Vilma Velasco, the vice-president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the independent body in Bolivia charged with administering all major elections, is launching a lawsuit against Evo Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) party for campaigning for new judges when the law specifically prohibits campaigning. Velasco said that the Constitution prohibits this campaigning and said, “This [...]

President Morales told the press yesterday while at the 70th anniversary of a town near Cochabamba that the indigenous TIPNIS march against his proposed Amazonian highway is actually a right-wing plan to disrupt his Movement to Socialism’s judicial elections planned for October 16. Morales that the after meeting with social groups allied with his party, [...]

The march of indigenous Amazonian protestors finally broke through a police blockade yesterday by taking Bolivia’s foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, hostage. Four injuries among the police were reported and it is not known if any marchers were injured. The marchers released Choquehuanca after two hours and continued on with their traditional bows and arrows. The [...]

Yesterday President Evo Morales received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Havana for his “work fighting for dignity of the oppressed peoples of Latin America,” said Morales. Morales is in Cuba before continuing on to New York for a meeting of the Organization of American States. Morales spoke about the fight of Latin [...]

Juan Acosta, the executive secretary of one of Bolivia’s largest labor unions (COD) has announced a march to support the indigenous people marching to La Paz from the Amazon (Beni) against the construction of a new highway. The highway would lead from the small coca growing town where Evo Morales lived for many years, Villa [...]

The municipalities of Achocalla, Mecapaca and Palca, in a mass meeting or cabildo yesterday gave the mayor of La Paz 48 hours to revoke “false” sub-mayoral districts of Zongo, Hampaturi and Mallasa in the South part of La Paz. The three protesting towns believe that the former three belong to their jurisdictions and are asking [...]

Yesterday, seven opposition legislators from the Beni department presented a criminal complaint to the attorney general against the former MAS gubernatorial candidate for Beni. They accused Jessica Jordan of a supposed plot to destabilize the government of Beni Governor Ernesto Suárez. Jordan is a young British-Bolivian former supermodel who ran for governnor of her native [...]

Bolivian President Evo Morales welcomed yesterday’s electoral triumph of Peruvian President-elect Ollanta Humala over Keiko Fujimori. The election of the leftist nationalist raised expectations in Bolivia, especially concerning Bolivia’s century-old maritime claim against Chile. The 1929 Peace and Friendship Treaty, signed after the War of the Pacific—in which Chile fought against Peru and Bolivia—awarded the [...]

Protests have heightened in the Peruvian town of Desaguadero. Yesterday, two public offices were burned and looted by town residents protesting a mining project which would contaminate Lake Titicaca. According to a report from the ATB television network, the demonstrators first burned…

Movement to Socialism (MAS) Legislator Rebeca Delgado explained yesterday that the new Telecommunications Law seeks to regulate access to content on the internet because, “sometimes it misinforms instead of informs.”  Delgado assured the public that the new law will allow differences of opinion and will not violate the Bolivian constitutional rights to free speech and [...]