Bolivia, 2004

On

behalf of Bolivia, I wish to express a concern that is

global: the issue of terrorism. A world that is haunted

by terrorism is an insecure world, one whose prospects

are threatened. Bolivia believes that the fight against

terrorism is one of the most important tasks we need to

undertake together. The incident in Beslan in the

Russian Federation demonstrates how far it is possible

to go in brutal actions that are entirely divorced from

any sense of humanity.

The fight against terrorism must also be linked to

the struggle against other scourges of concern to us all.

In that context, Bolivia affirms its most resolute

commitment to the fight against drug trafficking, which

in our country is being waged through the eradication

of excess coca, undertaken with respect for the nation’s

tradition of consumption. That joint task could not be

fulfilled without the presence and support of the

international community and in the context of shared

responsibility. Shared responsibility requires clear

action to be taken on both sides of the chain of

production to eliminate the scourge of drug trafficking.

Shared responsibility requires the social and the

economic issues to be considered when addressing the

problem.

Bolivia has elaborated the idea of alternative

development, which we would wish to see converted

into comprehensive development. In other words, the

participation of the communities and villages where

coca is produced in Bolivia should be part of the

decision-making process and of the design of strategies

to modify current practices of cultivation and to

generate reasonable economic options, to open

markets, and to reduce the costs of intervention to the

international community in the eradication of coca, and

in particular in the process of seeking viable alternative

ways for the Bolivian economy.

We believe that the fight against the scourges that

are currently stalemating humankind could not be

waged without a multilateral response to the challenges

to modern society. We firmly believe in multilateralism

and strongly support the United Nations as the arena of

that multilateralism. We are convinced that the time

has come to produce a series of comprehensive reforms

in the Organization as a whole. That would require,

inter alia, an expansion of the Security Council at the

onset of a new historic era. As the challenges have

changed, so too must the responses.

In that context, we are convinced that another

aspect to be thoroughly reviewed is the paradigm of

global development, which is unsustainable over time

and will not allow for long-term responses, but which

will instead generate complex problems that cannot be

resolved. A change in the development paradigm

requires openness of mind and a heterodox capacity to

respond to the basic parameters in which the world

economy functions today, without demagogic

responses or utopian solutions. On the contrary, we

need to ponder such issues as hunger, poverty and

exclusion, which afflict millions of human beings on

our planet.

This is a good opportunity to recall that, over the

past year, Bolivia has experienced a particularly

difficult situation. In October 2003, a social, political

and economic crisis pushed our nation to the brink of

confrontation and violence, with unforeseeable

consequences. The crisis threatened all of our

institutions, and in particular our democratic system.

The Bolivian response to that crisis was issued

peacefully, in respect for democracy, through a

mechanism of constitutional succession that allowed

me, as Vice-President, to take office as President and to

assume the enormous challenges to the country in order

to restore order, peace and the prospects and hopes of

our society.

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Why did this crisis occur in Bolivia? It happened

because of an accumulation of historic arrears that, at

some point, had to be paid for by our society. Those

arrears included exclusion, discrimination, a vision of

Bolivian society rife with racism, and truly dreadful

poverty. The efforts undertaken by the country on the

basis of a liberal economic model and of a structural

adjustment model had their highs and lows. Positive

results allowed for macroeconomic stability, but

genuinely inadequate results in the social sphere were

the outcome primarily of exhaustion and the need for

different responses. All of those historical arrears fell

due in October, leading to a popular upheaval that

ended in social turmoil, calling not only for a short-

term response — ours, I believe, was effective in that

democracy and peace were preserved — but also and

above all for a forward-looking solution.

What are the major challenges facing Bolivia

today in its geographical, historical and geopolitical

contexts? It must first resolve its own conflict between

society and State and the challenges of its own

economic growth. One of the country’s key issues was

the definition of an energy policy once we learned that

our nation has one of the largest reserves of natural gas

in South America.

We chose a path that was difficult, yet attractive,

and that marked our desire for democratic participation

and participative democracy — please forgive the

wordplay — within our society. We opted for a binding

referendum in which the people of Bolivia were able to

decide what they wished to do with their most

important energy resources. The referendum

highlighted our will to participate and to define our

own destiny. It was successfully held on 18 July. It

took place in a framework of peace, of democratic

participation and of clear and convincing responses

that allowed our Government to move forward with a

hydrocarbons and natural gas policy that regulates

export, industrialization and relations with investors

and investment companies that are appropriate and

useful to our nation.

In this forum, I wish to affirm our belief in a

constructive and mutually beneficial relationship

between private investors in Bolivia and the

representatives of the State. Perhaps one of the most

important lessons of recent years is that we must

neither revert to the old system of State capitalism of

the 1950s and 1960s, nor pursue the rigid orthodoxy of

the liberal vision.

The answer for today is a practical combination

within the false distinction between the market and the

State. That distinction must be abolished and the

combination made viable without exclusions and

without jeopardizing the fundamental concept, in

which we believe, that legal security is guaranteed by

the rule of law. That is the path on which we have

embarked as we work to adopt new hydrocarbons

legislation.

Perhaps the most important thing for Bolivia in

the coming months, however, is to reach a new social

covenant. While the relationship between society and

the State has been severely damaged and threatened by

collapse, it is clear that the concept of democratic

participation has to be reflected in that covenant

through a constituent assembly, freely elected to define

the outline of the country that we wish to build in the

immediate future.

Given that my Government has no political party

or organized presence in that context, we shall convene

a constituent assembly that is truly pluralistic and in

which the elements of our Magna Carta will be

provided by various social sectors yet respond to a

single basic concept: an end to exclusion and

discrimination; the option — in a country where the

majority is of indigenous Quechua, Aymara or Guaraní

origin — for the majority to express itself; and the

definition, in a democratic context and in the

framework of distinct regions and distinct visions, of

the profile of a viable nation.

I also wish to note that we achieved something

very important after the crisis: the restoration of peace

through transparent, honest and austere action that

Bolivia urgently needed. This does not mean that the

task is done. The struggle against corruption will

always be a challenge in our country, as it is elsewhere

in the world, but I believe that we have demonstrated a

clear commitment that has given us credibility and

legitimacy in our society.

Transparency, honesty and austerity are vital

elements in a poor nation that must administer

appropriately and efficiently the meagre resources at its

disposal. In that context, I wish here at the United

Nations to thank the international community, which

was consistent and unified in its support for Bolivia

during the crisis and in the following months, helping

us to implement a consistent macroeconomic policy to

resolve such serious issues as its heavy fiscal deficit.

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Given its geographical location at the centre of

our continent, Bolivia should be a pivotal country in

the fast-paced process of integration. That process has

two major protagonists: the Andean Community, of

which we are a member, and the Southern Common

Market, of which we are an associate member. At first,

we were a “hinge” country, but we are now in the

process of integration that will gradually encompass a

large bloc of South American nations, which we

welcome and towards which we are striving.

In that context of coordination and integration,

Bolivia holds a key play in any process of

infrastructure development. In energy, Bolivia is a

country that can serve as South America’s energy

distribution hub. In telecommunications — fibre optics

in particular — and, of course, in highway

infrastructure, we are vital and must be an actor that

facilitates rather than obstructs.

I wish to share a thought here with such

multilateral entities as the World Bank, the

International Monetary Fund and other organizations

that are cooperating with Bolivia and other developing

countries.

Because of its revenues and high level of debt,

Bolivia has been considered to be a heavily indebted

poor country. In theory, that has given it a series of

advantages in debt servicing and, above all, in the

channelling of that servicing not towards repayment,

but towards social services. Paradoxically, however,

this has limited the country’s capacity to obtain non-

concessional loans that would allow us to implement

infrastructure projects that are of interest not only to

Bolivia, but to all countries of the region.

We believe that we must begin to look differently

at the way international organizations interpret those

loans in order to make them more flexible and to avoid

the paradox whereby an advantage becomes a burden

that makes development impossible. We hope that this

new approach will be grasped by the international

community, and in particular by the multilateral

organizations.

Lastly, I wish to broach a subject that we will

always stress in our statements before the world

community. Bolivia’s landlocked status is a factor that

has curbed our development. Bolivia was born as an

independent country with a coastline on the Pacific

Ocean. Today, we demand free, useful and sovereign

access to that Ocean. Our demand has moral, historical

and legal bases and is linked to the high economic cost

that has made development difficult throughout our

history. We make this demand, and I want to emphasize

this, on the basis of a logic of construction — a logic

of integration.

Chile and Bolivia are countries that complement

each other. We are countries that have a destiny of

shared development and integration. To fail to find a

solution to the Bolivian issue is to negate the

possibility of development and integration and prevent

it from becoming a reality.

Bolivia is prepared to undertake an open dialogue

in order to find an appropriate and definitive solution

to the problem. That is all the more true today because

South American integration is so close at hand, and

because Bolivia’s maritime problem has become an

obstacle on the path to that integration.

We are expressing a rational, constructive

desire — a will for integration. Our demand is

unchanging and has profound relevance in the context

of everything I said earlier.

I should like to conclude by stating here, before

the nations of the world, that our country is one of

peace that believes in disarmament. It believes also

that we need to reflect on and change many of the

paradigms which in the course of time have

crystallized certain positions and have limited the

open-mindedness that we need today, more than ever,

in the twenty-first century, in order to face the

challenges of the future.