Word: bolivian
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...since the end of the War of the Pacific, which culminated 125 years ago with the Treaty of Ancón. In the country’s capital, constitutions have been passed and repealed, many regimes have risen and fallen; and yet, defying all rationality, the Bolivian Naval Force lives on. Arguably the poorest country of Latin America, and torn apart by racial tensions and political instability, Bolivia still maintains a force of over 5,000 sailors and 173 vessels, whose most important activity is the commemoration of ‘Sea Day’ at the centric Abaroa square...
...madness” afflicting the continent, perhaps at the core of what he famously described as “one hundred years of solitude” in his most celebrated novel. Although García Márquez may be correct about Latin America as a whole, the Bolivian navy does not fit his regional argument. This is not just because other landlocked countries, like Rwanda and Serbia, also have navies. Rather, it is because irrational behavior has always been at the core of international relations...
...Ultimately, political scientists attached to models can consider kleos as a possible motivation for action, just as they could ascribe a particular value to the Bolivian obsession with the sea. But values, in models and elsewhere, change just as much as motivations do. Thus, like Greenspan proposed, we need to understand the impossibility of foreseeing a particular actor’s full set of motivations when making a political decision. Given that the future is eternally foggy, our only option is to study the past in a qualitative, rather than quantitative...
...That is the only path to understanding the Bolivian Navy’s challenge to all existing rationality: No matter how complex our equations get, history will remain our best compass with which to navigate the uncertainties of human decision-making...
...priesthood to enter politics. He went on to spearhead an uneasy alliance of Liberals, socialists and workers' movements that have long opposed Colorado hegemony. His policies remain vague, and his critics warn that he would simply be a Paraguayan version of radical leftists like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales. But Lugo's running mate is a free-market liberal, Federico Franco, a Morales critic. On the campaign trail, Lugo has criticized Chavez for polarizing Venezuelan society and urges greater political openness in Cuba. Though his rhetoric often echoes the leftist cant of Latin America's liberation...