Forked Tongues in Bolivia?

Excerpt from Evo on the rocks: Decepción in Bolivia By Chellis Glendinning, The Rag Blog, June 16, 2011

Forked Tongue I: Madre Tierra

A Dec. 30, 2010 protest against gas price hikes. image from FM Center es Noticia

Out of one tine of what has become the Morales administration’s two-sided tongue come blood-stirring proclamations like the president’s empassioned grito “¡Planeta o Muerte!” at the 2010 Cancun climate change talks. Brilliant. Then there is the stark refusal, that not even Cuba or Venezuela would match, to sign on to the watered-down agreement at said talks.

And now comes the nation’s new law proclaiming the rights of Madre Tierra—to some minds, a legal-philosophic leap forward that, a few decades ago, only bioregionalists, primitive-anarchists, and traditional Native peoples could imagine.

But, sorry to say, the other spine of the eco-fork must be noted:

• the launch of genetically-modified agriculture into a countryside presently free of GMOs;
• two under-construction hydro-electric dams 300% bigger than the U.S.’s Hoover Dam at a cost of $13 billion, slated to channel water to Brazil in exchange for monies to boost Bolivia’s petro and plastic industries—this, in a country where many communities have no potable water and water-borne illnesses are rampant;
• in a nation uncontaminated by nuclear radiation: uranium mining, with future plans for nuclear power plants—aided by Iran;
• blankets of electromagnetic radiation in the form of WiMAX over urban landscapes – with the state telecommunications corporation bragging of 1350 radiobases in an area the size of Texas and California combined, with many more to come;
• commodity-transporting highways bulldozing through protected nature reserves whose treasures, in the case of the Villa Tunari-San Ignacio de Moxos road, include 11 endangered species and three Native groups in 60 communities living their traditional hunter-gatherer-fishing lifeways;
• new oil excavations;
• new gas excavations;
• in partnership with Mitubishi, Sumitomo, South Korea, and Iran: massive lithium development—threatening leeching, leaks, emissions, and spills in the world-treasure salt flats;
• Bolivia’s own Made-in-China satellite;
• with the help of India, the construction of humankind’s largest iron mine;
• 900 miles of pipeline slated to transport natural gas to Argentina; and
• an explosion of airport and high-rise construction.

In other words: full-tilt, high-tech, colossal-scale, high-capital modernization—on a Madre Tierra in which such expansion has already been shown to be The Problem…