After the Water War

Oscar Olivera, ROAR Magazine

In Latin America, the struggle for water as a common good is present in almost all environmental conflicts—sparked by extractive, industrial, highway and energy projects—but also forms part of the agenda of urban and labor movements rallying against privatization, shortages, sanitation problems, and so on.

This does not come as a surprise, since water—as a common good and as a human right—is an essential part of our lifeworld, of how we relate to the planet and to each other. Water to be consumed and managed by humans; water for the reproduction of life; water as a living entity that flows and evolves; water as a sacred being or territory: all the above are perceptions radically opposed to water as a commodity, to water as a “resource” or financial asset.

Liberal Democracy & Ayllu Democracy in Boliva

Liberal Democracy and Ayllu Democracy in Bolivia by TigersEye99 on Scribd

Rhythms of the Pachakuti

Rhythms of the Pachakuti by Raquel Gutierrez Aguilar by Duke University Press

Raúl Zibechi: Latin America Today, Seen From Below

Original interview published in the June 2013 issue MU Magazine, from the La Vaca popular media collective in Buenos Aires. Translated by Margi Clarke.  Reprinted with permission. Upside Down Word

1- ECUADOR

In Ecuador there is a government that proclaims a “citizen revolution” and that has a constitution with explicit environmental values that speaks of Well Being and the rights of Nature.  At the same time, there are 179 or 180 indigenous leaders and activists accused of sabotage and terrorism for doing what they always have done: blocking roads and occupying public land to protest and stop the mining projects that threaten their livelihood and communities.  The greatest struggle of the social movements right now is to defend water and to halt open-pit mining.  President Correa calls them “full-bellies” (‘pancitas llenas’) who have plenty to eat and can dedicate themselves to criticizing the government and the mining industry alongside their imperialist NGO allies (non-governmental organizations).

The riotous underbelly of the new normal

by Richard Pithouse, The Daily Maverick

Here we are, almost 20 years after Apartheid and, from the prisons to the shack settlements and the farms, the riotous underbelly of our society is on television most nights. We’re not even a full month into the year and it’s been reported that the police have killed another protester in the Boland and, depending on which newspaper you read, three, four or six people in Zamdela in Sasolburg.

The new normal that we are being asked to accept after Mangaung has won consent in some quarters by replacing a demagogic populist with an oligarch and putting an end to the discussion about nationalisation.  Its basic logic – crony capitalism greased with corruption, wrapped in an escalating conflation of both the nation and the state with the ruling party and defended with growing authoritarianism – can work well enough for capital. In fact international capital often finds authoritarian states to be its most attractive destinations for investment. And it’s not unusual for the middle classes to be quite comfortable with forms of authoritarianism that restrict the basic democratic rights of the popular classes in defence of the domination of society by an alliance between business and political elites – after all, just look at how many South Africans think Dubai is a great place to live.

Territories in Resistance

“Emancipation,” argues Raúl Zibechi, “is not an objective but a way of life.” For the last half century, new and emancipatory social formations have worked to carve out their own territories in Latin America, experimenting in rural and urban settings with new forms of liberatory politics that challenge neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and the very basis of the state itself. Not limited to a single path, these “societies in movement” have adopted forms of communitarian relations that allow experimentation and innovation to flourish at a riveting pace. Blending case studies and history with social theory and analysis, Zibechi opens our eyes to the new world being born just outside our gaze. With a foreword by Dawn Paley, and an epilogue that brings Zibechi into conversation with Michael Hardt and Alvaro Reyes on the continuing revolution of everyday life in Latin America.

Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia

by Jeffery Webber, 2011

Bolivia witnessed a left-indigenous insurrectionary cycle between 2000 and 2005 that overthrew two neoliberal presidents and laid the foundation for Evo Morales’ successful bid to become the country’s first indigenous head of state in 2006. Building on the theoretical traditions of revolutionary Marxism and indigenous liberation, this book provides an analytical framework for understanding the fine-grained sociological and political nuances of twenty-first century Bolivian class-struggle, state-repression, and indigenous resistance, as well the deeply historical roots of today’s oppositional traditions. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, including more than 80 in-depth interviews with social-movement and trade-union activists, Red October is a ground-breaking intervention in the study of contemporary Bolivia and the wider Latin American turn to the left over the last decade.

Moving beyond capitalism is a universal task

Álvaro García Linera interviewed by Luis Hernández and translated by Felipe Stuart Cournoyer, Axis of Logic, 18 February 2012

LHN – You have governed Bolivia for six years. Has progress towards decolonization of the state really been accomplished?

Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera

AGL – In Bolivia, the fundamental fact we have experienced has been the change in role of the people making up the demographic majority in the past and today – the indigenous peoples. Previously, because of the brutality of the [European] invasion and the burden from centuries of domination, which permeated the outlook of both the ruling classes and the subservient classes, indigenous peoples were condemned to be peasants, toilers, informal artisans, porters or waiters. Now they are ministers (both men and women), deputies, senators, directors of public companies, constitution writers, supreme court magistrates, governors, and president.

Che - a film directed by Steven Soderbergh

Open Letter from Evo Morales Regarding the European Union’s “Returns Directive”

First published on Rebelion on 12 June, translated by Machetera and republished on Tlaxcala, on the same day.

Until the end of the Second World War, Europe was a continent of emigrants. Tens of millions of Europeans left for the Americas in order to colonize, escape famine, financial crises, wars and European totalitarianism and the persecution of ethnic minorities. Today, I’m following the process of the so-called “Returns Directive” with concern. The text, approved on June 5th by the Interior Ministers of the European Union’s 27 member countries, must be voted on in the European Parliament on June 18th. I feel that it drastically hardens the conditions for detention and expulsion of undocumented migrants, whatever their length of stay in the European countries, their work situation, their family ties, their will and their achievements at integration.
Europeans arrived en masse in the countries of Latin America and North America, without visas or conditions imposed by the authorities. They were always welcome, and they continue to be, in our countries on the American continent, which therefore absorb the economic misery of Europe and its political crises. They came to our continent to exploit its wealth and transfer it to Europe, with a very high cost for America’s original population. Such is the case in our Cerro Rico, in Potosi, where the fabulous silver mines provided the European continent its coinage from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Indianismo and Marxism: The mismatch of two revolutionary rationales

Álvaro García Linera, 2005, Links

Over the last hundred years, five major ideologies or “conceptions of the world” of a rebellious and emancipatory nature have developed in Bolivia. The first of these narratives of social emancipation was anarchism, which managed to articulate the experiences and demands of urban labouring sectors linked to small-scale self-employed and blue-collar work and the retail trades. A presence in some urban working class milieus from the late 19th century, it enjoyed its greatest influence in the 1930s and 1940s.

State Crisis & Popular Power

Álvaro García Linera, New Left Review, 2006

Three factors define the functioning, stability and representative capacity of a state. The first is the overall framework of social forces: the correlation between the different coalitions, both dominant and subordinate, contesting the reconfiguration of what Bourdieu called ‘state capital’—the ability to influence decisions on matters of common import. Secondly, there is the system of political institutions and rules that mediate the coexistence of hierarchical social forces. In effect, this institutional framework is a materialization of the founding correlation of forces that give rise to a particular state regime, and the means by which it legally reproduces itself. Thirdly, every state depends upon a structure of common categories of perception, a series of mobilizing beliefs that generates a degree of social and moral conformity among both ruling and ruled, and which takes material form through the state’s cultural repertoire and rituals.

Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces

Dispersing Power

by Raúl Zibechi, 2010

"Zibechi goes to Bolivia to learn. Like us, he goes with questions, questions that stretch far beyond the borders of Bolivia. How do we change the world and create a different one? How do we get rid of capitalism? How do we create a society based on dignity? What is the role of the state and what are the possibilities of changing society through anti-state movements?... the most important practical and theoretical questions that have risen from the struggles in Latin America and the world in the last fifteen years or so.... The book is beautiful, exciting, stimulating.... Do read it and also give it your friends."—John Holloway, from the Foreword