Is Washington Undermining Democracy in Bolivia?

[Judi Lynn]

Is Washington Undermining Democracy in Bolivia?

By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet. Posted February 16, 2008.

Bolivian officials say Washington is trying to destabilize and even topple their democratic government.

This week's news that the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia has repeatedly asked Peace Corps volunteers and then a Fulbright Scholar to spy on people there is much more serious that it has so far been treated. In fact, together with other activities funded there by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Endowment for Democracy, there are grounds for a Congressional inquiry.

These actions reinforce Bolivian officials' claims that Washington seeks to destabilize and even topple their democratic government. This has potentially severe consequences in a region where in recent years approval of the United States, and especially its foreign policy, have reached the lowest levels in the non-Muslim world.

These interventions are also morally reprehensible, and put the United States on the wrong side of a struggle for civil rights, justice, and equality that has much in common with our own civil rights movement of the 1960's. It is perhaps not surprising that the Bush Administration, whose party was on the wrong side of that struggle, too, would be intervening against the government of Evo Morales.


Morales, an Aymara Indian, broke more than 500 years of tradition by being elected Bolivia's first indigenous president at the end of 2005. While vowing to end centuries of discrimination against Bolivia's indigenous majority, who are much poorer than their compatriots of European ancestry, most of the government's measures have benefited the vast majority of Bolivians - of all ethnic groups. For example, the government's re-nationalization of its hydrocarbons industry - mostly natural gas - has brought more than a billion dollars of additional revenue to the government. (This would be equivalent to more than $1.4 trillion dollars in the United States). The government has begun to use this revenue to build hospitals and schools, promote land titling and land reform, and to increase social security payments for the elderly - a major anti-poverty initiative.


All of this has run into opposition from Bolivia's traditional elite, and especially opposition governors who want to keep the gas revenues in the provinces where the gas is located, rather than sharing more of it nationally. It is ironic that the United States ostensibly supports the national sharing of such revenues in Iraq, but not in Bolivia.

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/77256/