Word: bolivia
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...small group of ranchers is preventing us from carrying out rightful land reform in the eastern region of Santa Cruz," says Bolivia's Vice Minister of Land, Alejandro Almaraz, who accuses Larsen of attacking his convoy this spring. "U.S.-born Ronald Larsen is leading this violent resistance." But critics counter that Morales is hyping the case to build support ahead of Sunday's referendum in Santa Cruz, where opposition parties are pressing for autonomy from the central government - and ahead of a constitutional referendum later this year on changes that include capping the amount of land that can be owned...
...Both the autonomy and land-reform issues have sparked violent unrest over the past year, pitting the largely white farmers and ranchers of Bolivia's more affluent lowland east against the impoverished indigenous majority who back Morales, himself an Aymara Indian and the nation's first indigenous President. Little surprise, then, that a national furor has erupted over a confrontation involving government officials and Larsen, 64, who along with his two sons, owns 17 properties totaling 141,000 acres throughout Bolivia, three times as much land as the country's largest city. (Larsen insists his holdings amount to less than...
...Larsen, who arrived in Bolivia in 1968, told a La Paz newspaper that Almaraz's vehicle had entered his property at around 3 a.m. Almaraz, he said, "had not presented any identification. He was drunk and being abusive ... I quieted him with a bullet to his tire. That's the story." But the government insists this wasn't Larsen's first run-in with Almaraz: the rancher is accused of kidnapping the vice minister for eight hours in February. The two alleged incidents prompted the government to file a criminal complaint of "sedition, robbery and other crimes" against Larsen...
...educated Duston Larsen, referring to Morales' efforts to empower Bolivia's indigenous, wrote on his MySpace page in 2007, "I used to think democracy was the best form to govern a country but ... should a larger more uneducated group of people (70%) be in charge of making decisions, running a country and voting?" The fact that Duston, in 2004, won the Mr. Bolivia beauty pageant, in the eyes of many government supporters, puts him in the company of the country's European-oriented elite. (That same year, Miss Bolivia, Gabriela Oviedo, also from the country's east, suggested Bolivia shouldn...
...since denied that he implied a separatist movement for Santa Cruz or the other three eastern states: Beni, Pando and Tarija, which will hold similar votes this summer. But critics say the remark betrayed an underlying goal of the country's eastern elite: gaining total control over Bolivia's vast natural gas reserves and its most fertile land...