[Antiracism] Whispering in the Giant's Ear - Bolivia's War on Globalization

[Emily Kawano]

AMHERST/NORTHHAMPTON/SOUTH HADLEY BOOK EVENT: NEW BOOK ON BOLIVIA'S WAR ON GLOBALIZATION

May 25th, 7:00 pm at the Odyssey Bookstore, S. Hadley

"Whispering in the Giant's Ear" is the first book relating the Indian protests, anti-Americanism, and left-wing movement that climaxed in December 2005 with the election of an anti-U.S. coca farmer as president of Bolivia, the first full Indian president of the hemisphere since the Spanish Conquest.  
On May 25th at 7PM, author William Powers will be in the Five Colleges area launching his controversial and inspiring new book at The Odyssey Bookstore (Village Commons, 9 College St. South Hadley). The event is co-sponsored by the Center for Popular Economics. Powers will read from the book and facilitate a lively discussion. Bolivian coca tea will be served!
For more information: www.williampowersbooks.com

"Powers did not just witness the change; he was immersed in the action, forced to juggle the country's internal conflict with his environmental organization's mission of saving the rain forest. What results is a deeply personal and informative chronicle of Powers' ambitions, the Indians' ambitions and perhaps most importantly in a country as physically diverse and dramatic as Bolivia, nature's ambitions."-Publishers Weekly
 
Ø      Bolivia, the poorest South American country, is emerging as a world flashpoint with its recent nationalization of gas and oil companies. 
 
Ø      Bolivia is also ecologically significant.  The Bolivian Amazon is the site of the world's largest and most ambitious forest-based Kyoto Protocol project, an attempt to decelerate the progression of global warming.
 
Witness and participant of these on-going events is William Powers.  In his memoir, WHISPERING IN THE GIANT'S EAR: A Frontline Chronicle from Bolivia's War on Globalization (Bloomsbury; 1-59691-103-4; May 18, 2006; $16.95; paperback original; 320 pages), Powers chronicles Boliva's attempt to engage the world and save its Indian culture and rainforests.   In 2001, after a two year stint as an aid worker in brutal Liberia, Powers arrived in Bolivia to serve as an administrator for a large international aid agency.  One year later, after having secured two promotions to deputy country director, Powers resigned from his post, abandoned his almost-penthouse apartment in La Paz, and headed into the Bolivian Amazon to work for a local NGO-FAN (Friends of Nature Foundation)-for a local Bolivian salary.  
 
In the rainforest, Powers befriends Salvador, an extraordinary Chiquitano Indian leader fighting to save the jungle and his people from extinction.  He and FAN join three multinational energy corporations in a tenuous relationship to operate a crucial Kyoto Protocol project-using forests to absorb dangerous planetary greenhouse gasses.  The project is endangered when Salvador begins to leave the forest to fight the racist Bolivian government and threatens to seize the forest from the project for the local Chiquitanos to log and farm coca for their survival. Powers' hands-on experience and relationships with a vast spectrum of Bolivians informs his memoir with the knowledge of an "insider."
 
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William Powers has worked for over a decade in development aid and conservation in Latin America, Africa, Washington, D.C., and Native North America. His project in the Bolivian Amazon won a 2003 prize for environmental innovation from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His essays and commentaries on global issues have appeared in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. Mr. Powers has worked at the World Bank, and holds international relations degrees from Brown University and Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. Raised on Long Island, he is currently on assignment with Conservation International in La Paz, Bolivia. He is the author of the Liberia memoir Blue Clay People.
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