La Declaración de Mallasilla

04.02.2004

After two very long days, the FES-ILDIS* conference on decentralization was productive. About 40-50 of us met at the La Paz Golf Club in Mallasilla (an upscale residential neighborhood in La Paz' Zona Sur) to discuss various decentralization models w/ a view to the upcoming Constituent Assembly. Hoping to produce some consensus to present publicly — the Declaración de Mallasilla.

The first day centered on presentations from three experts on the Brazilian, Spanish, and Colombian models. We were also reminded by Roberto Barbery, Minister of Popular Participation (the ministry in charge of coordinating municipal governments) that the advances of the 1994 Ley de Participación Popular and the creating of 316 municipal governments was an advance that shouldn't be hastily ignored or swept aside. The main question, however, was what to do about intermediate administrative levels (departments, provinces).

The first thing this conference made clear was that a Constituent Assembly is extremely difficult. Here we were, four dozen academic types, debating the merits of decentralization models — and we couldn't even agree on broad theoretical aims. The biggest issue was (of course!) raised by a tarijeño (Roberto Ruíz, the head of the Comite Civico de Tarija) who wanted to know whether autonomous regions would have sovereign rights to mineral rights (e.g. gas & oil) or whether these would remain in the hands of the central state. Questions of who collects taxes, how these are re-destributed, how much control would the central state retain, were prevalent.

At least we had very nicely catered lunches & coffee breaks. Believe me, I needed the coffee breaks. But I couldn't help glancing out the windows at times at the lovely, manicured golf course outside. No resemblance to a country on the verge of economic meltdown, w/ tremendous ethnic-regional-cultural cleavages, two days after a miner blew himself up & inspired 2,500 un-pensioned ex-miners to march on the capital.

The second day was shorter; we finished around 4pm. In the end, we came to very few points of consensus, other than the fact that we all agreed that we wanted to preserve Bolivia as a country. That's about it. Three different models of decentralization were outlined, w/ great debate between their proponents. I aligned myself to & helped develop one based on regional autonomies based on self-defined groupings of municipal governments (I'll outline this in a later post). But. The conference was still constructive, even if it was only a context to hear different proposals & points of view.

Personally, the conference was helpful in tracking down several interview subjects I'd hope to find. As well as making contacts w/ "public intellectuals" outside k'ara (white) society. I even met a few people who'd read some previous papers of mine (always a nice little ego boost). Which also means I now have to hurry & finish writing a paper on the de-consolidation of the political party system — hopefully for a local publication.

-----
NOTE: FES stands for Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (a German political-technical cooperation NGO). ILDIS stands for Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigación Social (funded by FES).

Posted by Miguel at 06:08 PM

Comments

How does it feel to be a "framer" of the new system? Perhaps you'll be portrayed in a mural somewhere someday...or if things don't work out, you'll get all the blame. I guess it's a thankless job, but somebody has to do it. --scott

Posted by: j.scott barnard at April 3, 2004 01:08 PM

LOL. I doubt anyone will remember this conference later on. This was mostly a group of self-styled intellectuals sitting around debating their pet theories. The actual constitution will be written by a constituent assembly, not us. It was fun, though, to imagine how I'd like to redesign the country.

Posted by: Miguel at April 3, 2004 04:31 PM