Why So Quiet at the Blog?

Regular readers will have noticed that I haven’t been writing on the Blog as frequently as usual for the past week. There’s a reason, a good one. We are scrambling to bring to publication our long-in-the-works report on Bolivia and the IMF, Deadly Consequences. The book will be back from the printer this week and the report will be on our Web site this week as well. Then I am off to Washington next week to present the report in conjunction with the joint IMF World Bank annual meetings.

Meanwhile, here’s a preview. Stay tuned for more.

INTRODUCTION

Through the large windows of the International Monetary Fund’s office in La Paz you can see down to the rooftop where Ana Colque was shot and killed in February 2003. Army sharpshooters sent a bullet through her chest during a military assault intended to quell public protests against an economic belt-tightening package imposed on Bolivia by the IMF.

Colque, 24, was a student nurse and single mother. She had climbed to the roof to come to the aid of Ronald Callanqui, a 25-year old repairman who lay dying, shot by soldiers an hour before. The two were among thirty-four people killed during two days of violent conflict sparked by the announcement of a new tax on the nation’s working poor.

For an afternoon, the conflict erupted into a shooting war between Bolivia’s army and police, directly in front of the National Congress and the Presidential Palace.

This report tells the story of Bolivia’s Febrero Negro, Black February. It is not just the story of two tragic days in La Paz, but also of the global economic system that set that violence in motion. All of the major actors in that system are present in this drama: the IMF, World Bank, and their economic policies toward poor countries; a government caught between those policies and the demands of its people; international corporations pressing their interests; workers and social movements taking to the streets; and individuals caught mortally in the crossfire.

Deadly Consequences traces a path. It is one that that begins on the desks of economists at the IMF in Washington, runs through the subtle dance of coercion between the IMF and poor governments, and ends with the squeezing of the poor beyond their tolerance and, finally, with death on a rooftop.

The story of Febrero Negro is Bolivia’s story but it is also one that echoes in the experiences of many other poor nations across the world.

For two decades, South America’s poorest and most indigenous nation has been one of Latin America’s chief laboratories for an experiment in market-driven economic reforms known as “The Washington Consensus.” It is an experiment that has included the privatization of natural resources and public enterprises, weakening labor protections, lowering taxes on foreign companies, and public spending cuts and domestic tax increases to reduce public debt.

These were reforms that promised prosperity by opening the nation’s doors to foreign investment. In Bolivia, as elsewhere, these policies have been adopted, not because the public asked for them, but because they have been made a condition of receiving international aid from the IMF, the World Bank and other foreign lenders.

But what have been the “real world” results of this economic experiment? This report sets out to answer that question by looking up close at one country’s experience on the ground.

The story of Febrero Negro is a real life tragedy. Like many tragedies, this drama unfolds in three acts. Act One tells the story of the IMF – of how it was born, how it grew to be a power greater than many governments, and at its role as the missionary of economic belt-tightening in poor countries. Act Two looks close up at the IMF’s role in Bolivia – at the economic policies it has sought to impose there, at the strained efforts of the Bolivian government to comply, and at how the IMF’s policies translate into cold reality. Act Three follows the story to its bloody end – a public uprising against a tax increase the poor could not afford, a series of missteps that turned the conflict violent, and finally government repression that took the life of a young mother dressed in nursing whites.

In telling this story we have taken seriously our responsibilities to get the facts right and to hear from diverse perspectives. This report draws on numerous and varied interviews – with Bolivia’s current President and senior government advisors, with IMF officials, with economists of varying points of view, with Bolivian human rights leaders, participants in the events on the ground, and with the families of victims. We have reviewed dozens of original documents, ranging from signed agreements between the IMF and Bolivia, to Bolivian budget analyses, to heart-wrenching personal testimonies.

Whether readers of this report count themselves as cheerleaders for IMF and World Bank policies, as critics, or simply as people seeking to better understand the issues involved, the story of Febrero Negro offers important lessons. They are lessons paid for in blood and to which we owe our serious attention.