Free Republic

LA PAZ, Bolivia - President Evo Morales agreed Thursday to stand for election in a nationwide recall vote, gambling that Bolivians will re-elect him after just two years in office. "If we politicians can't agree, it's best that the population decide our destiny," Morales said in a nationally televised address. Congress on Thursday passed a bill ordering the recall be held within 90 days. Morales said he will sign the measure. The bill would require Morales and Bolivia's nine state governors to win both more votes and a greater percentage of support than they did on a 2005 ballot. If...

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia - Bolivia's largest state voted amid scattered violence Sunday on a measure seeking greater political and economic autonomy from the government of leftist President Evo Morales, who called the vote unconstitutional. As polls closed Sunday, exit surveys showed the autonomy referendum drawing as much as 85 percent support, though they were conducted by local news media sympathetic to the cause. No margin of error was available. Minor clashes across Santa Cruz state injured at least 25 people during the politically charged vote, which sought to separate the state's freewheeling capitalism and mixed-blood heritage from Morales' vision of...

HAVANA - Bolivian President Evo Morales met with Fidel Castro for nearly three hours Thursday and said the convalescing Cuban leader looked well. "He looked very recovered to me," said Morales, who also found the time to play racquetball with Vice President and Cabinet Secretary Carlos Lage, and meet with Castro's brother Raul, Cuba's interim president, during his previously unannounced daylong trip to Havana. "I am very satisfied," Morales told state media before boarding his flight home Thursday night. "I am very much an admirer of Fidel." Morales predicted more meetings with the Cuban president, saying "I am sure we...

LA PAZ, Bolivia - President Evo Morales celebrated the birthday of Che Guevara Wednesday, the first time a top Bolivian leader has paid tribute to the revolutionary who was executed in the Andean nation four decades ago. Surrounded by Cuban and Venezuelan officials, Morales observed the 78th anniversary of Guevara's birth, using the occasion to praise his close allies President Fidel Castro of Cuba and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Guevara, an Argentine, launched an armed revolt in 1966 to bring communism to Bolivia after helping lead the 1959 Cuban Revolution that ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista and thrust Castro into...

SHINAHOTA, Bolivia - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who often accuses the U.S. of plotting to overthrow him, warned Bolivia's president Friday he could be facing the same prospect. Chavez spoke during a visit to the heart of Bolivia's coca-growing region with Bolivian leader Evo Morales and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage — a trip designed to bolster trade ties among three leftist governments. Chavez responded to President Bush's comment Monday that he was "concerned about the erosion of democracy" in Bolivia and Venezuela. "If the U.S. president says he's worried the democracy is eroding in Bolivia, this simply means that...

HAVANA - Bolivia's socialist president-elect got a greeting reserved for heads of state when he arrived in communist Cuba on Friday: a red carpet, a military band and a smiling Fidel Castro. Stepping off the Cuban plane sent to pick him up in Bolivia, Evo Morales said his trip to the Caribbean island was "a gesture of friendship to the Cuban people." Castro embraced Morales, who has visited the island in the past as one of Latin America's leading protest organizers. The Cuban government has welcomed the election of the nationalist Indian activist as an important triumph over U.S. influence...

2004: Top finds on Bolivian highlandsFinnish scientists discovered the most significant relics of antiquity in recent Bolivian history. In the excavations on Pariti Island in Lake Titicaca, in the highlands of Bolivia, the historical-archaeological research team of the University of Helsinki discovered a ritual offering site with well-preserved pieces of ceramics. The find adds substantially to what is known about the Tiwanaku culture, which flourished before the Incas and for which the island was probably an important religious site. “The dig contained approximately 300 kilograms of deliberately broken ritual ceramics, which, according to radiocarbon dating, have been buried sometime between...