Joel D. Hirst says while an anti-racism bill is one step to fighting discrimination in Bolivia, the Bolivian government must not disregard the tenets of liberal democracy.

This module features teaching notes by Florida International University professor Eduardo A. Gamarra, author of Bolivia on the Brink, along with other resources to supplement the text. In the report, Gamarra encourages the U.S. government to redirect its policy toward Bolivia to emphasize preservation of the democratic process and conflict prevention.  

As head of Congress and the major political operator for President Evo Morales, Bolivia's Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera stands in the eye of a political hurricane. The changes proposed by the Movement toward Socialism (MAS) government have unleashed protest from conservative sectors of society, leading to suspension of the Constituent Assembly called to revamp the nation's political institutions. Laura Carlsen from Center for International Policy interviews Alvaro Garcia Linera.

In an echo of the 1960s, Venezuela, Russia, and Bolivia are among a number of countries trying to renationalize the property of multinational corporations.

Bolivian President Evo Morales governs an increasingly unruly nation but shows few signs of changing his combative political agenda.

“Washington’s reaction to [Evo] Morales’ election, policies, and rhetoric has been to ‘wait and see,’” says a new Council Special Report. “Yet after nearly nine months in office, the Morales administration’s policy agenda has taken shape and, unfortunately, has exacerbated political, ethnic, and racial schisms in Bolivian society.”

This report encourages the U.S. government to redirect its policy toward Bolivia from "wait and see" to one with an emphasis on conflict prevention and preserving the democratic process in order to address the nation's many challenges. This report is also available in Spanish.

Alma Guillermoprieto writes about the historical emergence of a grass-roots party in Bolivia. Guillermoprieto argues that the revolution in Bolivia is an anomaly because there is no other country in Latin America where a grass-roots party has taken charge of a government and "whose members are poor and overwhelmingly Indian."

Evo Morales, Bolivia's populist president, has nationalized his country's energy industry. The decision will have specific economic ramifications, and possibly broader political ones in a region that lacks a coherent identity.

In a region seen as turning leftward, forging alliances would seem a natural course of events. But Bolivian President Evo Morales' decision to nationalize the oil and gas industry is exposing tensions, causing experts to say there is more diffusion than alliance-building in Latin America.

Secretary Rice and U.S. public diplomacy chief Karen Hughes travel to South America this week for the inauguration of Chile's first woman president, Michelle Bachelet. The trip could signal a new focus on South America, at a time when a growing number of leftist governments in the region pose questions for U.S. policies there.