Free Republic

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

LA PAZ, Dec 6 (Reuters) - In a violent show of anti-Venezuela sentiment, a crowd of about 200 Bolivians hurled stones at a Venezuelan military plane and prevented it from refueling after it landed on Thursday, local radio reported. After hearing the incoming plane, the mob seized control of the airport in the Amazonian city of Riberalta and attacked the aircraft. Regional leaders had said they suspected it was carrying arms and not humanitarian supplies, according to the radio reports. "We won't put up with these Venezuelans who come to the country and do whatever they want. We won't let...

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) decided at a meeting on Friday to set up a South American Parliament in Bolivia to promote the bloc's integration. Chilean President Michele Bachelet, also the UNASUR's temporary president, and Bolivian President Evo Morales opened the meeting in Bolivia's Cochabamba province which drew representatives from 12 countries in the region. "There are many tasks that the UNASUR is urged to accomplish, as part of the Latin American and Caribbean efforts," Bachelet said. Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia said that UNASUR members consider it necessary to promote the construction of the institutionalism and the...

Latin America: Barack Obama hasn't even assumed the presidency, but already he's getting his marching orders from a slew of hostile leftist regimes to our south. This is a sign of trouble.In principle, a consortium of 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries trying to solve the region's problems without the U.S. is a fine idea. But at a new summit in Brazil, participants couldn't get the U.S. off their minds. The financial crisis, the falling price of oil and the pickle in which the worst-managed economies in the region now find themselves blurred distinctions between democratic and authoritarian regimes, all...

A poor, agrarian, landlocked country in South America with a nearly 100 percent Christian population is hardly the place one would expect to become a hotbed of Islamic extremism in the Western Hemisphere. But a recent report by the Open Source Center (OSC) of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it's so. .... One Muslim leader named in the OSC report is Mahmud Amer Abusharar, founder of the Centro Islamico Boliviano (CIB) in Santa Cruz. Abusharar emigrated from the Palestinian territories in 1974 and claims to have built Bolivia’s first mosque in 1994 so that he would...

Bolivia blames capitalism Mexico: Bolivian President Evo Morales said capitalism was responsible for climate change in his speech at the Climate Change Summit Thursday and he insisted on the need for the developed countries to make new commitments to reduce their greenhouse effect gas emissions. “We are sometimes debating only the effects of global warming, and not the causes, and we should be responsible and debate those causes,” said the Bolivian President in the high level segment of the 16th Climatic Change Summit in Cancun. Morales recalled the responsibility of the Governments so that key decisions are adopted to face...

LA PAZ, Bolivia Bucking a global trend, leftist-led Bolivia is lowering its retirement age and nationalizing its pension funds. Bolivia's Congress approved legislation early Friday to make Bolivians eligible for full pensions at age 58. The country's 70,000 miners will get to retire two years earlier. The previous retirement age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Bolivia's decision to lower its retirement age runs counter to a global trend to raise retirement ages as life expectancies rise, birth rates drop and national treasuries come under strain from pension obligations. France raised its minimum retirement age to 62 last...

A rather unexpected voice just joined the chorus of the liberal media outcry over sex scandals among some Catholic clergymen: none other than Evo Morales, Bolivia’s socialist and neopagan president. A Neopagan Socialist... Indeed, Mr. Morales, leader of the Movement to Socialism, figured he should teach the Pope how things in the Church ought to be run. For those who may not know, he was inaugurated President of Bolivia in 2006 using indigenous pagan rituals.1 The Bolivian newspaper Los Tiempos, of Cochabamba (6/20/2006), described the ceremony: “Evo Morales assumed political power with a spectacular display of religious rituals alluding to...

Bolivian President Evo Morales announced a workers' day takeover of four power companies on Saturday, expanding the state's dominion over key industries. Morales signed the nationalization decree at offices of one of the companies in the central city of Cochabamba hours after police and soldiers moved in to secure them. The companies include Bolivia's largest power producer, Empresa Electrica Guaracachi SA, which is controlled by Rurelec PLC of Britain, as well as Empresa Corani SA, a hydroelectric company operated by GDF Suez, which itself is partly owned by the French government. Also nationalized were the Valle Hermoso company, operated by...

Bolivian President Evo Morales has abandoned a public event in the face of an angry protests over food shortages and price rises. Mr Morales was due to address a parade to commemorate a colonial-era uprising in the mining city of Oruro. But he and his team left the city to avoid a violent demonstration by miners throwing dynamite.There have also been protests in other Bolivian cities over the shortage of sugar and other basic foodstuffs.Mr Morales cut short his visit and returned to La Paz after protesters set off explosions close to where he was preparing to give a speech...

<p>Bolivian President Evo Morales has abruptly abandoned a mining town after protesters angered by rising prices booed him and set off dynamite.</p> <p>Mr Morales was due to speak on the anniversary of a colonial uprising in Oruro but canceled plans to participate in a march yesterday after demonstrations against rising food prices and shortages.</p>

DAKAR (AFP) – Tens of thousands of people marched through Dakar on Sunday at the start of the annual World Social Forum, an annual leftist gathering taking place as anti-government protests sweep the Arab world. The 11th edition of the forum, an alternative to the elite World Economic Forum held in the posh Swiss ski resort of Davos last week, brings together anti-globalisation activists opposed to capitalism. This year participants are focusing on the popular revolt spreading across northern Africa with demands for democracy and criticism of dire social conditions reflecting the crisis of capitalism. Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales...

LA PAZ (Reuters) – A pale green energy drink made from coca leaves has given Bolivian President Evo Morales a boost as he tries to persuade the United Nations to scrap a ban on the traditional Andean practice of chewing the leaves. Coca is the raw material for making cocaine, but Bolivians have chewed the leaves for centuries for it mild stimulant that reduces hunger and altitude sickness. The coca leaf was declared an illegal narcotic in the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, along with cocaine, heroin, opium and morphine and a host of chemical drugs. Tuesday's launch...

As news agencies reported early this week, the attraction which the governments of Iran and Bolivia feel towards each other has now become manifest in a number of bilateral agreements in various areas, including defence. According to different sources, Bolivian Economy and Finance Minister Luis Arce announced plans to purchase different defence-related equipment from Iran. Bolivian President Evo Morales and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, signed the agreements during a recent four-day visit of the Bolivian leader to Teheran. “We have expressed ... our interest in buying some airplanes and helicopters of Iranian manufacture, which are basically for training,” Arce...

LA PAZ, Bolivia — A Bolivian court has upheld a government decision to seize a ranch from a U.S. cattleman and his family on the grounds they treated workers as virtual slaves, an official announced Monday The National Agrarian Tribunal rejected a challenge by Ronald Larsen, a 65-year-old from Montana who has owned the 58-square-mile (15,000-hectare) ranch nearly four decades, deputy land minister Juan Manuel Pinto said at a news conference. Pinto said the Caraparicito ranch would revert to Guarani Indians, traditional inhabitants of Bolivia's southeastern region, known as the Chaco. He said the ranch and an adjacent 15-square-mile (3,790-hectare)...

LA PAZ (Reuters) – The Aymara priest who blessed Bolivian President Evo Morales at an inauguration ceremony four years ago has been arrested in possession of 530 pounds (240 kg) of cocaine, police said Thursday. Anti-drugs police in the Andean country found a cocaine laboratory in the home of priest Valentin Mejillones. His son and a Colombian couple were also detained. The stash of liquid cocaine seized in the raid was valued at $240,000. Mejillones told local media he had been tricked by the Colombians, and Vice President Alvaro Garcia said Morales had not chosen the priest to preside at...

LA PAZ, Bolivia – President Evo Morales has been re-elected as head of Bolivia's largest coca-growers union, a post he has held for more than two decades. Morales was sworn in late Monday as head of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, which represents more than 40,000 growers. .. Morales called his leadership of the union largely "symbolic" but promised regular meetings. His re-election was criticized by opposition members, who said it was inappropriate given an apparent rise in drug trafficking violence.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, who plays the Larry part in Latin America's socialist Three Stooges with Castro and Chavez, claims that eating chicken will turn you into an effeminate gay. "The chicken we eat is loaded with female hormones. So, when men eat it, they tend to deviate from their manhood," said Morales at a climate change conference held by his government. He says he only eats non-genetically modified chicken straight from the farm. He also claimed the diet of many people of European descent can be linked to baldness and early breast growth in girls. "Baldness, which seems normal,...

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (AFP) – Bolivian President Evo Morales was under fire on Wednesday for suggesting that eating hormone-injected chicken could provoke male deviance at a global climate change summit. Bolivia's opposition and homosexual groups criticized comments made by Morales at the first "people's conference" on climate change the previous day, in which he said that chicken producers inject birds with female hormones and "when men eat those chickens, they experience deviances in being men." The Bolivian president also suggested that the European diet made men go bald. Spain's National Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals sent a protest letter...

Firebrand leaders Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Robert Mugabe turned up the heat at the UN climate talks, dumping the blame for global warming squarely at the feet of capitalism. Mr Chavez, the President of Venezuela, was one of the first world leaders to take the podium at the venue of the Copenhagen talks. He seized the occasion to characterise newly-minted Nobel Peace laureate US President Barack Obama as a warmonger. "I don't think Obama is here yet," said Mr Chavez. "He got the Nobel Peace Prize almost the same day as he sent 30,000 soldiers to kill innocent people...

SNIPPET: "Lula and Chavez have established a "strategic relationship," and recently agreed upon a joint Brazilian-Venezuelan oil venture worth billions of dollars. Lula and Chavez have joined with Daniel Ortega, the returned Nicaraguan Marxist dictator, to form an anti-U.S. Latin American military alliance - all with Russian assistance - funded by the region's abundant oil reserves. Brazil is engaged in its own arms build-up and Lula is determined that Brazil will become at least a first-rate regional power. Unfortunately, Lula is establishing Brazil as an anti-American military power by aligning with nations hostile or potentially hostile to the U.S. Lula...

In case you haven't seen a TV in the last month, here is some background. Bertha Lewis is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Organizer of ACORN, the largest community organization in the country. Appointed in May 2008, Ms. Lewis oversees the operations of its 400,000 strong membership, which is active in over 110 cities across the country. During the past few weeks while Lewis has been all over the press defending her organization, she has claimed that her first priority is ACORN's Clients, those poor people needing housing, medical care, etc. If she is so concerned about "the little...

The 37th Summit of the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) concluded on Friday in Asuncion, Paraguay, with a strong condemnation to the coup perpetrated against Honduran legitimate President Jose Manuel Zelaya...In his opening speech, Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, categorically condemned the coup against Zelaya’s Government and said that “Honduras is a bleeding wound in regional democracy”....For his part, Bolivian President Evo Morales insisted that countries in the region should bear in mind the origin of the military coup. “What is the origin of the coup d´état in Honduras? From our point of view is the US military intervention” by...

It's good, occasionally, to take a trip down memory lane. It helps to put things into perspective. Hugo Chavez ought never to have been elected president. By rights, he ought to be growing old in a jail cell somewhere. Well, it's been seventeen years, maybe he’d be in a half-way house by now. As an army officer in 1992, he led a military revolt against the legal, constitutional government of Venezuela, and attempted to overthrow the democratically elected president of the time, Carlos Andres Perez. He gambled that once the shooting started, the minister of defense and the rest of...

The push for conversion to plug-in electric cars will do nothing to stop carbon emissions, a report by the GAO warns, throwing cold water on a push by Democrats to get more plug-ins on the road. In fact, the problem could be made worse as demand goes up at coal-fired electrical plants. Plus, the need for batteries may just have the US changing the dictators to which we’re chained, as IBD reports...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else. "If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another..."If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

Globovision of Caracas reports news that we hope is inaccurate, and which will be denied by former President Carter. The Venezuelan television network states that he has accepted an invitation to participate in the cultivation of coca with left wing Bolivian president Evo Morales, who grows it in Boliva. "Given that President Morales has been to my property, and evidently has harvested some peanuts, I hope that on my next visit I can go to El Chapare, where he is going to take me to harvest some coca leaves," responded Carter, which also drew a smirk of happiness from Morales....

Mystery deepened on Friday surrounding the breakup of a suspected assassination plot against Bolivian president Evo Morales that left three dead, as opposition leaders cast doubt on the government's story and said it was using the plot to influence coming elections. The hazy details of what happened on Thursday, in accounts by Bolivian authorities, seem lifted from the pages of a Hollywood script. An alleged plot against the president and other top officials was broken up by an elite police squad. Three men were killed in their underwear after a half-hour shootout at a hotel. Allegedly among the dead were...

LA PAZ : Bolivia's President Evo Morales proposed Saturday that leftist Latin leaders descend on Havana January 1 to stand strong and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution with ailing icon Fidel Castro. "It is my greatest desire to go there with the social movements, and with the anti-imperialist presidents, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution" which falls January 1, 2009, Morales declared on a visit to the eastern city of Santa Cruz. The first indigenous president of Bolivia, which has an indigenous majority, told a gathering of indigenous people from across the Americas that...

<p>A founding member of the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois met in New York City tonight with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.</p> <p>Jodie Evans, who co-hosted Obama's first major fundraiser in Hollywood in February 2007 just after Obama announced his candidacy and is a top fundraiser and donor to Obama's campaign, led a delegation of leftist anti-American groups that held a private meeting near the United Nations. The stated purpose of the meeting was to "serve as an opening for diplomatic resolution" to prevent war between Iran and the United States.</p>

Bolivia may look towards Russia for funding if the United States decides to withdraw its £14 million in annual aid. Relations between America and the South American state are at an all-time low after Bolivia expelled the US ambassador amid civil unrest which has left more than 30 dead. Whilst long range Russian bombers now streak across the skies of the Caribbean from a base in Venezuela, and Moscow seeks to strengthen relations with its old ally Cuba, Bolivia may be the latest recruit in expanding Russian influence in Washington's "back yard". Last week the US ambassador to La Paz...

Marxist President Evo Morales, a Chavez lackey and supporter of the Iranian regime, blamed opposition activists for killing government supporters this weekend. --Opposition leaders said the Marxist fighters were armed and intended to start fighting in the region. Here is AMAZING Footage of fighting at the airport in the city of Cobija this weekend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF9e32_rqcU . . Former Bolivian Congressman and political dissident Jose Brechner sent this report on the crisis earlier today: The socialist government of president Evo Morales centralized all the financial resources of the state and doesn´t want to give back the taxes from oil revenues to...

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez expelled the US envoy to Caracas today and threatened to halt crude exports to the US on a day he highlighted the recent arrival of two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers. Mr Chavez today ordered US ambassador Patrick Duddy to leave the country within 72 hours, in a move he described as an act of solidarity with Venezuela's ally Bolivia, which also expelled its US envoy. "Starting at this moment the Yankee ambassador in Caracas has 72 hours to leave Venezuela," Mr Chavez said at a public event in the port city of Puerto Cabello, 120km west...

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...

Bolivia's President Evo Morales delivered a keynote address to the United Nations forum on Indigenous People in which he proclaimed "if we want to save our planet earth, to save life, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system and the unbridled prosperity that is killing the planet." In its place, Morales urged people to “live our lives the way nature intended—solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.” The Bolivian president dismissed objections as “excessively human-centric.” “Humans have an over-inflated sense of their own importance,” Morales said. “They don’t realize that their lives and happiness are inconsequential in...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

There is an emerging mini-me of Hugo Chavez — Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. And his country is starting to pay the price for it. Bolivia may end up not merely fragmented but wracked by bloodshed if Mr. Morales continues to emulate the senseless and destructive policies of his patron. Mr. Morales has turned frequently to the Chavez playbook on "revolutionary" brinkmanship for policy guidance. From promoting a bespoke constitution, which removed inconvenient term limits, to undermining democratic institutions, to approving populist measures that hurt poor people the most, he has made all the moves favored by his role...

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia — “Against narco-communism,” reads one line of graffiti in this city in the lowlands of Bolivia. “To arms, Cruceños,” reads another, calling on residents to fight the government of President Evo Morales, who put the armed forces on alert this week as four eastern provinces move toward greater autonomy.

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, Feb 23 (EFE).- President Evo Morales on Friday blamed wealthy countries for the El Niño ocean-atmosphere phenomenon and the natural disasters it provokes, such as those that have affected much of Bolivia this year. According to official figures, thousands of Bolivian farmers have lost their crops due to a drought in the western part of the country, while more than 22,000 head of livestock have drowned as a result of flooding caused by weeks of heavy rainfall in the eastern lowlands.

Monday, 22 January 2007 Risks in Bolivia _____________________________________________________________________ The majority support with which President Evo Morales was elected placed him in a promising position to obtain Bolivian governability. Moreover, the significant improvement of the prices of the principal Bolivian exports of soy, minerals, and gas, the discovery of important reserves of hydrocarbons, plus the structural adjustments carried out by preceding governments, allowed for favorable expectations for the neighboring economy. Nevertheless, the methods of Morales in advancing his controversial electoral promises are preventing his capitalizing upon the auspicious conditions under which he assumed office. The combination of discouraging governmental measures against...

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Opposition lawmakers marched out of Congress in protest Monday during a four-and-a-half-hour speech by Evo Morales marking his first year in office as South America's first indigenous president. In Monday's address, Morales recalled being expelled from Congress in 2002 on charges he'd incited violence as leader of Bolivia's coca growers' union, a post he still holds. He slyly called Sen. Luis Vasquez, who was president of the House when it voted to expel him, "my best campaign manager." Deputies of Vasquez's party, the main opposition group Podemos, then got up and filed out in silence. Their...

Mercosur Summit: Evo generates an impasse and discomfort with Colombia In an encounter dealing with subjects such as how to unite the region, the President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, replied strongly yesterday to unexpected criticisms made by his colleague from Bolivia Evo Morales and requested the Venezuelan Chief Executive, Hugo Chavez, who intervened in favor of the Bolivian, to understand the "legitimate right" of Bogota to clarify whatever doubt could arise in the region over the Colombian situation. The impasse was produced during the session of speeches of the second and last session of debates of the Chief Executives of...

Ecuador aligns itself with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba In speeches against imperialism and neoliberalism, the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and Bolivia, Evo Morales, and the Ecuadoran President-Elect Rafael Correa, who should assume the government of his country Monday, expressed common ideological and political agreement Sunday. Chavez, Morales, and Correa, who also exalt the figure of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, met together in Zumbahua, an indigenous [Ecuadoran] locality 90 kilometers south of Quito, for a symbolic inauguration of Correa before the indigenous peoples [of Ecuador]. In a speech before a multitude congregated in the central plaza, Correa emphasized that "[Latin]...

The Republic of Bolivia boasts a new national monument: the childhood home of Evo Morales, the country's new president. In July, reports the Bolivian newspaper La Razon, Morales issued presidential decree No. 28807, declaring his hometown of Orinoca a "National Historical Heritage" site and turning the house where he was born into a "Historic Monument." The decree, approved by the president and his cabinet without input by the national legislature, directs the Ministry of Culture to allocate government funds toward maintenance of the home, and to build an "interactive museum" chronicling Morales's life up until his election victory last December....

LA PAZ, Bolivia A vaguely worded military pact between President Evo Morales' government and Venezuela ran into resistance Thursday in the opposition-controlled Senate. The accord, presented May 26 during a visit by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, would bring armed forces under the two leftist administrations closer together and have Venezuela help Bolivia construct a military base in the northern city of Riberalta and a river port on its border with Brazil. "Disarm who? Control of what forces? It could mean anything — whatever you want is in there," Carlos Borth, senator from the conservative opposition party Podemos, told the...

Geopolitics: Radical chic is thriving in the whirl of parties at the United Nations these days, and no one is being courted more solicitously as one of the downtrodden than Evo Morales of Bolivia. You remember "radical chic," don't you? The 1960s and 1970s phenomenon, described by Tom Wolfe in his "Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers" tells how New York's glitterati threw black-tie parties to court supposedly "real" revolutionaries — like Black Panthers, Puerto Rican separatists or Indian liberationists — in a bid to feel "authentic." It's been a long time, but radical chic isn't dead. Which explains why...

As Bolivian President Evo Morales tries to implement a controversial "agrarian revolution", the BBC's Damian Kahya visits the east of the country to talk to both settlers and landowners. Settler building a house (Photo: Amy de Wit) The settlers say they will not give up and are still building houses Land is a cause of conflict now in Bolivia. A recent survey by the Catholic Church here found that just 50,000 families own almost 90% of Bolivia's productive land. Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous president, was elected earlier this year on a platform promising to redistribute land. Few...