Venezuela and Bolivia: do they make a clue, or already a pattern?

May what Bolivia and Venezuela have in common be… high-tech?

Venezuela and Bolivia: do they make a clue, or already a pattern? /img/lithium-batteries.jpg

Lithium is a strategic metal. It is strategic because it is essential to make efficient batteries for smartphone, electric cars and everything in between. I have just found this article arguing that a central motivation of the coup against Evo Morales is the fact that Bolivia is the only South American state to have already started a lithium processing project “100% state-owned”.

The immediate effect of that article was to remind me of another article, about Coltan. Coltan is a strategic mineral. It is strategic because is necessary to make essential components “used in almost every kind of electronic device”.

Venezuela and Bolivia: do they make a clue, or already a pattern? /img/tantalum-capacitors.jpg

In February 2019, I read that, in October 2018, Nicolas Maduro inaugurated in Venezuela the largest coltan extraction plant in South America. That plant would “produce $ 7.8 million a day of revenue for the benefit of the nation, re-launching the importance of the Bolivarian country on the global energy chessboard”, said Nicolas Maduro. Yes, the same Maduro who is now under siege.

Venezuela and Bolivia: do they make a clue, or already a pattern? /img/maduro-morales.jpg
Hey, Nick, do we have a pattern here?

</em></u>

Agatha Christie wrote (maybe) that “One coincidence is just a coincidence, two coincidences are a clue, three coincidences are a proof”, or a pattern, as others say. Pope Pius XI (not Giulio Andreotti) once said “To think evil of others is a sin, but often it is correct”.

I don’t know enough to be sure. I’m not even defending, or attacking, Maduro, Morales or anybody else. Then again, as I also discovered today, it’s not me who said that “lithium, cobalt may be next in strategic metals struggle between US, China”. Nor am I the one who, apparently three years ago, argued that Bolivia had a growing bullseye on its back, also because of lithium.