BOGOTA — When President Evo Morales nationalized Bolivia boasts the second-largest hydrocarbon reserves in South America, Bolivia is easily the most foreign<\/strong> foreign From the impossibly high Lake Titicaca, the highest The last time we were in La Paz (world’s highest In fact, Bolivia is the most ethnically Native American They met at the old Hotel Italia, pulling up before But we digress. The conclusion that is stunningly obvious Who would dare deal with a rogue state like Bolivia Yes, China.<\/i><\/p>\n Meanwhile, business leaders in Santa Cruz, the headquarters Santa Cruz has long been controlled by a series When we blew through town, three sleepless days But wee are digressing again. A hazard of accumulated In fact, representatives from the Chinese Oil Ministry The fact that Latin American countries are feeling freer For whatever reason, be it our overextended military, Today they are dissing our oil companies, breaking But what can we do? Invade Bolivia? And Venezuela, article from the Why would Bolivia blow off the International Oil industry unless they already had a long-term, pressure immune alternate buyer lined up? BOGOTA — When President Evo Morales nationalized Bolivia’s gas industry this week, he fulfilled a popular campaign promise to … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/boliverbs.jpg\")
Why would Bolivia blow off the International Oil industry
\n unless they already had a long-term, pressure immune alternate buyer
\n lined up?<\/em><\/p>\n
\n Bolivia’s gas industry this week, he fulfilled a popular campaign promise
\n to return his country’s riches to its people. But he may have done more
\n harm than good to Bolivia’s interests and those of the region, analysts
\n said <\/p>\n
\n with an estimated potential value of $70 billion and including nearly
\n $1 billion in natural gas exports last year. If foreign investors
\n are scared
\n off by nationalization, the poorest country in the continent cannot afford
\n to fully exploit its hydrocarbons sector alone, the analysts say.<\/p>\n
\n country we have visited in our peripatetic voyages around the Western
\n Hemisphere. It is different
\n in so many ways<\/a> and on so many levels that
\n a visit to Bolivia is more like a trip to another planet than<\/em><\/p>\n
\n navigable body of water in the world, where people live on stilt houses
\n over the water, or on masses of interwoven vegetation floating on it,
\n to the Upper Amazon black market town Santa Cruz, known as the "White
\n City" and famous as the seat of Bolivia’s two most profitable industries,
\n oil and cocaine, and as a sort of spook central for the entire Amazon
\n Basin, the entire landlocked redoubt is a series of unsolvable, inscrutable
\n Andean and Amazonian riddles.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n national capital unless you include Lhasa. Tibet, which we do), the
\n city of winding,
\n climbing stone streets of Incan origin or inspiration which literally
\n takes ones breath away, seemed to be populated entirely by Indians and
\n expatriate Germans.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n country in the world. About 2\/3 of the country are full-blooded Indians,
\n and most of the rest are Mestizos. And at the time the Dowbrigade last
\n visited, in the mid-70’s, La Paz still had a large and vibrant community
\n of ex-Nazis (for by then, after all, nobody was a Nazi anymore), refugees
\n and sympathizers, whose paperwork had been conveniently destroyed in
\n the war, but who had managed to escape with something valuable enough
\n that they had ingratiated themselves with the local power structure,
\n which had inclinations in those directions (fascism and graft) anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n its stone and mortar porticos in chaffer-driven Mercedes, trim intense
\n men in their 50s and 60s, dressed in great, long woolen coats and high
\n leather boots against the mountain chill. We watched them come and go
\n because there wasn’t much else to do. La Paz didn’t seem to go in much
\n for public entertainment, and it was almost impossible to score. Plus,
\n the Italia was one of the few places to get a decent European-style meal.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n to the Dowbrigade, and which we are incredulous that no one else is writing
\n about, is that Evo Morales would not be telling his traditional customers
\n (Brazil and Argentina, as well as the international oil companies represented
\n in Bolivia by Brazil’s Petrobras, Spanish-Argentine
\n Repsol YFP, and France’s Total to go take a flying fuck UNLESS HE ALREADY
\n HAD ANOTHER SIGNED DEAL IN HIS POCKET.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n after they had blown off the US and international oil? Let’s think here
\n a minute, folks, its not nuclear fusion. Who can’t be bullied by George
\n Bush and the international oil cartel he is fronting for? Who would find
\n Evos brand of leftist populism and state control of vital industries
\n downright comforting? Who is desperately scurrying around the globe these
\n days to hunt down and tie up energy reserves in anticipation of the frantic
\n competition sure to ensue as demand increases and supply dwindles? <\/em><\/p>\n
\n of Bolivia’s petroleum industry and its financial capital, have called
\n for a general strike today to protest the occupation by soldiers of 56
\n gas installations around the country.<\/p>\n
\n of Bolivian Army Colonels, who established themselves there as sort
\n of Western Warlords,
\n out of the effective reach of the capital, and smack atop the drug, smuggling
\n and spying nexus between Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay. A few years before
\n the Dowbrigade visited the place, Che Guevara was finally run to ground
\n by a CIA ht squad in the jungle less than a day’s march from town. The
\n Colonel de Jour took public credit, but the lesson seemed to be you could
\n get away with anything in Santa Cruz, if you knew who to talk to. <\/em><\/p>\n
\n and nights on our way to Itagua, a tiny Paraguayan river port reputed
\n to
\n have the finest embroidery in the hemisphere (they did), before we finally
\n caught "The Train of Death" through the pestilent swamp to
\n Campo
\n Grande
\n and
\n the Brazilian
\n border,
\n nobody
\n believed
\n we were
\n anthropologists. Just because we were young and American, they
\n assumed we were drug dealers. Three times during our stay, runners came
\n up to us on the street and palmed us packets with 2 or 3 grams of pure
\n Bolivian flake inside, and a phone number written on the back<\/em><\/p>\n
\n experience. Everything reminds us of something else, these days.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n and China’s National Petroleum Company have been spotted in Santa Cruz
\n and La Paz often during the past six months. China has the capital, the
\n need and the will to take control of Bolivia’s huge natural gas resources
\n until they are empty. And why stop at gas? China has an understandable desire to make friends in the Americas as a counterbalance to US influence in Asia. In a few years, expect Bolivia to function as a fully-funded franchise of China, Inc. <\/em><\/p>\n
\n to abrogate deals signed by previous governments, levy new taxes and
\n fees in the face of the unprecedented capital accumulation represented
\n by the run-up in oil prices, and now even taking over their oil industries,
\n infrastructure and all, does not bode well for the future of American
\n foreign policy.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n our clear lack of national resolve, or our increasingly obvious moral
\n bankruptcy, our brother and sister nations are no longer willing to follow
\n our lead, or our instructions.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n deals and stealing equipment. Next thing you know they will be refusing
\n to
\n pay their loans, or deal with the IMF! And if it starts with our American
\n brethren, pretty soon we won’t be able to push people around in Asia,
\n Africa or the Middle East! Gadzooks, the American century just started,
\n and its already slipping out of control! <\/em><\/p>\n
\n Ecuador, Peru and Brazil? Is this the final battle of the Indian Wars which have been going on for the past 500 years, since White Men began displacing Red Men from the seats of power? Are we finally seeing the systemic readjustment
\n of the relative
\n value of raw and finished goods some economists have been predicting since the 60’s?
\n Or is it just the opening acts of Armageddon? Stay tuned…..<\/em><\/p>\n
\n Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"