Interview with Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby

Introduction by Richard Farson
Some of you remember Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby from your experience with him in our School of Management and Strategic Studies, so you already know that he is a brilliant, charming, interesting, and important contributor to progress all over the globe, and especially in his home country of Colombia. He has been a successful architect, business leader, consultant, and is now a Visiting Fellow at the distinguished MIT Media Lab, where he is conducting a program using advanced technology to bring educational experiences to children who have never had an opportunity to learn at a high level. Rodrigo is a very special guy in my life, and I am so glad that he is willing to let us interrogate him for the next week. Welcome, Rodrigo.

I will use executive privilege to ask the first question, Rodrigo. I know that you are very close to the political situation in Colombia. I recently read that since WWII the only country in which the US has become militarily involved that became more democratic as a result is Colombia. Do you think that is true? If so, how did it happen?

Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby
Greetings everyone.

It is a pleasure and an honor to be here with you today. I just got back from Colombia last night, where I spent a week working on the subject of E4P, Education for Peace project. It is a complement to the military involvement in recuperating law and order in areas of conflict. The US military involvement is exclusively an advisory role (or so they say).

Before I answer Dick's provocative question, let me give you as backround information the following which should put you all in context with what we are trying to do. In a following message, I will reply on the specific question from Dick and from others that may surface as a consequence of this initial provocation.

"....Education for Peace:

Creating conditions for peace through digital learning and broadband connectivity

One of the most dramatic consequences of the vicious circle of ignorance and poverty affecting developing nations and inner cities’ slums worldwide is the increase of desperation, anger and frustration voiced through violence and terrorism. "Areas Of Conflict", as they are now called, range from fabelas in Rio, to sub-regions in Colombia, or entire regions as the Middle East or parts of Asia.

Education for Peace (E4P) is a project being developed by the 2B1 Foundation in close association with the MIT Media Lab that tries to address these problems. We propose to start with Colombia, a country at war with itself. We believe that well controlled and massively applied high tech inventions, combined with Constructionism, the philosophical approach to learning we advocate, can indeed help reverse this perverse trend. Peace, however, is not something that can be given to a people. It must result from their active doing. As such, we propose to engage people living in those areas of conflict in "doing peace" by breaking radically from prevailing assumptions about who can learn, what they can learn, and how they can learn. The adoption of these ideas about learning by all sectors of Colombia’s society, (domestic and international) is a lever for peace. We plan to test our hypothesis by implementing a tri-part plan in regions of Colombia that has been recently "re-taken" from the guerrilla groups, paramilitary militias or gangs:

(1) We will work with both local children and military personnel to install satellite uplinks and WIFI (802.11b wireless local-area networks), in different villages located in strategic locations of the country: initially in Pensilvania in the state of Caldas, in the coffee-growing region; Alternately, we will implement one module in one of the Urban Communes recently re-taken by the army, such as Commune 13 in Medellín.

(2) We will saturate those communities with "ruggedized" laptop computers (later to become "ruggedized-low-cost" computers), using the local schools as the distributions points (on the order of one computer per ten people or almost one for every child). As a catalyst for locally "emergent" design, we will distribute with these computers a number of learning, design, and publishing tools developed at the MIT Media Lab as part of its twenty years of effort in the area of eDevelopment and eLearning; and

(3) We will leverage the international empathy for the children caught in this cycle of violence and despair in areas of conflict. Through the Internet, we will be recruiting and training mentors and consultants who will make themselves available as resources to the children. This "Virtual Digital Peace Corps" will draw foremost upon Colombians, secondly upon neighboring states, e.g., Costa Rica, and thirdly upon a broader international community. The children will use these mentors as a lever for their own learning and the local community will use the children as a lever for its development.

Much of this project should and would be carried out under the Plan Colombia as part of the military effort to re-construct stability, law and order, and community development. Military personnel (reserve units called to this effect), members of our partner organizations, and civilian members of the communities would be trained in the Constructionist pedagogy, in such a manner that they will form a civilian/military cooperative, involved in education, health, agriculture, the environment, and socio-economic transformation. This humanistic side of Plan Colombia is of importance in gaining the respect and credibility for the new breed of Colombian Armed Forces by the civilian population that previously resented and rejected their presence. Our own experiences, coupled with those in India, provide us with elements of support to maximize the possibility of success in this transformation. Without such efforts a framework for peace is not achievable.

Key Objectives

Our key objective is building a developmental and educational framework without which peace is impossible. We expect to achieve this objective through: (1) reinforcing children’s sense of self; (2) building a sense of being Colombian; (3) enabling communication with a bigger world; (4) building a new relationship with the military and other agents of the State; and (5) strengthening of local institutions and leadership.

In its barebones, this pilot project will infuse (in Caldas, Medellin and Bogota) a level of computer presence (including connectivity) typical of advanced countries and create a structure to use this action to serve a variety of goals:

(1) The immediate short-term goal is to support the establishment of peace and stability in these regions;

(2) A longer-term goal is to set in motion a sustainable process of development along economic, social, and educational dimensions;

(3) In the broader Colombian perspective, the goal is to study the workings of the project in regard to the scale-up of its methods; and

(4) In the broadest global perspective, the goal is to establish models and a new theoretical framework for the deployment of digital technology to support development.

Strategy
Our strategy involves deploying both technology and people.

Computers will be distributed to families, schools, town and village centers, and medical sites. A wireless local-area broadband computer network will be established, along with satellite uplinks for international connectivity. Recharging centers will be established for people who may have computers but no electricity.

We will establish a regional support center in the urban area and village support centers in the larger villages. We will recruit "point people" in smaller villages. We will use both the military and civilians for deployment and to assist centers in initial instruction. We will establish an online network of people (Virtual Digital Peace Corps) in Colombia and abroad to act as online buddies, consultants, teachers, etc. Finally, we will establish a network of local technical experts (including school children) with the goal of making the region self-sustaining for repair, upgrading, etc., and of teachers with enough knowledge to use this expertise to support other learning.

Our plan is to expand access to people and to knowledge and empower the grass-roots generation of ideas. We will not try to spell out every idea but provoke people to generate their own solutions.

We will involve the larger community of Colombians, including opinion makers in the scale-up process and we will develop a well documented "success matrix" to check and balance progress and success (failure) and plan for future expansions.

Supporting evidence
There is considerable indirect evidence that a Constructionist approach, based on giving students a sense of being trusted with their own learning, results in more "peace." In the two years since implementation of Operation Sadbhavna in the Ladakh region of Kashmir, there have been no terrorist incidents. Similarly, a Constructionist-learning center created in a juvenile prison in Maine (under direction of Papert) resulted in an order of magnitude reduction in violent incidents.

Benefits
We expect benefits to accrue that are synergetic with the goals of both USAID and the Colombian National Security Strategy.

We aim to strengthen democratic institutions. Our project is compatible with the general goals of human rights, conflict mediation, forums for dialogue, and informed discussion of issues. Communications and education are essential to alternative development. Our focus on humanistic and social uses of computers is a prelude to their eventual role in sustainable economic growth—"cultural survival" is key theme.

We believe that E4P will lead increased transparency and public scrutiny of State agencies, as a prelude to the recovery of a "culture of honesty and transparency." It will promote social action and alternative development that would favor Colombians of lesser means. Finally, it is part of an "educational revolution" aimed at "universal coverage, good quality, and democratic access."

Leverage
We plan on leveraging existing partnerships on the ground in Colombia, over twenty years of effort in the area of eDevelopment and eLearning at the MIT Media Lab, and the efforts of Media Lab Asia, which is developing on low-cost computing and telecommunications infrastructures...."

Participant
Rodrigo: It is like old times to see your name before a fascinating insertion. Looking forward to more. Don

Participant
Dear Rodrigo,

What you are so wonderfully involved in and what you are bringing to the ILF has such potential! Please, let's all of us, find a way to pursue some these goals in an active way.

Thanks for coming on board with this.

Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby
Thank you Don, is so nice to be back..... more to come....

Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby
Bill: I feel a little rusted since I have been so involved in the project itself that my participation in the ILF has been so poor. I feel guilty somehow. But I will try to keep the momentum with further descriptions of what we are doing.

Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby
Another topic I will like to bring to the table: The future of the relationship between the US and Latin America.

I will like to borrow a title that our dear and always remembered Walter O. Roberts used 20 years ago when he introduced us to the topic of Global Warming, a name unheard of at the time. That of "Provocations". I salute you Walt.

For the last decades, the number 1 priority foreign policy issue for the US was the war on drugs, after the fall of Communism marked the end of the cold war, Communism being the previous # 1 enemy.

Since the October 1962 crisis, Latin America’s relative importance vis a vis the US increased dramatically to the level of "strategic" importance. Thus, invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, Haiti, Grenada, the ousting of Chile’s Allende, the allowance of dictatorships a la Videla, and the support of the "contras" in Central America took place. Ironically, Latin America has a lot to thank Fidel Castro for this. The Alliance for Progress, the USAID program, the continuous participation and, some may say, manipulation of internal issues in many of these countries happened.

The consequence of the fall of communism, has been that this strategic importance was replaced by the war on drugs. Thus, Latin America, and specially the Andean countries, continued to enjoy a "strategic" importance to us here in the US. The presence in Bolivia (the largest Embassy in South America with 950 people, 16 helicopters, 3 Hercules 130, 6 Cesnas’s Citations), and in Colombia (today’s level of unprecedented size as well) are a clear example of all the above.

But all of this changed with 9/11/01. Until that time, terrorism was perceived as something that was interested in doing harm to us, and when it surfaced to do so, it did in far away places like Africa or Asia. After September 11, terrorism became something that not only wanted to hurt us, it wanted to destroy us. Remember: two planes hit the twin towers (economic symbol of America), one the Pentagon (military might of America), the fourth was heading towards the White House or the Capitol, both perceived as the political symbols of America.

Simultaneously, we have curbed the use of cocaine in this country. From a height of 14.5% in 1990 (470 metric tons) of our population who consumed drugs on a monthly basis, we are now down to 5% of the population and less than 220 metric tons, and decreasing. Sure, we still have a drug problem in this country. But 80% of that problem is concentrated in marihuana and ecstasies. Marihuana is now produced here in the US, under roofed warehouses so satellite detection is not possible, and ecstasies is produced in US laboratories or in Amsterdam. Not in Latin America. Sure, Colombia is still producing an enormous amount of cocaine. Not as much as 3 years ago when Plan Colombia started, but huge anyhow. But it is going to local consumption, to Brazil (today the second largest consumer in the world, despite their denial) and to Europe.

So, what are we to foresee? A drastic reduction of the relative importance of Latin America to our US interests. Witness the quiet and passive attitude towards Chávez in Venezuela, to the ousting of Sánchez de Lozada in Bolivia, to the crazy public displays of disdain towards president Bush by Kirshner in Argentina. Our government seems not to care and to leave those little nutty boys to do what they are doing. They do not pose a danger to us. True? I am not sure. I think this may be a simplistic and myopic view of the mid to long term consequences and importance of the Latin America market and environment for our own survival and prosperity. But this is a point for debate.

Otherwise, witness also the drive to conclude bi-lateral agreements with certain countries in LA, rather than completing the vision and dream drafted in Miami in December 1994 at the first summit of the Americas, that of an integrated hemisphere from Alaska to Patagonia, by 2005. This is a clear indication that the relationship between the US and Latin America is undergoing a tremendous revision and change.

I await your comments to the above…..

Participant
Rodrigo, I'm fascinated by the progress of your project (as I was when you first told us about it at La Jolla) and looking forward to learning more. I was interested to note your mention of a "constructionist" pedagogy and just looked up some material on it via Google -- I've long been interested in constructivist psychology, which appears to be closely related.

Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby
Thank you Walter; yes, we are making progress, although the fund raising process is tedious and boring. I am right now involved in the second leg of the fund raising program here in the US, since I already financed the Colombian portion of close to 7,000 PCs plus the communication hardware and software (WI FI). More later....

Participant
Rodrigo: In your 9:7, you suggested as a topic the future relationship between US and Latin America. I think that this could be both an instructive, and perhaps a creative activity.

I believe that we need t rethink in depth our relationship to others on this planet, and Latin America would be a good place to start. For centuries, we have been the dominant member of the Americas and this experience may, in part, have influenced our behavior recently in our relationships with other world nations as our military strength, standard of living, and scientific supremacy continued to out-distance others.

But as we entered this century, our supremacy in these measurements has begun to diminish without a corresponding change in our international behavior. I am particularly concerned with our tendency to play the overlord of other nations, including the arbiter of their government and their behavior.

We still have a significant mechanical edge in the Americas, but there are many signs that this behavior will not be feasible posture much longer. As in no other part of the world, there is great a mutual need for US to mitigate our lordliness, and for others to help us do this while re-thinking their roles.

Among the mutual issues we need to address are: how to better handle differences in population growth and standards of living as the natural resources of our two continents become more stressed.

I am sure, Rodrigo, that you can be far more up-to-date and constructive in expressing what I have in mind if you think that this could make a useful and interesting set of topics to address.

Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby
Don: thank you for your 9:10 comment. I believe the two topics intertwine. Education and development and the relationship between the two regions (North-South America). Because unless we foster the development of Latin America, we are going to see an inbalance of all the indexes that measure progress, happiness and success, that we are going to create a region of highly alineated people, Africanizing the south, developing the North. This will produce another breed of angry, frustrated, suicidal individuals as we are seeing in the Middle East.

The supremacy of the US is to be understood under the context of power (military and economic). Reading Robert Kagan's book "On Paradise and Power" I understood many things that were not so apparent before. Historical comparisons with France and England at their peak of their respective empires, give us a better understanding of why the US and Europe are at odds now. But to apply the same principle to the US-Latin America relationship is where I find myself concerned. It is in the best interest of the US to have a prosperous, stable, free hemisphere. If we abandon the area right now due to the arguments I have on my 9:7 comment, that is, that the region has no strategic value to our interests, I believe we are going to have quite a problem at our doorstep, and sooner than later.

We have succeeded in eradicating coca plants in Bolivia. From 270 metric tons of production in 1996, Bolivia is now producing less than 20 metric tons of coca paste. But what happened to the peasants that lived from that illicit trade? They are jobless and poor. President Sanchez de Lozada came to the US on October 2002 to ask for financial help in order to keep the country from collapsing. He was asking a mere $ 150 MM for the country. The reply from president Bush's team was to give him $ 10 MM, les than 10% !> He told president Bush: if you give me just that, I will be back here in a year asking for political asylum. A prophecy. He is now in Washington seeking political asylum! As one politician said to me last week in Bogota. Success is an expensive proposition. If we succeed eradicating the drug trade to the US, the Plan Colombia aid will not be here in two years. So, we succeed, force many hundreds of thousands of peasants into absolute poverty and desolation and then we tell them: sorry, now you are on your own. Where are we wrong in this whole strategy? Comments are welcome....

Participant
Our history with South America is not one in which we can take much pride, right up to the present, I'm afraid. I can't see that we have ever taken a truly humanitarian posture toward any of the developments there. Would South America be better off if we stayed out? Or is there a possibility that someday we could put their interests at a level with our own? We have moved from raw exploitation (United Fruit Company) to fighting communism by removing some of their better leaders to fighting our drug problem by emphasizing the futile plan of eradicating the sources, no matter how the indigenous population suffers.

Is there anywhere that we can point with pride to our foreign policy? Anywhere in South America, Rodrigo?

Participant
Rodrigo asks? "Where are we wrong in this whole strategy? Comments are welcome.."

Dick asks: "Is there anywhere that we can point with pride to our foreign policy?"

Those are indeed the correct questions. I think that part of the answer to both questions is that sending money, what was the cliche answer in the 20th century, seldom had good or long-range results and is even less likely to be of help in this century. For several reasons: The need for money in less developed countries today is so huge that even our large wealth is inadequate to do more than to give temporary respite. A more modern and frequent action is "out-sourcing" jobs that will reduce the cost and increase American profits temporarily. I am no expert on this current ploy, but in the long run it seems to me to be a looser.

I certainly don't have any better suggestions but will hazard a different process. We need to find more productive ways for using our wealth and know-how in partnership with the individual needs and culture of Latin American countries. We are no longer rich enough to base our relationships with Latin America on gifts of money as we have tried to do in the past, and at the same time we need to find ways to make a better relationship. The ingredients will be:

* How to manage a currently unmanageable migration of Latin Americans in a way that will recognize their need for better jobs and they will recognize that migration at the current rate is not a long-range solution.

* Better "negotiating manners" on our part with reciprocal understanding of our needs and culture on their part.

* Environmental programs with sustainable resources that will benefit us both.

* And many better ideas which are beyond my ability to name.

Participant
Let me redeem my amateurish insert directly above by pointing to a URL with a new insight into the areas of interest: ANDES 2020: A NEW STRATEGY FOR THE CHALLENGES OF COLUMBIA AND THE REGION. This is a recent publication of the Council on Foreign Relations and can be reviewed by logging in to www.cfr.org

I feel sure that Rodrigo must know of this publication and probably contributed to it.

I have a spare copy and will send it to anyone who first asks and gives me the mailing address to send it.

Participant
This is my maiden venture into the ILF discussion--I am honored to be your guest. Richard Farson has invited me to contribute to the this discussion, and here are my unexpert and somewhat uninformed thoughts on how the US can best contribute to the wellbeing of Latin America.

Basically, my perspective is this: that government in general has certain crucial roles that it can perform, and when it sticks to them and doesn't try to fix things that are better left to other agencies, it can play a positive role. Generally, when it gets outside its own patch it is unintentionally destructive and corrupting.

What government does well is preserve the rule of law, protect its people, and create a safe space for the vital and creative forces in its civil culture--business, the arts, religion, science, creative technology, and the partnership between the human and the other parts of nature as a whole (NB. I regard humans and human technology as part of nature).

So it seems to me that the US has been a hugely valuable presence for Latin America, but not through any virtue of its governments, liberal or conservative. Without the US as a huge market, a source of technology, an inspiration and example in the realm of what is possible in democratic government and legal rectitude, a massive employer of labor, a rich provider of capital investment, and a vital participant in pan-American culture, Latin America as a whole might well be what it was two hundred years ago--a land of poverty, of padrones and haciendas, plantations, and mines, with a tiny middle class, a huge peasantry, and a feudal system of law and government--with an average life expectancy of 35 years, widespread disease and illiteracy, deep gender inequality, and little freedom.

The US too would be a much poorer place culturally and in many other respects without Latin America, but this isn't the point.

All of the benefits from the exchange on both sides have come from the economic, human and cultural contacts between them; virtually none from the direct effects of government action on either side. So parhaps the best thing government can do is clear away all the barriers to such contacts in a timely but orderly way. This may mean rethinking large areas of our own policy--for instance, legalizing, taxing, and medicalizing the drug trade so as to turn it from a net destroyer of human welfare to a net contributor to it.

Rodrigo, what is your take on this?

Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby
I apologize for not responding for the past two and a half days. As I informed Dick Farson when he asked me to participate in this week's interview, I was to participate and be a speaker at an important conference on the Hemisphere sponsored by Columbia University, Georgetown U, the Council of the Americas and a new magazine on Latin America called PODER. I have been there since Wednesday night until this afternoon, practically being taken out of circulation from 07:00 AM until close to midnight every day.

Colombian president Alvaro Uribe came, as well as his minister of defense, and panelists included Southern Command head, General James Hill. Nicholas Negroponte gave a lecture, as well as a new star in the horizon, Mexican author and Havard BS professor Juan Enriquez whose newly published book "As the Future Catches You" is a revelation and a "must read" book. There were more than 120 people participating as speakers in a forum following the Davos's World Economic Forum, had more than 500 participants all together. So, after this apology for my two and a half days of silence, and even though tomorrow I leave for Canada for 5 days, I will be more than happy to extend this interview a few days longer to compensate for the missing days on-line. This, if Dick agrees to this idea, since I do not want to derail the normal course of events.

Many of the things discussed, had to do with what we are talking here.

Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby
On 9:13 Don asks provocative questions. On 9:15 Frederick Turner also brings to the table important concepts to ponder. War on drugs, migration, poverty, lack of democracy, sustainable development. Each of those topics deserve a full blown comment and repsonse.

Drug on wars: If you read the US official publications you find:

Cocaine consumption in the US has dropped from 470 metric tons into less than 220 metric tons per year. New habits: marihuana grown in the US, ecstasis manufatured in US Labs and in HOlland. The drop in usage of cocaine is also due in part to an increase in jailed people charged with using and dealing with drugs in the US. The last 10 years have seen contructions of more jail cells than school rooms. And of these added jail cells the people jailed has increased from 30% of the jailed population to 65% of them. This is being heralded in the US as a country that has taken seriously their responsibiity on this war and that has acted on their acceptance of a problem that for two decades was denied in our society.

Thus, Latin America is no longer of critical strategic importance to the US in the drug on wars. Plan Colombia was drafted and agreed before 9/11. Thus, Colombia was spared the agony of not having enough power to fight a rich guerrilla tha has financed their activity by becoming drug traffickers. Now the war is on terrorism but a terrorism of a specific nature, that of the middle east. Thus, latin american terrorism is not in the horizon of the US strategic importance. So the future is quite uncertain. Plan Colombia is due to expire on Dec 31 2005. Colombia has only 20 months to go on this war. Also, FTAA is being negotiated. But Brazil oposes it because of the agricultural subsidies in the US. More on this later....

Richard Farson
Rodrigo, you have given us much to think about in this interview. I'm sure all of us feel as Bill McGaw said in his earlier message, that we would like to help. Let us know if we can. Meanwhile, we thank you profoundly for the time you spent with us and the inspiration you have supplied. We look forward to more interaction with you in the future.