Bolivia news March 28, 2006

Here's some of our local news that you probably haven't heard:

1. According to the local news this morning, the Bolivian national airline, LAB, lost their leases on both aircraft that they used for international flights due to non-payment, which will eliminate their flights to the US and to Spain. Also, they’ve been cut off from their supplier of jet fuel for non payment. The government of Bolivia, after briefly trying to intervene in the airline, has turned it back over to its owners. This has prompted a hunger strike among the airline’s employees who are pushing to have the airline re-nationalized. Evo has said that the owner/manager of the airline is a “corrupt mafioso” and that he must have paid off the auditing firm who found that the company had not broken any laws in their current path to bankruptcy. Why do we even need auditing firms when Evo can just decide who's right and who's a corrupt mafioso?
2. They finally found the real identity of the man who bombed those hotels around the bus station last week – I don’t remember his name just now – but with his real identity in hand they’ve been able to determine that he’s a psychopath wanted in the United States on terrorism charges, has been deported from nearly every country in Latin America, and entered Bolivia illegally. What happens to him now has yet to be determined. But, the US is still unhappy with Evo for having accused George Bush of sending the bomber to Bolivia. In fact, the US Ambassador has been boycotting meetings with the Bolivian government for the past few days, including a diplomatic reception for Evo and a donor’s meeting to see about funding to help the flooded areas of Bolivia. Evo continues to insist that relations with the US are “normal”, but just this morning on the news the vice-president admitted that relations with the US government are at an “all time low.” But, the vice-president is still hoping to make a trip to the US to see if the US will cancel its Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, which has caused Bolivia to lose its sale of soy beans to Colombia.
3. In the newspaper this morning it was announced that the US and Europe-financed Alternative Development program is abandoning the Chapare and is refocusing all of their resources on the Yungas. I would be more enthusiastic about this announcement if it weren’t for the fact that relations between Bolivia and the US are at an all time low, which directly influences the amount of aid dollars to be spent in Bolivia. If things proceed in this direction, we could see donor funding for Bolivia dry up until after Evo’s term in office.
4. The MAS (the socialist narcotrafficking party that preys on the illiterate) has admitted to setting up multiple shell political parties in addition to their own party, the MAS, to send delegates to the upcoming Constitutional Convention in August. In light of this news, the two main opposition parties – PODEMOS and UN – have visibly stepped up their campaigns to send delegates to the convention. They have stated that they’re attempting to stem the MAS’s attempts to establish a single party dictatorship in Bolivia. Also, it’s been reported that both the Catholic Church and a coalition of the protestant churches are preparing delegates to send to the constitution convention, to prevent the atheistic MAS from confiscating church buildings to be converted to public schools, as per the rampant rumors around Bolivia.
5. Multiple blockades and strikes are currently underway around Bolivia, besides the LAB strike. Most notorious are the blockade of the Yungas by the city of Coroico who are demanding that the road construction contractor pay the city $1M for sand taken from nearby river beds, and the strike by the transportation workers' union who are protesting the government's decision to legalize ownership of stolen vehicles. This decision was taken by the government after a different transportation workers' union strike to demand the legalization of owning stolen vehicles - and the MAS caved, as has every previous administration in recent years .