From Beirut to Bolivia : Ballots and Bullets

[Judi Lynn]

May 23, 2008
From Beirut to Bolivia

Ballots and Bullets
By CONN HALLINAN

May has been a month of upheaval, from the streets of Beirut, where the Bush Administration appears to have miscalculated disastrously, to Santa Cruz Province in Eastern Bolivia, where a continent’s new political realignment is trying to checkmate a slow motion rightwing coup.
(snip)

Separatism hiding behind a veil of “autonomy” is what the Bush Administration is supporting in Bolivia, where a May 4 referendum to take local control of gas, water, and land in the eastern province of Santa Cruz passed by 82 percent.

Well not quite. While 82 percent of those who voted went for autonomy, 40 percent of the electorate rejected the proposal by heeding the central government’s call for a boycott, or just voting “no.”

Bolivia, the poorest nation in Latin America, is divided between the resource-poor highlands where most of the population is indigenous, and the east, where wealthy elites and landowners dominate the economy. Some of the landowners are Croatians who came after World War II, where many of them were associated with a pro-Nazi regime allied to Hitler’s Germany. .
(snip)

“Nobody is going to recognize this illegal referendum,” said Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador. “It’s a strategy to destabilize progressive governments in the region.”

Brazil’s Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Amorim said that South America would never accept “separatism in Bolivia.” The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas said that it rejected “the destabilization plans that aim to attack the peace and unity of Bolivia,” and that none of its member nations would recognize any “juridical figure that aims to break away from the Bolivian national state and violate the territorial integrity of Bolivia.”

The group includes Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, Dominica, Antigua, and St. Vincent. Ecuador is in the process of joining.

Argentina has also condemned the vote.

One immediate impact of the vote may be to slow down or even halt land reform efforts in Santa Cruz.

Energy is a different matter. Since most Bolivia’s gas and oil currently goes to Brazil and Argentina, an as long as those countries refuse to do business with the separatist provinces, there is virtually no way that Santa Cruz and Tarija can get their oil and gas out.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan05232008.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. It's refreshing to see South American REALITY addressed--after reading Obama's

"Manifest Destiny" speech in Miami yesterday. He thinks that South America needs are leadership...again. What rot. They are leading themselves, in excellent of examples of democracy and self-determination, without any help from us, and against unbelievably evil Bushite "divide and conquer," death and mayhem plots. They don't need "divide and conquer" with a prettier face, and corporate "win/win" spin on its lips. They don't need it, and they won't have it. The UNREALITY of Obama's speech is what struck me. Either he is very misinformed, or he is just another global corporate predator tool--or, possibly, something in between, given his audience (Miami fascists). I admit he was walking into a minefield. That took courage. But there was so much bullshit in this speech, and so little reality--and so many black holes, also--that it just appalled me. For instance, you'd think he would be a lot more concerned about the Bushite alliance with fucking WHITE SEPARATISTS--racists, Nazis!--in Bolivia, than with dissing the DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED leaders of Venezuela and Ecuador, using Bushite "talking points" and goddamned lies. He wants democracy in South America? Then why not blast the people who are trying to destroy it?

But more than distortions like this, his speech simply doesn't contain any understanding of how the great majority of South Americans now view U.S. "Manifest Destiny." In short, we don't have a "destiny" in South America any more. THEY have taken control of their OWN destiny. What is "manifest" is that, if we want to trade with South America's "Common Market," and be a vital and thriving part of this hemisphere's FUTURE, we need to start reforming the United States, seriously reforming it--reasserting our own sovereignty over the global corporate predators who are fucking things up for us and everybody else, demanding social justice HERE, and a return to our roots in the "New Deal"--non-monopolistic FAIR trade--and STOPPING the use of our military as the hijacked enforcer for corporate resource wars.

The South Americans won't have us, otherwise. They have standards. They have rules. They have ETHICS. They are democratic; we have beome a mere shell of democracy. And they won't be bullied any more.

Hear this statement....

“Nobody is going to recognize this illegal referendum,” said Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador. “It’s a strategy to destabilize progressive governments in the region.”

THEY know what's going on. Does Obama?