Oh. My. God. A voice of reason in the NYT about Bolivia...!

honest to pete, this is one editorial i didn't expect to see... there's a voice of reason out there amid the incessant firestorm of political and ideological rhetoric... whaddaya know...?!?

Oil and gas nationalization has been the main political issue in Bolivia for the last several years. Mr. Morales, an Aymara Indian farmer, won a landslide victory in December on a promise to nationalize the gas industry. Now he's delivering on that promise he made to the country's nine million citizens.

And when viewed from a Bolivian perspective, this is less of a nationalization than a return to constitutionality. Mr. Morales has a strong legal argument that the privatization that took place in the mid-1990's was unconstitutional. Under the Bolivian Constitution, the contracts that gave control to private companies were supposed to be approved by Congress, and they were not.

Add this to resentment on the street over Bolivia's Transparency International corruption ranking last year (placing its leaders among the world's most dishonest) and a long history of swindles where natural resources like gold, silver, timber and petroleum have been "privatized" into the global economy to the sole benefit of a few very wealthy Bolivians.

Nor is this a classic nationalization in the sense of the confiscations that took place in the region in the 50's and 70's. In those days, Latin American governments expropriated everything and kicked out the companies the next day. This time Bolivia will exert greater control over the companies, including significantly higher taxes and 50 percent-plus-one state ownership, but Mr. Morales has pledged to create an environment conducive to private profit-making, and the government has repeatedly stated that it is a "nationalization without confiscation," with no expulsion of foreign companies nor expropriation of their assets.

i'm rooting for both evo and bolivia... both of 'em are gonna need all the help they can get...

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