Awakening from hegemony

The Aftermath of Bagua: Lessons for Democracy in Peru

2009-10-05T07:24:00.000-07:00

On June 5, 2009, in the Bagua Province of the Peruvian Amazon, dozens of people were killed and more than 200 were injured when national police attacked indigenous protesters that had mobilized against a series of legislative decrees. When word of the attack reached nearby communities, groups of indigenous and mestizo people retaliated against police installations, and the death toll surged. The official count of those killed is 23 police officers, 5 indigenous people, and 5 local mestizos. Indigenous groups contest these figures and claim that around 40 Awajún and Wampi indigenous peoples died, alleging that bodies were dumped in nearby rivers, although no evidence has been produced to confirm these reports.

The decree laws – issued by President Alan García in 2008 under special powers granted by the legislature (Law #29157) to facilitate the implementation of a free trade agreement with the U.S. – would open broad areas of the Amazon to mineral, oil, logging and agricultural exploitation. For example, one decree withdrew the requirement (not always enforced) that resource extraction firms acquire informed consent from local communities prior to entering their lands. García’s decrees were issued without consulting indigenous communities that stood to have their lives and territory affected, and with minimal transparency. The following accounting of what took place on June 5 highlights several deficiencies in Peruvian democracy: (a) citizens’ most basic rights are periodically violated in the enactment of the state’s coercive powers, (b) there remains a high level of political and social exclusion of marginalized groups, especially rural and indigenous peoples, and (c) presidents have a tendency to concentrate power – through rule by decree and issuance of states of exception.

The series of confrontations occurred when the head of special operations (DIROES), General Luis Muguruza, led security forces in an assault to dislodge a blockade established by thousands of indigenous protesters on a stretch of the Fernando Belaúnde Terry Highway known as the “Devil’s Curve.” The blockade had been part of a series of non-violent protests by indigenous groups over the course of eight weeks, which had involved the closure of road travel, river navigation and oil facilities. Although those opposed to what they called the “Laws of the Jungle” had pursued negotiations over the decrees for more than a year, the García Administration declined to consult with local communities prior to their passage. [1] Instead of dialogue, García opted for confrontation, issuing a state of emergency on May 9, 2009, which suspended various constitutional protections, including the freedom of assembly and movement.

Those amassed at Devil’s Curve had hoped that a truce negotiated with the police the night before would allay a confrontation. However, at approximately 6:00 am, a verbal exchange between the police and protesters intensified, and without warning the police began shooting teargas and live ammunition indiscriminately into the blockade. The protesters responded by hurling rocks and spears, and police helicopters appeared overhead, also firing bullets into the crowd. Numerous deaths and injuries occurred on both sides.

News traveled rapidly, spurring two subsequent incidents. One took place in the nearby town of Bagua, where the situation turned riotous. A crowd of protesters engulfed the police station until police snipers opened fire from the rooftop, killing several of those below, including one indigenous leader, Felipe Sabio César of the Wawas community. The other site of violence – for some Peruvians, a more shocking one – occurred at a nearby pumping station 6, part of the North Peruvian Oil Pipeline, where 10 police officers were killed.

Weeks earlier, thirty-eight poorly equipped police had been sent to guard the pumping station. They entered into a non-aggression agreement with the community, and according to one officer developed a sort of camaraderie, with food shared and games of table football. The police were not informed in advance that the highway assault was to occur. That news arrived first to the indigenous people present via radio, who, outraged by reports of their comrades’ deaths, surrounded the police. Outnumbered and still unaware of what had taken place, the police surrendered their weapons, and were tied up and taken “hostage,” according to Garcia’s Prime Minister Yehude Simon, who described the situation in a press conference that evening. During the subsequent attempted rescue, ten of the police were killed in what some reports describe as “executions”. [2]

The decision to attack the highway blockaders occurred with no apparent concern for the police at pumping station 6, nor a plan for their safe withdrawal, despite intelligence reports that informed the administration of the situation there. Common sense suggests that retaliation against state actors and facilities was a possible response to the assault, and that the police at the pumping station were likely targets. The omission has spurred allegations of criminal negligence, incompetence, and disregard of intelligence on the part of Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas and national police generals that planned the strike on the highway.

As noted above, the death toll remains contested. An investigation by Peru’s Defensor del Pueblo (Ombudsman) found that police constituted the majority of those killed (23 of the 33 identified bodies), [3] and these numbers have been accepted as the government’s official accounting of lives lost. However, several witnesses have charged that the police disposed of bodies in the Marañon River, and many indigenous people that had joined the protests have not yet been accounted for or returned to their communities.

A statement issued by the Organizing Committee for the Indigenous Peoples of Alto Amazonas Province declared: “It is appalling that political powers have acted in such a cruel and inhuman manner against Amazonian peoples, failing to recognize the fundamental rights and protections guaranteed to us by the Constitution.” [4] Peru’s National Coordinator of Human Rights similarly laid blame at the feet of the state, alleging “negligence and the bad political decisions of the Government and the Congress have contributed in a fundamental way.” [5]

With clear allusions to Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), President García defended the police action as necessary to confront “subversive anti-democratic aggression,” while condemning the indigenous response as “savage and barbaric.” In an earlier racially-tinged declaration, García had declared, “Enough is enough. These peoples are not monarchy, they are not first-class citizens. Who are 400,000 natives to tell 28 million Peruvians that you have no right to come here? This is a grave error, and whoever thinks this way wants to lead us to irrationality and a retrograde primitivism” [emphasis added]. The pronouncements imply the view that indigenous people are less worthy of full enjoyment of their constitutional rights. Moreover, the president asserted that the land in question does not belong to indigenous communities, but to the state, and that the decreed laws are necessary to develop the country for all Peruvians. In addition to inflaming opposition, García’s discourse risks reproducing discriminatory stereotypes of indigenous peoples, deepening social cleavages, and reinforcing existing ethnic inequalities.

In the immediate aftermath of Bagua, a Peruvian judge issued an arrest warrant for Alberto Pizango, president of the Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP), on charges of inciting the violence. Peru’s national indigenous organization, AIDESEP represents 1,350 indigenous communities that together comprise 350,000 people. Pizango, who blamed President García for what he describes as “genocide,” fled to Nicaragua, where he has been granted political asylum.

The fallout from the day of violence has been unfavorable for the government of García, who was forced to admit that “there were a series of errors and exaggerations” in the government’s actions on June 5. Prime Minister Simon asked the Congress to repeal two of the ten laws that spurred the protests – Decrees 1090 and 1064, which would have accelerated development of the agricultural and forestry sectors in Peru’s Amazon. The Congress overwhelmingly rescinded the two laws on June 18, while García’s other decrees remain in force. Simon subsequently resigned from his post. In early August 2009, public prosecutor Luz Rojas brought charges of homicide against two police generals, including General Muguruza, and 15 officers; however, it remains uncertain whether the case will move forward. [6]

Beyond the sheer loss of life, what transpired at Devil’s Curve throws a spotlight on several shortcomings of Peruvian democracy. On display in the bloodshed of June 5 was police use of excessive force, concentration of power in the executive branch, lack of transparency and consultation, and the state’s disregard for human life, of not just those that challenge it, but its own agents of coercion. A more fundamental problem that underpins the unfortunate chain of events is the political and social exclusion suffered by indigenous peoples in Peru. Although Bagua represents an extreme case of Peru’s failure to ensure constitutionally protected rights, democracy will remain shallow unless the country develops policies and practices that ensure this segment of the population achieves “first-class citizen” status.

Sources:
1. Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (2009), “Sobre el Paro de las Comunidades Nativas y la Urgencia de Dialogar,” Internet, http://www.dhperu.org/prensa.php?op=prensa&id=35.
2. Instituto de Defensa Legal (2009), “El Horror,” Internet, http://www.seguridadidl.org.pe/destacados/2009/11-06/el-horror.htm. See also IPS (2009): http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47248.
3. Defensor del Pueblo (2009), “Actualizaciones Humanitarias Realizadas por la Defensoría del Pueblo con Ocasión de los Hechos Ocurridos el 5 de Junio del 2009, en las Provincias de Utcubamba y Bagua, Región Amazonas, en el Contexto del Paro Amonónico.” Informe de Adjuntía # 006-2009-DP/ADHPD.
4. Amazon Watch and Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (2009), “Eyewitness Reports Accuse Peruvian Police of Disposing the Bodies of Dead Indigenous Protesters,” Internet, http://www.amazonwatch.org/newsroom/view_news.php?id=1843.
5. Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (2009), “CNDDHH Desmiente Falsa Información y Aclara que No Ha Denunciado al Estado por Genocidio,” Internet, http://www.dhperu.org/prensa.php?op=prensa&id=114.
6. See El Comercio: http://www.elcomercio.pe/noticia/326373/denuncian-generales-policia-muerte-nativos-bagua.

Reprinted from the Andean Democracy Research Network.

The Mapuche Nation Ups the Ante

2009-09-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

On August 12, 2009, Mapuche activist Jaime Mendoza Collío, 24, was shot in the back by a police officer during a symbolic land occupation of the San Sebastian ranch outside the town of Angol, Chile. The killing - and the reactions to it - reflects a deepening crisis in the relations between the Chilean state and the 900,000-member Mapuche nation, the largest indigenous group in Chile. (See the accompanying article, "Chile's Mapuches Call For Regional Autonomy," by Roque Planas, on the NACLA Website.)

Two thousand Mapuche people attended Collío's funeral, and thousands more demonstrated throughout the country. In Temuco, the regional capital, hundreds converged on the office of the intendente, the regional governor appointed by the president, chanting "Killers!" and "People, listen: they killed a Mapuche!"

From the steps of the intendente's office, a Mapuche protester spoke to those amassed: "While the Chilean state advances toward its bicentennial, stained with the blood of Mapuche peoples, the nation rises up in battle for the recovery of its territory."

The death of Collío is the third at the hands of carabineros, Chile's national police, in the last decade. Alex Lemún Saavedra and Matías Catrileo Quezada were similarly killed in 2002 and 2008, respectively, during actions to recover Mapuche territory. Their killers have faced "justice" in military tribunals, which have a near perfect record of granting police impunity in cases related to Mapuche abuses, including harassment, torture and death. To date, no one has been convicted of these killings, although the carabinero who killed Catrileo, Walter Ramírez Espinoza, now facing charges of "unnecessary violence resulting in death," which could carry up to ten years in prison. Such a sentence is unlikely from a military court.

Mapuche protests have continued at a steady pace in recent years, employing a wide range of tactics including marches, office and land occupations, appeals in international human rights fora, and, for some more militant activists, setting fire to property and tree plantations on Mapuche territory. Since the 1989 return to electoral democracy, Chilean courts have imprisoned hundreds of Mapuche people under a Pinochet-era "anti-terrorist" law.

Underlying the state's policy for contending with Mapuche protest is an official view that indigenous land occupations are not a form of political expression, but terrorist crimes that cannot be tolerated. The anti-terrorist law allows prosecutors to call unidentified witnesses (who testify behind screens), withhold evidence for long periods, deny bail, and double the length of sentences. Often charges are brought not for actual crimes, but for terrorist association. The right to due process and a fair trial are casualties under these circumstances.

The use of the anti-terrorist law against Mapuche dissent is blind to the historical roots of the conflict, in which the state features as the chief antagonist, and is disproportionate to the actions being taken by protesters. A 2004 Human Rights Watch report concluded: "Chile's use of the anti-terrorism law for crimes committed by Mapuche in the context of land conflicts, which do not approach this threshold of seriousness, is not only inappropriate but also reinforces existing prejudices against the Mapuche people."

A report by UN special rapporteur Rodolfo Stavenhagen in 2003 similarly urged: "Under no circumstances should legitimate protest activities or social demands by indigenous organizations and communities be outlawed or penalized. Charges for offences in other contexts ('terrorist threat', 'criminal association') should not be applied to acts related to the social struggle for land and legitimate indigenous complaints."

In one high-profile case, four Mapuche activists and a supporter imprisoned for arson in the Angol prison maintained a hunger strike for months in 2007, demanding the release of all Mapuche "political prisoners" and the demilitarization of indigenous communities. Former theology professor Patricia "La Chepa" Troncoso Robles, 37, who had been found guilty of burning 250 acres of pine plantations and sentenced to ten years, continued without food for 112 days. Also charged was Héctor Llaitul Carrillanca, a leader of the militant group Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM). He was acquitted, but not before serving 16 months of pre-trial incarceration, during which time he maintained an 81-day hunger strike. Upon release, Llaitul declared, "They persecute me for what I say, not for what I do. It's an ideological persecution."

After a few months of freedom, new charges were brought against Llaitul, alleging he was the architect behind the ambush of a vehicle carrying public prosecutor Mario Elgueta in which Elgueta and his police escort were injured.

The persistent conflict between Mapuche groups and the state can be traced in part to Chile's exclusionary and rigidly institutionalized democracy, which ensures minimal capacity for renovation or citizen participation in Chilean politics in general. In the context of state discrimination against indigenous peoples, Chile's political exclusion has achieved its ultimate expression in the incapacity to address indigenous grievances. The slow pace of reform is evident in Chile's failure to sign onto UN Convention 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples until 2008, after 17 years of congressional debate. Moreover, both the process of ratifying Convention 169 and Congress's subsequent approval of constitutional reforms to implement the convention were marred by its attempts to reinterpret international law so as to minimize indigenous rights, and by its failure to properly consult the indigenous community. As a result, Chile still refuses to recognize indigenous collective rights, traditional organizations, or territorial claims.

Chile did establish a land and water fund in 1993 to expand the land base of Mapuche communities through market purchases. By 2005, the fund had acquired 202,335 acres of private land at a cost of US$140 million, which was allocated to 7,611 indigenous families, the vast majority of which were Mapuche. An additional 339,046 acres of state land was transferred to 7,983 families, with about half going to Mapuches. Although these transfers have been important for the recipients, the fund has been criticized by indigenous groups for the targeting of recipients based on political influence rather than need, assigning land to individuals instead of communities, and acquiring land of low quality. Moreover, the amount of land transferred represents a miniscule fraction of traditional Mapuche territory, millions of acres of which have already been converted to sprawling tree plantations of non-native Monterey pine and eucalyptus at the hands of Chile's twin timber giants Arauco and Mininco.

Perhaps more than her predecessors, the conflict has plagued President Michelle Bachelet, having been a political prisoner herself under the Pinochet dictatorship. In April 2008, Bachelet pledged a new commitment to political participation and improved conditions for indigenous people. She asserted that the problems facing indigenous people are "a matter of rights, of a collective identity seeking expression in a multicultural society," and announced a new "Social Pact for Multiculturalism" to promote "integrated development" and novel indigenous rights.

But it was not long before skepticism turned to disappointment. Most recently, during an August 28 meeting with Mapuche youth in Temuco, Bachelet's indigenous policy coordinator José Antonio Vierra-Gallo deeply offended the indigenous community when, following what they felt was aggressive and arrogant behavior, he stood up and walked out. Mapuche groups insist that the social pact has not delivered real gains, and have invigorated their demand for territorial and collective rights by forming a "Mapuche Territorial Alliance." The coalition of more than 60 communities intends to develop a "Mapuche Agenda" and strategize for future mobilizations.

The death of Jaime Mendoza Collío is the latest indicator that a resolution of the historical impasse between the state and Mapuche communities is unlikely anytime soon. Llaitul, who awaits his next trial in the El Manzano jail in Concepción, affirmed: "As long as there's poverty and misery in the communities, the fight for land and independence will go on."

--

Originally published by North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) at https://nacla.org/node/6116

Bolivia Prescribes Solidarity: Health Care Reform under Evo Morales

2009-08-20T07:17:00.000-07:00

The first time Mario Terán faced a doctor from Cuba, he killed him. He heard Che Guevara utter his famous last words: "Shoot, coward; you are only going to kill a man," and in October of 1967, in a small schoolhouse in rural Bolivia, Sergeant Terán fired a round of bullets into the revolutionary's body.

Forty years later, Terán walked into a medical clinic staffed by Cuban physicians. Disguising his identity, he requested medical attention. His cataracts were corrected, his sight restored.

Like hundreds of thousands of other Bolivians, Che's killer is a beneficiary of Operación Milagro (Operation Miracle), the cornerstone of Cuba's programs of social solidarity in the country. In addition to almost 2,000 Cuban medical personnel in Bolivia, aid from Cuba and Venezuela has funded the opening or expansion of at least 20 hospitals and 11 eye clinics across the country.

The support falls under the rubric of what President Evo Morales calls the "Peoples' Trade Agreement" (TCP) - also known as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) or TCP-ALBA - a regional integration accord signed in April 2006 that seeks to depart from the free trade model. Based upon principles of solidarity, cooperation and complementarity, the agreement recognizes asymmetries between countries and provides the greatest advantages to those with the smallest economies - in this case Bolivia.

What Cuba has, and is uniquely able to deliver under the framework of the TCP-ALBA, is a massive surplus of skilled physicians that the socialist country has been sending abroad since its first medical mission to Algeria in 1963.

Much as they do at sites across Bolivia, Cuban doctors work side-by-side with Bolivian physicians at the San Francisco de Asis Hospital in the rural town of Villa Tunari, nestled in the tropical El Chapare region. A Bolivian administrator explains that the hospital staff is comprised of 68 Cubans integrated with the 72 Bolivians who work there. Of the three surgeons, two are Cuban. The government of Cuba covers all of the expenses of their doctors, and they do not charge for services. One of the Cubans on site proudly asserts that in the span of one year his team had seen more than 30,000 patients, and conducted 400 surgeries.

At a national level, Bolivia's TCP-ALBA Coordination Team documented that in 2007 Cuban medical personnel had provided services to around three million Bolivians. The following year, a BBC article reported the number of consultations had surged to nine million. Government figures from 2009 indicate that more than 260,000 Bolivians had undergone eye surgeries through Operación Milagro.

But not everyone in Bolivia is thrilled about the Cubans' presence. Foremost among the critics is the profession's trade association, the Bolivian Medical College, which claims that the Cuban physicians are unqualified and ignorant of Bolivian customs related to matters of health. Moreover, the College argues that the influx of foreign doctors deprives Bolivians of work.

The proposition of substituting Bolivian for Cuban doctors has resonated with many in the medical community. In an outlying neighborhood of El Alto, a Bolivian doctor, speaking anonymously, expressed that, while he does not oppose the Cuban teams, he shares the sentiment of the Medical College: "This money should go to Bolivian doctors, not to Cubans, we say. There are unemployed Bolivian doctors. They should give the work to them, not to foreigners."

Many doctors contest the profession's official narrative, including Cochabamba physician Godofredo Reinicke, once El Chapare's Human Rights Ombudsman, and now director of the human rights group Puente Investigación y Enlace. Reinicke explains: "The Medical College has rejected the Cubans' presence because... it lacks the solidarity that it once had with the people; the doctor has become some sort of mercantilist. For me, the presence of [Cuban] doctors in particular is aid of utmost importance. [They are] advancing the theme of solidarity for doctors and common citizens to see how people can work without the necessity of pressure, conditionality or money."

Nationality aside, few would contest that the Bolivian health care system suffers from insufficient facilities and personnel. According to a 2004 World Bank report, the number of Bolivian medical practitioners per capita was half of the Latin American average, with only 6.6 doctors and 3.4 nurses for every 10,000 people. The Bank estimated that an additional 8,850 health professional and many more health facilities were needed in Bolivia.

"Seventy-seven percent of the population is excluded from health services in some manner," explained Bolivia's former Health Minister Dr. Nila Heredia in her 2006 presentation before the World Health Organization. "This reproduces in the field of health those inequalities and injustices of the economic structure."

Under Bolivia's system, the country's elite nets five times more in health care expenditures than those with the lowest incomes. Social security and private health care, which together represent four-fifths of all health care expenditures, are highly regressive. The World Bank found that only around 4% goes to poorest 20% of the population, while almost half is enjoyed by the richest quintile. Rural residents are especially disadvantaged, with many effectively lacking any access to health care services.

While medical solidarity from Cuba, Venezuela and other donor countries has been helpful in confronting Bolivia's uneven health care landscape, it is not a permanent fix. In the end, Bolivians should be seeing Bolivian doctors, a point implicitly acknowledged by the several thousand scholarships provided to Bolivians to study medicine in Cuba and Venezuela.

The Morales government has also initiated a series of domestic programs to increase health services. A newly announced mother-child subsidy called "Juana Azurduy" provides cash payments to pregnant women and mothers with babies through their second year, so long as they maintain pre- and post-natal checkups. Nutritional and vaccination campaigns have been initiated and expanded to combat malnutrition and diseases such as yellow fever and rubéola (measles). And in an effort to transcend the dominance of the "biomedical" model, the newly approved Constitution (January 2009) guarantees and promotes the use of indigenous medicines and "ancestral knowledge and practices."

Although these reforms signify important advances, there remain significant structural, budgetary and ideological challenges fundamental to the design of Bolivia's health care system. Debates over privatized care, unequal access, lack of funds, and the prioritization of biomedical disease treatment over the promotion of health and traditional medicines are by no means unique to Bolivia. Yet they sit uncomfortably at odds with the new Constitution's promise of "universal, free, equitable, intracultural" access to health care for all Bolivians.

Lifting Bolivia from close to the bottom of the hemisphere's health indicators will be a difficult task for Morales, much as it was for his predecessors. The initiatives he has implemented to date provide, at best, partial answers. But while Bolivia awaits more durable solutions, the government's immediate approaches have won accolades from many Bolivians, with the importation of Cuban medical professionals being a particularly popular measure.

"The Cubans are well received by those who have visited them and been attended as patients," the mayor of a town in El Chapare told me. "I welcome them because they are the support the population needs."

--

Originally published by North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) at https://nacla.org/node/6070

Independent Candidate Challenges Chilean Political Establishment

2009-07-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

For the first time since Chile's return to democracy, the country's ruling political coalition may lose the presidency. The centrist "Concertación" coalition is being challenged from both the left and the right, facing perhaps its toughest electoral battle yet. Previous elections have been mostly battled out between a consensus Concertación candidate and a right-wing opponent. But this year a relative newcomer to Chile’s political scene has shaken things up, gaining momentum in the race for the presidency. The political ascendance of 36-year-old Congressman Marco Enríquez-Ominami sets up a competitive three-way contest in the December 2009 election.

Candidates of the Concertación – formally known as the Agreement of Parties for Democracy – have won every presidential election since 1989. Among them is former President Eduardo Frei (1994-2000), a Christian Democrat, who is seeking a second term as the Concertación's chosen candidate. Sitting President Michelle Bachelet, of the Concertación-affiliated Socialist Party, has won record high approval ratings (74 percent) for her handling of Chile’s economic crisis. However, this has not dented deep public disillusionment with the Concertación, which has become increasingly disconnected from any popular base, stagnating into an ossified political institution incapable of responding to social forces.

“Not only is the system detached from civil society, but it possesses little capacity for renovation and high degrees of endogamy,” explain scholars David Altman and Juan Pablo Luna in a recent report on Chilean politics. “One observes a political system co-opted by the elites and with low levels of citizen participation and activation.”

Billionaire businessman Sebastián Piñera, who is the perennial candidate of the right-wing National Renewal Party (part of the "Alliance for Chile" coalition), has benefited from public frustration with the Concertación, jumping ahead of Frei in national polls. But the political vacuum has also facilitated the emergence of independent Socialist-turned-Green candidate Enríquez-Ominami, often identified simply as “Marco.”

Marco’s political education began early. He was born three months before the overthrow of Salvador Allende, and his father – Miguel Enríquez, leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) – was killed resisting the Pinochet dictatorship in 1974. Marco’s mother, sociologist Manuela Gumucio, was exiled to France, where Marco undertook his primary education. He returned to Chile for secondary school, and then received a degree in philosophy, embarking on a career of filmmaking before entering politics. In 2005, he was elected to Congress. His stepfather, Carlos Ominami, is also a member of Congress, and was a Socialist Party vice president until he left the party to campaign for Marco.

Marco’s June resignation from the Socialist Party reflected his frustration with the Concertación’s institutional inertia. In his renunciation, he declared: “More than 20 years since the return to democracy, nothing justifies sustaining the agreements signed in a very different political, social and economic context… nothing except the maintenance of certain privileges of a small group of leaders explains the collusion and privatization of politics.” Both Chile’s Green and Humanist parties subsequently endorsed him.

Some of his supporters have appropriated campaign imagery from the Obama campaign.

Through his blog and social networking websites, Marco has reached out to a burgeoning base of young supporters, long neglected by the political establishment. His campaign has centered on the theme of "change," which – along with his high energy, youthful vigor, and captivating personal story – has earned him the moniker "Chile’s Obama," bringing an exciting charge to the country's ordinarily sober elections. In the magazine Poder, researcher Partricio Navia observes that, like Obama, “Marco can construct a speech with imagery and history, a kind of national dream, with historical continuity and charged with significant symbols and dates.”

But the Obama analogy goes only so far. While Enríquez-Ominami has tapped into many Chileans’ aspirations, his policy solutions have been short on content. Navia notes, “Unlike the U.S. president, Marco seems today incapable of discussing the challenges of public policies that face the country in a detailed manner.” (Of course, Obama faced similar criticisms during the campaign.)

Marco’s platform has been a general call for a “change in the political regime.” He has proposed replacing Pinochet’s authoritarian and still-in-force constitution (as has Frei), the creation of the position of Prime Minister, provisions for presidential recall and referenda on public policies, and devolving power away from the national government, including the direct election of regional governors.

Environmental concerns have also featured prominently in his campaign, including support for renewable energy and criticism of mining and dam projects such as the controversial HidroAysén, a massive hydroelectric project in Chile’s Patagonia.

His opposition to these megaprojects dovetails with his efforts to seek support from indigenous peoples, most notably the Mapuche, who number around a million in Chile. Marco released a video in which he – speaking in the indigenous language, Mapudungun – recognizes the Mapuche new year, We Tripantu, and proposes to “construct a country with diversity as a motor and whose history and roots are its principle treasure.” The nod to indigenous peoples by a Chilean politician is unusual and refreshing.

However, even if Marco could prevail in drafting a more inclusive and democratic constitution that deepens indigenous rights, Chile’s free market orientation would likely impede improved conditions for indigenous peoples, among those most marginalized in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of inequality. Alfredo Seguel, a Mapuche activist and publisher of Informativo Mapuexpress, perceives a number of Marco’s social propositions as highly interesting but warns, “Some of the proposals put forward by Enriquez-Ominami on economic and environmental issues are very weak, including some that have a strong air of neoliberalism.”

Indeed, when it comes to the economy, Enríquez-Ominami has not indicated much of a penchant for change. His choice of Paul Fontaine, managing director of the energy consulting firm South World, as his principal economic advisor generated skepticism among Chile’s left. And while Marco has at times promoted a more regulatory state on economic issues – e.g. higher taxes on the rich and greater social spending – his economic policies seem to be guided by a pragmatism along the lines of Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

In a proposal decried by progressives, Marco has supported the partial sell-off of state-owned enterprises, including five percent of the state copper mining firm, the centerpiece of Chile’s economy that not even Pinochet endeavored to privatize. An editorial by left-wing magazine Punto Final accuses Marco of being a "neo-Concertación" candidate, arguing, “What Enríquez-Ominami’s [economic] program does is apply a new layer of paint on top of the old."

Marco must gather 36,000 petition signatures by early September to get on the ballot. Assuming he achieves this, which is likely, the most probable electoral outcome in December is that no party secures 50 percent of the vote in the first round, forcing a second-round contest between the top two finishers. Polls indicate that the Alliance for Chile’s Piñera would then face either the Concertación’s Frei or Marco.

If it is the Concertación that goes against Piñera, it can probably count on a last-minute endorsement from Marco, and vice-versa. Considering the new energy Marco has brought to politics, and the fact that the right-wing Alliance has never won a presidential election, the smart second-round bets are on whoever is matched up against Piñera. Polarization in Chilean politics has often made voters of the political middle ground the kingmakers of national contests.

Frei, as the candidate of the incumbent party, has faced difficulty deflecting Piñera's criticisms against the Concertación as being the party representing "business as usual." Marco has clearly capitalized on this popular dissatisfaction with the Concertación, boosting his image as the "change" candidate. The question is whether this relative "outsider" can muster the political organization to successfully compete against both of Chile's most entrenched political factions.

Even if Marco Enríquez-Ominami does not become the next president of Chile, the exuberance his candidacy has generated among previously untapped segments of the electorate sends a clear message to the political establishment: If they fail to develop a more inclusive, responsive political system, they will one day be replaced by an anti-establishment candidate who promises as much.

--

Originally published by North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) at https://nacla.org/node/6010.

Correa’s Re-Election Poses More Challenges for Social Movements in Ecuador

2009-05-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has marched from one victory to the next. In 2006, he won the presidency, campaigning squarely on a promise to rewrite the country’s Constitution. Two years later, despite stiff opposition from Congress, the Constitution was resoundingly approved by a voter referendum. The new Constitution required new elections, so Correa again ran for president. He won in a landslide on April 26.

But Ecuador’s leading social movements remain skeptical about whether his re-election will translate into the deep social changes promised by the country’s new Constitution. Ecuador’s indigenous federations are still reeling from a bitter fight over a controversial mining law that the President pushed through the interim Congress in January. Many indigenous groups withheld their support for Correa in the April general elections, possibly costing his party a majority in the newly established unicameral National Assembly.

Nonetheless, Correa achieved a feat unprecedented since the 1979 return to democracy: He won a majority of votes (52 percent) in the first round of the presidential election, nearly doubling the amount received by second-place finisher, Lucio Gutiérrez. Correa’s margin of victory can be understood as a combination of factors: public support for his political project, enthusiasm for the relative political stability that accompanied his first term, a divided opposition, and the disrepute of traditional political parties widely perceived as irretrievably corrupt and unaccountable. Indeed, Correa has built his political persona by railing against both the old partidocracia (party-ocracy) and neoliberal economic policies, while shrewdly positioning his party, Movement for a Proud and Sovereign Country (MPAIS or Alianza PAIS), against this old guard.

In April’s National Assembly elections, MPAIS slightly stumbled, falling just shy of the 50 percent plus one vote mark. But the party is by far the largest single political force. Electoral authorities are still compiling the final tally, but it appears MPAIS will secure around 60 of the 124 seats. In passing legislation, Correa will likely have to work with a smattering of smaller leftist parties, which hold an estimated 15 seats. The remaining 50 seats are mostly divided between a handful of conservative parties.

In achieving his many victories, Correa has displayed a combative “with-me-or-against-me” approach in carrying through his agenda. One of his more crushing victories was against the former Congress, which was stonewalling the creation of a Constitutional Assembly. After a 10-month feud, Correa emerged victorious when the MPAIS-dominated Constituent Assembly dissolved the Congress and assumed law-making powers.

But his combative approach is not limited to dealings with the reactionary right. The President has similarly tried to steamroll progressive forces opposing his policies.

Correa’s already tenuous relationship with indigenous and environmental social movements deteriorated when he proposed a new mining law. The legislation offered mining companies unprecedented large-scale open pit mining concessions throughout the country, including on indigenous lands and environmentally sensitive areas. Correa pushed the law through the interim Congress in January 2009, sparking widespread protests. Activists complained the law would negatively impact many rural and indigenous communities and that it was approved without public debate or transparency.

A broad-based grassroots coalition emerged in opposition to the mining law, including the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), environmental groups, human rights organizations, and youth and urban sectors. Humberto Cholango, president of a CONAIE-affiliated indigenous organization, captured the sentiment against the law in a written statement: “We reject the anti-democratic attitude of the national government and the legislative commission for closing off dialogue, denying a national debate, and rushing through the approval of the mining law, which promotes a model based on the pillaging of natural resources and that favors transnational corporations.”

In the view of these groups, the Correa administration is taking a page from Ecuador’s neoliberal regimes in prioritizing the interests of foreign investors over local people. Popular mobilization escalated on January 20, as opponents to the mining law launched a national “Day of Mobilization for Life” in which tens of thousands participated in marches, roadblocks, and hunger strikes across Ecuador.

The government responded by arresting protesters, and firing bullets and teargas, injuring dozens. Correa dismissed the protesting groups as an “infantile left” made up of “fundamentalists” that cannot be allowed to rise up against his program. Opposition groups countered that Correa’s aggressive posturing and use of force was effectively criminalizing dissent. Finally, in a move widely perceived as an act of retaliation, the government revoked the legal status of Acción Ecológica, a prominent environmental organization that had played a visible role in the protests. (The group’s status was only reinstated after an international campaign of solidarity was launched.)

The mining conflict hardened left-wing opposition toward Correa in the run up to the April elections. Ecuador’s leading indigenous federations gave particularly harsh rebukes. Cholango claimed, “We are not going to support any presidential candidate, because none represent a real alternative for the country.” CONAIE’s vice president Miguel Guatemal similarly commented, “This is a racist and rude government, and in the coming elections we will withdraw our support.”

Although opposition to Correa’s mining law may have been a factor in denying him a majority in the National Assembly, his party should be able to steer its legislative agenda by forming a coalition with one or more small parties of the left. Correa’s need to negotiate with other progressive forces may provide social movements with an avenue to influence the administration’s program and policies.

--

Originally published by North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) at https://nacla.org/node/5848.

Bolivians approve new constitution

2009-02-04T22:04:00.000-08:00

On January 25, 2009, Bolivians approved a new constitution, voting 61 percent in favor and 39 percent against, realizing a long-standing demand of Bolivian social movements and fulfilling a principal campaign pledge of President Evo Morales. The 411-article constitution represents an attempt to break with Bolivia’s colonial past, and the legacy of poverty and exclusion that plagues much of the country’s indigenous majority. Among the key features of the new constitution are provisions that (a) give greater rights to indigenous peoples (in such areas as recognition, systems of justice, education, religion, language and territory), (b) provide the state greater control over the economy (notably, over the country’s natural resources), (c) secure access to health care, education, food and water as ‘rights’, and (d) permit the president to sit for two consecutive terms. In the case of Morales, this allows him to stand for one additional term in an election to be held later this year. Additionally, Bolivians voted overwhelmingly to limit large agricultural land holdings to 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres), although this will not be applied retroactively to those who already hold large tracts of land.

Constitutional approval came despite strong criticisms from business and autonomist groups in the eastern departments of the media luna that the Constituent Assembly’s drafting and ratification process was illegal, as well as objections by social movements and organizations that too many concessions were made to appease the opposition (such as lack of retroactivity in agrarian reform). Ethnic, class and regional cleavages produced recurrent conflicts throughout the process of writing and approving the new constitution, climaxing in the September 11, 2008 massacre of 20 pro-Morales campesinos in the northern department of Pando. Though it appeared at times that the gridlock was insurmountable, international observers, most notably from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), played an important role in breaking the impasse between Bolivian parties, resulting in a compromise that was approved by a majority of the Bolivian Congress in October 2008. That body will now have the task of legislating over dozens of issues that arise out of the new charter.

A new era for Bolivia's campesinos?

2007-12-01T01:21:00.000-08:00

One of my fondest memories of Bolivia is walking in the mountains around Coroico, east of La Paz, summiting the Cerro Uchumachi and hiking through the fields of coca. The campesinos working their plots ignored the invasive gringo as I strolled along the path to the waterfalls, contemplating how this bitter little leaf was at the center of so much dispute. Certainly the situation has improved for Bolivia's cocaleros, as they have one of their own in the Presidency and no longer suffer the worst abuses of the repressive, U.S.-sponsored eradication campaign.

But is the future of the Bolivian peasant any more secure today than during the neoliberal period?

From 1985 to 2005, the role of the campesino in Bolivian society (and of agriculture in the economy) diminished due to reduced state support for the sector and trade openings to agricultural goods. Rural-to-urban immigration was propelled by worsened conditions and prospects for peasants, although many that make up the new semi-proletariat in sprawling urban zones like El Alto retain to some extent a rural identity and return to the countryside for varying periods of time.

Campesino organizations have had a growing impact on Bolivian politics, playing important roles in the contestation over neoliberal reforms and the resignation of two presidents viewed as hostile to their interests. In 2005, Evo Morales was elected to the Presidency on a broad reform platform, one pillar of which was a new agrarian reform and associated interventions in the Bolivian countryside. But shifting from ‘protest’ to ‘program’ has been a challenging process. Today’s campesinos and the Morales Government must contend with both a global free market context and the domestic economic framework that was reproduced by it.

Morales has implemented a series of agrarian changes that together constitute a deepening of state intervention into the sector, including an expansion of low-interest micro-credit for rural development. A large portion of this financing, as well as hundreds of tractors, has been donated by Venezuela, as part of a tri-lateral trade and integration agreement between Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. This accord, known in Bolivia as the Peoples’ Trade Agreement (or the TCP-ALBA), has also been the source of funds for infrastructure and productive development, including the paving of roads in rural Bolivia and the construction of factories designed to industrialize coca into tea and other non-illicit products. When in Bolivia this past April, I had the opportunity to tour one for these factories under construction in Lauca Eñe (see photo below), and talk with local officials who enthusiastically supported the project. Additionally, Venezuela has committed to import all Bolivian soy products no longer purchased by Colombia, following the latter country’s ratification of a trade agreement with the United States; however, Venezuela has only partially made good on this commitment.

The financial and technological resources Bolivia is receiving from Venezuela represent a constructive response to the global capitalist setting from which neither country will be able to extricate itself anytime soon. Chavez's act of solidarity provides some relief to the country’s campesinos, yet too strong a dependence on Venezuela would render Bolivia precariously vulnerable to external changes beyond its control.

In the present round of agrarian reform, Morales proposes the distribution of 20 million hectares to 2.5 million rural residents by 2011. This has been passionately challenged by rich landowners, as is normally the case with the expropriation of private property. It is hard to envision that more campesino blood will not be shed as this process advances. However, it is much more difficult to visualize economic and social improvements in the Bolivian campo absent genuine agrarian reform.

The free market vs. global health

2007-11-07T20:13:00.000-08:00

When the global economy settled into the Chicago School of Economics’ visible hands in the early 1980s, the health sector was by no means exempted. The face of health services and health policy was deeply impacted, and over subsequent years would swap the comprehensive Alma Ata ‘health for all’ idealism of 1978 for a narrower focus on health interventions for a small number of diseases. The shift in health policy exemplified the era’s general migration from Keynesian social democracy and corporatist development to the anti-development market hegemony of the Washington Consensus. The de-articulation of the state in the area of health care, replaced by the primacy of the market and privatization of the sector, would have profound impacts on those living in the most extreme conditions of poverty around the world.

The move from social democratic to neoliberal strategies for health governance represented not merely an unfortunate retreat by the global community in terms of its willingness to confront one of the world’s most vital development concerns, but also a regression into the logic of self-interest rooted in a quasi-religious faith in Adam Smith’s invisible hand. However, the reason that the free market’s hand cannot be seen probably has less to do with invisibility, and more with its absence. That is to say market principles cannot be trusted to distribute health services, as they are rendered inaccessible to some of the people who most need them. It is only through deliberative action by social forces, employing a redistributionist agenda, that universal access to health care could conceivably be realized.

Global health governance in two acts

Two distinct periods mark the contemporary thinking and practice of global health governance. The first, stretching from the end of the second World War to 1980, is rooted in the Keynesian or social democratic idea that one of the essential roles of the state is to strive to meet the needs of society. In terms of health, this meant the expansion of government-funded programs with the ambitious but generally elusive goal of universal coverage. However, with the onset of the 1980s debt crises and debilitating inflation rates, ‘developing’ countries of the world warmed to the Washington Consensus doctrine of an austere state in which the priority of balancing financial accounts left little room for ambitious health programs. Following the advice of the international financial institutions and the U.S. Treasury Department, most of the world accepted the neoliberal framework, swallowing the bitter pill of shock treatment as a necessary evil on the road to stability. One of those shocks would turn out to be access to health care by those living in poverty.

With the adoption of the Declaration of Alma Ata in 1978, global health governance within the United Nations, and subsequently the World Health Organization (WHO), advanced toward a framework of universality, egalitarianism and multilateralism. The Declaration ambitiously set a deadline (now long passed) to achieve a benchmark in global health: “the attainment by all peoples of the world by the year 2000 of a level of health that will permit them to lead a socially and economically productive life.” The Alma Ata agenda included the concept that health is a human right, and affirmed that states and the international community have a responsibility to provide comprehensive primary health care, complemented by health initiatives undertaken at the family and community level.

In the early 1980s, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) oversaw the implementation of neoliberalism around the world. Public health joined other social services in being recast within a market framework. Across the Third World, frayed but tangible social safety nets were replaced by things somewhat less concrete than nets: ideas and promises, framed in a model presented as the only remaining option. The ‘end of history’ had arrived, and with it the foremost question of political economy had been settled: the state should adopt a subservient economic role to let the market do its job. One of the tenets of the new consensus was the efficient provision of social services, which included an opening for the private sector into what was previously, in many instances, principally or entirely a public domain; the incorporation of competition into the provision of social services; and the application of user fees. Under the new framework, the commitment to primary health care was stripped bare, replaced by a much more limited strategy that sought to address a narrow range of health interventions while ignoring the broader health context.

By the early 1990s, many began to question the uneven economic outcomes that accompanied the neoliberal framework. The World Bank initiated a series of programs to address issues of equity, such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt reduction initiative and micro-credit lending, which provided some relief to impoverished countries and people while maintaining its free market approach and continued conditionality. In its 1993 World Development Report, “Investing in Health”, the Bank advocating for open competition between public and private health care service providers, the elimination of protections for domestic suppliers, and reduced government spending on high-cost, tertiary medical facilities and training. The state’s focus should be on providing low-cost clinics for essential services and maintaining health policy frameworks in which both the public and private sector can operate side-by-side. Such an approach, they argued, represents a practical strategy for confronting the scarcity of health resources. Competition among suppliers of health services will reduce the cost of service, improving access and the ability to deliver health care to a broader segment of the population, the Bank reasoned.

By 2000, the global health agenda was centered on private-public partnerships and stakeholder participation, maintaining the limited role for the state. This theme of a circumscribed state was also the centerpiece in the ascendant power of the third pillar of neoliberalism, the World Trade Organization (WTO). To the present day, privatization and market principles continue to occupy the centre of the global health agenda, under the purview of the WTO, international financial institutions and aid agencies.

Challenging the neoliberal order

Critics of the neoliberal approach to health have leveled their guns at privatization, arguing that social services like health are a public good that must remain in public hands. The development of a separate, private health regime, explains the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the BC Health Coalition, leads to two-tiered provisioning and draws financial resources away from the public system and into the private realm. With the development of a private system, profit-motivated providers begin to practice ‘cream-skimming’, the attendance to easy-to-treat patients, thereby minimizing risk while maximizing income, and for recruiting talented physicians away from public service into the private sector since they are typically able to offer them higher salaries. Such a dichotomy inevitably reinforces existing social inequalities and de-valorizes the public system, potentially rendering it unsustainable.

One of the principal loci for global health debates in recent years is the patent protections codified within the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the WTO. In the TRIPS Agreement, countries were restricted from providing patent-protected drugs, except through direct purchasing from the patent holder, including the development of generic alternatives. The impact of this language has been an incalculable number of deaths of people priced out of access to life saving medicines.

Various researchers have looked at the empirical effects of the expansion of global markets on health. In the southern India state of Kerala, Thankappan linked neoliberal reforms, including social sector expenditure reductions and the imposition of user fees, to a five-fold increase in health care costs, regressively affecting the poorest people of Kerala at a rate of 768% as compared to the richest, whose costs rose by only 254%. He also found a decrease in the quality of the public health system, as budgetary limitations affected the availability of supplies, including drugs. The Third World Network similarly documented the decreased usage of health facilities in four African countries after the introduction of health care user fees. Studies conducted by Janes in Mongolia found that the effect of privatization in the secondary and tertiary areas of the health system alongside a universal yet limited public system of primary care was that it created an uneven, fragmented system that denied access of care above the primary level to the vulnerable poor, and resulted in heightened maternal mortality among rural poor women. And in Latin America, Hershberg and Rosen argue that the reduction of state expenditures on public health and the shift of resources toward privatized health care shrank already inadequate and underfunded systems.

A final area that has been impacted by neoliberal restructuring is that of government spending on social programs, including sanitation and health infrastructure. The reduction of public expenditures has for more than two decades been one of the conditions demanded of countries that sought loans from the IMF and World Bank. The result was described by Hong as a “drastic decline in [disease] control and prevention measures”. Chossudovsky has documented the linkage of budget cuts and the resurgence of deadly diseases including cholera, yellow fever and malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa; malaria and dengue in South America; malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhea in Vietnam; and the bubonic and pneumonic plague in India.

Among the voices calling for a new approach to global health governance, some posit that health services in ‘developing’ countries can be improved through piecemeal modifications to the present order, such as the relaxation of patent protections and the allocation of more resources toward health. The Third World Network and other groups based in the Global South, as well as many northern non-governmental organizations, more accurately contend that much deeper action is necessary, and that only through a wholesale abandonment of the neoliberal model can the structural root causes of poor health be addressed. At the foundation of neoliberalism is the belief that the state must assume a minimalist role, which is both inherently contradictory to equitable access to health and the process of development, and contrary to the 1978 commitment made by the majority of the world in Alma Ata.

Useful sources (ask me for other references cited above):
1. Chossudovsky, M. (1997). The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms. Penang, Indonesia: Third World Network.
2. Hershberg, E. and F. Rosen (2006) Latin America After Neoliberalism: Turning the Tide in the 21st Century? New York, NY: The New Press.
3. Hong, E. (2000). “Globalisation and the Impact on Health A Third World View.” Penang, Indonesia: Third World Network.
4. Janes, C., O. Chuluundorj, C. Hilliard, K. Rak and K. Janchiv (2006). “Poor medicine for poor people? Assessing the impact of neoliberal reform on health care equity in a post-socialist context.” Global Public Health, 1(1). Pp 5-30.
5. Katz, A. (2005). “Reappropriating Health for All, By and For the People, After 25 years of Neoliberal Capture”. Geneva, Switzerland: People’s Health Movement.
6. Priest, A., M. Rachlis and M. Cohen (2007). "Why Wait? Public Solutions to Cure Surgical Waitlists." Vancouver, BC: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the BC Health Coalition.
7. Thomas, C. and M. Weber (2004). “The Politics of Global Health Governance: Whatever Happened to ‘Health for All by the Year 2000’?” Global Governance 10. Pp 187–205.

Changing Venezuela by Taking Power

2007-09-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

Hot off the presses: a new book by journalist Greg Wilpert on Chávez and Venezuela. If it is not available at your local bookstore, you can buy it for $18 on Amazon. I have not yet read this one, but pleasurably devoured another that Greg wrote/edited in 2003, Coup Against Chávez in Venezuela. For his older book, here's the link.

About Changing Venezuela by Taking Power:

"Venezuela under Hugo Chávez could be a model for peaceful revolution — or, as this definitive history shows, it could all be undone by the spectres of the past.

Since coming to power in 1998, the Chávez government has inspired both fierce internal debate and horror amongst Western governments accustomed to counting on an obeisant regime in the oil-rich state.

In this rich and resourceful study, Greg Wilpert exposes the self-serving logic behind much middle-class opposition to Venezuela’s elected leader, and explains the real reason for their alarm. He argues that the Chávez government has instituted one of the world’s most progressive constitutions, but warns that they have yet to overcome the dangerous spectres of the country’s past: its culture of patronage and clientelism, its corruption, and its support for personality cults—all of them fuelled by the attention and interference of a succession of US administrations."

And some kind words from Noam Chomsky:

“This fascinating study—deeply informed, penetrating in its analysis, comprehensive in scope—explores the historical and socioeconomic roots of the Venezuelan initiatives of recent years, the conflicts they have engendered, the achievements and pitfalls, the animating ideals of a genuinely participatory society, and the prospects for realizing them in ways that, if successful, might have significant impact not only for Latin America but well beyond."

A good day for imperialism

2007-06-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

Just as Bush's neoliberal nominee to head up the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, wins unanimous approval from the Bank's board (see May 20 posting), the U.S. Democratic leadership has caved to corporate interests and embraced a NAFTA-like agenda on trade policy. A new Bush-Democrat trade deal is expected to usher in another wave of trade agreements, this time with Peru, Panama and South Korea, and possibly a deal with the world's greatest killer of labour union activists, the Uribe Administration in Colombia. It's a good day for imperialism.

So, to all my friends in the States who swore that the Democrats taking Congress would mean a new America... well, it kinda looks like the same old thuggish Empire.

Here's what Public Citizen's trade guru Lori Wallach had to say about the deal: "The Democratic majority arrived with a fair trade mandate from a public strongly opposed to staying the course on the failed Bush trade agenda. It is incomprehensible why any Democrats would ever prioritize reviving Bush trade deals opposed by their entire base... over launching their own proactive trade agenda."

Well actually, it's not incomprehensible, since most Americans don't know the first thing about trade policy, other than they don't want to lose their jobs to a person in China, Mexico, or any country for that matter. Sure, a great many in the labour movement are joined by some environmentalists and the occasional anarchist or progressive Christian with an astute analysis of trade. But this paltry 5 percent (10?) of the U.S. population has found it difficult to overcome either the economic influence that export-oriented multinationals have on both parties or the hegemonic discourse of the irreversibility of "globalization". So, a big shout out to Thomas Friedman and all his fellow globalist wankers.

PC blasts the Bush-Democrat trade deal because it (among other problems):

- Fails to alter the outrageous NAFTA "Chapter 11" foreign investor privileges that create incentives for U.S. firms to move offshore and expose our most basic environmental, health, zoning and other laws – policies strongly advocated for by Democrats – to attack in foreign tribunals.

- Does nothing to address the NAFTA-style farm rules that resulted in 1.3 million Mexican peasant farmers losing their livelihoods. This is predicted to create dislocation and misery for large numbers of people, increase production of cocaine and cause instability in developing country trade partners.

Perhaps most telling about the true nature of the Bush-Democrat trade deal is that it has won the support of the National Association of Manufacturers, a conservative industry group at the forefront of the push for trade liberalization. So there's that. Credit is due, however, to all the lower and mid-ranking Congressional Democrats who continue to battle within the party's ranks to push a progressive trade policy.

To read Public Citizen's entire press release, click here: Bush-Democrat trade deal

Plummeting from Bolivia to Canada

2007-05-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

Descending 12,795 feet (3900 meters) from my flat in La Paz to this mattress on Shani and Lian's floor in Vancouver brings with it a few modifications in perspective, not least of all the gaze of one lovable perrito (little dog), Chicory, in regular need of jaunts to the park and cookies. The Latin America-to-North America transition has become customary, but the not-so-subtle contrasts don't escape me, as I re-enter the gentle sensitivity that is Canada (the busses say 'sorry' and the garbage cans 'thank you'), once again saying goodbye to the bustle, noise and grit of a sprawling, lively capital city in the 'developing world'. It always astounds me how adaptable we humans are, able to accept with little thought or adjustment such a radical shift in surroundings, climate, culture and routine. Our immediate environment becomes internalized within days, and we recalibrate our outlook to the landscape in which we are embedded. The new is normalized, the intriguing becomes ordinary. And one quickly ceases to notice that which initially shocked the newcomer, such as the taste of La Paz's air (read: vehicle exhaust), the outlandish cost of a beer in a Canadian bar ($8).

As any place, these two worlds offer their unique riches. Bolivia excels in certain culinary feats: the cuñapes (yucca-cheese balls), quinoa soup, maracuyá juice (passionfruit), and potato everything, while Vancouver has adopted stellar international cuisine, namely those of Asian origins. From my apartment in La Paz, perched precariously on the edge of lower Sopocachi (pieces of the building falling away as it ever-so-gradually slid downhill), I kept daily watch on the craggy, distant Devil's Molar peak (see photo left); while Vancouver consistently rewards the wanderer with terrific views of mountains, cityscape, forests and sea (photo below). The politics diverge dramatically, of course. Bolivia is a nation in the throes of an intriguing progressive social-political experiment, where a left-leaning president is stumbling along as he tries to fulfill his country's aspirations for a better life. Canada, meanwhile, has settled into its comfortable role as a developed nation, uniting a sometimes-interesting blend of social tolerance/innovation (pioneers of gay marriage, the Insite safe injection facility) with run-of-the-mill yet apologetic Western imperialism (hopeless occupation of Afghanistan, occupation of First Nations' land). There are, of course, countless cultural observations between the largely indigenous Bolivia and the white-dominated Canada (although I understand Vancouver is now almost 50% people of Asian descent), but those are details for a later post... For the moment, I will just report that the transition back to my Vancouver reality is now complete.

US hegemony in times of terrorism: the World Bank

2007-05-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

Not content to terrorize Iraq, Bush unleashed Wolfowitz on the world, appointing him to run the World Bank a couple of years ago. Proving that patronage is not just a problem in the Third World, the new WB chief engineered an attractive paycheck for his girlfriend, oddly raising more public dissent than his policies should have and spurring his resignation, a first in the institution's history. And while the present crisis should provide a global impetus for nations to question the very process of selecting the agency's director (US president appoints him, with Europe's acquiescence in exchange for their privilege to select the IMF head), little challenge to US hegemony has been forthcoming. Bush and company are busy perusing party loyalists, such as former US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick (champion of the failed NAFTA-for-the-Western Hemisphere proposal), to succeed the fallen neo-con. And while social movements, NGOs and a few world leaders have demanded that the WB chief be selected by 'merit', the G8 countries are now circling the wagons to ensure that their grip on power is maintained, reinforcing the institution's neoliberal orientation.

A toast, then (wine glasses raised everyone), to the continued protection of foreign investors over the provision of social services, to expansion of poverty and yawning inequality, and to a new epoch of subjection of the planet to the corporate whims of the rogue state known as the USA. And fear not, if the economic mechanism somwhow fails to inspire allegiance, America has other curious means to compel democracy and development (mission accomplished... good job boys!).

And so begins a blog

2007-05-16T03:21:00.000-07:00

The Seattle airport is peaceful at 3:30 am. Coffee courses through me, as I struggle against the natural urge to pass out after about 24 hours of continuous travel. From Ohio, trashed out land of agri-business and rust towns, religious fundamentalism and military bases. The midwest wasteland, the heart of the beast, the state that delivered the US to George W. Bush in the last presidential election. Ohio was a watch-the-little-sis-get-married stopover on the way back from Bolivia. Bolivia was the unfortunate victim of my MA research, which posed questions of political economy to a range of social actors from government to social movements to capitalistas.

The subject of my investigation, which has haunted me for the better part of my life: what should be the role of the State? How extensively should it and can it act as an engine for social and economic 'development'? Can this occur in a different framework/model that is not hellbent on ecological catastrophe? Are the so-called leftist leaders of South America building an alternative worth discussing or is this just more populist bluster that will end with failed economies and curtailed democracy? These are a few of the questions bouncing through my mind that will draw my attention here in this blog. Likely, one will also encounter diatribes against US military and economic exploits, and rants about food, wine, films, my dog, music and random cultural observations. We'll see where it goes; thanks for checking in.