Bolivia seeks charges against Montana rancher, son

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Bolivia seeks charges against Montana rancher, son
Posted on April 19
By DAN KEANE of the Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Bolivia’s government is seeking to charge a rancher from Montana and his son n a former Mr. Bolivia pageant winner n for their alleged role in violent protests against President Evo Morales’ land redistribution plan.

Ronald Larsen, of Plentywood, who has extensive land holdings in Bolivia, and his son Duston are named in a criminal complaint for “sedition, robbery, and other crimes.” The complaint was announced on Friday by Deputy Minister of Land Alejandro Almaraz.

Ronald Larsen is accused of firing on Almaraz’s vehicle and holding the minister hostage as he tried to carry out a government inspection of Larsen’s Bolivian ranch on February 29. The Larsens are also accused of leading a protest last week in the nearby town of Cuevo that left some 40 people injured.

Prosecutors will now decide whether to file charges against the pair. Neither could be immediately be reached for comment, and it was unclear if they had hired a lawyer.


Read more: http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/04/19/bnews/br72.txt

---

Here's a photo of Larsen's son, making him proud at his university.


(click for photo)

Duston Larsen
A.K.A. "Big D the Bolivian nightmare"


Major: Business Management

Bio: The 180 Pound Smoker Champion...

Position: Co-Historian, Sorority Liaison

http://www.geocities.com/msuksig2001/members.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. Bolivia: At the Bolivian Chaco 500 Guarani families are suffering suppression by landlords

Bolivia: At the Bolivian Chaco 500 Guarani families are suffering suppression by landlords

ABI
Abril 11, 2008, 10:10 EDT
Camiri, Santa Cruz - Bolivia --

From Iviyeca to Alto Parapet and in the other side of the Hill Sararenda, there are 500 guarani families suffering suppression from landlords, this report was made by Assembly of Guarani People (APG Spanish initials).

The Guarani people reported that they will continue fighting to recover their land and rescue families in captivity, giving a pronouncement under the slogan "Basta de peones y patrones en el Chaco Boliviano" (Enough of being servant, enough of landlords in the Bolivian Chaco).

According to APG, until now, 80 families have moved away from the area, leaving their communities to escape from landlord abuses.

At El Alto Parapeti, 13 landlords have 167 guarani families under slavery conditions, from those families 12 families are in captivity at Ronald Larsen’s lands, a United States citizen.

More:
http://www.redbolivia.com/noticias/News%20in%20English/Bolivia/62999.html

[Judi Lynn]

2. Government will show the Cardinal the existence of servants on the Chaco region

ABI-B A2336 21:54:32 14-04-2008
1-P
ABI: GOVERNMENT - CARDINAL

Government will show the Cardinal the existence of servants on the Chaco region

La Paz, April 14 (ABI).- The Executive Power announced this Monday that will show the Cardinal Julio Terrazas, evidence of servant conditions in that 500 families would be subdued on Bolivian Chaco region.

The Vice-minister of Governmental Coordination, Hector Arce, at press conference, stated that the Government will show all the documentation to the ecclesiastic authorities about the fact of exploitation and servant conditions in some areas of Santa Cruz and Tarija Departments.

"We will report about facts, that not only the Government has knowledge, but also international organisms of human rights," said Arce.

The Cardinal Julio Terrazas expressed in his Sunday homily that he does not believe in slavery existence on Chaco region, asking the Government to show the corresponding proofs.

"It is said there are places full of slaves, they have to show us where we can find them, it is not possible that we continue condemning us only with offensive words", stated Terrazas.

However, reports made by Assembly of Guaraní People (APG Spanish initials) show that From Iviyeca to Alto Parapety and in the other side of the Hill Sararenda, there are 500 families suffering subjugation to landowners.

On Alto Parapeti, 13 landowners have 167 Guarani families in slavery conditions, from them 12 families are in captivity at Ronald Larsen’s lands, the American citizen.

More:
http://abi.bo/index.php?i=noticias_texto&j=200804142154323x

[Judi Lynn]

3. Translation of info. from a news program. This is the google translation:

Ronald Larsen and other patterns of the province throwing stones and shooting at Cordillera indigenous and State officials; is the second attack in a month.

They attacked with stones, firecrackers and bullets officials to the Ministry of Lands and INRA in Caraparicito vicinity of the farm, located in the Town of Lagunillas, approximately 80 kilometers from Camiri. The intellectual and material authors of the attack are farmers and ranchers, including an American citizen linked to the political and business elites of the capital cruceña.

While sanitation in the area will benefit 10 thousand small owners and consolidate a TCO for Guarani indigenous communities, many of them exploited labour, landowners and ranchers formed "defense committees" with armed people to prevent the entry of government officials and paralyse the work of sanitation.

This is not the first time that landowners Cordillera in the province of Santa Cruz to prevent violence reorganizing its finances. On 29 February abducted and threatened with death to the highest authorities and national agricultural shot at the tires of his car.

Spanish version:

Ronald Larsen y otros patrones de la provincia Cordillera apedrean y disparan a indígenas y funcionarios del Estado; es la segunda agresión en un mes.

Atacaron con piedras, petardos y balas a funcionarios del Viceministerio de Tierras y del INRA en inmediaciones de la hacienda Caraparicito, ubicada en la Localidad de Lagunillas, aproximadamente a 80 kilómetros de Camiri. Los autores intelectuales y materiales de la agresión son ganaderos y hacendados, entre ellos un ciudadano norteamericano vinculado a las elites políticas y empresariales de la capital cruceña.

Aunque el saneamiento en la zona beneficiará a 10 mil pequeños propietarios y consolidará una TCO a favor de comunidades indígenas guaraníes, muchas de ellas explotadas laboralmente, los hacendados y ganaderos conformaron “comités de defensa” con gente armada para impedir el ingreso de funcionarios de gobierno y paralizar los trabajos de saneamiento.

No es la primera vez que los terratenientes de la provincia Cordillera de Santa Cruz impiden con violencia el saneamiento de sus haciendas. El 29 de febrero secuestraron y amenazaron de muerte a las máximas autoridades agrarias nacionales y dispararon a las llantas de su vehículo.

Video:
http://www.boliviaenvideos.com/2008/04/hacendado-norteamericano-arma-grupos-de.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. via seeks charges against Montana rancher, son

Source: Associated Press

Bolivia seeks charges against Montana rancher, son
Posted on April 19
By DAN KEANE of the Associated Press


LA PAZ, Bolivia - Bolivia’s government is seeking to charge a rancher from Montana and his son n a former Mr. Bolivia pageant winner n for their alleged role in violent protests against President Evo Morales’ land redistribution plan.

Ronald Larsen, of Plentywood, who has extensive land holdings in Bolivia, and his son Duston are named in a criminal complaint for “sedition, robbery, and other crimes.” The complaint was announced on Friday by Deputy Minister of Land Alejandro Almaraz.

Ronald Larsen is accused of firing on Almaraz’s vehicle and holding the minister hostage as he tried to carry out a government inspection of Larsen’s Bolivian ranch on February 29. The Larsens are also accused of leading a protest last week in the nearby town of Cuevo that left some 40 people injured.

Prosecutors will now decide whether to file charges against the pair. Neither could be immediately be reached for comment, and it was unclear if they had hired a lawyer.

Read more: http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/04/19/bnews/br72.txt

[Judi Lynn]

5. BASN statetement about Violence against Indigenous Guarani people and Autonomic Referendum

BASN statetement about Violence against Indigenous Guarani people and Autonomic Referendum
Fri, 04/18/2008 - 00:47 — tupaj
BASN statement
On April 13, an unarmed and peaceful delegation of indigenous Guarani delegates was attacked by an armed gang in the service of large landholders in the Bolivian province of Santa Cruz. More than 40 of the Guarani were injured, some seriously, and 11 are missing.

The Guarani delegation was accompanying officials from Bolivia’s National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), who were trying to regularize ownership of illegally occupied territories, where Guarani people are being held in conditions of enslavement, as witnessed and reported by UN Rapporteur, the Catholic Church, and other institutions.

The Morales administration is trying to change the unjust and illegal tenure of land for the benefit of Bolivia’s majorities – the Indigenous Peoples who make up 81% of the population, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
We emphatically condemn the desperate and brutal attacks of the Bolivian oligarchy and its armed shock groups against Indigenous Peoples and State officials trying to restore the rule of law.

We also condemn the attempt of breaking up the unity of the country through an illegal “referendum on autonomy,” to be held May 4, 2008. This vote has been denounced by several multilateral organizations, the European Union, individual governments and regional governmental organizations, like the Andean Pact. Such a rigged poll, held under conditions of severe and unrestrained right-wing violence, endangers stability and peace throughout Latin America.

http://grupoapoyo.org/basn/node/83

[Judi Lynn]

6. Another article, after going through google translation tool:

Ronald Larsen and other patterns of the province throwing stones and shooting at Cordillera indigenous and State officials

It was the second attack in a month
Hacendado American gun assault groups to defend estates in the Chaco cruceño
They attacked with stones, firecrackers and bullets officials to the Ministry of Lands and INRA in Caraparicito vicinity of the farm, located in the Town of Lagunillas, approximately 80 kilometers from Camiri. The intellectual and material authors of the attack are farmers and ranchers, including an American citizen linked to the political and business elites of the capital cruceña.
While sanitation in the area will benefit 10 thousand small owners and consolidate a TCO for Guarani indigenous communities, many of them exploited labour, landowners and ranchers formed "defense committees" with armed people to prevent the entry of government officials and paralyse the work of sanitation.
This is not the first time that landowners Cordillera in the province of Santa Cruz to prevent violence reorganizing its finances. On 29 February abducted and threatened with death to the highest authorities and national agricultural shot at the tires of his car.
At 10 am this Friday, 4 April, the government commission composed of 40 officials and the Ministry of INRA, sheltered by a police contingent of 40 troops, resumed the work of sanitation in the town Parapetí High, and again found violent resistance from landowners.
The caravan was arrested in the town of Ipati by a group of people on board more than a dozen vehicles drivers threatened to burn vehicles carrying government officials. However, the number broke the blockade and continued its journey under siege permanent threatening the farmers who sought aboard six vehicles.
At 15:30, government representatives came to the farm "Caraparicito." The road was completely blocked by a trailer without wheels of eight metres long, several logs and stones. Behind these barriers landowners erected a barricade and more ago placed a tank in the middle of the road.
He began a vigorous discussion followed by insults and shoves. Ranchers denying the government of Evo Morales. "This is going to take a few more days because they are no longer you," said one of the owners, an allusion to the autonomous status that entrepreneurship cruceño aims to adopt May 4.
Ranchers shouted that there were no captives in their estates, although the Guarani accompanying the commission denying them official. Journalists covering these incidents prevented asked why sanitation if there is no indigenous captives in their land, but the landlords did not respond. After a struggle was withdrawing the first trailer and the committee moved ahead with the police.
At that time he left his finances American Ronald Larsen, shouting and threatening directly to the Deputy Minister of Lands Alejandro Almaraz. The kidnapping of 29 February, the same character intimidated to Almaraz with firearms. The group clash of landowners began to throw firecrackers, rockets and stones at skilful and sinister, in the face injuring a policeman and a Guarani, and also a councillor of Lagunillas. The police had to use tear gas to halt the aggression. Then they negotiated a truce, without which neither party has abandoned their positions.
Both sides remain in their positions: the official contingent composed of 40 officials, 36 policemen and about 50 indigenous Guarani, as opposed to "defence committee" composed of 50 livestock people, some armed and equipped with radioreceptores.
Who's Larsen?
An American starred in two attacks on an official in less than 40 days. This foreigner who hired thugs levantisco to prevent the Guarani obtain a TCO in High Parapetí called Ronald Larsen.
Larsen connected with the Peace Corps, arrived in the Bolivian Chaco in 1968 and the next year bought the hacienda Caraparicito. Over the years, their finances became a tourist complex with natural attractions, gym, game room, dining room, meeting room, library, sauna and whirlpool.
The Chaco livestock farms are part of a tourism project promoted by the Prefecture of Santa Cruz. The investment of private property, with support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), reaches a million dollars, according to a report of the New Day (June 5, 2007).
Larsen is well connected with the political hierarchy of the department. The Prefecture cruceña elected Caraparicito as an example of environmental management. Within the estate of 2,800 hectares there is a "Private Nature Reserve Heritage" of 2,335 hectares. On June 4, 2007, Larsen received at its finance the prefect Ruben Costas, the president of the civic committee Branko Marinkovic, and the chairman of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CAINCO) then Gabriel Dabdoub.
All over land
Larsen and landowners in the province Cordillera, in alliance with the elites of Santa Cruz, formed a "defence committee" in the province Cordillera comprising medium and large landowners, they Juan Carlos Santistevan, owner of the property of an extension of Mandioty 1,885 hectares, and the family of Elvy Abbet of Malpartida, owner of the property Itacay of 9,783 hectares.
The most active clan are Larsen. According to data of INRA, the father, Ronald Larsen owns Caraparicito of 3,377 hectares and Caraparicito II, 3,399 hectares. His son Duston owns Yaguapoa campus of 2,696 hectares. All of these properties are located in the cantons Choreti, and Camiri Cuevo (Santa Cruz) and Sapirangui and Guembe (Chuquisaca).
Of a total of 98,875 hectares in High Parapetí, 51,512, 52 percent of all land was concentrated in 14 sites categorised as businesses. The 40 small properties identified at the scene joined an area of 7,755 hectares, or 7.8% of the land.

http://omarquiroga.blogspot.com/2008/04/ronald-larsen-y-otros-patrones-de-la.html

[Judi Lynn]

17. One of his confederates is Branko Marinkovic, you may remember as a white separatist,

working to coordinate this entire area and secede, taking the wealth of the country with them, as they are 100% opposed to sharing the oil and gas revenue from these areas with the indigenous Bolivians.

The Guardian 4 July, 2007

Separatist scheming imperils Bolivia

WT Whitney

Bolivian army commander Freddy Bersatti is worried about “subversive groups” and “abnormal movements”. His worries intensified after a two-day meeting in Santa Cruz of an Autonomous Council following which, on June 18, well-heeled right-wing separatist leaders issued a manifesto promising stepped-up attacks on Bolivia’s socialist government.

Ever since Evo Morales’ accession to the presidency by a 54 percent majority in January 2006, class and race-based divisions have bogged down Bolivia’s first indigenous-led government in 500 years. Opposition forces centred in the nation’s eastern “half moon” have demanded autonomy for four states, or departments, there — Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija. The Autonomous Council met simultaneously in each department.

The Santa Cruz manifesto vowed “to convert a state of emergency into a state of citizen mobilisation for organising civil and democratic resistance”. It demanded that Bolivia’s Constituent Assembly, in session for almost a year, implement a July 2006 national referendum that approved autonomy for the four eastern departments.

The Santa Cruz Civic Committee is the sparkplug of separatist agitation in the East. Leader Branko Marinkovic, a big rancher and president of the local federation of industries, emphasised to reporters the committee’s resolve to take action if the Constituent Assembly fails to approve a new constitution by a two-thirds vote or refuses to honour the referendum vote. Such resolve was the “mandate of our peoples”, he declared, expressed by “popular assemblies” held in the four departments last December 15.

The separatists announced that on July 2 proposed statutes on autonomy would be submitted to people in the four departments and that on July 7 a national gathering of “a united and democratic Bolivia” would decide specific actions. Roberto Gutiérrez of the Santa Cruz committee said marches and vigils would start soon throughout the nation.

The eastern states are unique in Bolivia for their European-descended majority and concentrations of wealth. Export-oriented Santa Cruz boasts 90 percent of the nation’s industry, 50 percent of its GDP, and 60 percent of the oil wells. In this epicentre of separatism, 25 individuals own 60 percent of the land. Amid charges of corruption, eastern moneyed interests held decisive national power prior to Morales’ election victory.

More:
http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve07/1326bolivia.html





Branko Marinkovic

[Judi Lynn]

7. More on Larsen, from article translated by google translation tool.

The terrain is similar to total three times the length of the eastern capital
The Larsen landless at 17 sites in Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz (PRESS) .- (La Prensa) 13 April-In 40 years of permanence in Bolivia, and Ronald Larsen estadounidens Nielsen (71) and his family consolidated 17 properties with an area of 57,145 hectares, located in the provinciasCordillera , Ñuflo Chavez and Jose Miguel Velasco (See info). This was revealed data from the Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), which also realize that the area represents three times the urban stain of the city of Santa Cruz, inhabited by some 1.2 million people.

In a contact with La Prensa, the landowner says that his family has many properties--2005 and now belong to their sons Duston, Aaron and Ronald having Bolivian nationality.


Moreover said that the sites that have the proceeds of esfue rzo many years of work and that did not seem fair that the state wants to take them away.

Nielsen Larsen arrived in Bolivia in 1968, accompanying a friend from American Peace Corps who had been his colleague at the University of Montana in the United States.

The rancher told La Prensa that arrived in Santa Cruz when General Rene Barrientos Ortuno running the country and urged to invest in development. "Bolivia is a paradise and I was captivated by their vegetation." His American accent combined with the Spanish brought to mind the voice of former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

In 1969, it acquired ownership Caraparicito, located in High Parapetí province Cordillera, where her son Duston (27), former mister Bolivia 2004, inhabits today to engage in agriculture and livestock farming.

Caraparicito of 3,377 hectares, belonged to the lawyer Octavio Padilla, the brother of heroin Juana Azurduy Padilla. The site had 32 farms.

Two weeks ago, Duston Larsen along with employees of the property prevented the passage of a commission of INRA, for the second time in the year, tried to initiate sanitation in the area. The Deputy Minister of Lands, Alejandro Almaraz, reported receiving threats and were thrown to plan shots and stones.

Ronald Larsen mind that bought property and that the entire field was cleaned up in time with resources from Netherlands, which does not justify a new verification process. However, the INRA ensures that there were irregularities in the procedures to be implemented by other administrations and deserves a new inspection.

Over the years, Larsen turned its finances in a tourist complex with natural attractions, a rustic house, gym, game room, dining room, meeting room, library, sauna and whirlpool. "Criamos horses, pigs, cattle, sow maize. We are the largest producers of pipoca in Bolivia. "

In the campus 12 families live. According to the farmer, all have a roof with "even with fireplace and drinking water, and anticipated that soon will light. The workers were entitled to a pulpería. The owner said that selling food at subsidized prices: a kilo of rice, flour, sugar two Bolivians and beef and pig six Bolivians. This infrastructure was shut down in recent days.

According to reports from indigenous Chaco, landowners in the area rates escalate to becoming the debts of their employees increase.

Larsen said that pay wages to employees and gives a bonus. Not gave figures.

The Government has qe signs in the area and there are people captive along with the People's Assembly Guarani (APG) makes efforts to free them. The rancher denied that situation.

According to INRA, his son Ronald Larsen Zurita was made of two other properties in the area: Caraparicito II and the Private Reserve of Natural Heritage (see graphics). The latter recognized by international experts for its wildlife.

According to the newspapers cruceños in 2007, the prefect of Santa Cruz, Ruben Costas, accompanied by the president of the Civic Committee of the department, Branko Marinkovic, and the then leader of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (Cainco), Gabriel Dabdob, stressed habitat in the region. All spent an afternoon there.

INRA reported that over the years the Ronald (Jr.) purchased other sites in the province Jose Miguel: Corrales and San Carlos. Subsequently, Duston, who according to El Deber, arrived in Bolivia in 2004 acquired Yaguapoa in the province Coordillera and Los Remates II and Loreto in Montana Jose Miguel de Velasco.

The official report gives an account of the other brother Aaron Hans Larsen Zurita holds properties in Ñuflo Chavez and Miguel de Velasco.

The father, Ronald Larsen Nielsen, ensures that all properties are today on behalf of their children. "I owned with a partner, but the properties were transferred in 2005, no large parcels because politics always interferes. I am with little ground. " According to INRA, he has six sites Ñuflo Chavez and Miguel de Velasco.

"My children are Bolivian and will not accept that (income INRA). Unfortunately, a farmer who has three properties he said it was latifundista, but a man who has 10 mobilities, and carrier is not telling anything, a family that owns a bank are bankers. Latifundista is a bad word. Where is the justice? Elsewhere to the people who work and has welcomed the success. "

The properties family

http://www.inra.gov.bo/portal/web/detalle.jsp?idNoticia=47

[Judi Lynn]

16. True Larsen puff piece. Taken also from google translation:

BOL-12 Caparicito: the new nature reserve of wildlife
Miguel Angel Vargas Saldías Escape magazine, newspaper La Razon, La Paz February 2007
CARAPARICITO
The natural reserve of wildlife

Ronald Larsen arrived in the Chaco region of Santa Cruz in 1968, where he started a family. Today, takes care of repopulating the area with piyos, buffalo breeding and home to wild animals. His son Duston continues his work.

It seems straight out of a western. Its 1.94 meters tall and 27 years of life are dressed to mount. Despite a promising career as a model after being Mister Bolivia in 2004 and to participate in the film Who killed the llamita white?, Duston Larsen prefers the life of the field. From parents Americans, as the athletic couple climbs in his truck, the speakers shed country music. A Bolivian cowboy.

Caraparicito finances is the Ronald Larsen-father-Duston came in 1968 to undertake an adventure to 280 miles from Santa Cruz. The climate of Chaco wraps green and offers a place conducive to the controlled wildlife reserve in the rocky area of Incahuasi.

The animal husbandry and the cultivation of pipoca are the main activities. To these were compounded by a latest initiative: opening up to tourism in the project Haciendas del Chaco, which links it to five other houses countryside that breathes life in the country.

At 22 kilometers from Lagunillas and 57 of Camiri, cacti caraparí, who gave the name to the area, mark the entrance. The guide is the voyage Duston, who arrives is not well received by their monkeys, and Harley Tuto. Since the admission, finances shows the splendor of yesteryear which will be recovered through new infrastructure for tourists.

The first visit is to corral where urinas, piyos, hens, rabbits and ducks to receive tourists. Toucans stopped and walk through the trees, while one of the urinas begins to mourn. 'Does hunger', says Duston marked with his American accent. Then, the man was approaching an waso and fed with a milk bottle with boiled milk and cornstarch.

In this area populated by eagles, foxes, mountain lions, tigers, ocelots and cats mountain, the reintegration of piyos in their natural habitat is one of the main commitments. These birds that run at speeds between 50 and 60 kilometres per hour, were virtually annihilated during the Chaco War, which repopulate the region is a task of Caraparicito. 'Piyos have no problems returning to the bush because they do not have a good memory. You can get used to freedom ', says Duston while feeding with a balanced fish.

He finished the cries. Very well fed, and Emma Beep-the-urinas, approaching visitors seeking caresses.

The dreaded Octavio Padilla

An orchestra of sounds animals anoticia sunrise. The rain blurs the landscape before a brief five-minute walk. From the viewpoint is finances Chaco in all its splendor. The greenery is lost on the horizon and provides a relaxing landscape. That until he begins to hear in the distance the relinchar horse and tractor engines that show increasing activity in the area.

Descending the lookout, there are two workers Caraparicito. Ramon Romero Padilla is 53 years old and lives in Moreviti, while Oscar Robles Padilla (51), born in Caraparicito, tells the stories of the area. 'This was before finances of Dr. Octavio Padilla, who had 32 farms. He was a lawyer and brother-in-law of Jeanne Azurduy Padilla. My grandfather told me he had a lot of silver, but that was because he had a pact with the devil '. Legend has it that when he died buried within its chapel, which became a whirlwind and took the body, leaving in its place a coffin filled with silver. They also have that during the holidays, the man threw coins in the air to rejoice for workers.


The tombstone of Padilla is carved in stone and is in the office Larsen. 'It was the most land and had maintained it was a good man that visited only once a year,' reflects Ronald.

The legends also spoke of witchcraft and when Larsen arrived rumored that practiced it, because all of this brought a seed of grass that allows this green adorne the landscape to this day.

Ronald Larsen arrived in 1968 accompanied by a friend of his, former Peace Corps, which had been his colleague at the University of Montana, USA. In response to an invitation from the Government of Bolivia to foreign investors, Larsen arrived in a car in three months' trip to St. Croix. To arrive at Caraparicito took more than three days.

Larsen found an abandoned place, which needed a lot of work. But first, he met with people of the region and began to build houses for workers. For 1971, already had kitchen and fireplace inside the house, to preserve the tradition of Guarani meet around the fire to share stories.

'The neighbors criticized me and told me why spend so much on them. I want people to live healthy. Here there is Chagas' disease, everyone knows we have a pulpería work and where they can buy products at very low prices, "says Larsen.

One option for tourists

Caraparicito always been an attractive place. When Ronald was unmarried, inviting their friends. Among them appeared a young American who worked in the Peace Corps in Paraguay. It was in 1975 that he met Debora Metendren. By 1979 he was born Duston, who now guides visitors attractions in the area.

In the shadow of cupesí begins the journey by car. A few kilometres of road, Duston stops the van at the Narrows, where they are surrounded by rock walls that climb up plants air 20 metres high. Along the way there is a path that allows crown in half an hour a hill from which you can see the mountains of Incahuasi.

On return to the farm, we need to witness the daily tasks, as the mark of livestock. The young animals are released within the corral while cowboys use diestramente the rope and immobilized in a copy of the legs. Duston heated iron in the coals and marks around the neck of the response the number 69, when it was purchased Caraparicito. It then prints on leather number exemplary. To prevent infection, applies liquid iodine.

Nearby is the Star of Bethlehem Baptist Church, a building erected in 1991 in memory of Travis Larsen, the youngest of the sons of Ron, who died in a train accident. There is a Travis peseando with Jesus.

Caraparicito not only offers natural attractions and activities of rural life, it also has a gym, game room, dining room, meeting room, library, sauna and whirlpool. It will soon be able to accommodate 30 people. Ronald Larsen, 62 years old, is proud of working in Bolivia and that his son lives in the countryside. 'Mexico is a paradise for work'. This seems to prove that the herd of buffalo to step tired plunges into a lake to cool off.

He arrived the night in a campfire, visitors are to share the experience of a guitar. Duston then took the instrument and gets to play. It is a cowboy Bolivia, but does not know sing.

http://www.biodiversityreporting.org/article.sub?docId=25018&c=Bolivia&cRef=Bolivia&year=2007&date=February%202007

[Judi Lynn]

8. Local puff piece on Larsen, put through the google translation tool:

Posted by _publisher on 6/12/2004 9:11:11 (1342)
Seven landowners chaqueños they showcase their lifestyle to receive tourists since January. The stories of Ronald Larsen and Egon Wachtel are barely a bite of the feast.

Ronald Larsen received a generous gift of laughter visitors off-take when he lost his wife because she will not be spared that ostriches have been eaten his wedding ring.

Rememora anecdote to explain that these animals eat everything and who managed to adapt to finance Caraparicito where coexist 8,700 hectares of land with 2,000 head of cattle and a rich variety of flora and fauna cruceño Chaco.

Then, Larsen pointed out that obviously ostriches had lunch ring in 1981, but acknowledges that his wife had left for other reasons. He went to US-where it originates-and left Duston, his eldest son, who now holds the title of mister Bolivia and is prepared to exercise his career as manager in the development of a tourism project in association with others six landowners in the area.

Just a graduate of business administration at a university in the USA, in 1968 the young Ronald Larsen, who would later become the father of Duston, loaded their dreams in a van in the form of house and, along with a friend who had already been in Bolivia went one year for Central and South America to arrive at what would be his final destination: the Bolivian Chaco.

The friend, who in his first visit as a missionary Peace Corps had discovered "the best country in the world," Ronald accompanied only until 1972. When he left began to rise which would be one of the most prosperous farms in the region, about 60 kilometers from Camiri, on the border with Chuquisaca. For further information within the firm is located Incahuasi the controversial pit, which now faces a civic Chuquisaca and Santa Cruz.

Also in the Chaco, about 40 minutes journey by trolley, another dream come on a boat from Germany became reality from the decade of the 40. Egon Wachtel buried all his savings from employee tanker, not a bank, but on the 2,800 acres of the farm Yatigüigua.

http://www.boliviahoy.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8617

[Judi Lynn]

9. The father has also registered land in his sonny boy's name:

Google translation:

Bolivia: MAS Assemblyman alleges that Larsen has more than 57 thousand hectares and Camiri supports the Guarani

APG News
April 10, 2008, 10:19 EDT

La Paz, Bolivia --
The constituent tarijeña Magda Lidia Calvimontes of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), reported on Wednesday that the family in Santa Cruz Larsen owns about 17 properties whose total area is greater than the 57 thousand hectares.

He revealed that Andre Ronald Larsen Zurita is a property of over 3,377 acres at the site Caraparicito; Duston Larsen Metenbrink would have more than 2,696 acres at the site Caraparicito II, on the campus Yaguapoa, Duston Larsen Metenbrink owns more than 2,696 acres.; on the campus called Private Reserve Natural Heritage, Duston Larsen Metenbrink, Andre Ronald Larsen and Aaron Hans Larsen would have more than 2,313 hectares. in the campus Itatiqui, Hans Aaron Larsen would Zurita owner of 3,986 acres, all in canton Ipati, in the province Cordillera, in the department of Santa Cruz.

The campus Corrales, Andre Ronald Larsen Zurita has 4,285 hectares, in the San Carlos campus has 2,557 ha. In the campus The Remates II Duston Larsen Metenbrink has 2,595 ha. In the campus Loreto Montana, Duston Larsen has Metenbrink owns 2,867 . in the campus Nativity, Hans Aaron Larsen Surita has 3,574 ha. in the St. Paul campus, Ronald Dean Larsen Nielsen has 4,612 ha., all in the province Velasco in canton San Miguel, in the province Velasco, the same department.

In farm San Augustin, Ronald Dean Larsen Nielsen has 1,178 hectares; on the campus Nativity San Ramon has 2,162; on the campus San Ceferino owns 2,634 hectares in the same canton.

The property owned San Miguelito, Ronald Dean Larsen Nielsen has 6,860 hectares; on the property Mount Honda, 3,949 ha. And ownership San Lorenzo, has 4,114. In the canton Saturnino Saucedo of the province Ñuflo Chavez.

The sum total of surfaces gives 57,145 hectares belonging to the aforementioned family.

It is estimated that this area represents three times the urban stain of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

Only in the province Cordillera surface of the land identified totalled 15,777 hectares, which is equivalent to three quarters of the urban stain of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, while the three properties in Ñuflo Chavez added 14,924 hectares.

According to the complaint, in the province Velasco joined the nine properties identified an area of 26,443 hectares, an area equivalent to 5,000 hectares higher in the urban stain of Santa Cruz.

WORD OF CAMIRI

In relation to this issue, the civic movement of Camiri issued a statement in which he conveyed its support for the Guarani people who signed with the "pact of unity and brotherhood of the Chaco region of Bolivia during the days to recover of the oil fields that are in private hands.

In addition, civic and disqualify camireños reject the statements by Mr Ronald Garcia Moreno, who assigns responsibility to speak on behalf of the Civic Committee of Camiri, "demonstrating positions frankly reactionary, fascist and racist showing once again that demagogic and practice of politiquera those seeking to confuse people looking for returns in a political conflict that must be resolved on the basis of compliance with national legislation, "says the document.

He also repudiated the violent attitude of foreign nationals as Ronald and Duston Larsen, who are said are large landowners who have more than 57 thousand hectares.

At the same time rejected any measure pressure attempting to proceed "by not responding to a lawsuit legitimizes that meets the common interest of Camiri in the Cordillera province, but on the contrary it only seeks to delegitimize our movement and achievements, trying to confuse the national public opinion. "

Finally hold the dialogue to try to find a solution to the conflict that was generated as a result of the reorganisation process that aims to develop the Executive.

The nation Guarani argued against groups, which qualifies as a minority who seek to ignore its legitimate right "we are confident that Bolivian society as a whole unknown privileges from families with economic and political power, achieved at the expense of usurpation of our lands and the subjugation to the servitude of hundreds and thousands of families in Guarani violated their basic human rights. "

The government claimed that there were families captive in this area are treated in conditions of slavery.

Protestaron the attitude assumed by the family Larsen, who have weapons in their hands trying to prevent it from being carried out by the process of healing.

They call on the authorities of the "Public Ministry as representatives of the State and Society, start the inquiry in order to clarify the criminal acts committed by Mr. Ronald and Duston Larsen assumptions owners Caraparicito located in the town of Lagunillas.

http://www.redbolivia.com/noticias/Regiones/62891.html

[Judi Lynn]

10. More on this white separatist movement, from a google translated article:

Ronald Larsen and other patterns of the province throwing stones and shooting at Cordillera indigenous and State officials; is the second attack in a month
Hacendado American gun assault groups to defend estates in the Chaco cruceño

They attacked with stones, firecrackers and bullets officials to the Ministry of Lands and INRA in Caraparicito vicinity of the farm, located in the Town of Lagunillas, approximately 80 kilometers from Camiri. The intellectual and material authors of the attack are farmers and ranchers, including an American citizen linked to the political and business elites of the capital cruceña.
While sanitation in the area will benefit 10 thousand small owners and consolidate a TCO for Guarani indigenous communities, many of them exploited labour, landowners and ranchers formed "defense committees" with armed people to prevent the entry of government officials and paralyse the work of sanitation.

This is not the first time that landowners Cordillera in the province of Santa Cruz to prevent violence reorganizing its finances. On 29 February abducted and threatened with death to the highest authorities and national agricultural shot at the tires of his car.

At 10 am this Friday, 4 April, the government commission composed of 40 officials and the Ministry of INRA, sheltered by a police contingent of 40 troops, resumed the work of sanitation in the town Parapetí High, and again found violent resistance from landowners.

The caravan was arrested in the town of Ipati by a group of people on board more than a dozen vehicles drivers threatened to burn vehicles carrying government officials. However, the number broke the blockade and continued its journey under siege permanent threatening the farmers who sought aboard six vehicles.

At 15:30, government representatives came to the farm "Caraparicito." The road was completely blocked by a trailer without wheels of eight metres long, several logs and stones. Behind these barriers landowners erected a barricade and more ago placed a tank in the middle of the road.

He began a vigorous discussion followed by insults and shoves. Ranchers denying the government of Evo Morales. "This is going to take a few more days because they are no longer you," said one of the owners, an allusion to the autonomous status that entrepreneurship cruceño aims to adopt May 4.

Ranchers shouted that there were no captives in their estates, although the Guarani accompanying the commission denying them official. Journalists covering these incidents prevented asked why sanitation if there is no indigenous captives in their land, but the landlords did not respond. After a struggle was withdrawing the first trailer and the committee moved ahead with the police.

At that time he left his finances American Ronald Larsen, shouting and threatening directly to the Deputy Minister of Lands Alejandro Almaraz. The kidnapping of 29 February, the same character intimidated to Almaraz with firearms. The group clash of landowners began to throw firecrackers, rockets and stones at skilful and sinister, in the face injuring a policeman and a Guarani, and also a councillor of Lagunillas. The police had to use tear gas to halt the aggression. Then they negotiated a truce, without which neither party has abandoned their positions.

Both sides remain in their positions: the official contingent composed of 40 officials, 36 policemen and about 50 indigenous Guarani, as opposed to "defence committee" composed of 50 livestock people, some armed and equipped with radioreceptores.

Who's Larsen?

An American starred in two attacks on an official in less than 40 days. This foreigner who hired thugs levantisco to prevent the Guarani obtain a TCO in High Parapetí called Ronald Larsen.

Larsen connected with the Peace Corps, arrived in the Bolivian Chaco in 1968 and the next year bought the hacienda Caraparicito. Over the years, their finances became a tourist complex with natural attractions, gym, game room, dining room, meeting room, library, sauna and whirlpool.

The Chaco livestock farms are part of a tourism project promoted by the Prefecture of Santa Cruz. The investment of private property, with support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), reaches a million dollars, according to a report of the New Day (June 5, 2007).

Larsen is well connected with the political hierarchy of the department. The Prefecture cruceña elected Caraparicito as an example of environmental management. Within the estate of 2,800 hectares there is a "Private Nature Reserve Heritage" of 2,335 hectares. On June 4, 2007, Larsen received at its finance the prefect Ruben Costas, the president of the civic committee Branko Marinkovic, and the chairman of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CAINCO) then Gabriel Dabdoub.

All over land

Larsen and landowners in the province Cordillera, in alliance with the elites of Santa Cruz, formed a "defence committee" in the province Cordillera comprising medium and large landowners, they Juan Carlos Santistevan, owner of the property of an extension of Mandioty 1,885 hectares, and the family of Elvy Abbet of Malpartida, owner of the property Itacay of 9,783 hectares.

The most active clan are Larsen. According to data of INRA, the father, Ronald Larsen owns Caraparicito of 3,377 hectares and Caraparicito II, 3,399 hectares. His son Duston owns Yaguapoa campus of 2,696 hectares. All of these properties are located in the cantons Choreti, and Camiri Cuevo (Santa Cruz) and Sapirangui and Guembe (Chuquisaca).
Of a total of 98,875 hectares in High Parapetí, 51,512, 52 percent of all land was concentrated in 14 sites categorised as businesses. The 40 small properties identified at the scene joined an area of 7,755 hectares, or 7.8% of the land.


http://www.bolpress.com/art.php?Cod=2008040414

[Malidictus Maximus]

11. Title or no, thanks anyway

Good information we would be otherwise unaware of.

[Judi Lynn]

27. The story is really creepy. There's a lot going on in that area now: planned instability, designed

to destroy the elected government by the will of the elite. Very, very ugly.

Welcome to DU, Malidictus Maximus! :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi:

[Peace Patriot]

12. Why don't you re-post it? The import of it is kind of lost without the country

being named.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Thanks for the idea. It sounds like the only really GREAT solution!

Thanks, also, to Malidictus Maximus.

This is a very important story, I think. I'm transferring the material from screwed up original post #1 to a new thread.

[Peace Patriot]

14. You can put a DU link there to this one, so you don't have to transfer your

other articles, and so people can read these comments.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Moderator has been kind enough to blend old one & new one I was constructing.Thanks. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

18. This is a very dangerous situation in Bolivia, generally--worst of all because

it is so exploitable by the Bush Junta--for destabilizing the region, for sparking their second oil war, and for undoing the tremendous progress in democracy and social justice that South America has been making.

The eastern provinces--where the gas and oil are--are ruled over by white separatists, who want to split these resource-rich provinces off from the central government of Evo Morales--the first indigenous president of Bolivia (a largely indigenous country)--to deny benefit of these resources to the poor majority. I believe that the Bushites have been funding, arming and organizing these separatists, with USAID-NED and other U.S. taxpayer dollars, to create an armed fascist enclave in the southern area of the Bolivarian Revolution, much as they have Colombia to use for trouble-making in the northern region (bordering Venezuela and Ecuador). Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela all have leftist governments and they are strongly allied with each other, and with Argentina (which borders Bolivia (as does Paraguay). The Bushites have almost no strategic ground in the southern region--and they are about to lose what little they have--easy strategic ground in Paraguay, with the election this Sunday of Paraguay's beloved "bishop of the poor," Fernando Lugo, as president of Paraguay.

Lugo is not as left/socialist as the Bolivarians, but he is a strong advocate of the poor and will be a huge change for the better in Paraguay, which has been ruled for 60 years by a corrupt, entrenched rightwing party with a fascist history. The eastern provinces of Bolivia, in question, are very close to the area of Paraguay where the Bush Cartel is rumored to have purchased 100,000 acres (near a U.S. military air base that has been beefed up, at our expense, to take jets and large aircraft). I'm pretty sure that Donald Rumsfeld & co. have envisioned this tri-corner area (intersection of eastern Bolivia, Paraguay and western Brazil) not only as a moneymaker (in addition to the gas and oil in Bolivia, this tricorner area is a major drug trafficking route, and I have little doubt that the Bushites are major drug traffickers) as well as an unpleasant little Bushite kingdom of some sort, from which to launch paramilitary death squads and even U.S. military planes and troops, and black ops/covert activities into the Bolivarian democracies (the remaining portion of Bolivia, after the split-up, and Argentina; possibly also Uruguay, another leftist democracy), as well as a meeting (organizing, coup plotting) place for the worst elements of South American society, now on the outs in almost every country.

Fernando Lugo, mild as he is, will be very unhappy with this. He's out to build social justice in Paraguay, and needs to integrate with these other South American economies, now run by leftists. I believe that it was pressure from members of Mercosur and other South American trade groups, and the Bank of the South--all dominated by leftists--that caused the current rightwing government to rescind both their immunity law for U.S. military operations and their non-extradition law. The new economic power of the left also convinced them to join the Bank of the South (--a Chavez inspired project to keep development loans in the control of the region, as opposed to the World Bank/IMF). Lugo is not an anti-Bush, anti-corporate firebrand, but he would heavily frown on U.S. interference in other countries, launched from his country, and on any kind of fascist enclave funded by the Bushites. For one thing, it would seriously imperil his own presidency, since the Colorado ruling elite would no doubt find aid and comfort in a Bush enclave.

On top of this, the leftist president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (a friend of Lugo's), has pledged not to renew the lease for the U.S. military base in Ecuador, which expires next year. The Bushites are therefore in a squeeze, with diminishing strategic ground, and need to act fast to reverse this decline. The pending civil war in Bolivia is made to order for their dirty rotten schemes. The civil war may heat up very soon, possibly this May. It could go like this: The Bolivian white separatists will declare their "independence" in the four eastern provinces; Morales will likely send the Bolivian army to take over the region, and restore them to the central government; hostilities will break out, and the white separatists will call upon Bush for U.S. troops in support their "independence"; this could well involve Venezuela and Ecuador, strong allies of Morales (and possibly Argentina), or, at least, it will cause a major diplomatic fracas in South America--one with the potential of alienating South America from the U.S. for the next hundred years or so. Rumsfeld couldn't care less about that--he's after the oil, mainly in Venezuela and Ecuador. He wants to destabilize and topple these democracies, and regain global corporate predator control of the oil, and install fascist governments to enforce the oil grab and repress dissent.

In his Washington Post op-ed of last December, Rumsfeld, indeed, calls for "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America.* I think he means Bolivia. Just recently, the U.S./Colombia committed a major provocation of Ecuador, nearly causing a war. (Chavez intervened--according to Lula da Silva, president of Brazil.) So we know that Rumsfeld intends military aggression. That, I think, was a trial run. Venezuela's and Ecuador's swift response (sending troops to their borders) and their canny avoidance of the war trap that Rumsfeld had laid, was also a gage of their strength. They had no hesitation as to defending their borders. They had strong political support, among their people and throughout the region. They will not be pushovers. There needs to be more effort at destabilization, and creating chaos, divisions and fear--a Rumsfeld specialty.

So the incident described in this OP is not an isolated incident--nor does it have to do primarily with foreign (in this case, U.S.) landowners in these eastern provinces. The incident is connected to a much bigger geopolitical picture. The Bolivian government officials, as exemplified in this reported incident with the Larsens, are having a hard time enforcing the law in these eastern provinces. The landowners consider themselves to be "the law." They have lorded it over the peasant farmers and workers (indigenous) for centuries, often brutally. I have no idea what the Larsens' politics are, nor if they are guilty as charged. But the situation is typical--and more typically between white Bolivian landowners, on the one hand, and their indigenous servants and workers, and peasant farmers, and Morales government officials, on the other. It is not unlike the situation in the U.S. south during the 1960s, with local whites oppressing black citizens, and the U.S. federal government trying to enforce civil rights laws in a region of hostile white rule. Judi Lynn has informed us that, as late as the 1950s-1960s, the indigenous were not permitted to walk on the sidewalks in Bolivia. The racial divide is that bad. Further, just prior to that era, the white Bolivians (a minority in the country) imported white South Africans (from apartheid South Africa) to bolster their numbers, visa vis the indigenous, and to steal and colonize more land.

This is an explosive situation. The Catholic bishops are apparently trying to mediate it. I think there's a pretty good chance that they--or some other mediators (say, Lula da Silva of Brazil--which has a long border with Bolivia; or Fernando Lugo, if he is elected president of Paraguay), or some combination of people--will succeed. Possibly these rich landowners can be bought off with a bigger share of gas/oil revenues than they deserve. It is likely the Bush-U.S. embassy that is stoking ideas of power and bloodshed. That is the sort of thing that the USAID-NED teaches these days--how to overcome the will of the majority. How to make rightwing coups look like democracy. It's not okay for Iraqis to defend their country--but white separatists in South America, that's patriotism. After all, they just want their "independence," like we did. I can just hear it.

Watch for news of Paraguay this Sunday (the election). Watch for news of Bolivia in May--and be prepared for the bombshell of the U.S. military involvement. And pray--that peace prevails, and that Rumsfeld's plans get foiled.

---------------

*"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

[judasdisney]

30. Peace Patriot: Why do you suggest the month of May?

I agree with your anaylsis here. The Triborder area is indeed also probably the type of intersection of money laundering, drug trafficking and fake-terrorist staging intersection that Sibel Edmonds has also spoken of.

Peace Patriot writes: "That is the sort of thing that the USAID-NED teaches these days--how to overcome the will of the majority. How to make rightwing coups look like democracy." I think there's much more in this statement that's going unsaid. There's a backstory of Latin America's 1970s and CIA involvement, and International Fascist connections, that are deeply rooted in Peace Patriot's statement...

... and there's a domestic U.S. component, that if I suggest it, will no doubt be called "Conspiracy Theory" by shrieking COINTELPRO plants across D.U. Of course the USAID-NED methods, practices & goals would never be used in the U.S. to make a rightwing military coup look like democracy. (And I'm not just suggesting the past 8 years but the next 7).

[Peace Patriot]

33. Oh, I think the Puke "riot" in FLA '00 might have been an example of early

Bushiste USAID "training." The rich oil elite in Venezuela followed a similar tactic only two years later in the 2002 (U.S.-backed) rightwing coup, contesting a legitimate election, and again in 2004 in the (USAID-NED funded) recall election, also in Venezuela. (Both against legitimate wins by Chavez.)

The white separatists in Bolivia are holding an election on May 4--an election forbidden by the supreme court--on autonomy of the four eastern provinces. It is a secession vote, in essence--and would be considered traitorous if it happened here. It is a civil war declaration. You might say, okay, so they vote--why shouldn't they have self-determination? The trouble is that the white rulers are very oppressive and brutal toward the majority indigenous. It won't be an honest, transparent vote. It is notsanctioned by the central government, and is not being conducted transparently with international (OAS, Carter Center or other) election observers. If this dispute was genuine--and not a clandestine Bushite/CIA op to start a war--they would have taken it to the OAS and set up a legit, monitored election, and/or an OAS sponsored mediation to resolve the dispute.

In any case, this May 4 vote will be the gauntlet thrown at the Morales government. The white separatists are thereafter going to behave as if the federal government has no legitimacy in their provinces; they are going to try to evict government reps and war may break out.

Morales was elected with a mandate to re-write the Bolivian constitution. He then received a specific vote (countrywide) of 80% to proceed with constitutional assemblies to write the new constitution. Soon, however, the white separatists began disrupting the assemblies with FLA '00 style rightwing riots and bullying, insisting that the constitution include autonomy for their gas/oil rich provinces (to deny revenue from those resources to the central government, that would benefit the poor majority under a Morales government). When the majorities in those assemblies did not agree to autonomy provisions for the eastern provinces, the white separatists then boycotted the process.

The matter came to a head in late February, when the various assemblies presented the new constitution to the national assembly, which voted to put it the electorate. The white separatists wanted a simultaneous vote on their autonomy, and have insisted on it, despite the fact that the assemblies did not approve it. In March, the supreme court suspended both elections, saying that there had not been enough time to organize an orderly election process. (This was, no doubt, something of an excuse to avoid the crisis of an unauthorized vote on secession.) But the white separatists intend to hold their election anyway--an unauthorized vote on their own secession during which they will, without question, bully and intimidate indigenous voters and suppress the indigenous vote. That's where things stood in March. They are defying the supreme court ruling and the central government. They don't want resolution of this dispute. They want to split up Bolivia and have their own country. And they are supported in this by the U.S. embassy, and by overt and covert aid from the Bush Junta, which has its own geopolitical agenda in the region--either to draw Venezuela and Ecuador int a war, in support of their ally Morales, or to gain strategic ground from which to launch covert and military/paramilitary action against them and their allies (Bolivia, Argentina), to destabilize these countries, and restore global corporate predator control of the Andes oil fields.

I think Donald Rumsfeld is behind this strategy. He said as much (reading between the lines a bit) in his op-ed in the Washington Post four months ago.

[judasdisney]

35. Thanks for this info. May 4, I did not realize was the date

and it looks like you're right... it's obvious. And I think you're correct about Rumsfeld -- he has not gone away.

[Judi Lynn]

19. (Vice President) García Linera warned the "families of gangsters"

(As you can see the translator tool isn't perfect (understatement) but if you scan the article it's possible to get the "gist" of it reasonably well.)

García Linera warned the "families of gangsters": "No more business and the 'pachanga' go to work if they want to eat"

Bolivia: Fight class disguised as competing regional
This is not the first time that the bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz is amotina against the State and justifies his insubordination brandishing flags of the "autonomy". Over the past 50 years, the agro-industrial elite, landowners, merchants are banking and won the autonomy to preserve their class interests.

The Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera believes that the core of the current crisis is not polarization around regional autonomy, as interpreted by the political forces of right, but frankly the "class struggle" between the few who have a lot and the thousands of human beings who have nothing.

On behalf of autonomy, entrepreneurship cruceño funded political factions extreme as Bolivian Socialist Falange (FSB) and supported as the de facto governments of Hugo Banzer, who was able to reward their hosts with the free allocation of huge tracts of land.

Now, a fraction of the bourgeoisie eastern goes much further and used false and hypocritically the banner of autonomy to divide the country and create another state with a constitution of its own. Minority always privileged sectors of society are able not only to confront Bolivians, but who dare to split the Motherland to defend their narrow interests, says Garcia Linera.

According to the Vice President, these "logieros" does not condone the government that they closed the doors of enrichment easy. "To the families of gang members and rogues who lived at the expense of the Bolivian people for centuries not let them return to mistreat our country, to continue privatizing, hoarding silver of Bolivians to buy luxury cars and houses."

These people can not bear to see a farmer has reduced the external debt of 5 billion dollars to two billion; not forgive that are building new businesses of paper, cardboard and milk. "Some families or political parties will not condone the President to distribute land is so dignified, fair and accountable. President Evo arrived and told them simply, the land is not for malbaratarla or acapararla improductivamente is to be used by the peasant dignity and the producer. Those families told them that the business was over and the 'pachanga', going to work if they want to eat. "

The bourgeoisie cruceña without influence national, was atrinchera in their region and organizes de facto self-government illegal, and back to the international community. The local elite division boosts creating a national citizenship itself, "cruceñidad" up a local police force and was attached full powers in areas that have always been the responsibility of the state as education, health, land allocation, taxes, natural resources and several others.

Derrotada on the court of bourgeois democracy, the right violates the rules, institutions and the sacrosanct "rule of law". "They must answer for their misdeeds and actions before the Constitutional Court, is the story of us (…) Nobody will make us change of thought, first is the people, the Motherland, people will be humble and after the loggias or privileged sectors that always . For us to do what they want, the President and his Vice-President Evo are willing to surrender their lives in defense of the right of poor people, and why if we have to insult and criticize welcome insult because dignifies us, "says Vice President.

The message of officialdom to "antipatrias trying to denigrating and destroying the country" is clear and emphatic: The process of change will continue because it is a commitment to Bolivians and history. Bolivia will remain united and will be defeated "racist and fascist" and alleged some opposition politicians or businessmen who never had homeland but estates and bottomless pockets.

More:
http://www.visionesalternativas.com/article.asp?ID=%7B94EAFA21-E56E-4DD8-A7DF-79875D573F8E%7D&language=ES

Non-Spanish speakers can always find google translator tool useful:
http://translate.google.com/translate_t?langpair=es |en

[mitchtv]

20. Take it from me

Bolivian jails have not been upgraded in many, many years.I also have confidence that the army will back el presidente

[Judi Lynn]

21. Two filmmakers kidnapped and mistreated in Santa Cruz department

Two filmmakers kidnapped and mistreated in Santa Cruz department

MONTREAL, April 18 /CNW Telbec/ - Reporters Without Borders condemns the
mistreatment that two documentary filmmakers - Tanimbu Estremadoiro and her
Argentine colleague Fernando Cola - received from residents of Cuevo, in the
eastern department of Santa Cruz, on 13 April.
They were kidnapped and subjected to physical violence during a clash
between government representatives and local landowners in a region where much
of the population supports calls for autonomy and is fiercely opposed to the
government in La Paz.
"All those trying to settle scores by attacking the press should have
learned from the death of Carlos Quispe on 29 March as a result of an attack
on Radio Municipal Pucarani (see 8 April release)," Reporters Without Borders
said. "The way Fernando Cola and Tanimbu Estremadoiro were treated shows that
the current political and social conflicts continue to expose journalists to
serious risks."
The press freedom organisation added: "We hope that justice will be
quickly rendered in this case and that the political class, especially those
in the regions that are pressing for autonomy, will undertake to ensure
respect for press freedom."
Cola and Estremadoiro, who are members of the Centre for Legal Studies
and Social Investigation (CEJIS) and the International Work Group for
Indigenous Affairs, a Danish NGO, are making a documentary about land
conflicts in Bolivia. On 13 April, they were accompanying a government
delegation that is in charge of distributing land to Guarani indigenous
peasants.
A group of local landowners opposed to agrarian reform blocked the
delegation's access to Cuevo, a locality near the city of Santa Cruz. When the
confrontation turned violent, Cola was captured. He was kicked repeatedly,
stones were thrown at him and his camera was smashed. He finally escaped from
his assailants and found refuge in the home of a local resident where soldiers
rescued him the next day.

More:
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/April2008/18/c7128.html

[Judi Lynn]

22. Photos of Montanan/Bolivian landowner's son, Duston, as Mr. Bolivia, 2004

http://promocionesgloria.com/galeria/album24?page=1

Web-Posted Aug 10, 2004
Northwest graduate named Mr. Bolivia
Duston Larsen working to promote ecotourism in Bolivia

By Harold Reutter
[email protected]

~snip~
Larsen was born in Bolivia and lived there until age 5, when he came to Grand Island, where he attended District 1-R and Northwest High School, Shafer said.

"He's alternated between living in America and Bolivia ever since," Shafer said. Larsen would attend school in Grand Island, while spending summers and holidays in Bolivia.

Newspapers in Bolivia described Larsen as a model.

Shafer said her son's modeling career was fairly short-lived, though.

"He took a year off from school and went to Los Angeles," she said. While modeling in Los Angeles, Larsen also took classes at UCLA. She said the year off from school gave Larsen a chance to experience big-city life and do something a little different.

"It was an experience, nothing more," said Shafer, who said she was glad when Larsen returned to his regular classes at Montana State University, where he earned a degree in business and marketing in 2003.

Since that time, Larsen has been working to promote eco-tourism in Bolivia.

"Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America," Shafer said. As a result, the tendency is for people to exploit the environment to try to raise the standard of living rather than try to protect it.

Eco-tourism tries to both protect the environment while generating business opportunities, Shafer said.

Larsen is promoting an eco-tourism project for Carataricito, a cattle ranch and hacienda owned by his father, Ron Larsen.

"The hacienda is kind of its own village," said Shafer, who said it buildings include a house, church and school.

The ranch is located close to the Incaguisi Mountains, a range that is part of the Andes, which run through seven South American countries. In addition to Bolivia, those countries include Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and Venezuela.

Tourists to the ranch would be able to see Inca artifacts and also caves that are in the area. Their activities would include hiking on trails and also horseback riding. The area would provide tourists with an opportunity to see a wide variety of wildlife, including parrots and other birds.

Part of the eco-tourism project includes trying to build cabins, roads and a landing area for planes to help promote tourism.

The ranch itself would continue to be a working cattle ranch.

Larsen is a citizen of both Bolivia and the United States, which is why he was eligible to compete for the title of Mr. Bolivia. Because he grew up in Bolivia, Larsen is able to speak both Spanish and English.

In some ways, competing for the title of Mr. Bolivia will help Larsen with his eco-tourism project. One of the rewards in being named Mr. Bolivia is receiving tuition for school.


http://www.theindependent.com/stories/081004/new_bolivia10.shtml

Duston's MySpace:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=76880714

In his page he links a photo gallary. His father, Ronald Larsen, is the first photo.

[Cleita]

24. I'm surprised he got there through the Peace Corp.

Before I read your articles I was thinking that he probably arrived there through American Co. Anaconda Copper, which was headquartered in Montana but ran mines throughout South America along with Kennecott Copper and Dupont Chemical.

The latifunda system that prevails in that part of South America is medeival and exploitive of the natives. I hope Morales puts an end to it.

[Judi Lynn]

25. Interesting enough, a link led to his friendship with Bolivian General Rene Barrientos Ortuno

He's mentioned in this snip, run through google translation:

Who's Larsen?

Ronald Larsen, related to the Peace Corps, arrived in the Bolivian Chaco in 1968 at the invitation of the government of Gral. Rene Barrientos Ortuno, a dictator who massacred miners, which was accused of having allowed the subjugation of the country to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Larsen acquired Caraparicito finances in 1969 and concentrated on crop and livestock production. Over the years, their finances became a tourist complex with natural attractions, a rustic house, gym, game room, dining room, meeting room, library, sauna and whirlpool.

http://ftierra-observa.org/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127&Itemid=98

You may find his Wikipedia interesting:

~snip~
Early years
A native of Tarata, department of Cochabamba, Barrientos was a career military officer, having earned his pilot's license in 1945. Later in the 1940s, he gravitated toward the reformist Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, or MNR) party of Víctor Paz Estenssoro. Barrientos played a part in the Bolivian Revolution of 1952, when the MNR toppled the established order and took power. In fact, he was given the honor of flying out of the country to bring back the revolutionary leader Víctor Paz Estenssoro, then in exile, once the rebellion succeeded. In 1957, Barrientos was rewarded when he was named commander of the Bolivian Air Force.
(snip)

Rise to power
In 1964, Paz Estenssoro had the Bolivian Constitution amended in order to be allowed to run for consecutive re-election, feeling that only he had the standing to keep the crumbling MNR together. Traditionally, attempts such as these (known as "prorroguismo") have been strongly condemned by the Bolivian political elites, many of whose members may have been waiting for their turn to occupy the presidential palace for years. This was no exception, and Paz's controversial move would soon prove to be his undoing. Paz surprisingly chose general Barrientos as his running mate in that year's elections, and the two were sworn in in August, 1964. Just three months later, Barrientos — in tandem with the Army Commander Alfredo Ovando — toppled Paz in a violent coup d'etat and installed himself as co-President in a Junta alongside general Ovando.
(snip)

Barrientos as Constitutional President
General Barrientos was quite charismatic, and was initially popular with ordinary Bolivians, aided by the fluency with which he spoke Quechua, the most important native language among the Bolivian peasantry. He was also skilled at manipulating the masses with his oratory, which often allowed him to present himself as both a populist and conservative, a revolutionary and a "law-and-order" advocate. Purporting to be a staunch Christian, Barrientos actively courted the Church and, in fact, chose as his running mate in the 1966 elections the leader of the small Christian Democrat Party of Bolivia, Dr. Luis Adolfo Siles. In reality, he was fiercely anti-Communist, pro-U.S., and hardly a friend of either miners or organized labor in general, unless they were completely under his thumb. Accepting more military aid and acquiescing to the training of special forces designed to combat possible Communist-inspired insurgencies (under the aegis of the Alliance for Progress) made Barrientos particularly popular with Washington.

Interestingly, during the Barrientos regime the Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie, also known as "The Butcher of Lyon" and by then a Bolivian resident, was named president of the Bolivian State Navigation Society.


The 1967 Guerrilla
Barrientos had ample opportunity to prove his anti-Communist credentials in 1967, when a guerrilla force was discovered to be operating in the rural Bolivian southwest under the leadership of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. The President had been quoted as saying that he wanted to see Guevara's head exhibited on a spike in downtown La Paz. While this didn't quite happen, the insurgency was eventually put down by Barrientos' troops (with various disputed degrees of American help) and Guevara was captured and executed in October of 1967.


Political troubles and Barrientos' death
While temporarily enhancing the president's stature, this only started more troubles for Barrientos. While the army was fighting the guerrillas, the miners of Siglo XX (a state-owned Bolivian mining town) declared themselves in support of the insurgency, prompting the president to send troops to regain control. This led to the "Massacre of San Juan," when soldiers opened fire on the miners and killed around 30 men and women on San Juan Day, June 24, 1967. Further, a major scandal erupted in 1968 when Barrientos' trusted friend and Minister of Interior, Antonio Arguedas, disappeared with the captured diary of Che Guevara, which soon surfaced in, of all places, Havana. From abroad, Arguedas confessed himself to have been a clandestine Marxist supporter, denouncing Barrientos and many of his aides as being on the CIA's payroll.

Barrientos by this point was largely seen as a brutal dictator at the service of foreign interests while masquerading as a democrat. Eager to do some damage control and repair his once excellent relations with the peasantry, the president took to traveling throughout the country to present his position, even in the smallest Bolivian villages. It was a tactic that had yielded him good results in the past. While doing this, he flew to Arque, Cochabamba Department, where he perished on April 27, 1969, in a helicopter crash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Barrientos_Ortu%C3%B1o



Not long after Rene Barrientos Ortuno came Hugo Banzer, another School of the Americas graduate, who was assisted by the US government in a violent coup, who drove native Bolivians off the land their communities had populated for generations, and gave that land to white ranchers he brought in from South Africa and Rhodesia in his scheme to create a "white Bolivia."

You bet it catches your attention when you see a young man arrived as a "Peace Corps" volunteer, ending up several decades later being one of the largest landowners in Bolivia, in the very area which is considered the most valuable, which contains the huge natural gas deposits, which the white separatists are planning to take from the actual country itself, and remove all profits from this area from the common government funds which benefit all Bolivians.

You've probably run across the sentiment expressed by those in this area that they simply don't want "their" money going to the "Indians." They are completely racist.

[judasdisney]

29. Larsen starts to sound very CIA here

in this particular dose of information.

Larsen seems very reminiscent of Michael Meiring:

http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2003/08/51985.php

Larsen may not be making bombs, but he's quite the same type of figure. Connections to the White Supremacist movement are also very resonant with murky CIA operations.

[Judi Lynn]

31. Ah, the old "“Christ In Action" CIA ploy! Good grief! Thanks for posting this reminder of what OTHER

people in the world have been seeing of the government's image from time to time.

There's no way a normal, sentient person can avoid noticing the undiluted racism at the heart of all these operations.

Can't dismiss the strange preoccupation with the Philippines, either. I'm sure you've read material about psyops head, General Edward Lansdale, who also worked in psyops against VietNam and Cuba, etc. (He was the Chief of Opertions in Operation Mongoose.)

Then the stories that won't leave your memory, about hanging up Philippine peasants to drain them of their blood and instill terror in the minds of villagers, leading them to think a vampire is killing them, and the recording of screams of prisoners they captured played back over loud speakers to Philappine citizens. How does a man REALLY live with a conscience which allowed him to concoct actions like this?

It's really time the nation developed a more mature, more integrated view of life in the world, wouldn't you think? We need more maturity in national and international policy at a time we're at our very worst low.

People have mentioned that maybe it isn't that things have gotten worse, but now we're simply MORE AWARE about what has really been happening in our country's actions toward others. That just may be closer to the truth.

[MisterP]

48. Judi, have you read Edward Nashel's "Lansdale's Cold War"?

it's vigorously freakish.
As a Latin American history major, I thank you and the other L.A. intelligentsia on DU!

[Judi Lynn]

49. NO! Didn't know it existed. I've got to see it, now. That man was far beyond sadistic.

How convenient the U.S. gov't just happened to have a psy-ops spot custom made for someone like him.

What I've seen is sparse, but goddawful. He seemed completely bonded with creating terror for people in the third world in the little look I've had already.

I really thank you for sharing that title here. I've seen other DU'ers discussing him, too, so I know there's a fair group of people who would also be very interested in an entire BOOK on the guy.

We don't need heroes like that guy! How would you like him living next door to you!



(You just sold a book! I stepped away to order the book before finishing this message. I'm really looking forward to a more detailed account of this psychopath. Thanks, a lot.)

[MisterP]

50. it gives his motivation: the Cold War was a holy war,

and he was spreading capitalism, democracy, and Christianity--and thus peace and prosperity--when he plotted ruthless acts of terrorism

[Judi Lynn]

51. It would take an extraordinary flexibility to be able to feel morally on balance while catching

villagers in the Philippines, killing them, hanging them upside down so their blood flows out onto the ground, then arranging it to look as if vampires had taken them in order to terrorize the other villagers senseless.

You just don't see that kind of unchecked sadism, and coldness every day, I HOPE, at least!

[Judi Lynn]

40. Found a slightly more detailed account of how so much land was simply GIVEN to the white racists

from South Africa brought over by Hugo Banzer. I've been so distracted I have been forgetting to look up more information on this as it's intensely important. (So much information, so little time!)

~snip~
Some of the worst abuses of the land reform system came during the dictatorships of the 1970’s, especially that of Hugo Banzer. Banzer and other military leaders exploited the Council to “re-distribute” enormous tracts of land for free or at rock-bottom prices to friends and cronies, in effect re-creating an array of new latifundios. These years signified a definitive step-back in efforts to benefit the nation’s – the spirit of the times is captured in the words of Dr. Guido Strauss, Banzer’s Undersecretary of Immigration, in 1977. In this year Banzer was trying to attract wealthy white immigrants from South Africa and Rhodesia to settle and create new latifundios in eastern Bolivia. The government offered 800,000 hectares of land free of charge, as well as $150 million (US) in funds, part of which would be available for repressing the 120,000 indigenous peasants who already lived on the designated lands. Strauss, trying to entice the white Africans, assured them of favorable conditions: you “will certainly find our Indians no more stupid or lazy than own blacks,” he wrote, as recorded in June Nash’s We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us (Columbia University Press, 1979).

The result of this era was that, except for some areas in Bolivia’s western altiplano, land was never truly re-distributed. Problems were especially pronounced in the eastern and most fertile part of the country, specifically in the departments of Santa Cruz, Pando, the Chaco, Tarija, and Beni.
(snip)

Yet, the reality of INRA was disappointing. Manual Morales Davila, in his popular analysis of the law, characterizes INRA as a “complete sham.” Specifically, what many found objectionable was that the new reform made an exception to the 1953 maxim, “the land belongs to those who work it.” It now stated, the land also belongs to those who pay taxes – pitifully low taxes – on it. Many, like Morales Davila, considered this antithetical to the spirit of ‘53, in that it legalized absentee ownership, speculation, and enormous holdings, characteristics favored by wealthy landholders, not the peasants INRA claimed to benefit.

More:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article1997.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Without a doubt Evo Morales knew this fight he's undertaken was going to be of heroic dimensions with Evo Morales pitted against the country's powerful, and their purely aggressive, racist backers in the right-wing idiot department of the U.S. government.

Stepping into office, he immediately cut his own salary in half, and the original salary was "bupkis," to start with! He has courage, and quality and character which could, if shared with the anal, sadistic, fascist white racists of the oligarchy, could make fine people of all of them, with tons left over!

[Cleita]

23. Good. It's about time American hegemony ends in South

America. All foreign owned lands and extraction industries should be returned to the natives. I also believe we need to do that in this country too before we are owned lock, stock and barrel by foreign enterprises that have no interest in our infrastructure and economic well being.

[fascisthunter]

26. Good.... We Need Public Exposer of This Type of Meddling

The right wing has done enough damage to our neighbors and this country itself.

[judasdisney]

28. Excellent research, Judi Lynn, thanks

As someone who aspires to expatriate to Bolivia within this year, I was saddened to see this story. And frustrated. First Tristan Jay Amero and now this.

Although I consider Bolivia one of the bright spots of hope for fervent grassroots democracy on the planet, I foresee a future in which Americans are the most reviled people on the planet -- no, we're not there yet, and it's going to get much, much worse. And that will make expatriation and/or travel a very ugly and even dangerous option.

Excellent and thorough research here, Judi Lynn. Thanks as usual.

[Judi Lynn]

32. Don't forget the U.S. embassy advised the Peace Corps worker to spy on Cubans

and any Venzuelans he ran into, and report back to him. The new Peace Corps guy, also a Fulbright scholar, was outraged and reported it, or we wouldn't know now, just as we didn't know, the multiple times the same people advised OTHER young Americans to do the same thing who didn't tell anyone else!

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4262036

Hopefully things will have mellowed a little by the time you feel you have to make a decision. It looks as if it's going to be fairly rocky for a while.

I don't know the new date for the national referendum on their new Constitution. That's another thing these white separatists are fighting tooth and toenail. They aren't going to allow a new constitution if there's anything they can possibly do to prevent it, including violence.

(You may recall reading they claimed they were going on a hunger strike late last year, I believe, with Branko Marinkovic, another mega wealthy landowner as the leader, and we never heard anything about it until much later when I stumbled across a reference in an article which said that the Morales government was handed a high moment of humor when someone discovered these separatists, who were holed up in the same location, in some office, had people sneaking in FRIED CHICKEN to them late at night when they imagined everyone else was sleeping.)

[Peace Patriot]

34. The latest news I can find on the constitutional votes is March 8

Bolivian court suspends vote on Morales' proposed constitution
Posted on Sat, Mar. 08, 2008
http://www.miamiherald.com/942/story/449315.html

They suspended both referendums (scheduled for May 4)--the authorized constitutional referendum, and the unauthorized white separatists' secession referendum. The immediate issue will be, will the white separatists proceed in defiance of the supreme court? (Excuse me, it's Bolivia's National Electoral Court--I don't know what relationship it has to the supreme court.)

This was about a month ago. I've since read that Bolivia's Catholic bishops are trying to mediate the dispute and prevent civil war. I hope that they, or someone, succeeds, because Morales will have little choice but to take military action against the separatists if they secede (much like Abe Lincoln). Note: Split-ups of countries, in the interest of global corporate predators, is a Bushite specialty.

[Judi Lynn]

36. For general interest, Klaus Barbie, the Nazi "Butcher of Lyon" moved to Bolivia,

and is featured in a new book:

Book claims France paid Nazi criminal commission for arms deal

Apr 17, 2008, 13:06 GMT

Paris - Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie, who died in a French prison, received a commission from the French government for an arms deal he helped negotiate with a former Bolivian dictator, according to extracts from a book published Thursday in the weekly L'Express.

According to the book, which consists of interviews with French General Pierre Aussaresses, Barbie was living in Bolivia under the name Klaus Altmann, when he helped negotiate a deal for tanks for the Bolivian strongman Hugo Banzer and the Austrian firm Steyr-Daimler- Puch.

At the time, in the late 1970s, Barbie - who had been head of the Gestapo in the French city of Lyon during the German occupation - was a wanted man and had been sentenced to death in absentia by a French court.

According to Aussaresses, the Bolivians wanted a more powerful cannon for the tank than the Austrians could provide, so Barbie procured French cannons. An arm of the French government paid Barbie a commission for the deal, the general said.

Known as the Butcher of Lyon, Barbie was discovered in the Bolivian capital La Paz by the French nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld and brought to France in 1983.

He was then re-tried and sentenced to life imprisonment because the death sentence had in the meantime been abolished in France. Barbie died in 1991.

Klaus BarbieKlaus Barbie Wikipedia:

~snip~
War crimes
He first set up camp at Hôtel Terminus. It was his time as head of the Gestapo of Lyon that earned him the name Butcher of Lyon. He personally tortured prisoners and is blamed for the deaths of 4,000 people.<1> He is best known primarily for one of his "cases", the arrest and torture of Jean Moulin, one of the highest-ranking members of the French Resistance. In April 1944, Barbie ordered the deportation to Auschwitz of a group of 44 Jewish children from an orphanage at Izieu.

In 1947, Barbie became an agent for the 66th Detachment of the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC).<2> In 1951, he fled to Juan Peron's Argentina with the help of a ratline organized by the Ustashi Roman Catholic priest Krunoslav Draganović. Asked by Barbie why he was going out of his way to help him escape, Draganovic responded, "We have to maintain a sort of moral reserve on which we can draw in the future."<3> He then emigrated to Bolivia, where he lived under the alias Klaus Altmann. Testimony of Italian insurgent Stefano Delle Chiaie before the Italian Parliamentary Commission on Terrorism suggests that Barbie took part in the "Cocaine Coup" of Luis García Meza Tejada, when the regime forced its way to power in Bolivia in 1980.<4>

While in Bolivia, Barbie managed a company that diverted Belgian and Swiss arms to Israel while Israel was still under a post-1967 war international arms embargo. "A report in the Israeli press alleges that Barbie also had frequent dealings with Israel concerning supplies of Israeli arms to Latin American countries and 'various underground organizations'" <5>


Trial
Barbie was identified in Bolivia as early as 1971 by the Klarsfelds (Nazi hunters), but it was only on January 19, 1983, that the newly-elected government of Hernán Siles Zuazo arrested and extradited him to France.

In 1984, Barbie was put on trial for crimes committed while he was in charge of the Gestapo in Lyon between 1942 and 1944. At the trial Barbie received support not only from Nazi apologists like François Genoud, but also from leftist lawyer Jacques Vergès. He had a reputation for attacking the French political system, particularly in French colonial territories. Vergès' strategy at the trial was to use the trial to expose war crimes committed by France since 1945. Indeed, many of the charges against Barbie were dropped, thanks to legislation that had protected people accused of crimes under the Vichy regime and in French Algeria.

His trial started on May 11, 1987, in Lyon — a jury trial before the Rhône Cour d'assises. In a rare move, the court allowed the trial to be filmed because of its historical value. The lead defense attorney was Jacques Vergès, who argued that Barbie's actions were no worse than the ordinary actions of colonialists worldwide, and that his trial was selective prosecution. The head prosecutor was Pierre Truche. During his trial, Klaus famously stated that: "When I stand before the throne of God I shall be judged innocent", indicating that he truly believed his actions were justified.

On July 4, 1987, Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, and died in prison of leukemia four years later, at the age of 77.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Barbie



Hugo Banzer, Bolivian U.S.-coup-assisted,U.S.-supported, bloody dictator

COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia
In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

[Judi Lynn]

37. How can this story NOT be related? "10 Bolivians, Uruguayan confirmed missing in Bolivia"

10 Bolivians, Uruguayan confirmed missing in Bolivia


www.chinaview.cn 2008-04-15 09:58:40

LIMA, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Ten Bolivian indigenous people and one Uruguayan journalist have disappeared, and are probably being held by landowners in Bolivia, Bolivia's Deputy Land Minister Alejandro Almaraz said Monday.

The group is thought to have been captured in a violent ambush in the Cordillera region by some landowners opposing the ongoing land reforms in the country, according to reports from La Paz, Bolivia's administrative capital. There was no immediate information about when they were taken.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, the first indigenous president in the country's history, has been pushing forward land reforms in some provinces, to redistribute some land from rich landowners to indigenous people.

More:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/15/content_7979410.htm

[Judi Lynn]

38. Land Reform Agents Try to Free Indians from Servitude in Bolivia

Q&A Land Reform Agents Try to Free Indians from Servitude in Bolivia
LA PAZ, Apr 24 (IPS) - Alto Parapetí, a rural area in the eastern Bolivian province of Santa Cruz, is caught up in a dispute between large landowners and the government, which is trying to free more than 2,700 Guaraní Indians from a state of servitude.

Forty inspectors from the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) are attempting to draw up a land registry in the area and restore the land rights of 19 indigenous communities in the area.

Alto Parapetí, in the province of Cordillera, is located 1,200 km southeast of the administrative capital, La Paz.

The inspectors’ access to the disputed land, where Guaraní families are living in a state of servitude and forced labour on remote estates, according to the ombudsman’s office and human rights groups, has been blocked by local landowners.

The medium and large landholders have the backing of the local government and the pro-business Santa Cruz Civic Committee, who are staunch opponents of the leftwing government of indigenous President Evo Morales.
(snip)

On three occasions since Feb. 29, landowners and their security guards have attacked the INRA team of inspectors with shovels, stones, fists and firearms to keep them off the land in dispute in Alto Parapetí, where the agrarian reform officials are attempting to grant land titles to Guaraní residents, who have never had the security of registered land ownership.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42120

~~~~~~~~~~~~
On edit, adding related: OAS warns of possible violence amid power-play in Bolivia
Apr 23, 2008, 22:42 GMT

Washington - A confrontation between Bolivia's government and wealthy regional governors in the east could soon descend into 'violence' and 'killings,' an official of the Organization of American States (OAS) warned Wednesday.

Dante Caputo, the OAS secretary for political affairs, said the 'possibility that the tension turns into conflict and confrontation is real,' during a special meeting of the permanent council of the OAS in Washington.

The fears stem from a referendum on greater autonomy to be held May 4 in the province of Santa Cruz, which lies at the heart of Bolivia's wealthy eastern region that holds the country's natural gas resources, as well as agriculture and industry.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous leader, opposes the referendum and has sought to boost federal tax revenues from the region for projects in the poorer west.

More:
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/americas/news/article_1401553.php/OAS_warns_of_possible_violence_amid_power-play_in_Bolivia

[Peace Patriot]

39. The days of U.S. domination of the OAS are over, so it's probably a good thing

that the OAS is involved in trying to mediate this dispute. They've done good work on transparent elections in South America (not so good in Mexico--but the Bushite interest in that case was probably overwhelming--and Guatemala was able to elect its first progressive government, ever, just recently).

The times they are a-changin'--no question about it. The OAS political line-up (or you can consult BoRev's hilarious map of Latin America at http://www.borev.net/2008/04/introducing_the_ap_style_guide.html) :

Venezuela - Bolivarian LEFT
Bolivia - Bolivarian LEFT
Ecuador - Bolivarian LEFT (kicking major U.S. air base the fuck out of their country)
Argentina - LEFT (close ally of Bolivarian LEFT)
Nicaragua - LEFT (close ally of Bolivarian LEFT - some U.S. "free trade" vestige from the past)
Uruguay - LEFT (told Bush to stick "free trade" where the sun don't shine)

Brazil - LEFT-CENTER (friendly with Bolivarian LEFT - some corp biofuel compromises)
Chile - LEFT-CENTER (progressive - anti-torture anyway, still pussy-footing around i.e., U.S. power and "free trade")
Paraguay - LEFT-CENTER (just elected the "bishop of the poor" who keeps saying, "I am not Hugo Chavez," but praises Bolivarian social justice goals, just overturned 60 years of corrupt rightwing rule, and opposes U.S. air base in Paraguay)
Guatemala - LEFT-CENTER (first progressive government, ever - opposed to "police state" methods i.e., drugs, crime)
Dominican Republic - LEFT-CENTER (I think - played a good mediating role on recent Colombia/U.S. bombing of Ecuador)

Costa Rica - CENTER (voted for CAFTA, liberals sacrificing labor to "raise all boats" in the region - long time democracy, good economy (up til now), dubious leadership)
Peru - CORRUPT CENTER ("free trade" corruption - shitty leadership)
Panama - CENTER-RIGHT? (not sure what's going on there, but it's a hub for Bush-U.S. military)
Mexico - CENTER-RIGHT (trying to privatize Mexico's oil, stole the last election from the leftists, bashed teachers' union heads in Oaxaca - however, when Bush visited, Calderon lectured him in public on the sovereignty of Latin American countries and mentioned Venezuela as an example - interesting, huh?)

Honduras - RIGHT (short life span for labor leaders, as we just learned; traditional U.S. launching pad for wars on Latin American leftists)
El Salvador - RIGHT (they've stopped murdering their bishops, anyway)

Colombia - FASCIST (labor leaders chainsawed and their body parts thrown into mass graves; leaders are mass murderers and major drug traffickers, and friends with Bush)

Is Cuba a member of the OAS? I dunno, actually. Given this line-up in the OAS (of which the Bush-U.S. is still a member - although Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua has proposed forming a new OAS without the U.S.), how do you think the white separatists of eastern Bolivia would fare, in a vote on splitting up Bolivia so they can take all the natural resources away from the indians? They have only two sure votes (Bush-U.S., Colombia, and a total of six possibles) in their favor, with a dozen solid votes against them, and others possible in reaction to Bush-U.S. interference. (Excepting Bush-U.S., the OAS was unanimous in condemning the Colombian (i.e., Bush-U.S.) murder expedition into Ecuador.) The dozen are committed democrats with a small d, with social justice goals (some more sincere than others). The Bolivarians and their friendly allies are a tight block who have strongly resisted U.S. interference.

The main issue in South America is the coming to power, at long last, of the poor, indigenous and mixed race majority. That is what is occurring with the success of democratic institutions. The white separatists in Bolivia will not find favor with the majority of governments--nor with the majority of Latin America's population. The separatists are bucking an overwhelming, historical, leftist tide. They are like the white South Africans, at the end of apartheid, and the white U.S. southerners at the end of segregation, digging in their heels to protect their property and privilege, and stoking up their egos with racism. It is going to take some "King Solomon" wisdom to mediate this U.S.-backed civil war. (Interesting that Bush-U.S.'s other ally in South America, Colombia, is also wracked with civil war. So is Iraq. It's a Bushite M.O.) I think the OAS is up to the task. I'm glad they are involved at this early stage. I expected them to become involved at some point. This makes me think that the dispute will be settled without bloodshed. I've been very worried about it. It is THE most worrisome spot in South America, as to Bushite destabilization/war plans. I understand that the Catholic bishops have been trying to mediate as well. And the new president of Paraguay (next door to the eastern Bolivian provinces)--a former bishop (the "bishop of the poor")--must certainly be concerned NOT to have break-away, fascist/Bush-U.S. supported provinces and a civil war on his border.

[Judi Lynn]

41. You will be thankful for the chance to read this background article on the autonomy referendum,

which was posted in the Latin America forum by DU'er "magbana:"

Bolivia in flames
April 27, 2008

The Bolivian crisis is much more serious than many people realize. Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega and Carlos Lage (standing in for Raúl Castro) had an emergency meeting last Wednesday, April 23 in Caracas; that’s how serious it is. Machetera is running to catch up with a series of interrelated translations, to shed more light on the events from a Latin American perspective. This is the first in that series.

Pablo Villegas explains for Rebelión why April may be the last month of life for many Bolivians, young Bolivians in particular. The article is long, so you may wish to copy, paste and print.

Bolivia in flames
April 27, 2008 ·

The Colombia/Santa Cruz Axis

To the “Mothers of Santa Cruz..we’ll spill their children’s blood responsibly.”

Pablo Villegas - Rebelión
Translation: Machetera

An Autonomy Without Law or Reason

The problem between the government and the autonomists is that the latter demand greater prerogatives than the states , comparable only to those assumed by Kosovo in its secession from Serbia.<1>

The autonomy movement confirmed its separatist character on April 3, with the presentation of a Governing Program for Santa Cruz to begin on May 4. This includes, among others, the creation of an Autonomous Assembly - a parliament in reality - a regional police force, autonomous exports and a self-contained tax system. Given the separatist character of the future government, an attempt to suspend the provision of fuel to departments outside Santa Cruz is a troubling possibility, one which would generate an extremely dangerous situation.

The autonomists, who’ve gone ahead with their openly secessionist actions, have hypocritically argued in their statute, their willingness to continue strengthening the unity of the Bolivian state and recently assured an OAS delegation that they were not trying to divide the country, yet days later, in a presentation of their governmental program, a prefect said: “After May 4th, I don’t know if the name of the highest authority in this Department will be Governor, President or simply Prefect.”(2)

The seditious position of the autonomists was radicalized after the call for a referendum on May 4, without respect to established norms, for which it was declared illegal by the National Electoral Court. Faced with this situation, people of such stature as the Prefect of Beni, E. Suárez (3) and the Secretary General of Beni’s Civic Committee, J.J. Hurtado, refused to recognize the president of the Court “because he is just another government employee.”(4) They also refused to recognize the Electoral Law, establishing their own “legality,” as acknowledged by the Vice President of the Parliamentarians of Beni, C. Velasco, who said, “What more legitimacy is wanted if many citizens are signing the books…in support of autonomy?” (5)

The autonomists also refuse to recognize any international law or organization. In their Statute, the only legal body they invoked was the OAS’s Inter-American Democratic Charter, but having selected this organization on the basis of its respect for legality, now according to Senator R. Yáñez of the Podemos party: “The OAS is not a credible organization due to the fact that it is run by Señor Miguel Insulza, Hugo Chávez’s acolyte and anointed one.”

The European Union also refused to send election observers because of the illegality. Therefore, the aforementioned senator stated that the agency “cannot decide hastily because it doesn’t know what’s really going on…”(6) and Klinsky, a Podemos parliamentarian, said that the referendum doesn’t need anyone’s recognition in order for the results to be valid.(7) The Senate President Ortiz (Podemos), for his part, stated that “there’s no ambassador anywhere who can say what is legal or illegal in Bolivia, and if they have said this, they would be meddling in internal affairs.” (8.)

More:
http://machetera.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/bolivia-in-flames/

[Judi Lynn]

42. The Conspiracy to Divide Bolivia Must Be Denounced (petition)

The process of changes in favor of the Bolivian majority is at risk of being brutally restrained. The rise to power of an Indigenous president with unprecedented support in that country and his programs of popular benefits and recovery of the natural resources have had to face the conspiracies of the oligarchy and United States interference from the very beginning.

In recent days the increase in conspiracy has reached its climax. The subversive and unconstitutional actions of the oligarchic groups to try to divide the Bolivian nation reflect the racist and elitist minds of these sectors and constitute a very dangerous precedent not only for the country's integrity, but for other countries in our region.

History shows with ample eloquence, the terrible consequences that the divisionary and separatist processes supported and induced by foreign interests have had for humanity.

Faced with this situation the signers below would like to express their support for the government of Evo Morales Ayma, for his policies for change and for the sovereign constituent process of the Bolivian people. At the same time we reject the so-called Santa Cruz Autonomy Statute due to its unconstitutionality and the attempt against the unity of a nation of our America.

More:
http://www.todosconbolivia.org/index.php?cont=declara&lang=2&declara=7

[Judi Lynn]

43. Guaraní Families in Forced Servitude (One of the charges against Ronald Larsen)

RIGHTS-BOLIVIA: Guaraní Families in Forced Servitude
By Bernarda Claure

LA PAZ, May 2 (IPS) - Efforts by Bolivia’s land reform authorities to free 167 Guaraní families living in servitude in Alto Parapetí, a rural area in the eastern Bolivian lowlands province of Santa Cruz, have brought to light a phenomenon that had remained largely hidden and ignored until now in the country’s vast Chaco plains region.

The scandal broke out a few weeks ago in Bolivia as the media began to report on the indigenous families’ appalling living conditions.

In the Chaco grasslands region, which covers the eastern and southeastern part of the provinces of Santa Cruz, Tarija and Chuquisaca and where temperatures regularly climb above 40 degrees Celsius, there are also another 1,050 families living in a kind of modern-day slavery.

A study carried out in 2007 by the German Development Service’s (DED) Programme to Foment Intercultural Dialogue in the Bolivian Chaco identified the municipalities in which the enslaved families live.

The spotlight is now focused on the municipality of Alto Parapetí in the province of Cordillera, where the government’s National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) decided early this year to enforce the land reform law and recover the property of around 20 Guaraní communities, in response to a legal claim to community land presented by indigenous people in the area in 1996.

Twelve years after the Guaraní’s initial claim to their ancestral land was filed, a team of INRA inspectors is attempting to regularise land ownership and redistribute idle or fraudulently obtained land -- by means of expropriation with economic compensation -- in the Chaco region.

But the INRA agents have run into violent opposition from white and mestizo (mixed-race) medium and large landowners, farmers and ranchers in eastern Bolivia, which concentrates most of the country's natural gas production, industry and gross domestic product, as opposed to the western highlands, which are home to the country’s poor indigenous majority.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42210

[Judi Lynn]

44. Land reform to free Indians from servitude in Bolivia

Land reform to free Indians from servitude in Bolivia

25 April 08 - Alto Parapetí, a rural area in the eastern Bolivian province of Santa Cruz, is caught up in a dispute between large landowners and the government, which is trying to free more than 2,700 Guaraní Indians from a state of servitude.

Interview by Franz Chávez/IPS, La Paz - Forty inspectors from the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) are attempting to draw up a land registry in the area and restore the land rights of 19 indigenous communities in the area.

Alto Parapetí, in the province of Cordillera, is located 1,200 km southeast of the administrative capital, La Paz.

The inspectors’ access to the disputed land, where Guaraní families are living in a state of servitude and forced labour on remote estates, according to the ombudsman’s office and human rights groups, has been blocked by local landowners.

The medium and large landholders have the backing of the local government and the pro-business Santa Cruz Civic Committee, who are staunch opponents of the leftwing government of indigenous President Evo Morales.

The presence of government inspectors in the area has fanned the flames of a conflict with the Morales administration, which is attempting to regularise land ownership and redistribute idle or fraudulently obtained land (involving expropriation with economic compensation) in the extensive plains and forests of Bolivia’s Chaco region, which covers the eastern and southeastern portions of the provinces of Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca and Tarija.

More:
http://www.humanrights-geneva.info/Land-reform-to-free-Indians-from,3049

[Judi Lynn]

45. Landowners’ Rebellion: Slavery and Saneamiento in Bolivia

Landowners’ Rebellion: Slavery and Saneamiento in Bolivia
Written by Alexander van Schaick
Monday, 28 April 2008

In recent weeks, cattle ranchers and landowners in Bolivia’s Cordillera province, located in the south of the department of Santa Cruz, resorted to blockades and violence in order to halt the work of Bolivia’s National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA – Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria). As a referendum on Departmental Autonomy for Santa Cruz draws near, the conflict calls into question the central government’s ability to enforce the law in the Bolivian lowlands.

The dispute centers on the region of Alto Parapetí, south of the provincial capital of Camiri, where INRA is currently trying to carry out land reform and create an indigenous territory for the Guaraní indigenous people. Additionally, it claims various communities of Guaraní live and work on white or mestizo-owned ranches in conditions of semi-slavery.

For nine days landowners and their supporters blockaded major highways and virtually sealed off Alto Parapetí. The blockades continued until Bolivia’s Vice-minister of Land, Alejandro Almaráz, left the region on April 18. At the end of February, Ronald Larsen, a major landowner in Santa Cruz, and other ranchers took Almaráz hostage at gunpoint for several hours when he and other government officials tried to enter the region.

An Incomplete Land Reform

In the 1990s and up to the present, the Guaraní Nation and Bolivia’s other lowland indigenous peoples mobilized to force the national government to recognize their right to their ancestral territories. In 1996, the first administration of Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada passed a land reform law that gave Bolivia’s indigenous people the opportunity to claim their Communal Territory of Origin (Territorio Comunitario de Origen or TCO).

The 1996 law – Ley N°1715 – reorganized the country’s land law and agrarian reform institutions. It also established INRA to resolve land conflicts and issue titles through a process called saneamiento. In this process, INRA would establish property limits, to look into whether property owners had obtained land legally and to investigate whether they were putting their land to socially or economically productive use. (Latifundios, or huge tracks of idle land used to speculate on rising land prices or as liens to obtain loans, are banned by the Bolivian constitution.) Finally, INRA would resolve land conflicts through mediation and legal processes, title TCOs for indigenous people, and establish parcels of state-owned land for distribution. In the end, landowners would own land with clear title. INRA was to carry out saneamiento throughout all of Bolivia between 1996 and 2006.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1254/31/

[Judi Lynn]

46. You may want to read what Time Magazine has to say about this guy:

U.S. Rancher in Bolivia Showdown
Friday, May. 02, 2008 By JEAN FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY/LA PAZ

In his native Montana, Ronald Larsen's current legal straits might be the stuff of an old-fashioned Western movie: A cattle rancher who believes the government and its allies are unfairly trying to seize his land, and picks up a rifle to signal his displeasure. But in contemporary Bolivia, where Larsen makes his home, his recent clash with the authorities is but another instance of rising tension over land-ownership between, on the one hand, left-wing President Evo Morales and his supporters among Bolivia's indigenous population, and on the other, political opponents backed by the country's wealthy eastern elite.
(snip)

Both the autonomy and land-reform issues have sparked violent unrest over the past year, pitting the largely white farmers and ranchers of Bolivia's more affluent lowland east against the impoverished indigenous majority who back Morales, himself an Aymara Indian and the nation's first indigenous President. Little surprise, then, that a national furor has erupted over a confrontation involving government officials and Larsen, 64, who along with his two sons, owns 17 properties totaling 141,000 acres throughout Bolivia, three times as much land as the country's largest city. (Larsen insists his holdings amount to less than 25,000 acres.)

Last month, when Almaraz and aides tried to pass through Larsen's Santa Cruz property — they insist it was the only route by which to reach to nearby indigenous Guarani residents to whom they were delivering land deeds — witnesses say the caravan was fired on by Larsen and his son Duston, 29. The incident was followed by two weeks of rancher roadblocks and violent protests that left 40 indigenous people injured.

Larsen, who arrived in Bolivia in 1968, told a La Paz newspaper that Almaraz's vehicle had entered his property at around 3 a.m. Almaraz, he said, "had not presented any identification. He was drunk and being abusive ... I quieted him with a bullet to his tire. That's the story." But the government insists this wasn't Larsen's first run-in with Almaraz: the rancher is accused of kidnapping the vice minister for eight hours in February. The two alleged incidents prompted the government to file a criminal complaint of "sedition, robbery and other crimes" against Larsen and his son two weeks ago. Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to press formal charges. Neither father nor son has responded publicly to the accusations, and neither responded to repeated requests by TIME for comment.

U.S.-educated Duston Larsen, referring to Morales' efforts to empower Bolivia's indigenous, wrote on his Myspace page in 2007, "I used to think democracy was the best form to govern a country but ... should a larger more uneducated group of people (70%) be in charge of making decisions, running a country and voting?" The fact that Duston, in 2004, won the Mr. Bolivia beauty pageant, in the eyes of many government supporters, puts him in the company of the country's European-oriented elite. (That same year, Miss Bolivia, Gabriela Oviedo, also from the country's east, suggested Bolivia shouldn't be considered an indigenous nation: "I'm from the other side of the country. We are tall, and we are white people, and we know English.) Morales backers say it is precisely this disdain for the indigenous that is driving what they call the secessionist agenda behind Sunday's autonomy referendum — which is not legally sanctioned by the National Electoral Court or recognized by the Organization of American States. But autonomy supporters say they're only seeking states' rights on questions such as taxation, police and public works. "This is a historic demand based on long-standing differences with a La Paz-based central government," says Edilberto Osinaga, managing director of the Chamber of Eastern Farmers.

More:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1737244,00.html?xid=rss-world

[Judi Lynn]

47. NY Times: American Rancher at Odds With Bolivian Government

May 9, 2008
American Rancher at Odds With Bolivian Government
By SIMON ROMERO
CARAPARICITO, Bolivia

~snip~
Mr. Almaraz, a bearded official who shows up at meetings chewing coca leaves, said he was kidnapped and held for a day on Mr. Larsen’s ranch. He responded to the incident by naming the American rancher and his son Duston in a criminal complaint for “sedition, robbery and other crimes.”

Faced with a legal tussle over the standoff, Mr. Larsen now claims that he did not shoot at Mr. Almaraz’s vehicle. “The tires were punched out with sharpened screwdrivers,” Mr. Larsen said. “If I’d have been shooting at people that day, there would have been dead and injured.”

At stake is the 37,000-acre Caraparicito ranch, which Mr. Larsen bought in 1969 for $55,000, and other holdings of more than 104,000 acres, according to government estimates. Mr. Larsen, who as a protective measure transferred ownership of almost all his land to his three sons, who are Bolivian citizens, declined to say how much land his family owned.

With his reserved demeanor, Mr. Larsen, a descendant of Danish immigrants to the American Midwest, makes it seem as if it were the most natural thing in the world to light out for Bolivia in the 1960s, after he got bored working for a year as a manager at a J. C. Penney department store.

“A buddy of mine in the Peace Corps told me Bolivia was a good place to invest,” he said. “When I got here you could buy land as far as you could see.”
(snip)

Within months of his arrival in 2004, he won the Mr. Bolivia beauty pageant, after compensating for his American-accented Spanish at the finale by shouting, “Viva Bolivia!” before a stunned panel of judges. Shortly afterward, he was cast as himself in a Bolivian comedy about cocaine smuggling entitled “Who Killed the White Llama?”

Now Duston is focused on guarding the family’s land, ahead of his marriage to Claudia Azaeda, a talk show host and former beauty pageant winner. Depicted in newspaper cartoons as a gun-slinging “Mr. Gringo Bolivia,” he basks in the showdown with Mr. Morales, an Aymara Indian who is Bolivia’s first indigenous president.

“Evo Morales is a symbol of ignorance, having never even finished high school,” Duston Larsen said in an interview on the porch of the 19th-century ranch house at Caraparicito, amid the howls of his two pet spider monkeys, Harley and Tuto.

He vehemently asserted that ranch hands and their families were free to come and go, after the Larsens and other ranchers were faced with government claims that ranches in their region held their Guaraní workers in servitude; the government has used the charge to move ahead with land seizures.

The reality of life at Caraparicito and other ranches may be more complex than either side suggests. At Caraparicito, workers get work contracts, food, clothing, housing and education for their children at a two-room schoolhouse on the ranch. But wages remain dismally low with senior farmhands earning less than $6 a day.
(snip)

In 2004, the French energy giant Total discovered one of the largest unexploited natural gas deposits in Bolivia, called Incahuasi, on the ranch. The rights to such discoveries automatically go to the government in Bolivia.

But Mr. Larsen said he believed that one reason the central government was so interested in his land was because of its natural gas. President Morales could bypass the province of Santa Cruz in reaching deals related to the natural gas field if he is able to settle Indians on the land who are sympathetic to his government.
(snip)

Juan Carlos Rojas, the director of Bolivia’s land reform agency, said the battle got personal when Mr. Larsen issued a veiled threat against him and other officials when the American rancher referred to a well-known incident in the 1980s in which he shot dead three intruders inside his home.

“Larsen made it clear that he was above the law,” said Mr. Rojas, who emerged from another standoff at Caraparicito in April with his face bloodied from a rock-throwing exchange. Echoing comments by Mr. Morales, he said Santa Cruz’s newly approved autonomy was “illegal” in his view.

“The last I looked, the Larsens were living in Bolivia and not the Republic of Santa Cruz,” Mr. Rojas said. “Despite Ronald Larsen’s resistance, we are going to get into his ranch.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/world/americas/09bolivia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=world