Source:
BloombergBolivia's Evo Morales to Nationalize Railroads, El Diario Says
By Matthew Craze
July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales said the country will nationalize its railroads, which were privatized by former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, El Diario newspaper reported.
Morales said in a speech at Tiwanaku, Bolivia, that the sale of the state-owned railroads hadn't benefited the Bolivian people, the newspaper said.
Read more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aUDK7yJqYAOk&refer=latin_america
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Mr. PrivatisationThe government renationalises a big tin smelter
Bolivia's industry
Feb 19th 2007
From the Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire
~snip~
In what has now become a hallmark of his presidency, Evo Morales stood before crowds of supporters on February 9th to announce the renationalisation of another former state asset, the world’s fourth-largest tin smelter, Empresa Metalúrgica Vinto. The current owners, Glencore, a Swiss metals and minerals broker, will not be compensated, Mr Morales said. While the case certainly raises concerns about the government’s intentions towards other mining companies, the expropriation of Vinto is probably more about political vendetta than a policy of nationalisation.
The announcement came after a difficult week for the government. The president was forced to drop a plan to increase mining taxes after thousands of individual miners marched on La Paz to protest against the proposal. In the face of an open revolt by a sector normally supportive of the government, Mr Morales was forced into a humiliating about-turn and agreed to freeze taxes at current levels.
Obvious target
Vinto always was seen as a likely target for the Morales administration. Glencore bought Vinto in 2005 as part of an estimated US$90m purchase of mining assets owned by a former Bolivian president, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who was forced from office in 2003 and fled to the US.
Mr Sánchez de Lozada was both the architect of privatisation reforms in the 1990s and the former owner of the country’s largest mining company, Compañía Minera del Sur (Comsur). He is also the man held responsible by the current administration for the deaths of 67 people during anti-government protests in 2003. Those protests were spurred on by Mr Morales, then leader of the coca growers association. On the basis of the charge against him, the government is mounting a strong effort for the extradition of Mr Sánchez de Lozada to face prosecution in Bolivia.
(snip)
The government has quietly given assurances that whatever it may say in public it will not act against companies operating legally and in good faith. Foreign mining investors believe that mining code revisions to be announced by the government will be neither draconian nor confiscatory in terms of a higher tax burden and are therefore pressing ahead with their projects.
More:
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8727212~~~~~~~~~~~~~Last Updated: Wednesday, 27 June 2007, 16:08 GMT 17:08 UK
Timeline: Bolivia
A chronology of key events:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1218814.stm
Small Banzer, taller Pinochet
Banzer on Paraguay's stampPresident Hugo Banzer, who privatised Bolivia's water:
COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia
In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html