Tag: Bolivia

Overview

While it has long been famous for having two capital cites (La Paz and Sucre) or being partial home to Lake Titicaca – the highest navigable body of water in the world – Bolivia has recently decided that it needed to spice things up a bit.  The country named after the leader of independence movements throughout Latin America elected a strong socialist leader – who is a long time advocate of the production of coca.  However, it seems that Evo Morales’ pro-socialist and indigenous brand of politics has angered many of the wealthy elite.  Four provinces – mostly populated by wealthy Bolivians of European descent – have planned votes to demand greater regional autonomy.  When the first vote, in Santa Cruz, was a resounding victory for the pro-autonomy movement, Morales responded by pushing for a national recall vote of him and the governors of all nine provides (departments) to prove how beloved he is, and how much the average people love local government.  Further complicating things is the fact that Morales is the number one disciple of Hugo Chavez, placing Bolivia in the middle of an international spat between the Latin left and the US.  Since we have a series of elections that could rip a country apart, remove a democratically elected president, and alter the ideological balance of the western hemisphere, let’s take a look at Bolivia.

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