Untold Stories

Bolivia: Tentación

We left Chulumani early in the morning, looking for Hernán Justo. He's the newly-elected president of the Departmental Association of Coca Producers or ADEPCOCA, an increasingly powerful organization that represents the rights of cocaleros to sell their coca in the legal market. People around town had told us that Justo was a young and charismatic farmer-turned-union leader -- just the man to talk to us about the commercialization of coca and how it's faring so far.

But when we arrived at his house in the small village of Pasto Pata, his wife emerged looking quite serious and unapologetic, and said that Justo, like everyone else in town, was nursing a hangover or "chasqui". So we decided to wait until he'd wake up. After all, we'd gone out to see him during Tentación, the last day of Carnaval when heavy drinking is more common than eating lunch or going out to tend the fields.

News Points: How Nonprofit Journalism Pays Off

Nathalie Applewhite, Pulitzer Center

The past several decades have been marked by two trends in journalism, neither of them conducive to an informed public or the furtherance of democracy. On the one hand there is the growing consolidation of media ownership and a precipitous drop in national and global reporting. On the other there is a fragmentation of the media creating a hyper-competitive landscape that drives the news market to deliver infotainment, soft news, and more ideologically defined, or ‘opinion’ media.

Notions of ‘public trust,’ responsibility and the ‘fourth estate’ seem to increasingly fall to the realm of citizen journalists, bloggers and advocacy organizations. And yet, despite a few exceptions, many still depend on traditional news outlets as points of departure for their information. And in a world of algorithm determined headlines, popularity usually beats public interest and the information the public needs to make informed decisions too often gets lost. The bottom line: If commercial incentives are the driving force of information gathering and dissemination — be it traditional or new media — what’s in the public interest (and not just what the public is interested in) will likely be ignored and the American public will pay the price.

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News Points: Forging a New Path, the Evolving Foreign Correspondent

Janeen Heath, Pulitzer Center

“Just a year after graduating, I wound up in Africa chasing stories,” Pulitzer Center grant-recipient Jason Motlagh told students at American University this month. “My writing skills weren’t polished at that point, nor had I worked long enough to have established a network of fixers. But I arrived at the border to Mauritania, my Lonely Planet in hand, just as a coup was beginning. I had almost no idea what I was walking in to. But I happened to be the only western reporter covering the conflict, so I got a lot of my stories published, and that success launched me through the continent.”

In today’s era of international journalism, it is important to take initiative and be self-driven to be able to successfully cover and place stories. With more and more overseas news bureaus closing down and front-page international news coverage being cut in half in the last two decades, foreign correspondents often face an uphill battle when trying to pitch their stories. But Jason is proof that the foreign correspondent has not died – just evolved – as long as you are flexible and can adapt to change, as well as work across a wide variety of media platforms.

“Sometimes I feel like I entered the journalism profession 10 to 15 years too late,” Jason said. ...

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Bolivia: Carlos' Cocal

Out of the many cocaleros we've met in Los Yungas, Carlos is, by far, the most forthcoming of them all. He has candidly shared with us his feelings about Evo Morales' coca policy and how he believes it's benefiting farmers like him, and he's also told us stories from the time, before Evo, when cocaine production was a common business throughout the region.

But among a majority of cocaleros, there's a general mistrust of outsiders based on their experiences during 25 years of the "War on Drugs". Coca growers either fear that their farming secrets will be taken away; or that informants will attract eradication forces to their coca crops; or turn out to be DEA agents or USAID personnel keen on collecting data for their own alternative development programs. Carlos may not be your typical skeptic from Los Yungas, but he's asked us to tell coca growers that we hail from Canada, and not from the United States, to avoid being seen as a possible threat.

A Dangerous Palette for Burma's Artists

It's only mid-morning, and sitting in his simple studio in the shadow of some of Rangoon’s wealthiest mansions, Thein Soe is already exhausted.

Soe, not his real name, is bone-thin at 61, with smoke-yellowed hair, and a face like the Scream. An artist for most of his life, Soe was 16 when General Ne Win took power in Burma in a military coup. He’s since weathered the military junta’s 46 year-rule on his country, watching it crush pro-democracy demonstrations, turn one of the wealthiest Southeast Asian economies upside down and quash all freedom of expression.

He may be tired, but Soe is not a beaten man. From the studio in his quiet home, he still tries to capture the truths of his country in his paintings, installations and performance art. It’s not always a truth that’s savored by the government.

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Bolivia: Coca Cero?

"Forced eradication" is a loaded term in Bolivia, and among cocaleros, it calls to mind the abuses and conflicts of the past few administrations. These days, the preferred word is "rationalization", used equally by government officials, military, police, and even the cocaleros themselves to refer to the limits placed on coca cultivation. Under president Evo Morales' "Coca Si, Cocaina No" plan, there's a rightful place and treatment for all kinds of coca -- whether it's grown in legal zones, in so-called "excess" areas, or in illegal zones.

The coca grown in Los Yungas can now be planted without too many restrictions -- in fact, up to twelve thousand hectares of coca can be grown in this traditional region under the law, and by the end of 2008, the government will allow up to twenty thousand hectares in this area alone. Coca from the "excess" -- or non-traditional areas of La Asunta or Caranavi is to be "rationalized" -- the cocaleros themselves must eradicate their own crops, or else, face forced eradication at the hands of the Bolivian police and military. And the illegal crops, like those in the eastern flatlands of the Chapare continue to be eradicated by force, and without any advance warning. This is what we can see today in the coca policy books under Morales. But what's actually done in practice is a whole other ballgame. An increasing number of areas have been "colonized" with coca plantations in the last five years, surpassing the area limits established by the law.

Voices from Burma

“In your country, you work two days and you have food for a week,” says Maung Lwin, a welder taking a break for tea after lunch. “Here, you work for one day and you eat for one day.” Lwin supports his family on an average daily wage of $2.30, the same salary the government pays a specialized doctor. Money is so tight that even sitting down for a 15 cent cup of tea takes careful consideration.

“You are human, I am also human,” he tells me. “But my luck is not the same as your luck.”

None of it makes any sense. Blessed with wealthy deposits of gemstones, teak forests, agricultural land, natural gas and oil, Burma has the potential to be the wealthiest nation in Southeast Asia. ...

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Ethiopia: Heading South: Five Days in Southern Oromiya

We stood in the pre-dawn glow of the streetlamps, greeted by intoxicated heckles from the previous night’s most diligent drinkers.  A battered, extended cab Toyota Hilux pickup pulled up, carrying a mound of mysterious goods under a green tarp and bearing faded Ethiopian Red Cross decals on its doors.  Seeing that there were already three passengers inside, I almost threw in the towel right there and sent my colleagues Ernest and Julia on without me, motivated as much by the practicalities of fitting so many people into such a tiny space as I was by the thought of my still warm bed waiting for me just down the block.

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