Bolivia Withdraws from the School of the Americas

Dear Readers:

Last week Bolivian President Evo Morales, responding to both Bolivian and international pleas to do so, announced that his country would no longer be sending its military officers to the controversial U.S. Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning Georgia. Bolivia's withdrawal is the fifth in the region and marks an important trend in U.S. Latin America relations.

The newest member of our Democracy Center team, Yi-Ching Hwang, is the author of this Blog post on Morales' announcement. Yi-Ching, an intern at the Center's Cochabamba office, is a former member of the U.S. Peace Corps – an organization that is the mirror opposite of the SOA in terms of the face that our country shows to the world.

Jim Shultz


Soldiers Out of Georgia

“We will gradually withdraw until there are no Bolivian officers attending the School of the Americas,” said Morales. Hesitant of U.S. government’s foreign policy, he remarked that “they are teaching high ranking officers to confront their own people, to identify social movements as their enemies.”

President Evo Morales formally announced last week in La Paz that he will not send any more Bolivian military officers to attend training at this US institute formally known as the School of the Americas (SOA).

This announcement confirmed a statement made by President Morales in October of last year when he said that “no foreigner in uniform will be operating here (in Bolivia),” and that he will stop sending Bolivian officers to the SOA. [Critics of President Morales will be quick to note, however, that uniformed Venezuelan soldiers have been a presence in Bolivia on different occasions.]

Bolivia is now the fifth country to end its relationship with the institute, following the lead of Argentina, Costa Rica, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Located in Fort Benning, Georgia, SOA is a U.S. taxpayer funded military training facility for Latin American soldiers. At a school where the Pentagon has acknowledged use of training manuals advocating coercive interrogation techniques and extrajudicial executions, more than 60,000 soldiers have been trained in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, and military intelligence, among other topics. In numerous documented incidents, SOA graduates have used their skills to instigate violence and war in their own countries against their own people. Responding to such a history and its associated public reaction, in 2001 Congress intervened by modifying the structure and curriculum of this military training school, and renaming it as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

Nicknamed by its opponents in the US religious community as the “School for Assassins,” SOA/WHINSEC has historically evident ties to oppressive military regimes in Latin America, training dictators and brutal military leaders.

Most notably for Bolivians is Hugo Banzer Suárez, a cruel military dictator who ruled Bolivia from 1971-1978. Trained by SOA in 1956, Banzer was infamously known for his “Banzer Plan” which silenced outspoken church members. The plan was later used throughout Latin America as a blueprint for repression. Furthermore, Banzer sheltered Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and had various links to drug trafficking groups. For all his ‘accomplishments’ Banzer received SOA’s “hall of fame” recognition in 1988.

In more recent times during Bolivia’s Gas Wars of September - October 2003, two former SOA/WHINSEC graduates, arrested on charges of torture, murder, and violation of the constitution, were held responsible for the death of 67 civilians in El Alto, Bolivia.

According to the organization School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), some other notorious past SOA/WHINSEC graduates include the perpetrators of both the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador and the assassination of that country's Archbishop, Oscar Romero.

President Morales’ decision to severe ties with SOA signifies a great triumph for victims and families wounded by SOA graduates, social movement leaders, and human rights activists of Bolivia and the rest of Latin America.

Written by Yi-Ching Hwang

Bolivia: Conflict in Paradise, Again

As the rains and the floods continue to bring haunting damage to some parts of Bolivia (and tall green corn fields to others), so the waters of political conflict appear to be rising again as well, on several fronts.

On the domestic side, political attention turns once again to the nation’s capital, La Paz, where President Morales’ government has announced its plans to use street heat to pressure Congress to convene two national voter referendums related to the proposed new constitution backed by he and his political party, MAS. Alfredo Rada, the Minister of Government, announced yesterday that Morales and MAS are mobilizing labor unions, coca growers and other social movements that back the President to march on Congress.

Their demands: a vote to set up national referendums to approve the new MAS-drafted constitution, and a parallel vote on a land reform provision MAS supports which won a majority on the Constituent Assembly but not the required 2/3 (hence the need for a separate vote on that provision).

Opposition leaders were quick to denounce the move. “Whatever decision is taken in the face of new blockades and pressures will not have validity or legitimacy,” said the PODEMOS head of the Senate.

While social movements on the left have the longest history of using street protest and blockades to pressure officials into action (and often resignation), Morales opponents are going to have a hard time calling this latest move illegitimate. Street mobilizations by Sucre and opposition leaders last year completely stopped the work of the MAS-dominated Constituent Assembly that was drafting the new Constitution, forcing members to flee the city altogether.

Meanwhile, tensions between the Morales administration and the U.S. government are also heating up again, with the Morales government floating publicly the possibility that it may formally ask that the Bush administration replace embattled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg (pictured above in rare happier days with the Bolivian Foreign Minister). The Bolivian government has also dispatched Minister Juan Ramon Quintana to Washington to wage a formal complaint against what it has declared a USAID policy of funding Morales opponents.

The USAID controversy is just one in a string of recent uproars between Morales and Goldberg, including the U.S. Army’s Embassy attaché bringing in 500 rounds of ammunition in a relative’s suitcase, revelations that Embassy staff have been asking Fulbright Scholars and Peace Corps volunteers to provide it with intelligence on Cuban and Venezuelan presence in the country, and a disputed photograph of Goldberg with a Colombian later arrested on criminal charges in Bolivia.

While Morales has certainly raised some strange and unsubstantiated charges against Goldberg in the past (the photo with the Colombian was a real stretch), it is also true that the Ambassador’s tenure here has been a litany of boondoggles that few diplomats would care to include on there CVs.

If the intent of the Morales Administration is to truly have Mr. Goldberg replaced, then demanding it publicly is not likely to work. More likely it will cause the Ambassador and whatever supporters he has left in Washington to dig in their heels. If that is Bolivian government’s actual intent, a strong request in private, followed by a quiet transfer of duty is a more likely road.

In any event, Mr. Goldberg’s two-year term is up later this year, and I am willing to bet all comers a pique entero that he is not interested in a longer stay. New Ambassador appointments are likely to wait until after the new U.S. President is seated 11 months from now, so two things seem certain: First, Mr. Goldberg is likely to ring in yet one more new year in Bolivia, and second, his mistakes piled upon mistakes will give his predecessor a very easy act to follow.

Note: The Democracy Center is in the middle of an investigation of USAID funding in Bolivia, including interviews with both governments, which looks well beyond the charges and defenses aired to date. We hope to have that completed and published shortly.

Bechtel's Ugly Ecuador Water Adventure

Readers:

The focus of our Latin America work at The Democracy Center has always been to help shed light on the role that international actors, particularly those from our native U.S., play in the region. That role was born with our reporting in 2000 on the Cochabamba Water Revolt against the Bechtel Corporation. It continued in our reporting about the effect of World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies in Bolivia, and is also an essential theme in our forthcoming book, Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization (University of California Press).

It is not our view that all multinational corporations are inherently evil. There are certainly examples of corporations that are decent global citizens. But in too many instances, corporations from the U.S. have shown their eagerness to trample on human and environmental rights if it helps them make an extra buck, and then to boldly lie about that when confronted with the facts. Bechtel and the Water War is one example. Enron and its massive Bolivian oil spill (a chapter in our book) is another.

In this post we bring you a report from Ecuador, the story of how Bechtel, the corporation behind Cochabamba’s water crisis in 2000 (headed by Riley Bechtel, above), is at it again in the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. The report comes from Emily Joiner, a long-term volunteer with the Guayaquil-based Observatorio Ciudadano de Servicios Publicos, and author of a book on the Ecuador case.

Jim Shultz


Bechtel's Ugly Ecuador Water Adventure

Before sunrise on Monday, November 7, 2005, I joined members of the Observatorio Ciudadano de Servicios Públicos as we erected a blue tent in front of the Palacio de Justicia in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Volunteers readied vote deposit boxes, paper ballots, and signature pages in anticipation of the crowds of people who pass by this centrally located building on a daily basis. The 1,550 ballots and corresponding signatures collected over the course of the day marked the start of a two-week “consulta”, to gather the opinions of Guayaquil’s citizens regarding the water and sewage services provided by Interagua, a local subsidiary of the U.S. Bechtel Corporation.

During those weeks in Guayaquil, I spoke personally with dozens of citizens who expressed their deep problems with the water and sewage services they received from Interagua. The local municipal government was not friendly to the “consulta” project and city police tried to remove local volunteers/activists from several polling locations. Nevertheless, more than 41,000 local citizens participated in the two-week survey, and 92% of them declared that the Bechtel subsidiary was not fulfilling its contractual obligations to Guayaquil’s consumers.

Interagua’s arrival in Guayaquil followed years of inadequate water and sewage services. In 1993 the municipal government began considering contracting out water and sewage services to a private company. Soon after, in 1996 and 1997, the municipality began to receive loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, aid that provided crucial funds for improvements, but which also required privatization to take place as soon as possible. International Water Services, a subsidiary of Bechtel, won the concession in 2000 as the only bidding company. The services were transferred to Bechtel’s newly incorporated subsidiary, Interagua, in 2001.

The contract provided no recourse to Guayaquil’s citizens to demand improvements projects, nor did it stipulate any minimum investments or measurable improvements in service quality.

After the 2005 citizen consulta, both Interagua and Guayaquil’s government refused to acknowledge any validity to the results, deeming them unscientific and statistically insignificant. Interagua also dismissed the Observatorio’s investigation conducted in June of 2005 of a Hepatitis A epidemic in a slum neighborhood on the outskirts of they city. That outbreak resulted in 85 confirmed diagnoses in children, all living within a several block radius.

Medical professionals in the neighborhood estimated that at least 150 children were affected, but the city government and Bechtel’s company denied that contaminated water could have caused the outbreak. Instead, they chose to blame the lack of sanitation in residents’ homes and schools for the disease, implying that the sudden and widespread incidence of the disease was caused by parents’ negligence. Nevertheless, the Observatorio refused to give up the fight for clean, safe services for Guayaquil’s consumers.

Over the next six months the Observatorio continued to assemble a body of documented evidence of Interagua’s violations of its contractual obligations and of the constitutional rights of consumers. We conducted case studies in different parts of the city and found a myriad of problems, including: postponement of improvements projects, discontinuous service, contaminated water, deaths due to water outages, erosion due to lack of sewage services, and communities billed illegally for services they did not receive.

A detailed legal and technical analysis, conducted by the Observatorio, concluded that under Interagua’s master plan, even after 30 years, a significant number of families would be left without water and sewage services. The company also had no plans to construct adequate sewage treatment facilities, which meant that the local ecosystem would be expected to absorb raw or barely treated sewage discharges for decades to come. Local residents began to ask -- Is this the best that privatization can offer?

Thanks in large part to the work of the Observatorio, Guayaquil’s situation has attracted both national and international attention. Local residents are looking into legal action demanding that the company compensate the Hepatitis A patients for their medical expenses, and dozens of families have already filed significant legal actions against Bechtel’s company for negligent services, illegal billing practices, and other grievances.

An independent study funded by the United Nations concluded that 6 years after privatization less than half of Guayaquil’s residents have sewage services, a decrease from the percentage provided with services prior to the privatization in 2001. Hundreds of consumers have come forward to demand that water and sewage services that have been cutoff be reconnected. In short, the permissive silence that once surrounded water and sanitation services has been broken.

All of this outspoken and knowledgeable criticism of Interagua’s actions has begun to produce results. In the spring of 2007, municipal health authorities threatened to close Interagua’s water treatment facilities due to its violation of sanitation standards. In spring 2007 the municipal government retook overall responsibility for the provision of services. In July 2007, ECAPAG (Interagua’s official regulator) fined the Bechtel subsidiary $1.5 million for breach of contractual responsibilities. In January of this year an Ecuadorian court found two company authorities guilty of contempt of court for refusing to respond adequately to accusations that they had negligently disconnected services. After being ordered to jail, one of the men fled the country.

Bechtel’s local company seems ready to follow his lead. According to local reports, Interagua is negotiating with another company to sell its contract and escape from the legal repercussions of its poor service and the health and environmental damages left in its wake. As it does so, Bechtel’s Ecuadorian excursion is becoming a powerful echo of the disaster it left behind in Cochabamba eight years earlier. There Bechtel’s overnight increases of more than 50% led to a civic rebellion that left one teenager dead and hundreds wounded. Bechtel fled with the local company’s cash reserves and hard drives.

International attention and action in response to Bechtel’s Bolivian adventure did serious damage to its corporate reputation, and forced the corporation to drop a $50 million legal action against Bolivia in a World Bank trade court. Today it is the citizens of Guayaquil who need the attention and help of the international community, to keep up the pressure on Bechtel and assure that the company is not able to flee the scene and ignore the damages it has inflicted over the past six and a half years.

For more information on the Bechtel/Ecuador case, visit Food and Water Watch here. You can also write to Emily Joiner directly at emily.joiner@gmail.com.


Emily Joiner is the author of Aguita Amarilla, a book chronicling the privatization of water services in Guayaquil, long-term volunteer with the Observatorio Ciudadano de Servicios Publicos and an enthusiastic supporter of the right to water. She holds a B.A. from Williams College and currently resides in her home state of Texas.

Observations from a Political Junkie

"I am a political junkie.”

Those were the odd words with which I opened my essay 24 years ago applying for graduate school. They were also true. I became converted to politics at age 14, living in Richard Nixon’s hometown (Whittier, California) and walking precincts for his opponent, Senator George McGovern. Over the course of a decade I worked as a campaign volunteer, then as legislative staff and then an advocate at the California Capitol. I also kept my hand in presidential politics, including heading off to the snows of New Hampshire for Senator Gary Hart the same year I applied to graduate school.

So it is with intense interest that I follow the drama of the current campaign in the United States, in an age when the Internet is almost like being there. With that explanation, here are some observations from a self-professed “political junkie.”

1. Barak Obama and the Democratic Holy Grail

Since Ronald Reagan sent the Democratic Party into a confused and downward tailspin in 1980, the party of Jefferson has often been torn by an internal debate between two competing strategies. Strategy One: Accept the electorate for what it is and go after the swing vote and independents. Strategy Two: Change the face of the electorate by rallying low-income and ethnic minority voters to the polls. The first strategy was ridiculed as moving the party to far to the right, and the latter was ridiculed for being too naïve.

Somehow, in a way that still escapes full explanation, Senator Barak Obama has placed his hand on the Democratic Party’s Holy Grail. He is doing both at once. No one else ever has. Independents and Republicans are voting for him in droves. And at the same time, so are new voters. In GOP dominant South Carolina, for example, his primary vote surpassed all of the Republican candidates combined, the product of waves of new voters. Now, this may not last, but it is in fact, for the moment, wildly historic.

2. In Politics, You define Yourself by What You Can Rationalize

Having worked for quite a few of them close up, and having come eerily close to becoming one myself a long while ago, I can tell you that inside the mind of a politician is an ongoing math equation. To be sure, decisions and choices are weighed on the merits, but then comes the other factor – politics. Inside most politicians echoes the logic of rationalization. It goes like this: “Even though I don’t think this is the right thing to do, if I refuse to do it I will lose and the person who will beat me will do it anyway, and a lot of other bad things that I won’t do.” Translated to math: 1 bad thing < many bad things = rationalization.

It is hard to find many people today who really believe that Senator Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize President Bush’s War in Iraq was actually a sincere expression of what she believed was right (despite her proclamation at the time that it was a “vote for peace”). Alongside others who did the same, such as Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, Clinton and other Presidential wannabes made a calculation that the war was a given and that going on record post 9/11 as a hawk and not a dove was a simple act of political survival. Senator Obama famously took the other side, though as a candidate for Senate, not a Senator. Voters aren’t stupid and they know this: If your political conscious allows you to rationalize a vote for war, it likely allows you to rationalize almost anything. People don’t like that.

3. Echoes of Bob Dole

One of the least memorable presidential campaigns in recent history was that of Senator Robert Dole against President Bill Clinton in 1996 (for ten “political junkie” points name Dole’s GOP running mate without looking it up). His campaign was almost the definition of never getting any “political traction.” The venerable Senator and World War II hero was reduced in the final weeks to a fit of frustration at the nation refusing to see the Clinton administration the same way he did. “Where is the outrage?” he declared to a nation that just wasn’t outraged.

There is an echo of that as another decent public servant, Senator Clinton, seems to be watching her own long-held Presidential ambitions evaporate into thin air. “Let’s get real!” she proclaimed to an audience in New York yesterday. Just as Senator Dole saw crystal clear that her husband’s administration was morally bankrupt but couldn’t get the nation to see it that way, Senator Clinton seems stunned that she can’t get Democratic voters to see Senator Obama as completely ill equipped to occupy the Oval Office. Candidates frustrated in this way are painful to watch.

4. Political Phenomena

Lastly there is the tale of Presidential political phenomena. Like clockwork, in every election I have watched, some candidate emerges as the phenomenon, the surprise that no one expected. And, like clockwork, they are almost always short-lived. In 2004 it was the frenzy over Howard Dean, a phenomenon that burned out by Iowa. In 2000 it was Straight Talkin’ John McCain, who got rolled by George Bush. In years past there was Pat Buchanan and the pitchfork crowd toppling George Bush the elder in New Hampshire, Ross Perot showing what a millionaire with pie charts could achieve, Jesse Jackson winning real elections for a time, my old hero Gary Hart carrying New Hampshire, and on and on.

In all these cases, going back decades, the only phenomenon candidate who made it all the way to the White House was President Jimmy Carter. But Richard Nixon and Watergate made for special times.

Regardless of whatever else one thinks of him, Senator Obama and his campaign are quite definitely a phenomenon and win the trophy for that distinction in 2008, no matter what happens next. But this year, unlike it others, the phenomenon has a real shot at going all the way.

So far November looks like a match-up between Phenomenon model 2008 vs. Phenomenon model 2000. And that is a phenomenon in itself.

And that is how it looks to this political junkie.

In Bolivia, When Dialogue Fails…

Readers:

When I left Bolivia three weeks ago, popular attention was dedicated to two things: a sputtering attempt at political dialog by the nation's President, Vice-President, and nine regional governors, and a national catastrophe caused by flooding. When I returned to Bolivia last Friday popular attention was dedicated to two things…a sputtering attempt at political dialog by the nation's President, Vice-President, and nine regional governors, and a national catastrophe caused by flooding.

That said, there have been important developments these past weeks on the dialog issue. To bring readers up to speed two members of The Democracy Center team, Aldo Orellana and Lily Whitesell, have prepared the Blog post below.

Jim Shultz


When Dialogue Fails…

After two weeks of growing tensions, the Morales government and the regional governors are at a current standstill in their ongoing political battles. The opposition governors and civic committees formed a new entity, calling themselves the National Democratic Council (CONALDE). They gave the Morales government an ultimatum to stop their current political moves with a deadline of last Wednesday, February 13.

The dialogue had begun fairly well more than a month ago, with the goals of reviewing the most controversial issues of the new Constitution, reaching an agreement on regional autonomies, and discussing the re-distribution of the Impuesto Directo a los Hidrocarburos (IDH), one of the key mechanisms through which revenues from foreign oil companies are allocated and spent here.

The current breakdown in talks began on February 1, when the government announced it would start payment of the “Bono Dignidad,” financial support for senior citizens similar to the US’ Social Security, using IDH funds. The program was approved by Congress last November, but the financing, which requires approximately 200 million dollars annually, had not been secured.

President Morales, speaking at the program’s launch in Cochabamba, said, “[The payment of the Bono Dignidad] is thanks to the natural resources recuperated in the struggle of the Bolivian people [in 2003] and nationalized by the government. … These economic resources are not Evo Morales’ money… it’s not the mayors’ or governors’ money, it’s the Bolivian people’s money, and … it must be returned to the Bolivian people.”

The opposition denounced the move as the end of the dialogue. Prior to the Bono Dignidad program, the IDH funds were to be distributed at the regional level, under the control of the governors. On the day of the government’s public launch of the program, Santa Cruz’s governor [Ruben Costas, pictured above] responded by announcing that a regional referendum on autonomy would take place on May 4. He asserted that, “The dialogue is hanging by a thread… this [action by Morales] is an intent to destabilize the regional governors.”

For its part, one of the leaders of the right-wing PODEMOS party, which has been marginalized as the governors take the main opposition role, added that, “The dialogue has unfortunately been broken … we don’t know where it is headed … because the president decided to begin to pay [the Bono Dignidad] without the agreement of the other side.”

A week later, the gap between the Morales government and the regional governors grew even wider when the members of CONALDE met in Sucre. In the meeting, the governors and their respective civic committees took a much more confrontational stance toward the government. They approved a number of resolutions, demanding that the government accept them.

These proposals went far beyond the three topics that had been flagged for discussion in the previous month of dialogue. If not impossible, they would be very difficult for the government to accept. They rejected the use of IDH funds to pay the Bono Dignidad. They demanded a new regional governor’s election in Sucre. They insisted that the government recognize the autonomy referendum proposals of Santa Cruz and three other regions – proposals that would give so much power to the regional governments that even the leadership of PODEMOS has been openly skeptical of them. The most difficult point that they suggested was to take the Constituent Assembly process back to last August 15, the day that the Capitalia issue was taken out of debate. They proposed taking the issue up again and demanded that the government call for a national referendum to decide the location of the executive and legislative branches.

Both sides are accusing the other of breaking laws. CONALDE has based most of their demands, particularly those dealing with the new Constitution, on what they assert were a series of illegal moves by the government, from taking the Capitalia issue out of debate to the vote that approved the new Constitution. On their side, the government has claimed that the governors’ call for regional autonomy referendums is illegal. If there is a difference, it is that the opposition is entrenched in legal arguments about past events, while the government has entrenched itself in legal debates about events which have yet to occur.

Perhaps what the two sides have most in common are demands for referendums, which could be the best, and most democratic, way out of the current standoff. First, the new Constitution would need a national referendum for its approval. Also, last November, the government proposed a referendum to give the population an up-or-down vote on the leadership of President Morales, Vice-President Garcia Linera, and the nine regional governments – which could completely reconfigure the political scene of the country. The proposal has not been approved by the Bolivian Senate, though it seems to be gathering support there. For their part, the opposition governors have called for their regional autonomy referendums on May 4 and are demanding a national referendum to resolve the Capitalia issue for once and for all.

There is a good reason for this flurry of referendum proposals. Both sides know that in order to unwind the current tension, re-direct the country’s politics, and take their next step forward, they would need to clearly have public support behind them. The current failure in dialogue has left the government and the opposition at an impasse. Both have shown that they are willing to take the risk of losing in a referendum. If they are unable to begin to dialogue again in the next few weeks – on any of these issues – perhaps a referendum on the national and regional leadership would be the best option. Political leaders shouldn’t be afraid of this kind of popular decision – though they very often are.

It is yet to be seen where the current standoff in Bolivian politics will lead. Last week, the government confirmed that they would not respond or capitulate to the demands. Leading up to their ultimatum deadline, CONALDE had warned of protests, blockades, and taking public buildings if the government failed to meet their demands. However, they have postponed politics and demonstrations to address the flooding crisis in their home jurisdictions.

Floods have been ravaging this country, particularly in the opposition governors’ regions. Since November, 53 people have lost their lives as a direct result of the flooding, more than 55,000 families have been affected, and 31,000 square miles of land are under water in Beni alone. President Morales and the governors of Santa Cruz and Beni are meeting today to discuss rebuilding efforts. If these political leaders are able to find common ground as they work to rebuild their country, perhaps one good thing will have come out of the tragedy of the flooding.

Written by Aldo Orellana and Lily Whitesell

Remembering Bolivia's Febrero Negro

It was exactly five years ago today that Ana Colque, a 24-year-old nurse and single mother, was murdered by Bolivian soldiers as she climbed to the rooftop of a building in La Paz. Arriving in an ambulance, she went to the roof to come to the aid of a handyman who lay dying, also from an army sniper attack.

It was five years ago this month that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded that Bolivia take a new massive dose of its economic medicine, setting up a chain of events that not only produced Colque's murder but a shooting war between the Army and the National Police on the steps of the Presidential palace. Over the course of two days 34 people – mothers, fathers, children – were left dead.

It is time to remember, once again, Bolivia's Febrero Negro.

The bloody events in La Paz those two days in February 2003 remain, not only one of the nation's ugliest political scars, but a powerful lesson about the global system and how its darker side effects the lives of real people. Not long afterwards, The Democracy Center undertook a serious and in-depth investigation of Febrero Negro, including the events that led up to it and the violence that spiraled into the streets. We interviewed Bolivia's then-Vice President, Carlos Mesa, senior government economic officials, the IMF, the leader of the rebelling police, Ana Colque's mother, and many, many others to get a full perspective. Our report, Deadly Consequences, can be read here.

Five years in retrospect, there are some new developments and some new lessons in the Febrero Negro story.

One lesson is about criminal impunity in Bolivia. To this day, despite ample evidence about who fired the shots that killed Ana Colque, no one has ever been convicted for the murder that sent bullets through her chest.

Other lessons are about economics.

The day Colque was killed, IMF officials fled Bolivia. On the wau to the airport they passed the building where her murder took place. They left, convinced as always, that deep deficit reduction was a required formula for Bolivia, even if their prescription aimed at "economic stability" turned into tax increases on the poor and produced 34 coffins. Three years later, at the start of 2006, Bolivia became one of a parade of Latin American nations that divorced itself from the IMF, declining further loans from the Washington-based institution and freeing itself from the IMF economic doctrines that have proven so damaging across the region.

Five years ago, as the government of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada struggled internally to craft a plan to respond to the IMF's deficit reduction demands, the President's economic advisors urged him to close the fiscal gap with new taxes on foreign oil companies. It was his gas and oil privatization schemes years before that had helped drain the national treasury and contributed to the country's large deficits, so it made sense, they argued, to close the budget gap by recouping some of that lost revenue. Sánchez de Lozada overruled his advisors and sought to keep the IMF happy, instead, with a new income tax that reached all the way down to the working poor – police, nurses, teachers and others that earned as little as $100 per month.

Later, after Sánchez de Lozada was toppled by his own people and fled himself to exile in suburban Maryland, Bolivia's leaders (starting well-before the Presidency of Evo Morales) embarked down the road that Sánchez de Lozada would not, raising the taxes paid by foreign oil firms by more than $1 billion. The result was not the mass departure of the firms that the IMF and Sánchez de Lozada predicted, but a new round of long-term contracts and Bolivia's first budget surplus in many years.

The economic lesson of Febrero Negro and its aftermath is this: Not only did the IMF/ Sánchez de Lozada approach send the nation into bloody, needless conflict. It was also economic stupidity.

On this day in which 34 Bolivian families, including Colque's will mourn losses deeply remembered, we hope our readers will also remember those events and their importance. Again, you can read our report in full here.

US Embassy Asked Peace Corps and Fulbright Scholars to Spy in Bolivia

ABC News went public today with a story that has been circulating privately in Bolivia for several months – at least one U.S. Embassy official in La Paz has been asking U.S. Fulbright scholars and Peace Corps volunteers to provide the Embassy with intelligence on Cubans and Venezuelans in Bolivia. The story, written by reporter Jean Friedman, centers on the testimony of John Alexander van Schaick, a Fulbright scholar who spoke in detail about the request from an Embassy official during a required "security briefing" in November 2007. Here is a link to the story.

According to van Schaick, Assistant Regional Security Officer Vincent Cooper asked him during the interview to provide the Embassy with any information he stumbled across, during his time in Bolivia, about Cuban or Venezuelan nationals doing work in the country. ABC News was able to corroborate similar requests from the Embassy with testimony from managers and volunteers in the U.S. Peace Corps.

Such requests are in direct violation of U.S. policy prohibiting the use of Fulbright scholars and Peace Corps members for any such intelligence gathering. ABC quotes an unnamed State Department spokesperson affirming that the request was not a part of any State Department policy.

The story, justifiably, is likely to gather significant attention in Bolivia, with Morales administration officials already publicly pledging to investigate. The "Spy for U.S." story follows months of charges by the Morales administration (and denials by the U.S.) that the Bush administration has been using USAID funding and other financing to back Morales opponents. It also has echoes of another incident last year when a relative of the senior U.S. military advisor at the Embassy was detained at the La Paz airport bringing in 500 rounds of 45 caliber ammunition for the Embassy official. This latest incident, as did that one, raises serious questions about whether U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia has directed the Spy requests, suffers from serious lapses in political judgment, or just has no control over his staff.

Either way, Goldberg's string of political headaches is likely to turn into a phenomenal migraine over this one.

A serious concern here is whether the fallout from the "Spy for U.S." story will have repercussions for Fulbright Scholars and the Peace Corps program. At an individual level, these young visitors to Bolivia rely significantly on the goodwill of the communities and people with whom they operate. If the Bolivian government and press label them as spies, that goodwill and their ability to work in Bolivia will be in jeopardy. The Peace Corps was already kicked out of Bolivia by the government there in 1971, following allegations that the program gave sterilization treatment to indigenous women without their knowledge. The Corps returned to Bolivia in 1990 after a nearly 20-year absence.

The object of anger over this incident should not be directed at either Fulbright scholars or Peace Corps volunteers. Bolivian anger over the Spy request ought to be directed at the incompetent U.S. officials who have put playing James Bond over the interest and safety of the hundreds of young people from the U.S. serving in these programs. This time public apologies alone will not resolve anything.

It is clear that Mr. Cooper should be dismissed from his post and the State Department immediately. It also seems that the time has come for Mr. Goldberg, his supervisor, to leave Bolivia as well.

What is Carnival like in Bolivia?

Readers:

This is a week packed full of notable dates all over the world: Super Tuesday in U.S. politics; Fat Tuesday in New Orleans; Lunar New Year in China, Ash Wednesday in the Catholic faith. And in Bolivia and elsewhere in Latin America this is the end of Carnival.

I am still in the Balkans as I write, so I have missed water balloon warfare back in Bolivia and will miss the day-long parade this Saturday on the street below our office in Cochabamba. Here is a post from The Democracy Center's able Leny Olivera, looking behind the customs of Carnival in Bolivia. Enjoy.

Jim Shultz


What is Carnival like in Bolivia?

Like many holidays in Bolivia, Catholicism has influenced Carnival since the Spanish colonization. Many Andean festivals that originally had other meanings have been replaced or modified and many times other holidays have been imposed on important dates and places to the Andean culture. Because of this, Carnival is actually celebrated in a different way in the cities and the countryside.

Carnival in the cities is celebrated in accordance with the Catholic calendar and begins before Lent – two weeks before the week of Ash Wednesday. The Thursday of the first week of celebrations begins with the festival of the Compadres. Compadres are similar to godfathers in the United States, but their relationships are not only related to baptisms but also weddings, communions and any other important event in someone’s life. In Cochabamba, the compadres have a grand celebration throughout the immense open-air market or cancha, together with their saint Señor de Compadres. Going to the cancha on the day of Compadres is like going to a public party – shopping can be very dangerous as nobody can escape the buckets of water, dye or foam thrown on passersby by the celebrants.

A week later, the festival of the Comadres is celebrated. This is also celebrated in the markets. In each market the comadres have different virgins and saints. The comadres celebrate from mid-day on by closing all the markets. There are only two days all year the markets are closed – both during Carnival. After working more than 12 hours every day of the year, the celebration of Comadres has greater meaning in the markets – the majority of whose vendors are women.

The following Sunday the nonstop week of Carnival begins with the Children’s Parade. During the parade all the children dress up however they want, marching for fun or to enter in competitions – the best costume of the parade wins a prize. The next day, Monday, people in offices get together for a Ch’alla. Broadly, this is a way to celebrate one’s surroundings, in this case the office. In Cochabamba, many people perform a Q’owa, an Andean ritual to give thanks to the Pachamama or mother earth.

Tuesday is called the “Tuesday of Ch’alla” and it is the day that many throughout the country celebrate their homes. From the beginning of this day houses are adorned with streamers, balloons and colorful decorations and a typical dish is prepared. The foods vary according to the region. In Cochabamba the typical plate is puchero. This dish has garbanzos, cabbage, peaches and a special variety of avocado for cooking – all products in abundance in the harvest this time of year in the valley region. The forms of ch’alla vary all over country with everyone doing it in accordance with the customs of their region. In the west, the ch’alla is traditionally done with a ritual of thanks to the Pachamama, in the east the Tuesday of Ch’alla is a more festive day.

On Wednesday another series of ch’allas occur. In this case it is the vendors who celebrate their shops and stalls. This is the second day during Carnival all the markets close from mid-day on. The merchants stop attending to the public in order to ch’alla their places of work. This date is very important for the vendors, as it is the source and inspiration of their work. Observant Catholics also celebrate Ash Wednesday by attending a mass where the Priest places a cross of ashes on their forehead.

In the provincial towns like Tarata, Arbieto, and Arpita in the countryside and high valleys of Cochabamba the Carnival celebration continues Thursday and into the following weekend. In the more removed communities of the altiplano in the departments of La Paz, Oruro, and Potosi, Carnival has a different meaning and is celebrated in a much different way from the city. The dates of Carnival coincide with the agricultural calendar to give thanks for the many products that are harvested and are the sustenance of life. The celebrations are an acknowledgement to the Pachamama. Within the Andean philosophy everything is related to the earth because thanks to her there is life. As a result, there are also musical instruments that are played on important dates during the agricultural calendar. In the time of Carnival for example the tarka, a native instrument originating before the Spanish colonization, is played. It is made from the Tarka tree and is the instrument of great happiness during these dates. In the communities everyone dances to the sound of the tarkas thanking the Pachamama with rituals and joy.

The days of Carnival in Bolivia are more celebrated than any other festivals throughout the year, including Christmas. They last longer than a month with a great cultural diversity across the regions of the country, in the city and the countryside.

Written by Leny Olivera, translated by Elliot Williams

Blog from Kosovo

Readers:

I am in the middle of a two-week work visit to the Balkans, asked here by two agencies of the United Nations to provide advocacy training to the local members of their staff dealing with children's rights and environmental issues.

Here is a Blog offering from what will, sometime in the next few weeks, become the world's newest nation.

Jim Shultz


Blog from Kosovo

I had to take a detour this morning on the snowy mountain road through the Balkan mountains that leads from Kosovo to Montenegro. The UN driver that escorted me to the border explained that the problem wasn't road conditions, but political ones.

The direct route between the two Balkan enclaves cuts through a small corner of Serbia, the nation from which Kosovo intends to declare its independence in the next few weeks. Because the flight that brought me here a week ago landed directly in Kosovo – no stop in Belgrade, no Serbian stamp in my blue passport – Serbian policy says that I arrived in the country illegally. Making border crossings a hassle is just one part of the pressure leaders in Belgrade seeks to bring on what they consider a runaway province.

This is Kosovo ten years down the road from a war with still open wounds, and weeks before it declares itself the world's newest nation. It is a country waiting to be a country, a place where 17,000 NATO troops still patrol the streets in giant green personnel carriers, and where Serbia to the north still considers it not only a part of that country but its ancient homeland.

"It will happen at anytime," people here tell me, maybe weeks, maybe months, but independence, they assure me, will happen.

"They sell every kind of firework here you can imagine," another UN employee tells me. "Independence Day, when it comes, will be very, very loud. There will also be gunfire, he warns. The guns will not be aimed at people, but up in the sky, in celebration. He lives on the top floor of his building and worries about some of those celebration bullets raining down onto his roof – or his living room floor.

Ten years after the war, and the NATO bombing that helped end it, the motivations for Kosovo independence are still easy to see here. On the road over the mountains there are still shattered skeletons of brick houses destroyed by Serbian mortar fire. There are also shattered Christian Orthodox churches destroyed in retaliation, by members of Kosovo's Muslim majority.

"First a Serbian neighbor of mine came to my apartment and warned me to leave," another of my new acquaintances remembered. "He said, 'Soon others will come and they will not speak so nicely as I am.' Then others came, shooting guns into the air in the street and ordering us to leave Kosovo. So we left." By the tens of thousands Albanian-speaking Kosovars fled, most of them to Macedonia. The fortunate ones took up residence with relatives. Many others ended up in UN refugee camps.

It is not surprising that the UN, NATO, and the US are considered heroes by many here who fled. They recite by heart the exact number of days that NATO dropped bombs on Belgrade and other targets to end the Kosovo expulsions – seventy-two. As we drove the mountain road this morning the UN driver recounted how he traveled the opposite direction a decade ago, home from Macedonia, "in a NATO motorcade." He waited three months more to bring his family home, wanting to be sure that a fragile peace would hold.

Today in Serbia, voters go to the polls in national elections, picking between two candidates dubbed by the foreign press as "moderate and Europe-leaning" on one side, and "radical nationalist and Russia-leaning" on the other. On Kosovo, however, their position is the same – it must remain a part of Serbia. The imminent declaration of independence is regarded in Serbia akin to how Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring California a sovereign nation might be received in Washington. But 17,000 NATO troops, including a large US military base, seems to assure that hot rhetoric and border crossing hassles are likely as far as Serbia will go.

The challenges ahead for the 2 million people who inhabit this nation-to-be are rooted much more in economics than in political aggression (though there is concern about whether large numbers of Serbs in the nation's north will leave). Kosovo, when it declares independence, will not only be the world's newest nation, it will also be among the youngest. Half its people are under 25-years-old and adult unemployment soars near 40%.

"Right now what we mainly produce is trash," another Kosovar told me. The roads are littered with plastic bags and gutted automobile carcasses. Organized crime is rampant and growing here. Idleness, especially among the young, is worrisome. And everything, everything is essentially dictated by foreigners. The UN is the official government here. The International Monetary Fund, so notorious for its economic dictates tied to aid, wields orders here even before it has provided a dime.

Kosovo, like South Africa, Bolivia, Eastern Europe and other corners of the world in the last two decades, is headed down the exhilarating path of transforming its national identity. And as in those other places, popular expectations are high, unrealistically high, about what rebirth will bring.

It is only after the echoes of the fireworks fade and after the bullets shot into the sky (hopefully) roll off of rooftops that the not-so-romantic work of nation building will begin.

Water Balloon Wars

Dear Readers:

Well one of the saving graces of being away from Bolivia this week is that I will not be a giant waking target for water balloons during Carnival. Believe me, a six foot tall gringo makes a popular target. But not nearly so popular as a young woman and a foreigner. For a perspective on what it means to walk in those soaked shoes this Carnival season, we bring you this Blog by The Democracy Center’s Lily (aka “Sploosh”) Whitesell.

For my own take on Carnival season, read here.

Jim Shultz

Water Balloon Wars

It is one of the most unique wonderful things about Cochabamba and Carnival (and there are many). It’s a time that mischievous kids (and kids-at-heart) await eagerly. It comes when the sun beats down the hardest, and when all Bolivia is preparing for the huge parties of Carnival.

The whole city decides, at once, to have a giant water fight.

Old women pump water guns, little kids throw water balloons out of third story windows, and young men (and women!) go out on the backs of trucks or motorcycles for drive-by-water-balloonings. Woe is the innocent pedestrian who decides to take a weekend walk up Calle Pando, where jovenes line up on opposite sides of the street to hurl balloons at each other (and anyone else) for hours.

As both a 20-something woman and a foreigner, I am something of a quintessential target. The other day I was the last person to squeeze onto a trufi, which meant I was left standing in the doorway. As the bus made its way up the Prado, I narrowly missed getting nailed with a bucketful of water that hit the back of the bus, and my fellow bus-riders quickly urged me to come further in, not wanting to become unintended casualties.

Each year, I walk around with water balloons stuffed in my purse, ready to strike or, as is more often the case, to defend myself. I've ducked behind candy stands, hid behind old ladies, and used other water-ballooners as shields. I've learned the techniques for making the balloons (small so that they're easier to throw and don't use up as much water), tying them (tie them tight so that they burst on contact instead of just bouncing off), for maximizing impact (if you have a group you want to get, throw a balloon at the tree above their heads; it will break there and soak them all), and for throwing them out of the window of a moving vehicle (don't forget to take into account the motion of the car in your aim). I don’t miss out on the fun.

However, as with everything else in this world of ours, there are some negative aspects to what would otherwise seem to be a purely innocent, temporary break in the norms of society. I won’t be able to wear a white shirt for a month. The contents of my purse have to be safely wrapped up in plastic bags. When walking around the city between the hours of 10AM and 7PM, there is the constant fear of the water-fight equivalent of a land mine: the bucket from the balcony. And some days you just don't want to walk around with a wet spot on your behind or you just don't feel like dodging the balloons.

But mostly, it's just about enjoying it or, for those that are less fond of the Bolivian tradition, finding your peace with it. This is not only the warmest time of year; it's also the rainy season, which means that it can be 95 degrees out with the sun beating down and then rain a half hour later without any kind of internal inconsistency. Clouds can come over the mountains to transform the skies at surprising speeds. It's part of the spontaneity of this season that I think helps inspire these water wars. You never know whether you will come home wet or dry when you go out anyway; San Pedro is playing with water, why can't we?

Now, for the well-informed Cochabamba aficionados out there, many of you will say, "Hey, isn't this the city that had protests over the privatization of their water system just a few years ago? Isn't this the city where people still only get water to their houses three or four days a week?" The answer is yes, and Cochabambino water balloons are notoriously small for that reason. But this is also a city where people know how to celebrate, how to give thanks when there is abundance. And in the one time of the year when there is water aplenty, Cochabamba knows how to celebrate that abundance.

Some key Spanish phrases for the weeks leading up to Carnival:

Jugar con agua - Play with water

Globear - To go out with water balloons (often bringing up to 100 balloons and a group of friends with the intent of using them all within an hour or two)

Lanzar/tirar globos - To throw water balloons

Chisguetes - Water guns

Perdicion inminente - Impending doom -- the feeling you get when you turn the corner onto a deserted street and 15 yards away is a group of four Bolivians with plastic shopping bags bulging with different colored water balloons

uuuaaaiiiiiiii!!!! - The noise you make when a water balloon bursts unexpectedly on your back

Written by Lily Whitesell