SAN SALVADOR, May 14, 2012 (IPS) - After decades of struggle, indigenous people in El Salvador will finally be recognised in the constitution – a first step towards recovering their community identity, which they have been denied by the state and by society at large.
Article 63 of the constitution will be modified to acknowledge native languages and other expressions of indigenous culture that the state has not explicitly recognised up to now.
“This constitutional reform is important because at least the state is committing itself to working on specific policies to strengthen the world vision, values and spirituality of our native peoples,” activist Betty Pérez, with the Salvadoran National Indigenous Coordinating Council (CCNIS), which groups around 20 organisations, told IPS.
The lawmakers who took office on May 1 must ratify the amendment approved Apr. 25 by the outgoing legislature, as established by the laws governing constitutional reforms.
But because the line-up of political forces in the legislature remained unchanged after the March elections, there are no doubts that the reform will receive the votes of the necessary special majority of two-thirds of the 84 members of the single-chamber Legislative Assembly. Indigenous leaders expect the amendment to be approved in June or July.
Although the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) rejected the reform, the right-wing opposition party does not have enough legislators to block its passage by the left-wing governing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and its allies.
El Salvador is a signatory to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in September 2007. But the state has not shown any interest in ensuring compliance with the international instrument.
There are no socioeconomic policies that directly benefit these ethnic groups, according to the Sociolinguistic Atlas of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America, published by UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund.
Article 2 of the U.N. Declaration states that “Indigenous peoples and individuals are free and equal to all other peoples and individuals and have the right to be free from any kind of discrimination, in the exercise of their rights, in particular that based on their indigenous origin or identity.”
“The reform is a great stride forward, because this country has ignored the existence of the indigenous population, and as a result of that denial, all of the rights that they have as original peoples have been eliminated,” Carlos Lara, an anthropologist at the University of El Salvador, told IPS.
The prevailing view in this Central American country is that indigenous people are a thing of the past because due to historical circumstances, they disappeared or merged with the general population, he said.
According to this view, El Salvador’s population of 6.1 million is “mestizo” – an ethnic mix of indigenous people and the descendants of the Spaniards who colonised this territory starting in 1524.
But this essentially denies the existence of native communities.
However, the constitutional reform “puts things to right, because now El Salvador will define itself as a multicultural and multiethnic country,” Lara said.
According to the 2007 census, native people represent just 0.2 percent of the population – a figure that was immediately rejected by indigenous organisations and academics.
Indigenous associations cite instead the 2005 household survey by the Economy Ministry, which put the proportion at 17 percent of the population, mainly Nahua-Pipil Indians in the centre and west of the country, and Lenca and Cacaopera in the east.
There are still towns, like Santo Domingo de Guzmán in the southwestern province of Sonsonate, where indigenous people make up 80 percent of the population, Lara said.
Hidden in history
Native peoples were enslaved and exploited by the Spanish colonists and later by the “criollo” - native-born white – elites who governed the country after it gained independence in 1821.
But “more or less in the middle of the 20th century, recognition of indigenous peoples as such began to be lost, and a false conception of ‘civilisation’ began to reign. It was necessary to be very modern and civilised, and to be that, people couldn’t be indigenous,” Lara said.
In 1932, dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez crushed a peasant revolt in the west of the country, killing – according to conservative estimates – between 10,000 to 30,000 people.
After the massacre, indigenous people hid their roots, and stopped speaking Náhuatl, their native language, which was banned by the dictatorship.
The Náhuatl tongue was brought to the area that is now Central America by groups who came in the 10th century from current-day central Mexico, where the language is still spoken. But the Pipil or Nawat variety of Náhuatl that was spoken in El Salvador is on the verge of extinction.
There are only some 200 speakers of the language in El Salvador today, according to the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, produced by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Living conditions among the country’s indigenous communities reflect their historical marginalisation.
The Sociolinguistic Atlas of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America indicates that the poverty rate among native communities in El Salvador stood at 38 percent in 2009, compared to less than 19 percent among the general population, while 67 percent of native households had no piped water, against a national average of 39 percent.
But while the constitutional reform is welcomed by native leaders, they say the struggle for the rights of their people has just begun.
Shandur Kuatzín, president of the Union of Indigenous Communities of Guacotecti Cushcatan, said that after native communities are officially recognised, they will begin to fight for real change, such as the recovery of their communally-owned lands, “which were stolen from us by landowners in the early 19th century.”
The land taken from indigenous communities was used to produce export products like indigo and coffee, the foundation of the wealth of the criollo oligarchy of the time.
“It’s a touchy issue, but we are going to hold demonstrations and marches, to get back what was stolen from us,” Kuatzín told IPS. (END)
Following the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in July 1979, a vast global solidarity movement developed. This provided invaluable support to the beleaguered people of Nicaragua who for ten years were victim to a vast campaign of overt and covert military, political, diplomatic and economic aggression, principally from the US government. Without external support from sympathetic organisations and governments across the world it is doubtful that the Sandinistas would have survived for as long as they did. In the end, Sandinista bureaucratisation, ten years of unceasing war, a massive propaganda campaign and electoral interference, along with the collapse of ‘really existing socialism’ eventually forced the Sandinistas from power in 1990.
The massive international support for Nicaragua and its revolution during the 1980s contrasts with the lukewarm foreign reception that FSLN governments have received since Daniel Ortega was re-elected in 2005. This is puzzling given much-improved economic and social statistics, the fact that the FSLN share of the vote has been increasing steadily since it first won power and the largely positive view of the global left for governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and so on. Why has Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, been singled out for disdain and criticism? Why does the FSLN no longer excite left-wingers in the ‘developed world’? The answer is rooted in the past, in the relationships forged during the 10 years of the first Sandinista government, and in the divisions which occurred after the FSLN lost the 1990 elections.
In the months before their victory in 1979 the Sandinista Front became a broad coalition of groups, which included many members of the former elite. In the following ten years the FSLN grew from a small guerrilla vanguard into a mass political organisation linked to the state and the mechanisms of power. Those with education were in high demand, and rose rapidly in the bureaucracy. Following defeat in 1990, the FSLN was forced to deal with an internal crisis, as well as the political and economic effects of the new government’s right-wing policies.
The crisis led the parliamentary sector of the FSLN to attempt a takeover of the leadership of the Party in order to set it out on a more ‘reformist’ social democratic path. Political differences were exacerbated by arguments over asset grabbing prior to the power handover in 1991, the FSLN’s policy of alliances, as well as personal rivalries within the leadership. The effort to seize the leadership failed, as Ortega and his supporters ably appealed to the Party’s social base to retain the revolutionary legacy. Instead of blaming their defeat in the failure to attract the Party’s base, the social-democrats blamed it on Ortega’s authoritarian tendencies.
What followed was acrimonious division, with the vast majority of the FSLN’s parliamentarians and Party apparatchiks founding a new Party which they called the MRS (Sandinista Renovation Movement) in 1993. Led by Sergio Ramirez, Nicaragua’s former vice-president, the MRS also took a large number of Sandinismo’s leading lights, such as Ernesto Cardenal and Dora Maria Tellez. Having been well known during the 1980s they took with them a decade’s worth of friendships and contacts abroad. Many other educated Sandinistas were forced by privatisations to seek work in the media, business, or in the foreign-financed NGO sector which boomed in the 1990s. Many of them became increasingly critical of the FSLN.
While division was without doubt a serious blow to the FSLN, it also provided an opportunity to revamp the party, to rethink its strategy, and to promote new cadres. While the FSLN had previously been dominated by well-educated Sandinistas from Nicaragua’s traditional elite, now cadres mobilised during the 1980s are at the forefront, people educated by the revolution. Although they lack the ‘legitimacy’ of a guerrilla past, these men and women lived the 1980s revolution in the bottom and middle levels of the FSLN and many fought in the Sandinista armed forces.
Meanwhile the former MRS Sandinistas have lost electoral ground, and their political alliances have moved to the right even while the rhetoric has remained leftist. Lacking a real alternative left-wing national project the MRS has increasingly concentrated on visceral personal attacks, gradually withdrawing from constructive politics. The MRS has received support from US government funded agencies such as USAID and the IRI and NED, and last year the MRS and the PLI were even accused of working with the US embassy in Managua to develop destabilisation plans to create unrest, violence and chaos in Nicaragua around election time. Meanwhile the MRS’ electoral base has shrunk during the 2011 election campaign it became the junior partner in a coalition with the right-wing party PLI. They ended up taking 31% of the vote.
The MRS has accused the FSLN, and Daniel Ortega in particular, of increasing authoritarianism and even of being a ‘neoliberal government’ because of its ‘links’ to Nicaragua’s oligarchy. The MRS has also alleged electoral fraud since 2008, and refused to recognise the last electoral results. In this it is even more vehement than the right-wing opposition, who recognised the results. The reason is most likely related to the fact that unlike the Conservatives and the Liberals, the MRS social base is shifting and its mobilisational capacity shrinking. Its supporters are increasingly not former Sandinistas, but right-wingers. All the opposition, its political parties, NGOs and the media frequently accuse the government of violating human rights, citing the notorious 2006 abortion law as an example, and of using social programmes to gain votes.
These allegations are either baseless or exaggerations. To consider Ortega a dictator is to ignore three electoral victories. While the US and various Western-funded NGOs have criticised some aspects of these elections, they have not deemed them fraudulent. In fact, the election results largely mirror dozens of opinion polls results. Meanwhile the allegations ignore the fact that the FSLN is no longer (if it ever was) a monolithic vanguard organisation. There are the trade unions, then the mass organisations such as the Sandinista Youth and a wide variety of environmental, indigenous and peasant organisations. Finally, there are the Sandinistas linked to the Party apparatus, and the leadership. All feed into the strategic decision-making process. It is true that Ortega has become a figurehead such as never existed before in the FSLN, but whilst this may be seen as a shortcoming in Europe, it ignores his standing in Nicaragua. As one Sandinista said to me “I love Daniel because he has never abandoned us, never stopped working for the people.”
Meanwhile, the abortion law bans abortions and violates women’s rights, but few people are aware that abortion laws are highly restrictive across Latin America, including such enlightened places as Chile and Brazil. The FSLN did not propose the abortion law back in 2005, although it did help pass it (along with today’s opposition) since this was the price of a ‘truce’ with organised religion. Thus, the abortion issue is not a Sandinista problem, it is a Nicaraguan problem and cannot be singled out from Nicaragua’s many social and economic problems.
The real measure of the Sandinista government must be its actions. Through a National Development Plan devised in consultation with business, trade unions and local organisations, the Sandinistas have created economic growth, jobs and improved social services, while undertaking an active foreign policy. The plan has renewed the state’s role in the economy and other fields. The FSLN has also designed an energy policy focused on renewable energy to create reliable energy sources for industry and to turn Nicaragua into an energy exporter.
The overall result is that GDP has grown by a quarter since 2005; in 2010 GDP grew by 4.5%, the highest growth rate in Central America. In education the Sandinista government has restored free education and a literacy programme has eliminated illiteracy for the second time in 30 years. Healthcare has once more been taken out into rural areas. Unemployment and poverty are down. Nicaragua currently spends 53.9% of the government budget on social issues including health and education. Whilst it is clear that much remains to be done, it is also clear that under Ortega and the FSLN, Nicaragua now has a government that prioritises people, and that fights for the interests of the poor whilst pushing for economic development for all.
The disappearance of French journalist Romeo Langlois, has raised concerns about the ongoing dangers facing journalists reporting on the conflict in Colombia, as well as highlighting the confusion that often surrounds the conflict.
Langlois was accompanying Colombian army troops on an anti-drugs mission in Caqueta, a conflict- riven region of Colombia. The coca fields they were attacking are claimed to belong to the FARC, and the troops were duly attacked by the FARC. Reports in local media initially reported a four hour firefight in which 20 troops were killed, while the government has claimed 4 dead, and several ‘disappeared’. Some of these have been found, but some troops remain disappeared. Meanwhile other sources allege that the government is hiding its true casualty figures by saying that troops are disappeared and claim that the FARC destroyed 3 helicopters in the operation. Such variance in casualty figures is common, with official figures stating that in 2010 the Colombian armed forces lost 2052 wounded and 488 killed, while guerrillas claimed 2242 wounded and 2078 troops killed - although they include both police and paramilitaries in this figure. What is clear is that the scale of the conflict is largely hidden from Colombian society, and from the international community.
Meanwhile, the circumstances of Langlois’ capture remain murky. The government alleges that the FARC fought wearing civilian clothes and that they fought from civilian houses, in violation of international humanitarian law. To prove the point the government released a short video clip showing men in white shirts out in the open, shooting and being shot. It is unclear whether the footage actually comes from the operation in question, and it doesn’t show them in or near houses. Surviving soldiers have reported that Langlois, who was wearing a Colombian military helmet and flak jacket, was wounded in the arm during the fighting. Apparently he then took off his body armour and helmet, and ran towards the guerrillas. This somewhat unusual behaviour was put down to “tension and pressure” by the Colombian Minister of Defence, Juan Carlos Pinzon. Some commentators think it more likely that the army troops fled during the fierce fighting, leaving the journalist behind. A 2011 report by the Arco Iris foundation confirmed that although the training of the Colombian army had improved, in ground combat troops often performed worse than the guerrillas, a failing largely compensated for with airpower.
Subsequently, a video was released by a self-proclaimed FARC guerrilla fighter claiming that the guerrillas held the wounded journalist. However, apparently the FARC usually communicates by written means and no official FARC confirmation has been forthcoming.
The situation has caused some questioning of the practice of ‘embedding’ journalists with the armed forces. Langlois was not identified as a non-military person, he was essentially wearing military uniform with helmet and camouflaged body armour. Even the Vice-President, Angelino Garzon has weighed in, saying that “The military are military. Civilians, including government figures and journalists, should not use military clothes.” However, the debate goes further with Andres Morales of FLIP (Press Freedom Foundation) saying that the exposure of a foreign journalist to such risks was the outcome of a policy of limiting media contacts with the guerrillas as part of the government’s strategy to isolate them. In 2010 the Colombian government accused the Telesur TV channel of complicity with the guerrillas for having visited a guerrilla camp. Therefore, Langlois was one of the few journalists to even cover the conflict from the frontlines.
The disappearance or capture of Langlois by the FARC has also conveniently overshadowed the FARC’s recent unilateral handover of its last military hostages, which had been seized on by Colombian peace campaigners as a sign of peace, as well as providing ammunition to hawks within government and society (such as former President Alvaro Uribe) to allege that the guerrillas are incorrigible hostage-takers and therefore not valid negotiating partners. Meanwhile, the allegations that the insurgents fought in civilian dress have helped to cover up the systematic abuses of both human rights and international humanitarian law by state forces, and by their paramilitary allies. Human rights groups routinely report aircraft strafing and bombing civilian settlements, as well as illegal roundups and detentions, false accusations by the military, the stationing of troops in civilian buildings like hospitals, schools and community centres, as well as the use of civilian homes by the military for billeting and as fighting positions – all of which are violations of international humanitarian law. Not to mention some 1,500 cases of extrajudicial executions carried out since 2002, in which over 3,000 troops are implicated so far, and the infamous practice of ‘false positives’ whereby troops killed civilians before presenting them as guerrillas killed in combat in return for bonuses from the Ministry of Defence.
It is to be hoped that Langlois is found safe and sound and returned to his family and friends as soon as possible. However, this case must not overshadow the grim reality of what is in many ways a highly militarised social conflict which has only one solution – negotiation.
John Pilger’s Nicaragua: A Nation’s Right to Survive. Brings to life the period of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Puts Nicaragua in the context of its time and place - Central America at the height of the dirty wars that killed hundreds of thousands…
A great video of images of the dictatorship in Chile, including the funeral of Pablo Neruda a few days after the coup, and images of an improvised demonstration. In the second part of the video you can see the same ‘guanacos’ and tear gas spraying as you can see in Chile today being used by the government of Sebastian Piñera - a government of those who benefited from and supported the dictatorship.
Muchos cubanos no conocen lo que ocurre en Chile… y son demasiados chilenos los que no tienen idea de qué sucede en Cuba. En ambos casos, y por razones diversas, existe un conocimiento superficial y estereotipado construido por los grandes medios de difusión masiva. La “carta abierta” de un músico cubano a Camila Vallejos, es una muestra, intencionada o no, de una manipulación que se deslizaentre medias verdades y explicaciones truncas, unido a una forzada e irracional comparación entre “ambas” represiones y sus “dictaduras”.
Aunque sea de elemental obviedad, hay que dejar sentado algunas esencias. La revolución Cubana se gestó entre universidades, sindicatos, barrios populares y bohíos de la sierra y el campo, y se lanzó tras cuarteles militares y barrios de ricos enQuinta Avenida y Siboney.La contrarrevolución que derrotó al Gobierno Popular de Salvador Allende se gesta entre generales, la embajada de los EEUU, las asociaciones empresariales y los barrios altos de la capital; y son militares los que asesinan o encarcelana hombres y mujeres en fabricas y barrios populares tras el asalto a La Moneda. Los ricos y poderosos huyen de Cuba; los ricos y poderosos chilenos se consolidan y se hacen mas ricos con Pinochet y en los sucesivos gobiernos “democráticos”.EEUU intervino para organizar el golpe militar y consolidar al dictador chileno y su modelo hasta tanto le fue útil. El mismo EEUU que declara y ejerce una sistemática agresión en todos los planos contra Cuba, incluido actos terroristas, y una cruel guerra económica que persigue al comercio cubano en cualquier parte del mundo. El músico cubano en su carta pública no da cuenta de este papel determinante de los EEUU en la vida cubana, sino sólo para exculparlo o poner en duda su constante financiamiento a la contrarrevolución interna. Por el contrario Chile y su modelo sonparte integrante del sistema político y económico promovido por los EEUU.
Sobre el papel de los EEUU en Cuba se puede hacer una doble lectura. Por una parteel gobierno revolucionario desde un inicio establece una legitima y amplia política de defensa, ignorada o despreciada por la contrarrevolución, dado que segmentos de ella, históricamente han sido pro-norteamericanos o francamente anexionistas, y por otra parte ─dato de no menor relevancia─ se trata del empleo indiscriminado y justificativo que ha hecho la propia revolución de este asunto para esconder o argumentar acerca de errores, incapacidades y deformaciones internas. Y esto último no es ninguna revelación, son parte del proceso de cambios que la revolución impulsa desde hace cuatro años. Para Cuba la presencia de los EEUU es consustancial a su historia, es vivencial, cotidiana; apenas 120 Km.separan a esta isla de un poco mas de 110 mil Km2 y casi 12 millones de habitantes, frente a un cuasi continente de cerca de 10 millones de Km2 y 300 millones de habitantes. Para muchos chilenos el “imperialismo norteamericano” es apenas un discurso comunista; para amplios sectores los EEUU son un aplastante paradigma cultural y para no pocos grupos de poder son el sostén principal de susnegocios.
Las esencias de la represión.
Uno de los peores momentos que ha vivió Cuba en su historia revolucionaria, fue en los años siguientes a la desaparición del Campo Socialista. En 1991 Cuba pierde de un día para otro el 85 % de su comercio exterior, de cuajo se terminó “la teta rusa” como popularmente se le denominó. La calidad de vida de los cubanos descendió a niveles inauditos. La Revolución se había tempranamente alineado e integrado su economía a un bloque económico con los pies de barro. Cuba se quedó sola y los cubanos ricos o sus descendientes en Miami prepararon sus maletas y se vieron en sus palacetes de la Avenida los Presidentes, y la prole de los terratenientes norteamericanos soñaron con recuperar sus latifundios.Ningún gobierno en Latinoamérica y quizás en el mundo, hubiese resistido tal impacto. Y la revolución sobrevivió sin tanques en la calle, sin tropas represoras ante el comprensible descontento degrupos que salieron a manifestarse con violencia en noches de apagones eternos. La represión principalla realizóla propia gente organizada, lo hicieron o colaboraron en parte los CDR que alude y no explica el músico cubano. Organización popular en cada cuadra y en todo el país que además de cumplir tareas sociales, su misión principal es defender la revolución,son “las hordas” para la contrarrevolución.
No obstante, “la teta rusa” durante tres décadas, no solo tendría consecuencias económicas. Ni los CDRni toda la red de organizaciones sociales y políticas escapan al deterioro y anquilosamiento del proyecto revolucionario por la pérdida paulatina de su protagonismo y el desinterés de las nuevas generaciones. Para muchos analistas estadounidenses la vuelta de Cuba al redil capitalista se trata de una cuestión de tiempo. Reconocida la gravedad del caso, todas las organizaciones sociales y políticas, principalmente el propio Partido Comunista, están inmersas en un complejo proceso de actualización y revitalización, en un complejo proceso frenado por sectores ortodoxos que se resisten a los cambios por una aplastante rutina en del ejercicio del poder o ante la perdida de precarios privilegios.
Es lo más probable que sea cierta parte de la denuncia del músico cubano relativo a los controles y “represión” sobre las actividadesde la “disidencia pacifica”. Los controles a las comunicaciones y teléfonos no solo son herramientas de los aparatos policiales de EEUU, en nuestro Chile todos lo saben y se lucha bajo tal premisa. Los aparatos de inteligencia policial y de las FFAA cumplen con su rol en esta sociedad dividida. Lo que ignora nuestro músico denunciante es que a los que protestan en Chile no son“intimidados por hordas de gobierno” ni controlados en su cuadra por CDR inexistentes, son policías que parecen extraterrestres, rompen cabezas y hacen estallar ojos con balines de escopetas… y no son pocos los muertos en estos años por acción demostrada de la policía… que sin tapujos encarcela amparada por leyes dictadas bajo el gobierno de Pinochet. Y si de “dictaduras” se trata, el músico no tiene la menor idea de cuerpos con las guatas (barrigas) abiertas lanzados al mar, electrodos en la punta del pene, vaginas penetradas por ratones enloquecidos… o ametrallamientos a mansalva sobre barrios populares… ¿Los cubanos en Miami se habrán enterado por CNN que esto ocurrió en Chile en dictadura? ¿En estos tiempos los cubanos de Cuba habrán visto por la TV cable(trucha) que piratean desde los EEUU a un aysenino con el ojo reventado y el cuerpo lleno de perdigones? ¿Cuanto daría El Mercurio por una dama de blanco con la cabeza sangrante y pateada por policíasextraterrestres?¿Saben los cubanos cuantos muertos produjo la dictadura? ¿Cuántos desaparecidos? ¿Pueden hacer una lista de los desaparecidos en Cuba?
Contra una dictadura se alzo el pueblo cubano hace más de cincuenta años… y no tengo dudas que lo haría otra vez si el caso fuera. La contrarrevolución siempre ha procurado que el papel principal en su “lucha” lo ejerza EEUU. Nuestra dictadura fue removida del gobierno ─no derrotada─, en parte decisiva aunque silenciada, por un pueblo que salió a las calles, se organizó, se clandestinizó, procuró armas, protestó, se tomó barrios enteros y también marchó y hasta cantó y puso velas en jornadas memorables de Protesta Nacional. Los pueblos son proliferos y muy ingeniosos en sus luchas… y eso lo da la masividad…, las organizaciones armadas que combatieron solo fueron parte de esa gesta. Y si las condiciones hoy son distintas en Chile, no es precisamente por benevolencia del sistema… son resultado de esa lucha, y para nadie es un secreto que de ponerlo otra vez en peligro… no trepidarán en actuar con toda la violencia que históricamente ha empleado la derecha y el poder en Chile en cada oportunidad que les ha sido necesario.
Política, economía y participación.
Es lo más probable que el pueblo cubano no tenga masivamente a su alcance la carta abierta del músico cubano dirigida a Camila Vallejos.Ningún de los medios de difusiónen Cuba la reproducirá. Las reflexiones de Camila únicamente aparecerán en medios alternativos en Chile, ninguno de los grandes grupos empresariales dueños de la prensa y televisión chilena las publicarán, aparecerá lo que ellos quieran decir. La disidencia política es tolerable en los marcos de la “democracia” de partidos políticos construida sobre los cimientos de la actual Constitución impuesta en dictadura, sin ninguna participación popular. La escuálida prensa contestataria y de izquierda apenas sobrevive en medio del consumo de la cultura “chatarra”. No es una amenaza. Mientras en Cuba los EEUU hacen ingentes presiones y esfuerzos tecnológicos para introducir unaTVcontrarrevolucionaria, así como fomentar lo que eufemísticamente llaman “una prensa libre”. El Mercurio es su paradigma, con más de doscientas páginas en domingo y kilos de papel invertido fomentando un consumismo desenfrenado. Ábraseun solo resquicio a esa intención en Cuba, y la riqueza del imperio correrá a raudales comprando conciencias como prolegómenos de un viaje sin retorno al modelo actual del capitalismo neoliberal, muy lejano al de tiempos de Batista. Muchos viejos cubanos recuerdan ese capitalismo liberal del estado interventor, y no pocos jóvenes solo ven los oropeles y candilejas del actual modelo del estado subsidiario y transnacionalizado. A esas fuerzas, a esos espíritus cubanos un tanto difusos en la actualidad, apuestan los tanques pensantes de los EEUU.
No es una opción para los revolucionarios cubanos la “democracia de los partidos” ni el tipo de medios de difusión en poder de mega empresas privadas. Conocen el modelo de los “dos partidos” que es uno solo en los EEUU. La alternativa que buscan revitalizar es la “democracia popular” y los medios de difusión en propiedad y controlada por ese pueblo en sus múltiples organizaciones socialesy políticas. Estas son apenas generalidades que introducen a uno de los temas más complejo que hoy enfrenta la revolución. De la actualización de su modelo político donde se retorne a formulas genuinamente participativas del pueblo, y del resultado en la actualización de su modelo económico socialista, dependerá el éxito de los esfuerzos que hoy se realizan. Al menos ya lo advierten y reflexionan. Profundizar la democracia participativa al interior del Partido Comunista, donde se estimula la mayor diversidad de opiniones, donde jamás se persiga o desplace a quien tenga opiniones criticas, divergentes…,son apenas algunos de los lineamientos que se pueden leer en los discursos de sus principales dirigentes, encabezados por Raúl Castro, donde se reconoce sin ambigüedades que el peligro real de la destrucción de la revolución esta en los propios cubanos. Los grandes medios de prensa fueron naciendo al alero de las organizaciones sociales, sindicatos y el propio partido comunistas, y de la misma manera con el transcurso del tiempo fueron perdiendo tal esencia representativa, participativa y critica, al reflejar el estancamiento y deformación de la democracia de las mayorías.
Cuba HOY busca enconadamente y en todos los planos construir un mejor socialismo, esta sola definición determina su negación para los EEUU y todos sus aliados. Para estos no es relevante la participación popular en los cambios y que se estén introduciendo categorías económicas de mercado. Millones de cubanos participaron en el último congreso del Partido Comunista, transformado así en un congreso de las mayorías. El grado de las criticas y los acalorados debates en todas partes donde hubiese cualquier organización, auguran un buen comienzo en un proceso de cambios, que los cubanos prefieren llamar de “actualización”. Estamos en presencia de otro gran periodo de trabajos y desprendimientos del pueblocubano, hoy en mejores condiciones económicas, donde los resultados objetivos y materiales son claves para el éxito. En la actualidad la mayoría de los cubanos han nacido en el periodo revolucionario, para un sector no desestimable, las increíbles y conocidas conquistas de la revolución, por las cuales los chilenos combaten hoy, son ignoradaso asumidas como naturales a toda sociedad.La generación que hizo la revolución tiene el deber, parafraseando a Raúl Castro, de consolidar un socialismo con una economía eficiente y recuperar la esencia de la verdadera democracia. No hay tiempos indefinidos nicuentan con el mismo espíritu revolucionario y generalizado de las primeras décadas de la revolución. “Sin prisa…pero sin pausa” es la consigna que sentencia el dramatismo y gravedad de la urgencia.
Muchos ojos chilenos y de todos los pueblos, tienen la mirada puesta en Cuba… para al menos tener esperanzas…que una sociedad mejor es posible… sabiendo que su construcción y diseño en Chile responderá a nuestra realidad, a su pueblo. De un día ser cierto, se hará entre montañas cerros y mar, entre los fríos del sur y los desiertos del norte… la copia de los cubanos a proyectos de ultramar… debiera ser una lección aprendida.
Interesting interview with a former FARC guerrilla where they talk about peace, the state of the war and why the war continues. Analysis of the Caguan peace process… “peace has a cost” he says and “Colombia deserves the right to peace” but “society needs to be prepared for peace”.
That’s what makes this article in the Wall Street Journal even more worrying - here the analysis is that the war DOES have a military outcome - and that achieving it means increasing the numbers of US troops and technology involved (even though the US has failed to ‘win’ in either Afghanistan or Iraq). This will likely mean yet more innocent deaths in Colombia and the war extending for longer. The increased presence of US troops will probably prompt a nationalist response in some sectors of Colombian society, and even within the military. Whose war is this? What is it being fought for?
This video is an introduction to Marx and Engels’ ‘Communist Manifesto’. A great study aid for anyone interested in how to analyse social problems, and for anyone interested in understanding one of the key texts of the left in Latin America and everywhere through the 20th century. The concept that “the only constant is change” and the concept that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” have yet to be fully integrated into mainstream social science. A must for anyone interested in marxism.
This is a rather amusing effort about China copying US policy towards China and flipping it right back at the US underlines many of the tactics the US has also used against any Latin American government that has tried to assert sovereignty over economic or political affairs.
A Humorous Look at Foreign Policy, if China Were to Copy the USA.
The US has a long history of using dozens of government departments and scores of NGOs, in vast propaganda campaigns meant to subvert the patriotism of citizens of other countries, incite unrest and even revolution, and sometimes to just embarrass, countries it doesn’t like. This includes everything from “The Voice of America”, to unrest in Tibet, and Twitter and Facebook in Iran.
Most of these are financed by the CIA, but many more innocent-sounding organisations support countless others. This support comes from people like the Far-Right Koch Brothers, the Carnegie Endowment (for “democracy”, of course), the Ford Foundation, and of course the NED.
The NED - the National Endowment for Democracy - is arguably the worst of these, planning and financing everything from propaganda like the VOA to instigating revolutions. But all of this activity is under the umbrella of one or another NGO, whose purpose is most often diametrically opposed to its name.
We have therefore created a “Foreign Propaganda Policy” for China that emulates the US high standard, and one which will undoubtedly be deeply appreciated by the Americans.
Here are the specifics of our plan:
Communications
Buy a national US TV channel and convert it to OPD TV - One-Party Democracy TV. Use the tag line, “Slavery Gets Stuff Done”, and use the air time to show Americans how to build their own Great Wall of Texas by using illegal Mexicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans to wall out their own people with cluster-bomb-filled adobe bricks. Cost: maybe 3 billion up front and 2 billion in annual replacement costs. But this might be so much fun the cost won’t matter.
Organise and fund a “Radio Free Universe”, and use it to subvert American patriotism by letting people think the broadcasts are coming from Andromeda. Tom Cruise and Rush Limbaugh will buy it, and they’ll sell it to the other 80% of Americans who are Right-Wing extremist whackos anyway. Use the tag line, “If you aren’t with us, you’re against us.” Do the broadcasting from Cuba, Nicaragua, the Honduras, Grenada (to repay the US for the invasion), and Panama. Broadcast from Canada too; tell Stephen Harper that (a) it’s God’s will and (b) it will put more people in jail, and he’ll buy it. Cost: maybe 5 billion to set up and 5 billion a year in operating costs. Ten billion, if Harper has an attack of mental clarity and doesn’t fall for it.
Nobel Prizes
(1) The Peace Prize
Search Texas prisons for a illegal-immigrant Mexican psycho-flake, and nominate him for the next Nobel Peace Prize. Ignore the inconvenient truth of his being a serial fruit-picker and forget all the terrible things he did to small animals, and focus instead on his fight for ‘freedom and democracy’. Cost: 900 million for the international ad campaign to embarrass the US and 100 million to bribe the Nobel Prize Committee. That’s much more than the US spent to get Liu Xiaobo the Peace Prize, but then China is richer than the US.
(2) The Economics Prize
Find a Chinese high-school student who can lucidly explain that Americans buy crap made in China and the Chinese buy crap made in America, because consumers like choices. Nominate him for this fake Nobel Prize in Economics, to stand beside Paul Krugman who made the identical discovery last year. Cost: 300 million for the ad campaign and 100 million to bribe the Nobel committee. Again, that’s more than AIPAC and the US government had to spend on Krugman, but …. see comment above.
NGOs
Organise and fund a “Free Hawaii” foundation with lavish domestic and international ad campaigns, to give the US government something to do when they aren’t busy sticking their noses into Tibet and Xinjiang. Cost: I’d spend at least 20 billion on this one, and well worth it, too.
Economics
Organise and fund an “American Council for Sustainable Development”, and use it to convince Americans to continue the rampant de-industrialisation of their country. Organise in tandem the “Post-Industrial Age Society” and use that to convince Americans that bookkeeping entries made by Goldman Sachs are the same as real production and GNP growth. Cost to increase the US spiral around the drain: maybe 5 billion each; 10 billion if you want to really increase the flow.
Social Harmony
Organise and fund a “Coalition for a Safe and Peaceful America”. Round up every anti-gun proponent available and hire the Saatchi Brothers to whip them into a frenzy of peace. For TVCs and print ads, use the tag line, “All NRA members should be taken out behind the barn and shot.” For billboards, use the tag line, “Only Gays own Guns.” Pay each person $1,000 to participate in strident and exaggerated street demonstratations. Encourage the NRA to attend and bring their guns. Cost: probably 10 billion if you want to hire enough people to make this work, but think of the potential for violence, chaos, police brutality and peace. Then of course China can sanctimoniously condemn the US for “cracking down” on innocent citizens parading for peace.
Religious Freedom
Organise and fund a “Foundation for Religious Freedom”, and use it to finance a massive resurgence of the Moonies, Scientology and the Falun Gong. Get them a copy of the CIA book on extraordinary rendition and indoctrination, and encourage them to bribe politicians to enhance their tax-free status. After their arrest, mount massive ad campaigns to solemnly condemn the US government for religious intolerance and persecution. For TVCs and print ads use the tag line, “Why are priests and rabbis always trying to get into my pew?” Cost: I think 10 billion should cover most of it; maybe another 10 for legal fees.
Organise and fund a “World Congress of Religious and Sexual Tolerance” and use it to create huge rifts in an already-confused American society and distract people from concentrating on the impending economic doom. Focus on, and combine, prominent minorities like the Jews, and high-profile sexual issues like gay rights. For the TVC tag line use, “If God wanted me to bend over, He would have put diamonds on the floor.” Locate candidates who look good on TV, and fund their campaigns for a Senate seat. Cost for the program and 25 promising candidates: about 10 billion, but worth every penny.
Political Matters
Establish and fund the “World Harmony Association” for the purpose of subverting, disrupting, and causing political chaos in the US. Fund the establishment of (cf. Italy) 325 new political parties so as to fragment the country and totally baffle everybody. Grant unlimited funds to the CNNs, the Foxes, the Becks, for sure the Limbaugh family, but grant equal funds to the opposite-spectrum flakes too. Be especially on the lookout for potential party leaders with a witchcraft or movie acting background. A Scientology or Moonie history would be helpful too. Cost: maybe 10 billion, but imagine the fun that China could have.
Organise and fund a “Society for the Preservation of Two-Party Democracy”, and use it to mount and fund a Supreme Court challenge so as to permit all 325 parties to field their own candidates for President. Fund a write-in campaign to obtain at least 100 million letters in favor, and don’t worry; nobody will have time to verify all those signatures. If successful, it should be able to fracture the US political scenery and increase the spiral flow around the drain. Cost: maybe 20 billion, but think of the potential to turn dysfunctional into ungovernable.
Organise and fund a “Hillary Clinton for President” campaign, to remove some attention from Sarah Palin. Ignore the fact that the woman has a personality like 40 miles of bad road, and focus on her having been a virgin before, and likely long after, marriage. That will draw votes from the Tea Party.
Organise an additional campaign for Monica Lewinsky too; might as well make it a three-way race. Her tag line would be “If you take back the country and give it to me, I’ll do things with it that you couldn’t imagine in your dreams.” Give Hugh Hefner the money to sponsor her. Cost: 300 million per candidate, a bit less if the virginity story proves true. But worth every penny.
Organise a “Coalición Para una América Unificada” in California, Texas and Florida, and use it to agitate for (1) Latino control of the State Governments and (2) secession immediately thereafter. Attract followers on the basis that the states really belong to them anyway, having been stolen at gunpoint by John Wayne. Use the tagline, “Remember the Alamo”. Cost: probably 10 billion to make this work, but you never know what will happen if you plant the seeds of independence into the fertile minds of free men.
Organise and fund a “Save California Assistance Program”. Use it to convince Californians that they’ve been cheated by the US Federal Government in not receiving the same 1.3 trillion dollars in bailouts as a few New York banks did. Americans, especially those in California, love to hear they’re victims and it’s all someone else’s fault, so run an aggressive campaign and whip them into a frenzy. Have them vaguely threaten unspecified acts of chaos and anarchy; Republicans like that because it will give them a new war.
When they’re ready, fund the already-organised “Free California Coalition”, then source and fund thousands of whackos to agitate for the secession of California. That will give the US government something additional to do when it isn’t busy sticking its nose into Tibet and Xinjiang. Cost: I think 5 billion for each part should do it. We don’t want to overspend here; we don’t actually want California to secede; we just want to bankrupt it and drive out the whites so Mexico can reclaim it.
(This article, or a translated version of it was published in Kathemerini on March 18th 2012)
Jorge Eliecer Gaitan was without doubt Colombia’s most important political figure of the 20th century. Gaitan combined a comprehensive political programme adjusted to Colombia’s political reality, with an unparalleled charisma which would have eventually taken him to the Presidency of Colombia if his life had not been cut short. His killing changed the course of Colombian history, sparking massive violence and enabling elites to avoid having to make broad-based concessions.
A lawyer and intellectual of modest origins, Gaitan was a proponent of structural reforms and a fierce defender of the powerless. He graduated from the National University with a thesis called “Socialist Ideas in Colombia”, demonstrating an early interest in left-wing political thought. He then studied in Italy, an experience which led to his rejection of fascism as the method by which capitalism “defends the enjoyment of individualist abuses by means of collective organisation”. By the early 1930s Gaitan was already a well known leader thanks to his ardent denunciation of the ‘massacre of the banana-plantations’ in late 1928, where Colombian troops massacred thousands of workers demonstrating for better working conditions as later described by Garcia Marquez in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. Gaitan then became Mayor of Bogota in 1936, and was appointed Minister of Education in 1940. In both these posts he established social programmes and public works which further enhanced his reputation as a defender of the poor.
By the late 1940s Gaitan had become the unrivalled leader of the Liberal Party, transforming it from an elite-led party to one that began to channel popular desires for change and which had majorities in both Congress and Senate. His platform was one that demanded ‘respect for the common man’, that sought to build an economy ‘at the service of people’ and to establish forms of participatory democracy as a way of ending what he called the ‘oligarchic regime.’
Although portrayed as a populist leader, Gaitan had clearly thought out both his aims and his methods. His conception of the state was as ‘the synthesis of democracy”, and he proposed the formation of a coalition that could agree on specific issues to advance the programme of reforms. This alliance would have the dual benefits of avoiding ‘caciques’ [chiefs] and violence. Gaitan did not believe in ‘catastrophic battles’. He thought that Colombia, with its backward economic structures and its ignorant population needed generations to achieve profound changes. His economic thought was similarly developed - the economy was to achieve a balance of production and consumerism, with a progressive abolition of exploitation and a state role in planning the economy and in redistributing wealth. “We are not enemies of wealth, but of poverty,” he said, and he argued that in Colombia wealth could not be spread without a radical land reform programme. He also proposed environmental legislation, labour laws - all within a transformative, revolutionary framework. Despite his populist theatrics, this was not the programme of a demagogue or dictator, but that of a democratic revolutionary, and is in many respects, similar to that of Salvador Allende in Chile.
This programme and his vast popular support made Gaitan powerful enemies. Within Colombia the landowning elites dreaded a potential land reform. Political elites also rejected his ideas on democracy and his anti-imperialist nationalism. Furthermore, Gaitan rose to prominence at a time when the United States was encouraging the closing down of democratic spaces across Latin America. After all the 9th Pan-American Conference held in Bogota at the time of Gaitan’s assassination had as its main aim the creation of a hemispheric bloc that rejected communism and which began the process of framing social conflict across the region in the parameters of the European Cold War.
On April 9th 1948, Gaitan was gunned down as he left his office for lunch. While it is still unknown who was behind the killing, the results are clear for all to see. Since his murder Colombia has had an exclusionary political system challenged by strong guerrilla movements. This has severely distorted Colombia’s development, and has meant that Colombia, unlike the rest of the continent, has been unable to resolve its social conflict peaceably.
Following his killing, Colombia succumbed to a ten-year (1948-1958) period of violence, until Liberal and Conservative elites agreed to share power, and an alternating presidency and shared parliament were set up. Other political forces were excluded. The violence also led to the creation of self-defence organisations by Liberal and Communist peasants. Many guerrillas who disarmed under a government amnesty in 1958 were killed, and therefore some chose to continue fighting. Then the 1959 Cuban revolution had the effect of spreading the conviction that they could, and should, overthrow the old system and the peasant groups became guerrilla armies. At the same time, in order to ‘avoid another Cuba’, the US began to train Latin American militaries in the notorious National Security Doctrine, preaching the existence of an ‘internal enemy’, and funding the first military operation against Colombian peasant guerrillas in Plan Laso.
While successive governments paid lip service to the need to resolve inequality, and the importance of land reform, the absence of real democracy and the entrenched powers of landowners meant that change was largely superficial. Together, inequality, state negligence, and the lack of real political freedom sustained the guerrillas. The 1979 Sandinista revolution, and the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala were reminders to the Colombian elite that something needed to be done to resolve the conflict, and during the mid-1980s a peace process began, under which the guerrillas, left-wing parties, trade unions and others helped create a left-wing political coalition called the Patriotic Union.
During the same period, to counter the growing guerrilla presence, and guerrilla taxes and extortion, landowners, drug traffickers and the military began to establish paramilitary armies. Equating the Patriotic Union with the guerrillas, and operating alongside the military, these death squads killed between 3,000 and 5,000 of its members. Since then nearly 3,000 trade unionists have also been killed by paramilitaries. Many thousands of human rights defenders, political activists and social organisers of all kinds have also been killed or disappeared. And the war continues causing immense suffering. Over 6,000 Colombian troops have become casualties in the last 3 years, 5 million Colombians are internally displaced, thousands have been disappeared, or killed as ‘collateral damage’ in the war.
As in the 1940s land and inequality continue to be major problems. According to a recent UN report on 189 countries, Colombia is the third most unequal after Haiti and Angola. Labour rights are virtually inexistent and human rights abuses abound. The political system is still highly exclusionary, and voter abstention is routinely around 60% in the cities (and higher in rural areas).Paramilitarism and the drugs trade have penetrated the state so far that the last president, Alvaro Uribe, is fighting claims that he was himself a paramilitary. This is far from Gaitan’s political and economic vision.
In short, the tragic legacy of the assassination of Gaitan has been a society whose development has been severely distorted by extreme violence and political exclusion. Gaitan’s vision appears distant, and yet the resolution of Colombia’s conflict lies within it, within a more equal, truly democratic republic where the integrity of the ‘common man’ is respected.
