Other large cities: Santa Cruz,
1,168,700; Cochabamba, 815,800; El Alto, 728,500; Oruro, 211,700
Monetary unit: Boliviano
Languages: Spanish, Quechua, Aymara (all official)
Ethnicity/race: Quechua 30%, mestizo 30%, Aymara 25%, white
15%
Religion: Roman Catholic 95%, Protestant (Evangelical
Methodist) 5%
Literacy rate: 87%
(2003 est.)
Economic summary:GDP/PPP (2005 est.): $23.73 billion; per capita $2,700. Real
growth rate: 3.4%. Inflation: 4.9%. Unemployment: 8%
in urban areas with widespread underemployment. Arable land:
3%. Agriculture: soybeans, coffee, coca, cotton, corn,
sugarcane, rice, potatoes; timber. Labor force: 4.22 million;
agriculture n.a., industry n.a., services n.a. Industries:
mining, smelting, petroleum, food and beverages, tobacco, handicrafts,
clothing. Natural resources: tin, natural gas, petroleum, zinc,
tungsten, antimony, silver, iron, lead, gold, timber, hydropower.
Exports: $2.371 billion f.o.b. (2005 est.): natural gas,
soybeans and soy products, crude petroleum, zinc ore, tin. Imports:
$1.845 billion f.o.b. (2005 est.): petroleum products, plastics,
paper, aircraft and aircraft parts, prepared foods, automobiles,
insecticides, soybeans. Major trading partners: Brazil, U.S.
Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, China, Japan
(2004).
Communications: Telephones:
main lines in use: 600,100 (2003); mobile cellular: 1,401,500 (2003).
Radio broadcast stations: AM 171, FM 73, shortwave 77 (1999).
Television broadcast stations: 48 (1997). Internet
hosts: 7,080 (2003). Internet users: 270,000 (2002).
Transportation: Railways: total: 3,519 km
(2004). Highways: total: 60,282 km; paved: 3,979 km; unpaved:
56,303 km (2002). Waterways: 10,000 km (commercially navigable)
(2004). Ports and harbors:Puerto Aguirre (on the
Paraguay/Parana waterway, at the Bolivia/Brazil border); also, Bolivia
has free port privileges in maritime ports in Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, and Paraguay. Airports: 1,065 (2004 est.).
International disputes: Chile rebuffs
Bolivia's reactivated claim to restore the Atacama corridor, ceded to
Chile in 1884, offering instead unrestricted but not sovereign
maritime access through Chile for Bolivian natural gas and other
commodities.
Landlocked Bolivia is equal in size to California and Texas combined.
Brazil forms its eastern border; its other neighbors are Peru and Chile on
the west and Argentina and Paraguay on the south. The western part,
enclosed by two chains of the Andes, is a great plateau—the Altiplano,
with an average altitude of 12,000 ft (3,658 m). Almost half the
population lives on the plateau, which contains Oruro, Potosí, and La Paz.
At an altitude of 11,910 ft (3,630 m), La Paz is the highest
administrative capital city in the world. The Oriente, a lowland region
ranging from rain forests to grasslands, comprises the northern and
eastern two-thirds of the country. Lake Titicaca, at an altitude of 12,507
ft (3,812 m), is the highest commercially navigable body of water in the
world.
Government
Republic.
History
Famous since Spanish colonial days for its mineral wealth, modern
Bolivia was once a part of the ancient Incan empire. After the Spaniards
defeated the Incas in the 16th century, Bolivia's predominantly Indian
population was reduced to slavery. The remoteness of the Andes helped
protect the Bolivian Indians from the European diseases that decimated
other South American Indians. But the existence of a large indigenous
group forced to live under the thumb of their colonizers created a
stratified society of haves and have-nots that continues to this day.
Income inequality between the largely impoverished Indians who make up
two-thirds of the country and the light-skinned, European elite remains
vast.
By the end of the 17th century the mineral wealth had begun to dry up.
The country won its independence in 1825 and was named after Simón
Bolívar, the famous liberator. Hampered by internal strife, Bolivia lost
great slices of territory to three neighboring nations. Several thousand
square miles and its outlet to the Pacific were taken by Chile after the
War of the Pacific (1879–1884). In 1903, a piece of Bolivia's Acre
Province, rich in rubber, was ceded to Brazil. And in 1938, after losing
the Chaco War of 1932–1935 to Paraguay, Bolivia gave up its claim to
nearly 100,000 sq mi of the Gran Chaco. Political instability ensued.
In 1965, a guerrilla movement mounted from Cuba and headed by Maj.
Ernesto (Ché) Guevara began a revolutionary war. With the aid of U.S.
military advisers, the Bolivian army smashed the guerrilla movement,
capturing and killing Guevara on Oct. 8, 1967. A string of military coups
followed before the military returned the government to civilian rule in
1982, when Hernán Siles Zuazo became president. At that point, Bolivia was
regularly shut down by work stoppages and had the lowest per capita income
in South America.
In June 1993, free-market advocate Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was
elected president. He was succeeded by former general Hugo Bánzer, an
ex-dictator turned democrat who became president for the second time in
Aug. 1997. Bánzer made significant progress in wiping out illicit coca
production and drug trafficking, which pleased the United States. However,
the eradication of coca, a major crop in Bolivia since Incan times,
plunged many Bolivian farmers into abject poverty. Although Bolivia sits
on South America's second-largest natural gas reserves as well as
considerable oil, the country has remained one of the poorest on the
continent.
In Aug. 2002, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada again became president,
pledging to continue economic reforms and to create jobs. In October 2003
Sánchez resigned after months of rioting and strikes over a gas-exporting
project that protesters believed would benefit foreign companies more than
Bolivians. His vice president, Carlos Mesa, replaced him. Despite
continued unrest, Mesa remained popular during his first two years as
president. In a July 2004 referendum on the future of the country's
significant natural gas reserves (the second largest in South America),
Bolivians overwhelmingly supported Mesa's plan to exert more control over
foreign gas companies. Mesa managed to satisfy the strong
antiprivatization sentiment among Bolivians without shutting the door on
some limited form of privatization in the future. But rising fuel prices
in 2005 led to massive protests by tens of thousands of impoverished
farmers and miners, and on June 6 Mesa resigned. Supreme court justice
Eduardo Rodriguez took over as interim president.
Bolivian Indian activist Evo Morales of the Movement Toward Socialism
(MAS) won 54% of the vote in Dec. 2005 presidential elections, becoming
the country's first indigenous president. He carried out two of his three
major initiatives in 2006: nationalizing Bolivia's energy industry, which
is expected to double the country's annual revenues; and forming in August
a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution, which will ensure
greater rights for indigenous Bolivians. His third major initiative is to
legalize the growing of coca, which many Bolivians consider an integral
part of their culture. In July 2007, Morales announced plans to
nationalize the country's railways, which for the past 10 years have been
run by investors from Chile and the United States. His controversial coca
policy, his plans to limit foreign investment, and his close ties with the
leftist governments of Venezuela and Cuba have predictably antagonized the
United States. Morales has referred to himself as the “United States'
biggest nightmare.”
On December 9, 2007, Morales presented a new constitution to congress.
The new chapter, which will give indigenous people more rights, recognize
37 official languages, and grant indigenous communities autonomy, was
approved by 164 of the 255 constituent assembly members. The opposition
boycotted the meeting, however, claiming that the document is illegal
because it was not approved by the required two-thirds majority.
Regardless of the opposition, the government plans to submit the document
to a referendum in 2008.
On May 4, 2008, at least one person died and many were injured when
clashes broke out in the Santa Cruz province after a poll was held in
opposition to President Morale's governement. The government strongly
disapproved of the prosposed referendum, which would give more autonomy to
the Santa Cruz province, including the ability to elect its own
legislature, raise taxes for public works, and create its own police
force.
