[Mar 5] "Oaxaca, the APPO, and the Alternative Media" (Gustavo Esteva and Sergio Beltran)

The UC Berkeley Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Center for Latin American Studies present:

Gustavo Esteva and Sergio Beltrán
(Universidad de la Tierra, Oaxaca)

"Oaxaca, the APPO, and the Alternative Media"

The Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO in Spanish) coalesced in response to police repression against a strike by the Oaxacan teachers' union, and occupied the city of Oaxaca from July to November 2006. Gustavo Esteva and Sergio Beltrán will discuss the conflict as well as the strategic use of the alternative media by this grassroots social movement and the Mexican government.


Monday, March 5
4-6pm
Spanish & Portuguese Library (5125 Dwinelle Hall)

Posted by Radio Zapatista

President Bush to Visit Colombia as Part of his Trip to Latin America, Where He Will See No Evil

• Significant ties to illegal paramilitaries found in Colombia’s Congress and President Álvaro Uribe’s Administration
• Colombia negotiating with and showing leniency to mass-murdering “narcoterrorists”
• U.S. acting suspiciously uncritical of Colombia’s refusal to extradite known drug traffickers
• Elimination of extradition undermines the Colombian phase of the “war on drugs”
• White House increases annual aid levels to Colombia from about $728 million to $750 million

Soon President Bush will be visiting Colombia, the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the hemisphere, where he is expected to discuss the current state of U.S. - Colombian counter-narcotics initiatives. However, this trip inauspiciously comes at a time when Bogotá is witnessing an unprecedented series of political scandals. After the surrender late last year of Salvatore Mancuso, ex-leader of the notorious right-wing paramilitary group, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), international focus has ironically shifted from his crimes to those of his captors. After turning himself in and ceremoniously giving up his pistol, Mancuso admitted to participating in acts of kidnapping, drug trafficking, murder, and torture during his time in command of the AUC. His confession, which gained him near-unlimited immunity, has expanded, though, to accuse many top Colombian politicians of supporting and aiding the AUC in the militia’s merciless crusade that has devastated rural communities and killed thousands of campesinos. To corroborate these accusations, Mancuso provided the court with a copy of the “Ralito Agreement”, a veritable treaty of cooperation signed by leaders of the AUC, as well as eleven members of the Colombian Congress, two provincial governors, and five mayors. Despite the substantial evidence of widespread corruption, Washington, and certainly a visiting President Bush, will have little motivation to querulously chide the U.S.’s favorite Latin American spear carrier.

From Rape to Riches
Formed in 1997, the AUC began as a small militia available as hired vigilantes to local ranchers being threatened by kidnapping, physical assault, or even murder by leftist guerillas. Although it continued to claim that its intention was to check the power of groups like FARC and ELN, the AUC’s mission grew increasingly violent as it began working solely as a right-wing death squad to further the interests of the wealthy political elites. Continuing under the guise of its “patriotic” pursuit, the AUC committed grievous crimes against thousands of innocent victims and escalated internal strife in Colombia.

The AUC’s tactics, which included kidnapping, mass-murder, torture, rape, forced disappearances, and assassination, were so horrific that, out of embarrassment, the U.S. had to eventually add the group to its list of terrorist organizations, which ironically also included ELN and FARC guerillas, groups that the vigilante body had been created to fight. But in addition to brutal and inhumane tactics against suspected leftists, the AUC’s grisly campaign targeted non-combatants like trade unionists, human rights advocates, liberal politicians, and even Colombian peasants that the paramilitaries labeled as left-wing sympathizers. However, even after the AUC was designated by the U.S. State Department as an “international terrorist organization,” the paramilitary group continued to grow and eventually its violence wantonly grew to include a ghastly campaign to ‘socially cleanse’ Colombia of homosexuals and other groups that it designated ‘undesirable’.

To fund its efforts the AUC found a comfortable niche in the Colombian drug-trafficking industry and with its considerable military power and wide-spread ideological support, it was able to achieve notable successes within this violent and dangerous trade. As a result of the rise in the group’s financial resources, the paramilitaries gradually began focused on participating in Colombian politics. By the end of the 1990s, the AUC began coercing votes for a cadre of selected national and local candidates who were already sympathetic or potentially supportive of its cause. During this period, the AUC also expanded its use of narcotics’ profits to bribe or eliminate less ideologically-friendly politicians, police, and armed forces’ personnel. The success of these efforts, according to Mancuso, was that the AUC rapidly came to control numerous local governments and a stunning third of the national legislature by 2001.

Estranged Bedfellows?
Mancuso’s surprising willingness to turn himself in was not due to a guilty conscience or lack of places to hide. Instead, it was the result of tailor-made Colombian legislation shaped by President Uribe’s administration that, with the alleged intention of luring the group to demobilize, set an atrociously low maximum eight year sentencing limit for AUC leaders in return for their surrender. This means that Mancuso, who admitted to personally committing over 300 murders, orchestrating dozens of bloody massacres, and trafficking massive amounts of narcotics, will ultimately serve less prison time than a tax evader. Even though Bogotá has pointed to many expected benefits of its clemency program, it should be noted that the AUC commanders who surrender are not required to actually ensure that their troops fully disarm . As a result, the country has failed assuage its critics’ doubts that this leniency towards the AUC may be a hugely one-sided quid pro quo.

Up until the late 1990s, Colombia’s military employed many of the same bloody and internationally condemned tactics against left-wing groups fighting in the country’s civil war, as those utilized by AUC Field Commanders currently on trial. However, because of growing international outrage over the military’s reviled methods, the U.S. was forced to politely criticize the Colombian authorities, and under Clinton, even cut back aid to specific units of the Colombian Army. Due to congressional pressure and U.S. threats to continue decreasing financial assistance, Bogotá began exercising a measure of greater control over its military’s deplorable practices. Conveniently for the Colombian government, though, after it was forced to rein in its army, right-wing paramilitary militias like the AUC were ready and willing to pick up the baton and ensure that the pace of mass-murders and kidnappings never slackened.

The AUC’s brutality against left-wing guerrillas allowed it to quickly gain popularity among Colombian politicians and military officers who saw it as the way to continue an all out war with leftist guerillas while providing a plausible opportunity for denying official involvement. This freedom to operate without constraint, along with the better pay offered by the AUC, lured large numbers of Colombian military personnel into the group’s ranks, many of whom retained important links within the armed forces. Not surprisingly, this led to a situation where Colombian military officials, including the former head of the country’s intelligence agency, Jorge Noguera, were providing intelligence and hit-lists to AUC field commanders and, in some truly horrendous cases, participating directly in planned massacres, or simply remained seated as the mass-murders were being carried out.

America the Dutiful
In 1996, President Ernesto Samper was accused by Washington of accepting a six million dollar contribution from the Cali Cartel for his presidential campaign. The U.S. immediately condemned the president, canceled his U.S. visa, and decertified Colombia in its annual evaluation of Bogotá’s performance in the “War on Drugs.” This led to a significant decrease in the funds supplied to Colombia that injured the country’s economy and eventually forced Samper to step down.

However, even at the risk of again incurring the U.S.’s wrath, Colombian officials suspended Mancuso’s arrest warrant in 2004 so that he could address the Colombian Congress. To an astonishing volume of enthusiastic applause, Mancuso declared to a full house that “the judgment of History will recognize the goodness and nobility of [AUC’s] cause.” Although the warm reception for Mancuso outraged those who had grievously suffered as a result of the AUC’s hideous crimes and cast serious doubts on Bogotá’s appetite for fighting right-wing paramilitaries, the U.S. remained aloof on the issue and made little effort, at least publicly, to castigate the Colombian government. This outrageous indifference, when compared to Washington’s earlier harsh and assertive responses to Colombia’s past “softness” on both drug and human rights policies, represented a tell-tale lapse in the U.S.’s moral code. Unfortunately, this stumble in U.S. policy became emblematic of a greater trend that, in effect, mortally wounded Washington’s anti-drug strategy in Colombia.

When Mancuso was taken into custody last year by Colombian officials, Washington was quick, but perhaps only superficially, to request his extradition. However, Colombia uncharacteristically refused to honor the U.S.’s wish, citing that the terms of its demobilization agreement with AUC strictly forbid the authorities to extradite any AUC leaders who had surrendered and were cooperating with the authorities. Nonetheless, this surprising refusal was met by an even more startling passivity by the U.S., which ultimately revoked its request. This act essentially compromised Washington’s all-important extradition strategy. Strangely it was allowed to take place even though the U.S. ostensibly still had a very strong bargaining position, as it had already dispersed over $4.3 billion in military and anti-drug supplies and could have probably pressured Colombia into extraditing Mancuso. This coming fiscal year, the Bush Administration proposes to award Colombia with another $750 million in aid, making the country the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the hemisphere and the third largest worldwide. But with a precedent now set for Colombia to deny extraditions, the U.S. has lost an essential, if not a pivotal tool in the “War on Drugs” that may not easily be substituted with merely increased funds. Whether the State Department was simply becoming more accepting of Colombian recalcitrance or is scaling back its coercive diplomacy, its uncritical and even magnanimous position towards Colombia’s decision to give away the store when it comes to negotiating with “narcoterrorists,” was stupefying.

However, to make matters worse, the U.S. went beyond mere silence. In 2007, long after substantial proof of grievous government corruption had surfaced, the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, visited Colombia and referred to Bogotá as a valuable ally in the “War on Terror.” As what could only be the product of a laconic or bemused speechwriter, General Pace even went on to exclaim that Colombia’s efforts to fight internal militias, like the AUC, were “truly remarkable.” Apparently, this must have been a reference to leftist rather than rightwing internal militias as AUC leaders, designated by the State Department as “international terrorists” were already being given a generous clemency rather than justice.

Few to Blame in a Uni-Polar World
Currently, even though it has received such ill-deserved flattery, the Colombian government has recognized the severity of its plight. On February 15, 2007 the country’s Supreme Court ordered the arrest of six congressmen, including Alvaro Araújo, brother of the foreign minister, because of their alleged links with AUC. As a result of the arrest of her brother, Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araújo voluntarily stepped down from her post on February 19, further adding to suspicions that connections with the AUC may have permeated the upper tiers of government.

With the hope of regaining legitimacy, both the conservative and liberal sides of the Colombian legislature have called for new congressional elections. Although this bid at the redemption of democratic bona fides may appear to justify Washington’s inappropriate praise for Bogotá, this is not the case. The controversy should more accurately be framed as a major embarrassment for Washington, because it either did not spend the necessary time to closely investigate the issue or purposefully chose to ignore the facts that ineluctably would have lead it to the conclusion that it was involved in a hazy anti-drug quagmire. Instead, the White House is preparing to squander hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in aid to Colombia.

In spite of all this, President Bush still plans on extending the honor of a personal visit to Colombia during his limited tour of the region from March 8 through14. The meeting with Uribe has been slated to discuss the U.S.’s commitment to fighting “narcoterrorism,” which will surely broach the prospects of continued U.S. aid under the aegis of Plan Colombia II, despite the disappointing results of the current Plan Colombia. Any ensuing talks will certainly be affected by concerns of internal corruption and a lingering awkwardness over the fear that Colombia has been a lost servitor to Washington. The two leaders in fact, have very much to talk about; both are weakened presidents whose leverage has deeply suffered because of their misdeeds.

Another Missed Wakeup Call?
With such dramatic levels of drug-fueled corruption being met with almost affable indifference by U.S. officials, it is not difficult to assume that there may be a double standard at work. Colombia is the United States’ closest ally in South America and the importance of its willingness to comply with U.S. initiatives is crucial because of the recent political successes by leftist candidates in the region. It may be plausible that the U.S. has been turning a blind eye to Colombia’s corruption with the hope that right-wing paramilitaries could stem the leftist tide within the Andean nation.

The recent arrests of six congressmen and the call for new elections intimates that Bogotá may be now taking corruption there more seriously than the U.S. If Washington continues to treat Latin America as a secondary concern and insists upon using antiquated Manichean tactics to isolate such foes as Venezuela while codling Uribe, it could quickly find its few remaining regional allies straying off

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Kevin Alexander Watt with research contributions by COHA Research Associate Marc Sutton

Pararamilitaries Invade and Pillage Zapatista Land. We will defend our Mother Earth

by luna

Bases of the EZLN will defend themselves for better or worse.

pics: meeting of the zapatistas and the peoples of the world, Jan 2007.

> > Pararamilitaries Invade and Pillage Zapatista Land. < < > > JBG: we will defend our MOTHER EARTH < < 1

Bases of the EZLN will defend themselves for better or worse.

The zapatista council of good government of the Caracol of Resistance Toward a New Dawn ( caracol hacia un nuevo amanecer, La garrucha ) denounced yesterday the aggressions undergone on the part of paramilitaries coming from the Ejido Cuxulja, second section, and of the village of Gracias a Dios in the municipality of Ocosingo.

The members of the meeting of the council of good government (JBG), Javier Gomez Ruiz, Buda Sanchez Hernandez and Roberta Santiz Perez informed that those people have been causing problems for two years inside land retaken by the Zapatista Army of National Liberacion in 1994.

They told how from the 20th of February they got to chop down six hectares of mountain land which were prepared for small holdings around the homes of compañeros ezln support bases and where they had planted their coffee plants fields, and that 300 of their coffee bushes had been knocked down by them.

Also they knocked down 15 pine trees to saw planks and took the wood to their villages; they destroyed a field separation for cattle and they cut two rolls of barbed wire; from the cattle fields they removed the cattle property of the inhabitants of Rosario to put in theirs. They denounced that the provokers were accompanied by six armed persons.

In addition the JBG informed, that the aggressors are directed by the village committee of Jerusalem, in charge of which is Guadalupe Santiz Gómez, " because the plan of the bad federal and state governments is to keep up the confrontation against the zapatistas. The idea of the government is to prevent the work of the other campaign and the route of the commanders in the 32 states of the Mexican Republic ".

A solution between the parts has been looked for by the council of good government and the agrarian commissions of Francisco Go'mez r, "but they have never respected the portion we recovered in 1994. We have knowledge that this land is been seized by the bank. For us the recovered estates belong to our Autonomous territory ".

And they warned that good government councils of the five caracoles and the support bases of the EZLN will defend the lands recovered " for better or worse with our peoples, for we have already spilled blood to defend our mother earth. We say to the bad governments: federal, state and municipal, and to the leaders of the organizations who are provoking problems within our autonomous territories that, if serious confrontations come to happen, they will be held responsible.

"We, as zapatistas, are not provoking problems; we are respecting the other organizations, but if they do not respect us, we will not do it neither, and we must defend our rights as zapatistas."

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

oficial note from the Zapatista Indygenous People's Autonomous Self government bellow ( in spanish, anyone up for translating please comment and send to email address provided, to repost or > include as an addition <

> > Addition #1 < < 1

A similar warning was issued same time of the year, an attack with a similar purpose, threaten, discourage, even starve the BAZs - EZLN Support Bases. http://www.ainfos.ca/06/jan/ainfos00287.html

The murderers of several peasants, non zapatista in viejo velasco ( survivor: " they wanted to kill us all )" in November came from Nueva Palestina. the OPDDIC paramilitaries issued a warning to the ezln, to the human rights org Frayba and to a small independent chiapas ecologist comunity NGO >/ Maderas de los Pueblo del Sureste/<, holding them responsible for the killings. A zapatista supported ( might or not be zapatista himself and his family ), promoter of education locally ( school teacher trainer ) and member of the same community was detained under dictatorship like anti terrorist laws for more than 3 months in an informal government safe house in Chiapas's capital tuxtla and two weeks ago dumped with the murder of all the people in Viejo Velasco and the attempted murder of his own family). this is what human rights mean for president calderon ( FECAL ) and the European Union (EU-UK). If you where to read spanish and clicked on http://www.frayba.org.mx/Boletines/2006/ 061115_primer_informe_viejovelasco.htm you'd notice from this document that the OPDDIC paramilitaries from Nueva Palestina, first cut the supply off the community days before the attack. the OPDDIC did the same to zapatista support base families in Moja.http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/jbg/647/ three days ago.

Meanwhile preparations for the next stage of the other campaign and the camps to Actively Defend Nature and our struggling surviving indygenous cultures both in the south east of chiapas and in the north west of Mexico in Baja California ( cucapa-colorado << href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1534308143462581524&q=cucapa">VIDEO english subtitles 17mins >>)are underway.

we are not in a hurry because we are going far. it is still a long way. love and rage.

Cuban president speaks on radio

Cuban President Fidel Castro has appears in a live broadcast for the first time since falling ill last July.

He was heard speaking live on the daily radio programme of his ally, the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez.

The 80-year-old leader is believed to be suffering from diverticulitis, a weakening of the walls of the colon.

He said he was "gaining ground," adding he felt he had more "energy and more strength." He was last seen in a video recording released in early February.

Mr Castro's younger brother, Raul, has been acting as Cuban president since July.

'Student again'

"Hello there, illustrious and dear friend, how are you?" Fidel Castro asked President Chavez at the start of an extended conversation on the Venezuelan leader's "Hello President" show.

Mr Chavez was last in Havana in January

"I feel good and I'm happy," Mr Castro went on.

He said that his illness had given him more time for reading, joking that he had become a student again.

But he did not discuss the question of when, or if, he would be returning to power in the near future.

Hospital visits

Mr Chavez has visited the convalescing Cuban leader several times, most recently in January.

Video of their meetings have been released.

Mr Castro's health is treated as a state secret in Cuba, and has been the subject of much speculation both at home and overseas.

The most regular pronouncements on his health have come from Mr Chavez.

Cuban authorities have denied the claims of US intelligence officials that he has terminal cancer but will only say that Mr Castro is recuperating satisfactorily.

In January, President Chavez denied a report in a Spanish newspaper that said Mr Castro's prognosis was very grave after three failed operations.

A Spanish surgeon who travelled to Cuba at that time to examine Mr Castro also said the report was "without foundation".

Search: Advanced AP Costa Ricans protest free-trade pact

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica

Tens of thousands of union members, farmers and political activists marched through Costa Rica's capital on Monday to protest a free-trade pact with the U.S. they say will be harmful to local businesses.

Costa Rica is the only one of six Latin American signatories to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, that has not yet ratified the accord. Legislators are awaiting a court ruling to clear procedural issues before voting on it.

Some of the protesters who took part in Monday's march carried signs reading "The North is Invading us Again" and "Farmers equal extinct species."

Much of the opposition stems from requirements under the pact that Costa Rica open its telecommunications, services and agricultural sectors to greater competition. Employees of the state-run telecom company were a major contingent in the march.

Also Monday, the newspaper Al Dia published a poll showing that 47 percent of Costa Ricans support ratifying the accord, compared to 34 percent that are opposed. The rest had no response. The pollsters interviewed 1,215 people, and the margin of error was 3 percent.

The free trade deal has taken effect in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and
El Salvador. The Dominican Republic, a Caribbean nation, was included in the pact, but its implementation there has been delayed by the need for changes in domestic laws.

Costa Rica's Congress failed to approve the pact under former President Abel Pacheco, who had argued that lawmakers needed to pass a series of fiscal reform measures before considering it.

Current President Oscar Arias, who took office last year, is a strong supporter of the agreement.

KIPTIK Report - Bringing Solidarity to Zapatista Communities in Chiapas Mexico

SUMMARY OF ACTIVITIES:

Water:

Morelia Caracol, Water training course, Morelia Zone:
The course we had planned in November was cancelled due to mobilisations in solidarity with the events in Oaxaca. This pretty much rounded off a bad year for the projects what with the 6-month alert that prevented us working from May onwards last year.

In December we went to the zone assembly to give a report on the work done so far and the problems encountered. There was immediate response from the representatives of one of the municipalities who have failed to send anyone to the courses: we’ll see if this materializes into them sending their people to this coming year’s courses. We also asked if they would consider naming a coordinator or coordinating group for the new team to oversee the work and deal with funds, accounts, receipts and general administration. In due course we’ll also need a workshop/ office, so we asked where we’d be able to build one.

Any training initiatives in the autonomous zones are plagued by 2 major difficulties: the first due to the cargo system which exists in the communities…when people are named by their municipality to receive training in a certain field it is generally seen as a temporary post which will be occupied by a new person after a year or so. This is a real problem in technical areas such as water, where you really need people with long-term experience who stick with the job for a good length of time…The other difficulty is that all posts are seen as a service to the community are unpaid, which means that there is a tendency for people to get burned-out and give up the work because they need to go and earn money in Cancun or on the oilfields in Tabasco. While the system works relatively well in the area of political posts, avoiding an excessive concentration on power in the hands of a small group, in technical areas it’s like taking 2 steps forward and 2 steps back…Both these things are internal issues which are difficult for us as outsiders to have much impact on, although we will be bringing them up for discussion before long so as to see what solutions we can agree on.

Puebla Nueva, Morelia:
Since the water training course was cancelled I made a trip out to Puebla Nueva to check up on the system and see how it’s going. We installed a pump here a couple of years back. Things are working fine, but we’ll have to go back out there this coming quarter to do some water-proofing on the tank which has sprung some slow leaks. After waiting 30 years for a water system and being told by various government engineers that it wasn’t possible, the community seems pretty happy to have a steady supply of water…

General AT:

3rd Electricity course:
In December we organised the 3rd electricity course in coordination with a representative from the electrician’s union in Mexico City. The course was well attended with 42 people present from 3 of the 5 zones. There was a mixture of people with experience from previous courses as well as newcomers. Most of the course was dedicated to practical work: installing low-tension cables, re-tensing cables which were slack and shorting out, repairing burnt out lighting strike conductors, general maintenance to low-tension networks, and surveys for new installations. The course was based in Moises Ghandi but included trips to 6 other communities. We also gave a short presentation on photovoltaic power, along with a brief look into the fascinating world of the insides of transformers. There are now probably about 10 people who have been to the 3 courses we’ve organised so far, and who are now able to work safely on low and mid-tension lines.

Following the course we went to the zone assembly in Morelia to report on the work done. They immediately followed up on this in January by formally naming an autonomous electricity commission complete with El Presidente, El Secretario, and El Tesorero (as yet there are still no women electricistas in sight- we’re devising tactics to change this...) This is good news and shows that there are keen to actively support the work done so far and move things forward.

Quarterly Goals:

Water training and Morelia Caracol:
In January we have the 4th water course planned: we’ll be teaching them how to use the theodolites for the surveys and the computers for the design work. This should be a big step forward in the training. We are planning a course each month, and if all goes well we will be starting a series of new systems mid-year, hopefully running concurrently. To begin with we will be closely accompanying them in the survey and design work, but as the team gains experience we will gradually let them take on more and more of the work.

Political update:
The incoming President Calderon took office in December and was sworn in amidst full-on fist-fights in the Congress as PRD diputados tried to block all the entrances to prevent to ceremony from going ahead. For once watching live coverage of the Congress was highly entertaining- while of course, reflecting the current state of affairs in the country: an incoming President seen as illegitimate, violence ready to flare at any and every moment, and a general and profound discontent at what politicians have failed to deliver to the millions of Mexico’s poor and dispossessed. While Latin America swings to the left and the southern Presidents dismiss the imposition of Washington’s “free-trade” agreements and launch their own version- Mercosur- Calderon is going be lacking allies further south but welcomed with open arms north of the border. His first steps in office involved cutting university budgets and other important initiatives aimed at destroying public services. The word on the street is: Esta buscando broncas…(he’s looking for trouble).

In Chiapas the incoming governor Juan Sabines took office and promptly installed a number of old-school PRI hard-liners in his cabinet. He began his campaign on a PRI ticket, but since the party turned him down he skipped over to the other side of the street and became candidate for the PRD (he’s clearly not too weighed down by political ideologies…) While he has promised to implement a number of social programs aimed at tackling poverty in the state there is little doubt that he will follow the same path as his predecessor: grovelling at the feet of multinationals to encourage foreign investment and selling Chiapas as the latest tourist destination complete with colourful Indians who have now stopped being rebellious and are settling down for a nice life as museum pieces. It’s interesting to note that the designers of the current tourist maps of Chiapas seem to have forgotten to draw in the roads that lead in and out of the so-called conflict zone in Chiapas…or is this a deliberate attempt to shield innocent tourists from the horrors of 21st century Zapatismo with its network of autonomous schools, clinics and revolutionary murals? While there is no doubt that in the last 10 years Chiapas has witnessed an unprecedented explosion of spending on infrastructure, it’s clear- as it often is in these cases- that those who really need it are not seeing the benefits, and the options open to the Chiapanecan indigenous are: go north to work, go to the city to live in a slum, or take the PAN’s word for it and become an entrepreneur………..in the drug-trafficking industry.

In Oaxaca the repression came to a head in November following a march organised by the APPO (Popular Assembly of Peoples’ of Oaxaca) on the 25th. The federal police (PFP, under military command and consisting mainly of military personnel) shot at, beat, and arrested several hundreds before flying them off to high-security prisons 1500 kilometres away in Tamaulipas and Nayarit. The recent visit of the International Human Rights Commission has revealed systematic rape of male and female detainees at the hands of the police on the way to jail, torture with electric shocks, beating and burning. It seems the reason this has not come to light in the mainstream media is that almost no one who suffered these abuses is prepared to testify legally due to fear of reprisals. A good number of the people arrested have now been released as it became clear the charges they were facing were completely ridiculous and devoid of all legality. Needless to say the so called “return to normality” in Oaxaca is one dominated by fear and continued killings and repression.

In the communities one of the major threats to a fragile peace comes from an organisation called OPDDIC (Organisation for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights) who issued a letter in December effectively declaring war on the autonomous municipalities. The organisation is run by Pedro Chulin, who in the past elections ran as diputado for the PRI, declaring himself a luchador social…social activist- pretty incredible for someone who has been named as the intellectual author of several murders of Zapatista support bases. OPDDIC promise money, land and freedom to their members and have grown rapidly. They have been at the root of several conflicts in recent months in the autonomous municipality of Olga Isabel in the Morelia zone, and Chol de Tumbala in the northen zone. There is no clear evidence that the organisation is funded and supported by the state, although it’s most likely that OPDDIC is the latest instrument in the government’s on-going counter-insurgency campaign.

Hard at work on the electricity course…

Number and size of new communities served:

Electricity training course:
Indirectly over 100 communities.

Water training course:
Indirectly over 80 communities.

“What is to be done?”, By Dr. Dawg

Since there has been some discussion of theory going on here, or, more accurately, praxis, I thought I might post a paper I wrote a while back that sums up my hopes and fears about our project of social change. It's long, and academic, but I hope it might offer some ideas worth discussing.

*****************************************************

The bourgeoisie has…drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.
–Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party

We are passing from the sphere of history to the sphere of the present and, partly, of the future. But we firmly believe that the [next] period will lead to the consolidation of militant Marxism, that Russian Social-Democracy will emerge from the crisis in the full flower of manhood, that the opportunist rearguard will be “replaced” by the genuine vanguard of the most revolutionary class.
–V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?

[O]nly from the vantage point of the West is it possible to define the Third World as underdeveloped and economically dependent. Without the overdetermined discourse that creates the Third World, there would be no (singular and privileged) First World. Without the “Third World woman,” the particular self-presentation of Western women…would be problematical.
–Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders

I mean, we have to rid ourselves of the basic paradigms of modernity. What are they? Among others, the notion of lineal, progressive, and ascending history. We’ll have to learn to work without that, to spin finely, to learn uncertainly. And not to ask ourselves: is this an advance or a regression? But rather to understand that that question has no place.
–Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar



ABSTRACT – Lenin’s question has not yet been answered. Against an endlessly ramifying transnational capitalism sweeping all before it in its incessant growth and development, opposition has taken increasingly complex and fragmented shapes, reflecting not only the complexity of the situation but a growing awareness of the multiple and sometimes contradictory forms of oppression. Class, “race” and gender intricately intersect within a context of social and economic practices that characterize corporate globalization. This paper explores the limits and possibilities for the future of transnational and transcultural oppositional solidarity.

Global capitalism and the roots of global resistance

The quotations above illustrate through their differences a number of points that I want to make in this examination of corporate globalization and the future of organized resistance to it. Two are from the classical Marxist-Leninist canon, (and I use the words “classical” and “canon” advisedly) and two are more contemporary voices whose points of origin are literally foreign to the former, in both space and time.

The prescience one can observe in the quotation from The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published more than a century and a half ago, which outlines with uncanny accuracy some of the major features of globalization, is offset by anachronism: the reference to “civilized nations,” followed by another to the “universal inter-dependence of nations,” erases the very existence of colonized peoples and their histories. Indeed, when Marx referred to such peoples explicitly, he often betrayed a Eurocentric prejudice and triumphalism quite in keeping with his time, and aligned, it must be said, with much colonial discourse.1

Marx did not, however, ignore the seamier aspects of the colonizing mission:

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.” (Marx, 1912: 823)


Moreover, after 1860, he expressed considerable pessimism about the colonial enterprise, recognizing that the destruction of local infrastructure, not self-sufficiency, was a likely outcome for many of the “backward nations” (Larrain, 1991: 233) Yet he retained an essentially European model of development (Larrain, 1991: 238), as did his supreme practitioner, V.I. Lenin, although even at the time different views were expressed. (See Luxemburg, 1996 [1913]: 338, in which the effects of transnational capitalism, she hints, create national dependency: she refers, for example, to “out-work under capitalism” replacing “the ruin of independent craftsmanship” within the context of colonization.)

In any case, to begin to come to grips with Lenin’s question it may be instructive to look at his own partial answer to it. Through the lens of twentieth-century history, his declaration that the future would bring a transformed Russia led by a vanguard into “the full flower of manhood” renders an outmoded vocabulary tragic, given the fundamental failures, excesses and final collapse of the Soviet project. Perhaps the seeds of its eventual destruction can be found in these words, in which the course of the project is set:

We are not utopians, we do not “dream” of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and "foremen and accountants".

The subordination, however, must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and working people, i.e., to the proletariat.
–V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution [1918]


There is no notion here of changing the dynamics of the work process to allow people to become “different.” Indeed, with control, subordination and an “armed vanguard” in charge, it is difficult to avoid recalling Marx’s well-known words in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon:
And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.

In this case “the spirits of the past” included Taylorism (Lenin, 1818b), the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and vanguardist command-and-control. Ordering people about was not going to change overnight; there would be no democracy on the shop floor. Nor would the “dictatorship” really be imposed by that amorphous mass called “the proletariat;” the latter, in fact, would be subordinated to the vanguard, governing in their name as a new, and yet very old, “body politic” (Kantorowicz, 1997). The sovereign (Foucault, 1990: 135-6) might have worn a red star, but did not abandon the spectral throne: the victims of the haphazard and chaotic violence of Stalinism remind one more of the wretched Robert-François Damiens* than of the disciplined subjects of governmentality (Foucault, 1977; 1994: 229ff). Marxists at the time relegated women to a “Question” (Aveling and Aveling, 1886) and largely dismissed or erased the life-history of colonized peoples in their accounts, failing to problematize institutionalized structures and discourses of racism that constituted them as Other and as inferior to Europeans, and were instrumental in their oppression and exploitation.

My purpose in briefly re-living here this relatively ancient history is partly to indicate that the transnational expansion of capitalism faced organized and transnational resistance almost from the beginning. But it is also to reiterate the profound failures of that initial resistance, and to contrast that limited approach, in its evolutionary, teleological, Eurocentric (Larrain, 1992: 237), androcentric and, it must be said, racist (Larrain, 1992: 235, 236) theoretical chains, to the far more complex resistance debates of more recent times.

Transnationalism today and sites of resistance

Few neo-Marxists today would support, much less attempt to build, a transnational solidarity based solely upon a working class cast in the mould of a European white factory worker, with a vanguardist model of revolution and state power, assigning second priority to the “Woman Question” and issues of “racial chauvinism.” The left opponents of corporate globalization would correctly see this as woefully insufficient in confronting and overcoming the complex “relations of ruling” that obtain today, in the home, within the nation-state and transnationally—or rather, that have by now been recognized and named (Dorothy Smith, cited in Clement and Myles, 1994: viii).

The current “map” of transnationalism—corporate globalization and resistances to it—is not an easy one to read. From the popular perspective, international trade and capitalist regulatory organizations like the World Trade Organization, The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, appear to have supplanted the sovereignty of nations and presented insurmountable barriers to alternative futures. The environment is rapidly being destroyed and human rights and dignity are rendered irrelevant by the exigencies of trade and profit-taking. And there is no alternative, we are told: resistance, fragmented and offering only temporary relief at best, is futile (Armbruster-Sandoval, 2005: 135ff; and see Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar on the recent election of Bolivia’s Evo Morales, cited in Acuña, 2006: “I refuse to accept that we don’t admit that we’re crossing through a happy moment”).

But matters are not so simple, nor, I would maintain, so hopeless. The “end of history,” to use Francis Fukuyama’s fatuous phrase, is nowhere in sight. Let us examine two of the popular notions just mentioned, beginning with the alleged withering away of the state under advanced capitalism, and the era of so-called “post-nationalism,” followed by the alleged impossibility of successful resistance.

In the 1960’s, a favourite street-chant of the Left was “Smash the State.” Is this now to become “Save the State” (see Munck, 2002, 144)? The state is, after all, in Western liberal democracies, at least in some limited fashion accountable to its citizens; in fact, as recent events in Latin America have indicated, pressures from below can yield governments (for example, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia) that to one degree or another appear to challenge the global hegemony of the US, although matters are more complex than that (see, for example, Petras, 2006, on the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia, although Dangle and Engler, 2006, take a more positive view). States can also be strong mediators between global capital and the needs of its own citizens, striking hard bargains with transnational firms as in the case of the “Asian Tigers” (McMurtry, 1998: 331ff; Martin and Schumann, 1997: 144). States will never simply be “representative” of its citizens, but will always exist in an uneasy tension with them, in a relation that is continually being negotiated and re-negotiated.

In any case, the state is in no danger of extinction. It should not be forgotten that transnational authorities such as those mentioned are indeed the creations of states, which are “co-generator[s] of global mobility and competition” (Schirm, 2002: 56). Certainly the role of the state has shifted in the current context (James, P. 2002: 6), but it remains, as Sarah Radcliffe puts it (writing of Latin America), “an important actor and a significant political interlocutor for subjects” (Radcliffe 2001: 20). The state is not “hollowed out” but “provides a ground of meaning-creation, institutions and political cultures through which transnational relations are constituted” providing “the context and platform through which a transnational public sphere is elaborated”(Radcliffe, Laurie and Andolina, 2002: 3, 15). Indeed, as recent developments in Latin America indicate, there is the distinct possibility of the state playing the transnational role of adversary to the hegemony of international capital.

Nor are we shifting into a period of the transnational or even post-national citizenship, despite the hopes of such commentators as Arjun Appadurai (cited in James, P., 2002: 5) reacting to the violence generated by the national imaginary. As Paul James puts it, “[I]t depends how the territory is lived and governed: questions of territory will always be with us as long as we live in embodied communities” (James, P. 2002: 6). If the transnational mobility of labour is held up as an example to the contrary, of a “de-territorialization” (Deleuze and Guattari, cited in James, P., 2002: 6) of citizenship, the migrants’ loss of social and political rights in the transnational sphere demonstrate the continued value of formal, territory-based citizenship (Sales, 2002: 99,100). And the notion of a post-modern rebellion like the Zapatista movement, at once bounded by community and place but transnational in its “digital simultaneity” (Reinke, 2002: 82, 83), loses its force when one considers that little changed materially in Chiapas (Reinke, 2002: 87).

We need to recognize that the interactions among states, their peoples and transnational institutions are complex, dynamic and mutually constitutive. Even colonies, with their colonized peoples portrayed sometimes as purely victims, are “hybrid and unstable”(Gunn, 2001: 172); the distinctions between colonized and colonizer, Gunn notes, citing Frederick Buell, are not “totalized formations in opposition to one another” but “constructions of a common, complexly interacting system” (Gunn, 2001: 173). Radcliffe notes that transnational actors including the World Bank, “transnational advocacy networks” and indigenous people, interact in complex ways that can benefit local populations through adroit leverage (Radcliffe, 2001: 27).

What, then, of the alleged futility of resistance? Let it be noted first that there is not one “resistance,” but many; and that the issue is less to create resistances than to join them together, as international capital is already joined: “Let the resistance be as transnational as capital” (slogan cited in Goodman, 2002: viii). Let us also be aware of the increasing urgency of the task: the process of corporate globalization has accelerated to the point that even such a committed socialist feminist as Chandra Mohanty has moved from an earlier emphasis upon transnational feminist struggle per se (Mohanty, 2003 [1986]: Chapter 1) to a call for feminist involvement in anti-globalism (Mohanty, 2002, 509).

The problem, then—what is to be done in the short and medium term—is to theorize and to build transnational solidarity.

The theory and practice of solidarity

I would like to introduce two notions of solidarity at this point: what I term centrifugal and centripetal. These are not necessarily in binary opposition. They are, however, imbricated wherever the conscious move to collective action provides a Foucauldian “surface of emergence” for solidarity discourses.

By “centripetal” solidarity, I refer to a solidarity among people based upon a perceived distinct identity and created in opposition to “others.” National liberation struggles have this character, for example, and the “identity politics” that have arisen more recently among racialized groups and radical feminists. Such solidarity is exclusive—only some people can join—and it has a centralizing, inward-turning tendency, in that it foregrounds and tends to reify the group identity that the subject shares, and can, in fact, fetishize difference (see Gunn, 2001: 10).

By “centrifugal” solidarity, I refer to an outward-turned project of solidarity, a flight from the specificity of time, place and history of the subject, a project sometimes called “making the links,” whose proponents attempt to build channels of communication and organizing bridges between groups resisting oppression, nationally and transnationally. Such an approach is also oppositional, but more to structures and systems themselves than to people.

I do not mean to oversimplify. As noted, one can find these two tendencies of solidarity emerging wherever resistance emerges, as in the American labour movement (Armbruster-Sandoval, 2005: 9-10); moreover, they can co-exist in a single subject. It is the extremes of both that are dangerous: in the case of centripetal solidarity, the essentializing of identity (Leistyna, 2005:10; Fraser, 2005:246-247) can create artifical demarcations between, for example, race and gender, when they are, in fact, inextricably entangled (Pihama, 2005: 366). An ahistorical and universalizing unity such as “woman,” shaped and defined, in fact, by subordination itself, is “ineffectual in designing strategies to combat oppressions” (Mohanty 2002: 31), and, with its hidden assumptions, prove to be exclusionary of Third World women (Trinh Minh-ha, cited in Goetz, 1991: 141). Moreover, such essentializing notions obscure or erase differences within the group: Mohanty explores at length the problems that Third World women find with universalizing feminist ideas from the First World, in which complex intersections of race and class are ignored, or inserted as an add-on into Women’s Studies programs, in a “discursive colonization” (Mohanty, 2003: 17; Mohanty 2002: 509; Alexander and Mohanty, 1997). Such difficulties are not overcome, but exacerbated, in “multiculturalist” approaches, which simply replace many homogenizations for one (Gunn, 2001: 120). Identity politics leads to “political refuges” in which “islands of validation and self-affirmation…[are] islands all the same” (Goetz, 1991: 145). Worse, it can lead to an almost wilful blindness, as in the case of feminist support for the arch-reactionary Anita Hill (James, J., 2005: 350).

The project of centrifugal solidarity is confronted by its own dangers. Where the cultural feminist adherents of identity politics “valorize experience” to the point that they entrench women “in their particularities,” postmodernists who want to tackle western normative universalism by engaging in the deconstruction of the category “woman,” subvert the feminist project by creating an endless “deferral of epistemic responsibility…[rendering] the need and even the possibility of a feminist politics problematic.” Both threaten the “imperative to act” (Goetz, 1991: 145, 134). There is in the latter case a flight from the centre, but no solidarity is found. There can be no bridges and channels when the ground under one’s own feet vanishes.

Solidarity must be founded in material conditions, however complex these might be. It is more than an “act of good will” (Gunn, 2001: xii). It is not based upon similitude, but upon “relations between self and ‘other’…[that] could be accepted as dialogically, even enhancing” (Gunn, 2001:194). If “woman,” for example, is a social construct, a marker of subordination across many cultures, then that marker, rather than signifying an obfuscatory “common oppression” (bell hooks, cited in Pihama, 2005: 367), could be a means of generating dialogue, mutual support and a wider understanding, Mohanty’s “noncolonizing feminist solidarity across borders” (Mohanty 2002: 503), or what Paul James calls an “embodied reciprocity” (James, P., 2002: 17).

If “global thinking is impossible” because we can’t think “from within every culture on earth” (Esteva and Prakash, 2004:412-413), global encounters are more possible than ever before, because of improved communications technology. As we move out centrifugally to engage in dialogue, however, we must be aware of the dangers inherent in that very technology. Cyberspace, as noted in the example of the Zapatista uprising, is not actual space, time or location (Reinke 2002: 87). In effect, the technology re-located the Zapatistas into enemy space (Reinke, 2002: 81). On the other hand, international labour solidarity is enhanced by such information-flows (Munck, 2002: 150), and, indeed, missing information can obviously inhibit solidarity, as lack of knowledge of the WTO did in the Seattle anti-globalization protests (Martinez, 2005: 295).

Solidarity is born of local engagement in a wider context: the Zapatistas, for example, did not seek solidarity with their own struggles so much as the formation of a “network of struggles” around the world, perhaps sparked by their own resistance (Reinke, 2002: 84). This goes well beyond similitude, to an expanded notion of “common interests, “ a “common context of struggle” (Mohanty, 2005: 324). Solidarity with the women of the Third World, says Mohanty, requires that “we…pay attention,” “to the specificities of their/our common and different histories” (Mohanty 2005: 340). We can see the intersection of the specific and the global in studies such as Martha Mies’ examination of lace-making in Narsapur (Mies, 1982), and in numerous studies that foreground women’s invisible or devalued work and their situation under capitalist development as “shock absorbers” (Elson, 1991: 186).

But initiating the necessary solidarity-building conversations across borders, cultures and histories is nonetheless challenging. The hidden assumptions even in discourses of resistance, such as in liberal feminism (Bandarage, 1984; Mohanty, 2003), need to be put on the table; reflection and self-criticism are essential if we are not, in Mohanty’s phrase, to “re-colonize” those who could be allies.

So far, the above amounts to a series of cautionary notes. When we attempt to put a solidarity project into practice, we find ourselves in a mine-field. We in the West bear the burden of our own history: and we carry that into the world. Like ethnographers, activists engaged in this project (Western or otherwise) are to some degree trapped in an “epistemological box” from which “[T]he more clearly they see their subject, the less clearly they see, or can correctively discount for, the apparatus of seeing itself” (Gunn, 2001: 15). Again, one must return to the actual cross-border oppressions and the resistances that arise, or could arise, transnationally.

The “transnational advocacy networks” of which Sarah Radcliffe writes (Radcliffe, 2001: 25ff) are a vital set of actors, mobilizing public opinion, although problems of inequality and accountability within the networks need to be resolved (Radcliffe, 2001: 27). The potential of these networks, constrained and at the same time enabled by the state (Radcliffe, 2001: 25), is enormous. While, as noted earlier, many labour victories in the sweatshops of the South prove to be short-lived, the Kukdong campaign in Puebla, Mexico (involving Nike and Reebok), was an unqualified success: it is the only factory in the Mexican maquiladora region where workers have a collective agreement and an independent union. Their resolve, supported by an transnational campaign, indicates the concrete results that are possible with the building of cross-border solidarity. The defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), where the Internet proved its worth, was another such victory (Tabb, 2001: 196).

“Culture,” too, is a weapon in this struggle, indicating the complex “entanglements” of indigenous, state and transnational actors. Indigenous peoples have determined that a reified form of their culture, a “politics of representation,” is a winning strategy in “a successful politics of anti-colonialism” (Radcliffe, Laurie and Andolina, 2002:11), resonating transnationally. But this strategy has its dangers, too, turning a lived culture into a series of self-conscious images, a series of simulacra (Turner, 1991: 309).

But nothing mobilizes better than a crisis, and crises we have aplenty in this era of global capitalism: AIDS, global warming and incessant American invasions, to name but three. A lesser-known one that is building currently is the dumping of toxic waste (Shiva, 2004: 426; Mohanty, 2003: 511; McMurtry, 1998: 322-3, 395-6). Like wealth and health. Toxic waste is unequally distributed. Not only is it exported by the North to the South; it is also concentrated by race at home, as Mohanty notes:

Three out of five Afro-Americans and Latinos live near toxic waste sites, and three of the five largest hazardous waste landfills are in communities with a population that is 80 percent people of colour. (Mary Pardo, cited in Mohanty, 2003: 511)

McMurtry brings home what can only be called the death-logic of capitalism by quoting a memorandum from a former chief economist of the World Bank, Lawrence Summers, encouraging what he called the “migration” of the “dirty industries to the least developed countries. Here is a part of it:

The measurement of the costs of health-impairing pollution depends on the forgone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. (in McMurtry, 1998: 395)

When leaked to the media, the actual author of the memorandum, Lant Pritchett, claimed that it was meant to be an “ironic aside” (“Toxic memo” in the on-line Harvard Review). The difficulty with the times that we live in is that we simply cannot be certain.

Transnational crises force all of us, whatever our standpoints, to interpret them as threats and to take action. Certainly, the reaction of capitalist institutions and First World governments to the crises specified here has been to pretend they don’t exist, or to minimize their impact, and to go on ignoring them or feeding them. But much as signifiers such as “woman” permit at least the possibility of solidarity across borders and cultures, crises demand action from a number of differently-situated players that can form the basis of transnational solidarity. The Kyoto Agreement, for example, was created by transnational “green” pressure, although it is in serious danger at this point.

Action, however, demands new vocabularies, the “translation” of the local experience of people, situated as they are in webs of meaning that include gender, race, class, nation, ethnicity and language (to name only a few elements that constitute the self), into communication that resonates beyond the local. Mohanty, once again, while “articulating
differences located in specific histories of inequality,” is also able to discern “a particular history that Third- and First-World women seem to have in common: the logic and operation of capital in the contemporary global arena” (Mohanty, 2005: 340). History, in other words, need not and indeed must not be confined to the local; there are, in fact, overlapping shared histories in which we are situated and which extend to the global level and offer the promise of action and change.

Conclusion: Carnivals of resistance, and the vertigo of transformation

Capital appears united; resistance to its effects, highly fragmented and dispersed. But, as Radcliffe, Laurie and Andolina indicate, matters are not so simple. Capital is regulated by institutions—the state, transnational bodies—that themselves are shaped by the needs and desires of populations pursuing their counter-hegemonic aims. The authors propose the notion, alluded to earlier, of “social entanglements around class, race, gender, profession, political affiliation, cultural authenticity (sic) and so on, which position actors not on a fixed ‘side’ of a hypothetic ‘above and below’ divide but which recognizes their complex, and unfixed, position….” They go on to “argue that relations are always national and transnational, as well as bodily and local” (Radcliffe, Laurie and Andolina, 2002: 15).

Thus, resistances can include a kind of judo-like skill in which Radcliffe’s transnational advocacy networks, with indigenous populations, or sectors of those populations (e.g., women) can use institutions as leverage to advance their specific causes. There is nothing immutable about any institution, and hegemony, as Antonio Gramsci reminds us, is something that needs to be won. Counter-hegemonic successes, such as the defeat of the MAI, can encourage other kinds of transnational solidarities.

But let us return to the title-question of this paper: what is to be done? I have tried to sketch out the problematic of solidarity and action, outlining the difficulties of transnational conversations that take account of the specifics of race, gender and class of each of the interlocutors. It is here that a newly-revivified socialism and historical materialism, despite their limited historical repertoire, may prove to realize their potential, not as a series of totalizing discourses, but as an open-ended praxis that not only accommodates but genuinely includes the voices and interests of women from both the Third World and the First, the colonized and the racialized and others, whose agency is undenied, whose oppressions are linked, and who are all “people with a history,” joined together in the process of making it.

What form will their future resistances take? In the absence of master-narratives and the impersonal and teleological unfolding of history, this will depend upon what is possible. Resistance, as the anti-globalist young people have shown us, can be joyful and non-violent, inclusive and organized along “the principles of non-hierarchy, democratic participation, and the notion of the personal being the political”—something Mohanty, in the midst of her calling for a feminist critique of the anti-globalist movement, concedes is an institutionalization of feminism within its decision-making processes (Mohanty, 2002: 529, 530).

In a slightly different context, Gunn makes this point: “Demonizing or merely even stereotyping the colonizing ‘other’ tends to reinscribe the totalizing structure of domination and subjugation even in the process of reversing its applications” (Gunn, 2001: 171-172). He argues for transcending “the discursive oppositions that currently define their relationship” (Gunn, 2001: 171). One cannot, in other words, move beyond the current situation if one is trapped in the discursive frame that creates and situates both oppressed and oppressor. Perhaps a hint of such transcendence may be found in so-called “carnivals of resistance,” in which participants mix “pleasure and rebellion,” a series of actions that be just as, or more effective, than using violence to counter the symbolic and actual violence of the New World Order—although the organizers can still find themselves on a terrorist list (Jordan and Whitney, 2001). If some would criticize the predominantly young protesters for struggling to articulate a positive vision of what an alternative world would look like (Harding, 2004: 420-421), I believe it is a hopeful sign that their values and dreams have not ossified into a Maximum Programme, but remain open, unfixed, without boundaries, continually engaged in dialogue.

As Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, a perceptive Mexican activist with a long history of struggle has said: “We’ll have to learn to work without [the notion of lineal, progressive and ascending history], to spin finely, to learn uncertainly. And not to ask ourselves: is this an advance or a regression? But rather to understand that that question has no place” (cited in Acuña, 2006). Transcendence is, by its very nature, vertiginous. Local resistances, joined together in the Zapastista “networks of struggle,” can transform the world or fail spectacularly at it: there are no blueprints or plans, at least none that have any credibility.

Is there an alternative? Another world may be possible (Armbruster-Sandoval, 2005: 154), although this phrasing suggests that even that may be an illusion. But there is no inevitability in history, and we always have choices before us, between socialism or barbarism, as Marx put it: or, in these dangerous times, between life—or death.

Oaxaca Conflict Puts Spotlight on the Media

by Nancy Davies
February 26, 2007

The Leap in Ratings for Channel Nine During the Women’s Takeover, and the Rise in Popularity of Noticias, Reflect the Desire for the “Presentation of Reality" I believe the strategy now in operation is for civil society organizations, other than the APPO itself, is to sponsor as much public debate as possible to confront the bad government. Public assemblies on property such as the university buildings are almost impossible to prevent (although we know the governor prevented a meeting at Santo Domingo), and even more so when national and international figures attend.

For example, this past weekend five organizations sponsored an open national forum on the subject of the media, and surprise, surprise: the Oaxaca media suffers from repression. That repression includes not only destroying community radio stations but also destroying university radio and Channel Nine (held by las cacerolas), and broadcasters like la Doctora Bertha Mendez whom I believe is still in hiding. It also includes killing off news reporters, and damaging the newspapers themselves (and even the corner stands that sold the newspapers) as in the case of Noticias. A videographer, Brad Will, was murdered, and even internet communicators are threatened. Of equal importance is the control of the mainstream media. Television is just about the only source of news for those who have electricity but no telephone nor local newspaper: that means the two corporate controlled stations of TV Azteca and Televisa.

Media personages such as Ericel Gómez Nucamendi, the president of Noticias Group which runs the daily newspaper Noticias, radio broadcaster Abraham Zabludovski (Radio 13), and Senator Humberto Lopez Lena addressed the National Forum on Communications and Society which held its first sessions February 23 to 25 in Oaxaca. The open discussion took place in the Bellas Artes building of Universidad Autonomía de Benito Juarez, whose rector, Francisco Martínez Neri was among the keynote panel presenters. Radio Universidad during several weeks was the only voice for the popular assembly movement; most of us were glued to it day and night.

Youngsters who operated the university station and hid for several weeks following the November 25 repression emerged to hear the panels of speakers and pose their own questions from the audience. One youngster asked, “Who decides who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?” The answer he received from a panelist was that it’s not a question of good and bad guys but of truth in reporting. I myself didn’t quite believe that, given the intensity of Internet blog hatred and the broadcasts by the PRI pirate station, Radio Ciudadana, or Radio Mapache (racoon), as the people call it.

In front of a changing audience, protected from the sun by a canvas tent, about 200 listened to each panel. The speakers (and the reporter invited from Imparcial, the non-impartial daily paper that supports the government, did not show up) laid out the history of media repression in Oaxaca. Ericel Gómez said, “Freedom of Expression is, and should be one of the fundamental constitutional rights, and we know it is indispensable in the struggle to respect and promote human rights.” He added that “the right is undermined by both the state and federal government who want to impede social change.”

Fernando Gálvez, a reporter whose articles appear in the national newspapers El Universal and La Jornada, read his half hour history of the attacks on Noticias and community radio. The audience applauded vigorously his forthright statements about the government’s attacks on both of those media. He also pointed out that there is scarcely ten percent of the population within reach of a daily newspaper. For example, he cited a town scarcely half an hour from the city, where as recently as 2005 no newspaper was available, the only source of news being the two main television channels. He indicated that most mountain towns (i.e., the majority of small towns in Oaxaca) have no telephone service, newspaper, Internet or radio.

Gálvez also expressed the opinion that Brad Will, shot in the neighborhood of Santa Lucia, was deliberately targeted in order to provide an excuse for the USA to back Calderón’s subsequent repression. The world proliferation of alternative media, he said, is because of discontent with corporate media.

The audience, comprised of youngsters, foreigners, academics, media people and Oaxaca citizens, participated with questions and statements following each panel. One woman who identified herself as a housewife assured the audience that she went to the zócalo several times during the teachers’ encampment. “It was like a fiesta,” she told the audience. Then when she arrived home to turn on the TV, she was totally surprised by the contradiction of what she had seen with her own eyes. Since then, she told us, when she goes to the zócalo she has to identify herself “like a delinquent” and her bag is searched. The failure of correspondence between reality and reporting, observed by all of us who live in Oaxaca, made a strong theme throughout the weekend presentations. The housewife accused the mainstream media by saying, “As reporters, you’re not selling peanuts, you’re selling information. Where is your professionalism? You may as well be selling peanuts and chocolate!” The leap in ratings for Channel Nine during the women’s takeover, and the enormous rise in popularity of Noticias, both reflect the desire for “the presentation of reality,” as one panelist called it.

Umberto Cruz of Radio Oro on the third panel began his presentation by saying, “I am sorry…” Radio Oro was one of the stations captured by the APPO, and like many of the media people who showed up he knows that much of what happens is well beyond his control. The open discussions are aimed at forcing the government to change, both law and behaviors. This government is a doubtful prospect, in my opinion, and especially with elections approaching.

Many corroborated the role of the TV in reducing the social movement to either obstructionism on the part of the APPO, or scenes of violence. Equally at fault is commercial radio. Present at one panel was the woman reporter Ixtli Martínez (W RADIO) who assured the audience she certainly didn’t take her orders from anyone, least of all Ulises Ruiz; she is thoroughly independent, and went to the barricades where she was threatened with a pistol! That was what she subsequently reported. In my opinion the audience rejection of Martinez’ self-defense of her role as a reporter was a prevalent attitude throughout. The mood reflects anger and hostility toward being treated as ignorant children or outright dupes.

While alternative media was mentioned frequently, it was also acknowledged that not many people can access the Internet beyond the main cities. The strongest demands focus on community radio. For towns that have an electric line but nothing else, community radio is seen as the life-line for organizing. That is certainly evident in the government refusal to permit local radio from gaining a foothold in towns where poverty keeps people – may I say – eating out of the hands of the caciques, and unable to organize.

The meetings will continue for one month with special tables and workshops, and conclude on March 25. On March 3, 10 and 17 the following themes will be addressed: State Radio and television , the Case of the Oaxaca Corporation for Radio and Television, the Public System of Indigenous Radio, and Social Movements and Alternative Media.

The series of forums was convened by the Center for Meetings and Intercultural Dialogue, The Autonomous University of Benito Juarez of Oaxaca, the Council for the Defense of the Natural and Cultural Patrimony of Oaxaca, the Mexican Association for the Right to Information and the University of the Earth in Oaxaca.

To the best of my knowledge, well-known author Carlos Monsiváis who was scheduled to speak at the conference on Sunday afternoon, didn’t arrive.

Cucapá Camp Regulations

The Indigenous Peoples in Defense of Life, Culture and Nature: Below and to the Left

Quilihua youth chillin'

The Cucapás, Quilihuas and Zapatistas have united in defense of indigenous people and Mother Earth. They are calling on their fellow Mexicans and compas from around the world to support two encampments: one on indigenous Cucapá territory in Baja California and the other in indigenous Tzotzil territory in Chiapas. Read the invitation carefully and consider how you may support this latest initiative of the Other Campaign. (Also check out the Sixth Commission's website, Enlace Zapatista, to see the wave of communiques and denunciations coming out of the Zapatista communities right now.)

In considering how best to engage with this initiative, it may be helpful to check out some of the articles and resources at Colours of Resistance, a site created by "a grassroots network of people who consciously work to develop anti-racist, multiracial politics in the movement against global capitalism."

And if you are considering physically joining either the Cucapá or Zapatista encampment, its a good idea to get ready now to respect the regulations they've set up for participation. It's one thing to break the rules of a government you disagree with but its another to break the rules of a people you are visiting and in solidarity with, right?

With that in mind, I've translated here the regulations put out for the Cucapá camp:

Encampment Regulations of the Chapey Seisjhiurra Coappá in Maat'cuoak
(Cucapá Fishermen Camp in El Zanjon)

2007 Fishing Season

First Article: This place, Maat'cuoak, is the land and water that we, the Chapey Coappá (Cucapá), have lived on and fished for thousands of years. This place is sacred to us.

We respect it because it is the place where our ancestors, same as us today, found food for our families. In this place, the Ipaa Gentil (Wild Wheat) is found, with which we have fed ourselves, and we have also encountered Jasreiis Cuoau Llu (Saltwater fish: Curvina), that also helps us to feed ourselves and to survive.

Second Article: Consequently, any person, be they indigenous or not, for their own safety, is obligated when entering and/or staying in the camp, to respect this place (Maat’cuoak), under the terms laid out in the following regulation and to fulfill it in agreement with:

a. Our Rights, Customs, and Traditions,
b. The Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico,
c. Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization,
d. The Political Constitutions of the States of Baja California and Sonora,
e. The Laws and Regulations that have emanated from these legislations, as long as these last ones and the others do not contravene the constituted rights of the indigenous Cucapá people.

Third Article: It is prohibited to use this regulation and the camp itself and any of its installations for electoral political ends or another’s demands of respect for indigenous rights and culture, and above all, prohibited are activities that do not promote the defense and recognition of the history, culture, and rights of the original people of the American continent and the world; the conservation and defense of Mother Earth; and that are not approved by the indigenous Cucapá people. Also prohibited are all actions or omissions that, in the consideration of the Cucapá people, damage the Mother Earth in their territory.

Fourth Article: It is prohibited to use this regulation and the camp itself and any of its installations for religious ends of any nature and, above all, it is prohibited to make within the camp activities for and/or against any church or sect or any religious organization, that contravene our rights, customs and traditions.

Fifth Article: This regulation is to be observed obligatorily by any person that enters the camp, in the three places in which it will be installed, that is to say:

Zone A: Indigenous Cucapá village El Mayor;
Zone B: El Zanjon, East Side (by El Indiviso);
Zone C: El Zanjon, West Side (by El Mayor)

Sixth Article: In regard to the safety and conduct of the people, it is strictly prohibited within this camp:

A. To pass through any part of the camp without carrying your respective accreditation from the Indigenous Cucapá Accreditation Committee.

B. The possession, trafficking and consumption of any substances identified as psychotropic, narcotics, or drugs of any type, and/or the possession, consumption, and/or sale of alcoholic drinks.

C. The use of any weapon, be it a firearm, knife, machete, or blunt or stabbing weapon. The fishing gear that is the property of the Cucapá fishermen (nets, trawling nets, buoys, utensils to remove the insides of the fish, lead weights, cabos, outboard motors, and boats) is not included in this prohibition.

D. The use of explosives of any type.

E. The use of any television and/or music device and of photographic, video, or television cameras that have not been registered with the Accreditation Committee.

F. To utter any type of offense or carry out acts of provocation toward any person.

G. To circulate in the camp after ten at night without the knowledge or authorization of the Indigenous Accreditation Committee.

H. To have, at any time, any sound-making device at high volume.

I. To commit excesses or carry out acts that contravene indigenous Cucapá rights, customs, and traditions.

Seventh Article: In regard to the activity of fishing, it is strictly prohibited within the camp:

A. To enter a boat without authorization from the Cucapá fishermen.
B. To enter a boat without a properly placed life jacket (with the exception of the Cucapá fishermen).
C. To operate a Cucapá fishing boat without their authorization
D. To be in the work area or direct fishing zone of the Cucapá fishermen without their authorization.

Eighth Article: Under no circumstance is a national or international permitted (according to the customs of the Cucapá and Mexican law), to meddle in matters that only concern the Cucapá themselves.

Ninth Article: The violation of any of the rules of this regulation will have, as immediate sanction, the cancellation of accreditation, and the violator will have to leave the camp immediately and without excuse. This without prejudice to the criminal or civil responsibilities the violator incurs.

Tenth Article: Any situation not foreseen in this regulation will be resolved by simple majority of the members of the Indigenous Cucapá Accreditation Committee. The judgments and resolutions that said committee aims to take will be unappealable and are to be immediately fulfilled.

Attentively

The Accreditation Committee of the Cucapá Camp