereignty as a people.

-----

It's interesting that both of these articles--neither of which has the typical US war profiteering corporate news monopoly sneering tone that is used to defame Hugo Chavez--are in the New York Times, which has otherwise been a shit-rag on Latin American, as well as Bush and Mideast war, topics. More than a shit-rag on the latter--colluders in Bush crimes and in treason. Are they trying to regain some credibility?

I haven't read the full articles yet, and I'm wondering if the sneer comes further down in the texts. But I refuse to "register" with the NYT to find out (if that is required).

I must say these articles bring joy to my heart--even if they appear in the newspaper that brought us the Iraq war. One oversight in the OP cited text--the Forero article mentions the Bolivians' resentment of the murderous US "war on drugs"--and that is true enough--but what was equally important in Evo Morales' election was the predatory behavior of Bechtel Corporation, which privatized the water in one Bolivian city, then jacked up the prices to the poor, even attempting to charge poor peasants for collecting rainwater! A huge revolt against Bechtel occurred and Bolivia through Bechtel out of the country. Morales' victory in the presidential election was a direct expression of that revolutionary spirit.

Giant corporations come in and offer infrastructure and modernisation--then the poor pay the price, and pay and pay and pay. Sound familiar? The Bolivians are fighting back. All of Latin America is fighting back. So can we! Step one (Democracy 101): TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS!

----------

"The time of the people has come." --Evo Morales

[mom cat]

6. Very well said! Bravo!

[Peace Patriot]

5. Great article in the London Guardian today about Chavez...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x210188

"Venezuela's president is using oil revenues to liberate the poor - no wonder his enemies want to overthrow him"

John Pilger
Saturday May 13, 2006
The Guardian

[Peace Patriot]

7. I got a gratis copy of the NYT today, and read the whole article on

Bolivia. The sneer comes later in the article, just after the sections cited in the OP. It's not quite as bad as some corporate news monopoly crap I've seen on Chavez, but it's quite an interesting sneer nonetheless. The gist of it is this (and it's a howler): According to this NYT article, the US has been quietly funding "aide" for "the poor" in Bolivia all along--a hundred million a year--and those ingrates are now PREFERRING Venezuela's and Cuba's aid to our "aide." Further, these stupido peasants persist in the notion that US "aide" is used for killing peasants and eradicating crops of their sacred plant (coca leaves essential for survival in the icy reaches of the Andes), and they dare to continue associating US "aide" with death and destruction.

A hundred million US$ a year, for years now--and still Bolivia has one of the poorest population's on earth. Gee, I wonder where that money's gone to? It sure hasn't gone to things like medical clinics, literacy projects and small business--the things that are NOW springing up everywhere, even in the remotest areas of Bolivia, with the new Venezuelan and Cuban aide. The latter aid is REAL. The US "aide" did NOTHING for the Bolivian people. But this irony escapes the NYT writer (or was it his editors?). Generous US "aide"= continuing stark poverty of most people. And, Venezuelan and Cuban aid = visible, immediate, dramatic improvement. Because why? Because, 1) the rich elite cannot pocket it, and, 2) it's not being sold as "aide" and then bled off into the "war on drugs" (gone for guns, ammo, military uniforms, napalm, and killing leftists).

This NYT article is therefore a sort of "cleansed" attack on South American leftists, painting South Americans as ingrates--the nerve of these peasants!-- and leaving out the dirty details as to WHY virtually the entire continent of South America would be in revolt against US "aide"--that is, the "war on drugs" (death squads and other political interference, and padding the pockets of the rich elite and the corrupt police/military) in combo with global corporate predators like Bechtel moving in, privatizing resources and creating slave labor conditions and easy US-ag dumping markets. The article runs past all of this, with its narrative of puzzling ingratitude. The narrative permits a few of the ingrates to speak, but paints a picture that causes me to fall back on that old cliche: "What's wrong with this picture?"