John Pilger, “A Glimpse of Freedom“:
Last year, I interviewed Pablo Solón, son of the great Bolivian muralist Walter Solón, in an extraordinary room covered by his father’s epic brush strokes. More visceral than Diego Rivera’s images of the Mexican revolution, the pictures of injustice rage at you; the barbaric manipulation of people’s lives shall not pass, they say. Pablo Solón, now an adviser to the government of Evo Morales, said: “The story of Bolivia is not unlike so many resource-rich countries where the majority are very poor. It is the story of the government behind the government and what the American embassy allows, for in that building is the true source of power in this country. The US doesn’t have major investments here; what they fear is another Chávez; they don’t want the ‘bad example’ to spread to Ecuador and beyond – even to Nigeria, which might be inspired to tax the oil companies as never before. For the US, any genuine solution to poverty spells trouble.”
“How much would it cost to solve the poverty of Bolivia?” I asked.
“A billion dollars; it’s nothing. It’s the example that matters, because that’s the threat.”
A Practical Policy 