| Sumario: | The writers discuss the report submitted by the Committee for Human Rights of the American Anthropological Association in March 1998 on violations of environmental laws and values and human rights arising from a hydroelectric dam project on the Bio-Bio river in southern Chile. They note that the dam project had been initiated by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is a division of the World Bank, and was undertaken in partnership with Empresa Nacional de Electricidad S.A. (ENDESA), one of the largest South American transnational corporations. They contend that the denials and violations of rights in this case were partly caused by the institutional cultures of the World Bank, the IFC, and its Chilean partner, ENDESA. They assert that these denials and violations of rights must be understood within the wider context of the global economy and the political climate in which the World Bank Group and other public institutions engaged in private-sector lending operate.
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