resistance
Industrial Farming Endangers World Food Supply (and creates deserts etc)
Two recent treehugger articles, discussing 7 Low-Cost, Low-Emissions Foods and the water footprint of your food reinforce the myth that to simply change the actual items that we buy, without considering where they come from and how they are grown, is enough of a change to slow the human impact on the planet and other life. No.
Ok, the list of foods – organic strawberries (bromide, a powerful greenhouse gas, is used extensively to grow strawberries) , beans, potatoes, home made bread, organic tofu, homemade almond milk, and organic rolled oats – are somewhat better than other foods in relation to their carbon footprint, but not if they’ve been transported from the other side of the world. Industrial agriculture is a huge part of our probems. Forests are levelled to make room for monocultures (even if organic), huge amounts of water are used – as shown in the other article, and wildlife and people are dispossessed so that corporate players can funnel fuel, water, biomass, to western consumers, making vast profits so they can buy up even more of the world.
This whole model has to go, and by doing so we take back control of our food supply, provide ourselves with meaningful work, recreate local economies and preserve nature around us. It is not enough to simply buy different stuff, when the whole process of buying, selling, transporting, and ownership is killing our planet, while enslaving and making us sick. And lets not forget the massive concentration of power and wealth that is happening around the world, into ever fewer companies who own and control our entire food system, enabling them to decide who eats and who starves, what huge monocultures will be grown where, and turning more and more forest into desert in the name of corporate profits. This is evil, nothing less.
Not only do we need to take control of our local food supply, and economies, but we also need to get on with the job of helping the earth reforest herself – which is where permaculture comes in. Our natural habitat, before 12000 years ago, is forest or jungle. The earths natural condition is forest. By recreating forests, but using our ability to understand the dynamics of forest succession, we can speed up forest growth and development, and over some years create a food forest par excellence, that can provide us with almost all of our needs.
The water footprint and carbon footprint of home grown smallscale horticulture is far far less than industrial farming, and food forests can regulate their own water needs, while absorbing more carbon than they release.
Another article, by By Karin Friedemann, at rense.com tells us that Industrialized Farming Endangers
World Food Supply.
Multi-national food corporations are increasingly using global food insecurity as a tool for political control. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reports that “land grabbing” by foreign investors in developing countries has resulted in a new form of colonialism. Spanish NGO, GRAIN reports that rich countries are buying poor countries’ fertile soil, water and sun to ship food and fuel back home. IFPRI researcher Joachim von Braun states, “About one-quarter of these investments are for biofuel plantations.”
Agribusiness imposes a devastating toll on small farmers worldwide. Landowners in African countries, where there are no official land deeds, have no legal recourse against foreign companies that steal their farmland. In the United States ranchers and farmers lose their land to agribusinesses and end up working as employees. American cattle ranchers have the highest suicide rate among American professions. Similar humiliations have also led thousands of farmers in India to take their own lives.
The `Global Food Security Act’ [S384] recently introduced in the US Senate will give USAID $7.5 billion over five years. Arun Shrivastava of the Centre for Research on Globalization reports: “USAID is actually an arm of the US-Department of Defense; it serves US foreign policy interest and has little to do with humanism.” There are two other similar pending bills, HR875 and S425.
Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, points out that while purporting to address issues of global nutrition and health, “the US Congress is hell bent on introducing laws with global reach that would destroy the very basis of people’s food security and food sovereignty.”
HR 875, the Food Safety and Modernization Act of 2009, writes Barbara Minton in Natural News, “would effectively hand over control of America’s food supply to such a nefarious giant as Monsanto and its lesser counterparts such as Tyson and Cargill.”
Monsanto GMO corn plants, which were designed with a built-in resistance to Monsanto’s weed killers, have already devastated thousands of South African farmers. The corn plants look healthy, but inside the husks there are no kernels! This GMO crop failure highlights the dangers of agribusiness domination of the global food supply.
“To ensure the perpetuation of its near monopoly, Monsanto is helping to install the right people in the right places,” Minton continues. “To that end, Michael Taylor, the ex FDA head who approved the use of bovine growth hormone (rBGH), has just become ensconced in the Obama transition team where he may soon be overseeing food safety. He will join already well placed Tom Vilsack, the pro-GMO Secretary of Agriculture.”
South Africa repeats the pattern of Iraq and of Afghanistan, where new laws prohibit farmers to save or trade their own seeds. These laws being promoted within the US would also block access to non-GMO seeds.
“Iraq, it must be remembered, has the oldest history of farming and one of the longest traditions of cultivation in the civilized world,” writes Latha Jishnu in the Business Standard of India. According to the Institute of Near Eastern & African Studies (INEAS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “Farm-saved seeds and the free exchange of planting materials among farmers have long been the basis of agricultural practice in Iraq.”
The Oil-for-Food program in Iraq forced the large-scale importation of food after the first Gulf War. Devastated Iraqi farmers then became the victims of USAID.
Under US occupation, Iraqi farmers must pay a “technology fee” plus an annual license fee to agribusinesses supplying the seeds and equipment. Similar policies exist in Afghanistan, which compel dependency on supplies from multi-national agribusinesses while industrial agricultural training courses provide the US military with opportunities to gather intelligence from the local population. A US Special Forces civil affairs manager in Afghanistan explains, “The presence of this agricultural center is a security measure in and of itself.”
GRAIN reports, “The war provides these corporations with both a lucrative short-term market in the blossoming “reconstruction” industry and an opportunity to integrate Afghanistan into their global production networks and markets in the long term.”
Industrial agriculture is based on mono-cropping, use of GMO seeds, fertilizers, lethal pesticides, and expensive farm machinery. Environmentalists say these methods cause topsoil erosion, depleted soil fertility, air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, decreased nutritional value of food, and serious health risks. Iowa State University biotech researchers are putting flu vaccines into the DNA of corn, reports Bryan Salvage in the Meat and Poultry Journal. This genetic manipulation is likely to increase the rate of viral mutation, rather than to reduce disease as claimed.
French Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini, molecular endocrinologist at the University of Caen found that Monsanto’s GMO corn damages the liver and kidneys like pesticides. Hungarian biology professor Bela Darvas of Debrecen University discovered that Monsanto’s corn endangers protected insect species. Spiegel reports that because corn is a wind-pollinated plant, GMO crops inevitably contaminate nearby farms. Because of these dangers, Germany has banned GMO corn.
Unfortunately she also advises us to ‘buy organic’. Its not enough. It is time we all pulled out of this failed experiment of civilisation, started getting our hands dirty and taking responsibility for our lives, our food, our communities and begin to create a world that we can all truly be happy, healthy and joyful in. all the while that we buy stuff, we are reliquishing power over our lives and our food supply, handing it over to evil grey men who aim to own and control all of us and everything. And they dont know any better than turning life into desert.
A Better Way of Making a Living
Chuck Burr, at culturechange.org writes about how we might begin to extricate ourselves from the empire.
Making a living in our modern culture usually requires that you participate in the destruction of the world. We can’t go back to Homo hunter-gatherer. Is there another way forward?
There is an another way to make a living that enables you to do what you love and save the world at the same time. I call it the “middle way” of making a living between our modern industrial system and hunter gathering. This is a deep subject that deserves to have several books written about it.
Saving the World and SustainabilityWhat do we mean by saving the world? We mean humanity continuing in some fashion without taking tens of millions of species down with us. Today our culture is solely responsible for the greatest mass extinction since the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. I say, “our culture,” because humanity has lived in harmony with the earth for three or four million years. The problem is not humanity. The problem it is our culture, our growth, and how we make a living.
Some believe that sustainability involves living in a manner that does not diminish the prospects of future generations. That is an “all about humanity” definition that needs to be discarded.
True sustainability has our species, like all others, living in harmony with the ecosystem or Gaia. True sustainability is measured by the growth, not of human population, but of top soil and biodiversity. These two are the only evolutionarily proven measures of sustainability, and have nothing to do with humanity’s success or failure. Permaculture, by allowing succession and by using natural structures such as a forest or old field, is the best examples I know of that both builds top soil and allows for species biodiversity growth.
Why do we need the other species? In some respects we don’t. But in the long run we do. We need the full resilience of the earth’s ecosystems to adapt to an ever changing world. I also believe that the true measure of our intellect is not what we can take or build, but what we can nurture and leave alone.
Yes, we may be the first to reach this level of consciousness, but the question is are we going to be the last, or are we the mentors for those that will follow over the next few million years?
Honestly, for this to happen our modern monoculture and civilization most likely is going to have to be replaced by a wide diversity of earth friendly cultures. Humanity may be able to continue in a powered down version of what we have for the next 10-20 years. If our culture manages to survive in the long run, it will be in a monoculture desert of our own making. The sad thing is that future generations will not know or appreciate what it was like today just as we don’t know what it was like 200-300 years ago.
Tribal Way of Making A LivingA tribe is a group of people working together to make a living, sharing equally, and with no hierarchy. Generally, tribes are fewer than 150 people. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized this number of people to be the limit with whom we can maintain stable social relationships in which we know each person. He suggests that numbers larger than this require more restricted rules, laws, and enforcement.
All profits, losses, and finds are shared equally. Decisions are made by consensus. It appears that ownership, at least initially, is not so important when getting started. However, since private property leads to hoarding and is a disincentive to sharing, it should be eliminated. All non-household assets should also be communal or part of the commons.
A New Ethic and World ViewHere is where it starts to get new. We need to embrace a new world view or honestly remember the original one. Chief Seattle in his 1854 speech and Daniel Quinn in his book Ishmael taught that the world is a sacred place and humanity has a place in it. Another way of saying this is that humanity belongs to the earth, our ecosystem, and Gaia.
This is the opposite of the world view that our ancestors created 2,000 years ago that humanity is flawed, we are sinners, and the earth is a proving ground to see whether we are worthy to go to a better place when we die. This belief gave us a “dominion” which we have to relinquish if we, or at least, most of the other species are going to survive.
Permaculture is also based on three central ethics:
“Care of the earth” means that our number one priority is taking care of the earth, making sure we don’t damage its natural systems.
“Care of the people” means meeting people’s needs so that people’s lives can be sustained and have a good quality of life as well but without damaging the earth.
“Accepting limits to population and consumption” is realizing that as a human species we cannot continue to increase and also sustain the planet. Sometimes you will hear this ethic phrased as “share the surplus, invest all of your means in the first two ethics.” This means limiting your consumption so that you can invest your resources in caring for the earth and caring for the people.These ethics translate to making a living in a way that does not participate in destruction of the earth. This means more than not starting a toxic chemical or genetic engineering lab. This may mean that will have to shift back to giving support to get support instead of making things to get things. A healthy self reliant local community focusing on each other and on giving support will provide greater cradle-to-grave security than our “all about me” culture.
If we are going to make products, they need to be made and consumed by the local community, bioregion, or watershed. If products are made for export and not just local use, the level of consumption will again lead to the depletion of local resources. I see this just driving around Oregon and Washington in the form of missing forests. In Peru 60 people just died in clashes between indigenous protestors and police over drilling for oil and gas in the rain forest. Defending your local resources and bioregion from outside interests is serious business.
Produce what you need now and some reserves, but not a large surplus that can be concentrated. If you concentrate resources or work within a hierarchy, you again will encourage hoarding, and take away the incentive to share.
Develop Community Self RelianceOne of the keys to the success of the Amish is that they do not operate in a way that creates entanglements with modern culture. Their aversion is more about the entanglement and not so much against technology. For example, the Amish use wood wheels which they can manufacture and repair themselves. They do not use rubber wheels because they don’t want to be dependent on modern culture. The Amish have nothing against rubber, but they do not want to be dependent upon us.
No individual or even a small group of people can be an island. It will take enough people working together as a community to bring one or both legs out of modern culture. Maybe one will have to work a day job while building skills and a tribal business with your friends. This will be a process not an overnight revolution. Remember though, petrocollapse will not conform to a gradual or delayed schedule for our convenience.
Set Aside Time for YourselfStart by doing what you love to do. You will become good at it, enjoy your work, and will make the biggest impact with your life that way.
Don’t work more than maybe 30 hours per week. This not only allows for employment of more people, but it gives you time to work on yourself, to study, grow, explore, and self-actualize. This is part of the reason our culture is stuck where it is. People are worked so much and not given a holistic education to think for themselves. Develop your vocabulary, arts, music, mental constructs, travel, and just general self-actualize. So powerdown, give away a bunch of your stuff, and reduce your overhead.
How to Get StartedBased on my experience as an entrepreneur, I would say follow the path of least resistance and watch for serendipity. Try multiple things and see which one gets the most traction. Walk before you run. Try your ideas on a part-time or hobby basis before committing. You could start with your neighbors and each could plant a different fruit or nut tree and you could exchange harvests in the fall. Create a micro-neighborhood edible perennial nursery business. The possibilities are endless. Have fun with it.
One idea I am considering is to start by creating a virtual community. We cannot all move in next door to each other overnight, but like-minded people could put their properties into a land trust for the benefit of the community. It may also be easier to coalesce closer together over time as the opportunities arise.
At Restoration Farm we are trying to build a tribal permaculture farm. We hope to be mostly chemical and fossil fuel free. The fossil fuels we use are largely for infrastructure setup and not so much for planting and harvesting. We will be experimenting with U-pick blueberries and food forest, and compost for reduced food cost models.
In regards to finding like-minded people, try hosting a potluck to discuss neighborhood sustainability. See who shows up. Learn about permaculture, and consider taking a two week intensive permaculture design course (PDC). You will meet your tribe of like-minded people there.
Finding a benevolent way of making a living that allows you to do what you love and to not participate in the destruction of the world is a journey of a lifetime.
Look on the Bright Side – Richard Heinberg
I imagine there are people, those of us who care passionately about forests, oceans, wildlife, nature in all her magnificent glory, who have been recognising just how good for the planet the ‘global economic downturn’, as its being called, is. Richard Heinbergs latest Museletter post says what i suspect many of us have been thinking.
And there are undoubtedly millions of indigenous peoples, subsistence farmers, people who live closer to their landbases than us children of empire, and evn perhaps trees, who are breathing a collective sigh of relief, and even cheering with all their hearts at each and every step of collapse. Oil and capital have fuelled the seemingly unending march of ‘development’ (so called), pushing people away from the land that has sustained them for 100s of generations, oppressing, exploiting, turning living creatures and in fact the whole web of life into consumer durables, with built in obsolescence, channeling everything – food, people, metals, fuel, water etc, into the ever growing dead zones we call cities.
But, peak oil, round one, and the chaos it has initiated in an economic system that needs huge amounts of energy and unlimited growth (impossible on a finite planet) to exist, has slowed down the devastation in many parts of the world. Its not enough, though.
This culture of empire, this system of death, the forces of darkness, the matrix, whatever you want to call it, is so hugely destructive of all things good – everything from joy to clean water to freedom, anything that can’t be commercialised is destroyed and anything that can will be until it is just a shadow of its former self, a plastic replica of the real thing – that we MUST help bring it down by all means necessary.
The empire thrives on war, and suffering, and is at war with nature. It even wages war on its own citizens, enslaving us, poisoning us, forcing us to suppress our own human natures, our instincts, our joy as living breathing beautiful animals.
The systems own unsustainability is helping to bring it down, and I appeal to all people of conscience, everyone who cares that this planet should be able to sustain life, all who refuse to be cogs in a damned infernal devastation machine. Rise up. Do what you can against the life destroying machine we call civilisation.
Stop buying stuff – particularly food from far away or in packaging. For too long we have been conned into thinking that vegetarianism, or green consumerism will make a difference. Industrial agriculture makes deserts. Full stop. Plastics and other ‘products’ makes poisons. It doesnt matter what the food is, if it has been grown far away, transported, packaged, sprayed, poisoned…. it does you little real nutritional good, and leaves a trail of devastation in its wake.
Plant food forests, rewild, use your time to help repair some of the damage done, and learn from your landbase – watch and it will tell you what it needs to regain its health. As empire contracts more and more damaged places will be abandoned. Nature can repair herself, amazingly, but with a little help from us, planting pioneer nitrogen fixing species, perhaps digging swales to retain water in dry areas, simply planting tree seeds, we can speed up the healing process while directing our local habitats to produce perennial food crops for us.
It wont be easy. Extricating ourselves from empire will be hard for most of us, born into this system, addicted to toxic foods, drugs, lifestyles, habits… but the whole sorry experiment is unsustainable and will fall, even without any help from us, in time, so to start extricating ourselves now will not only help bring down the beast, but is sound advice.
For a time, we may well find ourselves straddling both worlds, a natural world of trees and fresh from the plant foods, freedom and joy of life, while still having to give our pound of flesh to the devil, still having to submit to the boss and pretend to be good little citizens. This can be incredibly difficult, becoming easier and undoubtedly worthwhile when the global supply lines fail as they will, its just a matter of time. Life will become increasingly hard for the citizens of empire, although this may be almost directly proportional to the relief felt by billions of humans and animals as empire slows down, while those of us who has already started living a low carbon, community sufficient (self sufficiency in local communities) and lower energy life will find it easier going than many.
And finally, as the structures of empire become irrelevant, we’ll need to start dismantling them to help nature reclaim – particularly dams that stop the flow of the earths arteries. There are many ways we can help push this poisonous system into collapse. Use your imagination.
Recently I’ve begun compiling a list of things to be cheerful about. Here are some items that should bring a smile to any environmentalist’s lips:
• World energy consumption is declining.
That’s right: oil consumption is down, coal consumption is down, and the IEA is projecting world electricity consumption to decline by 3.5 percent this year. I’m sure it’s possible to find a few countries where energy use is still growing, but for the US, China, and most of the European countries that is no longer the case. A small army of writers and activists, including me, has been arguing for years now that the world should voluntarily reduce its energy consumption, because current rates of use are unsustainable for various reasons including the fact that fossil fuels are depleting. Yes, we should build renewable energy capacity, but replacing the energy from fossil fuels will be an enormous job, and we can make that job less daunting by reducing our overall energy appetite. Done.
• CO2 emissions are falling.
This follows from the previous point. I’m still waiting for confirmation from direct NOAA measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere, but it stands to reason that if world oil and coal consumption is declining, then carbon emissions must be doing so as well. The economic crisis has accomplished what the Kyoto Protocol couldn’t. Hooray!
• Consumption of goods is falling.
Every environmentalist I know spends a good deal of her time railing both publicly and privately against consumerism. We in the industrialized countries use way too much stuff — because that stuff is made from depleting natural resources (both renewable and non-renewable) and the Earth is running out of fresh water, topsoil, lithium, indium, zinc, antimony…the list is long. Books have been written trying to convince people to simplify their lives and use less, films have been produced and shown on PBS, and support groups have formed to help families kick the habit, but still the consumer juggernaut has continued — until now. This particular dragon may not be slain, but it’s cowering in its den.
• Globalization is in reverse (global trade is shrinking).
Back in the early 1990s, when globalization was a new word, an organization of brilliant activists formed the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) to educate the public about the costs and dangers of this accelerating trend. Corporations were off-shoring their production and pollution, ruining manufacturing communities in formerly industrial rich nations while ruthlessly exploiting cheap labor in less-industrialized poor countries. IFG was able to change the public discourse about globalization enough to stall the expansion of the World Trade Organization, but still world trade continued to mushroom. Not any more. China’s and Japan’s exports are way down, as is the US trade deficit.
• The number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is falling.
For decades the number of total miles traveled by all cars and trucks on US roads has relentlessly increased. This was a powerful argument for building more roads. People bought more cars and drove them further; trucks restocked factories and stores at an ever-growing pace; and delivery vans brought more packages to consumers who shopped from home. All of this driving entailed more tires, pavement, and fuel — and more environmental damage. Over the past few months the VMT number has declined substantially and continually, to a greater extent than has been the case since records started being kept. That’s welcome news.
• There are fewer cars on the road.
People are junking old cars faster than new ones are being purchased. In the US, where there are now more cars on the road than there are licensed drivers, this represents an extraordinary shift in a very long-standing trend. In her wonderful book Divorce Your Car, Katie Alvord detailed the extraordinary environmental costs of widespread automobile use. Evidently her book didn’t stem the tide: it was published in the year 2000, and millions of new cars hit the pavement in the following years. But now the world’s auto manufacturers are desperately trying to steer clear of looming bankruptcy, simply because people aren’t buying. In fact, in the first four months of 2009, more bicycles were sold in the US than cars and trucks put together (over 2.55 million bicycles were purchased, compared to fewer than 2.4 million cars and trucks). How utterly cool.
• The world’s over-leveraged, debt-based financial system is failing.
Growth in consumption is killing the planet, but arguing against economic growth is made difficult by the fact that most of the world’s currencies are essentially loaned into existence, and those loans must be repaid with interest. Thus if the economy isn’t growing, and therefore if more loans aren’t being made, thus causing more money to be created, the result will be a cascading series of defaults and foreclosures that will ruin the entire system. It’s not a sustainable system given the fact that the world’s resources (the ultimate basis for all economic activity) are finite; and, as the proponents of Ecological and Biophysical Economics have been saying for years, it’s a system that needs to be replaced with one that can still function in a condition of steady or contracting consumption rates. While that sustainable alternative is not yet being discussed by government leaders, at least they are being forced to consider (if not yet publicly) the possibility that the existing system has serious problems and that it may need a thorough overhaul. That’s a good thing.
• Gardening is going gonzo.
According to the New York Times (”College Interns Getting Back to Land,” May 25) thousands of college students are doing summer internships on farms this year. Meanwhile seed companies are having a hard time keeping up with demand, as home gardeners put in an unusually high number of veggie gardens. Urban farmer Will Allen predicts that there will be 8 million new gardeners this year, and the number of new gardens is expected to increase 20 to 40 percent this season. Since world oil production has peaked, there is going to be less oil available in the future to fuel industrial agriculture, so we are going to need more gardens, more small farms, and more farmers. Never mind the motives of all these students and home gardeners — few of them have ever heard of Peak Oil, and many of the gardeners are probably just worried whether they can afford to keep the pantry full next winter; nevertheless, they’re doing the right thing. And that’s something to applaud.But wait, before our cheering becomes an uncontrollable frenzy, we should stop to remember that most of these developments are due to an economic crisis that is taking a huge toll. With the possible exception of the last item on the list (and maybe some of those bicycle purchases), we’re not talking about voluntary behavior that’s evidence of forethought and collective intelligence. Whatever gains in sustainability these trends signify have come at an enormous cost in terms of unemployment, homelessness, and lost retirement savings.
Take all this to its tragic extreme. What if a billion humans died over the course of, say, the next ten years from starvation or swine flu? That would take a lot of pressure off natural systems. There would be more space for other species to flourish, and consumption of natural resources (oil, coal, water, and so on) would decline dramatically, improving the economic prospects of the survivors. So from a certain perspective this unimaginable nightmare might be seen as a good thing — though hardly anyone who actually experienced it would likely see it that way.
Parenthetically, it’s worth noting that this whole line of thought may be dangerous. Some free-market PR hack from the Cato Institute is likely reading along right now just as you are, trying out headlines for a press release. “Environmentalist delights in economic collapse!” might be a good one, or “Environmentalist wants billions of humans to die!” One way to avert that kind of backlash is to keep mum about the fact that economic contraction actually does have benefits, and so far most other environmental writers have been playing it safe in that regard. I’ve crossed the line here, so watch out. I might get us all in trouble.
Now back to our theme. At its core, the dilemma is this: We humans have overshot Earth’s carrying capacity through overpopulation and over-consumption, and have created all sorts of other problems in doing so (such as climate change). But nature will take care of all these difficulties. Overpopulation will eventually be solved by starvation and disease. Over-consumption will be reined in by resource depletion and scarcity. Climate change will take longer to fix, maybe thousands or millions of years — assuming we don’t turn Earth into Venus.
But nature’s ways of solving our problems are not going to be pleasant. And so the enormous, overriding question confronting our species during the remainder of this century will be, Are we humans capable of getting out ahead of nature’s checks so as to proactively rein in our population and consumption in ways we can live with?
Boil down all the environmental literature of the past century, and that’s the essence of most of it. So far, that literature has not had its desired effect: our species has continued to expand both in numbers and in per-capita impact.
But the items outlined above suggest that we’ve turned a corner. It’s no longer a matter of nature “eventually” providing checks on humanity’s boisterous expansionism. That’s starting to happen. And it’s not yet due to climate change: yes, we are indeed seeing potentially catastrophic impacts in terms of melting glaciers and so on, but those by themselves have not tempered the economic juggernaut. Instead, it is resource depletion that has begun to slow the freight train of industrialism. Over the past two or three years, high energy prices burst the bubble of unsupportable property prices and pulled the rug out from beneath the teetering financial derivatives market.
That’s what the whole Peak Oil discussion has really been about. It’s an attempt to identify the key resource whose scarcity will tip the global economy from growth to contraction.
But wait: this essay was supposed to help us look on the bright side. The discussion’s getting kind of dark here.
Okay, my point is this: we have reached the inevitable turning point. The growth trance that has gripped the world for the past several decades is in the process of ending. Even if we get short periods of economic growth, that growth will be in the context of a significantly contracted economy and will only be temporary in any case, as Peak Oil and other resource constraints will quickly damper increasing economic activity. Gradually, as “recovery” gets put off for another month, another year, another few years, people may begin to realize that the expansionary phase of the era of cheap energy is finished. There are of course no guarantees that the public and their business and political leaders will indeed finally “get it,” because the urge to hang onto the growth illusion will be very strong indeed. But if the misery persists, there’s at least a chance that understanding will finally dawn in the collective mind of our species — the understanding that we must get out ahead of nature’s checks and deliberately reduce the scale of the human enterprise in ways that maximize the prospects of both present and future generations.
But all won’t automatically come to that conclusion on their own. A fundamental change in our comprehension of the human condition will depend on more and more public intellectuals articulating the message of deliberate adaptation to limits, so that the general populace has the necessary conceptual tools with which to mentally process their new circumstances. We will also need far more people working on practical elements of the transition. Those will be ongoing needs — a growth opportunity, if you will pardon the irony, for smart and articulate young people interested in making a difference. And they’ll be most successful if they find ways of framing needed behavior and attitudinal changes in ways that are attractive and inviting — as the Transition Initiatives so brilliantly do.
So in that sense, when I say “Look on the bright side,” no irony or sarcasm is intended.
Its the end of the world as we know it, and its up to us to say ‘basta!/enough!’ to those who would make us mindless consumers and slaves, enough to the devastation of our planet in the name of money, and to decide what kind of world we want to live in, start creating it while doing everything in our power to help kill this monster that has been imposed on us.
Just do it!
British mining company threatens sacred mountain
http://www.survival-international.org/films/mine
To be a Dongria Kondh is to live in the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa state, India – they do not live anywhere else. Yet Vedanta Resources is determined to mine their sacred mountain’s rich seam of bauxite (aluminium ore).
The Dongria and other local Kondh people are resisting Vedanta and are determined to save Niyamgiri from becoming an industrial wasteland.
Other Kondh groups are already suffering due to a bauxite refinery, built and operated by Vedanta, at the base of the Niyamgiri Hills.
The Niyamgiri Hills are home to the more than 8,000 Dongria Kondh, whose lifestyle and religion have helped nurture the area’s dense forests and unusually rich wildlife.
The Dongria farm the hill slopes, grow crops in among the forest, and gather wild fruit, flowers and leaves for sale.
They call themselves Jharnia, meaning ‘protector of streams’, because they protect their sacred mountain and the life-giving rivers that rise within its thick forests.
Vedanta’s open pit mine would destroy the forests, disrupt the rivers and spell the end for the Dongria Kondh as a distinct people.
Act now to help the Dongria Kondh
Your support is vital if the Dongria Kondh are to survive. There are many ways you can help.
* Write to the Prime Minister of India asking his government to safeguard the Dongria Kondh’s rights.
* Donate to the Dongria Kondh campaign (and other Survival campaigns).
* Write to your MP or MEP (UK) or Senators and members of Congress (US).
* Write to your local Indian high commission or embassy.
* If you want to get more involved, contact Survival…
Indigenous People Rising
By JAMES COCKCROFT, at Thomas Paines Corner.
Indigenous peoples in Indo-Afro-Latin America, especially Bolivia and Ecuador, are rising up to take control of their own lives and act in solidarity with others to save the planet. They are calling for new, yet ancient, practices of plurinational, participatory, and intercultural democracy. They champion ecologically sustainable development; community-based autonomies; and solidarity with other peoples locally, regionally, and internationally – what they describe as “unity in diversity.” Their values are often different than those of the United States or Europe. One indigenous leader has stated: “We give what money we have not to banks to collect interest but to others – and their gratitude is the interest we receive.”
Fifty-five million indigenous persons, or 400 indigenous peoples, inhabit Indo-Afro-Latin America. Most reside in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. They reject the Europe-imposed term “Indians.” They call themselves “the native peoples” (“Ios pueblos originarios” in Spanish). They constitute 67 percent of Bolivia’s population. In Ecuador they are 40 percent, mainly in the cold highland Sierra and sweltering Amazonian tropics. They often ally with Afro-Ecuadorians along the Pacific coast, who account for 10 percent of the populace.
Spokespersons for the native peoples realize that the differences between their cosmic visions and those of Europe and the United States are part of an ongoing set of class and ideological conflicts that must be resolved if world peace and ecological balance are to be achieved. They recognize too that they must overcome divisions in their own ranks and that their struggles necessitate solidarity with other oppressed peoples around the globe. They link up internationally, as in the case of the worldwide 87-nation “Via Campesina” so important in the World Social Forums of this century. Sensitive to the world ecological crisis, the native peoples’ movements conducted the 2008 First Interregional Summit of the Amazon, the region known as “the lungs of the planet.”
In Bolivia and Ecuador, the native peoples and their supporters are re-founding the State, “democratizing democracy,” and introducing juridical pluralism. They are playing a prominent role in popular campaigns against neo-liberal capitalist globalization and US-European interventionism. Recognized and honored in UN and ILO declarations on indigenous rights, they emphasize human and planetary rights, including the rights of Nature (“Pachamama,” or “Mother Nature,” literally “Mother Universe”).
The CIA has often characterized the social movements of the native peoples as a major challenge to US hegemony. Territories they occupy contain 80 percent of Latin America’s biodiversity, several important watersheds, and such valuable resources as petroleum.
Bolivia and Ecuador, historically wracked by poverty, military coups, and massacres of native peoples, peasants, students, and workers, exemplify many challenges. Both countries remain two of the poorest in the world and have experienced recent cholera epidemics. The average income of a Bolivian peasant is $50 a year. That is one reason why peasants, whenever possible, base their lives on the indigenous legacy of terraced irrigation works and the “ayllu,” or commune. Many try to emigrate. One of every four Bolivians works outside the nation. Their remittances account for 10 percent of Bolivia’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
Brazilian economic interests account for 20 percent of Bolivia’s GDP. Bolivia’s profitable energy and mining sectors sell gas to fuel 70 percent of the industry of São Paulo, Brazil, South America’s largest city. Control of Bolivia’s principal agricultural export, soybeans, is 35 percent Brazilian. Some of Brazil’s farmers, together with a hundred Bolivian families, control five-sixths of Bolivia’s farmlands.
Ecuador remains the largest banana producer in the world but now gets more money from oil, forestry products, and the remittances of its emigrants (more than 3 million persons, out of a population of 14 million). Ecuador is a significant source of petroleum. It has abundant cedar, ceibo, and mahogany, and several 250-year-old trees. It is the world’s largest producer of Balsa wood. In 2003, forestry interests from Colombia provoked genocide against the already reduced, small, nomadic Tagaeri and Taromenari native peoples.
Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, an Aymara elected in 2005 with a majority of votes in the initial round, an unprecedented event for Bolivia’s multi-party system, has often pointed out that “The fight of our people is an historic struggle against empire.” Native peoples throughout the Americas tend to see empire as an uninterrupted process of 516 years of genocidal subjection in the face of their proud resistance. They understand well the continuity of colonialism/imperialism: the routine use of kidnappings, disappearances, torture, and male violence against women; ecological destruction; and the creation and perpetuation of an un-payable external debt for economic blackmail.
Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés once called Bolivia’s indigenous peasants and miners “the clandestine nation.” Now they and other peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean are changing history. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, a US-trained economist elected in a runoff in 2006, has declared: “We are living not in an epoch of changes, but in a change of epochs.”
Recently, Bolivia and Ecuador, like Venezuela, have experienced democratic elections, even popular referenda and, in the cases of Bolivia and Venezuela, recall votes. Their presidents have won these elections by impressive majorities. On behalf of the oppressed they have been implementing policies against neo-liberal capitalism’s practices of “free trade,” deregulation, and privatization. In various ways, they have advocated “a new socialism for the 21st century.” Evo Morales evokes an Aymara-type “communitarian socialism based on reciprocity and solidarity.”
In an address at the United Nations in September 2008, Evo, as he is popularly known, proposed “Ten Commandments” to save the planet, life and humanity:
- Put an end to the capitalist system
- Renounce wars (Evo says “I don’t believe there can be peace under capitalism”)
- Create a world without imperialism or colonialism
- Honor the right to water
- Develop clean energies
- Respect Nature (Pachamama)
- Recognize basic services as human rights
- Combat inequalities
- Promote diversity of cultures and economies
- Seek “Vivir bien” — living well (what is known in Ecuador as “sumak kawsay,” living fully), instead of living better at the expense of others
Evo pointed out that Bolivia’s recently drafted constitution “is to support a new pact with all humanity and Pachamama, from the heart of the Andes, from the South, for all the world.”
Revolutionary Processes Rooted in Indigenous and Social Movements
Revolutionary processes in Bolivia and Ecuador are rooted in the social movements of native peoples and others. In Bolivia, mass mobilizations against the privatization of water in 2000 and 2004 succeeded against the powerful US-based transnational corporation Bechtel. Similar mobilizations for nationalizing gas in 2003 toppled the government of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, known as “el gringo” because of his speaking English better than Spanish. Sánchez de Lozada’s regime was responsible for the massacre of more than 60 citizens in El Alto, a new Andean city of more than a million poor people above La Paz, the world’s highest capital.
One of President Evo Morales’ first acts after taking office in 2006 was to nationalize oil and the production of gas. With proceeds from the nationalizations, he created a “dignity pension” for people over 60 years of age and a “family income supplement” to help keep children in school. He extended credit with zero percent interest to farmers of corn, wheat, rice and other basics. Under Morales, Bolivia has eliminated its fiscal debt, repaid half its foreign debt, and quadrupled employment in the mining and metallurgical sectors. Its GDP has almost doubled in three years, while its foreign reserves have almost quintupled to over $8 billion. Cuban teams of teachers and medical personnel have helped reduce illiteracy by 80 percent and extend free health care to half the populace. Cuba’s “Miracle Mission” has conducted free eye operations to restore the full vision of nearly 300,000 Bolivians.
Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linares often reassures foreign capitalists and says Bolivia’s economy will be “Andean/Amazonian capitalism,” featuring strong support for small and medium enterprises, including cooperatives and handicrafts. Despite these reassurances, the US Government has sought to undermine Bolivian democracy the way it so often has done in the past. It has lifted its restrictions on the CIA’s use of assassination against foreign leaders. Both Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Correa have denounced assassination plots on their lives.
Upon assuming the presidency, Evo ordered the CIA desk in the presidential palace removed. Later, in the face of US pressures on behalf of Bechtel and other transnational corporations, he pulled Bolivia out of the World Bank’s Disputes Resolution Court. During 2008, department-level Bolivian officials expelled various personnel of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which had established an “Office of Transition Initiatives” to fund the rightist opposition. Evo discovered that US Ambassador Philip Goldberg was promoting and financing extreme rightist leaders in the gas-rich eastern breakaway departments who, in the name of departmental autonomy, in effect separatism, were ordering massacres of native peoples and occupying federal offices. This was a thinly veiled attempt at a “civil” coup d’état, a coup in quest of military support.
Ambassador Golberg had served earlier in countries undergoing violent breakups, such as the former Yugoslavia. He served as ambassador to Kosovo, where the United States tolerated or supported paramilitary massacres of Serbs and other ethnic minorities. His superior is John Negroponte, Deputy Secretary of State and chief State Department official for Latin America. Negroponte is the former 1980s’ambassador to Honduras who oversaw the “contra” war against the democratically elected Sandinista government. He and the State Department’s embassy staffs help coordinate US efforts to undermine or topple today’s socialist oriented governments and social movements, like those in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Goldberg’s Embassy began enlisting Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright Scholars to “spy” on Cubans and Venezuelans in Bolivia. It also worked with a special intelligence unit of the Bolivian police. Goldberg was photographed meeting with coup-plotting leaders and a known Colombian paramilitary figure. In September 2008, at the height of the unsuccessful “civil” coup attempt, Evo expelled Goldberg. The United States responded by sending home the Bolivian ambassador.
Meeting in Chile in September, the newly created Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) unanimously condemned the ongoing attempted coup and its massacres. UNASUR unconditionally supported Evo’s democratic government and sent observers to government-proposed negotiations in which the opposition finally agreed to participate. When the negotiations later failed because of right-wing intransigence despite major concessions by Evo, the UNASUR observers again condemned the right for its anti-democratic and criminal conduct.
Meanwhile, a UNASUR investigating team of experts confirmed details of a September 11, 2008 massacre of peaceful protesters, mostly native peoples, in Pando Department, when 18 people were gunned down, 60 were wounded, and more than 100 persons “disappeared.” The rightist governor said to be responsible for the massacre, Leopoldo Fernández, an ally of the 1970s’ dictator Hugo Banzer, fled toward Brazil but was captured by the military and jailed.
On November 1, 2008, Bolivia’s government suspended indefinitely the operations of the US Drug Enforcement Agency because of the DEA’s financing fascistic opposition forces behind the coup attempt and “criminal groups” plotting to kill government authorities. President Evo Morales offered evidence of this and other DEA crimes, such as its involvement in narco-trafficking and its investigations ordered in 2003 of leftist leaders, including Evo himself. He said that Bolivia would continue to protect small-scale growers of coca to maintain the cultural use of the product by native peoples and would play a key role in a new unified South American effort against narco-trafficking to be backed by regional funding. Washington countered by suspending long-term trade preferences with Bolivia.
In Ecuador, occupations of government buildings and general strikes became an annual affair in the 1990s. Mass movements of the underclasses, students, workers, and native peoples began to link up. The native peoples launched five uprisings. From 1995 to 2005 the popular movements toppled seven presidents. In January 2000, the native peoples took over Ecuador’s parliament and actually “governed” the nation for 24 hours! The old State — led by a comprador bourgeoisie in the coastal region of Guayaquil, landed oligarchs there and in the Sierra, military officers and paramilitaries, and an ultra-reactionary Catholic Church — began to totter.
President Rafael Correa of Ecuador initially tried to reassure Washington. He maintained the US dollar as the nation’s currency. He simultaneously challenged the US Government by declaring he might not recognize the legality of Ecuador’s foreign debt. He expelled the World Bank’s permanent representative and said that in 2009 he would not renew the lease for the US military base in Manta.
Then, on March 1, 2008, the United States and Colombia mounted a military bombardment and invasion of Ecuador that used the Manta base and killed at least 24 people, including Raúl Reyes, a guerrilla commander of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), who at the time was meeting with Mexican university students in the northern Ecuadorian jungle. Afterwards, Correa denounced US control of high officials of Ecuador’s security and intelligence forces and dismissed leaders in the Armed Forces, Police, and his own Minister of Defense. The Organization of American States (OAS) showed its independence from traditional US control when it voted to denounce the military attack on Ecuador.
In November 2008, President Correa, contrary to economic integration plans already underway in South America, went along with the European Union’s call for bilateral trade negotiations. Colombia and Peru, but not Bolivia, already had agreed to accept bilateral negotiations. The Ecuadorian government also announced a partial privatization of the Nappo River. It planned to allow state development of mining in Yasuni Park, declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1989. But at the same time, Correa accepted the report of an independent international commission of inquiry into Ecuador’s foreign debt from 1976 to 2006. The report found that many loan agreements involved corruption, illegalities, and “looting”; violated national sovereignty; contributed to greater poverty and inequality; and were “odious” because of their often being contracted in years of military dictatorships. Correa announced that the “illegitimate, corrupt, and illegal debt” would likely not be paid.
Meanwhile, Latin America’s indigenous and social movements called for “the recognition of the historical, social and environmental debt” that most of the “creditor” nations had incurred “during five centuries of the colonization of Abya Yala.” (“Abya Yala” means “Continent of Life” in the language of the Kuna peoples of Panama and Colombia.)
Re-founding the State, New ConstitutionsThroughout Indo-Afro-Latin America vigorous movements to “democratize democracy” have taken root. The social movements that put an end to the worse period of US-supported “dirty wars” and toppled the military dictatorships of the 1964-1984 period did not settle for the limited democracies that replaced them. People had fought and died for human rights and not the amnesties that were granted the dictators and their henchmen as a condition for allowing the new “democracies.” To walk down the street and suddenly see one’s torturer coming out of the corner store was one more form of torture. Moreover, the newly introduced “representative democracies” typically served the interests of big money and economic neo-liberalism rather than those of the general populace.
As poverty spread, movements sparked by native peoples and other groups, especially women and youth, mobilized against the IMF and its defenders in the newly elected parliaments and presidencies. For many, to “democratize democracy” meant to introduce economic democracy and not just limited political democracy. People began demanding constituent assemblies. The elections of Morales and Correa paved the way for a re-founding of the State and an official rejection of neo-liberalism.
In elections for Bolivia’s constituent assembly the only requirement was that 30 percent of the delegates had to be women. Candidates from Evo Morales’ MAS (Movement to Socialism) won 137 of the 255 seats; 64 of the MAS delegates were women. Delegates finalized the new constitution of 411 articles in December 2007, only after being forced to move the location of the assembly’s meetings because of right-wing violence and sabotage of the process. This violence was part of the “civil” coup attempt that actually commenced the day Evo was elected president.
Ecuador’s voters elected their constituent assembly in September 2007. It included 80 members of Congress from Correa’s heterogeneous political coalition “Alianza País,” 40 from the conservative opposition, 10 from small leftist parties, and 5 from theCONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, founded in 1986). Other organizations, such as the CONFENIAE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon) and the FENOCIN (National Federation of Peasants, Native Peoples, and Blacks), pressured the assembly to make constitutional changes in defense of their interests. On September 28, 2008, voters approved the 444-article Constitution by a 65 percent “Yes” vote. Concluded President Correa: “Neo-liberalism has been crushed and put in the dustbin of history.”
Both nations’ new constitutions distinguish between the old representative democracy and a new participatory and communitarian one. They call for plural nationhood; genuine interculturalism (instead of cosmetic multiculturalism); recognition of differences among cultures; and “unity in diversity.” As a result, the native peoples’ communities have constitutional rights to local self-governance and their own juridical procedures based on indigenous customs and traditions. Bolivia’s Constitution calls for juridical pluralism within a proposed “Plurinational Constitutional Court of Justice.”
Only when there is plural nationhood can there be real interculturalism. Plural nationhood entails re-founding the State. In the eyes of the native peoples, the old State was a colonial one, formed of select individuals. It championed individual freedoms solely for the elites. In no way did it represent collective societies like those of the Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Shuar, Siona and other native peoples. The new State is to be an independent, unitary, plurinational one that celebrates human diversity and true democracy. In indigenous terms, exit colonialism and enter all humanity.
Bolivia’s proposed new constitution contains the following provisions, presented here in a synthesized form and in no particular order:
- A unitary, plurinational, communitarian and democratic State.
- All 36 peoples to have equal rights and regional autonomies, that is, a democratic decentralization of power.
- Nationalization of natural resources and State control over forests and biodiversity.
- Three forms of economic ownership: public, private, and communitarian — in effect, a mixed economy compatible with the Vice President’s vision of an Andean/Amazonian capitalism.
- State involvement in strategic sectors of the economy, and foreign private investment to be subordinated to national development plans.
- Agrarian reform with expropriation of huge landed estates (latifundia).
- Re-election and removal of any elected official by popular mandate — already implemented on August 10, 2008, when the opposition’s demand for a referendum was granted and 67 percent of the votes favored keeping Evo Morales as president; Evo’s supporters also won several governorships while increasing their vote percentage in the few departments they lost to the rightist opposition.
- Election of the judiciary; recognition of communitarian and ancestral forms of conflict resolution.
- A plurinational Parliament with only one chamber (in effect, the elimination of the structurally elitist Senate).
- Free and equal health care and education; end of illiteracy.
- Sucre to replace La Paz as the capital (a concession to the rightist opposition).
- A ban on discrimination based on sex, color, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, culture, nationality, religion, ideology, disability, pregnancy.
- Prohibition of foreign military bases.
- Potable drinking water as a human right.
Most observers expect that Bolivian voters will approve the constitution in the referendum scheduled for January 25, 2009. The articles on land ownership will be submitted separately at the same time.
Ecuador’s Constitution contains the following provisions, also presented in a synthesized form and in no particular order:
- State to tighten control of strategic industries, such as oil, mining, and telecommunications, and to protect biodiversity.
- State to reduce monopolies.
- Some of foreign debt to be declared illegitimate.
- Agrarian reform; end of latifundia; prohibition of genetically modified seeds.
- Free health care; free education for all through college; State-assisted housing programs.
- A lay State; civil marriage for gay partners (measures opposed by one of the continent’s most reactionary Catholic Churches)
- Women’s rights, including valuation for work in the home.
- Free responsibility over one’s own sexuality and life; recognition of diverse types of family; yet, the right to life from the moment of conception (feminist activists generally welcomed their gains and said the clause on life at conception could be eliminated through future popular mobilizations).
- Equal rights for the disabled.
- Universal social security; pensions for stay-at-home mothers and informal sector workers.
- Presidential control over Central Bank; less autonomy for the Armed Forces.
- Consecration of Nature’s collective rights.
- Potable drinking water as a human right; prohibition of privatization of water.
- Food sovereignty and the right to have secure food sources.
- Right to have access to the mass media and to establish community media.
- Prohibition of foreign military bases.
- A solidarity-based and sustainable economic system; a “private, social and solidarity” economy, in effect a mixed economy.
- Integration into the rest of Latin America, especially via UNASUR
- Prohibition of State taking over private debts, in effect no bank bailouts
- Balanced living (sumak kawsay)
There are, to be sure, ambiguities and contradictions in both nations’ new constitutions. Ecuador’s, for example, includes loopholes for big capital and latifundistas, such as Article 323, a prohibition against all forms of confiscation. In Bolivia, some have criticized an overemphasis on local indigenous autonomies with inadequate attention given to the 70 percent of the population that is urban or to the important role women play in the creation and defense of “informal” economies key to human survival and advancement.
Also, one area of great concern to native peoples in Ecuador is the clause calling for their “previous informed consultation” on mining, oil, or other economic rights granted outsiders in territories where they reside. Consultation with native peoples does not mean their “consent.” There have already occurred killings and repression of protests against foreign petroleum firms. President Correa has gone so far as to characterize some of the protesters as “terrorists.” The UN and ILO declarations on indigenous peoples’ rights are generally interpreted as calling for “previous consent.” “Petroleum is the blood of the Earth,” goes a saying of the U’wa people resisting foreign oil interests in Colombia, “if you suck the blood you kill us.”
Clearly, new laws do not necessarily translate into new realities. The movements that gave birth to the new constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador will have to be maintained and strengthened if the articles on environment, plurinationalism, and social rights are to be fulfilled or expanded in practice.
Right-wing Opposition in Historical Context
A long time ago, a Mayan said:
They destroyed our crops
They cut our branches
They burned our tree trunks
But they could not kill our roots.In 1781, Tupak Katari, the leader of a widespread and nearly successful revolt by South America’s native peoples against Spanish colonialism, was captured and tortured. His body was torn apart, literally “quartered.” Before his death, he proudly announced to his captors: “I will return and I will be millions.”
Evo Morales, a strong advocate for world peace and non-violence, has said the right-wing opposition is attempting to “quarter” Bolivia but will not succeed. In a sense, Tupak Katari has returned and is millions. The Bolivian rightists, relatively strong in four departments rich in commerce, narco-trafficking, agriculture, gas, and other natural resources but unable to win national elections, seek to create a secessionist State centered around the economically powerful city of Santa Cruz. This would leave the rest of Bolivia impoverished.
Just as in Bolivia, there are anti-democracy rightists in Ecuador and Venezuela with links to US governmental agencies and paramilitary elements in Colombia. They too seek to topple the new democratically elected revolutionary governments by splitting off the richest areas into separate, new States: the industrial, oil, agricultural, and commercial region of Guayaquil in southwestern Ecuador and the oil-rich Zulia in northeastern Venezuela.
Bolivians have a long history of popular resistance to right-wing elements that have governed the nation on behalf of domestic and foreign elites. They have learned from their earlier struggles. In 1952 they achieved the continent’s first revolution since the Mexican Revolution of 1917. They introduced a short-lived agrarian reform and nationalization of tin mines, the main industry at the time. Many miners were Marxists. In 1946 the Miners’ Congress passed the “Pulacayo Thesis,” a program echoing the ideas of Bolshevik revolutionary thinker and military commander Leon Trotsky. This program called for workers’ control of the means of production, a genuine democracy, and internationalization of the revolutionary struggle. Armed miners turned the tide in 1952 just when it looked like the rightist military might crush the democratic revolutionary forces in a bloodbath.
However, the United States gradually reversed Bolivia’s 1952 Revolution by training the Armed Forces and sending in economic advisers favorable to free-market capitalism and foreign capital. By 1964, the Revolution was not only reversed. It was being replaced by a series of military dictatorships and occasional civilian governments that carried out several massacres of workers, peasants, and students, in a “dirty war.” Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, later extradited to France and convicted in 1987 of mass murder, helped set up Bolivian concentration camps. Poverty increased. Because of silicosis, overwork, and the decline of the mining sector, the lifespan of the average miner today is just 35 years.
A guerrilla struggle led by Ernesto “Che” Guevara in southeastern Bolivia failed when US-trained Bolivian Army forces captured Che on October 8, 1967, and, on US orders, killed him the next day. Crosses labeled “Saint Che” began appearing in several rural locations.
In 1971 a Peoples’ Assembly backed by the military government of General Juan José Torres approved a worker-peasant alliance and a program for socialism. Torres was overthrown by General Banzer, leading to a savage seven-year wave of repression known as “the Banzerato,” a prosperous period for Bolivia’s elites and foreign capital. The boom city of Santa Cruz began concentrating most of the nation’s wealth.
Popular protests by the poor majority and by the small economically squeezed middle classes continued. By 1980, strikes, revolts, and massacres reached another severe stage. The so-called “Cocaine Coup” of that year established a particularly brutal and corrupt dictatorship that lasted more than two years. In 1985, Harvard-educated economist Jeffrey Sachs introduced a “shock therapy” neo-liberal treatment of the economy that laid off thousands of miners, who had to migrate with their families to the countryside or cities to try to find work to survive. In the early 1990s, Sachs introduced the same economic approach in the former Soviet Union. In both cases the results were disastrous for the majority of the peoples.
During and after Sachs’ “shock therapy,” Bolivia’s resistance movements reached new levels of community-based organization. People perfected roadblocks and other acts of civil disobedience. Women’s committees, a traditional institution among miners, began running urban slums. A street vendors’ union grew each year to its present size of 800,000 members. Bolivia’s citizens conducted huge marches “For Life and Peace,” “For Life and Bread,” and for “People before Profits.”
Native peoples completed an historic 33-day “March for Territory and Dignity” (1990). A movement by coca growers led by Evo Morales gained strength and called itself the Movement to Socialism. Workers, steet vendors, ex-miners, desperate peasants, and heads of households in El Alto and other urban slums organized neighborhood defense-and-struggle committees. Women and youth played pivotal roles. Most of the time Bolivia was under a state of siege, with all opposition repressed. Nonetheless, the social movements kept reappearing and gaining strength, toppling government after government until Evo’s election in 2005.
Prefect Ruben Costas in Santa Cruz and several ex-Nazis and large landholders began to organize their ¨civil” coup. They referred to Evo with racist epitaphs and claimed no “Indian monkey” could possibly govern the nation. They sent fascist goon squads to attack, beat up, and kill native peoples. They took over national offices, including airports, making it impossible for the nation’s president to fly to important areas.
Several of the fascistic right-wing leaders of the opposition movement are anti-communist fanatics whose pro-Nazi families came to Bolivia from Eastern Europe after World War II, often protected or encouraged by the US government, as in the case of Klaus Barbie. One current leader, Branco Marinkovic, a Croatian-Bolivian, is widely believed to be in the pay of the man in the government of “el gringo” who ordered the El Alto massacre of 2003 and later fled to the United States with “el gringo” and other top government officials.
Over the years, the fascist leaders of the four breakaway departments routinely have hired Brazilian gunmen, some of whom joined Bolivian and Peruvian gunmen in the Pando massacre of September 11, 2008. Pando is the department that gave refuge to the murderers of Chico Mendes, the world-renowned trade-union and environmentalist leader of Brazilian rubber tappers assassinated in 1988. Ever since then, these assassins and their henchmen have been operating on behalf of Pando’s elites to help maintain labor discipline and political loyalty, but with decreasing success.
Even though momentarily defeated in their attempt to topple Bolivian democracy, right-wingers of all varieties have not stopped their pressures on Evo. The social movements and native peoples continue to mobilize in defense of Evo´s government.
In the middle of October 2008, some 50,000 to 200,000 people conducted an 8-day, 150-kilometer march that was joined on its last day by Evo himself. The marchers surrounded the national Congress in La Paz to demand approval of a future referendum on the new constitution. They succeeded in winning the required two-thirds majority of votes and then celebrated in the streets.
However, prior to the successful vote, centrist and rightist political parties in Congress modified more than 100 articles. Details of the changes are rather complex, but it is clear that greater though not complete autonomy is to be granted the breakaway departments. Also, Evo will not be allowed to run for re-election after the December 6, 2009 presidential and congressional elections. His potential years in the presidency thus would have to end in 2014.
In both Bolivia and Ecuador, as in Venezuela, the rightist opposition is increasingly divided. For example, Bolivia’s PODEMOS (Social Democratic Power in Spanish), the largest opposition group, now has at least four squabbling factions.
But the opposition is not just from the right. While leftists generally support Evo and Correa, even if critically at times, there are a few who feel that both nations’ presidents are moving too slowly and with too many compromises. Some even see the emergence of “a new neo-liberalism with a human face.” Also, there are people inside the governments of both nations who act as cliques that tend to undermine democratic processes and thus serve the rightist opposition’s claims that the presidents are “dictators.”
Cooptation and clientelism are occurring, more so in Ecuador than in Bolivia, but the social movements continue demanding genuine democracy and a new type of socialism that meets all human needs in harmony with ¨Pachamama.¨ The chances of either a civilian or a military coup seem slimmer each day but can never be ruled out. Both nations´ Armed Forces have sworn to uphold the constitutional processes underway. The Bolivian and Ecuadorian peoples are on the alert against possible traitorous officers or soldiers.
Decline of US Hegemony
Events in Bolivia and Ecuador reflect a growing defiance of the “big brother to the North.” Latin American nations are integrating into a larger “gran patria” independent of the United States, an idea originally advocated by “the Liberator” Simón Bolívar in the Wars of Independence against Spain when he attempted to unify the region against future US hegemony. Bolívar was unsuccessful, in part because of US opposition. He concluded in 1829: “The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”
In addition to UNASUR, several new institutions have been created in this recent integrative process. Among them are the following:
Rio Group (created in 1986 by members of the Contadora Group active in seeking peace in Central America, today an organization of almost all Latin American and Caribbean states whose most recent new member is Cuba)
TeleSUR (a continent-wide television news and entertainment channel countering the slant and distortions of CNN and most US mass media)
RadioSUR
PetroSUR and PetroCARIBE (for energy integration with discount prices on Venezuelan oil, gas, and know-how)
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas — ALBA, a socially responsible instead of profit-guided alternative to the now defeated US initiative Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
MERCOSUR – Common Market of the South, an earlier alternative to the FTAA
Community of Andean Nations and Caricom (two more regional trade blocs)
Latin American Court of Justice
Banco del Sur (Bank of the South, a response to US-dominated, neo-liberal financial institutions like the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank).
Parliamentary Confederation of the Americas (a South American Parliament is to be built in San Benito, Bolivia)
Security Council of South America (a military alliance of 12 nations excluding the United States)
There are also plans for a single unified currency possibly to be called “pacha” and a Monetary Fund of the South (Fondo Monetario del Sur) as an alternative to the US dollar and the IMF (International Monetary Fund). There is talk of an economic Stabilization Fund as well.
In the past, the US Government and Latin American oligarchies would not have tolerated this for a second. They would have mounted bloody military coups and new dictatorships in the name of defending democracy. But those days of US hegemony are long gone. Spain’s capitalists now have more investments in the region than those of their US counterparts. The United States and the OAS have been largely absent from all major decisions about conflicts; new coalitions like UNASUR and the Rio Group make those decisions, without a single dissenting vote so far. Even the influential US policy-creating Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), in its May 2008 report, says the Monroe Doctrine is dead and should not be resurrected. Significantly, Washington has accepted the 12-nation Security Council of South America.
US military and diplomatic failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, together with the global financial crisis triggered by US bank failures in 2007-2008, have extended the United States’ loss of hegemony worldwide. The Euro and other currencies have long since weakened the dominance of the US dollar. The gigantic US economy has become dependent on investments and loans from China, Japan, the European Union, and sundry oil kingdoms. According to CNN reports, the two-trillion-dollar US bank rescue plan may cost each US citizen $40,000 by 2010. The three-decade economic reign of neo-liberalism is spiraling rapidly downward into the abyss of human suffering it has helped generate. Multiple Poles of Power and the rise of new economic and geopolitical alliances are replacing the 18-year-long dominance of a sole Super Power.
Conclusion
It is evident that Bolivia and Ecuador, like so many Latin American countries, are undergoing historic changes in the correlation of social and class forces and in relations with the United States. Only the rightists and the US Government oppose these two new popular and vigorous democracies. Others are trying to learn from them.
In July 2008, the 8,000-mile “Longest Walk 2 All Life is Sacred – Save Mother Earth” reached Washington, D.C. One of its leaders, Dennis Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), summed up its goal as one of “environmental protection, an end to global warming, the protection of Indigenous cultural survival, and the empowerment of Native youth.” Most of the marchers expressed solidarity with Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
US policy on Latin America in 2008, however, continued down the anti-democratic path. The Pentagon sent the modernized Fourth Fleet to police the oceans and waterways of the region. More military bases were constructed in Colombia, bordering Ecuador and Venezuela. US support for the mega-project IIRSA (South American Regional Integration of the Infrastructure in Spanish) increased. It is a multi-billion dollar transcontinental transport and commercial development plan that will violate several indigenous territories. Despite widespread bank failures and skyrocketing unemployment rates at home and abroad, US aid programs continued to give short shrift to meeting human needs and instead contributed to the military repression of social and indigenous movements or renewed attempts at “civil” coups.
The world faces a profound ecological crisis. World hunger is rapidly increasing. In a relatively short time there will not be sufficient potable drinking water, food, or petroleum to maintain current standards of living even in the most industrialized nations. Neo-liberal capitalism faces both deepening economic crisis and loss of credibility on a world scale. The indigenous and popular movements of Bolivia and Ecuador, on the other hand, have achieved significant advances and now have a chance to push for even greater gains in the re-founding of their States and the introduction of new programs in defense of the environment and the peoples of the world.
In November 2008, some 400 academics of the prestigious Latin American Studies Association sent a letter to president-elect Barack Obama in which they expressed their hope that his presidency would convert the United States into “an ally instead of an adversary of the positive changes taking place in the Hemisphere.” It remains to be seen if Obama will maintain old policies; make mere cosmetic changes; or create new policies in the interests of all the peoples of Latin America – and the United States.
