Sunday 15 March 2009

¿Estás de cachondeo?

Bolivia's Morales: Army, police have CIA contacts.

It's telling that my first reaction is, "This surprises you?"
This time, Morales says a mid-level military official and Bolivian police officers are in contact with the U.S. spy agency. Morales made the allegations on Saturday, but offered no details or proof. He said he is personally investigating the matter "porque vender información a agentes externos es traición a la patria."

I hate to tell you this, sir, but I will anyway. The Monroe Doctrine was written as carte blanche for norteamericanos to fuck around with the rest of the Americas, and The Roosevelt Corollary did not help matters in the slightest.

Furthermore, señor, when entire sections of your country break off to declare independence, everyone with the common sense necessary to keep their own craniums out of their own colons is going to be keeping an eye on the exit door.

Beyond that, you have not only come up with the most hare-brained policy possible — Coca, sí, cocaine, no — you proclaimed upon taking up the presidency, ¡Viva coca! ¡Muerte a los Yankees! which is so not going to reverberate well with one of your most important trading partners. To further piss them off, you suspended U.S. anti-drug efforts.

Look, I'm a norteamericana. I can tell you exactly how hypocritical and stupid we're going to be about it — incredibly so. We'll happily tell you we don't support your production of cocaine as we tell you to ignore that glass coffee table in the living room. But being norteamericanos, we also know that the most powerful force that can be harnessed by ordinary man is money, a commodity that your population has in scarcity. As a coca farmer yourself, you want to preserve the existence of coca for traditional use.

Traditional use of coca is a subsistence use, limited to ceremonial functions and small amounts as a stimulant, rather similar to coffee or tea. Dry coca leaf trades at US $4.30 per kilogramme. Your private foreign investments (as opposed to soft money drops by the World Bank and IMF) is estimated between 8 and 12% of GDP, despite enormous natural energy reserves, and the inflation rate is in the double digits consistently. People tend to rank "being able to not starve" well above "participation in forward-reaching ideas with international importance."

At the very least, if you'd like for us to take this whole "not producing drugs, honest" thing seriously ... please stop giving Hugo Chávez coca in front of Alternativa Bolivariana summits with members of the Fourth Estate present, ¿vale?

No comments: