http://www.pinr.com, The core Andean states — Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru — form the most politically unstable region in South America today. Political instability is no stranger to the Andes — the three states in the heart of the mountains have long histories of veering from military rule to authoritarian and quasi-democratic civilian governments, and have political cultures that encourage direct extra-legal action as a social counterbalance to formal institutional and constitutional processes. At present, each of the Andean states is in the throes of a political crisis. The immediate causes of the crises are local and the forms they take are different, yet they express the same basic and persistent social tensions, making their simultaneous occurrence an indication of region-wide problems rather than simply a coincidence.
In Bolivia, the integrity of the state itself has come into question as protests initially mounted to oppose increases in fuel costs have escalated into autonomy and secessionist movements in the country's energy rich and relatively prosperous south and east. In Ecuador, the integrity of the constitution has become problematic in the aftermath of a congressional decision instigated by President Lucio Gutierrez to remove 27 of the 31 justices of the country's Supreme Court and to replace them with others. In Peru, President Alejandro Toledo's approval rating has fallen to eight percent in the wake of an electoral fraud scandal and a raid by radical nationalist militia on a police station in the town of Andahuaylas. In each case, the major issues are surrounded by other conflicts, leading to uncertainty about each country's political future.
Cycles of stability and instability corresponding to periods of economic growth and decline have become normal in the Andean states. In a recurrent pattern, relative economic prosperity covers over underlying social tensions, which come to the surface when the economy contracts. Deep social divisions between the minority of European and mixed ancestry that controls each country's wealth and forms its political class, and the indigenous and mixed majority of peasants and mine workers are activated in recessionary times and are expressed in both direct forms of confrontation and derivative conflicts within the political class.
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