The Price of Fire

by Federico Fuentes

For Bolivia's indigenous majority, the year 1781 is engrained in popular memory as one of open rebellion against Spanish colonialism.  Led by Tupak Katari, the indigenous Aymaras of the highlands lay siege to the city of La Paz for several months.  Whilst Katari was finally overpowered, captured, and quartered, he became a historic reference point for indigenous struggle, promising just before he was murdered that "I will come back, and I will be millions."

So it is that once again, after more than 500 years of colonialism, the millions of indigenous Bolivians are once again rising up to take control of their destiny, propelling for the first time an indigenous person, Evo Morales, into the presidency of the country.

This new wave of rebellion is the focus of radical journalist Ben Dangl's first book The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia.  Dangl is no stranger to this topic, having reported on events unfolding in Bolivia for a number of years, including as an eyewitness of the 2003 uprising, for amongst others Z Magazine, The Nation, and Green LeftWeekly, as well as editing the online magazine Upside Down World, an invaluable source of information on political change in Latin America.

In his book, Dangl returns to Bolivia to provide readers with a vivid insight into why Bolivia has become such an important battleground between combative social movements and foreign transnationals over, what he calls, the "price of fire" -- access to basic elements of survival such as gas, water, land, coca, employment, and other resources.

Whilst providing much valuable information on the origins and impacts of neoliberalism in Bolivia, the book's most important contribution is Dangl's tracing of the origins and distinct features of the new actors in Bolivian society -- coca growers of the Chapare region, neighborhood committees of El Alto, a movement of landless peasants, and feminist and cultural organizations amongst others -- providing important insights into their nature.  Crucially, Dangl allows those at the center of this struggle to tell their story, introducing readers to numerous well-known, and not-so-well-known, protagonists.

It is through interviews with street vendors, members of neighborhood committees, Aymara journalists and sociologists that Dangl provides a window into the world of the people of El Alto, central actors in the writing of Bolivia's new history.  He provides readers with a deep understanding of the politics of this radical city, sketching out how the history of this city, ignored for decades by the government, has been vital to the creation of strong bonds of solidarity and struggle amongst alteos.

Dangl articulates how the fusing of the habits and skills of the miners, left unemployed by privatization, and the organizational structures and traditions of the rural Aymaran ayllus, have created a collective identity of community cohesion and organization.  Dangl elucidates how, for the majority informal workforce of El Alto, their involvement in unions provides a "sense of collective identity . . . important to vendors who operate in an often isolated and economically competitive atmosphere."

A similar outline is made of the coca grower, or cocalero, movement in the Chapare region, who, faced with the US-imposed "war on drugs," were forged into one of the most combative social movements of the country.

Whilst the influences of the miners' unionism impacted more strongly due to historic factors, Dangl explains that the "syndicatos, community organization similar to unions" are much more than simply instruments of struggle, acting to "organize work cycles and distribution of land, and mediated disputes."

Recounting her story, Leonilda Zurita, who helped establish the first woman's federation of cocaleros in 1995, explains the role of these syndicatos.  Zurita says to Dangl: "[Many] women in the Chapare don't know how to read or write.  So the best school for the women is the union.  There we have empowered people.  We learn about which laws are in favor of us and which are not.  This has all shown us that the union organization is important to defend mother earth, defend the coca, and defend our natural resources."

Today, Zurita is a senator with the Movement Towards Socialism -- Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP), which emerged as a political response, primarily of the cocaleros of the Chapare, to "policies that were destroying their livelihoods."

It is also from the ranks of these cocaleros that Morales emerged, who, as Dangl points out, helped develop MAS into "an 'anti-imperialist' and 'anti-neoliberal' party that, amongst other platforms, advocated the decriminalization of coca production and putting natural resources, such as gas and oil, under state control."

Dangl also sketches out the development of important social organizations such as the Movement of Landless Peasants, the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life, and feminist organization Mujeres Creando.  Throughout all the close observations of the different dynamics at play within these, and other movements, not only in Bolivia but in the rest of South America, Dangl continues to return to what binds them together, their struggle to recuperating control over their natural resources.

Dangl summarizes this view at the end of the chapter "Occupy, Resist, Produce" -- a slogan made famous by the occupied factories movement of Argentina: "At the heart of each of these occupations," in this case the occupation of factories in Argentina, land in Bolivia and Paraguay, and a jail in Venezuela, "is the question of property and ownership, and whether or not a privileged elite or poor majority should use these resources."

In focusing on this question, Dangl goes beyond just introducing readers to the social movements of Bolivia, towards making an important contribution to the debate on the dynamics of social change, the role of the new left governments, and the question of state power, which makes the book an invaluable resource for those interested in the unfolding discussion.

Dangl's position departs from the viewpoint that the "regional integration building between progressive Latin American governments" has helped shift the balance of power "away from Washington and multinational corporations and into the hands of Latin American social movements and left of center governments"; rather, he argues, the real possibility for transformation comes from those social movements who "wield a power to organize and create an alternative social fabric that is in many cases stronger than the state."

This leads to two shortcomings in his analysis.  First, it simply lumps together all the left of center governments, without drawing a distinction between, for instance, the governments of Morales and Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) on one hand and those of Lula (Brazil), and Tabare Vasquez (Uruguay), and Bachelet (Chile) on the other hand.

Secondly it also downplays the importance of state power.  Dangl refers to well-known Uruguayan leftist commentator Raul Zibechi's analysis of the October 2003 uprising, who wrote, "it could be argued that if unified, organized structures had existed, not as much social energy would have been unleashed.  The key to this overwhelming grassroots mobilization is, without a doubt, the basic self-organization that fills every pore of the society and has made superfluous many forms of representation."

Yet, as Dangl himself notes, the key factor in the rise of Morales was that "while other leaders of leftist unions or parties at the time focused their energy solely on campesino, or indigenous, issues, Morales -- an indigenous coca farmer originally from the altiplano -- spoke to campesinos, indigenous, and cocalero voters."

It is precisely because Morales and the social movements who make up the base of MAS focused on creating a "unified, organized structure" -- MAS-IPSP -- and using this instrument not only to win elections, but to take power, that the two central demands of the social movements -- nationalization of gas and constituent assembly -- have become reality, notwithstanding some of valid criticisms Dangl makes of the shortcomings in their implementation.

Morales has been able to unite Bolivia's diverse, regional movements into a powerful movement for a project of national liberation aimed at not just recuperating control of national resources, but also "nationalizing" the state.

By occupying the existing state, Morales, working together with Bolivia's social movements, hopes to weaken the opposition of the capitalists and use it to lay the groundwork for a new state based on the inclusion of Bolivia's indigenous majority.  However, this is a battle that the movements, along with the government, will have to wage both in the Constituent Assembly, and on the streets.  To do otherwise would lead to the dispersion, demoralization, and ultimate defeat of the social movements.

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Federico Fuentes is a frequent writer for the Australian socialist newspaper, Green Left Weekly, and maintains the blog Bolivia Rising.  He is a member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, a tendency within the Australian Socialist Alliance.

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D.
from Michael Parenti
Date: 26 April 2007
www.michaelparenti.org

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Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty In The World

by Michael Parenti

There is a mystery we must explain: How is it that as corporate investments and foreign aid and international loans to poor countries have increased dramatically throughout the world over the last half century, so has poverty? The number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the worlds population. What do we make of this?

Over the last half century, U.S. industries and banks (and other western corporations) have invested heavily in those poorer regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America known as the Third World. The transnationals are attracted by the rich natural resources, the high return that comes from low-paid labor, and the nearly complete absence of taxes, environmental regulations, worker benefits, and occupational safety costs.

The U.S. government has subsidized this flight of capital by granting corporations tax concessions on their overseas investments, and even paying some of their relocation expenses---much to the outrage of labor unions here at home who see their jobs evaporating.

The transnationals push out local businesses in the Third World and preempt their markets. American agribusiness cartels, heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, dump surplus products in other countries at below cost and undersell local farmers. As Christopher Cook describes it in his Diet for a Dead Planet, they expropriate the best land in these countries for cash-crop exports, usually monoculture crops requiring large amounts of pesticides, leaving less and less acreage for the hundreds of varieties of organically grown foods that feed the local populations.

By displacing local populations from their lands and robbing them of their self-sufficiency, corporations create overcrowded labor markets of desperate people who are forced into shanty towns to toil for poverty wages (when they can get work), often in violation of the countries own minimum wage laws.

In Haiti, for instance, workers are paid 11 cents an hour by corporate giants such as Disney, Wal-Mart, and J.C. Penny. The United States is one of the few countries that has refused to sign an international convention for the abolition of child labor and forced labor. This position stems from the child labor practices of U.S. corporations throughout the Third World and within the United States itself, where children as young as 12 suffer high rates of injuries and fatalities, and are often paid less than the minimum wage.

The savings that big business reaps from cheap labor abroad are not passed on in lower prices to their customers elsewhere. Corporations do not outsource to far-off regions so that U.S. consumers can save money. They outsource in order to increase their margin of profit. In 1990, shoes made by Indonesian children working twelve-hour days for 13 cents an hour, cost only $2.60 but still sold for $100 or more in the United States.

U.S. foreign aid usually works hand in hand with transnational investment. It subsidizes construction of the infrastructure needed by corporations in the Third World: ports, highways, and refineries.

The aid given to Third World governments comes with strings attached. It often must be spent on U.S. products, and the recipient nation is required to give investment preferences to U.S. companies, shifting consumption away from home produced commodities and foods in favor of imported ones, creating more dependency, hunger, and debt.

A good chunk of the aid money never sees the light of day, going directly into the personal coffers of sticky-fingered officials in the recipient countries.

Aid (of a sort) also comes from other sources. In 1944, the United Nations created the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Voting power in both organizations is determined by a countrys financial contribution. As the largest donor, the United States has a dominant voice, followed by Germany, Japan, France, and Great Britain. The IMF operates in secrecy with a select group of bankers and finance ministry staffs drawn mostly from the rich nations.

The World Bank and IMF are supposed to assist nations in their development. What actually happens is another story. A poor country borrows from the World Bank to build up some aspect of its economy. Should it be unable to pay back the heavy interest because of declining export sales or some other reason, it must borrow again, this time from the IMF.

But the IMF imposes a structural adjustment program (SAP), requiring debtor countries to grant tax breaks to the transnational corporations, reduce wages, and make no attempt to protect local enterprises from foreign imports and foreign takeovers. The debtor nations are pressured to privatize their economies, selling at scandalously low prices their state-owned mines, railroads, and utilities to private corporations.

They are forced to open their forests to clear-cutting and their lands to strip mining, without regard to the ecological damage done. The debtor nations also must cut back on subsidies for health, education, transportation and food, spending less on their people in order to have more money to meet debt payments. Required to grow cash crops for export earnings, they become even less able to feed their own populations.

So it is that throughout the Third World, real wages have declined, and national debts have soared to the point where debt payments absorb almost all of the poorer countries export earnings---which creates further impoverishment as it leaves the debtor country even less able to provide the things its population needs.

Here then we have explained a mystery. It is, of course, no mystery at all if you dont adhere to trickle-down mystification. Why has poverty deepened while foreign aid and loans and investments have grown? Answer: Loans, investments, and most forms of aid are designed not to fight poverty but to augment the wealth of transnational investors at the expense of local populations.

There is no trickle down, only a siphoning up from the toiling many to the moneyed few.

In their perpetual confusion, some liberal critics conclude that foreign aid and IMF and World Bank structural adjustments do not work; the end result is less self-sufficiency and more poverty for the recipient nations, they point out. Why then do the rich member states continue to fund the IMF and World Bank? Are their leaders just less intelligent than the critics who keep pointing out to them that their policies are having the opposite effect?

No, it is the critics who are stupid not the western leaders and investors who own so much of the world and enjoy such immense wealth and success. They pursue their aid and foreign loan programs because such programs do work. The question is, work for whom? Cui bono?

The purpose behind their investments, loans, and aid programs is not to uplift the masses in other countries. That is certainly not the business they are in. The purpose is to serve the interests of global capital accumulation, to take over the lands and local economies of Third World peoples, monopolize their markets, depress their wages, indenture their labor with enormous debts, privatize their public service sector, and prevent these nations from emerging as trade competitors by not allowing them a normal development.

In these respects, investments, foreign loans, and structural adjustments work very well indeed.

The real mystery is: why do some people find such an analysis to be so improbable, a conspiratorial imagining? Why are they skeptical that U.S. rulers knowingly and deliberately pursue such ruthless policies (suppress wages, rollback environmental protections, eliminate the public sector, cut human services) in the Third World? These rulers are pursuing much the same policies right here in our own country!

Isnt it time that liberal critics stop thinking that the people who own so much of the world---and want to own it all---are incompetent or misguided or failing to see the unintended consequences of their policies? You are not being very smart when you think your enemies are not as smart as you. They know where their interests lie, and so should we.

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Michael Parenti's recent books include The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), Superpatriotism (City Lights), and The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories Press). For more information visit: www.michaelparenti.org.