"The battle for Bolivia hinges on land ownership and natural gas income. The four eastern lowland provinces - Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and Tarija - have resisted Morales' insistence that the central government control energy profits and decide how to distribute them. The four declared themselves autonomous this year in largely symbolic votes.

"While vowing not to expropriate private property, Morales has made an exception for fallow land in the east that he wants impoverished Indians to farm. The plan has made little headway, but still infuriated wealthy landowners.

"Natural gas and precious metals revenues have boomed since Morales nationalized the gas fields in 2006 and renegotiated extraction contracts. Bolivia now keeps about 85 percent of these profits, and combined with rising global energy and mineral prices, exports have nearly doubled since 2005 to US$4.7 billion last year.

"Populist measures that have endeared Morales to the poor indigenous majority have included handouts to schoolchildren and the elderly. He also has proposed a nationwide pension plan that would extend protection broadly to include workers in the informal economy and stay-at-home mothers."

And as the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) states: "The paper, "The Distribution of Bolivia's Most Important Natural Resourcesand the Autonomy Conflicts," by Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval, shows that the concentration of land in Bolivia - among a very small group of landowners - appears to be among the very worst in the entire world. The largest farms, although only 0.63 percent of the total, encompass two-thirds of all agricultural land. At the other end of the spectrum, 86 percent of farms account for just 2.4 percent of agricultural land, and many other rural families own no land at all. 

"The paper also notes that even though Bolivia distributes its hydrocarbon revenues more than any in the world to provincial and local governments, the Media Luna states are advocating for even more of these revenues to go to the provincial governments.

"The Media Luna states also have a disproportionate share of Bolivia's natural gas resources. Tarija province produces 60 percent of the country's natural gas, and Santa Cruz holds 22.3 percent, meaning that more than 82 percent of natural gas production is concentrated in just these two Media Luna states. The Media Luna states as a group receive the lion's share of the hydrocarbon revenue, nearly three times as much per person as the other five states. These states also have a much higher per capita income - 1.4 times more -- than the other provinces.

"The paper notes that there is a significant demographic divide between the Eastern lowland states and the rest of Bolivia. The Media Luna provinces have a much lower indigenous population than the rest of the country, ranging from 16.2 percent in Pando to 37.5 percent in Santa Cruz; this compares with 66-84 percent in the other states. This is clearly a vast demographic gap in a country where the indigenous majority has suffered centuries of discrimination. Indigenous Bolivians today have much higher rates of poverty, extreme poverty, illiteracy, and malnutrition. "