Bolivia and the War On Drugs

Bolivia held an election yesterday. An indigenous former llama farmer with an 8th grade education will be its next president. Not only that, Evo Morales is a Leftist and a close follower of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

Bolivia, along with Venezuela, has been thumbing its nose at the multinational corporations who view Latin America as their own personal fiefdom. In Republicanspeak, that means “they hate freedom.”

A few years ago, Bechtel had a contract to “revitalize” Bolivia. This contract included privatizing Bolivia’s water supply. In other words: one of the world’s wealthiest companies now owned all the drinking water in South America’s poorest country. Prices skyrocketed. People were rioting.

The riots were so huge, the Bolivian government was afraid of being overthrown. Their solution was to cancel their contract with Bechtel and take back their water supply.

And now Evo Morales is talking about nationalizing Bolivia's vast natural gas supplies. No doubt we’ll be hearing dire warnings from Bush and his Harem (formerly known as the “media”) about the Communist Menace threatening Latin America.

Take it with a grain of salt. Too many millions of Latin Americans are forced to choose between following a Leftist/Socialist leader, or being owned lock, stock and barrel by global corporations and the World Bank. It shouldn’t be too surprising when some of them turn to the Left.

Even more alarming: America’s War on Some Drugs will soon have a crack in the wall (the first of many, hopefully). Thousands of indigent coca leaf growers have been forced not to grow their crops. Coca leaves are chewed by millions of Indians throughout the Andes. The coca leaf has had herbal/medicinal uses for generations. But this part of their culture was forced to a grinding halt because too many citizens of the world’s wealthiest countries were addicted to a byproduct of the coca leaf.

Bolivians have finally had enough of this shit. Can you blame ‘em?

All through the Third World, dirt-poor growers of coca and opium have been forced to switch to even less lucrative crops, all because of the War on Drugs. Why is it their problem that millions of Americans and Europeans are addicted to a drug made from their crops?

Hopefully more countries will follow Bolivia’s lead.