Description
Bolivia leapt onto the front pages of the inside track in October 2003, when the “Gas Wars” protests caused the ousting of Bolivia’s President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Within the Gas Wars the indigenous inhabitants, trade unions, and other civil society groups came together to protest the sale of Bolivian natural gas to the US through a pipeline resulting in Chile. Within the unrest protestors were killed, and calls for the President to resign grew ever louder. Bolivia has a long history of social protest. In Cochabamba in 2000, the Water Wars saw nearly 10,000 people take to the streets against the privatization of water. The Bolivian peoples’ strong stance against foreign interests and the sale in their natural resources has been triggered by US pressure; first Within the war on drugs–the fumigation of illegal coca crops–and pressure waged on a much wider front of IMF structural adjustments, and the neo-liberal regime. In Patterns of Protest, UK-based Andean expert John Crabtree explains the antecedents of a poor country’s struggle against its so much powerful neighbors, and the predatory interests of global capitalism. In a strongly indigenous nation, explains the influence of Quechua and Aymara identity and setting up in Bolivian politics, and analyzes the original way that Boliva has united disparate populations–the urban working class and the agricultural indigenous people–to demand that Bolivian natural resources benefit Bolivians first.