Blog from LAX

And so, as I have so many times before, I kiss my homeland goodbye. Goodbye LA (where I did, in fact, grow up, to the extent that term applies). Good bye California. Good bye USA. Off I go to Bolivia.

Once again, it is the leaps forward in technology that I notice most. This time the airport is filled with businessmen in blue suits talking to themselves confidently. If one looks more closely, you can see their ears adorned with a small black earphone/miscrophone combination which makes them look a lot like Borgs, the half machine/half human beings from Star Trek the Next Generation. I gather these are connected in some way to the small divices on their belts -- that is the belts of the men in the airport not the Borgs. Borgs have internal hardware.

People here are in touch. Cell phones, bluetooths, laptops, earphones, hotspots...am I missing something? Americans are in touch. What are you all in touch with again? Each other? The home office? Nature, no skip that.

Again, no self-righteousness here. I have a cell phone that I just use when traveling in the US. To work here I guess you have to be connected.

Of course you have to be disconected to. What does all this technology, this rapid pace, this hurry, what does it disconnect us from?

This time tommorrow I will be in Cochabamba once more -- the dogs of my neighborhood will greet me. The rock-paved roads will be bumpy. Starbucks will be replaced with the woman on the corner who cooks and serves soup from a cart.

Hasta la vista!

San Francisco and Cochabamba

All week I have been back in the gorgeous City where I lived my life for 15 years. San Francisco in the spring in a week blessed by sun is about as good as it gets.

For a week I have been with a flurry of good people working hard against a rough tide to help make the US and California in particular a more humane place. I met with the writers at the San Francisco Mime Troupe who want to make the struggle for economic global justice the theme of their summer production. I spent a day with social justice advocates trying to tackle the mess of California’s budget crisis, the issue I worked on here for years. Another friend launched a ballot measure this week to create a new preschool option for every four year old in the state, funded by a new tax on California’s millionaires.

And everywhere I go there is still interest in the home I adopted after leaving San Francisco seven years ago, Cochabamba. There is a connection between these two points on the earth’s surface that is more than just my having lived a long while in both places. Maybe they are acupuncture points on Mother Earth.

Walking through San Francisco’s Mission district, a neighborhood of Latin American immigrants struggling against waves of gentrification, I was reminded of the incredible energy that comes when Latino culture gets mixed with old-fashioned San Francisco creativity. This week I saw a resplendent example of that, “La Llorona”.

A few years ago I received an email from one of The City’s most amazing muralists, Juana Alicia. For those who know San Francisco she is the one who designed the powerful four-story mural that wraps around the Women’s Building here. She was working on a mural idea about water and was struck by the powerful tale of Cochabamba’s water revolt. We communicated back and forth by email and I sent her some photographs.

Today at 24th and York streets in the Mission you can see the result, which I saw for the first time this week. “La Llorona” is a sea of aqua blue splashed against the side of a two-story building. At its heart is an image from Cochabamba, a young woman whipping her sling in confrontation with the police – a Bolivian David.

Such different places but with struggles so hauntingly similar. Cochabamba made people around the world believe that bold action was possible. People in San Francisco and the US need that kind of hope right now. I took the daughter of an old friend of mine on a mural walk here this week, a teacher in her 20s. She looked at “La Llorona”, thought a minute and said to me. “We really are everywhere, aren’t we?”

In the last two years I have worked with fighters for social justices in Brazil, Bolivia, the Balkans, Hungary, Thailand, Tanzania, and across the US. Yup, we really are everywhere. Don’t forget that. And if you make it to San Francisco take yourself to 24th and York.

Blog from Somewhere Over (North) America

Readers, I am on an airplane somewhere over the middle of the US, floating in the clouds as I hurdle from Washington DC to California. Speed seems to be the order of the day in the US.

Every time I return to this country of my birth I feel like someone has spun the record faster around the turntable (A note to younger readers, a turntable is a round spinning device we used to put vinyl disks on to listen to music.) How do you do it people? The security gates with their lineups of passengers moseying about in their socks. The constant noise of announcements designed to scare the heck out of people about to miss their flights. The unbelievable variety of bagels, cream cheeses, 68 varieties of coffee, and everything needed to make you bloated and wired both as you scrunch onto a seat where the concept of “a meal” is utterly foreign.
It is enough to make you, well, want to move to Bolivia or something. Oh right, I did that already.

And the baby strollers!! I saw a four week old today in a Washington restraint who was being wheeled about in a vehicle bigger than my first two cars. Now I don’t own a car but I do own a stroller, a little umbrella version. Mariana, our two year old, has never complained. We race in it at top speed in our yard now. She rides, I push.

There is hope here of course, valiant young people especially dedicated to knocking some sense into a country choking on materialism. Hey, I am not being self-righteous here. I ate a cinnamon raisin bagel today, went to Starbucks yesterday and coveted the electronics section in a Staples store. Viruses are an equal opportunity infection and who among us is immune.

Okay, perhaps I should never be locked in an airplane cabin for five hours with a laptop and a frenzied imagination. But really, USA, just between you and me. Don’t you think it is all just getting a little too weird?

Democracy Center’s IMF Report in the Seattle Times

Saturday’s Seattle Times carried a wonderful article about The Democracy Center’s new report on the IMF in Bolivia, Deadly Consequences. The article focuses on our two great volunteers, Carolyn Claridge and Nicholas Verbon of the University of Washington. Carolyn and Nick worked as volunteers with The Center for two months and did excellent research for us as we put the new report together. Read the article here, which includes an interview with them. Seattle Times reporter Al Scott wrote the piece.

I think that this article and Carolyn’s and Nick’s work demonstrate the best of what it can mean for people from the US (or other wealthy nations) to come to countries like Bolivia. They came to help. They used the research skills they learned as university students in the US to help pull the curtain away from the actions of the IMF.

That’s what we try to do at The Democracy Center, combine solid on-the-ground story telling with the context of the larger global forces that set those stories in motion. Sometimes getting to the facts isn’t easy. Carolyn and Nick took on looking through page upon boring page of IMF jargon and minutiae. But that is what it takes to understand how the global economic system works. In helping The Democracy Center tell the world that story, Carolyn and Nick put their skills to good use and made a great contribution. They deserve all the attention they get.

Here, once again, is the link to Deadly Consequences. Pass it along.

Deadly Consequences: When IMF Theory Becomes Cold Reality in a Poor Country

This morning, on the eve of the joint World Bank/IMF meetings in Washington, The Democracy Center formally releases our report, Deadly Consequences the story of the International Monetary Fund and Bolivia's Febrero Negro. The book is not just the story of two tragic days in La Paz, but also of the global economic system that set that violence in motion. It traces a path that begins on the desks of economists at the IMF in Washington and ends with the squeezing of the poor beyond their tolerance and, finally, with 34 people dead.

The report is based on interviews with Bolivia's current President and senior government advisors, with IMF officials, with economists of varying points of view, with Bolivian human rights leaders, participants in the events on the ground, and with the families of victims. It also draws on dozens of original documents, ranging from signed agreements between the IMF and Bolivia, to Bolivian budget analyses, to heart-wrenching personal testimonies.

I hope that all our readers will read the book and pass word of it along as far and wide as possible. It is a very important story.

Deadly Consequences can be viewed in full for free, or purchased as the book by clicking here.


CONTENTS:

Introduction

Act One: The International Monetary Fund and the Politics of Economic Belt-Tightening

Act Two: The IMF in Bolivia, a Nation Struggles to Meet Economic Demands Issued From Abroad

Act Three: Two Bloody Days in February

Epilogue

Conclusion: Lessons Learned in Blood and Fire

Why So Quiet at the Blog?

Regular readers will have noticed that I haven’t been writing on the Blog as frequently as usual for the past week. There’s a reason, a good one. We are scrambling to bring to publication our long-in-the-works report on Bolivia and the IMF, Deadly Consequences. The book will be back from the printer this week and the report will be on our Web site this week as well. Then I am off to Washington next week to present the report in conjunction with the joint IMF World Bank annual meetings.

Meanwhile, here’s a preview. Stay tuned for more.

INTRODUCTION

Through the large windows of the International Monetary Fund’s office in La Paz you can see down to the rooftop where Ana Colque was shot and killed in February 2003. Army sharpshooters sent a bullet through her chest during a military assault intended to quell public protests against an economic belt-tightening package imposed on Bolivia by the IMF.

Colque, 24, was a student nurse and single mother. She had climbed to the roof to come to the aid of Ronald Callanqui, a 25-year old repairman who lay dying, shot by soldiers an hour before. The two were among thirty-four people killed during two days of violent conflict sparked by the announcement of a new tax on the nation’s working poor.

For an afternoon, the conflict erupted into a shooting war between Bolivia’s army and police, directly in front of the National Congress and the Presidential Palace.

This report tells the story of Bolivia’s Febrero Negro, Black February. It is not just the story of two tragic days in La Paz, but also of the global economic system that set that violence in motion. All of the major actors in that system are present in this drama: the IMF, World Bank, and their economic policies toward poor countries; a government caught between those policies and the demands of its people; international corporations pressing their interests; workers and social movements taking to the streets; and individuals caught mortally in the crossfire.

Deadly Consequences traces a path. It is one that that begins on the desks of economists at the IMF in Washington, runs through the subtle dance of coercion between the IMF and poor governments, and ends with the squeezing of the poor beyond their tolerance and, finally, with death on a rooftop.

The story of Febrero Negro is Bolivia’s story but it is also one that echoes in the experiences of many other poor nations across the world.

For two decades, South America’s poorest and most indigenous nation has been one of Latin America’s chief laboratories for an experiment in market-driven economic reforms known as “The Washington Consensus.” It is an experiment that has included the privatization of natural resources and public enterprises, weakening labor protections, lowering taxes on foreign companies, and public spending cuts and domestic tax increases to reduce public debt.

These were reforms that promised prosperity by opening the nation’s doors to foreign investment. In Bolivia, as elsewhere, these policies have been adopted, not because the public asked for them, but because they have been made a condition of receiving international aid from the IMF, the World Bank and other foreign lenders.

But what have been the “real world” results of this economic experiment? This report sets out to answer that question by looking up close at one country’s experience on the ground.

The story of Febrero Negro is a real life tragedy. Like many tragedies, this drama unfolds in three acts. Act One tells the story of the IMF – of how it was born, how it grew to be a power greater than many governments, and at its role as the missionary of economic belt-tightening in poor countries. Act Two looks close up at the IMF’s role in Bolivia – at the economic policies it has sought to impose there, at the strained efforts of the Bolivian government to comply, and at how the IMF’s policies translate into cold reality. Act Three follows the story to its bloody end – a public uprising against a tax increase the poor could not afford, a series of missteps that turned the conflict violent, and finally government repression that took the life of a young mother dressed in nursing whites.

In telling this story we have taken seriously our responsibilities to get the facts right and to hear from diverse perspectives. This report draws on numerous and varied interviews – with Bolivia’s current President and senior government advisors, with IMF officials, with economists of varying points of view, with Bolivian human rights leaders, participants in the events on the ground, and with the families of victims. We have reviewed dozens of original documents, ranging from signed agreements between the IMF and Bolivia, to Bolivian budget analyses, to heart-wrenching personal testimonies.

Whether readers of this report count themselves as cheerleaders for IMF and World Bank policies, as critics, or simply as people seeking to better understand the issues involved, the story of Febrero Negro offers important lessons. They are lessons paid for in blood and to which we owe our serious attention.

US and World Bank Push Bolivian Rock Export Program

The US Embassy and the World Bank announced joint plans today to help Bolivia launch a program to export the nation’s rocks to other countries. Under the plan, “The Andean Rock Export Initiative”, the US and the Bank hope that Bolivia can begin exporting as many as 750,000 rocks by the end of this year, doubling that figure in 2006.

“It has been noted in the research for a decade that each nation needs to integrate itself into the global economy based on its particular competitive advantages,” said a Bank spokesman, Richard Fuller. “In Bolivia’s case that is rocks. Bolivia has a lot of rocks.”

The US and Bank-backed initiative anticipates benefiting Bolivia’s many low-income workers in particular. Bank officials estimate that as many as 10,000 workers could be employed picking up the rocks and putting them into the back of trucks. “There certainly is some skill required in selecting rocks suitable for export, and unfortunately we anticipate that many of those ‘high end’ jobs my end up going to foreigners, who have university training and other lapidary skills,” said a Bank official. “Nevertheless, there will be a lot of dignified work for rock picker-uppers and Bolivia needs unemployment.”

The Bolivian sub-minister for export, Rogelio Cruz, said that the government was surprised at first by the US/Bank proposal to export rocks. “Really, it sounded a little goofy to us when we first heard it,” he said. “But these people are well-trained global economists and we are willing to follow their lead.”

The Embassy here said that they hope that rock export can become a viable alternative development project, replacing the nation’s illegal coca leaf crop. “Obviously,” said one Embassy official, “we would much rather see Bolivian rocks entering the US than cocaine. They are also a good deal easier to track.”

Bank and US officials were unclear on exactly who the international market would be for Bolivian rocks. “We haven’t completely worked that out yet”, said Embassy economic officer, Larry Morgan. “We have a number of US companies that have submitted proposals for USAID funding to develop foreign markets.” One company, a sex toys outlet in Miami, has proposed marketing the rocks as a virility aid which buyers would put under their sheets at night. A marketing plan by the company suggests the rocks be promoted as “Andean Viagra”.

Until a foreign market is developed, the Bolivian rocks will be stored temporarily in a warehouse near Omaha, Nebraska. The costs for hiring Bolivian workers, shipping the rocks to the US, and paying foreign consultants on market development, will be financed through a $50 million World Bank loan to Bolivia. Bank officials said they felt confident that Bolivia would easily be able to repay the loan and the 10% annual interest on it through eventual rock sales.

“We feel that this program is emblematic of the forward thinking yet practical approach to poor country development that the new World Bank President, Paul D. Wolfowitz can bring to the institution,” said an Embassy official, speaking off the record. “Actually, this program was his idea.”

When asked for comment on the rock export initiative, Socialist Party leader Evo Morales responded, “Rocks? We are going to export rocks?”

The program will be inaugurated in late May and Bank and US officials say that the first rocks should arrive for sale in the US by early October, with shipping to be done through the Bolivian postal service.

Happy April Fools from the Democracy Center.