The really hard work in Bolivia is just beginning

evo morales, bolivia's new president-elect, may find himself with a hard row to hoe...

[A]lmost every major oil company -- including Spain's Repsol, British Gas, ExxonMobil and Texas-based Vintage Oil -- has already threatened to bring a claim in international arbitration against Bolivia. And if Morales nationalizes the industry, under the terms of the bilateral investment treaties between Bolivia and the companies' home countries, they could sue -- in private, closed-door arbitration, without the safeguards normally provided by publicly appointed judges in an international court -- for not only the approximately $3.5 billion private companies have already invested in the natural gas industry here but also for the loss of expected profits, which could total tens of billions of dollars.

For a country like Bolivia, whose annual revenues are only a little more than $2 billion a year, that's no small threat. It's for that reason -- and a host of other ways in which the United States, the World Bank, the IMF and the Inter-American Development Bank can threaten to pull the noose tight around Bolivia's highly indebted neck -- that an Evo Morales presidency may well remain largely a symbolic victory.

i'm rooting for morales and the bolivian people even though i know that in a few minutes, i will walk into my kitchen here in buenos aires and fire up a gas burner under a kettle of water for my morning coffee, fueled by bolivian natural gas... i'll muddle through somehow no matter what happens, but the bolivian people, in a country that has been fiercely exploited for well over three hundred years, deserve something better for themselves...

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