268/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
provide relocation programmes that ensure adequate com
pensation for displaced people.
1981 Brazil. Bank loans for the Polonoreste project in the Amazon
finance the building of inland roads which pave the way to
massive deforestation and the extinction of indigenous
communities.
1981 Brazil. The Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC)
invests S8 million in Cobrape, a company in which it is a
shareholder, for a rice-field irrigation project. Since 1984,
more than 100 families of small farmers have been resisting
legal and physical attempts to remove them from their land.
In 1987, they persuade a state prosecutor to lodge a
complaint against Cobrape for sending men to assault the
farmers, destroy fields and property, and force the farmers to
sign away their property rights. In 1986, the NGO Comisao
Pastoral Da Terra draws the IFC's attention to human rights
violations. Yet the IFC has never contact the prosecutor or
the affected parties. In 1992, the IFC discreetly withdraws
from the project after making investments totalling S4
million.
1982 Mexico. Beginning of the debt crisis, whose effects continue
to affect the Mexican people. The crisis turns the World Bank
and IMF into collection agencies for Western governments
and private banks.
1982 Ecuador. A series of Draconian anti-social measures are
taken in response to World Bank pressure. Gas prices are
increased by 120 per cent, flour subsidies are eliminated,
cigarette, beer and automobile taxes are increased, and
public transport fares are boosted by 25 per cent. Reaction is
swift and violent. Ministers are kidnapped, there are strikes
in transport, education and other sectors, riots break out.
The government is forced to back down on a number of
fronts, salary rises are granted to compensate for the rise in
prices, and gas prices are decreased.
1982 Burkina Faso. A 15 per cent salary reduction provokes a
strike of government workers.
1983 US. The NGO campaign on the Bank's obligation to reveal the
social and environmental impact of its activities begins with
two days of hearings at the US Congress. Since 1990, NGOs
in most donor countries work with partners in borrower-