The Bushwhacks were funding/organizing a white separatist coup attempt right out of the U.S. embassy. The white separatists wanted to split Bolivia in two and take the provinces that have the gas, one of Bolivia's main resources. All of South America mobilized in support of Morales, the first Indigenous president of Bolivia (a largely Indigenous country), who had just won the presidential election with something like 60% of the vote. The leader of Morales' South American support was Michele Batchelet, president of Chile and first president of the newly formed South American unity organization, UNASUR. The organization had only been formalized a few months before (in summer 2008).
Batchelet called an emergency meeting of UNASUR and took the delegates on a tour of Chile's Pinochet museum, and told them that they must not let this happen again. (Batchelet's father had been tortured to death by that U.S.-supported fascist regime.) UNASUR went into action, with a unanimous resolution and delegations to Bolivia, PLUS individual countries' aid to Morales. Brazil and Argentina--Bolivia's main gas customers--for instance, made it clear to the white separatists that they would not trade them in a split-up Bolivia. Venezuela provided legal aid to help Morales re-negotiate the gas contracts on more favorable terms for Bolivia. The new super highway from Brazil (between the Pacific and Atlantic) was altered to include a spur through Bolivia. And Batchelet negotiated and signed an agreement with Bolivia for Bolivia's access to the sea. (The latter two aids were obviously related--Bolivia would thus become part of a major trade route from Africa to Asia!)
So far so good. The white separatist insurrection was defeated. Morales began to make good progress in poverty reduction. But then, Batchelet was termed out and couldn't run again in Chile, though she left office with an 80% approval rating. Rightwing billionaire Sebastian Pinera defeated the socialist candidate (a Batchelet aide, but apparently without Batchelet's charisma) and on his first day in office, even before he was inaugurated, Pinera ripped up the agreement on Bolivia's access to the sea and has been making trouble for Morales over this ever since.
Pinera now has a 25% approval rating. And Batchelet, having skipped a term, is allowed to run again, is running this year, and still has a huge approval rating. She will likely be re-elected and will likely settle this matter with Bolivia once and for all.
This is very likely why Bolivia has taken the matter to the Hague, at this time--in anticipation of a Batchelet victory in Chile.
All of this context is "black-holed' in the BBCons' story. They link to another of their stories which they entitled, "Bolivia Stokes Chile border tensions." Bolivia! This article also portrays Bolivia as somehow being a trouble-maker for seeking sea access that had already been granted, sea access that had been designed to give poverty-stricken Bolivia a leg up in the world and to counter grave RIGHTWING troublemaking (riots, murders) within Bolivia and coming from Washington DC.
I don't call them the BBCons for nothing. They color every story about Latin America against the new leftist democracy governments, against peace and amity among Latin American countries, and against social justice and independence for these countries and their region. The BBC is no longer a reliable, objective news source. It is a tragedy for western journalism to see one of the last relatively reliable, objective news sources go down the corporate/war profiteer path. But I have seen too many omissions and distortions--and "black holes" where information should be, and even outright campaigning against leftist leaders and outright lies--in BBC coverage of Latin America, to consider them anything but Cons. Conservatives. Con-artists. Unreliable. Non-objective. Propagandists.
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