BYE-BYE UPDATE

A year ago, in Bye-Bye Bolivia, you learned that if Evo Morales were to take over Bolivia, the country would split in two.  Sure enough, after less than four months in office, Morales is well on his way.

Morales, recall, leads the Quechua and Aymara ethnic majorities up in the Andean highlands, and got elected by focusing their resentment on the Spanish and other European ethnic minorities in the eastern lowlands.  Yet the lowlands have all the oil and gas reserves.

With Morales promising to nationalize – a euphemism for “steal” – the lowland resources, the governor of the lowland province of Tarija, Mario Cossio, has met with government officials of neighboring Paraguay and Argentina, asking their support in declaring Tarija’s secession from Bolivia.

He is being joined by the governors of the lowlands’ other three provinces, Santa Cruz, Pando, and Beni.  The new country could be called after its nickname of Media Luna, “Half Moon,” from the provinces’ collective shape.

The host of Media Luna’s most popular radio show, Arturo Mendivil broadcasting from Santa Cruz, is saying, “The east will inevitably move toward independence within a year.”

Bolivia Is On The Verge Of Civil War! was the huge banner headline across the front page recently of Santa Cruz’s largest newspaper El Mundo.  Armed militias are being formed throughout the Half Moon.  Leaders of Morales’ Socialist Party are being beaten up on Santa Cruz streets.

Talk of death is in the air.  “I would give my life for the nationalization of natural resources,” Morales announced in a speech last week (3/21).  “We are prepared to die” to prevent Morales from doing so, responded a member of Bolivia’s parliament from the lowlands, Roxanna Gentile.

What is about to die to Bolivia itself.  The Half Moon has enough wealth and resources to survive on its own, but Andean Bolivia does not.  It will be gobbled up by Chile and Peru.  Morales will end up getting asylum from his buddy Hugo Chavez in Caracas.

The map of South America is about to change.