Bolivia may miss the boat on natural gas exports

[Say_What]

Spin, spin, spin...


<clips>

LIMA, Peru, Oct 20 (Reuters) - While Bolivia was rocked by widespread protests last week against natural gas exports, demonstrations that quickly led the country's president to resign, neighboring Peru was moving ahead in the race to grab North American market share.

The bitter "gas war" in Bolivia, where popular protests toppled President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, has painted export plans as a way to rob South America's poorest country of its natural resources.

Peru, meanwhile, is preparing to fulfill its end of an 18-year deal to sell 2.7 million tonnes of gas a year to Mexico from its Camisea field.

"Peru has shown the North American market that it has the capacity, the will and the political backing to deliver natural gas while in Bolivia we're stuck in existential angst that is giving Camisea a big advantage," said Carlos Alberto Lopez, Bolivia's former deputy minister of hydrocarbons.

<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031020/fin_enr/bolivia_gas_1>

[DuctapeFatwa]

1. So they don't have enough mercenaries to occupy Bolivia

without decimating troop strength in Colombia.

[Say_What]

2. Bolivian protest chief wants Indian nation

<clips>

Santiago, Oct 20, 2003 (EFE via COMTEX) -- A Chilean newspaper on Monday quoted a leader of the street protests that forced a change of government in neighboring Bolivia as saying his radical highland Indian organization seeks establishment of a self-ruling "indigenous nation."

Felipe Quispe, head of the CSUTCB farm workers' federation, also blasted the other principal leader of radicalized Indians and small farmers, Evo Morales.

Morales, a national lawmaker, is the head of the Movement Toward Socialism and leader of the Andean nation's powerful coca leaf growers' union.

"Evo Morales has a fascist ideology. He is very close to neo-liberalism," Quispe said in an interview published here Monday by La Nacion daily.

..."He (Morales) thinks he's already a member of the government, but we're not seeking a refounding of Bolivia, like Mesa wants. We're seeking self-determination as an Indian nation," the peasant leader said.

<http://investor.stockpoint.com/leftnav/newspaper.asp?SectionID=90&SubSectionID=&LastLevel=false&SearchCriteria=bolivia&SearchCriteriaType=2&Fixed=0&SearchSection=90&PckgID=8&SearchString=bolivia&UPSearchCriteriaType=255>



Bolivian President Carlos Mesa, center, gestures as he listens to indigenous leader and MIP (Moviemiento Indigena Pachakuti) party deputy Felipe Quispe, right, delivering his speech to thousands of indigenous people at the Plaza de los Heroes in La Paz, Bolivia on Monday, Oct. 20, 2003. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

[rog]

3. Thank you.

I just wanted to thank you for posting the articles on Bolivia today. This is an incredible story, as it moves forward.

.rog.

[Say_What]

4. You're welcome,

NarcoNews shut down as of Saturday, but this site looks as though it may carry on where NN left off:

<clips>

Mesa: "A Cato of Coca" Is On the Table

The new Bolivian presidency of Carlos Mesa will rise or fall depending on how he deals with the issue of the coca plant.

He didn't mention the C-word during his Friday night acceptance speech, but according to ABI news agency, he mentioned it on Sunday. The article is a bit wooden - damn those AP and NYT stylebooks that put everyone to sleep - but it contains some possible clues as to how the new Bolivian president may deal with the issue.

The adminstration of disgraced ex-president Goni adamantly refused to consider the proposal by coca growers that families be allowed to grow one "cato" (a 40-by-40 meter plot) of coca without being persecuted by police or invaded by the military. The US Embassy, always preferring to go after poor farmers while allowing narco-bankers off scot free, violently opposed this proposal.

According to this report (I'm looking for a link now), Mesa says, in a position very distinct from that of Goni, that a cato of coca per family is an acceptable matter for negotiation.

http://www.bigleftoutside.com/

[Say_What]

5. BOLIVIA: THE COUNTRY THAT WANTS TO EXIST

<clips>

...The year 2000 featured the so-called ''water war'' in Cochabamba. The peasants marched from the valleys and blockaded the city, which also rose up. They were met with bullets and tear gas as the government declared martial law. But the collective rebellion continued, unstoppable, until in the final clash the water was wrested from the grip of the Bechtel Corporation and restored to the people and their fields. (Bechtel, based in California, is now receiving relief from President Bush, who has awarded it multi-million-dollar contracts in Iraq.)

A few months ago, another popular explosion throughout Bolivia vanquished nothing less than the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF made them pay dearly for the defeat--more than thirty assassinations by the so-called forces of order--but the people succeeded in their task. The government had no option but to annul the payroll tax that the IMF had demanded.

Today, there's the gas war. Bolivia contains enormous reserves of natural gas. Sanchez de Lozada called this false privatization ''capitalization,', but the country that wants to exist showed it has a good memory. Would it allow a rerun of the old story of the country's riches evaporating in foreign hands? ''Gas is our right,'' proclaimed posters at the demonstration. The people demanded and continue to demand that the gas be used for Bolivia and that the country not submit again to the dictatorship of its underground resources. The right to self-determination, so often invoked, so rarely respected, begins with this.

Popular disobedience derailed a juicy deal for Pacific LNG, comprised of Repsol, British Gas, and Panamerican Gas, known to be a partner of Enron, renowned for its virtuous ways. Everything indicated that the corporation stood to make ten dollars for every one invested.

As for the fugitive Sanchez de Lozada, he lost the presidency but he won't be losing much sleep. Though he has the crime of killing more than eighty demonstrators on his conscience, it wasn't his first bloodbath. This champion of modernization is not bothered by anything that can't turn a profit. In the end, he speaks and thinks in English--not the English of Shakespeare but that of Bush.

http://www.progressive.org/dec03/gal1203.html

[Say_What]

6. Peru's Ex-Pres Garcia: Bolivia Revolt Won't Spread

More spin...

<clips>

.... Garcia added that the Bolivian revolt was a reaction to an economic model that has excluded the poor.

He said the movement that pushed Sanchez de Lozada out of office and into exile runs the risk of hurting the image of Latin America and causing investors to flee.

"What happened in Bolivia is part of a generalized reply of the poorest of Latin America," he said.

"It is a product of the exaggerations of a model that hasn't been able to reform itself," he added.

<http://framehosting.dowjonesnews.com/sample/samplestory.asp?StoryID=2003102019100002&Take=1>

[DUreader]

7. NARCO NEWS RETIREES ASSOCIATION STARTS A BETTING POOL: Who falls first?

http://www.bigleftoutside.com/archives/000183.php


Here at the retirees club, Luis Gómez and I have bet a bottle of Huari, the champagne of Bolivian beers, on the following
question:

Who falls first?

Alejandro Toledo of Perú?

or

Lucio Gutiérrez of Ecuador?

Gómez says Perú.

I say Ecuador.

I say Ecuador because traitors tend to get dealt with more rapidly than people who you always knew were against you. And the
Ecuador social and indigenous movements are super-organized - they got Gutérrez elected in the first place - and they're
justifiably angry. And they toppled the last government. And the country is majority indigenous.

[Say_What]

10. When Gutierrez was elected, I hoped he would be like Lula or Chavez

but he quickly showed his colors when he became the Bushies lap-dog-of-the-month.

This clip from the Christian Science Monitor in an article titled, "People power rules in S. America":

...Regional analysts are closely watching Peru's Alejandro Toledo and Ecuador's Lucio Gutiérrez, who have radically veered from their original campaign planks and now have less than 20 percent support in public opinion polls. Mr. Toledo was forced to impose a 30-day national state of emergency in May to squelch strikes gripping the country, and Mr. Gutiérrez has ditched the coalition that brought him to power, governing today on an ad hoc basis.

...While the details may differ from country to country, liberalized economic policies and accusations of gross corruption are common threads linking the fate of South America's newly deposed leaders.

Nations here have been following a US-led effort to open their economies since the mid-1980s. Bolivia was the first to implement sweeping changes in 1985, and nearly every nation followed suit. The changes - selling off state-owned companies, reducing tariffs and subsidies, and shrinking the role of government - have paid off on the macroeconomic front. Exports across the region are up, international reserves are solid, and four-digit inflation is gone.

These positive trends, however, have not translated into improved living conditions for the vast majority of people. Poverty has increased in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela in the past decade; foreign debts have ballooned with new loans and mismanagement; and gains from privatization were funneled into the hands of a few.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1021/p06s01-woam.html

[alcuno]

8. I listened to an incredible interview on Saturday on the

natural gas pipeline. It's archived at http://thisishell.net Northwestern University Radio.

The interviewee was in some city in Bolivia I cannot pronounce or spell.

[Say_What]

9. Couldn't find the Saturday interview, but Democracy Now!! had interviews

today with Luiz Gomez, reporter for the Mexican newspaper La Jornda and the website Narco News and Jim Shultz, executive director of the Democracy Center--both were in Bolivia. YOu can listen/watch at this link.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/20/1454205

[Judi Lynn]

11. Guess they could save themselves a lot of trouble

if they simply gave up and asked _Bush to take possession of their country, right?

This article says that the recently departed, although, unlike _Bush, ELECTED President actually appealed to _Bush, who told him to put a sock in it:

(snip) New Latin America movement: mass discontent
By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
Published October 21, 2003


MIAMI - In November last year the president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, visited Washington to ask for assistance.

In a meeting with President Bush he pleaded for a pause in the eradication of Bolivia's coca crops, the plant used to process cocaine. He also asked for extra financial aid.

His country was in dire straits, he warned. Without urgent help his government would collapse.

"We are not discussing that," Bush told Sanchez de Lozada, according to someone who was in the room. (snip/...)

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/10/21/Worldandnation/New_Latin_America_mov.shtml