There is a new wave
of articles online
arguing that Morales' fall in Bolivia was due to his lithium policy.
Take for instance “The Bolivian coup
d'etat comes less than a week after Morales stopped the multinational
company's lithium agreement” by E.
Higginsi,
published in the prestigious
commondreams.org.
That
title sounds
good, of course,
but it
would mean that Morales stopped Morales because he was the one who
made the agreement, so let's see what's up.
Pablo Villegas N, 26-11-19
I wonder which was the other partner, that is, the “multinational company”.
It
was a 20
employees company,
the German ACI systems (ACISA)ii,
a branch of the
ACI Group whose capital six years ago was only
62 thousand euros.iii
ACISA was founded in
May 2018iv
to run business
in Bolivia, that
is just 7 months before its association
with the Bolivian YLB.
This
does not resemble a multinational, right?
It is
more like a junior company betting on an
unreliable partner.
What
makes this company so important then?
According to the author, "ACISA provides batteries to Tesla;
...", but since he
does not indicate his
sources, nor does the company's website mention anything about the
sale of batteries, we leave there the
issue of the nature
of the company as
it was put by the author.
What
about the consequences of
the cancellation of the agreement? It:
“...opened the door to a renegotiation of the agreement with terms that provide more benefits to the population of the area or the direct nationalization of the Bolivian lithium extraction industry.v
It
would be naive to expect the company to negotiate after the contract
was broken unilaterally, without prior notice; the company's boss
learned of the breakdown on the radio! (vi).
On the other
hand, it would
be hard to find something to nationalize,
since there is no other lithium extraction industry than the
state-owned company.
The
annulment of the agreement was imposed on the government by the
Potosí Civic Committee through a several weeks long
regional strike because it was considered a
betrayal of regional and national interests.
The
Potosí strike lasted so long that it coincided with the subsequent
demand for Morales's resignation to the government due to the
electoral
fraud. That is, Morales broke the lithium agreement when Potosí
(among others)
was already
asking him to leave. It is obvious who was in favor of the agreement
and who was not, so do not try to find any leftism in Morales'
posture.
That
said, it is clear that the data in the
article commented here
is very poor. Be
it malice or
ignorance, data deficiencies in this type of article correspond to
its main objective of launching some easy-to-remember slogans to
influence the reader. The objective is not to inform, let
alone to
justify some reasoning. This is but a typical advertising resource,
nothing less than a poster with a half-naked woman leaning on a car.
Let's
look at other cases.
For
some reason, the Bolivian crisis has caught the attention of many
Argentine analysts. One of them is Pacho
O'Donnellvii,
a well known writer and historian.viii
He sustains also
the theory of the
lithium conspiration.
“...in
order to understand Bolivia, you have to understand the one billion
dollar contract that Bolivia signed with China.” he says.
Since
there is several authors sustaining the same data,
its worth to make a correction; there
is an agreement for much more than double that amount (2.390 billion
$), and not “with China" but with a specific Chinese company,
the Xinjiang TBEA Group Baocheng.
Continuing,
O'Donnell moves on to the well-known fashion talk about lithium and
its strategic value, which easily leads us to the issue of
geopolitics and, hence, to the superpowers competing for the world,
and so on… all this to reach an allegedly
offbeat
conclusion.
“ I
think Trump is restless about the great interference of China and
Russia in Latin America”ix
Maybe
you're thinking you've heard this phrase many times before, right?
Surely!!. Let's
continue.
Put
that way this competition seems to be developing in an empty country,
hence you don't have to know anything about its emptiness.
“Nothing on the national scene can be interpreted except in global terms.” says O'Donnell, and gives us the real reason for Morales's fall: “...he nationalized all the oil, energy, gas companies, which has really been a blow to very strong international interests that are obviously the ones that are playing …”
I
think for my part that nothing
on the national
scene -nor
anything else- should be interpreted
without basic data.
Experts like
O'Donnell would
have a hard time
if asked to be more specific about what they call "nationalization",
based on a
certain level of knowledge about
the hydrocarbon sector in Bolivia because they
don't mind knowing anything about it.x
You
want to know how
presumptuous they may be? Look
here. O'Donnell:
“Bolivia ...It has the most important oil reserves after Venezuela”.
Show
the numbers!!
No,
they won't because to say such things without being ashamed, they
must consciously ignore any database of international oil reserves.
Just
to give them a hint, Bolivia has long since ceased to be an oil
country.
To be continued...
i
Eoin Higgins. “Bolivian Coup Comes Less Than a Week After Morales
Stopped Multinational Firm's Lithium Deal”. Common Dreams,
November 11, 2019.
ii
“Empresa alemana aclara que no fabricará baterías de litio en
Bolivia”. Brújula Digital, 14/12/2018
http://tinyurl.com/rcvxyfw
iii
Juan Carlos Zuleta Calderón: “Un pésimo proyecto de
industrialización del litio en Bolivia” 4/9/2018
http://tinyurl.com/rdgdvzw
iv
“Empresa alemana aclara que no fabricará baterías de litio en
Bolivia”. Brújula Digital, 14/12/2018
http://tinyurl.com/rcvxyfw
v
Eoin Higgins: “Bolivian Coup Comes Less Than a Week After Morales
Stopped Multinational Firm's Lithium Deal”. Common Dreams,
November 11, 2019.
vi
“German lithium importer calls on government to help in row with
Bolivia” Clean Energy Wire / Spiegel
Online, 07/11/2019.
http://tinyurl.com/uu3xtbf
vii
Pacho O'Donnell: "Macri no sirve para gobernar". A24, LNE.
Luis Novaresio, 21/11/2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_zsoSK9vF4
viii
He was Argentinas ambassador in Bolivia between 90-91. Commenting
about the then
president of Bolivia, Gonzalo
Sanchez, he says
it was: “...a very
curious character who practically did not know how to speak in
Spanish (min 29:20) “
Certainly
he
had a very
strong American accent, but it is false to say that he did not speak
Spanish.
ix
This recipe can be applied to any country, just change the lithium
for what corresponds to the country in question, e.g. oil.
xIf
you want more information about the
nationalization:
https://www.cedib.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/La-industrializacion-del-gas-y-la-refundacion-de-YPFB-en-5-meses-hidrocarburos.pdf