Book Review: Whispering in the Giant's Ear

Readers:

A number of new books in English (in addition to ours) are coming out on Bolivia these days. From time to time we will offer reviews of them on the Blog, beginning with this review on William Powers’ Whispering in the Giant's Ear, written by our friend Lee Cridland at Volunteer Bolivia.

Happy reading.

Jim Shultz


Whispering in the Giant's Ear
By William Powers

In his new book, Whispering in the Giant's Ear, William Powers deftly weaves memoir and analysis into a captivating chronicle of contemporary Bolivian life and the politics. Santa Cruz's tropical lowlands and Noel Kempff Mercado National Park provide fascinating backdrops for this personal account of Bolivia's struggle with globalization.

The book opens with Powers leaving a high-paying development job in La Paz for Santa Cruz, where he has been hired by a local environmental NGO. His new job puts him at the forefront of the international community's effort to promote "new green globalization," as laid out in the Kyoto Protocol. Powers graphically illustrates the clash between this worldview and local perspectives by detailing his growing friendship with Salvador, an indigenous activist. Through humorous anecdotes detailing personal and professional foibles, Powers offers readers a glimpse into the challenges that a gringo encounters when working with local populations.

Beyond the author's personal experience towers Bolivia’s struggle against 500 years of colonization, currently embodied by global financial giants such as oil companies, the World Bank and the IMF. As popular discontent increases in the streets, the author ingenuously draws parallels between the struggle of the country's indigenous population and his own effort to find a place in Bolivia’s political and cultural milieu. His personal journey in the remote jungle is mirrored by social upheavals and political transformation in Bolivia's cities; in the end, each one is required to make sense of the other.

Reviewed by Lee Cridland