2025/03/08 by Christian Ruth · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Communism, Protests, Social Movements #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #International Relations and Foreign Policy
paper · doi:10.1093/dh/dhaf021
openalex publication_date 2025/03/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In July 1988, Rafael L. Urquidi traveled to La Paz, Bolivia, on a two-week long fact-finding mission. There, he toured government offices and publicly owned organizations slated to be privatized as part of the Bolivian government’s efforts to divest itself from national industries and most state-owned enterprises. Urquidi’s largest project involved creating an evaluation on transforming the Center for the Development of Pisciculture, a newly built 6 million structure located on the shoreline of Lake Titicaca meant to function as a training and research facility for rainbow trout farming, into a commercial enterprise.1 Urquidi, a Bolivian native who had become a naturalized US citizen, had decades of experience in agricultural science and business, and had been contracted to visit La Paz by the Center for Privatization (CFP), a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded organization established in 1985 to facilitate a private enterprise bonanza in the Global South. The CFP, a consortium of six different private consulting agencies, worked with the Bolivian government and USAID to provide analysis of privatization projects meant to break apart state-owned enterprises ranging from banana farming to cement mixing.2 Urquidi was not alone: the CFP undertook similar fact-finding missions and privatization reports for over a dozen countries, including Zaire, Egypt, Honduras, and Jordan, working with USAID’s newly created Bureau for Private Enterprise to promulgate divestiture and privatization knowledge.3