"The Bolivia Transition Project": Bolivia's Crisis

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The Right-Wing Coup

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Chossudovsky draws links between former U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, Kosovo and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte who is “known as one of the main architects of regime change and covert support to paramilitary death squads both in Central America and Iraq”.

Read the full article here at Global Research

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“Bolivia on the Brink,” is a phrase too often uttered by passing journalists unaccustomed to the country’s regular politics of the streets. But events of the last two weeks cannot be passed off as the ordinary business of protest. Rather, a right-wing coup attempt is in the offing in the five departments (states) governed by the right-wing opposition to President Evo Morales, of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party.

Read the full article here at Counter Punch

The tactics used by opponents of President Chavez during Venezuela's short-lived coup in 2002 are currently being replicated in a "civic coup" in neighboring Bolivia that is designed to undermine the democratic government of Evo Morales. That nation, though different from Venezuela in so many ways, seems to be travelling down a strikingly similar road, not least in terms of the role of the media in encouraging right-wing, anti-democratic opposition groups and the active support of that process by US officials.

Read the full article here on AlterNet

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The Massacre in Pando

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The massacre in El Porvenir was the worst in Bolivia since right-wing President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada presided over the slaughter of more than 70 unarmed protestors in October 2003. This time, however, the violence was not orchestrated by the central government, but by regional officials: departmental prefects in league with civic committees. On September 11, death squads armed with sub-machine guns massacred unarmed Morales supporters on their way to a mass meeting in El Porvenir. The meeting had been called to discuss possible responses to increasingly violent attacks on government supporters. The central government was slow to react and hesitant when it finally did. In a televised interview, the presidential delegate in Pando, Nancy Texeira, asked in a halting voice choked by pain and sadness, “Why doesn’t the government in La Paz do anything? We have been abandoned here.”

Read the full article here in English at NACLA
Read the full article here in Spanish at Rebelión

Oscar Olivera, General Secretary of the Federation of Factory Workers of Cochabamba, together with organizations and unions from this department express their solidarity with their bothers and sisters in Pando.

Read full testimony here at Ukampacha Bolivia

(English Translations)

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Bolivia-U.S. Relations

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In an extraordinary shift from a decades-long hegemonic status-quo during which Washington exercised de facto hemispheric supremacy, the U.S. role has dramatically diminished, at times becoming almost irrelevant. Washington cannot continue to conduct itself as if it had a backyard in which Latin America could be firmly found. The U.S. has been absent from the region for far too long to attempt to roll back the tide of anti-private capital, anti-U.S. sentiment that has swept over much of the region. In its stead, the region yearns for a “third way” and for change. The near breakdown of relations between Washington and La Paz in the midst of the Bolivia crisis, perfectly exemplifies the disastrous consequences of the inherent intolerance and disrespect that the U.S. has long exhibited towards the region.

Critics of U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America and the Andean region voiced deep concern over the George W. Bush administration's reluctance to disclose details regarding the amount of U.S. funding and its recipients in Bolivia.

Read the full article here on Inter-Press Services

"The Bolivia Transition Project"