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Photographer’s Note

For the record, I am not against poor people. This is just my way to complain for irrational policies against the ecosystem.

Fighting for the Rainforests.-

This picture was taken at the entry of the Amboro National Park, a paradise, now in danger thanks to the policies of Evo Morales, the first indigenous Bolivian President.

The boundaries of the Bolivian Parks are not respected now that MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) has come into power.

Evo Morales and his party, the Movimiento al Socialismo , advocate the expansion of legal coca cultivation, which encourage thousands of coca growers and landless poor into protected forests in search of new soil to harvest.

For example, the coca-growing region of Chapare has lost about 40,000 hectares—almost 99,000 acres—of forest.

Industrial soya and cattle farmers are also lobbying hard for access to these areas. To aggravate matters MAS last month closed Bolivia’s Ministry of Sustainable Development. This action eliminates any national conservation plan.

The biggest short-term pressure from within the MAS party is to give land to the poor.
There’s also the temptation to open up the Bolivian Amazon to cash-crop interests—for example, the Brazilian soy companies. The price of land in Bolivia is something like 10 times less than it is in Brazil, right now. The same risk with cattle ranching. So the danger of Morales? Instead of doing what he should do—which is protect the rainforest for the long term sustainable growth of this country—he could just to sell it off.

http://www.williampowersbooks.com/NewsweekInternationalInterview.htm

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Additional Photos by gabriel mendez (pitai) Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 1193 W: 162 N: 936] (3925)
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