Fascinating item. Let's do all we can to publicize Bolivia.
wcm>
> Effective change versus electoralism?  Comments?
>
> Bolivia Vanishes: See Style Section
> by Gregory Palast*
> - Gregory Palast, an award-winning investigative journalist, writes a
> fortnightly column, "Inside Corporate America," for The Observer of
> London, the Sunday paper of the Guardian Media Group.
>
> In April, five people were shot dead in Bolivia, a military policeman
> was
> lynched and the president declared a state of siege following a
> general
> strike that shut down much of the nation. At the end of it all, for
> the
> first time in a decade anywhere in the world, American and British
> corporate giants, the targets of the protest, were booted out of the
> Andean nation, a stunning reversal of the march of globalization.
> You didn't read the story? Come now, it was right there in the
> Washington
> Post ... in paragraph 10 of the story, on page 13 of the Style
> section. I
> kid you not: the STYLE section. It dangled from the bottom of a cute
> little story on the lifestyle of some local anti-WTO protesters.
> And so, one of the most extraordinary international stories of the
> year
> just went PFZZZT!!! and disappeared from sight.
> Here's what you didn't hear. In the 1990s, Bolivia became the World
> Bank's
> South American poster child for neo-liberal "reform" by following
> with
> pathologic care all the Bank's dicta. This included the forced sale
> of all
> the nation's public water systems. But when the new Anglo-American
> owners
> of one city's water company hiked prices 35 percent to 150 percent
> per
> World Bank orders, a general strike shut the town. The government's
> bloody
> reaction helped spread the protests nationwide. After 13 days,
> Bolivia's
> president, in fear of the strengthening protests, took back the
> water
> company from the U.S.-British operators and canceled the price
> hikes.
> Some vital stories get buried because they fail the "sex" test of
> hot
> photos, or they have no domestic news hook. But Bolivia had it all.
> Networks could obtain high-quality video footage of the military
> gunning
> down civilians. At the center of the story were huge American and
> British
> multinationals, including Bechtel of San Francisco and Britain's
> United
> Utilities. Most importantly, this general strike in South America
> offered
> a dramatic and bloody parallel to protests in Washington against the
> International Monetary Fund and World Bank, which were occurring
> that very
> week. By any normal news measure, this was a helluva story of
> globalization stopped dead in its tracks ... all while McDonald's
> burned
> in Washington.
> James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, was so shaken by
> events in
> Bolivia that on April 12, in the midst of responding to the
> Washington
> demonstrations against the Bank, he took time to denounce the
> Bolivian
> protesters as "rioters." Wolfensohn's wild statement (the rioters
> were
> peaceful demonstrators led by the town's archbishop) was meant to
> discourage the press from writing sympathetically about the
> Bolivians.
> He need not have worried. There was nothing on the tube; and aside
> from
> the mention in the Post's Style section and a few news wire
> paragraphs in
> The New York Times, for the mainstream media, the Bolivians simply
> vanished.
> I can't say there were NO reports. The Financial Times sent a
> reporter to
> Bolivia. The lead paragraph of his April 26 report informed us that
> on the
> wall of the protesters' headquarters hung "faded portraits of Che
> Guevara
> and Fidel Castro." There was no mention at all that five civilians
> and a
> policeman had died.
> The FT reporter, who should have known better, picked up the line
> that
> drug traffickers were somehow behind the water protests. This
> fanciful
> accusation originated in a Bechtel news release. (As one Bolivian
> told me,
> deadpan: "Traficantes don't care about their water bill.") Bolivians
> themselves were also denied the full story, but by more direct
> means. The
> courageous editor of the Bolivian newspaper Gente (People) published
> an
> investigative series exposing the sweetheart deals between the
> U.S.-European investors and politically connected Bolivians. At the
> end of
> April, Gente's publishers, admitting to threats of financial ruin by
> the
> water system's Bolivian partners, demanded that the editor, Luis
> Bredow,
> print a retraction of his reports. Bredow printed the paper's
> retraction
> ... and his resignation in protest.
>
> ======================
> *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
> material
> is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
> interest
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> source. ***
> Thanks to Robert Rodvik for this post. (and to Roger Lagassi, a
> bilingual
> educator and activist from BC.
> Jeunes Icrivains du Canada / Young Writers of Canada
> http://www.schoolnet.ca/vp-pv/jec/)
>
>
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