Latin America: Racial Revolt in the Making
November 17, 2003 2210 GMT
Summary
Racially based popular revolts among poor indigenous and peasant
groups are spreading throughout Latin America. Four South American
presidents have been toppled in the past four years, and more forced
regime changes are likely in the coming months, endangering U.S.
economic and security interests in several countries.
Analysis
Slightly more than a decade after Latin American reformist governments
enthusiastically embraced free-market economic policies advocated by
the United States, popular revolts against those policies are erupting
across the region. In the past four years, popular uprisings have
ousted four democratically elected presidents in Ecuador, Peru,
Argentina and Bolivia -- where former President Gonzalo Sanchez de
Lozada resigned and fled the country on Oct. 17 after month-long riots
in which 60 to 80 people were killed and more than 400 injured.
In recent weeks, violent popular demonstrations against free-market
policies also have rocked Central American and Caribbean countries
such as Honduras and the Dominican Republic. The most recent violence
broke out Nov. 11 in the Dominican Republic, where at least six people
were killed and more than 100 injured in clashes between poor
protesters and government security forces. If the violent protests
continue in Santo Domingo and other Dominican Republic cities, they
could destabilize the government of President Hipolito Mejia and
possibly force his resignation. Moreover, it's possible that over the
next six months new popular revolts could force the ouster of
Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez and interim Bolivian President
Carlos Mesa.
All of these popular uprisings share a common theme: Poor indigenous,
black and "mestizo" or mixed-race Latin Americans are revolting
against elected governments that seek to implement the free-market
economic and trade policies included in the so-called "Washington
Consensus." The popular uprisings against these policies, which are
called "neo-liberalism" across the region, also coincide with a rapid
increase in anti-U.S. sentiment that appears to cut across all
classes, from poor to rich.
A new poll of nearly 19,000 Latin Americans in 17 countries by
Chilean-based Latinobarometro, one of the most accurate and respected
polling organizations in the region, found that anti-American
sentiment among middle-class and poor people has more than doubled in
the past three years, from 14 percent in 2000 to 31 percent as of
mid-2003. A separate poll by U.S.-based Zogby International found
recently that only 18 percent of Latin American leaders in government
and business believe that closer economic engagement with the United
States will benefit the region. Moreover, 87 percent of the leaders
surveyed by Zogby had a negative opinion of U.S. President George W.
Bush.
These gloomy numbers -- and the popular revolts gaining momentum
across the region -- suggest that many Latin American democracies are
at risk of imploding and being replaced by authoritarian or populist
governments with an anti-U.S. agenda. The polls also indicate that the
region's leaders do not trust the Bush administration's policy
prescriptions for Latin America. In fact, many increasingly view some
U.S. foreign policy priorities in the region -- such as the drug war
and unfettered free-market policies -- as major contributing factors
to the growing turmoil.
However, the Bush administration appears oblivious or indifferent to
these trends, perhaps because Washington does not perceive any
immediate and direct threats to U.S. homeland security coming out of
Latin America. In effect, at several recent meetings between senior
U.S. and Latin American officials in Miami and Trinidad and Tobago,
the official U.S. message has been that Latin America's troubles are
not economic, but rather political and institutional.
Senior U.S. officials -- like Roger Noriega, the assistant secretary
of state for the Western Hemisphere -- have urged Latin American
leaders to accelerate pending economic and trade reforms. However,
most poor Latin Americans are convinced that the economic and
free-trade policies that the United States has promoted aggressively
since the end of the Cold War are responsible for growing regional
poverty and unemployment.
The region's poor also have linked the implementation of U.S.-promoted
economic policies with the huge surge in corruption the region has
experienced since the end of the 1980s. From Mexico to Argentina, the
poor perceive that the greatest beneficiaries of privatized state
enterprises have been corrupt bankers, business cronies and relatives
of whoever is in power. Though this isn't historically unique in Latin
America, where government corruption has been a fact of life since the
Spanish Conquest 400 years ago, populist political leaders and radical
groups with an anti-U.S. agenda have persuaded the poor that the
free-market policies advocated by Washington also fueled a new era in
corruption that benefited the dominant rich elites and foreign
companies at the expense of the poor.
However, as an adviser to the U.S. administration's core Latin America
policymaking team told Stratfor recently, "There isn't any viable
alternative model to free-market economic and trade policies." In
effect, with the exception of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, all of
the supposedly left-leaning presidents elected over the past year in
Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay have run for election on
anti-market platforms, but have steered orthodox economic courses once
in power. Even Bolivia's Mesa is trying to stay on course with
free-market policies -- despite threats from indigenous and peasant
leaders that he will be overthrown in a new popular revolt if he
doesn't abandon these policies quickly in favor of big-government
socialist schemes.
The Racial Politics of Popular Revolt
The biggest popular revolts in Latin America have erupted in recent
years in countries with large indigenous and poor populations, such as
Ecuador and Bolivia. This has fostered the perception among some
observers that these revolts are mainly a clash of cultures between
traditionalist indigenous peoples and modernist dominant ethnic groups
descended from European immigrants. These perceptions are not entirely
accurate, however.
It's true that there are major cultural differences between indigenous
peoples and long-ruling white elites in many Andes region countries.
As a result, there are elements in these revolts that could be
described as a clash between civilizations. However, the main reason
there have been popular revolts in recent years in countries such as
Bolivia and Ecuador is that the poorest citizens -- who happen also to
be indigenous -- are rebelling against governments that implement
policies which the poor believe have made poverty worse.
Moreover, while indigenous people may be among the poorest in the
region, the majority of the black and "mestizo" or mixed race
populations in Latin American countries are also poor. Increasingly,
indigenous leaders, populists like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
and radical groups seeking to oust capitalist democracy in favor of
centrally-planned authoritarian governments also are linking poverty
to race. This linkage is particularly effective in Latin America,
where indigenous people, blacks and mestizos have occupied the lowest
rungs of the socioeconomic ladder for centuries.
Since the 18th century, race has been a causal factor in popular
revolts against governments in countries such as Haiti, Bolivia and
Mexico. However, the twin forces of globalization and regional leftist
groups seeking to reinvent themselves since the end of the Cold War
have turned race and ethnicity into a core factor in the popular
revolts the region has experienced in the past four years.
From southern Mexico to Bolivia, indigenous groups have been taught
how to organize politically, using their race or ethnicity to
differentiate themselves -- and their political agendas -- from
central governments ruled by white elites. In some cases -- such as
the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in the southern Mexican
state of Chiapas in 1994 -- they have taken up arms to press their
cause. With the aid of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have
legitimate humanitarian or environmental agendas, many indigenous
groups also have developed extensive regional and international
networks to promote their political agendas, which basically include
demands for political autonomy and titled land ownership.
Indigenous groups in areas rich in natural mineral or energy resources
also are demanding a substantial share of the profits derived from
extracting and exporting those resources so that they can fund their
own economic and social development independently from the control of
central governments dominated by white and mestizo elites. This is the
case in countries such as Ecuador and Peru, for example, where
indigenous groups oppose the environmental destruction they claim is
caused by foreign oil mining companies, yet at the same time they also
demand deals guaranteeing them royalties and other income derived from
whatever resources are taken out of areas the indigenous groups
consider their ancestral or tribal homelands.
Coca, Neo-Marxism and Identity-Based Politics
Before Sanchez de Lozada resigned as Bolivia's president on Oct. 17
and left the country for the United States, he condemned his opponents
as "narco-terrorists" seeking to establ
sh an authoritarian leftist
regime based upon the international narcotics trade. Senior U.S. State
Department officials have since dismissed Sanchez de Lozada's
accusations. Stratfor also believes that his allegations of a
narco-terrorist plot against his government were greatly exaggerated.
Nevertheless, Bolivia's former president did make a valid point.
The Aymara and Quechua indigenous groups that make up 70 percent of
Bolivia's population -- and were at the core of the popular revolt
that toppled Sanchez de Lozada -- have legitimate grievances in terms
of their centuries-old exclusion from mainstream Bolivan society.
However, there is also substantial evidence that organizational input
and funding for some of the groups that participated in the revolt
that ousted Sanchez de Lozada came from international drug traffickers
and radical leftist groups that are seeking to end Bolivia's
18-year-old free-market democratic government.
For example, Bolivian indigenous leaders like Evo Morales and Felipe
Quispe became nationally prominent over the past 20 years by embracing
indigenous identity-based politics and symbolism. They wear the
traditional clothing of Aymara Indians, and have established local and
regional political organizations based upon centuries-old indigenous
traditions. They also advocate core indigenous spiritual and social
values rooted in tradition. Quispe calls himself the Mallku, which is
Aymara language for high-flying Condor. The Condor is the largest
predator bird in the Americas, and is also a centuries-old symbol of
Aymara leadership and ethnic pride. While this symbolism means little
or nothing to nonindigenous white Bolivians or U.S. policymakers, it
is a vital component of Bolivia's identity-based indigenous politics.
However, Morales and Quispe also advocate the creation of a socialist
or Marxist regime in Bolivia. Morales wants to follow Chavez's example
and win the presidency in democratic elections so he can implement his
version of a Bolivarian revolution; Quispe advocates seizing power
through armed revolution. Both leaders are virulently anti-American:
Their political demands on Mesa include kicking the United States out
of Bolivia permanently, aborting the U.S.-backed coca eradication
program, renationalizing all privatized strategic energy and mining
industries, rejecting the proposed FTAA and aligning Bolivia with
Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Both Morales and Quispe receive substantial political support from
Havana. Morales recently took part in a forum held in Havana, during
which he called on Latin America's poor to unite in a regional popular
revolt against "neo-liberalism," which is the word all Latin Americans
use to describe U.S.-centric free-market economic and trade policies.
Morales also vowed, during a recent speech in Havana at a forum hosted
by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, to turn Latin America into a new Vietnam
for Washington.
Radical Leftist Groups and Legitimate NGOs: Same Bed, Different Causes
In addition to his leftist, would-be revolutionary credentials,
Morales also is the elected leader of an organization called the
Andean Council of Coca Leaf Producers (CAPHC). The group claims to
represent the legitimate interests of Bolivian coca growers who have
cultivated coca for thousands of years. CAPHC argues that coca is a
central element of Andean indigenous culture and religion. However,
the CAPHC appears to be a front organization for coca growers that
supply drug traffickers with the raw material from which cocaine is
made.
The CAPHC is officially headquartered in the Bolivian capital city of
La Paz and the coca-growing Chapere valley region, but its affiliated
member groups extend geographically from the Chapare as far north as
southern Colombia. It has affiliated members in Peru's Apurimac and
Ene coca-growing regions where the insurgent group Shining Path still
roams freely. Its members also include groups in Brazil, Ecuador and
Colombia, mainly located in regions where coca is cultivated or where
major drug-trafficking routes cut geographically through the interior
of South America.
In all, the CAPHC claims to represent more than 1 million people who
derive their income in some way from the cultivation of coca, most of
which is sold to drug traffickers for export as refined cocaine to the
United States and Europe. The Peruvian component of the CAPHC also
claims it can tap the support of up to 240,000 armed local peasant
self-defense fighters that were set up in the late 1980s by Peru's
government to combat Shining Path.
Morales says the CAPHC is concentrated in the Chapare valley region
and is controlled by Bolivians. However, the organization appears to
be funded and controlled by a regional and international network of
NGOs -- including some with legitimate environmental or humanitarian
agendas -- and extreme-left political groups. The unifying feature of
these member- or support groups is active resistance to the
U.S.-funded drive to eradicate coca. Groups allied with the CAPHC
include the Peruvian Peasant Federation (CCP), which is linked to
ultra-left Mariategui Unified Party (PUM). Another member group is the
United Left (IU), a Peruvian political party that is a founding member
of the Sao Paulo Forum. The forum is an umbrella organization of Latin
American leftist political parties and insurgent groups like
Colombia's rebel organizations, that was established in 1990 jointly
by Cuban leader Castro and current Brazilian President Luiz Inacio
"Lula" da Silva.
Legitimate NGOs with institutional ties to the CAPHC reportedly
include the Society for Endangered Peoples, the South American Indian
Council, Cultural Survival-USA, the U.S.-based Drug Policy Foundation,
the New York-based anthropological Wenner Gren Foundation and the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In effect, the composition of the CAPHC's
members and known supporters illustrates the manner in which radical
leftist groups with links to drug-trafficking organizations in the
Andes region have misappropriated the environmental or humanitarian
agendas of NGOs like the WWF for political purposes. This theft of
legitimate NGO agendas by radical groups seeks ultimately to replace
the region's 15-year experiment in capitalist democracy with centrally
planned regimes that likely would be authoritarian.
Bolivian Ripple Effects
Bolivia appears to be ground zero for a sustained popular revolt by
self-described revolutionary groups seeking to install socialist
democracies or authoritarian regimes with Marxist tendencies. However,
the process is being replicated to different degrees in other
countries such as Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Mexico. For example,
Peru's Toledo faces a nascent revolt by coca growers, and Ecuador's
Gutierrez faces imminent national demonstrations by indigenous groups
that don't grow coca but are determined to evict capitalist democracy
from their country. In southern Mexico, the Zapatista leadership has
started to create autonomous local indigenous governments.
Moreover, in all of these cases, indigenous groups appear to be
seeking autonomous self-government and titled land ownership that
eventually could escalate into secessionist drives that could
balkanize some countries. In Bolivia for example, lowland areas like
Santa Cruz and natural gas-rich Tarija already are demanding autonomy
from the highland regions, where La Paz is located. The Bolivian
lowlanders, who are mainly of European descent but also include
indigenous groups, want to disassociate themselves from radical
highland indigenous leaders who would establish an indigenous form of
communistic government that existed in before the Spanish conquest.
In southern Colombia, the FARC has demanded complete political control
over the coca-growing departments of Caqueta and Putumayo as a
condition for even considering peace talks with the government of
President Alvaro Uribe Velez. In southern Mexico, Zapatista leaders
are openly discussing the eventual secession of Chiapas in favor of
creating a new indigenous nation that would include northern
Guatemala, which also has a large indigenous population with a 40-year
history of armed violence against the central government in Guatemala
City.
U.S. policymakers in Washington say that the only way to end these
popular revolts is to incorporate marginalized indigenous and other
ethnic groups into mainstream society while deepening free-market
reforms and joining a U.S.-centric FTAA. Ultimately, however, the
solution to the region's spreading popular revolts might not be found
in Washington, but rather in Brazil. Da Silva's government is trying
to stay the course with orthodox free-market policies while finding
ways to close the huge socioeconomic gap between millions of poor
Brazilians and the wealthy minorities that have controlled Brazil's
wealth and political institutions for centuries.
If Washington and Brasilia don't find common ground in upcoming venues
like the FTAA meeting in Miami on Nov. 20 and 21, da Silva's chances
of closing the gap between the rich and poor likely will shrink
significantly. More important, if Brazil's poor blacks lose faith in
da Silva, who has experienced near-starvation first-hand, the rural
indigenous and peasant uprisings that have destabilized several Andean
countries in recent years could merge into urban revolts by poor
blacks and mestizos in countries like Brazil. This could bring more
authoritarian figures to power in several countries, or it could lead
to civil conflicts like the one Colombia has suffered for nearly four
decades.
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| User: "TonyZ2001" |
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| Title: Re: Latin America: Racial Revolts in the Making |
29 Nov 2003 05:16:45 AM |
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Yes, and these are the same people that will be running the USA is about 20
years or so.
Tony
"About the time of the end, a body of men will be raised up, who will turn
their attention to the prophecies, in the midst of much clamor and opposition."
Sir Isaac Newton
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