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Despacho de Pepe de la Reza: un articulo aparecido en el Sacramento Bee de California USA.

California political insider finds

role as activist in Bolivia

.........................................................Por Peter Hecht del “Sacramento Bee” 19-JUN-05

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia -- Long before roiling street protests against foreign oil interests laid siege to the capital city and forced Bolivia's president to resign this month, veteran California political activist Jim Shultz unexpectedly found himself in the middle of the tragedy and chaos of South America's poorest nation.

Shultz is a former California legislative aide, political reform lobbyist for Common Cause, health care advocate for the Consumers Union and author of "The Initiative Cookbook," an insider's guide to California ballot measures.

In 1998, he moved his family to this Andean city nestled beneath a massive volcano and a towering statue he calls "the largest Jesus in the world." He set out to write another book and embrace a simpler, less harried life.

Shultz and his wife, Lynn Nesselbush, a San Francisco advocate for the homeless, escaped to Bolivia once before to volunteer in 1991 in a Cochabamba orphanage and ended up bringing home two adopted children, Elizabeth, now 18, and Miguel, today 17. Seven years later, they brought their English-speaking children back to Bolivia, settled in a house on a cobblestone street near a mountain creek, took in two stray dogs and began coaxing tomatoes and red peppers to grow from their compost pile.

But the laid-back existence wouldn't last. Cochabamba, Bolivia's third-largest city with 600,000 people, spiraled out of control. A series of tumultuous events catapulted Shultz into a new, enduring role.

He is now a leading activist protesting the negative effects of globalization, including free-market reforms and international lending practices he blames for social unrest, bloodshed and deepening economic suffering for the poor in developing nations.

In the spring of 2000, demonstrators, including thousands of impoverished Indians from the countryside, marched on Cochabamba and shut down the city during a general strike over increased water rates. They blamed privatization of the local water utility under a government contract with a Bolivian subsidiary of the San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp.

Choking on fumes from tires set ablaze by the protesters, his eyes burning from tear gas rounds fired by government forces, Shultz moved about Cochabamba plaza with a tape recorder, conducting interviews with the people. As demonstrations escalated, the Army fired rubber bullets and, later, live rounds. Scores of people were injured. A 17-year-old boy was shot dead.

Through the Democracy Center, a social advocacy group Shultz founded in San Francisco in 1992 and later transplanted to Bolivia, Shultz sent numerous dispatches on the violence to U.S. media outlets and human rights organizations, transmitting the story of the Cochabamba Water War to the outside world.

His Internet research also traced links between the local Cochabamba water consortium, Aguas de Tunari, and International Water Ltd. _ a company owned by Bechtel with an Italian utility and registered in the Cayman Islands.

Shultz organized an e-mail campaign, demanding that Bechtel cancel its Bolivian water contract because it unfairly burdened people earning barely $80 a month with 43 percent water rate increases and bills averaging one-forth of their monthly income. And he blamed monetary policies of the World Bank _ which required that Bolivia privatize state industries as a condition for water development loans _ for the blood that flowed in the streets of Cochabamba.

"The conflict was completely beyond my experience," Shultz said. "All I knew from the Bolivians was that this was their 'last battle.' This was a struggle that was very important for humanity and the world."

Shultz's characterizations of Cochabamba Water War are sharply criticized by the Bechtel Corp., which denies ever concealing its relationship with the local Aguas de Tunari water utility and says complex social and economic factors are to blame for the violence that erupted in Cochabamba and elsewhere in Bolivia.

"We take exception to his account," said Bechtel spokesman Jeff Berger. "He has dismissed our assertion that there were multiple causes for the tragic violence. He just doesn't seem to buy that."

Bechtel officials said the Bolivian government turned to private investors for a $290 million project to build a dam and other water systems because public mismanagement of the Cochabamba water system had left 40 percent of the population without service. He said Aguas de Tunari had rolled back rate increases before angry protests overwhelmed the city.

After the violence in Cochabamba, the Bolivian government cancelled its water contract with the Bechtel subsidiary. But Bolivia has since had numerous, tragic "last battles."

In recent weeks, hordes of demonstrators, protesting a tax law for foreign oil companies as too lax, blockaded La Paz, demanding nationalization of oil production and forcing President Carlos Mesa to
resign. The uprising followed bloody clashes in 2003 and 2004 that killed 97 people during protests over increased taxes and a plan to export natural gas to California through Chile, a hated enemy.

With each bloody, unruly turn, Shultz, a long-time "California political junkie" with a masters degree in public policy from Harvard, has used his "Blog from Bolivia" to decry "the dark forces of globalization" behind the crisis.

Distributed by his Democracy Center to 2,000 activist, media and political contacts worldwide, his newsletter assails multi-national corporations and lending practices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, for provoking unrest in Bolivia through debt restructuring demands. He argues the policies have resulted in higher taxes, privatization of state industries and open market policies enabling foreign investors to exploit Bolivia's oil, gas, water and other natural resources.

"I've known many gringos, and the other gringos are different from Jim," said Oscar Olivera, a union organizer and a fiery leader of the Cochabamba water protests who now works out of an office at Shultz's Democracy Center. "I think Jim is a part of the Latin American species. He's Bolivian with the pigment of a gringo. He's transparent, honest and he has a capacity to put our problems into a language that is easily understood."

Shultz relocated to Bolivia after receiving foundation grants to write an activist's primer on political organizing, lobbying and media campaigns _ "The Democracy Owner's Manual, a Practical Guide to
Changing the World" _ that was published in 2002. Now a frequent anti-globalization speaker, he published a volume on Bolivia in April, "Deadly Consequences," blaming economic pressures imposed by the International Monetary Fund for violence that rocked La Paz in 2003.

But Shultz insists he and his wife went to Bolivia to spend quality time with their children and flee the maddening schedules of being "political people."

Their daughter, Elizabeth or "Ellie," is a high school senior interested in a career as an orthodontist. Miguel is now studying computing. The family has since adopted another daughter, Mariana, now 2 1/2.

But activist causes never seem far away.

When Adela Rojas, a cook at an orphanage residence house, was thrown in jail on drug charges, Shultz got U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former Clinton administration officials to write the U.S. embassy in
Bolivia on her behalf. Rojas had helped police identify a cousin who stashed a bag of marijuana in her father's shed. But authorities arrested her as well and locked her up without trial for more than 2
1/2 years before she was freed on bail.

Shultz charged that she was unjustly held only to pad Bolivia drug arrest statistics under an incentive program that triggered bonuses for prosecutors as part of the U.S. war on drugs.

"There is a side to Jim that wants a simple, private life," said Elise Thurau, a legislative aide to state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, and long-time friend. "That's why he went to Bolivia. But he always cares about the underdog. That's why he starts to care
about how people are treated _ and he can only shy away for so long."

With Shultz as a key spokesman, the now five-year-old Cochabamba Water War continues to attract wide appeal. Bill Moyers of PBS aired a documentary on the local struggle against globalization. Recently, in his Democracy Center office, Shultz fielded inquiries from French and Italian movie producers. And he rushed to e-mail a summary on the water issue to an Israeli filmmaker waiting at London's Heathrow Airport.

"Why does this have such power?" Shultz said. "Because it has a clear story line: The World Bank forces a poor country to privatize its water. The water winds up in the hands of a big U.S. corporation. And the poor rise up to take the water back."

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