People without middle-class trappings or a particular level of comfort are probably more likely to shut down society than folks in the US who have mortgages, car payments, and soccer practices. When peoples' very means of subsistence are threatened, when life is a choice not between comfort and discomfort, but between starving and not starving, then people will stand up and fight.

Unfortunately, much of the US population is headed in that direction. We're not there yet, but as our homes get foreclosed, our cars get repossessed, our jobs disappear overseas, and our very means of subsistence get threatened, we'll be more likely to do that. It's just unfortunate that we'll have to sink that far to take action.

The irony and hypocrisy here astonishes and sickens me. Just two weeks ago you've got Steve indignantly frothing about a independent challenge to the two corporate parties (and the pathetically co-opted Green Party, for that matter) and the necessity of harnessing Obama as a vehicle for "change" (yes, Steve, even you regurgitated Obama's Orwellian theme which is repeated ad nauseam to the point of meaninglessness) yet in the same breath you glorify what started out as a third party in Bolivia (i.e. MAS), which interjected itself into the Zeitgeist in the face of the movement that projected it, thus challenging the duopoly there.

Here's the problem, Steve: the movement that is occuring in Bolivia can never be replicated in the U.S. because:

1.) Americans will never be hungry enough. In spite of themselves, the two corporate parties, of which you proudly count yourself a member of, make damn sure that they take care of their own, thus pacifiying the self-centered, narrow-minded ignorant masses of people -- including you. The power paradigm may shift depending on expediency, but it will NEVER change because people like you refuse to recognize it. It is THIS reason, that the U.S. (READ: NOT JUST BUSH!!!) can continue their escapades abroad and wreak havoc on such nations as Bolivia.

2.) Most importantly, indoctrinated progressive intellectuals like you continue to stubbornly stick with and apologize for the democrats and who become just as indignant, bitter and intolerant as any neo-conservative when anything or anyone on the Left challenges or intends to upend this worldview. This process of suffocating dilution feeds the disease and ensures its perpetuation. Think outside of yourself, Steve.

If Bolivia was similar to the US, I think you might have a point. If a similar thing happened in, say, France, I think you might have a point.

In many ways, Bolivia is unique. It has a majority indigenous population which has been oppressed -- for 350 years by the Spanish and for 150 years by the Spanish descendants and mestizos. Their struggle for independence after 500 years of oppression is the reason for the rise of MAS.

Unfortunately, MAS's rise seems ultimately doomed to failure, not because of "a U.S.-backed upper class in revolt over the new proposed constitution" but because MAS has adequately represented the kollas (the Aymaras and Quechuas) but has little or no support among the cambas (the Amazonian indigenous groups).

(You have to remember that the cambas were never conquered by the Spanish. They were "converted" late by the Jesuits, but their oppression has come mainly at the hands of the mestizos and the kollas. See this article for a good summary of the kolla/camba divide.)

Why can't the US be like Cochabamba in 2000 or El Alto in 2003? Because, basically, the people in the US are content. If the current economic mess spirals out of control and people are left to face starvation as they did in the early 1930s, then they may turn -- as they did then -- to more radical solutions. But, eating well and watching their reality television, there is no reason for them to turn out into the streets to force the government to do anything.

That, of course, is the issue, Jim -- people are content enough (and hit enough by political messages) that they don't realize how radically the nation has changed in just 20 years. The middle classs is far worse off then it was when I was growing up, and the rich are far richer. It's not sustainable. I'm not in favor of violent revolution; I like peaceful change through democracy. I hope we can make it work.

Yes, lets imagine we are Bolivia. Were instead of trusting the ballot box, we win elections by blocking all roads into cities until the general populace surrenders and votes for Morales just to get some relief. (Actually happened and Morales headed the blockades)

I was in Cobija this past weekend for the referrendum in Pando declaring autonomy from the central governemt in La Paz as part of my thesis work detailing the role of students in Andean democracies and the dramatic shift to the right that has not yet been seen in Latin American Politics to date.

I'm going to disagree with Marcello and a few of you other people. Elections in Bolivia have come a long way in recent months where NGO's monitoring the legitimacy of these votes are popping up left and right in order to ensure free and fair elections. As happened in Pando this weekend, the elections were fair, but one thing Evo did do was show up two days before and bought off a lot of people only yoo little too late pleading that those in MAS should choose not to vote as the referrendum is "illegal," until the still unfilled constitutional assembly be filled, something Evo has been slowing down since his inauguration. This plea in Bolivia's poorest region was all too late, leading to nothing but celebration and feelings of success for all the people of Cobija.

So, people are ready for change. A man working at a lavandería asked me today if I was partidario with George Bush. I answered no. I asked if he was partidario with MAS. He said I am Bolivian before I am a member with MAS.

It's no coincidence that Chávez and other Latin American Idiots, as Vargas Llosa deems them, have upped their talk threatening with military support in the case of democratic breakdown for fear that their own socialist regimes begin to crumble.