Category Archives: Bolivia

2012, the year of land-related protests in Latin America?

As the new year begins, members of the media, researchers, academics and politicians are all trying to guess what will happen in 2012 (recently I was interviewed about the future of U.S.-Venezuela relations and the future of the Occupy protests and their effect, if any, in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections). When it comes to [...]
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Brazil in Latin America: Emerging political risks?

Simon Romero has written a solid article on the front page of yesterday’s NYT about how Brazil’s rise and activity in Latin America is creating diplomatic problems with some its regional neighbors. The article itself is worth reading in its entirety, as it points to an interesting trend in regional politics, but for brevity’s sake, [...]
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The Media’s Role in International Diplomacy

Two recent stories out of Latin America highlight some of the stranger ways the media plays a role in international diplomacy. The first is minor. Living in Peru blog has an article on a recent diplomatic dispute between Bolivia and Peru: “Bolivia’s Minister of Culture Elizabeth Salguero has requested clarification on the “plagiarism” of a Bolivian song [...]
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Far-Reaching Demonstrations Against AZ Law

How divisive is Senate Bill 1070? There was a universal rejection of the law by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), as well as protests on both sides of the border: But the protests have spread to countries where a large diaspora stands to be impacted by the law. On 14 May, hundreds of Ecuadorians  in [...]
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Revisiting an Old Flame: Bolivia adopts Revolutionary Slogan

Via presidential order, the Bolivian army’s new slogan is “Patria o muerte, venceremos!” (Fatherland or death, we shall overcome!), adopted from early revolutionary Cuba and the iconic Argentine guerrilla fighter (he has been labeled in a variety of ways), Ernesto “Che” Guevara. This declaration has brought about a fair amount of analysis and discussion by [...]
Also posted in Latin America | Leave a comment

The International Reach of Organized Crime

Earlier this year, LatAmThought wrote a commentary about the international reach or criminal organizations in the Americas. Last week, we published an article on the International Relations and Security Network about the indirect presence of Mexican Cartels in the Andes. The amount of drug seizures in Bolivia have increased in 2009. Additionally, raids on drug-processing labs [...]
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Russia, Bolivia, and the new US model

On a recent trip to Moscow in May 2009, Bolivia’s Viceminister of Foreign Affairs Hugo Fernández Araoz said that Bolivia would be making a multimilliondollar arms and transportation purchase from Russia in efforts to combat drug smuggling and production in Bolivia. El Pais reported on 21 May 2009 that Bolivia used to make these purchases, [...]
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The Atypical Foreign Creditor

On 21 November Brazilian authorities recalled the Brazilian ambassador to Ecuador following a public announcement by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa that the Ecuadorian government would not pay a $243 million dollar debt to the state-owned Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) for the underwriting of construction on the San Francisco dam. Odebrecht, the Brazilian engineering company that [...]
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Bolivia and Colombia now have something in common: frustration with U.S. trade policy

Starting this weekend, and for the first time since 1991, Bolivia’s products no longer enjoy preferential access when entering the United States, unlike those from Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. All four countries had received tariff-free access for certain products under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), a program designed during the George [...]
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Bolivia: The Santa Cruz Autonomy Referendum

Yesterday, thousands of citizens in the eastern Bolivian departamento of Santa Cruz went to the polls, not to elect new leaders but to vote on a referendum demanding greater autonomy from their country’s central government, led by indigenous Aymara descendant and pillar of the Latin American new Left, Evo Morales.This controversial vote was the latest [...]
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