¡Ay Nicaragua, Nicaragüita!

Hundreds of thousands rally in Managua on July 19

2008-07-20T17:30:00.003-06:00

On July 19 well over 200,000 Sandinistas rallied in Managua’s Plaza La Fe and the Plaza de la Revolución to celebrate the 29th anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship and the victory of the Popular Sandinista Revolution. It was at the same time a powerful demonstration of mass support for the Sandinista government led by President Daniel Ortega. And it was a frank and demolishing reply to the right wing opposition that has recently carried out two national protest demonstrations of from 15 to 20 thousand people at the most.

The rally was addressed by Aleida March Guevara (Che’s widow), Cuba’s Vice President Esteban Lazo, the presidents of Venezuela (Hugo Chávez), Paraguay (Fernando Lugo), Honduras (Manuel Zelaya), and Daniel Ortega.

The speeches can be heard on the website of Managua’s Radio La Primerisima at http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias/general/33909

Felipe Stuart C.

Fidel on Colombia, FARC and opposition to US intervention: `Pax Romana'

2008-07-07T08:28:00.007-06:00

By Fidel Castro Ruz

July 5, 2008 -- I basically drew the data [below] from statements made by William Brownfield, US ambassador to Colombia, from that country's press and television, from the international press and other sources. It's impressive the show of technology and economic resources at play.

While in Colombia the senior military officers went to great pains to explain that Ingrid Betancourt's rescue had been an entirely Colombian operation, the US authorities were saying that “it was the result of years of intense military cooperation of the Colombian and United States’ armies”.

“`The truth is that we have been able to get along as we seldom have in the United States, except with our oldest allies, mostly in NATO', said Brownfield, referring to his country's relationships with the Colombian security forces, which have received over US$4 billion in military assistance since the year 2000.''

“…on various occasions it became necessary for the US Administration to make decisions at the top levels concerning this operation.''

“The US spy satellites helped in locating the hostages during a month period starting on May 31st until the rescue action on Wednesday.”

“The Colombians installed video surveillance equipment, supplied by the United States. Operated by remote control, these can take close-ups and pan along the rivers which are the only transportation routes through thick forests, said the Colombian and US authorities.''

“US surveillance aircraft intercepted the rebels' radio and satellite phone talks and used imaging equipment that can break through the forest foliage.''

“`The defector will receive a considerable sum of the close to one- hundred-million-dollars reward offered by the government’, stated the Commander General of the Colombian Army.”

On Wednesday, July 1, the London BBC reported that Cesar Mauricio Velasquez, press secretary at Casa de Nariño (Colombian Government House) had informed that delegates from France and Switzerland had met with Alfonso Cano, chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

According to the BBC, that would be the first contact with international delegates accepted by the new FARC chief after the death of Manuel Marulanda. The false information of the meeting of two European envoys with Cano had been released in Bogota.

The deceased leader of the FARC had been born on May 12, 1932, according to his father's testimony. Marulanda, a poor peasant with a liberal thinking and a Gaitan follower, had started his armed resistance 60 years back. He was a guerrilla before us; he had reacted to the carnage of peasants carried out by the oligarchy.

Communist Party of Colombia and FARC

The Communist Party he later joined, the same as every other in Latin America, was under the influence of the Communist Party of the USSR and not of Cuba. They were in solidarity with our revolution but they were not subordinated to it.

It was the drug-traffickers and not the FARC that unleashed terror in that sister nation as part of their feuds over the United States market. They caused powerful bomb blasts and even blew up trucks loaded with plastic explosives destroying facilities and injuring or killing countless people.

The Colombian Communist Party never contemplated the idea of conquering power through the armed struggle. The guerrilla was a resistance front and not the basic instrument to conquer revolutionary power, as it had been the case in Cuba. In 1993, at the 8th FARC conference, FARC decided to break ranks with the Communist Party. Its leader, Manuel Marulanda, took over the leadership of that party’s guerrillas which had always excelled in their narrow sectarianism when admitting combatants as well as in their strong and compartmented commanding methods.

Marulanda, a man with a remarkable natural talent and a leader's gift, did not have the opportunity to study when he was young. It is said that he had only completed the 5th grade of grammar school. He conceived a long and extended struggle; I disagreed with this point of view. But, I never had the chance to talk with him.
The FARC became considerably strong with more than 10,000 combatants. Many had been born during the war and had known nothing else. Other leftist organistions rivalled the FARC in the struggle. By then the Colombian territory had become the largest source of cocaine production in the world. Then, extreme violence, kidnappings, taxes and demands from the drug producers became widespread.

Real peace

The paramilitary forces, armed by the oligarchy, drew basically from the great amount of men enlisted in the country's armed forces who were discharged from duty every year without a secure job. These created in Colombia a very complex situation with only one way out: real peace, albeit remote and difficult as many other goals humanity has set itself. This is the option that, for three decades, Cuba has advocated for that nation.

While our journalists meeting in their 8th Congress debated the new technologies of information, the principles and ethic of social communicators, I meditated on the abovementioned developments.

I have expressed, very clearly, our position in favour of peace in Colombia; but, we are neither in favour of foreign military intervention nor of the policy of force that the United States intends to impose at all costs on that long-suffering and industrious people.

I have honestly and strongly criticised the objectively cruel methods of kidnapping and retaining prisoners under the conditions of the jungle. But I am not suggesting that anyone lay down their arms, when everyone who did so in the last 50 years did not survive to see peace. If I dared suggest anything to the FARC guerrillas, that would simply be that they declare, by any means possible to the International Red Cross, their willingness to release the hostages and prisoners they are still holding, without any preconditions. I do not intend to be heard; it is simply my duty to say what I think. Anything else would only serve to reward disloyalty and treason.

I will never support the pax Romana that the [US] empire tries to impose on Latin America.

Julio 5 de 2008
8 y 12 p.m.

Ortega warns of a popular insurrection against rightwing attempts to topple Sandinista government

2008-07-06T19:18:00.005-06:00

[ This report is based on news coverage from Managua’s Radio La Primerisima. Source: http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias/general/32963 ]

By Felipe Stuart C.

On Saturday, July 5, President Daniel Ortega warned the US Embassy financed opposition to avoid provoking the people. Ortega spoke to thousands of sympathizers in an act commemorating the 29th anniversary of the retreat of revolutionary forces from the capital during the popular insurrection against the Somoza dictatorship. Youth made a strong presence in the vast throng, along with public sector unionists and militants of the FSLN and the Citiznes’ Power Councils (CPC).

The original June 27, 1979 retreat from Managua to the city of Masaya, about 26 kilometers southeast of the capital, was a tactical operation. It included the urban guerrilla forces of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and thousands of civilians, following several weeks of resisting the assaults of the Somocista army (Guardia Somocista) in the western and eastern barrios of the city.

The guerrillas left the eastern barrios in total silence under cover of the dark. Some six thousand civilians joined the retreat because they feared being killed when the army entered the barrios that had been held by the Sandinistas. When the army detected the procession half way on its march to Masaya, they proceeded to bombard it from the air and with artillery, causing dozens of casualties. But the Guardia failed to block the success of the operation whose additional objective was to reinforce the taking of the southern cities of the country. Less than a month later, these forces would bring about the total defeat of the National Guard of the dictator Anastasio Somoza.

In his message to the rally at the beginning of the commemoration, Ortega said, “We render homage to all the heroes and martyrs on this day. We say to them that will never betray their ideals and their principles. We are Sandinistas, we are anti-imperialists, we are revolutionaries, we are solidary, socialists. And we will keep on defending our ideals and our principles in all battlefields.

“We love peace, but we are ready to resort to the arms of steel if they try to bring down the power of the people.”

Ortega added that “it would be better for those who are on the take from the US embassy to respect the norms and not provoke the people. We want reconciliation but not at the cost of the poor and enrichment of the rich.”

“Wherever our enemies look for us, there they will find us. Wherever the country sell-outs look for us, there they will meet us. Wherever the traitors look for us, there they will find us. Wherever those on the take from the Yankee embassy look for us, there they will encounter us, ready, as our great poet Rubén Darío would say, to raise steel arms of war and the olive branch of peace. We love peace, but we are also ready to take up arms if they try to overthrow people’s power, citizens’ power – what they are now calling a dictatorship. If they try to overthrow the “dictatorship,” which for us is nothing more than the power of the people, the power of the poor, then they are again going to run up against the insurrection of the people, with the insurrection of the masses, with the insurrection of the poor.”

Ortega warned those conspiring to bring down the Sandinista government to think though the logic of their actions. “It would be better for those who are conspiring, for those financed by the Yankees, for those who are financed by the imperialists, to respect the institutional norms that exist in our country; it would be better for them not to provoke the people, to not provoke the poor, to not provoke the farmers, because this power is of the people, it is greatly esteemed Sandinista power.

“It is the power of the people, Sandinista power, a red and black power to defend the country’s blue and white flag. Only (Augusto C.) Sandino with the red and black standard knew how to defend the blue and white flag of the country; only the Frente Sandinista, inheritor of Sandino’s flag, this red and black flag, has known how to keep on defending the blue and white flag of the homeland.”

Ortega argued that this “is the only way that Nicaraguans can enjoy peace and tranquility. We want reconciliation, but not at the cost of exploitation of the poor, nor at the cost of making the rich richer, and the poor, poorer, not at the cost of robbing campesinos of their land, or depriving the people of access to health care and education."

"All these conquests were taken from our people beginning in 1990, but are now being regained by the Nicaraguan people through the Government of National Unity and Reconciliation. We have been recovering those conquests since January 10, 2007; we are defending those conquests, and we will keep on recovering more conquests and defending new conquests under the chant of Homeland or Death (Patria Libre o Morir)!”

Ingrid Betancourt's liberation

Ortega used the rally to explain his government’s response to the freeing of Ingrid Betancourt and other FARC captives in Colombia. He welcomed the captives’ liberation, but pointed out that only a political solution can bring about peace in that country. President Ortega reminded his listeners that the FARC is not alone in holding political prisoners. “The Colombian army holds captive thousands of human beings; human beings are being held captive not just on one side, but on the other, and they have been submitted to terrible tortures.

“There are signs of harsh treatment of captives by the guerrillas, but also of torture and violation of human rights and disappearances committed by the army and its paramilitary groups.”

Ortega re-affirmed that under no condition would Nicaragua betray its commitment to the three women who were wounded in the attack on a FARC encampment in Ecuador that resulted in the death of dozens of people including FARC leader and negotiator Raúl Reyes. The three include two Colombians (Doris Torres and Martha Pérez) and the Mexican Lucia Morett; they have been granted safe haven in Nicaragua. Ortega stated that the Mexicans who were present in the encampment had no military role, but were there as part of a peace initiative. Nicaragua has rejected the Colombian governments demand that the three women be sent to Colombia to face “terrorism” charges. Ortega, in a speech earlier this week warned Colombian president Uribe not to send death squads into Nicaragua to try to kill the three “muchachas.”

The FSLN leader drew a graphic contrast between the Colombian army attack in Ecuador and the liberation of the group of prisoners including Betancourt and three US CIA agents. “Imagine the contrast. On the one hand they resort to state terrorism to attack an encampment in Ecuadoran territory, killing dozens of Colombia, Ecuadoran, and Mexican brothers and sisters, and gravely wounded these three young women; on the other hand, two or three days ago, without firing a single shot, they managed to rescue 15 people.

“What does this tell us? That it is possible to win release of prisoners without firing a single shot, it is possible to attain a negotiated liberation, without firing a sing shot.”

Ortega offered Nicaragua’s unconditional support to a peace process in Colombia. But, “we insist that the Colombian government and its army renounce any resort to acts of terrorism against their own brothers, Colombian brothers, Latin American brothers….”

Michael Lebowitz: The spectre of socialism for the 21st century

2008-07-03T10:46:00.007-06:00

The following is the keynote address to the annual meeting of the Society for Socialist Studies, Vancouver, June 5, 2008. It was originally titled ``Building socialism for the 21st century''.

IMHO, this talk is one of the best and most readable accounts of the historic issues and dilemmas posed in the Venezuelan Bolivarian revolution towards a 21st Century socialism. It is taken from the Australian publication LINKS at http://links.org.au/node/503

Those who find this article stimulating and educational should definitely check out Lebowitz's book Beyond Capital.

Beyond Capital
By Michael A. Lebowitz, 2nd Edition, published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

It is an essential read for anyone interested in understanding the essential contributions of Marx to the concept of socialist liberation and the transformational potential of working people.

Felipe Stuart C.
Managua

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Michael A. Lebowitz

A spectre is haunting capitalism. It is the spectre of socialism for the 21st century. Increasingly, the characteristics of this spectre are becoming clear, and we are able to see enough to understand what it is not. The only thing that is not clear at this point is whether the spectre is real – i.e., whether it is actually an earthly presence.

Consider what this spectre is not. It is not the belief that by struggling within capitalism for reforms that it is possible to change the nature of capitalism -- i.e., that a better capitalism, a third way, can suspend the logic of capital (except momentarily). Nor is it a focus upon electing friendly governments to preside over exploitation, oppression and exclusion -- i.e., to support barbarism with a human face. Indeed, this spectre does not accept the premise that you can challenge the logic of capital without understanding it. Very simply, the spectre of socialism for the 21st century is not yesterday’s liberal package -- social democracy. Further, this spectre is not a focus upon the industrial working class as the revolutionary subjects of socialism, a privileging whereby all other workers (including those in the growing informal sector) are seen as lesser workers, unproductive workers, indeed lumpenproletariat. Nor does it suggest that those industrial workers by virtue of the difference between their productivity with advanced means of production and their incomes (i.e., the extent of their exploitation) have a greater entitlement to the wealth of society than the poor and excluded.

In the conception of socialism for the 21st century, socialism is not confused with the ownership of the means of production by the state such that (a) it is thought that all that is necessary for socialism is to nationalise and (b) that everything not nationalised is an affront. Indeed, this spectre does not emphasise the development of productive forces without regard for the nature of productive relations (such that gulags, dictatorship and indeed capitalism can all be justified because they develop the productive forces and thereby move you closer to socialism and communism).

Nor, for that matter, does it think of two post-capitalist states, socialism and communism, separated by a Chinese wall; in the concept of socialism for the 21st century, there is no separate socialist principle of ``to each according to his contribution’’ which must be honoured. Rather, there is simply the recognition that the development of the new society is a process and that this process necessarily begins on a defective basis -- in other words, with defects such as self orientation. Precisely for this reason, this recognition of existing defects, the battle of ideas -- an ideological battle against the old world -- is central to the concept of socialism for the 21st century.

Finally, socialism for the 21st century is not based upon democracy in the classic sense. By that, I mean that it is not based upon the concept of representative democracy -- that institutional form in which rule by the people is transformed into voting periodically for those who will misrule them. All these fall into what I call yesterday's socialist package.

Marx and the centrality of human development

So, if the spectre of socialism for the 21st century differs from yesterday's liberal and socialist packages, what is it?

First of all, it is a stress upon the centrality of human development. In this respect, it is a restoration of the focus of 19th century socialists. It is the vision of a society with the goal (according to Saint-Simon) of providing to its members ``the greatest possible opportunity for the development of their faculties’’, a goal to which Louis Blanc referred as ensuring that everyone has ``the power to develop and exercise his faculties in order to really be free’’ and of a society in which, according to Friedrich Engels, ``every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society’’. This vision of human development which is central to socialism for the 21st century was unquestionably Marx’s vision (Lebowitz, 2006: 53-60)

The Young Marx envisioned a ``rich human being’’ -- one who has developed their capacities and capabilities to the point where they are able ``to take gratification in a many-sided way’’ -- ``the rich man profoundly endowed with all the senses’’ (Marx, 1844: 302). ``In place of the wealth and poverty of political economy’’, he proposed, ``come the rich human being and rich human need’’ (Marx, 1844: 304). But, it was not only a young, romantic, so-called pre-Marxist Marx who spoke so eloquently about rich human beings. In the Grundrisse, Marx returned explicitly to this conception of human wealth -- to a rich human being -- ``as rich as possible in needs, because rich in qualities and relations’’; real wealth, he understood, is the development of human capacity -- the ``development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption’’ (Marx, 1973: 325).

Could anything be clearer? This is what Marx’s conception of socialism was all about -- the creation of a society which removes all obstacles to the full development of human beings. He looked ahead to that society of associated producers, where each individual is able to develop her full potential -- i.e., the ``absolute working-out of his creative potentialities’’, the ``complete working out of the human content’’, the ``development of all human powers as such the end in itself’’ (Marx, 1973: 488, 541, 708). In contrast to capitalist society in which we are the means to expand the wealth of capital, Marx in his book Capital pointed to that alternative society, ``the inverse situation in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development’’ (Marx, 1977: 772).

The workers’ own need for development -- there is the spectre, there is the impulse for a new society. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx projected that in the cooperative society based upon the common ownership of the means of production, the productive forces would have ``increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly’’ (Marx, 1875: 24). As he described it in the Communist Manifesto, our goal is ``an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’’ (Lebowitz, 2003: 202-5). Our goal, in short, cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capabilities and others are not; we are interdependent, we are all members of a human family. Thus our goal must be the full development of all human potential.

`These ideas live today’

There’s more here than a 19th century view. That these ideas live today can be seen very clearly in the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela. In its explicit recognition (in Article 299) that the goal of a human society must be that of ``ensuring overall human development’’, in the declaration of Article 20 that ``everyone has the right to the free development of his or her own personality’’ and the focus of Article 102 upon ``developing the creative potential of every human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society’’ -- this theme of human development pervades the Bolivarian Constitution.

Further, there is something there that you don’t find in the liberal conceptions of human development underlying the UN Human Development Index. This constitution also focuses upon the question of how people develop their capacities and capabilities -- i.e., how overall human development occurs. Article 62 of the Bolivarian Constitution declares that participation by people in ``forming, carrying out and controlling the management of public affairs is the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective’’. The necessary way. And, the same emphasis upon a democratic, participatory and protagonistic society is present in the economic sphere, which is why Article 70 stresses ``self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms’’ and why Article 102’s goal of ``developing the creative potential of every human being’’ emphasises ``active, conscious and joint participation’’.

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This focus upon practice as essential for human development was, of course, Marx's central insight into how people change. It’s not a matter simply of spending more on education, health and social services. Remember Marx's early comment on Robert Owen’s conception that what was needed to change people was to change the circumstances in which they exist. Marx (1845) emphatically rejected the idea that we can give people a gift, that if we just change the circumstances in which they exist they will be themselves different people. You are forgetting, he pointed out, that it is human beings who change circumstances. The idea that we can create new circumstances for people and thereby change them, he insisted, in fact divides society into two parts -- one part of which is deemed superior to society. It is the same perspective that Paulo Freire (2006: 72) subsequently rejected in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed -- the concept that ``knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing’’.

In contrast, Marx introduced the concept of revolutionary practice -- ``the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change’’ -- the red thread that runs throughout his work. He talked, for example, of how people develop through their own struggles -- how this is the only way the working class can ``succeed in ridding itself of the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew’’. And he told workers that they would have to go through as much as 50 years of struggles ``not only to bring about a change in society but also to change yourselves, and prepare yourselves for the exercise of political power’’. And, again, after the Paris Commune in 1871, over a quarter of a century after he first began to explore this theme, he commented that workers know ``they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historical processes, transforming circumstances and men’’ (Lebowitz, 2003: 179-84).

Always the same point -- we change ourselves through our activity. This idea of the simultaneous change in circumstances and self-change, however, is not limited to class struggle itself. It is present in all activities of people -- i.e., every process of activity has two products -- i.e., joint products -- the change in circumstances and the change in the actor. This obviously applies in the sphere of production as well. As Marx commented in the Grundrisse, in production ``the producers change, too, in that they bring out new qualities in themselves, develop themselves in production, transform themselves, develop new powers and ideas, …new needs and new language’’. Here, indeed, is the essence of the cooperative society based upon common ownership of the means of production -- ``when the worker cooperates in a planned way with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species’’.

How far, of course, this is from the idea that what you have to do is build up the productive forces and thereby transform the conditions in which people exist, transforming their being and their consciousness! But what other inferences flow from these principles -- the focus upon human development and upon revolutionary practice, that simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change? Let me suggest that these two principles constitute the ``key link’’, the key link we need to grasp (in Lenin’s words) if we are to understand the concept of socialism for the 21st century.

Consider, for example, what this means for the process of production. If people are prevented from using their minds within the workplace but instead follow directions from above, you have what Marx described as the crippling of body and mind, producers who are fragmented, degraded, alienated from ``the intellectual potentialities of the labour process’’. There’s no surprise that Marx looked forward to the re-combining of head and hand, the uniting of mental and physical labour -- i.e., to a time when the individual worker can call ``his own muscles into play under the control of his own brain’’. But, more than a simple combination of mental and manual labour within the sphere of production is needed. Without ``intelligent direction of production’’ by workers, without production ``under their conscious and planned control’’, workers cannot develop their potential as human beings because their own power becomes a power over them (Marx, 1977: 450, 173).

`Protagonistic’ democracy

What kind of productive relations, then, can provide the conditions for the full development of human capacities? Only those in which there is conscious cooperation among associated producers; only those in which the goal of production is that of the workers themselves. Clearly, though, this requires more than worker-management in individual workplaces. They must be the goals of workers in society, too -- workers in their communities.

After all, what is production? It’s not something that occurs only in a factory or in what we traditionally identify as a workplace. When we understand the goal as that of human development, we recognise that production should not be confused with production of specific use-values; rather, as Marx noted, all specific products and activities are mere moments in a process of producing human beings, who are the real result of social production. And, that points to the importance of making each moment a site for the collective decision making and variety of activity that develops human capacities.

Implicit in the emphasis of the concept of socialism for the 21st century upon human development and how that development can occur only through practice is our need to be able to develop through democratic, participatory and protagonistic activity in every aspect of our lives. Through revolutionary practice in our communities, our workplaces and in all our social institutions, we produce ourselves as ‘rich human beings’ -- rich in capacities and needs -- in contrast to the impoverished and crippled human beings that capitalism produces.

In contrast to the hierarchical capitalist state (which Marx understood as an ``engine of class despotism’’) and to the despotism of the capitalist workplace, only a revolutionary democracy can create the conditions in which we can invent ourselves daily as rich human beings. This concept is one of democracy in practice, democracy as practice, democracy as protagonism. Democracy in this sense -- protagonistic democracy in the workplace, protagonistic democracy in neighbourhoods, communities, communes -- is the democracy of people who are transforming themselves into revolutionary subjects.

How else but through protagonistic democracy in production can we ensure that the process of producing is one which enriches people and expands their capacities rather than crippling and impoverishing them? How else but through protagonistic democracy in society can we ensure that what is produced is what is needed to foster the realisation of our potential?

If there is to be democratic production for the needs of society, however, there is an essential precondition: there cannot be a monopolisation of the products of human labour by individuals, groups or the state. In other words, the precondition is social ownership of the means of production: this is the first side of what President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has called the ``elementary triangle’’ of socialism: (a) social ownership of the means of production, which is a basis for (b) social production organised by workers in order to (c) satisfy communal needs and communal purposes.

Let us consider each element in this particular combination of distribution-production-consumption.

A. Social ownership of the means of production

Social ownership of the means of production is critical because it is the only way to ensure that our communal, social productivity is directed to the free development of all rather than used to satisfy the private goals of capitalists, groups of individuals or state bureaucrats. Social ownership is not, however, the same as state ownership. Social ownership implies a profound democracy -- one in which people function as subjects, both as producers and as members of society, in determining the use of the results of our social labour.

B. Production organised by workers

Production organised by workers builds new relations among producers -- relations of cooperation and solidarity. As long as workers are prevented from developing their capacities by combining thinking and doing in the workplace, they remain alienated and fragmented human beings whose enjoyment consists in possessing and consuming things. And, if workers don’t make decisions in the workplace and develop their capacities, we can be certain that someone else will. Protagonistic democracy in the workplace is an essential condition for the full development of the producers.

C. Satisfaction of communal needs and purposes

Satisfaction of communal needs and purposes focuses upon the importance of basing our productive activity upon the recognition of our common humanity and our needs as members of the human family. Thus, it stresses the importance of going beyond self-interest to think of our community and society. As long we produce only for our private gain, how do we look at other people? As competitors or as customers -- i.e., as enemies or as means to our own ends; thus, we remain alienated, fragmented and crippled. Rather than relating to others through an exchange relation (and, thus, trying to get the best deal possible for ourselves), this third element of the elementary triangle of socialism has as its goal building a relation to others characterised by our unity based upon recognition of difference; through our activity, then, we both build solidarity among people and at the same time produce ourselves differently.

And, this concept of solidarity is central because it is saying that all human beings, all parts of the collective worker, are entitled to draw upon our ``communal, social productivity’’. The premise is not at all that we have the individual right to consume things without limit but, rather, that we recognise the centrality of ``the worker's own need for development’’. Further, our claim upon the accumulated fruits of social brain and hand is not based upon exploitation. It is not because you have been exploited that you are entitled to share in the fruits of social labour. Rather, it is because you are a human being in a human society – and because, like all of us, you have the right to the opportunity to develop all your potential.

At the same time as a human being in a human society you also have the obligation to other members of this human family -- to make certain that they also have this opportunity, that they too can develop their potential. As a member of this family you are called upon to do your share -- a concept also present in the Bolivarian Constitution: Article 135 notes ``the obligations which by virtue of solidarity, social responsibility and humanitarian assistance, are incumbent upon individuals according to their abilities’’.

Look at the direction that this key link -- human development and the simultaneous changing of circumstance and self-change takes us:

- to democratic decision making in the workplace and the community

- to a focus upon building solidarity and new socialist human beings rather than relying upon exchange relations and material self-interest (which Che Guevara — whose 80th birthday would have been today -- warned us leads to a blind alley)

- to a new conception of the state as one which is not over and above civil society (i.e., a state of the Paris Commune-type) -- i.e., a state which Marx wrote is our own ``living force’’, our own power, rather than a power used against us

- and, for that matter, this key link of human development and revolutionary practice leads us to recognise the need for a political instrument which respects the creative energy and revolutionary practice of masses rather than substitutes its own wisdom. In short, a political instrument which embraces the revolutionary pedagogy of Rosa Luxemburg when she argued: ``The working class demands the right to make its mistakes and learn in the dialectic of history. Let us speak plainly. Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee.’’

Is the spectre real? Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

The outlines of the spectre, socialism for the 21st century, become increasingly clear. The question remains, however, is the spectre real? Does it have an earthly presence? Especially, since this vision of the spectre draws so much upon the discourse of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, it is important to ask what the reality is there.

Certainly, socialism for the 21st century has been explicitly on the agenda in Venezuela since Chavez’s closing speech at the January 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, when he surprised many people by saying, ``We have to re-invent socialism.’’ At that time, Chavez emphasised that ``It can’t be the kind of socialism that we saw in the Soviet Union, but it will emerge as we develop new systems that are built on cooperation, not competition.’’ Capitalism has to be transcended, he argued, if we are ever going to end the poverty of the majority of the world. ``But we cannot resort to state capitalism, which would be the same perversion of the Soviet Union. We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one, which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything.’’

Without question, there has been progress in this direction. Starting in 2004, oil revenues from the newly recaptured state oil company were directed to new missions which have been providing people with basic prerequisites for human development -- education, health care, adequate and affordable food. Important steps, too, have been taken to develop each side of the elementary socialist triangle:

Social property: There has been an expansion of state property, which can be a threshold to socialist property (because it is possible to direct state property to satisfy social needs). In addition to the expansion of state sectors in oil and basic industry, to last year’s acquisition of strategic sectors such as communications, electric power and the recovery of the dominant position for the state in the heavy oil fields has been added this year so far a major dairy company and most recently the steel company (SIDOR) that had been privatised by a previous government. Further, the offensive against the latifundia has resumed with several land seizures (or ``recoveries’’), and new state companies (including joint ventures with state firms from countries such as Iran) have been created to produce means of production like tractors.

Social production: While the government has continued to seek ways to encourage worker-management, in particular by supporting cooperatives and recovered factories, this side of the triangle is the least developed so far. In part, this is because of opposition within the state to worker-management in strategic sectors such as oil and energy, and in part because of opposition from traditional trade unions to co-management structures and workers’ councils. What has been happening is a continued search for forms, and the government has moved from exploring cooperatives as the desired form, to EPS, companies of social production (which made commitments to workers and communities), and now to the exploration of the concept of socialist companies. Everyday, I hear of new ideas in this direction. At this point, this aspect is a work in process. However, it does appear that a previous model of 51% state ownership and 49% ownership by a workers’ cooperative is being replaced by focus upon 100% state ownership with workers’ control. Progress in this area, unfortunately, has been held up by the chaos and intense battles between Chavist trade union currents, and that has been a source of incredible frustration for many -- including Chavez. In this process, Chavez continues to exhort the working class to play a leadership role. After this year’s takeover of the dairy producer Los Andes, he argued that ``workers' committees must be created, socialist committees, in order to transform the factory from inside. The workers must know what is happening in the company, participate in decision-making in the firm.’’ And, after the decision to nationalise SIDOR, he announced that the government was a government of the working class. At this very point, the nationalisation of SIDOR after major struggles by the steel workers has re-animated the organised working class; and our institute (Centro Internacional Miranda) has organised roundtables between tendencies and currents that would not have been possible several months ago.

Production for social needs: Throughout the country, there are many experiments attempting to link producers and consumers directly -- especially in the sphere of agricultural products and in local trading with local currencies. To be able to identify social needs, though, continuing social institutions are required; and the most significant advance that has occurred is the development in 2006 of the new communal councils which are able to identify the needs of their communities. These councils are an extraordinary experiment in bringing power to people in their neighbourhoods -- creating an institutional form in which they can diagnose their needs collectively and determine the priorities for their communities. Of course, the idea of participatory diagnosis and budgeting is not unique to Venezuela; that is occurring in a number of communities elsewhere (and the most famous example is Porto Alegre in Brazil). But what is unique in Venezuela is the size of the units in question. Communal councils are formed to represent in urban areas 200-400 families (which can be 1000 people) and in rural areas as few as 20 families. It means that the councils are choosing not distant representatives but, rather, their neighbours, people they know well -- and not as representatives but as voceros, spokespersons for the ultimate decision-making body, the general assembly (which, of course, meets in the neighbourhood, thus allowing everyone to participate). In the communal councils you have the embryo for a new state from below. And that was recognised explicitly by Chavez last year when he proclaimed ``All Power to the Communal Councils’’. Now, of course, the communal councils are small, and the problems of society go well beyond those that can be resolved at the neighbourhood level. That is understood, and Chavez has called the councils themselves the cell of a new socialist state. They are seen as the building blocks -- essential because they are allowing people to develop confidence and capacities in dealing with problems they understand. (Observing the sense of pride in these communities is very moving.) However, it is obviously necessary to begin to combine the communal councils into larger associations in order to deal with larger problems. And that is precisely what is happening now with the creation of pilot projects to combine some of the more advanced groups of councils into socialist communes. The process envisioned is very clearly one of trying to build a new state from below.

So, is this spectre of socialism for the 21st century, with its focus upon human development and practice, real? Clearly, it is not just words. There is truly an attempt to make socialism for the 21st century real. But, can it succeed?

Can socialism for the 21st century succeed?

You might wonder, why am I even posing this question -- given evidence that the desire is there and knowledge that the great oil revenues available provide the means!

Three years ago, I gave a talk in Venezuela called ``Socialism doesn’t drop from the sky’’, which has been very widely circulated in Venezuela (largely because Chavez has talked about it a number of times on television); it is also a chapter in my book, Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century. One aspect of the title of that essay refers to the obvious point that socialism obviously is necessarily rooted in particular societies -- which is to say that it must be developed in societies with particular histories. To understand the possibilities for success in Venezuela, you have to know something about the nature of that society.

Now, I can’t give you a complete, balanced account of Venezuela in the time left. So, I’ll just stress just some of the characteristics which suggest significant obstacles to building socialism for the 21st century in Venezuela.

When you talk about Venezuela, you have to begin with oil. Not only the effect of oil exports upon the hollowing-out of the economy such that local manufacturing and agriculture effectively disappeared as the result of an exchange rate which made it much cheaper to import everything rather than to produce it domestically. It’s an extreme example of what is called the ``Dutch disease’’: despite rich agricultural land, Venezuela was importing 70% of its food. So, massive migration from the countryside to live in the cities, e.g., in the hills surrounding Caracas -- 80% of the population is urban, maybe 10% engaged in agriculture. And as for industry, it was largely import processing -- processing food, assembling cars and assorted other import-related sectors. Oil production itself doesn’t generate many jobs, so we have to think about unemployment, an informal sector (about 50% of the working class) and poverty -- extreme social debt and inequality.

Add to that economic effect, the effect upon state and society. Unlike the classic picture of a state resting upon civil society, upon the social classes, in Venezuela, civil society rests upon the state. Contrary to Engels’ sneers at Tkachev, in Venezuela the state indeed has been suspended in mid-air -- or, more precisely, suspended upon an oil geyser. Thus, the state has been the supreme object of desire -- or, more precisely, access to the state for the purpose of gaining access to oil rents has been a national preoccupation. And, in this orgy of rent seeking within a poverty-stricken society -- a culture of corruption and clientalism, parasitic capitalists who don’t invest, a labour aristocracy with trade union leaders who sell jobs, a party system which functions as an alternating transmission belt for elections and access to state jobs, a state which mostly does not work because it is filled with incompetent sinecurists but, when it does, is completely top-down. These are just a few characteristics worth mentioning.

All of this was present in Venezuela when Chavez was elected in 1998. And, you would have to be truly naïve to think that it disappeared when Chávez came to office. On the contrary, it pervades Chavism -- the corruption, the clientalism, the nature of the state, the nature of the party (including the new party – PSUV -- currently being built), the gap between the organised working class and the poor in the informal sector -- it’s all there! And, you will recognise that it is entirely contrary to everything in the concept of socialism for the 21st century.

Socialism doesn’t drop from the sky. It is necessarily rooted in particular societies. And, these two souls which currently beat in the breast of Venezuela are clearly at war. Chavez often cites [Italian Marxist Antonio] Gramsci about how the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born (although he leaves out the part about how a great many morbid symptoms appear at that time). Precisely because of these two opposed tendencies, when I write about Venezuela, I always stress the internal struggle within Chavism as the main obstacle to the success of the Bolivarian Revolution. Obviously, it is not the only obstacle -- there is the existing oligarchy, the latifundists (who are the most reactionary and violent part of the opposition), the existing capitalists in their enclaves of import processing, finance and the media (which has been their main weapon) and, of course, US imperialism. Not only was the US complicit in the 2002 coup which briefly removed Chavez and in the oil lockout and sabotage later that year, but it also funds and trains the opposition, orchestrates the international media blitz against Venezuela (currently with the assistance of magical laptop computers produced by its Colombian clients), and it is in the process of bringing the US navy back to patrol the waters off Venezuela.

Imperialism is no paper tiger. And, clearly, solidarity with the Bolivarian process is essential by those outside the country who value the concepts and developments I have described. However, I stress the internal obstacles to socialism within Chavism -- the emerging new capitalists (the ``bolibourgeoisie’’), the high officials (both from military and vanguardist traditions -- it is difficult to see the distinction) who are opposed to power from below in workplaces and communities (and, thus opposed, in this respect, to human development and revolutionary practice), the party functionaries and nomenklatura. Why do I stress this? Because I consider this the ultimate contradiction of the revolution; and, I think the struggle between this ``endogenous right’’ (the right from within) and the masses who have been mobilised is the ultimate conflict which will determine the fate of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Who will win?

Who will win? I have to tell you honestly that I don’t know. My daily mantra in Venezuela is ``pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’’. I can tell you that Venezuela is no place for a revolutionary who suffers from bipolar disorder. There are the days of depression and despair; there are the days of manic exultation. In the end, it will all depend upon struggle, class struggle, and when it comes to class struggle, there are no guarantees.

But let’s assume a worse-case scenario -- that the process in Venezuela degenerates, that it proceeds to demoralise its supporters, is defeated in one way or another by defectors, domestic capitalists, the military or imperialism. Let’s assume, in other words, that this particular earthly manifestation of the spectre of socialism for the 21st century is no more.

What will be left? A spectre -- but one with much more substance than Marx and Engels could write about in the Communist Manifesto in the mid-19th century. A spectre -- but one which is capable of becoming a material force by grasping the minds of masses. A spectre -- but one which is absolutely essential to our survival because of another spectre.

Think about this concept of socialism for the 21st century. About the focus upon human development as the goal, upon a democratic, participatory, protagonistic society as the necessary way for the complete development of people, individually and collectively. Think about the idea of communal councils in which people can collectively decide upon their needs, where they simultaneously change circumstances and themselves. Think about democracy in the workplace, about ending the divide between thinking and doing and being able to draw upon the tacit knowledge of workers to be able to produce better. Think in general about this concept of revolutionary democracy which is central to the concept of socialism for the 21st century.

This is not a concept just for Venezuela or Latin America or for the poor of the South. Why is this not a spectre that can appeal to Canadians in their communities and workplaces? Why is there not the potential for a political instrument here that can focus upon these aspects, that can put forward a vision and that can be a medium for coordinating these struggles from below?

I suggest that this is not just a nice wish -- it is a necessity. Because there is another spectre out there -- a spectre which is haunting humanity, the spectre of barbarism.

Think about capitalism. Its very essence is the drive to expand capital. The picture is one of capital constantly generating more surplus value in the form of commodities which must be sold, constantly trying to create new needs in order to make real that surplus value in the form of money. That constant generation of new needs, Marx noted already in the mid 19th century, is the basis of the contemporary power of capital.

Thus, a growing circle -- a spiral of growing alienated production, growing needs and growing consumption. But how long can that continue? Everyone knows that the high levels of consumption achieved in certain parts of the world cannot be copied in the parts of the world which capital has newly incorporated into the world capitalist economy. Very simply, the Earth cannot sustain this -- as we can already see with the clear evidence of global warming and the growing shortages which reflect rising demands for particular products in the new capitalist centers. Sooner or later, that circle will reach its limits. Its ultimate limit is given by the limits of nature, the limits of the Earth to sustain more and more consumption of commodities, more and more consumption of the Earth's resources.

But well before we reach the ultimate limits of the vicious circle of capitalism, there inevitably will arise the question of who is entitled to command those increasingly limited resources. To whom will go the oil, the metals, the water -- all those requirements of modern life? Will it be the currently rich countries of capitalism, those that have been able to develop because others have not? In other words, will they be able to maintain the vast advantages they have in terms of consumption of things and resources -- and to use their power to grab the resources located in other countries? Will newly emerging capitalist countries (and, indeed, those not emerging at all) be able to capture a ``fair share’’? Will the impoverished producers of the world -- producers well aware of the standards of consumption elsewhere as the result of the mass media -- accept that they are not entitled to the fruits of civilisation? How will this be resolved?

The spectre of barbarism is haunting humanity. And, what is the alternative to it? Yesterday’s liberalism -- social democracy -- has never understood the nature of capital and offers, accordingly, only barbarism with a human face. And, yesterday’s socialist package, with its promise of more rapid development of productive forces, its privileging of industrial workers and, its premise of a stage based upon a principle that we all must get in accordance with our contribution -- this is no alternative to the crisis humanity faces.

Whatever the ultimate fate of the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, its principal contribution has been to restore hope; it has done this by revealing that there is an alternative to neoliberalism and the logic of capital. The alternative offered by socialism for the 21st century points to the need to understand that, regardless of the luck of our birthplaces or our own past contributions, the accumulated fruits of social brain and hand belong to us all. Internationally, its alternative is ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which has created links between Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia based upon solidarity rather than exchange relations. At the core of the alternative offered by socialism for the 21st century is the idea of building a society based upon relations of solidarity -- solidarity between producers, e.g., in formal and informal sectors, solidarity between those of the North and those of the South. At its core is the idea of producing consciously for communal needs and purposes and thereby building a society in which the free development of all is the condition for the free development of each.

So, let me conclude with a point that is completely unoriginal but which, so significantly, is being heard more and more these days: the choice before us is -- socialism or barbarism.

Let me add, though, that socialism doesn’t drop from the sky -- you have to struggle to make it real.

[Michael A. Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and director of the Centro International Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela.]

Bibliography

Freire, Paulo. 2006. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum).

Lebowitz, Michael A. 2003. Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

Lebowitz, Michael A. 2006. Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century (New York: Monthly Review Press).

Marx, Karl. 1844. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in Marx and Engels (1975b), Collected Works, Vol. 3.

Marx, Karl. 1845. ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, in Marx and Engels (1976), Collected Works, Vol. 5.

Marx, Karl. 1875. Critique of the Gotha Programme, in Marx and Engels (1962), Selected Works, Vol. II.

Marx, Karl. 1973. Grundrisse (New York: Vintage Books).

Marx, Karl. 1977. Capital, Vol. I (New York: Vintage Books).

Nicaragua -- new UNO opposition in the making?

2008-07-01T12:09:00.006-06:00

Nicaragua’s anti Sandinista rightwing staged their “march of the thousands” against the Ortega government on June 27. Credible estimates place the crowd at between seven and ten thousand participants, many bused in from as far away as Chinandega and Matagalpa.

CAPTION: The song "Se va el caimán" -- "The alligator is on his way out" was choreographed and danced by thousands of demonstators, yesterday. From La Prensa, Managua.

The rally, ostensibly organized by civil society, was led by US-financed NGOs and benefited from an abundant supply of logistical support from other international and national NGOs. It was aided and abetted, and attended by a sizeable presence of supporters of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (whose most well know leader is Dora María Téllez) and of the Rescate Group (MpRS-Sandinista Recovery Movement, led by Mónica Baltodano and Henry Ruiz).

These self-proclaimed Sandinista organizations , it appears, felt no discomfort or shame at being immersed and lost in a swamp of pro-imperialist politicians and “civil society” imposters.

I watched the procession on Channel 12 whose managers and presenters were super enthused. The main claim stemming from the action is that people abandoned or “cast aside their fear” of the alleged government dictatorship. Unity has at last been found and all participants coincide that they have now a model to build an ongoing and growing force to bring down the government, or force Daniel Ortega into feeble retreat and obedience to the country’s oligarchy. The main leaders of this action are clearly forces close to the maverick liberal politician and banker Eduardo Montealegre, and the US Embassy with its network of leased NGOs in the country. All pretentions to the contrary, the MRS and the MpRS persisted in their role as caboose and the caboose’s caboose to the Montealegre train. They found themselves knee-deep in an alligator infested swamp of the most vile flunkies of the US embassy and the traditional oligarchy and financial elite of the country.

One of the main slogans of the action, directed against Daniel Ortega, was based on a cartoon by right wing caricaturist for La Prensa, M. Guillén (shown above). The slogan “Se va el caimán” (The alligator is on his way out) had its variations on the march such as “Que se vaya, que se vaya a Venezuela” (take off for Venezuela ). As I heard reference to these slogans and saw close-ups of some of the placards and banners I was reminded of the right wing mobilizations in Venezuela, or those that occurred in Chile in the months prior to the September 11, 1973 Pinochet coup.

Another memory also surfaced – April 25, 1990 in the main baseball stadium in Managua, at the changeover of government from Daniel Ortega to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. By agreement, one-half of the invitees came from her political grouping, the UNO (National Opposition Union), and the other half from the FSLN. The FSLN crowd occupied the east side of the stadium, facing the afternoon sun. The UNO rightwing forces occupied the west side. When Daniel Ortega’s cavalcade arrived the thousands of UNO supporters chanted in unison” Que se vaya, que se vaya,” They were immersed in a sea of the blue and white national flag, just like the June 27 “civil society” rally last week. Of course, they had their equivalents of the MRS in their ranks as the UNO was a coalition ranging all the way from the US embassy crowd to the Contras to parties of the old left, still pretending to be Marxist. Another similarity is the pivotal role the newspaper La Prensa played in promoting and mobilizing both the UNO and today’s “united opposition.”

Perhaps the new anti-dictatorship coalition will adopt the name UNO –– for old times’ sake. It would be more than fitting.

La Prensa's "caimán" caricature is but one of dozens of examples of hate symbolism generated at the rally and in the newspaper La Prensa. Note, too, the disdain and contempt for Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution. Fear and hatred of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is almost a common denominator of the new NGO-based middle class here (this should be of no surprise given the vital role of US and European financing of these "bastions of civil society"), and of course, of the traditional oligarchy How far down the road of convergence the MRS and the Restate Group will go towards their rightwing allies regarding the Venezuela-ALBA alliance remains to be seen. The prognosis is not good.

Felipe Stuart C.
Managua

XIV Sao Paulo Forum: Left parties debate the current historic conjuncture

2008-06-30T06:24:00.004-06:00

IV Sao Paulo Forum: Left parties debate the current historic conjuncture

By Inés Hayes, with reports from Montevideo by Cristina Camusso and Julio Louis.

Dilemma: From May 22 to 25, the XIV Sao Paulo Forum was held in Montevideo, Uruguay. Under the banner `The Latin American and Caribbean left in the new time, richness in diversity’, 844 delegates from 35 countries in Latin America, Asia and Europe participated in this historic meeting. The first encounter was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1990. The debates over the crucial issues of the 21st century are embodied today in the governments which have emerged through the electoral road. The historic dilemma of reform or revolution once again returns to centre stage.

The Sao Paulo Forum was born in 1990 at the hands of the Partido de los Trabajadores (PT, Workers Party) of Brazil and the Partido Comunista de Cuba (Communist Party of Cuba). In the context of the disintegration of social and political struggle, the forum achieved an important task. Nevertheless, with the arrival of governments such as those of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and the possibility of once again believing in socialism, the reformist and social democratic positions of some political organisations now clash with the dynamic embodied in new and old experiences of revolutionary organisations.

In this, the XIV edition of the encounter, it was possible to clearly distinguish the two positions. While these strategies are being debated within administrations such as those in Brazil and Uruguay, governments like those of Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba start from the conviction that capitalism is intrinsically inhuman and has to be surpassed.

The opening of the forum was like a frozen snapshot. Almost as if it was an expression of desires, the Frente Amplio (Broad Front, Uruguay) opened the encounter focusing on the issue of governability, the construction of a more humane society, Latin American integration and the construction of another possible world based on more solidarity. Afterwards came the turn of the secretary of the PT, who put emphasis on the struggle against neoliberalism and on inclusion and integration.

The Cuban, Fernando Ramirez, changed the tone and climate of the encounter. Ramirez put forward the necessity of revolution and gave a historic outline of the situation of the continent when the forum first emerged 18 years ago. ``We are at the end of an epoch’’, he said. He was the first to mention Hugo Chavez and to talk about what the Bolivarian Revolution had meant for turning around the situation in the continent. Moreover, he assured that gaining access to government did not presuppose having access to power.

``We are witnessing an epoch of wars, of conflicts, of environmental problems and preventive wars by the United States’’, detailed Ramirez, mentioning the failure of Free Trade of Americas Agreement as well as the imposition of the free trade agreements in the continent. ``ALBA, Unasur, Petrocaribe and Petrosur are the real path forward’’, he emphasised. [ALBA is the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, an anti-neoliberal trading alliance led by Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia; Unasur unites two existing customs unions – Mercosur and the Andean Community – as part of a continuing process of South American integration; a Caribbean oil alliance with Venezuela to purchase oil at fair prices; Petrosur is a similar oil agreement involving Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina.] Ramirez outlined in detail the way in which the United States was financing the coup-plotting plans in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia and underlined the importance of the unity of parties and movements: ``The struggle for socialism must be constructed by each one of our peoples’’, he concluded.

Integration versus unity

During Saturday May 23, the speeches in support of socialism gained more strength. José Renaldo from the Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista de Brasil) spoke of the structural crisis of capitalism and marked out Cuba as a permanent example [of the alternative]. Furthermore he highlighted the importance of Venezuela in once again placing socialism on the agenda and the necessity of counting on an anti-imperialist front in Latin America and the world. ``Unasur is a beacon in this sense’’, he assured

For his part, Ricardo Patiño, coordinating minister for policy in Ecuador, outlined the consequences of the Ciudadana Revolucion (Citizens’ Revolution) and the risky situation which Latin American finds itself in, denouncing the ``assassinations of Raul Reyes and other people in Ecuadorian territory’’ and said that [Colombian President] ``Uribe will have to prove that a country like Colombia possesses technology that no one else in the continent has’’. Patiño ratified what Correa had said in regards to establishing a Latin American regional organisation to replace the Organisation of American States, without tutelage and with Cuba. ``There is an attempt to destabilise Ecuador and regionalise the conflict through the use of preventive war doctrines. The Sao Paulo Forum should ratify its rejection of intervention and aggression against the countries of Latin America’’, explained the minister. Referring to the sovereign decision by Ecuador to dismantle the Manta US military base he said: ``There needs to be, on the part of the Sao Paulo Forum, a line of action, a collective labour to ensure that no United States base exists in our countries.’’

Moreover, Patiño highlighted the defeat of the right in electoral politics and the coup-plotting role of the mass media. ``Latin American unity has its central axis in Unasur. None of our countries will be able to triumph on its own: the socialist revolution must spread throughout all of Latin America’’, he concluded.

Following the potent speech by Patiño, there was an intervention by Roberto Regalado, member of the Communist Party of Cuba. ``We talk about neoliberalism but neoliberalism is the capitalism of our day’’, emphasised Regalado, confronting the positions of those who assure that capitalism can be humanised.

The Communist Party of Paraguay was also present in the forum. It argued in favour of its support for the recently elected president, Fernando Lugo, and pointed out the importance of the peasant movement. The Paraguay Communists assured that there was a programmatic agreement with Lugo, including over agrarian reform and the defence of Paraguayan sovereignty against United States’ intervention.

For their part, both the Partido Humanista and the Communist Party of Chile harshly criticised the Concertación government: ``[President Michelle] Bachelet and the [ruling] Concertación [alliance] are not involved in the Banco del Sur [Bank of the South], nor in Telesur [a new pan-Latin American TV channel based in Venezuela]. They did not allow Operación Milagros in Chile and the Concertación is intact, exactly how Pinochet designed it. One example of this is the repression against students and the [indigenous] Mapuche people, who are permanently attacked and persecuted.’’ The exposition was shorter than the others because the organisers of the forum signalled that their time had run out. ``It seems that the Concertación cannot be criticised here’’, said the speakers.

In concordance with a progressive viewpoint, Marco Aurelio Garcia, vice-president of the PT said that many different lefts exist, not just the reformist and revolutionary ones. He put forward the necessity of import substitution and the complementarity of sectors. ``This is a favourable moment for progressive countries’’, concluded Garcia.

Taking a Copernican shift, Osvaldo Peredo, member of the Bolivian MAS [Movement Towards Socialism] affirmed: ``We are embarking on a socialist project following the examples of Cuba and Venezuela.’’

Ortega: `Only socialism will make us free’

The closing speech, given by Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, was also a counterweight to the positions more focused on the immediate problems of government and electoral issues. Without equivocation he assured: ``There is no good empire and bad empire, there is no good capitalism and bad capitalism. We need to bring down the tyranny of global capitalism and the power of the empire. Elections can no be seen as an end in themselves, this is not the goal.’’

The death of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) leader, Marulanda, traversed throughout all of Ortega’s speech. ``Marulanda was an extraordinary fighter in a struggle which is rooted in the deep inequalities faced by the Colombian people. The terrorist is the Yankee government, the European governments, not only because they use military force, but because they have been practising terrorism in a systematic way, assassinating human beings with their economic policies and eagerness to concentrate wealth’’, he stated.

Ortega ratified the example of Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela and classified Colombia as the most destabilising country in Latin America. ``War and narcotrafficking are the big business of the United States’’, said the Nicaraguan president, who also warned of the interventionist activity of the Fourth Fleet of the United States, deactivated since 1950. ``We need to redouble our capacity to struggle, only socialism will make us free’’, he finalised.

The dilemma between reform or revolution was present throughout all the discussions and debates in the forum. The mark of this encounter will be the struggle between those forces who propose to moderate capitalism and that those that openly come out on the side of the construction of socialism of the 21st century

Source: http://links.org.au/node/495

[Translated with permission from America XXI, Issue No. 39, June edition, http://www.americaxxi.com.ve]

El imprescindible…

2008-06-29T21:20:00.000-06:00

Por Kintto Lucas

1. “Hay hombres que luchan un día y son buenos. Hay otros que luchan un año y son mejores. Hay quienes luchan muchos años y son muy buenos. Pero hay los que luchan toda la vida: esos son los imprescindibles”, decía Bertolt Brecht…

2. Dentro de la lucha social y política, son pocos, muy pocos, los que se pueden encuadrar dentro de esas características y, casualmente, la gran mayoría de esos pocos no son figuras de primeras planas…

3. En esa lucha, quien siempre ha sido y seguirá siendo imprescindible es el pueblo en colectivo, no el pueblo individual de las personas…

4. Nadie es imprescindible, ha dicho el Presidente de la República , Rafael Correa, y es verdad. En la resistencia al neoliberalismo no fue imprescindible un buró político, mucho menos el actual de Acuerdo País, fue imprescindible el pueblo en las calles, y particularmente el movimiento indígena muchas veces cortando carreteras…

5. Para cerrar el paso al TLC y a la OXY no fue imprescindible la publicidad de Vinicio Alvarado, en realidad ninguna publicidad porque no había dinero y porque los grandes medios solo daban paso a las posiciones a favor del TLC y la OXY. Alguna que otra radio como La Luna y alguno que otro periódico, como Tintají, se jugaron enteros contra la OXY y el TLC, pero no fueron imprescindibles. Imprescindible volvió a ser el pueblo…

6. Para posicionar en el imaginario de los ecuatorianos y ecuatorianas el significado del Plan Colombia, cuya última muestra fue el ataque de Angostura, no fue imprescindible la consistencia y mirada jurídica de derecha del Director Jurídico de la Presidencia , otrora abogado de León Febres Cordero. Fue imprescindible la denuncia y la información tenaz y constante de muchos durante mucho tiempo…

7. Para que Rafael Correa llegara a la presidencia no fueron imprescindibles unas encuestas que decían que podía ganar en la primera vuelta. Fue imprescindible que el pueblo, asumiera el peligro real que significaba Alvaro Noboa y la necesidad de cambios profundos…

8. Para que los ecuatorianos y las ecuatorianas digan SI a la nueva Constitución, como no tengo dudas ocurrirá, no es imprescindible quedar bien con la Iglesia , con los grupos agroalimentarios (mandato agrario mediante) o con las transnacionales mineras, es imprescindible que el pueblo sienta que ésta es su Constitución, que la mayoría de los artículos representan el cambio y un quiebre con el poder tradicional, que la Constitución no es un cuento sino un proceso transformador, popular y democrático…

9. Cada día que pasa, con mucha lucha interna, con mucho debate, se va consolidando una Constitución transformadora, en lo ambiental, en lo económico, en las relaciones internacionales... Quedará en falta en algunos temas, pero hasta ahora es mucho más lo que está. Y como seguramente la comisión de redacción no trastocará el rumbo de lo actuado, tendremos una Constitución inmensamente progresista y transformadora…

10, Para eso fue y sigue siendo imprescindible que el pueblo estuviera presente en el trabajo constituyente, fue y seguirá siendo imprescindible la dignidad colectiva de muchos asambleístas (entre lo cuales, con todos sus errores, ha jugado un papel fundamental Alberto Acosta, similar al que jugaba en su pelea contra el neoliberalismo cuando muchos revolucionarios del presente estaban encantados con las privatizaciones) que se han jugado y han luchado por un texto transformador, y buena parte de asesores que supieron defender principios...

11. En el libro Rafael Correa Un extraño en Carondelet señalaba que era posible aceptar la ambigüedad del gobierno en muchos temas hasta la aprobación de la Constitución , pero en la Constitución no hay espacio para ambigüedades, y luego de aprobada la Constitución será el momento de las definiciones…

12. Unido el objetivo del Si al de una Constitución transformadora, no revolucionaria, pero si de quiebre, como la que se está forjando palabra a palabra, pelea a pelea, volveremos a ver que el único imprescindible volverá a ser el pueblo…

13. Como me decía alguna vez ese gran revolucionario de la América que fue Raúl Sendic, el pueblo es estratega. El pueblo, abriendo surcos, moviendo máquinas, tragando el polvo, juntando rabia, caminando a pesar de todo, siempre caminado, el pueblo es el único imprescindible…

14. Aunque falte mucho por hacer, hay que hacerlo, y aunque el camino está lleno de contradicciones, hay que caminar, y eso es bastante aunque sea muy poco... El SÍ a la Constitución será resultado del camino, pero sobre todo del pueblo en el camino…

Bolivia: Between Popular Reform and Illegal Resistance

2008-06-26T08:56:00.005-06:00

This excellent report needs no introduction. It is taken from MRZine at http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sweeney250608.html

by Chris Sweeney
Two members from a rightwing Santa Cruz youth group were arrested outside the Trompillo airport on June 19 with a rifle, telescopic sight, and 300 rounds of ammunition in a purported assassination attempt on President Evo Morales. In an unprecedented and highly questionable move, the accused were freed the very next day by a Santa Cruz attorney sympathetic to their separatist cause. This potentially violent scenario is telling of the fractious nature of politics currently unfolding in Bolivia, a country plagued by extreme social inequality and political marginalization.

Three days after the alleged attempt, a referendum aimed at increasing the autonomy of the Tarija department from the national government was resoundingly approved, marking the fourth such victory for the departmental autonomy movement in Bolivia over the past two months. While Morales hopes to strengthen the central government in an effort to equitably redistribute Bolivia's resource wealth throughout the country, his opposition, a number of departmental political leaders, aspire to increase their autonomy from the central government in order to preserve the privileged status the country's elite have enjoyed for centuries. The stage is now set for a dramatic showdown that will undoubtedly shape the future of Bolivia, the choices offered to its citizenry, and their prospects for more meaningful lives.

Bolivia's Natural Wealth

Bolivia is rich in natural resources. According to the CIA World Factbook, the landlocked Andean country has more than 650 billion cubic meters of proven natural gas reserves, second only to Venezuela in all of South America. Bolivia exports over 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, making it the sixteenth largest exporter in the world. In addition, the country is home to a variety of mineral deposits, including zinc, tin, and silver. Consider also that Bolivia is a net exporter of crude petroleum, and the importance of the wealth of its vast commodity resources -- real and potential -- becomes abundantly clear. Possession of such valuable commodities should guarantee Bolivia prosperity on a national scale. However the reality for the majority of the population is far from this egalitarian ideal. Indeed, Bolivia is narrowly divided along geographic and ethnic boundaries by ideologies, language, race, cultural and fiscal policies that, until recently, have ensured that the majority remain impoverished while an economic and political elite few inordinately benefit.

Bolivia's Poor Majority

Bolivia's indigenous peoples, who account for well over half of the population, have been systematically oppressed for centuries. Living primarily as subsistence farmers in the arid western mountainous regions of the country -- the Andean Altiplano -- Bolivia's indigenous majority largely lacks access to basic educational, health, and economic opportunities. The Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress reports that over 80 percent of rural residents lack access to clean water and means of sanitary waste disposal. The 2007/08 UN Human Development Report ranks Bolivia languishing behind every country in the western hemisphere except for Guatemala and Haiti, with regards to life expectancy, educational opportunities, literacy, and GDP per capita. One may question how a country so blessed with natural riches can suffer such poverty.

The Rich Minority

Living conditions in the eastern lowlands, home to the country's mestizo (30 percent) and white (15 percent) populations, are dramatically different. Nestled in the corner of the Amazon, the tropical climate allows for much more arable land, evident by greater agricultural production as well as different land usage. In the east, large landholdings are not the exception but the rule. According to the United Nations Development Program, 25 million hectares of prime farmland is controlled by some 100 families. In comparison, the remaining 5 million hectares of farmland in the country are shared among 2 million campesinos. This lopsided pattern of land use is reminiscent of the hacienda system, the form of land organization utilized during the high days of Spanish colonialism.

The case of U.S. national Ronald Larson, who owns more than 140,000 acres of land in the eastern department of Santa Cruz, exemplifies the intensity uneven land distribution. The white landowner employs large numbers of indigenous farmhands, and although he is not an oppressive employer by any means, the fact that the existing land tenure system has tolerated a single individual being able to amass such extensive landholdings essentially guarantees the continuation of the rigid divide between rich and poor in Bolivia. Says one laborer: "We are not slaves, but we are not prospering. We just exist" ("American Rancher Resists Land Reform Plans in Bolivia," New York Times, 9 May 2008). As long as such vast tracts of land are held by a privileged few, the potential wealth hidden in Bolivia's soil will remain largely inaccessible to most of the population.

The large agribusinesses of the east have normally generated healthy profits, but it is what lies beneath the soil that traditionally has accentuated Bolivia's grievous earning gap. Most of Bolivia's natural gas and petroleum deposits are located in the wealthier and more educated eastern regions of the country, in such departments as Santa Cruz, Tarija, Pando, and Beni. Until recently, profits from the exploitation of their resources have been unfairly shared sparsely with the rest of the country through an imperfect tax system. The revenues that the energy sector has generated in the east are largely responsible for the development of the bulk of the financial markets and business services located there. As a result, this region enjoys a much higher cross-the-board per capita standard of living compared to the rest of the country.

Evo Morales and Democratic Reform

The marginalization of the masses is now being challenged by a populist indigenous movement. Evo Morales was elected President of Bolivia on December 18, 2005, running on the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party ticket. As president, he has introduced a new economic model aimed at the equitable redistribution of the nation's patrimony. "Capitalismo Andino Amazónico" (Andean-Amazonian Capitalism) represents a pluralist approach to economic growth designed to give every citizen equal access to Bolivia's literal goldmine. Vice-President Álvaro Gracia Linera explains, "Industry in Bolivia should learn to coexist with forms of self-organization and commercial development owned in particular by the people in the Andes and Amazon." The Agencia Nodo Sur (South Node Agency) explains that Andean-Amazonian Capitalism is neither socialism nor neoliberalism, but a system catering to the contemporary realities of Bolivia which recognizes communal, state, and private forms of economic organization as being equal under the law.

One of Morales' primary objectives as president has been to implement a new constitution that protects the rights of all citizens. To this end, the Bolivian Constituent Assembly approved a relatively moderate constitution in December 2007. Still, its approval was highly controversial. Members of the opposition party claimed that they were physically prevented from attending the proceedings by pro-government social movements, such as trade unions and coca growers; the MAS maintains that those who were absent from the vote on the constituent assembly were so in order to boycott the proceedings. Regardless, the draft constitution contains two progressive measures that, if promulgated, should quickly serve to benefit the majority of Bolivians. First, it creates the strong central government necessary to ensure the equitable division of the nation's natural resources amongst the citizenry. Second, the proposed constitution will respect regional autonomy while protecting the rights of indigenous groups on a level equal to their mestizo counterparts, so as to promote a more pluralist national cultural identity. This arrangement is being contested by some orthodox politicians who fear that allowing indigenous groups to practice traditional customs, especially in those regions with a mixed demographic profile, will further splinter an already badly fractured political system. Other contested issues include agrarian reform and the division of natural gas profits through taxes.

Morales Makes His Move

While the new constitution awaits ratification by the electorate, Morales has not waited to make his populist vision a reality. First, he has nationalized the all-important energy sector. On May 1, 2006 -- International Workers Day -- Morales ordered the army to reclaim gas fields, pipelines, and refineries throughout the country. He announced that "the state recovers ownership, possession and total and absolute control" of Bolivia's vast natural gas reserves ("Bolivia's Military Takes Control of Gas Fields," Reuters, May 2, 2006). The government demanded that private firms relinquish at least 51 percent of ownership to the Bolivian state energy firm, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), within 6 months. Although the existing private companies and multinationals based in Bolivia were not pleased by the above moves, they for the most part accepted Morales' terms. According to the BBC, the 10 largest private firms operating in Bolivia signed new contracts accepting the government's terms just days before the predetermined deadline lapsed.

However the nationalization process was not as "absolute" as it may seem. Indeed, the appropriation of the energy sector falls in line with the mixed-economic model of Andean-Amazonian Capitalism. The new agreement provides for state ownership of hydrocarbons and control of their sale. Some private companies will continue to operate production facilities, and may receive up to 50 percent of the value of production, so long as they respect the stipulations of law. On June 2, 2008, Morales shifted control of the natural gas pipelines previously owned by Ashmore Energy International and Shell Gas to YPFB because the foreign companies had failed to be in compliance with government regulations.

The idea behind the new arrangement is to retain the efficiency of a private company while securing profits for state use. The dual involvement of state and private interests effectively balances productive capacity and social welfare, a healthy approach to achieving the national prosperity that is too often absent in South America. Although it may be unnecessary in the long run, a strong central government is viewed by many political scientists as being necessary for Bolivia at the present time in order to deconstruct the racial and cultural barriers which have divided society over the decades. In this regard, Morales is attempting to mediate between several competing groups so as to create a unified Bolivia. It is clear that the overall success of Bolivia takes precedence over the benefits to any particular party, regardless of its respective affiliation. As he explained during the nationalization of a processing plant formerly owned by Glencore International AG, a Swiss mining company, "Companies that respect Bolivian laws that do not steal money from the Bolivian people, will be respected. But if the companies do not respect the laws, I have no other alternative than to recover those companies" ("Bolivia to Nationalize Mineral Plant," Associated Press, February 8, 2007).

The Moon Rises in Bolivia

Morales' reforms, however, have faced stiff opposition. Indeed, the constituency of his popular movement is fiercely opposed by the far more affluent mestizo minority, as the redistribution of wealth and resources threatens the power maintained by this elite class. The country's so called "Half Moon," where most of the opposition forces are based, is made up of the four previously mentioned hydrocarbon-producing departments situated along Bolivia's eastern border. These departments particularly have taken issue with the aforementioned redistribution of wealth, claiming that the earnings from natural gas production, for example, should stay in the region where the resource was found.

The big political debate, then, revolves around who should have first draw on the profits from the sale of natural resources. The current hydrocarbons tax (Impuesto Directo a los Hidrocarburos), drafted in 2005, divides 12.5 percent of hydrocarbon tax revenues between the four aforementioned producing departments; 6.25 percent goes to each of the five non-producing departments; and 56.25 percent goes to the national government. Having the majority of profits going to the national government seems to be the most appropriate policy in a country sharply divided since Spanish colonial times along ethnic, economic, and political boundaries because it allows the government to address these problems with a unified approach. Indeed, critics of Bolivia's current situation insist that a strong, transparent and democratic central government is needed to achieve meaningful reform. Morales' administration has thus far filled this role surprisingly well, given the obstacles it has had to face and the tenacity of his political foes.

The Vote for Autonomy

Leading the opposition to Morales is Ruben Costas, the prefect of Bolivia's largest and wealthiest department, Santa Cruz. Costas spearheaded a referendum, held on May 4, 2008, calling for increased regional autonomy and voiding some of Morales' reforms to prevent Santa Cruz's copious wealth from being redistributed to the entire nation. Key provisions of the entirely illegal referendum on autonomy, which Costas' side overwhelmingly won, reserves Santa Cruz the right to negotiate its own contracts with foreign oil companies and gives it control over the possession, distribution, and administration of its own land holdings. According to Bolivian federal authorities, Morales is in favor of granting some autonomy to both departments and indigenous communities, however only if this condition is pursued through a legal constitutional framework and will preserve the integrity of the nation. The May referendum in Santa Cruz clearly did not meet this criterion.

Nevertheless, pro-autonomy forces received more than 80 percent of the vote in all of the autonomy-seeking departments. Santa Cruz's results were replicated on June 1 in the smaller departments of Pando and Beni and on June 22 in Tarija. However, the legitimacy of the Tarija vote deserves even greater scrutiny than the others. There, the department prefect, Mario Cossío, refused to recognize a similarly illegal vote organized by his opposition on June 15 that selected a sub-prefect and departmental councilor. Cossío's critics claim that his position, clearly guided by politics and not the law, further undermine the results of Tarija's autonomy referendum.

A Growing Problem

The Tarija case is characteristic of the situation being played out on a national scale. Competing political groups are attacking each other through illegal means and neither side is willing to negotiate with its respective opposition. If these counterproductive methods continue, with neither side conceding to the other, it could trigger the political disaster that has thus far been avoided. Secession was once merely a threat used by the Half Moon departments to bring attention to their cause, but it is once again gaining steam in various forms. In Tarija, for example, residents of the Gran Chaco region have expressed interest in splitting from their current department and forming a new one. The proposed "Chaco" department, which would be the nation's 10th such political division, is indicative of the multitude of political alliances currently at play in Bolivia.

"MASismo has failed," said the conservative Costas, in reference to Morales' political party, "We have set out on a road towards a new republic and modern state that will be forged in the four autonomous provinces, until this becomes the most decentralized country in Latin America" (Franz Chávez, "Referendum Gives Major Boost to Autonomy Movement," IPS). The primary point of contention between Costas and Morales is the question of to whom autonomy should be granted. Morales wants to recognize regional, departmental, and indigenous groups in a mixed political system comparable to his diverse economic model. Meanwhile, Costas is trying to divide the country strictly along political and geographic boundaries without granting indigenous groups any special powers, a concession which he opposes because it would undermine his administrative capabilities as well as those of nation's other prefects. Although Costas is essentially proposing a federalist society, he is careful to avoid the term because of the negative connotations it produces in Bolivia, namely its association with the Federal War of 1899, in which mestizo elites first allied with and then betrayed native Aymara indigenous groups.

The Legal System: A Political Reality Check

Regardless of their successes, the aforementioned referendums were blatantly illegal. Two months before the Santa Cruz vote, the Bolivian National Electoral Court (CNE), the nation's highest governing authority with plenary jurisdiction over elections, declared the then planned referendums unconstitutional. Admittedly, the CNE is loaded with Morales' supporters -- including its president, José Exeni -- but the ruling was also backed by the Bolivian Congress and other institutional bodies. Several international organizations have also sided with the government; the OAS and the EU both chose not to send electoral monitors to oversee the referendums due to their illegality, representing a strong show of support for the CNE decision. Furthermore, the results of the referendums also have been rejected by the newly formed South American Union, UNASUR. Up to now, the U.S. has encouraged dialogue between the involved parties, but has otherwise remained mum on the issue.

MAS, using some creative mathematics, has nonetheless claimed victory in the referendums, citing a 38 percent abstention rate in Santa Cruz, 46.5 percent in Pando, 34 percent in Beni, and 35 percent in Tarija, according to the Latin Daily News. When these numbers are combined with those who voted "no" to autonomy, it can be established that the referendums have been rejected by 52 percent, 56 percent, 40 percent, and 55 percent, respectively, in terms of the absolute percentage of the electorate. In addition, MAS has brought attention to numerous omissions on voter registration lists and other irregularities designed to assist the opposition in its illegal bid for autonomy.

It is interesting to note that Costas, Cossío, and Bolivia's other prefects were elected by popular vote, and not selected by the president as is stipulated by law. Thus, Morales could demand the resignation of the leadership of this regional opposition, but according to Dr. Martin Mendoza, a Cambridge political science professor, this would be far too controversial a step to take during these tumultuous times. Such an action could ignite the political tension into outright violence. At least one person died during the Santa Cruz referendum and many were injured there as well as in Pando and Beni during skirmishes instigated by the anti-Morales, ultra rightwing Youth League (to which the two accused in the assassination attempt belong). Instead of exercising his constitutional power to preserve his presidency, Morales has opted to leave this decision up to the people through a new referendum.

An Uncertain Future

Responding to the opposition, Morales has called for another referendum aimed at gauging national confidence in the President and all of the prefects. According to this template, the contested leaders must be affirmed by at least the percentage they received when voted into office. If not, their positions will be vacated and new elections will be held. This "confidence vote" -- which is legally sanctioned -- is scheduled for August 10th. Some experts, including Juan Carlos Hidalgo of the Cato Institute, have claimed that the recall vote is a ploy by the opposition to delay a vote on the new constitution. Indeed, Bolivian law stipulates that only one national referendum can be held in any given year, so the August 10 vote will push back a vote on the constitution until at least 2009.

However this move by the opposition could very well backfire. Many of the opposition prefects are no longer confident that they will survive the recall vote and have thus joined forces under the Conalde (national democratic council) to voice their disagreement. On June 23, the prefects from the four aforementioned departments, along with Manfred Reyes Villa from Cochabamba, publicly rejected the upcoming referendum. None of these prefects were elected by a clear majority and their newfound hostility to the legally-sanctioned referendum is a telling sign that they fear dismissal by their constituencies in August. Instead they have called for the renewal of "national dialogue," which although necessary to quell the worsening political turmoil, is in this case guided by self-serving interests and for that reason serves only to confound the problem.

Meanwhile, in a recent opinion poll, 55 percent of respondents approved of the president, a slight increase from April. For this reason, it is widely believed Morales will win the upcoming vote. He was elected by 53.74% of voters in 2005, an unprecedented victory in Bolivian politics, so it is unlikely that he will be ousted in August. What matters, then, is the margin by which Morales wins. A clear victory will further legitimize his government, strengthen the MAS party, and expedite the referendum ballot needed to approve the new constitution. A narrow victory, however, may serve to unify the somewhat divided opposition and give it new leverage against Morales. Even if he loses, there is no constitutional mandate to legitimize the ouster of the president in such circumstances, so Morales will likely be able to stall the impact of any vote until the next scheduled elections in January 2011, at which time it may no longer be relevant.

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Chris Sweeney is a Research Associate for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. This analysis was published on the COHA Web site on 24 June 2008. It is reproduced here for educational purposes.
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Article by Bolivan VP Álvaro García Linera and its relevance for Nicaragua

2008-06-24T10:59:00.005-06:00

Below is a link to a recently published article by Bolivian Vice-president Álvaro García Linera's on the problems of discerning the relationship of class forces, points of confrontation between opposed hegemonies, and ongoing contradictions in the indigenous-led Bolivian revolution. The article is based on a speech made in December, 2007 but only recently published by Bolpress. Veteran Canadian socialist Richard Fidler did the translation and prepared an introduction and notes. See: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/garcia220608.html or http://links.org.au/node/484

Below I am reproducing Fidler’s introduction and notes, followed by a commentary on the relevance of the article for analyzing the revolutionary process in Nicaragua.

Felipe Stuart
Managua

Catastrophic Equilibrium and Point of Bifurcation
by Álvaro García Linera

Introduction
by Richard Fidler

The following article, based on a speech given in December 2007 but only recently transcribed and published, is an important statement by a leading member of Evo Morales' government on the political situation in Bolivia in the wake of the Constituent Assembly's vote on a draft Political Constitution. The draft Constitution is to be put to a popular vote for adoption later this year.
Álvaro García Linera, Bolivia's Vice-President, is a former leader of the Tupac Katarí guerrilla army, subsequently employed as a university sociologist. He is also a prominent Latin American Marxist strongly influenced by post-World War II European non-Stalinist Marxist currents inspired by the ideas of the Italian communist leader and political theorist Antonio Gramsci.

Gramsci, who died in 1937, was an innovative Marxist thinker who wrote extensively on the concept of cultural hegemony and its role as an ideological mainstay of capitalist societies.

Some readers may be surprised by García Linera's frequent invocation of Gramscian "hegemony" in the Bolivian context, as that concept is often associated primarily with Marxist attempts to explain the particular problems of mass consciousness as they arise in the complex class societies of the imperialist countries. However, there is a long line of thinking among Latin American Marxists influenced by Gramsci; it goes back to José Carlos Mariátegui, the Peruvian communist, who lived in Italy for a period during the 1920s and was acquainted with Gramsci's writings. These Latin Americans, like Gramsci, also drew on the early Communist International's use of the concept of hegemony in analyzing the relationship between the minority proletariat and the non-proletarian (largely peasant) masses in the colonies and semicolonies. That theoretical legacy was explained more than three decades ago by Perry Anderson in a seminal article in New Left Review, "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci" (NLR 100, November-December 1976), which bears re-reading today. (See especially pp. 15-18.)

García Linera's title, in the original Spanish, is "Empate catastrófico y punto de bifurcación." He attributes the expression "empate catastrófico" to Gramsci.

The "empate" (blockage, standoff, deadlock, or impasse), as García Linera uses the concept, appears to refer to Gramsci's use of the concept of "equilibrium," often conjoined with the adjective "catastrophic," in his Prison Notebooks; it denotes a sort of stasis in the configuration of the class struggle, when neither of the major contending class blocs has the ability to establish its hegemony over the other, a situation that can endure (as García Linera says) for months or even years. See also the interview with García Linera in the Argentine on-line periodical Renacer: "Del empate catastrófico al desempate conflictivo."

Suggestions for further reading: "Neo-liberalism and the New Socialism -- Speech by Alvaro Garcia Linera," Political Affairs, January-February 2007; and Álvaro García Linera and Jeffery R. Webber, "Marxism and Indigenism in Bolivia: A Dialectic of Dialogue and Conflict," ZNet, April 25, 2005

Comment by Felipe Stuart

The months that have passed since the speech was first delivered resonate with examples of the theoretical generalizations that García Linera makes. It is a forceful contribution to our understanding of unfolding struggle in his landlocked country.

The problem of hegemony and relationship of forces, and points of
bifurcation that García Linera outlines have relevance for our current struggle in Nicaragua (always keeping in mind of course that every country presents these problems in unique and very concrete ways, and often in ways that are counterintuitive. It is therefore risky to directly extrapolate general processes from one country and apply them to another. Nevertheless, on a less fine-grained level one can’t help but see some lessons from García Linera for understanding Nicaraguan events since the 1990 electoral defeat.

That defeat of the FSLN in 1990 was more a referendum on war that a rejection of the goals of the revolution. Of course it was a historic defeat for the only course that could take the revolution forward. However, the question of the relationship of forces remained unresolved on many levels. The armed forces remained Sandinista.

As it turned out, the country could only be governed by three subsequent neo-liberal presidencies making deals with the FSLN leadership (governability, anyone?). For the entire period since the 1990 elections no one party has been able to govern without negotiating fundamental issues with the opposition. That remains true today, with the FSLN managing a minority government through an arrangement with the PLC called "the pact."

The first pact during this period was between the government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and the FSLN. It was arranged from the FSLN side by Sandinista Army General (now retired) Humberto Oretga and former Sandinista Vice-president Sergio Ramirez. This pact led to a crisis in the FSLN, and the organization of the Democratic Left tendency in the party, led by Mónica Baltodano, Victor Hugo Tinoco, and other compas (comrades). Daniel Ortega came on side by the time of the 1994 Congress, and these forces defeated the right-wing current led by Sergio Ramirez and Dora Maria Tellez (I was active in the Democratic Left current and well recall the Congress victory over the "pact makers" who now lead the MRS). Upon their defeat the vast majority of this right wing current, including the overwhelming majority of FSLN deputies in the National Assembly, split away and formed the social democratic Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS).

Subsequently the FSLN, with Daniel Ortega by then back at the helm, formed a pact with the PLC (Liberal Constructional Party [headed by former president, Arnoldo Alemán). At first the FSLN participated in the pact from its position as an opposition party to two different Liberal presidents. Now in office as a minority government, the FSLN has continued this arrangement with the PLC, in order to be able to pass legislation in the Legislature. The longevity of this “special arrangement” has led not a few to fear that a bi-partisan structure will evolve in Nicaraguan politics where only the FSLN or the PLC will be able to capture significant support. That has actually been the situation since at least 1996.

The reality in Nicaragua is that there are two competing hegemonies in terms of electoral politics. On the ideological level the country is still under the domination of neo-liberal concepts and perspectives. Only a minority of the population identify with the original goals of Carlos Fonseca and the FSLN, but a significant minority, waiting to be called to action. There are also important generational gaps. No polls, to my knowledge, exist to verify where youth stand on broader ideological issues; however, my reading is that a majority of youth are bound to pro capitalist notions, but without pro-imperialist leanings. Only ongoing struggles can win the youth to a revolutionary nationalist and anti-capitalist perspective, or rather to the historic program of the FSLN. This must be developed through advancing a program based on concrete demands and proposals that expose the historic inability of capitalist solutions to the country’s impoverishment and imperialist domination. The FSLN government has brought to an end the nation’s semi-protectorate status, but that advance could easily be reversed if the FSLN loses the next national elections. What it cannot accomplish, if it remains trapped in the constraints of an imperialist-dominated economy, is genuine national liberation. That prospect must take the country deeper into the process of regional alliances with countries sharing the same goals, such as Bolivarian Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Ultimately the question of hegemony in Nicaragua can only be resolved on a regional scale and within the framework of a changing international relationship of forces.

The big difference between the Nicaraguan situation and the Bolivian is that the MAS government came to power as the result of a series of ongoing mobilizations prior to its electoral victory. Coupled with the revolutionary nature of the process in Bolivia is the establishment of indigenous majority rule, now under sharp and dangerous challenge from the oligarchy, mainly based in the eastern "Media Luna" part of the county. The Nicaraguan process lacks the factor of mobilization of the masses. Prior to the 1996 election victory, the FSLN acted to hold its base within an electoral framework and effectively demobilized the party ranks. This is now beginning to change through the formation of the Citizens’ Power Councils (CPCs) that are working at the barrio and district levels in cities, towns and rural areas of the country. The mass base of the FSLN in the CPCs, the unions, the student movement, and small and medium-size producers could be brought into the streets rapidly if efforts to topple the Ortega government become stronger or threatening.

We saw a demonstration of the scope, density, and power of this base in the few days immediately following the November 2006 election. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets and stayed there until it became clear that the USA would accept their party’s victory. The only possible way Daniel Ortega could continue to govern, if the rightwing succeed in uniting their forces in an attempt to checkmate the government, will be to lead a counter mobilization of the Sandinista masses.

This problem would likely lead to important sectors of the oligarchy and the US State Department to reconsider their options. A mobilization of the Sandinista base could be very dangerous for them. It could only occur around a program a radical demands against the privileges of the rich (radical tax reform, repudiation of a major part of the internal debt that resulted from a banking scam nearly a decade ago, and so on).

The above is only a thumbnail sketch of some of the problems of power relations at the political level in Nicaragua. I find that the García Linera article develops a set of concepts that could, with proper sense of proportion and relevance, be of great utility in analyzing class and national struggles in many countries of Indo-Black-Latin America. I should mention, as well, that the Bolivian V.P. García Linera has had occasion more recently to present talks and articles that describe the ongoing standoff between the oligarchy and the MAS government in more concrete terms. Let’s hope he keeps providing Bolivia’s popular movements and international supporters with his incisive analyses.

Felipe Stuart C.
Managua

Toni Solo on MRS anti-FSLN camapaign

2008-06-23T12:12:00.006-06:00

Toni Solo, a writer for tortillaconsal.com, has written a very hard critique of the role of the MRS and the ten international personalities who signed a statement of solidarity with MRS spokeswoman Dora María Téllez. It appears in the webzine DISSIDENT VOICE – a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice – at

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/06/at-work-for-john-negroponte/

Below is an English-language version of the statement along with the names of the signatories. The statement appeared in the June 16, 2008 El Nuevo Diario (Managua) under the title Dora María merece ser escuchada [Dora María merits being heard].

Solo's article and the statement from the ten intellectuals and personalities is best read alongside my article on the MRS-led campaign to topple Nicaragua's FSLN government that appears immediately below this item on this website.

I do not share the harshness and substance of his critique of the signers of the statement – he argues that they most likely are fully aware of the anti-Sandinista and pro-imperialist campaign being orchestrated by the MRS-Montealegre axis in Nicaragua, with the backing of the oligarchy’s mouthpiece, La Prensa. I think they are victims of a long process of disinformation about the FSLN and what is at stake in Nicaragua today.

Solo noted in another article that the MRS has been more successful in their international outreach and propaganda than the FSLN. I think this is true among jet-set intellectuals, in NGO circles (many of whose leaders and full-timers are part of a new middle class in the third world), and in the leadership of a number of “social movements,” particularly the women’s movement. The latter case is definitely shaped by the outrageous Nicaraguan law against abortion rights for women, a law that the FSLN supported and the MRS opposed.

An example of intellectual being hoodwinked is the ongoing international campaign against Cuba over the arrest and imprisonment of so called “dissidents” --- individuals who acted consciously in the service of the US Embassy and were well paid for their work. Many “intellectuals” who signed statements denouncing the Cuban government have come to regret their erroneous conclusions and actions in lending their support to the US-led disinformation campaign around those events.

I believe this will be the case with current events in Nicaragua. But the mountain of dead dogs heaped on the FSLN government by international and national disinformation campaigns is so high that it will take time to get to the bottom of many of the issues underlying the class struggle in Nicaragua, and its international ramifications.

Despite my disagreement with Solo on this question, I recommend the article for the valuable information it contains, particularly on aspects of the history of the MRS.

Felipe Stuart C.

Managua

English version:

Dora María merits being heard

The signatories of this pronouncement have, one way or another, shared Nicaragua’s history. During the Sandinista struggle against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza and afterwards during the years in which Nicaragua suffered the aggression produced by the interventionist policy of the Reagan Administration, we accompanied revolutionary Nicaragua with our positions and our actions. Many of us formed part of a broad solidarity movement.

From that time on we have gotten to know and admire the valour and commitment of Dora María Tellez. Her integrity, prestige, dedication and the risk caused to her life by staying on hunger strike for 13 days prompts us to make a pronouncement asking the Nicaraguan government to meditate well on the consequences of not paying attention to the demands she represents.

What led Dora María to once more put her life and health on the line is a clear demand : that political spaces not be closed and that a national dialogue take place to resolve the food crisis and the high cost of living which, like many countries, Nicaragua faces.

None of these demands is irrational and a government that wants popular support ought to respond to them.

We want to support this demand and this protest. Political representation is a right. It is a right to protest against mechanisms that shut down this space. Dora María is exercising her right. She represents a broad sector of Nicaraguan society that ought to be listened to. We ask for her right, for that of her comrades and that of all Nicaraguans.

 Noam Chomsky
 Susan Meiselas
 Ariel Dorfman
 Salman Rushdie
 Eduardo Galeano
 Hermann Schulz
 Juan Geiman
 Brian Willson
 Tom Hayden
 Bianca Jagger
 Mario Benedetti

Anti-FSLN opposition seeks unity to topple Ortega government

2008-06-20T17:19:00.009-06:00

By Phil Stuart Cournoyer, Managua

On June 11 the axe of Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) came down on the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS [1]) and the old historic Conservative Party of Nicaragua (PCN), now a tiny shell of its former self. The CSE unanimously decided to deregister both parties on the grounds that they had failed to fulfill the requirements of the national electoral law.

That law states that only registered parties can participate in Nicaraguan elections. It obligates registered parties to submit their statutes and the results of internal elections to the CSE. It also stipulates that parties must have organized structures and executives in most of the electoral districts of the country, with the exception of parties that only exist in the Caribbean Coast autonomous regions (RAAN and RAAS), such as YATAMA.[2]

The CSE explained its action based on infractions of the electoral law. Despite protestations to the contrary from the affected parties, the Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America has justified the CSE decision, stating that it conforms to Nicaraguan law.[3] However, it is not necessary to probe into the details and legalese of these political actions to ascertain that the forced deregistration of the two parties, although pegged to the letter of the law, is a grave anti-democratic action, a political act made possible by an anti-democratic law, based on a long tradition of state control over political parties.

Appeal Court decision

In response to an MRS petition, the Managua Appeals Court has referred the CSE decision to the Supreme Court. This will likely mean a long delay before a final legal ruling is made.

By the ethics of disclosure, I should make it clear that I have been an FSLN full member since 1990 when I became a Nicaraguan citizen – and a historic collaborator of the Frente since 1978. I support the present Sandinista government, especially its anti-imperialist stands, but also many of its measures to alleviate poverty in the country. I also have many disagreements with aspects of government policies[3].

The CSE decision to deregister the MRS and the Conservative party constitutes, in my humble opinion, a serious political error and miscalculation by the FSLN and the PLC; both parties backed the CSE action.

All Nicaraguans should have the right to form parties and run in elections either as individuals or parties; or by what is called in Nicaragua “popular subscription” in which ad hoc groups of citizens were able to nominate candidates. The National Assembly removed that provision from the Electoral Law some years ago. The state or government should not be empowered to interfere in the internal affairs of political parties and organizations. Parties should not have to get state approval in order to participate in the electoral system.

Get the state out of business of regulating political parties

What is needed in Nicaragua is a clearly focused campaign to restore the right of the two parties to legality. The electoral law should be completely changed to get the state out of the “business” of monitoring and controlling the internal affairs of political organizations and parties. It should be noted, however, that no party with deputies in the National Assembly, the MRS included, have taken this clear stand.

Many individuals and organizations that support the government are in disagreement with this anti-democratic action and law. They include Dionisio (Nicho) Marenco, the FSLN mayor of Managua.

On the international level, as well, prominent pro-Sandinista figures have expressed their dismay at the decision to deny a political space to the two parties. The most powerful example of that phenomenon is a full-page statement in solidarity with the MRS protest, published in El Nuevo Diario, and signed by twelve prominent pro Sandinista figures including Noam Chomsky, Ariel Dorfman, Eduardo Galeano, Salman Rushdie, and Mario Benedetti. Their statement reveals a lack of detailed or accurate knowledge about what is happening in Nicaraguan politics at this stage, and also an inflated view of the actual appeal of the MRS and its leaders at this time.

Their reference to Dora María Téllez is an expression of solidarity with a thirteen-day hunger strike she launched on June 3, and ended on June 16, upon the strong insistence of her doctors. She began her hunger strike to protest the CSE decision.

However, in tandem with the hunger strike, the MRS embedded the key issue into its global anti FSLN strategy – one based on the analysis that the Ortega government is a family dictatorship under consolidation. Quickly their campaign, also backed by the Rescate Group[4], escalated into an offensive against the government based on the charge that is of the same ilk as the Somoza regime. Demonstrations and protests have been dotted with signs saying “Ortega equals Somoza,” and similar wild denunciations. The priority of the opposition is to unite to block the perpetuation of the “new dictatorship” – to topple the government through a process of mass protests and destabilization measures.

Uniting with the far and center right

The MRS-envisaged “united front” includes the forces of Eduardo Montealegre (the candidate of the US Embassy in the last presidential elections), the anti government newspapers La Prensa (pro-imperialist) and El Nuevo Diario (pro MRS), and other anti-Sandinista media. Also included are the Conservative Party and other smaller parties, and leaders and personnel of many internationally financed NGOs (who claim to represent “civil society”).

The decision to turn the defense of the MRS’s basic right to exist as a legal party into a broadside political campaign against the government is a major political error. It cuts out any possibility of influencing supporters of the government and the grassroots of the FSLN, the Citizens’ Power Committees (CPCs), many unions, and important indigenous movements. What we see is not a campaign for a democratic electoral law, but an alliance with the extreme right and the oligarchy’s newspaper, La Prensa. We know that those MRS allies (for the moment) are in no way friends of democracy, or the poor and the hungry in this or any other country.

MRS leader Edmundo Jarquín has acknowledged this orientation up front. Journalist Matilde Córdoba, in the June 18 El Nuevo Diario, reports that “Jarquín believes that it is ‘impossible to defeat the pact between the Sandinista Front and the Constitutional Liberal Party,’ without the support of liberals who are disenchanted with the attitudes of PLC leaders.”

MRS leader up front about uniting with “disenchanted liberals

“In Jarquín’s judgment it is necessary to give ‘political expression’ to the 700,000 votes obtained by the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, ALN, whose presidential candidate was Eduardo Montealegre, and to the 200,000 votes obtained by the MRS.
“This goal will be reached when the oppositional political organizations unite, he said. ‘This will attract liberal leaders’…”

Some government opponents, including Mónica Baltodano of the Rescate Group (she is a National Assembly deputy elected on the MRS Alliance slate) and MRS leader Comandante Victor Tirado, also claim that the Ortega regime is a Somocista-style dictatorship. Baltodano argues that this dictatorship rests on an unseemly pact between the FSLN and Arnoldo Aleman’s PLC. In good old Nicaraguan vernacular she put it this way: “They [Alemán and Ortega] sleep in the same bed. At times one is on top, and the other is on the bottom.”

Meanwhile, MRS leader Edmundo Jarquín has called for intervention from the Organization of American States “to restore political pluralism in the country.”
The breadth of support for unity between the MRS and forces to their right among Nicaragua’s intellectual and NGO elite is impressive and instructive. The NGO elite, in essence, have become since 1990 a new sector of the well off middle class. This social layer is one of the most tightly-knit and class conscious sectors of Nicaraguan society.

Mejia Godoy brothers prohibit government from using their music

Nicaragua’s most famous composer-singer, Carlos Mejia Godoy and his brother Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy (also a well know and highly popular composer-musician-singer) have prohibited the government and the FSLN from using their music and compositions at official government or FSLN events. Both are the authors and composers of many of the most popular revolutionary hymns and songs of the long Sandinista struggle. Mejia Godoy was the MRS candidate for vice president in 2006. His musical properties are registered in Spain and he has threatened legal action if his ban is not respected.

These prohibitions have caused great controversy and resentment in Nicaragua. Some of the families of the heroes and martyrs who are the subjects of many of their songs, feel insulted and morally injured by the decision. A prominent example is the protest letter to Carlos Mejia Godoy issued by Germán Pomares Herrera – the son of two Sandinista heroes (Comandante Germán Pomares Ordoñez, who fell in combat in Jinotega, in May, 1979 and Julia Herrera, assassinated by the Somocista army in August 1975. Germán says he now feels that his martyred parents have been taken from him and are now the property of Carlos Mejia Godoy. The brother musicians may get their way in the Spanish courts, if this comes to a legal showdown. However, there is no way they can prevent the mass base of the FSLN and the Sandinista unions from singing and chanting the songs of this common heritage of the revolution. For people outside Nicaragua to appreciate the sense out outrage this decision has provoked, think how socialist and communist workers would feel if the descendants of the composer of “The International” banned them from singing this revolutionary standard at their party rallies or congresses. Is the song “Solidarity Forever” someone’s intellectual property and can we be prohibited from singing it or broadcasting it?

There is no reason to doubt that the goal of the anti-government forces is to bring down the government. MRS leader Víctor Tirado López made this clear in an extensive interview with La Prensa, in its June 15 Sunday supplement.

“The MRS,” Tirado said, “has to act to form alliances with all the country’s political and economic forces, under a collective leadership. We struggled in the sixties for a democracy, but it vanished, it slipped out of our hands…How did we win in 1979? – with the entire economic and political forces of the country alongside. Everyone united against Somoza! And, in a certain manner, the same phenomenon is now occurring, an alliance against the government.”

The more realistic PLC leadership believe a fight to topple the government is very unlikely to succeed. They have followed a course of seeking agreements with the FSLN and sharing power with it in various arms of the state. Att this juncture strong trend and pressure in Nicaragua exists to set up a bi-partisan system dominated by the FSLN and the PLC. However, that could change given the unstable situation in the country. This “tango” between the FSLN and the PLC is known pejoratively as the “pact” and its supporters are called “pactistas.”

Pact politics

Nicaragua’s political history often has involved electoral or power-sharing pacts between at least two big political forces. Often no one party is strong enough to govern the country without forming alliances with other parties. Today this is reflected in the composition of the National Assembly where the Presidency’s supporters are a minority. The Presidency and cabinet must bargain with sectors of the opposition in order to get any of its programs or proposed legislation approved by the Assembly.

All the major parties have been involved in pact politics since the 1990 electoral defeat, including the MRS. The MRS was part of the pro FSLN Convergencia until 2005, and hence an accomplice of the very “pact” that they now so vehemently denounce as the platform for a Somocista-style dictatorship. The Liberal parties, from their point of view, believe the Convergencia is a pact. Over the last six months the MRS has tried futilely to draw the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN) and its former leader Eduardo Montealegre (the favorite of the US embassy and a leading banker) into an electoral alliance for this year’s municipal elections.

That strategy has now been revamped and accelerated. MRS leaders hope they will get a mass response to its call to “take the streets, while the FSLN says it will outmatch the MRS and the Nicaraguan right wing not only in the elections, but also “in the streets.”

Adolfo Pastrán’s view

Independent journalist Adolfo Pastrán, no friend of Ortega or his government, concurs that the strategy of the opposition is to topple the presidency. In the June 12 “Informe Pastrán,”[5] he writes:

“The opposition demands a dialogue with the government of Daniel Ortega under democratic rules, but at the same time they want to topple the Presidency, accusing it of corruption, of misgoverning the country, pummeling and wearing it down without relief. They are looking for a way to proscribe Sandinismo from power. For that reason the most extreme sectors have pressured against an understanding between the FSLN and the PLC (of Arnoldo Alemán), instead of pressing for real political, economic and social changes from the National Assembly. Despite having a majority in the Assembly, they have no influence in or control of that state power because of their own infighting. This is the real political x-ray of Nicaragua.”

Nicaraguan writer Amaru Barahona took up the mythological comparison of the FSLN government with the Somocista dictatorship in a June 12 El Nuevo Diario article entitled “A grotesque parallelism.” He pointed out that the Somoza dynasty maintained power based on support from Washington, control of the armed forces (National Guard and the police), and the resort to “systematic violent repression against popular classes (assassinations, torture, jails) and a selective repression against middle class and business persons who sided with the opposition.”

None of those conditions are applicable to the Ortega government, he pointed out. “I ask myself, where are the assassinations, the tortured, or the jailed?”

There is complete freedom of press and media in Nicaragua. As in Venezuela, most media are privately owned and are virulently anti government in all their “news’ coverage and opinion pages or programs. The alleged parallel with the former Somoza regime does not make sense for a government whose first foreign policy decision was to ally with revolutionary Cuba, to join a solidarity, fair trade alliance such as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), and to support a revolution such as the Bolivarian process in Venezuela. The new government spoke out strongly against imperialist aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, and expressed its solidarity with liberation struggles from continent to continent. Those are hardly traits one observed in the Somoza dictatorship dictatorship.

Anti Sandinista propaganda poses some thorny questions

The MRS insistence on placing an equal sign between President Ortega and the dictatorial dynasty of the Somoza family is mis-educating and disorienting today’s youth who never experienced the Somoza regime or the revolution. If Daniel Ortega’s government is a dictatorship like Somoza’s, doesn’t that call into question the revolution and the whole Sandinista struggle? Ironically, this propaganda makes the Somoza regime look pretty good. Or, if you read it in an opposite sense, this hype also begs the issue of whether the opposition needs to resort to armed or illegal actions in our present situation. That question has been on the tip of the tongues of some leaders of the opposition. This undoubtedly is of considerable interest to the US State Department and its destabilization games and plans.

More falsification of reality and cheap politics

The MRS has opened another front in its current anti-government campaign. It is now blaming the Ortega administration for the growing hunger and misery in the country. You would almost think they had never heard of the steep rise in international oil and gas prices, the worldwide escalation of food prices, the recession in the U.S. economy, the sharp decline in the value of the dollar (commonly used in Nicaragua, especially in savings deposits), and the slowdown of family remittances from Nicaraguans living in economic exile in the United States. Perhaps they have forgotten the damage that ten years of war and seventeen years of IMF-imposed neo-liberal economic adjustment programs did to our country.

The MRS Alliance offers no programmatic proposals for the economy that are distinct from the government’s present course – except their notable hostility to the special economic relations with Venezuela. This form of cheap politicking only lays the basis for the right wing to take the reins. Unlike the MRS, the right wing forces do have an alternative economic program to that of the government. It is well known, since we have lived it for the last 18 years. If the opposition succeeds in toppling Ortega, it is the traditional right, and not the MRS or any other centrist formation that will come to power.

The FSLN government is a regime based on a capitalist economy, in a country dominated by imperialist trade and monetary relations. However, the Sandinista regime also acts in the interests of workers, farmers, and producers in some initiatives, and in the interests of capitalist investors in other ways. It defends the country against the worst depredations of US and European imperialism, and of the traditional oligarchy. And it allies Nicaragua with anti-imperialist forces globally and the movement for Indo-Black-Latin American unity.

At times the government or ministries act arbitrarily, and engage in contradictory initiatives conditioned by Nicaragua’s position as an impoverished and weak country. A typical example is trying to go both with ALBA and the “Free Trade” agreement with the USA (CAFTA); maintaining an ambiguous policy towards diplomatic and trade relations with China and Taiwan; and accepting, albeit not without protests, ongoing subservience to IMF/World Bank economic policies. The negative aspects of these contradictions are completely in harmony with the opposition parties’ outlook. What they fear are any initiatives to accept a course towards a Bolivarian 21st Century socialism, as evidenced by their hostility to Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution

FSLN government is not a dictatorship

Our government is not a dictatorship. In fact, it is often hamstrung by its minority status in the National Assembly. To carry out even a minimal part of its commitments and program, it is forced to negotiate with and make concessions to opposition forces. The government’s decision to promote and base itself in Citizens’ Power Councils (CPCs) was partially vetoed by the pro-oligarchy majority in the Assembly. Nevertheless, the government pursued this opening towards more democracy in Nicaragua. The CPCs allow poor, voiceless and marginalized sectors a voice in how the country should be run. “Civil society” also includes them, and not just the well-heeled NGO directors and specialists, and university Ph.D. holders. However, poor and marginalized people (the “chapiollos) represent different class interests, and hence are scorned by the schooled elite ensconced in the NGO world. The same is valid for the union movement. It has never achieved the status of ‘civil society” in the eyes of middleclass appropriators of this concept. To become part of “civil society” in their outlook requires being stylishly coiffed and dressed, and in possession of a valid driver’s license and passport!

There is much to praise in the Ortega government, and also a lot that needs to be questioned, criticized, and when necessary, opposed [6]. But the hype about dictatorship only plays into the hands of those who take their lead from La Prensa – a “newspaper” that serves as the politburo of the oligarchy and mouthpiece for the US Embassy in our country.

The opposition anti-government campaign also offers succor to imperialist forces, above all Washington and its State Department. If successful, the hoped-for grand alliance will also strike a blow to revolutionary Cuba, to the Bolivarian revolution, and to the indigenous struggle in Nicaragua [the main indigenous organization – YATAMA – is strategically allied to the FSLN and the government – see endnote ii].

MRS leader slams alliance with Venezuela

Any doubters on that score should read the entire interview with Victor Tirado, cited above. Tirado slammed the alliance with Venezuela. The first mistake, he said, was “having made an economic axis with Iran and Venezuela…” Tirado accused Hugo Chávez of conditioning Venezuelan aid to Nicaragua, and Daniel Ortega of towing his line in order to keep the aid flowing.

That’s the same line as the US Embassy and La Prensa take on our relations with Venezuela and Cuba. The logic of Tirado’s position is to abandon anti-imperialism and revolutionary internationalism. This is a common trait among MRS leaders who have moved steadily to a right social democratic posture on most questions, especially international issues such as their lack of solidarity with the Bolivarian revolution or Cuba. They say they fear that active and concrete solidarity with that camp will provoke U.S. hostility.

Rescate Group takes a step backwards

The attempt to revive the united bloc against the dictatorship, which aims to win over Eduardo Montealegre and his voter base, is also a setback for the positive motion evidenced by the Rescate Group when, earlier this year, they openly criticized the MRS policy of an electoral marriage with Montealegre. They have been pulled back into a project based on collaboration with the most wretched flunkies of the US embassy, the so-called good Liberals – those who will not make to or make agreements with the FSLN.

The crisis around the decision to deregister the MRS tells us more about the opposition that it does the government. Keep tuned, because we can be sure there is worse to come.
__________________________________________________________________________________

[1] MRS – Movimiento para la Renovacion Sandinista/Sandinista Renovation Movement, an electoral party with deputies in the National Assembly. It won 200,000 votes in the 2006 national elections. It emerged as a social democratic split from the FSLN in 1995. Since that time it has taken different approaches to the FSLN. When the pro FSLN Convergencia alliance was formed, the MRS came on board and stayed until 2005. However, it participated in the 2006 elections as a separate party, and later tried to form an alliance with Eduardo Montealegre’s Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance party (ALN). It became the butt of jokes about being the caboose of the ALN train in the National Assembly.
[2] Yatama (Sons of Mother Earth) is the largest Indigenous party on the Caribbean Coast and is especially strong in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN).
[3] See “Caso MRS y PC es normal, Nicanor Moscoso, Presidente del CEELA" - El Nuevo Diario, 20 de junio de 2008, page 4A.
[3] Those interested in my analysis of the evolution of the FSLN and the performance of the FSLN government in its first year can consult my website. Many of my articles, even when first published on other sites such as MRZine, Links, Socialist Voice, Axis of Logic, and Venezuela News and Analysis, are posted and archived at Aye Nicaragua, Nicaraguita at http://aynicaraguanicaraguita.blogspot.com/
[4] Rescate Group -- the Movimiento para el Rescate del Sandinismo (Sandinista Recovery Movement). It is led by Comandantes Henry Ruiz and Mónica Baltodano, now an MRS Alliance deputy in the National Assembly.
[5] Pastrán Report, a daily Spanish-language summary of events in Nicaragua published to subscribers in digital form. The publication can be contacted by email at apastran@turbonett.com.ni"
[6] Space does not permit me to go into that here, but a good list of such problems can be found in “What alternative do President Daniel Ortega's opponents propose for Nicaragua?” and “What’s the alternative if the opposition topples the government?” by Domingo Quilez at [ http://aynicaraguanicaraguita.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-alternative-do-president-daniel.html ].

Peruvian government attacks violently civilian protestors in southern Peru

2008-06-20T07:49:00.006-06:00

This news item and its accompanying videos are foud at the peruanista website -- http://peruanista.blogspot.com/2008/06/peruvian-government-attacks-violently.html

La Lucha Indigena, a canpesino and indigenous newspaper, directed by Hugo Blanco, has pointed out for over a year the state terrorist character of the Alan Garcia regime.

This report confirms that analysis in spades.

Felipe Stuart
Managua

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The videos you are about to see are a bit shocking. For 18 months the people of the Moquegua region (southeastern Peru) and the mining workers from that region have been seeking for peaceful negotiations with the Peruvian government of Lima.

The moqueguanos were trying to lobby against a bill sent by the Peruvian executive to Congress which could mean a reduction of the royalties paid by foreign mining companies - Southern Copper Corporation (USA/Mexico) in this case - which are very important for the Moquegua region after the extraction of their natural resources. But workers were ignored.So it was clear for the over 22.000 people of Moquegua - they are not delincuents as the press from Lima called them- that their protest had became necessary and legitimate. They began a hunger strike and blockade of a national highway, eight days ago.

The violence we can see in these videos is the result of the negligence and arrogance of the Garcia administration and the Peruvian right-wing politicians. They have attacked workers who are fighting for their legitimate interests with tear gas.

For remainder of new article and videos go to:

http://peruanista.blogspot.com/2008/06/peruvian-government-attacks-violently.html

From Marx to Morales: Indigenous Socialism and the Latin Americanization of Marxism

2008-06-16T12:08:00.012-06:00

Intoduction

My comments on this theme and article appear at the end of compañero Riddell's very much needed article "From Marx to Morales: Indigenous Socialism and the Latin Americanization of Marxism." They follow the Endnotes for the main article.

Riddell's article first appeared in Socialist Voice at http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=299

Felipe Stuart C.
Managua

By John Riddell

John Riddell is co-editor of Socialist Voice and editor of The Communist International in Lenin's Time, a six-volume anthology of documents, speeches, manifestos and commentary. This article is based on his talk at the Historical Materialism conference at York University in Toronto on April 26, 2008.

Over the past decade, a new rise of mass struggles in Latin America has sparked an encounter between revolutionists of that region and many of those based in the imperialist countries. In many of these struggles, as in Bolivia under the presidency of Evo Morales, Indigenous peoples are in the lead.

Latin American revolutionists are enriching Marxism in the field of theory as well as of action. This article offers some introductory comments indicating ways in which their ideas are linking up with and drawing attention to important but little-known aspects of Marxist thought.

Eurocentrism

A good starting point is provided by the comment often heard from Latin American revolutionists that much of Marxist theory is marked by a "Eurocentric" bias. They understand Eurocentrism as the belief that Latin American nations must replicate the evolution of Western European societies, through to the highest possible level of capitalist development, before a socialist revolution is possible. Eurocentrism is also understood to imply a stress on the primacy of industrialization for social progress and on the need to raise physical production in a fashion that appears to exclude peasant and Indigenous realities and to point toward the dissolution of Indigenous culture.[1]

Marx's celebrated statement that "no social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed"[2] is sometimes cited as evidence of a Eurocentric bias in Marxism. Karl Kautsky and Georgi Plekhanov, Marxist theorists of the pre-1914 period, are viewed as classic exponents of this view. Latin American writer Gustavo Pérez Hinojosa quotes Kautsky's view that "workers can rule only where the capitalist system has achieved a high level of development"[3] — that is, not yet in Latin America.

The pioneer Marxists in Latin American before 1917 shared that perspective. But after the Russian Revolution a new current emerged, now often called "Latin American Marxism." Argentine theorist Néstor Kohan identifies the pioneer Peruvian Communist José Carlos Mariátegui as its founder. Mariátegui, Kohen says, "opposed Eurocentric schemas and populist efforts to rally workers behind different factions of the bourgeoisie" and "set about recapturing `Inca communism' as a precursor of socialist struggles."[4]

National subjugation

Pérez Hinojosa and Kohen both take for granted that Latin American struggles today, as in Mariátegui's time, combine both anti-imperialist and socialist components. This viewpoint links back to the analysis advanced by the Communist International in Lenin's time of a world divided between imperialist nations and subjugated peoples.[5] Is this framework still relevant at a time when most poor countries have formal independence? The central role of anti-imperialism in recent Latin American struggles would seem to confirm the early Communist International's analysis.

Pérez Hinojosa tells us that Mariátegui recognized the impossibility of national capitalist development in semi-colonial countries like Peru. The revolution would be "socialist from its beginnings but would go through two stages" in realizing the tasks first of bourgeois democratic and then of socialist revolution. Moreover, the Peruvian theorist held that "this socialist revolution would be marked by a junction with the historic basis of socialization: the Indigenous communities, the survivals of primitive agrarian communism."[6]

Subsequently, says Kohen, the "brilliant team of the 1920s," which included Julio Antonio Mella in Cuba, Farabundo Martí in El Salvador, and Augusto César Sandino in Nicaragua, "was replaced … by the echo of Stalin's mediocre schemas in the USSR," which marked a return to a mechanical "Eurocentrist" outlook.[7]

Writing from the vantage point of Bolivia's tradition of Indigenous insurgency, Alvaro García Linera attributes Eurocentric views in his country to Marxism as a whole, as expressed by both Stalinist and Trotskyist currents. He states that Marxism's "ideology of industrial modernisation" and "consolidation of the national state" implied the "`inferiority' of the country's predominantly peasant societies."[8]

Cuban revolution

In Kohen's view, the grip of "bureaucratism and dogmatism" was broken "with the rise of the Cuban revolution and the leadership of Castro and Guevara."[9] Guevara's views are often linked to those of Mariátegui with regard to the nature of Latin American revolution — in Guevara's words, either "a socialist revolution or a caricature of a revolution."[10] That claim was based on convictions regarding the primacy of consciousness and leadership in revolutionary transitions that were also held by Mariátegui.

Guevara also applied this view to his analysis of the Cuban state and of Stalinized Soviet reality. Guevara inveighed against the claim of Soviet leaders of his time that rising material production would bring socialism, despite the political exclusion, suffering, and oppression imposed on the working population.[11] (See "Che Guevara's Final Verdict on Soviet Economy," in Socialist Voice, June 9, 2008.)

Marx's views

In Kohen's opinion, the Cuban revolution's leading role continued in the 1970s, when it "revived the revolutionary Marxism of the 1920s (simultaneously anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist) as well as Marx's more unfamiliar works—above all his later works that study colonialism and peripheral and dependent societies. In these writings Marx overcomes the Eurocentric views of his youth."[12]

Kohen identifies the insights of the "Late Marx" as follows:

History does not follow an unvarying evolutionary path.

Western Europe does not constitute a single evolutionary centre through which stages of historical development are radiated outwards to the rest of the world.
"Subjugated peoples do not experience `progress' so long as they remain under the boot of imperialism."[13]

Latin American thought here rests on the mature Marx's views on capitalism's impact on colonial societies, such as Ireland. It also intersects with Marx's late writings and research known to us primarily through Teodor Shanin's Late Marx and the Russian Road.[14] Shanin's book can now be usefully reread as a commentary on today's Latin American struggles.

Marx devoted much of his last decade to study of Russia and of Indigenous societies in North America. His limited writings on these questions focused on the Russian peasant commune, the mir, which then constituted the social foundation of agriculture in that country.

Russia's peasant communes

The Russian Marxist circle led by Plekhanov, ancestor of the Bolshevik party, believed that the mir was doomed to disappear as Russia was transformed by capitalist development. We now know that Marx did not agree. In a letter to Vera Zasulich, written in 1881 but not published until 1924, he wrote that "the commune is the fulcrum for social regeneration in Russia." The "historical inevitability" of the evolutionary course mapped out in Capital, he stated, is "expressly restricted to the countries of Western Europe."[15]

The preliminary drafts of Marx's letter, included in Shanin's book, display essential agreement with the view of the revolutionary populist current in Russia, the "People's Will," that the commune could coexist harmoniously with a developing socialist economy.[16]

Ethnological Notebooks

These drafts drew on Marx's extensive studies of Indigenous societies during that period, a record of which is available in his little-known Ethnological Notebooks.[17] We find his conclusions summarized in a draft of his letter to Zasulich: "The vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc. societies, and, a fortiori, that of modern capitalist societies."[18]

In her study of these notebooks, Christine Ward Gaily states that where such archaic forms persist, Marx depicts them fundamentally "as evidence of resistance to the penetration of state-associated institutions," which he views as intrinsically oppressive.[19] The clear implication is that such archaic survivals should be defended and developed.

The Marxists of Lenin's time were not aware of this evolution in Marx's thinking. Thus Antonio Gramsci could write, a few weeks after the Russian October uprising, "This is the revolution against Karl Marx's Capital. In Russia, Marx's Capital was more the book of the bourgeoisie than of the proletariat."[20] Yet despite their limited knowledge of Marx's views, the revolutionary generation of Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Bukharin, Gramsci, and Lukács reasserted Marx's revolutionary stance in combat with the "Eurocentrist" view associated with Karl Kautsky and the pre-war Socialist International that socialist revolution must await capitalism's fullest maturity and collapse.

Shanin generalizes from Marx's approach to Russia in 1881 in a way that links to a second characteristic of Latin American revolution. "The purest forms of `scientific socialism' … invariably proved politically impotent," he argues. "It has been the integration of Marxism with the indigenous [i.e. home-grown] political traditions which has underlain all known cases of internally generated and politically effective revolutionary transformation of society by socialists."[21]

Here we have a second field of correlation with the Latin American revolutionary experience, with its strong emphasis on associating the movement for socialism with the tradition of anti-colonial struggle associated with the figures of the great aboriginal leaders and of Bolívar, Martí, and Sandino. This fusion of traditions emerges as a unique strength of Latin American Marxism.

Mariátegui captured this thought in a well-known passage:

"We certainly do not wish socialism in America to be a copy and imitation. It must be a heroic creation. We must give life to an Indo-American socialism reflecting our own reality and in our own language."[22]

Following the October revolution of 1917, Marx's vision of the mir's potential was realized in practice. The mir had been in decline for decades, and by 1917 half the peasants' land was privately owned. But in the great agrarian reform of 1917-18, the peasants revived the mir and adopted it as the basic unit of peasant agriculture. During the next decade, peasant communes co-existed constructively with the beginnings of a socialist economy. By 1927, before the onset of Stalinist forced collectivization, 95% of peasant land was already communally owned.[23]

There is a double parallel here with present Latin American experience. First, the Bolsheviks' alliance with the peasantry is relevant in Latin American countries where the working class, in the strict sense of those who sell their labour power to employers, is often a minority in broad coalitions of exploited producers. Second, survivals of primitive communism, including communal landholding, are a significant factor in Indigenous struggles across this region.

National emancipation

A third correspondence can be found in the Bolsheviks' practice toward minority peoples of the East victimized and dispossessed by Tsarist Russian settler colonialism. Too often, discussions of the Bolsheviks' policy on the national question stop short with Stalin and Lenin's writings of 1913-1916, ignoring the evolution of Bolshevik policy during and after the 1917 revolution. Specifically:

The later Bolsheviks did not limit themselves to the criteria of nationhood set out by Stalin in 1913.[24] They advocated and implemented self-determination for oppressed peoples who were not, at the time of the 1917 revolution, crystallized nations or nationalities.

They went beyond the concept that self-determination could be expressed only through separation. Instead, they accepted the realization of self-determination through various forms of federation.

They implemented self-determination in a fashion that was not always territorial.
Their attitude toward the national cultures of minority peoples was not neutral. Instead, they committed substantial political and state resources to planning and encouraging the development of these cultures.[25]

On all these points, the Bolshevik experience closely matches the revolutionary policies toward Indigenous peoples now being implemented in Bolivia and other Latin American countries.

Ecology and materialism

Finally, a word on ecology. The boldest governmental statements on the world's ecological crisis are coming from Cuba, Bolivia, and other anti-imperialist governments in Latin America.[26] The influence of Indigenous struggles is felt here. Bolivian President Evo Morales points to the leading role of Indigenous peoples, "called upon by history to convert ourselves into the vanguard of the struggle to defend nature and life."[27]

This claim rests on an approach by many Indigenous movements to ecology that is inherently revolutionary. Most First-World ecological discussion focuses on technical and market devices, such as carbon trading, taxation, and offsets, that aim to preserve as much as possible of a capitalist economic system that is inherently destructive to the natural world. Indigenous movements, by contrast, begin with the demand for a new relationship of humankind to our natural environment, sometimes expressed in the slogan, "Liberate Mother Earth."[28]

These movements often express their demand using an unfamiliar terminology of ancestral spiritual wisdom — but behind those words lies a worldview that can be viewed as a form of materialism.

In pre-conquest Andean society, says Peruvian Indigenous leader Rosalía Paiva, "Each was a part of all, and all were of the soil. The soil could never belong to us because we are its sons and daughters, and we belong to the soil."[29]

Bolivian Indigenous writer Marcelo Saavedra Vargas holds that "It is capitalist society that rejects materialism. It makes war on the material world and destroys it. We, on the other hand, embrace the material world, consider ourselves part of it, and care for it."[30]

This approach is reminiscent of Marx's thinking, as presented by John Bellamy Foster in Marx's Ecology. It is entirely appropriate to interpret "Liberate Mother Earth" as equivalent to "close the metabolic rift."[31]

Hugo Chávez says that in Venezuela, 21st Century Socialism will be based not only on Marxism but also on Bolivarianism, Indigenous socialism, and Christian revolutionary traditions.[32] Latin American Marxism's capacity to link up in this way with what Shanin calls vernacular revolutionary traditions is a sign of its vitality and promise.

I will conclude with a story told by the Peruvian Marxist and Indigenous leader Hugo Blanco. A member of his community, he tells us, conducted some Swedish tourists to a Quechua village near Cuzco. Impressed by the collectivist spirit of the Indigenous community, one of the tourists commented, "This is like communism."

"No," responded their guide, "Communism is like this."[33]

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Related Reading

Hugo Blanco. The Fight for Indigenous Rights in the Andes Today [pdf]
John Riddell. COMINTERN: Revolutionary Internationalism in Lenin's Time [pdf]
John Riddell. The Russian Revolution and National Freedom

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Footnotes

[1] "Alvaro García Linera, "Indianismo and Marxism" (translated by Richard Fidler), in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
David Bedford, "Marxism and the Aboriginal Question: The Tragedy of Progress," in Canadian Journal of Native Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (1994), 102-103.
Hugo Blanco Galdos, letter to the author, December 17, 2007.

[2] Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969, vol. 1, p. 504.

[3] Gustavo Pérez Hinojosa, "La heterodoxia marxista de Mariátegui." Rebelión, October 30, 2007..

[4] Néstor Kohan, "El marxismo latinoamericano y la crítica del eurocentrismo," in Con sangre en las venas, Mexico: Ocean Sur, 2007, pp. 10, 11.

[5] See, for example, V.I. Lenin's report on the National and Colonial Questions to the Communist International's second congress, in Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969, vol. 31, pp. 240-41; and the subsequent congress discussion and resolution, in John Riddell, ed., Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite!, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1991, vol. 1, pp. 216-290.

[6] Hinojosa, "Mariátegui."

[7] Kohen, "Eurocentrismo," p. 10.

[8] García Linera, "Indianismo."

[9] Kohen, "Eurocentrismo," p. 10.

[10] Ernesto Che Guevara, "Message to the Tricontinental," in Che Guevara Reader, Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2003, p. 354.

[11] See, for example, "Algunas reflexiones sobre la transición socialista," in Ernesto Che Guevara, Apuntes críticos a la Economía Política, Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2006, pp. 9-20.

[12] Kohan, "Eurocentrismo," pp. 10-11.

[13] Ibid., p. 11

[14] Teodor Shanin, ed., Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the "Peripheries of Capitalism," New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983.

[15] Shanin, Late Marx, p. 124.

[16] Ibid., p. 12, 102-103.

[17] Lawrence Krader, ed., The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx, Assen, NE: Van Gorcum, 1972.

[18] Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1989, vol. 24, pp. 358-59.

[19] Christine Ward Gailey, "Community, State and Questions of Social Evolution in Marx's Ethnological Notebooks," in Anthropologica, vol. 45 (2003), pp. 47-48.

[20] Antonio Gramsci, "The Revolution against Das Kapital"

[21] Shanin, Late Marx, p. 255.

[22] Marc Becker, "Mariátegui, the Comintern, and the Indigenous Question in Latin America," in Science & Society, vol. 70 (2006), no. 4, p. 469, quoting from José Carlos Mariátegui, "Anniversario y Balance" (1928).

[23] Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, New York: W.W. Norton, 1968, p. 85.

[24] J.V. Stalin, "Marxism and the National Question," in Works, Moscow: FLPH, 1954, vol. 2, p. 307.

[25] See Jeremy Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917-23, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999;
John Riddell, "The Russian Revolution and National Freedom." Socialist Voice, November 1, 2006.

[26] See, for example, Evo Morales, Felipe Perez Roque, "Bolivia and Cuba Address the UN: Radical Action Needed Now to Stop Global Warming." Socialist Voice, September 26, 2007.

[27] Ibid.

[28] From a presentation by Vilma Amendra of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (Colombia) at York University, Friday, January 11, 2008.

[29] Address to Bolivia Rising meeting in Toronto, April 5, 2008.

[30] Interview with Marcelo Saavedra Vargas, April 21, 2008.

[31] John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.

[32] See, for example, speech by Chávez on December 15, 2006, summarized in "Chávez Calls for United Socialist Party of Venezuela." Socialist Voice, January 11, 2007.

[33] Blanco's remarks to an informal gathering in Toronto, September 16, 2008.

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COMMENT BY FELIPE STUART

John Riddell’s article “From Marx to Morales: Indigenous Socialism and the
Latin Americanization of Marxism” is a much needed contribution to today’s arsenal of Marxism for application in Abya Yala, or Indo-Black-Latino America, and logically for many other arena of global struggle against imperialist and capitalist depredation and exploitation. I hope it will be rapidly reproduced in other publications , and translated to Spanish by a native speaker of that language, and why not, into Quechua and other indigenous tongues.

In the course of my work in collaboration with Peruvian indigenous and campesino leader Hugo Blanco, a Marxist friend wrote, in the framework of an internet discussion list, a posting that expressed a concern that solidarity with indigenous struggles often passes over into idealist and ineffective nostalgia for a “return to nature,” for times past that cannot ever be again. He was concerned that we would end up denying "progressive" aspects of the history of imperialist expansion (such as the current revolutionary impact of the Black minority in the United States) by a misdirected effort to turn back the clock of history.

I responded with the following message, obviously edited to remove references to other individuals involved in a multi person exchange, and for space reasons.

Felipe Stuart C.
Managua

Neither Hugo Blanco nor I have argued for a nostalgic return to the good old days of an imagined primitive communism or even to the pre-Conquest days.

Hugo is very explicit on that question.

He says we do not want to return to the past. We want – he explains – to know and honor our past and take from it essential elements to struggle today for our future.
The essential elements he points to are the communistic traditions of social organization and the respect and love of nature – an integral cosmovision whose essential core can lay the basis for a new morality and cultural mode in the socialist transformation of our continent.

Mariátegui was one of the first Marxists in the western hemisphere to break from schematism, and to appreciate the contribution that indigenous traditions and culture could make to the anti-imperialist and anti- capitalist struggle in Indo-America, and to social transformation beyond capitalism.

I think Eurocentric Marxism and to some degree the Marxism taught by George Novack (a longtime leader of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party … lacks the benefit of Mariátegui’s contribution. We should recall that Mariátegui made this advance without the benefit of Marx’s ethnography notebooks and recent discussions of his nuanced and dialectical appreciation of the potential role of the Russian peasant commune. But he did have before him the revolutionary shift in Bolshevik policy on the nationalities question when they broke completely with pre-1917 schemas and embraced the national minorities, Islamic religious and cultural rights, autonomy for Soviet Jews, and so on.

Don’t get me wrong -- I deeply respect George Novack’s contribution and consider his writings to be indispensable tools in ongoing socialist educational work. Some of his writings on combined and uneven development are crucial to unraveling some of the tightest knots in understanding Indo-Afro-Latin American history, especially the false debate about feudal or capitalist social relations in colonial times. But a good dose of Mariátegui would have enabled George to avoid some pitfalls [a Google search for George Novack and/or Pathfinder Press will turn up quite a number of his books and essays].

The notion that the defeat of the ancient commune and the rise of class society were inevitable and progressive is one sided and ultimately false.

Ernest Mandel addresses that question in the Chapter on Labour, Necessary Product, Surplus Product of his major two-volume work Marxist Economic Theory. After describing the progressive functions of the “new possessing classes,” he makes the following observation:

“The technique of accumulation has been used to justify the appropriation of extensive material privileges. Even if it be historically indispensable, there is no reason to believe that it could not have been applied eventually by the collectivity itself” (p. 41, 1971 Merlin edition).

The shattering of the ancient commune and the forging of class society, exploitation and oppression, and the rise of the state were not inevitable.

Mandel also notes:

“The Marxist category of ‘historical necessity’ is moreover much more complex that popularisers commonly suppose. It includes, dialectically, both the accumulation of the social surplus which was carried out by the ancient ruling classes, and also the struggle of the peasants and slaves against these ruling classes, a struggle without which the fight for emancipation waged by the modern proletariat would have been infinitely more difficult” (p. 42, 1971 Merlin edition).

[We might now want to change his sentence to read: “the fight waged by the modern proletariat and subjugated semi-colonial and indigenous peoples would have been infinitely more difficult” (FSC)].

No serious modern thinker would express nostalgia for the conditions of existence of pre-class communal tribal life, or yearn for a return to such days. But, as Blanco argues, elements of that tradition survived and became central to indigenous cosmovision in Abya Yala (the Americas) and today are central to their resistance to imperialist and capitalist domination, and to their defense of nature against capitalist depredation.

Mandel makes an interesting point that relates to this discussion:

“It is only when the division of society into classes begins, when the social division of labour, and the need to justify exploitation appears, that ideology in the sense of ‘bad conscience’ can arise. The old mentality, based on primitive clan communism, slowly dissolves. But its vitality remains very great, and thousands of years have to pass before the last traces of these feelings of elementary solidarity disappear. It is, moreover, by utilizing these feelings of solidarity and co-operative discipline within a communistic society that the first ideologists in the service of the ruling classes endeavour to persuade the working classes to accept their situation of permanent inferiority. This is the ‘organic’ conception of society, which is worked out in order to justify a social division of labour identified with the division of society into rich and poor, privileged persons and producers, those who give orders and those who obey them.”

[At that point, Mandel offers an insightful footnote about Karl Polanyi’s fascination with naturalism. “A curious echo of this ‘organic conception of society is to be found in the writings of certain modern critics of economic liberalism, such as Karl Polanyi. The latter treats even slave owning society as a society which ‘integrated the individual into society’ and makes no distinction between the way a free member of a village community saw his position and the way this position appeared to a slave or a serf.”

We should also note that this line of thought is directly related to the historical role of religion. The rise of Christianity is propelled both by a social movement against slavery and oppression, and in a dialectical progression, the imposition of the naturalist ideology discussed by Mandel. But it remains to this day, also the “sigh of the oppressed”. Ditto for the Muslim faith, and many others.

The spiritualism of indigenous peoples is different. It is not ideological. It did not arise to justify or to camouflage exploitative and alienating social relations. Mandel also explains this difference very succinctly and well by in the opening paragraphs of Chapter 18, The Origin, Rise and Withering Away of Political Economy (Op cit., p. 690).

In today’s world of imperialist subjugation and capitalist destruction of the very material conditions of life (the environment), indigenous spiritualist cosmovision takes on a revolutionary potential when integrated into the international proletarian and plebian struggle for socialism.

I was puzzled by your court summary of how the Aztec empire was supposedly destroyed by a couple of hundred Spanish soldiers. Similar arguments are made about the defeat of the Inca, although it took the Conquistadores a bit longer and cost them much more to occupy the Andes. However, the military relationship of forces is only part of the explanation of the historical catastrophe of the European conquest, as seen from the point of view of the original inhabitants of Abya Yala. The main factor was not force of arms, but disease.

…………..

We do not weep or even sigh about the conquest, although sighs can be healthy and positive, and even weeping at times. But we do rejoice at the great and powerful resistance struggles. We do celebrate 500 years of Indigenous, Black, and Grassroots Resistance (I was one of the central organizers of the huge conference on that theme held in Managua the week of October 12, 1992 attended (it now seems ironic) by a young indigenous militant from Bolivia by the name of Evo Morales, and by Rigoberta Menchu who had just received the Nobel Peace award).

So I would like to turn your apparently ambiguous attitude towards indigenous tradition into an active pursuit of a great tradition, a cultural “rescate” (recovery).

I am reminded of the assertive words on the license plate in Quebec -- Je me souviens (I remember); or Longfellow’s poem Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie. It has been put to song in dozens of interpretations and formed the basis of novels and stories (see http://www.cyberacadien.com/?p=40).

Is it reactionary for the Quebecois or the Acadien to yearn for the times before the British conquest?

When we do that are we yearning to go back to feudalism, indentured labor, and survival farming in a climate and geography we poorly understood? I don’t think that is what characterizes these cultural expressions, any more than Hugo Blanco’s arguments are part of a movement to go back to a “Native” world of times past. They are assertions of pride in and for the oppressed and suppressed culture, for the language and song of the oppressed, for our traditions, for our elders and ancestors, for the blood of our resistance to conquerors and imperialists then and now. For our liberation! …………. (fin)

Hasta siempre Comandante...14 de junio 2008. - 1928-1967

2008-06-14T15:36:00.003-06:00

Hasta siempre Comandante...frases célebres de Ernesto Che Guevara
Aporrea.org - www.aporrea.org
14/06/08 - www.aporrea.org/ideologia/n115509.html
El comandante argentino-cubano Ernesto Ché Guevara
Credito: pl

(14 de junio 2008. - 1928-1967). Revolucionario y líder político latinoamericano, cuya negativa a adherirse tanto al capitalismo como al comunismo ortodoxo le convirtió en un héroe de los nuevos grupos izquierdistas que surgieron en la década de 1960.

Nació el 14 de Junio de 1928 en Rosario, provincia de Santa Fé (Argentina) y obtuvo el Doctorado en Medicina por la Universidad de Buenos Aires en 1953. Convencido de que la revolución era la única solución posible para acabar con las injusticias sociales existentes en Latinoamérica, en 1954 marchó a México, donde se unió al Movimiento 26 de Julio, grupo integrado por revolucionarios cubanos exiliados a las órdenes de Fidel Castro. A finales de la década de 1950, jugó un importante papel en la lucha de guerrillas iniciada por Castro contra el dictador cubano Fulgencio Batista.

Desapareció de Cuba en 1965, reapareciendo al año siguiente en Bolivia, como líder de los campesinos y mineros bolivianos contrarios al gobierno militar. Fue capturado por la CIA y el Ejército boliviano y fusilado cerca de Vallegrande el 9 de octubre de 1967.

Frases celebres de Ernesto Che Guevara:

1. "Prefiero morir de pie, a vivir arrodillado."

2. "Seamos realistas y hagamos lo imposible."

3. "Podrán morir las personas, pero jamás sus ideas."

4. "Recuerden que el eslabón más alto que puede alcanzar la especie humana es ser revolucionario."

5. "Todos los días la gente se arregla el cabello, ¿por qué no el corazón?."

6. "La revolución es algo que se lleva en el alma, no en la boca para vivir de ella."

7. "Si el presente es de lucha, el futuro es nuestro."

8. "Sean capaces siempre de sentir, en lo más hondo, cualquier injusticia realizada contra cualquiera, en cualquier parte del mundo. Es la cualidad más linda del revolucionario."

La Prensa and the FSLN-FMLN Connection

2008-06-14T10:39:00.008-06:00

La Prensa is the flagship newspaper of Nicaragua’s traditional oligarchy and right wing sectors. It casts itself as “the daily newspaper of all Nicaraguans,” “in the service of truth and justice.” But notwithstanding such claims, it is merely the voice of the Nicaraguan right wing. Its editorial board functions as their version of a politburo, formulating a line to steer the country in accord with their class social and economic interests.

La Prensa campaigns daily to unite what they call “democratic forces” in Nicaragua which means any and all parties except the FSLN. They are especially sympathetic to the ex FSLN forces such as the MRS who want to ally with Liberal forces around Eduardo Montealegre, now the PLC candidate for Managua’s mayoralty.

The following editorial gives an idea of their chronic and visceral hostility to the FSLN and to revolutionary forces in other countries such as the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela, now organized in the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela), whose principal leader is Hugo Chávez.

The editorial writer reveals a superficial knowledge of Marxism and makes a few errors on the revolutionary history of Latin America (hence the addition of a few footnotes to clarify certain misleading or erroneous statements in the text, added by the translator, Felipe Stuart C.

Managua

The FSLN-FMLN Connection
La Prensa Editorial, June 12, 2008

The governing FSLN party has denied, although in an extra official manner, information published by the Salvadoran daily La Prensa Gráfica, and reproduced in communications media in Nicaragua. According to this report, a message was found in one of the computers of the deceased second chief of the FARC, who went by the name “Raúl Reyes” It says that one thousand militants of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) of El Salvador proctored the November 2006 election in Nicaragua and helped foster the electoral victory of Daniel Ortega.

It is understandable that the FSLN would deny the veracity of the information. But those who know the political history of Central America, and particularly that of Nicaragua and El Salvador, cannot be surprised by this news of a connection of the Sandinista Front with the Salvadoran FMLN, and with the FARC of Colombia. Would it really be strange, in reality, to find a message in the computer of “Raul Reyes” that says “Daniel (Ortega) has a very good position with them (that is, with the FARC) and with revolutionary movements,” when Ortega himself said that the ancient maximum leader of the FARC, Manuel Marulanda or “Tirofijo,” was his comrade and brother? Ortega even presented Marulanda with the “Orden Augusto C. Sandino” medal, on January 13, 1999. He was the only one among the left governments of Latin America who sent a condolence message to the Colombian terrorist narcoguerrilla upon Marulanda’s death.

Moreover, it is very well known that all the leftist and revolutionary organizations of the world maintain solidarity between them, coordinate actions of common interest, and practice so called revolutionary, socialist, or proletarian internationalism, which originates in the concept that Karl Marx imprinted in the 1848 Communist Manifesto, that “workers have no country.”

According to Karl Marx the communist revolution would be realized in an inevitable manner on an international scale. Later, the Russian Vladimir Ulianov, alias Lenin, formulated the Marxist doctrine, establishing the thesis that the revolution would triumph in the beginning only in some countries, even just one country, as occurred in Russia in 1917. That, however, would not signify renouncing revolutionary internationalism or the world communist revolution.

In the 60s of the 20th Century, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro promoted the communist revolution in the Third World, through an extremist organization called “Tricontinental,” [1] created in 1965 in Havana, Cuba. Two years later, also in Havana, the Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) [2] was founded as Tricontinental’s Latin American branch. When the Sandinista revolution triumphed in 1979 the representative of the United States government, William Bowdler, offered US friendship and economic cooperation to the victorious comandantes of the FSLN in exchange for them not trying to export the revolution to El Salvador and other Central American counties. However, the Sandinista comandantes, although giving verbal assurances that they would not export their revolution, in practice conspired with the FMLN of El Salvador and even sent Nicaraguan combatants to that country. As well, they established camps for political preparation and military training for leftist militants from other Central American countries, including peaceful and very democratic Costa Rica.

Now, under the flag of so called “21st Century socialism,” the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, with enthusiastic support from Daniel Ortega, is promoting the formation of a continental revolutionary army and has taken up the call made by Che Guevara in the 60s of the 20th Century to create “many Vietnams” in Latin America, to counter the United States and allow the communist revolution to triumph in all Latin American countries.

So it is not at all strange that the Salvadoran FMLN and the Nicaraguan FSLN cooperate with each other, according to the information published by La Prensa Gráfica of El Salvador about what was discovered in the computer of “Raúl Reyes.” Nevertheless this is something that should be investigated by democratic deputies in the National Assembly, at least to safeguard appearances.[3]
____________________________________________________________

[1] Tricontinental was the magazine of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAL). See its official site at http://www.ospaaal.org/ . See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricontinental_Conference and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricontinental -- Also see Green Let Weekly’s report “New situation demands unity: OSPAAAL” at http://www.greenleft.org.au/1995/177/12532

[2] OLAS - Organization of Latin American Solidarity. Founded in 1967, its high point of activity followed its founding congress in Havana and the its official declaration. Following the assassination of Che Guevara in Bolivia and the defeat of this the guerrilla force he led, OLAS went into decline and ceased to function. Its mission is now carried out though diverse initiatives such as ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas ([see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivarian_Alternative_for_the_Americas ].

[3] La Prensa has never editorialized against massive presence of "democracy trainers" from the USA financed by millions of USA dollars from such outfits such as the Republican Party and the NED (National Endowment for Democracy). Even the MRS has benefited from money from the USA to train its scrutineers. Nor has the oligarchy's politburo ever protested the fact that the US Embassy is addicted to participating in Nicaraguan elections. In the last national elections they backed Eduardo Montealege, also La Prensa's favored child. For La Prensa the empire is entitled to run the show in Nicaragua, but is is an act of delinquency for the left to engage in international solidarity and collaboration. Their imperial and class interests could not be better illuminated.

From Che to Chávez

2008-06-11T07:22:00.007-06:00

* Richard Gott
The dramatic appeal by the Venezuelan president Hugo
Chávez, suggesting to the Farc guerrillas in Colombia that
it is time to release their hostages and to abandon the
armed struggle, is a serious challenge to the Colombian
government of Alvaro Uribe, which has long pursued a
military solution to a rural conflict that has lasted for
more than half a century. Chávez has often criticised the
Farc (the "Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia") for
their practice of seizing and holding civilian hostages,
but this is the first time that he has called for them to
give up fighting. "The guerrilla war has passed into
history," he said on Sunday during his regular weekly
television programme, and he again requested to Farc to
make "a grand humanitarian gesture" by releasing their
hostages. These are believed to number more than 700, and
include three US defence contractors and Ingrid Betancourt,
a French-Colombian citizen (and former presidential
candidate) in whom the French president Nicolas Sarkozy has
taken a personal interest.

In making his call, Chávez is clearly taking advantage of
the new situation created by the recent death of Manuel
Marulanda, the Farc's leader since the 1960s, as well as by
the probable arrival in the White House next January of
Barack Obama, who has promised fresh policies towards Latin
America, invoking the once seemingly progressive projects
of earlier Democrat presidents like Franklin Roosevelt (the
"Good Neighbour" policy) and John Kennedy (the "Alliance
for Progress"). A new US president, paying proper attention
to Latin America for the first time in 20 years, demands a
fresh response.

The Farc, whose origins go back to the Liberal-Conservativ e
civil war in Colombia of the 1940s and 1950s, was always
markedly different from the other Latin American guerrilla
movements, inspired by Che Guevara, that emerged in the
1960s in the wake of the successful Cuban revolution. A
genuine peasant-based army (as opposed to irregular bands
led by urban intellectuals) , the Farc believed in the
necessity of politicising the peasantry, rather as the
narodniks had tried to do in Russia in the 19th century.
But in Latin America, as I wrote nearly 40 years ago in my
book Guerrilla Movements in Latin America (republished this
month by the Seagull Press), "this type of activity is
impossible without gun in hand. Political agitation, the
organisation of peasant unions, and the holding of strikes
is often illegal. The power of local landowners, reinforced
by that of the state, is used to repress incipient signs of
rebellion."

Those conditions still exist in parts of Colombia, where
trade unionists remain under permanent threat and where
paramilitary units work hand in glove with landowners, yet
in the rest of Latin America the memory of Che Guevara is
now kept alive on T-shirts rather than through the
monstrous rattle of machine-guns that he had once (along
with Wilfred Owen) so poetically evoked. The task in
Colombia is to engineer a peace process that will allow the
guerrillas to lay down their arms, and guide the country
towards the kind of social peace (and democratic argument)
that now exists in most of the continent. That has been the
hope of Chávez, ever since he accepted Uribe's request last
year to help in obtaining the release of the Farc's
hostages (and the release of Farc prisoners in Colombian
jails).

The Farc has been much weakened in the past year,
with the loss of several senior figures as well as
Marulanda, and the current leadership may not have much of
a hegemonic grip over its fighters, making peace talks
difficult about anything more than a hostage/prisoner
exchange. Uribe has established a reputation as a tough and
unreliable negotiator, yet if he were to swallow his
hostility to Chávez, the only significant outside figure
with lines open to the Farc, and to come under pressure in
the new year from Washington, his only ally, the longest
war in Latin America could now be brought to an end.

This article was first published on guardian.co. uk on
Monday June 09 2008. It was last updated at 16:30 on June
09 2008. http://www.guardian .co.uk/commentis free/2008/ jun/09/venezuela .colombia

Che Guevara’s Final Verdict on the Soviet Economy

2008-06-10T20:25:00.005-06:00

Ernesto Che Guevara

This article by veteran Canadian socialist John Riddell appeared in the June 8 edition of the Canadian digital publication Socialist Voice. Riddell is a co-editor of Socialist Voice. This publication has been one of the main sources of analytical information about the Cuban Revolution in Canada, and is a strong voice of solidarity with the Cuban people and nation in its struggle to advance the revolution and defend their country's independence and sovereignty.

The article is its own best introduction.

To read it in Socialist Voice, go to http://www.socialistvoice.ca/

June 8, 2008

By John Riddell

One of the most important developments in Cuban Marxism in recent years has been increased attention to the writings of Ernesto Che Guevara on the economics and politics of the transition to socialism.

A milestone in this process was the publication in 2006 by Ocean Press and Cuba’s Centro de Estudios Che Guevara of Apuntes criticos a la economía política [Critical Notes on Political Economy], a collection of Che’s writings from the years 1962 to 1965, many of them previously unpublished. The book includes a lengthy excerpt from a letter to Fidel Castro, entitled “Some Thoughts on the Transition to Socialism.” In it, in extremely condensed comments, Che presented his views on economic development in the Soviet Union.[1]

In 1965, the Soviet economy stood at the end of a period of rapid growth that had brought improvements to the still very low living standards of working people. Soviet prestige had been enhanced by engineering successes in defense production and space exploration. Most Western observers then considered that it showed more dynamism than its U.S. counterpart.

At that time, almost the entire Soviet productive economy was owned by the state. It was managed by a privileged bureaucracy that consolidated its control in the 1920s under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Managers were rewarded on the basis of fulfilling production norms laid down from above; workers were commonly paid by the piece.

Political economy of the transition

Che’s analysis was more pessimistic than most Western commentators, pointing to problems rooted in the Soviet economy’s fundamental nature. Far from being socialist in character, he said, this economy actually yoked together incompatible elements, both capitalist and non-capitalist. He also pointed out that the “political economy” — that is, the political and economic laws of motion — of societies in transition to socialism “has not yet been formulated, let alone studied.”[2]

His diagnosis, unique in its time, identified key weaknesses that contributed to the Soviet economy’s stagnation, decline, and finally, only 25 years later, its total collapse.

In “Thoughts on the Transition,” Che traces the troubles of the Soviet economy back to the introduction in 1921, under Lenin’s leadership, of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which “opened the door to the old capitalist production relationships.” Che notes that “Lenin called these relationships state capitalism.”[3]

In the final period of his life, Lenin questioned the “presumed usefulness” of NEP categories such as “profits” in relations among state enterprises, Che says. Further, Lenin was disturbed by ominous divisions inside the Communist Party, to which he drew attention in his final writings. “If [Lenin] had lived, he would have quickly altered the relationships established under the NEP.” But in fact, “the economic and legal framework of Soviet society today is based on the NEP, and incorporates the old capitalist relationships.”

Incompatible elements

Che says that the capitalist features of Soviet society may be termed “pre-monopolist” because they lack the dynamism of competition and cooperation that produced capitalist trusts like General Motors and Ford. “The current system restricts development through capitalist competition but does not abolish its categories or establish new categories on a higher level,” he says. Individual material interest has supposedly become the lever for development, but is robbed of its effectiveness by the fact that Soviet society “does not exhibit exploitation,” Che says.[4] Given the presence of these capitalist features in Soviet societies, he states, “humanity does not develop its spectacular productive potential and does not emerge as the conscious architect of the new society.”

Capitalist competition and exploitation having been abolished, what can serve as the driving force of economic development?, Che asks. The USSR relies on material incentives, but these reproduce the social irresponsibility characteristic of capitalism.

Moreover, material incentives are extended to “non-productive economic sectors” and applied also to the “leaders,” thus “opening the door to corruption” — a phenomenon that was to become pervasive in the Soviet bureaucracy.

It follows logically that such a privileged officialdom will develop distinct political interests and goals antagonistic to those of working people in the Soviet Union and worldwide. Che’s well-documented criticisms of Soviet foreign policy — for example its failure to lend effective assistance to Vietnam, point to such a conclusion.[5] Forty years earlier, Leon Trotsky, leader of the Bolshevik opposition to the rise of Stalinism, held that the Russian revolution had been undermined by a self-interested and privileged bureaucratic caste. Che, however, did not say that bureaucratism in the Soviet Union had proceeded to that point.

Law of value

Economic management through material and profit-based incentives cannot bring the desired results, Che says, because in the Soviet context “the law of value does not have free play.” (The law of value is a principle of Marxist economics that holds, broadly speaking, that the prices of commodities are proportional to the amount of socially necessary labour time required to produce them.)

In the Soviet Union there is no competitive free market to reward the efficient producers and remove the inefficient, Che says. Instead, in the Soviet economy, in the last analysis, social needs take priority over market forces. The Soviet “must guarantee that the population receives a range of products at set prices,” and these prices thus “lose their link with capitalist value.”

Che offers no explanation of why Soviet authorities must subsidize the production of such consumer necessities. Among Cuban Communist leaders of the time, this fact required no explanation. They considered that, whatever the distortions of the Soviet state of the time, the working class remained in power, and had sufficient leverage to prevent the triumph of capitalist exploitation.

Soviet claims to be surging ahead of the United States economically, Che says, are based on references to higher Soviet production of steel and other basic industrial products. But this is misleading. “Steel is no longer a basic factor in measuring a country’s efficiency, because we now have chemistry, automation, non-ferrous metals — and besides, there’s the question of the steel’s quality. The U.S. produces less steel, but a great deal of it is of superior quality.”

Technological stagnation

Technical innovation in the U.S. reflected “a giddy advance” of capitalism based on “a range of totally new technologies far removed from the old productive techniques.” However, in the Soviet Union, “in most economic sectors, technology has remained relatively blocked.”

Che writes that “new societies achieve brilliant successes thanks to the revolutionary spirit of their first moments. But after that, progress is less swift, because “technology no longer operates as the driving force of society.”

There is, however, one area where Soviet technology has scored great successes, and that is precisely in the sector where social priorities hold unquestioned sway: defense production. “This is because it is not held to the standard of profitability.” Rather everything is structured to serve the new society by assuring its survival.

“But at this point the mechanism breaks down,” Che cautions. “The capitalists keep their defense apparatus closely united to their productive apparatus [as a whole].”

“All the great advances of the science of war pass over immediately to civilian technology, producing gigantic leaps forward in the quality of consumer goods. None of this takes place in the Soviet Union: the two compartments are walled off from each other.”

These weaknesses of the Soviet economy have been transplanted to the more economically developed societies of Eastern Europe, where they have sparked a reaction against “the plague of bureaucracy and of excessive centralization.” But the result is to give the enterprises “more and more independence in the struggle for a free market.” Meanwhile the state in these countries “begins to be transformed into a guardian of capitalist relationships.”

Factories are closed, and “Yugoslav — and now Polish — workers emigrate” to Western Europe. “They are slaves,” Che remarks acidly, “offered by the socialist countries [to serve] the technological development of the European Common Market.”

Two principles

As an alternative to this course, Che counterposes two principles for which he had argued in Cuba’s debate on economic management during the previous three years.[6]

First, “communism is a phenomenon of consciousness” that cannot be captured by “quantitative economic measures.” There is no identification between communist society and high income per capita, and such income calculations are in any case an abstraction.

The second principle concerns technological innovation, the basis for expanded production of material goods. The “technological seeds of socialism are found much more in developed capitalism than in the old system of so-called economic calculation” which then prevailed in the Soviet Union. This system was “taken over from a capitalism that has now been superseded but that is nonetheless taken as a model for socialist development.”

Guevara is probably thinking here of the emphasis in Lenin’s post-1917 writings on the need to adopt the most modern techniques and organizational principles of the Western capitalist world of that time. In his view, these principles then became inalterable principles of the Soviet economy

Resistance to automation

The Soviet economy’s weakness is evident in its “backwardness … in adopting automation, compared to its truly startling progress in the capitalist countries.”

Che poses a hypothetical example: an oil refinery that needs to close down for a year for a complete technical overhaul. “What happens in the Soviet Union? Hundreds and perhaps thousands of such automation projects are piled up in the Academy of Science, but are not implemented because the factory directors cannot afford the luxury of not fulfilling their plan during a year.” What is more, “if the factory is automated, they will be ordered to get more production.”

Soviet factory managers were rewarded in terms of fulfillment of production norms set down in their ministry’s plan. In Che’s example, the manager of the automated factory gets penalized for the year of downtime and receives no compensating reward. “For them, achieving higher productivity is fundamentally of no concern.” Applying capitalist incentives to socialized enterprises thus obstructs technological advances while bringing none of the benefits of a true capitalist market.

The way forward is to “eliminate capitalist categories: commercial transactions among enterprises, bank interest, use of direct material incentives as a lever, etc., while adopting capitalism’s latest administrative and technological advances.”

Administration and technology

Che sees an example of such advanced administrative techniques in dominant capitalist corporations like General Motors, which, he points out, employs more workers than the entire Cuban nationalized economy. In such enterprises, administration is tightly linked to technology, and both are constantly in flux, adjusting to the development of capitalism as a whole. In socialism, by contrast, administration and technology “have been separated off as two different aspects of the problem, and one of them has remained totally static.”[7]

Referring ironically to the destructive effect of material stimulants, Che concludes that the challenge is “how to integrate people into their work in such a fashion that what we call ‘material disincentives’ will be unnecessary, that every worker will feel the urgent need to support the revolution and will thus experience work as a pleasure.”

Worker management

Che concedes that this is far from the case in Cuba. His critics, he says, are correct in pointing out that “workers do not participate in drawing up plans, in administration of state enterprises, and so on.” But the critics see the remedy for this in material incentives.

“This is the nub of the question. In our opinion it is an error to propose that the workers manage the enterprises … as representatives of the enterprise in an antagonistic relationship to the state.” Each worker should manage the enterprise “as one among many, as a representative of all the others [in society].”

Che’s concept of worker management based on revolutionary consciousness rather than material incentives is a decisive advance. It contrasts strikingly with all the models of economic management then current in the USSR and its allies, including both the top-down administrative centralization identified with the Stalin era and the profit-seeking self-managed enterprises of Yugoslavia.

Yet Che leaves his suggestion tantalizingly undeveloped. His text concludes on a note of puzzlement at the unresolved nature of the issues he is addressing — a tone reminiscent in some ways of Lenin’s final writings.[8]

Che endorses the widely held view that a centralized plan must utilize each element of production in a rational fashion, “and this cannot depend on [decisions of] a workers’ assembly or the outlook of a worker.” Still, he concedes, “when the central apparatus and intermediary levels have little knowledge, action by the workers is more useful, from a practical point of view.” One suspects that Che, in his practical experience, must often have found rank-and-file workers to have had more knowledge and better judgment than administrative cadres.

A note of uncertainty

Che’s text ends by emphasizing the unresolved nature of the problem. “Our experience has taught us two things that have become axiomatic: a well-place technical cadre can achieve much more than all the workers of a factory, and a leadership cadre assigned to a factory can transform it, for better or worse.” But why is it that a new factory manager can change everything? “We have not yet found any answer [to this question],” Che admits. The answer must be closely related, he concludes, to the still unformulated political economy of societies in transition to socialism.

The collection of Che’s writings in Apuntos critiquos makes available much of Che’s work devoted to laying foundations for such a political economy. It includes his trenchant critique of the official Soviet Manual of Political Economy and extensive minutes of Che’s meetings with collaborators in Cuba’s Ministry of Industry from 1962 to 1964. (Ocean Press has announced a forthcoming English-language edition.)

Yet when Che sent Fidel Castro these “Reflexiones,” he was not retiring to a period of study but advancing to the fields of revolutionary battle in Africa and Latin America. He evidently believed that the economic challenge he highlighted would be resolved above all through new revolutionary advances internationally.

‘21st Century Socialism’

.More than 40 years ago after Che fell in battle in Bolivia, his spirit is triumphant in the rise of revolutionary struggles in Latin America. The publication of Apuntes críticos is evidence of new attention in Cuba to Che’s theoretical writings, as the country searches for ways to continue its socialist experiment. Meanwhile, Venezuelan revolutionists have initiated a discussion of “21st Century Socialism” that builds on Che’s thought, while going beyond it in significant ways.

Like Che, Venezuela’s revolutionary Bolivarians reject the model of the Stalinist Soviet Union and aim instead to build a socialism founded on the initiative of the ranks. Like Che, they recoil from the danger of a bureaucratic layer of privileged officials. But where Che writes of “communist consciousness,” the Venezuelans talk of “protagonism.” This shifts the emphasis from individual awareness to agency, that is, to initiative, responsibility, and decision at the base. And the great campaigns of the Venezuelan revolutionary process — the “missions” — have implemented vast centralized projects for health care, education, housing, etc., by devolving authority downwards to rank-and-file committees and councils.

To be sure, Venezuela is still a capitalist society, in which the challenges of conquering the foundations of capitalist power and instituting workers’ management in the factories remain unresolved.

When capitalism has been overthrown and the main elements of the economy socialized, the political economy of the transitional society must resolve more than the challenge of properly balancing national planning with rank-and-file initiative. Economic problems must be solved: among them, how investment funds will be allocated; how the efficiency of investment will be measured; how raw materials will be allocated and their supply assured; and how prices will be set, as a basis both for accounting in the nationalized economy and for exchange in consumer markets.

A full answer to these questions, which would provide us with the “political economy of transition” that Che called for, has not yet been elaborated, and can be developed only through struggle and experience. Che’s insights, however, help pose these questions in a framework in which a solution can be formulated.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Footnotes

[1]. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Algunas reflexiones sobre la transición socialista,” in Apuntes críticos a la economía política, Ocean Books: Melbourne, 2006, pp. 9-20.

[2]. Che and other Cuban communist leaders of the time considered the Soviet Union and Communist-led states in Eastern Europe, North Korea, North Vietnam, China, and Cuba to be states that had overthrown capitalism and established the foundations for a transition to socialism. Some Marxists term such societies “workers’ states.” The Cuban view was contested in the workers’ movement at the time, above all by the Maoist leadership in China, which argued that the Soviet Union and its allies had by the 1960s returned to capitalism.

[3]. For Lenin’s final comments on this topic, see Lenin, Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965, vol. 33, pp. 419-421 (“Fourth Congress of the Communist International” and 472-473 (“On Cooperation”). These and other writings by Lenin are also available at www.marxists.org.

[4]. The common, dictionary meaning of “exploitation” is mistreatment of people for the benefit of others. By that definition, the social privilege Che describes in the USSR would qualify as “exploitation.” But he was using the word in its Marxist sense, which refers to an inherent characteristic of wage labour under capitalism. Marxism holds that a portion of the value produced by a worker, the “surplus value,” is appropriated as profit by the employer, the owner of the means of production. Many Marxist opponents of Stalinism, including both Leon Trotsky and Che Guevara, denied that exploitation in this sense of the word took place in the USSR. This is disputed by those who claim that the USSR had by Che’s time returned to capitalism.

[5]. In “Message to the Tricontinental,” published in 1967, Che wrote “Vietnam, a nation representing the aspirations and hopes for victory of the disinherited of the world, is tragically alone. This people must endure the pounding of U.S. technology — in the south almost without defenses, in the north with some possibilities of defense — but always alone. The solidarity of the progressive world with the Vietnamese peoples has something of the bitter irony of the plebians cheering on the gladiators in the Roman Circus. To wish the victim success is not enough; one must share his or her fate. One must join that victim in death or in victory.” Che Guevara Reader, Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2003, p. 352.

[6]. Seventeen contributions to this debate are collected in Bertram Silverman, Man and Socialism in Cuba: The Great Debate, New York: Atheneum, 1971. Che’s concluding article in this discussion, “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” is posted at www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm. A similar collection is available in Spanish from Ocean Press under the title El Gran Debate. For an incisive discussion of Che’s economic thought, see Carlos Tablada, Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1989.

[7]. The decline of General Motors since the 1960s suggests that its internal regime may have been less optimal than Che suggests and may have suffered from some ills analogous to those of the Stalinist Soviet economy.

[8]. See volumes 33, 36, 42, and 45 of the edition of Lenin’s Collected Works published by Progress Publishers in Moscow in the 1960s or go to www.marxists.org. These writings are collected in Lenin’s Final Fight, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1995.

Armed With a Pen, and Ready to Save the Incas’ Mother Tongue

2008-06-08T08:42:00.006-06:00

SIMON ROMERO often uses his pen and inkwell to connect the dots of Andres Oppenheimer’s Miami Herald advice for saving Indo-Black-Latin America for the gringos. But here he leaves behind his ideological mandate and offers New York Times readers a glimpse of an important struggle – to defend and promote indigenous languages. In this case, Quechua. His article is framed as a profile of one of the veterans of the movement to promote this important tongue. Hence it is limited and does not attempt to describe the broader grassroots forces -- the troops of this battle against those in Peru who would like to disappear Quechua culture, or limit it to the tourist circuit. Among them are powerful members of the ruling class and state.

Felipe Stuart

Managua

June 7, 2008

THE SATURDAY PROFILE

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/world/americas/07tupac.html?ref=americas

Armed With a Pen, and Ready to Save the Incas’ Mother Tongue

By SIMON ROMERO

CALLAO, Peru

“SOMEWHERE in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago.”

Simple enough, right? But not for Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui.

Instead, he regales visitors to his home here in this gritty port city on Lima’s edge with his Quechua version of the opening words of “Don Quixote”: “Huh k’iti, la Mancha llahta suyupin, mana yuyarina markapin, yaqa kay watakuna kama, huh axllasqa wiraqucha.”

Mr. Túpac Yupanqui, theologian, professor, adviser to presidents and, now, at the sunset of his long life, a groundbreaking translator of Cervantes, greets the perplexed reactions to these words with a wide smile.

Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui (Tomas Munita for The New York Times)

“When people communicate in Quechua, they glow,” said Mr. Túpac Yupanqui, who at 85 still appears before his pupils each day in a tailored dark suit. “It is a language that persists five centuries after the conquistadors arrived. We cannot let it die.”

Once the lingua franca of the Inca empire, Quechua has long been in decline. But thanks to Mr. Túpac Yupanqui and others, Quechua, which remains the most widely spoken indigenous language in the Americas, is winning some new respect.

Mr. Túpac Yupanqui’s elegant translation of a major portion of “Don Quixote” has been celebrated as a pioneering development for Quechua, which in many far-flung areas remains an oral language. While the Incas spoke Quechua, they had no written alphabet, leaving perplexed archaeologists to wonder how they managed to assemble and run an empire without writing.

SINCE the Spanish conquest, important writing in Quechua has emerged, but linguists and Quechua speakers hope that the new version of “Don Quixote” will be a step toward forming a public culture in the language, through Quechua magazines, television and books, that will keep its speakers engaged with the wider world.

After centuries of retreat in the Andes, Mr. Túpac Yupanqui’s efforts in fortifying Quechua, through teaching and translating, are being complemented by various other ventures.

Microsoft has released translations of its software in Quechua, recognizing the importance of five million or so speakers of the language in Peru and millions elsewhere in the Andes, mainly in Bolivia and Ecuador. Not to be outdone, Google has a version of its search engine in Quechua even if some linguists say that these projects were carried out more for corporate image polishing than for practical reasons.

The workings of Andean democracy are also reminding the world of Quechua’s importance. The government of President Evo Morales of Bolivia, for instance, is trying to make fluency in Quechua or another indigenous language mandatory in the civil service.

Here in Peru, two legislators from the highlands have begun using Quechua on the floor of congress. And President Alan García signed a law prohibiting discrimination based on language, even though its precise workings remain unclear.

These are small steps for a language threatened by the dominance of both Spanish and English amid Peru’s feverish link-up with the global economy following a bloody civil war in the last decades of the 20th century. Few people have toiled as long and hard as Mr. Túpac Yupanqui to give Quechua a fighting chance to survive a few centuries longer.

Mr. Túpac Yupanqui’s fascination with languages began in Cuzco, once the administrative center of the Incas, where he learned Latin and Greek as a young seminarian. He quickly seized on the importance of his native Quechua while traveling with priests to rural areas where they used the language in their sermons.

The son of a local politician, he was born in one of those highland villages, San Jerónimo, where Quechua surnames are common: Pachacútec, Sinchi Roca, Lloque Yupanqui and, of course, his own, Túpac Yupanqui, which is thought to illustrate lineage to Inca royalty. (Another esteemed Quechua name, that of Túpac Amaru, the Inca leader who led a 16th century rebellion against the Spanish, served as the inspiration for the name of Tupac Shakur, the rapper and actor who died in a drive-by shooting in 1996.)

Mr. Túpac Yupanqui might have remained in the highlands if not for a youthful philosophical quandary about Europeanized rational thought and spreading the word of God, which led him to abandon his clerical studies. “I simply decided that speaking about Descartes was not going to serve the Andean world,” he said.

So he moved to Lima and took up journalism. In the 1950s, he began writing a column for La Prensa, then an influential newspaper. He wrote often about the richness and subtleties of Quechua, a language long scorned by the light-skinned coastal elite.

Interest in his columns encouraged him to open Yachay Wasi, or “House of Learning,” an academy for studying Quechua, in the mid-1960s. The timing was propitious.

In 1968, a group of leftist military officers led by Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado staged a coup. General Velasco’s government, an anomaly in an era when right-wing dictators ruled much of South America, promoted equal rights for indigenous groups and decreed Quechua to be on an equal legal footing with Spanish.

The classroom of Mr. Túpac Yupanqui, who was asked in 1975 to translate Peru’s national anthem into Quechua, bulged at the time with students from Peru and afar. He taught military officers, civil servants and a few foreign adventurers who took an interest in Peru’s indigenous peasants.

BUT three decades after the leftist generals made Quechua an official language, little linguistically is remembered by Spanish-speaking city folk about the Velasco years, which ended in 1975.

“A language cannot become official if a country is unprepared to train its schoolteachers to lecture in it,” said Mr. Túpac Yupanqui, who advised General Velasco on some of the policies. “No language is given life through something as fleeting as a decree.”

Mr. Túpac Yupanqui soldiered on after that earlier idealistic push for Quechua. After a stint in politics as spokesman for President Fernando Belaúnde Terry in the early 1980s, he returned to teaching Quechua at his one-room academy on the second floor of his home, where he still lives with some of his nine children.

He also continued making translations into Quechua, completing in 2006 his work on “Don Quixote,” a rare accomplishment in what has essentially been an oral language for more than a thousand years.

“The translation of ‘Quixote’ is important not as a curiosity, but as a sign of what is to be done on a broader scale in the Andean republics if Quechua speakers are to be brought fully into their respective national communities,” said Bruce Mannheim, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan who specializes in Quechua.

Indeed, the intricacies of the translation were celebrated by linguists and literary critics alike, recognizing the challenges involved in translating the antiquated Spanish of Cervantes into a living language that, somewhat like Chinese or Arabic, has diverging dialects that can be mutually unintelligible.

Mr. Túpac Yupanqui’s eyes still light up when he discusses the grammar of Quechua (seven pronouns!) and what can be done to make it more resilient, like more radio projects and teaching it in schools alongside English.

“If Latin is said to be the language of the angels, then Quechua is the language for expressing the subtleties of existence on Earth,” he said. “That is why it is still alive.”

What alternative do President Daniel Ortega's opponents propose for Nicaragua?

2008-06-07T18:30:00.019-06:00

In February, the rift between the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS)[1] and the Movement for the Recovery of Sandinismo (MpRS or the Rescate Group)[2] began to widen and become more public. Although still in an electoral alliance, the Rescate Group (whose main leaders are Comandantes Henry Ruiz and Mónica Baltodano) has made clear its disagreement with the MRS policy of trying the embrace the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance Party (ALN) and Eduardo Montealegre in some kind of electoral alliance or ‘movement against the dictatorship’ (meaning the Ortega presidency). Montealegre’s decision to run as Managua mayoralty candidate for Arnoldo Alemán’s Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) has put the skids to any electoral MRS alliance with him and the ALN that he formerly led. The ALN is now tangoing with the FSLN.

The MpRS is endorsing the MRS candidates in the November municipal elections, but it is apparent that differences continue to surface between these allies.

One factor that will bring them closer is solidarity with the MRS whose legality is under review and challenged by the Supreme Electoral Council. Many Sandinistas, including this writer, are opposed to any move to deny minority parties legal status and hence the right to contest elections. The MpRS has vigorously protested the threat to deprive the MRS party of its legal standing.[3]

In February the MpRS youth movement published a manifesto sharply criticizing the MRS effort to draw Eduardo Montealegre into an electoral alliance. The MpRS followed up with a statement stating their opposition to any electoral alliance or collaboration with Montealegre. They pointed out that in the 1996 elections Montealegre was the choice of the bankers and the US Embassy, and that he represents the transnationals and their grand schema for “free trade” in our region.

World acclaimed author and leading MRS supporter Giacondi Belli replied to the MpRS youth statement. Reporter Sergio Aguirre wrote in a February 29 article in the Managua daily El Nuevo Diario that Belli dismissed the youth statement as “arrogant.” “We live in a difficult era when even the purest, if they come to power, would have to make compromises…” She argued that the priority for left Nicaraguans, Renovados or Rescatados, is to block the consolidation of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, which she predicted is certain to happen if the FSLN wins the November municipal elections.

Belli recalled that the FSLN made such alliances in the fight to defeat the Somoza dictatorship in 1978-79 – implying that the Ortega “dictatorship” is just as bad as Somoza’s was, and that a similar struggle is now necessary to oust Ortega. She added that an alliance with Eduardo Montealegre “is not suicide, but on the contrary is something that will enable us to keep on being an active element within Nicaraguan society and to grow.”

It should be noted that Belli may have changed her mind since Montealegre about faced and went back to Arnoldo Alemán’s PLC, tail between his legs, towing a showy Movement for Eduardo in his wake. But, by the very logic of her argument, Belli is affirming that the MRS is prepared to ally with anyone who wants to unite to topple the “dictatorship.” Recently MRS leaders have warned that alleged anti democratic actions of the government combined with growing misery and hunger could lead to the kind of violence that Somoza had to cope with. Dangerous talk, to say the least.

Rescate Group (MpRS) leaders Henry Ruiz and Mónica Baltodano are hard pressed to argue this point because they share the view that Ortega has set out to consolidate a family dictatorship and they insist that it is a priority to stop them in their tracks.[4]

Below is a blog from a Sandinista journalist – Domingo Quilez [5] – posed on the website of Radio La Primerisima. which takes up the question "What alternative do these government opponents have?"

I largely agree with Domingo but think he should have made more distinction between the different forces he is criticizing. He should avoid painting them with the same brush.

Nevertheless they must all answer to the inevitable outcome of their campaigns to oust or defeat the Ortega government. It is not Mónica Baltodano or Dora María Téllez [3] who will replace Daniel if the “joint opposition” succeed in toppling his presidency, but someone of the US Embassy’s choosing. They will have to answer for that not just to the immediate victims among the poor and the youth, but also to our allies in ALBA and in movements such as the supporters of Ecuador’s President Correa. And more importantly, from their point of view, to history.

Felipe Stuart C.
Managua

For a more extended critique of the MRS and MpRS approach see my article Nicaragua: A Sharp Left Turn, found at

http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/cournoyer020408.html

Or on this Blog site at

http://aynicaraguanicaraguita.blogspot.com/2008/04/nicaragua-sharp-left-turn.html

Translation of Domingo Quilez's blog is by Felipe Stuart, June 5, 2008.
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What’s the alternative if the opposition topples the government?

By Domingo Quilez [5]

June 2, 2008

[The original Spanish text can be found at http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/blogs/58]

“Nicaragua cannot be saved by politicians who represent the exploiting classes, the landlords, big commerce, the magnates of industry, nor by the press which defends them. It is not man that made man a beast of burden. Man must create a new world.”

Carlos Fonseca Amador [6]

Eighteen months ago, overjoyed, we celebrated the electoral victory of the FSLN. We shared our joy with everyone in the poorest barrios of Managua who hit the streets to celebrate the return of the FSLN to government. We especially felt joy for all those thousands of compas (comrades) who waited 16 years for this moment, for all those who after dedicating their whole lives to the cause had felt a sense of frustration, of being cheated, that history had betrayed them.

For them, for us, and for those who are no longer here, we toasted that moment, although our joy had more to do with sentiments, emotions, and memories than with political identification with the FSLN leadership.

For 16 years we witnessed how all the revolutionary conquests for which we struggled were dismantled (often with the consent of FSLN leaders). So this electoral victory supposedly cancelled the debt (not all) that history has with the poorest Sandinistas, with those who never asked [the revolution] for anything in return.

We shared little or nothing with the Sandinista leadership at that moment in November 2006.

At the 1998 Sandinista Congress Daniel Ortega decided to ally with the business sector of the Frente, with the goal of getting into government at whatever cost. Ever since we have thought that the FSLN had converted itself into one more party of the system. From that point on the Frente took on the capitalist stands of Sandinista businessmen (among them the late Herty Lewites). It threw all its chips on the electoral game, and making pacts for quotas of political and economic power with the Nicaraguan liberal oligarchy in exchange for paralyzing social mobilization and not undermining the policies imposed by international economic entities (IMF, World Bank) – much like in any “civilized and democratic” country. Investment, social peace, judicial and constitutional power is shared among the most important political forces; an electoral system is maintained in which minority groups are disappearing (notwithstanding their abundance); and state institutions are shared out to those who have money – today is for you, tomorrow for me! This goes on in any European country and also in the USA; and in all the capitalist pseudo democracies around us. It’s part of the system of capitalist law and order.

Of course, this all happened with the blessing and support of the MRS from 2000 until 2005.

With that background, we sensed our joy would not last long, and that very soon we would have to criticize Daniel [Ortega’s] government for carrying on with the neoliberal policies that had brought the country to ruin.

Given what the former governments had bequeathed us, we applauded the first measures in education and health; we congratulated the government for its soundest decisions either economic or political,such as Nicaragua’s entry into ALBA [7].

We were confident that some of the social programs that were being announced and set in motion could bring about an improvement in the situation of those most in need.

Even so, there are things about this government that we neither share nor understand. The fact that the derogation of therapeutic abortion still stands enrages us, makes us indignant, and seems to us to be a crime.

The “goose/gander” (ambiguous) position held on questions like Unión FENOSA [8] and the Cenis [9] worries us.

We do not understand why no new tax legislation has been presented that would make the richest pay more.

And all the government’s religious paraphernalia bores and angers us.

Certainly, also, it seems to us a great stupidity and grave political error, if this is confirmed in the end, to deprive the MRS of its legal status so it cannot run in the coming municipal election. But it is still to be seen if this will happen, although some have already censured the government over this issue.

But even though we do not share many things with this government, nothing compares with the disgust and repugnance that this whole strategy of harassment of and efforts to topple the government, begun even before it assumed power, provoke in us.

It makes us reject the resentful political game, often dishonest and almost always manipulative, opportunist, defamatory, and selling out the country, played by the right, the reactionary communications media, and self-proclaimed progressives, some NGOs and representatives of “Civil Society” (if we only knew what this means and who they represent!), and by so many men and women comrades who are in other political and social organizations.

But this rejection is not because they may be right or wrong -- in some cases they are correct – but because since the first minute this government came to power they have given it no truce; they have never supported a decision even though it could have benefited the most needy. Their only strategy seems to be to topple the government no matter the cost.

They repeat chewed over lies like the fable of the “dictatorship” or the lack of free expression; they invent false news like the lack of confidence of cooperants and investors; they ally with and allow themselves to be bribed by the gringos, the worst enemy of humanity – anything to help topple the government. All sectors of the opposition are employing the same strategy they accuse the government of having – “anything can be resorted to.”

And all this for what? What alternative do they all have?

None. More neoliberalism, more inequality, more corruption, more slaving sweat shops, more strategic plans and sociological studies carried out with support from cooperation agencies to again gather statistics about how bereft we are, and, of course, to support a state of law and order that serves those who have wealth.

During 17 years of neoliberal governments they supposedly opened the gates to the big investors, strategic sectors were privatized in the name of the free market, democracy, and efficiency. And this great manna for the poor unemployed emerged – maquilas [sweatshops]. Moreover, the NGOs as a consequence of their great negotiating capacity as “representatives” of the poor have received millions of dollars for their programs, their studies, the strategic plans, and their mini or larger scale projects. Laws have been approved and spaces opened so they can participate and make proposals.

And what is the result?

During Doña Violeta’s [Chamorro] government, 5% of the population captured 35% of the national income. All state industrial and agricultural enterprises were liquidated. Life expectancy went down from 66 years in 1988 to 59.6 in 1996. Per capital annual health expenditures fell from $35 in 1989 to $14 in 1995. In 1992, 21% of the school-age population failed to enroll in schools. In 1996 credit for small producers was reduced by 87%. Tariffs and internal taxes were lifted in favor of foreign production.

Arnoldo Alemán’s government came to power via fraudulent elections. Cronyism, corruption, servility, systematic violation of laws – that some now so often protest – were constants of his government. His personal fortune went up by 900%. Eight-six percent of the population lived in poverty, 57 percent in extreme poverty, and 29% were destitute. He laid the bases for his successor to sell off at ridiculous prices the state electricity and telephone utilities, and he pillaged the public purse.

Bolaños, using funds stolen by his predecessor for his election campaign, came to govern. It was the government most servile to the interests of the USA and the international organizations. The economic improvement that was often heralded, and that some “renovation” leaders [a reference to the Sandinista Renovation Movement] applauded, was not a result of increased production or exports, but rather the product of external aid that came to Nicaragua because of Hurricane Mitch, and from family remittances from emigrants. Even with all that aid, according to the UN World Food Program (WFP), in 2006 Nicaragua was the second poorest country in the Americas with 1.5 million starving people, 27% of the population.

Do they want to go back to that? Is that the alternative they want for Nicaraguans? What have all those millions of international cooperation dollars been used for, that according to journalistic news no longer are being sent here because of the ‘tyrannical” government of Daniel Ortega. In what way has the situation of the people improved over the last 17 years?

Not at all. The poor are more raked over and the rich are richer. Ah! And a new class – the class of those working for international agencies and organizations.

We are convinced that we have to criticize this government, and even mobilize ourselves to make it comply with its obligations to the most disfavored sectors. But even with its errors, stupidities and ideological madness, it is much closer to the problems of the people than any of its predecessor governments – and much preferable to the alternatives proposed from the opposition.

But it is not only against the government that we have to mobilize. Also against the private enterprisers be they Liberals, Sandinistas, or Renovators (who also have them) who continue to pay miserable salaries, but demand stability. Against the transnationals who buy for two bits the patrimony of all Nicaraguans, treating us as third-hand merchandise. Against the bank owners who continue to lard their current accounts. Against all these money bags, whoever they may be, who pass by calmly in their SUVs, showing off and fancying their wealth.

We mobilize together with women not only for restitution of the right to therapeutic abortion, but for the legalization of women’s right to access no-cost abortion services as a matter of their free choice.

From that outlook, we add our numbers to popular mobilizations against the powerful, whether they are in government, in the opposition, or gain mega salaries from some NGO.

We join together with campesinos to demand better social services in the countryside, support for production, and why not, to go back to carrying out an Agrarian Reform that will return to many campesinos lands that were stolen from them over these years by bankers and landlords.

We join with men and women health and education workers, the police and other state officials so their wages will at least cover the basic family food basket, even if we burst the state budget and fail to comply with the International Monetary Fund. Together with Costeño men and women so that at last they can become owners of their own destiny and not puppets of the political and economic interests from the Pacific.
Together with the men and women sweatshop workers to enforce compliance of their labor rights and so they get a dignified wage, even though the sacred investors will get less profit.

And of course, we mobilize here and now together with the NOBODIES, with those with nothing, with the residents of the Acahualinca garbage dump. According to prudent analysts of the communications media and NGOs, it seems that since their latest mobilizations they don’t even have the right to protest; their only future is to keep on rummaging through other people’s garbage.

Will the owners of the communications media, the “social leaders” from some NGOs, or the leaders of the Renovators back the demands [of those sectors] and participate in their protests? I think not.

For them, all the racket only makes sense if it is aimed to defeat the government; but they seem indisposed to change the criminal economic and social system, and lose the privileges that many of them have.

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1. MRS – the Sandinista Renovation Movement, a political party that resulted from a breakaway of many FSLN leaders in the mid nineties. Its orientation and approach are social democratic in its Latin American version. They are known as the “Renovadores,” to distinguish them from the Movimiento por el Rescate del Sandinismo (MpRS—Sandinista Recovery Movement) that also goes by the names Grupo Rescate and is often just called the “Rescates.”

2. MpRS -- Movimiento por el Rescate del Sandinismo (Movement for the Recovery of Sandinismo). Founded by the late Herty Levites and various other leading FSLN members who left or were expelled from the FSLN. See Endnote 1.

3. Dora Maria Tellez, a key MRS leader and founder, is currently in the fourth day of a hunger strike to protest the Electoral Council’s move against the MRS and three other small parties. There has been widespread opposition to any decision to deny these parties formal or legal status.

There is a a disturbing irony to this story described by Oscar Marín who posts blogs on Radio La Primerisima. He points out in his current blog that Dora Maria Tellez is the original promoter of the undemocratic law under which her party may now lose its legal standing [see “MRS debe asumir su situación con dignidad,” at http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/blogs/60 ]. He argues that Dora Maria Tellez, Sergio Ramirez Mercado [former Sandinista Vice President of Nicaragua in the 80s], and Luis Humberto Guzman formed their own “pact” to eliminate two electoral rivals, and accomplished this goal as part of the 1995 Constitutional Reform. His conclusion, however, cannot be supported. He says the MRS leaders, because of this questionable history of rigging the electoral law in 1995, should now take their own medicine “with dignity.” I argue that they are correct to defy this law and any attempt to deregister he MRS as a recognized and legal political party. This reactionary law allows the National Assembly and the Supreme Electoral Council to decide which groups can be recognized parties. It is only through struggle that it can be overturned.

4. See the PROCLAMA del RESCATE, 27 de Enero de 2008.

5. The Nicaragua Network Hotline (February 12, 2008) publisheed an English-anguage summary of an earlier call by Domingo Quilez for Sandinista unity.

Journalist calls on Sandinistas to unite to achieve social change

"In a recent article published on Radio La Primerisima’s website (www.radiolaprimerisima.com), journalist Domingo Quilez emphasized the need for all those political parties, NGOS, social movements and other sectors which were born out of Sandinismo and are dedicated to working for social justice to unite in order to achieve true social change in Nicaragua. “The only way to bring an end to social injustice in Nicaragua is to change the economic system that generates it,” says Quilez. “Neither the government, nor the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), nor the NGO sector, nor social movements can do that on their own.”

"He went on: “How is it possible that the FSLN can make pacts, negotiate and even reconcile with Cardinal Miguel Obando, the [Constitutional Liberal Party] inner circle and so many other enemies of the revolution but cannot sit down, talk and reach agreements with the MRS or the Sandinista social movements?
“How is it possible that [he MRS [and other Sandinista organizations and movements opposed to the government] can describe the current government as a dictatorship, talk about a lack of freedom of expression in the country … and participate with Somocista individuals and organizations in the “Block Against the Dictatorship? Are they unable to admit that there have been some advances … in health care, education and workers’ rights [under the FSLN government]?

“I am convinced that there are women and men in the current government who are working for social, political and economic change in benefit of the people and that within the Sandinista opposition and organizations there are also people working towards these changes. Will it be possible for them to come together and, united, build a Nicaragua where everyone can fully enjoy our national wealth, where economic rights are considered an essential aspect of human rights and where the exploitation of the majority by the minority is brought to an end? More than a desire, it is a necessity.” See http://www.nicanet.org/?p=461

A google search turn up much more, but in Spanish of course.

6. Carlos Fonseca Amador (June 23, 1936–November 7, 1976), was a Nicaraguan teacher and founder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Fonseca was later killed in the mountains of Nicaragua, three years before the FSLN took power. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Fonseca

7. ALBA – Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas – an organization based on the principles of Caribbean And Latin American unity, fare trade, and solidarity among its member countries. It was launched by Cuba, Bolivia, and Venezuela, and later joined by Nicaragua days after Ortega’s election in November 2006.

8. Union FENOSA is a Spanish corporation that managed to buy off the electricity distribution system for a song during the previous government period. Most Nicaraguans hate it. Calls for its nationalization are widespread and loud.

9. CENIS is a reference to bonds issued to guarantee the savings of clients of several banks that “failed” in the opening years of the new century. This led to a dramatic increase in Nicaragua’s internal debt, one that carries high interest rates compared to those attached to foreign loans In the process of issuing these bonds a massive fraud was enacted in which over $600 million was shared out to a few leading bankers in the country – illegally. The State Prosecutor reports that charges are now pending against numerous (as yet unidentified) persons involved in the fraud.

Worst financial crisis since Depression, says IMF

2008-04-09T20:08:00.004-06:00

"Closed due to housing crisis"

Governments will have to pay for more bailouts, says Fund as it slashes growth forecasts and warns of global recession

Heather Stewart

The Guardian, Thursday April 10 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/10/useconomy.subprimecrisis

The US mortgage crisis has spiralled into "the largest financial shock since the Great Depression" and there is a one-in-four chance that it will cause a full-blown global recession, the International Monetary Fund warned yesterday.

As finance ministers and central bankers arrived in Washington to discuss ways of tackling the crisis, the IMF warned, in its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook, that governments might be forced to step in with more public bailouts of troubled banks and cash-strapped homeowners before the crisis was over.

"The financial market crisis that erupted in August 2007 has developed into the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, inflicting heavy damage on markets and institutions at the core of the financial system," it said.

After warning this week that the world's financial firms could end up shouldering $1trn (£500bn) of losses from the credit crunch, the IMF said it expected the US to experience a "mild recession", notching up GDP growth of 0.5% in 2008 and 0.6% in 2009. It expects house prices to fall by up to a further 10% before the downturn is over.

With the US sliding into such a recession, there is mounting pessimism about the ability of the rest of the world to escape unscathed. The IMF shaved its forecast for growth in the global economy by half a percentage point, to 3.7% for this year, and by 0.6% - to 3.8% - for 2009.

Although the Washington-based body expects most emerging economies to continue to grow strongly over the next two years, it admits that efforts to tackle the knock-on effects of the credit crunch could be hampered by fast-growing commodity prices. "Inflation has picked up around the globe, mainly reflecting sharp increases in food and energy prices," it said.

In the US, President Bush has already signed off a $150bn tax rebate package to kick-start the US economy, and the Federal Reserve last month backed an extraordinary emergency buyout of the investment bank Bear Stearns.

However, the IMF said more taxpayers' cash may still need to be spent to unblock the markets. "Given the serious risks coming from sustained financial market dislocations, the recent legislation to provide additional fiscal support for an economy under stress is fully justified, and room may need to be found for some additional support for housing and financial markets."

Simon Johnson, IMF research director, presenting the report in Washington, described such bailouts as an essential "third line of defence", after interest rate and tax cuts, for governments struggling to prevent a deep recession.

He said the main risk to the global economy over the next year was the emergence of a vicious circle, as house prices continued to fall, dealing a fresh blow to the world's banks, and creating a damaging feedback loop.

"Sentiment in financial markets has improved in recent weeks since the Federal Reserve's strong actions with regard to investment banks. But we have seen how strains in markets can quickly become reinforcing, and the possibility of a negative spiral or 'financial decelerator' remains a possibility," he warned.

The IMF's downbeat analysis creates a gloomy backdrop for policymakers arriving in Washington to discuss ways of easing the credit squeeze. Such is the concern about problems in the financial markets that a range of radical options is on the table. These include greater disclosure of losses on sub-prime assets by banks; firmer regulation of credit-rating agencies, and - more controversially - plans for taking some of the risky mortgage-backed assets at the heart of the crisis on to government balance sheets. Alistair Darling, the chancellor, is calling for a detailed plan to be agreed over the weekend.

The IMF backed more comprehensive disclosure by banks. "We fully support the move towards greater disclosure," Johnson said. "We think that marking to market [rating assets on current market values, not book values] and continuing to recognise losses is an important part of how the financial system operates."

The US Federal Reserve has cut US interest rates by a hefty 3 percentage points to 2.25% since the crisis began, in an attempt to restore confidence and turn the credit taps back on. The IMF welcomed the Fed's approach but said it would not be enough to prevent recession.

"Adverse financial conditions are likely to have a continuing negative impact on activity in the United States, notwithstanding the Federal Reserve's strong response," it said. "The United States remains plagued by profound errors in risk management."

The value of the dollar has plunged to record lows in the past year as the outlook for the US economy has darkened, but the IMF said the greenback still "remains somewhat on the strong side".

No bounce after the hard landing

Alistair Darling's forecast that Britain will bounce back from the credit crunch by next year now looks hopelessly optimistic, according to an authoritative assessment by the International Monetary Fund.

Just a month ago, in the budget, the Treasury had pencilled in 2% GDP growth this year and 2.5% in 2009 as the economy recovers, but yesterday the Washington-based IMF predicted far weaker growth of 1.6% both years.

The chancellor has said repeatedly that Britain is "better placed" to weather the storm because of its low unemployment and flexible labour market, but the IMF calculates that the housing market is overvalued by up to 30% and faces a damaging correction.

"The housing market is going to be a drag on the economy," said Charles Collyns, a senior IMF economist. "We do see house prices softening already, and we see potential that the housing correction will continue, with an impact on consumption. We also see the UK being affected by the tightening of the financial constraints related to the turmoil in the financial markets."

He added that the knock-on effects of weak growth in the US and the eurozone would also depress growth.

House prices fell 2.5% last month, Halifax said, and the IMF says the wider economy will be hit hard as overstretched banks repair balance sheets and borrowers face tighter loan conditions and higher interest rates. In January, when it last updated forecasts, the IMF was expecting expansion of 2.4% in 2009, but the longer the credit crunch continues, the more threatened the UK economy has become. Darling said yesterday that the downgrade was "not surprising" and the economy was "extremely strong".

Heather Stewart

NICARAGUA: Houses Without Water or Water Without Houses?

2008-04-05T07:36:00.004-06:00

The headline given to this very timely article is somewhat misleading. There is no inherent reason why Nicaraguans must choose between their water and construction jobs.

Why should a city of well over one million people have to bow down to a gang of capitalist investors and land speculators and drink their piss? They are literally defecating in the city’s main water supply, the underground aquifers to the southeast of the city.

This is only one of countless examples of savage assault on our natural environment and public health by greedy capitalist groups. We need only recall the mercury poisoning of the rivers in the mines region by Canadian and US firms -- destroying the health and food sources of Mayangna and Miskitu indigenous peoples in those areas. That too was done in the name of jobs, but it was not about jobs. It was gold – carted off the North and generating record profits for Canadian and US billionaires. The miners remained poor and died young, mostly from lung diseases.

Access to clean water is a key issue not just in rural Nicaragua, but also in a great many neighborhoods in the capital, and in other major cities of the country. The previous government was on the verge of privatizing water services in Nicaragua. One of the first actions of the Ortega government was to scuttle that planned rip-off. He appointed to woman consumer advocate who had led the national campaign against water privatization -- Ruth Selma Herrera -- to head the state water and sewage facility (ENACAL).

Not surprisingly, she is now a major target of the oligarchy's political parties, their newspaper La Prensa, and their many TV and radio outlets. They sing sweet lullabies to the environment when in the mood, but whenever it comes to a choice between profiteering and protecting the environment they know which side they are on. They are class conscious.

We need to learn a lesson from them.

We need to be not just Nicaraguan nationalists (which they are not), but class conscious internationalists who defend the interests of working people in the cities and on the land. We are the vast majority. Our interests are not opposed to Mother Earth.

Felipe Stuart
Managua
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By José Adán Silva

MANAGUA, Apr 1 (IPS) - Authorities in Nicaragua are facing the dilemma of generating thousands of jobs through the development of the construction and real estate industry in the capital or putting a priority on future water supplies for the city’s 1.2 million people.

The debate broke out in February, when five city governments in Managua and surrounding suburbs agreed to adopt a ban on the construction of housing units to the south of the city, a rural, forested area where the underground water reserves that supply the capital are located.

Managua Mayor Dionisio Marenco, the main sponsor of the ban, told IPS that for 17 years, development companies have been clearing the forests in that area and building housing projects with little government oversight.

"In the name of free enterprise and progress, they have hurt the city’s water resources and the country," said the mayor. "In that area, they have destroyed forests without any controls, levelled the land, made sources of water disappear and polluted the water reserves that are going to supply the city for the next 30 years."

The mayor complained that the companies have not respected building regulations, have dumped construction industry debris and sewage, which leak into the underground water reserves, and have ignored safety measures in sewage treatment plants.

The declaration of a development ban had the support of the town councils in El Crucero, La Concepción, Managua, Nindirí and Ticuantepe, and of the president’s office, the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) and the state-run water and sewage company (ENACAL).

ENACAL president Ruth Selma Herrera reported that 355 urban developments are under construction in the area encompassed by the building ban, which have reportedly not presented the water treatment infrastructure feasibility studies that must be approved before construction begins.

She also said the companies use the water without paying for the connections or the service, even though the country’s legislation establishes that water supplies belong to the state and are subject to oversight by the relevant government agencies.

"They do business without paying, without making rational use of the water, while polluting it and refusing to bring their construction projects to a halt," Herrera told IPS.

Because of the deforestation, chaotic urban growth around the capital, and lack of investment in the city’s sewage and water systems over the last 17 years, "there are areas in Managua where we can't pump water and we have to ration it up to 12 hours a day, while the companies pollute and exhaust the water supplies day after day," said Herrera.

The decision by the environmental and municipal authorities drew an angry reaction from the Chamber of the Construction Industry and the real estate industry.

Alfonso Silva, president of the Chamber of Real Estate Developers, said the industry, which invests around 200 million dollars a year, generates employment for 25,000 heads of households and reduces the pressing housing shortage in the country.

"Nicaragua has an over 30 percent unemployment rate and a deficit of more than 500,000 housing units. In these conditions of extreme poverty, we cannot be hindering development and hurting the economy," Silva told IPS.

Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. According to a January 2007 United Nations report, 47 percent of the population was living in poverty and 15 percent in extreme poverty.

"We are aware that the country must protect its natural resources, but it must do so without affecting investment and development. If a company fails to live up to the rules of the game, it should be punished, but we should not all be punished," argued Silva.

Lawmaker Agustín Jarquín Anaya, an ally of the leftist governing Sandinista Front, told IPS that the ban on housing construction in the area in question is "healthy and commendable," but said alternatives for the private investment projects affected by the measure should be explored.

"We should not be so drastic. Alternative solutions that seek to preserve water sources and that do not affect the country’s economic growth should be sought," he added.Cirilo Otero, president of the Centre for Research on Environmental Policy, said the problem is complex because of the high levels of poverty in the country.

"On one hand Nicaragua has assumed the environmental commitments included in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but on the other, it has to respond to the people’s need for jobs," he said.

Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2000, the eight MDGs, which set a 2015 target date, are to halve extreme poverty and hunger from 1990 levels, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and maternal health, reduce child mortality, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development.

To meet the MDGs, Nicaragua will have to provide clean water and sanitation to 2.5 million people by 2015.

But little progress has been made towards that MDG. A report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), presented in Managua last year, stated that 70 percent of Nicaraguans lack access to clean water.

Víctor Campos, an expert in water resources at the Humboldt Centre, a local environmental organisation, said Nicaragua’s water supply problems are not caused by actual shortages.

"If there’s anything that Nicaragua has it is water: 15 percent of the territory is liquid. The entire country is an enormous aquifer; what is needed is the know-how, investment and research to exploit our water sources," said Campos. (END/2008)

Nicaragua: A Sharp Left Turn

2008-04-03T08:47:00.009-06:00

This article first appeared in MRZine, the digital zine of the US publication Monthly Review, edited by Yoshie Furuhashi. http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/cournoyer020408.html

by Felipe Stuart Cournoyer

MRZine must be commended for its recent publication of Mike Friedman's interview with Nicaragua's Comandante Mónica Baltodano. It is especially welcome because there has been a dearth of information and analysis about Nicaragua in the English-language world ever since the 1990 electoral defeat of the revolution. That in some ways is puzzling because the actions of the 21st-century Ortega government came as a surprise to friends and foes alike.

On the day of his inauguration in January 2007, Ortega signaled a sharp left turn on the part of the FSLN and his new government. With two allied presidents at his side -- Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Boliva -- Oretga announced to a mass Sandinista rally that Nicaragua would join the ALBA alliance. The speeches of all three presidents, as well as that of Cuba's vice-president José Ramón Machado,were a vehement concert denouncing US imperialism, its wars against third-world countries, and a renewed appeal for Indo-Latin American unity. Within days Nicaragua welcomed Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the government signed a host of economic and trade agreements with one of Washington's arch enemies, its next target on the Pentagon's war list. Since that time, Nicaragua has deepened its ties and collaboration with Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia not only through ALBA, but also in bilateral agreements. And it has pursued a strong and consistent anti-imperialist course in international relations. That was most recently evidenced by Ortega's role at the Santo Domingo Summit of the Rio Group and the subsequent meeting of the OAS in Washington. Those meetings reflect a turning point in Latin America as a majority of Latin American nations rejected the Bush doctrine justifying aggression against other countries in the name of a war on terrorism.

The FSLN's left turn caught the Nicaraguan oligarchy and opposition parties, the US embassy, and the newspaper La Prensa, whose editorial board acts as the oligarchy's politburo, completely by surprise. Some observers believe that the anti-imperialist course of the government is mere rhetoric designed to cover up its real goal of consolidating deeper relations with Washington! Others limit themselves to the notion that it is all about oil, in this case Venezuelan oil, and little more.

Neither Washington nor the Nicaraguan right have bought into that kind of self-deception. Far from being mere rhetoric, the anti-imperialist course of the government is deep-going and far-reaching. [1]

On the domestic front, the FSLN government immediately set out on a course to reverse the most devastating impacts of 17 years of neoliberal assaults on workers, farmers, and poor people. These include restoration of free education and free health services (including Operación Milagro which has restored sight to thousands of Nicaraguans), an ongoing literacy campaign, social programs to combat hunger and child malnutrition, and special programs to stimulate small business and to re-activate small-scale farming. Plans to privatize the nation's water system were scuttled. Venezuelan aid has been crucial in renewing the country's collapsing electrical system and making some progress in rebuilding roads, bridges, and port facilities. Venezuelan investments in a large oil refinery and Iranian investments in hydro electric and port construction will have a major long-term impact on the economy.

The FSLN government inherited a nearly dysfunctional country and state. Nearly 80% of the population subsist on $2 or less a day (40% on $1 or less). During the previous ten years, over 700,000 Nicaraguans had emigrated in search of work, most to the U.S. The country's infrastructure had been pillaged and gutted, especially the electrical system, the health system, the education system, and such basic infrastructure as rural roads and ports.

During the first year of the government, the country was hit by several disasters and blows over which Nicaragua had no control or power to evade. Two natural disasters struck the country in September 2006 -- Hurricane Felix and the enormous floods that followed in Pacific Nicaragua. The steep rise in world oil prices has hit the national economy, especially reflected in rising electricity and transport costs. The US recession and the decline in the value of the US dollar has also struck harsh blows, given that the US is Nicaragua's major market and also the main source of family remittances (now a key generator of our country's hard currency). Another factor fueling national inflation is the steep rise of the prices of basic grains and food in the global market. While this has helped to encourage Nicaraguan agro-exports, it has also hit hard against consumers, especially poor people in the cities. The overall impact of these blows has produced galloping inflation that threatens to undercut any advances on the economic front.

The government has had to take these realities into account in developing its economic strategies. Alongside its move to join ALBA and to promote south-south economic collaboration along an anti-imperialist axis, the Ortega administration has chosen to participate in the Central American "free trade" agreement with the United States (CAFTA-DR), to maintain agreements with the World Bank and the IMF, and to promote better trading relations with Europe and Asian countries. It has also chosen to postpone a showdown with the banking and financial sector on two important internal questions -- the payment of the internal debt, a large part of which was illegally acquired in bank-failure rip-offs, and the question of reforming the regressive tax system.

The FSLN presidency is a minority government. It cannot carry out far-reaching economic changes without the consent of a pro-imperialist majority of ALN and PLC [2] deputies in the national assembly. Sociologist Orlando Nuñez, perhaps the main theoretician and ideological defender of the FSLN government, and head of the Zero Hunger campaign, explains the economic strategy of the government this way:

"For a party with a socialist mission like the Sandinista Front, our situation is very complex and contradictory. The party holds the presidency and has the most political sympathizers in Nicaragua. However, it is still a minority in other state powers, and faces an opposition that is trying to unite and jointly oppose it. This party, now in power, has to administer a country where capitalist economy dominates and must govern a society whose hegemonic values are liberal and neo-liberal. Its strategy implies defending revolutionary measures of the government and acting as a party opposed to the capitalist system now in force." [3]

President Daniel Ortega has said on several recent occasions that Nicaragua would have gone under had it not been for Venezuelan cooperation and ALBA initiatives. His strategy of combining that approach with traditional measures to attract foreign investment is highly vulnerable. But thus far it has managed to lessen the impact of the grave international economic realities facing the country. Nicaragua's export earnings rose 18% last year. This turnaround has led economist Francisco Mayorga to predict in his latest book (Nicaragua 2010: el futuro de la economía) that export earnings will continue to rise and will soon overtake family remittances as the main motor force of the economy. Hence, despite ongoing grave economic problems and poverty, the government continues to hold significant support in the population and is gaining ground in the countryside. According to a recent poll commissioned by La Prensa, Ortega has a 47% favorable rating. None of the opposition political leaders come anywhere near that level of support. However, if the government fails to bring down the bitter levels of inflation, its support could soon begin to erode, especially in the cities, traditional Sandinista strongholds.

In order to offset the problem of its minority status in the National Assembly, the government has implemented a strategy of mobilizing the urban and rural poor in popular councils -- the Citizens' Power Councils (CPC). This has enraged liberal and right-wing opinion, wedded as it is to bourgeois institutions and the phony trappings of "representative democracy." La Prensa whines and protests that the CPCs are a copy of the Bolivarian popular power movement developing in Venezuela. To some extent, that is true. They offer the hope (and also, to some, the threat) of shifting the main locus of "civil society" from the NGO- and university-based professional classes to the rural and urban poor. The claims that the CPCs are dominated by the FSLN knock hollow for the simple reason that the center and right-wing parties boycott them. This has been the experience in my Managua barrio where I am an active CPC participant and FSLN militant. Over five hundred thousand people are participating in the CPCs in city barrios and rural areas. All FSLN candidates in the 2008 elections are committed to working with the CPCs in determining and implementing municipal policies. Likewise, national ministries and agencies are under government instruction to work with CPCs in resolving problems and formulating policies.

The building and growth of the CPCs has also enabled the Ortega wing of the FSLN to get around the problem of the divisions that exist within the FSLN. Contrary to the myth that the FSLN is a monolithic machine controlled by Ortega, it is a mass movement and home to many diverse currents and conflicting interest groups, including an organized group of capitalist investors. The party's main roots are in the unions, the social movements, and among the urban and rural poor. On the Caribbean Coast its image has been enhanced by a strategic alliance with the main indigenous movement YATAMA. But it is structurally weak and often immobilized by internal tensions, especially at leadership levels. Historian Aldo Díaz Lacayo, a key confidant of Daniel Ortega and FSLN ideologue, argues that the CPCs can form the basis of a new and possibly more coherent revolutionary movement than the current FSLN. [4]

Díaz says that the FSLN's predicament is not new. "It is a consequence," he argues, "of the brutal demobilization of 1990; a product of the 'save your own skin' syndrome that attacked the whole world left after the fall of real socialism; of the 1994 modernicist rupture that offered itself as a supposed surpassing of that syndrome, convinced that the historic Frente Sandinista would never again return to power; of the withdrawal of the counterpart [5] for electoral reasons; and then two intervening electoral defeats that reduced to a minimum any expectation of getting back into government."

Díaz added that the "fundamental" problem in today's FSLN "is that the thesis of a social democratic socialism is being promoted within the [FSLN] through the commercial activism of well known leaders -- and also with the undesirable, but natural support of the local right, and their counterparts in all latitudes -- while President Daniel Ortega Saavedra has decided to orient his government to revolutionary socialist positions along the same lines as the Sandinista revolution and what is occurring in South America."

The opposition of Nicaragua's main oligarchic and pro-imperialist parties (the PLC and the ALN) to the government's anti-imperialist course is as comprehensible as it is blatant. Likewise the hostility of the center social democratic Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS party) is not difficult to understand. The great puzzle, at least for this rank-and-file militant, is to understand the course of the Movement for Sandinista Recovery (MpRS [6]) led by Comandante Henry Ruiz (Modesto) and Comandante Mónica Baltodano, a current member of the National Assembly elected on the MRS-Alliance slate in November 2006.

The MpRS, instead of hailing the anti-imperialist course of the government, and blocking with it to fend off attacks from the right-wing majority in the National Assembly, did the opposite. It clung to the strategy of trying to consolidate an anti-government bloc and joined what came to be called the Bloc against the Dictatorship. MRS-Alliance National Assembly deputy Victor Hugo Tinoco, acting as its spokesperson on international affairs, has consistently criticized the government for endangering Nicaragua's national security because its alliance with Venezuela and Cuba will invite US retaliation. The most recent expression of this approach was the ridicule poured on the diplomatic break in relations with Colombia. MRS leader Edmundo Jarquín accused Ortega of turning Nicaragua into Hugo Chávez's "caboose." This was an extremely sad moment because it witnessed an important section of Sandinista opinion in Nicaragua lining up with the national right against a common front formed by Venezuela, Ecuador, and Nicaragua that struck a major blow against US imperialism and Colombia at the Rio Group summit in Santo Domingo.

Edmundo Jarquín got to know the caboose expression well months earlier when the MRS and the MRS-Alliance earned this tag because of their alliance with the ALN in the National Assembly, their participation in the Block against the Dictatorship, and their sustained effort to form an electoral alliance with the ALN for the 2008 elections. Unfortunately, Mónica Baltodano and the MpRS went along with this approach, although they have recently distanced themselves from efforts to form an electoral bloc with the ALN. All that blew up in the MRS's face when Eduardo Montealegre lost the leadership of the ALN and then chose to eat crow and run on the PLC slate for mayor. The MRS says it can dance with Montealegre, but not the PLC, so it is now running on its own (in the guise of the MRS-Alliance) in the municipal elections. However, hope springs eternal. In late March, MRS president and Managua mayoralty candidate Enrqiue Saenz renewed their call for rebuilding the Bloc against the Dictatorship. Montealegre has since broadcast his support for this proposal far and wide.

In my opinion the MpRS leadership made a fundamental error in not recognizing the left turn of the government and the opening provided by the launching of the CPCs. Instead of blocking with the center MRS and the right-wing parties, it should have allied with the FSLN. It should have helped to build the CPCs and should have thrown its support to the growing grassroots movements in solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela. Such an approach would have won it a hearing among the Sandinista masses for many valid criticisms and proposals regarding government policy. And it would have helped to enhance the voices of left-wing Sandinistas within the FSLN, especially on such vital issues as women's right to choice (abortion rights) and defense of the laic character of the state.

This course is blocked because of a completely erroneous view of the nature of the Ortega government. The MpRS leadership believes that Ortega has set out to build a Somoza-style dictatorship in Nicaragua. Because of that, all other questions are subordinated to forming alliances to destabilize and ultimately defeat the government.

In a January national rally in Managua of over 1,000 supporters, the MpRS issued a Proclamation (Proclama del Rescate [7]) outlining its aims and principles. "El Rescate proclaims and reiterates that it will struggle to block the re-election efforts of Ortega. We have to block the installation of a family dictatorship. . . . El Rescate reiterates its intention to carry on the struggle . . . to avoid the advance and rooting of the institutional dictatorship."

The problem with all this is that there is no dictatorship. It is a fiction used to justify an alliance with the right-wing parties, and now to maintain an ongoing association with the social democratic MRS party.

Linked to this problem is the MpRS's drift away from the anti-imperialist foundations of Sandinismo. There is no mention of anti-imperialism in the document. This is puzzling given the powerful anti-imperialist core of Sandino's example, Carlos Fonseca's writings, and the imperialist assault on the Nicaraguan revolution in the 1980s. It is even more worrisome given the vital importance today of Latin American unity and defense of the Bolivarian revolution to the outcome of our own struggle for national liberation.

On that, however, the Proclama is silent. Aside from a mention of the need for Central American unity, the document does not escape the bounds of a purely nationalist framework of reforms based on "ethical values." It stems from a post-modernist discourse shared with the MRS, so poignantly criticized by the Belgian third-world scholar and advocate, Francois Houtart, in his famous July 2007 letter to Managua's El Nuevo Diario explaining why he believed the MRS was not a left party [8].

The MpRS-proposed economic policies are not substantially different from those of the FSLN. They limit their economic horizons to reforms and policies that they argue would provide a more just distribution of the national income.

The erroneous course taken by the MpRS is not irreversible. Many more critical challenges are in the offing that will pose the same basic choice to these compañeras and compañeros -- to defend the government against right-wing and imperialist attack, to defend the Bolivarian revolution and the ALBA alliance, or to keep going down the road of cohabitation with the Nicaraguan right wing.

My hope is that developments outside Nicaragua, as well as developments in our own country, will soon clarify these problems and bring about deep-going changes not just in the approach of Sandinistas who now find themselves outside the FSLN, but also within the governing party itself. To put it another way, that the advance of anti-imperialist and Indo-Latin American unity on a continental scale finds a strong and healthy reflection in the land of Sandino.

Notes

1 My views on the nature and direction of the Ortega government can be found in articles written over the last year. See, for example, "Nicaragua Confronts Natural disasters: Time to Strengthen Solidarity," Axis of Logic, 3 November 2007 [ http://axisoflogic.com/cgi-bin/exec/view.pl?archive=162&num=25433 ]; "Nicaragua's Sandinista Government Allies with Anti-Imperialist Forces," Socialist Voice, 18 September 2007 [ http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=208 ]; and "Defying Attacks from the Right, FSLN Government Stays on Course," Socialist Voice, 3 October 2007, [http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=212 ].

2 ALN -- Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, led until recently by US embassy "first choice" Eduardo Montealegre; PLC -- Constitutional Liberal Party, led by Arnoldo Alemán. It held the presidency for two of the three terms since the 1990 Sandinista defeat.

3 Orlando Nuñez, "El asalto al estado nacional," Radio La Primerísima, 23 July 2007.
[ http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias/17200 ].

4 Aldo Díaz Lacayo, "Without a Party the Revolution Is Difficult." See my translation of this important analysis at http://aynicaraguanicaraguita.blogspot.com/2008/03/without-party-revolution-is-difficult.html

5 A reference to a social democratic split from the FSLN that subsequently formed the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), an electoral party.

6 Movimiento para el Rescate del Sandinismo. This has also been translated as "Movement to Rescue Sandinismo." I sense that "recovery" is closer to the real meaning in the sense used in "cultural recovery." MpRS activists call themselves "el Rescate" to distinguish themselves from the MRS "renovadores" (renovators).

7 Proclama del Rescate [ www.adital.com.br/site/noticia.asp?lang=ES&cod=31433 ]. The document appears as an annex to the welcoming speech given by Comandante Mónica Baltodano to the Rescate rally. Her speech, like the Proclamation it introduces, avoids any mention or discussion of the anti-imperialist character of the struggle for Nicaraguan national emancipation. The Proclamacan also be found at [ www2.renacientes.org:8080/renacientes/otros/noticias/proclama-del-rescate ].

8 See Fracnois Houtart, "MRS, ¿derecha posmoderna?" El Nuevo Diario, 24 July 2007.
[ http://impreso.elnuevodiario.com.ni/2007/07/24/politica/54521 ].

Felipe Stuart Cournoyer has been an active Marxist since the late 1950s. He is a Canadian-born Nicaraguan citizen and FSLN member. He played a leading role in the Canadian movement of solidarity with the Cuban revolution in the 1960s and also with the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution in the 1970-80s.
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Without a party the revolution is difficult

2008-03-30T19:08:00.010-06:00

Aldo Díaz Lacayo’s article – Without a party the revolution is difficult – appeared in Managua’s El Nuevo Diario last November. It is a vital contribution to understanding the controversial role of the newly established Citizens’ Power Councils and their relationship to both the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) and the Ortega government.

Díaz is a prominent Nicaraguan diplomat and historian. A leading FSLN ideologue, he is a close collaborator of Daniel Ortega. He was named ambassador to the UN but has been unable to assume duties in New York for health reasons.

His article helps to debunk the notion of the monolithic character of the FSLN. The Sandinista party is a mass movement and is home to many diverse currents and conflicting interest groups, including (as Díaz points out) an organized group of capitalist investors.

Below is my English translation of the article. The original Spanish appears following the end notes.

Felipe Stuart C.

Managua

Without a party the revolution is difficult

By Aldo Díaz Lacayo

El Nuevo Diario | noviembre 23, 2007

http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/opinion/2567

The Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional [Sandinista National Liberation Front/FSLN] is more a circumstantial party [partido presentido ](i) than an organic entity. Leaders at all levels feel part and even active members of its structure, but they are not. And the few who really are active are aware of its organic weakness.

This is not a new situation. It is a consequence of the brutal demobilization of 1990; a product of the “save your own skin” syndrome that attacked the whole world left after the fall of real socialism; of the 1994 modernicist (ii) rupture that offered itself as a supposed surpassing of that syndrome, convinced that the historic Frente Sandinista would never again return to power; of the withdrawal of the counterpart (iii) for electoral reasons; and then two intervening electoral defeats that reduced to a minimum any expectation of getting back into government.

In other words, the Frente Sandinista’s return to government took place at a time when the party’s institutions were extremely weak, and in a situation of maximum ideological heterogeneity. It occurred in a country bankrupted by neoliberalism aggravated by the oil crisis; in a situation of great world instability and hence a revolutionary international ambience. Its return to government took place in highly contradictory conditions: very negative within the country but extraordinarily positive externally, even taking into account Nicaragua’s weakness in the face of imperialism.

The fundamental challenge of Daniel Ortega Saavedra’s government is how to surmount this new national and international reality given such structural weakness. He cannot evade that challenge. As well, he is obliged to meet it by giving preference to strategic solutions stemming from his revolutionary commitment. That means he must cope with headwinds and risk inevitable errors and the outburst of old and new contradictions. He has to do that to combat the dictatorship of global capitalism (as he calls it), now in crisis, and to consolidate the revolutionary tendency on the national level, and throughout the Americas and the South as a whole.

That is the structural background to the discussion that is taking place within Sandinismo (iv) and in our country. This background is real, but not yet grasped. Precisely for that reason, the discussion arising within the circumstantial party [FSLN] is projected to public opinion as personal differences, rather than the expression of objective contradictions. It is cast as a discussion between organic-historic party leaders and de facto upstarts, ignoring that the scaling of the struggle always produces new leaderships; and, in that sense, all authorities are in practice de facto.

It’s true that personality differences impinge on the handling of political-ideological contradictions. Holding positions of power strengthens one’s capacity to handle them, as in the case of the current discussion. One aggravating factor is that one of those positions is represented by the wife of the president. That lends an undesirable family bias to the discussion. However, despite all its potential graveness, none of that annuls the existence of the objective conditions.

The fundamental contradiction is that the thesis of a social democratic socialism is being promoted within the circumstantial party though the commercial activism of well known leaders – and also with the undesirable, but natural support of the local right, and their counterparts in all latitudes – while President Daniel Ortega Saavedra has decided to orient his government to revolutionary socialist positions along the same lines as the Sandinista revolution and what is occurring in South America.That is Daniel Ortega’s explicit political will, whether or not he is managing to impart his government with a revolutionary socialist orientation. He is doing that alone, with the active support of his wife Rosario [Murillo] He is aware that this adds an important subjective element to the fundamental contradiction, no doubt in order to get to its root and overcome it. He is applying that line without concession either to the circumstantial party or the opposition. He is confronting in a combative spirit limitations imposed on him by general conditions in which he is operating, and he is taking on the contradictions that this confrontation is producing, above all that between his heartfelt discourse and the reality.

The situation becomes complicated because prior to the consolidation of the South American revolutionary tendency, the social democratic orientation was general throughout the South and then came to dominate the ranks of the Frente Sandinista, also in a circumstantial way. And, as well, because the contradiction between social democratic socialism and revolutionary socialism is still not fully developed. It is not even foreseeable at this time in definitive form. Only the government, and more concretely President Daniel Ortega, has the capacity and hence the responsibility to cut through this impasse. The contradiction has suddenly taken form in the Citizens’ Power Councils (CPC) that the government has designed as its basic instrument to handle, and if possible, overcome the national crisis through a socialist orientation and through mobilizing the citizenry. Their very nature, therefore, imbues the CPCs with a highly political-ideological potential and makes them the likely structure of a real new party, drawing in citizens of other political sympathies and thereby reactivating the Sandinista revolution. Frequent social mobilization inevitably results in increased ideological consciousness of the people.

Given the actual condition of the Frente Sandinista and the country, the CPCs were born from power and logically for power. For that reason they are in contradiction with the established partisan and national powers. That same reason explains why they exacerbate contradictions within the circumstantial party and provoke radical rejection by the right of all stripes. All of this is aggravated because they are starting up with activists with ideological deficiencies and with little or no awareness of the contradiction involved, motivated to act by policies of leaders who are also in power, and thereby taking up their defense.

The ideological corollary of this critical analysis to the new Sandinista reality in its national context, without qualifying it in any way, is that the circumstantial party is a permanent cause of political-ideological contradictions. Political struggles for control of the party dilute its ideological goals and run the risk of keeping it in permanent instability, forever on the edge of splits, or being converted into a traditional party of a democratic-representative ilk, without grassroots support. To put it another way, the revolution becomes much more difficult without a real, ideologically united party.

Translator’s Endnotes

(i) The original Spanish reads: “Más que orgánico, el Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional es un partido presentido.” The author explains his use of this term (presentido) in the very next sentence. He uses it several times later in the article without attempting to qualify his meaning, leaving it open to various perceptions.

(ii) The author, in a letter to the editor of El Nuevo Diario, protested that the copy editor had changed his word “modernicista” to “modernista.” While acknowledging he had used a neologism that does not appear in standard Spanish dictionaries, he explained that the word has come into use with a special twist in meaning that was vital to his point. “As I understand it, he wrote, “in political-ideological terms modernicismo implies a rationalization of modernity. That is, using the concept of modernity in logical but intangible terms in order to justify a decision. In the political-ideological case I refer to, I mean the justification for abandoning the historical orientation of the Frente Sandinista.” See Con todo respeto, corrigiendo al corrector - http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/opinion/2722

(iii) A reference to a social democratic split from the FSLN that subsequently formed the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), an electoral party.

(iv) The term Sandinismo refers to the broad Sandinista movement and culture of Nicaraguans and takes in a majority of people with anti-imperialist traditions and concepts.

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Sin partido la revolución es difícil
Por Aldo Díaz Lacayo
15:45 - 23/11/2007
http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/opinion/2567

Más que orgánico, el Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional es un partido presentido. Dirigentes de todos los niveles se sienten parte y hasta miembros activos de su estructura, pero no lo son. Y los pocos que realmente lo son, están conscientes de su debilidad orgánica.

Esta situación no es nueva, es consecuencia de la brutal desmovilización de 1990, producto del síndrome del “sálvese quien pueda” que atacó a la izquierda universal, después de la caída del socialismo real; de la ruptura modernista de 1994, que se dio como supuesta superación de este síndrome con la convicción de que el Frente Sandinista histórico jamás regresaría al gobierno; del repliegue de la contraparte por razones electorales; y desde luego de las dos derrotas electorales intermedias, que disminuyeron al máximo la expectativa de este regreso.

En otras palabras, el regreso al gobierno del Frente Sandinista se dio en condiciones partidarias de extrema debilidad institucional y de máxima heterogenización ideológica; en un país en bancarrota neoliberal, agravada por la crisis petrolera; en medio de una gran inestabilidad mundial, y por lo mismo en un entorno internacional revolucionario. Un regreso, pues, en condiciones políticas altamente contradictorias: muy negativas a lo interno, pero extraordinariamente positivas a lo externo, aún considerando la debilidad de Nicaragua frente al imperialismo.

Cómo acometer esta nueva realidad, nacional e internacional, con tanta debilidad estructural es el reto fundamental del gobierno de Daniel Ortega Saavedra. No puede soslayarlo. Y está obligado, además, a asumirlo privilegiando soluciones estratégicas desde su compromiso revolucionario; contra el tiempo, a riesgo de inevitables errores y del afloramiento de viejas y nuevas contradicciones. Para combatir la dictadura del capitalismo global, como él la llama, actualmente en crisis, y consolidar la tendencia revolucionaria, nacional, americana y del Sur.

Éste es el trasfondo estructural de la discusión que se está dando en el sandinismo, y en el país nacional. Un trasfondo real pero aún no asumido. Precisamente por esto la discusión aparece a lo interno del partido presentido y se proyecta a la opinión pública como diferencias personales, y no como expresión de contradicciones objetivas; como una discusión entre autoridades partidarias orgánico-históricas y de hecho-advenedizas; ignorando que en la práctica todas las autoridades son de hecho, y que el escalamiento de la lucha siempre produce nuevos liderazgos.

Es cierto que las diferencias de personalidades inciden en el manejo de las contradicciones político-ideológicas, y que las posiciones de poder potencian este manejo, como es el caso de la discusión actual; con el agravante de que una de estas posiciones está representada por la esposa del Presidente, lo cual le imprime a la discusión un sesgo familiar no deseado. Sin embargo, a pesar de toda su gravedad potencial, nada de esto anula la existencia de contradicciones objetivas.

La contradicción fundamental es que a lo interno del partido presentido y con el activismo mercantilista de connotados dirigentes --y también con el indeseable, pero natural respaldo de la derecha local y de todas las latitudes--, se impulsa la tesis de un socialismo socialdemócrata; mientras que el presidente Daniel Ortega Saavedra ha decidido orientar su gobierno hacia posiciones socialistas revolucionarias, en la misma línea de la revolución sandinista y de la que se está dando en Suramérica.

Con independencia de que el Presidente esté logrando darle a su gobierno una orientación socialista revolucionaria, ésta es su voluntad política explícita. Y la está implementando sólo con el apoyo activo de su esposa Rosario, consciente de que le agrega un importante elemento subjetivo a la contradicción fundamental, sin duda para radicalizarla y superarla; aplicándola sin concesiones, ni al partido presentido ni a la oposición; enfrentando con espíritu combativo las limitaciones que le imponen las condiciones generales en que está actuando, y asumiendo las contradicciones que este enfrentamiento produce, en primer lugar entre su discurso sentido y la realidad.

La situación se complica porque antes de la consolidación de la tendencia revolucionaria sudamericana, y en general del Sur, y también en forma presentida, la orientación socialdemócrata primaba en las filas del Frente Sandinista; y también porque aún no está plenamente conformada la contradicción socialismo socialdemócrata/socialismo revolucionario. Ni siquiera es previsible en este momento su conformación definitiva. Sólo el gobierno, y más concretamente el presidente Daniel Ortega Saavedra, tiene la capacidad y desde luego la responsabilidad de romper este impasse.

De pronto, la contradicción ha tomado cuerpo en los Consejos de Poder Ciudadano, CPC, diseñados como instrumento fundamental del gobierno para manejar, y de ser posible, revertir la crisis nacional con orientación revolucionaria, a través de la movilización ciudadana. Por su propia naturaleza, entonces, son una instancia de altísimo potencial político-ideológico y probable estructura del nuevo partido real, cooptando a ciudadanos de otras simpatías políticas y reactivando así la revolución sandinista. Porque inevitablemente la frecuencia de la movilización social se traduce en aumento de la conciencia ideológica del pueblo.

Por otra parte, por las actuales condiciones del Frente Sandinista y del país, los CPC han nacido desde el poder, lógicamente para el poder, y por la misma razón en contradicción con el poder establecido, partidario y nacional, lo cual explica porqué exacerban las contradicciones a lo interno del partido presentido y provocan el rechazo radical de la derecha, en todos sus matices. Y todo esto con el agravante de que están arrancando con una militancia con deficiencias ideológicas, con poca o ninguna conciencia de la contradicción planteada, actuando en consecuencia por motivaciones políticas alrededor de liderazgos también de poder, y asumiendo así su defensa.

El corolario ideológico de este análisis crítico, sin valoraciones de ninguna especie, sobre la nueva realidad sandinista en el contexto nacional, es que el partido presentido es causa permanente de contradicciones político-ideológicas. Porque los objetivos ideológicos se diluyen en las luchas políticas por el control del partido, con el riesgo de mantenerlo en permanente inestabilidad, siempre al borde de la ruptura, o de convertirlo en un partido tradicional, sin arraigo popular, al mejor estilo democrático-representativo. Dicho de otro modo, sin partido real, ideológicamente unitario, la revolución se hace mucho más difícil.

Hillary's Nasty Pastorate

2008-03-20T07:54:00.004-06:00

It is difficult for people outside the United States to understand the complexities, idiosyncrasies, crudities, and subtleties of US politics. It is far easier for those born and raised in such a violent, racist society, that speaks and thinks in codes, and specializes in denial of obvious realities, to grasp the significance of events and statements by political leaders.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s piece from The Nation on “Hillary's Nasty Pastorate” helps to decode at least one element of the campaign (its religious dimension) and to understand the great philosophical divide between her and Obama.

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/ehrenreich

Felipe Stuart
Managua

by BARBARA EHRENREICH

The Nation
March 19, 2008

There's a reason Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama.

You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that "through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as "The "Fellowship," also known as The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet's shocking exposé The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May.
[ http://jeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-post.html ]

Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells"--their term--and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia. In 2002, Sharlet joined The Family's home for young men, forswearing sex, drugs and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn't undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn't completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners--alone.

The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes--knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs. As Sharlet reported in Harper's in 2003:

During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise.

At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful.Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's "most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton.

She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics.

What drew Clinton into the sinister heart of the international right? Maybe it was just a phase in her tormented search for identity, marked by ever-changing hairstyles and names: Hillary Rodham, Mrs. Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and now Hillary Clinton. She reached out to many potential spiritual mentors during her White House days, including New Age guru Marianne Williamson and the liberal rabbi Michael Lerner. But it was the Family association that stuck.

Sharlet generously attributes Clinton's involvement to the under-appreciated depth of her religiosity, but he himself struggles to define The Family's theological underpinnings. The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power--cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't."

Obama has given a beautiful speech on race and his affiliation with the Trinity Unity Church of Christ. Now it's up to Clinton to explain--or, better yet, renounce--her long-standing connection with the fascist-leaning Family.

“ I’d call it being Black in America’

2008-03-19T08:36:00.008-06:00

Paul Kellogg has written a hard-hitting and superb defense of Barack Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. I recommend it not just for what he says, but for its excellent journalistic form (it is posted below).

I think, however, that his comments fall short of capturing the dynamic behind Obama’s Philadelphia speech that I commented on yesterday.

It is true that the dredging up of Wright’s comments by Obama’s opponents put him “on the defensive.” In response Obama, for reasons Paul explains very cogently, decided that he had to “completely reject” Wright’s statements as “not only wrong, but divisive.”

But that is not the only element of this response.

He also said, following an extensive eulogy of Wright’s positive contributions to the Black community and cause, that “Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.”

And to sharpen this side of his message he added: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”

Obama speech captures his difficulty of sitting on the horns of a dilemma. His broad youth constituency, and not just among Blacks, would find Wright’s denunciations of the system and Black oppression as right on. But, as Paul explains, “Obama’s campaign is in a double prison. First he is up against the deep racism of a society founded on slavery and only recently emerging from apartheid-like conditions in the American South, a society then that is deeply racist. Second, he is trapped inside a Democratic Party whose origins and history are dripping with that same racism. It was the Democratic Party “Dixiecrats” who for generations tried to preserve White privilege in post Civil War United States, the Democratic Party which has taken turns with the Republicans waging racist wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.”

Hence, Obama must both reject Wright’s comments, but embrace the man and his contributions to the Black community.

Paul does not comment on another important element of the speech which I pointed out in my post yesterday. Obama forcefully challenges the reactionary ruling class notion of that US society is as good as it gets, and will always be as it is. This reactionary and self-serving ideology of the rich traces its lineage to Alexander Pope’s famous “An Essay on Man: Epistle I.”
……
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony, not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

Obama’s rejection of that ideology is an important opening for socialists in the United States to build on, to take to its logical conclusion. The US people can not only change race relations in their country, they can change class relations. Moreover, to tackle racism in any lasting way they must get at its roots which are deeply embedded in class exploitation.

Obama’s speech invites discussion and debate on some very fundamental issues. He poses questions that he cannot answer. But, it is an advance that the leader of an important wing of a major bourgeois party raises them in the heat of his battle for the presidential nomination.

The Marxist left should engage his supporters among youth, in the Black communities and movements, among immigrants, and in the labor movement in further debate on those questions.

Felipe Stuart
Managua

‘I wouldn’t call it radical – “ I’d call it being Black in America’

© 2008 Paul Kellogg

Old sermons by Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor, have caused a storm of outrage to sweep through the presidential campaign in the United States. It is really a storm of hypocrisy. The outrage should be saved for the conditions faced by African Americans, conditions that remain appalling long after the end of slavery and Jim Crow.

In one of the sermons, Wright says: "The government gives them [African Americans] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human."[1] An ABC news reporter asked parishioners whether they thought Wright’s views were extreme. One said: “He spoke the truth, he continues to speak the truth, and people can label that as radical, but I say it’s insightful.” Another said, “No, I wouldn’t call it radical, I’d call it being Black in America.”[2]

The United States Census tells us something about being Black in America. Black men are twice as likely as Whites and Hispanics not to finish high school, and Whites and Hispanics are twice as likely as Black men to graduate from university with a Bachelor’s degree or more. Unemployment for Black men is in double digits, twice that of Black and Hispanic men. For Black women, unemployment rates are more than twice that of White women. The poverty rate for Blacks in 2001 was 23 percent, compared to 8 percent for non-Hispanic Whites. Put this figure another way – one poor person in four in 2001 was Black, far in excess of their share of the population.[3]

The American prison system tells us something about being Black in America. Black men in America are more than six times as likely as White men to end up in prison. For White men in 2006, 487 out of every 100,000 were in jail. For Black men the figure was an appalling 3,042 per 100,000.[4] For young Black men, the figures go from appalling to barbaric. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time in prison.[5] Put this in the terms used earlier – for every 100,000 young black men in America, eleven thousand, one hundred and eleven are in prison. These numbers only hint at the terrible reality faced by these young people. American prisons are cauldrons of rape. In the first ever survey of sexual abuse in the prison system, the group Stop Prisoner Rape reported that in 2007 alone, approximately 60,500 inmates were “subjected to sexual abuse.”[6] “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.” These are the facts. But these facts notwithstanding, Wright’s comments have put Obama on the defensive. “I completely reject” them Obama told a town-hall meeting at a high school in Plainfield Indiana, March 15.[7] Obama is up against the racism in American society from a different front. The more his candidacy has emerged as a credible one, the more the campaign inside the Democratic Party has polarized on racial lines. Obama’s campaign has captured the hope of millions. But to get elected, he needs to speak to a section of the electorate that does not want to hear about America’s systemic racism – and that means distancing himself from Wright.

According to John Ibbitson, in the Globe and Mail, “in early primaries, Mr. Obama often took a majority of the White vote, or at least of White male voters; in Mississippi’s primary last week, Mr. Obama took 92 per cent of the Black vote but only 26 per cent of the White vote.”[8] These kinds of statistics will figure prominently in the selection of the Democratic standard bearer.

Neither Obama nor Hillary Clinton can win enough delegates through the remaining primaries and caucuses, to secure the candidacy. Each will need to win over the non-elected delegates to the convention, the several hundred “super delegates” — party elders and full-timers – who will hold the balance of power. There is a real possibility that these super delegates will give the candidacy to Clinton, even if Obama has won more states, more delegates and more popular vote than her. There will be many of those super delegates open to an argument that a Black candidate cannot win the votes of substantial numbers of white American voters.

Obama’s campaign is in a double prison. First he is up against the deep racism of a society founded on slavery and only recently emerging from apartheid-like conditions in the American South, a society then that is deeply racist. Second, he is trapped inside a Democratic Party whose origins and history are dripping with that same racism. It was the Democratic Party “Dixiecrats” who for generations tried to preserve White privilege in post Civil War United States, the Democratic Party which has taken turns with the Republicans waging racist wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.

But even if the campaign of one man inside an old, establishment party will not transform this grim reality, we need to angrily reject the indignant howls of those “offended” by the comments of Obama’s pastor. Let them learn from Wright to direct their rage against the prison system, the education system, and the economic system, which remain to this day stained top to bottom with racism.

http://ca.f509.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=3579_98143945_7037135_1964_14318_0_167459_31908_3366536372&Idx=6&YY=30071&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#336579_0

Barack Obama’s Speech on Race

2008-03-18T15:10:00.008-06:00

Although I don’t agree with Obama on many questions he addresses in this talk, I have to say that it is a brilliant and powerful presentation.

He argues that US society can be changed. He says that it is not condemned to remain forever a dinosaur world of racist and sexist oppression. That is an important concept that the US ruling class fears. What he fails to acknowledge is that real change can only come about by uniting the exploited and oppressed majorities of the country in a struggle against the mostly white ruling class and their economic system. His call for unity is rooted in projecting an ethical concept of change, of uniting “all good men and women” to the cause of change for the betterment of all. Nevertheless, if his campaign can help break apart the ideological straitjacket of what-is-must –always-be, it will provide openings for more effective strategies for changing the system.

Obama’s approach is not new. If one looks back historically, there are many examples of similar ethical appeals for change. But it is striking a chord now in US society because of the depravity of ruling class politics and the predator culture brought to its most acute expression over the last two decades under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. This is a culture that glories in the contrast between obscene wealth and growing poverty, in permanent war, in torture as a legitimate aspect of justice, and in an insane and irrational assault of the environment.

Obamas’s refusal to trash his former pastor, Reverend Wright is also important to note. While stating his disagreements, he also explained the roots of Wright’s anger and anti-system views in the experience of Black oppression. My sense is that this shows Obama’s awareness that his youth base is largely sympathetic to Wright’s views or at least regard them as a legitimate part of a necessary rethinking in the imperial heartland.

It will be interesting to see whether the giant US media monopolies will give any play to this speech, or whether Obama’s campaign will have to pay an arm and a leg to get it disseminated on a mass scale.

Felipe Stuart C.
Managua
March 18, 2008

TRANSCRIPT

Barack Obama’s Speech on Race

The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia, as provided by his presidential campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=06a539b9d149224f&ex=1205985600&adxnnlx=1205859694-v7u4BaH/Oo8rh09R5PLKkg

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working-and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

[Closed due to the housing crisis]

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

World Banker and His Cash Return Home

2008-03-17T00:03:00.005-06:00

Please take the time to read this most interesting item from the New York Times on the experience of emigrant workers and the issue of family remittances at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/world/asia/17remit.html?pagewanted=3&ref=world

Somewhile back I submitted another New York Times article on emigrant workers and family remittances. This issue is also discussed from a Nicaraguan point of view in my blog at http://aynicaraguanicaraguita.blogspot.com/2008/02/emigrant-workers-keep-homeland-afloat.html

Dilip Ratha’s experience and contribution to understanding this phenomenon is indispensable to developing a clear understanding of the complexities of this process.

I would appreciate the opportunity to interview Ratha about the methodology used to calculate remittances.

The reason is simple. I have spent a lot of time over the last 25 years away from Nicaragua. But I always sent money back to my family. Most of it was not sent though Western Union or the banks (they take a big chunk out of your apple). Most went in the wallets of kind friends who agreed to take modest sums from Canada to my family. How is that kind of remittance captured in World Bank calculations? I know from personal experience in my own barrio in Managua that recipients of remittances deeply resent the rip off of businesses like Western Union and the banks.

I recently transferred a modest sum of money from Canada to my own bank in Managua, and was charged $25 at that end, $15 dollars by a transfer bank in Miami, and another $15 by the local bank! The only word I know for that is parasite – in this case three of them.

I think our Nicaraguan government should nationalize the process of transfer of remittances and reduce to real cost the price of making money transfers. Given that we have a free trade agreement with the USA, Nicaragua should set up a network of agencies in that country to handles low cost (non-profit) family remittances. And banks here should be banned from levying charges against their own clients. They already reap profit from the interest earned from these funds.

Felipe Stuart
Managua

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/world/asia/17remit.html?pagewanted=3&ref=world

March 17, 2008

World Banker and His Cash Return Home
By JASON DePARLE

SINDHEKELA, India — An important man from the World Bank recently arrived in this isolated village, where monkeys prowl rutted roads, rain pours through the school roof and the native son who achieved the most did so by going away.
Lessons about global poverty were waiting, but so were his sisters’ chapattis. Migrant and migration scholar, Dilip Ratha was home.

No one has done more than Mr. Ratha to make migration and its potential rewards a top-of-the-agenda concern in the world’s development ministries. And no place has done more to shape his views than this forgotten hamlet, where he studied under the lone streetlight and began a poor boy’s improbable journey to the front ranks of an elite field.

“When I think about the effects of migration, I think about Sindhekela,” he said.
Working from his office in Washington five years ago, Mr. Ratha produced the first global tally of remittances, the money that migrants send home, and stunned experts from himself on down with the discovery of their size. Gathered from a trickle of hard-earned cash, the sums now exceed $300 billion a year.

In subsequent work, Mr. Ratha, 45, has pushed to reduce money-transfer fees and increase the productivity of the money that is sent. Allies say his work has prompted projects in governments and beyond that could benefit millions of people. Skeptics argue that if migration brought development, Mexico would be Switzerland.

A soft-spoken man whose seeming diffidence disguises his drive, Mr. Ratha is gripped by his cause. “Some people say I paint too rosy a picture of migration and what it can achieve,” he said. “But I realize the importance of dollars coming in because I know poverty firsthand.”

If he is enthusiastic about migration, he has lived it on especially favorable terms. He has never crossed borders illegally or worked with dirty hands. He commands a salary 100 times higher than he would if he had never left home. With it, he has educated two younger siblings, paid for a nephew’s life-saving operation, and built a big house for his father.

Spanish: One thing is to believe in God, another is believing in a monetary sect!

Limits of Giving
Yet a visit to Sindhekela last month also suggests the limits of long-distance giving and the migrants’ psychological strains. Old friends want money. A younger brother has squandered his help. An effort to upgrade the local high school has met with ambiguous results.

His father, at 78, worries about dying alone. His older sister frets that he eats with a fork. Both speak Sambalpuri, meaning his Venezuelan wife and his American sons, all English speakers, cannot talk to them.

Globe-trotting technocrat, village boy made good, Mr. Ratha is like many migrants torn between two worlds and fully at home in neither. “On bad days, I do feel lonely in a way that I can’t explain,” he said.

There are about 200 million migrants worldwide, supporting as many if not more people at home. That suggests that remittances may reach almost a tenth of the world’s population: India ($27 billion), China ($26 billion) and Mexico ($25 billion) are the leading beneficiaries. But in relative terms, small countries gain the most, with some increasing their national incomes by more than 20 percent. Egypt gets more from remittances than it does from the Suez Canal.

Most of the money is spent on consumption — food, clothing or a birthday bash — which leads some economists to discount its impact on development. But Mr. Ratha argues migrants would invest more if they had better options. And he regards higher consumption among the poor as a very good thing.

“It’s not just about economics,” he said. “Having someone who’s doing well abroad brings confidence to the family. They can hold their heads high.”

Holding heads high has been a challenge in Mr. Ratha’s corner of India. Per capita income in the state of Orissa is about $400 a year, half the national average. The neighboring village, Khariar, made international news two decades ago when a hungry woman raised about $3 by selling a child. Sambalpuri, his first language, lacks a written script.

By local standards, Mr. Ratha’s family enjoyed a comfortable life. His father, Gopal, had a primary school education and a state job as a land assessor. As a Brahmin, he was expected to avoid physical labor, but he bought a speck of land that a sharecropper worked. The Rathas had little cash but plenty of rice.

While Mr. Ratha’s older sister left school after third grade, he grew up inexplicably hungry for books. His father saw him with a promising future as a village postmaster. But high test scores brought a scholarship to a two-year college, and his father felt obligated to find the money for room and board. “I felt like I was putting a tremendous burden on him,” Mr. Ratha said.

More scholarships took him to a university in Delhi, a 42-hour train ride, where he studied under Marxist economists and practiced English by watching Clint Eastwood films. He wanted to attend an American graduate school but lacked the application fees. Teaching fellowships sustained him at the prestigious Indian Statistical Institute until he finished his Ph.D.

The Global Migrant
By then, a younger brother, Artatrana, was following his path — he earned two Ph.Ds. Their younger sister, Rina, got a master’s degree. When Mr. Ratha finally borrowed the money to reach the United States, he became Sindhekela’s first global migrant.

Other than his brother, a professor in Minnesota, he is thought to be its last.

“We are always citing the example of Dilip Ratha,” said his high school teacher, Mrutyunjay Tripathy, who now runs the school. “Our students are astonished that this young man from Sindhekela flies around in planes.”

When Mr. Ratha reached the World Bank in the early 1990s, most economists saw remittances as small private sums that were irrelevant to development. After years of sending money home, he took a closer look.

Given the scorekeeping at central banks, it was an exercise in forensic accounting.
The International Monetary Fund said the Philippines received $122 million. Mr. Ratha produced an estimate 51 times higher: $6.2 billion. His tallies, first published in 2003, showed that remittances, once dismissed as the equivalent of a rounding error, were nearly three times greater than the world’s combined foreign aid.

“That was a bombshell,” said Kathleen Newland, a founder of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group. “Putting it in that context made people see there was this enormous flow of money into the developing world. Dilip really is the person who put remittances on the map.”

In subsequent work, Mr. Ratha has argued that the importance of the money exceeds its sheer size. Unlike foreign aid, it cannot be skimmed by potentates. Unlike investors who flee crises, migrants increase their giving during hard times. The money is directed to the needy. And Mr. Ratha contends it is well-monitored, too, by intimates on the sending end. “It comes with a lot of goodwill, advice, knowledge and punishment if necessary — keeping in mind the welfare of the recipient,” he said.

When officials from more 150 countries met in Brussels last summer, remittances figured high on the agenda. Skeptics smell a fad.

“Remittances: the New Development Mantra?” asked an article by Devesh Kapur of the University of Pennsylvania. He sees the money as a palliative that, while at times helpful in easing poverty symptoms, leaves underlying structures unchanged. “If I ask can you name a single country that has developed through remittances, the answer is no — there’s none,” he said.Some critics fear the focus on remittances obscures broader concerns about migration, including the potential costs to children left behind. “Behind every remittance, there’s a separated family,” said Elizabeth Gibbons, a senior official at Unicef.

Some see the money as a pittance that deflects attention from migrant exploitation. “It tends to justify the way the world economy is being restructured for the benefit of a small elite,” said Raul Delgado Wise of the University of Zacatecas in Mexico.

Mr. Ratha agrees that migration is wrenching and the economic forces that drive it are often unjust. But, “Once people decide to migrate, benefits can occur for local development — that’s the point,” he said.

From Thinker to Doer
Mulling a leap from thinker to doer, he has drafted plans for an “International Remittances Institute,” to provide cheaper ways to send money — fees often exceed 10 percent — and more options for investing it. Easier access to banks, for example, might improve migrants’ savings rates and expand local lending pools.

Back in Sindhekela for the first time in three years, Mr. Ratha went from being a migration expert to mere migrant again, with the attendant tensions. He was annoyed that the money he sent his father for medical treatment went to a relative’s wedding. His father was annoyed that Mr. Ratha refused to honor his caste by wearing a sacred thread.

Father and son had long wrangled over the house that Mr. Ratha had built as a gift. The son is proud of the big master bedroom. His father finds its size off-putting and sleeps on a living room cot.

Mr. Ratha gave the village high school a new classroom, which he intended as a science hall. The state never sent the equipment, and the room houses some aging computers of uncertain utility.

Mr. Ratha, who named the building for his long-deceased mother, professes no donor’s remorse. “The building has served a great purpose,” he said.

He does worry that his generosity may have hurt his half-brother, Tarun, who spent the money on gadgets and a motorcycle and did not finish high school. At 23, he is unemployed and the family blames remittance dependency. “I think it has affected his drive in a negative way,” Mr. Ratha said.

At the same time, his sister Rina said that without his support she would not have earned her degrees or married an architect. “Whatever I am, I am because of him,” she said of Mr. Ratha.

The headmaster wanted another classroom. A neighbor needed medical care. Mr. Ratha needed no reminder that his 9-year-old’s tuition at a Washington private school, $26,000, would support 65 villagers for a year.

Still, he was surprised at the recent progress that Sindhekela had made. The road had been widened and partly paved. Three cellphone towers rose overhead, and the children all wore shoes. In a village once thick with beggars, he saw only one.

There were a variety of possible explanations, including an irrigation project that expanded local harvests. It was no surprise that Mr. Ratha emphasized another: India’s vast internal migration, which was luring villagers to distant cities and bringing rupees home.

“I understand the costs of migration,” he said. “There is a cost to not migrating, too.”

DANIEL ORTEGA’S CLOSING ADDRESS TO THE CONGRESO SANDINISTA

2008-03-16T10:55:00.005-06:00

VIVA SANDINO, VIVA NICARAGUA!

The second, extraordinary session of the Viva Sandino Congress of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional took place at Managua’s Loma de Tiscapa on March 14.

Its main agenda point was to ratify the candidates of the Frente and the United Nicaragua Wins Alliance for the November municipal elections this year.

President Daniel Ortega’s closing address, however, concentrated on current international issues that have directly impacted on Nicaragua, most importantly, Colombia’s aggression against Ecuador and the Santo Domingo summit of the Rio Group.

Below is a translation of that section of his address. Omitted are some brief remarks at the end about the next point on the agenda, the presentation of the slate of candidates.

VIVA SANDINO, VIVA NICARAGUA!
March 14, 2008

Good evening brothers and sisters of the National Congress of the Frente Sandinista. Good evening brothers and sisters of the United Nicaragua Wins Alliance; brothers and sisters of diplomatic missions from Cuba who are always here with us, from Venezuela, Libia, Iran.

Our Second Session of the Viva Sandino Congress is taking place just after the recent Santo Domingo meeting of Latin American Peoples managed tear down the war strategy of the Empire, its strategy of dividing and confronting the Latin American peoples. It managed to strengthen Latin American unity! It was a victory for the Latin American and Caribbean peoples who love peace and want the unity of Latin America and the Caribbean.

This historic meeting took place without the representatives of the US government. We Latin Americans provided a lesson that yes, we can come to mutual understandings and overcome our problems; yes, we have to work in a united way as brothers, regardless of our differences.

Consider the great contrast. On the one hand the OAS where the US acts as a divisive factor, one of instability and confrontation. On the other hand, the meeting in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. There the governments most in dispute managed to overcome those tensions and move away from any war threat. We managed to find a road towards understanding…A few weeks or a few days after, the president of the United States launched a ferocious speech that clearly revealed the Empire’s desperation and irritation because the “great loser in Santo Domingo was the Empire that wanted to see us divided and at loggerheads with each other.”

Our solidarity with the Venezuelan people, with President Hugo Chávez who has been insulted once again by the president of the United States. We have been in telephone communication in the past few days with the president of Venezuela and with President Rafael Correa to help assure that the next OAS meeting on March 17 (where there will also be the sewers of discord) does not get converted into a setback, but rather becomes a continuation and ratification of the will of Latin American governments that was clearly expressed at Santo Domingo.

Likewise, we have to point out how President Felipe Calderón of Mexico expressed himself in his message upon assuming the temporary presidency of the Rio Group (temporary because the position is rotated and it is Mexico’s turn). The president of this country made it clear that yes, it is possible and necessary to have this Organization of Latin American Peoples become an Organization of Latin American and Caribbean States that have common interests and in which those who have other interests like the United States, should not be present.

For example, the OAS lacks the presence of Cuba. It was expelled a long time ago. We are talking about a Latin American space where all Latin American and Caribbean peoples will be present, without exclusion! That is a message of enormous historic transcendance.

The message that we Central American presidents issued two days ago on March 12 in San José, Costa Rica is in the same vein. We met to take a position on the European Union’s proposal for an association with Central America. We said that yes, we are disposed towards an association. But suddenly there appeared spokespersons, men and women Commissioners of the European Union, who tried to lay down conditions of a political-constitutional nature. We don’t even know to what extent they were expressing the positions of their governments. The conditions proposed even went against the Constitutions of Central American countries.

Among other things, they are trying to condition an agreement on acceptance of their demand that Central American countries adhere to the International Criminal Court that is organized by Europeans. They say that crimes committed against humanity cannot be left with impunity.

The first that we would have to judge would be the Europeans! For the crimes against humanity committed against our peoples when they came to raze our originary peoples, the indigenous communities; when they came to rob our resources.

That, logically, did not go over. We have our own legislatures, our own laws. There we decided that conditions could not be imposed….

We were clear – the President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias Sánchez; Antonio Saca of El Salvador; the President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya; recently elected President Álvaro Colom of Guatemala – we were clear in saying that we were open to an association and would work for an association with Europe, but without conditions that try to weaken and discredit the juridical bases of our respective Central American countries. I believe this is an example of maturity, an example of dignity of Central American peoples and governments…Let them respect our sovereignty!

Today the Bi-national Costa Rica-Nicaragua Meeting ended. There too, we expressed a will and an effort to work to overcome obstacles and to strengthen ties between the two bordering countries. We are already working with El Salvador and Guatemala to convert the Golf of Fonseca into a Peace Zone – three Central American countries working together in the Golf.

Nicaragua is working with Costa Rica on bi-national projects. First, the immigration issue. Of equal importance, was the environmental issue, taken up yesterday by the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican delegations in Granada. Also, we are discussing tourism that we want to increase because of the enormous potential we have in this field.

Today we made these agreements public. We are sure that they are going to enable us to strengthen ties with the Costa Rican people. That is going to help the frontier communities and municipalities of both countries to improve their development. The Costa Rican side of the border is more developed and we are obliged look together for external resources to invest in that. Some of the agreements with Costa Rica deal with development and investment in accordance with conditions prevailing on each side of the border.

If there are highways on the Costa Rican side of the border, we will have to find joint resources to build them on the Nicaraguan side in order to improve transportation, sanitary conditions, health, education, etc. We have to increase the potential we have in this zone and also assure the conservation of the environment. We feel happy about the results of this meeting and we established timelines to later weigh them.

Brother and sister delegates, Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, this Congress is meeting at a time when Latin America and Central America is making steps forward towards Integration, towards the Unity of our people.

Translation by Felipe Stuart Cournoyer
…

Karl Marx

2008-03-13T09:19:00.010-06:00

Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883 - 125 years ago. His family and comrades buried him in London’s Highgate Cemetery. To commemorate and celebrate Marx’s life and historic contribution to the cause of the world’s exploited and oppressed, I am republishing here Frederick Engel’s brief report of the funeral that appeared in Der Sozialdemokrat, March 22, 1883. It includes the text of his eulogy at the funeral. The parting words of Marx’s political and intellectual partner reverberate through history in all languages. The text and the images of Marx and Engels are taken from The Marxists Internet Archive (MIA, http://marx.org/) at

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/dersoz1.htm

Che Guevara included Engels’s’ graveside address in his “Síntesis Biográfica de Marx y Engels,” recently published for the first time in the Centro de Estudios Che Guevara-Ocean Press book “Apuntes críticos a la Economía Política.” He believed that no better summary of Marx’s gift to humanity existed when he prepared his plan for his work “Apuntes…” I believe that is still the case.

The hired pens of the exploiters have killed Marx hundreds of times over since he physically perished in 1883. But his work and his discoveries live on. They surface in every battle for human emancipation and every attempt to lay bare the reality of social and economic relations in class society.

Carlos Marx y Frederic Engels, ¡presente!

Karl Marx's Funeral

Der Sozialdemokrat, March 22, 1883

On Saturday, March 17, Marx was laid to rest in Highgate Cemetery, in the same grave in which his wife had been buried fifteen months earlier.

At the graveside Gottlieb Lemke laid two wreaths with red ribbons on the coffin in the name of the editorial board and dispatching service of the Sozialdemokrat and in the name of the London Communist Workers' Educational Society.

Frederick Engels then made the following speech in English:

"On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep-but forever.

"An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.

"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.

"But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.

"Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.

"Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.

"For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorw?rts! (1844), Br?sseler Deutsche Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and in addition to these a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else."And, consequently, Marx was the best-hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow-workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that though he may have had many opponents he had hardly one personal enemy.

"His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work!"

Then Marx's son-in-law Longuet read the following addresses which had been received in French.

I.

On the Grave of Karl Marx - from the Russian Socialists
"In the name of all Russian socialists I send a last farewell greeting to the outstanding Master among all the socialists of our times. One of the greatest minds has passed away, one of the most energetic fighters against the exploiters of the proletariat has died.

"The Russian socialists bow before the grave of the man who sympathised with their strivings in all the fluctuations of their terrible struggle, a struggle which they shall continue until the final victory of the principles of the social revolution. The Russian language was the first to have a translation of Capital, that gospel of contemporary socialism. The students of the Russian universities were the first to whose lot it fell to hear a sympathetic exposition of the theories of the mighty thinker whom we have now lost. Even those who were opposed to the founder of the International Working Men's Association in respect of practical questions of organisation were obliged always to bow before his comprehensive knowledge and lofty power of thought which penetrated the substance of modern capital, the development of the economic forms of society and the dependence of the whole history of mankind on those forms of development. Even the most vehement opponents that he found in the ranks of the revolutionary socialists could not but obey the call that he and his lifelong friend sent into the world 35 years ago:

"'Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!'

"The death of Karl Marx is mourned by all who have been able to grasp his thought and appreciate his influence upon our time.

"I allow myself to add that it will be still more deeply mourned by those who associated closely with Marx, especially by those who loved him as a friend.

"P. Lavrov."
Paris, March 15, 1883.

II.

TELEGRAM

"The Paris branch of the French Workers' Party expresses its grief at the loss of the thinker whose materialist conception of history and analysis of capitalist production founded scientific socialism and the present revolutionary communist movement. It also expresses its respect for Marx as a man and its complete agreement with his doctrines.

"The Secretary, Lipine."
Paris, March 16, 1883.
The Marxists Internet Archive (MIA, http://marx.org/)

III.

TELEGRAM

"In my own name and as a delegate of the Spanish Workers' Party (Madrid Branch), I share the immense grief of the friends and daughters of Marx at the cruel loss of the great Socialist who was the master of us all.

Jos? Mesa y Leompart.
Paris, March 16, 1883.

Then Liebknecht made the following speech in German:

"I have come from the heart of Germany to express my love and gratitude to my unforgettable teacher and faithful friend. To my faithful friend! Karl Marx's greatest friend and colleague has just called him the best-hated man of this century. That is true. He was the best-hated but he was also the best-loved. The best-hated by the oppressors and exploiters of the people, the best-loved by the oppressed and exploited, as far as they are conscious of their position. The oppressed and exploited people love him because he loved them. For the deceased whose loss we are mourning was great in his love as in his hatred. His hatred had love as its source. He was a great heart as he was a great mind. All who knew him know that.

"But I am here not only as a pupil and a friend, I am here as the representative of the German Social-Democrats who have charged me with expressing their feelings for their teacher, for the man who created our party, as much as one can speak of creating in this connection.

"It would be out of place here to indulge in fine speeches. For nobody was a more vehement enemy of phrase-mongering than Karl Marx. It is precisely his immortal merit that he freed the proletariat, the working people's party, from phrases and gave it the solid foundation of science that nothing can shake. A revolutionary in science and a revolutionary through science, he scaled the highest peak of science in order to come down to the people and to make science the common good of the people.

"Science is the liberator of humanity.

"The natural sciences free us from God. But God in heaven still lives on although science has killed him.

"The science of society that Marx revealed to the people kills capitalism, and with it the idols and masters of the earth who will not let God die as long as they live.

"Science is not German. It knows no barriers, and least of all the barriers of nationality. It was therefore natural that the creator of Capital should also become the creator of the International Working Men's Association.

"The basis of science, which we owe to Marx, puts us in a position to resist all attacks of the enemy and to continue with ever-increasing strength the fight which we have undertaken.

"Marx changed the Social-Democracy from a sect, a school, into a party, the party which is now fighting undaunted and which will be victorious.

"And that is true not only of us Germans. Marx belongs to the proletariat. It was to the proletariat of all countries that his life was dedicated. Proletarians who can think and do think in all countries have grateful reverence for him.

"It is a heavy blow that has fallen on us. But we do not mourn. The deceased is not dead. He lives in the heart, he lives in the head of the proletariat. His memory will not perish, his doctrine will be effective in ever broader circles.

"Instead of mourning, let us act in the spirit of the great man who has died and strive with all our strength so that the doctrine which he taught and for which he fought will be put into practice as soon as possible. That is the best way to honour his memory!

"Deceased, living friend, we shall follow to the final aim you showed us. We swear it on your grave!"

Besides those mentioned there were also present at the grave, among others, Karl Marx's other son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, Friedrich Lessner, who was sentenced at the Cologne Communist Trial in 1852 to five years' imprisonment in a fortress, and G. Lochner, also an old member of the Communist League. The natural sciences were represented by two celebrities of the first magnitude, the zoologist Professor Ray Lankester and the chemist Professor Schorlemmer, both members of the London Academy of Sciences (Royal Society).

Signed: Fr. Engels

Silvio Rodriguez--Canción Urgente Para Nicaragua

2008-03-12T15:12:00.011-06:00

On Sunday, March 2 our very much acclaimed Silvio Rodriguez came to Nicaragua to do a concert. Ten thousand or more enthusiastic fans turned out. It was chaos in the beginning because the commercial outfit that arranged the concert did zero planning in order to cut its costs to close to zero. There were not even any large screens to allow those far from the stage a better view of the Cuban performers.

Some fans paid fifty bucks for VIP tickets. Others, like me paid a little over fifteen dollars and most paid about ten dollars for their tickets. But many got in for free because the angry crowd, frustrated by hours of waiting in line, broke down the barriers and surged in, just in time to hear our outstanding performer and founder of the Nueva Trova movement in Latin American music. Most of us missed the Nicaraguan performers Silvio had invited to open the concern – the young Moisés Gadea, and Duo Guardabarranco (Katia and Salvador Cardenal).

Just before, Silvio had done concerts in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Silvio, as always, soared into the ears, hearts, and minds of his crowd – and we responded with voice accompaniment, cheers, chants, requests, and a good smattering of Cuban and Sandinista flags. Beer stands had their best night in a long while.

We were a mixed crowd in generational terms. Many were from the generation of the revolution – people who remember his electrifying April 1983 Managua concert where he gave us his unforgettable and inspiring Canción Urgente Para Nicaragua (see below). Most were from younger generations. Almost everyone, however, knew the words to Silvio’s songs and followed him in chorus.Silvio touched many hearts when he read a message in solidarity with the five Cuban political prisoners serving long terms and harsh conditions in various US prisons.

What I will remember most about the event is not that Sivio refused clamors from the crowd to sing “Cancion Urgente…” It is the image of two Nicaraguan army soldiers in uniform holding high two flags – Nicaraguan and Cuban. Around them were also FSLN flags. As the hours passed people passed them around to relieve one another of the weight and discomfort, or to go to a beer stand to fuel up.

I will also not forget meeting my friend Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy in the long lineup to get in. The wait was so long that I used to time to walk up and down the line to greet people I knew. He was way back in line and I have no idea where he ended up in the field used by the Pharos Casino for large events. But he avoided the temptation to buy a VIP seat and joined the low income crowd. He mentioned to me he will be making a cross Canada tour in May.

Why did Silvio not want to sing “Cancion Urgente…” I don’t know and see no value in speculating. He refused repeated entreaties from the crowd and at a certain point let it out that he has “some problems” with the song now. Some people speculate that he meant political problems with it because Nicaragua is now no longer in the lift of a revolution. Others hue closer to his words and say he has not played it for a very long time and felt not able to do it to standard. All I know is that I respect his right to determine his own program and to hold to his own artistic criteria.

If I had to make a complaint it would be that he allowed his Nicaraguan organizers to hold this concert on the grounds of the Pharos Casino. It simply is not set up to handle a crowd that size. The stage is too low to be visible through the heads and flags of those closer to the stage.

We should bring him back soon to a mass event in the Plaza of the Revolution or the National Stadium.

Silvio’s choice not to sing “Cancion Urgente…” only served to focus more attention on the song. Many, like me, probably played it later that night or went on the internet to find the video of the April 1983 concert.If you want to do that now, go to youtube. The scenes are uplifting, and the music, well it’s Silvio 25 years ago. His song is a call for urgent international solidarity with the young Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution, already under sustained attack by the United States through the proxy Contra war. Here’s the URL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnho2BQmhmk

Felipe Stuart

Managua

Brasil busca recuperar el control de su petróleo y Petrobras

2008-03-12T10:03:00.005-06:00

This interview-article recounts the sad story and results of the privatization of Brazil’s petroleum industry – Petrobras.

Despite the controversy surrounding this sellout of Brazil’s national patrimony many news articles still refer to Petrobas as “Barzil’s state-owned oil company” or other variants of the same error. The government now has only 40% of shares in the gaint firm, compared to its former 87% share.

The privatization is again coming under question because of the stunning discovery of huge reserves of oil in the Atlantic Tupí fields off the south-east coast. It brings Brazil’s oil reserves up to at least 80 billion barrels, putting the country on a short list of major oil giants along with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela.

Fernando Siqueira explains the predicament the imperial USA finds itself in and why it is on a drive to regain or maintain control of oil reserves in the Americas, most importantly those of Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil. The US currently pays around $300 a barrel for oil. How is that?

“In reality,” he says, “the United States today pays around $300 for a barrel of oil: 100 dollars for the cost of crude in the market and another 200 dollars to defray the cost of the military apparatus in the Mid East that guarantees the provision of oil from those fields.”

Felipe Stuart
Managua

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/03/12/index.php?section=economia&article=028e1eco
Entrevista a Fernando Siqueira
Director de la Asociación de Ingenieros de Petrobras

Empresas extranjeras se apropian de recursos, sostiene.

Ante la presión de Estados Unidos por privatizar los hidrocarburos de América Latina, el especialista dice que su país debe copiar a México el marco constitucional de control del Estado sobre sus recursos. “Ahora más que nunca Pemex es un paradigma”, afirma.

Roberto González Amador e Israel Rodríguez

Estados Unidos enfrenta una “difícil situación energética”, y la necesidad que tiene de lograr el control sobre los recursos petroleros de América Latina está detrás de las “enormes presiones” para privatizar los hidrocarburos en México y en otros países de la región. Habla Fernando Siqueira, director de la Asociación de Ingenieros de Petrobras (Aepet):

"En realidad, Estados Unidos paga hoy 300 dólares por barril de petróleo: 100 dólares por el costo del crudo en el mercado y otros 200 derivados de los gastos en el aparato militar en Oriente Medio para garantizar el suministro desde esos yacimientos”.

Crítico del proceso de privatización de Petróleos Brasileños (Petrobras), que se concretó en 1997, durante el gobierno del ex presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso –cuando se promulgó una ley que permitió a otras empresas competir con Petrobras en todos los ramos de la actividad petrolera–, Siqueira dice a La Jornada:

“En la discusión sobre el tema energético, México no debe ver el proceso de apertura en Petrobras como un ejemplo. En Brasil estamos en plena campaña para recuperar el control sobre el petróleo, y Brasil tiene que copiar a México el marco constitucional de control del Estado sobre sus recursos, y ahora más que nunca Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) es un paradigma. Es necesario que Brasil recupere el control de su riqueza”.

Fernando Siqueira y Murilio Marcato, delegado de la Aepet en Minas Gerais, forman parte del movimiento que ha renacido en Brasil para que el país recupere el control de su petróleo. La Aepet, fundada en 1961, está integrada por 5 mil empleados de nivel medio y superior de Petrobras, la mayoría en activo. Entre sus objetivos está defender la propiedad del Estado sobre el petróleo y el fortalecimiento de Petrobras como una empresa energética pública.

De visita a México comentaron a La Jornada algunas de las experiencias del proceso de privatización del petróleo en su país. Entre ellas, la forma en que las empresas extranjeras penetraron los órganos de dirección de la Agencia Nacional del Petróleo (ANP), el órgano creado por el gobierno después de la apertura para coordinar la política petrolera, e incluso del intento –ya durante el gobierno del presidente Luis Inacio Lula da Silva– de cambiar el nombre de la empresa por “Petrobrax”, bajo el argumento de su director de que “era más fácil de pronunciar para los inversionistas extranjeros”. También de la manera en que los promotores de la privatización invirtieron millones de dólares en pagar a periodistas y “analistas independientes” para que influyeran en la opinión pública en crear un clima favorable a la privatización.

“La experiencia de Petrobras no fue buena ni para el país ni para la petrolera; se abrió a las compañías extranjeras que se convirtieron en propietarias del recurso natural. El gobierno tenía 87 por ciento de las acciones y ahora tiene sólo 40 por ciento. Las empresas participan en las licitaciones de lotes para explotar campos petroleros y se convierten en dueñas del terreno y del petróleo que encuentren, el cual pueden vender a quien deseen”.

La privatización de Petrobras, asegura Siqueira, no llevó nuevas inversiones a Brasil. Tampoco aportó tecnología. “Las empresas extranjeras vinieron a Brasil a aprender, Petrobras era un líder tecnológico”, asegura.

Debilitamiento premeditado

A la vez que se transfería a firmas privadas, principalmente extranjeras, la propiedad sobre el petróleo, el Estado comenzó a perder los recursos de la renta petrolera.

Explica Fernando Siqueira: las empresas privadas que participan en la explotación del petróleo brasileño pagan al gobierno una participación de 10 a 45 por ciento del precio a que vendan el crudo. La media internacional en cuanto al pago de contribuciones a los países propietarios del recurso, agrega, es de 84 por ciento del precio de venta. Es decir, las compañías que operan en el país sudamericano pagan al Estado la mitad de lo que se tributa en promedio internacional.

Otra merma para el Estado, luego de la privatización impulsada por el régimen de Fernando Henrique Cardoso y continuada en el actual, tiene que ver con el valor de los lotes, que son las partes del territorio que se adjudican a las firmas privadas mediante licitación.

Explican los expertos que el lote más costoso ha sido vendido por el gobierno brasileño a un precio de 300 millones de dólares. La firma que se lo adjudicó extraerá crudo por un monto equivalente a 8 mil millones de dólares durante la vida productiva del yacimiento.

La privatización de Petróleos Brasileños en 1997 fue el punto culminante de un proceso de debilitamiento intencional de la empresa iniciado 20 años antes, explican. “Petrobras fue obligada a comprar petróleo a precios internacionales de 25 dólares por barril y venderlo en el mercado interno a 14 dólares; la diferencia era cubierta por la producción nacional y esto provocó que la empresa no tuviera recursos para invertir y se descapitalizara”, dice Siqueira.

En 1994 ocurrió un intento de reforma a la Constitución brasileña para acabar con el monopolio del Estado sobre el control de los recursos naturales. “Se tergiversaban las cosas, diciendo que Petrobras era un monopolio, pero en realidad el monopolio era del Estado sobre el control de los recursos, y Petrobras sólo era la empresa encargada de poner en práctica la política estatal sobre petróleo”, añade.Había una creciente oposición a la privatización de Petrobras, que incluía al sindicato petrolero, entonces uno de los mayores del país, a empleados públicos de otros gremios, sindicatos de industria y organizaciones sociales. Cuenta que en 1995 el entonces presidente Henrique Cardoso emitió un decreto que prohibía a cualquier empleado público trasladarse a Brasilia, la capital federal y asiento de los poderes, a realizar cualquier protesta contra la decisión de abrir la empresa petrolera al capital privado, so pena de ser despedido. El objetivo, dice, era “quebrar” la resistencia a la política de apertura.

Un año después fue enviada la ley para eliminar el control total del Estado sobre el petróleo y permitir a empresas extranjeras extraer y hacerse propietarias del crudo brasileño. Fue aprobada un año después, a la vez que se creaba una Agencia Nacional del Petróleo que, asegura, respondía a los intereses de las grandes trasnacionales a las que entregó “todo el conocimiento que Petrobras había acumulado en 55 años de investigación sobre los yacimientos de petróleo en el país”.

Los modos de Halliburton

Una vez aprobada la ley que privatizaba la propiedad del petróleo brasileño, se instrumentó en la empresa una política de jubilación anticipada, que redujo de 35 a 30 años los años laborados antes del pase a retiro. En este proceso, la plantilla laboral de Petrobras se redujo de 60 mil a 30 mil empleados, aunque el plan de los administradores era de mantener sólo 15 mil empleados.

Una siguiente medida fue reconformar el consejo de administración de Petrobras, que hasta antes de la privatización estaba integrado por nueve miembros: seis directivos de la empresa y tres representantes de la sociedad.

Con las modificaciones legales se incluyó a consejeros externos de nacionalidad brasileña que, dicen los entrevistados, representaban los intereses del sistema financiero internacional.

A partir de esta reconformación del consejo se perdió control sobre las decisiones y el manejo de información estratégica. Un problema, desde su punto de vista, que llegó al extremo este año, cuando “se perdieron” tres discos duros robados a computadoras portátiles y que contenían la información sobre el gigantesco campo de Tupí, descubierto en diciembre pasado. Esos datos, como se ha publicado en la prensa brasileña y ahora recuerda el entrevistado, “aparecieron” en poder de Halliburton, la empresa propiedad del vicepresidente de Estados Unidos, Dick Cheney.

Se eliminó, además, al equipo de planeación de Petrobras y se compraron “activos podridos” en Argentina, pertenecientes a Repsol, firma que, dijo, “se sospecha es un brazo de la Shell usado por la petrolera anglo holandesa para eludir algunos controles a que están sujetas las mayores compañías energéticas del mundo”.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso dejó la presidencia en 2003 con una deuda interna por el equivalente a 60 mil millones de dólares, aun cuando durante su gobierno fueron vendidos activos públicos por 160 mil millones de dólares. “Entregó al país en bancarrota”, señala Siqueira. Murilo Marcato, delegado de la Aepet en Minas Gerais, recuerda que una vez iniciado el proceso de privatización, que ha llevado a que 40 por ciento del capital de Petrobras esté colocado en bolsas de valores, desde el Banco Nacional de Desarrollo Económico y Social (BNDES, similar a Nafin en México) se buscó adquirir acciones de la compañía petrolera para asegurar que una parte permaneciera bajo control estatal. “El gobierno impidió que siguiera la compra de acciones del BNDES, e incluso los directivos del banco que la promovían fueron cesados”. Actualmente, ese banco tiene alrededor de 10 por ciento del capital de Petrobras.

En cambio, se favoreció a las empresas privadas que compraban acciones de Petrobras a través de los mercados accionarios. Dice Marcato que en 1999 el estatuto de la empresa fue cambiado para permitir que su presidente fuera extranjero; en 2000 se vendió, a través de la bolsa, 18 por ciento de la participación estatal. Un porcentaje similar de acciones, también del gobierno, fue colocado en las bolsas en 2001. En total, 40 por ciento del capital de Petrobas fue vendido en la bolsa.
El gran consumidor

Los dirigentes de la Asociación de Ingenieros de Petrobras consideran que América Latina está sujeta a una mayor presión por parte del aparato industrial y militar de Estados Unidos, y de las grandes compañías petroleras que los abastecen, por el control del petróleo. Una presión que ha ido en aumento conforme el alza en la cotización del crudo llega a niveles que los expertos consideraban que ocurrirían después de 2010.

Explica Siqueira: “El choque de precios previsto para 2010 está ocurriendo en 2008. Se anticipó porque los picos de producción se han caído y la demanda ha subido. La era del petróleo barato ya se terminó y ahora la previsión es que el barril alcance 180 dólares en 2015 y una cotización de 300 dólares en 2020”.

En este contexto de precios cada vez más altos, Estados Unidos muestra una mayor avidez por petróleo. Ese país consume una cuarta parte de la producción mundial dentro de su territorio y casi otro tanto con sus instalaciones militares externas, señala el experto.

Así, con reservas de 28 mil millones de barriles, Estados Unidos requiere 8 mil millones de barriles por año para su suministro interno y otros 7 mil millones de barriles para su aparato militar, “por lo que si no garantiza un suministro confiable, en dos años puede colapsar”.

Agrega que el desarrollo de Estados Unidos está “montado” sobre la energía del petróleo, que es la materia prima de 3 mil productos que no son fácilmente sustituibles.

“Estados Unidos está en una situación crítica. Consume 15 mil millones de barriles por año y tiene 28 mil millones en reserva. En ese país, cada coche consume 28 barriles (al año), una computadora tres barriles, y el promedio de consumo por habitante es de 25 barriles por año, en tanto que en los países de Europa es de 11 barriles por persona al año”, asevera.

Una de las principales fuentes de abasto de petróleo para Estados Unidos es el Oriente Medio y en especial de Arabia Saudita. Según los entrevistados, el gasto militar estadunidense en esa región del mundo agrega un costo de 200 dólares por barril al precio del crudo, que ya tiene dos semanas arriba de 100 dólares. Para el aparato industrial y militar de Estados Unidos, el costo neto ha subido a 300 dólares por barril de crudo.

“Aun cuando Arabia Saudita es un aliado muy fiel de Estados Unidos, no tiene la capacidad para abastecer y garantizar el suministro de crudo”, agrega Siqueira. Estados Unidos, asegura, se encuentra en una situación difícil de abasto de petróleo y para ellos es más fácil tratar de garantizar ese suministro en América Latina que invertir en Medio Oriente.

“Ahora que la oferta de petróleo es prácticamente igual a la demanda, la lucha por el abasto y el control del crudo se intensifica”.

Estrategia mediática

La decisión del gobierno brasileño de privatizar su industria petrolera en 1997 tuvo un componente fundamental para asegurar su realización, cuenta el especialista. Fue “convencer” a la población, a través de los principales vehículos de comunicación de masas en el país, de que Brasil no podía solo.

Relata: “la campaña en los medios de comunicación hacía llegar a los brasileños el mensaje, insistente, de que si no había apertura al capital privado no llegarían al país recursos externos necesarios para explotar el recurso, y entonces, se decía desde el gobierno, se tendrían que desviar recursos de los ramos de la salud, educación y seguridad. Se nos insistía en que no teníamos recursos ni experiencia, por lo que necesitábamos ayuda de las compañías y que no permitir esa ayuda sería ruin para el país”.

Todas las afirmaciones para apoyar la privatización estaban sustentadas en mentiras, cuenta Siqueira. Fue una campaña muy bien elaborada y planeada, añade. Recuerda que la trasnacional Shell invirtió 100 millones de dólares para que especialistas y profesores escribieran artículos y aparecieran en los medios de comunicación para hablar a favor de la privatización. “Les daban espacios para defender la privatización, compraron conciencias de periodistas y académicos que después se volvieron célebres en los medios brasileños”.

Relata que los promotores de la privatización ofrecían a profesores universitarios triplicarles el sueldo para que aceptaran escribir artículos y participar en foros para hablar a favor de la apertura de la empresa petrolera al capital privado.
“Yo, como opositor a la privatización, realicé entonces visitas por todo el país para hablar sobre el tema. Y me llamó la atención cómo, sin importar la región de Brasil donde me encontrara, las preguntas de quienes me cuestionaban en los foros eran las mismas, como salidas del mismo sitio”.

Los periódicos y los medios electrónicos lanzaron una campaña en la que argumentaban que la nacionalización de los recursos petroleros “era algo retrógrado y que la globalización era lo actual”. Se desplegaron informaciones subliminales para convencer a la población, dice.

Recuperar el control

En diciembre de 2007, Petrobras anunció el descubrimiento del campo petrolero Tupí, en el sureste del país, en la costa del océano Atlántico, un yacimiento que incrementará la reserva de crudo de Brasil a 80 mil millones de barriles, lo que convierte a ese país en poseedor de una riqueza comparable a la de mayores dueños de reservas: Rusia, Arabia Saudita, Irán, Irak y Venezuela.

El descubrimiento de Tupí reavivó el debate nacionalista e infundió nuevos ánimos a un sector de la población que busca recuperar el control total de Brasil sobre sus recursos naturales. Una acción emprendida, entre otras organizaciones por la Aepet, ante un órgano autónomo de procuración de justicia, detuvo temporalmente una licitación de 41 campos cercanos a Tupí. Con este mandato judicial, el gobierno pospuso la venta de esos campos.

“La enorme riqueza descubierta hace necesario que Brasil recupere el control sobre sus yacimientos. Como están las cosas ahora ese control no existe, porque las empresas privadas, de acuerdo con la ley vigente, son propietarias del crudo que extraen”, dice.

En Brasil, asegura, ha crecido un nuevo sentimiento nacionalista que ha hecho suyo el lema “el petróleo es nuestro” –que fue una de las frases empleadas por Getulio Vargas, el presidente que nacionalizó el hidrocarburo en los años 50, quien tomó como ejemplo el decreto del presidente Lázaro Cárdenas de nacionalización en 1938.
Añade que la privatización de Petrobras tuvo otras implicaciones. Dio éxito a la idea de los grupos que controlan política y económicamente a Estados Unidos de que se debe impedir que países potencialmente hegemónicos se desarrollen.

“Antes de la privatización, en Brasil el 90 por ciento del desarrollo tecnológico se realizaba en empresas estatales, eso se perdió. Los países dominantes no quieren un competidor indeseable”.