Cochabamba Bolivia: Standing Room Only

This week (April 19th to 22nd to be exact) sees Cochabamba hosting the officially entitled "People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth", a conference set up by Dr. Evo Morales after the world class snafu Copenhagen climate conference dissolved into stupidity. To get a bit of background, here's the Beeb en Inglés:

Delegates are gathering in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba for a grassroots alternative to last year's UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.

The meeting will also celebrate the rights of Mother Earth on 22 April.

Bolivian President Evo Morales was one of several leaders who refused to sign the Copenhagen climate change deal.

He is set to use this week's talks to propose a world referendum to ask up to two billion people their views on how to tackle climate change. (continues)

Thing is, the whole conference has snwballed into a major event. Cochabamba was chosen because it's an area of Bolivia that has been hit especially hard by Climate Change (yes dumbasses, it exists....just leave the world temperate zones and find out for yourselves instead of listening to XOM-sponsored crap) but the city only has hotel space for 1,500 visitors at any given moment. The conference has grown and grown and now over 18,000 people are expected to attend. 100 large tents have been set up in the nearby town of Tiquipaya to host meetings and conferences, but the way things are going they may have to double as night-time sleeping quarters. In fact 129 countries have delegates attending, no mean feat for a little dot on the map like Bolivia, so it's going to be a bit of a squeeze, but that just points to the enormous grassroots interest there is in the issue, far away from the normal MSM idiocy you're fed up North.

A final word. Long-established (and pretty big) altwebsite Rabble has several bloggers on the scene and is promising full audio-visual-textual coverage of the four days. Check out that site via this link here.

UPDATE: Paul notes in the comments section (ty dude) that Jim Schultz of The Democracy Center (based in Cochabamba, so no probs for a bed tonight) will be covering the event closely, too. Here's the link.

Evo and popularity

From IKN's department of fed-up-to-the-back-teeth-with-this-bullshit-bias, here we go with the latest opinion polls and Presidential approval ratings for Evo Morales of Bolivia. With just two months before the most one-sided presidential race since Chirac vs Le Pen, Evo has been given a 60% approval rating over the length and breadth of Bolivia, up six points since the last poll, by the reliable pollsters Ipsos Apoyo.

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So Evo is popular, period. He's popular because he's been doing a good job. Got that? I know it might be tough to swallow for some of you, but it's just another inconvenient fact that you're gonna have to live with, dudettes and dudes. However there's more to see in the numbers and that's why there are several bars on that chart above. The results have been broken down further and show Evo's support in the three major conurbations of Bolivia. In his La Paz/El Alto stronghold he's running an impressive 84%. In Cochabamba he's polling 56% and is far more popular than his main (adjective used loosely) election opponent, local boy Manfred Mann Villa Reyes or Reyes Villas or whatever his name is. In Santa Cruz, he's polling under 50% but the 39% approval is nobody's idea of a total disaster. Just check how Evo's numbers in Santa Cruz compare to Twobreakfasts in the whole of his country, also according to Ipsos/Apoyo.

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Strange how the English language media that cover South America love to dwell on Evo's unpopularity in Santa Cruz but nary a word gets printed about the utter rejection felt by the Peruvian people all over the country towards their dumbass-in-chief. Strange, innit?