Evo Morales expelled USAID from Bolivia

Evo Morales

The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, informed last May first the expulsion of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in protest against U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, who called to Latin America as a “backyard.”

“Today we will only nationalize or to deepen the nationalization of the dignity of the Bolivian people,” said Morales last Wednesday in La Paz. The indigenous executive ally with the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, had previously expelled the ambassador and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in 2008 and has a habit of announcing the nationalization each May first.

This move by the president rekindles tensions between world power and the South American country, which in the last five months seemed to have improved relations after nearly five years without ambassadors.

USAID had already declined drastically it’s operations in Bolivia since 2009, after being accused by the government and government unions of financing the opposition and even Amazon Indians who reject a road project in the country’s central jungle.

The agency had 49 years working in the country and has led several projects of economic, social and political nature. And by 2013 it only had small health plans and environmental protection projects, with an annual investment of about 20 million.