Mayors in the Bolivian Amazon to Expel USAID from Their Municipalities
Published by PRAVDA Ru
Translated from the Portuguese version by Lisa KARPOVA
20 July 2010
Wilson García Mérida, Bolpress
A transcendent fact has happened in the multicultural State of Bolivia. The mayors of the municipalities of the autonomous region of Pando, in the Bolivian Amazon, decided to expel from their jurisdictions the various NGOs, foundations and companies operating in this area with funding from the Agency of Cooperation of the United States (USAID in its acronym in English) noting that these entities “are those that generate internal conflicts within the country, interfering in our political process of national liberation to undermine the democratic legitimacy of our government,” said a statement issued on July 6 by the municipal authorities of the Amazon frontier with Brazil and Peru.
It was discovered that officials paid by USAID tried to provoke a split within the indigenous movement, placing the peasant organizations in the Bolivian Amazon region against the government that represents them. The mayors of Pando decided to “expel from each of our municipalities NGOs, businesses, organizations and projects funded by USAID and its allies to end the deception of the international traffickers of biodiversity, ending the political maneuvers of the U.S. government in our rich Amazonian territory and liberate ourselves from old practices imposed by this perverse ‘cooperation’ whose cents degrade the conscience of our people, our brave peasants and indigenous representatives.”
