Bolivian President Evo Morales and Peru\u2019s Pedro Pablo Kuczynski agreed on Friday on a program that promises to give landlocked Bolivia access to the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n
One major element of the plan calls for including Bolivia on the route of a railway linking Brazil\u2019s Atlantic ports with the terminals on the Peruvian stretch of the Pacific coast.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Lima will implement a long-dormant pact to accommodate a permanent Bolivian presence at the Peruvian port of Ilo.<\/p>\n
The projects were discussed at a binational Cabinet meeting here in Bolivia\u2019s constitutional capital.<\/p>\n
Kuczynski joined Morales in defending La Paz\u2019s proposal for a railroad linking Ilo with the Brazilian port of Santos via Bolivian territory, as opposed to a more costly and environmentally risky initiative that would bypass Bolivia in favor of a direct link between Brazil and Peru.<\/p>\n
The Peruvian president said he made the case for the Bolivian option during a recent visit to China, telling officials in Beijing that the path through Bolivia \u201cis the most logical route.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morales, who first proposed the continent-spanning rail link as a way to facilitate increased exports to China, said the Santos-Ilo railroad will be \u201cthe Panama Canal of the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has always insisted that the project will benefit not only Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru, but also Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay, thanks to a project link between the railroad and the Paraguay-Parana inland waterway.<\/p>\n
In the final declaration from the meeting in Sucre, the two presidents call for \u201cthe prompt implementation\u201d of a 1992 convention intended to give Bolivia access to Ilo.<\/p>\n
Bolivia is locked in an acrimonious legal and diplomatic battle with Chile over La Paz\u2019s quest to reclaim a part of the Pacific coastline lost to the Chileans in a 19th-century war.<\/p>\n
Currently dependent on using ports in northern Chile, Bolivia is anxious to secure another outlet to the sea.<\/p>\n
Source: LatinAmerican Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bolivian President Evo Morales and Peru\u2019s Pedro Pablo Kuczynski agreed on Friday on a program that promises to give landlocked Bolivia access to the Pacific Ocean. One major element of the plan calls for including Bolivia on the route of a railway linking Brazil\u2019s Atlantic ports with the terminals on the Peruvian stretch of the Pacific coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}