Is Anti-Americanism the Face of the Next Bolivian Administration?
At present, 70 percent of the 8.4 million Bolivians live below the poverty line. Most rural communities lack electricity and running water, and the countrys rates of infant and child mortality are the highest in South America. Coca eradication strategies cost Bolivians a total of $500 million each year. It is little wonder that the most marginalized populations in the Andean nation resent the United States for dramatically altering peasant livelihoods based on an epidemic of cocaine addiction it has failed to competently address back home. Over time, this resentment has snowballed into a deep distrust of state authority that has manifested itself in massive strikes and large-scale popular uprisings. In recent years, the result has been a trajectory of slow but steady deterioration of Bolivias highly volatile and increasingly disruptive social and political order. The past months events confirm that Bolivian society has reached a boiling point and today sits poised to drastically transf
