WATER ABLAZE - Patagonia Sin Represas

educational opportunities. Plans for total renationalisation fell through
initially due to strong opposition on the part of Brazil’s President Lula,
representing the interests of the Petrobas Oil Company.
If all states were to demand a fair share of their own natural
resources, the entire global economy would begin to totter. The
wealthy nations in particular are concerned about rising energy prices.
The financial world and especially those companies which would
be affected are not just going to stand by and do nothing about this
development. One impending threat, for instance, is the tidal wave of
corporate compensation lawsuits which would be brought before the
arbitration boards of the WTO or World Bank.
Resistance to Morales’ reform policies is now beginning to make
itself felt in his own country, too. At the end of November 2006, against
the will of the largely Conservative senate, the government succeeded
in carrying through a land reform designed to support the small farms
on Bolivia’s central plateau (Altiplano) and to ensure a more equitable
apportionment of the vast estates of the cattle barons and soy kings
in the Amazon lowlands (Oriente). Six provincial governors called
for the boycott of parliamentary control of these measures. It is also
to be feared that companies and powerful institutions will try to use
big landowners to provoke the destabilisation of the president and his
policies.
During a visit to Germany in 2006, Oscar Olivera expressed concern
about the possibility that the claims of the population to a rightful
share of their own national resources could lead to a state of affairs
resembling civil war and that every possible form of support would be
necessary in order to carry through the reforms peacefully.
Olivera’s fears are not unjustified. Since 2002, the country has had
diverse conditions imposed on it within the framework of German
development aid – conditions drawn up in agreement with the
World Bank and IMF. The GTZ developed an appropriate €17-million
programme, which is due to run until 2011. The PADEP programme 14
is a strategy of “decentralisation” – apparently to help combat poverty.
Its real function, however, is to open the way for private enterprise.
Meanwhile, it has joined forces with the interests of the big landowners
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