Bolivian President Ganzalo Sanchez de Lozada

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that President Ganzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who believed that building a $5 billion pipeline to export natural gas through Bolivia into the U.S and Mexico via a port in Chile would boost Bolivian economy, resigned after the massacre at El Alto when the people of Bolivia rebelled believing this plan would exploit their natural resources with little monetary return. The author points out that Bolivia's history is saturated with violence and political upheaval as they struggle to remain a viable state in which Bolivia's politics has been directly determined by their economic position as the poorest country in Latin America. The paper concludes that Lozada's ideals are commendable in that he wanted to liberate Bolivia socially and boost the economy, but, in a country where people face starvation daily, perhaps capitalism is the wrong solution because the Bolivian economy is not able to sustain a free market.

From the Paper:

"The Andean people suffered economically, while President Lozada and President Bush took credit for the progress in the war against drugs. However, consumed with terrorist threats and the war in Iraq, the Bush administration soon neglected the war on drugs and coca plant cultivation began to reemerge. Burning coca fields did little to end the abuse of cocaine in the United States. Instead, it has encouraged civil unrest and devastating poverty in Bolivia. In 1996, when the Bolivian government proposed a five-year plan to eliminate coca production, the number of patients admitted to the emergency room who were suffering from a drug overdose in the United States had risen. There seems to be little relationship between the amount of coca supply and the percentage of people using cocaine. But, as the coca fields were destroyed thousands of Bolivians faced starvation."

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