I've seen a lot of people online suggest that the Bolivian coup was CIA-backed to take control of their lithium production.
I actually think that it's less likely for companies to be going after the lithium than it is that they're going after the natural gas. BP has every incentive in the world to want to overthrow Morales.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/11/bolivian-coup-c...
Bolivia doesn't even chart for reserves (i.e., extractable right now). Have they brought significant capacity online in the last year since this report was collected?
For resources (extractable in principle) there are 62 million tons of identified resources worldwide, of which Bolivia has 9 million tons. That is a lot, about 15%, but certainly no where near 50-70%. Notably Argentina has 14.8 million tons.
I guess I'm just curious if there are better sources or if I'm misunderstanding the USGS report.
>I actually think that it's less likely for companies to be going after the lithium than it is that they're going after the natural gas. BP has every incentive in the world to want to overthrow Morales.
So basically lithium is Quantum, and some organisation wants the world to hold on to most of the World's Lithium Reserves?
Also, anyone remember this?
On the npr program I listened to about Bolivia this morning, it seemed to be the previous president had basically violated the constitution by running again. Which is separate from the process by which a new president is chosen.
The situation is more complex than that. First, historically the racist far right in Bolivia was just aching for a reason to kick the indigenous president out (there is a now deleted tweet by the now semi-legally acting president outright stating she doesn't like "Indians". The far right Camacho, one of the key instigators of the coup, vowed to "never again let the Pachamama in the government"; the Pachamama being an indigenous and non-Christian deity). Second, while it was legally dubious for Evo Morales to run for a fourth term, it was deemed legal by a court from Bolivia and it was accepted by the OAS (yes, the same OAS which later claimed there were "irregularities" with the voting -- so this isn't an organization that particularly sides with Morales). Finally, before being kicked out (er, "suggested by the military to resign", which in Latin America carries ominous undertones), Morales had finally accepted to have completely new elections, as suggested by the OAS. By this point the instigators of the coup had already seen they had the upper hand and accepted nothing less than the president's resignation.
So no, the re-election of Morales was not the cause of the coup. It was merely an additional argument they used to force him out.
While production would mostly go to China it could still affect global demand and prices and give China a lot of leverage in the lithium market.