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).
MU: Bolivian President Evo
Morales also calls out NGO’s as organizations promoting imperialist interests
with the intention to erode Latin American state power.
Yes, Correa and Morales accuse
the social movements of being manipulated by the NGO’s, as if the indigenous
communities were underage children.
Ecuador and Bolivia have several things in common: one, the popular
movements are strong; another is that the governments call themselves
‘revolutionary’; and in both countries there is an fierce confrontation between
the governments’ modernization policies with the social movements who are
criminalized and persecuted.
But an interesting fact is that
the dominant classes in Bolivia as well as in Ecuador are changing
rapidly. The financial bourgeoisie in
Guayaquil (in the south) has collapsed and today it is the financial sector in
Quito (the northern altiplano) that is dominant. At the same time, new analyses coming out of
Bolivia speak of a new bourgeoisie in which the Aymara and Quechua indigenous
leaders have an important role. This
contradiction was evident in the conflict over Tipnis, when a huge indigenous
mobilization halted a highway project into their ancestral lands, which are
part of a national park. In Tipnis the
conflict is between the coca-producers who are now part of the ruling structure
against the indigenous [whom they had previously been allied with to bring Evo
Morales into power]. We see this process
happening in several countries.
MU: So, what does the power map
look like now?
Basically what we have on the
one hand is the old ownership class, and on the other hand the “management”
class (‘gestores’). People who are not
the owners of the banks but who manage the banks, those who control the pension
funds, the capital that is the raw material for financial speculation. These managers are now the critical players,
they are paid well and they are part of the ruling class even though they do
not own the industrial means of production.
They dominate the financial-economic circuit that reproduces
capital. We see contradictions in these
countries between the owners and the managers who are allied with each other in
some ways, but not in others. It is
interesting to see how the dominant class that has become more complex and
where there are conflicts. And how parts
of the ruling class make use of the popular sectors and others depend on other
social sectors, in service of their own interests, and that there are points of
unity and points of conflict between and among them. Basically we are seeing a re-structuring and
re-positioning of the ruling classes and we see these shifts very clearly in
Bolivia and Ecuador.
2- BOLIVIA
Bolivia is where the social
movements are strongest and have gained the most and have intersected the most
in the dominant systems. They have the
great virtue of being very diverse.
There are the Aymara of the highlands, and the peoples of the lowlands. In many cases the exploiters are
multinational corporations, but in other cases the threats are from Aymara or
Quechua economic sectors. This creates a
very complex web in which at this time the lowlands are at the bottom of the
power structure.
We see an interesting
reconfiguration of the ruling class which is no longer the bourgeoisie that
speaks ‘gringo’ but another group that wears a poncho and speaks in Aymara or
Quechua, for example Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera. He is the theorist of the new practices of
the dominant structure, the hinge between the western and the indigenous we
might say. Bolivia is the ideal
laboratory for this process: we can see from the perspective of the elite when
an indigenous movement contests for power the government tries to create a
parallel power structure. There is a
process of cloning that creates confusion, coopting leaders and creating brutal
divisions with the goal of muddying the waters.
This slows things down, allowing the elite time to reposition itself and
continue to promote its projects. We are
seeing dominating practices that are much more refined than before.
MU: What has happened to the
concept of ‘dispersion of power’ that you speak about in your book about
Bolivia?
Bolivia continues to have those
practices. We see for example, the
monthly magazine called Pukará; we have the katarista movement which had some
connection with Alvaro Garcia Linera but which has maintained a certain
autonomy. We have feminist groups like
Mujeres Creando (Women Creating): they are the ones saying “This continues to
be a colonial state, though we call it pluri-national.”
This is an interesting
statement because it clearly describes the situation. If we look at the Latin American indigenous
movements today we see two clear tendencies: the “pluralistic state” which is
the most visible but which has not fundamentally transformed the Nation-State;
it continue to be the same colonial model but with a multi-colored stamp. And we see the autonomous indigenous
movement, represented by the Mapuche, the Zapatistas, some Colombian organizations,
and all those who do not defend that plural State as their goal.
The plural state has been a
little door that the colonial Nation-State has opened but allows it to
perpetuate its practices. A state is not
transformed simply by writing a new Constitution. The state is made up of practices. There is a very interesting piece by Bolivian
writer Luis Tapia who expressed this very clearly. He asks: “How can it be a pluralistic State
if we have a presidential office with more power than ever, with the ability to
serve three terms?” If government is
highly centralized and does not distribute power, where is the pluralism? Bolivia is a case where those above try to
mask themselves with the poncho, and those below are permanently denouncing
them. There is a line of independent
thought and action and in the long run that is the most powerful force.
3- PERU
I was recently in Peru [in
2013] and I can say that the principal struggle today is over mining. In Peru there are 30-40 places where there
are conflicts over mining, and 200 environmental conflicts. A key case is in the north, in Trujillo where
the Conga gold mine has faced a lot of local resistance. In Peru there are lots of long-standing
organizations: the Peasant Confederation whose representative is Hugo Blanco;
the National Agrarian Confederation which is linked to APRA; the CGT, the
General Workers’ Confederation. And
there are new organizations like the National Confederation of Communities
Affected by Mining. Yet, none of these
established groups plays a decisive role in these struggles. The resistance today is outside of
institutional organizations.
So who is organizing the
resistance? It is the communities in the
highlands themselves organizing based on their own traditions. For example, look at the peasant councils:
the villages have always organized local watch committees: originally to guard
against cattle thieves, then to protect themselves from the military, then from
the paramilitary, then from the Sendero Luminoso rebels; and now it is against
incursions by the mining companies.
MU: Are these watch patrols
armed?
Yes, these are villages that
arm themselves to provide night patrols.
It is self-defense. And the watch
councils have become over time an organization called the Guardians of the
Lake. The lagoons are the principal
sites of conflict with the mining companies.
The big problem with mining is that is contaminates the water sources
that the community uses. In order to
stop that, they organize collective self-defense mechanism to protect the lakes
from contamination. They camp there to
prevent mining operations from setting up.
MU: How does the government
respond?
The government of President
Ollanta Humala is inclined to favor the multi-nationals. In his first two years
in office there were two significant crises.
Both of them had to do with local resistance to mining. He dismissed his whole cabinet. The government tried to establish a state of
siege and militarize the areas of conflict.
The mining companies organized “white guards” (death squads). There was a whole military and paramilitary
apparatus set up, along with media coverage and governmental administrative
efforts: but even with all this, they have not been able to turn back the
resistance. On the contrary, the
anti-mining struggle is at a high point.
Together with Guatemala, Peru is today spearheading popular action
against mining and is the most important example in the continent.
MU: What is the impact of the
resistance?
They have succeeded in stopping
several projects, for example the Conga gold mine is at a standstill. And while there are many communities who
stand up to the mining projects in order to negotiate benefits, there are also
those who intend to stop the projects altogether and they are winning. In the south of Peru they succeeded in
stopping a Brazilian mega-construction project that would have built 5 dams on
the Inanburi River.
MU: What characterizes the
strength of the resistance?
This popular resistance does
not have political party structures, does not have institutional organizations,
but rather is based in struggle, is community-based and is strong, achieving
local and intermediate levels of organization that coordinates to address
particular timely topics but without establishing permanent coordinating
structures. Some analysts question
this: Isn’t it curious that such strong
struggles have not given birth to powerful organizations? Do they lack
structure or do they not want structures?
This is a reality in Latin America today: struggles are occurring and
resistance is strong without the need to generate political apparatuses, at
least not purely in service of the particular struggles. But perhaps this is not a defect but an important
lesson.
4 - CHILE
I was in Chile in January
[2013] and saw two large struggles: high school student organizing (in addition
to the university student movement); and widespread Mapuche organizing.
The high school students have
created the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students which had participation
of more than 100 high schools at the peak of the 2011 mass rallies for reforms
in the educational system; today they still have 60 schools actively
participating. They have created a
horizontal space for debate and political consciousness-raising that is
enormously participatory where the students have marvelous experiences of
self-expression, organizing and advocacy.
This year [2012-13] they
carried out a national campaign called “No, I will not give my vote” in the
city elections and 60% of the eligible voters did not participate. And now a group of intellectuals has taken up
the same campaign calling for a boycott of the next elections. This electoral abstention is a form of
disobedience. Another micro-example is
fare-evasion in the Trans-Santiago, the public transit system in the
capital. Fare-evasion exceeds 30% of
passengers. The government put young
people to work as vigilantes in red shirts denouncing those who do not pay the
fare. But even with that, the refusal to
pay is very high. I think there is an
important process of civil disobedience, at least in Santiago, led basically by
the youth of the popular [poor] neighborhoods.
In terms of the indigenous
Mapuche organizing we see the true paradigm of dispersed power. There is not a single Mapuche organization:
there are dozens. Perhaps this is what
has allowed them to always have a sector that is never co-opted. Today there is a lot of dynamism created by a
new generation of Mapuche activists and intellectuals. For example, there is a collective of
historians that has produced a great deal of very illuminating work.
We have to realize that the
Mapuche are perhaps the only people in the world with five centuries of resistance
(against colonial oppression) and of victories.
Many people do not know that the Mapuche defeated the Spanish militarily
and forced them to recognize the existence of a Mapuche Parliament in Valdivia. For two centuries the Spaniards could not
cross south of the Bio-Bio River. But
the Mapuche are not farmers; they are ranchers.
For that reason they never established larger towns, rather they live in
dispersed villages. They have local
family and clan leaders. There is no
single Mapuche authority, there tons.
There is a richness that those of us outside it are just beginning to
see.
MU: How does this differ from
the other indigenous resistance movements who have mentioned?
The Mapuche do not feel they
are Chilean. In their minds their identity
has nothing to do with the concept of the Nation-State. Neither Pinochet nor democracy succeeded in
domesticating them. While it is true the
Mapuche society has a lot of machismo, it is a strong patriarchy, in all the
other ways this movement is very disruptive and breaks with the mold (of the
left). What I have noticed recently is
the strong links between the student movement and the Mapuche. The young people go to Araucania (southern
Chile) and work together with them. They don’t just offer solidarity from the
cities; they go and work with them.
MU: What is the difference?
It is difficult to work with
them. If you think they are fragmented
you are wrong although it is true. There
is a unique historical Mapuche corpus (body of work) that has a thousand
tentacles. This is how they learned to
struggle, not in a single unified form.
On the other hand, in Chile we have a so-called anti-terrorist law that
is only applied against the Mapuche.
They have many leaders in prison with very long sentences. Why? Because
their struggle has not been symbolic, it is real. En Mehuin for example there is a Mapuche
coastal fishing community. A company
wanted to build a mega-project and the authorities were requiring an
environmental impact study. But the
Mapuche thought: “If we let them to do the study we have lost.” So with their fishing canoes they surrounded
the ship that brought the experts to do the study. They did not let them come. It was a naval battle, canoes against a
modern ship. And the Mapuche won.
5 - MEXICO
I am pro Zapatista. And from
that sympathy, I am enthusiastic that they have gone into hiding in the last 6
years, disappeared according to conventional media. But in those 6 years of silence they have
become ever more autonomous: they have their health system, their educational
practices, their own production, their power, their own armed forces. They are their own society, their own
world. Last December [2012] they decided
to demonstrate this with a march: forty thousand participants with hoods
marching without saying a word. Forty
thousand people who had to come from very long distances, some having to walk 2
or 3 days to get to the nearest county seat. And they did it. Their level of
logistical organization has no precedents and it clearly shows their level of
organizational development: forty thousand people doing the same thing at the
same time. All walking in silence, their
fists raised, the only sound their boots marching on the paving stones, without
speaking and the men carrying the children.
This was the evidence of what they have been doing for the past several
years.
MU: So what is Zapatismo at
this time, in terms of social organization?
In the state of Chiapas there
are 5 “caracoles” (snails), which are areas controlled by the Zapatistas, each
with slightly different levels of development.
The most well-known are Oventic and La Realidad deep in the Lacandon
jungle near the border with Guatemala.
In these zones of control they have Good Government Councils, production
cooperatives, primary school and secondary school and a hospital. They are truly autonomous communities. A special aspect of the health system is that
nearby villagers, even if you are not a Zapatista you can be seen for
free. All this they have done without
money and without the State and without international cooperation: they have
support of some Mexican civil society groups who are in solidarity and from
their own labor. The caracoles in this
way have built everything they need to live and their own power structures to
administer it all. At the community
level the ruling body is the assembly. A
gathering of 30 communities is an autonomous municipality. The network of municipalities makes up the
Good Government Council, which controls the caracol. The caracol is thus the
physical zone of autonomy, and the Good Government Council is the political
space.
MU: How does the Council
function?
Through the elected
representatives from each autonomous municipality. The interesting thing is that these
representatives change every 15 days or every month. The Councils have between 10 and 20 members,
with men and women in equal numbers. A
caracol can include up to 200 communities, which means we are talking about
20,000 people or more. These people
participate in a rotating political system: there are no permanent
representatives. Every 15 days or every
month, the governing body’s composition changes. Imagine what this means in real terms:
calculate how many people over all these years who have had a concrete
experience of what power and representation means.
MU: What is most inspiring to
you about the Zapatista experience?
I would not say that it is a
general tendency (in Latin America) but I do say that there is a growing
political tension that puts in question the role of the State, and among the
Zapatistas this is true in way not seen in any other popular movement. And now they have gone another step further:
they have created a Zapatista political school.
It is only be invitation and they invitation says: ”Well, you who never
spoke against us when that was the fashion, can come to this school. We are not going to pay your way here, but
once you are here you can share our food and our home with us.” When you get to the school you find that the
villagers are the professors. The
students come to listen and learn. These
special invited students are intellectuals, unionists, social movement leaders,
we who are more accustomed to speaking and being listened to, not to learning
and much less going to school to listen to others. How could I not be inspired by an experience
like this?
6 - VENEZUELA
Venezuela without Chavez means
many things. It means that the process
has a timeframe; that the process [of popular power] has come to a plateau with
a certain maturity but at the same time, in my view, has become corrupted, is
failing. We have come to a turning
point: continue to walk alone, or continue to look up. I believe it is time to walk alone, time to
stop looking up at traditional seats of power and walk our own path. The processes of change in Latin America, but
specifically in Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina, have already given what they
can give. From the standpoint of
liberation those processes are not going to give more. They have achieved what could be expected and
now the people need to choose. I believe
the people need to self-organize and walk into their own future, and then see
what to do with the governments. I
believe we can no longer keep waiting, and that is the message to take from
Chavez’s death.
7 - ARGENTINA
I see in Argentina the very
best and the very worst. I see a society
where the powerful and the media are in a fierce downward spiral. I believe there are few countries in the
region where the political decomposition is so deep. In few countries have there been media
scandals like Lanata [a scandal revealed in WikiLeaks regarding the Kirchner
government’s pressure on the media through censorship and threats]. It almost seems like a joke doesn’t it? It is like a Machiavellian fable, outside of
reality. I say this because this trend
[of corruption of the media in service of the government] reflects how low the
level of debate has fallen and reflects a headlong path of political
decomposition. But on the other hand I
see another society that is fighting against this. When I go into the barrios I see a lot of
garbage, but I also see interesting things going on.
I was in a little health post
in the Villa 31 (slum in Buenos Aires), that the young people from the medical
school created. They are training health
promoters and they are doing it with a high degree of political consciousness. I saw real commitment and real work. There are a lot of these examples in all
fields that I find very hopeful. I don’t
know who will win the elections but that does not seem so important
either. What is important is to
recognize that the political collapse is not something one administration or
another is going to stop because it has deeper roots than that. In the slums like Villa 31 we see some going
into drugs and bribes. But we see others
creating new realities. But we have to
see that both of these realities are occurring, they are inter-related. I think in Argentina we are in a moment like
the end of the 1990’s [when the economic policies and corruption produced the
2001 financial crisis]. I am not saying
there will be another crisis like the one in 2001 but we are coming to another
crossroads. What gives me hope is that I
see many people learned from the last time.
We already know what can happen and what to do.
8 - URUGUAY
Uruguay is an artificial
country. I had a professor who said: “Uruguay
in reality should be called Ponsonbylandia”, in honor of Lord Ponsonby who
negotiated the creation of Uruguay so that Argentina and Brazil would stop
having border wars. He was a British
bureaucrat who called his strategy “Putting a piece of cotton between two
crystal glasses.” What he did not say
was that this strategy also guaranteed waterways for British commerce. Today this history is repeating itself. Uruguay is going to build a huge port at
Rocha. Many of us suspect, although
there is little information available, that this deep-water port is the ideal
place for the U.S. Fourth Fleet to be anchored.
If you look at the map you can see this is the closest location to the
Brazilian oil reserves at Paloma on the southern Atlantic coast. Rocha is an ideal geo-political site for US
imperialist interests.
MU: What is the US imperialist
strategy toward Latin America?
The US strategy toward Brazil
is the same as its strategy vis a vis China.
Surround it with conflicts, which is why the US seeks to destabilize
Brazil’s principal allies Venezuela and Argentina.
9- BRAZIL
My intent in analyzing the role
of Brazil in the current conjuncture is to point out several things I think are
important for social movements to be aware of.
Number one: we must be alert to the importance of geo-politics. We have to pay attention to geo-political
trends and to understand them in order to understand how they affect us. Number two: it is important in and of itself
to understand and pay attention to Brazil.
It is important to understand what is happening in Brazil not just from
the moment of the rise of Lula [Brazil’s Workers Party President from
2003-2011]. What Brazil is today is
built on what happened long before.
In particular, Brazil’s
importance in the continent today began with the creation of IIRSA in 2000
under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
IIRSA is the mega-construction and engineering company that became the
cornerstone of the UNASUR/MERCOSUR (South American Union/Common Market)
strategy to integrate trade and infrastructure throughout the continent. Now named COSIPLAN, this is a set of
mega-projects to connect Latin America with 12 cross-continental corridors that
run from the Atlantic to the Pacific and two north-south corridors -- among
them the Parana-Paraguay highway -- to accelerate the movement of goods. These are projects of the Sao Paolo
bourgeoisie with the support of the international banking system that Cardoso
initiated and Lula continued. Some
things were changed but basically they are the same: they are multi-modal
corridors of highways, air corridors, ports and fiber optic cables, everything
oriented to industrial communication and trade.
The concept is that these are infrastructure mega-projects that can only
be built by Brazilian construction companies. And the only bank that has
sufficient resources to finance them is the BNDES (National Development Bank of
Brazil). So it is a perfect circular
business.
MU: In your view this is also
something more: the project that best illustrates Brazil’s emergence as a World
Power.
The Brazilian ruling class is
not just any elite [in the region].
Brazil is the 6th largest economy in the world so its ruling class is
therefore the 6th largest as well. In
addition, Brazil had its own Peron, who was Getulio Vargas [Dictator 1930-45,
and President 1951-54] who broke the old landowning oligarchy, built up Brazil’s
industries, and outlined the main systems of today’s Brazil. One of Vargas’ key creations was the War
Academy of Brazil (Escola Superior de Guerra).
I would invite anyone interested to take a look at their website and see
what you find. Today it is the biggest
think tank in the global south. The
topics they investigate and analyze include globalization, climate change, soy
monoculture and many others. This is
where much of the Brazilian elite studies and they take on a strategic
perspective that does not exist in the elites of other countries in the
continent.
MU: So is neo-liberalism part
of this ideology?
Well not in the sense of
neo-liberalism as the dominance of US corporate intervention in Latin America,
as in Argentina or Chile. But yes in
other ways: Fernando Henrique Cardoso was the great privatizer of Brazil. Two example of how Brazil is unique. One: the Health Minister under Cardoso was
Jose Serra from the Brazilian far right.
But it was Serra who, in the 1990’s, led the fight against the
pharmaceutical sector to allow generic drug production. Two: All the privatized national assets ended
up in the hands of Brazilian capitalists, not foreign corporations.
MU: Is this then state
capitalism?
No State Capitalism is China’s
model. Brazil is a more complex
capitalism in which the power is shared among the State, the Brazilian
capitalists, the military and the unions.
I return to my first concept: it is the capitalism of the manager class
(gestores). A capitalist model with
greater strategic integration. And that
is where the War Academy comes in: there they give courses in strategic
planning.
10 - THE FUTURE
My intent is to alert the
popular movements to become more familiar with two things:
One: Strategic Planning: This
is having a long-term vision. We have to
think not just about what we will eat tomorrow but what our grandchildren will
eat. That’s where we need to focus our
work. When we see the people in the
slums and they talk about Father Mujica [current leftist President of Uruguay],
or in the industrial complex of Cordoba and they speak about Tosco [union
leader who led the 1969 uprising against the Argentine dictatorship], you
realize that the people have never met these leftist leaders but they share
their vision of where we need to go in the long term. I think this is how we must think: what are
we leaving behind for the next generation to build on.
Two: Geo-politics:
This is a having a global view that permits us to see the changes
occurring the world. Within 50 years, US
imperialism will be history. So we are
in a moment when we can influence what comes next in our future. These are times to think about what we can
achieve and to believe we can do it. I
know it is a dangerous time for Latin America, precisely because of the great
crisis that is beginning to shake the North.
There is no Plan B for the extractive economic model. And I know that the Good Governance model has
no electoral traction, and that we do not get out of the extractive model with
votes. We are seeing that the transition
from the extractive model will be full of brutal crises. But we will come out
of that crisis if we have solid alternatives to offer society. There are small spaces that are telling us:
It is possible to live autonomously.
These are the spaces that we need to sustain today because they have
strategic value: they tell us there is an alternative and we need to create
things differently that what we have today.
MU: is it possible to change
everything from a small perspective?
I am very tired of groups that
say: “We have to leave local work to do politics on a bigger scale.” That is how you lose, along with Lanata! [who
sought support for freedom of the press by going to US Embassy to help him
against the Argentinian government’s censorship].
It is in local efforts that we
do the real work: sustaining a cooperative, creating a project, without knowing
what will happen tomorrow. That is not
small: that is fundamental. The key is
not elections: create a great campaign and win 5% of the vote. The key is to have certain spaces that are
viable. Because those spaces in the
process of transition to a new society have the potential to be the
regenerative nuclei of a new social structure.
The other day when I was in
Villa 31, Dora who is a Paraguayan immigrant woman of about 50 years old was
there to inaugurate a women’s center, that offers among other things,
self-defense classes. And she says to
me: “This is something clean.” There was
nobody imposing conditions on them with the funding, nothing like that. Dora, whose family lives in one of the worst
homes in the slum, spoke of something ‘clean.
