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The Rise Of America's New Enemy
By John Pilger
11/10/05 "ICH
" -- -- I was dropped at Paradiso, the last
middle-class area before barrio La Vega, which spills into a ravine
as if by the force of gravity. Storms were forecast, and people were
anxious, remembering the mudslides that took 20,000 lives. "Why are
you here?" asked the man sitting opposite me in the packed jeep-bus
that chugged up the hill. Like so many in Latin America, he appeared
old, but wasn't. Without waiting for my answer, he listed why he
supported President Chavez: schools, clinics, affordable food, "our
constitution, our democracy" and "for the first time, the oil money
is going to us." I asked him if he belonged to the MRV, Chavez's
party, "No, I've never been in a political party; I can only tell
you how my life has been changed, as I never dreamt."
It is raw witness like this, which I have heard over and over again
in Venezuela, that smashes the one-way mirror between the west and a
continent that is rising. By rising, I mean the phenomenon of
millions of people stirring once again, "like lions after slumber/In
unvanquishable number", wrote the poet Shelley in The Mask of
Anarchy. This is not romantic; an epic is unfolding in Latin America
that demands our attention beyond the stereotypes and clichés that
diminish whole societies to their degree of exploitation and
expendability.
To the man in the bus, and to Beatrice whose children are being
immunised and taught history, art and music for the first time, and
Celedonia, in her seventies, reading and writing for the first time,
and Jose whose life was saved by a doctor in the middle of the
night, the first doctor he had ever seen, Hugo Chavez is neither a
"firebrand" nor an "autocrat" but a humanitarian and a democrat who
commands almost two thirds of the popular vote, accredited by
victories in no less than nine elections. Compare that with the
fifth of the British electorate that re-installed Blair, an
authentic autocrat.
Chávez and the rise of popular social movements, from Colombia down
to Argentina, represent bloodless, radical change across the
continent, inspired by the great independence struggles that began
with SimOn Bolívar, born in Venezuela, who brought the ideas of the
French Revolution to societies cowed by Spanish absolutism. Bolívar,
like Che Guevara in the 1960s and Chavez today, understood the new
colonial master to the north. "The USA," he said in 1819, "appears
destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of
liberty."
At the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, George W Bush
announced the latest misery in the name of liberty in the form of a
Free Trade Area of the Americas treaty. This would allow the United
States to impose its ideological "market", neo-liberalism, finally
on all of Latin America. It was the natural successor to Bill
Clinton's North American Free Trade Agreement, which has turned
Mexico into an American sweatshop. Bush boasted it would be law by
2005.
On 5 November, Bush arrived at the 2005 summit in Mar del Plata,
Argentina, to be told his FTAA was not even on the agenda. Among the
34 heads of state were new, uncompliant faces and behind all of them
were populations no longer willing to accept US-backed business
tyrannies. Never before have Latin American governments had to
consult their people on pseudo-agreements of this kind; but now they
must.
In Bolivia, in the past five years, social movements have got rid of
governments and foreign corporations alike, such as the tentacular
Bechtel, which sought to impose what people call total locura
capitalista - total capitalist folly - the privatising of almost
everything, especially natural gas and water. Following Pinochet's
Chile, Bolivia was to be a neo-liberal laboratory. The poorest of
the poor were charged up to two-thirds of their pittance-income even
for rain-water.
Standing in the bleak, freezing, cobble-stoned streets of El Alto,
14,000 feet up in the Andes, or sitting in the breeze-block homes of
former miners and campesinos driven off their land, I have had
political discussions of a kind seldom ignited in Britain and the
US. They are direct and eloquent. "Why are we so poor," they say,
"when our country is so rich? Why do governments lie to us and
represent outside powers?" They refer to 500 years of conquest as if
it is a living presence, which it is, tracing a journey from the
Spanish plunder of Cerro Rico, a hill of silver mined by indigenous
slave labour and which underwrote the Spanish Empire for three
centuries. When the silver was gone, there was tin, and when the
mines were privatised in the 1970s at the behest of the IMF, tin
collapsed, along with 30,000 jobs. When the coca leaf replaced it -
in Bolivia, chewing it in curbs hunger - the Bolivian army, coerced
by the US, began destroying the coca crops and filling the prisons.
In 2000, open rebellion burst upon the white business oligarchs and
the American embassy whose fortress stands like an Andean Vatican in
the centre of La Paz. There was never anything like it, because it
came from the majority Indian population "to protect our indigenous
soul". Naked racism against indigenous peoples all over Latin
America is the Spanish legacy. They were despised or invisible, or
curios for tourists: the women in their bowler hats and colourful
skirts. No more. Led by visionaries like Oscar Olivera, the women in
bowler hats and colourful skirts encircled and shut down the
country's second city, Cochabamba, until their water was returned to
public ownership.
Every year since, people have fought a water or gas war: essentially
a war against privatisation and poverty. Having driven out President
Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in 2003, Bolivians voted in a referendum
for real democracy. Through the social movements they demanded a
constituent assembly similar to that which founded ChAvez's
Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, together with the rejection of
the FTAA and all the other "free trade" agreements, the expulsion of
the transnational water companies and a 50 per cent tax on the
exploitation of all energy resources.
When the replacement president, Carlos Mesa, refused to implement
the programme he was forced to resign. Next month, there will be
presidential elections and the opposition Movement to Socialism
(MAS) may well turn out the old order. The leader is an indigenous
former coca farmer, Evo Morales, whom the American ambassador has
likened to Osama Bin Laden. In fact, he is a social democrat who,
for many of those who sealed off Cochabamba and marched down the
mountain from El Alto, moderates too much.
"This is not going to be easy," Abel Mamani, the indigenous
president of the El Alto Neighbourhood Committees, told me. "The
elections won't be a solution even if we win. What we need to
guarantee is the constituent assembly, from which we build a
democracy based not on what the US wants, but on social justice."
The writer Pablo Solon, son of the great political muralist Walter
Solon, said, "The story of Bolivia is the story of the government
behind the government. The US can create a financial crisis; but
really for them it is ideological; they say they will not accept
another Chavez."
The people, however, will not accept another Washington quisling.
The lesson is Ecuador, where a helicopter saved Lucio GutiErrez as
he fled the presidential palace last April. Having won power in
alliance with the indigenous Pachakutik movement, he was the
"Ecuadorian Chavez", until he drowned in a corruption scandal. For
ordinary Latin Americans, corruption on high is no longer
forgivable. That is one of two reasons the Workers' Party government
of Lula is barely marking time in Brazil; the other is the priority
he has given to an IMF economic agenda, rather than his own people.
In Argentina, social movements saw off five pro-Washington
presidents in 2001 and 2002. Across the water in Uruguay, the Frente
Amplio, socialist heirs to the Tupamaros, the guerrillas of the
1970s who fought one of the CIA's most vicious terror campaigns,
formed a popular government last year.
The social movements are now a decisive force in every Latin
American country - even in the state of fear that is the Colombia of
Alvaro Uribe Velez, Bush's most loyal vassal. Last month, indigenous
movements marched through every one of Colombia's 32 provinces
demanding an end to "an evil as great at the gun": neo-liberalism.
All over Latin America, Hugo Chavez is the modern Bolivar. People
admire his political imagination and his courage. Only he has had
the guts to describe the United States as a source of terrorism and
Bush as Senor Peligro (Mr Danger). He is very different from Fidel
Castro, whom he respects. Venezuela is an extraordinarily open
society with an unfettered opposition - that is rich and still
powerful. On the left, there are those who oppose the state, in
principle, believe its reforms have reached their limit, and want
power to flow directly from the community. They say so vigorously,
yet they support Chavez. A fluent young arnarchist, Marcel, showed
me the clinic where the two Cuban doctors may have saved his
girlfriend. (In a barter arrangement, Venezuela gives Cuba oil in
exchange for doctors).
At the entrance to every barrio there is a state supermarket, where
everything from staple food to washing up liquid costs 40 per cent
less than in commercial stores. Despite specious accusations that
the government has instituted censorship, most of the media remains
violently anti-Chavez: a large part of it in the hands of Gustavo
Cisneros, Latin America's Murdoch, who backed the failed attempt to
depose Chavez. What is striking is the proliferation of lively
community radio stations, which played a critical part in Chavez's
rescue in the coup of April 2002 by calling on people to march on
Caracas.
While the world looks to Iran and Syria for the next Bush attack,
Venezuelans know they may well be next. On 17 March, the Washington
Post reported that Feliz Rodríguez, "a former CIA operative
well-connected to the Bush family" had taken part in the planning of
the assassination of the President of Venezuela. On 16 September,
Chavez said, "I have evidence that there are plans to invade
Venezuela. Furthermore, we have documentation: how many bombers will
over-fly Venezuela on the day of the invasion... the US is carrying
out manoeuvres on Curacao Island. It is called Operation Balboa."
Since then, leaked internal Pentagon documents have identified
Venezuela as a "post-Iraq threat" requiring "full spectrum"
planning.
The old-young man in the jeep, Beatrice and her healthy children and
Celedonia with her "new esteem", are indeed a threat - the threat of
an alternative, decent world that some lament is no longer possible.
Well, it is, and it deserves our support.
First published in the New Statesman -
www.newstatesman.co.uk
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