By Ben Dangl , October, 24 2008, Z Net

After months of street battles and political meetings, a new draft of the Bolivian constitution was ratified by Congress on October 21. A national referendum on whether or not to make the document official is scheduled for January 25, 2009.

"Now we have made history," President Evo Morales told supporters in La Paz. "This process of change cannot be turned back...neoliberalism will never return to Bolivia."

If the constitution is approved in the January referendum, a new general election will take place in December of 2009.

Leading up to Congress's approval, Morales participated in sections of a march from Caracollo in Oruro to La Paz, a distance of over 100 miles and involving an estimated 100,000 union members, activists, students, farmers and miners.

The march took place to pressure opposition members in Congress into backing the constitution and referendum. When marchers arrived in La Paz they packed the center of the city to historic levels. Some media outlets said the march, which stretched 15 kilometers, was the longest one ever in the capital.

"Those who have been kicked out to the chicken coop, those who have been hidden in the basement, are jailed no more," Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said of the approval of the constitution, according to the Associated Press.

By Andalusia

From Left Turn: October 14, 2007

Written by Rebecca Tarlau, from Upside Down World, Thursday, 11 January 2007

The main plaza of the Bolivian city of Cochabamba turned into a war zone on January 8th. Protestors demanding the resignation of Cochabamba’s governor, Manfred Reyes Villa, were faced with violent police repression as they tried to take over the government offices.

Loud gun shots could be heard all over the city center, as police fired tear gas into the crowds, sending protesters and civilians running. The protestors, predominately coca farmers from the Chapare region of Cochabamba, started small fires all over the plaza to counteract the unbearable effects of the gasses. Other fires were more deststructive: several cars belonging to government officials smouldered in the plaza, while the locked door to the governor’s office was also set on fire. Earlier, Bolivian citizens who had dared to get close to the police force hit the door with large sticks, attempting to break it down.

Dec 1, 2006
By Adam Ziemkowski, Cochabamba, Bolivia, Bolivia Solidarity Campaign

On Monday, November 27, several hundred protesters surrounded the entrance to Cochabamba’s municipal building in what turned out to be a sharp clash with right-wing thugs and provocateurs and the Cochabamba police.
By late afternoon, Cochabamba’s central plaza and all of its surrounding streets were filled with tear gas as heavily armed police moved in to disperse the crowd by force.

Z Net| Bolivia

by Rebecca Tarlau; November 22, 2006

The woman sitting next to me interrupted the discussion by yelling, "Enough of this analysis, let's start talking about the actual demands we have for Bolivia's future!" A murmur of agreement went up around me and everyone started shouting out their ideas: A real nationalization of Bolivia's natural gas! The industrialization of our primary resources! National control of foreign-owned electricity and mining companies! Diversification of career training for our youth! A constitutional assembly that is accountable to the actual people of Bolivia! An education that is based on the Bolivian reality! The demands kept coming for almost an hour, at which time our workgroup on "The Economic Atmosphere in Bolivia" had to report our proposals to the larger assembly of Bolivian citizens who had travelled from poor, urban periphery neighbourhoods in cities all over Bolivia to participate in this national meeting of "neighbors."

Latin America is preparing to settle accounts with its white settler elite
The political movements and protests sweeping the continent - from Bolivia to Venezuela - are as much about race as class
by Richard Gott
November 19, 2006
The Guardian
The recent explosion of indigenous protest in Latin America, culminating in the election this year of Evo Morales, an Aymara indian, as president of Bolivia, has highlighted the precarious position of the white-settler elite that has dominated the continent for so many centuries. Although the term "white settler" is familiar in the history of most European colonies, and comes with a pejorative ring, the whites in Latin America (as in the US) are not usually described in this way, and never use the expression themselves. No Spanish or Portuguese word exists that can adequately translate the English term.

Very useful and interesting analysis -- although as with much Fourth International type analysis hostile to autonomist positions and over-emphasizing the importance of a 'political' break on the level of state and party politics.

V Online magazine : IV382 - October 2006

Jeffery R Webber

Philip S. Goldberg, a career functionary of the United States foreign service whose most recent postings include Kosovo, Chile, and Colombia, is the new American ambassador to Bolivia, replacing David Greenlee. Upon Goldberg’s arrival at the El Alto airport on Friday September 29, Bolivia’s foreign minister David Choquehuanca told the press that his “central objective” was “to improve relations between both countries.” [1] The principal aim of Goldberg’s mission, according to the ambassador himself, will be to enforce the war against “narco-trafficking.” The “war on drugs,” like the old “war against communists” and the new “war on terror,” has for quite some time been a useful point of entry for the US to achieve its underlying imperial aims in Latin America, offering up a whole series of “enemies” who are labelled “narco-traffickers,” a term whose definition is infinitely malleable and unverifiable.

Written by by Marielle Cauthin, Translated by April Howard
Tuesday, 23 May 2006 upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/295/1/

La Paz, Bolivia – At this moment, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS, the political party of President Evo Morales) steers a government that is against the current and has the job of following through with a promised plan.

The true debate is being fought between visions of a Bolivia with more possibilities than a return to statism, distinct from that of the first half of the twentieth century – or a country with a traumatic privatizing drive and in liberal excess.

ZNet | Bolivia

by Jeffery R. Webber ; May 04, 2006

La Paz. Monday, May 1, 2006, amidst celebrations and marches commemorating the day of the working class internationally, the Bolivian government nationalized the country's hydrocarbons sector (natural gas and oil). With presidential supreme decree 28701 - named Heroes of Chaco in memory of the overwhelmingly indigenous Bolivian soldiers who died in defense of oil reserves in Bolivia's Chaco War with Paraguay in the 1930s - Evo Morales reversed the privatization of hydrocarbons instituted in 1996 by then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.

Bolivia gas move met with shock

Brazil and Spain have reacted sharply to a decree from Bolivia's President Evo Morales which asserts state control over the country's energy industry.
Under the May Day decree, private energy companies will have to sell a controlling stake to the Bolivian government and renegotiate contracts.

At the largest gas fields, royalty payments will increase from 50% to 82%.