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.

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).

Zapatismo and the Latin American cycle of struggles

by Raúl Zibechi, Roar Magazine

Translated from Spanish by Tamara van der Putten

For the past twenty years since the Zapatista uprising on January 1st, 1994, social movements in Latin America have championed one of the most intense and extensive cycles of struggle in the world. Ever since the 1989 Caracazo, uprisings, insurrections and mobilizations have encompassed the whole region, delegitimized the neoliberal model, and recognized those from below — organized into movements — as central actors of social change.

Ethics of Liberation: In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion

Ethics of Liberation by Enrique Dussel by Duke University Press

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.

Social Movements and Leftist Governments in Latin America

by Gary Prevost, Critical Studies Seminar Series

The last decade in Latin America has witnessed two important simultaneous and interrelated developments: the rise in prominence of social movements, and the election of a number of left and center-left governments. The social movements have ranged from the broad, community organized “piqueteros” of Argentina that brought down three governments in the space of one month in 2001 to the indigenous-based movements of Ecuador and Bolivia that have been instrumental in toppling five governments in the two countries within the last decade, the Landless Movement in Brazil (MST), Afro-Colombians resisting displacement in a region coveted by investors, the Cocalaros and the mobilizations against water privatizations and gas pipeline investments in Bolivia, to the Zapatistas in Mexico, who burst on the scene to challenge the formation of NAFTA and the marginalization of the mostly indigenous peasants in Chiapas. The social movements of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia are complemented across the region by a myriad of organizations that engage on a range of issues from land rights to women’s rights to environmental concerns.

Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements & States in Latin America

Dancing with Dynamite

Written by Benjamin Dangl, published by AK Press.

“Ben Dangl breaks the sound barrier, exploding many myths about Latin America that are all-too-often amplified by the corporate media in the United States.  Read this much-needed book.”—Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!

In the past decade, grassroots social movements played major roles in electing left-leaning governments throughout Latin America, but subsequent relations between the streets and the states remain uneasy. In Dancing with Dynamite, award-winning journalist Benjamin Dangl explores the complex ways these movements have worked with, against, and independently of national governments.

Neo-liberalism and the new socialism

Speech by Álvaro García Linera, undated, 21st Century Socialism 

Allow me to cover three areas with you: how to distance ourselves from Neo-Liberalism, how the state relates to social movements, and socialism.

Latin America’s Left at the Crossroads

by William Robinson, Brave New World

Leftist governments in Latin America are facing resistance not only from the right, but from their own bases, as well.

The triumph of left-leaning former army officer Ollanta Humala in Peru’s presidential elections this past June has observers wondering if Peru could be the latest “Pink Tide” country in Latin America. The so-called Pink Tide refers to the ambiguous turn to the left in recent years in several Latin American countries. The neo-liberal model that has changed the face of the continent’s political economy and devastated the poor and working classes over the past two decades has come under challenge by these nominally left governments, whose populist and redistributional policies, however, may now be reaching a crossroads.

Governments and Movements: Autonomy or New Forms of Domination?

by Raúl Zibechi, The Post-Capitalist Project

The end of 2008 marked the ten-year anniversary of Hugo Chávez's first electoral victory (December 6, 1998), which initiated a new period marked by the emergence of progressive and left governments in South America. His clinching of the presidency was the result of a long process of struggles from below, beginning in February 1989 with the Caracazo—the first great popular insurrection against neoliberalism—which drove into crisis the party-system that for decades had sustained elite domination.

The Essential Pablo Neruda

“Poetry is like bread. It should be shared by all, by scholars and peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity."  

- Pablo neruda

"The call for a more accessible collection of Neruda's important poems is answered with City Lights' The Essential Neruda, a 200-page edition that offers 50 of Neruda's key poems. The editors and translators know how to extract gold from a lifetime of prolific writing. If you want a handy Neruda companion and don't know where to begin, this is it."
– The Bloomsbury Review

"What better way to celebrate the hundred years of Neruda's glorious residence on our earth than this selection of crucial works - in both languages! - by one of the greatest poets of all time. A splendid way to begin a love affair with our Pablo or, having already succumbed to his infinite charms, revisit him passionately again and again and yet again."
– Ariel Dorfman, Pulitzer-prize winner author of "Death and the Maiden"

Latin America and Global Capitalism

by William Robinson,  Johns Hopkins University, 2008.

This ambitious volume chronicles and analyzes from a critical globalization perspective the social, economic, and political changes sweeping across Latin America from the 1970s through the present day. Sociologist William I. Robinson summarizes his theory of globalization and discusses how Latin America's political economy has changed as the states integrate into the new global production and financial system, focusing specifically on the rise of nontraditional agricultural exports, the explosion of maquiladoras, transnational tourism, and the export of labor and the import of remittances. He follows with an overview of the clash among global capitalist forces, neoliberalism, and the new left in Latin America, looking closely at the challenges and dilemmas resistance movements face and their prospects for success.

The Politics of Dignity and the Politics of Poverty

John Holloway on the Politics of Dignity and the Politics of Poverty. This is the text and notes for a talk given in Nottingham.

Nottingham

How far is Latin America from Nottingham? It depends on how you measure it. You can measure it in terms of a politics of poverty or you can measure it in terms of a politics of dignity.

If we speak of a Pink Tide in the area, we must remember that Pink is not a primary colour, that what seems to be pink is in fact a blend of colours that combine and conflict. There is a central issue that runs through so-called pink tide in Latin America and the way that we understand it. This is the contrast between a politics of poverty and a politics of dignity.

Open Veins of Latin America Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

by Eduardo Galeano

Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation.

Marx and Latin America Revisited - Bruno Bosteels