Blog from Bolivia

/ revolutions / blogged /
The Democracy Center blogs from Bolivia, providing excellent on-the-ground analysis of the current uprising.
Narconews provides a timetable of the latest events that led to president Mesa's ouster. Meanwhile there seems to be a truce between the new government an the leadership of the protest movement(/revolt?).

Note that the Washington Post correctly describes the issues behind the protests:

The demonstrators were demanding the ruling elite grant more power to the poor majority through a "constitutional assembly," that the country's natural gas fields be nationalized and that the government back away from the free market reforms many impoverished Bolivians blame for compounding chronic poverty in the country.

This probably seems too improbably impudent a version of events to Forbes which, reporting on the same story, softens the unilaterally softens up the demands:

Sunday's meeting was a new sign of detente after three weeks of protests as poor Bolivians demanded a larger share of the country's huge natural gas wealth, second in South America only to Venezuela's.

Speaking of Venezuela, Chavez (who was cleared from any involvement in the uprising by Mesa himself) has no doubt about who's ultimately to blame for the situation in Bolivia...

Bolivia was among the 18 poor nations that saw their debts cancelled in the G8 meeting. However the leader of the Bolivian opposition, while happy about the announcement, see the issue in broader context.

(See also: Floridian home of Latin American reaction squirms noticeably)