Not reading between the between the lions
Mid-December last year I read Anna Shea's piece, Wealth of the land produces poverty in Bolivia in Rabble.Ca, a home for the NDP-inclined Canadian Progressives, and Annie Murphy's Felipe Quispe: The Other in the New Socialist.
Annie Murphy, writing about the shared history Felipe Quispe (Aymara) and Alvaro Garcia Linera in the Tupac Katari Indigenous Guerrilla Army (EGTK), and the latter's decision to become the running mate of Evo Morales (Aymara), describes the positions of the Indigenous Pachakuti Movement (MIP), the traditional indigenous party, and the larger Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party:
Earlier in the campaign both Felipe Quispe and Evo Morales supported a total nationalization of Bolivia's hydrocarbons; the nation has natural gas resources second only to Venezuela's in Latin America, yet ties with Haiti for poorest country in the region. Morales was a vocal force in the June 2005 protests. Recently, however, Morales has taken a more moderate tack; he now speaks of renegotiating contracts instead of a radical appropriation of foreign companies.
The Sunday costumed lockout, which is what a tax dispute is when the custodial action is executed by uniformed employees of the State, is "total", to the "surprise" of the analysts of finance capital, not the anticipated 40% to 60%, and the purpose is to impose a 180 day contract renegociation period. The core of Monday's decree is that private investment groups must sell 51 percent of their participation to YPFB, and they and the YPFB have six months to structure the deal, possible more, and those investment groups that don't make significant progress towards that goal will be looking at a loss ... for failing to sell equity at fair market value with enough terms and conditions to keep hundreds, if not thousands, of lawyers and clerks fully employed for years. Every day M&A stuff.
In the mid-1990s Bolivia's gas industry was privatized, and Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) was stripped of its operational capabilities. In the mid-2000s Bolivia's gas industry is being publicized, and despite all the flutter in the first-world press, its just contracts, margins, and re-operationalizing the YPFB. No more glamorous than shifting bus driver pensions back from private management to public, and the buses too. Some changes of terms, some changes of margins. Nothing to start wars and coups over, unless that is the actual purpose of wars and coups.
Democrats should start talking with Morales, and Chavez, and Lula. Handing Abramoff and CREA's clients the terms and margins for coal, oil, and gas royalties is not the only policy choice possible, unless the Democratic Party is also the Party of Privatization and Efficiency and ... whatever else grand theft auto can be spun as.