Better living through chemistry is the motto of Bolivia's crack team of revolutionary scientists, ie, all the chemists we could round up who aren't currently manufacturing cocaine. They're crowded around a tremendous achievement in Bolivian history: the first "oil refinery". At least, that's what Colonel Ovando called it. In reality, it's just a steam cracker; complex, yes, shipped in a few huge piece through Argentina just before the blockade snapped its jaw.

It's not a large one by any means, having the ability to crack only around 400 barrels a day. But it will turn Bolivia's crude oil, at least a fraction of it, into the feedstock for a modern chemical economy – fuel oil, gasoline, but most critically, benzene. Benzene is what Bolivia really needs. Because in a few reactor chambers, a miracle is going to happen, a miracle of chemistry. After reacting with sulfuric acid (produced from Bolivia's many volcanoes) and sodium hydroxide (a natural byproduct of chlorine production), phenol, a building block of every modern chemical, will be produced.

Simultaneously, acetic acid will be produced and chlorinated. Once it is combined with chlorophenol, a truly magical substance will be produced: 2,4 Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid or 2,4,d for short. It is this that, Bolivian agronomists hope, will save us from our famine. For 2,4,d is a massively efficient killer of broadleaf weeds, but does not affect grasses. So while it won't help our potato crop, it should radically increase the productivity of our wheat and barley, with barrels of 2,4,d sent to rural communes with Soviet sprayers (or poorly made domestic replicas) and Young Bolivarians trained to apply the magic juice to their crops, something that we're pretty sure won't cause cancer, especially with all the random petrochemical adulterants that end up in it.

At this time Bolivian chemists are also attempting to spin up production of DDT, which relies on highly similar, chlorobenzene based chemistry, but chloral production is causing some trouble and priority for resources has been squarely directed towards 2,4,d instead, so the quantities produced have thus far been small and relatively impure.