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Reporter's Notebook: Al Giordano

US State Department Evacuates Bolivia Embassy

Posted by Al Giordano - June 8, 2005 at 2:54 pm
Here it is, from the the horse's mouth (that is to say, the U.S. State Department website, with an updated "travel warning" that "supercedes" the one issued last week):

This Travel Warning is being issued to warn American citizens of continued political unrest in Bolivia.   The Department of State has authorized the departure of non-emergency U.S. Embassy personnel and all eligible family members of U.S. Embassy personnel and urges all U.S. citizens to defer non-essential travel to Bolivia.  This Travel Warning supersedes the Public Announcement issued June 1, 2005.

Ambassador Greenlee: Don't let the door smack your rear end on the way out.

About Al Giordano

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Reporting on the United States at The Field.

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AFP: Evo Calls to Blockade Congress in Sucre

Submitted June 8, 2005 - 3:32 pm by Al Giordano
Hormando Vaca Diez's plan to hold a session of the Bolivian Congress tomorrow in Sucre, rather than the legislative capital of La Paz, has reportedly hit a speedbump.

Agence France Press reports:

(AFP) Opposition leader Evo Morales on Wednesday called upon Quechua (Bolivia's second largest indigenous ethnic group) peasant farmers to block the installation of Congress in the city of Sucre (740 kilometers from La Paz), where the resignation of President Carlos Mesa and the assent of his succesor that have convulsed Bolivia are to be decided.

Morales said that the blockades of the route surrounding this lower Andean city, where the country was founded 180 years ago, will be hardened to stop the rise of Congress President Hormando Vaca Diez.

Vaca Diez, first in line in the Constitutional succession, called the Congress to a plenary session in Sucre at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, in spite of the opposition by social movements in La Paz.

"Not one compañero is going to lift the road blockades in the interior of the country," the coca growers leader warned...

According to Morales, mineworkers (of nearby regions) where in 1996 eleven indigenous were killed by the military are now headed toward Sucre.

According to the leader of the powerful One Union Confederation of Bolivia Farm Workers, Roman Loayza, who is close to Morales, some 2,000 Quechua campesinos have left from the neighboring state of of Cochabamba toward Sucre...

Tick... Tock...

EFE: Bolivian Farmers Are Taking Oil Fields

Submitted June 8, 2005 - 4:22 pm by Al Giordano
The Spaniard news agency EFE reports that a spokesman for the Spanish-Argentine oil company Repsol says that peasant farmers have taken three oil fields from the company today, as part of the growing tsunami of protests to nationalize gas and oil in Bolivia:

Three oil fields and a small oil well belonging to Repsol-YPF in Bolivia had to stop working in the state of Santa Cruz after being occupied by peasant farmers, sources within the Spanish-Argentine company confirmed today to EFE.

Miguel Cirbian, director of foreign relations for Andina, Repesol's affiliate in Bolivia, explained that the occupied fields are in Vibora, Sirari and Yapacani, located 150 kilometers north of the city of Santa Cruz...

The three fields, that together produce between 2,600 and 3,000 barrels a day of oil, were taken on Tuesday by campesinos from Yapacani, 125 miles from the capital of Santa Cruz...

In recent days the farmers also occupied the small oil well at Los Penocos, stopping a production calculated at 150 barrels a day.

He said that the occupation was nonviolent...

In the same region, the Chaco oil company, affiliate of British Petroleum, confirmed to EFE that its fields in Patujusal, Los Cusis and Humberto Roca have been under the campesinos' control since last Friday and have stopped producing between 1,500 and 1,700 barrels daily.

The farmers demand the convocation of a Constituent Assembly and the nationalization of hydrocarbons in Bolivia...

And, I just heard from Authentic Journalist Gissel Gonzales (who is permanently at the side of Oscar Olivera in Cochabamba) that protestors in that city "have just closed the gas valves" of that capital.

Meanwhile, in El Alto, the neighborhood groups have taken the gas company and are distributing the gas, free, to the people of that impoverished city.

Is it safe to go?

Submitted June 14, 2005 - 3:09 pm by Anand Bhat
I am supposed to go to Santa Cruz, Bolivia next month with my pre-med group to work at the hospital there.  Should I just forget the travel warning and go anyway?  Things should be cooled off by July 12th....

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