Plan Bolivia is a multinational, multi-disciplinary and multi-media approach to law and development. There exists in Bolivia today an opportunity to reverse more than 500 years of underdevelopment and to create a new kind of state with a renewed set of values with which to engage the global economy and participate in its governance.

From September 2006 to February 2008, Plan Bolivia undertook the following activities:

Workshop for producers, videographers and reporters at TV Congreso (a service of the Vice President’s Office)
Sebastian Vives, ACCESO Communications Director, recently spent several days in a workshop with TV Congreso, the newly reformed media arm of the Vice-President’s Office of Bolivia.
The team increased their skillsets in on-camera interviews, man in the street perspectives, and modern-paced editing.
Says TV Congreso Director Leyla Medinaceli Monrroy, “this was a really good thing.”
For Sebastian Vives, “I am exhausted. After the day at El Alto, South America’s largest outdoor market, you will have seen it all.”

Drug Treatment Courts National Conference
While Bolivian Law No. 1008 in Bolivia continues to promote a strong policy against drug trafficking the costs continue to mount.
Working with the Vice-Ministry of Justice and Human rights, Proyecto ACCESO co-sponsored a national conference for law enforcement officials and other stakeholders on the use of drug treatment courts as part of Bolivia’s newly reformed criminal procedures.
While we were undertaking an examination not of U.S. drug policy, instead we engaged in a discussion of “salidas alternatives” or diversion programs that can save money, save lives, and safe society unwarranted costs of incarceration.

Lead speaker Hon. Laura Safer Espinoza provided the audience of law enforcement officials with examples of the successes in her Bronx, New York courtroom. Accompanying Judge Safer Espinoza was Angel Valencia, who in August 2006 left the Fiscalia Nacional as the lead Prosecutor for Drug Courts in the Santiago Sur pilot project in Chile.

The two pioneers of drug courts, a problem-solving mechanism, in the Americas, were also joined by members of the National Police, members of Congress, private lawyers, Bolivian Vice-Minister of Justice Renato Pardo, Penitentiary Director Ramiro Llanos Moscoso and Vice-Minister of Citizen Security José Percy Paredes Coimbra.

This conference took place a day after U.S. President Bush issued a memorandum for the Secretary of State Presidential (Determination No. 2006-24), called Presidential Determination on Major Drug Transit or Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries for Fiscal Year 2007 which the President must provide Congress pursuant to section 706(1) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, FY03 (Public Law 107-228) directing Bolivia to do more to fight in the war against drugs. See here

Our timing is really good,” said Angel Valencia of Proyecto ACCESO, a former solider in the war on drugs in neighboring Chile, “or maybe not.”

Lustrabota Paceño Workshop
An initiative to work with a group of more than one hundred shoeshiners around downtown La Paz has taken route.
A special ACCESO Collection pants for the Lustrabota was commissioned by the Municipality of La Paz, as part of their San Francisco Urban Renewal project, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank.

The Lustrabota, shoe shine professionals, are part of a strong union and are the arbiters and witnesses of much of what goes on around them. They have willingly joined workshops on micro-entrepreneurial credit, human rights, and social responsibility.
As part of these workshops by ACCESO Capacitación, a new uniform has been created to provide public education cards to clients in a one of one classroom. Pablo Groux, Director of the Municipality of La Paz’s Cultural Office, seemed impressed.

Fair Trade/Comercio Justo Conference
On January 1, 2007, the Andean Trade Preferences and Drug Eradication Act will expire, affecting the exports of Bolivian products into the United States. This year, Bolivia entered into a treaty among the peoples with Cuba and Venezuela. Venezuela has left the Andean Community of Nations and joined MERCOSUR.

The European Union is fast negotiating new coordination and development treaties. There is much going on in regional trade integration and whose rules are being used to structure it.

On Tuesday, September 26, 2006, Proyecto ACCESO co-sponsored a conference on fair trade with Bolivian non-governmental organization Labor, and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung to discuss new mechanisms to ensure fair trade in the Americas. Pablo Solon, Ambassador at large for Bolivia’s Foreign Relations ministry and part of the Bolivian Government’s negotiating spoke on a panel with ACCESO Director James Cooper.

Cooper provided opening remarks to the panel examining the record of the North American Free Trade Agreement and comparing the maquilas of Tijuana with those of El Alto, outside La Paz, Bolivia.

Rodolfo Eróstegui of Labor, Sócimo Paniagua of COB, Dr. Aldo Ruiz of the Vice-Ministry of Exports, and Antonia Rodríguez of El Alto City Council and CANEB, also spoke at the conference.


ACCESO Collection Plan Bolivia presentation at Diesel Nacional in Sapocachi District of La Paz
Over September 2006, ACCESO Collection’s Plan Bolivia line made its debut, and what a debut it was. Articles throughout the Bolivia national media spoke of the relevance of fashion for justice and how public education can take advantage of Bolivia’s strategic advantage in the production of textiles.

The t-shirts, pants, and jackets this time around feature articles from the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, ILO/OIT Convention 169, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights along with the Bolivian Constitution.

Designed by Mexican architect and longtime ACCESO Collaborator, Marcela Guadiana Cerda, “the Collection is a real life example of how to live and express what you feel, she told the journalists assembled around the media frenzy that hit La Paz.

ACCESO Collection Plan Bolivia presentation at the Centro de Orientación Femenina Obrajes, the women’s prison in southern La Paz
Working with the Bolivian prison authorities and Dr. Ramiro Llanos, director the Bolivian penitentiary system, the ACCESO Collection debuted its Plan Bolivia clothing line for the Spring season at Obrajes Centro de Orientación Femenina Women’s Prison on Thursday, September 21, 2006.

Featuring human rights documents, like the right against gender discrimination, sexual reproduction, and a fair trial, ACCESO’s new collection is a sure fire hit among both law enforcement officers and the incarcerated.
Hosted by Bolivian anchor woman Carla Patricia Soria Galvarro from the National TV Channel 7, the ACCESO Collection was worn by a number of women inmates who modeled and told the stories of human rights through fashion.

Presentations on TV Unitel national morning show, Canal 11’s nightly news talk show, and Pato Peter’s national radio program.
Working with the Bolivian prison authorities and Dr. Ramiro Llanos, director the Bolivian penitentiary system, the ACCESO Collection debuted its Plan Bolivia clothing line for the Spring season at Obrajes Centro de Orientación Femenina Women’s Prison on Thursday, September 21, 2006.

Featuring human rights documents, like the right against gender discrimination, sexual reproduction, and a fair trial, ACCESO’s new collection is a sure fire hit among both law enforcement officers and the incarcerated.
Hosted by Bolivian anchor woman Carla Patricia Soria Galvarro from the National TV Channel 7, the ACCESO Collection was worn by a number of women inmates who modeled and told the stories of human rights through fashion.

Proyecto ACCESO participated with the following institutions to produce Plan Bolivia: Fundación IDEA, Hormigón Armado, Fundación Arte y Culturas, Viceministerio de Culturas de Bolivia, Colegio de Abogados, Vice-Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, International Labour Organization, Swiss and Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigaciones Sociales (ILDIS).