November 4, 2007

Evo Morales: The new enemy of the United States

After winning the presidency in December 2005, Morales has increased Bolivia's annual natural gas revenues from $300 million to $2 billion a year by exerting greater state control over the industry. Water utilities have reverted to state control and authorities are negotiating the re-nationalization of the country's main telecommunications company, Entel, which is owned by Telecom Italia SpA. Officials have indicated electrical power could be next. Morales has allied himself closely with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's leftist president, and Fidel Castro, Cuba's aging leader.

Those politics have not endeared him to the United States, his nemesis in the late 1980s and 1990s when he led coca growers, or "cocaleros", in protests against Washington-directed forced eradication campaigns. The plant's small green leaf has been chewed as a mild stimulant here for millenia, but is best known outside the country as the base ingredient of cocaine.

Morales will try to implant the Cuban communism in Bolivia. He is a criminal.

No comments: