Who Are We?

Acción Andina was created in 1992 as a nonprofit network; grouping both people and institutions of civil society together for reflection and activities related to the socioeconomic, environmental, and political problems and of violence, caused as much by the economy of illegal drugs as by the military policies that seek to fight them.

In later years, Acción Andina widened its scope to include the monitoring of all state or supra-state policies related to the imposition and/or implementation of authoritarian security models.

The initiatives of Acción Andina combine activities of analysis and investigation, information gathering and dissemination, capacity building and joint reflection, along with the social action.

Members of Acción Andina take part in the network starting from their critical reading of the national and international realities and by nonprofit contributions based on their experience and knowledge, to contribute to the legitimate construction of peace and social justice in some of the most divisive of conflicted situations.

Currently, Acción Andina works through two independent offices coordinated nationally out of Bolivia (Cochabamba) and Colombia (Bogota). In 2007, the Bolivian network program is composed of three core thematic areas: 1) Human Security, 2) The Coca Leaf, and 3) Public Space (outlined below).

1) HUMAN SECURITY

The concept of Human Security emphasizes the interests and needs of the population and not those of institutions. In addition, it values the importance of all economic, social, cultural, environmental, and political the factors that may interfere with these interests and needs, as well as their necessary interrelationships. In every possible scenario, human security must be understood as a combination between internal capacity (of people, families, populations, etc.) to create satisfactory living conditions on the one hand, and external forces which pressure that capacity on the other.

In contrast, security proposals and policies prevalent in absolutist projects, such as those tied to National Security Strategies of states, represent extremely narrow visions, and are often prone to pursuing very one-sided objectives – such as the eradication of some source of insecurity -, and are often unrealistic - as, for example, the idea of being able to build "a world without drugs". These projects originate, as a rule, out of the imposition of particular determined interests upon the common good.

Human Security first of all seeks to contribute to clearly identify those particular interests, as well as the consequences of their imposition on the common good of Bolivian and other Andean communities in the region. The initiatives of Acción Andina, born and promoted by way of examination and study, address the raising of awareness and the affirming the population’s activist stances in terms of their situation and perceptions of security (and insecurity), be it at the local level (where in formal terms it is usually referred to as "Citizen Security" or "Public Security"), the national level ("Defense” or “National Security") or the international level ("Hemispheric Security", "Cooperative Security", etc.).

2) COCA LEAF

The coca leaf is one of the great jewels that life has bestowed on humans, and this is how inhabitants of the Andes and Amazon understand it as for centuries coca has been an integral part of their daily life. Modern science has also come to recognize the great nutritious, medicinal, cosmetic, and spiritual value of "mother coca", which in its time came to surprise kings and other members of the European elite.

There are, nevertheless, some stupidities that we humans commit when establishing our imperfect relationship with the reality and wisdom. Among them they are the wars that we wage against our very existence. In this manner, we have managed to shield ourselves in a supposed "war against drugs" in order to question the mere existence of certain plants, distorting their true nature and meaning while alienating ourselves from their intrinsic values and wisdom.

Since it was added to the United Nation’s List of Narcotics in 1961, the coca leaf has been a prisoner of this international system of control which defends and exacerbates these distortions of reality. While the beneficial uses of the coca leaf encounter numerous obstacles, the business of war and destruction built on the pillars of "drug control" strategies continues to flourish. Nevertheless coca – an intrinsic part of Andean-Amazonian life and identity – continues to be strong, flexible and resistant. Its re-evaluation, the continuous process of rediscovering people’s aspirations, guides to us towards a better understanding of our history, identity, and actions, with all its successes and mistakes. Acción Andina seeks to contribute to this rediscovery by collecting and organizing data, carrying out studies, facilitating dialogue, and by promoting a healthy coexistence with the coca leaf.

3) PUBLIC SPACE

In a world fascinated by the privatization of goods and values, the re-invention, creation, and re-creation of public spaces have become high-priority tasks. One might even say there is an urgent need, especially cases where the conquest and defence of public space have become synonymous with subversion.

This has to do with such important issues as the construction of a harmonious relationship between oneself and the "whole" of society and the collective self-determination of past, present and future. It also has to do, therefore, with the construction of individual and collective capacities that allow one to live without fear of change or transformation, in other words, to live through the conflicts of life while learning from them.

The contributions of Acción Andina to the theme of public space are diverse, but all of them combine research with capacity building and training, the promotion of and participation in public spaces, dialogue and collective action, and the publication of texts and other materials.