One day last fall, while I was home visiting the United States, my step-mother asked me: “So, are there really no birds in La Paz?”

“What are you talking about?” I responded, confused.

She was talking about the recently published Alma Guillermoprieto New York Review of Books series on Bolivia. The distinguished Mexican writer starts off “The New Bolivia: Part II,” (September 21, 2006 edition) with this description of the South American nation’s seat of government:

La Paz occupies a narrow, deep depression scooped out of this parched land, but at 12,000 feet above sea level it is still situated at a height hostile to trees. The embedded city, modest in all its proportions, and the jagged cliffs that surround it are uniformly the color of dust, and one is constantly aware of the absence of birds.

That seemingly-odd fact had caught my step mother’s attention. “Does it have to do with the altitude?”

I was baffled. I had been living in La Paz for over a year, yet had no such constant awareness. Could I really have never noticed the lack of winged wildlife in my new home?

La Paz, birds, La Paz, birds, my mind raced until it hit on an image: pigeons. The government Plaza Murillo during the 2005 May-June mobilizations—blocked-off to those not press, police or politicians—had been filled with pigeons instead of people. But maybe Guillermoprieto doesn’t consider them birds; maybe to her they are, as the saying goes, rats with wings.

I had to admit that I had no other avian memory. So my step-mother and I agreed that a journalist of Guillermoprieto’s caliber writing in a polished outlet like the New York Review of Books must be correct.

Returning to La Paz, I moved out of an apartment, and into a house surrounded by rose bushes, ivy and flowers. And, as it turns out, by birds—hummingbirds, little sparrow-like birds that sing at sunrise, baby birds who fall out of their nest above our patio whom we raise until they can fend for themselves.

The next time I talked with my step-mom, I clarified the matter. And I thought I moved on.

But the incident continued to bug me. Guillermoprieto’s two articles were relatively accurate—Evo as rising political star, the challenges he now faces. Does it matter if the thousands of New York Review of Books readers thinks that La Paz is a bird-less city?

For us here at UB, it does. It matters that most of what people outside of Bolivia read is written by foreigners who spend little time in the country. It matters that every piece of their articles is taken as truth. And it matters that most Bolivians don’t have access to the foreign press coverage, specifically the English language press, so they will never know when and where the problems arise.

We would therefore like to offer our assistance, and in doing so inaugurate our media watchdog column: Birds of La Paz. We will periodically take a look at the work of our journalist friends and offer our thoughts on any inconsistencies that we find.

The first one under the microscope is Council On Hemispheric Affairs’ research associate Katherine Hancy Wheeler. Better known as COHA, the Washington DC-based organization issued one of its periodic reports on Bolivia on April 30th: What is Happening with Morales and his Vision for Bolivia? The briefing overviews the ongoing constitutional assembly process and its consistent problems (last Sunday May 6th marked 9 months since the Assembly’s inauguration and not a single constitutional article has been agreed upon).

Most of the report is a reasonable summary of the stalled process. But let’s check out the second paragraph. Report author Wheeler writes:

Through various proposals that Morales has submitted to the Assembly, plus numerous efforts to ensure his movement’s (Movimiento al Socialismo-MAS) plenary influence on its proceedings, it has become increasingly evident, at least to his rightwing opposition, that Morales is attempting a bureaucratic revolution in Bolivia whereby he will become the presidente vitalicio (president for life).

Wheeler correctly explains that the MAS is trying to move up the 2010 schedule general elections to 2008. The MAS has also proposed that the new constitution allow consecutive re-election (right now, you can serve two terms but not in a row). And Morales says that since the 2008 elections would be the first under the new constitution, if he won it would be his first term rather than his second. Therefore, if re-election is enabled for 2013, he could conceivably hold the presidential office for another 11 years (a long time, but not a life-time).

As Wheeler notes, the opposition is critical. Opposition party officials claim that re-election is unethical because the governing party could use the state apparatus—finances, transportation, public visibility—to campaign, making an uneven playing field. Also, the opposition criticizes MAS for proposing the lowering of the voting age minimum from 18 to 16 and for trying to enfranchise Bolivians living abroad (almost 30% of the total Bolivian population)—efforts which the opposition assert would give MAS an edge.

None of this, however, adds up to Wheelers’ assessment that Bolivia is heading towards (what is intimated as a Fidel Castro-style) presidente vitalicio, nor does Wheeler specify where such claims originate.

Unfortunately this is not the first time COHA has been caught with its guard down.

According to its website, COHA “is an independent research and information organization…established to promote the common interests of the hemisphere, raise the visibility of regional affairs and increase the importance of the inter-American relationship, as well as encourage the formulation of rational and constructive U.S. policies towards Latin America.”

In practice, the organization puts out reports on social, political and economic situations in Latin America written by a group of mostly right-out-of-college volunteer interns that often have little understanding of or background in the region. Larry Birns, COHA founder and director, oversees the process.

Two years ago, UB editor Luis Gomez brought to light several inaccuracies in Melissa Nepomiachi’s August 2005 COHA report With Bolivia Seized by Unrest and Instability, there are Lessons to be Learned about Autonomy from Nicaragua’s Comparative Experience. Faulty interpretations of statistics, incorrect citations, and other grave errors plagued the report.

This, just weeks after Narco News founder Al Giordano called out Birns and his team for their slanted reporting in Zapatistas Issue A General Red Alert: Resurfacing Unwanted Memories in Mexico. Giordano’s extensive criticism caused such alarm in DC that COHA responded with an open public letter admitting that “there is no doubt that aspects of the Zapatista press release were flawed, and COHA takes full responsibility for those mistakes of fact and interpretation.”

The errors in Ms. Wheeler’s report may not have been as grave as those found in COHA’s past work but they are enough to qualify her to be our first bird of La Paz.