President Evo Morales announced Wednesday the expulsion of USAID from Bolivia, accusing the US development agency of meddling in the country's internal affairs. In a fiery speech to workers on May Day, the leftist president of South America's poorest country said the US Agency for International Development was in Bolivia "for political purposes, not social ones."
"No more USAID, which manipulates and uses our leaders," Morales said in the address in La Paz's Plaza de Armas. He did not specify exactly how he felt the US agency was interfering in Bolivian affairs. USAID has operated in the Andean nation since 1964. Morales, a populist and Bolivia's first indigenous president, has been in power since 2006 and followed a sometimes nationalist agenda hostile to Western governments and companies.
He expelled the US ambassador and representatives of the US Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008 on the same grounds of meddling in Bolivia's internal affairs. Bolivia is a major producer of coca leaves, the raw material of cocaine. In that diplomatic crisis back, the United States responded by expelling the Bolivian ambassador and ending trade privileges that it had granted Bolivia.
After a long period of frosty ties, the two countries in 2011 signed a framework agreement to normalise relations and exchange ambassadors again. But some tensions remained, nonetheless. "With the government of the United States we have profound differences of an ideological, cultural and, especially, policy-related nature," Morales told the La Paz diplomatic corps last year. "I hope that with the new framework agreement we can improve things, but I doubt it," he said.
The new US Secretary of State John Kerry has encouraged improved relations with Bolivia. But bilateral ties suffered another blow recently when Morales said the United States was conspiring against the new government in Venezuela that has taken over for the late Hugo Chavez, who was an ally of Morales.
And in early April, the United States announced it was ending the financial and logistical support it had given to Bolivia's struggle against drug traffickers, although it did donate several aircraft. In his speech Wednesday Morales said Bolivia was offended by recent Kerry comments to the effect that Latin America was the United States' backyard.
The United States, he said, "probably thinks that here it can still manipulate politically and economically. That is a thing of the past." Morales instructed Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca to inform the US embassy of the expulsion of USAID, "that tool which still has a mentality of domination."
In Bolivia, USAID has worked to help Bolivia improve its health care system and also runs a sustainable development and environmental program. Specific goals include boosting farm productivity and food security, expanding access to social services and enhancing the competitiveness of small and medium sized companies, according to the USAID web site. During Wednesday's speech Morales also announced several laws designed to benefit workers and recalled the seventh anniversary of his government's nationalisation of the hydrocarbon sector, which affected nearly a dozen foreign oil companies.
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