[Peace-discuss] The poorest of the poor were charged up to two-thirds of their pittance-income even for rain-water.

[Chuck Minne]

    The Rise of America's New Enemy 
    By John Pilger 
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective 
    Thursday 10 November 2005 
    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 un-vanquishable 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 immunized 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. 
    Chavez 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 Bolivar, born in Venezuela, who brought 
the ideas of the French Revolution to societies cowed by Spanish absolutism. Bolivar, 
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, 
un-compliant 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 
privatizing 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 labor and which underwrote the Spanish Empire for three centuries. 
When the silver was gone, there was tin, and when the mines were privatized 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 colorful skirts. No more. Led by visionaries 
like Oscar Olivera, the women in bowler hats and colorful 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 privatization and poverty. Having driven out President Gonzalo Sanchez 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 program 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 Neighborhood 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 Senior 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 anarchist, 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 
Rodriguez, "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 maneuvers 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. 



Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex.
[Frank Zappa]   
 

  








		
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