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<div class="entry-date">August 15, 2013
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<div class="subheadlinestyle">Dispatch From Catatumbo<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/15/capitalism-genocide-colombia/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/15/capitalism-genocide-colombia/</a><br>
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<h1 class="article-title">Capitalism, Genocide & Colombia</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle"><big><big>by DANIEL KOVALIK</big></big></div>
<div class="main-text"><big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>I just returned from Catatumbo, Colombia where thousands
of peasants are waging a life-and-death struggle against the
U.S.-backed Colombian military and its paramilitary allies. For over
60 days, the peasants have been demonstrating against the deplorable
living conditions and economic circumstances in which they live, and in
support of their proposal for a Peasant Farmer Reserve Zone of 10
million hectares.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Such a zone, which is provided for under the law, would
allow the peasants to engage in subsistence farming free of the threat
of encroachment by extractive companies desiring to mine or drill on
their land. This demand, along with the concomitant demand of the
peasants for all mining and oil exploration and extraction in their
region to be suspended, is critical to the peasants who are being
driven to the verge of extinction.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>According to the Luis Carlos Pérez Lawyers’ Collective
(CALCP), 11,000 peasants have been killed in this region by state and
para-state forces, most of them during the 2002-2010 term of President
of Alvaro Uribe, and over 100,000 peasants, out of a total of around
300,000, have been forcibly displaced. At least 32 mass graves
containing the bodies of murdered peasant activists have been found in
this region in recent years.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>And, this mass murder and displacement is being carried
out to make way for more oil drilling, African palm cultivation (for
biodiesel) and for coal mining by North American companies.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>I say that this mayhem is being carried out, in part, in
order to make way for <em>more</em> oil drilling because, in fact,
much oil drilling has been taking place there for the past 70 years.
And, the peasants of this region have nothing to show for this many
years of drilling. As we were told a few times during out trip, after
70 years of oil exploration, the rural parts of this region do not even
have a paved road. (Our delegation – led by Justice for Colombia and
including participants from the USW and Unite the Union UK – found this
out the hard way during our 3.5 hour drive over a dirt road from Cucuta
to a village outside Tibu near the Venezuelan border).</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>In addition, there is no sewage system, no running water
and no health services. Indeed, peasants injured in their
confrontations with the military and police during the two months of
demonstrations – with the peasants defending themselves with sticks
against the guns, tanks and other U.S.-supplied hardware of the
military and police – have been forced to flee into Venezuela for
refuge and medical services.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>In short, the oil and other extractive companies,
beginning with Texaco in the 1930’s, have taken and taken, and left the
people with nothing. Now, the companies want even more, and it is the
very existence and presence of the peasants which stands in their way.
And so, quite logically, the companies, with the help of the
U.S.-backed military and paramilitaries, are aiming to literally wipe
the peasants off the map. In other words, these forces are engaged in
a calculated act of genocide. Indeed, when a number of us remarked
upon how almost everyone we saw and met with in our visit to Catatumbo
were no more than teenagers, we were told that this was the result of
the fact that their parents had either been murdered or displaced.
Left behind are villages populated almost entirely by children.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big><b>Young Peasants of Catatumbo In Rebellion</b></big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The calculated mass killing and displacement that is
taking place in Catatumbo is a good example of the phenomenon discussed
in the new book, <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1780321996/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);"><i>Capitalism:
A Structural Genocide</i></a> by Garry Leech. In that book, Leech
argues, and quite forcefully, that capitalism, left to its own devices,
will inevitably destroy (1) those who stand in the way of the
exploitation of natural resources; and (2) those individuals, such as
peasants and subsistent farmers, who are engaged in pursuits which
neither contribute towards economic “growth” nor produce surplus value
or profit. Of course, the peasants of Catatumbo fall into both of
these categories simultaneously, and are therefore a double threat.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Citing Indian physicist and philosopher Vandana Shiva,
Leech explains that, under capitalism, “nothing has value until it
enters the market. Shiva points out that under capitalism ‘if you
consume what you produce, you do not really produce, at least not
economically speaking. If I grow my own food, and do not sell it, then
this does not contribute to GDP, and so does not contribute towards
growth.’” Rather, for such subsistence farmers, “’nature exists as a
commons.’” The commons, moreover, and those who work on it, are
simply not permitted under capitalism.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>As Leech and Shiva explain, those working the commons must
either “be incorporated – often through coercion – into the
ever-widening spheres of production and circulation,” or they must be
simply be destroyed. This process, as Leech explains, is what Karl
Marx termed, “primitive accumulation,” and it is quite a nasty process,
wherever it is carried out.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Leech explains that, as capitalism was beginning to get
into full swing in Britain in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, the
British Parliament passed a series of Enclosure Acts which privatized
commonly held lands and “prevented much of the generations-old practice
of grazing their animals and cultivating their crops on commonly held
lands, thereby forcing them to move to the cities in search of jobs.”</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>More recently, as Leech astutely points out, Mexico
outlawed communal land titles for indigenous peoples in order to make
way for NAFTA. As Leech explains, and as many of us have argued for
years, a major <i>raison d’être</i> of NAFTA was in fact the primitive
accumulation of the commons of millions of small farmers in Mexico.
This primitive accumulation was carried out by NAFTA’s provisions which
allowed heavily-subsidized, and therefore cheap, agricultural products
from North America to flood the Mexican markets tariff-free.
Meanwhile, the IMF rules governing Mexico forbid that country from
subsidizing its own agricultural producers.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>As Leech explains, the results for 2 million small farmers
in Mexico, who could not compete with the subsidized food from the
North, was devastating, with these small farmers losing their
livelihood and their land and fleeing into the cities, or illegally
into the U.S. Finding themselves displaced from their land, many were
left with no jobs at all, found themselves exploited in low paying jobs
with poor safety and health practices, or turned to the drug trade for
employment. The result for Mexico as a whole has been the destruction
of the social fabric of the nation and increased violence, with cities
like Juarez suffering violence levels comparable to nations at war.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>While Leech does not focus on Colombia in his book, he
does mention that Colombia itself “has become Latin America’s poster
child over the past decade and its economic growth has been driven by
the exploitation of the country’s natural resources, particularly oil,
coal and gold, by foreign companies.” Colombia now has the largest
internally displaced population in the world at over 5 million. As
Leech explains, “[m]any have been forced from their lands by direct
physical violence related to the country’s armed conflict – often by
the Colombian military and right-wing paramilitary groups serving the
interests of multinational corporations. However, many others have
become economic refugees due to the structural violence inherent in
neoliberal policies that has dispossessed them of their lands in order
to facilitate capital accumulation for foreign companies.”</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big><b>Peasants Greet Us Along The Highway</b></big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The peasants of Catatumbo have long been the victims of
such direct as well as structural violence, but now they are fighting
back to defend their land. For 53 days, these peasants, armed only
with sticks, blocked the main highway linking the cities of Cucuta and
Tibu. Shortly after our visit, the government agreed to negotiate with
them directly, and the peasants ended this blockade for now. However,
they will begin it anew if talks fail.</big></big></p>
<big><big>
</big></big>
<p><big><big>While the Colombian Minister of Defense warned us not to
travel this highway because of these protests, the peasants freely
allowed us to pass. Of course, as all of us understood, what the
Colombian government was truly afraid of was that we would witness that
it is in fact the peasants who are on the side of right; that it is
they who are defending the land, the water and the rainforests for all
of us. And, this is why their struggle, and the struggles of others
like them, must succeed. In truth, our very lives and future depend
on them.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big><em><b>Daniel Kovalik</b> is a labor and human rights
lawyer and teaches International Human Rights at the University of
Pittsburgh School of Law.</em></big></big></p>
<big></big></div>
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