WASHINGTON -- On a good day you can get from Bolivia's capital, La Paz, to its John F. Kennedy International Airport in 35 minutes. On a bad one -- of which there have been many lately -- you may not get there at all.
Between La Paz and the airport is El Alto, a sprawling, poverty-stricken city of 800,000 on the Andean plateau. El Alto is a vortex of distress and distrust, symbolic of the frustration that seems to be swallowing up much of Bolivia. When that frustration overflows, protesters from El Alto barricade the airport road with rocks and burning tires, effectively choking off the capital from the rest of the world.
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Marcela Sanchez also reports daily in Spanish about local Washington news on Univision. Watch the Video
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In the middle of it all is Jose Luis Paredes, El Alto's recently re-elected mayor and one-time rabble-rouser himself. This week he was on a mission, walking the streets of Washington in search of investment and support for his town where three out of four working-age residents don't hold a formal job. On a small scale, Paredes is trying to do what his entire country requires: bridge the unquestionable need for international cash with the most basic demands and concerns of Bolivians.
It's not exactly an easy job, even when it comes to something as basic as water. In the early 1990s, Bolivia had the worst water service and sewer system in Latin America. The municipal water company of La Paz, in charge of servicing El Alto, was a prime example of "a politicized, overstaffed and inefficient public utility,'' according to the World Bank.
By 1997, as Bolivia was fast becoming the poster child for market reforms in Latin America, the government privatized the utility and awarded a 30-year contract to Aguas del Illimani, a company controlled by France's Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux. Aguas del Illimani promised to expand the water grid in El Alto, and for several years investment grew and the water supply improved.
Then last month El Alto protesters again closed the airport road. According to Paredes, people in El Alto were fed up with Aguas del Illimani's high connection fees ($460 per residence in a city where average annual income is $600), unmet coverage goals and a reluctance to make a bigger investment in infrastructure. The protest forced Bolivian President Carlos Mesa to rescind the contract with Aguas del Illimani.
Privatization promises increased efficiency and reduced cost. And in that respect, Aguas del Illimani was largely successful. But for the nationalistic and indigenous leaders who hailed the contract revocation as a victory, the potential for worsening water service in the future is nothing compared to what they perceive as a continued relinquishing of power -- and natural resources -- to others, particularly foreigners.
Just 15 months ago, El Alto's protesters forced Mesa's predecessor, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, to resign. Sanchez de Lozada rightly saw immense opportunity for Bolivia to export natural gas to Mexico and the United States. But he committed the three Bolivian sins: he chose to export the gas through Chile, Bolivia's sworn enemy; he negotiated with multinationals; and he failed to convince Bolivia's majority that they had more to win than to lose.
El Alto has no natural gas, but Paredes is juggling the same forces that Sanchez de Lozada failed to manage. He is fully aware that his hopes to see a foreign investor ever set foot in his city again will depend on a "decorous'' resolution to the water issue. He can choose to repeat some of Sanchez de Lozada's mistakes, or he can look to a model that has worked within his own country.
Twenty-five years ago, residents of the now well-off eastern city of Santa Cruz converted from a public water system to a cooperative that was to be run as effectively as a private company but committed to service instead of profit. Today the citizen-owned company prides itself in having one of the best-managed utilities in Latin America.
The community that Paredes serves has the same needs but not the same means as Santa Cruz. Paredes came to Washington to get support from those with means -- the Bush administration, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. The question is whether the administration or the financial institutions are ready to accept that aggressive privatization -- the model that has been Washington's doctrine -- has not been a panacea in Bolivia.
Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.
