Suggestions

Endemic Chagas’ disease in Bolivia is a symptom of its unpaid “social debt.” Since 1985, Bolivians have paid more than $3 billion in debt repayment to institutions and international banks; but money must be reinvested in the environment and people of Bolivia. This must be done, if not for social justice, at least for economic survival, environmental protection, and disease prevention in Bolivia. Bolivia also must have equality of educational opportunity for all its people in order to compete in a global economy. A free market requires a radical educational reform which includes indigenous people and women in both rural and urban districts. Teachers to train other teachers are needed. The economic systems of Andeans need to be incorporated into free‑market strategies. Andean communities can utilize their communal structure and economic exchange patterns to form strongly competitive cooperatives, which should be broad based to include credit and housing plans, consumer goods, and production goods.

There also is a need to change certain attitudes. The free market has brought new wealth to certain Bolivians, but this emerging middle class is driven by a consumerism that models itself after the few who are much richer and have no sense of nation building. They dissipate their wealth on such things as luxury homes and cars, investing the surplus in the United States. Bolivia’s wealthy never have believed in themselves or in their own country. The poor of Bolivia have a “solidarity of suspicion” about world economic integration, both in theory and practice. Finally, a national policy is needed to combat Chagas’ disease, because it debilitates members of the work force when they are most productive, leaves children without parental upbringing, and is costly to treat.

However, the political economy alone cannot be blamed for all unhealthy aspects of Bolivian housing. Chagasic control projects need to include the cultural economy of housing with the political economy, which will be the subject of subsequent chapters.