BOLIVIA FOR BOLIVAR: The Right to Food & Water

"What happened these past days in Bolivia was a great revolt by those who have been oppressed for more than five hundred years. The will of the people was imposed…and has begun to overcome the empire’s cannons. We have lived for so many years through the confrontation of two cultures: the culture of life represented by the indigenous people and the culture of death represented by the West."

Evo Morales, "I Believe Only in the Power of the People," 24 December 2005. [1]

Indigenous cultures never forget the past. While European cultures record events in mythological anthologies commonly known as history, indigenous peoples pass the stories from generation to generation by word of mouth.

Dominant cultures are very good at rewriting history with an eye to glory and heroism. Americans are particularly refined at forgetting that which does not conform to an image of an enlightened nation with divine purpose.

Indigenous peoples are not easily persuaded. They need no books to inform them where the truth lies.

We should not then be surprised when the past met the present in modern-day Bolivia, a nation named for the 19th century visionary and liberator, Simon Bolivar. With the election of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president in the nation’s history, Bolivia came home, after decades of decline and crushing poverty under the leadership of American sponsored corporate proxies, to the movement that bears its name.

The Bolivarian movement sweeping across Latin America stands as an enlightened alternative to the disastrous policies of the global "free trade" marketeers. While those policies have hardly failed their corporate benefactors (exploiting natural resources has been extremely profitable), they have so desperately failed the people of the exploited nations that they made the current tidal wave of opposition inevitable.

So arrogant are the exploiters of a global economy that they actually claimed the right to own the water that falls from the sky.

You can only push a people so far before they erupt in outrage.

In the memorable phraseology of Richard Nixon, make no mistake: The overlords of globalization, always eager to praise democracy in the abstract, are not pleased with the fruits of democracy in Bolivia and Venezuela. They are not pleased with the political forecast for Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico and elsewhere. They are not pleased with the emergence of China as a Latin American trading partner. While America is bogged down in the Middle East, we can be sure the CIA and their European counterparts are working overtime to stop the trend. Indeed, we have seen their fingerprints in the Haitian coup d’etat and the twice-attempted overthrow of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

The difficulty with the anti-globalization movement has always been obfuscation. It begins with misleading terms and proceeds to convoluted arguments, coaxed in the parochial terminology of economic theory. The eyes glaze over, the mind disengages and the consumers of knowledge and information are reduced to judging the integrity and honesty of the presenters.

Who will we trust: The bearded, bespectacled advocates of environmental sustainability or the clean-shaven, well dressed advocates of "free trade" and a global vision of prosperity?

We are making progress in this struggle not because the people truly understand and agree with us but because the gray suits and blue suits with the patriot’s flag on the lapel, have so often lied that they are losing credibility.

If we are to prevail in this war – a war that must be won if humanity is to grow and prosper as intended – it is imperative that we communicate the cause in simple, comprehensible terms.

Let us begin with this: All people on the planet have a god-given or natural right to cultivate the soil upon which they live, to produce the food they require for sustenance. All people have a fundamental right to the water that falls from the sky and flows through the rivers and streams of their land.

This basic right of human sustenance cannot be overridden by any other rights or claims of government, corporations or individuals of wealth and influence.

Here is a truth so simple and clear it defies opposition yet it is at the core of the anti-globalization movement. It does not demand that Americans sacrifice their way of life. It rather asks them to rebuild their own family farms and that they allow other people in other nations to do the same.

Just as Americans have been duped into supporting policies of war that deliver nothing but more wars, more violence, terror and a generation poisoned by unspeakable horror, we have also been duped into supporting policies of "free trade" that deliver nothing but declining wages, job exportation and debt.

Why are the poor and displaced of other nations pouring into America to do menial, unskilled or sweatshop labor if not because they have been denied the right to a sustainable living in their own lands?

Eventually, if we continue on this false "free trade" path, we will take back the jobs that undocumented migrants fill today but it will not signal the beginning of a new prosperity. Rather, it will be the last nail in the coffin of the middle class worker.

There is in fact not an example of free trade on the planet. The carefully crafted trade agreements are like mafia protection contracts. The International Monetary Fund / World Trade Organization / World Bank consortium opens some doors (exploiting the poor and powerless) while slamming others shut (protecting and enabling the corporate elite).

If the policies of globalization are so promising, where are the returns?

Third world nations have given up control, even ownership, of their resources, only to fall hopelessly in dept. Compelled to undergo "austerity" programs that decimate social services, including job training, health care, welfare and education, they are hurled into an endless whirlwind of revolving poverty and frustration. They have sold their futures and the fate of their children on the promise of a corporate benevolence that does not exist.

When the truth is finally exposed, debt forgiveness will hardly be adequate; retribution will be an imperative of global human rights.

The emerging economic giants, China and India, are marketing poverty in the form of cheap labor – jobs that can neither sustain a decent life nor produce a consumer class. They are banking on the continued and growing appetite of wealthy nations, neglecting that the new economy they are helping to create will destroy the very consumer societies they depend on.

As for the reigning monarchs of the global economy, America, Japan and Western Europe are operating on perpetual deficits and the myth that the world’s most powerful nations will never be held to account. Remember Enron?

Global trade, as it is currently practiced, is a monster that consumes itself.

There is another way. The Bolivarian movement in Latin America is breaking new ground and the early returns in Venezuela are impressive.

This new model of economic practice requires nations to take back control of their own natural resources, to protect the rights of family farmers and individual laborers, to provide for the people’s needs over the profits of international conglomerates, and to secure a sound future by educating and providing health care for the young. It calls for new trade partnerships with like-minded nations that will assure mutual benefit.

There are powerful forces in the world that will do everything they can to prevent the success of the Bolivarian movement but, if it succeeds, it offers greater hope to all working people everywhere than anything the new globalists have ever dreamed. In the end, it offers greater promise even to them.

It is only common sense.

Jazz.

References:

1. "Our Struggle is Against US Imperialism," CounterPunch, December 30, 2005.

2. "Bolivia: A New Weave for ALBA" by toni solo, Dissident Voice, December 29, 2005.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE APPEARED ON DISSIDENT VOICE, THE ALBION MONITOR, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH AND PEACE-EARTH-JUSTICE.

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