Free Republic

Posted on Tue, Jan. 24, 2006 LATIN AMERICA Bolivian praises coca and CastroEvo Morales' first day as president of Bolivia included meeting leaders of Cuba and Venezuela and the swearing-in of a leftist Cabinet. BY JACK CHANG, Knight Ridder News Service LA PAZ, Bolivia - Newly inaugurated Bolivian President Evo Morales began his historic, five-year term Monday by meeting with leaders from Cuba and Venezuela, two of Latin America's harshest critics of U.S. policy, before swearing in a Cabinet largely made up of political radicals. His Cabinet choices included a former housekeeper turned union activist as justice minister and a...

HOJAS DE COCA PARA EL ENVIADO DE BUSH La hoja de coca selló la distensión que Evo Morales propicia con Washington. Thomas Shannon, enviado especial del presidente Bush y subsecretario de Estado para asuntos del Hemisferio Occidental, recibió con sonrisa complaciente las hojas de coca que le obsequió el presidente boliviano horas antes de su toma de posesión. Hace unas semanas, el vicepresidente Alvaro García Linera dijo que Morales pronto daría señales claras de cambio. No hubo que esperar mucho para que se advirtieran que algo nuevo empieza en Bolivia. Evo no sólo hizo que Shannon aceptara la cita en...

The Next Crisis By Oliver North January 13, 2006 Official Washington has the attention span of a fruit fly. A "crisis d'jour" momentarily captures the attention of the so-called mainstream media, politicians and government bureaucrats. For a few days -- occasionally for a few weeks -- the potentates on the Potomac will focus on "the problem," hold hearings, introduce some legislation, devise a way to spend more of our tax dollars, initiate an "investigation" -- and move on when they are "shocked," "stunned," and/or "surprised" by the next catastrophe or scandal. Like a pan of soup on a hot stove,...

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- Leftist coca grower Evo Morales, a fierce critic of U.S. policies who helped topple two of his predecessors in deadly street uprisings against Bolivia's ruling elite, was inaugurated Sunday as the nation's first Indian president. The former llama herder and leader of Bolivia's coca growers union raised his fist in a leftist salute just before he swore to uphold the constitution during the ceremony in the ornate Legislative Palace Morales wept and bowed after he was presented with the yellow, red and green presidential sash -- the colors of the Bolivian flag. Outside, tens of...

January 22, 2006 Bolivia's Leader Solidifies Region's Leftward Tilt By JUAN FOREROand LARRY ROHTER TIWANAKU, Bolivia, Jan. 21 - When Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and former head of the Bolivian coca growers union, is sworn in as president on Sunday, it may be the hardest turn yet in South America's persistent left-leaning tilt, with the potential for big reverberations far beyond the borders of this landlocked Andean nation. While mostly vague on details, and recently moderating his tone, Mr. Morales promises to transform Bolivia. He has said he would "depenalize" cultivation of coca, the prime ingredient for cocaine,...

Morales signals growing ties with Venezuelan leader as well as Castro CARACAS, VENEZUELA - Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales, fresh from a visit with Fidel Castro, launched a world tour Tuesday by joining with Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez in a denunciation of free-market economics — a sign of the growing relationship among the three leftist leaders. Notably, the tour includes stops in Spain, France, Belgium, South Africa, China and Brazil — but not Washington. Morales' spokesman says he was not invited.Arriving in Caracas aboard a Cuban jetliner, Morales said he and Chávez were uniting in a "fight against neoliberalism and...

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Bolivia's president-elect said he will meet with Cuban President Fidel Castro during his first trip abroad since winning the Bolivian presidential elections this month.President-elect Evo Morales announced that he will travel Friday to Cuba as the first stop in a world tour that includes visits to Europe, China, South Africa and Brazil before he assumes office Jan. 22. ''We have a lot of invitations from governments, from presidents,'' Morales said Tuesday, adding that he was ''very impressed, very happy'' with the calls he received from leaders of governments and international organizations, including the United Nations.Morales said...

LA PAZ, Bolivia - (AP)President-elect Evo Morales persuaded the European Union to fund a study to track what happens to Bolivia's coca leaf and how much is used in the drug trade.The European Union has agreed to a request from Bolivia's President-elect Evo Morales to help determine how much of the nation's coca production and consumption goes to legal uses, and how much is used to make cocaine. The EU will contribute the $499,800 to finance the study, but will not participate in its implementation, Angel Gutiérrez, First Secretary of the EU mission here told The Associated Press on Friday....

LIMA (Reuters) - President Alejandro Toledo on Thursday declared a state of emergency in Peru's central jungle after Shining Path guerrillas killed eight policemen amid an upsurge in violence from the Maoist group. The emergency decree bans public gatherings and gives police and military the right to search houses and make arrests without warrants. The rebels killed eight policemen in an ambush on a police vehicle out on routine patrol in the remote Huanuco region on Tuesday, some 220 miles northeast of Lima. The group that led one of Latin America's bloodiest insurgencies in the 1980s and early 1990s has...

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia — Evo Morales, the socialist coca farmer who would be Bolivia's first Indian president, appeared poised to join the ranks of like-minded leaders who have pushed Latin America's democracies to the left in recent years. With exit polls running strongly in his favor, Morales took an early congratulatory phone call from Venezuela's belligerently anti-American president Hugo Chavez. At a party at Morales' home in Cochabamba, his supporters toasted as the candidate announced that Chavez planned to contact Cuba's Fidel Castro. Said Morales of Chavez: "He's going to tell Fidel the good news" _ eliciting laughs from those nearby....

CHIPIRIRI, Bolivia - In nearly 50 years of growing coca, José Torrico has seen army soldiers swarm across his fields to pull up his plants and heard threats from successive Bolivian governments determined to destroy his crop. And like thousands of other coca farmers in this verdant, tropical region of central Bolivia, Mr. Torrico has refused to stop growing coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, even in the face of a relentless United States-financed effort to stamp it out. Now, after years of persistence, he and his fellow farmers say they are eagerly anticipating the advent of a new era,...

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Peru's first lady said yesterday that coca, which contains cocaine, cannot be stamped out because it has been used for thousands of years. Besides, she said, it is good for you. "Coca has many, many virtues in addition to health and ritualistic" uses, anthropologist Elaine Karp, wife of Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, said in a speech at George Washington University. According to the State Department, Peru is the world's second-largest producer of coca leaf, from which cocaine is extracted. The United States has spent millions of dollars trying to eradicate coca crops in Peru, 90 percent of which...

Bolivia is on the brink of a constitutional, indeed, societal collapse. It seems headed for a military coup d’état and general chaos. In the overall scheme of things in Latin America, Bolivia is of only marginal economic or political significance. But as the most acute case of a more general and disturbing set of problems affecting far more important countries in the region—an increased radicalization (and anti-democratic manipulation) of indigenous peoples, the return of long-discredited populist and Marxist ideologies, general government incompetence, and pathological anti-Americanism—it is a country we should be paying attention to. The immediate cause of Bolivia’s current...

February 23, 2003 LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- The president of Bolivia is considering a plan to resume cultivation of the raw ingredient in cocaine in a remote jungle basin -- a move the U.S. government fears would undermine what is viewed as its most successful anti-drug program in South America. President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is studying a proposal to allow cultivation of coca in the Chapare region of central Bolivia to help calm unrest among growers who have blockaded major highways and put their support behind his political rival. "We've begun serious dialogues with coca growers with the...

<p>SARAVENA, Columbia—The arrival of US special forces trainers in this battered town last month signaled that the US military will play a more direct role in Columbia’s long civil war, a challenge that could lead the country’s two leftist guerilla armies to broaden attacks against US targets.</p> <p>Late last month, the smaller of the two Marxist-oriented guerilla movements, the National Liberation Army, kidnapped two journalists, a Briton and an American, in this oil-rich region of eastern Columbia, saying the province had become a “war zone declared by the North American government and the Columbian state.”</p>

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Despite spending billions of dollars to train police forces, whip soldiers into shape, spray crops with defoliants and teach farmers how to grow anything but coca plants, the United States is losing ground in the South American drug war. In Peru, coca eradication efforts stopped July 2. In Bolivia, where by last year authorities had nearly ended the growing of coca leaves that are refined to make cocaine, farmers are back at it. In Colombia, the president-elect's vow to eliminate the nation's burgeoning coca crop has shrunk to a pledge to attack only industrial-sized...