Bolivia's president to speak at Brown University

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Bolivia's president to speak at Brown University

Updated: April 22, 2008 03:38 PM CDT

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Bolivia's first indigenous president is preparing to speak at Brown University as part of the school's year-long focus on Latin American issues.

Evo Morales, a former coca grower, has been a critic of the U.S. government. He's also trying to amend Bolivia's constitution to include a detailed bill of rights and considerable autonomy for the country's 36 indigenous groups.

In a written statement, Brown President Ruth Simmons says Morales offers a unique perspective on Latin America and the impact of U.S. foreign policy there.



Read more: http://www.eyewitnessnewstv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8210318

[SpiralHawk]

1. Condor coming to meet with the Eagle at Brown U.

(N.B. no eagles to be found among the republicon homelanders. They are the chickenhawks).

http://aguilahombre.wordpress.com/

[Robbien]

2. "unique perspective"

meaning not the usual BS we get from WaPo and MiamiHearld or hate talk radio.

This should be interesting. Wish he'd come to the Great Lakes area.

[BunkerHill24]

3. Kudos to my Alma Mater...n/t

[grizmaster]

4. The usual crap channel 12 coverage

It doesn't say when or where he's speaking. Yet more proof of the complete failure of journalists to do even the basics of their job.

[slampoet]

5. DAMMIT! the article doesn't say WHEN AND WHERE!!

Not your fault.


Brown University has a nasty way of keeping these things secret until the last minute, (even when some of these events receive public tax money), in order to keep the general public out.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Rats! This story was published today, and says he's supposed to speak Tuesday. What????

Bolivia's president to speak at Brown University

April 22, 2008
PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Bolivia's first indigenous president gets ready to speak at Brown University in Providence.

Evo Morales is scheduled to deliver a lecture Tuesday about the Andes.

An Aymara Indian and former coca grower, Morales is a fierce critic of the U.S. government.

Lawmakers for Morale's Movement Toward Socialism party are trying to amend Bolivia's constitution to include a detailed bill of rights and considerable autonomy for the country's 36 indigenous groups.

In a written statement, Brown University President Ruth Simmons says Morales offers a unique perspective on Latin American and the impact of U.S. foreign policy there.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2008/04/22/bolivias_president_to_speak_at_brown_university/

[Judi Lynn]

7. It's all over. Done today. Dammit! Here's an article which came out earlier:

Evo Morales to give speech at Brown University

01:00 AM EDT on Monday, April 14, 2008

Thomas J. Morgan

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous head of state, will deliver a Stephen A. Ogden Jr. Memorial Lecture on International Affairs at Brown University on April 22.

Morales’s topic is “From the Andes: New Visions, New Voices.” The free lecture will begin at 4 p.m. in Sayles Hall. Doors will open at 3 p.m.

Morales offers a unique perspective on Latin American affairs and on the effects of U.S. foreign policy in the region, said Brown President Ruth J. Simmons.

Morales’s visit to Brown comes during a year when the university is hosting lectures, exhibitions, events, and film series with a focus on Latin American issues. The year’s inaugural event, in October 2007, featured Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil, and Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile, discussing social and economic inequality in Latin America. Lagos and Cardoso are professors-at-large at Brown, based at the Watson Institute for International Studies.

Writer Carlos Fuentes and former heads of state from Chile and Spain are currently joining dozens of historians, literary scholars, and writers from Europe and the Americas for a conference to celebrate the bicentenary of Latin American independence. The conference concludes tomorrow.

More:
http://www.projo.com/news/content/BOLIVIAN_04-14-08_VL9NV4B_v12.298080a.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They must have been afraid too many people would show up, or there would have been more publicity at the appropriate time.

Maybe someone will write an article on how he did, at least.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Report on his speech: Morales tells of Bolivian boyhood

Morales tells of Bolivian boyhood
Juliana Friend
Issue date: 4/23/08 Section: Campus News



Media Credit: Min Wu
Bolivian President Evo Morales, in
his trademark casual dress, spoke
to a full Sayles Hall in Spanish
last night.

Framed by the United States flag on his right, and the Bolivian and University flags on his left, Evo Morales raised his palm to a packed Sayles Hall and quieted the roars of the standing ovation that greeted him.

In lilting Spanish, the President of Bolivia did not begin his address with a crowd-pleasing joke or a political cry.

Instead, after apologizing for having to cancel his first scheduled visit to Brown in February, Morales began by describing the highland town of Orinoca, Bolivia, where he grew up with his illiterate mother and semi-illiterate father. The president told the audience in his intimate yet subdued tone that he himself had dropped out of school in sixth grade after his father declared, "That boy of mine is no good at studying, so now go to work."

He has been working since, but politics was not his initial occupation. "Never in my life did I think of being a leader, much less a president," Morales said of his early years.

However, in his speech that intertwined his past with his country's future, Morales said with evident pride that after his inauguration as president in 2005, Bolivia has seen increasing economic prosperity and political equality.

While it is impossible to make reparations for 500 years of oppression, "for the first time the government is reaching places it's never reached before," he said.

Morales' tone intensified as he said that after his administration nationalized oil resources, revenues jumped from $300 million to $1.93 billion.

More:
http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2008/04/23/CampusNews/Morales.Tells.Of.Bolivian.Boyhood-3343506.shtml

[judasdisney]

9. I'll Wager $10 Evo Gets Harassed by TSA/DHS

and there will be Neo-Nazi-Con propaganda spun about "exporting socialism" and Brown's "promotion of cocaine" etc.

Leave it to the fascists to cook-up a diplomatic incident when Evo visits, for mobilizing more hatred from their base and leveraging their class war against Latin America.

P.S. Seems like a very, very misguided time for Morales to be away from Bolivia, with the May 4 secession vote coming up and CIA mischief a-plenty boiling in Santa Cruz.

[Judi Lynn]

10. If I'm not mistaken, that date was postponed. It's also easy to guess the date with Brown

was made well in advance.

I think it's good for President Morales to keep strong ties with the Americans who actually know something about his goals and achievements, and what he's fighting and hoping to secure for the great majority of Bolivian citizens.

It's especially prudent for him to build solidarity with sane Americans at a time his separatist landowners are going back and forth, themselves to confer with _Bush's administration, and get personal counseling from the American ambassador, Philip Goldberg who is coaching them, along with representatives of U.S.A.I.D. and N.E.D., as they attempt to destabilize the Bolivian government.

Those people in Santa Cruz should not be allowed to imagine they have him pinned down, a prisoner, helpless against their superior, more powerful, _Bush-backed machinations. He has allies here, and around the world. It's good for him to touch bases.

On edit, here's an article which discusses a postponement:

Posted on Sat, Mar. 08, 2008
Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Bolivia's top electoral authority on Friday indefinitely postponed a May 4 referendum on a new constitution intended to give more political power to the nation's long-oppressed indigenous groups.

Citing logistical concerns, the National Electoral Court ruled that it would be impossible to ensure the ''legal guarantees, sufficient time and adequate electoral environment'' on such short notice for the referendum, which is backed by President Evo Morales.

It also suspended referendums planned in four opposition-controlled eastern states on proposals to declare greater autonomy.

''The National Electoral Court's decision is fair as long as the state electoral courts'' also abide by it, said Cesar Navarro, a legislator from Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party. ``But it's not fair if the decision only puts the brakes on the national referendum.''

Regional leaders vowed to press on with those votes.

Lawmakers from Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party last month passed a bill sending the new constitution to voters in May, over the objections of opposition groups who walked out of the constitutional assembly that drafted the document in 2007.

If approved, Morales' constitution would outline a detailed bill of rights and considerable autonomy for the country's 36 indigenous groups, long shut out of power by the country's elite.

Opponents say the charter places Indians over the rest of the population and fails to address the autonomy demands of the eastern states, which are fighting Morales' land redistribution plan and want to keep more of the region's natural gas revenues.

http://www.miamiherald.com/942/story/449315.html

[Peace Patriot]

11. I think the white separatists are going to defy the federal court and hold

the referendum anyway, because they are a law unto themselves. There will be no Carter Center or EU or other international election monitors, nor federal involvement, to protect indigenous voting rights, so rightwing thugs will be free to beat up, bully, intimidate and bribe poor voters who want to vote against secession. This has been the white separatists way--they are like the white bigots in our own southern states prior to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s. So they will probably win their own rigged referendum, and then ask for Bush Junta support for their "independence."

And, interestingly, Donald Rumsfeld, in a Washington Post op-ed, five months ago, urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America.* The Bushites don't have any "friends and allies" in South America, except for the fascists running Colombia (whose paramilitaries have slaughtered thousands of union leaders, peasant farmers, political leftists, human rights workers and journalists), and fascist cells planning coups within the many democratic, leftist countries, like these white separatists in Bolivia.

I think Rumsfeld is orchestrating Oil War II: South America. And I think that this situation in Bolivia--with the Bushites stoking a civil war (funding, arming, advising and organizing the white separatists)--is the best opportunity they have for drawing the Bolivarian countries into a war, destabilizing them, creating mayhem in the region, and re-gaining global corporate predator control of the oil and other resources.

There must be many curses against democracy in Washington DC offices today, given the election of a leftist in Paraguay on Sunday. Paraguay is adjacent to the eastern provinces of Bolivia, rich in gas, oil and other resources, that the white separatists want to split off from Bolivia. I'm fairly sure that the Bushites were thinking of FORMERLY rightwing Paraguay and eastern Bolivia as a fascist enclave from which to launch major trouble-making in the Andes region, ultimately aimed at Ecuador and Venezuela (rich in oil). They lack strategic ground in the "southern cone" (southern end of the Bolivarian revolution). They have major trouble-maker Colombia in the north ($5.5 BILLION in U.S.-Bush military aid) adjacent to Ecuador and Venezuela. They face a solid block of leftist countries in the south (Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil), with only weak Paraguay as a rightwing outpost. Now they've "lost" Paraguay. The new president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo (the "bishop of the poor") will not be friendly to U.S. meddling in Bolivia, and has stated that he wants the U.S. air base in Paraguay and U.S. troops to be gone.

A fascist, white separatist state in the eastern provinces of Bolivia will be much more vulnerable without the corrupt, rightwing Colorado Party covering for U.S./Bushite military activity in Paraguay. What are war criminals to do? BoRev.net** has a hilarious map of Latin America, expressing their dilemma. Check it out.

-----------------------------

*"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

**map of Bushite dilemma in Latin America
http://www.borev.net/2008/04/introducing_the_ap_style_guide.html

[Judi Lynn]

14. Good grief! I thought they were kidding, until I saw the link! Thanks! Sort of!

On edit:

That list is mind boggling. You have to wonder how many of us do they think they can fool with that crap? Who wrote it, originally, you have to wonder: John Bolton? Roger Noriega? Otto Reich?

What a PANTLOAD.

If anyone sees the list and has the impression he/she just might want to look a little more deeply, this would be a great time to look into the history of any one of those countries at the hands of U.S. policy, and its history going back to the 1950's, when Eisenhower overthrew the Guatemalan President on behalf of the United Fruit Company.

Here's a running start for anyone who still hasn't had time to be aware of the "modern" way of dealing with Latin America by some of the uglier U.S. Presidents:

A "killing field" in the Americas:
US policy in Guatemala

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~snip~
"10 Years of Springtime"
Repressive governments have plagued Guatemala throughout its history, with alternating waves of dictators being the rule. But, between 1945 and 1954, there was a period of enlightenment -- an experiment with democracy called the "10 Years of Springtime" -- that started with the election of Juan Jose Arevalo to the presidency.

While in power from 1945 to 1951, Arevalo established the nation's social security and health systems and a government bureau to look after Mayan concerns. Arévalo's liberal regime experienced many coup attempts by conservative military forces, but the attempts were not successful.

Arévalo was followed by Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán who became president in democratic elections in 1951. At the time, 2% of landowners owned 70% of the arable land and farm laborers were kept in debt slavery by these landowners. Arbenz continued to implement the liberal policies of Arevalo, and instituted an agrarian reform law to break up the large estates and foster individually owned small farms. The land reform program involved redistribution of 160,000 acres of uncultivated land owned by United Fruit Company. United Fruit was compensated for its land.
United Fruit, Eisenhower and the end of reform
United Fruit was a state within the Guatemalan state. It not only owned all of Guatemala's banana production and monopolized banana exports, it also owned the country's telephone and telegraph system, and almost all of the railroad track. In addition to redistributing United Fruit land, the government also began competing with United Fruit in the production and export of bananas.

Important people in the ruling circles of the US, involved with United Fruit Company, used their influence to convince the US government to step in. (Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' law firm had prepared United Fruit's contracts with Guatemala; his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, belonged to United Fruit's law firm; John Moors Cabot, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, was the brother of a former United Fruit president; President Eisenhower's personal secretary was married to the head of United Fruit's Public Relations Department.)

In 1954, Eisenhower and Dulles decided that Arbenz finally had to go, and the US State Department labeled Guatemala "communist". On this pretext, US aid and equipment were provided to the Guatemalan Army. The US also sent a CIA army and CIA planes. They bombed a military base and a government radio station, and overthrew Arbenz Guzmán, who fled to Cuba.

The coup restored the stranglehold on the Guatemalan economy of both the landed elite and US economic interests. President Eisenhower was willing to make the poor, illiterate Guatemalan peasants pay in hunger and torture for supporting land reform, and for trying to attain a better future for themselves and their families. In order to ensure ever-increasing profits for an American corporation, the US State Department, the CIA, and United Fruit Company had succeeded in taking freedom and land from Guatemala's peasants, unions from its workers, and hope for a democratic Guatemala from all of its people.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.html

[joeglow3]

12. That is one messed up country

A client of mine had a power plant there. Every month we would have a meeting with the client to discuss their business and there was always crap going on there. One time they had all their employees locked in the plant for weeks because the coca rioters were attacking everything. It was also the first client I ever had that was depreciating machine guns.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Please take some time to explain what your post means. The crucial information

has been left out.

[joeglow3]

15. Just stating that it is one messed up country

Nice to see someone who may change it around.

[Judi Lynn]

16. DU'er magbana has posted a great interview Evo Morales did for Democracy Now with Amy Goodwin:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/24/welcome_to_the_axis_of_evil

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x3690

Transcript, as well as video and audio streams.