Chaco as tenth department?
03.29.2006Technorati tags: Bolivia politics
So. The rural provinces in Bolivia know as the Chaco have decided to secede from their respective departments. The Chaco is made up of five provinces in Santa Cruz, Tarija, and Chuquisaca; it's also where most of the natural gas reserves are. Here's the story in La Razon, Los Tiempos, and El Deber. I think someone just turned the crazy knob to eleven.
For the record, I'm not opposed to more (and smaller) departments as a matter of reasonable democratic devolution of state authority. I posted about this at the now-defunct SoEx blog (now defunct, I can't find the post, not even in Google cache). But there are several other regional units (e.g. Tupiza, Vallegrande, Yungas) that might want to govern themselves w/o interference from their departmental capital. So I can understand the impulse. It just makes things much more complicated at a time when tensions are already high enough.
Posted by Miguel at 10:43 AM