Behind the mask of solidarity hides an authoritarian willing to get rid of private property and individual freedom both for natives and foreigners.

 

Nationalizing fossil fuel resources affects the Spanish company Repsol. Morales is putting his electoral program into effect, a program that despises private property. Evo started with oil and gas because it is the only wealth he can expropriate without having it disappear the next day. However, he will need strategic allies to help him find new sources and keep the oil industry up to date with the on-going technical innovations happening throughout the world.

 

Morales, the supposed defender of indigenous people, hurt a few companies (which he might feel good about it), but he has hurt his own people much more. Bolivia’s credibility as a host for new international investment has crashed and it will not recover until he is forced to leave power. Some artists and businessmen who have prospered thanks to subsidies and privileges and some left wing politicians will no doubt help him. Zapatero could lend him a hand again and find him companies willing to work with Bolivia. Why not? Since he has already betrayed his duty to defend the property of Spanish companies, what would stop him from providing more aid to the despot? But the truth is that big companies run away from expropriators and not even Zapatero can change that.

 

Morales, wearing his colorful sweaters, is imposing a dark future on his fellow citizens and the indigenous people will suffer the most. For thousands of years the social traditions of Bolivia’s indigenous communities have respected private property. They often have communal systems in which they share to help those in an emergency. They keep a complex structure of private property that is linked to social merit and their judicial system is not the official state-run system. Every indigenous person is free to leave the ancient “clubs” and try his luck as a private peasant. However, Morales insists on having the state invade these institutions that have been developing freely for centuries. He wants the state to issue land property registrations, he wants to regulate the norms of the communities, he wants to register the participants and he wants to have the state involved in their judicial system. In essence, he wants the same thing he is doing to the oil companies: he wants to control and rule these free communities. We don’t know yet if the occidental indigenous groups will praise such aggressions or if they will get drunk on state-spreading socialism.