SANTA CRUZ, BOLIVIA – For centuries, Bolivian laborers toiled to unearth silver, gold, and tin, only to see most of the wealth benefit a small number of elites and foreigners.
On Sunday, this poor landlocked Andean nation will try something novel: Voters will decide whether to nationalize the country's 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the third-largest reserve in the region. It's the first time Bolivians will have been consulted on how to exploit the nation's buried assets.
And all it took was for the country to be so close to violent revolution by the poor that the elites are scared shitless. Kinda how things were in the US during the depression. Is that what it takes to get the people to stand up for themselves?
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I took the name Phaedrus from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Not that I'm as smart as that Phaedrus, but I am a ghost. Sort of.
I started doing odd jobs at a motel when I was 14. I lasted one day at a McDonald's, quit, lasted a lot longer at Taco Bell. I've been a gas station attendant, janitor, die cast production worker, day laborer, course maintenance at a miniature golf course, warehouse, union janitor, cabbie, statistical clerk, pool cleaner, working homeless for a few weeks (day labor), and several other things I can't remember. And I've survived. Sort of. I'm not a Marxist, but I am a genuine member of the lumpen proletariat.
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