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against all of Latin America, and clearly against the indigenous Bolivian people. You really need to spend some time learning about the subject you attempt to discuss with so much opinion, not knowledge. So many Americans, at some point in their adulthood, start realizing they have been dreadfully misinformed about U.S. policy, most particularly the policy of U.S. idiot homicidal Republican Presidents who view Latin America as their "backyard" and the people as 2nd class inferiors, born to be exploited by U.S. multinationals. You're going to be left behind while everyone else has been discussing subjects from a foothold in reality, while you will never even slightly grasp the subject if you don't get busy and do your research. Books are available, if you can spare the time from the message board, and god knows so much is available to you on what your pResident calls the "internet S". How Richard M. Nixon spent American taxpayers' hard-earned money: 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~~~~~~~~~~~~~Banzer came back after the info. above was published, to serve as the Bolivian President in the 1990's, during which time he arranged for the Bush-connected Bechtel company to privatize Bolivia's water, raise the price of water until it was tearing the majority of citizens' daily lives apart struggling so hard to be able to buy water for their most meager needs, then Bechtel started trying to charge them for any rainwater they could try to collect in barrels on their land, to drink. Bechtel claimed to own the rain by then. When this filthy exploitation broke the people's backs, they had no alternative but to pour into the streets to protest, at which time School of the Americas-trained snipers picked them off. More expert use of U.S. taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. Someone won that confrontation, which took human lives, lives surrendered trying to protect against absolute evil greed by Bechtel. Bechtel LEFT. They are GONE. Your side LOST. Now you're attempting to claim Evo Morales is lying, has so much time on his hands, is so innately dishonest he's inventing facts. That would make him a Republican. You are so wildly off base, and if you took the time to do the most basic research you'd know why everyone knows how wrong you are. Bush's Defense Department under Rumsfeld knew Morales was going to be elected in a landslide and went behind the back of the sitting Bolivian President prior to the election to confer with top officers in the Bolivian military, and arrange to spirit out missiles, stripping them out of the Bolivian defense capacity, and took them to an airbase in Texas. From the Washington Post: Bolivia's Defense Chiefs Ousted in Missile Scandal
Reuters
Wednesday, January 18, 2006; Page A11
LA PAZ, Bolivia, Jan. 18 -- A scandal in Bolivia over surface-to-air missiles prompted the defense minister's resignation and the army chief's dismissal Tuesday, plunging the military into a political crisis days before socialist president-elect Evo Morales is to be sworn into office.
The outgoing interim president, Eduardo Rodriguez, said he had accepted the resignation of Defense Minister Gonzalo Mendez, and fired Gen. Marcelo Antezana over apparent irregularities in the destruction in the United States of a batch of Chinese-made missiles in October.
"I have relieved the commander of the army of his duties and accepted the defense minister's resignation," Rodriguez told reporters after a cabinet meeting Tuesday.
At the height of campaigning for last month's presidential elections, Morales denounced the destruction of the 28 to 30 Chinese HN-5 shoulder-fired missiles, the only arms of their kind in the military's arsenal.
Antezana, the army chief, told reporters that Washington initiated the drive to destroy the missiles because it feared Morales would win the presidency of the South American country. More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011800124.htmlAlso: 23 December 2005
Evo Morales faces his first problem: what happened to Bolivia's air defence missiles?
President-Elect Evo Morales of Bolivia met the outgoing President Eduardo Rodriguez to discuss the handover of power yesterday. However, the new President faces a problem with the USA even before taking office. Put simply, what happened to Bolivia's air-defence missiles?
The country had 28 or 30 Chinese built HN-SA hand-held anti-aircraft missiles that seem to have vanished from the military's arsenal. By all accounts they were stolen by the American Embassy with the conivence of Bolivian military officers, during May or June of this year. It is reported that they were taken aboard an unmarked C-130 transport aircraft and removed from the country.
When Evo Morales first made these allegations last month, the Bolivian army claimed that the missiles had been disposed of as part of an "annual disposal of obsolete equipment," and the army also claimed that the weapons were still in the country. However, army reports which were released this month show that the missiles, which cost Bolivia about £1,000,000, were well-maintained and had ten more years of service left in them. More: http://www.the-exile.info/2005_12_01_archive.htmlAlso: Bolivian army chief fired over missile flap
Chinese-made, shoulder-fired weapons were sent to U.S. for destruction
MSNBC News Services
updated 8:49 a.m. CT, Wed., Jan. 18, 2006
LA PAZ, Bolivia - Outgoing President Eduardo Rodriguez fired Bolivia’s army chief on Tuesday over his decision to have 28 Chinese shoulder-launched missiles destroyed in the United States.
Gen. Marcelo Antezana later appeared on Bolivian television to say Rodriguez had made a “bad interpretation” of his role in the October destruction of the missiles, which led to accusations of treason by Evo Morales, then a presidential candidate.
Morales — who later won elections in December — revealed the destruction of the missiles by the United States and said it had left Bolivia with almost no air defense.
~snip~
On Tuesday, government news agency ABI reported that Rodriguez would make a formal inquiry with the U.S. Embassy to investigate their role in the matter. More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10774121/More of your pResident's handiwork: Bush Spending U.S. Tax Dollars to Foment Unrest in Bolivia
By Benjamin Dangl, The Progressive. Posted March 10, 2008.
Documents show that Washington is backing Right-wing opposition to Bolivia's democratic reforms.
~snip~
From the Bush Administration's perspective, that turns out to mean Morales's opponents. Declassified documents and interviews on the ground in Bolivia prove that the Bush Administration is using U.S. taxpayers' money to undermine the Morales government and coopt the country's dynamic social movements--just as it has tried to do recently in Venezuela and traditionally throughout Latin America.
Much of that money is going through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In July 2002, a declassified message from the U.S. embassy in Bolivia to Washington included the following message: "A planned USAID political party reform project aims at implementing an existing Bolivian law that would . . . over the long run, help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors." MAS refers to Morales's party, which, in English, stands for Movement Toward Socialism.
Morales won the presidency in December 2005 with 54 percent of the vote, but five regional governments went to rightwing politicians. After Morales's victory, USAID, through its Office of Transition Initiatives, decided "to provide support to fledgling regional governments," USAID documents reveal.
Throughout 2006, four of these five resource-rich lowland departments pushed for greater autonomy from the Morales-led central government, often threatening to secede from the nation. U.S. funds have emboldened them, with the Office of Transition Initiatives funneling "116 grants for $4,451,249 to help departmental governments operate more strategically," the documents state.
"USAID helps with the process of decentralization," says Jose Carvallo, a press spokesperson for the main rightwing opposition political party, Democratic and Social Power. "They help with improving democracy in Bolivia through seminars and courses to discuss issues of autonomy."
"The U.S. Embassy is helping this opposition," agrees Raul Prada, who works for Morales's party. Prada is sitting down in a crowded La Paz cafe and eating ice cream. His upper lip is black and blue from a beating he received at the hands of Morales's opponents while Prada was working on the new constitutional assembly. "The ice cream is to lessen the swelling," he explains. The Morales government organized this constitutional assembly to redistribute wealth from natural resources and guarantee broader access to education, land, water, gas, electricity, and health care for the country's poor majority. I had seen Prada in the early days of the Morales administration. He was wearing an indigenous wiphala flag pin and happily chewing coca leaves in his government office. This time, he wasn't as hopeful. He took another scoop of ice cream and continued: "USAID is in Santa Cruz and other departments to help fund and strengthen the infrastructure of the rightwing governors."
In August 2007, Morales told a diplomatic gathering in La Paz, "I cannot understand how some ambassadors dedicate themselves to politics, and not diplomacy, in our country. . . . That is not called cooperation. That is called conspiracy." Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said that the U.S. Embassy was funding the government's political opponents in an effort to develop "ideological and political resistance." One example is USAID's financing of Juan Carlos Urenda, an adviser to the rightwing Civic Committee, and author of the Autonomy Statute, a plan for Santa Cruz's secession from Bolivia. More: http://www.alternet.org/audits/77572/ |
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