The Plurinational State has the world's largest reserves with 23 million tons of lithium, essential in the change of energy matrix towards electromobility on a planetary scale.

La Paz, Aug 7 (RHC) Bolivian President Luis Arce on Monday urged the Armed Forces to combat smuggling, ensure border control and, above all, protect the country's natural resources from external appetites.

"The Armed Forces must always keep in mind that our natural resources are the basis of our Social Community Productive Economic Model (MESCP)", said the President in his speech for the 198th anniversary of the military institution.

The day before, during the commemoration of 198 years of Bolivian independence, Arce called for joining efforts to face "with a sense of Homeland" the new external attack on natural resources, mainly lithium".

The Plurinational State has the largest reserves in the world with 23 million tons of this metal in the Uyuni (21 million), Coipasa (1.8 million) and Pastos Grandes (200 thousand tons) salt flats.

This resource is essential in the context of a change in the energy matrix towards electromobility on a planetary scale.

The head of the U.S. Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, and U.S. congressmen publicly expressed their ambition for the existence of this mineral in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, and criticized the establishment of sovereign business with China.

In his capacity as Captain General of the Armed Forces, during his speech at a military parade held this Monday in Tarija, Arce evoked the change of course given to the Republic, to give way to a Plurinational State. He described that this new political structure includes in equal conditions all the nations that inhabit the country and is the result of a long indigenous rebellion that resisted the oligarchs, allowed the recovery of natural resources and opened the doors to the redistribution of national wealth with its own economic model.

He also added that the history of the country cannot be told without the participation of the Armed Forces, mainly during Bolivia's independence preparations. The dignitary also reaffirmed that sovereignty, in the face of foreign powers that orchestrated massacres against the Bolivian people, led to the birth of the Plurinational State.

The Bolivian Armed Forces were founded on August 7, 1825, with the fundamental mission of defending and preserving the national independence, security and stability of the State. (Source: PL)