Bolivian government orders troops to take 'control' of oilfields
This comes at a time when right-leaning President Carlos Mesa was forced from office and a controversial referendum on regional autonomy for the energy rich eastern part of Bolivia is scheduled for Aug. 12.
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Bolivian government orders troops to take 'control' of oilfields
LA PAZ (AFP) Jun 28, 2005 Bolivia's government has ordered the armed forces to take 'physical control' of oilfields in a politically charged move amid continuing demands for full nationalization of the industry in South America's poorest country.
But the move does not mean an end to the operations of foreign multinationals, such as Britain's BP, Spain's Repsol, France's Total and Brazil's Petrobras, which have been here since 1997.
"It is symbolic more than anything else," said analyst and university professor Marcelo Varnoux.
Interim president Eduardo Rodriguez issued decrees late Monday instructing the ministries of Oil and Gas, Interior, and Defense "to coordinate work and operations so as to guarantee State authority at oil and gas deposits".
The move comes as implementation of a law approved in May and which the multinationals have slammed as confiscatory. Monday's decree underscored that the industry should operate "in the interest of all Bolivians".
The new oil law doubled to 32 percent non-deductible taxes on the oil companies, and kept at 18 percent their royalty payments to the state. It also boosts the role of the state oil company YPFB in the production process.
The move comes after New York oil prices closed above 60 dollars a barrel for the first time on Monday, and although prices cooled Tuesday, market jitters remain.
Rodriguez on June 9 succeeded Carlos Mesa who was driven out of office after weeks of social and political unrest largely over control of Bolivia's natural resources, particularly natural gas.
Bolivia has South America's largest gas reserves after Venezuela.
The leftist opposition Movement to Socialism charged that Rodriguez "hasn't the least intention of recovering state ownership" of oil and gas industries.
After Mesa quit, the presidents of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies refused the presidency, leaving the president of the Supreme Court, fourth in the constitutional line of succession, as caretaker president, with the power to call a snap election.
Rodriguez has promised general elections before the year's end.
Mesa was the second president in 20 months to be forced to resign by the poor masses seeking a greater share of Bolivia's energy wealth.
Rodriguez, 49, was sworn in hurriedly in Sucre, without the presidential sash and regalia, before a session of legislators as protesters clashed with police outside.
For three weeks, tens of thousands of farmers, workers and indigenous people in the Andean country of nine million clamored in La Paz and other cities for the nationalization of the gas and oil industry as part of a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Bolivia's crisis pits poorer Andean regions in and around La Paz against more prosperous eastern and southern plains, where most natural gas is located. cc/mdl/jjc
An Aug. 12 referendum on autonomy highlights a divide between European descendants and the indigenous.
By Bill Faries / Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
SANTA CRUZ, BOLIVIA - If Lorgio Balcazar Arroyo has his way, Bolivia will soon have a system of government like the United States.
Mr. Balcazar, from the industrial eastern part of Bolivia, is general manager of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee, a key organizer behind a controversial referendum on regional autonomy that is scheduled for Aug. 12. Broad dissatisfaction with the central government has led to an independence movement in this industrial boomtown. Leaders here say autonomy would help buttress the area against such volatility in the west as the month-long protests in May that paralyzed the capital and led to the resignation of Bolivia's second president in less than two years.
"Bolivia needs a federal system of government," Dr. Balcazar says, noting that the central government still makes decisions over the staffing of public hospitals and road construction. "We are a huge, diverse country, but our central government is too fragile."
With Bolivia's Congress meeting Tuesday in La Páz to consider its own resignation, and the country's newest president promising elections by December, the view from the east reveals the profound economic, cultural, and political divide facing Bolivia's next government.
Santa Cruz was barely on the map half a century ago. But thanks to the strength of its fertile soils and petroleum reserves, as well as subsidies from the central government in La Páz, it has grown to a city of more than 1.2 million, from 40,000 in 1950.
Today, it is a bustling metropolis of immigrants and industry, home to Croatians, Germans, and Japanese, as well as the offices for agriculture and petroleum giants like Archer Daniels Midland, British Gas, and Brazil's Petrobras. The city and surrounding region produce 42 percent of the nation's agricultural output and 34 percent of industrial GNP, according to a 2004 report by the United Nations.
Culturally, geographically, and politically, Santa Cruz is a world apart from the high plains of western Bolivia, home to the capital, La Páz, and El Alto, indigenous strongholds where last month's protests began. Newsstands here sell magazines from Brazil in front of billboards advertising John Deere tractors. In the city's cafes, young professionals talk of weekends spent in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. From sidewalk vendors to CEOs, people here are frustrated by the mounting economic toll that years of protests have had on the country, South America's poorest. But Santa Cruz's growing assertiveness is seen as a threat to many in the west.
The Aug. 12 referendum has not been sanctioned by the national government, and many western leaders view it as a means to counteract the growing power of the country's indigenous majority.
Yet its backers claim that one of the key benefits of autonomy would be to bring Bolivia's government closer to its people and allow the country's nine departments, or states, to have greater control over how their taxes are spent.
The Pro-Santa Cruz Committee has existed since 1950, but it wasn't until June of last year, when 150,000 people turned up at its rally in support of autonomy, that its agenda made national headlines. A cabildo, or town-hall meeting, followed in January, drawing more than 300,000 people into the streets here.
But as the demands from Santa Cruz gain legitimacy, the rivalry between east and west here is increasingly delineated in racial terms. It's the eastern cambas (European-descended Bolivians) versus the western collas (a term often used to refer to western indigenous people).
At one extreme are groups like the Camba Nation, which calls for independence from the indigenous cultures, described on Camba Nation's website as "slow and miserable" and prone to "conflict and communalism."
Camba Nation's counterparts in the west were on display during the recent protests in La Páz, when speakers in the city's main plaza accused then-President Carlos Mesa of "not being a true Bolivian" because of his supposed European ancestry. But so far the extremists have been unable to broaden their influence.
From his office on the outskirts of Santa Cruz, Carlos Kempff, CEO of Santa Monica Cotton and a former minister of economic development, speaks regretfully of the path Bolivia seems headed down. "We are all guilty for what has happened here," he says. "We worked hard for 20 years to improve the country's macro-economic condition, but ... we have not been able to solve the problems of poverty and inequality, and many Bolivians feel they have been betrayed."
Yet Mr. Kempff says that the conflict over autonomy has been overblown. "Everyone wants to be able to make their own decisions, to use their own money in their own regions," he says. "We in Santa Cruz are seen as the 'devils of separatism,' but many of the protesters aren't analyzing what we've proposed."
His opinion is seconded by Balcazar, who points to the recent political crisis as highlighting the need for autonomy. "What happened in El Alto and La Páz is terrible," Balcazar says. "The needs of the people there haven't been met by the government for years. We don't want to see Santa Cruz deteriorate the same way."
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This is being denied, yet it would be out of character for the U.S. not to move troops to Paraguay next to Bolivia and her extensive gas deposits which are the largest South American gas reserves after Venezuela. The U.S. has troops in Colombia next to Venezuela. This really looks to be true to some degree. The entire 16.000 troops may not be in Paraguay at present but the U.S. is very probably setting up. There is a lot going on in Paraguay. #msg-6636179
The U.S. has hired Arabs to build a base in Israel. Why not hire ethnic Russians to build a U.S. base in Paraguay? #msg-6977807
Both Bolivia and Venezuela believe this to be factual.
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Posted Tue 12 July 2005 04:03 Tue 12 July 2005 04:03
Washington has succeeded in establishing a bridgehead in Latin America. In Paraguay close to the Bolivian border and the Triple Borders, they constructed a base that will permit the landing of Galaxy airplanes and heavy armaments. Already 400 Marines have arrived but the base is prepared to house 16,000 military troops.
The Paraguayan Congress approved the entrance of US Troops in this country, with immunity, right of free transit and permanence for its soldiers until December 2006, automatically extendable.
This insinuates that the US, from this base, could control the Bolivian Natural Gas Reserves, especially the "La vertiente" fields, one of the largest in the World.
Source: "El Deber Diario Mayor"
16,000 U.S. Troops Invade Paraguay
July 18, 2005: Earlier this month, there was a fast moving news story in Latin America about the American troops in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, a town in the desolate Chaco desert. As the story grew, during the first week of July, it evolved into the description of an air strip out in the desert capable of handling B-52s and heavy American transports. Word had it that some 16,000 American troops were moving in. The reason for all this American military activity was reported as U.S. interest in natural gas deposits across the border in Bolivia. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Eventually, some reporters checked with government officials, and flew out into the Chaco desert to see for themselves. Naturally, there was no there there. What was there was an air freight base being built by a Russian firm. There were American troops in Paraguay. Seven (as in 7) had arrived in the capital on July 3rd, to conduct a training course on counterinsurgency and anti-drug operations. A second small group of will arrive on July 24th, to do medical work in eastern Paraguay. A total of 204 American troops will be visiting Paraguay, in groups no larger than 32, between July and December, 2005. These are all training missions of one kind or another.
Wild rumors about nefarious American military operations have always been popular in Latin America, but the strident efforts to paint the liberation of Iraq as another conquest by evil imperialists has got reporters fired up and ready to take any rumor the extra mile.
Congressman Cardozo to head a delegation to go to the border zone.
07/11/05 "El Deber" - - The installation of a military base on Paraguayan territory, some 200 kilometers from the border of Bolivia, created worry yesterday in the Legislature, to the point that a commission of the Lower House announced an investigation.
Willman Cardozo, Congressman for Tarija, on the border with Paraguay, where is located the largest reserves of Natural Gas in the country, urged the Government to open an investigation and solicit information from the Embassy of Paraguay in La Paz.
"The Executive must open an immediate investigation and the Ministry of Defense must assume it role for the preservation of the nation's integrity" demanded the Legislator, who is to lead the delegation to the border area next week.
The Chancellery stated it is unaware of the subject. "There is no specific information. Between Bolivia and Paraguay there is perfect harmony and cooperation, we have an agreement about energy cooperation", stated the Chancellor Armando Loayza.
The Director of the CBO (Central Workers Union) Luis Choquetijlla, denounced that "the United States has threatened us with a military intervention through friendly countries", with the result of controlling the Natural Gas riches of Bolivia.
For the military analysis, Juan Ramon Quintana, it is a very delicate subject that concerns the entire region. " We should be very worried, it is the most negative sign, dramatic in the fact that there exists the possibility of intervention in strategic areas linked to energy, a regional project" he warned.
Continued Quintana, the political aim of Washington in South America is to offset, utilizing the Southern Command, terrorism, narcotic trafficking, narco-terrorism, and popular radical governments.
THE BARRACKS (FACILITY) CAN HOLD 16,000 MEN
Washington has succeeded in establishing a bridgehead in Latin America. In Paraguay close to the Bolivian border and the Triple Borders, they constructed a base that will permit the landing of Galaxy airplanes and heavy armaments. Already 400 Marines have arrived but the base is prepared to house 16,000 military troops.
The Paraguayan Congress approved the entrance of US Troops in this country, with immunity, right of free transit and permanence for its soldiers until December 2006, automatically extendable.
This insinuates that the US, from this base, could control the Bolivian Natural Gas Reserves, especially the "La vertiente" fields, one of the largest in the World.
When US troops enter a Latin American country, it is not for solidarity!
Tuesday, July 12, 2005 Bylined to: Carlos M. Pietri
VHeadline.com guest commentarist Carlos M. Pietri writes: With the creation of a military base in Paraguay, the United States has made a strategic move ... a possibility that had been denied to them by Brazil and Argentina; but which Paraguay has done under Alfredo Stroessner ... 1954-1989 ... when the USA was allowed to establish a CIA base in Paraguay.
Paraguay has acted against Latin American interests, preferring to be at the service of imperialist interests instead of defending the sovereignty and the rights of its own people.
Paraguay must know that it has given a mortal blow to the South Common Market (MERCOSUR) construction process. In addition, it has opened a possibility to obstruct the Asuncion Treaty, where some agreements were settled for triple border administrative handling with Brazil and Argentina.
Although the Paraguay government insists that they did not sign "any agreement with the United States for the establishment of a North American military base in the territory of the Republic" and that they only authorized the entry and free transit of US marines until December 2006, we all know that when North American troops enter a Latin American country, it is not for solidarity and they do not withdraw in short time.
Examples: Manta in Ecuador; Guantanamo in Cuba; Tres Esquinas, Larandia and Puerto Leguizamo in Colombia; Iquitos and Nanay in Peru and the military bases in Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
Now, what is the USA intention with this movement?
Many think that it is to control Bolivian’s gas ... others say that Washington was finally been able to place a simple workers in control of governments that bother them ... and perhaps they are right. But, particularly, I believe that in addition to these possibilities, the USA has gone ahead on predictions that say that for the year 2025, water shortages in the world will be so great that it will probably be the main reason for the next war.
So appropriating to itself the greater fresh water reserves in the world, the water-bearing Guarani, that it guarantees the present population of the world for 180 years ... an average of 100 liters of water per person ... sure makes them have an enviable position.
Let us all remember that, as much the World Trade Organization as the US (through the Free Trade Agreement that it promotes) maintain that water must be a private service (in other words if you were to need water you must pay for it). Therefore, we see again how the USA is always playing for economic benefits, without caring if natural resources such as water will be used for the common well-being of everyone on this our planet.
So ... thinking about human well-being, a worldwide movement should be created to force the United Nations to protect and to declare water as a human right and human patrimony; setting down on paper at least that this precious liquid must not be put in private hands.
The people of Paraguay must demand that their governors should respect their dignity and sovereignty ... before it is too late.
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