Taking Note

Mark Fried
The Rettig Report was to expose corruption under Pinochet's regime, but the murder of Senator Jaime Guzman and the loss of the Report led to abandonment of the issue.

Intro

NACLA
Bolivia is the poorest, the most indian, the most isolated, and perhaps the most organized nation in South America.

Updates

Louise Edwards
After nearly a decade in hiding, the "popular resistance communities" of El QuichZ went public in February to ask for recognition as civilian non-combatants. Their bitter story of living on the run, dodging bombardments and army sweeps, touched a chord in many Guatemalans, adding to growing sentiment that the military must be reined in.

Report

Linda Farthing & Carlos Villegas
Not one of the 158 state enterprises has found a buyer, yet the state-led development model has been effectively dismantled. Free market or not, Bolivia remains the Hemisphere's poorest nation after Haiti.
Soñia Davila
Economic policies touted as a model for Eastern Europe destroyed Latin America's most powerful labor movement. While labor debates strategy, coca farmers have taken up the mantle of opposition.
Susanne Rance
Indigenous peasants, who for centuries fed the nation, are being driven out of business by cheap imports and U.S. food aid. The result: massive migration to the coca zone and accelerated erosion of native culture.
Linda Farthing
Armies of ex-miners, unemployed factory workers and refugees from rural hunger labor in family-run workshops, hawk wares, or deal in contraband. A thrilling demonstration of entrepreneurial spirit, or pitiful attempts to survive an inhospitable regime?

Reviews

Interview

Mark Fried
The Humanist Party's first congresswoman, has tackled the issues traditional politicians would rather avoid: divorce, sex education, responsible paternity. This informal chat she lambastes parties and grassroots organizations that have lost touch with the people, insisting that only new forms of participative politics will make democracy work.

Article

Lawrence Weschler
JEFFREY SACHS ARRIVED ON THE SCENE IN Poland in the early fall of 1989, within weeks of Solidarity's overwhelming triumph in the June parliamen- tary elections-a veritable blast of can-do American energy and self-confidence. The country's economy was careening wildly, veering inexorably toward hyperinflation, and Solidarity's new legislators were utterly unprepared for the powers and responsibilities which were suddenly and unex- pectedly being thrust upon them.
Peter Andreas
WASHINGTON'S RAVE REVIEWS OF BOLIVIA'S New Economic Policy almost never consider the country's most important source of revenue and employ- ment: coca, the raw material of cocaine. Bolivia is the second largest producer of coca in the world, behind neighboring Peru.
Linda Farthing
THE COCA GROWERS UNIONS HAVE BEEN AT the forefront of efforts to turn U.S.
Linda Farthing
THE CHANGES BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE growth of the informal sector erupted suddenly into national politics in the 1989 elections. A brand new political party, Patriotic Conscience (CONDEPA) polled a fourth of the votes.
Linda Farthing
"UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL WE permit a militarization of the struggle against drug trafficking." The words ofa coca producer or militant union leader? No, President Jaime Paz Zamora speaking to the Bolivian press in May 1990, days after he signed an agree- ment with the U.
Linda Farthing
THE INCREASING NUMBERS OF WOMEN smuggling donated U.S.
Last Crossing SAN CLEMENTE, California. Hun- dreds of illegal immigrants coming north from Mexico have been killed or in- jured in the past four years as they try to run across highways in an effort to avoid capture by immigration agents.
Peter Andreas
ROBERT GELBARD IS RETURNING TO WASH- ington this summer after three ,years as U.S.