Bolivian Chaos

OK, so now we have a situation of near-civil war in Bolivia. If you haven't been watching (and I must admit it's only been on the peripheral scanner here) here's the general lowdown.
Bolivia is one of those third-world countries that just can't seem to get it down. On a list of the most unstable countries in the world you could list it right up there with Italy. They have had 200 revolutions in their 180 year history, more than one per year.
Couple that with geographically and ethnically distinct parts of the country and you can see that things can get hairy down there.

Over at Winds of Change a while back, they had a guest writer who gives a pretty reasonable background for the current tension.
He's also got a great map that illustrates the geographic separation that occurs in the country. The entire west half of the country is up in the Andes mountains, with the capital, La Paz, being in that half. The other half is the more flat, Amazon and Paraguay basins. Native American indians dominate the upper mountainous regions, while peoples of more European descent are the majority in the lowlands.
What exacerbates this is that the lowlands are where the natural resources are. Natural gas is plentiful in the basin, and is exported to Brazil and Argentina, of which it supplies over half of their gas needs.

For some time now, a lot of Bolivians have been conducting a "Gas War," blocking roads, demonstrating in cities like El Alto and Cochabamba to prevent the export of Bolivian natural gas by foreign companies. The fellow coordinating the protests is Evo Morales, a Marxist protégé of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, the leader of the MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) Party, and also the leader of coca leaf growers (the stuff that's made into cocaine). The protests brought down the presidency of Gonzalo Sanchez do Lozada in October 2003 and continue to escalate: 820 in the last 17 months. The current government of Sanchez's successor Carlos Mesa in teetering.

Needless to say, "Today, there are no more pro-America, pro-freedom, and anti-Marxist folks in all South America than those in Santa Cruz."

So now we hear the news that President Mesa has been forced to step down, after 20 months in power (hey, that's pretty good by their standard). By their constitution, the president of the Senate and then their House-equivalent, are next in line. Some political wrangling somehow convinced both of those players to abdicate their right to succeed. So now the congress has appointed the Supreme Court President, Eduardo Rodriguez, as the interim leader of the country. When that happens, the temp guy must schedule a new election for the presidency within a short amount of time.
What is causing the quick line of succession? Fear of the protesters?

Anyway, now that Rodriguez has officially taken over, the protesters seem to have stopped the violence, and have begun to lift the roadblocks.

The Harvard-trained jurist has a daunting challenge: to defuse a country on edge whose majority Indians, coca-leaf farmers and leftist labor and student groups are clamoring for a greater share of power, for nationalizing the oil industry and for backing away from U.S.-style free-market programs they blame for widespread poverty.

Good luck. I'm skeptical that changing things to a more socialist economy will improve things much in the long run, but temporarily it will probably improve some poor urbanite lifestyles. I would be interested in finding a more detailed explanation of what drives Bolivia's economy, and whether or not it's just market issues, government intervention problems, or if their economy is just not diverse enough.

Morales is expected to be a leading candidate. A presidency of Morales, an Aymara Indian who calls himself a follower of Venezuela's anti-American President Hugo Chavez, would bring to seven the number of leftist leaders in Latin America.

Just what we need down there. Another Chavez.