NACLA Weekly Update 9/25/08

New on nacla.org

McCain-Palin and Latin America
by Nikolas Kozloff
This week the McCain team is trying to dispel the notion that Palin is a foreign policy lightweight. The Alaska Governor is slated to meet with a handful of foreign leaders during the General Assembly meeting of the United Nations. The roster of leaders chosen by the McCain camp bodes badly for U.S. foreign policy should the Republican ticket win in November.
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An Open Letter to the U.S. State Department Regarding Recent Violence in Bolivia
by Various Authors
Since the democratic election of Evo Morales in December 2005, the U.S. government has sent millions of dollars in aid to departmental prefects and municipal governments in Bolivia. Some of these funds have ended up in the hands of opposition groups linked to recent anti-government violence. A group of Latin America experts have called on the U.S. government to publicly disclose USAID's funding portfolio.
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From the archives

Exporting Gas and Importing Democracy in Bolivia
by Reed Lindsay
Even before the Aymara uprising that ousted President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, USAID was raising warning signals about the rising popularity of the MAS, which was seen as a threat to Bolivia's increasingly discredited traditional parties. Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that the U.S. government has spent millions of dollars to rebuild discredited political parties, to undercut independent grassroots movements, to bolster malleable leaders with little popular support and to dissuade Bolivians from talking about whether they should have greater ownership rights over their natural resources. The funds have been distributed under the banner of "democracy promotion," a central plank of U.S. foreign policy since the early 1980s that has become increasingly prominent in recent years.
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