In a ceremony to distribute lands in the southern department of Potosi, the dignitary questioned the miners rejecting the measure due to personal interests.

Nowadays, defending the neoliberal policies and the rules left by the prior governments would be a crime, he remarked.

Thus the president referred to the rejection of cooperative sectors to the development process carried out in the southern locality of Huanuni, stage of an armed clash leaving 16 deaths and dozens of wounded in October.

Bolivia should defend the ideological position maintained by the glorious Federation of Mining Workers and aimed at retaining the state control on natural resources.

"We respect the private investment, but our mining workers and others can not defend a private sector. We have the obligation to recover those natural resources because they are of the nation, of the people," Evo Morales stressed.

Prensa Latina