News stories by Franz Chávez, page 5

The income earned by Bolivian women migrants in Spain, which enables them to support the families they left behind and build a nest egg, comes at a high price: low wages, long hours, no benefits and few or no days off.

Bolivia’s voters approved a new constitution in Sunday’s referendum with around 60 percent support, ushering in further social changes under President Evo Morales, who will now be able to run for reelection in December, to a single consecutive term.

'Did you know they want to throw God out of Bolivia?' asks a television spot frequently broadcast by opponents of leftwing Bolivian President Evo Morales ahead of the Jan. 25 referendum on constitutional reform.

The Bolivian government of Evo Morales enjoyed a third consecutive year of strong economic growth in 2008, but business leaders warn that the drop in commodity prices will hurt export revenues and lead to a rise in unemployment in the months to come.

The United States’s decision to suspend tariff benefits for Bolivian imports as a result of the confrontation with the government of Evo Morales has generated widespread uncertainty among the business and working communities of the Bolivian capital’s satellite city of El Alto.

Quietly and inconspicuously, Aymara indigenous traders are combining pre-Columbian traditions and modern-day survival skills to find unique ways of creating wealth and sustenance beyond the confines of textbook economic theory.