Dirt Products

South America's largest body of fresh water, Lake Titicaca is so polluted that local fishermen are having a hard time catching anything, let alone making a living. Most pollution on the Bolivian side, such as toxic heavy metals like arsenic and lead originates in El Alto, a city of one million near La Paz. Seventy per cent of El Alto's factories operate illegally and are not monitored for pollution. One might wonder how a government can sit idly by while this goes on. It's more than probable that the factories are owned by global corporations who are there because of the lax regulations and failure to monitor and, if regulated, would move to another place where they could operate as they wished to maximize profit and leave El Alto and its workers high and dry. Having despoiled Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, capital is seeking new horizons to continue dirty production wherever it can. Such is the nature of capitalism. John Ayers.