Word: bolivia
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...native Montana, Ronald Larsen's current legal straits might be the stuff of an old-fashioned Western movie: A cattle rancher who believes the government and its allies are unfairly trying to seize his land, and picks up a rifle to signal his displeasure. But in contemporary Bolivia, where Larsen makes his home, his recent clash with the authorities is but another instance of rising tension over land-ownership between, on the one hand, left-wing President Evo Morales and his supporters among Bolivia's indigenous population, and on the other, political opponents backed by the country's wealthy eastern...
This year half a billion people in 175 countries marked Earth Day in a global festival of political showmanship and corporate spin. President Bush planted an oak in New Orleans (249,999 more would bring the canopy back to pre-Katrina levels). In Indonesia, activists painted themselves green (above). Bolivia's socialist President Evo Morales told the U.N. that "if we want to save our planet Earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system." And capitalists polished their image to a green sheen: Macy's unveiled a new solar-power system in San Jose, Calif...
That message plays well in a country where, according to the United Nations, 21% of the people live in extreme poverty - and the figure is rising - making it South America's second-poorest nation behind Bolivia. (Per capital gross domestic product is little more than $4,000 a year.) It is also one of the hemisphere's most corrupt, which Colorado critics blame on so many years of one-party rule - 35 of those under the brutal and venal Stroessner until his 1989 overthrow. Paraguay's government has been civilian since 1993; but a recent survey found that more than...
Seemingly undeterred, Bolivia said this month it was also set to invest another $300,000 for developing new, legal coca markets. Not surprisingly, the Bolivian delegation was the first to issue what it called an "energetic protest" against the INCB's recommendations during the agency's annual meeting this week in Vienna. It also put forward a proposal to remove coca from the U.N.'s narcotics list. That's not likely to happen. The big question is whether the U.N. will adopt the INCB proposal - which would essentially leave Bolivia and Peru in breach of international law if they continue...
...with an eye to exporting, that is turning coca into everything from flour to toothpaste, shampoo and curative lotions. (Morales sent Fidel Castro a coca cake for his 80th birthday last year.) Even as the INCB was issuing its report, the Bolivian government was reaffirming its desire to increase Bolivia's legal coca crop limit from 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) to 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres). The Bush Administration has warned that the latter move would put Bolivia in violation of its international agreements - it is "not consistent with Bolivia's obligations," said the State Department...