The Bolivian referendum Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

Welcome to the Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean. If you would like your posts included in next week’s Carnival please email me: faustaw2 “at” gmail “dot” com.

Yesterday’s big news: Bolivia, the hemisphere’s third poorest country after Haiti and Guyana, approved a new Constitution

Approval of the constitution, which caps a two-year campaign by Morales, will give expanded discretionary powers to the president, such as the ability to dissolve Congress. He will also be eligible to run for a second five-year term late next year. The earlier constitution did not allow consecutive terms.

Observers expect him to dissolve Congress and call for new elections ahead of scheduled December 2009 balloting.

As expected, voters in the western highland states such as La Paz with large indigenous populations overwhelmingly approved the new charter, according to the preliminary results, while voters in the four eastern states that passed autonomy measures last year were resoundingly opposed.

For many voters interviewed Sunday in the city of La Paz, the nation’s capital, the most salient features of the new charter are the strengthened rights for Bolivia’s three dozen ethnic groups, which make up about a third of Bolivia’s 9.2 million population. The word “indigenous” appears 130 times in the new constitution.

According to clauses in the new document, those groups will now be able to eschew the traditional court system and resort to their own “community justice,” claim some nationalized lands as their own and receive a greater share of royalties on minerals and energy developed on or beneath those lands.

I’m writing a post on the referendum for Real Clear World Blog, and will link to it here later.

Other news: Cristina Fernandez‘s trip to Cuba and Venezuela, and Mexico’s Ominous Drug Wars

In today’s podcast:
The Bolivian referendum, other headlines from today’s Carnival, and a few words on Slumdog Millionaire from the context of third-world poverty. Chat’s open at 10:45AM and the call in number is 646 652-2639. Join the conversation!

You can listen to the podcast here, live, or archived.

LATIN AMERICA
Mario Vargas Llosa: Atribuye la crisis al “despilfarro” y niega fin del capitalismo

ARGENTINA
Argentina to Swap Up to 11 Billion Pesos of Debt

BOLIVIA
Bolivia’s new constitution
A passport to Utopia
Evo Morales campaigns for a great leap forward. Or back, say some

¿Evo perdió la chaveta?

Spilling Ink Instead of Blood: Bolivia Poised to Vote on New Constitution

Chavez envia tropas militares armadas a Evo Morales – Noticiero Digital

Bolivia nationalizes BP subsidiary

Bolivia poll won’t end opposition

In Bolivia, vote unlikely to heal divide

BRAZIL
Fugitives from justice in Brazil
The madness of asylum
Why this indulgence for a convicted killer?

GM to Invest TARP Dough in Brazil