Indigenous movement in Bolivia challenges European-based leadership

[struggle4progress]

BY OSCAR AVILA

Chicago Tribune

<snip> Across Latin America, many of the region's 40 million indigenous citizens are raising similar voices of discontent, angry that greater political freedom and free-market economic policies fostered by the spread of democracy have not lifted them out of poverty. And in Bolivia, they have brought President Carlos Mesa's government to the brink of collapse.

Faced with road blockades by indigenous activists to protest foreign investment in the energy sector, Mesa offered to resign earlier this month. Such a move would have made him the second Bolivian president to leave office in 18 months because of indigenous protests. <snip>

In recent years, native peoples have also toppled a president in Ecuador and mobilized in Chile, Mexico and Guatemala. In January, indigenous militants in Peru took over a police station in a failed attempt to force the resignation of President Alejandro Toledo. <snip>

The native people of Latin America have been disenfranchised since the arrival of Spanish conquistadors. Millions of the indigenous people died because of forced overwork, disease and massacres. The Spanish also drained much of the continent's natural resources, including the bountiful silver mines of Potosi, a frigid Bolivian city more than 2 miles high in the Andes. <snip>

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/world/11218703.htm