Bolivia In Crisis
The contentious August 10 recall vote appears to have done little to quell the political tension that has pushed Bolivia
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One of History’s Great Atrocities: The Corporate Theft of the Public’s Natural Right to Water
Alternative Strategies: South Africa’s Water Policy
Andrea Arango’s article, entitled Alternative Strategies: South Africa’s Water Policy, will be issued on Thursday, May 1st. This COHA publication is another in the organization’s contribution to the debate over who will control the world’s water supply.
The Growing Debate on who will Control the World’s Water Supply
The current 1.1 billion people worldwide without access to potable water only opens one of the smaller windows on the injustices and the multiple casualties being wrought by private water-related industries. In fact, many are clueless to the magnitude of the victims— present and projected — of the growing water crisis as well as to the inhumane implications of the role of the private sector in regards to treating water as a commodity that can be owned and sold for profit. As of now, 2.6 billion people are at high risk for not having access to potable and an additional 1.8 million children die each year from water-related diseases.
In the mix of chaos, despair, and confusion, which most affects the poorer elements of society, it is important to note the private corporations’ role, which some critics have identified as being among the major culprits in causing the crisis. Within recent decades, water privatization firms such as Suez, Vivendi, and RWE have bought control of a number of communities’ municipal water services, and then drastically increased the price of water; with some of them failing to effectively purify the water resources they had come to monopolize.
An Innate Right
The heightened trend towards water privatization has gone almost undetected by the general public for well over a decade, despite the huge ramifications it is having on many lives. Public water advocates argue that it is a necessity of life and no individual or corporation has the right to seize ownership and place a value on the resource. Water is for life, not for profit. Author Vadana Shiva resolutely states that “water is a commons because it is the basis of all life. Water rights are natural rights and thus usufructuary rights, meaning that water can be used, but not owned.” Water privatization has caused considerable strife around the world, specifically in less industrialized nations. Major water companies, with the help of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), continue to divest communities of their natural right to water, thus undermining the essence of democracy as well as contributing to an insidious form of global deprivation.
Bolivia Struggles with Its Proposed New Constitution
Consensual Hegemony: Theorizing Brazilian Foreign Policy after the Cold War
Sean W. Burges,1 Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Ottawa
Abstract
Conventional approaches to hegemony emphasize elements of coercion and exclusion, characteristics that do not adequately explain the operation of the growing number of regional
projects or the style of emerging-power foreign policy. This article develops the concept
of consensual hegemony, explaining how a structure can be articulated, disseminated and
maintained without relying on force to recruit the participation of other actors. The central
idea is the construction of a structural vision, or hegemony, that specifi cally includes the
nominally subordinate, engaging in a process of dialogue and interaction that causes the
subordinate parties to appropriate and absorb the substance and requisites of the hegemony
as their own. The utility of consensual hegemony as an analytical device, especially for the
study of regionalism and emerging market power foreign policy, is outlined with reference
to Brazil’s post-Cold War foreign policy, demonstrating both how a consensual hegemony
might be pursued and where the limits to its ideas-based nature lie.
Click here to read the full article.
Bolivia’s continuing political crisis which has brought expressions of concern from international and regional entities such as the Organization of American States (OAS), European Union (EU) and the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), follows months of political tension between Bolivia’s leftist government and right-wing opposition. Sure to contribute to the mounting tension, it was recently reported that eleven people (including an Argentinean journalist) have disappeared in the region of Cordillera, as a result of a violent ambush set off by Bolivian landowners, possibly as means to express their anger over President Morales’ recently proposed land reforms (redbolivia.com). Amid ongoing disputes on a number of fronts, Morales’s government has been very open and willing to allow mediators and members from international organizations to assess and aid in resolving Bolivia’s multiple political struggles.
Read MoreBibliography: The Cofán
Works Cited for The Cofán: Hope in the Midst of Tragedy Borman, R. “Ecotourism and Conservation: The Cofan Experience.” Ecotourism
Read MoreColombia deserves a cold handshake rather than a warm abrazo from the Bush Administration
Colombia deserves a cold handshake rather than a warm abrazo from the Bush Administration President Bush has sent the proposed
Read MoreThe Secret Aspects of NAFTA
Colombia deserves a cold handshake rather than a warm abrazo from the Bush Administration
President Bush has set the proposed, FTA to Congress for legislative action. He stressed the fact that Colombia is a good friend and that on economic and security grounds it deserves to be rewarded by the Democratic-controlled congress with an affirmative vote.
In order to justify a free trade pact with Bogotá, President Bush repeatedly presents Colombia as a thriving democracy and President Uribe as a committed constitutionalist. In fact, Uribe for years has had a sinister history of sanctioning human rights violations, compromising the work of human rights agencies and jeopardizing their personal security by publicly accusing them as scarcely being distinguishable from leftist guerillas. At the present moment, Colombia’s Attorney General is investigating corruption charges which he had lodged against a large number of legislators coming from Uribe’s own party, that involve claims that these political allies of Uribe were directly linked to the extreme rightwing death squads known as the AUC, of which Uribe was said to be part of this relationship. Uribe also undermined the core of Washington’s anti-drug strategy in Colombia by allowing AUC members to plead guilty and thus obtain immunity against being extradited to the U.S. to stand trial for their drug-trafficking activities. This initiative in effect torpedoes the heart of Washington’s anti-drug strategy in Colombia.
The Bush administration is grateful that Uribe has been a strong backer of a distorted U.S. policy in the region. But what may be good for the White House and the Nariño Palace is not necessarily good for America or Latin America. The fact that Colombia is one of the few friendly faces that Washington can count on in the hemisphere is an indication of how isolated this administration is in the region, and which probably has done irreversible damage to any prospects for a relationship of constructive engagement with the rest of the hemisphere.
Today, Colombia is probably the worse human rights violation in Latin America and is a nation where labor leaders and democratic political activists are murdered with impunity to the indifference of the Colombian authority. Colombia is without any bona fide claims to be granted a free trade relationship with the U.S. and Congress would be wise to reject any further trade concessions to Bogotá at a time that U.S. workers are suffering from Bush’s neglect, if not indifference.
Larry Birns
Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
NAFTA
This is another in a series of essays on the problems and prospects of NAFTA.
Specifically related to NAFTA and such associated issues as free trade, immigration, drug trafficking and economic security, are the security concerns of the trade pact’s members. Also important to note in an increasingly globalized world, security threats are not just posed by military personnel and weapons, but include economic security issues as well. To uncover the relationship between NAFTA and security, it is important to know how the trade pact was first intended to deal with such matters. NAFTA was heralded by politicians, economists and, to the American public, as a grand equalizer. It was the first area agreement between developed and developing nations designed to provide economic growth opportunities for both.
There have existed many expectations concerning NAFTA’s ability to meet its lofty objectives. It is important to note the economic expectations surrounding NAFTA, and the arguments currently being used to discuss the trade pact, as it centers on its actual performance. First, due to its trade liberalization trend, NAFTA was intended to enhance the export markets of both the United States and Mexico. Prior to its implementation in 1994, centrist economists Hufbauer and Schott, based at the Institute for International Economics, wrote, “over time, the NAFTA should impel industrial reorganization along regional lines, with firms taking best advantage of each country’s ability to produce components and assembled products and thus enhancing competitiveness in the global marketplace” (Hufbauer and Schott 4). Greater market efficiency would occur, allowing for a more prudent allocation of resources.
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