Headlines : Corporations

Bolivia’s Battle of Wills

Summary:

In light of Bolivia’s stuggle for freedom from corporate rule, there is so much going on both sides ranging from violence to back door deals. This is an article summing up the Bolivian experience, in particular the past few months. It shines a light on a potential course for the future where corporations use governments to suppress their own people for the sake of increasing the profits of foreign companies, thus perpetuating corruption and poverty in the developing world. Bolivia may very well be a case study redefining the term “corporate take-over.”

[Posted By alpinestar]

By Christian Parenti
Republished from The Nation

For several weeks in May and June, protesters flooded the streets in Bolivia. They have now started to lift their blockades, but the country remains locked in stalemate.

At a roadblock on the Bolivian altiplano, a group of indigenous tin miners in brown fiberglass helmets, their jaws bulging with coca leaves, lounge around on an empty strip of road. Suddenly the thin, high-altitude air shakes with a quick explosion. Everyone laughs. The comrades are killing time by tossing lit dynamite into a field. Tomorrow they will march across these high empty plains, through the sprawling, impoverished, majority Indian city of El Alto and over the edge of a steep canyon down into the capital of La Paz, and there lay siege to the government.

The miners have held this road for the past twenty-four hours. Both main arteries linking La Paz to the outside world are shut down. The Bolivian economy is beginning to sputter and stall; before long the restaurants, hotels and offices of the capital will start to run out of food and fuel; uncollected garbage will pile up in the streets. Soon six major cities will be sealed off by more than eighty blockades.

“The Congress is dominated by the transnational corporations. We are fighting to recover our natural resources. It is our right,” says a stern miner named Miguel Sureta.

The social movements …

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Posted by alpinestar
I have lived many lives in many countries. an alchemist on a constant quest for truth. my destiny is as of yet unclear, but i am still immature. i only want to learn as much as i can before i die. minimalism, naturalism and a few other isms define me ...