First, the nationalization, in 1952, from
Time Magazine:BOLIVIA: Nationalization Day
Monday, Nov. 10, 1952
On a windswept field near Bolivia's big Catavi tin mine, President Victor Paz Estenssoro stepped to a rude table one day last week and with a golden pen signed the decree nationalizing the country's three big tin companies. Twenty thousand black-shawled women and tin-helmeted men yelled vivas. A leather-jacketed Indian stepped to the President's side and sounded the ancient Inca battle call on a curved bull horn. That night bonfires burned all over the Bolivian Andes, and the cobbled streets of La Paz echoed with the din of jubilant partisans firing off the rifles and pistols they had seized from government arsenals and routed army units last April during the uprising of Paz Estenssoro's totalitarian Movement of National Revolution.
Time to Explain. The tin decree, climaxing long years of bloody struggle, was the most important act of nationalization in Latin America since Mexico expropriated its foreign oil companies in 1938. The three nationalized companies—Patińo,* Hochschild, Aramayo—produce 72% of the country's tin. Though Bolivia now mines only 15% of the world's tin, it still accounts for virtually all that is produced in the Western Hemisphere. And tin is still backward Bolivia's one cash crop, providing 80% of the country's foreign exchange. Last week's decree set a tentative valuation on the expropriated properties of $21,750,000—barely a third of what the companies think their investments in Bolivia are worth.
Nevertheless, President Paz Estenssoro hopes to make a peaceful settlement with the big three. He has insisted that "lawful compensation must be paid." On the eve of nationalization, the companies received what appeared to be a demand for $505 .million in unreported foreign exchange and $15 million in allegedly evaded income taxes (TIME, Nov. 3). Last week the President's experts explained that this was not a final reckoning. The implication was that the tin companies, if they agree to dicker instead of fighting the regime by litigation and fomenting embargoes abroad, might still wind up with some cash compensation for their shareholders (including the U.S. citizens who reportedly own 26% of Patino Mines & Enterprises stock).
More:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,817198,00.html~~~~~Important facts to consider:
Dealing with the devil
~snip~
Whereas the introduction of the welfare state was arguably a conscious move on behalf of the US government to pacify an agitated working class, the election of the MAS was far less cynical. In the case of Bolivia, large proportions of the population were being denied access to the basic necessities of life not because of a failure of capital, but because 20 years of unchecked privatisation had torn millions of people from their land and livelihoods. Furthermore, the coca eradication programmes, part of the US 'war on drugs', led to an estimated 50-70,000 job losses annually during 1997-2002.
These included many people who had become cocaleros (coca growers) after being forced out of the tin mines following their privatisation in the 1980s. When the World Bank demanded the privatisation of the water services in 2000, appropriating the infrastructure and more than doubling water bills, the people fought back.
More:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/dealing-with-the-devil/~~~~~Thirst For Justice
by Maude Barlow
posted Jun 30, 2001
~snip~
Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America, and since the 1960s, a series of military leaders,notably Hugo Banzer, a Pinochet-style dictator, has presided over deepening economic and social unrest. In 1980, a civilian government came to power, but corruption and nepotism abounded, particularly in the current coalition government led by none other than Hugo Banzer.
Banzer and his coalition adopted the tenets of globalization and complied with the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank. Under these institutions' structural adjustment programs, the powerful tin miners' union was brought to its knees and the country's oil reserves and forests were plundered.
More:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/reclaiming-the-commons/429~~Abbreviated bio. on Bolivian President Hugo Banzer, supported in his coup to seize control of Bolivia's people by the United States. This was written in 1995, so it doesn't contain the last crimes against Bolivians he committed in his first
elected presidency before dying of cancer:
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.
More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html~~~~~Behind the 'tin war' in Huanuni
Friday, October 13, 2006 - 10:00
By Ruth Ratcliffe, Sucre
~snip~
Comibol was formed in 1952 when the leftist government of President Victor Paz Estenssoro nationalised the countries largest tin mines. In 1985, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, the Bolivian government froze public sector wages and fired thousands of state employees, leading to widespread unemployment. A concurrent drop in the world tin price caused many mines to close, leaving 25,000 miners without work.
While many Huanuni miners left the town to seek work, others remained and formed independent cooperatives to continue working the Posokoni tin deposit. The revival of the international tin price in the 1990s led to a massive increase in the number of cooperative miners in Huanuni — from 200 in 1995 to 4000 today.
However, in 2000, most of the Posokoni deposit was sold to a British company, Allied Deals, for the paltry sum of US$501,123 and the promise to invest $10.25 million in the first two years of business.
More:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/36396
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