Bolivia: from nature's rights to "balanced industrialization"
Information on Bolivia is scarce in European newspapers and television. So I had to rely on other sources and documentaries to understand the situation there. It was worthwile, as I discovered the universal importance of the freedom movement that is happening there. Not only a Human Right's movement, as in the Arab World and other parts of the World, but also a movement of human freeing themselves from the illusion of dominating nature. A human and nature's freedom movement...
Evo Morales was brought up in 2005 as president by the peasants movement in Bolivia, counting for the poorer half of the population. It was the first time ever that an indigenous leader was at the head of the Bolivian state, even as the Aymara and Quechua account for roughly half of the country's population. But soon, Evo and his government knew they had to balance the desire to respect Mother Earth, Pacha Mama, as the Campesinos know they should, with the realities of the country's unbalanced mining economy, which feeds, even marginally, its urgan poor population.
David Choquehuanca, a member of the government, close to Evo Morales, confesses he and his colleagues don't have a roadmap or even a rough idea yet of how they will implement the promise behind their motto "industrialization that respects nature". And a huge gold mine which has been polluting for decades with cyanid the river that throws into the lake Titica had still not been closed. The government, however, has lowered private company's share of profit on the country's wealth from more than 50% to roughly 18% in all sectors. "Even like this, it must be a good deal, as those companies are staying in the country" says a member of the government in another documentary entitled "Campesinos", by two young French reporters.
A 24" documentary on Al Jazeera shows this contradiction quite well: in April 2010, Bolivia organized the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which was a great symbolic success, at a moment where European flights were hindered by the explosion of an unpronounceable volcano from Island. David Choquehuanca speaks about mining, the differences between capitalism, socialism and Bolivia's movement, as well as of "balanced industrialization" :