BOLIVIA’S ROAD TO NOWHERE

Remember this map in Bye-Bye Bolivia last April?

A favorite protest tactic of Evo Morales’ socialist mobs is to block roads leading to Bolivia’s capital, La Paz. This may backfire big time. Serious candidates for the world’s scariest roads are the thin ribbons of asphalt that plunge off the Bolivian highlands to the lowlands. There are only two, and since the lowlands produce most of Bolivia’s wealth, they are the lifelines to all those protesting folk way up there in the Andes.

So don’t be surprised if the guys in the lowlands, the targets of Morales’ demands to nationalize and expropriate their wealth, blow the roads and destroy those two thin lifelines.

They won’t do it themselves. Brazilian Intelligence – ABIN (Agencia Brasileira de Inteligencia Nacional) – will do it for them.

The most fascinating aspect to this contretemps is the rift it has caused between South America’s most powerful leftists: Hugo Chavez and Lula da Silva. For Venezuela’s Chavez, his Castroite fanaticism trumps everything including economics. He is after revolutionary power, which is why he pays Evo Morales’ bills in Bolivia. He can politically afford to do so because he has transformed Venezuela from a democracy into a dictatorship.

Brazil’s Lula cannot, as Brazil remains a democracy – so he has to focus on Brazil’s economic interests rather than his life-long socialist beliefs. Bolivian oil and gas exports are critical for Brazil’s economy; their shut down would cause gas rationing and grave economic damage to Brazil, and thus grave political damage to Lula.

There is no way Lula is going to let some coca-growing Bolivian Marxist puppet of Chavez do this to him and Brazil. If he has to split Bolivia in two, and support the folks in the lowlands who want autonomy and even independence from La Paz, he will.

In a contest between Lula and Chavez – bet on Lula. How ironic that this icon of Latin Leftism should turn out to be our biggest anti-Chavez ally. The map of South America may be about to change. Bolivia is a failed state and is on the verge of vanishing.