Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization.

Dignity and Defiance. Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization is a collection of well-written essays and stories that gives a balanced and thoroughreport of Bolivia's problems and the challenges of globalization. It approachesthe various problems from differing and at times opposite perspectives. Thebook also includes valuable new research with testimonies that integrate thisresearch with the voices of those people who participated in and were affectedby the issues. These personal testimonies are woven into the essays and tiethe academic tone with a narrative thread. The powerful essays pull the readerdirectly into the struggles between communities, the government, and corporations,on issues such as water, gas, oil, external debt, and the IMF, World Bankand NGO policies. The structure and organization of each essay gives the wholebook unity, bringing together first-hand information, diverse points of view, andexcellent research.

The first essay, "The Cochabamba Water Revolt and Its Aftermath," writtenby Jim Shultz, who was present and played a major part in discovering thecompany behind the scenes, gives the reader an inside look at this issue. Bycovering the aftermath as well, Shultz brings this conflict up to the present timeand reveals new information in terms of the fate of water management andthe current problems faced by SEMPA (Servicio Municipal de Agua Potable yAlcantarillado). The second and third essays on the oil spill in the DesaguaderoRiver and the fight for control of oil and gas resources are both well-researchedhistories of foreign intervention and control of these resources in Bolivia. "ARiver Turns Black," the essay by Christina Haglund, not only documents one ofthe gravest environmental disasters in Bolivia's history (the spread of twentyninethousand barrels of toxic petroleum across nearly a million acres of farmand grazing land), but it also brings the personal stories of the communitiesand homes affected by it, pointing out Enron's failure to accept responsibility, the Bolivian government's failure to intervene, and the economic and healthproblems that the affected communities were facing.

The political tensions provoked by foreign companies, as in the Enron oilspill, are even more visible in the fight for more control of oil and gas resources,a story that is told in the article, "Oil and Gas: the Elusive Wealth beneathTheir Feet," written by Gretchen Gordon and Aaron Luoma. The history of thisconflict gives the reader a better understanding of the gas war of 2003 whenmore than 60 people were killed by government forces. It points out the currentpolitical tensions that resulted from the nationalization of the country's oil andgas reserves enacted by the current Bolivian president, Evo Morales: the dealingand negotiating with foreign companies, and the difficulty encountered in tryingto determine the most effective way of investing oil and gas revenues.

The remaining sections of the book turn to global economic policies and U.S.policies on Coca eradication, concluding with one of the results of increasingpoverty: migration. Shultz's article "Lessons in Blood and Fire: The DeadlyConsequences of IMF Economics" gives a brief history and introduction to theIMF and its policies, backed by the opinions of well known economists in orderto explain, later on, the two days of riots and confrontations with deadly resultsdue to a tax increase by the Bolivian government, a product of the demands bythe IMF.

In "Economic Strings: The Politics of Foreign Debt," Nick Buxton turns toanother area of conflict, that of foreign banks, the state, and increased debt thatthreatened Bolivia's economic and political independence. Describing specificcases of loans, for example the money borrowed to construct the La Paz-Yungasroad, the article shows the reader how a proposed loan can more than double thecost of road construction and explains how this brought the country into debtreaching incredible heights during the Sánchez de Lozada administration. It tellsof the unending rebirth after debt cancellations and its new forms: the globaltrade agreements favored by the current MAS government.

Trade tied to coca eradication is the topic of the next article, "Coca: TheLeaf at the Center of the War on Drugs." This perfectly planned essay consistsof three separate sections: the first section, by Caroline S. Conzelman, stressesthe cultural importance of the coca leaf and the differentiation between cocaand cocaine; the second, by Coletta A. Youngers, introduces views on U.S.policies to cut supply of the leaf to control cocaine consumption (within thissection there are stories of the war on drugs by Jim Shultz, Caitlin Esch, andLeny Olivera Rojas); and the third section gives case studies that describe theeffects of forced eradication on coca growers and the failed implementation ofthese policies based on Bolivian reality.

Globalization is seen not only as a force for economic opportunity, but also as a potential cultural threat in the essay, "Workers, Leaders, and Mothers" by Melissa Crane Draper. Aid, in this case by NGO's, for the empowerment of womencan, at first, be successful in creating cooperatives for weavers and raisingtheir standard of living, but it could bring into question the traditional genderrole division. The story of Casimira Rodríguez, whose trajectory from domesticworker to Justice Minister in the Morales administration is one of those caseswhere women took on leadership roles at the national and global stage. Theimportant information and analysis presented in this essay is also presented inthe concluding article, "And Those Who Left: Portraits of a Bolivian Exodus"by Lily Whitesell. As a Bolivian immigrant of the late 1960s myself and havinglived in the Washington D.C. area through the 1980s, I can attest to the massiveurban change and the immigrant dilemmas of breaking family ties, contestingidentities, and economic survival that this essay presents.

As a whole this book offers much needed new material that can be used tore-analyze previous histories and re-evaluate present conflicts with new information.Moreover, it brings into the picture the much neglected history and point ofview of the community, the people who paid for globalization with their lives,and the ones who benefited from it.

Josefa Salmón                                                                                                               Loyola University