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Finding potable water is a challenge in the high and dry Altiplano, but the quality and quantity of each year’s harvest of wheat,
maiz and papa (potatoes) is assured with micro-irrigation systems. Large-scale irrigation is one exemple of technologies that can't
be imported from the North. Sadly, Northern aid organizations have been slow to realize this.

 

 

- why. waste time and money giving them tractors?

 

September 1, 1991

 

by Jeff Mc Donald

source: the Other Press

a Bolivian development group through a work exchan,
with the non-profit organization Canadian Crossroads
International.) ;

Development. Inthe Western world, development
usually means turning raw land into real estate. In the
Third World, development should mean establishing
basic health services, combating world hunger,
education, and promoting economic self-sufficiency.
Unfortunately, it tends to take the same form as First
World development. It would be ludicrous, ifit wasn’t
so sad, to see a shining new hospital perched
somewherein Bolivia's Altiplano—absolutely empty.

There’s no doubt that Bolivians need improved
health care. In the Altiplano region (a vast, high plain
thatruns from Perusouth throughBolivia to Argentina)
the infant mortality rate is 169/1000, and the average
lifeexpectancy is 36.4 years,according tolocalstatistics.

Nor is there any doubt that the Bolivian people
could benefit from Northernaid. It’s one of the poorest
countries in the Western hemisphere, and inthe world,
with a fragile resource-based economy and virtually
no industrial capacity. Ever since Bolivia was
“discovered” somenearly 500 yearsago, its wealth has
been siphoned off to other parts of the world, first to
Spain and now to its stronger South American
neighbours and to North American and European
multinational companies. Other money disappears
into the deep pockets of an amazingly corrupt
government.

So what does development mean for Bolivia?
Sadly, it often means little more than massive
construction projects financed by Western countries
(often tendered only to firms from those countries). A
hospital isa wonderfulthing if itis staffed with doctors
and nurses, but the training of Bolivians to provide
medical care isn’t high on the list of projects in the
Northern countries. For one thing,it’s not profitable;
moreover, it doesn’t fit the Western notion of
development — it doesn’t turn land into real estate.

Upon seeing that empty hospital, one realizes
something about the Northern mindset. We are very
good at getting things built, but we cannot conceive
that our solutions don’t necessarily apply all over the
world. We've got lots of rocket scientists, but we can’t
comprehend that a doctor without a hospital is worth
a lot more than a hospital without a doctor. We can
build a bridge over a river in the Bolivian Andes, but
the campesinos can’t eat it. Nor can they drive over it
— they don’t own cars.

First World aid, then, seems to be little more than
a combination of developing our own economies,
assuaging of guiltandasortofmoneyed masturbation.

So what form should development take?

The first thatshould happen, likeany projectin the
North, is to determine what is needed. This shouldn’t
bearevelation—ifthe campesinos don’tneed tractors,

There needs to be far more consultation with existing
aidanddevelopmentorganizations in the Third World.
Thereare many of them,and they havea farbetteridea
of what's needed than we do.

The European Economic Community has