Trying to reverse the tide

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America with two-thirds of its population living under the poverty line. It is a landlocked country which straddles the Andean peaks and the Amazonian jungle. Bolivia also happens to be immensely wealthy in natural resources and holds the second largest oil and gas reserves in Latin America which are controlled by six multinational companies. In 1990 when the IMF and other donor governments persuaded the Bolivian government to privatize its gas and oil sector and lower taxes, it was promised an increased income as a result of additional foreign investment. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way – governement revenue actually decreased while private profits increased. Bolivarians are now looking to reverse a tide that has seen a small elite control the political and economic power for centuries.

Bolivia was hailed a model pupil by the IMF in the 1990s for its government’s wholehearted embrace of neo-liberal reforms. But they reckoned without the backlash of the impoverished and largely indigenous majority who have since 2003 increasingly taken to the streets causing governments to fall and multinationals to flee.

“While the poor don’t have food, the rich won’t have peace,” reads the graffiti scrawled onto the wall adjoining the dual carriageway that sweeps breathlessly from one of the world’s highest airports into Bolivia’s Andean city of La Paz.

In front of the graffiti lie six smashed-up toll booths, destroyed by protestors who have marched almost daily in May 2005 from the impoverished city of El Alto towards the seat of Government in the centre of La Paz.

Suddenly the traditional centre of power has been full of those excluded from power for centuries – indigenous women with swirling skirts and bowler hats, Aymara men in deep-red ponchos with mouths bulging with coca leaves, rural farmers with weathered faces shaded by faded baseball caps, miners with sticks of dynamite ready to storm the Congress building.

The resounding call by the largely indigenous protestors is for nationalization of Bolivia’s gas reserves…

Posted by Grym
Ex-Imperial Soldier