COMMENTATOR : Previously on Life:
IMRANA QADEER: People are not able to subsist on what they were able to subsist earlier.
ROBERT REICH: The dangers of the new Global Economy essentially are to split societies.
JAMES WOLFENSOHN: Globalisation is an opportunity for us to have the developing countries with whom we deal make advances rather than to be pushed out.
COMM: Bolivia is at the heart of South America. Its people are a mix of Quechua, Aymara and Guarani; its colonial past - Catholic Spanish. It extends from the high Andes to tropical jungle. It's culturally, ethnically and geographically very diverse and potentially rich. But it's one of the poorest countries on earth.
In 1985, after decades of dictatorship, democracy was restored. There followed a period of stringent economic reforms. But despite all the changes, Bolivia is still poor. Two-thirds of Bolivians live on under a dollar a day, one in five children is malnourished, and the infant mortality rate is one of the highest in Latin America. Bolivians suffer from ill health, have short life expectancy, and in recent years inequality has grown. In 1997 the current government, led by President Banzer, decided to start a 'National dialogue with the people' to set out its priorities for integrated development.
JORGE QUIROGA, Vice President, Bolivia: Bolivia convened all of civil society: workers; business people; media; military; judiciary, political parties. And we looked at four areas of Bolivia: social development; economic development; institutional development and the fight against drugs - to find some basic consensus on what directions we should be heading in those areas.
COMM: At the same time the World Bank was reviewing the effectiveness of international aid policies.
ISABEL GUERRERO, World Bank, Washington DC: The whole international community in the last decade transferred ten percent of GDP to Bolivia in aid, and yet poverty has hardly changed. And so here we had a huge challenge and in the first consultancy group meeting we all agreed that this was a shared responsibility. This is not Bolivia that's not having any poverty alleviation, it's also us , the dollar community, is not having any poverty alleviation impact in Bolivia. That's when we realised that we had to look at the way we're doing things. And we realised, of course, that the best way is to go to our clients and say, okay - if you had total a blank slate how would you re-invent the World Bank in order to help you reach your goals?
COMM: The Bolivian Government and the World Bank have met regularly - putting together a strategy which they hope will increase economic growth and improve the lot of the Bolivian poor. A new experimental plan's been in place for a year. It's called the Comprehensive Development Framework or CDF. The World Bank's representative in Bolivia explains.
JOHN NEWMAN, World Bank, La Paz The Comprehensive Development Framework started, I think, because of a dissatisfaction with the pace of poverty reduction, given all the efforts that had been made in development assistance in the past decades. And it grew out of a recognition that in addition to creating the conditions for economic growth, there also needed to be an attention paid to the institutions so that government programmes could be more effective and so development assistance could be more effective.
COMM: For a second time since it was elected, the Bolivian Government has held a process of consultation with the people. The government and the World Bank are keen to emphasise the democratic nature of their consultative programme.
JORGE QUIROGA: What we've never had is poverty alleviation plans and programmes that are not designed based on the whims or ideas of three people in the seat of government. But rather by convening everybody from each municipality, from each one of the regions and having them have a say on how we go about the fight against poverty.
COMM: To encourage people to participate, the government put out the following advert.
COMM. (TRANSLATION): Dialogue is . . .
GIRL (TRANSLATION): Believing that we can change!
BUSINESSMAN (TRANSLATION): That just having good intentions isn't enough.
FARMER (TRANSLATION): Let's get together and make better decisions!
OLD WOMAN (TRANSLATION): To participate is to make decisions.
WORKER (TRANSLATION): Don't let others decide your future!
YOUNG RURAL WOMAN (TRANSLATION ): Dialogue is fighting against poverty.
COMM. (TRANSLATION): Yes we can do it, Bolivia has the word Dialogue 2000.
COMM: Education is one of the cornerstones of the new approach by the government and World Bank. Under the Comprehensive Development Framework or CDF, all projects will be co-ordinated so that the ambitious reforms embarked on by the government can come to fruition. The Deputy Minister for Education explains.
AMALIA ANAYA, Deputy Minister of Education, Bolivia (TRANSLATION): Bolivia's education system has been in a state of crisis for many years. Bolivia has the worst indicators in this part of the South America when it comes to illiteracy, truancy and repeating school years. The low standard of education made us launch a programme to reform education, to improve the overall standard of education and in particular expand public education.
COMM: On the Altiplano at over four thousand metres high, between Lake Titicaca and the capital La Paz lies the Department of Pucarani. Under the new CDF strategy, a school in Cucuta has been the focus of government. The people here are Aymaran and in the past many children found primary education hard because all classes were in Spanish. They were made to feel their language and culture was second class, many children played truant, and their parents - who could often do with an extra pair of hands at home - did little to encourage them to attend. All that has now changed - when these children start school, classes are in both their native Aymara and Spanish. For their teacher, Daniel Mendoza - a qualified psychologist - the reforms have been welcome. But when asked what he wants from the government, it's clear that social inequality goes deep.
DANIEL MENDOZA (TRANSLATION): I'd ask the government to eliminate poverty, especially where there is inequality, because now where people have more money they can get a better education.
COMM: The reform has included the involvement of local community leaders in the school, who encourage more pupils to attend. Here the local Mayoress lends her support - and that of the civic community.
MAYORESS, Domitila Alconde Marquez (TRANSLATION): We support all the work here and we also keep an eye on the money and how it is being shared out from the public purse.
COMM: At the moment most teachers only work part time, about three hours a day, because they're paid so poorly. The government wants to change this by - it hopes - incorporating international funding into their budgets.
AMALIA ANAYA (TRANSLATION): Teachers are earning little and working little. What we are trying to do with the reform is bit by bit to get teachers working full time so that they earn more. As a country we need to make a bigger effort to improve the quality of the teachers and pay them more too.
COMM: So how does the CDF help the poor? This is El Alto: a town built on the plane above the capital La Paz - over four thousand meters above sea level and the fastest growing city in Latin America. The population - at about three quarters of a million - is mainly indigenous Aymarans who have moved from the countryside to El Alto in search of work. Basic facilities such as water, electricity and sanitation are expensive and only reach a small section of the town. Segundo Lima and his wife Maria Baptista have done well. They run a workshop that makes leathers goods and woven purses for the tourist market in La Paz. He employs people on a casual basis depending on how well his goods sell. His workers have no guaranteed or fixed hours and earn less than the official minimum wage. And they have no access to health care or social security. Cruz, who's finished secondary school, can't afford to go to university. He has just started working here His salary is sporadic and well under a dollar a day.
CRUZ (TRANSLATION): It depends on how much is sold. It is not a lot.
DIRECTOR (TRANSLATION): Is it enough to live on?
CRUZ (TRANSLATION): No it's not - with what's happening it's not enough to live on.
COMM: The casual way that Segundo employs his workers is typical of El Alto, where there is mass unemployment.
SEGUNDO LIMA (TRANSLATION): I live in a poor area. There are a lot of poor people here as there aren't many jobs nor much medical attention as there is no government support. Everybody here lives totally independent from the state support.
COMM: At the moment Segundo's business is doing quite well, but neither he nor his family have health insurance or social security. It's a precarious wealth, with no safety net. For many of the NGOs who work in El Alto the whole concept of the Comprehensive Development Framework is wrong; Javier Gomez is one of the sceptics.
JAVIER GOMEZ (TRANSLATION): We cannot discuss Bolivia after fifteen years of structural adjustment, without talking about the economic model that has failed to solve the serious problems that we face with inequality. Bolivia is poor -it's not just a fraction of the people who are poor. When thinking about Bolivia one has to think along those lines. We don't need to make politics to reduce poverty we need a development model to eliminate inequality and poverty and the CDF does not come up with that.
PART TWO
COMM: This farm is on the outskirts of the village of Aranjuez, close to the provincial capital of Cochabamba. It belongs to Catalina Hinojosa and her husband Cornelio Perofino. Although the soil here is fertile, they have a constant battle trying to get enough water to grow their crops. There is no irrigation or running water in their area and no government, World Bank, NGO or private financing for any integrated irrigation system for the village. Where they have managed to get water into the soil, it is fertile and produces speedy results. Here they have grown alfalfa to feed their animals, and later in September they'll plant maize for a Christmas harvest. To get at the life giving water, they have hand dug a deep well thirty-two metres deep by hand, and bought a small pump to bring water to the surface. There was no credit available for them to pay for the pump. The only reason Cornelio and Catalina could afford to buy one is that they both do other jobs - he teaches and she works in a library. For them life is hard and once the well runs dry they may have to leave the village like many have before them.
CORNELIO PEROFINO (TRANSLATION): The majority, especially the young, have emigrated to other countries, especially Argentina - perhaps about sixty to sixty-five percent and about thirty percent go to the US. They are looking for new working opportunities because here there aren't enough jobs. They have gone looking for new horizons.
COMM: Recently, the government tried to impose a new law. It proposed that water from their well should be taxed. In Cornelio's view, none of the revenues raised would be used for any local improvements. CORNELIO PEROFINO (TRANSLATION): I believe they want to enrich themselves, each government in turn have always thought of their personal sectarian interests and they have thought or cared little for Bolivia. That is why we are in the situation we are in. COMM: His scepticism is shared by his neighbour Dr Franklin Arnez. Doctor Arnez was born and bred in Aranjuez. During the week, he works in Cochabamba, but at the weekend he comes home and gives free medical advice to his fellow villagers.
DR FRANKLIN ARNEZ (TRANSLATION): Here in Aranjuez there is no public health centre for people to attend. If they need help they have to go privately and pay for a doctor or hospital. It is a fraud. Lately there is a subsidy for poor people who have to go to hospital but you don't get to see it. Poor people who have to go into hospital don't get treated unless they've got money.
COMM: As for the government consulting the people, Dr Arnez is adamant.
DR ARNEZ (TRANSLATION): Absolutely nobody. At least from what I know and I am here every weekend. Nobody came here to talk to or listen to anybody.
COMM: In Bolivia's third biggest city, Cochabamba, this is how half its population receives its water. It's expensive; they pay seven times the normal rate. It is stored in unhygienic metal containers. Where there is no access to running water, the infant mortality rate triples. The government was looking for a solution that didn't involve public investment. They turned to a consortium led by International Water Ltd who won a forty-year concession to provide water to Cochabamba's six hundred thousand population. To achieve this a large tunnel is being bored through the mountains, giving access to a new reservoir. To cover the cost of the project, water tariffs had to be massively increased. The government ignored the warnings from the World Bank and went ahead with the plan.
COMM: Once the people of Cochabamba heard that water prices would rise, resentment, fear and distrust of the government and foreign corporations exploded onto the streets [April 2000]. The government declared a State of Siege and called in the army, repression followed. One demonstrator was killed - and over a hundred injured. The head of the Water Committee, Oscar Olivares, who organised the demonstration, was seen as a local Che Guevara.
OSCAR OLIVERA, Cochabamba Water Committee (TRANSLATION): The water war in Cochabamba, Bolivia was a fight for democracy. A fight of the people wanting to be heard so that the people make the decisions and not the government. Not the international financial organisations such as the World Bank, the IMF which makes the decision for us. Ultimately the water war was a fight over who decides: whether it is us the people, or the international organisations.
COMM: As the situation got out of control the army began to take increasingly desperate and undemocratic measures. When the actions of this army sniper, wearing civilian clothes, were caught on camera, international condemnation followed. The government backed down. Today nobody has a solution to one of the most basic problems in Bolivia: how to bring affordable water to the town of Cochabamba.
This is the Chapare region of Bolivia. In recent years it has been famous for growing coca which is then refined into cocaine and exported. There are army checkpoints on all roads into the area, and every vehicle entering or leaving is searched. Bolivians have always produced coca which they drink as a tea or chew. However, once cheap refined cocaine became available in the United States, demand for the drug spiralled out of control and peasants began growing increasing amounts of coca. Bolivia has been under intense pressure from the US to control its production; this Government has made coca eradication and alternative development part of the Comprehensive Development Framework. For the Vice President there are three reasons for the eradication programme.
VICE PRESIDENT JORGE QUIROGA: The first is this was the most aggravating stereotype that Bolivia faced. It damages the country. Number two is that the money that people derive from this is so corrosive that it could contaminate anything that it touches in Bolivia. Be it political parties, banks, business people, media - you name it. Military, police - anything that it would touch it would contaminate. Because for a small country like this, the amounts of money were extremely corrosive. And number three: consumption in Bolivia quadrupled.
COMM: Local farmers in this area of the Chapare have been coerced into ripping up their coca plants and growing alternative crops.
ALEJANDRO (TRANSLATION): My name is Alejandro Terrazas. Here I am in a citrus grove. Well, on this side I have some oranges and mandarins and over there I have got some Macadamia plants in the middle of the citrus plants.
COMM: Don Alejandro planted Macadamia nut trees on the advice of European experts who told him they would be profitable. To carry this out, he borrowed money - over six thousand dollars.
ALEJANDRO (TRANSLATION): They told us that a kilo of Macadamia nuts would sell for twenty-five dollars and each tree would produce one hundred to one hundred and fifty kilo so that's why I decided to plant a hectare of Macadamia nuts. Almost seventy percent of the trees have died and the other thirty percent that have survived don't produce those kind of results. I'd calculate that at most it's about two kilos per tree.
COMM: It's been a disaster. Most of the Macadamia trees have rotted away because of high humidity levels. As a result Alejandro is now behind on repayments of the original loan. To compound the problem, the market price for his oranges and lemons is in decline as there is now over-production. For Don Alejandro, it's been a sorry business.
ALEJANDRO (TRANSLATION): The alternative development programme hasn't worked. So much money was put into the programme and it pains me to have to say this, but it has to be said clearly, that the alternative development programme, sadly, is for those that work in institutions not for those who work on the land.
COMM: The Comprehensive Development Framework has now been in place for just over a year during which the income of the average Bolivian has fallen slightly. For the World Bank, it is just the beginning of a long process.
ISABEL GUERRERO, World Bank: We are just now learning the donors -we have most donors here - they are really aligned. There's been a lot of work happening at the level of ministers of economic development, at the grassroots there's a lot of work there but then you have to bring it to civil society. I think the dialogue is a good step in that direction, but how do you make it go beyond a minimal small group to really make a difference in a sustainable way that you have a change in government and it doesn't disappear? I think that that's the challenge.
COMM: The people of Bolivia are waiting for that challenge to be met.
END
IMRANA QADEER: People are not able to subsist on what they were able to subsist earlier.
ROBERT REICH: The dangers of the new Global Economy essentially are to split societies.
JAMES WOLFENSOHN: Globalisation is an opportunity for us to have the developing countries with whom we deal make advances rather than to be pushed out.
COMM: Bolivia is at the heart of South America. Its people are a mix of Quechua, Aymara and Guarani; its colonial past - Catholic Spanish. It extends from the high Andes to tropical jungle. It's culturally, ethnically and geographically very diverse and potentially rich. But it's one of the poorest countries on earth.
In 1985, after decades of dictatorship, democracy was restored. There followed a period of stringent economic reforms. But despite all the changes, Bolivia is still poor. Two-thirds of Bolivians live on under a dollar a day, one in five children is malnourished, and the infant mortality rate is one of the highest in Latin America. Bolivians suffer from ill health, have short life expectancy, and in recent years inequality has grown. In 1997 the current government, led by President Banzer, decided to start a 'National dialogue with the people' to set out its priorities for integrated development.
JORGE QUIROGA, Vice President, Bolivia: Bolivia convened all of civil society: workers; business people; media; military; judiciary, political parties. And we looked at four areas of Bolivia: social development; economic development; institutional development and the fight against drugs - to find some basic consensus on what directions we should be heading in those areas.
COMM: At the same time the World Bank was reviewing the effectiveness of international aid policies.
ISABEL GUERRERO, World Bank, Washington DC: The whole international community in the last decade transferred ten percent of GDP to Bolivia in aid, and yet poverty has hardly changed. And so here we had a huge challenge and in the first consultancy group meeting we all agreed that this was a shared responsibility. This is not Bolivia that's not having any poverty alleviation, it's also us , the dollar community, is not having any poverty alleviation impact in Bolivia. That's when we realised that we had to look at the way we're doing things. And we realised, of course, that the best way is to go to our clients and say, okay - if you had total a blank slate how would you re-invent the World Bank in order to help you reach your goals?
COMM: The Bolivian Government and the World Bank have met regularly - putting together a strategy which they hope will increase economic growth and improve the lot of the Bolivian poor. A new experimental plan's been in place for a year. It's called the Comprehensive Development Framework or CDF. The World Bank's representative in Bolivia explains.
JOHN NEWMAN, World Bank, La Paz The Comprehensive Development Framework started, I think, because of a dissatisfaction with the pace of poverty reduction, given all the efforts that had been made in development assistance in the past decades. And it grew out of a recognition that in addition to creating the conditions for economic growth, there also needed to be an attention paid to the institutions so that government programmes could be more effective and so development assistance could be more effective.
COMM: For a second time since it was elected, the Bolivian Government has held a process of consultation with the people. The government and the World Bank are keen to emphasise the democratic nature of their consultative programme.
JORGE QUIROGA: What we've never had is poverty alleviation plans and programmes that are not designed based on the whims or ideas of three people in the seat of government. But rather by convening everybody from each municipality, from each one of the regions and having them have a say on how we go about the fight against poverty.
COMM: To encourage people to participate, the government put out the following advert.
COMM. (TRANSLATION): Dialogue is . . .
GIRL (TRANSLATION): Believing that we can change!
BUSINESSMAN (TRANSLATION): That just having good intentions isn't enough.
FARMER (TRANSLATION): Let's get together and make better decisions!
OLD WOMAN (TRANSLATION): To participate is to make decisions.
WORKER (TRANSLATION): Don't let others decide your future!
YOUNG RURAL WOMAN (TRANSLATION ): Dialogue is fighting against poverty.
COMM. (TRANSLATION): Yes we can do it, Bolivia has the word Dialogue 2000.
COMM: Education is one of the cornerstones of the new approach by the government and World Bank. Under the Comprehensive Development Framework or CDF, all projects will be co-ordinated so that the ambitious reforms embarked on by the government can come to fruition. The Deputy Minister for Education explains.
AMALIA ANAYA, Deputy Minister of Education, Bolivia (TRANSLATION): Bolivia's education system has been in a state of crisis for many years. Bolivia has the worst indicators in this part of the South America when it comes to illiteracy, truancy and repeating school years. The low standard of education made us launch a programme to reform education, to improve the overall standard of education and in particular expand public education.
COMM: On the Altiplano at over four thousand metres high, between Lake Titicaca and the capital La Paz lies the Department of Pucarani. Under the new CDF strategy, a school in Cucuta has been the focus of government. The people here are Aymaran and in the past many children found primary education hard because all classes were in Spanish. They were made to feel their language and culture was second class, many children played truant, and their parents - who could often do with an extra pair of hands at home - did little to encourage them to attend. All that has now changed - when these children start school, classes are in both their native Aymara and Spanish. For their teacher, Daniel Mendoza - a qualified psychologist - the reforms have been welcome. But when asked what he wants from the government, it's clear that social inequality goes deep.
DANIEL MENDOZA (TRANSLATION): I'd ask the government to eliminate poverty, especially where there is inequality, because now where people have more money they can get a better education.
COMM: The reform has included the involvement of local community leaders in the school, who encourage more pupils to attend. Here the local Mayoress lends her support - and that of the civic community.
MAYORESS, Domitila Alconde Marquez (TRANSLATION): We support all the work here and we also keep an eye on the money and how it is being shared out from the public purse.
COMM: At the moment most teachers only work part time, about three hours a day, because they're paid so poorly. The government wants to change this by - it hopes - incorporating international funding into their budgets.
AMALIA ANAYA (TRANSLATION): Teachers are earning little and working little. What we are trying to do with the reform is bit by bit to get teachers working full time so that they earn more. As a country we need to make a bigger effort to improve the quality of the teachers and pay them more too.
COMM: So how does the CDF help the poor? This is El Alto: a town built on the plane above the capital La Paz - over four thousand meters above sea level and the fastest growing city in Latin America. The population - at about three quarters of a million - is mainly indigenous Aymarans who have moved from the countryside to El Alto in search of work. Basic facilities such as water, electricity and sanitation are expensive and only reach a small section of the town. Segundo Lima and his wife Maria Baptista have done well. They run a workshop that makes leathers goods and woven purses for the tourist market in La Paz. He employs people on a casual basis depending on how well his goods sell. His workers have no guaranteed or fixed hours and earn less than the official minimum wage. And they have no access to health care or social security. Cruz, who's finished secondary school, can't afford to go to university. He has just started working here His salary is sporadic and well under a dollar a day.
CRUZ (TRANSLATION): It depends on how much is sold. It is not a lot.
DIRECTOR (TRANSLATION): Is it enough to live on?
CRUZ (TRANSLATION): No it's not - with what's happening it's not enough to live on.
COMM: The casual way that Segundo employs his workers is typical of El Alto, where there is mass unemployment.
SEGUNDO LIMA (TRANSLATION): I live in a poor area. There are a lot of poor people here as there aren't many jobs nor much medical attention as there is no government support. Everybody here lives totally independent from the state support.
COMM: At the moment Segundo's business is doing quite well, but neither he nor his family have health insurance or social security. It's a precarious wealth, with no safety net. For many of the NGOs who work in El Alto the whole concept of the Comprehensive Development Framework is wrong; Javier Gomez is one of the sceptics.
JAVIER GOMEZ (TRANSLATION): We cannot discuss Bolivia after fifteen years of structural adjustment, without talking about the economic model that has failed to solve the serious problems that we face with inequality. Bolivia is poor -it's not just a fraction of the people who are poor. When thinking about Bolivia one has to think along those lines. We don't need to make politics to reduce poverty we need a development model to eliminate inequality and poverty and the CDF does not come up with that.
PART TWO
COMM: This farm is on the outskirts of the village of Aranjuez, close to the provincial capital of Cochabamba. It belongs to Catalina Hinojosa and her husband Cornelio Perofino. Although the soil here is fertile, they have a constant battle trying to get enough water to grow their crops. There is no irrigation or running water in their area and no government, World Bank, NGO or private financing for any integrated irrigation system for the village. Where they have managed to get water into the soil, it is fertile and produces speedy results. Here they have grown alfalfa to feed their animals, and later in September they'll plant maize for a Christmas harvest. To get at the life giving water, they have hand dug a deep well thirty-two metres deep by hand, and bought a small pump to bring water to the surface. There was no credit available for them to pay for the pump. The only reason Cornelio and Catalina could afford to buy one is that they both do other jobs - he teaches and she works in a library. For them life is hard and once the well runs dry they may have to leave the village like many have before them.
CORNELIO PEROFINO (TRANSLATION): The majority, especially the young, have emigrated to other countries, especially Argentina - perhaps about sixty to sixty-five percent and about thirty percent go to the US. They are looking for new working opportunities because here there aren't enough jobs. They have gone looking for new horizons.
COMM: Recently, the government tried to impose a new law. It proposed that water from their well should be taxed. In Cornelio's view, none of the revenues raised would be used for any local improvements. CORNELIO PEROFINO (TRANSLATION): I believe they want to enrich themselves, each government in turn have always thought of their personal sectarian interests and they have thought or cared little for Bolivia. That is why we are in the situation we are in. COMM: His scepticism is shared by his neighbour Dr Franklin Arnez. Doctor Arnez was born and bred in Aranjuez. During the week, he works in Cochabamba, but at the weekend he comes home and gives free medical advice to his fellow villagers.
DR FRANKLIN ARNEZ (TRANSLATION): Here in Aranjuez there is no public health centre for people to attend. If they need help they have to go privately and pay for a doctor or hospital. It is a fraud. Lately there is a subsidy for poor people who have to go to hospital but you don't get to see it. Poor people who have to go into hospital don't get treated unless they've got money.
COMM: As for the government consulting the people, Dr Arnez is adamant.
DR ARNEZ (TRANSLATION): Absolutely nobody. At least from what I know and I am here every weekend. Nobody came here to talk to or listen to anybody.
COMM: In Bolivia's third biggest city, Cochabamba, this is how half its population receives its water. It's expensive; they pay seven times the normal rate. It is stored in unhygienic metal containers. Where there is no access to running water, the infant mortality rate triples. The government was looking for a solution that didn't involve public investment. They turned to a consortium led by International Water Ltd who won a forty-year concession to provide water to Cochabamba's six hundred thousand population. To achieve this a large tunnel is being bored through the mountains, giving access to a new reservoir. To cover the cost of the project, water tariffs had to be massively increased. The government ignored the warnings from the World Bank and went ahead with the plan.
COMM: Once the people of Cochabamba heard that water prices would rise, resentment, fear and distrust of the government and foreign corporations exploded onto the streets [April 2000]. The government declared a State of Siege and called in the army, repression followed. One demonstrator was killed - and over a hundred injured. The head of the Water Committee, Oscar Olivares, who organised the demonstration, was seen as a local Che Guevara.
OSCAR OLIVERA, Cochabamba Water Committee (TRANSLATION): The water war in Cochabamba, Bolivia was a fight for democracy. A fight of the people wanting to be heard so that the people make the decisions and not the government. Not the international financial organisations such as the World Bank, the IMF which makes the decision for us. Ultimately the water war was a fight over who decides: whether it is us the people, or the international organisations.
COMM: As the situation got out of control the army began to take increasingly desperate and undemocratic measures. When the actions of this army sniper, wearing civilian clothes, were caught on camera, international condemnation followed. The government backed down. Today nobody has a solution to one of the most basic problems in Bolivia: how to bring affordable water to the town of Cochabamba.
This is the Chapare region of Bolivia. In recent years it has been famous for growing coca which is then refined into cocaine and exported. There are army checkpoints on all roads into the area, and every vehicle entering or leaving is searched. Bolivians have always produced coca which they drink as a tea or chew. However, once cheap refined cocaine became available in the United States, demand for the drug spiralled out of control and peasants began growing increasing amounts of coca. Bolivia has been under intense pressure from the US to control its production; this Government has made coca eradication and alternative development part of the Comprehensive Development Framework. For the Vice President there are three reasons for the eradication programme.
VICE PRESIDENT JORGE QUIROGA: The first is this was the most aggravating stereotype that Bolivia faced. It damages the country. Number two is that the money that people derive from this is so corrosive that it could contaminate anything that it touches in Bolivia. Be it political parties, banks, business people, media - you name it. Military, police - anything that it would touch it would contaminate. Because for a small country like this, the amounts of money were extremely corrosive. And number three: consumption in Bolivia quadrupled.
COMM: Local farmers in this area of the Chapare have been coerced into ripping up their coca plants and growing alternative crops.
ALEJANDRO (TRANSLATION): My name is Alejandro Terrazas. Here I am in a citrus grove. Well, on this side I have some oranges and mandarins and over there I have got some Macadamia plants in the middle of the citrus plants.
COMM: Don Alejandro planted Macadamia nut trees on the advice of European experts who told him they would be profitable. To carry this out, he borrowed money - over six thousand dollars.
ALEJANDRO (TRANSLATION): They told us that a kilo of Macadamia nuts would sell for twenty-five dollars and each tree would produce one hundred to one hundred and fifty kilo so that's why I decided to plant a hectare of Macadamia nuts. Almost seventy percent of the trees have died and the other thirty percent that have survived don't produce those kind of results. I'd calculate that at most it's about two kilos per tree.
COMM: It's been a disaster. Most of the Macadamia trees have rotted away because of high humidity levels. As a result Alejandro is now behind on repayments of the original loan. To compound the problem, the market price for his oranges and lemons is in decline as there is now over-production. For Don Alejandro, it's been a sorry business.
ALEJANDRO (TRANSLATION): The alternative development programme hasn't worked. So much money was put into the programme and it pains me to have to say this, but it has to be said clearly, that the alternative development programme, sadly, is for those that work in institutions not for those who work on the land.
COMM: The Comprehensive Development Framework has now been in place for just over a year during which the income of the average Bolivian has fallen slightly. For the World Bank, it is just the beginning of a long process.
ISABEL GUERRERO, World Bank: We are just now learning the donors -we have most donors here - they are really aligned. There's been a lot of work happening at the level of ministers of economic development, at the grassroots there's a lot of work there but then you have to bring it to civil society. I think the dialogue is a good step in that direction, but how do you make it go beyond a minimal small group to really make a difference in a sustainable way that you have a change in government and it doesn't disappear? I think that that's the challenge.
COMM: The people of Bolivia are waiting for that challenge to be met.
END