THE WEALTH UNDERGROUND:

Bolivian Gas in State and Corporate Hands

by Benjamin Dangl

Years before the arrival of the Spanish, Bolivia’s indigenous people used “magic water” to cure wounds and keep fires going. With the invention of the automobile in the 1880s this black liquid took on a new importance. Since then, the oil and gas has been more of a curse than a blessing for the Bolivian people. On May 1 of this year, the history of these resources entered a new phase.

Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that the oil and gas will be nationalized and put into the hands of the state-run oil and gas company, Yacimientos PetrolĂ­feros Fiscales Bolivianos, (YPFB). Though what this nationalization plan truly entails may not be known for weeks, the move raises the question: will state control of resources be more beneficial to the Bolivian people than corporate control?

“Property of the Bolivian People”

“The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of its natural resources,” Morales said in a speech from the San Alberto petroleum field, wearing a white helmet from YPFB. Nearby a banner hung that said, “Nationalized: Property of the Bolivian people.” The day the announcement was made thousands converged to celebrate the nationalization in La Paz’s central Plaza Murillo.

The decree bumps up Bolivia’s share of profits coming from two major gas fields, San Alberto and San Antonio, from roughly 50% to 82%. These fields, which represent 70% of Bolivia’s natural gas, are currently owned and operated by Brazil’s Petrobras, Spain and Argentina’s Repsol and France’s Total. Smaller fields will continue with the same tax arrangement which allots 50% to the government. Within 60 days, YPFB is to control oil and gas production, exploration, and distribution. Within 180 days, foreign companies are obliged to sign renegotiated contracts which give more control to the state. If they refuse to renegotiate, they have to leave the country. The new decree does not call for the total expropriation of foreign assets. It does involve a mandatory sale of most assets in the oil and gas industry to the government. The state will seize the assets of those companies which refuse to renegotiate contracts. Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said that by 2007, these changes will increase the government’s annual income by $320 million.

In order to establish the new terms of operations and tax rates, the decree includes an audit of all oil and gas companies working in Bolivia. The state will recover 51% of shares from five companies which were carved out of the privatization of YPFB in 1996, when many of the current contracts were drawn up. Bolivian officials contend that these contracts are unconstitutional because they were not ratified by congress, which is required by Bolivian law. In this light, the nationalization is a return to constitutionality.

From September to October in 2003 massive protests took place against a plan to export Bolivia’s gas to the US for a meager price. Government repression against the mobilizations resulted in an estimated 80 deaths and hundreds of injuries. In the end, the protests forced President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to resign. The current nationalization plan is in part a response to pressure from this grassroots movement.

“We are moved because the nationalization of hydrocarbons has been one of the fundamental demands of the mobilizations of October 2003 and May and June 2005. For us, it’s homage to the fallen of October,” Edgar Patana, the executive secretary of the Regional Workers’ Central of El Alto told ZNet journalist Jeffrey Webber. “It’s an historic act that, hopefully, in the following months, will bring the country more revenue, to relieve unemployment, and make more jobs available.”

Morales, along with other newly elected left-leaning leaders in Latin America, came to power on a platform which promised a change from the structural adjustments pushed by the International Monetary Fund and free market economic policies which favored the interests of foreign corporations over the welfare of the people. Instead of bringing about the promised development and progress, thirty years of such policies has plunged the region into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. By following an unconventional path, Venezuela and Argentina have become the fastest growing economies in the region in recent years. Morales’ nationalization may produce similar results. As Bolivians know, business as usual has had a devastating effect on their country, which is the poorest in South America.

The Case for Nationalization of Oil and Gas in Bolivia

History illustrates that an oil and gas industry run by YPFB is a feasible and lucrative option. In 1937, during the government of David Toro, the state-run company was created. From then until 1940, YPFB produced 882,000 barrels of oil which was more than Standard Oil had produced in 15 years of operations in Bolivia. In 1953, the company produced enough to take care of the national consumption of oil. For over 60 years, YPFB generated enormous funding for the government. It explored, exploited, built ducts, refining plants. From 1985-1995, YPFB was the main source of economic support for the state. The highest amount YPFB exported was 55.7% of total exportation in 1985. Through YPFB, the technology and expertise was developed to sustain an infrastructure which is still intact to this day. The success and experience of the company contributed to the population’s recurring demands for nationalization of oil and gas.

“People have the hope that after all of this history of misery, exploitation of the natural resources, the gas could be the basis for a modernization of the economy. Not just to be utilized as energy, but also a basis for a future of industrialization,” Carlos Arze of Bolivia’s Center for Labor and Agricultural Development (CEDLA) explained in an interview in his office in La Paz, where large windows looked over the city. The key element to this industrialization is the rising cost of oil and gas.

As the amount of global gas reserves decrease, the demand will increase, putting Bolivia in a good position to financially gain from the business if the state takes advantage of its position as a major gas producer. According to Gregorio Iriarte in his book El Gas: Exportar o Industrializar?, in 2020, the US will demand 50% more gas than it uses currently. Meanwhile, the gas reserves in Argentina will end in 17 years and Chile depends primarily on Argentina for their gas. Brazil is hugely dependent on Bolivian gas. Over time, there will be more interest in Bolivia as a gas producer. Studies have shown that in 1997 the amount of gas in Bolivia was estimated to be 5.7 trillion cubic feet. In 2003, that figure rose to 54.9 trillion. It’s likely that more gas will be discovered in the coming years.

There is a general feeling in Bolivia that to sell most of the gas to the exterior is a poor use of the resource. The gas and its derivatives could be better used by the impoverished Bolivian population. Before it is processed, natural gas has methane, propane, ethane, butane and other gases in it. It can also be used to produce fertilizers, explosives, plastics, heat and electricity. The resource could be used in industries, kitchens and energy plants. Even if all of the houses and kitchens in Bolivia had access to gas, it wouldn’t use even 1.5% of the reserves.

For decades, gold, rubber, tin and other raw materials from Bolivia were sold for a low price. Foreign companies profited from the industrialization of these raw materials and sold them abroad for a much higher price, while Bolivia remained impoverished. This took place, Iriarte explained, under the argument that “Bolivia requires investments and work” and that “those who oppose the sale of the gas, oppose development…. In practice, the biggest benefits of the sale are the transnational companies that transport, liquidize and commercialize the gas.” He argues that the gas needs to be industrialized in order to use it in Bolivia and to export it for a higher price. He suggests the price of gas to private companies needs to be raised so it can stimulate the Bolivian economy.

Arze explained that there were various demands in the gas conflicts of 2003, all of which revolved around the slogan, “recuperate the gas to industrialize it.” People wanted to improve their own access to the resource:

“Whereas there are 6-7 barrels of oil [used] per capita in Argentina, Chile—in Bolivia we have around two, and we have a large reserve of energy. Natural gas, which is the most important hydrocarbon in our reserves, only arrives to 1.5-2% of the population, of the families of Bolivia. There is not a network of consumption. More than 90% of the gas is exported. And of the 10% that is left, a very small amount enters the network of domestic use. Most of this goes to the thermo-electric plants, where they generate electricity with this. The electricity is also in private hands, in Spanish hands. And the electricity is very expensive. It doesn’t arrive to most of the population, especially to rural areas. In rural areas there is very small amount of people who have access to electricity, and even less to gas. They are still living as if in medieval times…so the people are far from the benefits of this use of energy [that we have]. People want access to the gas in order to improve their standard of living.

People also want cheaper access to gas-related products, such as diesel for tractors and agriculture. In Bolivia, more than half of the diesel used is imported from abroad. Diesel could be produced from natural gas in Bolivia, and offered at a lower price to farmers.

State vs. Corporate Ownership

In Morales’ nationalization plan, the management of the oil and gas goes to YPFB. This leaves the question: how will the industry operate without foreign investments? Arze explained that foreign corporate investment is not needed to expand the gas industry in Bolivia. In fact, he argues, corporate control and investment of the resources has so far has had the opposite effect. As for transportation, foreign companies have mainly created gas ducts to other countries for exportation, and there are no new gas ducts for international users. For example, the biggest gas duct to Brazil is 40 times bigger than the one that goes to La Paz. The older ducts created by YPFB are in disrepair and cause regular environmental problems. When the Brazilian oil and gas company Petrobras bought three of the state refineries, they didn’t invest anything into them.

Foreign investors have placed more emphasis on making money by selling to external markets than developing the infrastructure in Bolivia for national use and industrialization. The technology needed for industrialization has not been provided, and what infrastructure that does exist is in poor condition. The result is that the country with one of the largest gas reserves in the region has some of the worst distribution and industrialization methods for its own citizens.

Arze emphasizes the role of the state in what infrastructure Bolivia does have. “The areas with the most reserves were discovered by YPFB more than 15 years ago.” However, at the time, YPFB lacked enough funding from the government to utilize the discovery, and it went into the hands of foreign corporations. “The state created an infrastructure that up to today continues, and created many technical experts that are currently working for private companies. The state did this with a small amount of financial resources.” This business was given up to foreign companies, and the government, in a sense, turned its back on the highest priced market in the world.

Says Arze: “Now we develop something like 20 times more gas than before. Is it possible to find [financial] resources? Is it possible to improve the terms of our negotiation with other companies and countries? I think so. Right now the world market is good for us because of the high price of oil; the gas market is becoming more important. There is also an energy crisis in the region. Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina need gas. And who has the gas? Bolivia. So Bolivia could negotiate for better conditions. Now, the state, in the immediate moment, probably doesn’t have sufficient capital [for industrialization]. But if the business of gas and oil is the best in the world, something which has caused invasions, could one find better negotiations for the country? I think so.”

By renegotiating with companies, raising the taxes and royalties which companies pay, Arze believes the Bolivian government could significantly increase the money it makes from the oil and gas industry. It could then use that funding to recuperate YPFB, which had operated well years earlier which a much smaller budget.

The new nationalization plan could, as Morales has promised, end up being the “solution to the economic and social problems of the country.” However, much still depends on how the corporations and the Bolivian people respond once the dust settles.

——

Benjamin Dangl is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (forthcoming from AK Press, 2007). He edits UpsideDownWorld.org, a website uncovering activism and politics in Latin America, and TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events.

This story originally appeared in Upside Down World, May 7
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/282/1/

See also:

“THE PROGRESSIVE MANDATE IN LATIN AMERICA
Bolivia, Evo Morales and A Continent’s Left Turn”
by Benjamin Dangl & Mark Engler
WW4 REPORT #121, May 2006
/node/1902

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE WEALTH UNDERGROUND: 

EVO SEIZES THE GAS

Bolivia’s Nationalization by Decree

by Gretchen Gordon

The smell of gas hangs strongly in the air as a crowd of flag-waving Bolivians celebrate outside the Petrobras Gualberto Villaroel oil and gas refinery. A state worker clad in a tan work suit and hardhat props a wooden ladder against the front wall of the refinery just beneath the blue metal letters that read PETROBRAS, and ascends the ladder as the crowd looks on.

He carries a laminated banner with the name “Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos,” or YPFB, Bolivia’s former state oil and gas company, essentially privatized in the mid-1990s through a process called “capitalization.”

“Take down the placard!” someone yells from the crowd. “Throw it in the trash!” someone else shouts, making a rhyme with the Spanish words. (¡Saque el letrero!, ¡Que lo pone en el basurero!)

As the worker struggles a bit to secure the banner over the blue letters, someone in the crowd observes, “No, they’re not going to take it down, just cover it over.”

As the banner is secured, someone calls out, “¡Que viva Bolivia! ¡Que Viva la nacionalizacion!”

“¡Que viva!” the crowd erupts in response.

It’s Monday, May 1, not coincidentally International Workers Day, and the Bolivian government has just declared the nationalization of oil and gas by presidential decree.

Though the “nationalization” and “recovery” of Bolivia’s oil and gas resources has been the main political issue in the country for the last several years, the Supreme Decree 28701 read publicly by president Evo Morales on Mayday came as a surprise to Bolivians and foreign investors alike. During the government’s first 100 days, several policy options have been floated regarding the restructuring of the oil and gas sector; however no clear comprehensive policy has been put forward until now.

Nationalization by Decree

Under the main goal of recovering “the property, possession, and total and absolute control” of oil and gas resources for the state, Decree 28701 contains five principal measures:

* Declaration of the state as the agent empowered to commercialize, set conditions, volumes and prices for internal consumption, export, and industrialization, and to take “control and direction” of all aspects of oil and gas production and distribution.

* Establishment of a 180-day time period for the re-negotiation of contracts to bring them in line with the oil and gas law 3058 passed last year.

* Recovery of 51% of the shares of five capitalized companies, carved out of the state company in 1996.

* Increase of the tax and royalty level from 50% to 82% for companies operating in Bolivia’s two largest gas fields (Petrobras, Repsol and Total).

* An audit of investments and earnings for all other oil and gas companies operating in Bolivia to determine their future tax rate and terms of operation.

While the discourse of the day is powerful—punctuated by the imagery of the securing of the country’s 56 oil and gas fields and two refineries by the Bolivian military—the real extent and impact of the government’s policy are not yet clear.

The recent oil and gas debate in Bolivia has shown that the term “nationalization” is open to definition and interpretation. Since Morales’ landslide electoral victory and “democratic revolution” last December, the government has consistently maintained that their “nationalization” does not involve expropriation, as traditionally understood by the term. The decree in fact does not confiscate private infrastructure or expel foreign companies as some in Bolivia have demanded. The plan to recover 51% shareholding of the capitalized oil and gas firms is seen by some as insufficient, due to the fact that the holdings of these companies were under 100% YPFB control prior to the privatization of the mid-1990s. Others criticize that the new restructuring is too similar to the oil and gas law passed during the Carlos Mesa administration, rejected by social movements as inadequate. Jaime Solares, the leader of Bolivia’s Labor Federation, has criticized the decree as a “partial” nationalization and renewed the demand for the state to take “absolute control” through confiscation without compensation.

At the same time, many see the government’s plan as the key to much-needed economic development and as a means of recovering state sovereignty in a country that historically has been managed in the interests of foreign capital. “The recovery of the oil and gas resources is what Bolivia is counting on to be able to develop,” explains Roberto Delis, an YPFB employee participating in the refinery “takeover.” “Now those resources are going to be returned so that they serve Bolivia.”

The potential increase in government revenues through the elevation of tax and royalty rates from 50% to 82% will be very significant for this impoverished nation, but is an unexpected move by a government which previously was exploring more cautious options. The figure of 82% is also highly symbolic in that it is the inverse of the 18% tax rate put in place during the privatization process in 1996. What the companies were putting in their pockets as recent as a year ago, will now be what Bolivia keeps for itself.

Many aspects of the decree, however, remain to be determined and its true impact will depend on the details of its implementation over the coming months. The mechanism for the recovery of majority shares in the capitalized companies remains unspecified, as does the treatment of the 54 fields not impacted by the tax rate increase. The government calls the decree “flexible and consensual.” However, they have made it clear that those companies unwilling to play by the new rules of the game will not be allowed to remain in Bolivia.

Domestic business interests have reacted with concern, though without marshalling a strong challenge. Many support the concept of recovering greater state control, but fear economic instability and warn against the possibility of costly international litigation by transnational companies. The response by foreign investors has been strong, though still not completely bellicose. Brazilian President Lula called the move “unfriendly,” while Spain’s Zapatero expressed his “profound preoccupation.” Brazilian Petrobras and Spanish Repsol are two of Bolivia’s largest foreign investors. Many companies, however, are keeping their comments reserved.

Government Takeover?

From La Paz’s main plaza, in a skillfully orchestrated event weaving together the nationalistic historical memory of Bolivia’s previous two oil nationalizations (1937 and 1969) with the class themes of International Workers Day, President Morales addresses a crowd of thousands urging Bolivians to come together to defend this new endeavor.

Meanwhile, back at the Gualberto Villaroel refinery outside Cochabamba, Saul Escalera, the director of Industrialization for YPFB, addresses the crowd from the bed of a red pickup truck. Announces Escalera:

“We will now engage in a symbolic entrance of YPFB technicians in which we will give official notification [to Petrobras] that as of this moment this refinery will be administered by YPFB.”

Escalera asks the crowd to refrain from trying to enter the refinery, warning that such an action could jeopardize the nationalization process. As the group of around fifteen technicians and representatives pass through the front gates of the plant, a military band strikes up the national anthem as the crowd sings. Young soldiers proceed through the gates carrying a giant Bolivian flag.

Returning back through the front gates after several minutes, with little fanfare, Escalera notifies the crowd, “We have now recovered this refinery…You may now all return home.”

With the waning notes of a brass band, Bolivia’s “nationalization without expropriation” advances, as has Morales’ broader “democratic revolution,” without violence or disruption, and to the great surprise of most onlookers.

The question which remains is how much will a profound change for Bolivia require the old system to be dismantled, and how much, like refinery placards, can more pragmatically be covered over with something new.

——

Gretchen Gordon is a research associate with the Democracy Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

This story originally appeared May 2 in Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/274/1/

See related story, this issue:

“THE WEALTH UNDERGROUND: Bolivian Gas in State and Corporate Hands,”
by Benjamin Dangl
/node/2028

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingEVO SEIZES THE GAS 

9-11’s HIDDEN VICTIMS

New York’s Hero Rescue Workers Face Kafkaesque Nightmare

by Joe Flood

An hour after Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the men of FDNY Engine Company 240 received orders at a nearby command post to enter the building and help evacuate survivors.

“As we were walking there it began to collapse and we were caught in the debris field,” says fireman Thomas Dunn. “You could see absolutely nothing, we thought the building we were next to collapsed and that we were trapped…the only way I knew we were still outside was when I felt a car door next to me.”

Dunn was nearly as close when the North Tower fell a half hour later, and spent the rest of the day searching for survivors. He had to go to the hospital that evening for an ankle injury, but was back the next day and every day that week searching, whether he was on duty or off.

“We lost a chief from the firehouse, about twenty guys I knew, my two best friends,” he says. “It took over everything.”

Nearly five years later Dunn has developed asthma, coughs when he speaks and has serious acid reflux, the most common symptoms of what has become know as the “World Trade Center Cough.” For almost four years after the collapse he was able to stay on the job, fighting the cough and shortness of breath, and taking medication for the acid reflux. But last year he had a severe asthma attack and was pulled off of active duty, probably for the rest of his life.

“I haven’t gotten the letter yet, but I’ve been told that I will be given limited status service, light duty. I can work, but only at a desk.”

Dunn is just one of the growing number of city employees—including fire-fighters, police, construction workers, even office workers and a deputy mayor—to develop serious medical problems from exposure to toxic dust at Ground Zero.

So far the death of one relief worker, Detective James Zadroga, has been officially attributed to exposure to toxins at the site, but union officials attribute dozens more deaths to Ground Zero.

“We’ve lost three people in the last two years, people with respiratory problems,” says Patrick Bahnken, president of the Uniformed EMTs and Paramedics Local 2507. “Everyone knows what it’s from. One paramedic with no asbestos exposure in her life died from mesothelioma,” a rare form of cancer whose only known cause is asbestos exposure. “But no one is willing to say it’s from the Trade Center.”

A recent Fire Department study, published April in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, found that in the single year following 9-11, fire-fighters suffered an average loss of lung capacity equivalent to 12 years of normal fire-fighting, and found that other Ground Zero workers showed signs of similar losses.

“We had baselines for all firefighters based on annual medical exams,” says Thomas Von Essen, who was Fire Commissioner on September 11. “It’s a good comparison to show this particular guy was fine before September 11, and now he’s not. A lot of construction workers and other workers don’t have that.”

The worst effects, though, were found in emergency workers who were at the site when the towers collapsed.

“It was terrible. The debris, we were choking on it. I had my mask with me but it wasn’t on when the tower fell,” says Dunn. “The face-piece itself was filled with debris, so when I put it on and took a breath I got all dust and almost threw up. I tried to clear out the mask, put it back on and started breathing OK, but no one else had masks, so I shared it with cops and EMS.”

For the first few days only surgical masks were available to workers at the WTC site, and even when enough respirators arrived, many workers did not wear them all the time.

“If 25 percent of people were wearing them at one time, that was a lot,” says Jonathan Bennett, public affairs director of the non-profit New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. “I’ve worn respirators and it is hard work. Communication is impossible with them. People who normally wear them have hand signals that they’ve developed on the job. Wearing them eight hours is a real challenge, and wearing them for those 12-hour shifts they worked… I’m not going to say it’s impossible, but it’s a lot to ask.”

“Looking back, it was a mixed bag,” says Von Essen. “Some people didn’t wear the masks all of the time, some people didn’t wear them at all. It was very warm, and hard to communicate. I’m not sure how we could have prevented it. ”

Von Essen experienced breathing trouble himself after working at the site.

“I had some breathing problems at first, but they didn’t linger. I’ve developed asthma since.”

A former firefighter, Von Essen says that it’s hard to tell whether the asthma was from the WTC or accumulated damage from years of smoke inhalation.

“I was leaning towards it anyway. Some firefighters my age might have been predisposed, certainly anyone who was a smoker,” he says. “But we’re going to have many terrific firefighters that suffer.”

It will be years, doctors say, perhaps decades, before the full extent of the health problems created by the WTC collapse are known. The thousands of rescue workers who risked their lives and their long-term health on September 11 and the days that followed nearly all say they have no regrets, and would gladly do it again. But many who have become sick as a result of their work are being forced to navigate an overburdened bureaucracy that some unions, employees and workers’ compensation experts are calling disorganized and too restrictive.

Rudy Washington, a deputy mayor under Rudolph Giuliani who became sick from exposure at Ground Zero, made news recently over his worker’s compensation claims. City lawyers first denied Washington’s claims—then, when Washington won in court they appealed the decision. When the news went public in mid-May, Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked city lawyers to revisit the case, and they promptly withdrew the appeal.

Washington won his case on the merits and pulled no strings to have his case upheld; in fact he turned down an offer of assistance from Bloomberg months ago. Yet hundreds of city employees find themselves in a predicament similar to the one Mr. Washington was extricated from, and are not confident they will have any extra help form the Mayor’s office

“Each case is different and it’s all an uphill battle,” says EMT union president Bahnken. “As these cases begin to rise this is not a problem that will go away.”

New York State’s worker compensation laws require that employers pay for lost wages and medical expenses incurred on the job. In the case of an injury, workers have two years from the date of the injury to file a claim; with an “occupational illness” they have two years from the onset of symptoms or diagnosis of the problem. In Washington’s case, his claim was at first denied by the city’s legal department because they treated his respiratory illness as an injury, and he missed the two-year deadline to file for it.

While few would argue that Washington’s breathing problems, which developed years after his exposure to toxic dust at Ground Zero, are the same as a slip-and-fall injury, New York defines an occupational illness as only an infirmity which is common to an employees’ line of work. Lung cancer, for instance, is considered an occupational illness for city fire-fighters, but the policy is ambiguous for EMTs and non-uniformed workers.

“An asbestos worker who comes down with lung cancer related to asbestos 20 years later would qualify,” says John F. Burton Jr., a lawyer and economics professor at Rutgers University who specializes in workers’ compensation. “But as the statute is interpreted, someone like an office worker with lung cancer, or a deputy mayor, would not.”

In Washington’s case, the city paid for his short hospitalization after 9-11. Because the city paid for an injury incurred on the job, this exempted him from the two-year time limit on filing a workers’ comp claim. The court accepted this, but the city appealed on what Bloomberg called a “technicality”—prompting the city to drop the case.

But many workers have not been so fortunate. The New York Times reported May 23 that 290 people have filed claims after the deadline, and as further illnesses arise (some can take years and even decades to develop), that number is likely to increase.

In Albany a bill has been introduced which would eliminate the two-year deadline for all 9-11 workers, giving them six months from when they first notice symptoms to file workers’ comp claims—essentially treating 9-11-related health problems as occupations illnesses rather than injuries. Last year a similar measure was passed in Albany applying to disability pensions, lowering the burden of proof that certain illnesses were caused by work at the Ground Zero site. But the future of the workers’ comp bill is unclear.

The two-year limitation is only one of a number of bureaucratic hurdles faced by sick workers, like EMT Paul Adams. Adams was near the Trade Center crash site when the South Tower fell, helping twelve people out of the debris, and spent the day rescuing and treating victims.

“That afternoon I collapsed, I couldn’t breathe,” says Adams, 39, who has been an EMT since 1991. “They sent me to Mt. Sinai [hospital] in Queens with lacerated pupils and breathing problems, and after 6 hours I was discharged.”

Five months later Adams started having trouble breathing, and a medical examination turned up lung problems. Because EMTs work for the Fire Department, Adams went before the FDNY’s medical review board, which declared him permanently partially disabled and unfit for active duty. He filed for worker’s compensation and a disability pension. Police and fire-fighters have their own pension plans, but EMTs must go through the New York City Employees Retirement System (NYCERS) for their pensions.

“I went to NYCERS and went to see their doctor. Not even two minutes into the exam and they denied me,” says Adams. “I’ve got one board telling me I’m too sick to work, another telling me that I can work.”

NYCERS director of operations Linda Chiariello says that she sees no problem with the medical board’s review process.

“EMTs are our employees, examined by our medical board,” she says. “I’m not familiar with the FDNY’s board, but there is nothing wrong with our process.”

As for EMTs like Adams who are not allowed to return to active duty but have been denied a disability pension, Chiariello says there are opportunities to have the case revisited.

“If our medical board denies disabilities, they could to the board of trustees, make an appeal, or file a lawsuit,” she says. “There are a lot of opportunities, this is all spelled out in the administrative code and retirement and social security law.”

Adams says he is considering a lawsuit, but is concerned about what will happen while it is being decided. For the last 18 months he has been out of work. Worker’s compensation benefits have paid his medical bills to this point but they are about to expire, and without pension benefits, Adams says he’s not sure how he’s going to pay those bills, or get private insurance with a pre-existing conditions.

“I use three inhalers, and medication I have to take the rest of my life. It’s not the pension money I want, it’s the benefits,” he says. “I know I’m going to get worse in the long term, I don’t know how I’ll pay for it.”

Adams does have the option of returning to work on light duty, but says he doesn’t want a desk job.

“I can’t climb a set of stairs without getting out of breath,” he says. “I’m not going to sit light duty for another ten years in a building breathing recycled air, it’s not what I became an EMT for. I don’t want to seem like I’m greedy. My concern isn’t money, only medical coverage, that’s all.”

Firefighter Dunn finds himself in a similar limbo. While he has been declared unfit for active duty, he hasn’t received a disability pension and unless something changes, the 33-year-old will be on light duty for the foreseeable future.

“It seems like the rules changed,” he says. “Before if you failed your lung capacity test they put you right out on disability. Now it’s different.”

A group of fire-fighters suing the Fire Department are alleging just that. Since 9-11, they say, the department has made it much harder for fire-fighters to receive a disability pension. Attorney Eric Sanders has filed suits for 16 fire-fighters denied disability, and is in the process of filing 12 more.

“Pre 9-11, when firefighters failed pulmonary tests, they were given their three-quarters pensions,” says Sanders. “Post 9-11 you have fire-fighters taking multiple tests and failing. The FDNY’s own doctors say they are failing, and the pension board is denying them. All these firefighters are in legal limbo, they can’t work and they can’t retire.”

Increased public attention stemming from the Rudy Washington affair, new laws, and lawsuits may smooth the path for those seeking compensation for their health problems and get benefits to those who truly deserve it. In the meantime, many city employees are left wondering about what medical problems may lie in store for them, and how they cope financially.

“I wouldn’t change anything, I would do the same thing again,” Dunn says of his efforts are Ground Zero. “I don’t blame the city or the job, but I want some answers. If I can’t be a fireman anymore I need to move on.”

——

A version of this story will appear in the Summer issue of The Shadow, the Lower Manhattan anarchist sporadical.

See also:

“9-11’s LINGERING TOXIC MENACE:
‘Redevelopment’ at Ground Zero Hits New Yorkers With Double Whammy,'”
by Wynde Priddy
WW4 REPORT #108, April 2005
/9-11toxicmenace

“NYC: firefighters sue over WTC illness,” April 27, 2006
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“Supreme Court shafts 9-11 widows,” Jan. 19, 2006
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“9-11 heroes get shafted,” June 7, 2005
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue Reading9-11’s HIDDEN VICTIMS 

INTERVIEW: SAMIR ADIL

President of the Iraqi Freedom Congress

by Bill Weinberg

Samir Adil is president of the Iraqi Freedom Congress (IFC), a new initiative to build a democratic, secular and progressive alternative to both the US occupation and political Islam in Iraq. Adil, who fled Iraq in 1995 after being tortured in Saddam’s prisons, returned after the US invasion to help build a secular resistance movement. He recently traveled to the US in a tour of several cities organized by the American Friends Service Committee, in which he met with numerous anti-war organizations and attended the Labor Notes Conference in Detroit. On the night of May 9, after a presentation at the Paulist Center in Boston, Samir Adil spoke by telephone with WW4 REPORT editor Bill Weinberg over the airwaves of New York’s WBAI Radio.

BW: Samir, what kind of reception have you been getting on your tour?

SA: Well, I came to United States because, as you know, the one picture that’s left in the media, the corporate media, is just the fighting—the American occupation and the political Islamist groups or the nationalist groups. But the other perspective in Iraq—I mean the secular movement—nobody mentions it. Nobody mentions the workers’ movement, the student movement, the women’s movement. All of them now joined under one umbrella called the Iraqi Freedom Congress, the IFC, which I am a representative of. But the people [in the US] haven’t any information about this secular movement.

There is one slogan raised by the anti-war movement: end the occupation. But what is the future of Iraq after the occupation? What do we want? There is a no answer of this question. So this is a great chance to hold presentations and speeches in different cities in the United States.

I met really great people and they told me, “We didn’t know about anything about a secular movement in Iraq.” Not just the secular movement in Iraq but in all the Middle East, too. And I told them, your enemy and our enemy is one, the anti-human enemy: This is what happened on September 11 in New York and Washington, and the same is happening today in Iraq. Innocent people in Washington and New York paid the price, and other innocent people are paying the price now in Iraq. The enemy is the American administration’s policies and the political Islamism policy, and we have to work together to build this front from Washington to Baghdad to end all of these inhuman policies. We believe without this international movement, especially in the United States, we can’t defeat these inhuman policies and establish a secular and non-nationalist government.

BW: Well, what makes this position problematic for a lot of people in the United States, I think, is the perception—which of course both Bush and the jihadists have done their best to cultivate—that they oppose each other, and that you have to be on one side or the other. Whereas you take a position that rejects both of them as representing an “inhuman” policy, as you put it.

SA: Well, unfortunately, the anti-war movement just focuses on the crimes of the occupation. Iraqi society has been suffering from the occupation and from the crimes of the political Islamists and nationalist groups, but the anti-war movement has just one slogan: end the occupation. But today when I am talking about our perspective, our alternative, we get a positive response from the people. I think most of the people in the United States [until now] didn’t face the question about Iraq after the occupation, because the American administration has a campaign of propaganda. They say, “Our forces must stay in Iraq to prevent sectarian war, and there is no alternative for the Iraqi society.”

This is a kind of hypocrisy, because everybody knows the occupation’s policy created this sectarian war, created the situation. They created it by imposing ethnic and nationalist divisions on Iraqi society. And when the people in the United States get the word that there is a secular movement for a democratic society in Iraq, that can rebuild civil society, can bring stability and security and build a brighter future for Iraqi people, build a secular government like in the West—then the American people can join us in this human movement. And we can defeat these policies.

BW: Well, you blame the Bush administration for bringing about the situation of ethnic and sectarian conflict. But I would imagine that even the most hubristic of the neo-cons who literally wanted to divide Iraq up and to Balkanize it into separate mini-states—I would say that the situation is out of their hands at this point, and what’s happening in Iraq now is beyond even what they wanted.

SA: Well, after three years of occupation, we have five million Iraqi people below the poverty level. That is the last report from the United Nations and human rights organizations…

BW: As opposed to how many before the occupation?

SA: Before, we had the sanctions, but the figure did not exceed two million people. Now after three years of occupation, it has increased to five million people. After three years of occupation, now the young people, between 20 to 25, are going to sell their kidney for between 900 to 1,200 US dollars.

BW: Sell their…?

SA: Sell their kidney.

BW: Sell their organs.

SA: Yes, sell their organs. After three years of occupation, if you visit Baghdad, or any city in Iraq, you see a mountain of garbage. Three years of occupation and there is no electricity in many districts in Baghdad, and summer is coming, and the temperature is going up to 50 or 55 Celsius,. After three years of occupation, the number of women selling their bodies to feed their children is increasing day by day. And after the three years of occupation, the Iraqi people are starting to say, “We don’t want freedom, we don’t want prosperity, even if we have to live by bread and water—but we want security. We want our lives, to survive.”

Iraqi society is like a jungle. I swear to you, the Amazon jungle is better than Iraqi society. You can kill anyone, in the front of the police, for 100 US dollars. In just one day in the Ashab area, they killed 14 men, just because their name is Omar, which is a Sunni name. Those people didn’t do anything, just their name was Omar. In Basra, in two days they killed 76 men, women and children, just because they are Sunni. In another part, they kill anyone named Haider or Ali, which are Shi’a names. This is the situation in Iraq. The forces of the interior ministry—they’re attacking places like al-Adamiyya, which they describe as a Sunni area, right in front of American forces… And the people in al-Adamiyya are arming in self-defense and fighting with the police. This is the situation, this is the reality in Iraq.

BW: Where is this taking place?

SA: Al-Adamiyya. An area in the middle of Baghdad. Just two or three days ago, armed groups attacked the hospitals in Baghdad and Basra, killed all of the doctors and the nurses and all of the sick people. This is the situation in Iraq. And now on American [TV] stations they are saying “We must stay in Iraq to prevent sectarian war…” Two years ago, this sectarian war had already started! But they didn’t mention it. Two years ago, they established the organization “To Kill Kurdish People.” That is the name of an organization, announced in a public statement—To Kill Kurdish People! And hundreds of people have been killed because they are speaking the Kurdish language, not Arabic language…

One year ago, the Zarqawi organization began putting up checkpoints on the road north from Baghdad, just 100 kilometers, and they stop the car and ask for the ID. If the ID is Sunni, they can go ahead—if the ID is Shi’a, they cut off his head and throw the body [by the roadside]. And this checkpoint was there for many months, not far from an American base, just a few kilometers–but because those groups didn’t attack Americans, the Americans didn’t get involved in this situation. This is happening every day, and day-by-day it is going worse and worse and worse.

And everybody knows this situation was created by the occupation. Before the war, when they held the London confidence, the American and the British governments brought all of the ethnic and sectarian parties and charted the new division of Iraq’s society—you are a representative of the Shi’a, you are a representative of the Sunni, you are a representative of the Kurdish. And after the occupation they established an ethnic-based government council, and gave legitimacy to this division by the new constitution. Before the last election, we asked that people don’t participate, because this election would only deepen the ethnic conflict; they only take your fingerprints to give legitimacy to all of the crimes committed by the occupation, and to the division, the nationalist conflict. And five months after the election, you can see, there is no government. Before there was no government, too—just in the Green Zone. But now we have a jungle society, and the people are organizing for self-defense, because nobody takes care about them. Every day in Baghdad people are killed because of their ethnic identity, killed by suicide bombings, and all the neighborhoods and workplaces and marketplaces are turned into a battlefield. This is the situation in Iraq. And more than one million have escaped from Iraq to Iran, to Syria, to Turkey, looking for security.

BW: Refugees, you mean? Really, a million?

SA: Yeah, one million, perhaps more. There are 250,000 just in Syria.

BW: Well, there’s very little awareness of this. They’re not, presumably, in camps like traditional refugees as we think of them, so they’re sort of invisible…

SA: Yeah.

BW: Are you able to travel freely around Iraq?

SA: No, no, I always have a bodyguard with me, and it is not easy. Because I have criticized the political Islamists, the nationalists and their crimes. There is a fatwa from the Sadrist group, for more than one year now, to assassinate me. The leaders of our organization always travel with bodyguards, and the reason is our agenda and our slogan and our perspective.

BW: Tell us about the activities of the Iraqi Freedom Congress and some of the member organizations.

SA: Especially last month, after February 22—I think everybody heard about the explosion of the Shi’a holy places—after that date, all of the leaders of the parties that are pro-America escaped from the cities and went to the Green Zone. Only the leaders of our organization, the IFC, have stayed in the cities to mobilize people. We issued a statement that met with a wide response: “No Sunni, no Shi’a, we believe in human identity.” Ordinary people distributed hundreds of thousands of copies in the streets.

And in many places, we work to prevent ethnic cleansing. We are working in areas like Husseinia in Baghdad, holding meetings where the people announced, under the IFC banner—”Everybody can live in this area, nobody has the right to ask you if you are Sunni or Shi’a or Kurdish, or Christian or Muslim. Everybody can believe anything they want, this is a personal thing, and anybody can believe any religion, or be atheist.” We are also working in Kirkuk and Basra and Nasiriyah. We are starting to establish a presence in Karbala and Najaf, the holy places of the Shi’a. We are working with doctors to establish volunteer clinics in these areas. Because the aim of the IFC is to rebuild civil society. We are organizing people to collect the garbage, all the civil services…

In Basra we just held a meeting with the union leaders. As you know, 40 percent of the leadership of the IFC are union leaders. Maybe you read my open letter to the oil union leaders who joined IFC last month. You can go to our website and see my open letter, sending my congratulations to them because they joined IFC…

BW: Which union is this?

SA: The oil workers union in the south of Iraq. This will bring our movement many steps forward. Because we are the civil resistance, and we are preparing a general strike in the oil sector to confront the occupation policy, and halt this ethnic cleansing in the different cities of Iraq.

BW: So you’re doing both community work, attempting to establish these secular autonomous zones in the cities, and also working with organized labor, particularly in the oil industry. And then student groups are also involved, I believe…

SA: Yeah. Just last year, there was a student uprising against the Sadrists and all of the Islamist groups at Basra University. And now the students’ organization grows more strong day by day. At Baghdad University and other universities many students are joining the IFC—individually or through their student union. We believe students and the youth can be a big force against the occupation and against the sectarian war.

BW: Well I’m sure that you saw today’s news. Quite ironically, they did manage to form a government, they agreed on a new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and I suppose they wanted to put a very optimistic spin on it—and that same day there was a horrific suicide bombing in Tal Afar in the north, 17 civilians blown up at a marketplace. So the IFC is taking a position of not collaborating with the actual government in Iraq. What exactly are your reasons for this position of non-collaboration?

SA: There is no difference between al-Maliki or al-Jaafari. Al-Maliki was the vice deputy of [outgoing prime minister Ibrahim] al-Jaafari, and led efforts to eliminate Sunnis. You can’t imagine anything is going to change. The same characters—[President Jalal] Talabani, the representative of the Kurdish nationalist party, or [Vice President Tareq] al-Hashemi representing the Sunnis. As long as the government is an ethnic and nationalist government, every part of this government will be looking for its interest, not the people’s interest. I can give you one example. You know, last year at the funeral of King Fahd there was a big argument between al-Jaafari and Talabani and [then-Vice President Ghazi] al-Yawar on who was to go to Saudi Arabia and represent Iraq. And in the end, nobody could accept the other and there were three separate delegations…

There will be no security, no stability, without ending the occupation, and without establishing a secular government, a non-nationalist government…

BW: Maliki was involved in paramilitary activities, you say?

SA: Yeah, yeah, he led a committee to eliminate the Sunni people from the society, especially those who supported the Saddam regime.

BW: But his Dawa party is portrayed as a more moderate Shi’ite element, compared to the Sadr and Badr militias…

SA: Yes, al-Maliki and al-Jafari are from the Dawa. But they gave the Ministry of Interior to the Badr group.

BW: That’s right…

SA: So Dawa created this ethnic cleansing in the different cities in Iraq.

BW: But this extremely sinister-sounding committee to eliminate the Sunnis was linked to the Dawa party, or…

SA: Yeah, the Dawa party. It is an official committee.

BW: I would imagine it would have to be clandestine. So you’re saying all the Shi’ite parties were complicit in the attacks on Sunnis…

SA: Yes.

BW: Maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself, Samir. What’s your personal story?

SA: I was born in Baghdad in 1964. After I graduated from the university I began working underground to oppose the Saddam regime. I was captured in 1992. I was in the prison for six months, and after an international campaign to release me, I stayed in Iraq for one more year. I didn’t want to leave Iraq. But Saddam’s regime asked me many times to work with them, and I refused, and I knew they were planning to capture me again. It was then that I escaped from Iraq.

BW: What activities resulted in your being imprisoned?

SA: We established a Marxist organization and we were working underground with the workers at that time, planning for the workers to get their own union. But Saddam’s government, through informants, captured us and six months we stayed in the jail. And because I was one of the founders of the organization, I was for 25 days under torture.

BW: My goodness. What was the name of the organization?

SA: In English, it would be the League for the Liberation of the Working Class.

BW: That was one of the precursor groups to the Worker-Communist Party?

SA: Yes. The Worker-Communist Party would be established July 21, 1993.

BW: So you were trying to organize an independent labor movement.

SA: Yes.

BW: And for this you were arrested and tortured?

SA: Yes. You know, in Iraq at that time, anybody who worked outside the Ba’ath party—this meant you are against the party, and this was illegal. But our friends in the Canadian Labor Congress sent off a letter to Saddam asking that he release us—me and six others I was arrested with. After that campaign, they released us—but then every week I had to go to the main intelligence office in Baghdad. They asked me to work with them, I refused many times, and when I felt they were planning to capture me again, I escaped to the north of Iraq, outside of the control of the government.

BW: The Kurdish zone.

SA: Yeah. I stayed three years and then I escaped by an illegal way to Turkey. And I stayed in Turkey for two years, and then with the help of the UNHCR I left to Canada. I arrived in Canada on July 5, 1995.

BW: So, when you were in prison—did you even come before a judge? Were you ever formally charged with a crime?

SA: No, I was held without charge.

BW: So it was extra-judicial, so to speak. And for three weeks you were under torture and very harsh conditions.

SA: Yeah, for 25 days I was under the torture. I still have a problem with my left side, and with my hearing…

BW: You first got into contact with the Worker-Communist Party when you arrived in the Kurdish zone, in the north?

SA: Yeah, in the Kurdish zone.

BW: Can you tell us something about the Worker-Communist Party and what it believes?

SA: There are two communist parties in Iraq. One is the Communist Party of Iraq, which was with the Soviet Union, and is now part of the American process in Iraq and part of the government. But the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq is different from this kind of communism. The Worker-Communist Party of Iraq has criticized the Soviet Union, China, Albania, Cuba; they said that the Soviet Union and China are not socialism, it’s a capitalist state. And the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq was positioned against the sanctions, against the wars—the Second Gulf War [1991] and Third Gulf War [2003]. And we are now positioned against the American-led process in Iraq and the occupation and political Islam. And the Iraqi Freedom Congress is a project of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq to save Iraq society from this abyss.

BW: What’s exactly the relationship between the Iraqi Freedom Congress and Worker-Communist Party of Iraq?

SA: As I said, Iraqi Freedom Congress began as a project of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq. But now, after one year of this project, the Worker-Communist Party is just a member, like any party or organization. And our manifesto calls for every organization and every party to be a member of IFC if their manifesto does not have a contradiction with the Freedom Congress. For example, no Islamist party could be a member of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, because we have in our manifesto full equality between men and women. This is a contradiction with all of the agendas of the Islamist parties. After one year, there are many members, some more nationalist, some more Islamic. And Worker-Communist Party of Iraq has a right to build its faction and work to bring the policy of the IFC to the left. And the nationalist faction can work to push the policy of the IFC to the right. Yes, I am a member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, but as leader of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, my duty is now to make a balance between right and the left in IFC.

BW: What groups would constitute the right of the IFC?

SA: If you look at the leadership of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, there are many people who are Muslims, who believe in Islam and pray, but also believe in the agenda of the IFC to establish a secular government. We also we have a Christian; and we have Communists and atheists. But all of the leadership believe in human identity, non-religious government, non-nationalist government, one Iraqi society with one identity—human identity.

BW: So the leadership is not entirely constituted by followers of the Worker-Communist Party, then?

SA: No, no. The Worker-Communist Party has a minority in the leadership, not a majority. The majority are independent people.

BW: And you returned to Iraq from Canada, to organize the IFC.

SA: Yes, in December 2005.

BW: Bringing the conversation back to where we began it: You say there’s a reluctance among activists in the United States to address the question of what happens after the occupation—that we see our responsibility ends with merely calling for bringing the troops home. And I think part of the reason for that is that Bush used this propaganda that we’re going to “liberate Iraq,” it was “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” So I think there is some legitimate wariness on the part of anti-war activists to the notion that it’s any of our business to “liberate” Iraq. And there’s a failure to draw a distinction between intervention to “liberate Iraq” (quote-unquote) and solidarity—trying to actually provide some human solidarity to the forces in Iraq that are trying to liberate their own country. You follow me? So this raises the question of what’s the best way to pose the issue so that people understand…

SA: Well, today I had an interview with the Boston Globe newspaper and they asked me the same question: if American forces go out, won’t there be chaos in Iraq? I said, “It is not chaos now?” It is chaos now. When you can be killed for 100 US dollars, this is not chaos? When people are killed just because of their [religious or ethnic] identity, this is not chaos? This is US propaganda. They ask me again, “You are against the political Islamist groups? If American forces were out of Iraq, then political Islam will get power.” I said, “Who brought political Islam in Iraq? Not the American forces, not the American occupation? Who put political Islam in power, who gave legitimacy to the Islamic constitution, who brought this order in which women and Sunni and Christians are second-class citizens?” If you go to the south of Iraq, controlled by the Shi’a militia, if you go to a government building in Basra, you see a big picture of Khamenei, the cleric of Iran. Music prohibited. Alcohol prohibited. Men and women doctors separated in the hospital. Jeans prohibited in Najaf. And if you go to the west of Iraq, the areas controlled by the Sunni militia, chewing gum prohibited…

BW: Chewing gum?

SA: Yeah, chewing gum prohibited.

BW: Why chewing gum?

SA: I don’t know why chewing gum prohibited, this is the rule of the Taliban, al-Zarqawi—the Sunnist group. And also, imposing the cover, the hejab, on women. And men must wear their beard a certain way. I don’t know if you remember my beard, but I have a short Western-style beard…

BW: You have sort of a goatee, as I recall it.

SA: Yes, and if they catch you shaving like that they will shave you with a stone and cut your head! This is going on every day in Ramadi. And they say if Americans go out, then political Islam gets power! Political Islam has power now! And the American administration has brought all these armed gangs to our society! If the American occupation leaves, first thing, we end the justification of the political Islamist groups to attack innocent people. When we end the occupation, they cannot justify their crimes. We can face all of these gangs. There is another perspective, another movement, that can rebuild society, that can establish security and stability, can establish a secular government. After 10 days in the United States, I believe if we show the American people this perspective, this alternative, we can stand together against the American administration and the propaganda of George Bush.

BW: Well, one response which I frequently get when I tell people about the existence of a civil resistance in Iraq, is: “Well, it’s a very nice idea, they’re very idealistic, but they’re doomed. And they have no chance to bring about any kind of change for the better because the ethnic and religious extremists are the people who have the power and have the guns.”

SA: Well, first thing. Till now, you know, the history of Iraqi society is a civilized one. And all of the crimes are happening by the sectarian parties, not by the ordinary people, and there is a very strong resistance against the ethnic conflict. But this is not a guarantee. I must tell you frankly, if a movement like IFC is not involved in this situation, Iraqi society could fall into a sectarian war and be like Kosovo and Rwanda and Lebanon. And we are facing a financial problem. All of the sectarian groups are supported by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. But our movement doesn’t get any support—only from the international human movement, from the anti-war movement.

You ask me, how to face the ethnic cleansing without the gun? I would like to tell you, every single house in Iraq has three guns and four guns. But if IFC were to mobilize these people to use their guns, [it will be] to prevent sectarian war, not to go to kill his neighbor because he is Shi’a or Sunna. We can defeat this ethnic cleansing. And now we have experience, organizing in many areas in Iraq, especially Baghdad and Kirkuk. We can organize and educate and mobilize people to never use those guns against their neighbor, never use them to kill innocent people because of their identity, only use them for self-defense. This is what we are doing in Iraq now.

BW: You acknowledge that there is at least a possibility that if the US leaves, things could continue to get worse?

SA: You know, if the American forces stay in Iraq, the situation is only going worse and worse…

BW: Right. I’m not making an argument for the US forces staying, but I think it’s important to recognize that at this point the situation is so bad, it could continue to deteriorate regardless of whether the US stays or the US goes. And I think activists in the United States—speaking as one—need to realize that our government’s actions created this ghastly situation and therefore our responsibilities to the Iraqi people do not end when the US occupation troops leave.

SA: This is I want to tell you. This is what pushed me to come to the United States. Our movement can prevent the sectarian war, can end the catastrophic situation, but we need support from the United States people; we need support from the West—all of the movements, the human movements, progressive movements in the world. We can do this; this is our job. We have a clear agenda, we have a clear program, and the people join us day-by-day, thousands of people. But we don’t have financial support, unfortunately, and we don’t have the moral support, unfortunately, from progressives outside Iraq. Nobody has heard until now that there is a secular movement in Iraq, a libertarian movement in Iraq. We want to tell the people of the United States there are people in Iraq thinking like them, thinking of a better life, thinking to build a democratic society, to give a human identity to this society. And they can trust this movement, we can do it if the occupation leaves of Iraq. Because, I say again, without the occupation, these sectarian gangs couldn’t continue their behavior. Because their justification would be gone.

BW: I understand it’s your special dream to establish a satellite television station, which would be a voice for secular progressive forces not only in Iraq but throughout the region.

SA: Yeah.

BW: And our friends in the Movement for Democratic Socialism in Japan have already started to raise money for this project.

SA: As you know—you participated in the international conference in solidarity with the IFC in Tokyo on January 28 to 29–a resolution was passed there to support this project, and our Japanese friends are working hard to achieve this. And I think we are going to open our satellite TV maybe in July or August…

BW: That soon? Of this year? Why, that’s a month and a half away!

SA: We got a very positive response from them and they told me just two days ago they want me to visit them in Japan after I finish my tour of the United States to have a meeting and arrange everything. We believe our movement is about to advance many steps forward. Because just as the people of the United States are victims of the media, victims of Fox News, so people in the Middle East are victims of al-Jazeera. But if we get this Iraqi Freedom Congress satellite TV, we can mobilize people. People in Iraq are waiting to hear another voice, a new voice, a human voice. Unfortunately, we have 12 satellite TV stations in Iraq, and they are all nationalist and ethnic TV, every day educating the people how to hate your neighbors because they are Sunni or Shi’a; how to hate your sister because she’s woman; how to educate your children to become suicide bombers. This is Iraqi satellite TV. If we get on satellite TV, there will a big change in our movement and our society.

BW: Samir Adil of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, I hope that the rest of your tour in the United States is very productive, and best of luck back in Iraq. And please, do stay in touch with us.

SA: Thank you very much.

Transcription by Melissa Jameson

RESOURCES:

Iraqi Freedom Congress (IFC)
http://www.ifcongress.com/

Letter from Samir Adil to the Leaders of the Southern Oil Trade Unions
http://www.ifcongress.com/English/News/mar06/union-leaders.htm

IFC statement to US anti-war forces
/node/1746

AFSC page on Samir Adil’s US tour
http://www.afsc.org/iraq/news/2006/04/beyond-dictators-and-occupation-way.htm

See also:

“HOUZAN MAHMOUD INTERVIEW:
The Iraqi Freedom Congress and the Civil Resistance,”
WW4 REPORT #120, April 2006
/node/1798

“Iraqi civil resistance leader confronts Richard Perle,” May 15
/node/1966

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingINTERVIEW: SAMIR ADIL 

ANATOMY OF THE WEST BANK “REALIGNMENT”

Strategic Pull-Back to Perpetuate Occupation

by David Bloom

The US government, with European urging, has requested that Israel give negotiation of a bilateral agreement with the Palestinian Authority one last shot. If by the end of the year the US agrees with Israel that no “suitable” Palestinian “partner for peace” exists, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s shaky Kadima-led government will continue the process of unilaterally separating Israelis from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and probably parts of occupied East Jerusalem. The process is expected to take four years.

During Olmert’s recent visit, US President George Bush praised his plan for unilateral separation from the Palestinians as a “bold move” for peace. However, before Olmert came to the US, Israel had to shelve its request for immediate approval for its separation plan, called at the time the “convergence” plan, along with a $10 billion request to finance the resettlement of thousands of settlers from one part of the occupied West Bank to another—that is, inside Israel’s yet-to-be completed separation barrier, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice at the Hague in July 2004. According to a May 15 report in the right-wing WorldnetDaily.com by Aaron Klein, the US balked at the price tag—so far.

The Numbers Game

Gideon Levy, writing in Ha’aretz May 28, says the number of settlers who would be removed from the eastern side of the barrier is now at most 40,000, down from the originally announced 70,000, in Olmert’s “convergence” plan. The updated plan also has a new euphemism—”realignment.” According to the Jerusalem Post on May 19, 70,000 is the number of settlers who currently live on the eastern or “Palestinian” side of the fence, suggesting some 30,000 settlers are to be left in place on the eastern side. These may become enclosed on the western “Israeli” side in extensions of the barrier yet to be announced. This trial balloon was floated before Olmert’s DC trip, by his settlements advisor, Kadima party Knesset member (MK) Uzi Keren, who posited in a May 29 Jerusalem Post article that approximately 55 settlements out of 262 total will be beyond the barrier, but only “20-30” will be removed.

There are an estimated 445,000 Israeli settlers—defined as any Israeli citizens living in occupied Palestinian territory, including within the illegally annexed East Jerusalem area—and their number has actually grown since approximately 9,000 were removed from the Gaza Strip last summer. Under the current plan, only 40,000 will actually be moved anywhere, and generally the Kadima-led government says they will be moved to the existing settlement “blocs” on the western side of the barrier—thus still within occupied territory. The Israeli army intends to still operate in the area where settlers are earmarked to be removed.

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem lists the number of Israeli government-“approved” settlements (all are illegal under international law) as 152. In addition, there are 105 “illegal” settlement “outposts,” according to a report by Israeli government-appointed attorney Talia Sasson. The Jerusalem Post on May 29 said 24 of these “illegal” outposts are slated for evacuation; the fate of the other 81 is to be “reconsidered” under the “realignment” plan. MK Keren said that the “Beit El group” of settlements, which include Ofra and Shilo, currently to the east of the planned route of the barrier, were likely to be included inside the fence. Even without these adjustments, according to B’Tselem, this would enclose 9.5% of the West Bank onto the “Israeli” side of the barrier. This figure does not include the Jordan Valley, itself about one third of the West Bank, but cut off from the rest of the Bank through a series of checkpoints (instead of a formal barrier), and it is unclear what its fate will be. It also does not include Hebron. The Jerusalem Post reported May 26 that Kadima’s MK Otniel Schneller, who is involved in formulating the “realignment” plan, proposes to include the Jewish settlements within Hebron, which will be linked up to the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba: “Hebron and Kiryat Arba are supposed to be part of the Israeli state,” said Schneller. 450 Jewish settlers living in the “H2,” or Israeli-controlled section of Hebron, have made life near impossible for the 20,000 Palestinian residents of the section, who are being effectively cleansed from the area through settler violence.

Even without Hebron or the Jordan Valley included, B’Tselem says 490,500 Palestinians will be directly affected by the barrier—42 communities, with 245,500 residents, including East Jerusalem, will be enclosed on the Israeli side. Fifty communities, with 244,000 residents, will be surrounded on at least three sides to the east of the barrier.

But the 9.5% figure—or the disingenuous 8% figure that David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East affairs (WINEP) cites, which does not include East Jerusalem, doesn’t tell the real story. Makovsky groans in WINEP position papers that the Palestinians will tend to look at the glass as 8% empty, instead of 92% full. The empty part of the glass—even if it ends up being only 8% empty—happens to contain the Palestinians’ most valuable farmland, and all of its water resources.

Control of Water

Under the Oslo peace accords, four-fifths of the West Bank’s water resources were left under Israeli control; the placement of the wall allows it to control 100%. For example, all seven wells belonging to the agricultural village of Jayyous, as well as 95% of its arable farmland, are on the western side of the wall. According to a report in New Scientist, Israel intends to supply West Bank Palestinians with desalinated water from the Mediterranean, under a huge project it intends to undertake, while keeping the lion’s share of the West Bank’s natural supplies for Israel and its settlements—with the entire project funded by the US. Thus the Palestinians, who sit on top of enough water to be self-sufficient, will be entirely dependent on Israel for water. Israel, in turn, has plans to become a “world water technology superpower.” Uri Yogev, chairman of the Waterfronts Israel Water Alliance, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post May 23: “Israel is in a good opening position for handling the international opportunity. The development of new technologies, alongside the growth of the water industry worldwide, will benefit the Israeli water market and create opportunities to develop an export-oriented industry.” Yogev estimates that within 10 years, Israel’s water industry exports will reach $10 billion, “and then Israel will be considered a world center of developing advanced water industries and technologies.”

The 9.5% figure includes the barrier’s encirclement of the western side the Jerusalem satellite-settlement of Ma’ale Adumim—which may reach to within 10 kilometers of the Jordan border, effectively cutting off the southern third of the West Bank from the rest, and sealing off East Jerusalem. Israel has proposed digging a tunnel underneath the “E-1 corridor” for the Palestinians, the area it intends to annex to connect Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem, linking the southern third of the West Bank with the rest. The Palestinian Authority has made it clear it considers the E-1 plan to be a “red line” which will prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

As of now, the Israeli Committee on Housing Demolitions (ICAHD) reports the bulldozers are not at work in the E-1 area, although settlers are completing a police station on behalf of the Israeli government. Two announced separate sections of the barrier enclosing the Jewish settlements of Ariel and Kedumim will cut off the northern third of the West Bank from the rest—and if Israel retains the road out to the Jordan valley, the West Bank will be effectively cantonized into at least three dis-contiguous sections, with continued Israeli control of Palestinian movement between the sections.

The Jordan Valley

The supposedly dovish Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, the new head of the Labor Party, has approved the expansion of four settlements, Ha’aretz reported on May 21. One of the expansions is to the Jordan Valley settlement of Maskiyot, where the government plans to move settlers evacuated last summer from the hard-line Shirat Hayam settlement in the Gaza Strip. StoptheWall.org reported May 29 that 3000 dunums (850 acres) of Palestinian lands in Wadi al-Maleh are being seized for Maskiyot’s expansion, and that 40 farming families are being uprooted. Opinions on both right and left by seasoned observers have tended to doubt Israel will hold onto to much, if any of the Jordan Valley in a final settlement, or unilateral Israeli diktat. Jeff Halper of ICAHD believed it was Ariel Sharon’s intention to build up the Jordan Valley and then throw it in as a grand gesture as part of a final “generous offer” to the Palestinian Authority.

The less fettered the access to Jordan, the more likely the state of Jordan can absorb the economic, demographic and political dislocations from what remains of the West Bank—just as Israel would like to see Egypt, with its semi-open border with Gaza, absorb pressures from the Gaza Strip. However, Israel has stepped up the pace of cementing control over the Jordan Valley since the start of the second Intifada. According to Amira Hass writing in Ha’aretz on Feb. 13, the Israeli military issued a March 2005 order banning all but the 50,000 Palestinian residents of the valley, and those working in Jewish settlements, from entering it. Since then, Israel has built permanent checkpoints on the main roads to block access and the IDF is conducting night-time raids to drive unregistered Palestinians out of the restricted area. This consolidation of the valley mirrors then-Defense Minister Yigal Allon’s 1967 plan to retain control of area.

Bi-Level Highways, Permanent Checkpoints

The most recently reported plan for the West Bank road system envisions a bi-level system of highways, with Israeli motorists driving above and Palestinians below, for the 20% of West Bank roads used by Israelis. Six of twelve planned interchanges for this system have already been built. In this plan, Palestinians would not be forbidden from traveling on any West Bank roads, but the design would encourage them to use the roads intended for traffic to and from their population centers.

Israel is building 11 permanent checkpoints throughout the West Bank, some designed to be international crossings. The Qalandia checkpoint, which separates Ramallah from East Jerusalem, sports a sign written in Hebrew, Arabic and English, reading “The Hope of Us All,” with a picture of a flower. A group of Jewish anti-occupation activists spray-painted “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work brings freedom) on the sign, which the Nazi regime posted on the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The group, which calls itself, “Jews Against Genocide,” also painted “Manifest Destiny” on the sign. US diplomats accepted an Israeli offer to tour the new Qalandia complex, now called “Atarot crossing” by Israel, but European diplomats refused. Along with the permanent crossing Israel built between East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the Atarot crossing interferes with the free flow of goods and people across the Ramallah-Jerusalem-Bethlehem axis that accounted for approximately 40% of the Palestinian economy five years ago, before the second Intifada erupted.

The northern portion of the separation barrier, from Jenin to Ramallah; the southern portion that divides the Bethlehem area from Israel’s Gush Etzion settlement bloc; and the retention of the Jordan Valley, separates the rest of the West Bank from nearly all its arable farmland—thus depriving a future Palestinian state of any ability to be self-sustaining. The barrier has already promoted a migration away from farming areas towards urban centers further from the barrier.

The Industrial Agenda

Included as part of “realignment” is a plan to build industrial zones on the farmland being confiscated from Palestinians. Two years after these plans were announced, not one resident of the encircled city of Qalqilya has accepted “shares” in the zone Israel intends to build on lands belonging to Qalqilya on the other side of the barrier, where Israeli capital can exploit Palestinian labor without Palestinians entering Israel proper. If the idea was to keep the disenfrancised Palestinians from revolting, that may turn out to be a bust—the Erez and Karni industrial zones at the edge of the Gaza Strip are subject to repeated attack by the Palestinian resistance, and Kadima MK (and former prime minister) Shimon Peres announced May 24 that plans for additional industrial zones—to have been run jointly with the Palestinian Authority—on the boundary with Gaza have been cancelled due to security concerns.

That the motivation for the realignment plan is political and not security-related is confirmed by Martin van Creveld, widely considered the dean of Israeli military historians. When this reporter asked if there was any security justification for placing the barrier four miles from the Green Line in Jayyous, Van Creveld replied: “In my view, as an Israeli who is concerned about his country’s future, the wall should run along the 1948 border. But better any wall than none.”

In his book, Defending Israel: A Controversial Plan Towards Peace (St. Martin’s Press, 2004), Van Creveld concludes that “seen from a security point of view, indeed, the entire map of settlement hardly makes any sense at all.”

RESOURCES:

“The Choice Is Now,” Angela Godfrey, Challenge magazine, May 29
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article4750.shtml

“Countdown to Apartheid,” Jeff Halper, Counterpunch, May 26
http://www.counterpunch.org/halper05252006.html

“Israel Lays Claim to Palestine’s Water,” New Scientist, May 27, 2004
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn5037

For a map of the Allon plan, see:
http://www.mideastweb.org/alonplan.htm

See also:

“Bitter Fruits Of Jordan Valley Apartheid,”
by Sarkis Pogossian
WW4 REPORT #118, February 2006
/node/1533

“Update From Jayyous: Israeli Settlement Seizes Palestinian Farmland,”
by David Bloom
WW4 REPORT #105 December 2004
/105/palestine/jayyous

“Israel to UN: Drop Dead!”
by David Bloom
WW4 REPORT, #101, August 2004
http://ww3report.com/hague.html

“Israeli army attacks protest, girls school,” May 16
/node/1976

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingANATOMY OF THE WEST BANK “REALIGNMENT” 

THE BATTLE OF IDEAS IN LATIN AMERICA

And the New Challenge to Global Capital

by Peter Hudis

At a moment when the Bush administration is facing a quagmire in Iraq and growing opposition to its policies at home, Latin America may not appear to be its central area of concern. Yet events there are becoming as worrisome to it as those in the Middle East.

A left-wing government under Evo Morales took power in Bolivia in December; a radical who favors nationalizing U.S. mining interests, Ollanta Humala, is hoping to become the president of Peru in April; and a left-of-center government may take power in Mexico if Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the PRD wins its presidential election in July. Meanwhile Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s effort to create a “counter-hegemonic pole” to the U.S. is becoming an increasing irritant to the Bush administration.

The move to the Left by Latin America’s electorate is only one reflection of a continent in upheaval. In Ecuador the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities last month called for a nationwide uprising to protest a possible free-trade agreement with the U.S. In Colombia, the government is being sharply criticized for signing a free trade agreement with the U.S. in late February that may throw 2.5 million Colombians out of work once tariffs are lifted on U.S. agricultural imports.

From Mexico to the southern cone, Latin Americans are expressing disgust with decades of U.S.-sponsored neoliberal restructuring that has sunk 44% of Latin Americans into poverty and made income disparities between rich and poor even worse than ever.

BUSH’S FAKE TALK OF “DEMOCRACY”

That the Bush administration’s policy towards Latin America is coming apart at the seams was seen last fall when its Free Trade Agreement of the Americas died in the face of withering attacks by Chavez and other Latin American leaders. Although the U.S. since then has tried to promote an Andean Free Trade Agreement, Morales’ election has left that in tatters as well. The administration is responding to this situation by accusing its critics of being “undemocratic.”

In February Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said of Chavez: “He’s a person who was elected legally just as Hitler was elected legally and then consolidated power and is now, of course, working with Castro and Morales. It concerns me.” Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte (ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s when the U.S.-supported government murdered thousands of people in Central America) stated a few weeks later that Chavez is a threat because he is “diminishing freedom of the press” in Venezuela.

Aside from the fact that these advocates of domestic spying, torture, and the use of death squads against liberatory forces in Latin America are hardly in a position to lecture others about “democracy,” one thing that cannot be said of Chavez is that he has ended freedom of expression. The open and vibrant debate that is taking place in Venezuela over whether or not his “Bolivarian Revolution” is a viable path to the future is proof of it.

A lively debate is in fact taking place in Latin America today among democratic grassroots groups of indigenous peoples, feminists, workers, national minorities and youth. There are few places to get a better sense of the battle of ideas taking place there than at the World Social Forum (WSF), held in Caracas, Venezuela in late January.


THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

This year’s WSF in Caracas, attended by 80,000, took place in a radically different context from last year’s gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Last year’s event was held in the midst of growing mass disillusionment with the accommodationist stance of Lula da Silva’s Workers‚ Party (PT). Although the PT came to power through decades of struggles by movements-from-below of metal workers, feminists, Christian base communities, and the Landless Peasants’ Movement (MST), Lula has adhered to the neoliberal policies that the masses expected him to challenge.

No mass upsurge preceded Chavez’s rise to power. He became president through a national election in 1999 after having earlier staged an abortive military coup. Since then, his promotion of what he calls “Bolivarian Socialism” has created an opening that many in Venezuela are using to promote radical demands, at the same time that many questions are being asked about where his “revolution from above” is headed.

The Venezuelan political context directly impacted this year’s WSF. It had a larger presence of traditional Marxist-Leninist tendencies than previously. For the first time 850 participants attended from Cuba.

Most important, whereas at previous WSFs it was rare to hear extended discussion of “socialism” let alone a serious analysis of what constitutes a non-capitalist society, this year’s WSF was dominated by much discussion of socialism—in part because Chavez has anointed the “Bolivarian Revolution” as a project of “socialist reconstruction.”

The question is what is meant by such discussions of socialism and whether the radicalization that characterizes Venezuela today will accentuate or impede the search for a viable alternative to capitalism.

BATTLE OF IDEAS IN VENEZUELA

Chavez’s attraction for many inside and outside of Venezuela lies in his attacks on Bush and in his effort to funnel Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs.

Chavez is using a fourfold increase in oil revenue since 1999 to forge a “counter-hegemonic” pole to the U.S. He is selling oil at below market prices to several friendly Latin American countries. He has floated bonds to help Argentina pay off its debt to the International Monetary Fund. And he is also trading oil for commodities (like soybeans) as part of an effort to curry favor with Morales’ Bolivia.

His ambitions extend even further. He is forging close relations with China and talks of using its technological expertise to bypass Venezuela’s dependence on the U.S. He is also trying to forge a “strategic alliance” with Iran. Venezuela is one of only a handful of countries that opposes placing restrictions on Iran’s access to nuclear technology. This is occurring at the moment when Iran’s right-wing president is cracking down on its labor movement, as seen in the arrest last month of 1,000 striking bus drivers.

Inside Venezuela, Chavez is solidifying his mass support by funneling much of the nation’s oil revenue into social programs. This year 41% of Venezuela’s budget is earmarked for spending for health care, literacy, housing, and other needs. It represents the largest and most comprehensive program of social spending in Latin America.

He has also set up a dozen “missions” that provide emergency health, education, and welfare as well as paid subsidies to the poor. The missions are financed out of the growing oil revenue under a separate budget subject to Chavez’s personal discretion.

While many at the WSF hailed these moves as proof that Venezuela is moving in a “socialist” direction, such policies have done little so far to dent the nation’s massive unemployment. Only 37,000 new jobs have been created in the past year. And many in the missions complain of never getting paid for their work or being paid only occasionally.

Many working people also complain about growing bureaucracy and the risk of one-man rule. Chavez’s tendency to appear on television several evenings a week to give four-hour speeches has many critiquing him for a cult of personality and “Bonapartism.”

The most applauded as well as contentious aspect of Venezuela concerns the explosive growth in cooperatives. Thousands have sprung up, encompassing everything from food vendors to health care providers to efforts to form cooperatives in industrial enterprises.

These cooperatives, which are also funded by the state from oil revenues, are touted by the government and its supporters as a way to “popularize capital.” As one official put it, “The principal idea is that cooperatives or development zones should integrate with other cooperatives to add value through processing and transformation” while avoiding intermediaries such as foreign corporations or private businesses.

Most cooperatives are contracted to sell goods to the government, which gives it a significant role in determining which ones thrive and which fail. At the same time, many socially conscious activists are creating nonprofit cooperatives that provide health care, housing, and social assistance to raise the standard of living of Venezuelans.

Thus the situation in Venezuela is highly contradictory. While some programs being enacted from above have a bureaucratic or state-capitalist stamp to them, large numbers of people are making use of the present situation to press for radical changes on their own.

WHAT IS SOCIALISM?

Such distinctions often did not get made in discussions at the WSF, however, where enthusiasm over Chavez’s specific policies tended to trump serious analysis of them.

Even government ministers admit that some enterprises are being turned into cooperatives “not with the intention of transferring power to their workers, but to evade taxes from which cooperatives are exempt.” Minister for Popular Economy ElĂ­as Jaua stated: “There are many cooperatives that are registered as such on paper, but which actually have a boss who is paid more, salaried workers, and unequal distribution of work and income.” Many workers in the cooperatives earn less than the minimum wage, $188 a month, as they are not subject to national labor laws.

Yet many at the WSF argued that capitalist relations will erode as “social ownership of the means of production” and the elimination of private competition take hold. Clearly there is a growing tendency in today’s movements against global capital to return to more traditional approaches that focus on nationalized property and statification of natural resources as the solution to the problems of neoliberalism.

There is nothing wrong with demanding that global capital be prevented from continuing to rob the natural and human resources of Latin American nations. Just as it is vital for workers to demand a more equitable redistribution of the surplus value that is robbed from their hides each day at work, so it is important for the nations of the South to demand a redistribution of wealth from global capital.

Yet by the same token, just as a worker who obtains a wage increase still lives in a capitalist environment in which those gains can be readily taken away, a popular regime that demands a redistribution of the surplus value robbed from its people by multinational corporations still exists in the context of the world market and capitalist social relations.

In a word, socialism is not the same as nationalized industry and property—even when a “co-management scheme” operates between workers and the state.

As Raya Dunayevskaya put it: “Even where a state like Cuba is protected from the worst whims of the world market and where state planning is total, the price of sugar is still dependent upon the socially necessary labor time established by world production. In a word, to plan or not plan is not the decisive question. The state of technological development and the accumulated capital are the determinants, the only determinants when the masses are not allowed their self-activity.” (Philosophy and Revolution, p. 225).

WHICH WAY AHEAD?

The turn back to statism in much of the movement against global capital is by no means complete, including in Venezuela. Independent movements are gaining strength there, such as an abortion rights movement.

The growth of the women’s movement explains why Venezuela is the only Latin America country with a constitution that recognizes housework as economically productive activity. Housewives are now able to obtain social security benefits.

However, women are still under-represented in the government. Only 12% of the members of the National Assembly are women. Demands are being raised that 50% of its seats be reserved for women candidates.

Many are probing into a genuine alternative that avoids the dead ends of both neoliberalism and state-capitalism. This was reflected in an “Alternative Social Forum” held at the same time as the WSF by Venezuelan anarchists. Its sponsors stated at the forum: “In the last four years Venezuela has undergone a polarization induced by the top players vying for power against the new Chavez bureaucracy that has supplanted the previous one. Part of the demobilization of the social movements answers to this logic: having taken part in, and assumed blindly, the agenda imposed from above, postponing their own claims. Another chapter belongs to the expectations created by some of the social activists faced with a ‘progressive and left’ government, spokesmen of a discourse that assumes the language of the movements but whose policies go in the opposite direction.”

Clearly an important debate is going on in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America over the direction of the movements against global capital—even if the initiative for now rests with those favoring a return to more statist tendencies of the old Left.

One reason for this shift is that while the movement against global capital has raised the important slogan “another world is possible,” it has tended to avoid an in-depth discussion of exactly what constitutes a society that negates and transcends capitalism.

Reticence about imposing programs and devising “blueprints for the future,” both of which have been integral to the anti-vanguardist nature of the movements against global capital since their inception in the Seattle protests of 1999, is understandable. Yet no movement can live forever on generalizations and good intentions. If anti-vanguardists fail to spell out in precise and specific terms the basic features of a socialist society that transcends the parameters of value production, other less liberatory tendencies will surely do so instead. This is what we are now witnessing, as many who want to know “what is socialism” find that the more traditional, statist leftists are the ones who have a ready-made answer to their questions, albeit a superficial one.

The debate is by no means finished, yet it will not be brought to a successful finish unless we concretize the creativity of cognition by spelling out “what happens after” the revolution, beginning right here and now.

——

This piece originally appeared in News & Letters, Chicago-based journal of Marxism-Humanism, April-May 2006
http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2006/April-May/Lead_April-May_06.htm

RESOURCES:

“Tehran bus strikers appeal for solidarity,” News & Letters, April-May 2006 http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2006/April-May/Tehran_April-May_06.htm

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE BATTLE OF IDEAS IN LATIN AMERICA 

CENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA EXPANDS, DEATH SQUADS BACK

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

HONDURAS, NICARAGUA IN CAFTA

After a number of delays, the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) went into effect in Honduras and Nicaragua on April 1. Honduran president Manuel Zelaya held a ceremony with US ambassador Charles Ford, who acknowledged that “changes generate fear” but insisted: “[W]e have confidence in the future.” Nicaraguan president Enrique Bolanos marked the occasion by certifying the first shipment of Nicaraguan beans–a container reportedly valued at $20,000–for export to the US under the new agreement. The ceremony was held in El Crucero, a town south of Managua, with US ambassador Paul Trivelli participating. Nicaraguan government sources predicted that DR-CAFTA will increase Nicaraguan exports by 20%; last year Nicaragua exported goods worth $291.7 million to the US and imported $524.8 million, with a net deficit of $233.1 million. (El Diario-La Prensa, April 2 from AP)

Thousands of Honduran doctors, teachers, students, workers and indigenous people marched in Tegucigalpa on March 31 to protest the planned DR-CAFTA implementation. The marchers passed in front of the US embassy and the presidential offices chanting slogans against Zelaya and the US government. “The treaty was designed to benefit big business and the rich,” union leader Juan Barahona told the demonstrators. “[F]oreign investment, which the trade accord is supposed to attract, is the hook…[but] investors have never helped the country; on the contrary, they’ve looted it throughout our history.” The current unemployment rate in Honduras is 46%, while 71% of the country’s 7 million inhabitants live in poverty. The protest was organized by the Popular Bloc and the National Resistance Coordinating Committee. (ED-LP, April 1)

DR-CAFTA, a trade bloc incorporating Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the US, was supposed to go into effect on Jan. 1. Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly has still not approved the accord; the other countries have ratified DR-CAFTA, but the legislatures failed to enact laws that the US insisted were necessary for full compliance. El Salvador passed the legislation in time for DR-CAFTA to take effect there on March 1.

Nicaragua’s National Assembly cleared the way for the DR-CAFTA implementation when it voted unanimously on March 21 for a series of reforms to existing laws: the Patent Law, the Law of Brands and Other Distinctive Signs, and the Special Law of Crime Against International Trade or International Investment. (Diario el Mundo, San Salvador, March 22)

The vote in the National Assembly was made possible by the decision of the second largest bloc, the deputies from the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), to reverse their previous opposition to DR-CAFTA. On March 15 the Sandinista Assembly, the party’s official decision-making body, voted to “promote proposals in favor of the Nicaraguans in all those reform laws currently being promoted by the government for the implementation of CAFTA.” At the same time, the Sandinista Assembly insisted that “national production should be the primary axis for the development of a sustainable and self-sustainable economy” and that DR-CAFTA “represents a serious threat to our natural resources, to the producers, workers and other Nicaraguan sectors.” (Associated Press, March 16)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 2

GUATEMALA: MURDERS FOLLOW UPRISING CALL

Four heavily armed men dressed in black murdered Tz’utujil Maya indigenous leader Antonio Ixbalan Cali and his wife, Maria Petzey Cool, on April 5 in their home in the community of Valparaiso, Chicacao municipality, in the Guatemalan department of Suchitepequez. Ixbalan was a local leader of the National Indigenous and Campesino Coordinating Committee (CONIC) and president of the Farmers Association of Santiago Atitlan. The Valparaiso community is composed of 44 families that carried out a successful struggle for their land, formerly a private ranch; they were granted the legal title on Feb. 8, 2002.

The murders came within days of two other apparently political killings. On April 2 Meregilda Suchite, a community leader and member of the local Women’s Network in Olopa, Chiquimula municipality, in the Ch’orti region, was shot six times and attacked with a machete. Suchite’s husband said police failed to arrest the murderer, Cesar Perez Gonzalez. On April 6 two men on a motorcycle gunned down legislative deputy Mario Ronaldo Pivaral Montenegro, of the center-right National Hope Unity (UNE), in front of the party’s headquarters in Guatemala City. He had gone outside to answer a call on his cell phone. (Guatemala Hoy, April 6, 7)

National CONIC leaders tied the murders of Ixbalan and Petzey to a call they issued hours earlier on April 5 for a “National Mayan and Popular Uprising.” In a press conference CONIC leaders and leaders of the National Teachers Assembly (ANM) announced the uprising as they broke off talks with the government of President Oscar Berger. “The response to our demands mocks the Maya and popular movement,” said CONIC general coordinator Pedro Esquina. Another CONIC leader, Juan Tiney, projected actions starting after Easter weekend ends on April 16 that could include taking over farms, blocking highways, and holding assemblies and demonstrations. “They are forcing us to choose the route of popular struggle,” he said. “Ecuador and Bolivia are examples of the results that can occur, and we believe that in Guatemala this is also possible. Everything CONIC says, it does.” The CONIC leaders called on all Mayans who hold government posts to resign and join the Mayan people’s struggle, including human rights activists Rosalina Tuyuc and Rigoberta Menchu.

The movement’s demands include the resolution of more than 100 land conflicts, forgiveness of debts to the government for land awarded to campesinos, the suspension of mining concessions, a law on nationality and indigenous peoples, and an end to the effort to fire ANM leader Joviel Acevedo from his teaching job. (Guatemala Hoy, April 6, 7; Prensa Libre, Guatemala, April 6)

The call for an uprising followed a demonstration by thousands of campesinos and others in Guatemala City on March 30, largely organized by CONIC and ANM around the same demands. March 27 and 28 had brought road blockades by people whose homes and land had been damaged by hurricane Stan in October, along with demonstrations against DR-CAFTA. (La Semana en Guatemala, April 4)

On March 29, in the midst of these mobilizations, army troops, reportedly backed by tanks and helicopters, violently evicted some 310 members of the Worker and Campesino Labor Federation (FESOC) from land they were occupying in the community of La Bendicion, Flores municipality, Peten department. The campesinos were waiting for the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP) to comply with its commitment to relocate them on other suitable land. The troops reportedly injured campesinos and burned their homes and possessions. (Amnesty International Urgent Action, April 3)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 9


HONDURAS: GENERAL LOSES IN U.S. RIGHTS SUIT

In a ruling issued late on March 31 in Miami, US district Judge Joan Lenard ordered a former Honduran military officer, Lt. Col. Juan Lopez Grijalba, to pay $47 million to torture survivors and relatives of victims murdered by troops Lopez Grijalba commanded in the early 1980s. The plaintiffs, who now live in the US, were Gloria and Oscar Reyes, a married couple abducted and tortured by soldiers in and around Tegucigalpa in 1982; Zenaida Velasquez, the sister of Manfredo Velasquez, a university student leader murdered in 1981; and the two sisters of university student Hans Madisson, mutilated and decapitated in 1982. During this period, Lopez Grijalba headed the National Investigations Directorate (DNI) and the death squad known as Battalion 316. Judge Lenard ruled that Lopez Grijalba was responsible for the actions of the troops, and that he was present and giving orders during the raid in which Madisson and Gloria and Oscar Reyes were captured.

The monetary award was mostly symbolic, since Lopez Grijalba is living in Honduras and apparently has no assets in the US. He moved to the Miami area in 1998; US immigration authorities arrested him in April 2002, and he was deported to Honduras on Oct. 21, 2004 for his participation in human rights abuses.

But Matt Eisenbrandt, litigation director for the San Francisco-based Center for Justice & Accountability (CJA), which brought the suit in 2002 on behalf of the plaintiffs, said the decision might advance a case the Honduran human rights prosecutor opened against Lopez Grijalba when he was deported. “A judgment in the United States can carry a lot of weight in that country,” Eisenbrandt said. Bertha Oliva, coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras, called the decision “historic” and said it “obligates the Honduran authorities to review their role as fixers and builders of impunity.” (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, April 4; Miami Herald, April 4; La Nacion, Costa Rica, April 3; CJA press release, April 3)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 9


EL SALVADOR: FEW CHANGES IN ELECTIONS

March 12 elections in El Salvador for municipal governments, the National Assembly and the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) failed to show major shifts in the strengths of the main parties. According to the final results presented by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) on March 18, the governing right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) won 34 deputies’ seats in the 84-member National Assembly, followed by the leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) with 32. The right-wing Party of National Conciliation (PCN) won 10 seats, the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) won six and the social democratic National Change (CD) came in last with two. No party has the 43 votes necessary for a majority, and ARENA will have to bloc with the FMLN to get the 56 votes required for constitutional changes or major fiscal decisions.

ARENA and the FMLN both gained slightly from their totals in 2003, when the FMLN came in first with 31 seats, followed by ARENA with 27.

ARENA won 147 municipal races, followed by the FMLN with 52 municipal governments, the PCN with 39, the PDC with 14 and the CD with two; various coalitions won in the remaining eight municipalities. The FMLN held on to San Salvador, which it has governed since 1997, but slipped in other large cities, winning in just two of the other 14 departmental capitals; ARENA won seven departmental capitals. FMLN supporters charged ARENA officials with fraud and intimidation. In the close San Salvador race, the government initially indicated that ARENA candidate Rodrigo Samayoa had won. Some 20,000 FMLN supporters marched in San Salvador on March 16 to protest alleged irregularities; the police dispersed the marchers with tear gas and rubber bullets. In the end the TSE declared FMLN candidate Violeta Menjivar the winner, by just 44 votes.

ARENA and the FMLN each won eight seats in PARLACEN; the PCN won two and the PDC and CD two each. (Terra March 19; La Nacion, Costa Rica, March 19; La Prensa Grafica, San Salvador, March 19; El Diario de Hoy, San Salvador, March 20; Adital, Brazil, March 17)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 2

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“El Salvador: No Business as Usual as CAFTA Takes Effect,” by Paul Pollack. WW4 REPORT #120
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ECUADOR: STUDENT KILLED IN TRADE PROTESTS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Ecuadoran secondary school student Jhonny Montesdeoca was killed on April 6 during demonstrations in Cuenca to oppose signing the Andean Free Trade Agreement (known as TLC in Spanish) with the US and to demand the expulsion of the US-based company Occidental Petroleum (OXY). Montesdeoca died of a gunshot wound in his back. Another secondary school student, Javier Loja, was hospitalized after being shot in the foot. Students carried out violent mobilizations all day in Cuenca, according to the Ecuadoran media, especially near Cuenca State University; the two students were shot in that area.

Ten students were arrested in a demonstration the Popular Front Against the TLC held in Quito on the same day. Police agents used tear gas against the protesters as they tried to gather at the headquarters of the Ecuadoran Social Security Institute (IESS). The General Union of Workers of Ecuador (UGTE) charged that police agents beat a local union president, Jose Chusin, on the head with nightsticks. (Adital, April 10)

The demonstrations by students and others followed a wave of massive protests against the TLC led by indigenous organizations from March 13 to March 25. A recent opinion survey published in the Ecuadoran media found that 62.40% of those polled considered the TLC harmful to the country; 29.60% felt it would be beneficial. (Adital, March 28)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 16

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VENEZUELA: PEASANTS MARCH, U.S. HOLDS WAR GAMES

from Weekly News Update on the Americas


U.S. NAVY HOLDS CARIBBEAN WAR GAMES

The US Navy’s George Washington aircraft carrier strike group entered the Caribbean the week of April 10 to lead large-scale joint military exercises that were scheduled to end in May. According to the Miami-based US Southern Command, the deployment is part of “Operation Partnership of the Americas” and focus on threats such as drugs and human trafficking. The group–which includes, in addition to the 1,100-foot aircraft carrier USS George Washington, the missile-armed cruiser USS Monterey, the destroyer USS Stout and the frigate USS Underwood, along with 71 airplanes–made its first visits on April 10-11, when the Stout stopped in Curacao and the Underwood docked in Cartagena, Colombia. The exercises were to include a visit to St. Martin on April 14; Honduras, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba and St. Christopher (St. Kitts) and Nevis are also on the itinerary.

The militaries of Honduras, Colombia and the Dominican Republic are participating, along with militaries from countries belonging to the British Commonwealth and those affiliated with France and the Netherlands. The exercises, the first in the Caribbean since 2003, are taking place close to Venezuela; Curacao and Trinidad and Tobago are just miles off the Venezuelan coast. Rear Admiral Joseph Kilkenny told the Miami daily El Nuevo Herald that the US had invited Venezuela to participate in the exercises but hadn’t received a response. “I don’t have the invasion of any country on my agenda,” he said. On April 9 top officials from the US embassy in Caracas met with Southern Command chief Gen. Bantz Craddock aboard the George Washington. According to El Nuevo Herald, US ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield was present. (ENH, April 11; El Tiempo, Bogota, April 8; Sun Sentinel, South Florida, April 11)

(The exercises coincide with the US military’s “Safe Horizons 2006” operation in the Dominican Republic, which Dominican activists have charged is connected to plans for aggression against Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela)

CARACAS: CAMPESINOS MARCH, AGAIN

More than 1,500 Venezuelan campesinos rallied in front of the vice president’s offices in Caracas on March 27 to protest the government’s failure to comply with its prior agreements with the Ezequiel Zamora National Campesino Front (FNCEZ). Among other demands, the FNCEZ is pressing for investigations into the murders of campesino activists, as well as compensation for the victims’ families. In a communique, the campesinos warned the “traitorous, corrupt, pro-imperialist right wing” not to try to confuse or manipulate the “legitimate struggles of Bolivar’s people,” since “our protest is profoundly inspired by the Bolivarian revolution, not against it, and is linked to its historic leader and commander of the revolution, [Venezuelan president] Hugo Chavez.”

The FNCEZ also had a warning for the US: “We are also mobilizing to tell the world and the Venezuelan people that the homeland of Bolivar doesn’t sell out, it defends itself, and in the face of the imperial invasion threat thousands of us campesinos will be here waiting for them with our dignity and fists intact.” (FNCEZ Communique, March 27 via Servicio Prensa Rural)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 16


ANDEAN TRADE BLOC COLLAPSING?

On April 22 Venezuela officially began the process of disengaging from the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), a trade bloc formed in 1969 to strengthen ties between Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Light Industry and Trade Minister Maria Cristina Iglesias said the process would take five years and that relations between the countries would remain stable while Venezuela reviewed the mechanisms for leaving the group.

In an April 22 letter to the CAN, Venezuelan foreign relations minister Ali Rodriguez Araque cited the free trade accords (TLC) Peru and Colombia signed with the US, in December and February respectively. According to Iglesias, US products may enter Venezuela through Colombia, disrupting Venezuela’s plans for internal development. Left-populist president Hugo Chavez Frias has charged that US products are underpriced because they are “super-subsidized.” Evo Morales, the leftist president of Bolivia, seconded Chavez’s charges on April 19 while in Asuncion, where he and Chavez were meeting with Paraguay president Nicanor Duarte and Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez. The accord between Colombia and the US “has taken away our trade in Bolivian soybeans,” Morales said. In CAN “there are some nations that have become instruments of disintegration.”

Leaving CAN will put some strain on Venezuela’s economy, but Chavez is looking to increasing trade with Mercosur, the trade bloc formed by Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay and Uruguay. In the Asuncion meeting, Chavez said Mercosur must “avoid” CAN’s fate. Chavez is promoting a Latin American trade bloc–the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)–in opposition to the US-proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA in English and ALCA in Spanish). (El Barlovento, Mexico, April 19; Rodriguez letter to CAN, April 22, posted on Colombia Indymedia; Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, April 22; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, April 23)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 23

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THE PROGRESSIVE MANDATE IN LATIN AMERICA

Bolivia, Evo Morales and A Continent’s Left Turn

by Benjamin Dangl & Mark Engler

On January 21, on a hill outside of La Paz, a traditional ceremony marked both a major shift in Bolivian politics and a milestone for the growing New Left in Latin America. At Tiwanaku, a site of pre-Incan ruins significant to the country’s indigenous populations, Evo Morales, barefoot and dressed in a red tunic, received a silver and gold staff from leaders of the Aymara people.

It was the first time in 500 years that this ritual transfer of leadership had been performed in Bolivia and it came just a day before Morales, former president of the coca-growers’ union and the leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party, was officially inaugurated president of Bolivia.

In December Morales, who had campaigned on a platform championing indigenous rights and denouncing economic neoliberalism, won a landslide victory. He bested rivals, including Jorge Quiroga, a Washington favorite who had served as president of Bolivia from 2001 to 2002, finishing the term of past dictator Hugo Banzer. With a surprising 54 percent of the vote in a multi-party race, Morales not only secured the margin needed to avoid a run-off vote, he obtained the largest mandate ever given a president in Bolivian history.

Yet Morales’ hardest work may have just begun. He takes power as the first indigenous president in a country where nearly two-thirds of the population identifies with the Aymara, Quechua, or other indigenous groups. The same fraction of the country lives in poverty and the divide between rich and poor closely follows racial lines. Morales has announced plans to nationalize the country’s gas reserves, rewrite the constitution in a popular assembly, redistribute land to poor farmers, and change the rules of the U.S.-led war on drugs in Bolivia. If he helps spur on the radical change that his social movement base demands, he will face pressure from corporate investors and from the White House. If he chooses a more moderate path, Bolivia’s social movements have pledged to organize the same type of strikes and protests that have ousted two previous presidents in the past two years.

As Morales faces these trials in the coming months, he will do so in the context of a South America that has moved increasingly leftward. His administration joins left-of-center governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. These countries offer diverse suggestions for what progressive governments can accomplish and how social movements and financial elites might respond.

The Bolivian Moment

Morales begins his presidency following several years of social upheaval in Bolivia, fueled by a rejection of two decades of corporate globalization that deepened poverty and exacerbated inequality in the country. In April 2000 the residents of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city, organized street protests and blockades against water privatization pushed by the World Bank and carried out by the Bechtel Corporation. In February 2003, 34 Bolivians were killed during protests against an income tax hike imposed at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In part of what became known as Bolivia’s “gas war,” over 60 people were killed in protests in October 2003 against further privatization of the country’s natural gas and a plan to export the resource through Chile.

At that time, Bolivia’s indigenous majority widely referred to the sitting president—multi-millionaire Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada—as “el gringo” because he was raised in the United States and spoke Spanish with an accent. As president, Sanchez de Lozada, a leader of one of Bolivia’s leading right-wing parties—the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement—stood as a long-time proponent of trade liberalization and IMF-recommended structural adjustment.

After gas war demonstrators were killed, street protests began calling for Sanchez de Lozada’s resignation. He was ultimately ousted on October 19, 2003. Vice President Carlos Mesa took his place, as stipulated in the country’s constitution. Under Mesa, a referendum on Bolivia’s gas resources was held in July 2004. The measure did not include the option of nationalizing the country’s natural gas reserves, as demanded by the social movements. As a result, protests continued. In March 2005, amid further mass demonstrations, Mesa left office, claiming he was incapable of governing such a tumultuous country.

Among the presidential candidates that ran in the December 2005 election, Morales had the broadest ties to the country’s social movements, having built Bolivia’s coca growers’ union into one of the most prominent social movements in the country. Yet despite his history as an organizer, Morales played a limited role in the popular uprisings of recent years. During the height of the gas war in 2003, for example, when mobilizations took to the streets to demand the nationalization of the country’s gas reserves, Morales attended meetings in Geneva on parliamentary politics. Morales’ actions were aimed at generating broad support among diverse sectors of society, including the middle class and those who did not fully support the tactics of protest groups. This strategy, combined with directing the momentum of social movements into the electoral realm, helped contribute to his victory on December 18.

For their part, social movements supported Morales as the best option in the electoral contest. However, their allegiance to the state remains limited. As Oscar Olivera, a key leader in the revolt against the privatization of Cochabamba’s water in 2000, explained in a recent interview with Uruguayan political scientist Raul Zibechi, “We are creating a movement, a nonpartisan social-political front that addresses the most vital needs of the people through a profound change in power relations, social relations, and the management of water, electricity, and garbage.”

“The [54 percent] isn’t a blank check, it’s a loan,” said political analyst Helena Argirakis to Los Tiempos, Cochabamba’s daily newspaper. Her colleague Fernando Garcia added, “The social movements’ support of Morales will always be conditional.”

At the same time, Morales faces severe external pressure if he antagonizes foreign creditors. Conservatives in the United States have been horrified by the success of Morales, whom they regularly slander as a narco-terrorist because of his support of coca growers. (Although coca can be used to produce cocaine, the natural plant leaves are used to make tea, have traditional importance for the country’s indigenous people, and are almost impossible to abuse in their natural form.) Bolivia owes large debts to international financial institutions, including the World Bank, the IMF, and the Inter-American Development Bank. This gives the U.S. an effective veto over future loans to the country and thus the potential to plunge Bolivia’s shaky economy into economic crisis. Domestic right-wing factions, centered in the wealthy province of Santa Cruz (the heartland of Bolivia’s energy industry), are threatening to secede if resource extraction is nationalized. These conservatives are ready to side with the U.S. and the IMF against Morales should an international showdown take place.

New Left Accomplishments?

In looking for a model for managing these tensions, Morales can examine the record of other progressive administrations that have taken power in Latin America. Progressive governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile have generally increased social spending and devoted greater attention to the needs of the poor. Rarely, however, have they lived up to the expectations of the social movements that helped put them in office.

Likewise, the electoral success of progressives in South America has signaled a backlash to two decades of unfettered economic neoliberalism. Yet the extent to which each country has rejected the policies of the Washington Consensus varies greatly.

The most recent electoral victory for the left in Latin America has taken place in Chile. There, a coalition of Christian Democrats and Socialists known as ConcertaciĂłn had governed since the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990. On January 15, Chileans elected Socialist Michelle Bachelet as their new president. Bachelet is the first woman to govern the country and only the third female directly elected a head of state in Latin American history. (Her family has been imprisoned and her father killed by the Pinochet regime in the 1970s.) While Bachelet’s victory marks an exciting cultural shift, the president-elect has vowed to “walk the same road” as the sitting socialist president, Ricardo Lagos. Lagos has supported neoliberal initiatives such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), maintained close ties with Washington, and distanced himself from more radical governments in the region. Although optimistic international observers hope that Bachelet will break with the moderation of the Lagos administration to more aggressively address the sharp inequality in the country, her statements thus far stress continuity.

More relevant to the Bolivian situation are the examples of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Each represents a dominant economy in the region and each has fared differently since progressives have held power, offering unique lessons for MAS leaders.

Bucking the IMF in Argentina: In 2003 the left-leaning Nestor Kirchner took office in Argentina in the aftermath of the 2001 collapse of the country’s economy and the popular uprisings that forced several successive governments from power. The neoliberal policies supported by the IMF and implemented by President Carlos Menem in the 1990s were widely seen as responsible for the collapse. Since then, Argentina has set an important example by breaking with the IMF and playing hardball with international creditors.

The country made a credible threat of defaulting on its payments to the IMF—something previously unheard of for middle-income countries. In response, the IMF backed away from demands for austerity and higher interest rates. It did so for fear that other countries would follow Argentina in defaulting. The exchange shook the international standing of the IMF and allowed Argentina to finalize a renegotiation of over $100 billion in foreign debt in 2005. The renegotiation drastically reduced the value of the country’s outstanding obligations to private creditors. Moreover, Argentina’s stance against the IMF has allowed the country to base its economic recovery on policies that, while not venturing far to the left of the standard Keynesian playbook, run contrary to those preferred by Washington. Beyond economic policy, Kirchner has supported the repeal of amnesty laws protecting military officers. This action has helped open a large number of legal cases against human rights abusers from Argentina’s past military government.

Still, tensions remain between Kirchner’s government and forces like the piqueteros (the unemployed workers’ movement). Such movements accuse the president of using radical or nationalistic posturing to cover more conservative policy decisions. One illustration of this conflict came with Kirchner’s announcement in December that the government (following a similar move by Brazil) would “un-indebt” Argentina by paying off $9.8 billion to the IMF. Citing the pain that the financial institution has caused to the country’s people, Kirchner framed the move as a decision to be rid of the IMF and its odious policy recommendations for good. However, as the Dario SantillĂłn Popular Front, a piquetero organization, pointed out, the move amounted to a full debt repayment, rather than a renunciation. “Despite the progressive rhetoric, the debt is paid off with the hunger of the people,” the group said in a statement cited by the Inter-Press Service. Ultimately, the relevance of the decision as a model for other progressive governments will depend on the Kirchner government’s ability to use its newfound freedom from the IMF to chart an increasingly independent economic course.

Lost innocence in Brazil: The Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) has stayed on a more conservative path since taking the presidency, to the disappointment of many who were enthusiastic to see Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva gain office in 2003. Early on, Lula, a former metalworker and union leader, pursued a “pragmatic” economic policy. His cautious decisions were designed to reassure foreign investors and avoid precipitous capital flight—a genuine concern for any country wishing to avoid the economic collapse that Argentina had already experienced. Over time, Lula’s course has become virtually indistinguishable from the policy direction the PT once criticized harshly. Lula has opted to follow IMF prescriptions and continue making payments on Brazil’s huge foreign debt, which the World Bank valued in 2002 as 49.6 percent of Brazil’s GDP (or some $230 billion). For 20 years the PT had campaigned against paying the debt, arguing that it took too much money from social programs and productive economic investment. The president’s current position is a far cry from even the most moderate of his party’s past stances.

Lula’s administration has been more aggressive in pursuing some neoliberal measures than even the IMF has demanded. IMF dictates call on the Brazilian government to maintain a primary budget surplus of 3.75 percent of the country’s GDP. But Lula has voluntarily elected to maintain an even greater primary surplus of 4.25 percent, leaving money for only modest increases in government spending on social programs. Several of these programs—such as Fome Zero, the government’s flagship anti-hunger initiative—have been stunted by lackluster implementation and administration.

Moreover, while strong economic growth was used in the past to justify the government’s cautious approach, this year’s figures for growth hover at 2.5%. This has caused even some centrist economists to criticize the government’s preoccupation with controlling inflation with high interest rates, which lead to high unemployment.

Lula’s actions on the international scene also show a disappointing trajectory. In 2003, PT leadership of South America’s largest economy promised to open a space of possibility in international negotiations. Lula spoke often about crafting a “new geography” of trade and politics where poor countries would be respected as equals. Brazil emerged as one of the most outspoken countries condemning the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Lula was an instrumental force behind the formation of the G20+, a group of developing countries that stood up to U.S. and European demands at the 2003 WTO ministerial in Cancun. Their stance led to the collapse of those talks.

However, Brazil’s commitment to solidarity with the rest of the developing world has more recently been called into question. In the summer of 2004, Brazilian negotiators bullied poorer countries into signing the “July framework” for agriculture at WTO negotiations in Genevaďż˝likely because Lula thought that a deal could benefit Brazilian agribusiness. This move gave new life to the languishing institution. Along with India, Brazil continued its pursuit of nationalist objectives over G20+ solidarity at the WTO talks in Hong Kong in December 2005. There it used its weight to ensure that the developing world did not block an agreement on the continuation of Doha Round negotiations. Interest in growing Brazil’s agribusiness exports has also caused friction between Lula’s government and the once-friendly Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), which has criticized the slow pace of land reform under the PT.

In a final discouraging development, several important PT officials have been implicated in a corruption scandal in the past year. This has marred the party’s reputation of holding itself to a higher ethical standard than its competitors; it has also positioned the PT unfavorably within a context of politics-as-usual, rife with patronage and bribery.

Between corruption and policy failures, some observers have aptly dubbed 2005 a “Year of Innocence Lost” in Brazil. At the 2005 World Social Forum, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez counseled Lula’s critics to be patient and allow the PT government more time to assert its independence from the Washington Consensus. A year later, with Lula’s popularity sagging and elections in the fall drawing nearer, time may be running out.

Venezuela as protagonist: Much of the progressive leadership expected from Lula when he was first elected has ended up coming from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who has established himself as the White House’s key adversary in the region. Unlike other countries in which popular upheavals and established social movement organizations have helped to put new governments in power, Chavez has largely used the state as the starting point for directing a “Bolivarian Revolution,” which has subsequently developed popular dimensions. In the past two years, the shape of this revolution has come into focus as the Venezuelan economy has recovered from several rounds of oil strikes and the instability of a U.S.-supported coup in 2002.

While Chavez is often cast in the mold of Fidel Castro, several observers have noted that the redistributionist programs that are the hallmark of his social policy owe more to the New Deal than to Cuban state socialism. The many government programs that have been funded in recent years by proceeds from oil sales include an ambitious literacy program, free public education through the university level, job training, an anti-hunger program that provides subsidized food for over a third of the country, and an extensive system of free public health clinics. Chavez’s decidedly un-neoliberal economic policy has created the most robust growth in the hemisphere, with the country’s GDP surging 18 percent in 2004 and approximately 9 percent in 2005.

On the international scene, Chavez has been the most outgoing of Latin American leaders in proposing a unified front for the New Left. He has presented the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) as a model for regional cooperation distinct from the FTAA. He has loaned Argentina almost a billion dollars and has sold discounted oil to many countries in order to benefit impoverished populations (including residents of low-income housing in Boston and the Bronx). In another such oil deal, Cuba sent some 20,000 doctors to bolster the public health care system in Venezuela in exchange for infusions of oil. At the WTO talks in Hong Kong, Venezuela provided a strong and consistent critical voice. In one dramatic stance at the closing ceremony, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Mari Pili Hernandez denounced the WTO agreement on the record before it was rubber-stamped by the assembly.

That Venezuela is a leading oil exporter in the hemisphere is a central fact in the country’s recent transformation. High oil pricesďż˝which produced $25 billion in profits for the Venezuelan government in 2004 (even more in 2005)ďż˝have given Chavez both abundant funds and political leeway to carry out his policies. (Of course, high export prices do not necessarily translate into human development; previous oil booms have done nothing to boost the incomes of the poor or decrease inequality.) Likewise, Chavez deserves credit for his efforts to build solidarity among Latin American nations, something other relatively affluent countries have often neglected.

However, the Venezuelan model is not without problems. The good fortune of the country’s natural resource wealth raises questions about whether the Bolivarian Revolution is an exportable one. Indebted countries with less freedom to antagonize the international financial community cannot afford to replicate Chavez’s social programs and public bluster. Moreover, a number of state initiatives have drawn fire from environmentalists. In one example, the PDVSA—the Venezuelan state energy company—has teamed up with ChevronTexaco and Phillips Petroleum in the multi-million dollar Hamaca project, which will develop an oil field in the Orinoco river basin. Activists argue that the project will have a devastating impact on the surrounding ecosystem.

The centrality of Venezuela’s president as a charismatic leader of reform efforts also raises concerns about whether the “revolution” can survive beyond Chavez. Having no lack of self-regard, Chavez regularly portrays himself as a key historical actor and has often worked to consolidate his own power. It remains to be seen how well local groups such as the “Bolivarian circles,” which act as forums for democratic participation in new social initiatives, will be able to mature so as to outlive Chavez’s tenure and ensure a model distinct from the centralized state power held by Castro in Cuba.


How Does Bolivia Compare?

Domestic circumstances, foreign pressures, and the Morales government’s own political inclinations will determine whether Bolivia will travel down one of the paths blazed in Argentina, Brazil, or Venezuela, or set an entirely different course. In terms of political conditions, Bolivia is an amalgam of its South American neighbors. Like Argentina, Bolivia has experienced a crisis of governance, with rapid turnover in the presidency. Strong social movement pressure has created a mandate for standing up to international financial institutions. Yet like Brazil, Bolivia must still worry about capital flight and foreign creditors, which can potentially cripple its economy and limit the government’s ability to act. Ironically, Petrobras, an energy company partially owned by the Brazilian state, is one of the largest foreign interests in Bolivia’s gas industry. That said, Bolivia’s ample natural resources could potentially translate into leverage for Morales, just as oil has proven a boon to Chavez. Bolivia has some of the largest natural gas reserves in the hemisphere and large oil deposits as well. However, at least in the near future, the country is dependent on foreign investment to develop these resources.

The independence of civil society marks a critical difference between Bolivia and Venezuela. Leaders in the new Morales government and in the country’s social movements have been quick to assert that Bolivian political landscape under a MAS administration will be very distinct from that seen in Caracas. In an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE, incoming Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera argued that, while in Cuba and Venezuela “the civil society has been constructed by the state,” Bolivian civil society is almost entirely grassroots. Linera described the country’s recent political experience as a “construction of multiple social movements with a far-reaching trajectory, and an organizational and autonomous capacity, that little by little has been pressuring the state and eventually occupying it.”

Oscar Olivera, the social movement leader in Cochabamba, explained: “We aren’t fighting to govern, we’re fighting to make the government disappear and self-govern ourselves.” When asked if he was interested in helping transform Bolivia into another Venezuela, he said: “I don’t believe in military leaders, or ex-military leaders [such as Chavez]. Every country is different, and has its own culture and history. Many people in the media treat Chavez as though he were the best thing possible. But the leader is one thing and the people are another.”

Nationalizing Oil and Gas

Two issues will preoccupy the Morales administration in coming months: reclaiming profits and ownership of Bolivian oil and gas resources; and rewriting the constitution in a popular assembly. While these same two issues powered the political process in Venezuela after Chavez took power, Morales will face serious challenges in each arena.

No matter what the MAS leaders do with Bolivia’s gas and oil reserves, they are likely to upset corporate investors, social movements, or both. The social movements are demanding full nationalization. As Olivera explains, “We won’t accept partial nationalization. All of the contracts are with neoliberal companies. All they want to do is take our gas. People didn’t die [in recent social struggles] to give the gas to the companies. The people have to say what we need to do with the gas. Pachamama [Mother Earth] is for the people, not for the transnational corporations.”

While also using the language of “nationalization,” Morales has signaled a more moderate approach, distinguishing between the natural resources underground and the assets of the extraction industry. Ultimately, MAS is likely to deal with each individual energy company differently, attempting to negotiate concessions from each. “We will nationalize the natural resources, gas and hydrocarbons,” Morales said in early January. “We are not going to nationalize the assets of the multinationals. Any state has the right to use its natural resources. We must establish new contracts with the oil companies based on equilibrium. We are going to guarantee the returns on their investment and their profits, but not looting and stealing.”

Such reassurances have been popular with groups such as the ComitĂ© Civico Pro Santa Cruz, a pro-privatization lobby in the Santa Cruz region, with which Morales met following his electoral victory. Morales also traveled to Brazil to meet with Lula on January 13. There he vowed not to expropriate the property of energy companies and guaranteed the security of Brazil’s investments. He also outlined a plan to organize a multinational commission among Bolivia’s gas investors to revise contracts and agreements between different countries.

Dealing with individual companies may be an effective way to gain concessions from the energy industry without risking corporate lawsuits and pressure from the U.S. However, it would leave the Morales administration open to charges of having sold out to the corporations if the concessions it gains are inadequate. This dilemma adds importance to the second main issue confronting the government: the need for a popular assembly to rewrite the constitution. Such an assembly would create an opportunity for diverse political parties, business leaders, and social movements to agree on the terms for gas exportation.

A Constituent Assembly

Morales’ campaign promise to call an assembly between diverse social sectors to rewrite the constitution contributed significantly to his victory. The re-writing of Venezuela’s constitution in 2000 served as the launching pad for that country’s new political process. There, a referendum and nationwide assemblies were held to create and approve the new constitution. The new document mandated that profits from the oil industry be redirected into the state for social programs in education, health care, and community media initiatives. Today, a common saying in Venezuela holds that the new constitution is the country’s strongest weapon against corporate globalization and imperialism.

The re-writing of Bolivia’s constitution may prove to be similarly powerful. The election of delegates for a constituent assembly is now scheduled to take place in June 2006 and the actual assembly will convene in August. Three delegates will be elected from each of the country’s municipalities and delegations must include a minimum of one woman and one indigenous person. At present, social movements are putting forth proposals for what they want to see in a new constitution. Some of the main issues on the table include gas nationalization, land reform, free trade agreements with the U.S., and a referendum on autonomy for the Santa Cruz region. Because the majority of the delegates are likely to represent social movements, the new constitution is expected to favor popular forces over corporations and foreign interests.

The constituent assembly may well redraw Bolivia’s electoral map to allow for adequate representation of indigenous peoples. This could result in new elections, which might challenge Morales’ power. However, his enormous electoral victory indicates that any elections resulting from changes to the constitution will favor MAS. Nonetheless, well-funded lobbyists from Santa Cruz may be successful in pushing for autonomy in their gas-rich region. Moreover, it is unclear how the changes in a new constitution would be enforced. In Venezuela the country’s constitution declares that all housewives are entitled to a pension for their work. However, this has not been made into a law or put into effect.

Some social movement groups, such as the Workers and Campesinos Federation of La Paz, have given Morales a two-month window to make immense changes in the country. Such radicals are in the minority. Most social movement organizations have pledged to wait for the results of the constituent assembly before seriously pressing the administration. If the assembly fails to meet such demands as gas nationalization, protests and road blockades are expected to occur.

Such protest campaigns could paralyze the country and exacerbate political divisions. They could also give Morales leverage to pursue some of his more radical campaign promises if elites decide they would rather keep the government in place than risk upheaval. There is probably no other country in Latin American where social movements are so well organized and have such a great capacity to threaten the presidency. This balance of political muscle between the street and state makes it unlikely that Morales could replicate Lula’s “pragmatic” concessions to neo-liberalism, even if he wanted to.

Outside of their role in pressuring the government, established grassroots networks could provide a base for the reorganization of political power and representation. Right before the December elections, a meeting called the Congress of the National Front for the Defense of Water and Basic Human Services convened to forge alliances between the country’s social movement groups. The Congress includes the Water Coordinating Committee of Cochabamba, the Federation of Neighborhood Councils of El Alto, the Water and Drainage Cooperatives of Santa Cruz, as well as other neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, irrigation farmers, and committees on electricity and other services. In many cases, these autonomous groups have organized methods of providing citizens with basic services that the state fails to offer. Such a coalition of grassroots forces will serve as a powerful lobbying instrument for the constituent assembly. Depending on the results of the assembly, it could either provide an infrastructure for participation in new state programs or represent an alternative structure for governance.

Like many other Bolivians who voted for Morales, Anselmo Martinez Tola, an organizer of indigenous groups in Potosi, believed the MAS candidate was the most likely among presidential contenders to convoke a constituent assembly. “We are a majority and through the assembly we hope to rescue what belongs to us,” he said, referring to the nationalization of the gas and the redistribution of land. His organization has been choosing delegates for their municipality and developing proposals for the assembly. Among them is a suggestion that the government be restructured along the lines of traditional ayllus, which are small groups of families that have long guided decision-making in indigenous communities across the country. “We have to have a new constitution that refers to our culture, our history, and not foreign countries or companies. It has to reflect the varied movement of indigenous groups in Bolivia,” Tola explained.

Critics such as James Petras, a long-time analyst of Latin America, have denounced the “army of uncritical left cheerleaders” that has celebrated Evo Morales’ victory and has expressed hope for significant changes in Bolivia. Just as he has been disappointed by Lula and Kirchner, Petras predicts that the Morales administration will undertake only “symbolic gestures of a purely rhetorical nature, devoid of nationalist substance,” rather than truly redistributive initiatives.

There is reason to believe otherwise. Morales may have presented himself as a moderate during the presidential campaign in order to gain broader support, but his decisive victory has created space for bolder action. In the eyes of many MAS supporters, policies regarding gas nationalization, land reform, and indigenous rights are not in the hands of Morales, but rather in the hands of the constituent assembly. A rewritten constitution brings with it promise for significant change. Cognizant of the assembly’s will and closely monitored by one of Latin America’s most powerful social movements, the Morales administration will have the mandate and the motivation to drive a hard bargain with international creditors and create its own model for progressive governance.

Until then, Bolivia will stand on the brink of a new post-colonial period, for the first time governed by an indigenous leader who looks like the majority of its people and resting in a continent that has moved another step away from neoliberalism. If the victory put on display at the ruins of Tiwanaku is thus far only a symbol, it is no doubt a potent one.

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Benjamin Dangl edits Toward Freedom and Upside Down World and is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (forthcoming from AK Press). Mark Engler is an analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and can be reached via his website, Democracy Uprising.

This article originally appeared in the March 2006 issue of Z Magazine, and also appeared in Toward Freedom.
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/794/

See also:

“THE NEW BOLIVIAN EXPERIENCE:
Grassroots Activists Take Reins of Government”
by Gretchen Gordon, WW4 REPORT #119, March 2006
/node/1666

“Bolivia: Evo Morales Victory Confirmed,” WW4 REPORT #117, January 2006
/node/1433

“Bolivia hosts hemispheric indigenous conference,” WW4 REPORT, April 9, 2006
/node/1838

See related story, this issue:

“THE BATTTLE OF IDEAS IN LATIN AMERICA”
by Peter Hudis
/node/1906

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE PROGRESSIVE MANDATE IN LATIN AMERICA 

COLOMBIA QUAGMIRE DEEPENS

FARC Indictments Spell Escalation in Andean Oil War

by Peter Gorman

During the past several years, five apparently separate events have taken place involving Colombia that are actually quite interrelated. The first was that during the late 1990s, massive oil resources were discovered in the southern areas of Colombia predominantly controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the leftist rebels who’ve been waging a civil war for 40 years. The second is that Colombia and the US have been working on a Free Trade Agreement which just signed this past February 27. Third, last year Colombian President Alvaro Uribe successfully pressured the country’s Congress into writing an amendment to the constitution that will allow him to run for a second consecutive term. The fourth occurred in early March 2006, when General Mario Montoya Uribe (no relation to the president) was put in charge of the Colombian military. The fifth and last domino fell later that month, when 50-members of the FARC were indicted (with huge rewards placed on their heads) by the US government for alleged massive cocaine trafficking. While many will see these as distinct events, they’re probably better seen as separate pieces of a complex puzzle.

Until the massive oil reserves were discovered in Putumayo and other departments held by the FARC, the guerillas were permitted to control a large portion of southern Colombia as an autonomous zone—as long as they stayed within their zone, the Colombian government wouldn’t send its military in after them. All that changed with the discovery of the oil, which shortly thereafter led to Plan Colombia and the disastrous spraying of the herbicide glyphosate, which has been raining down on the jungle and villages of southern Colombia for several years now. While some saw the frequently errant spraying—which hit more jungle than coca plants—as accidental, others point out that it is impossible to get a good satellite read on the location of oil beneath the ground when the surface is covered with trees. The spraying cleared huge swaths of that jungle cover and “incidentally” displaced thousands of peasants and indigenous from the region—which by luck freed up the areas the oil people wanted to look into.

Add to that the evident reality that President Uribe, Bush’s closest ally (or perhaps crony is a better word) in the War on Drugs south of Texas, sees himself as lord and master of Colombia—which isn’t entirely untrue as he has long been a vital player in and currently controls the country’s cocaine economy, without which the national economy would sink like a stone. Uribe couldn’t see himself put all this oil and glyphosate business in motion and then leave office to have someone else either ruin his plans or take the glory and gelt, so last year he managed to get himself a chance at running for a second term in office. He pressured the Colombian congress into writing an constitutional amendment permitting it—something other Colombian presidents have only tried but at which he succeeded. He’s considered a shoe-in to win, as his hardline policies have made the highways safer and led to at least a slight decline in kidnappings.

Seemingly assured of a second term, he went to work diligently to get the Bush-proposed Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and the US passed. Looking over the agreement, much ink is spent on things like the reduced or eliminated tariffs US companies will have to pay to ship cotton, chicken legs and so forth into Colombia. All of those elements will work toward eliminating Colombian peasant farmers from the market, particularly in the deep rural areas—such as Putumayo. But deep in the agreement are several items related to Colombia’s “energy” and “oil” industries. Close reading shows that US companies will now be able to purchase Colombian land, utilize US—rather than Colombian—personnel to work their oil rigs, bid on formerly Colombian-only contracts for Colombian oil, and be entitled to the same agreements Colombian companies are offered in relation to all Colombian energy. Shorthand? The US just took over the Colombian oil market, and its open season on those reserves.

But that open-season doesn’t mean a thing if there continues to be a civil war raging in the new oil regions. And Plan Colombia thus far hasn’t eliminated it, as had been hoped for. To step that effort up, Gen. Mario Montoya has just been named the head of the Colombian military. Gen. Montoya has a history—dating back 30-years—of collaborating with the paramilitaries in killing innocent peasants, massacring villages, and generally being one of the worst 25 or so humans of the last century. He’s been sanctioned by the UN, criticized by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and once ran a battalion, the 24th, which was so rife with human rights abuses that it was cut off from US funding. He was also a student, and later, in 1993, a teacher, at the US School of the Americas, the notorious training ground for blood-thirsty US-flunkies who go on to rule Central and South America’s militaries and politics. Former students include Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer, Panama’s Manuel Noriega, and Peru’s Vladmiro Montesinos—quite a list. Montoya’s specialty was training troops against peasant insurrections.

To give his job relevance, 50 FARC leaders were indicted in the US in late March as cocaine traffickers, with prices as high as $5 million put on each of their heads. The federal indictments accuse the FARC of being behind “50 percent of the world’s cocaine trade and 60 percent of the cocaine exported to the United States.” At the announcement of their indictments, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said, “We believe these men are responsible for not only manufacturing and exporting devastating amounts of cocaine, but enforcing their criminal regime with violence.” Some of that is obvious hyperbole, as many of the charges try to link the FARC commanders with cocaine operations either nowhere near where they operate or to operations that occurred long before the FARC were involved in the drug trade.

Some of them are undoubtedly involved in the trade—even FARC-sympathizers concede that the FARC have moved from taxing coca farmers to trying to get a piece of the trade in recent years. But by naming 50, rather than half-a-dozen, alleged traffickers, and placing a fat price on their heads, the US has unleashed every mercenary and paramilitary in the hemisphere to go after them. Worse, they’ll be going after those suspected of protecting and harboring them as well—which means it’ll be open season on peasants and the indigenous in the region as the shmucks claw their way to the $5 million bonanzas. And any villagers that get caught in the crossfire will not be noticed by the international community, as they will be perceived as aiding and abetting narco-terrorists.

To drive that point home, Colombia’s Defense Minister Camilo Ospina noted to the press that the indictment showed that “a big decision has been made to carry out the final battle against narcotrafficking and terrorism.”

Montoya’s job? Capture the 50 most wanted FARC copmmanders and eliminate anyone he considers may have been cooperating with them. The goal: displace or eliminate anyone in the way of access to the oil reserves. With 30 years of human rights abuses under his belt, it will be a job he will relish. And when the smoke clears and the bodies stop burning, Uribe will be a hero to the US companies who’ll make out big in the deal, and wind up on their boards after he retires. George Bush will dress up in a military uniform and declare victory while standing on a drilling rig. And the coca trade, still controlled primarily by the paramilitaries, will continue to thrive.

RESOURCES:

“United States and Colombia Conclude Free Trade Agreement,” US Trade Representative, Feb. 27, 2006
http://www.ustr.gov/Document_Library/Press_Releases/2006/February…

“Free Trade with Colombia: Summary of the Agreement,” US Trade Representative, Feb. 27, 2006
http://www.ustr.gov/Trade_Agreements/Bilateral/Andean_TPA/Fact_Sheets/Section_Index.html

“Colombian leader Uribe allowed to run for new term,” EducWeb News, Nov. 13, 2005
http://www.educweb.org/webnews/ColNews-Nov05/English/Articles/Colombiefeuvertpou runecan.html

“The U.S. Department Of Justice Announces Indictments of Members of Farc Drug Cartel,” DoJ press release, March 22, 2006
http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2006/ag_speech_0603221.html

“US indicts FARC over ÂŁ14bn cocaine cartel,” The Scotsman, April 27, 2006
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=458552006

“U.S. Indicts 50 Leaders of Colombian Rebels in Cocaine Trafficking,” New York Times, March 22, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/international/americas/23colombia.html?ex=1300 770000&en=c89b3f3d6c9f5350&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

See also:

“OPERATION GREEN COLOMBIA: Coca Eradication Brings War to Endangered National Parks,” by Memo Montevino, WW4 REPORT #119, March 2006
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“Colombia: Trade Pact Signed, Right Sweeps Elections,” WW4 REPORT #120, April 2006
/node/1805

“Ethnic Cleansing in Colombian Amazon,” WW4 REPORT, April 4, 2006
/node/1828

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA QUAGMIRE DEEPENS 

ELECTIONS IN PALESTINE & HAITI

This Is What Democracy Looks Like!

by Nirit Ben-Ari

On February 7 and January 25, Haitians and Palestinians (respectively) went to the polls. Haiti is an independent republic since 1804, and one of the founding members of the United Nations. “Palestine” is a territory that has been occupied by the Turks, then the British, and now the Israelis. It’s not an independent country and not a member in the United Nations. Despite these apparent differences, Haitians and Palestinians share much in common–in particular, their belief in the democratic process. Sadly, their ways of practicing democracy also share something in common; the disdain of most of the “civilized” world.

The Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are to this day under Israeli military control. Despite the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Israel still maintains control over its borders, the flow of goods in and out of the Strip, and occasionally carries out military operations, including extra-judicial assassinations, deep inside the territory. Similarly, in the West Bank, the Palestine Authority (PA) does not have control (or has very minimal control) over borders, movement of Palestinians, or trade. Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza are essentially living in huge prisons, where their movement, their economic activity, and their police force, are mostly under the control of a foreign army.

Despite this reality, the world has told the Palestinians that they must practice democracy. Based on Bush’s “road map” from June 2002, Palestinians were asked to put in place a democratic system, consisting on democratic institutions and periodic elections, to receive the support of the so-called “world.” Which is exactly what they did. The first democratic elections after Arafat’s death took place in January 2005, and were observed by the Carter Center and declared free and fair. Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen by his honorific title) won as president with 62% of the vote.

In the most recent election in January 2006, Palestinians took their despair to the polls. Frustrated with the “security” fence that imprisons them and blocks them from accessing their lands, and with the PA’s corrupted regime which cooperates with Israel, they voted the old ruling party, Fatah, out of office. Hamas won about 45% of the popular vote, which gave them a majority of parliament because of electoral rules. Why Hamas? As Israel’s military assaults and policing have destroyed all services since 2002, Hamas has filled in the gaps everywhere, setting up and running schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues. “Approximately 90 percent of [Hamas’] work is in social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities,” writes Israeli scholar Reuven Paz. But Hamas is better known for its hard-line military tactics, which have included attacks against Israeli citizens within Israel-proper.

The world watched in dismay as Palestinians counted their ballots. It was only few days after the results were made known that international voices were heard: Hamas is not a legitimate government. In fact, Hamas’ election is Israel’s wet dream. It makes it much easier for Israel to say there is no one to talk to, since Hamas refuses to negotiate. It allows Israel to act unilaterally without anyone complaining.

The Palestinians were told, yet again, democracy is good, as long as you vote for whomever we want you to vote for.

So, what does the state of democracy in the OPT has to do with the above-mentioned Caribbean nation?

Indeed, there is more in common that meets the eye.

Although Haiti has been an independent republic since 1804, it is today the poorest country in the western hemisphere. There are no checkpoints or security fences on Haitian land, and no direct foreign control over the flow of goods in and out of the country. Do Haitians have control over their country?

Consider Haitian rice and poultry production. On condition of restoring President Aristide back to power in 1994, Washington had imposed a neo-liberal economic reform, in which Haitian farmers were denied tariff protection and were hence “free” to compete with U.S. agribusiness–which receives 40% of its profit from government subsidies. As a consequence, cheap American rice and poultry has flooded Haitian markets. By 1998, the chicken industry was virtually shut down, and 10,000 jobs were lost.

This is what Haitian “sovereignty” looks like.

But Haitians have been told by the world that it will only get better if they hold free democratic elections. Which is exactly what they did.

The first free elections in Haiti had taken place only in 1989. After 30 years under the dictatorship of “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son “Baby Doc,” and few more years under a military junta, Haitians took to the polls in a show of democracy that was as rare in non-western countries as in western. The winning candidate, with 67% of the vote, was the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was backed by a vigorous grassroots movement, the Lavalas (“flood” in Creole). Only seven months later, Aristide and his government were overthrown in a coup d’etat that brought to power a murderous, illegal military regime. After three years of terror, the world–that is, the U.S.–intervened, and restored Aristide to power; however, only on condition that his government adopt the neo-liberal economic regime that was designated to it by Washington. A second condition was that after the end of his term (Aristide had seven months left in his term at the time of the coup) he would not run again.

The following elections in Haiti took place in 1996. With Aristide barred from running for office again, his protégé Rene Preval (Ti Rene) won with 64% of the vote.

The following elections took place in 2000. Aristide was back, and his Fanmi Lavalas won 91.81% of the vote. This time, it took Washington four years to organize a coup. In March 2004, the Marine corps invaded Haiti, put Aristide on an airplane, and dispatched him to the Central African Republic. He later sought exile in South Africa.

The country spiraled into chaos. Despite the fact that the income per capita of this country is less then one dollar a day, the Inter-American Bank withheld its loans for Haiti following Aristide’s forced exile. The reason? Haiti needs to hold democratic elections. But this is exactly what Haiti had done! The problem was, they had not chosen the right candidate.

The story of Haiti is of unending tragedy. What used to be one of the richest colonies in the world (providing a source of a good part of France’s wealth), is today one of the poorest countries in the world, with 80% living in abject poverty. American support of Duvalier’s dictatorial regime and the military juntas who came after him, as well as the imposition of neo-liberal economic adjustments, have generated endemic instability and political violence. And yet in the American mind, “hopeless,” “backward,” “savage” Haiti is in need of more American help.

On February 7, 2006, Haitians showed the world what a real democracy looks like. People trekked for days by foot in order to reach the polls. Some slept outside the polls for days before the elections. Many others stood in long lines under the fierce sun for hours before practicing their democratic right. And when finally–after much delay and attempts to circumvent and steal the elections–the results were known that Ti Rene was chosen, they danced in joy in the streets.

So, what do “democracy” and “sovereignty” mean for Haiti and Palestine?

To put it bluntly, nothing. “Democracy is good as long as you choose who we want you to choose” is the message that both Haitians and Palestinians are getting from the world. If it is the wrong candidate, then bye-bye democracy, hello dictatorship, repression, and violence. You play by our rules, or get a hammer on the head.

Ironically, Americans can learn the meaning of democracy from Haitians and Palestinians. When was the last time that in the United States Election Day was a day of celebrating democracy? According to the latest estimates, 46% of Americans don’t even vote. And most days of the year, most Americans think that shopping is a democratic duty. The days when Tocqueville was touring this country, impressed by the rich activities of the American civil society, are long gone. Americans don’t vote, don’t know in what electoral precinct they live in, who are their representatives, and what are their democratic rights.

Haitians, despite abject poverty, the world’s neglect, and the imperial aggression of their powerful neighbor, were able to overthrow a dictatorship, vote into office a truly grassroots party of their own making, and a candidate of their own choice. Against all odds, and despite the world’s disdain toward them, they have persistently continued to believe in democracy, powerfully showcased on February 7. Palestinians, despite almost 40 years of direct foreign occupation, insist on practicing their democratic rights and go to the polls–that is, if they can actually reach them–and protest with their ballots.

THIS is what democracy looks like.

RESOURCES:

“Haiti: some areas really miss tariff,” by Jane Regan, Miami Herald, Oct. 26, 2003, online at Heritage Konpa
http://www.heritagekonpa.com/archives/Haiti;s%20rice%20farmers%20suffered%20sinc e%20trade%20barrier%20in%201994.htm

See also:

“Haiti: US-Sponsored Regime Change,”
by Nirit Ben-Ari and Bill Weinberg
WW4 REPORT #96, March 2004
http://ww3report.com/static/haiti.html

“Haiti: Dominican authorities probe US flights over border zone”
WW4 REPORT, April 10, 2006
/node/1842

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingELECTIONS IN PALESTINE & HAITI