Bolivia’s President Morales expels USAID, accused it of working against him

(Washington Post) President Evo Morales acted on a longtime threat Wednesday and expelled the U.S. Agency for International Development for allegedly seeking to undermine Bolivia’s leftist government, and he harangued Washington’s top diplomat for calling the Western Hemisphere his country’s “backyard.”

Bolivia’s ABI state news agency said USAID was “accused of alleged political interference in peasant unions and other social organizations.”

In the past, Morales has accused the agency of funding groups that opposed his policies, including a lowlands indigenous federation that organized protests against a Morales-backed highway through the TIPNIS rainforest preserve.

In 2008, Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador and agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for allegedly inciting the opposition. On Wednesday, he said Washington “still has a mentality of domination and submission” in the region.

While Morales did not provide evidence of USAID meddling, funds channeled through it have been used in Bolivia and its leftist ally Venezuela to support organizations deemed a threat by those governments.

But there is not much aid left to cut.

As U.S.-Bolivian relations soured and Washington canceled trade preferences, total U.S. foreign aid to the poor, landlocked South American nation has dropped from $100 million in 2008 to $28 million last year. Amid mutual distrust on drug war politics, U.S. counter-narcotics and security aid are track to all but disappear in the coming fiscal year Bolivia, a cocaine-producing country along with Colombia and Peru.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell called Morales’ allegations “baseless” and said the purpose of USAID programs in Bolivia has been, since they began in 1964, “to help the Bolivian government improve the lives of ordinary Bolivians” in full coordination with its agencies.

He called the USAID expulsion a demonstration of the Morales administration’s lack of interest in a relationship “based on mutual respect, dialogue and cooperation” and regretted it would hurt Bolivians who had benefitted from programs focused on education, health, environmental protection and strengthening the legal system.

Analyst Kathryn Ledebur of the nonprofit Andean Information Network in Bolivia was not surprised by the expulsion itself, but by the fact that Morales took so long to do it after repeated threats, which she believes diminishes its political impact.

“USAID alternative development efforts tied to forced coca eradication provoked his mistrust,” she said of Morales, a longtime coca-growers union leader before his December 2005 election as Bolivia’s first indigenous president. Since U.S. assistance has “dwindled to a trickle,” the financial impact will be limited as well, she said.

Ledebur said Morales was also upset that USAID money reached lowland regional governments he accused of trying to overthrow him in 2008.

In a 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, The Associated Press asked USAID for descriptions of the Bolivian recipients of grant money. The response did not go into detail, but did include such items as $10.5 million for “democracy-building” awarded to Chemonics Int. Inc. in 2006 “to support improved governance in a changing political environment.”

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