Does the rest of the world care about what’s happening in Bolivia? Or, more to the point, does the media? Most of the major US daily papers are talking about everything except the escalating unrest in and around La Paz.
The landlocked Andean nation may be on the verge of being overthrown, but you wouldn’t know that if you get your information from American media outlets. As my Mom, a very well-informed sort, said recently, she wouldn’t have known anything’s happening down there if she didn’t read what I’ve written on this page.
(The latest from Reuters is that the government has sent in “thousands of troops backed by tanks” to subdue El Alto, a poor suburb outside La Paz which has been the scene of the most fervent protests.)
Today’s San Francisco Chronicle features an AP story about the situation. And so does today’s Washington Post–but surprisingly enough, the paper hasn’t put one of their own reporters on the case. And the New York Times isn’t running anything Bolivia-related.
The most thoughtful commentary I’ve seen has been published on CounterPunch. There was Forrest Hylton’s article “Upheaval in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity” and “Bolivia’s Gas War,” a piece by Bejamin Dangl. But both of those ran nearly a week ago.