[News] Latin America - Autonomy or New Forms of Domination?
Anti-Imperialist News
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Wed Feb 25 13:45:01 EST 2009
Autonomy or New Forms of Domination?
Raúl Zibechi | February 18, 2009
Translated from:
<http://ircamericas.org/esp/5807>¿Autonomía o nuevas formas de dominación?
Translated by: Monica Wooters
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5877
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)
<http://americas.irc-online.org/>americas.irc-online.org
In late 2008, the Hugo Chavez administration
celebrated 10 years in government. Since his
first electoral triumph on Dec. 6, 1998, a new
period began characterized by the emergence of
progressive and leftist governments in South
America. Chavez's rise to power was the result of
a long process of struggle from the bottom-up
that initiated with caracazo of Feb. 1989the
first massive popular insurrection against
neoliberalism. It has now led to crisis in the
party system, which supported domination by the elite for decades.
In the following years, another seven presidents
have come to power creating a new paradigm within
the institutional political scenario in eight out
of 10 governments in the region: Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva in Brazil, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner
in Argentina, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Tabaré
Vázquez in Uruguay, Evo Morales in Bolivia,
Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Fernando Lugo in
Paraguay. These governments were made possible,
to greater and lesser degrees, by the resistance
of social movements to the neoliberal model.
In a few cases this change was the consequence of
a long electoral history (notably in Brazil and
Uruguay), while in other countries it was the
fruit of social movements' actions that were able
to bring down neoliberal parties and governments
(Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and in part,
Argentina). After 10 years of this process, it
seems timely to undertake a brief history of what has occurred:
* More important than the differences between
these processes is the fundamental element they
have in common: the return to a central state
that has been converted into an actor for change;
* The marginalization of the social
movements, which in the 1990s and at the start of
2000 were the main players in resistance to the neoliberal model;
* The dominant contradiction has been the
dynamic between the government and the right, an
issue that pushed many social movements into a
pro-state position that has appeared largely avoidable;
* Some tendencies aim to move the social
movements toward new bases of support, employing
new causes and forms of intervention.
The decline of the "progressive" decade as a
process of social, political, and economic change
implies the need for social movements to take
inventory of the period and analyze the gains and
losses that it represented for the popular camp.
The Risks of Subordination
In the first stage after the "progressive"
governments took power, the subordination of
social movements to their respective governments
predominated, resulting in demobilization,
divisions, and the fragmentation of initiatives.
Only small groups maintained open confrontation,
while the majority collaborated with the state in
return for subsidies and other material benefits,
including positions in state agencies and
institutions. Another large part of the original collectives simply dissolved.
In contrast, the social movements of Chile, Peru,
and Colombia have taken important steps forward.
In these three countries, it is the indigenous
peoples that have taken the initiative. The
Mapuche people of Chile are recovering from the
destruction caused by the antiterrorist law
inherited from the Pinochet era and reactivated
by the "socialist" Ricardo Lagos (president from
2000-2006), and together with students and
diverse sectors of the workers' movement (miners
and foresters in particular) are engaging in an
important revitalization of their movement.
Indigenous communities affected by mining in Peru
founded a new organization, National
Confederation of Peruvian Communities Affected by
Mining (Confederación Nacional de Comunidades del
Perú Afectadas por la Minería, Conacami), engaged
in vigorous resistance to the genocidal mining
activities of multinational companies that
contaminate water sources and air to improve
their profits. Conacami is a Quechua
community-based organization that continues to
resist free trade policies with the United States
and the neoliberal policies of Alan García. Its
members have proved willing to risk their lives
and incarceration as political prisoners to carry their movement forward.
In Colombia, the historical struggle of the Nasa
people manifested in the Association of
Indigenous Councilmen of the Northern Cauda
(Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del
Cauca, ACIN) and the Regional Indigenous Council
of Cauca (Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca,
CRIC), has been doubly successful. The large
social movement known as Minga (collective work)
was created in October in Cauca, joining dozens
of indigenous peoples. Minga was able to break
the military hold on society that paralyzed
indigenous peoples. The vast majority of
Afro-Colombians, sugarcane laborers, service
industry workers, and community and human rights
organizations united with the indigenous struggle.
The example of these movements, created and
fostered in adversity, inspires social movements
throughout the continent. The long hunger strike
by Patricia Troncoso between Nov. 2007 and Jan.
2008, and the efforts of the indigenous Colombian
movement Minga share the powerful goal of
overcoming isolation and low-intensity genocide
designed to wipe them off the map and deny their existence.
In other countries the social movement scenario
is very complex, Argentina being perhaps the most
emblematic case. Most of the piquetero movement
was co-opted by the state through social programs
and the designation of leaders of the movement
for government positions. The human rights
movement, and in particular the Mothers'
Association of the Plaza de Mayo (Asociación
Madres de Plaza de Mayo), which played a major
role in the resistance to neoliberalism in the
1990s, has moved toward a more official role and
begun to defend government policies. In addition,
a section of the neighborhood associations have disappeared.
However, not everything has regressed within the
social movement community. In the last five years
numerous collectives have emerged, many of them
linked to environmental issues such as open-pit
mining, deforestation, and soy monoculture. As a
result, hundreds of local assemblies (most small
but incredibly active) have been created,
coordinated through the Union of Citizen
Assemblies (Unión de Asambleas Ciudadanas, UAC),
which has become an active leader in the resistance to multinational mining.
Some 200 rural organizations of small-scale
farmers make up the National Campesino Front
(Frente Nacional Campesino). This Front
represents family and community agriculture
against the imposition of soybean production. It
brings together longstanding movements (such as
the Campesino Movement of Santiago del Estero,
[Movimiento de Campesinos de Santiago del Estero,
MOCASE]), with newer organizations of small
producers including a handful of collectives from the urban periphery.
Movements in Brazil have not been able to
overcome a long period of being on the defensive,
which intensified under the Lula administration.
In Uruguay, despite the strengthening of the
union movement due mainly to state protection of
the union leaders, social movements are far from
being defined as anti-systemic actors. The urban
poor have mobilized but only on a local level and
their movement is extremely fragmented.
Government social programs are largely
responsible for the current weakness of grassroots movements.
In Bolivia the situation is different. Movements
have not been defeated and continue to maintain
an important capacity to mobilize their bases of
support and pressure both the government and the
right-wing. The political crisis of last Sept.
was resolved thanks to the popular sectors. The
intense activity of the social movements included
a siege on the opposition stronghold of Santa
Cruz, and by resistance from the huge Plan 3000
settlement of poor and indigenous people located
on the outskirts of the oligarchic mestizo city.
According to Raquel Gutiérrez, the attitude of
the Bolivian movement during this period reflects
"a new margin of political autonomy from
government decisions," since they learned that
the government will be unable to restrain the
oligarchy. "They are no longer willing to
subordinate themselves so that the government
will guarantee them what they want."
Alongside pressure from the movements, there
exists a pro-state logic embodied in the profuse
state bureaucracies (judicial, legislative,
ministerial, and municipal agencies, and
military). These bureaucracies are averse to
change. In addition to their characteristic
conservatism, there are the new political
apparatuses integrated by a wide array of elected
officials (representatives, senators, councilmen,
and mayors) and un-elected officials (ministers
and hundreds of consultants) whose main ambition
is to remain in their positions.
New Forms of Domination
It seems virtually impossible for grassroots
movements to overcome their dependence on and
subordination to the state, especially given that
the new "leftist" and "progressive" governments
have instituted new forms of domination including
social programs aimed at "integrating" the poor.
These play the leading role in the design of new forms of social control.
Recently I had the following conversation with a
high ranking official of the Uruguayan Ministry of Social Development:
"We understand the [current] social policies as
policies of independence and not as policies used to control the poor."
"Is this your personal opinion or that of the Ministry as well?"
"It is the belief of the national government and
not just that of the Ministry of Social
Development or my personal belief. The national
government did not come here to placate the
poorest social sectorsit came to generate
opportunities for integration and independence."
This conversation, no doubt honest, calls into
questions the role of social movements as the
state assumes their discourse or even their
practices. The issue raises three central questions:
* The end of the old right. The new
governments that gained strength during the
crises of the first stage of neoliberalisma
period of privatization and deregulationcannot
move forward without destroying the foundations
of the traditional domination of the elite
right-wing. These elite have erected expansive
networks with local political bosses to subdue
the poorest individuals through mediation with
state institutions and control of the electoral system.
Grassroots movements came about in the battle
against the elite. The case of the piqueteros is
typical. The struggle to gain direct control of
subsidies, taking it away from the network of
local political bosses, gave meaning and power to
the movement. The wave of mobilizations that
modified the regional political map directly confronted the right-wing.
The new governments tend to displace these
networks, with more or less success, and replace
them with state bureaucracies. Perhaps this is
the principle "progressive" move on the part of
the new governments. In order to dismantle the
networks belonging to the old elite, the states
appeal to the same language and the same norms
and codes of the popular sectors organized into movements.
* The new forms of control. The crisis in
discipline as a way to train new cadres in closed
spaces was one of the main characteristics of the
"revolution of '68." The loss of control by
patriarchal hierarchies and the breakdown of
vertical control in factories, schools,
hospitals, and the military forced capital and
the state to create new forms of control, placing
at the center of their strategy the question of
population and security. Social programs directly
implemented by the state but executed by a range
of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are how
new forms of domination are put into practice in
the opaque area of control. Through these tactics
the state becomes expansive and comes to the poor
neighborhoods that have been converted into
bastions of revolt to work from the inside; in
other words, it works with the same sectors that
have organized themselves into movements but to dismantle those organizations.
The state's presence no longer takes on the
shape of the police baton, which never really
disappears, but rather the more subtle "social
development for integration and the citizenry."
NGOs supply the state with information they have
accumulated over decades of "cooperation" through
daily interaction in the "participative"
practices that characterized popular education to
accomplish this task. We now have a new legion of
young government officials who no longer wait for
students in the schools or patients in the
hospitals, but go directly into the heart of
impoverished and rebellious populations. They
have an advantage in this area of work; they know
the ins and outs of the popular sectors because a
large percentage of these officials have
participated in the resistance to the neoliberal
model. In other words, they have been radicals,
or, at the very least have had close ties with social activism.
It is fair to say, as does the Brazilian
sociologist Francisco de Oliveira, that social
programs are instruments of control based on a
bio-politico mechanism through which the state
classifies individuals based on what they lack
and "restores a kind of political clientele
relationship" in which the policy ends up becoming irrelevant.
It is true that social programs can help
alleviate poverty, but they do not change the
distribution of wealth, avoid the growing
concentration of income, or transform the central
aspects of the model. In affecting the capacity
for organizing movements, they block their growth
and in this way are tools of the neoliberal war
to commercialize life. It is interesting to note
that almost all leftist intellectuals consider
the implementation of social programs an accomplishment of progressivism.
* An offensive against autonomy. These same
governments are now adopting the vocabulary of
social movements, even saying that they wish to
support a "critical autonomy" within the social
sectors that receive the benefits of social
programs. They create methods of coordination so
that the social movements may participate in the
design of social programs and become involved in
the application of local policies (never general
policies that could question the model).
The social movements are made to participate
in a "participative evaluation" of their
neighborhood or town. They even charge them with
carrying out the local assistance work so that
they might become involved in the policy of
"organizational strengthening" designed by the
World Bank, which decides which organization is
best suited to collaborate with the corresponding ministry.
All of this occurs to "build the state" in
the daily practices of the popular sector, the
same context in which these individuals learned
to "build movement." Social programs are directed
at the heart of communities that have engaged in
rebellion. The state seeks to neutralize or
modify the networks and methods of solidarity,
reciprocity, and mutual aid created by those from
below to survive the neoliberal model. Once those
ties and the autonomous wisdom that was generated
by the social movements disappear, the people
will be much more easily controlled.
None of this should be attributed to a supposed
evil within the new progressive governments. Each
time those from below throw off the trappings of
domination, other, newer, more perfected forms
necessarily appear. Only by neutralizing the
social programs and overcoming the offensive
against autonomy from below can social movements
find their way back to the road to independence.
Translated for the Americas Program by Monica Wooters.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
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