Bush Suspends Bolivia's Participation in ATPDEA Trade Program

For Thanksgiving this year President Bush took to the White House lawn to pardon a turkey (a presidential tradition). Meanwhile, back inside the White House pressroom, the administration was announcing that it was turning another turkey into U.S. foreign policy – formally implementing the administration's threat to remove Bolivia from the Andean Trade Preferences Program (ATPDEA). The move could destroy as many as 20,000 jobs in Bolivia, just as the global economic crisis is driving up unemployment to levels not seen in decades.

To see a video produced by The Democracy Center last month featuring interviews with three workers whose jobs are on the line, see here. The video was also shown at the Trade Representative's public hearing on the Bush decree.

In a statement, Mr. Bush's press secreatry declared:

President Bush signed a proclamation that suspends the designation of Bolivia as a beneficiary country under the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) and the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA). The suspension, which takes effect on December 15, 2008, is the result of Bolivia's failure to cooperate with the United States on counternarcotics efforts, which is one criterion for ATPA and ATPDEA eligibility. If Bolivia were to improve its performance under the ATPA and ATPDEA programs' criteria, the President would have the discretion to issue a proclamation to redesignate Bolivia as a beneficiary country.

Seeking to Tie President Obama's Hands?

There is certainly a reasonable debate to be had about Bolivia's current anti-drug efforts, and the Bolivian government has expressed a willingness to have it. But in reality the Bush announcement looks mostly like a political effort to tie the hands of his successor on an issue fraught with politics.

Members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, have raised questions about President Morales' commitment to deal with the portion of Bolivia's coca crop that eventually ends up as part of the illegal drug trade. To be clear, a strong portion of Bolivia's coca goes for traditional uses such as chewing, and to legitimate industrial uses such as tea. But not all of it does and a good deal of Bolivian coca does feed the illegal drug trade, though primarily headed toward Brazil and Argentina, not the U.S. (which imports its cocaine primarily from U.S. ally Colombia).

That concern, tied to the ATPDEA agreement, was translated in October into a much more sensible approach, and a bipartisan one – legislation that renewed Bolivia's participation in ATPDEA for six months (instead of the year granted to other nations), pending a review by the incoming administration. That approach made sense at a variety of levels. It was bipartisan and it left the policy choice to the new president as part of a new political approach to the region. This is very different than putting that policy decision in the hands of a lame-duck President whose deep unpopularity in the region is rivaled only by his deep unpopularity at home.

The bipartisan Congressional approach also maximized the leverage that U.S. policy makers might have on Bolivia anti-drug efforts. The one issue in Bolivia/U.S. relations that the Morales government has worked hard is the country's continued participation in those trade preferences, a theme I heard over and over again in my recent meetings with both Bolivian and U.S. policy makers. The Bush executive decree only pushes Bolivia father away from being influenced by Washington, as it seeks to replace U.S. markets for those textiles and other products.

And an administration headed by a Harvard MBA might at least have enough common sense to know that markets broken are not so easily put back together, as U.S. suppliers look elsewhere.

All this will put the incoming Obama administration in the awkward position of having to reverse the Bush decree just to put its policy in alignment with Republicans and Democrats in Congress, a move it should make quickly nonetheless. President Obama will have some strong political cover if he does make such a move, including from the senior Republican in the Senate on foreign policy issues, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana. President Morales met with Lugar last week in Washington, after which the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced:

The United States regrets any perception that it has been disrespectful, insensitive, or engaged in any improper activities that would disregard the legitimacy of the current Bolivian government or its sovereignty. We hope to renew our relationship with Bolivia, and to develop a rapport grounded on respect and transparency. In this regard, after appropriate and constructive official contacts, I hope that we will have a U.S. Ambassador in La Paz soon, and that we will look forward to having a Bolivian Ambassador here in Washington, D.C.

Lifting the suspension on the ATPDEA with Bolivia will strengthen the growing political and economic relationship between our nations and help bring new jobs and good will to the region.

In effect, the Bush administration's final decision on Bolivia and ATPDEA this week is the equivalent of Mr. Bush leaving a plate of stale turkey leftovers in the White House refrigerator, with a note encouraging the new occupant to eat up. President Obama will be far better off dumping the unwelcome gift in the trash and starting over fresh with Bolivia. There is plenty of eagerness by the Morales government to do so, and support on Capitol Hill as well.

Film Review: The Big Sellout

Readers:

I am in Washington this week (more on that later) and marveling about how deep a crisis it takes for some people to learn a basic fact of economics -- raw faith in a marketplace with limited public rules is a recipe for disaster. There is a sad justice in this. It was this city that pushed developing countries, like Bolivia, so hard to toe the line on "unfettered markets will set you free." And now those chickens have come home to roost and even the mighty giant Citicorp has come here hat in hand begging for public cash. So it looks like corporate America only wants unfettered markets when things go as they hoped, but wants government intervention to be massive when they screw up. I wish I could get that deal, and so do many other Americans.

It turns out that the sad history of market fundamentalism in Latin America was a preview of events to come in the U.S., tales of am economic theology run amok.

In this post our intrepid Lily Whitesell offers up a brief review of a recent film from California Newsreel, The Big Sellout, which documents the Cochabamba Water Revolt as well as three other cases where privatization hasn't worked. Here is her review.

Jim Shultz

The Big Sellout

The Big Sellout begins by introducing its viewers to stories of how privatization has affected real people’s lives across the globe. A middle aged mother in the Philippines frantically tries to find money for a twice-a-week kidney dialysis that her quiet teenage son needs to live. After 20,000 families in South Africa lose their electricity in a single month, the community decides to take matters into their own hands. Railway train drivers in Great Britain who used to boast the most efficient system in Europe now fear that the poorly maintained tracks could cost them their lives.

The documentary follows hospitals in the Philippines, electricity in South Africa, trains in Great Britain, and water in Cochabamba, which were all privatized in the 1980s and 1990s. In interviews with Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, it explains how privatization came to be the prevailing doctrine in many of the industrialized countries of the world, and how it was exported to developing countries through the World Bank and IMF, promising more efficient systems, greater investment, and better management.

The Big Sellout is a solid introduction to both how private companies have failed to meet those promises, and a deeper look at what is lost when basic services are privatized without being regulated. In Great Britain, the train system has lost its long-range vision, planning, and basic maintenance. The results have been severe job cuts, massive train delays, and a higher incidence of train crashes and deaths on the rails. In the Philippines and South Africa, the privatized health system and electricity company lost the goal of providing services for people in favor of profits and a better bottom line. Those unable to pay have had no option but to live without electricity and to let loved ones die without proper treatment.

Interviews with a spokesperson from the World Bank and a short promotional video from the IMF, juxtaposed with the four stories of privatization failures, reveal just how removed those backing privatization can be from the communities their policies affect. After a series deadly train crashes in Great Britain, the maintenance of the railway tracks was put back under public control. However, nations like the Philippines, South Africa, and Bolivia have had strict conditions written into their loans from the World Bank and the IMF, taking away the ability of regular citizens to have a say in what is in public hands and what is privatized.

At the same time, The Big Sellout brings to light stories of people fighting back from the ground up. In South Africa, a community group turns the lights back on for hundreds of houses that will never have the money to pay electricity costs. In Great Britain, unions are organizing to prevent further cuts. In the end, the film looks to Cochabamba's struggle against Bechtel for inspiration and hope in fighting other failed privatizations.

The film provides solid stories from around the world of when privatization has not worked for people – and how groups around the world have used both creative and traditional ways to combat policies imposed from above or abroad. California Newsreel’s efforts to bring these stories into the public eye are extremely useful to both informing a broader audience as well as inspiring people to take action in the face of injustice.

Written by Lily Whitesell

The Clinton Campaign Team Plots a Return to Bolivian Politics

The last Bolivian politician who put his fortunes in the hands of Bill Clinton's political advisors now sits in unofficial exile in suburban Maryland, fighting both a criminal indictment in Bolivia and a multi-million dollar civil case in the U.S.

In 2002, a collection of consultants from Mr. Clinton's former A-team – James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, Jeremy Rosner, and others – headed south to the Andes to work a lucrative contract aimed at putting a staunch U.S. ally, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, back in office after a five year time-out required by the Bolivian constitution. As political achievements go, they did a helleva job. They took a President widely hated for his leading role in a decade of Washington-driven privatizations and maneuvered him through a field of stronger opponents to a razor thin 2% point win.

Both the campaign and its disastrous aftermath were documented close-up in award-winning documentary, "Our Brand is Crisis," by U.S. filmmaker Rachel Boynton.

In Search of a Sequel

Now apparently the former Clinton team is fishing around for a Bolivian sequel. Last month the political consulting firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research posted a job announcement for an "International Campaign Representative" in Bolivia. The firm, which bills itself as, "a global leader in public opinion research and strategic consulting," announced that:

[We are] seeking a highly professional individual to work in-country as part of a political campaign in Bolivia as our on-the-ground representative. Applicant must have substantial experience in politics and/or campaigns, preferably including political organizing and communications strategy, and fluency in Spanish. Contract would begin as soon as possible. Contract likely for a few months, possibly longer. Requires very long hours and ability to multitask, deal with senior-level officials, and operate in a high-stress setting.

All this raises the obvious question – who is the mystery candidate that Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Rosner hope to sweep into power this time. If Bolivians approve, as expected, a new constitution in the upcoming January 25 vote, a new round of Presidential elections will be held in December 2009, with Evo Morales newly enabled to seek re-election.

The 2002 Goni Strategy, Overt and Covert

The 2002 Goni campaign was really a textbook case of how to apply a math equation to politics and make it work. After exhaustive polling and focus group research, the Carville/Greenberg/Rosner team came back to the former President with three basic realities (delivered, quite remarkably, on camera, thanks to Ms. Boynton):

1. He had a solid base of popular support among something just shy of 25% of the Bolivian electorate.

2. The remaining 75% would never vote for him under almost any conditions. They hated him.

3. The only way to have a chance at winning was to maintain that support among a quarter of the nation and then do whatever was necessary to make sure that no other candidate won more than 25% either.

And in 2002 that candidate was the fresh-faced former Mayor of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa, a politician known for completing a series of flashy public works across his city, and managing to make himself quite wealthy in the process. His name seemed always to be associated with the slogan, Roba, pero cumple – he steals but he delivers.

Polling by the U.S. experts also told them that the key to driving down Manfred's numbers was hammering him on two things, the cloudy corruption charges that seemed to follow him around and reminding voters of Reyes Villa's deep military past, in a nation still wary of soldiers turned politicians.

A barrage of advertising orchestrated by the men from El Norte filled the Bolivian airwaves with images of Manfred's multiple homes on two continents and of a young Captain Manfred in uniform. That drove Reyes Villa's once-high numbers down into Goni territory, but still not low enough.

The act that finally cut Reyes Villa off at the political knees, and won the Presidency for Sanchez de Lozada, was one that also came from the U.S., but this time not from the consultants but directly from the U.S. Embassy.

Just weeks before the Bolivian vote, Ambassador Manuel Rocha, an appointee of President Clinton, surprised most everyone with a highly publicized public rant against Evo Morales, a candidate trailing badly in third place. He also made a threat, "If you elect those who want Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the future of US assistance to Bolivia.”

The political impact was swift. Overnight thousands of voters, angered by such overt U.S. interference in their elections, switched their allegiance to Evo, nearly doubling his support in the polls (he eventually finished second, less than 2% behind Goni). And where did that support come from? As Morales' support leapt, Manfred's collapsed. The two shared a core political base, Cochabamba. And it was by no means a coincidence.

If your political strategy in 2002 was to pull votes away from Reyes Villa you have to give those voters somewhere else to go. That somewhere else was never going to be Goni, but it could be Evo, and Rocha's rant did the trick, overnight.

I once asked a source with connections to the campaign if it seemed plausible if Carville, Greenberg and company might have cooked up the winning scheme and paid a visit to the man who owed his Ambassadorship to their former client. "No," I was told. "They weren't strategic enough to do that." Then I asked if perhaps the attack on Evo had been set-up by Goni's own in-house Machiavelli, his long-time aid, Carlos Sanchez Berzain. "Oh yeah, he would have done it."

Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada fled Bolivia in October 2003, as protests swelled across the nation following his government's killings of dozens of citizens. It turned out that "crisis" wasn't so much the firm's brand, but its product.

The firm’s site also includes a lovely fictional account of Sanchez de Lozada’s final bloody days. Principal Jeremy Rosner writes, “Protests organized by opposition leaders in October 2003 resulted in scores of deaths and Sanchez de Lozada’s resignation.” Mr. Rosner fails to mention that troops under the command of his paying client fired the bullets, including at children.

Fleeing with Goni was his now-co-defendant in both the criminal and civil cases arising from those killings, Carlos Sanchez Berzain. Soon afterwards Mr. Berzain joined a Miami law practice with an old colleague of his from Bolivia, the former U.S. Ambassador, Manuel Rocha.

So, What is Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Up to Now?

Now back to that question – who is the mystery candidate who Team Goni 2002 will seek to guide into office in 2009? Is it Carlos Mesa, Goni's former Vice-President who left his own inherited presidency early in the face of other protests in 2005. The historian-turned-politician has been making a lot of new political noise recently. In the current edition of the Bolivian magazine Tal Cual, Mesa calls for the construction of a new political opposition to Morales, and criticizes the existing opposition as "never representing a significant, genuine leadership."

Is it Manfred Reyes Villa, who up until the moment of the lopsided vote that ended his Cochabamba governorship in August, was declaring his candidacy for President. In his silent exile (in Tiquipya or Miami, we don't know) has he been cutting a deal with the team that cost him the Presidency six years ago?

Is it a dark horse? Perhaps the Vice-President of PepsiCo, a Bolivia-U.S. dual citizen who dropped into the country for a couple of weeks in 2005 to see whether running for the Presidency that year might be a suitable promotion. He opted to stay in Manhattan, but given the financial turmoil in the U.S. maybe Bolivian politics is looking like a better career move now.

As another ex-President (one I respect a good deal), Eduardo Rodriguez said in the same article in Tal Cual, Bolivia does need a solid political opposition. Rodriguez, the former head of the nation's Supreme Court explained:

"Political equilibriums are essential to guarantee democratic plurality and all fundamental liberties. Without the presence of a democratic opposition the tendencies toward totalitarianism and hegemony are very big. What is fundamental is to preserve democratic liberties."

I agree with that assessment, in Bolivia, in the U.S. and in general about democracy.

But it seems unlikely that Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research is assembling a Bolivian team with the pure-hearted intent of helping create democratic balance in a nation they little-understand. More likely someone has some money to spend and some big ambitions. And he or she hopes that a little magic polling from those gringos who put Goni back in power once-upon-a-time might just do the trick.

But let's not forget how high the price was, in blood and fire, last time the firm came flying into town, a bill owed to the Bolivian people that has still not been paid.

Note: We invited the press office at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research to offer a comment on their new Bolivian plans, but they simply let us know that the position had been filled, with no other comment. If members of the press would like to try their luck and seeing what the firm is up to now in Bolivia, its press liason is Jaclyn Macek at: jmacek@gqrr.com.

The Bush Administration 'Decertifies" Bolivia's Anti-Drug Program

Readers:

This week President Morales is in the U.S. and among his goals is to lay the groundwork for better relations with the Obama administration than he has had with the Bush administration.

There are many thorny issues in the U.S./Bolivia relationship – trade issues, U.S. protection of Bolivia’s indicted ex-President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and Bolivia’s close relationship with U.S. antagonist Venezuela. But the toughest issue remains the U.S. War on Drugs in Bolivia, an issue that is likely to dominate the opening moves in the Morales-Obama relationship.

In September, the Bush administration formally “decertified” Bolivia’s anti-coca efforts, triggering among other things the administration’s removal of Bolivia from an important trade preference program, a move that could cost the country at least 20,000 jobs. To many the Bush administration move looked less like a sober assessment of Bolivia’s anti-drug efforts than it did one in a pile of retaliatory moves against Morales for his ouster of the U.S. Ambassador (whom Morales claimed was actively undermining the Bolivian government.

John Walsh, an expert on the U.S. drug war at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), wrote:

The Bush administration’s decision to label Bolivia as a “demonstrable failure” in drug control – and to then use decertification as the pretext for suspending trade preferences – was evidently meant to punish Bolivia for President Morales’ expulsion of the U.S. ambassador. But the decertification boomeranged because it was so obviously unjustified, underscoring longstanding complaints in Latin America that the certification process is hypocritical and decided for political reasons, rather than on the basis of the drug control record.

WOLA, along with another group, the Andean Information Network, recently published an analysis of the Bush administration’s ‘decertification decision, “Decertifying Bolivia: Bush Administration “Fails Demonstrably” to Make its Case.” That analysis was submitted to the U.S. Trade Representative as part of the administration’s public hearing process on its plans to axe Bolivia from the Andean Trade Preferences Act.

Because of the importance of this issue we wanted to bring this analysis to our readers’ attention. Below is a segment from the introduction and a link to the full analysis, which you can also go to directly here.

Jim Shultz


Decertifying Bolivia: Bush Administration “Fails Demonstrably” to Make its Case

An analysis by the Washington Office on Latin America and the Andean Information Network

On September 16, 2008, the Bush administration announced its determination that Bolivia had “failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months” to adhere to its “obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.”1 Ten days later, the Administration announced its intent to make Bolivia ineligible for benefits under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), asserting that “Bolivia’s demonstrable failure to cooperate in counternarcotics efforts over the past 12 months indicates that Bolivia is not meeting important criteria” to qualify for the tariff preferences.

The Bush administration’s “decertification” of Bolivia came just days after Bolivia expelled the U.S. ambassador, whom President Evo Morales accused of conspiring against the government.3 Departing Bolivia on September 14, the expelled U.S. ambassador, Philip Goldberg, warned Bolivians that the decision to expel him “could have serious impacts that have not been appropriately weighed.”

In explaining Bolivia’s decertification at a September 16 press briefing, David T. Johnson, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, remarked that the decertification “was not a hasty decision.”5 Asked specifically whether the decertification was “linked to the ambassador being kicked out or any other tit-for-tat,” Assistant Secretary Johnson said that it was not. But these protests deny the obvious – that the decision to decertify Bolivia was a reprisal against the Morales government for having just expelled the U.S. ambassador – not because of Bolivia’s supposed “demonstrable failure” in drug control.

Read the full analysis here.

An Update on our Peace Corps Blog

We have received a good deal of feedback following our Blog post last week about the Peace Corps pullout of Bolivia and the auctioning off of its Cochabamba training center.

A number of Peace Corps volunteers wrote to us thanking us for our support of their work. One of those who was recently returned home wrote, "Thank you for your human portrayal of the fate of PC Bolivia, and for filling me in on what has become of our beloved Huallani [the training center]. Now, back in the US and putting my life back together, I again find that your reporting is the best out there."

Though the Peace Corps management has not contacted us directly, we have been told by several different sources that those managers are not happy that we suggested a link between the Corps' sudden departure from Bolivia and a flurry of moves by the Bush administration that came at the same time, aimed at politically punishing President Morales for his ouster of the U.S. Ambassador. Those moves included the removal of Bolivia from the ATPDEA trade agreement, its 'decertification' of Bolivia's anti-drug efforts, and the expulsion of Bolivia's ambassador to the U.S.

The Peace Corps press office, in reply to an inquiry from The Democracy Center, wrote:

The safety and security of all Peace Corps Volunteers is the agency’s highest priority. Since January 07 in Bolivia, we’ve initiated our Emergency Action Plans 20 times at varying degrees including alerts, standfast, and volunteer consolidations. Peace Corps suspended the Bolivia program because of increasing civil unrest, including blockading of major transportation routes, and escalating violence against Bolivian citizens.

We are maintaining most of the PC vehicles, all the furniture and equipment in the Cochabamba office as well as a skeletal staff. The furniture and equipment that is being sold is from the Training Center that was scheduled to be shut down and moved to the main Peace Corps Office in Cochabamba. The decision to close the Training Center was made a couple months prior to the decision to suspend the program.

I am certainly willing to listen to reasoned debate on why the Peace Corps was pulled from Bolivia and what real plans the Corps has for coming back. Some sources have told us the Corps claims it will be back in operation as soon as a year from now, others say 2010. Officially the Corps says it "plans to re-assess the suspension when the security environment improves in Bolivia." Our main hope, as we expressed earlier, is that the Peace Corps comes back soon. We think it is good for Bolivia and good for the U.S. as well.

The High Art of Remembering Dead Loved Ones

Readers,

A week ago, as lucky children in the U.S. were sorting and counting their Halloween candy (my first daughter didn't like chocolates, so I got all the Butterfingers!), Bolivians were celebrating their own end-of-October/start-of-November holiday, Todos Santos. The cemeteries of the nation, including out local one in Tiquipaya, were filled with smiling families picnicking at the gravesites of parents and others lost but not forgotten. Altars featured their favorite foods and conversations their favorite stories.

A little late, we bring you a post from the Democracy Center's intrepid Yi-Ching Hwang, who answers the age-old question – can a young woman from Taiwan and San Diego make 't’anta wawas' with arms?

Enjoy,

Jim Shultz


Bread Babies and Visiting the Dead

Because I didn’t speak much Quechua, somehow communication during my Peace Corps service largely took on the forms of experiencing. I knew something special was happening that weekend and we would be making t’anta wawas, but I hadn’t known that Don Clelio was going to dress up as a woman.

Years ago, I lived in a rural, agrarian, highland village two hours outside of Cochabamba. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I was assigned to work with the Women’s Club in this 200-family community called Quewiñapampa. In the end, I taught English at the local middle school, collaborated with a few farmers in cultivating high altitude apple trees, worked with the women on planting vegetable gardens, supervised the construction of a school hand washing station, secured grants for a community latrine project, paid house visits, planted potatoes with my neighbors, harvested faba beans and peas, and spent a lot of time looking inward while staring at the tapestry-like hills outside of my door view.

I am so thankful to have had that opportunity in Quewiñapampa, integrating and getting to know a community that for a typical passerby is just dotted houses on a hill. Like dripping water that slowly erodes a rock, Bolivia, through still time of hours of wait, silent frames of tapestry-like hillside, and a mixture of I-can’t-stand-it-any-longer to those of I-think-I-will-never-forget emotions, this landlocked country, gradually seeped into my heart and soul.

I guess Bolivia can have that effect on you.

Earlier this month Bolivia celebrated its Todos Santos (All Saints) holiday, where the dead are remembered. Families, especially those with recent deaths, typically set up a table called mast’aku, adorned with t’anta wawas (bread babies), snake figures, small ladders, flowers and food. Most people also make a stop at the graveyards where the dead are known to return in spirit.

It is a time for remembering the deceased, but also a time when nostalgia of the past flies in the air. Through tears, through smiles, through stories, we each find our ways to honor those we’ve loved.

My own memories drifted me back to a few years ago today when I awkwardly tried to make my first t’anta wawa and the baby turned out to be armless. However armless, making bread babies among a room full of piles of dough and other concentrated bread baby makers was one of those defining moments in my Peace Corps service.

There were many days where after a frustrating attempt at the school, all I wanted to do was go home, lock myself in, and cry. There were many moments too where I wonder if I should terminate early and just go back to the States and get a ‘normal’ job. There were also moments where surrounded by nearly the whole village, I felt lonelier than ever— no one understood me, in fact, I was connecting better with the author of the book I was at the moment reading.

Yet, when I had arrived once again at the local school and my students— who just days ago were running around during class time ignoring me—were weeding and watering our communal garden and peeking at me with smiles; when I sat watching the sunset with a local dirigente (community leader) and our conversation ventured away from the latrine project at hand and into his wife, ex-wife, kids, and his hopes for the future; when I, despite the language and cultural difference, was accepted as part of the family and piled in a room of 30 people that at one minute was busy chewing chicken and peanut-flavored freeze-dried potatoes and the next all conversing in Quechua while watching after their 10 plus kids not picking on each other, I knew why was there.

Those were the moments when I whispered to myself “I am exactly where I need to be.”

Todos Santos in Quewiñapampa was a period of days when the whole community gathered and visited different houses to pay respect for that year’s deceased. There was also a festive gathering where young girls sat on huge swings made of eucalyptus trees and plastic ropes, all while pulled by young boys showing off their strength and muscles. In the Andean culture, life and death is one, and hence Todos Santos, instead of just bawling tears and sadness on the deceased, includes the celebration of youth and love, representing the beginning of the life cycle.

With my neighbor Doña Ana and her two little girls, in the early afternoon we walked over a few eucalyptus and pine trees (there are no streets signs nor clearly marked streets) to Don Clelio’s house. Before I knew it, I saw masses of men and women all dressed in black, some eating, some staring into space, while others were playing a coin game called rayuela. Chicha, an alcoholic beverage made of corn, was being served in coconut shells.

Following Doña Ana’s lead, we first entered the house to where the mast’aku was, to both say hi to the owners of the house as well as to pay our respect to Don Clelio’s aunt, who passed away earlier that year. Through the rows and rows of burning candles and flowers and the piled t’anta wawas, I saw Don Clelio sitting in the corner dressed as a widow cholita, whimpering and making crying sounds.

“What’s happening?” I asked Doña Ana.

“It’s the soul of the aunt, manifesting through Don Clelio, she’s came back to say goodbye.”

We silently ate the sheep blood, potato and rice lunch they served us, then as the crowd gathered to start their march towards the cemetery, led by Don Clelio weeping and rambling loudly, I said goodbye to Doña Ana.

“I’m going to make t’anta wawa at Doña Feliza’s house, I’ll see you later.”

Accompanying the funeral march for a few more yards, I turned toward a dirt path and walked down the hill to visit another family with their mast’aku. But more than anything else, they had invited me to make bread babies and I wanted to make sure that this time, they would have arms.

Written by Yi-Ching Hwang

Dismembering the Peace Corps

Lot #11: 1 cork bulletin board, 1 wooden desk with glass top, 1 medium sized wooden bookshelf, 1 chair, 2 Spanish/English dictionaries, three books in English.

Behind a long adobe wall, just outside the small town here of Sacaba, the U.S. Peace Corps' training center has been converted into an auction house. The last material evidence of the Corps' presence in Bolivia is up for bid.

Those looking at Lot #51 can get a former staff refrigerator with a bedspread thrown in. Those interested in Lot #62 can have 7 former Peace Corps rulers, 10 folders, a stack of books that volunteers left behind for their successors, and a map of Bolivia.

In September, against a backdrop of political violence in two of Bolivia's nine departments, the Peace Corps pulled out all 113 of its members, flying them to Lima, Peru. Many people thought, at the time, that it was just the U.S. taking a temporary safety precaution. But as it turns out, the Peace Corps evacuation from Bolivia is not a temporary one.

The Bush administration, in addition to bringing a premature halt to this year's class of Corps volunteers, has also cancelled plans for any new class as well. The Peace Corps – a rare positive U.S. symbol in a country deeply skeptical of the U.S. – is gone and it isn't coming back. Its vehicles, computers, stoves, lamps, computers and other accessories will be sold Friday to the highest bidder – souvenirs of a valuable program being dismembered.

Using the Peace Corps as a Political Tool

There is really little question about the motive for the Bush administration's withdrawal of the Corps. It isn't safety, it's politics. Shortsighted politics.

Bolivia is a big country of more than 2 million square miles. The September violence, as frightening as it was, was limited to a very small portion of the country. The worst of it, in Pando, took place in a part of Bolivia so remote that one would truly need to go to great lengths looking for trouble in order to find it. The vast majority of the volunteers were nowhere near the violence, nor threatened by it. Those that might have been nearby could easily have been moved to Cochabamba or another region at peace.

The Vermont-based School for International Training's (S.I.T.) semester abroad program for U.S. undergraduates is notoriously more cautious about safety concerns than the Peace Corps. In October 2003, during the political conflicts that led to the ouster of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, the S.I.T. students were whisked off to Buenos Aires while the Peace Corps remained. This time around the S.I.T. students stayed safely put in Cochabamba, and remain here, while the Peace Corps volunteers were ordered, most against their wishes, on a plane to Lima.

And if there was any question remaining about whether safety or politics was behind the U.S. move, the answer to the question became clear when the Bush administration announced that the Corps was not coming back at all.

The administration's withdrawal of the Peace Corps from Bolivia was part of a package of hastily imposed policies aimed at punishing President Morales for declaring the U.S. Ambassador here, Phillip Goldberg, 'persona non grata' and sending him home. It was as if administration officials reached into a drawer and pulled out a list titled, "What We Do if Evo Crosses A Line." It included:

· Kick out Bolivia's Ambassador to the U.S., Gustavo Guzman
· Decertify Bolivia's anti-coca efforts
· Eliminate Bolivia's participation in the ATPDEA trade program

And pull out the Peace Corps, for a long time if not permanently.

Sadly, this was not the first episode of the Bush administration pulling the Peace Corps into U.S./Bolivia diplomatic battles. A year ago a U.S. Embassy security official in La Paz illegally asked a Fulbright scholar and Peace Corps volunteers to pass along any information they came across about Cubans and Venezuelans in the country. Whether those were the rogue actions of one stupid security official or something more conspiratorial can be debated. But it left a shadow of U.S. politics over the Corps that its withdrawal now only reinforces.

The Washington Post's new correspondent for the region, Joshua Partlow, authored a front-page article two weeks ago about the dissatisfaction among Corps volunteers at being used as political pawns, and how some of them have returned back to Bolivia on their own to continue their work here. He quoted a volunteer from Maryland, whose letter to friends and family circulated widely at the time. "The Peace Corps, unfortunately, has become another weapon in the US diplomatic arsenal," wrote volunteer Sarah Nourse. She called the Bush administration's move, "one more chance for the US to maintain its tough image and hit back, harder."

Advice to President-Elect Obama, Send them Back

Here at the Democracy Center we didn't have to look too far to find what the Peace Corps means to those who participate in it, and to those whose lives they touch. Yi-Ching Hwang, a member of our staff, served a two-year stint in the Corps, working in the highland community of Quewiñapampa.

"Living in that community for two years has transformed my way of looking at and interacting with the world. It is a time I will never forget. More than two years after my service, when I returned to visit, surprisingly, from the littlest of kids to aging grandmas, they still remembered my name and warmly greeted me. It is as if I’ve never left."

Just weeks after taking office in 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the U.S. Peace Corps by executive order, with a modest start of trying to put 500 volunteers in the field by the end of the year. He declared at the time:

"Our Peace Corps is not designed as an instrument of diplomacy or propaganda or ideological conflict. It is designed to permit our people to exercise more fully their responsibilities in the great common cause of world development."

The final days of the Clinton administration eight years ago are remembered most for a flurry of last minute executive pardons, some of them highly questionable. The final days of the Bush administration seem likely to be marked by a full scale effort to lock his successor into a set of policies that will be difficult to reverse, from weakening environmental protections to locking in a hard line against governments not to Mr. Bush's liking.

Over the next few months we will be putting forward a set of proposals aimed at rebuilding the torn relationship between the U.S. and Bolivia, including steps that both governments, of Presidents Obama and Morales, will need to take.

Here's the first of those suggestions – President Obama should reverse the Bush administration's error and send the Peace Corps back into Bolivia in full force. And President Morales should make clear that the Corps is warmly welcomed and that its security and that welcome will always be protected and honored.

Young people like Yi-Ching are an asset in Bolivia, both for the work they do and the relationships they build, not government-to-government but people-to-people. The President-elect has already signaled his desire to rebuild the U.S. tarnished image and place in the global fabric. Sending the Yi-Chings of our country back into Bolivia is a very good place to begin.

November 4, 2008