Bolivia President resigns, US sends troops to evacuate

Bolivian President Gonzalo "Goni" S�nchez de Lozada will resign today.

Power will pass, constitutionally (as we've told you all along), to Vice President Carlos Mesa.

The military will support the new government. In fact, today, Army and police forces which had cordoned off Plaza Murillo, next to the National Palace and Congress, ceded the way to a multitude of protestors who want Goni's resignation. They now are at the gates of power.

www.bigleftoutside.com...

LA PAZ , Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivia's government coalition fell apart on Friday after a main ally of embattled President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada withdrew his support, echoing demands from protesters for the unpopular leader to step down.

Tens of thousands of miners, farmers and Indian women marched to the colonial center of the besieged capital, shouting "quit, quit" and exploding dynamite sticks two blocks from a government palace guarded by troops and assault vehicles.

Wired News

www.cnn.com...



[Edited on 17-10-2003 by kukla]

This is starting to look like another Venezuelan situation. I wasn't aware of this but Bolivia has rich natural gas deposits. Another attempt by the U.S. to control gas reserves and the citizens are saying NO.

17-09-03 A crowd estimated by organizers to number 20,000 gathered to protest plans to export some of Bolivia's massive reserves of natural gas. The rally marked the culmination of two separate marches to La Paz by groups opposed to the initiative.
Some 5,000 peasants and union activists arrived at the government palace from the area of Lake Titicaca, the stronghold of agrarian leader Felipe Quispe Huanca, and the town of Caracollo, respectively. The two groups met in a town just outside of La Paz and entered the capital separately to hold a joint rally at a downtown square, causing a huge traffic jam.

Peasant leader Rufo Calle said the march was aimed at "making the administration see that the Bolivian people do not want (authorities) to carry out the export of (natural) gas." The natural gas project, coordinated by the Pacific LNG consortium, hopes to reach an agreement with a US firm so that the government of landlocked Bolivia will choose a port in Peru or Chile from which to ship the fuel north.

www.gasandoil.com...

This thing stink stinks like yesterday's garbage and it has Uncle Dick's fingerprints all over it. The riots and revolts started after a decision to send LNG to Mexico and the U.S. A quick search and we find that World Bank Group's MIGA is one of the transnational authorities trying to get Bolivia's gas. And guess which American company is using MIGA to legitimize the project. El Paso energy, who's current CEO was CFO at Halliburton. The other major investor is EPED. Don't be fooled it's another subsidary of Halliburton.

MIGA fact sheet
El Paso CEO Article
Google Cache of EPED
Bolivia president resigns

Theer is no doubt that, as citizans of S. America's poorest nation, the Bolivians are concerned that they should profit most from the gas (and that includes processing and value-adding in Bolivia rather than shipping it all off via Chile to be processed elsewhere by, among others, the gentlemen referred to above.
There are other factors- anger at the IMF, peasant anger at US intervention in coca-growing and the fact that Sanchez was very Americanised and very much see as a DC stooge. Not that Mesa is much better.
I would suggest the political dimenson is the one to watch: S. America is slowly melting down economically and is less and less susceptible to US control (as Venezuela is showing)