By JUAN FOREROPublished: December 18, 2005
The New Dream: Evo Morales, a presidential candidate in Bolivia who promises to roll back free-market reforms, seeks votes in the jungle town of Cobija.
TACAMARA, Bolivia: AT first glance, there's nothing cutting edge about this isolated highland town of mud-brick homes and cold mountain streams. The way of life is remarkably unchanged from what it was centuries ago. The Aymara Indian villagers have no hot water or telephones, and each day they slog into the fields to shear wool and grow potatoes.
But Tacamara and dozens of similar communities across the scrub grass of the Bolivian highlands are at the forefront of a new leftward tide now rising in Latin American politics. Tired of poverty and indifferent governments, villagers here are being urged by some of their more radical leaders to forget the promises of capitalism and install instead a community-based socialism in which products would be bartered. Some leaders even talk of forming an independent Indian state.
"What we really need is to transform this country," said Rufo Yanarico, 45, a community leader. "We have to do away with the capitalist system."
In the burgeoning cities of China, India and Southeast Asia, that might sound like a hopelessly outdated dream because global capitalism seems to be delivering on its promise to transform those poor societies into richer ones. But here, the appeal of rural socialism is a powerful reminder that much of South America has become disenchanted with the poor track record of similar promises made to Latin America.
So the region has begun turning leftward again.
That trend figures heavily in a presidential election being held today in Bolivia, in which the frontrunner is Evo Morales, a charismatic Aymara Indian and former coca farmer who promises to decriminalize coca production and roll back market reforms if he wins. Though he leads, he is unlikely to gain a clear majority; if he does not, Bolivia's Congress would decide the race.
Still, he is the most fascinating candidate, because he is anything but alone in Latin America. He considers himself a disciple of the region's self-appointed standard-bearer for the left, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, a populist who has injected the state into the economy, showered the nation's oil profits on government projects aimed at the poor, and antagonized the Bush administration with constant invective.
"In recent years, social movements and leftist parties in Latin America have reappeared with a force that has no parallel in the recent history in the region," says a new book on the trend, "The New Left in Latin America," written by a diverse group of academic social scientists from across the Americas.
Peru also has a new and growing populist movement, led by a cashiered army officer, Ollanta Humala, who is ideologically close to Mr. Chávez. Argentina's president, Néstor Kirchner, who won office in 2003, announced last week that Argentina would sever all ties with the International Monetary Fund, which he blames for much of the country's long economic decline, by swiftly paying back its $9.9 billion debt to the fund.
The leftist movement that has taken hold in Latin America over the last seven years is diverse. Mr. Chávez is its most extreme example. Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by contrast, is a former labor leader who emphasizes poverty reduction but also practices fiscal austerity and gets along with Wall Street. Uruguay has been pragmatic on economic matters, but has had increasingly warm relations with Venezuela. In Mexico, the leftist who is thought to have a good chance to be the next president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has distanced himself from Mr. Chávez.
What these leaders share is a strong emphasis on social egalitarianism and a determination to rely less on the approach known as the Washington Consensus, which emphasizes privatization, open markets, fiscal discipline and a follow-the-dollar impulse, and is favored by the I.M.F. and United States officials.
"You cannot throw them all in the same bag, but this is understood as a left with much more sensitivity toward the social," said Augusto Ramírez Ocampo, a former Colombian government minister who last year helped write a United Nations report on the state of Latin American democracy. "The people believe these movements can resolve problems, since Latin American countries have seen that the Washington Consensus has not been able to deal with poverty."
The Washington Consensus became a force in the 1980's, after a long period in which Latin American governments, many autocratic, experimented with nationalistic economic nostrums like import-substitution and protectionism. These could not deliver sustained growth. The region was left on the edge of economic implosion.
With the new policies of the 1980's came a surge toward democracy, a rise of technocrats as leaders and, in the last 20 years, a general acceptance of stringent austerity measures prescribed by the I.M.F. and the World Bank. Country after country was told to make far-reaching changes, from selling off utilities to cutting pension costs. In return, loans and other aid were offered. Growth would be steady, economists in Washington promised, and poverty would decline.
But the results were dismal. Poverty rose, rather than fell; inequality remained a curse. Real per capita growth in Latin America since 1980 has barely reached 10 percent, according to an analysis of I.M.F. data by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. Meanwhile, many Latin Americans lost faith in traditional political parties that were seen as corrupt vehicles for special interests. That led to uprisings that toppled presidents like Bolivia's Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and Ecuador's Lucio Gutiérrez; it also spawned demagogues who blame free-market policies for everything without offering detailed alternatives.
The new populism is perhaps most undefined here in the poorest and most remote corner of South America. Mr. Morales promises to exert greater state control over foreign energy firms and focus on helping micro-businesses and cooperatives. "The state needs to be the central actor," he said in a recent interview. But he is short on details, and that worries some economists.
Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University development economist and former economic adviser here, says he empathizes with Bolivia's poor and agrees that energy companies should pay higher taxes. But he says Bolivia cannot close itself off to the world. "Protectionism isn't really a viable strategy for a small country," he said.
If Mr. Morales does become president, he might well find that the slogans that rang in the streets are not much help in running a poor, troubled country.
Mr. da Silva, the Brazilian president, acknowledged as much in comments he made Wednesday in Colombia: The challenge, he said, is "to show if we are capable as politicians to carry out what we, as union leaders, demanded of government."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/weekinreview/18forero.html?fta=y
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Rise of the Left in Bolivia
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Presidential Vote Could Alter Bolivia, and Strain Ties With U.S.
By JUAN FORERO
Published: December 18, 2005
LA PAZ, Bolivia, Dec. 17 - Bolivians go to the polls on Sunday with the possibility of transforming this isolated Andean country, where frequent uprisings have toppled two presidents in the past two years.
The leading candidate, Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and an ally of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, promises to exert greater state control over natural gas reserves and decriminalize the cultivation of coca, from which cocaine is made.
Polls have put Mr. Morales five percentage points ahead of the next contender, Jorge Quiroga, a former president who recommends open trade to help Bolivia extricate itself from poverty. A third candidate, Samuel Doria Medina, is a La Paz cement magnate who owns Bolivia's Burger King restaurants.
A candidate must capture more than 50 percent of the vote to win the presidency outright. If that does not happen, Bolivia's new Congress - all 157 seats in the bicameral legislature are also up for grabs - will choose between the top finishers.
The system is considered anachronistic and, in theory, an obstacle to the political ambitions of Mr. Morales, 46, who went from leader of the coca growers' union to internationally known opponent of globalization. But political analysts believe it could be politically calamitous for the Congress not to select Mr. Morales as president if he wins a plurality.
"If Evo wins by a significant difference, and a significant difference is 5 percent or above, there is nobody who can take the presidency away from him," said Eduardo Gamarra, the Bolivian-born director of Latin American affairs at Florida International University. But if the margin is tighter, Mr. Gamarra said, Mr. Quiroga could be chosen.
For the Bush administration, the prospect of Mr. Morales in the presidency is seen as a potentially serious setback in the war on drugs, one which could jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars in American anti-drug, economic and development aid.
Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, told reporters in Washington on Thursday that the United States would take its time to evaluate its relationship with Bolivia. "We'll see what policies that person pursues," he said. "And based on that, we'll make an evaluation of what kind of relationship we're going to have with that state."
Political analysts say Mr. Morales, an adept campaigner, charged ahead in part because Mr. Quiroga failed to highlight his accomplishments as vice president and president, when he helped strike a trade deal with the United States that has stoked exports. Mr. Quiroga, an American-educated engineer, left office in 2002 with a high popularity rating.
Mr. Morales has offered few details about how he would govern. Much of his campaigning has focused on what he sees as the evils of capitalism, including the development of Colombia's natural gas reserves by foreign companies.
"On natural resources," he said in a recent interview, "we are the owners of this noble land, and it is not possible that they be in the hands of the transnationals."
Whoever wins will face a divided country in which even the majority indigenous population appears split. Many radical groups see in Mr. Morales less an indigenous stalwart than a consummate insider who could sell them out.
One senator from Mr. Morales's own party, Román Loayza, said this week that whoever won would have three months to nationalize the energy industry and press forward on rewriting the Constitution, or face crippling protests. "This is not something we are saying just to the neoliberals, but also to our brother, Evo," he said. "For that reason, he has to be ready to respond to the people."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/international/americas/18bolivia.html
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Who Will Bring Water to the Bolivian Poor?
By JUAN FORERO
Published: December 15, 2005
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia - The people of this high Andean city were ecstatic when they won the "water war."
Half of the 600,000 people in Cochabamba, Bolivia, remain without water. Here, Edwin Ventura, 8, collects water from an outdoor tap.
Enlarge This Image
Noah Friedman-Rudovsky for The New York Times
Many in Cochabamba cannot depend on wells and get water through deliveries made two or three times a week by freelance water dealers.
After days of protests and martial law, Bechtel - the American multinational that had increased rates when it began running the waterworks - was forced out. As its executives fled the city, protest leaders pledged to improve service and a surging leftist political movement in Latin America celebrated the ouster as a major victory, to be repeated in country after country.
Today, five years later, water is again as cheap as ever, and a group of community leaders runs the water utility, Semapa.
But half of Cochabamba's 600,000 people remain without water, and those who do have service have it only intermittently - for some, as little as two hours a day, for the fortunate, no more than 14.
"I would have to say we were not ready to build new alternatives," said Oscar Olivera, who led the movement that forced Bechtel out.
Bolivia is just days away from an election that could put one of Latin America's most strident antiglobalization leaders in the presidency. The water war experience shows that while a potent left has won many battles in Latin America in recent years, it still struggles to come up with practical, realistic solutions to resolve the deep discontent that gave the movement force in the first place.
That discontent may have found its most striking incarnation in Bolivia. Here, protests against the introduction of stronger market forces have toppled two presidents since 2003. And the discontent has given Evo Morales, a charismatic Aymara Indian and nationalistic congressman who has channeled much of the anger of his poverty-stricken country, a slight lead in the polls ahead of the Dec. 18 elections.
Frustrated that the economic restructuring prescribed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund failed to translate into sustained growth and reduced poverty, country after country in Latin America has either discarded or is questioning much of the conventional wisdom about relying more on market forces - known as the "Washington consensus" - from the privatization of utilities to the slashing of social spending to unfettered trade.
Much of the policy turn has come under pressure from the streets and the results have varied wildly.
Argentina, for instance, has bounced back from economic collapse by ignoring crucial aspects of I.M.F. orthodoxy the last four years, while accepting others. Ecuador is tottering on the brink of political tumult even as the eight-month-old government of President Alfredo Palacio tries ramping up social spending. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez is forming state companies and spending lavishly - some say recklessly - on social programs, pleasing the poor, but failing to generate much foreign investment or business not linked to the overarching oil industry.
Bolivia's back-tracking, more a product of roiling protests than government policy, began after the country became among the first in Latin America to apply market prescriptions wholeheartedly in the mid-1980's. The I.M.F. later asked for far-reaching measures in exchange for loans and other aid, and promised steady growth, up to 6 percent a year, that would cut into poverty.
Bolivia's economy, though, grew at a dismal pace. Even the fund, in a 2003 memo, noted that a fall in per capita income and employment contributed to "rising social tensions that erupted recently."
The fund and other institutions that helped guide Bolivia's economy blame grinding corruption, poor infrastructure and high pension costs. Officials at the I.M.F. also note that Bolivia, like other countries that seek help, come only when they are wracked by economic troubles that require tough choices.
"If you're spending more than you're earning, for a while that's fine," said Caroline Atkinson, deputy director of Western Hemisphere operations for the fund. "But if your borrowing gets too huge, then no one wants to fund you anymore, and you have to cut back."
But to Bolivians, the experiment was marked by failure. Privatized companies like the railroads went bust, while the energy industry is generating $100 million less in taxes and royalties than it did when it was state-run, budget officials said. "They did everything right," said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist at Columbia University who has been critical of the I.M.F. formula. "They liberalized, they privatized and they felt the pain. Now it's 20 years later and they're saying, 'When is the gain?' "
In the end, market changes pushed by the I.M.F., the World Bank and American-educated Bolivian economists fueled anger that severely weakened governments and gave rise to Mr. Morales. Making his name leading Bolivia's powerful coca growers' federation, Mr. Morales has in the last four years used his outsider status, his "up by the bootstraps" journey from very poor origins on Bolivia's high plains and his Indian roots to rail against market changes he says favor foreigners, not Bolivians.
That is why Mr. Morales is pushing for a "nationalization" of the gas industry that, while not leading to expropriation, will increase taxes and royalties on foreign energy companies; those combined levies were raised earlier this year to 50 percent. He also wants to tighten borders to keep out cheap products and focus the government's attention on cooperatives, a loose mix of indigenous and socialist business practices.
"We will have an economy based on solidarity and reciprocity," Mr. Morales said in an interview. "We do not dismiss the presence of foreign investment, but we want it to be real, fresh investment to industrialize our hydrocarbons, all under state control."
The proposals, to be sure, are vague. Mr. Morales, who did not finish high school, is guided on economic matters by Carlos Villegas, a left-leaning economist, and by his running mate, Álvaro García, a socialist intellectual, professor of sociology and former guerrilla who articulates the party's position.
Much of the anger that has given Mr. Morales momentum began here in his home city, Cochabamba. The arrival of Bechtel quickly prompted heated protests when the water company increased rates, arguing that it needed more money to finance investment and expand service. In some cases, poor people ended up paying double their previous costs. It also became clear that Bechtel would not expand service to the impoverished south, where the company had no profits to gain from an expensive expansion.
The ouster of the company meant the return of Semapa - but this time with more community control. Semapa has expanded service in fits and starts, with those receiving piped water and sewage service increasing to 303,000 people, from 248,000. The company also managed to lower costs and, oddly for a government company, reduce the work force.
But Semapa still grapples with petty graft and inefficiencies, managers at the company said. Its most serious problem, though, is a lack of money. The company cannot secure big international loans, and it cannot raise rates, since few here could pay them.
For a wide-scale expansion that would include a new dam and aqueducts, $300 million is needed, an enormous amount for a company whose capital budget is just shy of $5 million.
"I don't think you'll find people in Cochabamba who will say they're happy with service," said Franz Taquichiri, one of the community-elected directors of Semapa and a veteran of the water war. "No one will be happy unless they get service 24 hours a day."
On a tour of Semapa's facilities, Luis Camargo, the operations manager, explained that the water filtration installation is split into an obsolete series of 80-year-old tanks and a 29-year-old section that uses gravity to move mountain water from one tank to another. It is fine for a smaller city, he said, but what is needed now is to develop high-altitude reservoirs, a hugely expensive undertaking.
"We're trying to be realistic, and we're looking for aid from Canada and other countries," explained Mr. Camargo, who has worked at Semapa 20 years.
Thousands of people have given up on ever getting Semapa's water. At Rafael Rodríguez's home and small restaurant, a spigot in the yard provides water three hours a day from a community well. He has little good to say about Bechtel, but he noted that Semapa's pipes were far from reaching the neighborhood.
"I was hoping water would get here, but it just has not happened," Mr. Rodríguez, 43, said.
Community organizations, each with an average of 200 families, pool money to drill 200 feet into dry, soft dirt, searching for water that is then delivered through small, cheap pipes to homes in the vicinity of each well.
Still, there are many people who cannot even depend on wells. Edwin Villa, 35, lives in a neighborhood that gets its water through deliveries made two or three times a week by freelance water dealers.
The deliveries are sporadic, he said, and sometimes the water contains tiny worms. His children ask for piped water, but there is not much he can tell them.
"Our hope is that someday Semapa will reach this far," he said. "It would just be magnificent."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/business/15water.html?pagewanted=all
See Pixs by Noah Friedman-Rudovsky for The New York Timesm Great Job!
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