Book Event this Friday in La Paz, and Our New Video on the Web

For our readers in La Paz, we hope that you will join us this Friday evening for a great event – the presentation of our new book, Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization (the Spanish edition). The event will be a joint one with Naomi Klein, who will be presenting her new book, Shock Doctrine. Here are the details:

Book Presentation: Dignity and Defiance and Shock Doctrine

When: Friday, May 2 – 6:30pm
Where: Palacio de Comunicaciones, Ave. Mariscal Santa Cruz, isq. Calle Oruro
Admission: Free
Presenters: Jim Shultz and Naomi Klein (with commentary by other guests)
Hosts: The Democracy Center, Fundación Solon, Editoriales Plural

There will be music and video as well!

Dignity and Defiance, The Video Now on You Tube

Members of The Democracy Center team recently joined with our good friend Ismael Saavedra of the School for International Training to produce a dramatic new video based on Dignity and Defiance. The video, which includes a minute of footage associated with each of the book's eight chapters, can be seen by clicking on the screen above, or on the link here.

Dignity and Defiance on the Web

As promised (after a few technical delays), the Spanish edition of Dignity and Defiance is now available in complete form, for free, on the Internet. You can read it here. We invite you to make all the pirated copies you like. The idea is to get the book into people's hands.

Two Other Important Book Events in Cochabamba This Week

This seems to not only be Autonomy (and Anti-) Week in Bolivia, but Book Week as well. We'd like to draw your attention to two other important book presentations this week here in Cochabamba:

1. Nosotros Somos la Coordinadora: A new book by a collection of authors about the citizens' movement that led the Cochabamba Water Revolt

Friday, May 2: 9am
Auditorium of the Trabajadores Fabriles (Factory Workers Union)
Plaza Principal, northeast corner

2. Shock Doctrine: Cochabamba presentation by Naomi Klein

Saturday, May 3: 9:30 am
CESU
Calle Calama #235, between Nataniel Aguirre and Esteban Arce

Happy reading to all and I hope we see you Friday evening in La Paz.

Here Comes May 4th

Last night I went to the movies. It was a Hollywood flick based mainly on a clever cinematic device. The same 23 minutes during a terrorist attack on the U.S. President is replayed four or five times (I lost count) from different perspectives.

Next weekend will bring the Bolivian version of this dramatic device, but live instead of in cinemascope. Please be patient, I'll get to the mataphor eventually.

On Sunday May 4th an event will unfold here that will bring in reporters worldwide. This kind of attention over the years generally only comes to Bolivia when either: a) the government is going to fall, or b) people are going to start trying to kill one another over politics. In this case it will be the vote by the department of Santa Cruz on whether to approve “statutes of autonomy.” Some visiting press smell the possibility of one or both.

The Vote that Is and the Vote that Isn’t

The May 4th vote in Santa Cruz is a big deal in Bolivia. Let’s not lose site of that. In the current three ring circus of Bolivian politics, regional autonomy is in the center ring.

The new constitution produced by a year-long Constituent Assembly and backed by President Morales, was supposed to be the center ring next Sunday. But that vote got knocked off schedule formally because national election officials said the voting process didn’t meet all the legal requirements. But I think the real reason that Morales and MAS didn’t press forward had more to do with something they smelled, the real possibility of getting defeated.

Now, the Santa Cruz autonomy vote was officially given the same procedural thumbs down as the Constitution referendum, by the same officials at the same time. But, in contrast to Morales and MAS, Santa Cruz leaders clearly smell a whopping victory and, well, those are circumstances under which process and constitutionality are often set aside as less urgent by those doing the smelling.

The growing global interest in the autonomy vote next Sunday seems to revolve around two basic questions:

1. What does the vote really mean?

There are basically two main interpretations, both eager to make their case in rhetorical extremes.

The international left view is summed up by a recent letter on the subject, signed by 200 prominent left names from a variety of countries, including, from the U.S., Noam Chomsky and Ramsey Clark:

The subversive and unconstitutional actions of the oligarchic groups to try to divide the Bolivian nation reflect the racist and elitist minds of these sectors and constitute a very dangerous precedent not only for the country's integrity, but for other countries in our region.

[Note to whomever wrote this, in case you are reading: This is the kind of writing from left intellectuals that no one else really understands. FYI.]

Then there are the Santa Cruz civic leaders sponsoring the vote. They have proclaimed the vote, in essence: A democratic bulwark against Evo Morales’ Rasputin-like efforts to join Bolivia surgically to Cuba and Venezuela in a march toward left-wing authoritarianism. What do you say readers – does that about capture it?

Santa Cruz’s calming and mellow departmental governor, Ruben Costas threw some new logs onto the political fire this week by declaring that passage of the autonomy statutes would usher in a “second republic”, enflaming even more the charges of a secessionist plot. “Second Republic” to some sounds like “Third Reich” to others.

By the way, in case you missed it, according to the current round of conspiracy theories that secessionist plot is being handcrafted by the U.S. Ambassador here, who it seems also single-handedly engineered the same fete in Kosovo beforehand. This, of course, is despite ample evidence that the current Ambassador is little able to manage his own Embassy with much skill, much less a clandestine political conspiracy. But perhaps incompetence is just the political cover dejour.

Okay, do we all get the picture now? In summary:

1. Santa Cruz is going to vote.

2. The autonomy movement there was instigated by the region’s wealthy elite, with a good deal of economic self-interest and racism as fuel.

3. However, long ago that movement and the anti-Evo sentiment driving it also won the support of a lot of people who aren’t rich or white or oligarchs. This is – alternatively depending on your point of view – the product of political brainwashing or skilled political organizing. Take your pick.

4. Autonomy will win by a lot.

5. Then no one really knows what happens next.

On the two substantive issues that drive the autonomy issue – land reform and gas and oil revenue – the region and the Morales government seem to cancel each other out.

On land, Santa Cruz is one of the areas of Bolivia that land reform in the 1950s never really reached. I don’t see how Evo does much of anything there on land without sending in the Army to enforce it. And that is about as likely as me becoming one of Las Magnificas (though it does remain a secret dream). The episode last year of Morales’ quick (and wise) withdrawal of troops from the Santa Cruz airport is pretty good evidence of the government’s thinking on that topic.

On Santa Cruz’s desire for a bigger slice of gas and oil revenue, the situation is reversed and it is Morales who holds the upper hand. Bolivia’s big petroleum buyers are the governments of Argentina and Brazil, both currently left and sympathetic to Morales. The payments go to La Paz first, not the region. And don’t look for any sudden side deals from either country with the Newly Independent Republic of Santa Cruz.

Which takes us to the big question on people’s minds here…

2. Will there be violence?

In all kinds of political and social circles here one hears in ominous whispered tones the words, civil war. No question, the situation is delicate and dangerous. But as others wiser than I in the ways of Bolivia have pointed out, don’t look for rival armies to march on one another, or violence directly led by either faction. It is a long way from the dusty roads of Achacachi (where this past week I saw pro-constitution messages splashed in paint across the plentiful rocks) to the covered patio of Alexander’s Coffee in Santa Cruz. Morales has called for indigenous groups to suspend previous plans to march to the region the day of the vote.

The real danger of violence – and it is real – is from unexpected explosions where rival sides will find themselves in physical proximity to one another. Think the streets of Cochabamba, January 11, 2007. This includes, for example, the impoverished island of Plan 3000 near the city and indigenous areas of the department where community members would like as much autonomy from Costas and Company as Costas and Company want from Evo.

About that Cinematic Premise I Began With

All of which brings me back to watching the same 23 minutes over and over again from different vantage points.

Next Sunday, May 4th, the eyes of those who tune in via the “oligarchs vs. left authoritarians” channel will be watching the autonomy vote. Meanwhile on opposite sides of the Cochabamba Valley, Sunday will be marked in other, vastly different ways.

At the Fairgrounds the annual Expo will be wrapping to a close, ending a week of thousands braving the sun to see new cars, test samples of dried fruit, vomit up some of that dried fruit on the carnival rides, and celebrate Bolivian entrepreneurship in rare and exotic forms.

On my side of the Valley, here in Tiquipaya, we will have the annual chicha festival, and people in lesser numbers will also brave sun, but in the name of getting somewhere between tipsy to plastered on fermented corn.

So, I leave it to my readers to determine for themselves which is the “real Bolivia” that will be on display here May 4th. Will it be the people who march to suspect polls in Santa Cruz demanding a statutory divorce from La Paz? Will it be the indigenous peoples and left intellectuals warning that the vote is a racist plot? Will it be the people gawking at the latest cell phone models at the Expo? Or will it be my neighbors partaking in the best that fermented corn has to offer?

Or is Bolivia all of those things simultaneously, and desperately in need of a will and a way to hold such disparate pieces together?

The World Bank Tries to Re-Write Bolivian History

As any Bolivian newspaper reader knows, paid political propaganda is a staple of the Sunday editions. Running full-page ads, or whole inserts, aimed at self-promotion is a practice that crosses ideological lines.

In the same edition readers might be treated to twenty column inches of Evo Morales wrapping himself in the wonders of Bolivia's new aid plan for the elderly, side-by-side with four pages of photos of Cochabamba Governor Manfred Reyes Villa cutting ribbons at newly paved roads. All this of course is at Bolivian taxpayer expense.

Well, now the World Bank's Bolivia office has decided to get into the propaganda game. This month it produced a snazzy little 22-page booklet that it is distributing by the tens of thousands in three major Bolivian dailies, in La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz. The booklet is titled, "Ten Things They Never Told You About the World Bank in Bolivia."

There is, however, a good reason that Bolivians aren't used to hearing some of the Bank's ten boasts – it's because they aren't true. In fact, a few of the Bank's claims wander so far into fiction that one wonders whether the Bolivia office has hired Pinocchio and Associates Inc. as its new public relations firm.

Inside the Imagination of the World Bank: We Won the Bechtel Case for You!

The real whopper among the Bank's claims is 'Thing They Never Told You #6': "The Aguas del Tunari Conflict [the Bechtel vs. Bolivia case] was resolved by an arbitration facilitated by the World Bank."

The Bank writes:

In 2002, after being expelled from Cochabamba the company Aguas Del Tunari [Bechtel's subsidiary] presented a demand before ICSID [The International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, the World Bank-operated trade court]. In the end the controversy resulted in favor of the Bolivian state, which bought the shares of the company for a price of 2 dollars. This shows that arbitrations can prevent trials against countries and serve to resolve conflicts.

Perhaps a short look at the facts the Bank seemed to miss:

First, it was the World Bank itself that set the entire Bechtel-in-Cochabamba fiasco in motion. In 1997 the Bank made privatizing Cochabamba's water a condition of any further aid for expanding water service in the country. In the aftermath of the 2000 Water Revolt – following the bloody death of a 17-year-old boy and the wounding of more than a hundred others – Bank officials went to work to disclaim any connection to the privatization. But even those denials ended after The Democracy Center led reporters to a World Bank report confirming the Bank's demand that the water be privatized.

Second, the World Bank did not protect Bolivia from facing a case against it by Bechtel. It provided the venue where Bechtel filed the case, shielded from the public and press. Under the Bank's helpful graces Bechtel sought $50 million from Cochabamba water users, after having invested less than $1 million.

In 2002 when Cochabamba water users petitioned the Bank to open the case to public participation and media scrutiny, a tribunal headed by a World Bank appointee rejected the request, insisting that the case be handled in secret. Not surprisingly, none of this appears in the Bank's little booklet.

It seems quite clear that the Bank would love for Bolivians to believe that the Bank itself deserves credit for the case being settled for pennies. That honor however, goes not to the institution that aided Bechtel, but to Bolivian Waqter Revolt leaders and the thousands of citizens on five continents that pressured Bechtel to drop its Bolivian demand.

Other Bedtime Stories from the Bank

The Bolivia office of the World Bank's attempt at spin does not end with its re-write of history on Bechtel vs. Bolivia.

Take 'Thing They Never Told You #3': "The World Bank decided not to collect the debt that it had with Bolivia." This makes it sound like Bank officials just woke up one day with a big smiles on their face and a song in their hearts and out of great generosity suddenly decided to excuse Bolivia from paying back all the money it owed. Not mentioned is the fact that debt cancellation, in Bolivia and elsewhere, came only after a decade of aggressive campaigning by religious communities and others worldwide, who pointed out the heavy burden that the world's poorest were bearing to finance bogus development deals pushed and financed by the Bank. Maybe Bank officials just missed all those protesters outside the doors of their annual meetings.

Or consider ‘Thing They Never Told You #4’: “The World Bank is one of the least expensive sources of financing on the planet.” Whether this is true with regard to the Bank’s interest rates may be a reasonably debated point. But not included in the Bank’s definition of ‘cheap’ is the payment taken in lost democracy. Assistance from the World Bank is never a simple cash transaction, but one full of dictates and conditionalities about how nations should conduct their economic life – such as thou shalt privatize.

Banks making student loans, for example, do not generally dictate your college major. Nor do banks making home loans insist that you should paint your house green and not yellow. The World Bank however does not blanche at such demands and as a result of these conditions over the past decades; the price of World Bank loans in Bolivia has been very high indeed.

A History That Can Not Be Rewritten with Spin

There is certainly one thing that the World Bank got right – its image in Bolivia is miserable. The World Bank played a leading role in decades of so-called 'structural adjustment' policies that wrecked Bolivian industries, traded away natural resources at bargain prices, and left the country deeply in debt for boondoggle projects that often just benefited the small elite that cozied up to the Bank's ideological agenda. In fact, during the time in which Bolivia was supposedly deciding these issues 'democratically', the Bank had dozens of Bolivian public officials on its own consultant payroll, just to make sure the Bank's bidding was done correctly.

I am not, as some others are, a 'World Bank hater'. However, if the Bank's office here thinks that it can remake its image through public relations and spin, it may have another hard Bolivia experience ahead of it. Asked by e-mail about how much in Bank dollars the Bolivia office spent on the booklets, the Bank offered only that they cost 14 cents ($US) a piece to print but would not reveal how many they had printed nor the cost of distributing them. Secrecy, it seems, remains a World Bank reflex. But based on the number of Sunday papers distributed in the three cities (well more than 100,000), the Bank's public relations project was not a cheap enterprise.

The World Bank has a new representative in Bolivia, Oscar Avalle. If fiction is how Mr. Avalle intends to guide his tenure in Bolivia, he won’t be doing Bolivia, the World Bank, or himself any favors. My guess is that he can expect to hear from Bolivian social movement leaders about his opening act, and the welcome will not be a warm one.


Note: We have sent this Blog post to the World Bank's Bolivia office and invited officials there to respond, as they may wish, in the comments section below.

Book Launch this Thursday in Cochabamba!!

As our regular readers know, the focus of our attention for the past year and a half has been the research, writing, editing and production of a full length book – Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization.

Sometimes we refer to it as The Book that Ate the Democracy Center.

This Thursday in Cochabamba we will host the public presentation of the Spanish language translation of the book: Desafiando la Globalización: Historias de la Experiencia Boliviana (Plural Press). All readers here in Cochabamba are welcome!

Here are the details:


When: Thursday, April 10, 6:30 pm

Where: Centro Boliviano Americano (CBA), Calle 25 de Mayo
entre Ecudador y Mayor Rocha, Cochabamba

Admission: Free

The event will include the showing of a new video based on the book, commentary, music, and more.

On May 2 we will be doing a presentation of the book in La Paz, jointly with Canadian author Naomi Klein. We'll post the details on that closer to the date. We hope to visit other Bolivian cities with the book in the coming months.

We are also very proud that the book is being published in Spanish and in Bolivia before it is published abroad in English. In September Merlin Press will publish a special U.K. edition and at the end of the year the University of California Press will publish the U.S. edition. We'll be doing speaking tours for both those editions as well.

In addition, to make the book as accessible to Bolivians as possible, we are providing copies to public libraries across the nation and will be posting the entire Spanish language edition for free download on the Web. We’ll have news on that as soon as it is ready in a few days, along with a more complete list of where the book can be purchased or viewed for free.

Meanwhile, for those in Cochabamba, we hope to see you Thursday evening!

The image above of the book’s cover is the painting, “Mercedes, Protectora de la Coca” by Cochabamba artist Valentina Campos.

The 40th Anniversary of the Killing of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, as many will note, is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Most of those who will mark this date in some way were not yet born when it occurred (I was 10, old enough to remember it) and yet it affects them in various ways as well.

Writers more gifted and I will stop today to reflect on the significance of this day in a nation's troubled history. But especially for those many readers born long after April 4, 1968, I want to offer two things that can help bring that day four decades ago into being today, one to watch and one to read.

The offering to watch is the video clip above. On that April night Senator Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning in the Indiana primary and announced the news to a crowd that was mostly black. His speech that evening, a tribute to Dr. King, is one of the most moving pieces of spontaneous oratory in the nation's history and many young people have never seen it.

The offering to read is a piece of writing from Dr. King, my favorite of his writings, Letter from the Birmingham Jail. He wrote this wrote 45 years ago this month – from the Birmingham Alabama jail.

Thank you all.

Morales and Cheney Announce Halliburton to Takeover Santa Cruz

In a stunning move, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced Monday that Halliburton Corp. the Texas-based firm managing U.S. civilian operations in Iraq, will take over administration of the department of Santa Cruz. The move was widely seen as an effort to diffuse the explosive political crisis over demands by Santa Cruz that it be granted political autonomy.

“This is an opportunity for Bolivia to put the regional autonomy issue behind us,” said Morales at a packed La Paz news conference. Under a deal negotiated in secret by Bolivian and Santa Cruz officials, at the corporation’s Houston offices, Halliburton will begin administration all of the department’s key public services, as well as its tax collection and interactions with foreign oil firms.

“This step will allow us to move on to the other pressing challenges we face as a people, such as the development of our oil and gas resources, and securing the right to play soccer at 5,000 meters,” said Morales.

Santa Cruz governor Ruben Costas appeared side-by-side with the President to endorse the plan. “Santa Cruz is a hard working region and a prosperous one. We believe that by merging that eagerness to work with Halliburton’s well-established management expertise, we can bring new growth and efficiency across the department.”

Under the agreement the position of Governor will be abolished in Santa Cruz and Costas will assume the title of “Regional Director” under the supervision of a Halliburton management committee based in Houston. Santa Cruz civic leaders also announced that they would drop plans for a May 4 vote on the autonomy issue.

Cheney Makes Surprise Visit to Bolivia

Adding to the drama, U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney, en route to a previously scheduled trip to Brazil and Argentina, made an unannounced stopover in Bolivia to support the plan. The Vice President was CEO of Halliburton prior to joining the Republican ticket in 2000 and has played a controversial role in steering U.S. government projects, in Iraq and elsewhere, to his former company.

“This agreement is a landmark in the global effort to bring private sector expertise into public administration,” said Cheney in a brief La Paz appearance with Morales and Costas. “This is also the first time that a private company, from the U.S. or elsewhere, has ever taken over an entire state. This will help Halliburton develop the on-the-ground expertise it needs to eventually take over administration of an entire nation.”

A Cheney assistant, speaking off the record, told the Associated Press that two nations under current consideration for a complete Halliburton takeover are Romania and Malawi, sometime in late 2009.

Deal also Includes “Las Magnificas” and New Flag

According to a Halliburton news release (available here), effective July 1, the company will assume operating responsibility for a range of services, including public schools, water service, administration of the Santa Cruz airport, as well as oversight of the region’s popular beauty pageants. Under the deal, the Santa Cruz beauty queens known as “Las Magnificas” will change their official name to “Those Halliburton Gals” and will make a minimum of two goodwill tours to Texas each year for the duration of the 25-year contract.

Also unveiled Monday was a new Santa Cruz flag. Emblazoned across its traditional green and white stripes will be the Halliburton corporate logo of a $100 bill. This will be the first time that U.S. currency will appear on any government flag. Reuters quoted U.S. representatives here saying that they expected the new flag to help boost the fortunes of the sagging dollar.

“Every time people in Santa Cruz look up, they are going to see Benjamin Franklin smiling down on them,” said a U.S. Embassy official quoted by the news service. “Let’s see the Euro compete with that!”

Political Reaction Mixed

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) representative in Bolivia, Robert Landhom, told La Razon, “We always believed that the Morales government would eventually come around to the inherent wisdom of privatization but frankly, we never expected this. On the basis of this turnaround we think the door is wide open to approach the government about going into heavy foreign debt again as well.”

In El Alto, Felipe Mamani, leader of the left-wing Movement for the Defense of Sovereignty (MDS), said his group was prepared to resort to extremes to block the privatization move. He declared “We cannot allow our Camba brothers and sisters be taken hostage by a U.S. corporation.” MDS leaders threatened to seize the popular mascot of the Fino Cooking Oil Company – the eight-foot-tall Fino Man – until the agreement is rescinded.

In Cochabamba, Governor Manfred Reyes Villa, dismissed the move as, “a transparent act of cowardice by the Morales government to attempt to split our departments.” Reyes Villa told reporters, “Obviously the Halliburton deal was dictated directly from Caracas. But Cochabamba will not be left behind.”

The Cochabamba governor released a letter he sent Monday to Riley Bechtel, CEO of the San Francisco-based Bechtel Corporation, inviting the Corporation to return to Cochabamba and begin administration of the region. The Governor urged Bechtel officials to forget their ousting during the 2000 Water Revolt. “Everyone here loves you guys now. We even have plans to rename our local soccer team Bechtelman,” Reyes Villa wrote company officials.

But Santa Cruz civic leaders quickly embraced the move. Civic Committee member Silvia Brocovic told the newspaper El Dia, “Halliburton has promised to deliver smooth administration, modest amounts of corruption spread evenly, and a very large supply of big hats. We see this as a win/win for everyone.”

President Morales’ spokesman, Alex Contreras explained to reporters how the Santa Cruz/ Halliburton deal came about. “These guys came down here and asked to see the President. Naturally we were quite suspicious at first. But after hearing about progress with public works under Halliburton management in Iraq, Evo finally turned to the rest of us and said, ‘Compañeros, isn’t that exactly what we want for Santa Cruz?”

“After that,” said Contreras, it was really just a matter of a few phone calls and working out the details."

“And by the way,” he added, “Did you know that Vice President Cheney likes to chew coca? Who knew?”


Happy April Fools Day from The Democracy Center!