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Opinion Forum:
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Saturday's
Lagniappe
The
Bolivian Aid Barrier
AP
Bolivian
state-employed miners shout slogans demanding a solution to
the conflict in their sector in the streets of La Paz, Bolivia
on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2006. Last week a two-day battle between
rival bands of miners that claimed 16 lives left Bolivian populist
president Evo Morales stunned into inaction being widely criticized
for failing to immediately quell the violence.
By
Marcela Sanchez
For
James Cooper, head of a small nonprofit promoting judicial reform
throughout Latin America, working in Bolivia today is very much
like practicing an "extreme sport: You have no idea what's
going to happen. ... You go from moments of extreme happiness
to total desolation."
That's
life in the philanthropic fast lane -- under the auspices of
President Evo Morales' new Bolivia. The former leader of the
country's coca growers last year became the Andean nation's
first indigenous president, putting an end to a history of white
minority rule that he blames for his country's deep-seated poverty.
So far, he has nationalized natural gas resources, launched
ambitious land reform projects and promised to reexamine coca
eradication programs.
This agenda has created an unfriendly environment that threatens
foreign investment and challenges international relations. And
it has also altered the terrain for philanthropic organizations
that play an essential role in a country where nearly half of
all public investment funds depend on foreign aid and private
generosity.
Cooper's
Proyecto ACCESO promotes the rule of law in Bolivia through
unusual means. He has designed a clothing line with human rights
messages and trained shoe shiners in La Paz to help impart civic
education among their customers. Last month, he co-sponsored
a national conference for law enforcement officials on the use
of drug treatment courts and flew U.S. judge Laura Safer Espinoza
to La Paz to share experiences from her Bronx courtroom.
Starting
these and other projects has grown more complicated during Morales'
administration. Simply meeting with government officials is
an exercise in frustration. "The senior people are being
replaced all the time and the junior people are too afraid to
make a decision," he said. "The only expectation I
have is to have no expectations."
What's going
on in Bolivia is not simply a problem of personnel shuffling,
but the reflection of a radical change among those who hold
power. In this transformation, the U.S.-based Soros Foundation
sees opportunity. Together with the Norwegian government, it
is currently exploring ways to help Bolivian officials develop
the know-how to run the industries recently nationalized.
This kind
of assistance is similar to what the foundation did in former
Soviet bloc countries to help them embrace democracy. At the
Organization of American States earlier this month, George Soros
said his foundation's niche is helping governments deliver on
their promises in countries where "a group previously excluded
comes to power with good intentions but without capacity."
Soros and
Cooper may be the exception rather than the rule. In general,
philanthropic activity, like money, abhors instability. As Soros
put it in his OAS speech, "philanthropists don't like to
be involved in things that may be politically controversial."
Corporate
giving is particularly vulnerable in an unfriendly environment
such as Bolivia's. But a study done last year showed that the
chilling effect of uncertainty also affects homegrown giving,
both at the national and local levels. Jeffrey Davidow, former
U.S. ambassador and now president of the Institute of the Americas
at the University of California, San Diego, has found in Mexico
that "the willingness of local business to donate ... has
a relationship to the question of the confidence in their own
future in that country."
To the degree
that political changes or anti-business attitudes lessen the
confidence of business owners, they spend more time figuring
out short-term advantages for themselves, including getting
the money out of the country, Davidow said. In Bolivia, where
national wealth is largely concentrated in the eastern part
of the country, there has even been talk of secession from the
poorer mountainous regions of the west.
There is
also the fear that populist policies undermine initiatives designed
to create self-sufficiency. Nancy Birdsall, president of the
Washington-based Center for Global Development, warns that populism
can rapidly disintegrate into "patronage systems that end
up hurting the poor" by pushing aside legitimate community-driven
local initiatives favored by international donors.
Bolivia
has yet to come to that point. In fact, Morales is spending
far more than he planned on nationalizing the gas and oil industry
-- leaving less for social programs. In August, the Bolivian
government announced that the nationalization process would
be "temporarily suspended" due to lack of funds.
Morales'
popularity has been falling as discontent rises and the threat
of violence hovers over the country. In that environment, the
work of nonprofits is only likely to become more perilous, and
helping Bolivia's poor will be far more difficult.
Marcela
Sanchez's
column on Latin American politics appears every Friday on washingtonpost.com
(Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com).
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