Plan to send natural gas to U.S. has fans in Bolivia

[Say_What]

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TARIJA, Bolivia (AP) -- On roads lined with cacti, women in braids lead donkeys through sleepy valleys and rolling brown hills dotted by the occasional vineyard. This sun-parched landscape also hides a secret bounty that toppled a president: abundant underground reserves of natural gas.

In southern Bolivia, a world away from the capital of La Paz -- epicenter of recent deadly street riots over plans to send surplus gas abroad -- the street lights are hung with banners reading: "Yes to the exportation of gas."

Thousands marched last week in Tarija, this southern Bolivian city, to demand that the $6 billion project go forward.

Today, the gas-export plan that many argue could lift Bolivia out of its astonishing poverty now threatens to fall apart after it sparked weeks of upheaval that toppled the government of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=75702

[Say_What]

1. The U.S. Response to Bolivia and Venezuela:

A Study in Opposites

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Hoping for consistency from the Bush administration is something like playing the lottery: You play the game, but deep down, you know you're going to lose. But even for this administration, the U.S. response to recent events in Bolivia and Venezuela reveals cynical and transparent contradictions.

Last year on April 11, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela was overthrown in a short-lived coup. In less than two days he was returned to power due to the overwhelming support of Venezuelans, who had voted him into office by a landslide. President Chávez was, and still is, a democratically elected president.

Last week in Bolivia, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to demand the resignation of an unpopular president, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. They won that resignation. President Sánchez de Lozada was a democratically elected president.

When it became clear that Bolivia's leader was in political trouble, the U.S. made strong statements in support of him and of Bolivia's democracy.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1025-02.htm

[Say_What]

2. Coca farmers' hero holds sway in Bolivia

US dismayed as socialist becomes nation's power broker

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He has been described as the new Simón Bolívar, the visionary soldier who to tried to unite the South American continent. His own model, judging by the poster fixed to the wall of his office in the parliament building of the Bolivian capital of La Paz, is more recent: Che Guevara.

Whatever happens in Bolivia in the near future, it will not be without the say-so of Evo Morales: champion of cocaine producers and indigenous peoples; socialist, anti-imperialist and America's declared enemy.

...Washington has been horrified by the appearance of a series of left-leaning South American leaders rejecting its assumption of leadership of the region - including Lula in Brazil. Morales wants Bolivia's cocaleros to be allowed to grow and market their cocaine after years of US-funded efforts to stem production, the most successful eradication programme of America's drug wars.

Morales rejects the 'neo-colonialism' of the US in South America, calling for an anti-capitalist, local, indigenous and socialist future for his country. And Bolivians are listening.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1071182,00.html

[VermontDem2004]

3. Az Daily Sun, Flagstaff Newspaper

I never seen anyone use an AZDaily sun link. Well sorry to get off subject.

[Say_What]

4. LULA REDUCES DEBT OF LA PAZ AND PROJECTS INVESTMENT IN BOLIVIA

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The Brazilian government will lift nearly the entire bilateral debt from Bolivia. The new was referred by the Ambassador of Brasilia in La Paz, Antonio Lisboa Mena Goncalves, stating that “the remission of the debt is unconditional; we will only renegotiate a minimum margin, probably of around 5%, of the $52-million loan we granted to Bolivia without posing any conditions”. La Paz will therefore need to pay a maximum of $3-million of its current foreign debt with Brasilia. Mena Goncalves also announced the intention of Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula Da Silva to invest around $780-million in Bolivia, the majority of which (around $600-million) will go toward infrastructure projects, particularly communications. With this remission and investment plan Lula aims to obtain two results: lending a hand to a neighbour in serious economic and social crisis, which in the past weeks brought Bolivia to the edge of civil war; and reducing without resorting to the military the high inflow of illegal immigrants from Bolivia into Brazil seeking better fortune.

http://www.misna.org/news.asp?lng=1&id=99740

[Judi Lynn]

5. Wow! So un-American!

Isn't it astonishing seeing what could be the beginning of a new Latin American cooperative effort to gain solidarity among the South/Central American countries?

They have always divided and conquered, completely at the mercy of large, brutal, greedy corporations and U.S. interference.