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Global Notebook 11/03
Left-leaning Latinos Fuel Resistance
CARACAS — Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was scheduled to speak at the UN in late September. But he abruptly cancelled his US trip. The main reasons given were security concerns and a lack of enthusiasm for UN summits. "A dialogue of the deaf,” Chavez called them, arguing that the world body is fundamentally undemocratic and should be democratized.
Meanwhile, weeks of rising anger and police violence in Bolivia climaxed in a September 29 general strike by unionists, backed by peasants, students, and merchants. Two days later, miners joined, paralyzing production. As a result, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resigned and fled to Miami. The confrontation, inspired by Evo Morales, popular leader of Indian coca farmers, involved a deal that would have sold Bolivian natural gas to the US and Mexico, via a Chilean port.