Who Stands Accused?

Burning the State Department's hands since mid-March has been a voluminous report on working conditions in Bolivia. In Washington and La Paz, officials debated whether to suppress it or release it, and perhaps bring down a torrent of criticism on 1) Bolivia, and 2) Tin King Simon I. Patino, whose miners precipitated the whole business by striking four months ago (TIME, Dec. 28).

Last week the report was released in La Paz. Most of the fears turned out to have been unnecessary. An impartial U.S.Bolivian Commission of jurists, unionists, industrialists and Government economists found many an example of outrageous exploitation, many a sore spot in the Bolivian economy. But the authors of the report also demonstrated an intelligent awareness that the root causes lay deep in centuries of poverty and inevitably slow development. In its sum, the report was at once an indictment of those who now exploit these conditions, and a challenge to all the Americas to raise the standards of substandard areas. Points:

> At least 75% of Bolivians are illiterate. Schools are ill-equipped, ill-staffed. A deplored fact: "Bolivian law requires that mining enterprises and haciendas maintain primary schools for their employes. . . . [Thus] the control of administration and teaching personnel remains in the management of these interests."

> "The Commission was impressed wherever it went with the total absence of free association [among workers] and collective bargaining. ..." For this condition the Commission blamed Bolivian authorities and many Bolivian employers.

> "The legal minimum [wage] rates . . . are clearly insufficient to maintain a decent and healthy standard of living."

> For most of the population, including the tin miners, medical care and sanitation are woefully insufficient. "There does not exist in Bolivia today a single safe water system under proper control. . . ."

> "The diet of the average Bolivian worker falls far below the standards commonly considered necessary for good health. . . ."

Said the report: "The recognition and fostering of the self-respect and dignity of the individual lies at the foundation of a labor economy in a democracy. Our aim must be the achievement of a standard of living compatible with that dignity. . . . No nation has as yet fully achieved that objective. . . . The Commission cannot forbear the hope that its report will make some modest contribution to the material and moral progress of the conditions of labor in Bolivia."

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