Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events
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Cuba receives from China the largest floating dock in the insular Caribbean
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More than 1,000 delegates from Latin America, Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Europe in anti-imperialist conference in Havana. #ManosfueradeCuba @pslweb is present with delegation. #Venezuela #Cuba
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Revolts in Latin America: the rise and fall of the neoliberal consensus
Bruno Sgarzini
24 Oct 2019, 9:30 am.
13 million Chileans are under a curfew imposed by the Piñera government (Foto: Migrar Photo)
"A shock program of drastic reduction in public spending would eliminate inflation in months and lay the foundation for a free market economy in Chile", wrote Milton Friedman in a letter sent to Augusto Pinochet after a brief 45-minute meeting with the dictator. From the beginning, Friedman understood that Pinochet knew little about economics, and "taking advantage" of this, he sent him the aforementioned letter. He did it as the leader of the free market school of thought, founded at the Economics Department of the University of Chicago.
The acceptance of Friedman's plan was immediate by Pinochet and originated the "Chilean liberal revolution," which later inspired the presidencies of Margaret Tatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States in their deregulation and privatization plans. Behind Pinochet's economic program, however, was the United States, which financed its preparation with funds from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sent to the disciples of the Chicago school of economics indoctrinated in Chile.
The creators of the famous "brick", the 300-page book that served as the basis for the Pinochet program, were formed by the Chicago School at the Catholic University of Chile, under the tutelage of a financing program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The trident of the United States, the Catholic Church and neoliberalism broke into Latin America for the first time to impose a free market ideology across the continent.
José Piñera, the current president's brother and disciple of Milton Friedman, was a member of Pinochet's cabinet and one of the proponents of the Chilean constitution. (Photo: GGN)
Once the public companies' liberalization and privatization reforms were completed, José Piñera proposed a Constitution where the right of the private over the public was institutionalized at the expense of abandoning education, health and even water to the market's wishes. This institutional package, marinated with a system of far-right and moderate right parties, is what is presented as the best management model of a free market economy in the region and the world.
According to Orlando Letelier, assassinated by Operation Condor in the United States, the catechism of this ideology is that "the only possible framework for economic development is one within which the private sector can operate freely; that private enterprise is the most efficient way of economic organization and that, therefore, the private sector should be the predominant factor in the economy. Prices should fluctuate freely in accordance with competition laws. Inflation, the worst enemy of economic progress, is the direct result of monetary expansion and can only be eliminated by drastically reducing government spending".
Why is the Chilean model's problem both regional and global?
José Piñera promoted the Chilean Constitution by listening to the words of his mentor Milton Friedman about the neoliberal experiment, which would become unfeasible if it was not institutionalized in a "democratic regime."
Piñera's brother, in addition, was the one who designed the privatization of Social Security in Chile, taken as a reference by the neoliberals of the world to allow banks, and financial funds, to bet on pension money in the global market.
Precisely, the three main reforms being pushed throughout Latin America to revive the economic growth of the region, estimated for this year at 0.2%, are based on labor, pension and tax reforms similar to those taken by Chile. The catechism cited by Letelier is the same: reduce public spending and liberalize control to private parties to attract capital.
"The sad irony of protests like those of Chile in the region is that they make it difficult to improve the situation through economic reforms", said Brian Winter of the Council of the Americas, founded by David Rockefeller. According to this logic, Brazil would only come out of a seven-point fall in its GDP if its Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes — trained in the Chilean neoliberal experiment — could reform Social Security and privatize Petrobras, after having liberalized working conditions.
If one observes regionally the tendency from Mexico to Argentina, the mandate of the banks to continue financing the public debts of the nation-states is based on a combo of clear austericide measures. If states like Argentina cannot pass these reforms, as it happened to Mauricio Macri with the labor reform, the IMF immediately appears to finance a shock plan that releases all control to the private sector and drastically reduces public spending by force.
Protests like the ones in Chile are being replicated throughout the continent while the same neoliberal recipes are being imposed (Photo: CNN)
What these measures based on the "debt" trap generate, according to economist David Harvey is that, through the IMF, Treasury Department and Wall Street triad, countries rationalize their debt by generating an even greater, but better structured one, on the basis of transfering their assets abroad (read the United States and Europe).
Since 2008, with the financial crash, this process, which Harvey calls "accumulation by dispossession", has accelerated throughout Latin America leading to the current state of affairs, where most states are in the process of major reforms to return to growth of their macroeconomies, at the expense of their own populations impoverished by these measures.
It was precisely in Chile where this global process of accumulation by dispossession began, given that the economic plan designed by the Chicago Boys was the one that gave rise to the Washington Consensus, imposed in most of Latin America after hyperinflation and large debt scenarios in the '80s. An experience that was replicated in Africa and Asia in the same way as explained in the Working Document In the Ruins of the Present published by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.
Privatization and drastic reduction of public spending was the neoliberal war cry when they designed the Chilean institutional system to stratify a class society, dominated by a consumption of goods and services based on massive indebtedness.
The balance is too eloquent: one in three Chileans over 18 have no resources to pay their debt, which were contracted in department stores, personal or family education, health expenses and daily purchases, according to a report from the Concepción newspaper.
In this regard, El Mostrador published a note titled "With the noose around the neck; the accumulated indebtedness that detonated the October revolt", where they interviewed Lorena Pérez, a researcher at Núcleo Milenio Autoridad y Asimetrías del Poder. Pérez said that most Chileans spend 27% of their salaries paying debts that represent a "kind of salary extension", which is constantly refinanced for consumption purposes, or simply to reach the end of the month.
An even greater additive to this explosive situation is that the privatization of pension funds, carried out by Piñera's brother, has resulted in active workers taking over the economic costs of their parents now that they withdraw from the social security system.
"This generation has to financially bear their own debts and the costs of their parents' undignified pensions," Pérez said of a Chile where the richest beneficiaries of this privatization are the biggest tax evaders.
Precisely, an expert in evading taxes is the current president Piñera, who specialized in buying broken companies, considered "zombies" to, through them, write down their profits in their losses in order to pay less taxes. This is why researcher Martín Rivas described Piñera as "zombie king".
Social explosion and indiscriminated repression
"Piñera has correctly understood the need to make Chile more attractive to foreign investors and to boost economic growth (...) If you want to preserve the hard-earned stability of your country, you should show a similar sensitivity toward less fortunate Chileans", said the Financial Times in an editorial after the Chilean president faced protests against the rise of the Metro fare, among other reforms.
The fare is estimated to have increased 20 times since 2017, and if a Chilean travels twice a day, the ticket price absorbs 16% of his salary. A clear example of how neoliberalism works in Chile.
The Financial Times, which mistakenly considers the Chilean revolt as one of "the middle class", is criticizing — between the lines — Piñera's decision to establish a curfew and state of emergency in the streets, without taking responsibility for the consequences of the policies it defends in its pages.
129 complaints of torture and cruel treatment by the Chilean military have been registered (Photo: Perfil)
Under a classic strategy to criminalize the protests, the Chilean government, along with the media, remixed the classic combo of groups of infiltrators with acts of violence to typify the demonstrations as a threat to the country's stability.
Hours and hours of video were filmed with episodes of violence by the security forces, as if a movie by Quentin Tarantino was being shot. The globalized citizen could see firsthand how the Chilean military shot young people in the back, beat children and women, and patrolled protesters, among many other episodes of the Chilean horror show.
The balance is 19 dead, more than 200 injured, almost 3,000 detainees and 129 reports of torture and cruel treatment collected by the National Institute of Human Rights (NHRI). A flashback from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, but with touch screens.
David Harvey rightly asserts in his thesis on the accumulation by dispossession that the control of discontent, the product of neoliberal policies, is generally in the hands of the "state apparatus of the debtor country, backed by the military assistance of the imperial powers".
Chile, for instance, has armed forces formed by the US Army School of the Americas under national security doctrines that consider anyone who is a risk to the stability of the country an "internal enemy". What we see on social networks is nothing more than a practical example of everything the security forces do to the Mapuche throughout the year, every year.
Piñera, on the other hand, astonished by the virulence of the protests, rehearses concessions such as freezing Metro and electricity rates, and raising the minimum wage, applying the neoliberal political theory of the Rational Election on which the Chilean political system is based.
This theory assumes that the individual, or agent, tends to maximize their profit-benefit and reduce costs or risks in their decisions. "Individuals prefer more of what's good and less of what causes them harm", says the Economipedia portal. According to Piñera, then, the way to attract the demands of Chileans towards institutionality is to contain them with palliative measures and a dialogue table.
However, Piñera's inability to appease the protesters, by force or persecution, demonstrates a clear collapse of a political system and an institutional design that for ten years has been blocking the Constitution from being modified to contemplate common social rights in the region such as education and health, just to name two of them.
An example of how to understand this is found in the Systems Theory by David Easton — also liked by neoliberals — which states that political systems feed off society's demands, processed by the articulators of the system (call them politicians), and the responses to these demands, which in turn generate other reactions of society that restart the cycle.
From this point of view, the Chilean political system has for a long time been unable to link any of the points listed above for the reasons already mentioned.
Piñera's Minister of the Interior, in charge of the repression in Chile, is Andrés Chadwick, who was part of Pinochet's cabinet. (Photo: Chile's Presidential Press)
That is why in the streets of Santiago they shout "out with them all" against a political class, that from Piñera to Michelle Bachelet has been involved in corruption, and a business elite that takes 65% of the wealth produced by the Chileans without even paying taxes. In this context, Cecilia Moret, first lady of Chile, told a friend that they were going to have to "decrease their privileges" after telling her that the Chilean government was being overwhelmed by a "kind of foreign, alien invasion".
This is the same horror of the plebs in the street that runs through the politicians and businessmen of the global South and North, afflicted by the implosion of a political system that no longer matches the needs of society with corporate voracity.
This April 23, that perception was reflected in a note from the Financial Times entitled "Why executives are worried about capitalism", where one of the corporate CEOs consulted, Ray Dalio of the Bridgewater fund, simply said the obvious: "Capitalism can be reformed as a whole, or in conflict".
That is why the house of Chilean mirrors, where each of the regional crises are observed bouncing to infinity, shows an overly crude trajectory of the world in which we live.
Hence the first neoliberal essay — with no apparent reinvention capacity — returns to the same military cabbage it left in 1975, after a brief 45-minute meeting between Augusto Pinochet and Milton Friedman, as if in its DNA the only language that could be spoken is that of a corporate dictatorship.
Revolts in Latin America: the rise and fall of the neoliberal consensus
Bruno Sgarzini
24 Oct 2019, 9:30 am.
13 million Chileans are under a curfew imposed by the Piñera government (Foto: Migrar Photo)
"A shock program of drastic reduction in public spending would eliminate inflation in months and lay the foundation for a free market economy in Chile", wrote Milton Friedman in a letter sent to Augusto Pinochet after a brief 45-minute meeting with the dictator. From the beginning, Friedman understood that Pinochet knew little about economics, and "taking advantage" of this, he sent him the aforementioned letter. He did it as the leader of the free market school of thought, founded at the Economics Department of the University of Chicago.
The acceptance of Friedman's plan was immediate by Pinochet and originated the "Chilean liberal revolution," which later inspired the presidencies of Margaret Tatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States in their deregulation and privatization plans. Behind Pinochet's economic program, however, was the United States, which financed its preparation with funds from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sent to the disciples of the Chicago school of economics indoctrinated in Chile.
The creators of the famous "brick", the 300-page book that served as the basis for the Pinochet program, were formed by the Chicago School at the Catholic University of Chile, under the tutelage of a financing program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The trident of the United States, the Catholic Church and neoliberalism broke into Latin America for the first time to impose a free market ideology across the continent.
José Piñera, the current president's brother and disciple of Milton Friedman, was a member of Pinochet's cabinet and one of the proponents of the Chilean constitution. (Photo: GGN)
Once the public companies' liberalization and privatization reforms were completed, José Piñera proposed a Constitution where the right of the private over the public was institutionalized at the expense of abandoning education, health and even water to the market's wishes. This institutional package, marinated with a system of far-right and moderate right parties, is what is presented as the best management model of a free market economy in the region and the world.
According to Orlando Letelier, assassinated by Operation Condor in the United States, the catechism of this ideology is that "the only possible framework for economic development is one within which the private sector can operate freely; that private enterprise is the most efficient way of economic organization and that, therefore, the private sector should be the predominant factor in the economy. Prices should fluctuate freely in accordance with competition laws. Inflation, the worst enemy of economic progress, is the direct result of monetary expansion and can only be eliminated by drastically reducing government spending".
Why is the Chilean model's problem both regional and global?
José Piñera promoted the Chilean Constitution by listening to the words of his mentor Milton Friedman about the neoliberal experiment, which would become unfeasible if it was not institutionalized in a "democratic regime."
Piñera's brother, in addition, was the one who designed the privatization of Social Security in Chile, taken as a reference by the neoliberals of the world to allow banks, and financial funds, to bet on pension money in the global market.
Precisely, the three main reforms being pushed throughout Latin America to revive the economic growth of the region, estimated for this year at 0.2%, are based on labor, pension and tax reforms similar to those taken by Chile. The catechism cited by Letelier is the same: reduce public spending and liberalize control to private parties to attract capital.
"The sad irony of protests like those of Chile in the region is that they make it difficult to improve the situation through economic reforms", said Brian Winter of the Council of the Americas, founded by David Rockefeller. According to this logic, Brazil would only come out of a seven-point fall in its GDP if its Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes — trained in the Chilean neoliberal experiment — could reform Social Security and privatize Petrobras, after having liberalized working conditions.
If one observes regionally the tendency from Mexico to Argentina, the mandate of the banks to continue financing the public debts of the nation-states is based on a combo of clear austericide measures. If states like Argentina cannot pass these reforms, as it happened to Mauricio Macri with the labor reform, the IMF immediately appears to finance a shock plan that releases all control to the private sector and drastically reduces public spending by force.
Protests like the ones in Chile are being replicated throughout the continent while the same neoliberal recipes are being imposed (Photo: CNN)
What these measures based on the "debt" trap generate, according to economist David Harvey is that, through the IMF, Treasury Department and Wall Street triad, countries rationalize their debt by generating an even greater, but better structured one, on the basis of transfering their assets abroad (read the United States and Europe).
Since 2008, with the financial crash, this process, which Harvey calls "accumulation by dispossession", has accelerated throughout Latin America leading to the current state of affairs, where most states are in the process of major reforms to return to growth of their macroeconomies, at the expense of their own populations impoverished by these measures.
It was precisely in Chile where this global process of accumulation by dispossession began, given that the economic plan designed by the Chicago Boys was the one that gave rise to the Washington Consensus, imposed in most of Latin America after hyperinflation and large debt scenarios in the '80s. An experience that was replicated in Africa and Asia in the same way as explained in the Working Document In the Ruins of the Present published by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.
Privatization and drastic reduction of public spending was the neoliberal war cry when they designed the Chilean institutional system to stratify a class society, dominated by a consumption of goods and services based on massive indebtedness.
The balance is too eloquent: one in three Chileans over 18 have no resources to pay their debt, which were contracted in department stores, personal or family education, health expenses and daily purchases, according to a report from the Concepción newspaper.
In this regard, El Mostrador published a note titled "With the noose around the neck; the accumulated indebtedness that detonated the October revolt", where they interviewed Lorena Pérez, a researcher at Núcleo Milenio Autoridad y Asimetrías del Poder. Pérez said that most Chileans spend 27% of their salaries paying debts that represent a "kind of salary extension", which is constantly refinanced for consumption purposes, or simply to reach the end of the month.
An even greater additive to this explosive situation is that the privatization of pension funds, carried out by Piñera's brother, has resulted in active workers taking over the economic costs of their parents now that they withdraw from the social security system.
"This generation has to financially bear their own debts and the costs of their parents' undignified pensions," Pérez said of a Chile where the richest beneficiaries of this privatization are the biggest tax evaders.
Precisely, an expert in evading taxes is the current president Piñera, who specialized in buying broken companies, considered "zombies" to, through them, write down their profits in their losses in order to pay less taxes. This is why researcher Martín Rivas described Piñera as "zombie king".
Social explosion and indiscriminated repression
"Piñera has correctly understood the need to make Chile more attractive to foreign investors and to boost economic growth (...) If you want to preserve the hard-earned stability of your country, you should show a similar sensitivity toward less fortunate Chileans", said the Financial Times in an editorial after the Chilean president faced protests against the rise of the Metro fare, among other reforms.
The fare is estimated to have increased 20 times since 2017, and if a Chilean travels twice a day, the ticket price absorbs 16% of his salary. A clear example of how neoliberalism works in Chile.
The Financial Times, which mistakenly considers the Chilean revolt as one of "the middle class", is criticizing — between the lines — Piñera's decision to establish a curfew and state of emergency in the streets, without taking responsibility for the consequences of the policies it defends in its pages.
129 complaints of torture and cruel treatment by the Chilean military have been registered (Photo: Perfil)
Under a classic strategy to criminalize the protests, the Chilean government, along with the media, remixed the classic combo of groups of infiltrators with acts of violence to typify the demonstrations as a threat to the country's stability.
Hours and hours of video were filmed with episodes of violence by the security forces, as if a movie by Quentin Tarantino was being shot. The globalized citizen could see firsthand how the Chilean military shot young people in the back, beat children and women, and patrolled protesters, among many other episodes of the Chilean horror show.
The balance is 19 dead, more than 200 injured, almost 3,000 detainees and 129 reports of torture and cruel treatment collected by the National Institute of Human Rights (NHRI). A flashback from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, but with touch screens.
David Harvey rightly asserts in his thesis on the accumulation by dispossession that the control of discontent, the product of neoliberal policies, is generally in the hands of the "state apparatus of the debtor country, backed by the military assistance of the imperial powers".
Chile, for instance, has armed forces formed by the US Army School of the Americas under national security doctrines that consider anyone who is a risk to the stability of the country an "internal enemy". What we see on social networks is nothing more than a practical example of everything the security forces do to the Mapuche throughout the year, every year.
Piñera, on the other hand, astonished by the virulence of the protests, rehearses concessions such as freezing Metro and electricity rates, and raising the minimum wage, applying the neoliberal political theory of the Rational Election on which the Chilean political system is based.
This theory assumes that the individual, or agent, tends to maximize their profit-benefit and reduce costs or risks in their decisions. "Individuals prefer more of what's good and less of what causes them harm", says the Economipedia portal. According to Piñera, then, the way to attract the demands of Chileans towards institutionality is to contain them with palliative measures and a dialogue table.
However, Piñera's inability to appease the protesters, by force or persecution, demonstrates a clear collapse of a political system and an institutional design that for ten years has been blocking the Constitution from being modified to contemplate common social rights in the region such as education and health, just to name two of them.
An example of how to understand this is found in the Systems Theory by David Easton — also liked by neoliberals — which states that political systems feed off society's demands, processed by the articulators of the system (call them politicians), and the responses to these demands, which in turn generate other reactions of society that restart the cycle.
From this point of view, the Chilean political system has for a long time been unable to link any of the points listed above for the reasons already mentioned.
Piñera's Minister of the Interior, in charge of the repression in Chile, is Andrés Chadwick, who was part of Pinochet's cabinet. (Photo: Chile's Presidential Press)
That is why in the streets of Santiago they shout "out with them all" against a political class, that from Piñera to Michelle Bachelet has been involved in corruption, and a business elite that takes 65% of the wealth produced by the Chileans without even paying taxes. In this context, Cecilia Moret, first lady of Chile, told a friend that they were going to have to "decrease their privileges" after telling her that the Chilean government was being overwhelmed by a "kind of foreign, alien invasion".
This is the same horror of the plebs in the street that runs through the politicians and businessmen of the global South and North, afflicted by the implosion of a political system that no longer matches the needs of society with corporate voracity.
This April 23, that perception was reflected in a note from the Financial Times entitled "Why executives are worried about capitalism", where one of the corporate CEOs consulted, Ray Dalio of the Bridgewater fund, simply said the obvious: "Capitalism can be reformed as a whole, or in conflict".
That is why the house of Chilean mirrors, where each of the regional crises are observed bouncing to infinity, shows an overly crude trajectory of the world in which we live.
Hence the first neoliberal essay — with no apparent reinvention capacity — returns to the same military cabbage it left in 1975, after a brief 45-minute meeting between Augusto Pinochet and Milton Friedman, as if in its DNA the only language that could be spoken is that of a corporate dictatorship.
Revolts in Latin America: the rise and fall of the neoliberal consensus
The three days of the forces that want to change the world
Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, president of the Republic of Cuba, Nicolás Maduro Moros, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, presided over the closing of the event
Author: Madeleine Sautié
Author: Nuria Barbosa León
November 4, 2019 10:11:34
The meeting devoted space to demand the release of former Brazilian President Lula da Silva. Photo: Endrys Correa Vaillant
Cuba's place in political affairs is that which thinks of humanity as a common homeland, in which all men strike together with equal rights in the same heart. For this reason, its territory was, is and always will be a space for imperial greed to be denounced in its installations, as was the case of the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Conference, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism, held at the Convention Palace from Friday, 1 November to Sunday 3, with the participation of 1,352 delegates from over 86 countries. Due to the importance of what was experienced during these three days, Granma International offers its readers a synthesis of what happened.
First day
The meeting began chaired by José Ramón Machado Ventura, Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, and Esteban Lazo, President of the National Assembly of People's Power and the Council of State.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba stated that the current US government increases interference in the affairs of our states and warned: "I feel a duty to express to you that hard times are coming, when everyone's efforts will be crucial". Faced with the hostile US policy against Cuba, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said that the government of that country incurs violations of human rights of Cubans and also launched an aggression campaign against the medical cooperation that our country offers to the needy.
Fernando González Llort, president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, addressed the audience and reminded them of Commander Fidel Castro: "In this room, Fidel said that if he came back with the Granma yacht, he would have done it with the social movements on board".
On this first day, the panel on the challenges of the left in the current scenario in the face of the imperialist offensive resulted in a reflection break for the delegates, who advocate the importance of presenting an alternative model to the one prevailing in the unipolar and capitalist world. Argentine researcher Atilio Borón warned of the need to recognize that the right, which has the powerful media in their hands, has large sums of money, which they take advantage of to deploy their message lines and hide the truth.
José Luis Centella, leader of the Communist Party of Spain, said that "if we do not defeat the right, this can be a danger not only to humanity but also to the planet". He also called on the left to be able to cooperate, join forces and make the year 2020 a push of the people against imperialism. "The resistance must give rise to the counter-offensive", he said.
Ana Luz Farías, coordinator of the World March of Women, said that our struggle is one of resistance and must be based on solidarity, democracy and a socialist society for all the peoples of the world, without borders.
Yasmina Bárbara Vázquez Ortiz, a scholar from the Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies at the University of Havana, explained that the right we face is an expression of the particularities acquired by multidimensional power struggles in 21st century imperialism, in the midst of a process that has been called the conclusion of the concentration of wealth and capital, to the concentration of political power.
"One of imperialism's main subversion strategies is the call for the formation of movements of citizens and parties without ideology and the promotion of social protest actions, which even include manuals with precise guidelines for each case", said the researcher.
As many experts and delegates said during their speeches, the use of hypermedia tools is a weapon of these times.
Second day
The second day of the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Conference, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism experienced a special moment, when the 2,601,565 signatures of the Cuban people were handed over to Gleisi Hoffmann, president of the Workers' Party of Brazil, to demand the release of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The event took place during an act of solidarity with the former Brazilian president and was chaired by members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba, Ulises Guilarte, secretary-general of the Workers' Central Union of Cuba, and Teresa Amarelle Boué, secretary-general of the Federation of Cuban Women.
As a precious gift, Hoffmann appreciated the gesture and stated that "we are here with a very representative delegation from Brazil through the Workers' Party and, on behalf of all the entities and parties present here, we warmly salute the Cuban Revolution", of which she highlighted its democracy and the resistance against imperialism, neoliberalism for 60 years.
In such an unequal and exclusionary world that concentrates wealth and currently lives the most perverse phase of capitalism, "we thank Cuba for being a beacon that guides the struggle for the determination of the peoples, for their rights", she said. And she also thanked the "small, but enormous island, due to its generosity" for the solidarity it has always given to the peoples of the world. "There is a lot of good Cuba did to the Brazilian people when it sent thousands of Cuban doctors to serve our people", said Hoffmann. And she regretted that "today, unfortunately, more than 60 million Brazilians do not have basic health care, because of the insane and fascist persecution of Cubans by a man who illegimately came to the presidency of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro".
The Workers' Party's president assured that Brazil will never forget the Cuban gesture of collecting more than two million signatures in just 14 days to demand the release of its largest political leader, comrade Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and she thanked the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, the Workers' Central Union of Cuba, the Federation of Cuban Women, all the organizations that are part of the Solidarity Committee for the release of Lula, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. "Cuba has 11 million inhabitants and gave us 20% of its inhabitants' signatures", she said, explaining that the struggle for Lula's freedom is also the struggle for Brazil and it's people's freedom "from the clutches of neoliberalism, authoritarianism and the destruction of the Brazilian state".
In a subsequent statement, Hoffmann denounced that "they criminalized, blamed and condemned not one man, but a country's whole project of development", which was giving an economic and social way out for most poor Brazilians, and recalled that "Lula was convicted without evidence, in a manipulated and highly politicized trial, led by a DOJ-trained judge who, after doing his job convicting Lula, won the Ministry of Justice as a prize from the president he helped elect, removing Lula from the election dispute".
Sergio Moro and his group persecuted Lula and handed over "our country's greated wealth, our oil, to US foreign interests and imperialist voracity", she said.
Another element highlighted by Hoffmann as part of today's Brazil, is "the perfect combination of fake news and the encouragement of violence so that neoliberal policies can retake its position in State leadership", but — she said — "there is resistance and struggle, always strengthened by the support and solidarity of everyone present here", which strengthens the advance and offers the dimension of the greatest struggle of the Latin American people.
Obrador's victory in Mexico, Alberto and Cristina's victory in Argentina, Evo's victory in Bolivia, the people in the streets of Ecuador and Chile, the electoral result in the Colombian capital, the resistance of the Venezuelan and Cuban peoples, "all show the way to go. Firm persistence and unity of the left to wipe out all the injustices in the world", she said.
Another significant moment was the intervention of Ulisis Guilarte de Nacimiento: "The world witnessed more than a year and a half ago the injustices committed against former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by the oligarchic right of his country, who is afraid of his integrationist, humanist and Latin American leadership", he said. He reviewed the current conditions of the Brazilian leader, in prison since April 2018 for crimes he did not commit and a victim of "judicial persecution through a fradulent and corrupt legal structure, whose chief representative today is president Jair Bolsonaro", a White House lackey, destroyer of the social achievements of the Brazilian people and a slanderer of the Cuban Revolution and its health collaborators.
He recalled Lula's status as a world-class statesman and the success of his social policies in just eight years of government, never before lived in Brazil. "Fidel always taught us that only those who struggle and resist are entitled to victory. This is also how colleague Lula thinks and acts", concluded Guilarte before asking Fernando González Llort, Hero of the Republic of Cuba, to give the Brazilian delegation a picture of Fidel and Lula.
Jordania Ureña, representative of the Continental Day, said that today "the right invades our societies with hate speech and fearmongering". The activist also said that the International Monetary Fund has returned with the neoliberal policies that drown the dispossessed and that multinationals play an essential role in violating peoples' rights.
Karin Nansen, president of Friends of the Earth International, emphasized the need to join forces. “We face a systemic and structural crisis that cannot be solved by individual actions. To articulate ourselves, we need common understanding, solidarity, popular power, political training and communication”, she said.
Manuel Bertoldi, member of the Continental Secretariat of ALBA Moviments and the Patria Grande Front, said that “we need to build from the popular forces to fight for the majority. We need to have national popular blocs, a political program with the people and a strong mobilization”.
Mônica Valente, member of the Workers' Party of Brazil, said that we must unite the national and the regional fights; reinstate the USAN, the dialogue with political forces and social movements; solidarity as an antidote to the subjective evils of neoliberalism. "The struggle against the empire and neoliberalism is advancing", she said. Meanwhile, Ismael Drullet, member of the Workers' Central Union of Cuba's International Relations Secretariat, said that the current scenario demands commitment to the ideas of José Martí, Simón Bolívar, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and other key leaders.
Third day
Urging a united struggle, the meeting was closed by Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel, in the presence of army general Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, and Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro Moros.
"I give a special greeting to all who resist and have come to the Cuban capital, which has always been and always will be a meeting place for those who advocate peace and solidarity among peoples", the president said in a warm speech. Concluding words and on behalf of Cuba reaffirmed that “the new generation of Cuban leaders, formed and educated by the historical generation of Fidel and Raúl, are still revolutionaries, socialists, faithful and martians and that we will not compromise our positions regarding independence, sovereignty and social justice”.
"New and better times are here today in Latin America," said the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In concluding, Maduro urged those present: “We will have the strength to continue advancing in our century. Until victory, always!".
For those present, it was necessary to emphasize the need for political improvement of the communicators, highlighting the importance of study centers and compromised intellectuality, without neglecting popular mobilizations, as the main trench. They considered it crucial that leftist forces build their own history to write history from the perspective of the most exploited classes and ensure that the ideological battle is won with the responsible conscience of the masses.
Participants converged by pointing out that the neoliberal free trade model has negative consequences for countries such as the inability to protect their national productions and their natural resources, resulting in increased bankruptcy of their local industries, a structure of impunity that allows for multinationals to invade, plunder, move, buy, destroy life in the territories at no cost and even allow sanctions to governments that try to regulate their actions.
Solidarity for the decolonization of Puerto Rico, Palestine and Sahrawi, as well as the protests in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, and the freedom of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other leaders arrested by the oligarchies wishing to overthrow the avant-garde thoughts were expressed at the meeting, where support for the Bolivarian Venezuelan Revolution, Sandinismo in Nicaragua and the victories of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández in Argentina were ratified.
Subsequently, and with a visible constructive spirit, frank and open to consensus, speakers from Honduras, Laos, Chile, and Ghana raised their voices to summon the world's popular forces for a united struggle against capitalism.
Chilean activist Elizabeth Molina reported the demonstrations being held in her country against the neoliberal measures dictated by the government chaired by Sebastián Piñera and said they will not stop until a new constitution is achieved.
Janna Alonso from Ghana emphasized that the Cuban Revolution is defended by Africa because they know the solidarity vocation maintained for over 60 years.
Ana Miranda from Spain spoke of the historical ties between the peoples of Spain and Cuba, described the situation of capitalism in Europe and ensured that the struggle for change in the world continues. Elena Flores from Honduras expressed appreciation for the solidarity that the people of Cuba have displayed to her country, especially in medical collaboration and literacy in villages located in remote communities, including the original peoples of the continent.
The three days of the forces that want to change the world
Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, president of the Republic of Cuba, Nicolás Maduro Moros, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, presided over the closing of the event
Author: Madeleine Sautié
Author: Nuria Barbosa León
November 4, 2019 10:11:34
The meeting devoted space to demand the release of former Brazilian President Lula da Silva. Photo: Endrys Correa Vaillant
Cuba's place in political affairs is that which thinks of humanity as a common homeland, in which all men strike together with equal rights in the same heart. For this reason, its territory was, is and always will be a space for imperial greed to be denounced in its installations, as was the case of the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Conference, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism, held at the Convention Palace from Friday, 1 November to Sunday 3, with the participation of 1,352 delegates from over 86 countries. Due to the importance of what was experienced during these three days, Granma International offers its readers a synthesis of what happened.
First day
The meeting began chaired by José Ramón Machado Ventura, Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, and Esteban Lazo, President of the National Assembly of People's Power and the Council of State.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba stated that the current US government increases interference in the affairs of our states and warned: "I feel a duty to express to you that hard times are coming, when everyone's efforts will be crucial". Faced with the hostile US policy against Cuba, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said that the government of that country incurs violations of human rights of Cubans and also launched an aggression campaign against the medical cooperation that our country offers to the needy.
Fernando González Llort, president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, addressed the audience and reminded them of Commander Fidel Castro: "In this room, Fidel said that if he came back with the Granma yacht, he would have done it with the social movements on board".
On this first day, the panel on the challenges of the left in the current scenario in the face of the imperialist offensive resulted in a reflection break for the delegates, who advocate the importance of presenting an alternative model to the one prevailing in the unipolar and capitalist world. Argentine researcher Atilio Borón warned of the need to recognize that the right, which has the powerful media in their hands, has large sums of money, which they take advantage of to deploy their message lines and hide the truth.
José Luis Centella, leader of the Communist Party of Spain, said that "if we do not defeat the right, this can be a danger not only to humanity but also to the planet". He also called on the left to be able to cooperate, join forces and make the year 2020 a push of the people against imperialism. "The resistance must give rise to the counter-offensive", he said.
Ana Luz Farías, coordinator of the World March of Women, said that our struggle is one of resistance and must be based on solidarity, democracy and a socialist society for all the peoples of the world, without borders.
Yasmina Bárbara Vázquez Ortiz, a scholar from the Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies at the University of Havana, explained that the right we face is an expression of the particularities acquired by multidimensional power struggles in 21st century imperialism, in the midst of a process that has been called the conclusion of the concentration of wealth and capital, to the concentration of political power.
"One of imperialism's main subversion strategies is the call for the formation of movements of citizens and parties without ideology and the promotion of social protest actions, which even include manuals with precise guidelines for each case", said the researcher.
As many experts and delegates said during their speeches, the use of hypermedia tools is a weapon of these times.
Second day
The second day of the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Conference, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism experienced a special moment, when the 2,601,565 signatures of the Cuban people were handed over to Gleisi Hoffmann, president of the Workers' Party of Brazil, to demand the release of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The event took place during an act of solidarity with the former Brazilian president and was chaired by members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba, Ulises Guilarte, secretary-general of the Workers' Central Union of Cuba, and Teresa Amarelle Boué, secretary-general of the Federation of Cuban Women.
As a precious gift, Hoffmann appreciated the gesture and stated that "we are here with a very representative delegation from Brazil through the Workers' Party and, on behalf of all the entities and parties present here, we warmly salute the Cuban Revolution", of which she highlighted its democracy and the resistance against imperialism, neoliberalism for 60 years.
In such an unequal and exclusionary world that concentrates wealth and currently lives the most perverse phase of capitalism, "we thank Cuba for being a beacon that guides the struggle for the determination of the peoples, for their rights", she said. And she also thanked the "small, but enormous island, due to its generosity" for the solidarity it has always given to the peoples of the world. "There is a lot of good Cuba did to the Brazilian people when it sent thousands of Cuban doctors to serve our people", said Hoffmann. And she regretted that "today, unfortunately, more than 60 million Brazilians do not have basic health care, because of the insane and fascist persecution of Cubans by a man who illegimately came to the presidency of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro".
The Workers' Party's president assured that Brazil will never forget the Cuban gesture of collecting more than two million signatures in just 14 days to demand the release of its largest political leader, comrade Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and she thanked the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, the Workers' Central Union of Cuba, the Federation of Cuban Women, all the organizations that are part of the Solidarity Committee for the release of Lula, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. "Cuba has 11 million inhabitants and gave us 20% of its inhabitants' signatures", she said, explaining that the struggle for Lula's freedom is also the struggle for Brazil and it's people's freedom "from the clutches of neoliberalism, authoritarianism and the destruction of the Brazilian state".
In a subsequent statement, Hoffmann denounced that "they criminalized, blamed and condemned not one man, but a country's whole project of development", which was giving an economic and social way out for most poor Brazilians, and recalled that "Lula was convicted without evidence, in a manipulated and highly politicized trial, led by a DOJ-trained judge who, after doing his job convicting Lula, won the Ministry of Justice as a prize from the president he helped elect, removing Lula from the election dispute".
Sergio Moro and his group persecuted Lula and handed over "our country's greated wealth, our oil, to US foreign interests and imperialist voracity", she said.
Another element highlighted by Hoffmann as part of today's Brazil, is "the perfect combination of fake news and the encouragement of violence so that neoliberal policies can retake its position in State leadership", but — she said — "there is resistance and struggle, always strengthened by the support and solidarity of everyone present here", which strengthens the advance and offers the dimension of the greatest struggle of the Latin American people.
Obrador's victory in Mexico, Alberto and Cristina's victory in Argentina, Evo's victory in Bolivia, the people in the streets of Ecuador and Chile, the electoral result in the Colombian capital, the resistance of the Venezuelan and Cuban peoples, "all show the way to go. Firm persistence and unity of the left to wipe out all the injustices in the world", she said.
Another significant moment was the intervention of Ulisis Guilarte de Nacimiento: "The world witnessed more than a year and a half ago the injustices committed against former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by the oligarchic right of his country, who is afraid of his integrationist, humanist and Latin American leadership", he said. He reviewed the current conditions of the Brazilian leader, in prison since April 2018 for crimes he did not commit and a victim of "judicial persecution through a fradulent and corrupt legal structure, whose chief representative today is president Jair Bolsonaro", a White House lackey, destroyer of the social achievements of the Brazilian people and a slanderer of the Cuban Revolution and its health collaborators.
He recalled Lula's status as a world-class statesman and the success of his social policies in just eight years of government, never before lived in Brazil. "Fidel always taught us that only those who struggle and resist are entitled to victory. This is also how colleague Lula thinks and acts", concluded Guilarte before asking Fernando González Llort, Hero of the Republic of Cuba, to give the Brazilian delegation a picture of Fidel and Lula.
Jordania Ureña, representative of the Continental Day, said that today "the right invades our societies with hate speech and fearmongering". The activist also said that the International Monetary Fund has returned with the neoliberal policies that drown the dispossessed and that multinationals play an essential role in violating peoples' rights.
Karin Nansen, president of Friends of the Earth International, emphasized the need to join forces. “We face a systemic and structural crisis that cannot be solved by individual actions. To articulate ourselves, we need common understanding, solidarity, popular power, political training and communication”, she said.
Manuel Bertoldi, member of the Continental Secretariat of ALBA Moviments and the Patria Grande Front, said that “we need to build from the popular forces to fight for the majority. We need to have national popular blocs, a political program with the people and a strong mobilization”.
Mônica Valente, member of the Workers' Party of Brazil, said that we must unite the national and the regional fights; reinstate the USAN, the dialogue with political forces and social movements; solidarity as an antidote to the subjective evils of neoliberalism. "The struggle against the empire and neoliberalism is advancing", she said. Meanwhile, Ismael Drullet, member of the Workers' Central Union of Cuba's International Relations Secretariat, said that the current scenario demands commitment to the ideas of José Martí, Simón Bolívar, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and other key leaders.
Third day
Urging a united struggle, the meeting was closed by Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel, in the presence of army general Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, and Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro Moros.
"I give a special greeting to all who resist and have come to the Cuban capital, which has always been and always will be a meeting place for those who advocate peace and solidarity among peoples", the president said in a warm speech. Concluding words and on behalf of Cuba reaffirmed that “the new generation of Cuban leaders, formed and educated by the historical generation of Fidel and Raúl, are still revolutionaries, socialists, faithful and martians and that we will not compromise our positions regarding independence, sovereignty and social justice”.
"New and better times are here today in Latin America," said the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In concluding, Maduro urged those present: “We will have the strength to continue advancing in our century. Until victory, always!".
For those present, it was necessary to emphasize the need for political improvement of the communicators, highlighting the importance of study centers and compromised intellectuality, without neglecting popular mobilizations, as the main trench. They considered it crucial that leftist forces build their own history to write history from the perspective of the most exploited classes and ensure that the ideological battle is won with the responsible conscience of the masses.
Participants converged by pointing out that the neoliberal free trade model has negative consequences for countries such as the inability to protect their national productions and their natural resources, resulting in increased bankruptcy of their local industries, a structure of impunity that allows for multinationals to invade, plunder, move, buy, destroy life in the territories at no cost and even allow sanctions to governments that try to regulate their actions.
Solidarity for the decolonization of Puerto Rico, Palestine and Sahrawi, as well as the protests in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, and the freedom of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other leaders arrested by the oligarchies wishing to overthrow the avant-garde thoughts were expressed at the meeting, where support for the Bolivarian Venezuelan Revolution, Sandinismo in Nicaragua and the victories of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández in Argentina were ratified.
Subsequently, and with a visible constructive spirit, frank and open to consensus, speakers from Honduras, Laos, Chile, and Ghana raised their voices to summon the world's popular forces for a united struggle against capitalism.
Chilean activist Elizabeth Molina reported the demonstrations being held in her country against the neoliberal measures dictated by the government chaired by Sebastián Piñera and said they will not stop until a new constitution is achieved.
Janna Alonso from Ghana emphasized that the Cuban Revolution is defended by Africa because they know the solidarity vocation maintained for over 60 years.
Ana Miranda from Spain spoke of the historical ties between the peoples of Spain and Cuba, described the situation of capitalism in Europe and ensured that the struggle for change in the world continues. Elena Flores from Honduras expressed appreciation for the solidarity that the people of Cuba have displayed to her country, especially in medical collaboration and literacy in villages located in remote communities, including the original peoples of the continent.
The three days of the forces that want to change the world
Afro-descendants in El Salvador demand recognition
Yaneth Estrada
October 16, 2019
The Central American Parliament carried out the roundtable discussion called “Current situation in El Salvador, from the historical perspective of ancestral roots and regional integration”, to celebrate the International Day of Resistance of People of African Descent. Photo: Diario Co Latino/PARLACEN
On the International Day of Resistance of People of African Descent, the Central American Parlament (PARLACEN), with the support of the Legislative Assembly, analyzed the current situation in El Salvador from a historical perspective and regional integration.
The FMLN deputy Cristina Cornejo said that “this is a very important issue, because what they are asking for is the recognition of the existence of Afro-descendant people in this country; very few people acknowledge it and give it the human meaning that it has”.
In addition, the politician explained that “this morning we have committed ourselves ourselves to two legal provisions that are in the Legislative Assembly, at the suggestion of Afro-descendant organizations in the country, one is a constitutional reform to article 63 to recognize the existence, and another that is in the Human Rights Commission and has to do with the Law for the Protection of Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendants, for the respect and recognition of all their human rights”.
They are here, they exist and they resist
Wendy Morales, director of Azul Originarios, an organization that works for the human rights of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants said that these spaces are important to recognize the importance, the vindication and recognition of their human rights.
“This is because first we have suffered from a lot of structural racism within the Educational Centers, the political, social and cultural fields, we have been denied, made invisible, and whenever something is
referring to Afro-descendants is in a negative way”, emphasized the leader.
That is why Morales insisted that “this cannot continue happening on the part of the institutions of security, justice and education of the State that must work and encourage that our rights be respected, that they are added to the recognition of Afro-descendants that has been ratified by the United Nations, ratifying that we are here, we exist and we resist”.
It should be noted that the State recognized for the first time, in 2009, that El Salvador is a multicultural and multi-ethnic country, which means that different cultural traditions have equal importance and value for all. According to the 2007 census, more than seven thousand inhabitants claimed to be Afro-descendants; however, researchers believe there is more and that they have not been counted for various reasons.
Afro-descendants in El Salvador demand recognition
Yaneth Estrada
October 16, 2019
The Central American Parliament carried out the roundtable discussion called “Current situation in El Salvador, from the historical perspective of ancestral roots and regional integration”, to celebrate the International Day of Resistance of People of African Descent. Photo: Diario Co Latino/PARLACEN
On the International Day of Resistance of People of African Descent, the Central American Parlament (PARLACEN), with the support of the Legislative Assembly, analyzed the current situation in El Salvador from a historical perspective and regional integration.
The FMLN deputy Cristina Cornejo said that “this is a very important issue, because what they are asking for is the recognition of the existence of Afro-descendant people in this country; very few people acknowledge it and give it the human meaning that it has”.
In addition, the politician explained that “this morning we have committed ourselves ourselves to two legal provisions that are in the Legislative Assembly, at the suggestion of Afro-descendant organizations in the country, one is a constitutional reform to article 63 to recognize the existence, and another that is in the Human Rights Commission and has to do with the Law for the Protection of Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendants, for the respect and recognition of all their human rights”.
They are here, they exist and they resist
Wendy Morales, director of Azul Originarios, an organization that works for the human rights of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants said that these spaces are important to recognize the importance, the vindication and recognition of their human rights.
“This is because first we have suffered from a lot of structural racism within the Educational Centers, the political, social and cultural fields, we have been denied, made invisible, and whenever something is
referring to Afro-descendants is in a negative way”, emphasized the leader.
That is why Morales insisted that “this cannot continue happening on the part of the institutions of security, justice and education of the State that must work and encourage that our rights be respected, that they are added to the recognition of Afro-descendants that has been ratified by the United Nations, ratifying that we are here, we exist and we resist”.
It should be noted that the State recognized for the first time, in 2009, that El Salvador is a multicultural and multi-ethnic country, which means that different cultural traditions have equal importance and value for all. According to the 2007 census, more than seven thousand inhabitants claimed to be Afro-descendants; however, researchers believe there is more and that they have not been counted for various reasons.
Afro-descendants in El Salvador demand recognition
Deputy Minister Pimentel: Cultural Festival with Africa ratifies solidarity of African countries with Venezuela
Written by Stefany Arias on 11/10/2019.
In an interview with the 360° program broadcast through the Venezuelan Television Corporation (VTV), the Deputy Minister for Africa of the Ministry of the Popular Power for Foreign Affairs, Yuri Pimentel, said that the VI edition of the Cultural Festival with the Peoples of Africa, scheduled for October 9-12 at the Teresa Carreño Theater, has ratified the bidirectional solidarity between the African countries and Venezuela.
He also said that this space of culture, approach and artistic fusion has allowed the delegations of Algeria, Senegal, Mali and Namibia to compare the reality that exists in the country with the one that is projected by the international media.
Namibian filmmaker and screenwriter Uhanovo Kahorongo said that although the world of politics is very separate from his artistic approach, he finds it very pleasant that the truth of Venezuela is another and not the one sold on social networks, “being here I could verify the reality about Venezuela”.
He also said that both peoples share very similar and profound stories, the history of colonization in the case of Africa by Europe and also segregation. “The main difference between Venezuela and Namibia is Venezuelan independence is over 200 years old, while Namibian independence is recent, 20 years; another difference is the language”, he added.
Africa's importance for Venezuela
“Commander Hugo Chávez had this vision, that we inherited, to see Africa as a space of integration, which was achieved in Latin America with Unasur, Celac, Petrocaribe, ALBA and which extended to the villages of Mother Africa with the creation of the Africa-South America Summit (ASA), it is all the same struggle and South-South cooperation is fundamental”, said the deputy minister for Africa.
He said that if the natural wealth of Latin America and Africa were combined, it would possibly be 85 percent of the world's wealth in these territories, “but the problem is that they have not allowed us to develop because of neo-colonialism, that is why it is important for us to remain united”.
Deputy Minister Pimentel: Cultural Festival with Africa ratifies solidarity of African countries with Venezuela
Written by Stefany Arias on 11/10/2019.
In an interview with the 360° program broadcast through the Venezuelan Television Corporation (VTV), the Deputy Minister for Africa of the Ministry of the Popular Power for Foreign Affairs, Yuri Pimentel, said that the VI edition of the Cultural Festival with the Peoples of Africa, scheduled for October 9-12 at the Teresa Carreño Theater, has ratified the bidirectional solidarity between the African countries and Venezuela.
He also said that this space of culture, approach and artistic fusion has allowed the delegations of Algeria, Senegal, Mali and Namibia to compare the reality that exists in the country with the one that is projected by the international media.
Namibian filmmaker and screenwriter Uhanovo Kahorongo said that although the world of politics is very separate from his artistic approach, he finds it very pleasant that the truth of Venezuela is another and not the one sold on social networks, “being here I could verify the reality about Venezuela”.
He also said that both peoples share very similar and profound stories, the history of colonization in the case of Africa by Europe and also segregation. “The main difference between Venezuela and Namibia is Venezuelan independence is over 200 years old, while Namibian independence is recent, 20 years; another difference is the language”, he added.
Africa's importance for Venezuela
“Commander Hugo Chávez had this vision, that we inherited, to see Africa as a space of integration, which was achieved in Latin America with Unasur, Celac, Petrocaribe, ALBA and which extended to the villages of Mother Africa with the creation of the Africa-South America Summit (ASA), it is all the same struggle and South-South cooperation is fundamental”, said the deputy minister for Africa.
He said that if the natural wealth of Latin America and Africa were combined, it would possibly be 85 percent of the world's wealth in these territories, “but the problem is that they have not allowed us to develop because of neo-colonialism, that is why it is important for us to remain united”.
Deputy Minister Pimentel: Cultural Festival with Africa ratifies solidarity of African countries with Venezuela
Veroes, in Yaracuy, is declared the first Afro-descendant municipality
By: Prensa Cimarrona | Wednesday, October 9 2019, 07:01 AM
The Juan Ramon Lugo Afro-Revolutionary Movement met in Yaracuy
Recently (October 4–6), a large assembly of Afro-descendant leaders was held in the Veroes municipality, in the state of Yaracuy, in order to discuss the Afro-Descendant Sectoral Plan to be included in the National Plan (2019–2025). This historical fact, said the leader of the Juan Ramon Lugo Movement, Alexis Machado, sets a standard in the history of public policies from our independence to the present day. The transversal inclusion of the Afro-descendant people in public policies had made some progress with some official entities, but this intersectoral plan marks the responsibility of the State towards fifty-one percent of Venezuelans to eradicate the exclusion and structural racism that unfortunately persists even in many institutions. Machado explained that his movement has been holding meetings to raise awareness among Afro-descendants in the leading role they must play to build the new Venezuelan Maroon society without institutional racism and without exclusion.
Why Veroes as an Afro-descendant municipality?
According to researcher Jesús Chucho García, member of the Juan Ramon Lugo Afro-Revolutionary Movement and researcher of the processes of cimarronaje in the Americas and the Caribbean, these lands of the Veroes municipality are sacred land where the first historical uprisings against colonialism took place. From King Miguel of Buría in the mid-16th century to the rebellion of Andresote and his strategy of mobile cumbes (focalism and territorial mobility) to confuse the enemy, as well as the subsequent struggles such as the one in Cañizos-Palo Quemao, this territory has been a space where the descendants of Africans took spiritual, political, economic and environmental roots. Veroes is territorially an Afro-descendant city. This is why the mayor, Cesar Silva, and the municipal council in the context of the reterritorialization decided to delcare this municipality of more than fifty thousand hectares an Afro-descendant municipality.
The Afro-descendant Sectoral Plan
This meeting was attended by the Ministry of the Popular Power for Planning and institutions such as Conadecafro, which have come under prior consultation with social movements, the Afro-descendant sectoral plan with 7 well-identified areas (Economy, Education, Electoral Circuit, Technology, Legal Aspects) linked to the five strategic objectives of the National Plan, explained Norma Romero, president of Conadecafro. The Ministry of Planning team conducted the pilot test of the VQR code as a way to convey directly to the Ministry of Planning the most felt needs of Afro-Venezuelan populations to incorporate it into the National Plan. It is expected that by November 10 the Afro-Venezuelan Congress will be held in the former Cumbe de Ocoyta, Municipality of Acevedo, State of Miranda. Williams Sequera, creator of the Afro-Yaracuan music school, hopes that this plan will not remain unimplemented and for it not be an institutional demagogy it is up to us to be vigilant and make sure that it is fulfilled in the different few institutions involved.
Veroes, in Yaracuy, is declared the first Afro-descendant municipality
By: Prensa Cimarrona | Wednesday, October 9 2019, 07:01 AM
The Juan Ramon Lugo Afro-Revolutionary Movement met in Yaracuy
Recently (October 4–6), a large assembly of Afro-descendant leaders was held in the Veroes municipality, in the state of Yaracuy, in order to discuss the Afro-Descendant Sectoral Plan to be included in the National Plan (2019–2025). This historical fact, said the leader of the Juan Ramon Lugo Movement, Alexis Machado, sets a standard in the history of public policies from our independence to the present day. The transversal inclusion of the Afro-descendant people in public policies had made some progress with some official entities, but this intersectoral plan marks the responsibility of the State towards fifty-one percent of Venezuelans to eradicate the exclusion and structural racism that unfortunately persists even in many institutions. Machado explained that his movement has been holding meetings to raise awareness among Afro-descendants in the leading role they must play to build the new Venezuelan Maroon society without institutional racism and without exclusion.
Why Veroes as an Afro-descendant municipality?
According to researcher Jesús Chucho García, member of the Juan Ramon Lugo Afro-Revolutionary Movement and researcher of the processes of cimarronaje in the Americas and the Caribbean, these lands of the Veroes municipality are sacred land where the first historical uprisings against colonialism took place. From King Miguel of Buría in the mid-16th century to the rebellion of Andresote and his strategy of mobile cumbes (focalism and territorial mobility) to confuse the enemy, as well as the subsequent struggles such as the one in Cañizos-Palo Quemao, this territory has been a space where the descendants of Africans took spiritual, political, economic and environmental roots. Veroes is territorially an Afro-descendant city. This is why the mayor, Cesar Silva, and the municipal council in the context of the reterritorialization decided to delcare this municipality of more than fifty thousand hectares an Afro-descendant municipality.
The Afro-descendant Sectoral Plan
This meeting was attended by the Ministry of the Popular Power for Planning and institutions such as Conadecafro, which have come under prior consultation with social movements, the Afro-descendant sectoral plan with 7 well-identified areas (Economy, Education, Electoral Circuit, Technology, Legal Aspects) linked to the five strategic objectives of the National Plan, explained Norma Romero, president of Conadecafro. The Ministry of Planning team conducted the pilot test of the VQR code as a way to convey directly to the Ministry of Planning the most felt needs of Afro-Venezuelan populations to incorporate it into the National Plan. It is expected that by November 10 the Afro-Venezuelan Congress will be held in the former Cumbe de Ocoyta, Municipality of Acevedo, State of Miranda. Williams Sequera, creator of the Afro-Yaracuan music school, hopes that this plan will not remain unimplemented and for it not be an institutional demagogy it is up to us to be vigilant and make sure that it is fulfilled in the different few institutions involved.
Veroes, in Yaracuy, is declared the first Afro-descendant municipality
Latin America and the Caribbean: Between the Neoliberal Offensive and New Resistances
Challenges for Popular Movements and Critical Thought.
Berta Cáceres, 1971-2016
For quite a few years, the people of Latin America and the Caribbean have been confronted by a new advance of imperialism and capitalism, which has revived a process of recolonization in the region. The agenda of ‘reforms’ driven by these various neoliberal and neofascist projects is mirrored from country to country. As these projects have driven their agendas, the interests of the people and their movements in Latin America and the Caribbean have been forced to take a step backwards. Social and economic life has been eroded for the majority of the people and, on the political terrain, democratic institutions have been hollowed out. These policies have, however, corroded the legitimacy of the governments that have promoted them. This is the case in Argentina, where the Frente de Todo defeated the neoliberal project at the polls. and in Brazil, where we have seen the popularity of neo-fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro’s fall.
New processes of struggle and new kinds of popular mobilisation have developed in the region in response to this offensive. Ecuador, Haiti, and Chile are among the epicentres of these new cycles of protest and popular resistance. But the existence of these struggles does not indicate the end of the neoliberal offensive or a defeat of the economic classes that drive it. Their strength lies in their monopoly over capital and in their mobilisation of their power through targeted violence, the corporate-controlled mass media, and more amorphous networks of social communication.
The complex landscape of resistance raises a series of challenges for social movements and for critical thought. Amongst these main challenges and questions, we – at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – raise a slate of questions:
Bartolina Sisa, 1753-1782
The Past and the Present of Critical Thought in ‘Our America’
From the 20th century to today, critical thought in Latin America and the Caribbean has developed based on theoretical reflections on the political practices and challenges that confront the people. These reflections are carried out by intellectuals who are committed to these movements and rebellions – intellectuals who are often militants from these very groups and whose thoughts are shaped by intense debates about the core issues of the continent’s emancipatory projects. These projects include the struggles against colonial domination and for independence in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the projects of national liberation and socialism in the 20th century. Central to these projects is a regional or continental project that we call Nuestra América or ‘Our America’, stemming from the project to unite the Americas against colonialism.
The field of critical thought addresses different traditions and currents of Marxism that have flourished in the region. It refers as well to a wide range of studies and schools of thought that – without directly subscribing to Marxism – put forward a critical perspective about the prevailing social order and that, in various ways, weave together the desire for social transformation.
During the last century, this school of critical thought has concentrated much of its energy on debates about two important issues:
In the 1960s, the school of critical thought experienced a profound renewal. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the revolutionary wave that it inspired produced a new set of debates. An important aspect of this was the revitalisation of Latin American Marxism, which had two main contributions: first, it enlivened the regional debate around revolutionary activity and thought, and second, it provided a counterpoint to the Soviet Marxism of that era. Rooted in the experience of Latin America, this critical thought developed a range of significant theoretical currents and inserted them into the global debates of the Left. These currents included dependency theory, liberation theology, the coloniality of power, popular feminism, the pedagogy of the oppressed, Latin American political ecology, and a new transformative constitutionalism (distinct from the colonial liberal constitutionalism that prevails).
Critical thought in our current political conjuncture faces a debate about the characteristics of the neoliberal and neofascist offensive and the challenges that these offensives raise for popular movements and emancipatory projects. This debate engages three important dimensions: the character of contemporary capitalism, the new monsters that drive it, and the possibility of necessary alternative futures.
By the 1980s, the debate centred around the challenges facing the region as states moved from military dictatorships to democracies and even towards revolutionary processes. Ten years into the neoliberal democratic transition, the debate became dominated by the characteristics of neoliberal globalisation and the Washington Consensus and whether an alternative to these processes was possible. By the 2000s, thanks to various left-wing victories at the ballot box from Venezuela to Argentina, the debate shifted to focus on the characteristics of the post-neoliberal transformations and the social formations that propelled them forward.
Eduardo Galeano, 1940-2015
The Contemporary Configuration of Imperialism.
A key question for reflection today is to understand whether the United States has entered a crisis of hegemony. The loss of legitimacy of the US’ imperialist project seems to have reached a point of no return.
A point to highlight here is the displacement of the axis of accumulation of capital on the global scale from the West to the East. In this framework, China appears as the centre of a new pattern of capital accumulation. This is clear not only from its sustained economic growth – even though the rate of growth is no longer what it was a few years ago – but also from its new cycle of technological innovations and its enormous investment in research and development. The project of the New Silk Road has increased the inter-connections across Asia. It has reactivated dormant production systems in other regions of the world. Could China’s economic dynamism result in a new boom of commodity prices? If this were to happen, it would change the economic conditions in Latin America.
The dispute over hegemony has unsettled the world order, which already faces a general – and long-term – crisis of capitalism. Cycles of debt and fiscal as well as monetary crises clash with the intensification of rivalries and interventions in the Global South.
Latin America is in the midst of an economic downturn, with some countries already in the midst of a recession. This downturn has been deepened by a dynamic of financialization promoted by the United States. The acceleration of financialization is an expression of the progressive decline of the United States as a global hegemonic power, a dynamic that we have seen in earlier cases of the decline of hegemony, from Holland to Great Britain, which were similarly preceded by a shift to financialization. Only Bolivia, whose growth rate has increased by above 4% and remains at this level, has escaped this general downturn and instability.
The United States has long considered Latin America to be its ‘backyard’. As the power of the US declines, its activity in Latin America – where it seeks the absolute subordination of all countries to its authority – has intensified. Tensions mount as the power of the US declines at the same time that the challenge presented by the East is rising as seen, for example, by Russia’s willingness to exercise its veto to prevent international cover for US military action. Militarization is increasing in the region, illustrated by military drills and operations in the Amazon and in Central America.
In Cuba and Venezuela, a US-driven ‘hybrid war’ or unconventional war has intensified that combines an economic, financial, political, and media blockade. There are two reasons that the United States has pushed this agenda: first, to secure its economic interests and those of its multinational corporations (such as having access to Venezuelan hydrocarbons and minerals), and second, to bury once and for all the cycle of popular governments that led to the rebellions against the neoliberal offensive in the 1990s. The forms of intervention in Venezuela are similar to those that have been used before, but they are now more sophisticated: cyberwar, paramilitary intervention from Colombia, a deeper economic war that includes sabotage, intelligence operations into the Venezuelan military’s command and control establishment, and a political operation to form a parallel government. The rulebook designed for hybrid wars is being applied here in full force. (To better understand this process, please read our Dossier no. 17: Venezuela and Hybrid Wars in Latin America).
The different forms of intervention being promoted by imperialism and by the domestic right-wing in Venezuela demonstrate its strategic defensiveness against the consolidation of popular movements. The possibility of reviving and deepening these movements is being shaped by the imperialist forces’ attempt to use their power to restructure the economic, social, political, and cultural institutions in the region. However, popular struggles continue to find new grounds to confront imperialism. The eventual direction of this conflict cannot be predicted.
The recent socio-political struggles that are being played out today in countries such as Ecuador, Haiti, and Chile signal that popular resistance has once more risen up in the face of the neoliberal offensive. The IMF, a key agent of this offensive, returns to the region on the back of the renewed US imperialist drive in Latin America, illustrated by the largest loan in its history – $57 billion to Argentina (2018) – a process that we discuss in depth in our Dossier no. 10, Argentina Goes Back to the IMF. But if the events in Ecuador, Haiti, and Chile indicate the start of a new cycle of social conflict similar to that which took place at the close of the 1990s and the start of the 2000s, and which produced the left governments of that period, then it is important to study these movements not only for the similarities but for what differentiates them from the uprisings of the past.
In order to have a global understanding of the current moment of the neoliberal offensive, as well as an understanding of the potential of the unfolding conflicts and crises that could open up new possibilities, we must take a close look at the following political developments:
Nela Martínez, 1912-2004
Challenges for Popular Movements and Critical Thought.
Berta Cáceres, 1971-2016
For quite a few years, the people of Latin America and the Caribbean have been confronted by a new advance of imperialism and capitalism, which has revived a process of recolonization in the region. The agenda of ‘reforms’ driven by these various neoliberal and neofascist projects is mirrored from country to country. As these projects have driven their agendas, the interests of the people and their movements in Latin America and the Caribbean have been forced to take a step backwards. Social and economic life has been eroded for the majority of the people and, on the political terrain, democratic institutions have been hollowed out. These policies have, however, corroded the legitimacy of the governments that have promoted them. This is the case in Argentina, where the Frente de Todo defeated the neoliberal project at the polls. and in Brazil, where we have seen the popularity of neo-fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro’s fall.
New processes of struggle and new kinds of popular mobilisation have developed in the region in response to this offensive. Ecuador, Haiti, and Chile are among the epicentres of these new cycles of protest and popular resistance. But the existence of these struggles does not indicate the end of the neoliberal offensive or a defeat of the economic classes that drive it. Their strength lies in their monopoly over capital and in their mobilisation of their power through targeted violence, the corporate-controlled mass media, and more amorphous networks of social communication.
The complex landscape of resistance raises a series of challenges for social movements and for critical thought. Amongst these main challenges and questions, we – at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – raise a slate of questions:
- What are the specific characteristics of contemporary capitalism and how do they impact the current projects of neoliberalism and neofascism?
- What is the role of imperialism in the current political context and what are US imperialism’s methods of intervention in the region?
- What role do the apparent decline of US imperialism and the geopolitical disputes with an emergent China play in Latin America?
- What are the characteristics of this regressive cycle and the effects – in social and subjective terms – of the transformations that have been imposed on society?
- What are the political forms, methods of governance, and social subjectivities adopted by this neoliberal – and, in its worst forms, neofascist – offensive?
- How do we characterise popular resistances and their agendas as they develop as part of the class struggle against neoliberalism and neofascism?
- How do we rethink the alternatives and how do we conceptualise the construction of a popular project that seeks to create an exit from neoliberalism and a transition to socialism?
- What are the strengths and weakness of earlier progressive and popular projects?
Bartolina Sisa, 1753-1782
The Past and the Present of Critical Thought in ‘Our America’
From the 20th century to today, critical thought in Latin America and the Caribbean has developed based on theoretical reflections on the political practices and challenges that confront the people. These reflections are carried out by intellectuals who are committed to these movements and rebellions – intellectuals who are often militants from these very groups and whose thoughts are shaped by intense debates about the core issues of the continent’s emancipatory projects. These projects include the struggles against colonial domination and for independence in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the projects of national liberation and socialism in the 20th century. Central to these projects is a regional or continental project that we call Nuestra América or ‘Our America’, stemming from the project to unite the Americas against colonialism.
The field of critical thought addresses different traditions and currents of Marxism that have flourished in the region. It refers as well to a wide range of studies and schools of thought that – without directly subscribing to Marxism – put forward a critical perspective about the prevailing social order and that, in various ways, weave together the desire for social transformation.
During the last century, this school of critical thought has concentrated much of its energy on debates about two important issues:
- The characteristics of the social and economic formations in the region, as well as their relationship to global capitalism and imperialism.
- The configurations of subaltern subjects, their modes of organisation, their forms of collective action, their projects and agendas for transformation, and their political strategies.
In the 1960s, the school of critical thought experienced a profound renewal. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the revolutionary wave that it inspired produced a new set of debates. An important aspect of this was the revitalisation of Latin American Marxism, which had two main contributions: first, it enlivened the regional debate around revolutionary activity and thought, and second, it provided a counterpoint to the Soviet Marxism of that era. Rooted in the experience of Latin America, this critical thought developed a range of significant theoretical currents and inserted them into the global debates of the Left. These currents included dependency theory, liberation theology, the coloniality of power, popular feminism, the pedagogy of the oppressed, Latin American political ecology, and a new transformative constitutionalism (distinct from the colonial liberal constitutionalism that prevails).
Critical thought in our current political conjuncture faces a debate about the characteristics of the neoliberal and neofascist offensive and the challenges that these offensives raise for popular movements and emancipatory projects. This debate engages three important dimensions: the character of contemporary capitalism, the new monsters that drive it, and the possibility of necessary alternative futures.
By the 1980s, the debate centred around the challenges facing the region as states moved from military dictatorships to democracies and even towards revolutionary processes. Ten years into the neoliberal democratic transition, the debate became dominated by the characteristics of neoliberal globalisation and the Washington Consensus and whether an alternative to these processes was possible. By the 2000s, thanks to various left-wing victories at the ballot box from Venezuela to Argentina, the debate shifted to focus on the characteristics of the post-neoliberal transformations and the social formations that propelled them forward.
Eduardo Galeano, 1940-2015
The Contemporary Configuration of Imperialism.
A key question for reflection today is to understand whether the United States has entered a crisis of hegemony. The loss of legitimacy of the US’ imperialist project seems to have reached a point of no return.
A point to highlight here is the displacement of the axis of accumulation of capital on the global scale from the West to the East. In this framework, China appears as the centre of a new pattern of capital accumulation. This is clear not only from its sustained economic growth – even though the rate of growth is no longer what it was a few years ago – but also from its new cycle of technological innovations and its enormous investment in research and development. The project of the New Silk Road has increased the inter-connections across Asia. It has reactivated dormant production systems in other regions of the world. Could China’s economic dynamism result in a new boom of commodity prices? If this were to happen, it would change the economic conditions in Latin America.
The dispute over hegemony has unsettled the world order, which already faces a general – and long-term – crisis of capitalism. Cycles of debt and fiscal as well as monetary crises clash with the intensification of rivalries and interventions in the Global South.
Latin America is in the midst of an economic downturn, with some countries already in the midst of a recession. This downturn has been deepened by a dynamic of financialization promoted by the United States. The acceleration of financialization is an expression of the progressive decline of the United States as a global hegemonic power, a dynamic that we have seen in earlier cases of the decline of hegemony, from Holland to Great Britain, which were similarly preceded by a shift to financialization. Only Bolivia, whose growth rate has increased by above 4% and remains at this level, has escaped this general downturn and instability.
The United States has long considered Latin America to be its ‘backyard’. As the power of the US declines, its activity in Latin America – where it seeks the absolute subordination of all countries to its authority – has intensified. Tensions mount as the power of the US declines at the same time that the challenge presented by the East is rising as seen, for example, by Russia’s willingness to exercise its veto to prevent international cover for US military action. Militarization is increasing in the region, illustrated by military drills and operations in the Amazon and in Central America.
In Cuba and Venezuela, a US-driven ‘hybrid war’ or unconventional war has intensified that combines an economic, financial, political, and media blockade. There are two reasons that the United States has pushed this agenda: first, to secure its economic interests and those of its multinational corporations (such as having access to Venezuelan hydrocarbons and minerals), and second, to bury once and for all the cycle of popular governments that led to the rebellions against the neoliberal offensive in the 1990s. The forms of intervention in Venezuela are similar to those that have been used before, but they are now more sophisticated: cyberwar, paramilitary intervention from Colombia, a deeper economic war that includes sabotage, intelligence operations into the Venezuelan military’s command and control establishment, and a political operation to form a parallel government. The rulebook designed for hybrid wars is being applied here in full force. (To better understand this process, please read our Dossier no. 17: Venezuela and Hybrid Wars in Latin America).
The different forms of intervention being promoted by imperialism and by the domestic right-wing in Venezuela demonstrate its strategic defensiveness against the consolidation of popular movements. The possibility of reviving and deepening these movements is being shaped by the imperialist forces’ attempt to use their power to restructure the economic, social, political, and cultural institutions in the region. However, popular struggles continue to find new grounds to confront imperialism. The eventual direction of this conflict cannot be predicted.
The recent socio-political struggles that are being played out today in countries such as Ecuador, Haiti, and Chile signal that popular resistance has once more risen up in the face of the neoliberal offensive. The IMF, a key agent of this offensive, returns to the region on the back of the renewed US imperialist drive in Latin America, illustrated by the largest loan in its history – $57 billion to Argentina (2018) – a process that we discuss in depth in our Dossier no. 10, Argentina Goes Back to the IMF. But if the events in Ecuador, Haiti, and Chile indicate the start of a new cycle of social conflict similar to that which took place at the close of the 1990s and the start of the 2000s, and which produced the left governments of that period, then it is important to study these movements not only for the similarities but for what differentiates them from the uprisings of the past.
In order to have a global understanding of the current moment of the neoliberal offensive, as well as an understanding of the potential of the unfolding conflicts and crises that could open up new possibilities, we must take a close look at the following political developments:
- The results of the elections in Bolivia, with the re-election of Evo Morales and his party.
- The defeat of Macri’s project in Argentina and the victory of Frente de Todos.
- The victory of Frente Amplio in the first round of Uruguay’s elections, with a second round in November.
- The defeat of the right-wing government in several major cities in Colombia’s regional elections.
Nela Martínez, 1912-2004
New Monsters and the Neoliberal-Neofascist Offensive in Latin America
The desperation of imperialism to regain its stronghold in the region – once threatened by the ‘Pink Tide’ of progressive governments in the 1990s and 2000s – has led to the emergence of interlinked neoliberal and neofascist projects. Old ultra-conservative and pseudo-fascistic groups that previously had little legitimacy have now been revived to dispute the political hegemony of the Left. These groups, back in power, have directly attacked political and democratic rights as well as the living conditions of the people (with a special attack on the working class). The emergence of these ‘new monsters’ has become the focus critical thought and popular movements.
These neoliberal and neofascist projects are conjoined by a set of common policies that imitate the Washington Consensus of the 1990s. They call these policies ‘reforms’ when they are in fact highly regressive attacks against labour laws, the management of pensions, tax and fiscal policies, energy production, and a range of other social policies (such as in health and education). A close analysis of these ‘reforms’ allows us to map the shape and characteristics of the neoliberal and neofascist offensive on the continent and of the resistances that are emerging to contest them.
One key aspect of this offensive is the deepening of the extractive-export model for raw materials on the continent. Government policy has gone the way of increased privatisation and deregulation of mining and forestry, allowing private multinational firms to pillage the continent and leave it in a state of socio-environmental destruction. The most dramatic instance of this has been in Brazil, where the government of Jair Bolsonaro has opened up the Amazon to full-scale pillage (as we document in Dossier no. 14: Brazil’s Amazon: The Wealth of the Earth Generates the Poverty of Humankind).
The neoliberal offensive seems to be characterised by a dissociation between what is happening at the economic level and what is happening at the political level. At the economic level, neoliberal projects are subject to extreme instability. They are incapable of fostering sustained growth. What they produce is a ‘neoliberal zombie’, minimal growth, and maximum instability. Pressure comes on the countries of the region to open up their economies through free trade agreements. However, in the old centres of capitalism such as in the United States, protectionist policies operate to give an advantage to their manufacturers and to prevent an outflow of capital to the periphery. Alienated by the United States, the countries of Latin America maintain more favourable economic ties with the China.
The ‘neoliberal zombie’ plunders and commodifies common goods – notably natural resources – and increases the exploitation of labour. It plunders and exploits without any attempt to create a consensus about this pathway. Democratic institutions are set aside. To govern, the ‘neoliberal zombie’ pursues political control through the use of violence against society, through the restriction of liberal institutions, and through the creation of socially conservative ways of being in the world (or ‘subjectivities’).
In the political sphere, the neoliberal offensive has a greater margin for innovation due to a series of developments in the global and regional context. Firstly, neoliberalism reaps the fruit of the subjectivities that it has fostered: among them, social and ideological developments such as individualism, the idea of meritocracy, and a conservative mindset regarding several social fronts. Secondly, liberal democracy has entered a phase of profound crisis with the delegitimization of democratic institutions through such processes as lawfare (use of the law to invalidate popular leaders, a concept that we discuss in depth in our Dossier no. 5, Lula and the Battle for Democracy). The combination of these new ideological developments and the erosion of democratic institutions can be seen clearly in Brazil, particularly during the election of Jair Bolsonaro. As is evident in Brazil, the influence of fake news – which is linked to political interventions that seek to cultivate an anti-political sensibility – is expanding. Brazilian social life has been overrun by various conservative forces, notably in the realm of evangelic socio-religious communities. The emergence and rapid expansion of neo-Pentecostalism has taken place not only amongst the communities of the poor, but it has also fixed itself with right-wing political formations and has played a key role in the election process. Lastly, there are now clear indications of neofascistic ‘grassroots’ activism that have generated mechanisms for mobilisations and street actions. This is seen thus far in Brazil, Colombia, and – of course – Venezuela.
These indications allow us to reflect on the potential of these neoliberal projects to consolidate a stable hegemony. It is clear that these projects have been able to mobilise the worst parts of the social subjectivity produced by capitalist processes in our current period – including individualism, the theory of merit, and pleasure through commodification. The use of organised social networks, new cultural industries, and Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) deepens the hold of these conservative ideologies in the imagination of the popular classes by articulating the worries of working people along the axes of neofascist and neoliberal aspirations.
We are therefore at a crossroads of analysis. On the one hand, on the economic terrain, the neoliberal project has not achieved anything near stabilisation. This is exemplified by the economic difficulties and the progressive deterioration of social life. On the other hand, on the political terrain, we see the emergence of ultra-conservative, repressive, punitive, and even neofascist models which are then affirmed by new cultural industries. It is here that social crises and the authoritarian interventions seem to complement each other. The development of neoliberalism – far from being able to overcome the crisis – reinforces it, thrives on it, and develops malignant political forms by which it attempts to manage it. In the face of this analysis, there is a need to rethink the strategies of popular movements and emancipatory projects in Latin America in order to better combat the consolidation of neoliberalism and neofascism.
Rita Segato, 1951-
Challenges for the Reimagination of the Future.
The question of the future is posed before our movements. We are in the stage of building resistance against the neoliberal and neofascist projects. But we must look further, beyond the act of resistance, and towards building an alternative that is anti-neoliberal, anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, and post-capitalist where we are able to produce a new system and new subjectivities.
Eight central themes emerged out of our collective discussions:
Paulo Freire, 1921-1997
Latin America and the Caribbean: Between the Neoliberal Offensive and New Resistances
The desperation of imperialism to regain its stronghold in the region – once threatened by the ‘Pink Tide’ of progressive governments in the 1990s and 2000s – has led to the emergence of interlinked neoliberal and neofascist projects. Old ultra-conservative and pseudo-fascistic groups that previously had little legitimacy have now been revived to dispute the political hegemony of the Left. These groups, back in power, have directly attacked political and democratic rights as well as the living conditions of the people (with a special attack on the working class). The emergence of these ‘new monsters’ has become the focus critical thought and popular movements.
These neoliberal and neofascist projects are conjoined by a set of common policies that imitate the Washington Consensus of the 1990s. They call these policies ‘reforms’ when they are in fact highly regressive attacks against labour laws, the management of pensions, tax and fiscal policies, energy production, and a range of other social policies (such as in health and education). A close analysis of these ‘reforms’ allows us to map the shape and characteristics of the neoliberal and neofascist offensive on the continent and of the resistances that are emerging to contest them.
One key aspect of this offensive is the deepening of the extractive-export model for raw materials on the continent. Government policy has gone the way of increased privatisation and deregulation of mining and forestry, allowing private multinational firms to pillage the continent and leave it in a state of socio-environmental destruction. The most dramatic instance of this has been in Brazil, where the government of Jair Bolsonaro has opened up the Amazon to full-scale pillage (as we document in Dossier no. 14: Brazil’s Amazon: The Wealth of the Earth Generates the Poverty of Humankind).
The neoliberal offensive seems to be characterised by a dissociation between what is happening at the economic level and what is happening at the political level. At the economic level, neoliberal projects are subject to extreme instability. They are incapable of fostering sustained growth. What they produce is a ‘neoliberal zombie’, minimal growth, and maximum instability. Pressure comes on the countries of the region to open up their economies through free trade agreements. However, in the old centres of capitalism such as in the United States, protectionist policies operate to give an advantage to their manufacturers and to prevent an outflow of capital to the periphery. Alienated by the United States, the countries of Latin America maintain more favourable economic ties with the China.
The ‘neoliberal zombie’ plunders and commodifies common goods – notably natural resources – and increases the exploitation of labour. It plunders and exploits without any attempt to create a consensus about this pathway. Democratic institutions are set aside. To govern, the ‘neoliberal zombie’ pursues political control through the use of violence against society, through the restriction of liberal institutions, and through the creation of socially conservative ways of being in the world (or ‘subjectivities’).
In the political sphere, the neoliberal offensive has a greater margin for innovation due to a series of developments in the global and regional context. Firstly, neoliberalism reaps the fruit of the subjectivities that it has fostered: among them, social and ideological developments such as individualism, the idea of meritocracy, and a conservative mindset regarding several social fronts. Secondly, liberal democracy has entered a phase of profound crisis with the delegitimization of democratic institutions through such processes as lawfare (use of the law to invalidate popular leaders, a concept that we discuss in depth in our Dossier no. 5, Lula and the Battle for Democracy). The combination of these new ideological developments and the erosion of democratic institutions can be seen clearly in Brazil, particularly during the election of Jair Bolsonaro. As is evident in Brazil, the influence of fake news – which is linked to political interventions that seek to cultivate an anti-political sensibility – is expanding. Brazilian social life has been overrun by various conservative forces, notably in the realm of evangelic socio-religious communities. The emergence and rapid expansion of neo-Pentecostalism has taken place not only amongst the communities of the poor, but it has also fixed itself with right-wing political formations and has played a key role in the election process. Lastly, there are now clear indications of neofascistic ‘grassroots’ activism that have generated mechanisms for mobilisations and street actions. This is seen thus far in Brazil, Colombia, and – of course – Venezuela.
These indications allow us to reflect on the potential of these neoliberal projects to consolidate a stable hegemony. It is clear that these projects have been able to mobilise the worst parts of the social subjectivity produced by capitalist processes in our current period – including individualism, the theory of merit, and pleasure through commodification. The use of organised social networks, new cultural industries, and Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) deepens the hold of these conservative ideologies in the imagination of the popular classes by articulating the worries of working people along the axes of neofascist and neoliberal aspirations.
We are therefore at a crossroads of analysis. On the one hand, on the economic terrain, the neoliberal project has not achieved anything near stabilisation. This is exemplified by the economic difficulties and the progressive deterioration of social life. On the other hand, on the political terrain, we see the emergence of ultra-conservative, repressive, punitive, and even neofascist models which are then affirmed by new cultural industries. It is here that social crises and the authoritarian interventions seem to complement each other. The development of neoliberalism – far from being able to overcome the crisis – reinforces it, thrives on it, and develops malignant political forms by which it attempts to manage it. In the face of this analysis, there is a need to rethink the strategies of popular movements and emancipatory projects in Latin America in order to better combat the consolidation of neoliberalism and neofascism.
Rita Segato, 1951-
Challenges for the Reimagination of the Future.
The question of the future is posed before our movements. We are in the stage of building resistance against the neoliberal and neofascist projects. But we must look further, beyond the act of resistance, and towards building an alternative that is anti-neoliberal, anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, and post-capitalist where we are able to produce a new system and new subjectivities.
Eight central themes emerged out of our collective discussions:
- We must elaborate and promote a political and cultural ideological project amongst the masses that raises important questions: what is the utopia of our time? Can this utopia be realised in Latin America? These questions raise an older idea of Nuestra América, ‘Our America’. We must collectively produce a common strategy throughout the continent that lays out a utopian horizon for the construction of ‘Our America’.
- Neoliberal and neofascist projects have placed war and violence at the centre of their agenda. Across the region, the neoliberal and neofascist projects are using war, violence, and militarisation as a method of governance. They focus on eliminating the ‘other’ – often a relatively powerless group – an attitude that simultaneously creates ideological cohesion around their core group. Social and community bonds are frayed by this practise as these right-wing projects mobilise the state apparatus and sections of civil society for violent attacks. This is why it is important to reflect upon and affirm the importance of the strengthening and politicisation of social and community bonds in order to achieve a future that is based on a genuine notion of peace.
- Neoliberalism and its regressive social programmes fragment society. Nonetheless, experiences of struggle and collective action are visible across the continent. These struggles must be amplified and studied. Such grassroots and mass work are required to build these struggles – both in terms of reconstructing social bonds and of building political platforms that are capable of embodying emancipatory proposals and projects. This raises the question of what kind of political education is necessary, including how to intervene in the Battle of Ideas. (For more on the Battle of Ideas, see our Dossier no. 12, The New Intellectual).
- Neoliberal projects have created social and political disorder, resulting in the stagnation and demoralisation of the mood of the public. This raises the question of how to oxygenate social life and how to enliven political organisations and popular movements in order to radicalise democracy.
- The challenge for critical thought and the emancipatory project is precisely to incorporate the inter-sectoral goals of LGBTQIA, feminists, and afro and indigenous peoples in a revolutionary perspective; to support an integral view of the oppressions of our people and to place identity politics in a revolutionary perspective.
- Faced with the rise of evangelical movements that are aligned with the right, we raise the question of whether it is valuable to build an alternative path for the spiritual needs of the popular classes. Such a spirituality would contend with questions about the meaning of life and of social existence and would seek to build socialist values and ethics over the values and ethics of consumerism, individualism, and social fragmentation produced by the neoliberal project. Such a discussion would go beyond the spiritual in order to open up a debate around social and economic questions of how to build collective production and how to imagine the alternative society that we seek to build. In the context of Latin America, it is important to research the practices and social subjectivity promoted by neo-Pentecostal churches and to study the experiences of liberation theology as well as other traditions of popular piety and secular views that would help us to construct a collective, popular alternative to the neoliberal project.
- Central to this is a discussion of the limits of the progressive projects of the past, which would help us to imagine new emancipatory projects for Latin America’s future. We have to look carefully at the dimensions of production, distribution, and consumption that advance a socialist agenda that also values the environment and all social communities. Only this kind of comprehensive view of society will help us create the path for the necessary transition to an emancipatory future. To find an exit from the current neoliberal project, we have to face the reality of external indebtedness and the reliance upon financialization and extractivism in order to make payments on that debt. Alternative models of development that are not restricted to one country but that are framed around regional integration must be considered (the impulse that led to the creation of ALBA, UNASUR, CELAC, and others). Any new project must – on an ideological and practical level – help us develop a concrete project around the concept of ‘Our America’, Patria Grande (‘Our Homeland’), and Abya Yala (referring to the American continent in the Kuna language).
- As part of the project to build an emancipatory future, it is important to discuss scientific and technological developments and debate the effect of these developments on social communication, cultural change, the production of social subjectivity, and the use of these technologies for the surveillance and suppression of people (through cybersecurity, for example). A critical leftist perspective must be developed on these kinds of scientific and technological processes. A neutral attitude is not possible.
Paulo Freire, 1921-1997
Latin America and the Caribbean: Between the Neoliberal Offensive and New Resistances
A coulpe of lines on the social crisis in Haiti
October 29, 2019
By Varlindo Nascimento
The past few weeks were abounded with events (elections) and insurgencies that have endangered imperialist politics in several Latin American and Caribbean countries. Haiti is another such case, but which, given the sheer volume of situations, may go unnoticed by the wider public.
Haiti is a Caribbean country located on the western part of the island of Hispaniola. On the other part is the Dominican Republic. As we know, Haiti has a sui generis history among former slave-based economies, a reality throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. While the independence process took place through the intervention of a local elite descended from the criollo settlers, Haiti achieved its independence from the French colonial yoke through a slave revolution that established a republic in the early nineteenth century.
The exclusivity in the way this country achieved its independence has brought it far more damage than historical advantages. The elites who controlled the other countries did not want Haiti as an example to be followed by the subaltern peoples of the continent. Therefore, Haiti should not set a precedent for independence movements.
In the early 2000s, after president Jean-Bertand Aristide was overthrown, the country lived under UN intervention through a “peacekeeping mission” led by the Brazilian military that lasted until 2017. As if socio-economic problems and foreign intervention — which served primarily to control the population — were not enough, in 2010 a severe earthquake further collapsed the country's conditions.
The current facts serve, first and foremost, as proof that the so-called “humanitarian missions” only served as an instrument of popular control and contributed nothing to the country's socio-economic reality. Haiti remains one of the most miserable countries in the world, and oil geopolitics has pushed the country in recent days to the brink of insurrection against the right-wing government of Jovenel Moïse.
Haiti has an extremely limited energy mix, therefore the country relies heavily on the importation of oil and its derivatives, including kerosene, which is very necessary for a large part of the population which does not have an electricity supply network. In 2005, under the government of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela created Petrocaribe, an alliance that provided oil and its derivatives at subsidized payment rates to several countries in the region, including Haiti. During these years, Petrocaribe enabled the disposal of part of the Venezuelan production for the benefit of regional development and countries that have always been the backyard of the economic interests of the United States and its corporations.
In an attempt to weaken Venezuela and bring the government of Nicolás Maduro to collapse, the United States has imposed a series of sanctions and embargoes on Venezuela, a fact that directly impacts oil trading possibilities with neighboring countries, directly affecting Petrocaribe's operations. Parallel to this, as the United States pulls Venezuela out of regional trade, it benefits its large corporations, which are no longer competing to sell their oil at much higher prices.
Haiti's current government is fully aligned with imperialist policies. Agreements with the International Monetary Fund have resulted in a series of economic measures that further undermine Haitians' standard of living. Faced with this situation, the people have been taking to the streets and demanding the resignation of President Moïse.
The mainstream corporate media say that the blame for the problem in Haiti is a reflection of the crisis in Venezuela, but it does not say that the crisis in Venezuela is the fault of a policy of economic sabotage carried out by the United States to destabilize the country. The Haitian people now suffer doubly: they suffer from the consequences of their historical dependence, and suffer from a government that is fully aligned with US interests and pursues an internal policy of hunger.
Given this scenario, the Haitian people find themselves in the streets demanding the immediate resignation of Jovenel Moïse.
A coulpe of lines on the social crisis in Haiti
October 29, 2019
By Varlindo Nascimento
The past few weeks were abounded with events (elections) and insurgencies that have endangered imperialist politics in several Latin American and Caribbean countries. Haiti is another such case, but which, given the sheer volume of situations, may go unnoticed by the wider public.
Haiti is a Caribbean country located on the western part of the island of Hispaniola. On the other part is the Dominican Republic. As we know, Haiti has a sui generis history among former slave-based economies, a reality throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. While the independence process took place through the intervention of a local elite descended from the criollo settlers, Haiti achieved its independence from the French colonial yoke through a slave revolution that established a republic in the early nineteenth century.
The exclusivity in the way this country achieved its independence has brought it far more damage than historical advantages. The elites who controlled the other countries did not want Haiti as an example to be followed by the subaltern peoples of the continent. Therefore, Haiti should not set a precedent for independence movements.
In the early 2000s, after president Jean-Bertand Aristide was overthrown, the country lived under UN intervention through a “peacekeeping mission” led by the Brazilian military that lasted until 2017. As if socio-economic problems and foreign intervention — which served primarily to control the population — were not enough, in 2010 a severe earthquake further collapsed the country's conditions.
The current facts serve, first and foremost, as proof that the so-called “humanitarian missions” only served as an instrument of popular control and contributed nothing to the country's socio-economic reality. Haiti remains one of the most miserable countries in the world, and oil geopolitics has pushed the country in recent days to the brink of insurrection against the right-wing government of Jovenel Moïse.
Haiti has an extremely limited energy mix, therefore the country relies heavily on the importation of oil and its derivatives, including kerosene, which is very necessary for a large part of the population which does not have an electricity supply network. In 2005, under the government of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela created Petrocaribe, an alliance that provided oil and its derivatives at subsidized payment rates to several countries in the region, including Haiti. During these years, Petrocaribe enabled the disposal of part of the Venezuelan production for the benefit of regional development and countries that have always been the backyard of the economic interests of the United States and its corporations.
In an attempt to weaken Venezuela and bring the government of Nicolás Maduro to collapse, the United States has imposed a series of sanctions and embargoes on Venezuela, a fact that directly impacts oil trading possibilities with neighboring countries, directly affecting Petrocaribe's operations. Parallel to this, as the United States pulls Venezuela out of regional trade, it benefits its large corporations, which are no longer competing to sell their oil at much higher prices.
Haiti's current government is fully aligned with imperialist policies. Agreements with the International Monetary Fund have resulted in a series of economic measures that further undermine Haitians' standard of living. Faced with this situation, the people have been taking to the streets and demanding the resignation of President Moïse.
The mainstream corporate media say that the blame for the problem in Haiti is a reflection of the crisis in Venezuela, but it does not say that the crisis in Venezuela is the fault of a policy of economic sabotage carried out by the United States to destabilize the country. The Haitian people now suffer doubly: they suffer from the consequences of their historical dependence, and suffer from a government that is fully aligned with US interests and pursues an internal policy of hunger.
Given this scenario, the Haitian people find themselves in the streets demanding the immediate resignation of Jovenel Moïse.
A coulpe of lines on the social crisis in Haiti
Bolivia's Boiling With Color Revolution Unrest
31 OCTOBER 2019
The narrow re-election of long-serving Bolivian President Evo Morales earlier this month during the first round of voting has been exploited by his internal and external foes alike as the trigger event for inciting preplanned Color Revolution unrest in this lithium-rich landlocked socialist state.
Bolivia's boiling with Color Revolution unrest after the narrow re-election of long-serving President Evo Morales during the first round of voting earlier this month. The socialist leader is the only survivor of the "Pink Tide" that swept most of South America in the first decade of the 21st century but has since forcibly receded following the US' covert continental-wide regime change operation colloquially referred to as "Operation Condor 2.0". Morales' landlocked country is geostrategically located in the South American heartland and is rich in the lithium that's recently become an essential component in many modern-day gadgets that form the basis of contemporary society, hence why it's been targeted for destabilization.
Color Revolutions and the Hybrid Wars that they oftentimes lead to are commonly driven by the external exploitation of preexisting identity differences in diverse states, with Bolivia being no exception. The country is still mostly inhabited by its indigenous people, though severe socio-economic disparities exist within this demographic and between it and the non-indigenous minority, a state of affairs that was institutionalized for decades until Morales' rise to power rectified this historic wrong and sought to promote equality among the population. The non-indigenous people are predictably much better off than the indigenous ones, and it's they who historically formed the core of the anti-Morales opposition.
It should also be said that they mostly reside in the eastern lowlands rich in gas while the indigenous population lives mostly in the highlands where lithium is mined, and the former have been vehemently against Morales' wealth redistribution policies that they feel are unfairly depriving them of the revenue that they believe that they deserve from their natural resource sales. Their activism even briefly took the form of the "Media Luna" (half moon) quasi-separatist movement that might even be revived in the present day if the destabilization intensifies. Having said that, there are also some indigenous people who have turned against Morales for their own reasons, whether out of "leadership fatigue" or the Amazon rainforest fires.
Returning to the present moment, this state of affairs made it relatively easy for external forces to encourage unrest after the latest election, especially since Morales' campaign for a fourth term was previously denied after he narrowly lost a referendum on this issue a few years ago but was then eventually overturned by the courts that allowed him to run again. This backdrop seeded doubts about his legitimacy, which were watered by the brief pause in reporting the recent election results that ultimately found that he won 10% more votes than his closest opponent by a razor-thin margin and thus avoided a second round that could have seen the anti-Morales forces pool their efforts into collectively defeating him as was most probably planned in advance.
It's for this reason why the US and its regional vassals are doing everything that they can to discredit his latest re-election since they bet on the vote going to a second round where they believed that they had the best chance of "democratically" unseating him. The ethno-political and domestic regional context within the country makes it ripe for Color Revolution unrest, which serves the strategic goal of either overthrowing Morales or compelling him into cooperating with the US to the point of becoming yet another of its proxies in order to relieve the Hybrid War pressure that's being increasingly put to bear on his country. The greatest obstacle to this plan, however, is that Morales has many passionate supporters who would fight for his presidency.
He's done more than any leader in his country's history to right the historical wrongs of ethno-regional inequality and finally bring dignity to Bolivia's majority-indigenous population through his effective implementation of socialist policies, so millions of previously destitute people feel like they literally have everything to lose if he's illegally deposed and the progress that he made over the past decade and a half is rolled back to the old days of neo-colonialism. Bolivia could therefore very well be on the path to civil war in the worst-case scenario, especially since opposition leader Carlos Mesa already declared that he won't recognize the outcome of the OAS' audit of the recent election, which strongly suggests that powerful forces are pushing him to provoke a Color Revolution that could rival the ongoing destabilization in Venezuela and ultimately dwarf the humanitarian crisis that it created by virtue of the landlocked country's greater vulnerability to logistical disruptions.
Bolivia's Boiling With Color Revolution Unrest
31 OCTOBER 2019
The narrow re-election of long-serving Bolivian President Evo Morales earlier this month during the first round of voting has been exploited by his internal and external foes alike as the trigger event for inciting preplanned Color Revolution unrest in this lithium-rich landlocked socialist state.
Bolivia's boiling with Color Revolution unrest after the narrow re-election of long-serving President Evo Morales during the first round of voting earlier this month. The socialist leader is the only survivor of the "Pink Tide" that swept most of South America in the first decade of the 21st century but has since forcibly receded following the US' covert continental-wide regime change operation colloquially referred to as "Operation Condor 2.0". Morales' landlocked country is geostrategically located in the South American heartland and is rich in the lithium that's recently become an essential component in many modern-day gadgets that form the basis of contemporary society, hence why it's been targeted for destabilization.
Color Revolutions and the Hybrid Wars that they oftentimes lead to are commonly driven by the external exploitation of preexisting identity differences in diverse states, with Bolivia being no exception. The country is still mostly inhabited by its indigenous people, though severe socio-economic disparities exist within this demographic and between it and the non-indigenous minority, a state of affairs that was institutionalized for decades until Morales' rise to power rectified this historic wrong and sought to promote equality among the population. The non-indigenous people are predictably much better off than the indigenous ones, and it's they who historically formed the core of the anti-Morales opposition.
It should also be said that they mostly reside in the eastern lowlands rich in gas while the indigenous population lives mostly in the highlands where lithium is mined, and the former have been vehemently against Morales' wealth redistribution policies that they feel are unfairly depriving them of the revenue that they believe that they deserve from their natural resource sales. Their activism even briefly took the form of the "Media Luna" (half moon) quasi-separatist movement that might even be revived in the present day if the destabilization intensifies. Having said that, there are also some indigenous people who have turned against Morales for their own reasons, whether out of "leadership fatigue" or the Amazon rainforest fires.
Returning to the present moment, this state of affairs made it relatively easy for external forces to encourage unrest after the latest election, especially since Morales' campaign for a fourth term was previously denied after he narrowly lost a referendum on this issue a few years ago but was then eventually overturned by the courts that allowed him to run again. This backdrop seeded doubts about his legitimacy, which were watered by the brief pause in reporting the recent election results that ultimately found that he won 10% more votes than his closest opponent by a razor-thin margin and thus avoided a second round that could have seen the anti-Morales forces pool their efforts into collectively defeating him as was most probably planned in advance.
It's for this reason why the US and its regional vassals are doing everything that they can to discredit his latest re-election since they bet on the vote going to a second round where they believed that they had the best chance of "democratically" unseating him. The ethno-political and domestic regional context within the country makes it ripe for Color Revolution unrest, which serves the strategic goal of either overthrowing Morales or compelling him into cooperating with the US to the point of becoming yet another of its proxies in order to relieve the Hybrid War pressure that's being increasingly put to bear on his country. The greatest obstacle to this plan, however, is that Morales has many passionate supporters who would fight for his presidency.
He's done more than any leader in his country's history to right the historical wrongs of ethno-regional inequality and finally bring dignity to Bolivia's majority-indigenous population through his effective implementation of socialist policies, so millions of previously destitute people feel like they literally have everything to lose if he's illegally deposed and the progress that he made over the past decade and a half is rolled back to the old days of neo-colonialism. Bolivia could therefore very well be on the path to civil war in the worst-case scenario, especially since opposition leader Carlos Mesa already declared that he won't recognize the outcome of the OAS' audit of the recent election, which strongly suggests that powerful forces are pushing him to provoke a Color Revolution that could rival the ongoing destabilization in Venezuela and ultimately dwarf the humanitarian crisis that it created by virtue of the landlocked country's greater vulnerability to logistical disruptions.
Bolivia's Boiling With Color Revolution Unrest