Bolivia
Bolivias gas reserves now belong to Bolivians, said Armando Mariaca in Bolivias El Diario. President Evo Morales has announced that foreign countries will no longer be allowed to plunder Bolivian resources according to an outdated, colonialist model. Investors such as Brazils Petrobras and Spains Repsol, which run gas fields in Bolivia, will have to renegotiate their contracts to give a greater share back to the state. The presidents decree caused delight here at home, because it corrected the huge mistakes of the past. Abroad, though, investor countries are predictably skeptical. They seem not to believe that they will no longer get to buy gas at a price infinitely lower than market rates. To them, we say, Like it or lump it. Bolivia has the gas you need. Out of a feeling of friendship, we wont charge higher prices than necessarybut neither will we cheat ourselves.
What a transparently demagogic move, said Winston Estremadoiro in Bolivias El Nuevo Dia. Its the same old bread and circuses that populists have offered since Roman times, only in this case were getting more circus and less bread. Morales is hyping his nationalization as the third and definitive nationalization, comparing it to the 1937 seizure of Standard Oil assets and the 1969 seizure of Gulf assets. But he apparently doesnt realize that those takeovers were not free. The Standard takeover cost this country $1.7 million in Great Depression dollars, while the Gulf fiasco crippled our petroleum production for decades. Placing our faith in our insolvent state gas company rather than in thriving companies such as Petrobras is economic stupidity. Worse, weve traded a cushy position as the treasured godchild of Brazil and Chile for an uncertain alliance with far-left governments in Cuba and Venezuela.
So this is what we get for being nice to Bolivia, said Brazils Veja in an editorial. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had nothing but warm words of welcome for Morales when the former coca farmer was elected president. He was repaid with treachery. Just last month, Lula was still the leading light of Latin America. Hes now one more fool in the court of Venezuelas Hugo Chavez. It was Chavez, that ultraleftist buffoon, who planned the theft of Brazilian property in Bolivia.
Folha de Sao Paulo