Even for Basics, Latin America Lacks Answers -NYT

[Rose Siding]

Piped water, like the runoff from the glaciers above this city, runs tantalizingly close to Remedios Cuyuña's home. But with no way to pay the $450 hookup fee charged by the French-run waterworks, she washes her clothes and bathes her three children in frigid well water beside a fetid creek.

So last month, when legions of angry residents rose up against the company, she eagerly joined in. The fragile government of President Carlos Mesa, hoping to avert the same kind of uprising that toppled his predecessor in 2003, then took a step that proved popular but shook foreign investors to their core. It canceled the contract of Aguas del Illimani, a subsidiary of the $53 billion French giant Suez, effectively tossing it out of the country and leaving the state responsible.
...
The trend is not unique to Bolivia, where a lack of clean water contributes to the death of every tenth child before the age of 5, and it has presented Latin American leaders with a nettlesome question: what now?

"The decisions that have to be made are stark and difficult," said Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University. "They're going to have to make some sort of compromise, and that compromise often means buying back and taking over those services - and then, of course, making them efficient in the hands of the state. Their track record doing this in the past was miserable.".....

http://nytimes.com/2005/02/22/international/americas/22bolivia.html?hp&ex=1109048400&en=aed06c3a7480583e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[pretzel4gore]

1. corporate pigs shit in the water....

mygod, at least kicking them outta the country will stop that!
btw the nytimes editorial board belongs in jail, facing trial for treason...why do they bore us with their bushit thoughts about the 'latin americans' miserable record? the nytimes has absolutely nothing to say under its current management......

[bemildred]

2. Great. Bash the French and Latin America, fail to mention

ENRON, the IMF, WTO, and how stupid the whole privatization
fad was in the first place. Government works fine by the way.
There are many examples of government working in an excellent
fashion, all over the world.

[MisterP]

5. privatization gets it sort of in the shorts in the article too, in mah

owan vyoooo...

[bemildred]

10. Rather oblique and lukewarm criticism.

But yours is not a ridiculous point of view. The facts are
mentioned, some of them.

I feel that the article fails to address a number of relevant
issues and provides insufficient context. It is typical of
PR blame avoidance strategies in that, in leaving out the
essential context that allows one to identify how the mess
came to be.

[HuckleB]

6. Exactly.

And never ever mention the US and multinational corporations that got wealthy on these projects, intended only to increase the wealth of said corporations, not to improve lives.

Ugh.

[Mandate My Ass]

3. Coming soon to North America

When Bush is done looting the treasury and trashing the economy the big multinationals will come in and buy up our resources, land in fire sales and basics human needs like clean drinking water will be for the elite only.

NYT makes it sound like running these vultures out was hasty and short-sighted but I'll bet you dollars to donut holes the gov't won't have to charge a $450 hook-up fee to supply water to its citizens. Like that's efficient.

[Matilda]

4. Trouble with most Latin American countries

is that whenever the people elect a leader with even slight left-
wing leanings who tries to make basic services available to all the
people, the US steps in gets rid of him, one way or another.

$450 connection fee for water - that really sucks. Just what are
these profiteers smoking?

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Here's the vital point

Many residents, like Franz Choque, 31, a construction worker, are worried. He said that he was not philosophically opposed to a private company running the water system. He only wanted the costs to be just and the service to be effective.

"It is O.K. for a foreign company to be here, but they should charge the Bolivian rate, not like in the country where they come from," said Mr. Choque, as he worked on a new school that will have running water only because residents have pooled resources to pay for the hookup. "Not everything can be free. We can pay a little. But we just want a fair price."

Providing fresh water isn't rocket science, and the local labour rates will be low. If the water company behaved like a company appropriate to the Bolivian economy, it would cost materials plus a few days' labour to hook people up. Any company that is handed a monopoly has to be closely regulated, with pricing limits set by the government.

[jmcgowanjm]

8. Cuba leads/Chavez-"Kill me and Oil to the US stops

Danger signals of the destructiveness of capitalism on
the environment have been flashing for over 40 years. Just
when capitalism should be jamming on the brakes it
pushes down harder on the accelerator. We are travelling at
100 miles per hour down a dead-end street. Millions of
people the world over oppose the subordination of science
to weapons production and profits. We oppose
the subordination of media and communications to
marketing and sales. We oppose the subordination of the
planet to multinational corporations and production for
profits. That is why we say Cuba leads and we fight with
her.

http://www.revolutionarycommunistgroup.com/frfi/154/154-cub.htm

Cuba has been cited by the United Nations, the
International Federation of the Red Cross, the Red
Crescent Society and other agencies and authorities who
deal with the effects of natural disasters as the world model
in disaster management, not only for underdeveloped
countries but for all countries. Massive, humane evacuations
of hundreds of thousands of people have been carried out
within hours during hurricanes that reached high
levels.

It is noteworthy that prolonged rains in California have
already killed almost twice as many people in a two-week
period as the 16 who died in six major hurricanes in
Cuba between 1996 and 2002. The Cuban method of
education, preparation, warning and organized
mass intervention during natural disasters is sorely missed
right now in California.

http://www.workers.org/ww/2005/cuba0120.php

The US cannot tolerate a viable economic model.
Cuba must be eliminated by the Suits in DC/NYC.

[jmcgowanjm]

9. decades of extreme weather events in Cuba have honed the strategy

Salvano Briceño, Director of the UN International Strategy
for Disaster Reduction, “the Cuban way could easily be
applied to other countries with similar economic conditions,
and even in countries with greater resources that do not
manage to protect their population as well as Cuba
does.”

http://www.medicc.org/medicc_review/1004/pages/top_story.html