Bolivia looks to restore ambassadors, rebuild US relations under Obama administration

Source: Associated Press

Bolivia looks to restore ambassadors, rebuild US relations under Obama administration
By Associated Press
10:05 PM EST, January 28, 2009

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivia wants to rebuild strained relations with the United States and hopes to exchange ambassadors with the new U.S. administration soon, the South American nation's foreign minister said Wednesday.

David Choquehuanca said Bolivia will present President Barack Obama with an agenda, including plans for a trade deal that he said was rejected by George W. Bush's government.

"We want to rebuild our relations with the U.S., and we know that they want a positive relationship too," Choquehuanca told reporters, saying his country would wait until the new U.S. president was settled in office before pressing the issue.

He said the Obama administration had congratulated leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales on voters' approval Sunday of a new constitution, which Morales had made the central platform of his presidency.



Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-bolivia-us,0,3194432.story

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EU calls on all parties in Bolivia to recognize constitutional referendum results
2009-01-30 00:13:23

BRUSSELS, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) on Thursday called on all parties in Bolivia to recognize the results of the Jan. 25 referendum, through which the new Constitution had been approved, and to ensure that the process of change respects the rights of all Bolivians.

In a statement issued by its Czech presidency, the EU, while expressing its satisfaction with the secure and peaceful conditions in which the referendum was held, hoped that the result will enable the Bolivian people to move forward in a peaceful and consensual manner.

The EU also urged all political actors to work together to strengthen the unity of the country, the democratic institutions of the State and the rule of law, and to face in a spirit of openness the challenges facing Bolivia.

Meanwhile, the EU reaffirmed its continuing readiness to accompany the process of democratic change and support the continuation of dialogue between all parties in the Latin American country.

The EU had sent an Election Observation Mission to monitor the constitutional referendum in Bolivia.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/30/content_10734996.htm

After centuries, the indigenous regain land rights
by Raul Burgoa

Bolivian President Evo Morales celebrated victory Monday after his compatriots approved sweeping constitutional changes that would empower the country's indigenous majority and let the president run for re-election.
Exit polls by two of the country's largest television networks showed that the new constitution had been approved in Sunday's referendum by a comfortable margin.

The changes were approved by 60 percent of the votes cast, according to the Unitel television network. ATB television network reported 58-percent approval. Official returns were expected later.

"Now Bolivia is being re-founded!" Morales told supporters who gathered at the Plaza de Armas in La Paz to hear him speak from the balcony of the presidential palace.

"Here the colonial state ends, and internal and external colonialism end," said the leftist Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president.

More:
http://www.progress.org/2009/colonial.htm

The seeds of Latin America's rebirth were sown in Cuba
There was one region that saw the bankruptcy of neoliberalism - and now the rest of the world is having to catch up

Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Thursday 29 January 2009

On 9 October 1967, Che Guevara faced a shaking sergeant Mario Teran, ordered to murder him by the Bolivian president and CIA, and declared: "Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man." The climax of Stephen Soderbergh's two-part epic, Che, in real life this final act of heroic defiance marked the defeat of multiple attempts to spread the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America.

But 40 years later, the long-retired executioner, now a reviled old man, had his sight restored by Cuban doctors, an operation paid for by revolutionary Venezuela in the radicalised Bolivia of Evo Morales. Teran was treated as part of a programme which has seen 1.4 million free eye operations carried out by Cuban doctors in 33 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. It is an emblem both of the humanity of Fidel Castro and Guevara's legacy, but also of the transformation of Latin America which has made such extraordinary co-operation possible.

The 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution this month has already been the occasion for a regurgitation of western media tropes about pickled totalitarian misery, while next week's 10th anniversary of Hugo Chávez's presidency in Venezuela will undoubtedly trigger a parallel outburst of hostility, ridicule and unfounded accusations of dictatorship. The fact that Chávez, still commanding close to 60% popular support, is again trying to convince the Venezuelan people to overturn the US-style two-term limit on his job will only intensify such charges, even though the change would merely bring the country into line with the rules in France and Britain.

But it is a response which also utterly fails to grasp the significance of the wave of progressive change that has swept away the old elites and brought a string of radical socialist and social-democratic governments to power across the continent, from Ecuador to Brazil, Paraguay to Argentina: challenging US domination and neoliberal orthodoxy, breaking down social and racial inequality, building regional integration and taking back strategic resources from corporate control.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/29/che-guevara-venzuela-cuban-revolution

This Guardian item is particularly refreshing.

I'm looking forward to revisiting this thread after work tonight.

'Neoliberalism ends here'
Bolivia's bold new constitution empowers the country's ethnic communities with access to education and healthcare

Benjamin Dangl guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 27 January 2009 20.30 GMT

After Bolivia's new constitution was approved in a national referendum on Sunday, thousands gathered to celebrate in the central Plaza Murillo in La Paz, the country's capital. Standing on the balcony of the presidential palace, President Evo Morales, an indigenous, former union organiser, addressed the raucous crowd: "Here begins a new Bolivia. Here we begin to reach true equality."

The event was underscored by the fact that just over 50 years ago, indigenous people were prohibited from entering that same plaza. Bolivia is South America's poorest country, with 62% of the population self-identifying as indigenous, and about the same percentage living under the poverty line. Many who support Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party see the new constitution as granting long-overdue rights to the indigenous majority.

On referendum day, when the news spread that the constitution had been approved, fireworks, cheers and horns sounded off sporadically across La Paz. By evening, Morales was already giving his victory speech: "I want you to know something, the colonial state ends here. Internal colonialism and external colonialism ends here. Sisters and brothers, neoliberalism ends here too."

Among many other changes, the new constitution empowers Bolivia's indigenous and Afro-Bolivian communities, establishes broader access to basic services, education and healthcare, limits the size of large land purchases, expands the role of the state in the management of natural resources and the economy and prohibits the existence US military bases on Bolivian soil.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jan/27/bolivia-referendum-constitution-evo-morales

passage of the new Constitution, which the Bushwhacks had tried to defeat this last September, by funding and organizing fascist rioters and murderers. Morales' victory (62% vote margin for the new Constitution, and wins in several fascist 'strongholds' as well) was not only a victory for the Bolivian people, and for the rule of law, it was also a victory for the new South American 'common market'--UNASUR--which acted strongly and swiftly in support of the Morales government, in peacefully defeating the attempted coup, and it was a resounding defeat for Bushwhack policy in South America.

I did not expect the Obama administration to so quickly disavow this Bushwhack policy, in such a dramatic and public gesture--congratulating Morales on the new Constitution. Although Obama, because of his race and life experience, would certainly have a natural affinity with other struggles against racial bigotry, the class warfare of the rich and the corporate against the poor of the world is a more difficult issue for well-intentioned US politicians. Bolivia's new Constitution addresses both. For instance, it enshrines access to water as a human right (directly as a result of Bechtel Inc.'s corporate barbarism on the water issue in Bolivia, which prompted the protest movement that led to Morales' election.) The Constitution protects all of Bolivia's natural resources from private or foreign ownership. At Bolivia's victory celebration, at the passage of the new Constitution, Morales notably told the crowd, "Neo-liberalism is dead!"

Obama's congratulations is very meaningful in this context. The Bolivian people endorsed peace and the rule of law--and so much more. Given some contra-indications in Obama appointments and statements, I am surprised by this, and hopeful for a new day in north/south relations. Obama is going to meet with Brazil's president Lula da Silva in the White House in March, and is going to visit Brazil later in the year. Lulu has already said that he wants to talk to Obama about Washington's hostile attitudes (and actions) regarding Venezuela and Bolivia. Lulu is a close friendly ally with both of these presidents.

We have yet to see if covert US policy to subvert South American democracies continues, however. Millions of our tax dollars, in USAID and other budgets, have been used for the worst possible purposes--funding the rightwing opposition in Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries, 'training' rightwing students in disruption tactics, propaganda, psyops and assassination and coup planning. Billions have been spent in military aid to the narco-fascist thugs running Colombia. The US has been doing this--misusing our money in anti-democratic causes--for decades, but never more intensely than under the Bushwhacks. Will Obama show a friendly face, but yet tolerate this kind of crap under the radar? I don't know. I really don't. I go back and forth about him as to Latin American policy. His administration has hardly had time to catch its breath, let alone to fully formulate its seeable and unseeable polices. South America does have vigilant and unified leadership, now, as to US interference. So if Obama's policy is two-faced, we will certainly hear about it from them, and from alternative news sources. And, frankly, I think Obama is in an extraordinarily dicey position--if he really intends an open, honest, pro-democracy and pro-social justice policy toward Latin America. Most of our corporate overlords do not want that. They don't want to compete in a "common market" where national governments have some clout to protect their country and their people. They want things rigged in their favor. They don't want to give anything back to the countries and peoples they plunder (including us). And the war profiteer segment needs the corrupt, failed, murderous US "war on drugs" to keep filling its pockets. There are so many forces militating against a just US Latin American policy, that the task seems almost undoable, and also very dangerous.

The north and the south of the western hemisphere could together create a powerhouse economy that is a model to the world of democracy and social justice--and one that restores our planet's ecosystem. The elements of this are all present--with the south leading the way. We should hold to that positive vision, and do everything we can to support Obama's best intentions, and also to insure his re-election in 2012, so that he can't be Diebolded or "swift-boated" out of office, for doing the right thing on this and other matters.