Bolivia - Some Additional Background

The Washington Post has a very thorough analysis by noted economist, Jeffrey Sachs, with some solid background as to the confluence of events that led to the recent unrest in Bolivia and the lack of carefully considered support for the government of Bolivia and its needs:

Late last year, Sanchez de Lozada visited Washington to warn President Bush about Bolivia's growing instability. He appealed for $150 million in emergency assistance, a pittance for the United States -- less than one day of troop costs in Iraq -- to maintain urgent social services and rudimentary public investments in the face of massive poverty and growing unrest. He warned Bush that without emergency help, he would most likely be back within a year . . . seeking asylum. Nevertheless, Bush sent him away empty-handed. Worse, he sent him down Pennsylvania Avenue to the IMF for some economic austerity measures. Only after a police mutiny and two dozen deaths in February did Washington give $10 million. In the end, of course, Sanchez de Lozada's warnings were all too accurate.

Bush was following the standard, failed script handed him by the State Department, Treasury Department, National Security Council and Pentagon. It is a script I know well. As an economic adviser to Bolivia and dozens of other poor countries during the past 20 years, I have watched the United States fumble and founder as friendly, impoverished governments have collapsed. As a result, the mutual interests of the United States and these countries have been squandered.

The U.S. government is not organized to grasp the complexities of economic distress in places such as Bolivia (or Afghanistan or Iraq or Nigeria). At least since the Reagan administration, Washington has repeated one mantra: The problems of economic development can be solved by the IMF and don't require any significant financial help from the United States.

Sachs also makes it clear that this was not the first time Lozada had gone to the US for help and it was not the first time he had ben rebuffed:

Bolivia's chronic poverty is rooted in geography, demography, agronomy, climate, ethnicity and history. Yet the U.S. government systematically overlooks these broader issues and, via the IMF, advocates belt-tightening policies that leave struggling countries without the financial means to tackle their deeper problems.

Much of Bolivia is 13,000 feet above sea level. It is landlocked and suffers some of the highest transport costs in the world. Investors in Bolivia have, therefore, always been interested in commodities with a high value per weight -- gold, silver, tin, oil, natural gas and coca leaf. Commodity booms and busts, with profits mainly carried away by conquistadors, colonial rulers and foreign investors, have left Bolivia impoverished and exhausted. And international investors in manufacturing and services have mostly been dissuaded by the country's economic isolation.

This much was evident 20 years ago, in the midst of hyperinflation and economic collapse, when as a new planning minister, Sanchez de Lozada designed a bold economic strategy based on a restoration of democracy, market reforms and increased social investments. But he knew that Bolivia would need significant help from abroad, especially from the United States.

In 1987, Sanchez de Lozada came to Washington for visits with President Reagan, Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger. That year the Pentagon had launched a military operation against peasant coca growers and cocaine traffickers. Bolivia's economy was in turmoil, and Sanchez de Lozada told the Americans that Bolivia needed more than military operations. It needed help to build transport infrastructure, industrial parks, schools and clinics, so that it could overcome the root causes of impoverishment and offer alternatives to the peasantry. Incredibly, Shultz, representing the world's richest country, explained to Sanchez de Lozada, representing the hemisphere's second-poorest nation, that the United States had a large budget deficit and would therefore be unable to help, even as U.S. military actions were destabilizing Bolivia.

Read the entire article. Sachs brings up some good points and makes some thoughtful suggestions.

Marcela Sánchez thinks that the Bush administration has been granted a second chance in Bolivia, despite the ultimatum given to new President Carlos Mesa by Felipe Quispe to respond to his group's demands within 90 days or face more unrest. She suggests that they reach out to a most unlikely figure:

The swiftest and most obvious move would be for Washington to reach out to another Bolivian leader with credentials similar to Quispe's: Evo Morales, the leader of the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS.

Morales is an indigenous populist whose claim to fame is as leader of Bolivia's coca growers, whose crops have been targeted under a U.S.-backed eradication program. He was a close second to Sanchez de Lozada in last year's presidential elections and since then has gained broader national and international standing. The events last week only made him an even more viable political player in Bolivia's future.

Despite his coca connections and socialistic predilections, Washington must fight the temptation to reject him. Instead, engaging Morales will be critical for Bolivia. It will also send the right signal to the rest of the hemisphere at a time when U.S. policies appear so numb to current regional crises.

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Sanchez de Lozada, hamstrung by U.S. insistence not to give in on the coca eradication goals, could not build alliances with Morales' MAS, a luxury Mesa cannot afford. Broadly seen as a much less radical force than Quispe's, MAS has "the potential to mature into a loyal opposition" committed to democracy, according to the U.S. government-commissioned research of Bolivian expert Eduardo A. Gamarra, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University.

Some current and former U.S. officials argue that reaching out to Morales and MAS is akin to reaching out to groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. But the analogy doesn't work. MAS enjoys much more popular support than does the FARC, winning elections when the FARC can only coerce local candidates. The MAS members who are responsible for violence are armed mostly with rocks and sticks, not the machine guns and assault rifles of a guerrilla force.

She goes on to draw an analogy between Morales and Lula, and while I'm not entirely convinced of this (Lula has never resorted to violence to my knowledge), I think that she raises a good point. If the Bush administration were to make this sort of approach to Morales, I really don't see a downside. It could also paint Morales into a corner if he rejects the American overtures out of hand.

As Sachs demonstrates and as Sánchez implies, this administration is so bereft of new ideas, so intellectually uncurious and so foolishly consistent, that it is really difficult to imagine them changing their approach now.

Comments

[maja]

FWIW, I don't think any American govt (with the possible exception of Carter's, and given what he allowed to happen in Guatemala in '78, it would be a hard case to make) has ever given a damn about any part of Central or South America besides Mexico (and Cuba, of course) since Nixon got stoned. The only issues they've ever talked about or taken seriously were illegal drugs and illegal immigration. They've de-stabilized govts in the southern hemisphere at will; used them as staging areas for US troops; propped up failing and brutal dictatorships and military juntas, and offered not one iota of genuine help or even concern about the common folk.

This not-so-benign neglect, possibly the result of the "spheres of influence" doctrine dating from the Cold War, has left a policy vacuum in which officials play their stances day-by-day, event-by-event. Much of Africa gets pretty much the same treatment: words but no deeds and certainly no money.

I have no idea what it would take to turn American interest to the south, but whatever it is it hasn't happened yet.

Would you please say to Mr. Carter: Bolivia will recover the sea lost in the Pacific's War against Chile when the USA give back to Cuba the bay of Guantanamo