Andean Information Network

Widespread protests, marches, counter-marches, blockades, and strikes continue throughout the nation, and do not show signs of diminishing.  Doctors, medical students, and health workers continued to protest, entering their eighth week of strikes on Monday, May 14th.   Public university students and staff as well as transportation unions joined the measures.  Early in the week, the [...]

Throughout 2012, Bolivian unions, social movements, and civil organizations have staged marches, road blockades, and strikes.  Following a customary pattern, the period after Carnaval (end of February) these measures have escalated, particularly around May Day, a traditional time for labor demands. Various unions and organizations reject legislation or measures implemented by the Morales administration.  Most [...]

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs’ (COHA) April 25 “Spotlight on Bolivia: The “Coca Diplomacy” of Evo Morales,” generalizes and speculates about Bolivian drug policy and relations with the United States. While the general conclusion that U.S. policymakers should do more to cooperate with Bolivia’s vision of coca is valid, inaccuracies presented weaken its arguments. The [...]

As calls mount from prominent Latin American politicians for a profound re-evaluation of international drug policy, and even a debate on the feasibility of drug decriminalization and legalization at the Summit of the Americas this weekend, Bolivia’s complex position is often misunderstood. Personal consumption decriminalized in practice Currently, personal drug possession in Bolivia does not [...]

Since the legal recognition of community justice in the 2009 constitution, Bolivia’s political opposition and the press have repeatedly blamed Morales administration legal reform initiatives for a supposed increase in lynching. For example, the Economist asserted: “Many rural Bolivians have no access to the courts. The new constitution drawn up by Mr. Morales’s party and approved in [...]

Jeffrey Sachs casts himself as the US’s ‘progressive’ candidate to head the World Bank, and from his analysis it’s clear that he is a better economist than historian. Nothing reveals this more plainly than reviewing some of the ‘facts’ on Bolivia in his Economic Reforms in Bolivia, Poland in the 80s and 90s, A Look [...]

On March 7, the US released the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Drug policy advocates have long criticized the yardsticks used by the US government to measure efficacy in drug control. But even by US standards, Bolivia surpasses Peru in most categories, though the US certified Peru and determined that Bolivia “failed demonstrably to make [...]

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) 2011 Report singled out the Bolivian Government, stating that the country is presenting a “major challenge to the international drug control system.”[i] This conclusion is based on Bolivia’s 2011 denunciation of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol. The Bolivian government objected [...]

The protracted conflict over road construction through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) has stemmed, in large part, from the government’s failure to first consult the affected indigenous communities as required by the 2009 Bolivian Constitution. In an effort to ease tensions, a congressional commission has retroactively defined draft legislation for “prior consultation” [...]

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