news from Bolivia

The LDS church announced recently that all North American missionaries serving in Bolivia have been transferred to Peru temporarily. This is in reaction to political unrest in Bolivia resulting in the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador (or a more leftist take on the events, click here). I found an article in Deseret News about the church's decision to pull missionaries out of Bolivia. Here's a non-random sample of comments from readers of that article.

The first comment, referring to the Bolivian government:

Pray for them, folks; they don't know any better

Yes, it would be so much easier if you just let our government make your decisions for you. A few examples to show exactly what the U.S. government can do for your Latin American country: the 1973 Chilean coup resulting in human rights violations and the Pinochet dictatorship; the 1954 Guatemalan coup organized by the CIA that led to military rule, genocide, and increased discrimination; and the Iran-contra affair, where Oliver North sold weapons to Iran and used the money to fund a bloody terrorist war to overthrow a democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Speaking of democratically elected leaders, this next comment refers to the Morales administration specifically:

It is sad to see the loss of democracy in some of these South American countries.

Apparently, these people lost democracy by electing someone in a fair election where Morales received a true majority (53.7%) of the popular vote. After Morales had been in office for a few years, the politicians opposed to him were fed up and were able to finally organize a recall referendum to kick him out, but the people of Bolivia voted against the referendum with a 67% majority. Now the prefects of the rich regions are trying again to restore "democracy" by using violence to physically remove Morales from office and continuing to oppress the poor majority.

He's trying to re-write the Bolivian constitution like Venezuela for crying out loud!

Please, no re-writing of constitutions. That should be reserved for really serious problems like gays wanting to get married.