Bolivian Marchers Protest Chile Pipeline Plan
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Thousands of protesters marched through the streets here Friday, opposing plans to sell natural gas to California via a pipeline through Chile.
The demonstration resurrected a century-old territorial grudge and underscored the deep disappointment among Bolivians that more than a decade of pursuing foreign investment in this Andean nation has done little to erase poverty and unemployment.
The marchers voiced the anti-globalization complaints heard across Latin America these days: that foreign investment, especially involving the privatization of state-owned companies and resources, has only led to layoffs and a rise in the misery index.
"They have turned administration of the phone company over to the Germans, and they haven't spent one peso on it, just taken all the money back to Germany," protester Reynaldo Illanes said.
The natural gas controversy laid bare a festering sore in Bolivian history: its long anger over Pacific Coast territory lost to Chile during a 19th century war, leaving this nation landlocked.
"Chile took the sea from us, and because of that Bolivia is so behind in the economy and in development," said demonstrator Carlos Rodriguez, 87, a decorated veteran of the 1930s Chaco War with Paraguay, which also cost Bolivia a significant chunk of territory.
The government is trying to decide between Chilean and Peruvian routes for a pipeline that would connect natural gas reserves in Bolivia's Amazon basin to markets in Mexico and California. Enough gas could be shipped annually to fill 15% of California's demand. Shortages of gas and the high prices they caused were among the reasons for California's energy crisis.
A consortium of energy companies, including British Gas, British Petroleum and Repsol YPF, has proposed spending $5 billion to build the pipeline from fields it controls here. But the group says only a Chilean route is economically feasible.
Many Bolivians favor a longer and more expensive pipeline through Peru.
Sempra Energy of San Diego and CMS Energy Corp. of Michigan have agreed to purchase the gas, which would be transported by ship to a terminal they would build south of Rosarito in Baja California and piped north.
But what might seem to outsiders a golden opportunity for Bolivia to exploit a market hungry for its vast reserves of natural gas is perceived by many locals as just one more case of the nation selling its resources on the cheap to foreign interests.
