Battle at the Cochabamba Airport

A Special Report from the Embattled Runway at the Cochabamba Airport

Normally on a Thursday morning Jacamo Urresti, a pilot with Bolivia's LAB airlines, would be on the runway at the Cochabamba airport in the cockpit of a Boeing 727, taking off on a flight destined for Santa Cruz. This morning Urresti was one of several hundred LAB workers and their supporters who broke through police lines to take over and block that runway – in Bolivia's escalating crisis over the country's treasured and privatized national airline.

It is a crisis that, this morning, saw national police under the command of President Evo Morales tear gas and beat some of his oldest political allies.

One More Failed Experiment in Privatization

LAB has been Bolivia's national air carrier for eighty years, one of the oldest commercial institutions in the nation. It employs more than 2,000 people (and according to the pilot's union indirectly sustains more than 9,000 families), also making it one of Bolivia's largest and most important employers. In 1995 LAB became one more lab rat in that great IMF-induced economic experiment of privatizing all of Bolivia's state-owned industries.

Under "capitalization" LAB was one of almost a dozen companies in which the government handed off a majority, managing stake to private buyers, amidst great promises about how the loss of public control would be offset by new investment and efficient leadership. A decade later, LAB is a case study of how bad that experiment failed.

"The airline has had a management of thieves," says Urresti, an active member of the pilots' union. "They have dismantled the corporation, selling it off, selling it off, selling it off." According to the union, LAB (which was solvent when it was privatized a decade ago) now has a debt somewhere in excess of $140 million.

Service has suffered as well. My personal nickname for LAB is Lloyds Atrasado Boliviano (which translates, "late"), because getting anywhere on time on LAB is about as likely as finding bagels in Cochabamba. Good luck.

When privatized originally, the new controlling owners were partners in the Brazilian airline VASP. Those owners evidently pilfered LAB jets out of Bolivian service to help with their other airline. Three years ago, Bolivian millionaire Ernesto Asbun swooshed in to supposedly save the day, buying VASP's shares and putting LAB back into Bolivian hands, albeit private ones.

In fact, Asbun turned out to be more pirate than effective manager of an airline. Half the controlling interest he supposedly brought three years ago he bought on credit. While writing boasting columns for the monthly LAB in-flight magazine, he was selling off assets and building up massive LAB debt. In December it all became too much to keep hidden, as LAB employees didn’t get paid for almost three months. It was also discovered that Asbun had stopped making legally-required payments to the employee pension fund.

The Battle for LAB

With that began the battle for LAB and calls for the Morales government to re-nationalize the airline.

In February the pilots and other workers staged a full-system shut down, leaving thousands stranded. Among them was one of our young Democracy Center staff, who spent three days camping (tent pitched) in the Caracas airport. The shut-down provoked a timid promise of intervention from the freshly-inaugurated Morales. The pilots went back to work, LAB took anew to the air, but the government's promises crashed, as Morales and his advisors threw up their hands and said that LAB was really out of their hands.

A week ago LAB workers and their supporters from other unions launched a hunger strike and by yesterday more than 200 people in three cities were participating, including a large group at the Cochabamba airport. With the Morales government still refusing to act, the LAB workers and their allies decided on a more radical course. This morning hundreds of them broke through an armed police line to take over the runway in Cochabamba. The national police, equipped with tear gas, rubber bullets and long black riot batons, used them all against the protesters, beating people, pulling women by the hair and leaving several seriously wounded, including at least one journalist.

"We can’t allow an airline that has been around for eighty years, that two thousand workers and their families depend on for their livelihoods, we can’t allow it to be sacked [by Asbun] and to let it disappear with the stroke of a pen," said Urresti. "My father was a pilot for this airline. My grandparents flew this airline. It is a symbol of the Bolivian people."

"Evo is Tear Gassing His Brothers"

Who sent the police with orders to beat protesters is unclear. When I asked commanders that question at the airport this morning they refused to answer. Technically the police are under the command of Cochabamba's regional governor, Manfred Reyes Villa, a former military officer and graduate of the much-decried US Army School of the Americas. Reyes Villa went on TV at mid-day to deny that the police at the airport were under his orders, a claim many doubt. It is also highly unlikely that national police would be under orders at the airport without the involvement of the national government, and that points the finger at Morales and those closest to him.

Next to the runway this morning, I asked Oscar Olivera who, as head of the Cochabamba Factory Workers Union, is supporting the LAB workers, "Is it fair to say that Evo is now tear gassing his friends?" Weary from a week-long hunger strike and having been hit this morning by police, Oscar told me, "Evo is tear gassing his brothers."

Shortly after being gassed, Olivera received a call on his cell phone from Bolivia's Vice-President, Alvaro Garcia Linera, who told Olivera, "We can’t block the country, can’t block airports."

Said Olivera, "These are the same people, Evo and Alvaro, who before [they became the government] supported the force of the people expressing themselves."

As I write this, several hundred LAB workers and their supporters remain beside the airport runway in Cochabamba, being watched over by an equal number of heavily-equipped riot police, under orders from someone somewhere who won’t admit it. No flights have left since this morning and the next one is scheduled for 6pm. It is unclear whether LAB workers will try to take the runway once again.

Union leaders told me they expect Morales to make some sort of intervention to stop the destruction of the airline, perhaps before the end of the day. If not, LAB workers will be joined tomorrow by a citizen force much larger than the one at the airport today, including students and professors at the public university, neighborhood groups, and other unions.

Said one of the activists I spoke with, "If the Morales government isn't willing to take forceful action to save the national airline, it is even more sure it won’t stand up to the foreign oil companies."

The battle for LAB is not just a battle for LAB, it is a battle over whether Morales will be kept true to his promises during the election for a new kind of economy. So far, it doesn't look so good.

A Follow-Up Reflection

I think that the debate over “nationalizing LAB is an important one and I hope the comments on this post will look at that seriously. This may surprise some readers, but I also think that nationalization of LAB, especially at this point, is full of problems.

It would be a huge mistake for the government to get saddled with the massive debt that LAB’s private sector operators have racked up. It also isn’t clear to me that the Bolivian government is in a position to run an airline right now. Six years after the water revolt, Cochabamba still hasn’t mastered the art of running its public water company, SEMAPA, and an airline is harder, I suspect.

That said, it is an awesome display of private sector incompetence and thievery to have sacked and destroyed an airline that was solvent when it was privatized. LAB is a vital part of Bolivia’s economic architecture and, for that reason alone, there is a strong public interest in having it survive. I haven’t studied the details enough to say with great confidence what should happen but it probably includes the total dismissal (and some jailing) of the airlines current administration, a declaration of bankruptcy to get out of as much of its debt as possible, and then a reconstitution with strong government involvement.

Advocates of LAB’s “nationalization” need to be very specific about what they mean and equally specific about how they will address the hard choices involved. However, the longer that Evo Morales pretends that this isn’t the government’s problem to solve, the bigger his LAB headache is going to get.

Nixon to China, Evo to Chile

It is on this day, March 23rd, that Bolivians of all political stripes pause to remember one of the more painful moments in the nation's history – Bolivia's loss of its access to the sea, to Chile, on this date in 1879.

It is hard to understate what this means to people here. I've seen school children here carrying notebooks with slogans such as "We will take back our sea." On Bolivia's independence day, when schools mark events with children dressed in the traditional clothing of the nation's nine departments, I've seen a tenth costume added, a child adorned in black clothing and chains, representing "litoral", the lost department on Chile's coast. In La Paz, a whole museum is dedicated to the battle in which 135 Bolivian troops lost to a Chilean force four times its size and set the nation's destiny as a landlocked country.

For decades Bolivian presidents have repeated the rhetoric of recovering the nation's access to the Pacific Ocean – with a credibility roughly akin to US presidents declaring that, "We will end our nation's dependence on foreign oil." That said, I actually believe that Evo Morales has a shot at delivering the goods.

To be clear, I think there is no chance whatsoever that any Chilean government is going to pull out a map of that spaghetti-shaped country and lop off a piece of coastline and give it to Bolivia (though, it sure has plenty of coastline to spare). I do think, however, that there is a historic deal possible and that Morales may be the one who can pull it off.

That deal looks like this: Chile gives Bolivia unfettered access to a seaport from which it can step up its foreign exports and imports and Bolivia agrees to have a gas pipeline to the Pacific built through Chile instead of Peru.

A little recent history needs to be remembered. In October 2003, Bolivia exploded over plans by then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to export Bolivia's natural gas to Mexico and the US via Chile. After Sanchez de Lozada presided over the killings of dozens of citizens he was ousted from office. The animosity of Bolivians toward Chile should not be underestimated (the two nations still do not have full diplomatic relations).

It is precisely because of this animosity toward Chile that Morales may be the Bolivian President who can convince his people to agree to a deal. It took that long-time anti-communist crusader, Richard M. Nixon, to open doors between the US and China. It will probably take a Bolivian leftist to get Bolivia's social movements to sign off on a gas export deal through Chile, and access to the sea is just the bargain that can sell it.

Morales' campaign for the sea begins in earnest today, with a mass public rally in La Paz. I was at a private meeting last month when Morales first explained his plans for the giant gathering of citizens in the city's historic Plaza San Francisco:

The Bolivian people will show their unity [behind the demand for access to the sea] the social movements, the high schools, members of parliament, members of city councils, the armed forces, the police, miners, indigenous people from the altiplano, intellectuals, everyone unified. And the message won't be to condemn Chile…but to send a message to the Chilean people [that the people of Bolivia want access to the sea].

There is a logic to the "ocean for a pipeline deal". What does it cost Chile to give its neighbor untaxed and unregulated access to a seaport? On the other side, the economics of gas pipelines is pretty clear – shorter is cheaper. And any quick glance at a map of South America makes it pretty clear that it is a lot shorter to get to the Pacific from Chile than Peru.

Two countries with new presidents. One with its first indigenous leader, the other with its first woman in the highest office in the land. Together, Morales and Chilean President Michelle Bachalet have an opportunity, not to reverse Bolivia's tragic loss 127 years ago, but to reverse it enough for both countries to move ahead and be better off for it.

World Water Day

Readers:

We bring you another Blog posting from a member of The Democracy Center staff, our assistant director, Marcela Olivera. Marcela is a long-time activist on water issues, not just in Bolivia, but globally. Marcela notes the significance of World Water Day, which is today.

Jim

World Water Day

“We are all water” -Yoko Ono

Today is World Water Day.

Last week, the Fourth World Water Forum was inaugurated in Mexico City. It ends today on World Water Day. A whole host of government officials, presidents and representatives of multinational water companies and international financial institutions have gathered to discuss the increasingly pressing issue of water around the world. But it was not only the officials who were present. Activists from all over the world met in a parallel forum to oppose the vision of water as a commodity-- as something to be bought and sold-- and to offer the alternative vision that everyone has a basic right to water.

At the official forum, Bolivia has been represented by the newly appointed Water Minister, Abel Mamani. He was previously the president of the FEJUVE (Federation of Neighborhood Boards) of El Alto—the group responsible for organizing the Second Water War in Bolivia in January 2005 that challenged the multinational company, Aguas de Illimani’s contract to privatize El Alto’s water system. Mamani, perhaps better than anyone, knows what it is like to live under privatization of a community’s water system.

Last year, FEJUVE used civil disobedience as their tool for action. Mamani was one of thousands of community members in El Alto who refused to pay his water bill and therefore lost all access to water services for several months. Now, the story has taken a 180 degree turn, putting Mamani as the main representative of the state.

In Mexico, the Bolivian delegation has proposed to withdraw water from all free trade agreements and firmly opposes any agreement that does not acknowledge that water is a human right. The difference between Mamani and the other high-level officials that are meeting at the Forum is fundamental: Mamani speaks from experience. He has lived the reality. He is trying now to bring policy together with the reality he knows in order to develop a plan that considers the impact of water services for everyone, not just a select few. If officials from the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank (IBD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) formulated their policies with the assumption that they, themselves, were to live under those policies, and suffer their consequences, things would be quite different.

Today is World Water Day and while it is being celebrated all around the world, in Cochabamba, Bolivia it is passing largely unnoticed. Here, the wars over water have not ended; the public company who took over from Bechtel when it left still confronts the million dollar question: how do you supply water to those who need it the most without extending a hand to privatization?

Check out more about World Water Day at its official web site here.

The official World Water Forum has laid out its goals here, on the website of the World Water Council, the body that organizes the Water Forums every three years.

Written by Marcela Olivera

Blog from a Witness to War, in Iraq

Readers:

I am reprinting this letter sent to me and others by one of the finest people I know, a woman who has put her life on the line to be a witness to the US war in Iraq. I have known Cathy Breen since she was a Maryknoll lay missionary here in Cochabamba in the early 1990s. On her return to the US, Cathy took up residence in the Catholic Worker house in Greenwich Village, working with the poor of New York and becoming a tireless campaigner against the US sanctions in Iraq, and later the war. In the months leading up to the war Cathy moved to Baghdad to bear witness and has returned several times since with Voices in the Wilderness and Christian Peacemaker Teams. It was CPT peace activist, Tom Fox, who was taken hostage and killed in Iraq this month. Tom was a friend of Cathy's.

We can no longer let this war in Iraq sit on the periphery of our vision as an annoyance in a far off land. We cannot sit idly as the New York Times reported today, The administration could take heart this weekend from the relatively small anti-war protests around the country, compared with protests held on previous anniversaries of the invasion.

Here is Cathy's letter and we'll publish more of her accounts as she returns to bear witness to the US war In Iraq.

Jim

Friday, March 17, 2006
Amman, Jordan

Dear Friends,

Fortunately, I sighed, the last stop on the bus from the airport is MY stop. At least I can't get lost.

Weary but grateful after the 11 hour flight from JFK, my mind wandered as the bus headed into the city, about a 45 minute ride. It was dark outside as the radio sounded inside. Once again I felt that I too was "in the dark," unable to make out the words in Arabic, clumsy and fumbling with the money I'd changed into Jordanian dinars. Just one year ago I'd spent six weeks in this city and yet so much seemed unfamiliar and different. If only I had the language, I grumbled inwardly.

Now two days have passed, and I sit with a hot cup of tea to counter the cold. And I think how much has changed in the span of one year. Can it be that just a week ago Joanne and Matt D. came to my room late at night to break the news to me that Tom Fox's body had been found in Baghdad? Can it be that only a year ago I was with Tom here in Amman, and we shared something of our life stories over dinner? Both of us from an "older" vintage, Tom was struggling with the language as well.

Although I'd caught parts of Tom's statement of conviction from March of 2005 that was broadcast on WBAI radio last week, yesterday I was able to read it through reflectfully with no interruptions. Again I was deeply moved. He writes "During the previous year they [Iraqi friends and human rights workers] asked us to tell their stories, since they could not easily be heard, nor could most flee to a safer country. We continue to act as a resource to connect citizens of Iraq with human rights organizations both local and international, as well as accompany them as they interact with multinational military personnel and Iraqi provisional officials.

As a peacemaking team the need to cross boundaries, help soldiers and other armed actors be humane, and invite them to refuse unjust orders. We need to help preserve what is human in all of us and so offer glimpses of hope in a dark time."

Yes, Tom, to cross boundaries and to touch the human in one another is what it is all about wherever we find ourselves. To bring out the good in one another by trying to be good ourselves. I can hear Peter Maurin in those words.

Every Friday a large open-air market is held in part of the bus lot across from the little hotel where I am staying. This morning I headed off in search of something warm among the piles of used clothing and to buy something fresh like cucumbers, tomatoes and carrots. Thanks to one of the wonderful mainstays of the hotel, a young jovial man named Jamiil, we were able to unearth in the storage room a plastic bag that I had left there (for subsequent CPT and Voices folk) containing items like an electric metal pot for boiling water, a mug and dishtowel and paring knife.

One of the ways I cope with stress is to try and "set up house" wherever I am. I find comfort and solace in preparing food or washing clothes by hand. Maybe it is the normalcy that such things represent. For the first time in my life I carry a cell phone on my person or within hands' reach. It is making me crazy trying to learn how to use it! But, it is what connects me with the CPT team in Iraq and in North America. But it is also a constant reminder of the gravity of the situation we are facing. During a sleepless night last night, how often I thought of Harmeet, Jim and Normal, and of the team in Baghdad, and offered up a prayer, a groan, a psalm, or just listened to the silence. How are they faring? I wondered as I lay under clean sheets and blankets.

This morning when I arose the sun was shining brightly and everything looked different, better somehow at sunrise. The long night and the fears were behind us, at least for a time. And I read the words of Rainer Marie Rilke:

God speaks to each of us as God makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:

"You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody Me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you; beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose Me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give Me your hand."

When I read this I shudder and rejoice at the same time, and I ask myself if I can bear the seriousness. Then I reach for a cup of tea.

Much love,

Cathy

Written by Cathy Breen

One Night in Cochabamba

Readers:

We are treated once again to a guest Blog from my Democracy Center cohort, Christina Haglund. In this post Christina writes with great passion about one night in Cochabamba -- of coca, life on the street, and about the lives of the people who struggle mightily just to get by. Enjoy!

Jim

One Night in Cochabamba

I was chewing coca, and feeling a zany jolt similar to a double espresso. It is Thursday night and people are out. There are toddlers running around the plaza, children chasing the wind and infants seemingly mummied to their mothers. People are walking. I think they find it their most reliable source of transportation. I know I do.

A vacant doorway is a hard find in the early evening. All manner of faces, from the the fresh ones of children to the wrinkled ones of the old, curiously meet my eyes. People don’t shut their doors here when it gets dark. They enjoy their public space without fear, even when the moon is out.

So I hit the streets, without definite destination, my green bag of coca leaves in my hand.

The tasty treat that is chewing coca begins with a ritual of preparation. First you rip the small green leaves from their stems and then pile them in between your cheek and gum, until you start to have a look of a happy chipmunk. In quick order, the wad in your mouth produces a flavor-filled tea, created by the combination of saliva, coca leaves and legia, a sweet or salty nugget that activates the alkaloids of the coca. And the taste lasts for hours!

Like coffee, coca suppresses the appetite and contains caffeine. It is the Andean version of Starbucks, though much richer in calcium, iron, protein, and almost all of the vitamins of the alphabet. And, unlike coffee, coca is considered sacred.

I come upon two adolescent sisters, both wearing apron bibs with giant pockets for easy access to change. Each has a well-organized basket filled with cigarettes, an assortment of candy, lighters and maybe some cookies. We sit on some concrete steps. One of the girls yawns.

What time is it?

1:30 a.m.

How late can you sleep in tomorrow?

We have class at 8 a.m.

Their mother arrives. Buenas noches, I tell her. Buenas días, she corrects me. She has a basket with the same goods as her daughters. She also carries a bag filled with empty plastic bottles. She can sell a kilogram of the discarded bottles for one Boliviano. Buckets and washtubs and plastic bins are made out of the collected and returned bottles.

And the people – the ones with holes in their clothes, holes in their walls, holes in their pockets, the ones who will never make their ends meet – they will make about 15 cents for bringing in just over two pounds of plastic.

The money is in aluminum cans, she tells me. For those she gets four Bolivianos for a kilogram.

What do you do in the daylight hours? I ask her. She goes to a corner, the one where she and dozens of other women shout out offers of cheap labor services to passersby.

I wash clothes!

I clean houses!

And in your country? Could I live better? Oh how I hate this question. Yes you could, I think to myself, but only because the majority of the world struggles to survive.

Just like you.

Written by Christina Haglund

George W. Déjà Vu

I have to confess, watching President Bush's speeches defending the US War in Iraq is starting to give me flashbacks to my youth. Many have made the comparison of Bush with the last not-a-Bush President the US had from Texas, Lyndon Johnson. And it is true, if you close your eyes during one of Bush Iraq speeches you can almost hear LBJ talking about "the light at the end of the tunnel" in Vietnam. It took another twenty five thousand dead US soldiers (and many, many more Vietnamese) before the US formally stopped pretending that whopper was true.

But I am having a flashback to a different President – the one who nudged me into politics as a boy, Richard M. Nixon. I grew up in Nixon's hometown – Whittier, California – when he was President. I spent a good part of my sophomore year in high school walking door to door to try to get him out of office (we lost by the way, well the election at least).

During Watergate the man we loved to call "Tricky Dick" had a steady formula.

1. Revelations would come out about the depth of corruption in his administration.

2. Nixon would take a nosedive in the polls.

3. Nixon would go on TV from the Oval Office (looking increasingly out of touch each time) with another batch of lies.

4. Nixon would gain a little bump in the polls.

5. Return to #1 above.

This downward spiral went on for almost a year and a half – treating us to such delights as the revelation of a secret White House taping system; the 18 and half minute gap; the leader of the free world declaring "I am not a crook," (my favorite); and that great lame wave as he left on his farewell helicopter ride.

George W. Bush and Iraq. The current occupant of the Oval Office has a steady beat of his own.

1. The news from Iraq shows a war (of US choice) that is increasingly sending a country into a state of violence and chaos that looks worse by the day.

2. George W. Bush's poll ratings take a nosedive (currently in Nixon territory at 37% public support). More people than that think that professional wrestling is real.

3. George W. Bush goes on TV, usually before a military audience, and tells the nation how well things are going in his war in Iraq (and looking a little more out of touch with reality each time): "We have a comprehensive strategy for victory in Iraq." "Iraqi security forces turned in a strong performance." "This is real progress." "The terrorists are losing on the field of battle."

4. In some circles public confidence and in some cases Bush's poll numbers register a small boost.

5. Return to #1 above.

LBJ in 1967. Nixon in 1974. Bush in 2006.

All this reminds me as well of the escapades of Don Novelo, the US humorist who, under the pen name Lazlo Toth, used to write letters to the mighty and powerful to ask them odd questions. One was sent to MacDonalds:

"I see where you're up to 10 Billion hamburgers sold. How many more do you have to go?"

I wish just one reporter would ask George Bush something similar:

"Sir, I see that we are up to 2,300 US soldiers dead in Iraq now and some 35,000 Iraqis. How many more until you're done?"

Until someone asks President Bush that question and until he is forced to answer it, you can bet the numbers of heartbroken families, of many nationalities, is just going to grow and grow and grow. How many more until we hear the echoes of LBJ and Nixon in this President's cheery declarations? How many more until the US finds its conscience and sanity and brings this war to an end?

Will Bolivia Kiss the IMF Goodbye?

There are so many stories coming out of Bolivia right now – Evo's visit to Chile and meeting with Condoleeza Rice, the new law convening the national constituent assembly, and this story about Bolivia preparing to free itself of the IMF. We'll do our best to get you caught up on the rest as the week continues.

Will Bolivia Kiss the IMF Goodbye?

For twenty years Bolivia has operated under a series of aid agreements with the International Monetary Fund. The essence of these agreements with the IMF has been – we loan you money and you pay us interest and rearrange your economy according to our advice. The results haven't been too good. Privatization of the oil and gas industry (one of the IMF's great Bolivian goals) led to a plummeting in the percentage of the national budget coming from gas and oil. IMF demands for steep deficit reduction in 2003 triggered Febrero Negro and the needless deaths of 34 people.

Even the IMF itself confessed, in a report last April, that the failure of IMF policy in Bolivia is a "puzzle”, noting that, "a country perceived as having one of the best structural reform records in Latin America experienced sluggish per capita growth, and made virtually no progress in reducing income-based poverty measures." The IMF has finally learned what people on the streets here have known for a good long time. The IMF's very-educated economic recipe just plain failed.

Now, it looks like the government of Evo Morales is getting ready to follow in the footsteps of Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela and to tell the IMF that it doesn’t want to do business anymore. Bolivia's current three-year "stand-by" lending agreement with the IMF ends at the end of this month and both Bolivian and IMF officials have signaled that Bolivia isn’t interested in signing a new one.

In reality, this a good move for Bolivia and a good time to make it. Bolivia, for the first time in many years, no longer owes the IMF any money. Last December the IMF announced that it was canceling Bolivia's $251 million debt to the Fund, along with the debts of a host of other poor countries. In reality, direct loans from the IMF are relatively small in the scheme of things. What makes the IMF more important for Bolivia is that it is used as the gatekeeper for good economic behavior by a number of foreign governments that give Bolivia foreign aid. Bolivia can surely find a way to keep those donors happy without giving control of its economic policy over the Fund officials in Washington.

I was in a discussion about this issue last month, with a group of Bolivian policy makers and some economic experts from abroad. There was clear agreement that the price of continued IMF involvement in the Bolivian economy was just too high – especially given the Fund's clear opposition to moves by the country to take back control of its gas and oil reserves. According to a Reuters report last week, both IMF officials and Bolivian officials now anticipate that when the current agreement with the Fund ends in three weeks. The IMF will have one less customer in Latin America. Given the disasters that its policies have left behind here, that is a very good thing.

International Women's Day in Bolivia

Readers: Below is another guest Blog from another one of our great Democracy Center researchers, Melissa Draper. Melissa was in La Paz yesterday for the marking of International Women's Day. Here is her reflection.

Jim

El Dia de la Mujer

I would like to take a poll of you blog-readers: How many of you knew it was International Women’s Day yesterday, March 8? If you asked me that same question five years ago I would have stared at you as blankly as I imagine most of you are staring at your computer screen. College-educated and from Santa Fe, New Mexico, a place considered by most to be a progressive outpost in the southwest United States, I didn’t know about this day until I came to Bolivia. Granted, there are a whole variety of “international days” promoted and celebrated by special sectors of civil society around the world. But this one, well, applies to everyone. It celebrates the woman: mother, daughter, sister, friend.

Leni Olivera, a bolivian colleague at the Democracy Center has a very different perspective on the day. A 27-year old Cochabambina who has been active in the vibrant social movements of Bolivia for more than 7 years, she laments that the day is not well known around the world. She does admit that just over the past decades its recognition indicates the improvement—albeit slow—of the recognition of women’s rights and their fundamental contributions to society. She did not hesitate to give me the full history of the day and to remind me that the struggle for women in a country like Bolivia is one of triple discrimination: they are women, and the majority of those women are indigenous and poor.

The real impulse for calling an international day for women started in 1910 and was picked up again with fervor in the 1960s with the women’s movement. In 1975, the UN began to sponsor it as an official “international day.” A detailed history of the day can be found here.

The Day is catching on in Bolivia. The morning TV shows yesterday were all focused on Women’s Day. A friend turned on the TV at 7:30am and a mariachi band was playing a serenade for the women of the world with the tag line “El Dia Internacional de la Mujer.” After a flourish of statements thanking women for doing what they do, the host proceeded to distribute small bouquets of flowers to every woman on the show, including the women working the cameras and in the editing room.

March 8, however, is not just about flowers. It is also about rape, genital mutilation and bride-burning. The UN has focused on these issues as they have promoted the day around the world. They are a stark reminder that some cultures around the world put family honor and societal rules above the rights of individual women.

In Bolivia, the official festivities for the day centered around a special event at the Palacio del Gobierno in La Paz, which I had the privilege to attend. It was quite a sight to behold. Women of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds flowed into the regal space of the Palacio, capped with its stained glass ceiling depicting the Bolivian seal. Full petticoat-ed polleras, colorful shawls, formal suits, mining hats and embroidered skirts marked to the diverse collection of women from all parts of the country.

The fact that four of the sixteen ministers of this new administration are women is a great step forward for Bolivia. The Minister of Justice is a Quechua woman who was once a domestic worker. In his speech, President Morales spoke directly about the important role of women to help fight corruption, saying he had strategically placed women in positions that require the management of major funds.

The jury is still out on whether this government will really allow space for women’s participation and promote their representation. The process of the Constituent Assembly will be the first test. President Morales’ support for his female ministers to bring about real change will be another. He needs to show that they were not merely appointed to be symbolic heads but as women he trusts to carry out the changes he has promised. The MAS party’s strength is its ability to represent a huge swath of the Bolivian people. It cannot do its job well if it does not do it with the conscious involvement of women every step of the way.

Written by Melissa Draper

Leader Against the US Army's "School of the Americas" Visits Cochabamba

Readers: The following is a posting from one of our Democracy Center researchers, Aaron Luoma, about the visit this week to Cochabamba of Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the America’s Watch. If you are in town in the next few days, I hope you will join us.

Jim

Leader Against the US Army's "School of the Americas" Visits Cochabamba

This coming Monday night, March 13, at 6:30 p.m., those present in Cochabamba will have the opportunity to hear from Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of the America’s Watch (SOAW). The title of this public talk, and panel discussion to follow, is: School of the Americas: The Security Policy of the United States and Military Violence in Latin America. The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), located in Fort Benning, Georgia, is an institution that trains Latin American soldiers in counter-insurgency tactics, psychological warfare, and interrogation tactics. Its graduates have been implicated in countless atrocities and human rights violations throughout Latin America since the school’s founding in 1946.

Father Roy Bourgeois began his Maryknoll service working with the poor in Bolivia in the mid-1970s. During the dictatorship of former SOA graduate General Hugo Banzer, a member of the school’s ‘Hall of Fame’, Father Roy was arrested and forced to leave the country. He founded SOAW in 1990 and has worked tirelessly ever since to close the school, including serving over four years in prison for non-violently protesting the SOA. Annual SOAW protests at the gates of Fort Benning attract more than 15,000 participants.

Since it formation, the SOA has always been, and continues to be, a vital and strategic component of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. The fulfillment of U.S. military and economic security goals, however, comes at a price for Latin America: these highly trained officers return to their countries not to repel a foreign enemy, but, more often than not, to repress and brutalize their own citizenry. Taken from the SOAW web site , former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.”

The school’s record is particularly shameful in El Salvador. SOA graduates have been found responsible for: the assassination of Archbishop Romero in 1980; the murders of the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in 1989; and the four church-women raped and murdered in 1982, two of whom were friends of Father Roy. Participating in Monday’s panel will be Carlos Mauricio from El Salvador, tortured at the hands of SOA graduates. Closer to home, another SOA grad is the army sharpshooter, Captain, Robinson Iriarte de La Fuente. It was Iriarte de la Fuente who, in April 2000 during the Cochabamba water revolt, was captured on film shooting live rounds into an unarmed crowd. A seventeen-year-old boy, Victor Hugo Daza, was shot and killed with a bullet through the face. Brutal repression by SOA graduates continues today in Colombia, in what Human Rights Watch calls ‘State Terrorism.’

This public event is being sponsored by: The Coordinator for Water and Life, The Democracy Center, the Bolivian Solidarity Network, and the Maryknoll Language Institute.

This weekend’s events are as follows:

Friday, March 10 – 7:30 p.m.

Documentary Film: 'School of the Assassins’ – nominated for an Academy Award in 1995, this film details the history of the SOA and the effort to close it.
Location: La Republika Café (342 Ecuador, between 25 de Mayo and Espana)

Monday, March 13th

9 a.m-5:00 p.m. – Local organizations exhibit their materials on themes such as human rights, military violence, and other campaigns.

Location: Plaza Principal, 14 de Septiembre

(If anyone would like to participate in presenting their organizations work in the Plaza Principal on Monday, please call Tita Camacho at: 440-7680)

6:30-9:00 p.m.: Panel Discussion: School of the Americas: The Security Policy of the United States and Military Violence in Latin America

Presenters:

Father Roy Bourgeois (Founder, School of the America’s Watch)
Carlos Mauricio (Professor in El Salvador, and torture victim of SOA graduates)
Ana Laura Duran (Assembly for Human Rights-Cochabamba)
Dr. Andres Guatier (Institute of Therapy and Investigation of the Consequences of Torture and State Violence)

Moderator: Theo Roncken, Accion Andina

Location: Centro de Documentación e Información Bolivia (CEDIB), Calama 255 (two blocks south of the plaza principal)

How Global Institutions Affect Country Budgets and How Citizens Can Make a Difference

As long-time readers of The Democracy Center's work know, we are involved in much more than just writing about events in Bolivia. Our work stretches globally and, occasionally, into realms that some readers will think are a bit "wonky", i.e. the deeper realms of public policy.

In that spirit I invite readers who are interested to read a new report written by The Democracy Center and published by our partners at the International Budget Project. It is titled: Invisible Hands – Tracing the Connections Between the Policies of International Financial Institutions and Country Budget Policies.

Don’t be put off by the rather 'wonky" title. The report is based on a meeting we helped put together in Washington last year, bringing together people from all over the world from two kinds of work. Some focus on making their countries' budget policies more open and accountable, and especially more aimed at lifting up the poor. Other groups that came work on holding international financial institutions – like the World Bank and IMF – more accountable.

Don’t mistake this work as boring technical detail. If the IMF tells a poor country to reduce its budget deficit, even if that means on the backs of the poor, that affects real people's lives. And that is why it is so important that citizens get involved in these issues – of both budgets and IFIs – to make sure that the public is served.

Below is the opening of the report. Here's a link to the full version. And, for those really interested, here's the link to more on The Democracy Center's work with citizens and public budgets.


In April 2005, two international civil society networks – one that seeks to influence government budget policies and one that seeks to influence the policies of international financial institutions (IFIs) – came together for a global meeting titled: International Financial Institutions, Budget Policy, and Social Justice: An Opportunity for Civil Society. The meeting was convened by the International Budget Project (IBP), with its partner, The Democracy Center, and the Bank Information Center (BIC). This is the report of the information shared by each community, and the new thinking that emerged as these groups came together.

It includes reports from the IBP and the BIC on how each community does its work, a set of case studies that illustrates each field’s work in action, a look at the cross-cutting issues of concern in both fields, and strategies for potential collaborations.