“What's Behind the Bolivian Government's Attack on NGOs?”

The fraught relationship between the government of President Evo Morales and Bolivia’s NGOs took a turn for the worse this past August, when Vice President Alvaro García Linera launched an attack on four well-respected Bolivian research organizations: the Center for the Study of Labor and Agrarian Development (CEDLA), the Bolivian Center for Documentation and Information (CEDIB), and the Tierra and Milenio Foundations. The episode has set off a firestorm inside and outside Bolivia, raising important questions about national sovereignty, the erosion of democracy, and the prospects for continuing debate around Bolivia’s extractivist development model. The four NGOs, which have conducted important investigations on economic, social, labor, environmental, and agrarian issues in Bolivia for more than 25 years, are accused of “lying and political meddling” to advance the interests of foreign governments and corporations…