President Evo Morales yet yesterday with the leaders of the Conisur march who want to abolish the recently passed Ley Corta, or Short Law in which the government “forever” renounced its plan to build a Brazilian-funded highway through this protected Amazonian Nationan Park and Indigenous homeland. Conisur represents 21 of the 60 mostly indigenous community [...]

Bolivia’s Minister of Planning, Viviana Caro said today that Brazilian company OAS will continue building segments I and III of the infamous Amazon highway that the Bolivian government had agreed not to build after a march by indigenous protestors. Now, just three months after President Evo Morales agreed to demands that the would not be [...]

The main group representing lowland and Amazonian indigenous peoples in Bolivia, CIDOB, has declared an emergency as the government-controlled legislature prepares to consider modifying the “Ley Corta” or Short Law passed to protest Isiboro Securé national park from a planned highway through it. Coca growers from Chaparé have marched to the capital, demanding that the [...]

The legislative processes pushed by the ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party in the assembly will not be as easily achieved as they were in the last two years (2010-11) of President Evo Morales’s second term, due to divisions in the party that will prevent it from a two-thirds majority in the congress: an anti-Moralas [...]

  Today roughly 400 coca growers including men, women and children from the four towns of La Asunta, Litoral, Río Cajones y Puerto Rico in the Sud Yungasregion of the  La Paz Department have expelled 20 soldiers from a nearby base where they were patrolling for illegal coca. Locals complain of illegal detentions and physical [...]

The Spanish newspaper El País named Bolivian indigenous leader Fernando Vargas as one to the top 100 most important people of the Hispanic world of 2011. Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, was not included on the list, nor were any other Bolivians. El Pais describes Vargas as “The Indian that turned to face Evo Morales.” Other [...]

In Bolivia, more than half of the population—around 5.2 million people—live in poverty, and 2.7 million of those people live in extreme poverty. This data was contained in a 2011 report about human development from the United Nations Development Program, presented yesterday in the Bolivian foreign ministry. It recommended that Bolivia improve its policies against [...]

Bolivian Chancellor David Choquehuanca affirmed to the press on Thursday that he is pressing criminal charges against a group of indigenous women who forced him to march with them when he was sent to negotiate with them on September 24 in Yucumo. The indigenous Amazonian women were marching against a highway that the government planned [...]

An extremely intense localized hail storm pounded 13 rural villages in the Arque region of Cochabamba, leaving over 60 centimeters (almost two feet) of hail on the ground. The Cochabamba department has declared this an emergency as reports of intense flooding, hundreds of homeless families and over 20 hectares of damaged crops emerge. The hail [...]

Fifteen minutes before the Sept. 25 police operation in which scores of indigenous marchers were brutally repressed, the then vice minister of government, Marcos Farfán, gave the authorization for the police to intervene in the march protesting the construction of a Beni-Cochabamba highway that would cut through the Tipnis ecological and indigenous reserve, according to [...]