Bolivia's gas industry and economic self-determination

I noted last December that Bolivia had moved to the left with the election of Evo Morales, a Castro admirer and would-be Chavez, as president. Well, rightly or wrongly, Morales has seized control of his country's gas industry, according to The Washington Post:

Bolivian President Evo Morales seized control of the country's natural gas industry Monday, sending soldiers to occupy fields that he contends private companies have plundered for years.

Morales said that unless foreign energy firms agreed to give Bolivia's state oil company oversight of production and a majority of their revenue generated in Bolivia, the government would evict them from the fields.

"The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources," Morales said during a televised speech from a gas field near the country's southern border. "The looting by foreign companies has ended."

One should keep in mind that Morales is very much a populist. He described himself on election day as "the candidate of those despised in Bolivian history, the candidate of the most disdained, discriminated against".

I'm generally in favour of economic liberalization -- private ownership and open markets -- but one cannot deny that countries like Bolivia have historically suffered at the hands of invasive foreign interests and the anti-democratic strongmen who coddled them. Insofar as Morales is attempting to regain control over his country's natural resources on behalf of the Bolivian people, this may not be quite as troubling as it may at first appear to be.

In the end, we should cautiously applaud efforts at economic and political self-determination.