Ruben Corani modestly describes his organization as a puntito negro, a small black dot, one among many others throughout the hemisphere. In fact, anyone traveling today in Latin America, whether in its cities, towns or rural communities, constantly meets committed people like him who are working to alleviate poverty, improve education, protect the environment and generally make the future a little more promising.
Corani, a 28-year-old Aymara Indian, helped to establish an association of Aymara communities throughout Bolivia that aims to help local people carry out development projects that will improve their lives.
His story begins on an island called Suriqui, where he was born. Far from an ordinary island, Suriqui is in Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable body in the world. Corani grew up with a deep appreciation for the Aymara culture, which has enabled his people to maintain their identity through turbulent centuries. Suriqui is also famous for its skilled boat builders, whose graceful creations of tortora reed have come to symbolize Lake Titicaca to the outside world. In fact, famed Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl used the services of Corani's relatives to help build the Ra II, a craft whose journey provided evidence of pre-Columbian contact between the New World and the Old.
Imbued with respect for the past, Corani set his sights on the future. Although he was trained as a fisherman and a furniture maker in his teens, he decided that the future belongs to the educated. His family had no money to send him to secondary school, but he went anyway, to the city of El Alto, outside of the capital of La Paz. At night he studied, and during the day he worked to cover expenses. Later he returned to Suriqui, where he was elected to lead the 8,000-member fishermen federation. He also began to visit La Paz to attend seminars given by government and private organizations on such subjects as social development, indigenous rights and identity and community action.
During the course of attending these seminars, he and two other youths began laying plans to create an organization to link Aymara communities. They received encouragement from the Indigenous Peoples Fund, established in La Paz with IDB support. After long days and nights of intense discussion, sustaining themselves on soft drinks and crackers, they came up with their vision for the future: Integration of Aymara Communities of Bolivia (ICAB).
Corani and his ICAB companions first looked north, to Carabuco, a traditional Aymara region near Lake Titicaca with a population of some 8,000 in 84 communities. Their plan was to enlist the support of young people, hold meetings to identify the community's priority needs and locate sources of funding.
Meanwhile, they went to the Indigenous Peoples Fund and other organizations for funding, and received $5,000 to cover logistical costs and technical assistance. They also made contact with a similar group operating on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, which provided them with community development and leadership training.
"People told us that with that money we couldn't reach even three communities. But in the end, we reached 54 communities. Later they asked us how we did so much in so little time. The truth is that while we lack experience, we have a great deal of energy and work far into the night."
In each of the 54 Carabuco communities, they conducted "self-analysis" sessions during which the local people were urged to express their views on what they wanted as a community.
"Everybody came," Corani recalled, "local leaders, the municipality, the church, teachers, professional people. They all participated. We were the technicians, and we filled notebooks with what the people said. When they voted, we wrote the numbers on the blackboard."
It proved to be a novel experience both for ICAB and the communities. "We had come where the government has never been, not even a nongovernmental organization," he said. "Young people came up to us and said, ‘I want to be part of ICAB.' So we formed a development committee for Carabuco."
In the end, the communities identified three priorities: agricultural development, electrification and water. ICAB's role changed from a catalyst to an intermediary, and it found a source of financing in a U.S.-based fund for the agriculture project and a German fund for irrigation.
Building on its experience in Carabuco, ICAB is now working with 237 additional communities in five other Bolivian provinces. Its goal is to present 10 more projects for funding and at the same time form a grassroots organization consisting of a congress made up of all participating community members, and an assembly of local leaders.
According to Corani, one of the keys to his group's success has been its reliance on younger leaders, both men and women, with technical skills: group management, doing paperwork, record keeping. But won't this lead to conflicts with the traditional power structure in the communities?
It hasn't so far, said Corani. "We are their children, and a parent is proud of his children, proud that we can read and write. In their time there were no schools. What they can't do, we can do, and they are proud."