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- Title
De cómo Bolivia alcanzó la primera plana.
- Authors
Cabrices, Rafael Osío
- Abstract
The second largest natural gas reserve in South America lays in Bolivia. The question is who profits from them. The Bolivian leftists, who have Eva Morales as their most visible figure, fear that they might be taken from them by foreign countries. Eva Morales is president thanks to, among other things, a curious paradox that has been present in the last fifteen years of the XX century: Victor Paz Estenssoro, the same that lead the Revolution in 1952, in 1985 made what he considered was best: he started privatizations and free contracting with a package designed by Jeffrey Sach. Hundreds of thousands of fired miners were obliged to go to El Chapare and learn how to cultivate coca for the new industry of drug smuggling. But at the same time, due to the liberal measures they hated, saw an opportunity to reach mayor's offices, the Congress, and now, the bureau of the Palacio Quemado. Without letting go of the very profitable coco harvest for drug smuggling, the former miners shut down public roads and vote for Eva Morales. What they really want is for Morales to get rid of foreign citizens and give their jobs back to them, not in the tin mines, but around the gas burners. Outside the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), the alliances of Eva Morales are not that strong. El Alto's incendiary workers recently accepted his leadership. The real owners of the economic power --Santa Cruz's magnates--will press him in order to receive autonomy. Chavez and Castro won't stop acting as godfathers to ensure his hegemony between the Caribbean and the Andes. Eva Morales is fenced. Either the multinationals take off or he will have to deceive his anachronistic voters and those who hate foreigners. Either he sacrifices the only sources of employment available today in Bolivia or he will risk being overthrown from his seat. Either he pleases the Mercosur or reconciles with the Americans. In a planet where money comes and goes, and in times of expensive oil, when the presence of hydrocarbons is determining, not even his elegantly sewn sweaters will shelter him from the storm that is coming towards him.
- Subjects
BOLIVIA; NATURAL gas reserves; PAZ Estenssoro, Victor, 1907-2001; GAS reservoirs; NATURAL gas geology
- Publication
Debates IESA, 2006, Vol 11, Issue 2, p98
- ISSN
1316-1296
- Publication type
Article