Pubdate: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 Source: Dallas Morning News (TX) 2.html Copyright: 2003 The Dallas Morning News Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117 BOLIVIAN SCARE: FORCED RESIGNATION OF PRESIDENT IS A BAD OMEN Bolivia is beginning to look as if it could become another Venezuela. The United States should worry. The Western Hemisphere doesn't need another country whose head of government regards capitalism and globalization as enemies, energy as a weapon and democratic institutions as mere devices. It is consoling that Bolivia's constitutional order is undisturbed, even with the resignation last week of President Gonzala Sanchez de Lozada and the deadly street protests that preceded it. Vice President Carlos Mesa immediately took power, as the constitution stipulated, and is free to serve the remaining four years of Mr. Sanchez's mandate. But Mr. Mesa says he will call an early election, which raises the prospect of a victory by Evo Morales, the second-place finisher in 2002. A Morales presidency would be a gigantic step backward for Bolivia and for U.S. policy in Latin America. He is a congressman and leader of the union that represents Bolivia's growers of coca, the base material for the illegal drug cocaine. He opposes the U.S.-backed coca-eradication policies of Mr. Sanchez. The immediate cause of the demonstrations that brought down Mr. Sanchez was his plan to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico through a port in Chile. Bolivia lost the port, and much else of what is today northern Chile, during a war from 1879 to 1884. Bolivians have never completely reconciled themselves to being landlocked, and the gas pipeline scheme rekindled the old resentment. But there were underlying causes. Mr. Sanchez is rich and white; most Bolivians are poor and brown. Mr. Sanchez speaks Spanish with an American accent, having been raised in Chicago; many Bolivians speak only indigenous tongues. The anti-coca campaign nearly wiped out the illicit crop, but the corresponding campaign to help Bolivians grow and sell legal crops did not fare nearly so well. Finally, Mr. Sanchez was too identified with globalization, which many Bolivians wrongly see as a threat instead of an opportunity. One shrinks to imagine a Bolivian president who would use the country's copious natural gas and coca as Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has used his country's petroleum - as weapons in an ideological war against the United States. However, Mr. Morales could become Bolivia's next president, and sooner than anyone had imagined. The United States should brace itself. - --- MAP posted-by: Josh