Prison Tourism in La Paz

Readers:

A researcher in La Paz recently approached me wanting to write an article about the infamous San Pedro prison in La Paz. The jail is home to some of Bolivia's most famous inmates (including former Pando governor Leopold Fernandez) and also to a new niche in the Bolivian economy, prison tourism.

For reasons that will be apparent in the article below, the researcher asked to publish this piece without the public use of her name. Normally we wouldn't do this, but in this case, because of the circumstances, we are making an exception.

Jim Shultz

Prison Tourism in La Paz

The 'world-famous' San Pedro prison has been in the Bolivian news again in recent weeks. In the usual manner, a media outlet, this time La Rázon, printed articles referring to the widely acknowledged presence of tourism, drug fabrication and sales in the prison. Prison officials denied it through news media the following day, and the story soon died off.

Ironically, the same week heavy rains were cited as the cause of the collapse of a wall in the 114 year old prison. According to the network ATB, as many as four prisoners were injured severely as the wall fell on their cells. The prison governor claimed the only damage was material, “Gracias a Dios”, and that although around 10 cells were affected, the prisoners who live there will not be moved. “They’re just going to have to make do where they are, make themselves comfortable or rather uncomfortable a little more than they are right now.”


The official story from prison officials is that inmates at San Pedro prison are well fed and well cared-for, do not produce cocaine, and tourism is not widespread because it is not allowed. To see a recent interview with the prison governor click here .

But if one digs a little deeper one finds that the “unofficial” account of this prison appears to be the more credible one, backed up by endless first-hand accounts and photography.

In addition to the reporting done by the Bolivian newspaper La Rázon, Wikipedia.org hosts pages in a surprising number of languages concerning the “peculiar” prison, the English page directing you to articles written by international journalists working with the BBC, ABC, and others. The popular guidebook, Lonely Planet (2007 edition and others), has a special, three-quarters of a page block devoted to explaining the prison’s absurd, workings and history of tourism. Finally, for those who read English, this website functions as a trailer to the 2003 non-fiction book, Marching Powder, with pictures taken by author Rusty Young while he lived inside San Pedro for four months researching the book.

These reports present a Cárcel San Pedro that is a place with its own set of rules, hierarchy, and ethics. Hundreds of women and children live inside the prison with their incarcerated spouses and fathers. Elections are held yearly to choose prison representatives that hold great power.

Prisoners must pay for everything they require. They must buy or rent cells in one of the five sections of the prison, which have different hotel-like star ratings. Notoriously, some wealthy prisoners live in luxury hotel-like suites that include cable TV, wireless Internet, private bathrooms, fully stocked kitchens and more, while poor prisoners find themselves sharing a small, unfurnished cell with 10 other men if they are lucky. Food, clothing, bedding and basic hygiene supplies are not provided for prisoners.

While there is usually a trained doctor available (in the form of a prisoner doing time) and a pharmacy inside, these are all basic rights that prisoners at San Pedro must pay for or, if they cannot, simply do without. Also, prison guards do not enter the prison except for once every morning to take roll call, which means that violent fights, often with knives, are frequent and often fatal. Perhaps these latter two realities – the lack of basic amenities for poor prisoners and the absence of police security – explain the current monthly death rate for prisoners: 4 out of a population of 1500.

Some of those deaths can probably also be attributed to the widespread use of highly addictive drugs, including cocaine, cocaine base and crystal meth. It’s not hard to envision how a prisoner might get hooked on one of these addictive drugs, getting to the point where all his money goes towards getting high until he starves to death. According to some of those who have investigated conditions at San Pedro, these drugs and others are not only available inside the prison but manufactured there and thus sold at literally wholesale prices.

In Marching Powder: a True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail, former prisoner Thomas McFadden describes the extent to which corruption is embedded in the criminal justice system. Bribes are a part of everyday life for those who live or are connected to San Pedro (in the case of many judges and prosecutors as well).

In fact, there is a great deal of maneuvering on the part of police officers throughout the country working to get transferred to this specific prison in order to reap the benefits of collecting bribes big and small on a daily basis. With a big enough colaboración (Bolivian for bribe) prisoners can leave the prison with a police escort for a day, walking about town, dining in fine restaurants, even going to clubs till four in the morning.

The corruption, writes McFadden, reached the highest levels. The book portrays a bizarre night when the prison governor at the time came to McFadden’s cell with two young women, a bottle of expensive whisky and 100 pesos that McFadden was supposed to use to go buy five grams of cocaine for the party to share. When the startled prisoner tried to resist, Governor Montesinos insisted, “The coke in the prison is better than anywhere else in the whole of Bolivia. And if the governor of the prison can’t get some coke, then who can?” (Page 128).

Tours of the prison started about ten years ago with McFadden as the first tour guide. Today, the reported price for a tour is 250 Bolivian pesos, about $36. In order for tourism as a business in the prison to function smoothly, guards and higher officials need to be paid off. According to a prisoner interviewed by La Rázon, “70% of the [250 peso] fee goes to the police and the people who organize the foreigners for the tours,” the rest being split up among prisoners.

Though prison officials deny the tourism, one only needs to pass by the prison during the day to see tens of foreigners gathering in the plaza for their guided visit. Some, like the prisoner cited above, insist that tourism is good for the prisoners because it creates much-needed cash-flow as tourists buy not only drugs but handicrafts, eat in prison restaurants, and give a few coins to the most desperate, begging prisoners.

However, in my view this type of tourism contributes to a blatant abuse of prisoners’ rights and human rights in general. A handful of pesos from tourists is not a substitute for the government providing the inmates with basic food, shelter and medical care (and as many as 75% of prisoners in San Pedro are simply awaiting trial and have not been convicted of any crime). Thousands of pesos a day being poured into the prison via tourism serves mainly to maintain and sustain the system of corruption that governs the prison and turns its inmates into the rough equivalent of animals in a zoo.

This is something tempted tourists might keep in mind before they pay their money and pass through the door.

For information regarding prison activism see these organizations:

International Cure
ACLU Prisons Project

Comments

I have had a handful of interesting exchanges with people who have written in by e-mail over the last week, about our comments section and how we ought to handle the problem of a space for reasoned debate getting crowded out by anonymous posters competing to see who can insult each other the most.

Some people have urged me to drop the comment section altogether – an option. Others have repeated the request that I begin moderating comments, deciding which ones to post and which ones not to – not an option. I am not interested in investing the time or in becoming a censor.

Others have suggested that we require people to register in some way to post a comment, which I suspect will end being pretty much the same thing as shutting the comments down entirely.

So instead let's try it one more time and see if everyone can act just a little more adult and focus on criticizing one another's writings (including mine) instead of attacking people personally.

I hope that those of you who have been our reasoned commenters in the past will try returning once again. Your analysis and your intelligent criticism are missed.

A few others suggestions to keep in mind. Please feel encouraged to draw our readers' attention to other Blogs on Bolivia or other articles by posting links to those. We have more than 2,500 readers a day and many will be interested in other sources you might suggest. But on the flipside, please don't clog up the comment section by pasting the full text of long articles. These are always posted somewhere else on the Web and a link will do just fine. If people want to read it they can.

So the comments section is open for business once again, including on our most recent post: Three Things that the Governments of the U.S. and Bolivia Should Do.

Let's proceed on the honor system, in the hopes that all posters here will act honorably, regardless of their point of view. If commenters are not able to do that, then the comment section may have to be put to rest permanently, which would be a loss for everyone.

Three Things that the Governments of the U.S. and Bolivia Should Do.

At the beginning of this month I wrote a post titled, U.S./Bolivia Relations in a Nutshell. Like most writings on the topic, it was about politics. It was about the relationship between two governments –a lot of that relationship being about leaders ticking each other off and regular people paying the price.

But in fact, the relationships between two countries should not be defined by how their governments are getting along. They are about the relationships between two peoples. Governments, truth be told, have a certain tendency to screw things up.

So I have been thinking. What are the issues right now between the U.S. and Bolivian governments that have a real impact on people’s lives – from both countries? From that perspective what should be done?

Which brings me to my follow-up to the first post, this one entitled: Three Things that the Governments of the U.S. and Bolivia Should Do.

I understand that there are a lot of possibilities here, but I picked these. Each one will effect people’s lives in profound ways.

1. Save People's Jobs: The U.S. Should Restore Bolivia's Participation in Andean Trade Preferences

For almost two decades, until the end of 2008, Bolivia was one of a several Andean countries that received special trade preferences under the ATPDEA trade accord with the U.S.. This meant that whole new U.S. markets were created for Bolivian products like textiles, weavings, and woodwork. Tens of thousands of jobs were created in Bolivia and new sales markets were created in the U.S. – a win/win proposition all around.

But then, last September, when the Morales and Bush administrations went to diplomatic war with one another, President Bush tossed the trade preferences into the mix and used his executive authority to kick Bolivia off the list. Bush attributed the move to his administration's sudden (and political) "decertification" of Bolivia's anti-narcottic efforts. But his move also broke directly with Congress, which on a bipartisan basis voted to keep Bolivia on the preference list.

If you would like to read more detail on the issue, and see a brief video of testimonies by the workers who stand to lose their jobs, have a look here.

So now it’s time to reverse Bush's action. These workers, who have nothing to do with any diplomatic fight, should not be turned into political pawns. The Obama administration should side with Congress and reverse the Bush policy.

2. Let Children Have Families: The Bolivian Government Should Re-open Adoptions to the U.S.

Bolivia is a nation with many, many orphaned children. Most are abandoned early in their lives by young single mothers who can't afford to support them. Some get taken in by other family, but thousands are not so fortunate and they end up living in an orphanage. In Cochabamba alone there are nearly eighty institutions that take in abandoned children, ranging from the good to the miserable.

But not even the very best orphanage can come to being raised in a family, with parents who love you. Every parent knows that every child needs to have at least one adult who thinks she walks on water. Institutions can't do that. I know. For four years I helped run one of the better ones here and it doesn't come close.

The answer is adoption.

It would be great if adoptions by Bolivian families would provide families for all these children. They don't. Not even close. Foreign adoptions help make up the difference, giving thousands of Bolivian children families and homes.

In 2002 the Bolivian government (under President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada) halted foreign adoptions, amidst concerns that the foreign nonprofit agencies responsible for sending follow-up reports about these children were not doing their job. Bolivia declared that it would only allow adoptions to countries that operated under the provisions of an international adoption treaty (the Hague Agreement). Under that agreement the governments themselves assume responsibility for follow-up reporting.

Some countries, including Spain, Italy and Holland, were able to quickly operate under the new rules and Bolivian adoptions to those countries were reopened. For the U.S. things were much more complicated. The U.S. does not have a single national agency for children and the follow-up work required is a state-level responsibility. So the State Department had to establish a complicated coordinating system with the states in order to comply with international adoption rules.

U.S. authorities have told me that this process is now complete and that the only thing that stands in the way of re-opening Bolivian adoptions to the U.S. is the final signing of paperwork between the two governments.

Neither bureaucratic inaction nor political disputes should get in the way of re-opening a door through which hundreds of children each year can find the very thing they need most, a family that loves them. The U.S. and Bolivian governments should take action as soon as possible to re-open the door to U.S./Bolivia adoptions.

3. Re-build the Bridges of Understanding: Bring the Peace Corps Back to Bolivia

Last September, right around the same time that the U.S. and Bolivian governments were having a diplomatic meltdown, the Bush administration also pulled all 113 Peace Corps volunteers out of Bolivia. In fairness, at the time Bolivia was also having a domestic political meltdown all its own, with serious violence in specific parts of the country. The U.S. claimed the pull-out was to protect the volunteers' security.

Yet, what the Bush administration did was far more than move the volunteers in the affected areas out to safer territory. With virtually no advance notice to these young people, they were put on a plane to Lima and told they were never returning to Bolivia. Many weren’t going to be able to finish their Peace Corps service at all. They left behind friends, pets, and communities without even having the chance to say goodbye.

Then the Peace Corps fired most of its local staff and auctioned off most of its equipment, signaling that is wasn't coming back, certainly not anytime soon.

Across the U.S. on our recent book tour, Peace Corps volunteers who had been pulled out of Bolivia last September came to see us and to talk. They told us how devastated they were to have been yanked out. They told me that it was unnecessary to permanently pull them from Bolivia to protect their safety. Several, who were in areas where violence was a risk, told me that they could easily have been moved temporarily to Cochabamba or some other peaceful region of the country until things calmed down.

Peace Corp volunteers not only make a direct and valuable contribution to the communities they live in, they also form a two-way bridge of understanding between countries. The U.S. and Bolivia could use a good dose of that these days. Peace Corps volunteers are a part of what a 'people-to-people' relationship is all about.

Bring them back. The Bolivian government should ask the Peace Corps to return and the Obama administration should accelerate efforts to do that.

Special Note: While the comments section continues to be at rest (see post below) we are happy to hear directly from people who have thoughts on these goals and how they might be achieved. Drop us a note at: contact@democracyctr.org.
Interestingly, our daily visits seem to have increased since the comments section was put on hold.

The Comment Section is on a Break

Dear Readers:

In the four years since we began this Blog we have tried to allow the comments section to remain an uncensored space where readers could have a reasoned debate about the issues we write about. For much of that time we have achieved that, and that debate, including opinions contrary to ours, have been much appreciated.

However, in the past few weeks I have gotten complaints again about how the comments section has been taken over by a handful of people -- all anonymous -- who seem to be confused about the difference between debate and insult. In that environment people of reason have stopped posting. So, as we have done before, we are shutting down the comments section for an indefinite time to help people gather themselves and think if there might be a better way to engage one another. In the meantime, we'll keep publishing our posts on a regular basis.

We have between 2,000 and 3,000 readers daily on the Blog now, numbers that continue to grow each year. Thank you all for your continued readership and interest.

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

Writing About Bolivia

Over the past few weeks I have received a number of e-mails from people I respect a good deal asking me to use this space to write a critique of two recent pieces of writing about Bolivia.

One is a piece on Evo Morales in the current issue of Atlantic, written by a freelancer, Eliza Barclay. The brief article carries the provocative title, “The Mugabe of the Andes?” Barclay, a visitor to Bolivia, argues that Morales is like Mugabe because he is dividing Bolivia along racial lines. Aside from the fact that racial division in Bolivia is hardly a Morales invention, it is a real stretch to compare an African despot who steals elections by violence with a South American President who keeps winning them by historic majorities. The Atlantic editors, who generally produce a good magazine, should have known better.

The more onerous piece of recent writing about Bolivia that deserves notice is a new book by one of the Democratic party’s most well known pollsters, Stanley Greenberg. Mr. Greenberg has been stumping coast to coast for his new book about some of his past clients, Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders. Those leaders and ex-consulting clients include Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Ehud Barak, Nelson Mandela, and Bolivia’s ousted President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Mr. Greenberg famously helped Sanchez de Lozada win the presidency in 2002, a performance documented up close in Rachel Boynton’s well-done film Our Brand is Crisis.

What is it this month about bad comparisons between Bolivian presidents and their South African counterparts?

This is, to be sure, a remarkable leap of chutzpah for Greenberg. He lifts up a man driven from office by his own people, for acts of violent repression, and casts him in the same league with Mandela, one of the 20th century’s most respected liberators. Mr. Greenberg was paid well, we presume, for his service as a spinner for the former President. So it shouldn’t be all that surprising that he is putting his spin skills to work now to try to paint his former client into a political saint. "A fearless and radical social reformer,” is how Greenberg describes the man whose troops shot children in 2003. Mr. Greenberg’s view contrasts pretty starkly with the families of those killed under Sanchez de Lozada’s command. They, unfortunately, won’t have a podium at Barnes and Noble this month.

But that’s it. That’s all I have to say about these articles. Other people can respond with their respective defenses of Morales or critiques of Sanchez de Lozada. I am not interested in doing either.

Instead, I’d rather use this post to do something more positive, to highlight writing in English about Bolivia that I think is worth reading. I hope readers will add their own suggestions about Spanish language resources.

Books on Bolivia

I begin with books. I have a healthy respect for books on a subject, having written and edited three. It is huge effort to write a book and (with apparent exceptions) there are many points along the way where you are challenged both as to your facts and as to your analysis. My last two books have been ‘peer-reviewed’ by the academic presses that published them. I can say first hand that you don’t go unchallenged, and the writing is the better for it.

So here are a few books on Bolivia worth a look (and apologies for those I left out):

Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Popular Resistance: Ben Kohl and Linda Farthing, who co-wrote this book, are both friends of mine. They are also very capable analysts of Bolivia who have lived here off and on for decades and their work shows it.

Llamas, Weavings, and Organic Chocolate: Multicultural Grassroots Development in the Andes and Amazon of Bolivia: Kevin Healy, the author of this book, is another friend, and a writer with decades of experience in Bolivia. His book has become a classic on development issues.

Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: William Powers wrote this book as a memoir of his time working on sustainable environment issues in the eastern part of the country.

The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia: Some readers of Ben Dangl’s book on recent Bolivian events may dismiss it as being too blindly ‘left’ in its perspective. But Ben takes his research seriously and spends a good deal of time visiting Bolivia to do it.

A Concise History of Bolivia: Herbert Klein’s history text is also considered a classic, written with a great mastery of the nation’s history. But to be honest, its dense writing style takes a subject that is fascinating and makes it a little painful to read.

Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952-82: James Dunkerlee is as solid a Bolivia expert as they come, based at the University of London. His book offers up the kind of sharp history that can only come from someone who has spent years of his life pouring though original sources as few others have.

Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present: John Crabtree is a well-respected research associate at Oxford University and his newest work is a seriously done look at recent events.

Dignity and Defiance, Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization: I also include our new book here for two reasons. One is that my co-authors and editor would be really ticked if I don’t. Second, I think you should read this first.

[Note: I have used mainly Amazon links above because that’s where these books are available at the lowest price. But independent booksellers also have the book and if you have the extra cash, buy it from them to help keep independent booksellers alive.]

News Coverage

Keeping up with day-to-day events in Bolivia means sifting through press coverage and figuring out what is most worth your time to read. Here are some observations about news coverage of Bolivia:

The Foreign Press

Foreign coverage of Bolivia (in the U.S. in particular) has come a long way since the Water Revolt nine years ago. Back then about 90% of foreign press coverage came out of one long-time A.P. correspondent in La Paz, who had the unfortunate habit of using President Hugo Banzer’s press releases (written by a close friend of his) and turning them into A.P. dispatches. He later lost his job when it was revealed that he was lobbying the Bolivian government on water issues at the same time he was writing about those issues.

Today there are nearly a dozen foreign journalists who count Bolivia as their regular beat. A handful of them actually live in Bolivia. Dan Keane built-up the A.P. bureau in La Paz into a very respectable news operation, and his recent return to the U.S. is journalistic loss. Both the BBC and Reuters have able correspondents here as well, Andres Schipani and Eduardo Garcia. Eduardo, a Spaniard, deserves extra mention. He had the resolve to return to Bolivia after nearly being killed in the same 2007 car crash that took the life of the BBC’s wonderful Lola Almudevar. Jean Friedman-Rudovsky also reports ably from La Paz for Time magazine.

The rest of the foreign journalists live elsewhere in South America, covering Bolivia from where they are and visiting here a few times a year. Simon Romero writes for the New York Times from Caracas, as does Tyler Bridges for the Miami Herald and other McClatchy papers. Joshua Partlow, who came here after a long stint in Iraq, covers Bolivia for the Washington Post out of Rio de Janeiro, as does Julie McCarthy for NPR. Patrick McDonnell covers Bolivia for the Los Angeles Times from Buenos Aires. Most of the other papers and outlets use freelance reporters or the A.P.’s articles.

In my recent trip to the U.S. I heard a few familiar criticisms about coverage from these writers. Most comes from supporters of Evo Morales who believe that the corporate-owned media (all of the above are corporate-owned but for NPR) write with a markedly anti-Morales bias. Romero, of the New York Times, seems to have a regular following of critics on a handful of Blogs.

I have had a good deal of personal interactions with each of these reporters and have watched their writing over the years. I have a solid respect for their work. I may not always agree with their analysis but they are each hard-working reporters who go to great efforts to speak to a variety of sources. Unlike the ‘parachute journalists’ who come in for a week and count themselves as experts, these ongoing reporters have a depth to their work and it shows.

Unfortunately, foreign bureaus are closing fast, including some of those mentioned here. So more and more of the foreign coverage we see is going to be coming from the 'parachuters' who come and go. That's a loss.

The Bolivian Press

While this post is about sources in English, the Bolivian press is still an important source for daily events so I include it here. For those interested in reading Bolivia’s regular dailies, COMTECO, the telecommunications cooperative here, puts together a great shortcut. It produces a daily summary of the top headlines from all the major daily papers in Bolivia, with links to the articles. You can find that here and also subscribe if you like to have the summary sent to your e-mail. Keep in mind however that the daily press in Bolivia is owned by the nation’s wealthy elite and generally reflects their point of view. As a balance to the conservative dailies, you can keep an eye on Red Erbol, which has a great Bolivia news Website. The Bolivian government just launched a daily paper biased towards the government, Cambio, but I don’t know if it is available yet on-line.

Organizations and Independent Sources

There are a number of organizations that produce independent reporting and analysis about Bolivia. Here are a few (with links embedded in their names):

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) has been putting out good writing on Bolivia for years, as has the Andean Information Network. The Center for Economic and Policy Research produces occasional briefing papers on Bolivia that have good information in them.

And the Blogs

Okay, here’s the deal, I don’t read Blogs. I know that’s funny since I write one, but I don’t. I get an in-box full of articles and links everyday, from both Spanish and English writers. I just don't follow the Blogs. There are lots of Blogs that write about Bolivia, some of them valuable and some of them just silly. In other words, Blogs that cover Bolivia are like Blogs in general, it is up to readers to sift the garbage from the good.

Among the Blogs I do know, two worth looking at are Upside Down World, edited by Ben Dangl, and the material published by Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Luis Gomez at Ukhampacha Bolivia.

And finally, of course, there is this Blog, which we hope you will continue to read regularly, as so many do.

To all our readers, thank you for your kind interest in what we write here. Those of you who have other suggestions of what to read about Bolivia, I hope you will post a description and a link in the comments section below.

Happy Fathers Day!

Today is Fathers Day in Bolivia.

I began my day with a blissfully muddy 25-minute bike ride to school (Fathers Day and the end of the rainy season still coincide), past cows and corn, with a singing first-grader seated on the metal rack behind me. I was also the happy recipient of a set of very nice tiny drawings on tiny scraps of paper, with tiny flowers.

There is some commercialization of Fathers Day here, but beyond a few ads for neckties and dress shirts it isn’t much. In some years my family and I end up being in the U.S. in June, when Dads’ Day is celebrated up there, and I get two! But this year one will be enough.

When school is out I am waiting at the door. You can tell something is different. Some of the other fathers have also managed to escape from work, sneaking into the usual crowd of mothers who congregate around the muddy entrance.

My six-year-old daughter and I head into the city with an afternoon’s worth of plans ahead of us. We lunch on pizza at the restaurant with the plastic playground equipment that she has played on since she was a toddler and which she has now nearly outgrown. Then we are off to the movies, a rare father/daughter treat for us.

The center of Cochabamba is dotted with signs of a special day. Many tiny hands reach up to grasp large ones as they walk down the street. A man I know who runs a restaurant stops his work to chat with me a while and then announces he is off to rejoin his elderly father at a table in the corner.

Fathers Day is a funny holiday. You start out in life with it being about your own father. In my family, when I was little, we marked both Mothers Day and Fathers Day by getting up early and scotch taping a fistful of homemade cards to my parents’ bedroom door.

For me there were a number of years when Fathers Day was just a time of hard remembrance. My father died 20 years ago next Friday. But soon after I became a parent in my own right, three times, and I became the lucky recipient of little notes written by little hands.

At the movies, after carefully studying the posters for what was playing, we settled on a new movie called Hotel for Dogs. We laughed so hard we almost peed our pants. In the movie the young boy who saves stray canines across downtown Los Angeles (my hometown) also makes inventions to keep them happy. The best was the one that let the dogs watch films of a road whizzing by, while sticking their heads out of disconnected car door windows and having fans blow air in their faces. We liked that.

We agreed that our dogs would have liked the movie as much as we did. But dogs aren’t allowed into theaters here. At least I’ve never tried.

Happy Fathers Day to all our readers who are fathers, in Bolivia, and everywhere else.

Coca en la Boca

Bolivian President Evo Morales has a well-written (and I assume ghost-written) op-ed in today’s New York Times calling for the coca leaf to be removed from the official UN list of substances banned from international export. Morales was in Vienna earlier this week to testify before a UN panel taking up the issue.

Writes Bolivia’s President:

What is absurd about the 1961 convention is that it considers the coca leaf in its natural, unaltered state to be a narcotic. The paste or the concentrate that is extracted from the coca leaf, commonly known as cocaine, is indeed a narcotic, but the plant itself is not.

Travelers to Bolivia are certainly familiar with the t-shirt on sale for foreigners, emblazoned with an artist’s image of a coca leaf, along with the slogan – “Coca is not cocaine.” And it doesn’t take a Nobel in chemistry to understand that the relationship between the coca leaf is roughly the same as between the potato and vodka, grapes, and wine, or hops and beer. In other words, you have to do a lot to the little plant of origin to turn it into something that can get you high. In coca’s case, that involves an elaborate chemical process to leach out the alkaloid that makes cocaine.

But as with most things, the debate is more complex that the cartoonish proclamations on the respective sides that “Coca is a drug that must be eradicated,” and “It’s just a harmless little green leaf.”

A Brief History of the War on Drugs

The coca leaf is the object of thousands of years of Andean culture. Used for everything from medicinal purposes, to rituals, to the familiar wad in the mouth to stave off hunger and slumber, the leaf is widely used among a large swath of Bolivians. It is hard to find a construction site, a farm, or a late-night taxi shift that does not involve someone with a small green plastic bag at the ready and a batch of leaves in the mouth.

The coca leaf, as separate from cocaine, was placed on the UN banned substances list, alongside heroin and cocaine, in 1961. And that placement was based on a dubious “scientific” study conducted nearly a decade before. More bluntly, ten years into the 21st century the world’s policy toward the coca leaf is based on a study conducted just around the time black and white television started showing up in U.S. living rooms.

In the 1980s when cocaine and then crack use soared in the United States, the U.S. government took a new interest in the coca leaf. Instead of investing in the strategy that has long been proven the most cost-effective, providing drug-treatment on demand to those with an addiction, the Reagan administration took its “Just Say No” mentality abroad. The U.S. government pressured governments in Latin America to go after cocaine at the source, by eradicating the raw product required to produce it (and to produce Coca Cola), the coca leaf.

I remember well that as U.S. funds were lavished on these eradication efforts, in California we couldn’t scrape together enough funds to guarantee drug treatment for pregnant women addicted to crack, an issue I worked on in the Legislature in those years.

Bolivia, a major producer of coca bound for the cocaine market in the 1980s (though still dwarfed then, as now by Colombia), was a main target. In 1988, under the direct threat of withholding of U.S. foreign aid, the Bolivian Congress approved its now-infamous anti-drug law, Ley 1008. In addition to laying out an eradication plan the law also guaranteed the U.S. Embassy ever-escalating drug arrests that it could include in its reports to the State Department and Congress as a measure of its success.

The U.S.-forced law established a network of special anti-drug prosecutors who received a special monthly salary bonus directly from the U.S. Embassy. To justify that cash from the U.S. the prosecutors padded their cases against the guilty with even more against the innocent. And under the law, those innocent were forced to stay in jail as long as a year and a half and more as their insanely slow trials moved through an inhuman legal system.

Bolivia’s jails filled and U.S. diplomats reported the arrests as success.

The hypocrisy of the U.S.’s official inability to distinguish between coca and cocaine is underscored even more as the Embassy has continued to serve coca tea to visitors and officially recommend it as a possible health treatment for tourists in La Paz suffering from high altitude problems. Until the DEA was forced out of the country last year by Morales, one of the Bolivian policeman assigned to guard its giant Cochabamba office from midnight to dawn used to chew a wad of the green leaf to stay awake as he stood gun-in-hand at the door.

Coca Si, Cocaine No?

The Morales administration, led by the nation’s most visible coca grower, set out to craft a different policy, one more in line with what European governments had advocated for many years. Instead of the U.S. strategy of “eradicate all your coca then take a chance on bananas and palm hearts,” the new Bolivian strategy of “coca si, cocaine no” allows coca growers to harvest a basic amount of coca, and aims to develop new markets for non-narcotic coca products – herbal tea, most especially. The UN listing of coca as a substance banned from export stands in the way.

As a basic strategy, it isn’t bad. I have served coca tea to hundreds of visitors for a decade, including a Texas Republican who gave me a George W. Bush necktie as a gift (I wear it at Halloween). People love it and I have no doubt that a solid market could be found throughout the U.S. and Europe for it (coca toothpaste and some of the other more exotic products, I am afraid, have a ways to go still). There are also promising medicinal uses for coca, including for the treatment of cocaine addiction itself.

That said, it is a myth that Bolivia’s coca crop is innocently directed at making tea and cookies. Regardless of what official statistics may have to say – from the UN, the Bolivian government or others – the anecdotal evidence here in Cochabamba makes it clear that coca aimed at the cocaine market is on the rise. More than one friend has stumbled unwittingly onto a lab in the hills above Apote. Another friend found himself in the middle of a police raid on a lab operation in his next-door neighbor’s house. There are enough of these stories, and others, floating around Cochabamba these days to know that something is up that the statistics (which show a minor increase in cocaine production in Bolivia and a big one in Colombia) alone don’t tell.

The problem is that he U.S. War on Drugs here has always been more about looking like there is a war on drugs than actually having one, hence the spending on big DEA offices abroad instead of big increases in treatment at home. In fact, whatever cocaine is coming out of Bolivia these days isn’t headed north as much as it is east, to Argentina and Brazil. Those are the governments with a huge stake in teaming up with Bolivia to make “coca si, cocaine no” something more than a slogan.

If the Obama is administration wants to get smart in the War on Drugs instead of just marketing a slogan of its own it will back away from insistence that the U.S. make the rules for Bolivia and it will support Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia to take real action together, on the demand and supply side both. The administration will also pull the U.S. back from being the main objector to pulling coca of the UN list. Similarly, the Morales government needs to cop to the fact that cocaine production is on the rise and deal with it.

Letting coca tea from Bolivia find its place on the shelves at Whole Foods in New York, Washington and San Francisco won’t stop Bolivia’s coca from being a part of the narcotraffic market. But every little green box that gets sold is one more real step to diverting that little green leaf in a much more healthful direction – for everyone.

Note: For a much more comprehensive look at the history of the coca leaf and of the War on Drugs against it, see Chapter 6 (“The Leaf at the Center of the War on Drugs”) in the Democracy Center’s new book, Dignity and Defiance, Stories from Bolvia’s Challenge to Globalization (University of California Press).

Mob Attacks Home of Former Vice President -- and Another U.S. Diplomat is Ousted

On Saturday a mob invaded the altiplano home of Victor Hugo Cardenas, the Aymara intellectual who served as Bolivia's Vice President under President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (1993-97). Cardenas was away at the time but members of his family, including his wife and children, reported being physically attacked before their home was taken over entirely in an act of political violence spurred by Cardenas' recent opposition to the new MAS-backed constitution. The former Vice-President had also made indications that he was considering running against Morales in next December's presidential elections.

Lidia Katari, Cardenas' wife, is also a well-known and respected figure in Bolivia, who during her time as Bolivia's 'segundo dama' was known for continuing to wear traditional indigenous clothing.

Los Tiempos on Sunday quoted a campesino leader, Alfredo Huañapaco, as justifying the attack on the basis of Cardenas' 'traitorous' acts against his people and that the hose "served no social function." The mob that took over the house claimed its intention to turn it into a home for the aged.

Critics of the government, including Cardenas, were quick to lay blame for the attack on Morales, including claims that national officials had refused to provide the house with security after the family had received threats. PODEMOS leader and ex-President Jorge Quiroga put the attack in a line-up of "violent acts" by Morales supporters, including the burning of the Cochabamba governor's office in January 2007.

Speaking for the government, Interior Vice-Minister Marcos Farfán told the press that the government had nothing to do with the attack and, in fact, sent security forces to the house and to expel those who had taken it over.

Today, in the wake of the attack, Cardenas announced formally that he will challenge Morales for the Presidency in December. He joins a field that will likely include former President Carlos Mesa, Sanchez de Lozada's other Vice-President (2002-2003) among others. Cardenas declared, "What is real, what is concrete is that the government headed by Evo Morales on Saturday did not provide protection for my house or for the lives of my family."

Regardless of what one thinks of either Cardenas, Morales, or any other political figure, the protection of democratic space is essential, and that includes the open right to dissent. As long-time readers of this Blog know, for more than four years we have practiced that here with a 100% uncensored comments section that allows even the stupidest of things to be said without filtration.

The principle that we believe in for our own work we believe in for the larger public debate as well. All political figures, whether of the left or the right, ought to reaffirm that principle in Bolivia, not just in word but also in deed.

Update Tuesday Morning

The sacking of the home of the former Vice-President and the brutal attacks on his family continue to grab front-page headlines here, as it should.

Yesterday brought a new round of denunciations against Saturday's attack – not only from the Morales government's usually critics but from UN officials, religious leaders and prominent members of MAS as well. Jorge Silva, a MAS member of Congress is quoted in Los Tiempos saying, "there is no justification to violently attack, to invade a home, or to beat people."

While both President Morales and Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera voiced a general condemnation of the violence, both also sought to justify it in public comments. Morales (also quoted in Los Tiempos) said, "The people do not tolerate or forgive traitors."

Garcia Linera declared (according to a Red Erbol report), “We regret this act. Those responsible need to be sought…there is no justification for doing damage, for attacking private property." But he then went on to offer a justification as well, "We reject the provocative declarations of the ex-Vice President. What is it that Victor Hugo Cardenas did such that his own [indigenous] brothers assumed this grave reaction?" Linera went on to suggest that Cardenas' house might be expropriated by the state.

Erbol also reported mixed reaction from Bolivian indigenous leaders to the Saturday attack, which left several members of Cardenas' family still hospitalized as of this writing.

Cruz Chura, leader of the Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), declared, “I have understood that on more than one occasion the community summoned Victor Choquehuanca [Cardenas] to defended, to argue why he denied his [indigenous] family and he never had the dignity to respond to the authorities of this region."

On the other side, Pedro Nuny, Vice-President of the Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia (CIDOB), called on those of the altiplano to calm themselves and said there was no justification for what occurred Saturday. "This act is not justified, because here in the lowlands we have suffered the taking of our offices because we think in a different manner than those violent groups here. Brothers, we do not defend Cardenas, he has to pay for the things that he has done to this country, but now he is the victim."

Personally, I do not find it very hard to see the principle at stake here. Just as this Blog has denounced, over and over again, violence against the innocent at the hands of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and others on one side of Bolivian politics, the same must hold true for the other side of Bolivian politics as well. Political argument should be confronted with political argument, not violence. Political movement should be confronted with political movement, not violence. And people's families should be left out of it entirely.

It is also certain that a real political candidacy has been born out of Saturday's attack. Cardenas, who has been little more than a footnote in Bolivian politics for more than a decade now bears the badge of martyr. Watch him now become the rallying point for a variety of political forces opposed to Morales' reelection later this year, drawing foreign headlines of, "In Bolivia a Battle Between Two Indigenous Candidates."

And One More U.S. Diplomat Sent Home

Not to be lost in the public uproar over the Saturday attack is the declaration yesterday by President Morales that he is sending a second U.S. diplomat home to the U.S., Embassy assistant, Francisco Martinez.

Evo accused Martinez of interfering in Bolivia's domestic affairs, including "ongoing" relations with opposition groups and contact with ex-agents of the police that the government has charged with plotting anti-government activities. The sending home of Martinez follows the ousting, last September, of the U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Phillip Goldberg, amidst accusations of his interference in domestic politics. Late last year Morales also expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from Bolivia, claiming it too was intervening in political affairs. It's longtime Cochabamba headquarters is being converted into an auto showroom.

The U.S. State Department denounced the decision, calling it "“unwarranted and unjustified.” The U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, Denise Urs, told the press, "We can't understand how the president can assure us that he wants better relations with the United States and at the same time continue to make false accusations."

We haven't had the opportunity to look at the actual facts in this case yet. But one thing is certain, this isn't going to help Bolivia's cause to get the country's exports put back in the ATPDEA trade preference program. So far the prospects of a new Bolivia/U.S. relationship don't look too good.

U.S. Bolivia Relations in a Nutshell

Dear Readers:

Back from the book tour. Back from the snows of Minnesota and Chicago to the sunshine of Cochabamba. Back from planes, trains, and subways to simple morning walks to greet the neighborhood cows. Back to work.

Across the U.S. for the past month one of the questions we were asked the most was: What does the future hold for new relations between Bolivia and the U.S., under President Barak Obama?

I want to tackle that question in two posts this week. This first one is an overview, a look at the recent trajectory of relations between the two nations. Later this week I'll be back with a post: Three Things that the U.S. and Bolivian Governments Should Do.

The photo for today's post, appropriate to the subject at hand, was taken by the partner of one of our Democracy Center staff in Oruro at Carnaval a week ago. He took just before he sprayed foam on Evo from behind. Bolivians, Presidents included, like to have a good time.

Thanks again to everyone who came out to see us on the tour!

Jim Shultz

U.S. Bolivia Relations in a Nutshell

The Way it Was

For many years Bolivian governments and governments in Washington had a splendid relationship. But it was one based on Bolivian governments being quite happy to do pretty much anything Washington asked.

In the War on Drugs, Bolivian governments willingly allowed local drug prosecutors to receive special salary bonuses directly from the U.S. embassy. To keep those bonuses coming the prosecutors on Washington's payroll put thousands of innocent people in jail, giving the U.S. Embassy the escalating arrest statistics it happily reported onward to the State Department as evidence of its success. President Morales suspended the bonuses after taking office.

In reform of the nation's economy, the U.S. government and the international financial institutions associated with it (the World Bank, the IMF, and others) found happy allies in Bolivia's governing elite. Together they made the country a test lab for the policies of the Washington Consensus. While these moves made U.S. energy firms like Enron happy (the Texas company took control of Bolivia's oil pipelines), Bolivians were made worse off.

That convivial relationship changed in 2006, when President Evo Morales took office. A fierce U.S. critic, he told a stadium rally in Cochabamba that if the U.S. intended to continue using Bolivia as an economic test lab that he would "become the U.S.'s worst nightmare." On election night he ended his victory speech with an old cocalero chant, "Grow coca, death to the Yankees." But he said it in Quechua and none of the U.S. correspondents caught it.

Given that, it is actually surprising how well the Bush/Morales relationship began.

Shortly before the Morales inaugural I had conversations with both Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and the Bolivian government's designee for U.S. Ambassador. Both told me they hoped for good relations with the U.S., an intent that was clearly signaled to Washington as well. By happenstance I ended up flying the next day, from La Paz to Washington, on the same flights as the State Department's Assistant Secretary for Latin America, Thomas Shannon. Shannon had been the Bush administration's official representative at the Bolivian inaugural. He told me that was genuinely impressed by the new government's desire for cordial relations.

That message snaked its way up the diplomatic chain of command and resulted, some weeks later, in an official congratulatory call from President Bush to President Morales. Someone I know who listened in says that all went well on the call until Evo mentioned his political party, Movement Toward Socialism. Bush, I was told, could be heard turning to his aids and saying with some surprise, "He's a socialist?"

From afar it seemed like the Bush administration was suffering a bout of internal schizophrenia about what to do with Evo. One day Bush called Evo to congratulate him, then a few days later then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stood before a Washington press club, lumping Morales with Hugo Chavez and warning about the dangers of the continent's new "populist" leaders.

But on substantive policy matters the non-hawks in the administration seemed to carry the day. Bolivia's anti-drug efforts were certified as meeting U.S. standards and Bolivia continued to be included in the Andean Trade Pact (ATPDEA) that allowed its textiles tariff-free access to U.S. markets. Morales also stuck to his more dovish post-inaugural tendencies toward Washington. When asked by a U.S. journalist if he joined in Chavez's famous declaration at the United Nations calling Bush the devil, Morales demurred, saying he found no benefit to attacking people personally.

Goldberg Wars

It was probably inevitable that the Washington/La Paz honeymoon wouldn't last. President Morales distrusts the U.S. government viscerally, having been personally on the blunt end of the U.S. War on Coca. And the Bush administration was never comfortable with a cocalero socialist who counted Hugo Chavez as a close friend.

Diplomacy is the business of seeing how such conflicts can be kept in check, allowing for the mutual benefit of both sides. But skillful diplomacy takes a skillful diplomat. And the man who Mr. Bush sent to La Paz as his new Ambassador in August 2006, Phillip Goldberg, was not, by a stretch, a skillful diplomat.

It didn’t take much more than 5 minutes in the room with Goldberg to witness his condescension toward Bolivia and his cluelessness at diplomacy. In a roomful of U.S. citizens here in Cochabamba I watched jaws drop as Washington's chief diplomat in Bolivia made a joke about a woman being lynched in El Alto.

And time after time Goldberg displayed an innate ability to make international incidents out of diplomatic molehills.

First there was 'Ammogate'. In June 2007 Mr. Goldberg's military attaché, a U.S. Army Colonel, arranged for his son's fiancé to bring 500 rounds of ammunition into Bolivia in her suitcase. When the bullets were discovered at the La Paz airport the story was major front-page news. Ambassador Goldberg downplayed the incident publicly and paid an apology visit to the Bolivian Vice President. Even members of Goldberg's staff told me later that the Embassy had blown it by not making the Colonel apologize on television or sending him packing altogether. Imagine how U.S. Homeland Security might react if the niece of the Bolivian ambassador to Washington was stopped in Miami with 500 rounds in her suitcase.

Here's a Latin American joke: Why has there never been a coup in the United States? There isn't a U.S. Embassy.

Further evidence Mr. Goldberg's inability to run the Embassy came in February 2008, when news broke that one of his security aides was asking Fulbright Scholars and Peace Corps volunteers to spy on behalf of the U.S. government by passing along information about Cubans and Venezuelans in the country. The Embassy's antics put hundreds of U.S. young people at risk and were a direct violation of U.S. rules. Yet again, in public, Goldberg tried to treat the incident as minor, failing to understand totally the reactions of the Bolivian people.

To be clear, in the breakdown of U.S./Bolivia relations Goldberg has had a good deal of help from President Morales. Time and time again his anti-U.S. instincts took over. Sometimes it came as declarations, including a public repeat of his "Death to the Yankees" slogan when foreign reporters were watching. But words were not the only thing Morales tossed into the mix. When incoming U.S. Senate leader Henry Reid paid a visit to La Paz over New Years 2007, Evo took that moment to announce that U.S. citizens would be newly required to carry visas. Last year when Senator Christopher Dodd – one of the most important progressive voices on Latin America in the Senate – boarded a plane for Bolivia, he was told that Evo wouldn’t see him. Not even frenzied phone calls to the Bolivian Embassy in Washington could change Evo's mind (Dodd met only with the Vice President).

Finally, in July of last year, Assistant Secretary Shannon made a return trip to Bolivia in the hope of resolving some of the tensions that Goldberg and Morales could not. Happy statements of continued friendship came out of those meetings, but the mistrust sewn in both directions for two years were, in the end, insurmountable.

The September Meltdown

Whatever diplomatic civility remained between Bolivia and the U.S., if there was any, melted entirely in September as Bolivia was in the midst of its own domestic political meltdown.

In August President Morales survived an election showdown with his regional adversaries, winning the backing of 67% of voters in a national referendum. That same vote also ousted two of his fiercest opponents among the governors, both by wide margins. When Evo announced that he would use his fresh mandate to push forward with a national vote on a MAS-drafted constitution, the remaining regional governors opposed to Morales decided to go to war. In Santa Cruz the governor egged on mobs of youth who torched public buildings. In the Pando the Governor there was charged with involvement in a massacre of more than a dozen campesinos.

A wiser diplomat would have remained carefully neutral, issuing calls for peace from the bunker-like U.S. Embassy in La Paz. But on the eve of the violence, when it was clear that the nation's divisions were headed for a violent precipice, Mr. Goldberg went on tour, to visit two governors who were Morales' harshest critics – Sabina Cuellar of Chuqisaca and Ruben Costas of Santa Cruz.

What was said in these meetings is known only to those present. But shortly afterwards Cuellar called for Morales' resignation and Costas launched the street attacks in Santa Cruz. Here is a link to the September declaration by a group of MAS Congress Members which outlines the specific actions charged by the Bolivian government against Mr. Goldberg.

Those visits set off the string of events that leads us to where we are today. In short order Morales declared that Goldberg was encouraging the governors' efforts to undermine democratic rule in Bolivia and ordered him out of the country. With that move, whatever dovish instincts may have still been alive within the Bush administration were quickly overtaken by the move into retaliation mode. Bolivia's ambassador to the U.S., Gustavo Guzman, was ordered out of the U.S. Bush then suddenly 'decertified Bolivia's anti-coca efforts and removed it from the Andean Trade Preference Program.

The administration also pulled more than 100 Peace Corps volunteers out of Bolivia, citing "security concerns". The Embassy here apparently had no such security concerns when it asked some of those volunteers to spy on its behalf. I have spoken to many of these volunteers in the months since. Most felt totally safe where they were, they were not told they were being pulled from Bolivia when they left their villages, and they are bitter at the possibility that they were used as political pawns.

This was the Bolivia/U.S. relationship inherited by the Obama administration.

What Would Obama Do?

The election of Barak Obama inspired great hope here in Bolivia as well as in the U.S. Taxi drivers in El Alto asked me about him. President Morales seemed to feel a personal sense of connection. "What is happening in the world?" he asked. "An indigenous man is president in Bolivia and a black man is president in the United States." But how does that translate into changes in diplomatic relations?

When asked about this on our book tour I made two points.

The first is that U.S. relations toward Bolivia are operating at the moment on Bush holdover autopilot. As a source in Washington, close to the administration, explained to me, Obama will focus all of his attention and his political capital on three things – the economic crisis, the War in Iraq, and the War in Afghanistan. Latin America, and Bolivia less so, is not even on the radar screen. What decisions are being made are mostly likely being made at a level far below President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The administration hasn't even gotten around to naming a successor to Assistant Secretary Shannon, the person that will lead administration policy development toward the region.

The second is that in the absence of a strong vision for U.S./Latin American policy, it is possible that some of the basics will be driven by politics. As I said in the U.S., I think the new administration will have a naughty list and a nice list, with Hugo Chavez heading the former and people like Lula of Brazil heading the latter. Where Evo ends up is up for grabs.

Oil Corruption, the CIA, and Human Rights

All of which brings us to the stories currently grabbing a few column inches in the U.S. and headlines in Bolivia.

For the last month the Morales administration has been hit with a major corruption scandal involving its newly reconstituted state oil company (YPFB). The scandal broke when an oilman by the name of Jorge O'Connor was killed in late January in La Paz. He was carrying $450,000 in cash, apparently on its way to be handed over to the head of the state company, Santos Ramírez. Stung badly, Morales ordered Ramírez to jail and fired many of those who worked with him.

As I was quoted in yesterday's Washington Post, "I don't think it's any secret to anybody that corruption in the Bolivian government did not end when Evo Morales became president."

Then last week Morales came up with a new theory of why the state oil company has suffered such a string of corruption and mismanagement charges under his administration. The C.I.A., he charged, has infiltrated the company to create problems for his government. The Embassy in La Paz angrily denied the accusation and Morales opponents declared that the President was just trying to shift attention away from the corruption scandal.

This is not the first accusation by the Morales government that the U.S. has been meddling in internal affairs in Bolivia. In addition to the charges leveled against Goldberg, his government has accused USAID of providing backing to his opponents and also accused the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of meddling and ordered it to leave.

Finally, this week the Obama administration tossed its own grenade into the mix, with the State Department's annual issuance of human right reports on 191 nations across the globe (not including the U.S.) – from Albania to Zimbabwe. These reports are always received with skepticism, coming as they do from a country that makes rendition flights to sweep people away to U.S. operated torture camps. It is worth noting, for example, that the Cuba report makes no mention of the surest source of human rights abuses on the island, the U.S. prison at Guantanamo.

The report on Bolivia -- which was surely written long before Mr. Obama took the presidential oath -- included warnings similar to those under prior governments. These include unjust detentions, abuses by police and soldiers, and infringements on press freedom. Yesterday Morales declared, "The State Department does not have the moral right to speak of human rights, those who have most punished the whole world…who went to Iraq to kill."

I think it is a very good thing to have a global review of human right situations around the world. But it also seems clear that the U.S. has shot itself in the foot for a long while to come as a credible messenger.

And Now…

This is how we got here, to a place in U.S./Bolivia relations where neither nation has an ambassador to the other, where 20,000 Bolivian workers remain at risk due to President Bush's political moves on trade, where the Peace Corps is gone and not coming back, and where the relationships between two peoples that ought to have good relations are now deeply soured because of the actions of their governments.

How can we get to a better place? Tune into our next Blog post later this week.