Academic literature on the topic 'Coca industry – Political aspects – Bolivia'

Polttical Conflicts between Bolivia and its peasantry over the production and distribution of the coca leaf during the 1980s is the focus of this essay. The first section describes several of Bolivia's comparative disadvantages (among Andean producer nations) for waging effective coca leaf control programs. Following is an analysis of the interplay and results of specific statepeasant conflicts during the 1982-1988 period of civilian democratic rule. To give a Bolivian contextual backdrop to these conflicts, aspects of the national political culture which shape the terms and conditions of the struggle over controversial drug-related issues are explained. A final section presents a brief analysis of the Chapare region's prospects for a successful coca leaf eradication program.Explanations for the Bolivian government's ineffectual campaign against the coca leaf and cocaine industry range from its status as a weak state to its fragile and deteriorating economy (Healy, 1986). Bolivia's political system holds the world record for changes in government by way of the coup d'etat.

The essence of Bolivian politics can be conceptualized under four main aspects: the economy, political issues and context, indigenous identity, and democracy. A brief overview of the economy over the last hundred years is explored, and focuses on resource export. Economic policy in relation to Bolivia’s resources is closely tied to the success of political leaders, as policy resentment by the populace has led to the creation of political movements, parties, ousting of presidents, and the rise of a current populist leader. Indigenous identity underlies issues of water control and the coca industry. Evo Morales continues to successfully bring such issues to light, and is providing solutions of nationalization that agree with public sentiment, and may be helping to consolidate democracy.

A fundamental aspect in the study of the Colombian armed conflict is related to the violence produced in the country after the signing of the Peace Agreement with the FARC-EP guerrillas in November 2016. To this end, we attempt to analyze the transformation of the relationship between the perpetrators of violence and their territory, taking as a case study a region particularly affected by the conflict, as is Llanos Orientales (known in English as the Eastern Plains). Starting with a preliminary characterization of the most relevant armed groups – post-paramilitary groups, FARC-EP dissidents and ELN guerrillas – we attempt to analyze the changes and continuities of their armed presence and the symbolic, structural and institutional aspects that explain their territorial distribution in this part of the country. In this way, the presence of the former FARC-EP and concurring factors such as the coca trade, oil industry and poverty are aspects that should be considered in order to understand the shifting geometry of violence.

The purpose of the article is look into historical features and to determine the formation stages and the current state of the library specialists’ education system and its level in Latin American countries. The methodology. There were used historical-genetic and systemic-structural approaches. It made it possible to establish the main stages periodization of the higher education levels in Library Studies’ origin and development in the leading countries of Latin America. The study proved the influence of North American and European traditions on the development of the training of highly qualified library personnel system in the founding countries of graduate library education on the continent. A comparative and content analysis of the bachelor’s, master’s and Doctoral Degrees’ educational programs in the specialty “Library and Information Sciences” provided by leading universities in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, made it possible to determine the general and specific aspects of the specialists training for the information industry, to establish the peculiarities of cognitive and institutional components of bachelor’s and master’s educational programs, justify the objective necessity of strengthening their interdisciplinarity and flexibility. The results. It has been established that Argentina was the first among Latin American countries to establish a training school for librarians in the structure of the Philosophy and Literature Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires back in 1922. In the 1940s and 1950s, universities opened Library Studies (Schools) in Panama (1941), Brazil (1942), Peru (1943), Uruguay (1943), Mexico (1945, 1956), Chile (1949), Costa Rica (1950) and Colombia (1956). The system of post-graduate library education began to take shape in the 1970s, when in 1972 the first post-graduate program in the field of “Library and Information Science” was opened in Brazil at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, and in 1980 — the doctoral program as well. Currently, in the countries of Latin America, only the leading metropolitan universities have educational programs of master’s and Doctoral levels. It is due to the low scientific qualification of graduate departments and the insufficient number of professors who can carry out qualified supervision of master’s and Doctoral thesis research. The current state of the library and information education system development on the Latin American continent is demonstrated by the following statistics: Brazil has 47 universities with their structure including schools or departments for the library specialists training, Argentina has 16 of such universities, Mexico — 13, Colombia — 6, Chile — 4, Cuba — 3, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Peru, Venezuela — 2 universities each, Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Jamaica — 1 university each. The scientific topicality. The formation of the higher library education levels system on the Latin American continent took place in several stages: the genesis stage (1920–1930s), the stage of active development (1940–1960s), the stage of starting post-graduate training of library specialists at the postgraduate level, and later — master’s and Doctoral studies (1970–1990s); the stage of strengthening the interdisciplinary integration of educational program profiles (2000 — present). The results of the educational programs (EPs) content analysis of various levels of training in the specialty “Library and Information Sciences” made it possible to establish a certain conservatism of their profiling, to determine that the promising directions for their modernization are interdisciplinary and strengthening of the digital and information and communication components with, for example, such relevant EPs as “Communication, organization, management of information and knowledge”, “Sociocultural, political and economic configurations of information”. The practical significance. The research results can be used by Ukrainian institutions of higher education in the process of improving master’s and Doctoral educational programs in the specialty 029 “Information, Library and Archival Affairs”. The introduction of the best foreign training practices of library specialists will improve their quality and competitiveness at the global information market.

Defence date: 7 November 2016
Examining Board: Doctor Donatella Della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, (former EUI Supervisor); Doctor Oliver Roy, European University Institute (EUI); Dr. John Holloway, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP); Doctor Jeffery R. Webber, Queen Mary University of London
How do revolutionary movements choose what political strategy to follow in their quest for social change? What mechanisms are set in motion in order for the movements to select their political strategy? And when they shift from one strategy to another, why and how does that happen? In my work, I first identify what the options available for social movements that want to bring about (or block) social change are. I have created a model which distinguishes between basically two different roads to social change: the one that passes through the seizure of state power (the state power road) and the one that avoids any relationship with the state or its functions (the non-state power road). The state power road also has two routes, depending on the means the movements choose in order to grasp state power: the electoral route and the insurgent one. The non-state power road refers to the abstention of any relationship with the state and the engagement with autonomous, prefigurative politics instead. However, the availability of political strategies is one thing, and the strategy the movements actually decide to follow is another. The former defines the options available for the movements. The latter defines the movements’ choice from those options. Through what mechanisms is that choice made? The relevant literature places most of its attention on the political opportunities (or resources) available to the movements. According to it, when political opportunities are opened the movements are more likely to take the electoral route to state power and social change. When they are closed, as it happens under authoritarian regimes, the armed struggle is a more likely option. However, that has to do with the widening or limiting of the options available, and it does not explain how the strategic choice is actually made. Comparing the cases of the FLN/EZLN (Mexico) and the Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba/MAS (Bolivia), two movements that took completely different paths in their quest for social change despite starting from similar standpoints, I argue that the strategic choice of the movements was made through a combination of a) across time and space resonance of own-or-other experiences at home or abroad, b) in-depth study and sometimes active research of the resonating cases, and c) active training of the movements’ constituencies to secure the ideological hegemony of the choice made and the discipline of the militants to the selected strategy.