Corruption

I recently finished a great book titled The White Man’s Burden: Why the West Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly. It gave me great insight on the US approach to foreign aid and a laundry list of reasons why it doesn’t help to bring people out of poverty. One of this arguments is corruption and bad government. As the vast majority of foreign aid goes from government to government, if the receiving end is corrupt then the poor will never see that money. He cites various research results that indicate that corrupt/bad governments create/maintain poor countries and not that poor countries create bad governments.
I’m not convinced that the current Bolivian administration is entirely corrupt. President Evo Morales was democratically elected and democratically supported in a referendum election. He is not a dictator and people don’t just go missing. The government could probably be doing more to bring its citizens out of poverty but on the whole they don’t appear to be horrible.
The government seems to do a pretty good job creating laws that protect people’s rights. The problem that I see exists in the corruption of the police that are charged with enforcing the laws. I have not met a single Bolivian that trusts the police. Recently some friends witnessed some criminal activity and tried to call the police station SEVEN times without anyone even picking up the phone. The large open air market known as La Cancha is probably home to the highest incidence of crime in the form of petty theft. There are police officers all over La Cancha, but they are directing traffic (poorly! it shouldn’t take an hour to move through 6 blocks of space). There is a vicious cycle of no one respecting the police because they accept bribes, don’t answer the phone, and don’t seem to actually help/protect people, because no one respects them; and the cycle continues.
I think my own personal worst example is in the barrio where I work. It is located just 10km outside the city. If someone calls the police for robbery, assault, or domestic abuse the police literally say “it is too far, uses up too much gas, deal with it yourselves.” I was talking about it to a Bolivian that lived in the States for 10 years and we actually laughed at the idea of calling 911 in the States and being told that six miles is just too far.
Easterly would probably argue that this country is never going to be relevant on an international scale until they find a way to eradicate, or at least seriously diminish corruption.