Four of Bolivia's richest departments Monday said they will put their autonomy hopes to referendum votes, as President Evo Morales called for talks with the country's nine governors in a bid to defuse rising tensions.
The energy-rich eastern departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando announced signature drives to get the legal quorum of 8.0 percent of their local populations behind referendums to approve their quest for greater autonomy, officially declared by state officials on Saturday.
The governors of Cochabamba and Chuquisaca have also announced similar aspirations, as Bolivia's three remaining western departments -- La Paz, Oruro and Potosi -- stand firmly behind Morales in the biggest challenge yet to his socialist reform movement.
Morales, the country's first indigenous president, has alienated the country's rich lowland regions, who populations are largely ethnically European and mixed, by pushing his plan to redistribute the country's wealth to the poor natives in the mountains ...
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