An Argentinian perspective on Evo Morales

as we americans wallow in the skewed perspective of the u.s. media on bolivia's new president, we also need to be aware of how bolivia's south american neighbors - in this case, argentina - are viewing the "new kid on the block..."

President Néstor Kirchner’s fleeting presence in La Paz last Sunday for the presidential inauguration of his new Bolivian colleague Evo Morales was supremely ambiguous, leaving the future relationship with Bolivia open-ended. On the one hand, Kirchner did make the effort to go (already better than Uruguay’s Tabaré Vázquez) but he minimized his presence to four hours, thus making any direct talks with Morales impossible. This brevity can easily be explained by the anxiety to avoid soroche (altitude sickness) with La Paz 4,000 metres above sea level but with equal ease it could be seen as at best circumspection and at worst a cool and even disrespectful attitude towards the new Bolivian president.

If Kirchner was indifferent, the feeling was mutual. Morales seemed far keener to meet Ricardo Lagos, the outgoing president of historic foe Chile, and United States representative Tom Shannon than Kirchner — while interested in a frontier meeting next month, Morales has not joined Chilean president-elect Michelle Bachelet in pledging to make Argentina his first trip abroad. On the positive side, Morales has abandoned his all-out resistance to natural gas exports from a couple of years ago but this only leads to the billion-dollar question: At what price?

Although it might seem counter to all logic, Argentina has little choice but to start multiplying its gas purchases from Bolivia precisely when Bolivia is seeking to multiply the price — buying under four percent of current gas needs from Bolivia, Argentina will have to import at least a quarter of its gas in a very near future if it is not to exhaust its own reserves and Bolivia (with at least 100 years of reserves) is by far the cheapest source. Argentina’s only hope is to pay for the gas in kind rather than cash (offering food and technology in exchange for energy imports, as already agreed with Venezuela) but buying Bolivian gas at far steeper prices seems unavoidable — as does tension with the new Bolivian government.

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