The Week That Was: Audiovisual Version

I won’t be posting videos every week but I thought the events of these past days disserved some special attention. The first video (from the upper left to right) is a brief run down of Evo’s speeches this week, in which he attacks the opposition, the church, autonomy movement, the television channel Unitel and the US. The second clip is about a Cuban dissident who’s been living in Bolivia for the past few years and has been very outspoken about the reality under Castro’s regime; in this clip he claims to know of at least six recently-arrived Cuban doctors in Bolivia who have already escaped to Brazil or are in hiding.

This week, president Morales accused the US of sending "covert agents" to Bolivia, and even published the names of some twenty American and european citizens in the official news agency website as “proof”, unfortunately for Evo most if not all of these people were academics or grad students and one can easily find their vitas or curriculums with a simple google search; they include University of Michigan's Carrie Landrum and Denver University Jennifer Hennessey among others. The ridiculousness of this claim did not stop the rapid diffusion of this news item internationally as some 70 US newspapers have reported on it. Perhaps we should add a new caveat for US tourists and visiting fullbrights in those Lonely Planet guidebooks: be ready to be accused of working for the CIA by none other than the Bolivian president!

Meanwhile, television channel ATB has been carefully following the issue of Venezuelan military presence in Bolivia and recently informed of a new group of Venezuelan pilots arriving to Bolivia, they presented a video of the troops and attempted to interview some of them. Finally, one big story was published by La Prensa and quickly addressed by the executive; it talks of a possible “split” of opinion and confidence between the president and the vice-president Alvaro García Linera.

A though set of news for only one week, and surely there's more to come.

(File under: Other) On a blog-related side-note, I’d like to thank Ciudadano K for his kind words about my blog in his website; he apparently likes my writing style. Also the folks at Medicina Cubana for having taken up and republished my article on their blog, though global voices confused authorship when citing it; Guccio’s also commented on the article and posted a related note; he clearly got what I was trying to say – which some people didn’t. I’m not attacking the Cuban doctors in Bolivia or their intentions, I’m questioning how their labor is being used to generate propagandistic announcements and further a confrontation with Bolivian health professionals. Finally, I should have mentioned Miguel’s commentary on my oil nationalization article a long time ago.

Ok, so after noting all those accolades, my turn to make a couple: do check Marketing SOS, finally…I’m no longer the only one blogging about Bolivian business-related topics... or maybe I was never the only one nor the first one: here’s to Finanzas Globales, which is registered in Bolivia, though my attempts to reach the author have been foiled so far.

That’s all, I may post something tomorrow, there is a lot I want to write about.

Tag: South America, Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela, Evo Morales.