From 2002-2006 we lived in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, although I frequently worked down in Santa Cruz. The power company in Santa Cruz, CRE, is the world's largest electric cooperative and was founded with the help of my former employer back in 1962.
This current political problem in Bolivia has been very complicated from the beginning; Bolivia has been mired in poverty in spite of their abundant natural resources largely due to government mismanagement. One of their worst setbacks happened in the 50's when their communist government broke up all of the large successful farms in the country and gave out little parcels to the poor workers - "land reform" it was called. It turned out that all of the little mismanaged farms couldn't produce the food that the few well managed big farms could, so Bolivia lost their food independence almost overnight. So then the farmers who had formerly owned big farms, which had all been confiscated by the government, bought up big tracts of land down in the Amazon basin and made new farms in what is now the state of Santa Cruz. Their new big farms are what currently feed the whole country and are what the new communist government wants to confiscate and break up into little farms and redistribute to all of the poor Indians who can't make a living on the little farms that their fathers got back in the 50's. Obviously these big prosperous farmers don't want their property confiscated again.
To make matters worse and even more volatile, EVERYONE in the country knows that the current president, Evo Morales, was put in place by Hugo Chavez in his bid to unite all of South America under one communist government ruled by himself, the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar. Evo, just like his daddy Hugo, and his granddaddy Fidel is doing everything he can to make himself dictator for life over Bolivia. The "rebels" down in Santa Cruz are doing everything they can to protect themselves from him. While we were living in Bolivia, Santa Cruz even appealed to Brazil to annex them away from Bolivia. I don't blame them. If I lived in Santa Cruz I would be taking up arms in defense of my property too.
By the way, I see the events in Bolivia as the road map for the path on which the US is currently traveling. When Barack Hussein Obama is our president, I look for our government to implement all of the same "progressive" reforms that Evo, Hugo, and Fidel have implemented. And then we'll see what has to happen to preserve our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
The communist experiment in the Soviet Union was a spectacular and well-documented failure, as were all of those in China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, practically all of Africa, etc. etc. And YET... we currently have "democratically elected" socialist (= communist) governments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Venezuela, Russia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Spain, and nearly all of Western Europe. Did no one in any of those countries ever read anything about history?!
And even worse - all three of the candidates to be president of the United States are avowed socialists! They are all promising us (due to popular demand) socialized medicine, socialized retirements, socialized housing, socialized utilities, socialized transportation, etc. etc. How is that even possible? How ignorant are we? I am more ashamed of us as a people, for our ignorance, than Michele Obama ever thought of being. We are NOT the America that the world thought we were; this is not the America that our grandparents endowed us with.
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