I read somewhere that Bolivia is practically synonymous with the word “coup” and that it has had over 190 coups since Simon Bolivar helped liberate the country 1825. Well, indeed, that seemed like a lot to me. It comes out to one coup every 344 days! Could this mean that I was flying into a danger zone? Was Bolivia due for more turmoil? Of course I was only planning to stay for about 3 weeks, so certainly I’d be in and out of the country before any long smoldering conflicts re-ignited into inescapable violence, right?

Actually, it’s been about 23 years since the last coup. So Bolivia is a fairly stable democracy, even though anti-government protests left 59 people dead in October, 2003.

Recently, I got to wondering if it was fair that Bolivia’s reputation is so tarnished with the “c” word. I did some research, trying very hard not to surpass the minimum standard of journalistic research established by Drudge Report and Bill O’Reilly. I Googled “coup Bolivia” and got 89,000 matches. When I Googled “coup Haiti,” I got 167,000 matches, proof - at least according to todays's journalistic standards - that in the competition for Coup Capital of the World, Bolivia is far outpaced by Haiti. I continued Googling and found that, as rough as it is in Haiti, Venezuela must be even worse, with 269,000 hits, three times as many as Bolivia.

Knowing that most coups are the result of meddling by the imperial powers, I figured Google would help shed some light on this part of the story as well. The “coup United States” search yielded a whopping 1,090,000 hits. China had only 433,000, and the woeful USSR could muster only 71,500. The Brits registered a disappointing 178,000. Could it be that no one tops the US in this dubious tally of meddling? I could think of only one other possible country. So I ran the Google, and yes, just as I thought. First place goes to France: 1,580,000 hits.

So, there you have it. Simple research. Simple conclusions. Now all I need is a TV news studio and a satellite.

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