that threatens a large number ofKupini’s Castles of Sand
by Ralph Ossa
The devastating landslides in Kupini last Saturday
exposed the danger that threatens a large number of
people all around La Paz. Local residents claim that the tragedy could
have been avoided if the city council and Aguas del Illimani had heeded
their warnings. Fortunately, no lives were lost. If underlying infrastructural
problems are not addressed before the next rainy season, other areas of
the city could face similar disasters
A massive landslide occurred last Saturday in the
Kupini neighborhood, one of the poor areas of La Paz, located on the eastern
hillsides of the city.
According to Dr. Jose Farfan, the President of
the Kupini neighbor’s union, 15 to 20% of the district was damaged.
More than a 100 houses were destroyed and 700 people were directly affected.
Although there were no deaths or injuries, many people lost most of their
property and are now homeless. Some are staying with friends or relatives
while others are billeted in the tent-camps set up by the Bolivian Army.
At the moment the situation is stable but
sanitary workers foresee a possible danger of epidemics due to a lack of
clean water. The catastrophe was largely a result of the heavy
seasonal rains, but the infrastructure of the Kupini area also leaves much
to be desired. The state-owned water company “SAMPA”, the predecessor
of the private company “Aguas de Illimani” supplied the region
with drinking
water, but there were no measures taken to establish an adequate sewage
or drainage system. Tragically, the waste water seeped into the ground and
saturated it instead of draining properly. This did not pass unnoticed by
the citizens of Kupini, and they took steps to resolve the problem. In a
letter passed to the Bolivian TIMES, the neighborhood association wrote
to the
chairman of Aguas de Illimani, stating that “we have noticed a crack
in our land lots.” They stressed in the letter their concern that these
cracks had been caused by the lack of an adequate sewage system. They concluded
that “we, all the neighbors who are in danger of becoming victims,
are asking for the water supply to be cut until a suitable drainage system
can be installed”.
The letter was sent to Aguas de Illimani on the
1st of October 1997, but no action was taken. When a small land slide occurred
a short time ago in the lower part of Kupini, the citizens stepped up their
warnings and sent several letters to the municipality of La Paz. However,
these warnings remained unheeded. When questioned about these complaints
the Mayor of La Paz, German Monroy Chazarreta, blustered: “There have
been existing geological problems in the area for many years which required
fairly expensive geological studies ........ and now we have to see who
is responsible.” Looking on the bright side, he said that “we
are just on time because up until now there has been no loss of human life”
The victims, however, think that “it was the
municipality’s obligation to assume all the necessary precautions in
order to prevent the disaster”. Francisco Villa Santos, one of the
victims and head of a teacher’s union, agreed: “From my point
of view it was almost a provoked disaster”.
As well as the municipality, the citizens of Kupini
also accused Aguas de Illimani of bearing responsibility for the disaster.
The company has denied this, pointing out that their predecessor was responsible
for the poorly designed infrastructure in the area. The Mayor of La Paz,
German Monroy Chazarreta spoke to representatives from Kupini on Monday
morning to discuss the necessary emergency measures for the following weeks.
Before the release of the results of 
this meeting, the victims expressed their
point of view to BolivianTIMES. “We suffered a devastating natural
land-slide with wide-spread effects where including entire houses destroyed”,
says Villca Santos. He added that they are expecting “a fair judicial
solution, because we have to remember that we live in an area legally recognized
by the municipality. We have done some construction with the municipality’s
permission using legally recognized plans and therefore we believe that
the authorities won’t (dodge the issue) as they have done in previous
cases”. The area is indeed a legally planned urban area, although not
every house was built with the municipality’s permission.
According to the Mayor, the municipality has worked
out a four point plan to meet combat the crisis. Firstly, the municipality
intends to make a geological study in order to reveal the general state
of the district, including those areas which have not yet been seriously
affected. Secondly, with respect to the main street
of Kupini, which was completely destroyed by the land-slide, the authorities
plan to open a new access road to the district to make the clean-up work
easier.
Their third project is to register all the names
of those victims who lost their entire houses during the catastrophe. And
finally, they are determined to meet the immediate requirements of the affected
people, by providing things like food kitchens. The Mayor added that a document
is to be signed between the municipality and the affected people to ensure
they will always receive adequate help. However, the Mayor could not yet
say whether the landslide victims will be fully compensated for their losses.
Although the victims of Kupini have already lost
a lot, they still have to face the possibility that the situation could
get worse, as further heavy rains are likely to cause new land-slides.
Apart from Kupini there are many other parts of
La Paz which are also exposed to the risk of such a catastrophe. Last Saturday
it hit the neighborhood of Kupini and the victims don’t yet know whether
they can ever return to their former homes. Other communities may be similarly
affected, unless effective measures are taken to prevent similar landslides
occurring.
When questioned by the press about the likelihood
of landslides in other areas of La Paz. the mayor admitted that large areas
of the city were at risk. Perhaps the greatest fear is that with the rainy
season coming to an end, no further action will be taken until the next
years down pour.
- from Bolivian Times - Weekly Newspaper,Internet Edition Thursday, April 1, 1999, Vol VI No. 13
McDonald’s Mania Hits La Paz
Last Friday, the 106th McDonald’s in the world and Bolivia’s first
opened in the affluent Calacoto district of La Paz. That day, a serpentine
waiting line stretched out onto Avenida Ballivan, with some people standing
as long as two hours to try their first McDonald’s hamburger.
Every hamburger the restaurant sells will be added
to the more than 100 billion the Golden Arches have sold since the first
restaurant was opened in Des Plaines, Illnois, in 1955.
The La Paz McDonald’s represents the first
in a wave of Big Mac locales to hit the country — sort of a fast-food
manifest destiny. The second restaurant will open in Santa Cruz in December,
followed by the
third in Downtown La Paz, then Cochabamba, Sucre, on down until all nine
departments have one, according to Roberto Udler, co-directing manager for
the first four Bolivian locations.
To perfectly reproduce that distinct McDonald’s
flavor, Bolivian companies had to upgrade their technology and know-how.
Among them are Frigosa, which is supplying the hamburger meat; La Francesa,
which is baking the buns; and Hipermaxi, which is growing the iceberg lettuce
that garnishes every burger. Every 15 days, for an indefinite period of
time,
company inspectors will visit to ensure that quality standards are being
maintained.
Though Bolivia grows 800 varieties of potato, the
McDonald’s Corporation could not find the Russet potatoes that the
company prefers. So they are importing their French fries from Canada while
they determine how to cultivate that particular variety in Bolivia.
McDonald’s employs more than 1 million people
worldwide. At the restaurant’s brisk expansion rate, the corporation
predicts that, by the year 2000, it will employ more than 2,500,000. 450
people have been hired to work at the first four restaurants in Bolivia.
To learn the tricks of the burger trade, co-managing
directors Udler and Silvia Kozlner enrolled in the McDonald’s Hamburger
University in Oak Brook, Illnois. The management team has been training
in Uruguay since last spring. Udler and Kozlner entered a joint venture
with the McDonald’s Corporation, each party furnishing 50 percent of
the initial investment capital (US$6 million) for the construction of the
first four locations.
- from Bolivian Times - Weekly Newspaper, Internet Edition Thursday, October 30, 1997, Vol V No. 43
Major Plans for Micro-industry
The government has grand designs for micro-industry in Bolivia. For the
past 15 years, non-government organizations,
financial entities and international economic cooperation have assumed the
responsibility of assisting small-time entrepreneurs. Now the megacoalition
wants in.
On November 14, the government will gather all
of the country’s micro-industry players for a large-scale talk-fest.
Representatives from foreign economic aid groups, NGOs, BancoSol, the World
Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, various government ministries
and Bolivia’s micro-entrepreneurs will meet in La Paz. Their trials,
victories and past lessons learned will help the vice-ministry define policies
and norms for a micro-business law that is scheduled for approval next year.
A micro-business is defined as any operation that
functions with one to five people, usually working with between
US$500 and US$5,000 in capital. Bolivia, with a population of more than
US$7.5 million, has some 920,000 such businesses. In the first semester
of this year, the NGO and foreign support for the promotion of micro-industry
in the country amounted to a total of US$100 million. Vice-Minister of Micro-Businesses
and Micro-Loans Eduardo Bracamonte estimates that once the government intervenes,
next year up to US$400 million will be invested in micro-industry. According
to Bracamonte, a Treasury Department agency will probably channel micro-business
funds to the people through private financing organizations, overseen by
the Superintendency of Banks.
Getting legitimate
By enticing Bolivians with loans and a higher standard
of living, the government wants to reduce the number of informal
marketeers. The informal sector makes up some 50 per cent of the country’s
business community, and includes all those merchants and producers, mostly
rural, who have not registered with the federal tax bureau.
To apply for loans and receive training, however,
people must register with the government. This means that those who
don’t have birth certificates or State identity cards must acquire
them, which isn’t as simple as it sounds. The State Office of
Gender Matters is currently running a campaign to register an estimated
500,000 women (1/15 of Bolivia’s population) who
don’t have an identity card. The Department of the Interior is also
doing its part to incorporate unregistered Bolivians into the system.
Bolivia’s illiteracy rate also complicates
the effort to register those without I.D. cards. In 1992, 20 percent of
Bolivians 15 and over (mostly rural) could not read or write, according
to the National Institute of Statistics
Bracamonte says that business taxes are the major
obstacle to informal marketeers’ legitimization. Most campesinos, due
to their isolation, are not accustomed to paying government taxes, business
or otherwise. To break that habit, for the past two years Bolivia’s
311 municipalities have been compiling an official register of all private
land parcels. When the surveyors have finished appraising each plot, the
government will periodically tax the owners.
“This is the first step in getting [campesinos] accustomed to contributing
to the government,” said Bracamonte. In the cities, “paying taxes
is very problematic, even for sizable businesses,” he added. “There’s
a lot of bureaucratic red tape and forms. We have to make paying taxes easier.”
Judith Trujillo, the loan coordinator for ProMujer,
an NGO that makes micro-loans available to women, added that some campesinos
are not aware of their tax obligations. Others, she said, “don’t
see the government improving the city, so they choose not to pay.”
Both Trujillo and Bracamonte agreed that the government, working with
the country’s micro-business NGOs, will need to implement a vast education
program to break the ignorance and apathy barriers.
Targetting producers
Under the new law, the government will concentrate
on rural production rather than commerce, according to Bracamonte. Efforts
will be particularly focussed on the food industry. This production-biased
approach will help to avoid subsidizing the ubiquitous black marketeers,
and advance President Banzer’s war on poverty by generating more food
for domestic
consumption.
Targeting the rural areas will be a fairly new
direction for micro-business aid. Workers at the Save the Children Fund,
a U.S.-based NGO, have been inviting colleagues to join them in promoting
micro-business in the Inquisivi Province, but so far there are no takers.
“They think it’s too risky,” said the Fund’s director
in Bolivia, Richard Embry. Apparently, many financial
organizations consider lending to campesino women who live tucked away in
little crannies of the countryside a risky venture at best.
Accordingly, “People in the cities and large
towns, who already have capital, usually get micro-loans,” said Embry.
“Micro-loans usually don’t reach the poorest of the poor.”
To induce NGOs to focus on the countryside, the government is prepared to
dip into its “strengthening fund for private organizations”, according
to Bracamonte, and provide facilities,computers and personnel “until
the organization takes off”.
Micro-businesses employ the greatest number of
Bolivians, beating out the small, medium and large industries, but “micro-businessmen
still don’t have a business mentality”, according to Bracamonte.
By beefing up the programs and economic might of the country’s 70-80
micro-business NGOs, Bracamonte hopes to upgrade micro-industry on all levels.
“They have
to learn how to distinguish themselves, strive for product quality and foster
their business’s prestige,” he said.
- from Bolivian Times - Weekly Newspaper, Internet Edition Thursday, October 30, 1997, Vol V No. 43