Bolivia Is Falling Apart

[tony4moroney]

Story Highlights

# The natural-gas-rich districts seek to distance themselves from Bolivia's constitution

# Constitution calls for heavier taxes on the regions to help finance social programs

# AP: "We won't permit Bolivia to be divided," President Evo Morales warns

# Pro-Morales groups: Richer regions want to control Bolivia's natural resources

Full Story

[Empanado]

You're forgetting that the eastern regions (the ones trying to secede) are predominantly white, compared to the more indigenous western regions.
I'm not the biggest fan ever of Evo Morales, but these people from Santa Cruz and the surrounding areas are just fucking A.
Sure, they never had a problem with forming part of Bolivia as long as they had a white, aristocratic and oligarchic "president". Some darkie gets elected and he tries to distribute better the wealth of the nation (regardless of how good he's at it) and suddenly it's all "different cultures! we must break away!".

I mean, we're talking about an area where their people tend to identify themselves as "the part of Bolivia where everybody's white, tall, and speaks english". Eastern Bolivia has been historically racist and opressive towards the indigenous population. If Morales, along with 80% of Bolivia's population, were black instead of Amerindian/mestizo, this would be a fucking outrage.

[Der-Lowe]

At 12/17/07 02:55 PM, Empanado wrote: You're forgetting that the eastern regions (the ones trying to secede) are predominantly white, compared to the more indigenous western regions.
I'm not the biggest fan ever of Evo Morales, but these people from Santa Cruz and the surrounding areas are just fucking A.
Sure, they never had a problem with forming part of Bolivia as long as they had a white, aristocratic and oligarchic "president". Some darkie gets elected and he tries to distribute better the wealth of the nation (regardless of how good he's at it) and suddenly it's all "different cultures! we must break away!".

But he has implemented rather radical changes, he should've imposed lighter changes, or at least, be more political, like Menem with the military.

Do you know what's going to happen with the new constitution?

[Empanado]

At 12/17/07 05:57 PM, Der-Lowe wrote: But he has implemented rather radical changes, he should've imposed lighter changes, or at least, be more political, like Menem with the military.

Of course he should, but the appropiate response is a stiff opposition, hell, even a coup d'etat would be something to expect (after all they pretty much hold the world record: nearly 200 coups in 180 years of independence), but not threatening to break the country apart, specially when the seperatist movement had been almost nonexistant before Morales' rise to power.

I mean, in most scenarios excessively accelerating a set of radical changes is a bad thing, but when a nation qualifies as the poorest in South America one should probably take the hint that a shitload of changes is better than no changes at all. I say change it all and sort out what stays and what reverts back to normal once things have calmed down.

Do you know what's going to happen with the new constitution?

My guess is that Morales will succeed. With his choice of subjecting n early end of his term to a referendum, he gave the signal of "either I get something done or I'm out of here". The electorate realizes that Evo's the only chance they've got to get ANY changes on the system they've currently got, as evidenced by the last, what, 50 years of military and (white, of course) civil rule?

[Boke]

will be very interesting to see how serious those regions are about independence