Bolivia

Back in the 1970's my friend J.K. and I used to discuss the status of Bolivia at that time. He was not my only friend who was acquainted with Latin America at that time. Over its life as a country independent from Spain, it has seen over 223 change of governments.
Lately what has been happening there is nothing short of revolutionary.
Miners, workers, Indian farmers and city dwellers all protesting together, to ask for some share of the potential wealth from gas and oil.
Naturally the corporate media in the U.S. has not covered the story too much, devoting a lot of time to J. Wilbanks, Natalee in Aruba, Brandon in Utah et al.
There is an excellent blog called Blog from Bolivia set up by : The Democracy Center, based in Cochabamba Bolivia and San Francisco California, which works globally to advance human rights . Here is a reply, one could say an add on to a recent post by Jim Shultz ,who is author of the Blog:"
jorge h said...
As a Bolivian living away for many years, I can remember a quote my father whispered in my ears as a child. From what I see, those words seem to become more real today.

"Los primeros seran ultimos y los ultimos seran los primeros"

500 painful years of inequality, 500 years of outright racism, 500 years of gruesome injustice fueled by an arrogant "One-solution-fits-all" policy enforced by the IMF and world Bank have managed to create the lab where a civil war is born. The people are tired of being cheated by their own leaders and the ruling elite, they are tired of being ripped off by foreign investors, they are tired of being sacked by the transnational corporations, by the World Bank, by the IMF and by Washington. They are tired of being poor and without access to basic services, they are tired of not knowing how to read, how to learn, how to look for a brighter future, they are tired of living in deep ignorance and a hopeless existance, they are tired of being second class and third class citizens. They are sick of being fooled and abused because they are indians. They are tired of being last and forgotten.

They now rise in anger, clutching stones in their hands through tears in their eyes and they will be heard in La Paz, the entire Bolivian Republic and around the world, because their plight is no longer just theirs, it has now become a global issue. You can bet their plight one day will be ours too. Bolivia, often referred as the poorest and most insignificant country in South America, now becomes the lightning rod of a global shift, a spark that ignites a resistance to failed policies that have only created more of the same, poverty and inequality. Policies that have only created unimaginable wealth for a conniving few and have made chaos and war the only language these few seem to pay attention to.My thoughts are with those who will lose their lives, there are innocents everywhere you look, my family is there and all my childhood friends are there, I swallow tears and watch in horror the insanity of war may force them to pay a high price in all this. We will never be the same when this storm passes, who knows what uncertainty lies in the horizon for this beautiful culture we know until today as Bolivia. I hope the world pays close attention, it's time for greed, corporate arrogance, obscene inequality, violent and subtle racism to begin their journey into the night. We are done with them, the Bolivian people are done with them."
from- - -http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2005/06/us-seeks-to-blame-chavez-for-bolivian.html
Beautiful words. I pray this is a new dawn for the Bolivian people.