Oh Crap!!! Its On!

Well Mesa has finally given it up. As Burgoa from AFP says the president has officially resigned. Evo, greedily staring the prize right in the eye, sounded kinda skeptical.

Socialist opposition leader Evo Morales, who heads the country's coca growers' union and was behind the current anti-government protests, said Mesa's resignation was "only half believable since at no time did he mention it was irrevocable."

So, it might be another gambit from Prez Mesa?? Take it to the brink.

Evo of course, dared everyone else to quit so he could be elected.

"To make us believe," Morales added, the presidents of both houses of Congress, Vaca Diaz and Cossio, should also resign "and the Supreme Court president should assume the presidency and call for presidential elections before the end of the year".

The lefties are going nuts, can't wait to get their man into office. So much for 'popular power'!!!

Underlying this whole mess is the feeling of the Aymara nationalists. Will they be happy enough with keeping control of El Alto and La Paz?? The protests and hell-raising are supposedly about the gas, but that is physically (and realistically) pretty far away. They will get denied by the autonomists, who don't want to be run by Evo and Quispe. But is that really the point???

However 'significant' this movement is, I can't avoid feeling that part of it is a 'get whitey' feeling by this marginalized population. They have reportedly been beating up workers who have the misfortune of wearing ties that day. That reeks of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge picking up people wearing glasses as 'intellectuals.' The Aymaras have endured exploitation and a caste/race marginalization by Bolivia's 'mestizo' population. That difference is more based on dress than anything, because La Paz' purported 'white elite' is largely indistinguishable from its Aymara cousins, the only difference seems to be dress.


It takes a Venezuelan to figure out the mess Bolivians are in.

Discussing Bolivia is extremely complex. Suffice to say for now that the Bolivian "altiplano" long suffering and long exploited natives want now to benefit from the oil and gas of the Santa Cruz province, the newcomer and the booming area of Bolivia. There was a time where Bolivia fought for the Chaco in a bloody XX war. Paraguay won but no oil was found in the Chaco. Had Bolivia been more patient it would have realized that the oil was already at home. Meanwhile Santa Cruz grew in the recent decades to become the granary of Bolivia and the pole of industrial pole.

The locals do not want to have orders come from La Paz for which there is not even a real good road to connect with. Santa Cruz looks to Brazil and Mercosur. La Paz looks at its navel. Santa Cruz thinks local initiative (even if only for the local oligarchy), decentralization. La Paz is afraid to fall into the hands of radical leaders that exploit the justified resentment of their followers. Whoever wins in La Paz will only try to control Santa Cruz and get as much money as possible from there to buy off peace from El Alto.