An Experiment in Local Democracy

...Although the cabildos serve only as consultative bodies, they have still encountered resistance from traditional leaders who fear the growth of popular participation...

...As the neoliberal policies of the 1980s squeezed them even more than usual, Salcedo's poor-lacking other ways to influence a highly centralized government-took to the streets to show their discontent, demanding that the central government build aqueducts to supply water and that it improve health services...

...The community was the main protagonist," said one consultant...

...They also organized an immunization campaign against tuberculosis and other diseases, and they promoted health education in poor neighborhoods...

...This rapid urbanization transformed the nature of collective action, displacing older sites and styles of political organization...

...As Eugenia's case suggests, decentralization in Salcedo at times recapitulates longstanding inequalities between peasants and experts, and contradictions between democratic decision making and the desire for certain instrumental outcomes...

...The Mirabal sisters are the basis of Julia Alvarez's recent novel, in the Time of the Butterflies...

...This reflected, in part, the near disappearance of a coherent national project for the left-a process that was accelerated by systematic government repression throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s...

...In Puerto Plata, for Social Science example, the tourist mecca on the country's north coast, State University a project of urban planning and economic and social reform began five years ago with support from commu27REPORT ON THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC nity organizations, churches, opposition parties and the business community...

...The Committee developed a strategic plan based on project proposals for the region, and also administered public funds allocated by the central government for local use...

...While some Salcedo houses have zinc roofs, electricity and running water, many have roofs thatched with palm leaves and no running water at all...

...Funding, given the limited budgets to which Dominican provinces have access, was therefore a major problem...

...The reformers faced two fundamental problems at the outset...

...When Salcedo's new leaders declared that the province had moved "de la protesta a la propuesta "from protest to proposal-they often pointed to these new mechanisms of popular expression...

...As a result, these urban social movements are more diffuse and fragmented, and their capacity to negotiate vis-ii-vis the state is weaker...

...The political vitality of the 1980s, in turn, had its roots in the popular mobilizations of the 1960s and 1970s against the repressive rule of Joaquin Balaguer...

...A reformers, joined by leftist leaders and un Lilian Bobea is a sociologist at the Latin American Faculty (FLACSO) in Santo Domingo, and at the S of New York at Binghamton...

...7 Focus group with community leaders, Salcedo, July, 1996...

...Grinding poverty plagues both the urban and rural areas of the province...

...On the health-care front, the project organizers oversaw the training of dozens of nurses to work in primary care at local hospitals and clinics...

...3.The charisma of Jaime David in Salcedo is in part owed to the national, indeed international fame of his three aunts, the Mirabal sisters, murdered by Trujillo in an act that sparked popular resistance to the regime...

...Yet devising new alternatives had as much to do with the high levels VOL XXX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1997 of political mobilization before 1990 as it did with the new avenues of expression...

...After the first crop failed, technical assistants urged her to try another, and then a third...

...In fact, prior to the province's 1990 elections, NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28REPORT ON THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC politicians from both opposition parties, the PLD and the PRD, "agreed that whoever won would initiate a new system...

...Despite the good intentions embodied in these new participatory mechanisms, a tradition of top-down decision making continues to hamper the process, as one recent experience illustrates...

...It takes time to develop...

...Yet they continue to struggle against their spatial and political segregation to assert their citizenship rights...

...Salcedo was the most conflictive province in the country," said one political leader...

...Fundamental to a transformative project is the conviction that democracy is both a means to an end and a good in itself...

...4.interview with Miguel Angel, consultant for the Provincial Technical Office, Salcedo, July, 1996...

...y many measures, the Salcedo experiment has been a great success...

...But poverty has not made the people of Salcedo passive...

...The political confrontations and mobilizations of the 1980s were seen by participants as struggles against the centralized authority both of the PRD administrations of the early 1980s and Balaguer's Social Christian Reformist Party (PRSC) government after 1986...

...Many farmers continue to eke out a living in the declining sectors of cocoa and coffee production, but many others have sought out employment in the public sector as well as in the informal economy...

...Slum dwellers find that their urgent day-to-day problems, and the mechanisms they create to solve them, exist in a kind of political limbo...

...In the end, Eugenia had no crop and owed a substantial sum of money to the project...

...An Experiment in Local Democracy 1.Interview with a social promoter at the Provincial Technical Office, Salcedo, July, 1996...

...5 The provincial electoral defeat of the PLD in 1994, moreover, put the entire decentralization project at risk, revealing the fragility of Salcedo's much-heralded concertacidn...

...Yet the decentralization experiment has faced a number of problems, among them Salcedo's long history of partisan rivalry...

...It's not that the community had no importance-the project never would have worked without them...

...3 A technical office was set up to design infrastructure projects, including rural and urban clinics, drainage and water systems, and garbage-disposal systems...

...4 The reformers believed they could overcome sectarian in-fighting through their policy of concertaci6n...

...5.Salud, Medioambiente y Lucha contra la Pobreza," project concept paper, 1991...

...They take part at the key moment, as manual labor...

...These actions, which exist outside the structure of traditional politics, have not attracted the support of any political party or "respectable" organization...

...While the PLD was not itself a new political force in 1990, its newly installed municipal and provincial leaders felt they had a mandate to reform the province, above all through the decentralization of resources and decision making...

...the country to tatives, sought to fashion an experiment that would t Fernindez's overcome the traditional concentration of power and [irabal, then a decision making in the hands of the federal governetic project to ment...

...Between 1970 and 1990, the country's urban population climbed from under two million to over four million...

...The protests, after all, had forced local politicians to imagine new and creative ways to deal with the province's pressing problems...

...At times, the rhetoric of participation masks a hierarchical approach to problem solving...

...In just a few years, Salcedo's infant mortality rate has notably decreased...

...As President Leonel Fernandez and his Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) gradually reveal the political direction of their new govern- ment, a semi-rural, north-central province called Salcedo may be emerg- ing as a model they would like the rest of I follow...

...The province of Salcedo was already one of the most organized in the country," commented one leader...

...t is within this larger context of social change that Salcedo's decentralization experiment makes sense...

...VOL XXX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1997 An Experiment in Local Democracy A health promoter makes a home visit in the kind of local initiative the new government may soon begin promoting...

...And a community leader drove the point home...

...7 And while Salcedo's reformist leaders were politically committed to their decentralization project, genuine participation remains an unconquered territory...

...Beyond progress in the area of health, the project also created a series of agricultural initiatives (mostly to help small farmers grow and market nontraditional crops), an office to fight discrimination 29REPORT ON THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC and violence against women, and a project promoting democratic participation that has trained over 2,000 community leaders to act as liaisons between municipal agencies and the province's communities...

...2.Interview with Orlando Rosado, a PRSC Congressman...

...While the loss in Salcedo was part of a nationwide rout of the party, it is hard not to conclude that the vote signaled the PLD's failure to bring together the diverse political forces in the region and to mobilize the population in favor of a far-reaching process of political transformation...

...It was here in the early 1990s tha vice president, Jaime David Ferndndez M federal senator from Salcedo, led an energ decentralize and democratize the Domin process...

...Equally important, however, was the rigidity and intolerance of the two centerleft opposition parties, the PLD and the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), which failed to present programs that realistically responded to the desperate conditions in which most Dominicans lived...

...The first step was the creation of a group called the Community Development Forum, which brought together provincial and congressional officials, local clergy, political leaders and community group leaders...

...Though Salcedo remains largely rural, its small cities have grown rapidly over the past few decades...

...To begin with, local officials looked abroad for resources...

...It is the community that develops and executes the project...

...Residents frequently fetch (hopefully) fresh water from nearby rivers and streams...

...She felt mistreated because the "experts" simply told her what to plant, then gave no technical support...

...At the same time, the new leaders organized meetings with an even broader range of community groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to identify critical problems in the province...

...In the rapidly growing marginal barrios of Dominican cities, new political forces emerged in response to the growing poverty and deepening inequality brought on by neoliberal economic policies...

...2 If Salcedo moved from protest to proposal, it did so at least in part because the protests made the proposals possible...

...First, the decentralization plan was sui generis-as a local initiative, it was not linked to any broader commitment by the central government to introduce nationwide reforms...

...During those decades, unions, peasant organizations and women's groups played key organizing roles while young activists throughout the country organized sports groups and social clubs that became centers of popular education and resistance to Balaguer's authoritarianism...

...By the 1980s, the scenario had changed dramatically...

...appropriate electricity and water, and create ad hoc councils to demand basic services from the government...

...Control over the police force is also concentrated at the national level, weakening local mechan and democ- nisms of accountability...

...Participation is like trust," observed a Salcedo activist...

...She had no sense of how her experience fit into the larger project, nor what the project was, who was in charge or how decisions were made...

...One leader was always boycotting the other's plan, so that they never came up with solutions to the problems of the community...

...More important is the issue of what popular participation means in Salcedo...

...In a society that is only now emerging from the deep-rooted authoritarian tradition of Joaqufn Balaguer and countless lesser caudillos, the process will clearly not take place overnight...

...The meetings, which also sought to foster support by explaining the decentralization process to community groups, identified health, education and employment as priorities...

...Since the successes and seti Salcedo experiment reveal a great deal a rent state of Dominican society and the change in the near future, it is vital to un the project is all about...

...This was-and remains-a daunting task...

...6.Opinion expressed by community leaders at an evaluation meeting in Salcedo, July, 1996...

...Several new organizations of grassroots participation were formed, such as the Committee for Community Development, which coordinates community activities and brings together already-existing groups for dialogue and mutual aid...

...But it is in Salcedo that the development of a genuine local politics and the encouragement of citizen participation is taking place in the most systematic and interesting way...

...6 The weakness of Salcedo's decentralization experiment became evident by 1994...

...Despite progress in many areas, the PLD was turned out of office by Salcedo's voters...

...Alongside the parties and the trade unions, then, a new political actor has emerged-the new urban poor who live in the so-called "marginal neighborhoods...

...The Pan-American Health Organization, largely underwritten by the Italian government, offered substantial funding for the project...

...Once in office, the PLD put together a plan to spur local development by means of a broad process of consultation and collaboration among the diverse political and social forces in the province...

...The authorities," she said, referring to the new reform-minded provincial government, "came into the community looking for people to get involved...

...To succeed, the decentralized political institutions of Salcedo would have to be parallel to, and largely independent of, normal structures of government...

...A subsistence farmer named Eugenia was selected to take part in a pilot agricultural program...

...Urban movements began to focus their energies on issues that were truly local-like access to basic services such as schools, health clinics, electricity and potable water...

...It also trained dozens of community residents as public-health educators to advise their neighbors on hygiene and other health issues...

...Another new form of popular expression is represented by the cabildos abiertos, or open councils...

...While the opening of the province's political system after 1990 encouraged a more productive way If genuine decentralization is the transfer of power and responsibility not just to local caudillos but to the people themselves, then much work remains to be done...

...of engaging in political dialogue, it is not clear how successful the reformers were in keeping their promise to promote "the effective coordination of all the social, political and economic forces of the province with the goal of enhancing the general welfare...

...The PLD hoped to bring the diverse popular organizations that functioned in Salcedo into this process, including neighborhood associations, women's groups, peasant associations and sports clubs...

...And there is no such thing as 1 elections of local legislation: all Dominican laws are national...

...But it was the authorities who took the initiative...

...In fact, Salcedo's success in attracting funds is widely attributed to Fernindez Mirabal's ability to make use of his contacts in Italy, where he had obtained a degree in public health...

...In this new scenario, traditional collective actors, such as political parties and unions, became less relevant than before, and the connection between left-wing parties and local struggles grew ever-more distant...

...They seize land from the state or large landowners, illegally While Salcedo's social movements exist outside traditional politics-in a kind of political limbo-they continue to struggle against their spatial and political segregation to assert their citizenship rights...

...slate of PLD Salcedo is not alone in its attempt to bring political iion represen- decision making to the local level...

...She agreed to invest in nontraditional crops for her small farm...

...Central to the plan was an effort to promote forums where different proposals could be aired and collective decisions agreed upon-a policy of dialogue and decision making known as concertacidn...

...If genuine decentralization is the transfer of power and responsibility not just to local caudillos but to the people themselves, then much work remains to be done...

...The ican political Dominican Constitution gives the president direct conbacks of the trol over most of the national budget, and this underibout the cur- mines the ability of municipal and regional governprospects for ments to carry out projects and reforms according to derstand what local needs...

...The authorities could never agree on anything...

...Convoked by municpal authorities, they are open to the participation of all adult members of the community...

...Salcedo's experiment in decentralizatio ratization took shape after the provincia 1990-elections won by the PLD...

...The reformers-PLD municipal authorities as well as then-Senator and current VicePresident Jaime David Fernandez Mirabal-organized their initial efforts around an ambitious public health plan...

...This was -and remainsa daunting task...