The Art of Visiting But Not Seeing

I see it all the time, reporters, business people and others come to Bolivia for a week or so, become convinced they know what there is to know, and return home to the US to get it all wrong. This week Senator Bill Nelson of Florida joined that crowd. Following a brief Congressional visit to South America, the Senator outlined his prescription for an ailing continent in a Miami Herald opinion article: "South America Beset by `Crisis After Crisis'.” A note, you might have to enter some information and get a free subscription to read the article.

Here’s my letter to the editor in response:

Letters to the Editor
The Miami Herald

Dear Editor,

While it is a good thing that Florida Senator Bill Nelson has traveled here to South America to get a closer look at events (South America beset by `crisis after crisis', op-ed 1/23), it is important that he get the story right.

The Senator writes, for example, that, “In Bolivia, earlier this month, widespread labor unrest brought commerce to a halt.” In fact, the protests across Bolivia this month had nothing to do with labor issues. Outside the nation’s capital, in the city of El Alto, the protests were by neighborhood groups, aimed at ousting a foreign water corporation that left tens of thousands of families without the possibility of access to safe drinking water. Other protests took aim at a steep hike in gas prices approved by the government.

If we don’t analyze the problem correctly, the prescription isn’t likely to fit either. Senator Nelson prescribes the medicine of free trade agreements, such as the FTAA and bilateral accords. He shouldn’t expect either to go down well with average people here. Accords like the FTAA are designed to give foreign corporations even more access to take over natural resources on the continent, exactly the kind of policies behind much of the turmoil the Senator warns about.

As a U.S. citizen who has lived here for more than six years, what I see is a continent that wants economic growth without ceding control of its destiny to US corporations or the US government. When US leaders see and respect that, then we’ll have a genuine starting point for progress.

Jim Shultz
Executive Director
The Democracy Center
Cochabamba, Bolivia