It Has Many Virtues
By DAVID MACARAY
CounterPunch
By now, most people have heard of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), the bold legislative initiative introduced by the Democrats (Rep. George Miller, D-CA), intended to amend the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by making it easier and fairer for employees to join a labor union.
Although the measure passed the House by a vote of 241 to 185, in June of 2007, and was approved by a 51-48 vote in the Senate, it failed to get the 60 votes necessary for cloture (which would have made it filibuster-proof), causing it to lie dormant for the remainder of the 110th Congress.
However, it should be noted that President Bush had already promised to veto the legislation, so even with those 60 crucial Senate votes the bill would have emerged stillborn. To have any chance whatever of becoming law, it was clear that the EFCA would require a Democrat in the White House.
During the primaries, both Obama and Clinton loudly sang the praises of the EFCA (as they raked in organized labor’s contributions) and promised, if elected, to fight for its passage. But because there have been signs that President Obama is hedging on that promise, it remains to be seen how hard he and his Congress-savvy chief of staff Rahm Emanuel will push for it. On one side, they have moderate Democrats terrified of provoking the Republicans; on the other, they have an aroused AFL-CIO applying pressure.
If enacted, EFCA would allow employees to circumvent the complex, time-consuming, and management-skewed NLRB certification process. Instead of a full-blown election, workers would have the choice of “card check,” where all they have to do is sign cards indicating they wish to become union members. If a majority of the workforce signs such cards they instantly belong to a union.
Naturally, most businesses hate the idea of the streamlining the process. They object to anything that makes joining a union easier. Indeed, if it were their call, many businesses would prefer seeing unions made illegal or “state-run,” as they are in the most repressive countries in the world. Accordingly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent millions lobbying against passage of the EFCA.
While card check is the most celebrated feature of the EFCA, there are two other provisions in this bill that are equally—if not more—important. Card check is an enormous advantage to unions, but it’s not a “new” method. It’s already used voluntarily by companies who feel they can either defeat the measure through anti-union propaganda, or believe there’s benefit in being seen as “labor friendly.”
But the two other features of this bill could be seen as labor milestones.
First, the EFCA will give the union the right to demand that the company begin contract negotiations within 10 days of certification. Ask any union organizers how hard it is to get that first contract, and they’ll tell you that companies are notorious for dragging their feet—either by stalling interminably before sitting down with the union, or purposely prolonging the negotiations to the point where novice memberships get so antsy, they lose their nerve and ask for decertification. It happens.
However, under the EFCA, if the parties are unable to reach an agreement within 90 days, either side, union or management, can request that the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) be brought in to mediate the bargain. Mediators already assist in contract bargains, particularly when strikes have been called or appear to be imminent, so having one present isn’t innovative.
But here’s the astonishing part: If the parties can’t reach a mediated settlement within 30 days, the FMCS has the authority to finalize the contract. In effect, it would be binding arbitration. The notion of an outside party—a government agency, no less—setting the terms of a labor agreement would put the fear of God in management, causing them to do everything in their power to reach an equitable agreement. It’s a profound improvement to the process.
Second, the EFCA would require the NLRB to seek an immediate injunction when there is “reasonable cause” to believe an employer has fired, suspended or harassed an employee for engaging in a union organizing or first contract drive. Moreover, an employer who is found guilty of illegally firing or suspending a union activist would be required to pay that employee three times his back pay—the amount of his lost wages, plus two times that sum in punitive damages—plus as much as $20,000 in civil fines.
So there it is. The EFCA will not only make card check a way of life, it will prevent companies who hope to avoid having to agree to a fair contract from stalling or playing mind games at the bargaining table, and will stop (or seriously curtail) management from illegally thwarting union activism in the workplace.
It’s no wonder the Republican Party and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are going ape-shit over this. Arguably, the EFCA would be the first big-time pro-labor legislation to come down the pike since the 1935 Wagner Act. Now it’s up to Obama and the Democrats to step up to the plate and get it done.
David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright (“Borneo Bob,” “Larva Boy”) and writer, was a former labor rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net
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2/19/09
América Latina y los desafíos de la izquierda revolucionaria
Camilo Moreno
Rebelión
Para nosotros no se trata de reformar la propiedad privada, sino de abolirla; no se trata de paliar los antagonismos de clase, sino de abolir las clases; no se trata de mejorar la sociedad existente, sino de establecer una nueva...
Nuestro grito de guerra ha de ser siempre: ¡la revolución permanente!
C. Marx. Mensaje a la Liga Comunista. 1850
Introducción:
Muchos líderes y analistas de izquierda cometen un grave error de percepción al sobrevalorar los cambios políticos ocurridos en América Latina en los últimos años. Sus planteamientos van desde aquellos que perciben los triunfos electorales de la centro izquierda como "avances revolucionarios" , hasta los que, menos optimistas, plantean sin embargo que América Latina ofrece nuevas oportunidades para transformar profundamente las relaciones de dependencia y miseria privilegiando la vía institucional y aprovechando "las puertas que se han abierto" desde la democracia burguesa. Esto trae como consecuencia la subvaloración de la importancia de la lucha extra institucional y antisistémica, la movilización y organización popular y la creación de poder alternativo local.
El complejo y contradictorio proceso que vive desde hace años América Latina requiere, sin embargo, análisis más abarcativos para no dejarse engañar por las ilusiones que, aunque haciendo llamados a la movilización de masas, plantean la lucha electoral privilegiadamente como el único camino posible y "sensato" para la izquierda.
La izquierda revolucionaria tiene como desafíos plantearse estrategias capaces de construir verdaderas alternativas de poder y recuperar la movilización de masas en decadencia. Esto pasa por reconocer, más allá de los triunfalismos, algo que ya hoy es evidente: el reflujo de la movilización social en América Latina y el resurgir de la derecha.
Crisis del neoliberalismo a inicios de siglo y triunfo electoral de centro izquierda:
Después de la contraofensiva neoliberal de los años 90, a finales de la década e inicios de siglo su derrota en el plano económico desacreditó a la derecha tradicional, creó conmociones sociales y produjo una crisis que derrocó varios gobiernos de la región por vía de la movilización popular: la revuelta derrocó tres presidentes en Ecuador, varios en Argentina y dos en Bolivia. Los movimientos sociales fueron los grandes protagonistas de las jornadas rebeldes que dejaron decenas de muertos como saldo y pusieron temporalmente en jaque la institucionalidad dominante. Indígenas, campesinos cocaleros, trabajadores mineros, piqueteros y masas urbanas empobrecidas desarrollaron jornadas de protesta social demostrando en ciertos países gran capacidad de acción y voluntad de sacrificio.
Las revueltas desataron una crisis de institucionalidad que, sin embargo, no logró ser capitalizada por los movimientos sociales para crear verdaderas alternativas de poder.
Aunque de manera desigual, la crisis y las protestas permitieron en ciertos casos la llegada al gobierno de candidatos de centro izquierda que capitalizaron la revuelta social para desplazar a la derecha tradicional (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brasil, Ecuador). En otros casos surgieron líderes de los propios movimientos sociales (Bolivia), y un militar bolivariano que obtuvo popularidad por encabezar un golpe fallido a un gobierno corrupto de derecha (Venezuela)
A pesar de los matices (no es lo mismo Venezuela, Bolivia y Ecuador que el resto de la región del cono sur) ninguno de los gobiernos de centro izquierda en la región logró desarrollar o consolidar cambios estructurales profundos, ni plantear alternativas reales al proyecto neoliberal. Venezuela es una notable excepción en este caso, cuyo proceso revolucionario aun tiene inmensos desafíos por delante, y donde seguramente la acción decidida de las organizaciones de base clasistas será un factor decisivo en la profundización de los avances.
Los gobiernos de centro izquierda encauzaron la rebeldía popular por vías institucionales, hicieron un llamado a la "mesura" y no aprovecharon la capacidad de movilización para desarrollar poder alternativo real. Con discurso progresista estos gobiernos en la mayoría de casos desmovilizaron a los movimientos sociales, desligaron varios de sus líderes minando la autonomía y capacidad de respuesta de éstos, al tiempo que nombraron en puestos claves de los ministerios a neoliberales ortodoxos para lograr un equilibrio de poder y garantizar así la gobernabilidad.
Política exterior y distanciamiento de EEUU: Máscara anti-imperialista, fondo neoliberal
Muchos análisis de izquierda se centran en la oposición que los nuevos gobiernos de centro izquierda hacen respecto a la hegemonía Norteamericana: el rechazo al ALCA principalmente es tomado como una muestra del carácter antiimperialista de los mismos. Excluyendo a Cuba y Venezuela, y aunque en algunos casos el rechazo al establecimiento o continuidad de las bases norteamericanas es una muestra de dignidad nacional, el distanciamiento de las políticas norteamericanas responden más bien a un contexto interno y externo que vale la pena analizar (sobre todo en los países del cono sur): En el plano externo la diversificación de los mercados internacionales y el alza en los precios de las materias primas a inicios de siglo permitieron cierta flexibilidad y capacidad de maniobra de los gobiernos y restaron importancia a las políticas del FMI y el BM; esto creo las condiciones en el plano interno para el surgimiento de una clase agro minera exportadora local y extranjera que aprovechó los altos precios de las materias primas para buscar mayores ventajas en otros mercados. Esta clase domina las finanzas, ejerce presión sobre los estados, y exige, al mismo tiempo, junto a los gabinetes de gobierno, mayor liberalización del mercado norteamericano (oposición al ALCA). En la mayoría de casos no se plantea, en último análisis, una oposición al neoliberalismo, sino más bien relaciones de mercado más competitivas y menos unilaterales por parte de EEUU. Esto evidentemente debilita la política norteamericana acostumbrada al saqueo incondicional y a tener regímenes clientes totalmente sumisos a sus designios. Estos gobiernos buscan y firman tratados de libre comercio con otras naciones más favorables a la entrada de sus productos (UE, países Asiáticos y comercio local y regional). Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo se avanza poco en un proyecto verdadero de integración solidaria (ALBA) y desarrollo endógeno.
Fortalecimiento de la derecha, debilitamiento de los movimientos sociales
En la mayoría de países donde triunfó electoralmente la centro izquierda, ésta tuvo que buscar alianzas para conseguir gobernabilidad. La reprimarización de la economía condujo a estos gobiernos a basar su política económica en consolidar el sector agro minero del cual obtenían grandes dividendos y les permitía llevar a cabo programas sociales tendientes a superar la crisis social de inicios de siglo. El equilibrio de poder constituido por la centro izquierda basada en sus alianzas con los grandes productores y exportadores agro mineros y sectores financieros por un lado, y la base electoral compuesta por la clase trabajadora urbana y rural de clase media y baja por el otro, terminó por desplazar la correlación de fuerzas hacia la derecha agro minera con mucha influencia en la economía [1].
La incapacidad para adelantar cambios estructurales profundos, para modificar las relaciones de propiedad de la tierra, para organizar efectivamente al movimiento popular como motor estratégico de cambio, trajo como resultado un debilitamiento de la centro izquierda y un fortalecimiento creciente de la derecha, ahora a la ofensiva. Los movimientos sociales se debilitaron, perdieron influencia y en algunos casos militantes.
En resumen, los gobiernos de centro izquierda, por falta de voluntad o incapacidad, adelantaron una "revolución pasiva" funcional a la supervivencia del sistema capitalista cuya crisis orgánica a inicios de siglo era evidente [2]. Esto es, con consignas progresistas resignificadas (cambiando algo, para que nada cambie), administraron la crisis neoliberal, aceitaron los engranajes del sistema, y devolvieron la legitimidad a las instituciones. En última instancia, concientes o no, reconstruyeron la hegemonía dominante y dieron paso al resurgimiento de derechas.
La derecha retoma la ofensiva
Al contrario de la izquierda tradicional que solo se moviliza en tiempos de campaña electoral y privilegia la lucha parlamentaria, la derecha en cambio, con sus grandes recursos, utiliza todos los medios a su alcance para recuperar su hegemonía. En todos los países controla los grandes medios de comunicación que desarrollan fenómenos mediáticos pro fascistas (Colombia), campañas de descrédito multimillonarias (Venezuela, Ecuador); han logrado proyectos separatistas (Bolivia) donde la oligarquía agro minera controla varias provincias ricas en recursos; han promovido iguales proyectos en el estado de Zulia (Venezuela), con la infiltración creciente de grupos paramilitares colombianos, y en Guayaquil (Ecuador). En Brasil, la oligarquía agro exportadora, las inmensas inversiones extranjeras en megaproyectos de agro combustibles y exportación agrícola, con la complicidad del gobierno, han desplazado miles de campesinos, debilitado y perseguido a los Sin Tierra (MST) y deforestado millones de hectáreas. En Argentina, la oligarquía agraria ha movilizado miles de personas en un paro que buscaba concesiones sobre los impuestos de exportación gubernamentales.
Así mismo, la derecha ha logrado constituir una base social fuerte en varios países y ha combinado la lucha parlamentaria con la movilización callejera de manera efectiva. Ha utilizado la movilización masiva para consolidar proyectos de ultra derecha (Colombia), avanzar sobre campañas de derrota a las políticas progresistas (referéndum en Venezuela), bloquear carreteras y parar la economía (Argentina) y consolidar proyectos separatistas (Bolivia).
En la mayoría de países la embajada norteamericana y agencias como la National Endowment for Democrcy (NED) han gastado miles de dólares en financiar partidos de oposición, dar asesoría sobre propaganda electoral, promover candidatos de derecha y desestabilizar gobiernos adversos a sus intereses, al tiempo que reactivan la IV flota caribeña y dan millones de dólares en ayuda militar a gobiernos terroristas como el colombiano.
De igual forma, la derecha ha promovido la violencia callejera y el terrorismo en varios países. Ha creado grupos de choque para hostigar simpatizantes del gobierno central en Bolivia y Venezuela, grupos armados privados para desplazar campesinos en Brasil y Colombia, y consolidar así megaproyectos agro mineros y energéticos.
El mito del reformismo: Nuevos ropajes, viejas ilusiones
Contrario a lo que sucedió con la socialdemocracia europea "de fines del siglo XIX y las primeras seis décadas del XX, en países beneficiados por un desarrollo económico, político y social capitalista basado en la explotación colonial y neocolonial, que les permitió acumular excedentes y redistribuir una parte de ellos entre los grupos sociales subordinados"[3] ;en America Latina la transnacionalización y desregularización de las economías, su creciente dependencia respecto al capital financiero internacional, y el Nuevo Orden Mundial impuesto, creó un mecanismo de seguridad que restringía aún más a los gobernantes la toma decisiones de manera autónoma o el desarrollo de proyectos de reforma progresista. Así mismo, después de la pacificación y la derrota política sufrida por la izquierda en las décadas anteriores, donde se instauraron dictaduras de "seguridad nacional"y el imperialismo usó la intervención directa y la lucha contrainsurgente para destruir los movimientos revolucionarios de los años sesenta y setenta, se abrió en los noventa un escenario donde el imperialismo reconstruyó la hegemonía burguesa, instaurando la "democracia neoliberal" como forma única de gobierno en la región De esta manera, el imperialismo puede "tolerar" ciertos gobiernos de centro izquierda, siempre y cuando respeten las reglas del juego, puesto que puede garantizar que, aunque en las urnas se vote por un candidato de izquierda, la economía siempre va a estar sujeta a las políticas de mercado. Esto restringe enormemente las posibilidades de llevar a cabo reformas progresistas en la región. Los gobiernos de centro izquierda tienen enorme dificultad para implementar cambios de fondo, redistribución de tierras y en pocos casos renacionalización de empresas. Las elites agro mineras se niegan a compartir o redistribuir sus enormes dividendos obtenidos de los altos precios de las materias primas y presionan a los gobiernos para desregularizar la economía y profundizar el neoliberalismo. Al tiempo que el imperialismo sigue desarrollando una política contrainsurgente en Colombia y amenazando con una intervención en Venezuela, donde la recuperación de la empresa estatal petrolera ha permitido al gobierno llevar a cabo proyectos alternativos "intolerables" para los poderosos.
En resumen, ni hoy, ni nunca han existido las condiciones para adelantar en América Latina un proyecto reformista equiparable al de la socialdemocracia europea (ni siquiera en la etapa desarrollista de mitad del siglo pasado). Más aún, reformas progresistas básicas de hoy se topan con el obstáculo de la hegemonía neoliberal.
Los sectores de izquierda que pretenden reeditar hoy, incluso con lenguaje marxista, las viejas ilusiones reformistas del pasado, o aquellos que hacen un llamado al "realismo", o a construir un "capitalismo nacional", abandonan en la práctica el proyecto estratégico de la revolución a largo plazo y terminan, en última instancia, siendo funcionales a la reconstrucción de la hegemonía capitalista.
Los desafíos de la izquierda revolucionaria: construcción de poder alternativo, lucha por la hegemonía socialista
La relación entre la estrategia y la táctica políticas ha sido siempre un problema que ha generado debates en la izquierda a través de la historia. Sin embargo, la historia misma ha demostrado que los movimientos políticos de izquierda exitosos han logrado percibir los momentos tácticos en su relación dialéctica con el objetivo estratégico (sin nunca perderlo de vista); han tenido presente siempre la categoría de totalidad a la hora de analizar las tareas políticas inmediatas; han percibido, más allá de los fenómenos superficiales del momento, los aspectos generales de tendencia de una época, y se han preocupado en todos los casos por incentivar la iniciativa política directa del campo popular como motor de transformación revolucionaria.
En la práctica, sin embrago, muchos movimientos políticos se pierden en las tareas del día a día, caen en el rutinarismo, tienden a desligarse de los movimientos sociales, y poco a poco se dejan arrastrar por el chantaje institucional.
Si la izquierda revolucionaria se caracteriza por promulgar el socialismo como la alternativa política a conquistar por el campo popular, por plantearse la lucha por el poder como el objetivo estratégico a lograr, en la mayoría de casos esa estrategia práctica se diluye de facto. Por ejemplo, si un objetivo primordial para avanzar sobre el proyecto revolucionario es lograr una apertura democrática nacional, la izquierda se pierde en las tareas más o menos inmediatas de la lucha electoral-parlamentaria o en las coaliciones electorales; no las percibe en la práctica como un momento táctico, aunque importante en ciertos casos, siempre dependiente de una totalidad más abarcativa de la lucha social: descuida o abandona la creación de poder alternativo extra institucional, la organización y movilización popular, y en último análisis, la lucha antisistémica y la organización revolucionaria.
Desde la institucionalidad burguesa es imposible construir una contra-hegemonía socialista. Aunque, tal como lo percibía Gramsci, los espacios de la democracia burguesa son un campo de batalla que pueden permitir ganar ciertas posiciones ("guerra de posiciones"), la creación y consolidación de una hegemonía socialista se desarrollan principalmente desde la organización y la lucha social.
La educación y organización política de base, el impulso y reconstrucción de los movimientos sociales, la articulación de las luchas parciales hacia los objetivos comunes, la lucha por la hegemonía , el desarrollo de poder dual (poder local alternativo que le dispute el poder a la burguesía) y la relación indisoluble entre dirigentes y movimientos sociales serán factores decisivos que permitan desbalancear la correlación de fuerzas a favor del campo popular y consolidar proyectos alternativos duraderos.
En la actualidad, los crecientes costos en el nivel de vida de la población, la crisis alimentaria producto de los nefastos proyectos de agro combustibles, la crisis mundial capitalista y el creciente descontento popular son condiciones que posibilitan retomar la ofensiva, siempre y cuando la izquierda revolucionaria sea capaz de organizar al campo popular, más allá de la lucha electoral, y de impulsar la rebeldía hacia la lucha por el socialismo.
Referencias:
1. Las paradojas del desarrollo en América Latina. Petras, James.
2. Crisis orgánica y revolución pasiva: el enemigo toma la iniciativa. Kohan, Nestor.
3. La izquierda latinoamericana en el gobierno: ¿sujeta a la hegemonía neoliberal o construyendo una contra hegemonía popular? Regalado, Roberto
Rebelión
Para nosotros no se trata de reformar la propiedad privada, sino de abolirla; no se trata de paliar los antagonismos de clase, sino de abolir las clases; no se trata de mejorar la sociedad existente, sino de establecer una nueva...
Nuestro grito de guerra ha de ser siempre: ¡la revolución permanente!
C. Marx. Mensaje a la Liga Comunista. 1850
Introducción:
Muchos líderes y analistas de izquierda cometen un grave error de percepción al sobrevalorar los cambios políticos ocurridos en América Latina en los últimos años. Sus planteamientos van desde aquellos que perciben los triunfos electorales de la centro izquierda como "avances revolucionarios" , hasta los que, menos optimistas, plantean sin embargo que América Latina ofrece nuevas oportunidades para transformar profundamente las relaciones de dependencia y miseria privilegiando la vía institucional y aprovechando "las puertas que se han abierto" desde la democracia burguesa. Esto trae como consecuencia la subvaloración de la importancia de la lucha extra institucional y antisistémica, la movilización y organización popular y la creación de poder alternativo local.
El complejo y contradictorio proceso que vive desde hace años América Latina requiere, sin embargo, análisis más abarcativos para no dejarse engañar por las ilusiones que, aunque haciendo llamados a la movilización de masas, plantean la lucha electoral privilegiadamente como el único camino posible y "sensato" para la izquierda.
La izquierda revolucionaria tiene como desafíos plantearse estrategias capaces de construir verdaderas alternativas de poder y recuperar la movilización de masas en decadencia. Esto pasa por reconocer, más allá de los triunfalismos, algo que ya hoy es evidente: el reflujo de la movilización social en América Latina y el resurgir de la derecha.
Crisis del neoliberalismo a inicios de siglo y triunfo electoral de centro izquierda:
Después de la contraofensiva neoliberal de los años 90, a finales de la década e inicios de siglo su derrota en el plano económico desacreditó a la derecha tradicional, creó conmociones sociales y produjo una crisis que derrocó varios gobiernos de la región por vía de la movilización popular: la revuelta derrocó tres presidentes en Ecuador, varios en Argentina y dos en Bolivia. Los movimientos sociales fueron los grandes protagonistas de las jornadas rebeldes que dejaron decenas de muertos como saldo y pusieron temporalmente en jaque la institucionalidad dominante. Indígenas, campesinos cocaleros, trabajadores mineros, piqueteros y masas urbanas empobrecidas desarrollaron jornadas de protesta social demostrando en ciertos países gran capacidad de acción y voluntad de sacrificio.
Las revueltas desataron una crisis de institucionalidad que, sin embargo, no logró ser capitalizada por los movimientos sociales para crear verdaderas alternativas de poder.
Aunque de manera desigual, la crisis y las protestas permitieron en ciertos casos la llegada al gobierno de candidatos de centro izquierda que capitalizaron la revuelta social para desplazar a la derecha tradicional (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brasil, Ecuador). En otros casos surgieron líderes de los propios movimientos sociales (Bolivia), y un militar bolivariano que obtuvo popularidad por encabezar un golpe fallido a un gobierno corrupto de derecha (Venezuela)
A pesar de los matices (no es lo mismo Venezuela, Bolivia y Ecuador que el resto de la región del cono sur) ninguno de los gobiernos de centro izquierda en la región logró desarrollar o consolidar cambios estructurales profundos, ni plantear alternativas reales al proyecto neoliberal. Venezuela es una notable excepción en este caso, cuyo proceso revolucionario aun tiene inmensos desafíos por delante, y donde seguramente la acción decidida de las organizaciones de base clasistas será un factor decisivo en la profundización de los avances.
Los gobiernos de centro izquierda encauzaron la rebeldía popular por vías institucionales, hicieron un llamado a la "mesura" y no aprovecharon la capacidad de movilización para desarrollar poder alternativo real. Con discurso progresista estos gobiernos en la mayoría de casos desmovilizaron a los movimientos sociales, desligaron varios de sus líderes minando la autonomía y capacidad de respuesta de éstos, al tiempo que nombraron en puestos claves de los ministerios a neoliberales ortodoxos para lograr un equilibrio de poder y garantizar así la gobernabilidad.
Política exterior y distanciamiento de EEUU: Máscara anti-imperialista, fondo neoliberal
Muchos análisis de izquierda se centran en la oposición que los nuevos gobiernos de centro izquierda hacen respecto a la hegemonía Norteamericana: el rechazo al ALCA principalmente es tomado como una muestra del carácter antiimperialista de los mismos. Excluyendo a Cuba y Venezuela, y aunque en algunos casos el rechazo al establecimiento o continuidad de las bases norteamericanas es una muestra de dignidad nacional, el distanciamiento de las políticas norteamericanas responden más bien a un contexto interno y externo que vale la pena analizar (sobre todo en los países del cono sur): En el plano externo la diversificación de los mercados internacionales y el alza en los precios de las materias primas a inicios de siglo permitieron cierta flexibilidad y capacidad de maniobra de los gobiernos y restaron importancia a las políticas del FMI y el BM; esto creo las condiciones en el plano interno para el surgimiento de una clase agro minera exportadora local y extranjera que aprovechó los altos precios de las materias primas para buscar mayores ventajas en otros mercados. Esta clase domina las finanzas, ejerce presión sobre los estados, y exige, al mismo tiempo, junto a los gabinetes de gobierno, mayor liberalización del mercado norteamericano (oposición al ALCA). En la mayoría de casos no se plantea, en último análisis, una oposición al neoliberalismo, sino más bien relaciones de mercado más competitivas y menos unilaterales por parte de EEUU. Esto evidentemente debilita la política norteamericana acostumbrada al saqueo incondicional y a tener regímenes clientes totalmente sumisos a sus designios. Estos gobiernos buscan y firman tratados de libre comercio con otras naciones más favorables a la entrada de sus productos (UE, países Asiáticos y comercio local y regional). Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo se avanza poco en un proyecto verdadero de integración solidaria (ALBA) y desarrollo endógeno.
Fortalecimiento de la derecha, debilitamiento de los movimientos sociales
En la mayoría de países donde triunfó electoralmente la centro izquierda, ésta tuvo que buscar alianzas para conseguir gobernabilidad. La reprimarización de la economía condujo a estos gobiernos a basar su política económica en consolidar el sector agro minero del cual obtenían grandes dividendos y les permitía llevar a cabo programas sociales tendientes a superar la crisis social de inicios de siglo. El equilibrio de poder constituido por la centro izquierda basada en sus alianzas con los grandes productores y exportadores agro mineros y sectores financieros por un lado, y la base electoral compuesta por la clase trabajadora urbana y rural de clase media y baja por el otro, terminó por desplazar la correlación de fuerzas hacia la derecha agro minera con mucha influencia en la economía [1].
La incapacidad para adelantar cambios estructurales profundos, para modificar las relaciones de propiedad de la tierra, para organizar efectivamente al movimiento popular como motor estratégico de cambio, trajo como resultado un debilitamiento de la centro izquierda y un fortalecimiento creciente de la derecha, ahora a la ofensiva. Los movimientos sociales se debilitaron, perdieron influencia y en algunos casos militantes.
En resumen, los gobiernos de centro izquierda, por falta de voluntad o incapacidad, adelantaron una "revolución pasiva" funcional a la supervivencia del sistema capitalista cuya crisis orgánica a inicios de siglo era evidente [2]. Esto es, con consignas progresistas resignificadas (cambiando algo, para que nada cambie), administraron la crisis neoliberal, aceitaron los engranajes del sistema, y devolvieron la legitimidad a las instituciones. En última instancia, concientes o no, reconstruyeron la hegemonía dominante y dieron paso al resurgimiento de derechas.
La derecha retoma la ofensiva
Al contrario de la izquierda tradicional que solo se moviliza en tiempos de campaña electoral y privilegia la lucha parlamentaria, la derecha en cambio, con sus grandes recursos, utiliza todos los medios a su alcance para recuperar su hegemonía. En todos los países controla los grandes medios de comunicación que desarrollan fenómenos mediáticos pro fascistas (Colombia), campañas de descrédito multimillonarias (Venezuela, Ecuador); han logrado proyectos separatistas (Bolivia) donde la oligarquía agro minera controla varias provincias ricas en recursos; han promovido iguales proyectos en el estado de Zulia (Venezuela), con la infiltración creciente de grupos paramilitares colombianos, y en Guayaquil (Ecuador). En Brasil, la oligarquía agro exportadora, las inmensas inversiones extranjeras en megaproyectos de agro combustibles y exportación agrícola, con la complicidad del gobierno, han desplazado miles de campesinos, debilitado y perseguido a los Sin Tierra (MST) y deforestado millones de hectáreas. En Argentina, la oligarquía agraria ha movilizado miles de personas en un paro que buscaba concesiones sobre los impuestos de exportación gubernamentales.
Así mismo, la derecha ha logrado constituir una base social fuerte en varios países y ha combinado la lucha parlamentaria con la movilización callejera de manera efectiva. Ha utilizado la movilización masiva para consolidar proyectos de ultra derecha (Colombia), avanzar sobre campañas de derrota a las políticas progresistas (referéndum en Venezuela), bloquear carreteras y parar la economía (Argentina) y consolidar proyectos separatistas (Bolivia).
En la mayoría de países la embajada norteamericana y agencias como la National Endowment for Democrcy (NED) han gastado miles de dólares en financiar partidos de oposición, dar asesoría sobre propaganda electoral, promover candidatos de derecha y desestabilizar gobiernos adversos a sus intereses, al tiempo que reactivan la IV flota caribeña y dan millones de dólares en ayuda militar a gobiernos terroristas como el colombiano.
De igual forma, la derecha ha promovido la violencia callejera y el terrorismo en varios países. Ha creado grupos de choque para hostigar simpatizantes del gobierno central en Bolivia y Venezuela, grupos armados privados para desplazar campesinos en Brasil y Colombia, y consolidar así megaproyectos agro mineros y energéticos.
El mito del reformismo: Nuevos ropajes, viejas ilusiones
Contrario a lo que sucedió con la socialdemocracia europea "de fines del siglo XIX y las primeras seis décadas del XX, en países beneficiados por un desarrollo económico, político y social capitalista basado en la explotación colonial y neocolonial, que les permitió acumular excedentes y redistribuir una parte de ellos entre los grupos sociales subordinados"[3] ;en America Latina la transnacionalización y desregularización de las economías, su creciente dependencia respecto al capital financiero internacional, y el Nuevo Orden Mundial impuesto, creó un mecanismo de seguridad que restringía aún más a los gobernantes la toma decisiones de manera autónoma o el desarrollo de proyectos de reforma progresista. Así mismo, después de la pacificación y la derrota política sufrida por la izquierda en las décadas anteriores, donde se instauraron dictaduras de "seguridad nacional"y el imperialismo usó la intervención directa y la lucha contrainsurgente para destruir los movimientos revolucionarios de los años sesenta y setenta, se abrió en los noventa un escenario donde el imperialismo reconstruyó la hegemonía burguesa, instaurando la "democracia neoliberal" como forma única de gobierno en la región De esta manera, el imperialismo puede "tolerar" ciertos gobiernos de centro izquierda, siempre y cuando respeten las reglas del juego, puesto que puede garantizar que, aunque en las urnas se vote por un candidato de izquierda, la economía siempre va a estar sujeta a las políticas de mercado. Esto restringe enormemente las posibilidades de llevar a cabo reformas progresistas en la región. Los gobiernos de centro izquierda tienen enorme dificultad para implementar cambios de fondo, redistribución de tierras y en pocos casos renacionalización de empresas. Las elites agro mineras se niegan a compartir o redistribuir sus enormes dividendos obtenidos de los altos precios de las materias primas y presionan a los gobiernos para desregularizar la economía y profundizar el neoliberalismo. Al tiempo que el imperialismo sigue desarrollando una política contrainsurgente en Colombia y amenazando con una intervención en Venezuela, donde la recuperación de la empresa estatal petrolera ha permitido al gobierno llevar a cabo proyectos alternativos "intolerables" para los poderosos.
En resumen, ni hoy, ni nunca han existido las condiciones para adelantar en América Latina un proyecto reformista equiparable al de la socialdemocracia europea (ni siquiera en la etapa desarrollista de mitad del siglo pasado). Más aún, reformas progresistas básicas de hoy se topan con el obstáculo de la hegemonía neoliberal.
Los sectores de izquierda que pretenden reeditar hoy, incluso con lenguaje marxista, las viejas ilusiones reformistas del pasado, o aquellos que hacen un llamado al "realismo", o a construir un "capitalismo nacional", abandonan en la práctica el proyecto estratégico de la revolución a largo plazo y terminan, en última instancia, siendo funcionales a la reconstrucción de la hegemonía capitalista.
Los desafíos de la izquierda revolucionaria: construcción de poder alternativo, lucha por la hegemonía socialista
La relación entre la estrategia y la táctica políticas ha sido siempre un problema que ha generado debates en la izquierda a través de la historia. Sin embargo, la historia misma ha demostrado que los movimientos políticos de izquierda exitosos han logrado percibir los momentos tácticos en su relación dialéctica con el objetivo estratégico (sin nunca perderlo de vista); han tenido presente siempre la categoría de totalidad a la hora de analizar las tareas políticas inmediatas; han percibido, más allá de los fenómenos superficiales del momento, los aspectos generales de tendencia de una época, y se han preocupado en todos los casos por incentivar la iniciativa política directa del campo popular como motor de transformación revolucionaria.
En la práctica, sin embrago, muchos movimientos políticos se pierden en las tareas del día a día, caen en el rutinarismo, tienden a desligarse de los movimientos sociales, y poco a poco se dejan arrastrar por el chantaje institucional.
Si la izquierda revolucionaria se caracteriza por promulgar el socialismo como la alternativa política a conquistar por el campo popular, por plantearse la lucha por el poder como el objetivo estratégico a lograr, en la mayoría de casos esa estrategia práctica se diluye de facto. Por ejemplo, si un objetivo primordial para avanzar sobre el proyecto revolucionario es lograr una apertura democrática nacional, la izquierda se pierde en las tareas más o menos inmediatas de la lucha electoral-parlamentaria o en las coaliciones electorales; no las percibe en la práctica como un momento táctico, aunque importante en ciertos casos, siempre dependiente de una totalidad más abarcativa de la lucha social: descuida o abandona la creación de poder alternativo extra institucional, la organización y movilización popular, y en último análisis, la lucha antisistémica y la organización revolucionaria.
Desde la institucionalidad burguesa es imposible construir una contra-hegemonía socialista. Aunque, tal como lo percibía Gramsci, los espacios de la democracia burguesa son un campo de batalla que pueden permitir ganar ciertas posiciones ("guerra de posiciones"), la creación y consolidación de una hegemonía socialista se desarrollan principalmente desde la organización y la lucha social.
La educación y organización política de base, el impulso y reconstrucción de los movimientos sociales, la articulación de las luchas parciales hacia los objetivos comunes, la lucha por la hegemonía , el desarrollo de poder dual (poder local alternativo que le dispute el poder a la burguesía) y la relación indisoluble entre dirigentes y movimientos sociales serán factores decisivos que permitan desbalancear la correlación de fuerzas a favor del campo popular y consolidar proyectos alternativos duraderos.
En la actualidad, los crecientes costos en el nivel de vida de la población, la crisis alimentaria producto de los nefastos proyectos de agro combustibles, la crisis mundial capitalista y el creciente descontento popular son condiciones que posibilitan retomar la ofensiva, siempre y cuando la izquierda revolucionaria sea capaz de organizar al campo popular, más allá de la lucha electoral, y de impulsar la rebeldía hacia la lucha por el socialismo.
Referencias:
1. Las paradojas del desarrollo en América Latina. Petras, James.
2. Crisis orgánica y revolución pasiva: el enemigo toma la iniciativa. Kohan, Nestor.
3. La izquierda latinoamericana en el gobierno: ¿sujeta a la hegemonía neoliberal o construyendo una contra hegemonía popular? Regalado, Roberto
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie
Der Spiegel Exposes the Brazilian Ethanol Madness
By ROBERT BRYCE
CounterPunch
For years, the US has been inundated with claims that it should follow Brazil’s lead on biofuels. These arguments have largely been made by a small, but influential group of neoconservatives who claim that the US should quit using oil altogether. They claim that using more ethanol – produced from sugar cane, or corn, or some other substance – will impoverish OPEC and America will once again be returned to prosperity.
But these claims wither in the face of a story by Clemens Hoges in the January 22 issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel. Hoges writes that sugar cane “is considered an effective antidote to climate change, but hundreds of thousands of Brazilian plantation workers harvest the cane at slave wages.” The story is one of several published in recent years that have exposed the brutality of the Brazilian sugar cane fields. But before looking at Der Spiegel’s coverage, let’s do a quick review of the Brazilian ethanol boosters.
Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times has frequently advocated the mirage of “energy independence.” And he has cited Brazil as a model. In an August 2005 column, he conflated the issues of oil and terrorism “we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism: our soldiers and the fascist terrorists,” he wrote. He went on to claim that many of the technologies needed for energy independence are “already here – from hybrid engines to ethanol.” He then quoted Gal Luft, the neoconservative who heads the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and created Set America Free, a group that advocates “energy independence.” Luft claimed that Brazil’s success in cutting its oil imports was due to the fact that the South American country was “bringing hydrocarbons and carbohydrates to live happily together in the same fuel tank.” In Luft’s view, ethanol has brought “Brazil close to energy independence” and insulated it from higher oil prices.
(Luft’s claim completely ignores the fact that since 1980, Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, has been growing its oil production by an average of 9 percent per year thanks to its offshore drilling prowess. Since 1998, Brazil has doubled its oil production and is now producing about 2 million barrels of oil per day. Neither Friedman nor Luft bothered to mention that fact.)
In late 2005, in a speech to the National Press Club, Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell said that “No longer is investing in alternative fuels a fringe idea….Brazil is perhaps the world’s greatest success story. Due to 30 years of hard work, research and investment, Brazil will not need one drop of imported oil this time next year. If anyone suggests to you that these ideas aren’t ready for prime time and cost too much, they are living in the past.”
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle have touted Brazil’s “energy independence miracle.” In a May 2006 opinion piece in the New York Times, they said that ethanol “could set America free from its dependence on foreign oil” and that Brazil proves that “an aggressive strategy of investing in petroleum substitutes like ethanol can end dependence on imported oil.”
In October 2006, former president Bill Clinton while in California stumping for Proposition 87 (an alternative energy initiative that later failed) declared that the initiative would “move California toward energy independence with cleaner fuels, with wind and solar power.” He continued, “There are people who don't believe you can do it. I do. Look at Brazil. Don't you think you can do it if they did it? They run their cars on ethanol.” Clinton later provided a sound bite for the pro-Proposition 87 forces in which he declared that “If Brazil can do it, so can California.”
The biofuels madness continued with a May 6, 2008 editorial in the Chicago Tribune, titled “Food vs. fuel, a global myth.” The piece, written by Set America Free’s Luft, and his fellow traveler, Robert Zubrin, a right-wing zealot who advocates colonizing Mars, claimed, incredibly, that “farm commodity prices have almost no effect on retail prices.” The two went on to declare that “rather than shut down biofuel programs, we need to radically augment them, to the point where we can take down” the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
A big reality check is in order.
First and foremost, over the past two years, 14 studies have found a direct link between the ethanol scam and higher food prices.
Second, Brazil is not the epicenter of ethanol production, the US is. In 2008, the US produced about 9.1 billion gallons of the fuel, all of it from corn. Brazil produced about 6.8 billion gallons. And while sugar cane may be a far better feedstock that corn, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy balance, the key issue is one of labor. While US corn is harvested mechanically, the Brazilian sugar cane is harvested almost exclusively by hand. And it is dangerous, back-breaking work.
In 2007, London’s The Guardian newspaper ran a story which quoted human rights activists who said that the men who harvest sugar cane for ethanol production “are effectively slaves” and that Brazil’s ethanol industry was “a shadowy world of middle men and human rights abuses.” It cited figures provided by a Catholic nun, Sister Ines Facioli, who runs a support network in a small town about 200 miles west of São Paolo. She claimed that between 2004 and 2006, 17 cane workers died due to overwork or exhaustion. One laborer, Pedro Castro, told the Guardian’s Tom Phillips, that the hot climate, combined with the heavy protective clothing needed to protect his body from the sharp machete blades used to cut the cane, was like working “inside a bread oven.”
For their work, the average cane worker gets paid about $1 for every ton of sugar cane they cut. They often work 12-hour shifts. Their housing, according to Phillips’ article, consists of “squalid, overcrowded ‘guest houses’ rented to them at extortionate prices by unscrupulous landlords.” The average cane cutter makes less than $200 per month. And some, it appears, make nothing at all.
In July 2007, the Brazilian government freed 1,100 laborers who were found working in horrendous conditions on a sugar cane plantation in the northeastern state of Para. A story by the Associated Press said that the workers were forced to work 13-hour days and that they had no choice but to pay “exorbitant prices for food and medicine.” It then cited a source in Brazil’s labor ministry who claimed that many of the workers were “sick from spoiled food or unsafe water, slept in cramped quarters on hammocks and did not have proper sanitation facilities.” The government-backed raid of the plantation lasted three days. The plantation in question is owned by Para Pastoril e Agricola SA, which produces about 13 million gallons of ethanol per year. The workers were caught up in a situation known as debt slavery in which poor workers are taken to remote farms where they then rack up large debts to the plantation owners who force the workers to pay high prices for everything from food to transportation.
According to Land Pastoral, a group affiliated with Brazil’s Roman Catholic Church, about 25,000 workers in Brazil are living in slavery-like conditions, most of them in the Amazon, and many of them working in the sugar cane business. The 2007 raid is not the first. In 2005, 1,000 workers were found living in debt slavery on a sugar cane plantation in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.
The article in Der Spiegel makes it clear that little has changed over the past few years. Hoges reports that one worker he interviewed, Antonio da Silva, makes just $172 per month during the harvest season, which lasts about six months. During the rest of the year, he has to rely on charity to feed his family. Da Silva’s home in the village of Araçoiaba Nova, Hoges reports, is the same as it was five years ago. “They threw plastic tarps over a handful of branches to build the hut where they still live today. The door consists of scraps of cloth nailed to a board, and boards placed around a hole in the tarp form the window. The furniture, arranged on the bare earth floor, consists of the plank beds and a cabinet.”
The most compelling quote in the piece is from Father Tiago, a 66 year-old Scottish monk who has been working in Brazil for decades. The Scotsman makes clear what he thinks about the issue: "The promise of biofuel is a lie. Anyone who buys ethanol is pumping blood into his tank,” he said. “Ethanol is produced by slaves."
The photos that accompany Hoges’ story should be viewed by everyone who retains the misguided belief that the US should emulate Brazil’s biofuels industry. Here Is the Link
Alas, it doesn’t appear the members of Congress are paying much attention. Last month, US Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, announced that he would be pushing legislation aimed at eliminating the $0.54-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Doing so, Engel said, “would enable U.S. refiners to purchase cheaper and more climate-friendly ethanol, no matter where it comes from. The result would be an overall increase in the supply of fuel, a decrease in its price, and a decrease in our dependency on petroleum from the Middle East.”
Sound bites like the one from Engel ignore basic arithmetic: Even if the US imported all of Brazil’s ethanol -- all 6.8 billion gallons per year -- that quantity would only provide the energy equivalent of about 1.4 percent of America’s total oil consumption.
Despite those numbers -- despite the ongoing evidence of slavery in the Brazilian ethanol trade -- the energy discussion in America remains stuck in an absurdist fantasy about energy independence and freedom from the sticky problems of the Persian Gulf. But given what has happened in the past few months with regard to rising food prices and the myriad other problems associated with biofuels, one thing is becoming perfectly clear: Ethanol isn’t the answer to our energy challenge. Ethanol makes it worse.
Robert Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence
By ROBERT BRYCE
CounterPunch
For years, the US has been inundated with claims that it should follow Brazil’s lead on biofuels. These arguments have largely been made by a small, but influential group of neoconservatives who claim that the US should quit using oil altogether. They claim that using more ethanol – produced from sugar cane, or corn, or some other substance – will impoverish OPEC and America will once again be returned to prosperity.
But these claims wither in the face of a story by Clemens Hoges in the January 22 issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel. Hoges writes that sugar cane “is considered an effective antidote to climate change, but hundreds of thousands of Brazilian plantation workers harvest the cane at slave wages.” The story is one of several published in recent years that have exposed the brutality of the Brazilian sugar cane fields. But before looking at Der Spiegel’s coverage, let’s do a quick review of the Brazilian ethanol boosters.
Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times has frequently advocated the mirage of “energy independence.” And he has cited Brazil as a model. In an August 2005 column, he conflated the issues of oil and terrorism “we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism: our soldiers and the fascist terrorists,” he wrote. He went on to claim that many of the technologies needed for energy independence are “already here – from hybrid engines to ethanol.” He then quoted Gal Luft, the neoconservative who heads the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and created Set America Free, a group that advocates “energy independence.” Luft claimed that Brazil’s success in cutting its oil imports was due to the fact that the South American country was “bringing hydrocarbons and carbohydrates to live happily together in the same fuel tank.” In Luft’s view, ethanol has brought “Brazil close to energy independence” and insulated it from higher oil prices.
(Luft’s claim completely ignores the fact that since 1980, Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, has been growing its oil production by an average of 9 percent per year thanks to its offshore drilling prowess. Since 1998, Brazil has doubled its oil production and is now producing about 2 million barrels of oil per day. Neither Friedman nor Luft bothered to mention that fact.)
In late 2005, in a speech to the National Press Club, Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell said that “No longer is investing in alternative fuels a fringe idea….Brazil is perhaps the world’s greatest success story. Due to 30 years of hard work, research and investment, Brazil will not need one drop of imported oil this time next year. If anyone suggests to you that these ideas aren’t ready for prime time and cost too much, they are living in the past.”
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle have touted Brazil’s “energy independence miracle.” In a May 2006 opinion piece in the New York Times, they said that ethanol “could set America free from its dependence on foreign oil” and that Brazil proves that “an aggressive strategy of investing in petroleum substitutes like ethanol can end dependence on imported oil.”
In October 2006, former president Bill Clinton while in California stumping for Proposition 87 (an alternative energy initiative that later failed) declared that the initiative would “move California toward energy independence with cleaner fuels, with wind and solar power.” He continued, “There are people who don't believe you can do it. I do. Look at Brazil. Don't you think you can do it if they did it? They run their cars on ethanol.” Clinton later provided a sound bite for the pro-Proposition 87 forces in which he declared that “If Brazil can do it, so can California.”
The biofuels madness continued with a May 6, 2008 editorial in the Chicago Tribune, titled “Food vs. fuel, a global myth.” The piece, written by Set America Free’s Luft, and his fellow traveler, Robert Zubrin, a right-wing zealot who advocates colonizing Mars, claimed, incredibly, that “farm commodity prices have almost no effect on retail prices.” The two went on to declare that “rather than shut down biofuel programs, we need to radically augment them, to the point where we can take down” the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
A big reality check is in order.
First and foremost, over the past two years, 14 studies have found a direct link between the ethanol scam and higher food prices.
Second, Brazil is not the epicenter of ethanol production, the US is. In 2008, the US produced about 9.1 billion gallons of the fuel, all of it from corn. Brazil produced about 6.8 billion gallons. And while sugar cane may be a far better feedstock that corn, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy balance, the key issue is one of labor. While US corn is harvested mechanically, the Brazilian sugar cane is harvested almost exclusively by hand. And it is dangerous, back-breaking work.
In 2007, London’s The Guardian newspaper ran a story which quoted human rights activists who said that the men who harvest sugar cane for ethanol production “are effectively slaves” and that Brazil’s ethanol industry was “a shadowy world of middle men and human rights abuses.” It cited figures provided by a Catholic nun, Sister Ines Facioli, who runs a support network in a small town about 200 miles west of São Paolo. She claimed that between 2004 and 2006, 17 cane workers died due to overwork or exhaustion. One laborer, Pedro Castro, told the Guardian’s Tom Phillips, that the hot climate, combined with the heavy protective clothing needed to protect his body from the sharp machete blades used to cut the cane, was like working “inside a bread oven.”
For their work, the average cane worker gets paid about $1 for every ton of sugar cane they cut. They often work 12-hour shifts. Their housing, according to Phillips’ article, consists of “squalid, overcrowded ‘guest houses’ rented to them at extortionate prices by unscrupulous landlords.” The average cane cutter makes less than $200 per month. And some, it appears, make nothing at all.
In July 2007, the Brazilian government freed 1,100 laborers who were found working in horrendous conditions on a sugar cane plantation in the northeastern state of Para. A story by the Associated Press said that the workers were forced to work 13-hour days and that they had no choice but to pay “exorbitant prices for food and medicine.” It then cited a source in Brazil’s labor ministry who claimed that many of the workers were “sick from spoiled food or unsafe water, slept in cramped quarters on hammocks and did not have proper sanitation facilities.” The government-backed raid of the plantation lasted three days. The plantation in question is owned by Para Pastoril e Agricola SA, which produces about 13 million gallons of ethanol per year. The workers were caught up in a situation known as debt slavery in which poor workers are taken to remote farms where they then rack up large debts to the plantation owners who force the workers to pay high prices for everything from food to transportation.
According to Land Pastoral, a group affiliated with Brazil’s Roman Catholic Church, about 25,000 workers in Brazil are living in slavery-like conditions, most of them in the Amazon, and many of them working in the sugar cane business. The 2007 raid is not the first. In 2005, 1,000 workers were found living in debt slavery on a sugar cane plantation in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.
The article in Der Spiegel makes it clear that little has changed over the past few years. Hoges reports that one worker he interviewed, Antonio da Silva, makes just $172 per month during the harvest season, which lasts about six months. During the rest of the year, he has to rely on charity to feed his family. Da Silva’s home in the village of Araçoiaba Nova, Hoges reports, is the same as it was five years ago. “They threw plastic tarps over a handful of branches to build the hut where they still live today. The door consists of scraps of cloth nailed to a board, and boards placed around a hole in the tarp form the window. The furniture, arranged on the bare earth floor, consists of the plank beds and a cabinet.”
The most compelling quote in the piece is from Father Tiago, a 66 year-old Scottish monk who has been working in Brazil for decades. The Scotsman makes clear what he thinks about the issue: "The promise of biofuel is a lie. Anyone who buys ethanol is pumping blood into his tank,” he said. “Ethanol is produced by slaves."
The photos that accompany Hoges’ story should be viewed by everyone who retains the misguided belief that the US should emulate Brazil’s biofuels industry. Here Is the Link
Alas, it doesn’t appear the members of Congress are paying much attention. Last month, US Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, announced that he would be pushing legislation aimed at eliminating the $0.54-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Doing so, Engel said, “would enable U.S. refiners to purchase cheaper and more climate-friendly ethanol, no matter where it comes from. The result would be an overall increase in the supply of fuel, a decrease in its price, and a decrease in our dependency on petroleum from the Middle East.”
Sound bites like the one from Engel ignore basic arithmetic: Even if the US imported all of Brazil’s ethanol -- all 6.8 billion gallons per year -- that quantity would only provide the energy equivalent of about 1.4 percent of America’s total oil consumption.
Despite those numbers -- despite the ongoing evidence of slavery in the Brazilian ethanol trade -- the energy discussion in America remains stuck in an absurdist fantasy about energy independence and freedom from the sticky problems of the Persian Gulf. But given what has happened in the past few months with regard to rising food prices and the myriad other problems associated with biofuels, one thing is becoming perfectly clear: Ethanol isn’t the answer to our energy challenge. Ethanol makes it worse.
Robert Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence
La herencia Mariateguista de Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Gustavo Pérez Hinojosa
Rebelión
Hace muchos años atrás, un joven argentino, estudiante de Medicina, llamado Ernesto Guevara de La Serna, que realizaba uno de sus ahora famosos viajes en Motocicleta por Suramérica, pasaría por el Perú, y conocería con motivo de su interés en la Lepra, a un médico peruano llamado Hugo Pesce (quien precisamente fue uno de los que viajara junto con Julio C. Portocarrero, en representación del Partido Socialista del Perú a la Primera Conferencia Comunista Latinoamericana, realizada en Argentina, en junio de 1929, y defendiese los puntos de vista de J.C. Mariátegui frente a Victorio Codovilla, representante del Congreso del Buró Sudamericano de la Internacional Comunista), quien le haría conocer la obra de José Carlos Mariátegui.
La influencia de esta obra en este joven, sería tan fundamental, que escribiría en su diario, sobre este viaje : "El personaje que escribió estas notas murió al pisar de nuevo tierra argentina, el que las ordena y pule, yo, no soy yo; por lo menos no soy el mismo yo interior. Ese vagar sin rumbo por nuestra mayúscula América me ha cambiado más de lo que creí.", tal y como retrata, fielmente, el final de una reciente película sobre esta historia (me refiero a “Viajes en motocicleta”). Años después, el Dr. Pesce recibiría un ejemplar del libro "La guerra de guerrillas" del “Ché”, con una dedicatoria del propio autor :"Al Doctor Hugo Pesce, que provocara, sin saberlo quizás, un gran cambio en mi actitud frente a la vida y la sociedad, con el entusiasmo aventurero de siempre pero encaminado a fines mas armoniosos con la necesidades de América".
Mas tarde, en Guatemala, en Diciembre de 1953, Ernesto Guevara de La Serna conocería a una peruana, quien sería mas tarde su primera esposa, Hilda Gadea. Ella en sus memorias recuerda que conoció a Ernesto y viendo que le interesaba visitar Europa, le recomendó “que leyera a José Carlos Mariátegui para aprender cómo hay que estudiar a Europa. Entonces comentamos “El alma matinal” y los “Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana”” (“Mi vida con el Ché”. Hilda Gadea). Así el “Ché” volvería a reencontrarse con Mariátegui.
Es posible que la obra completa del “Ché” esté llena de frases, ideas y tesis de Mariátegui, pero aquí solamente vamos a referirnos a dos artículos suyos, escritos en momentos muy peculiares y especiales : “Táctica y estrategia de la revolución latinoamericana”, escrito en 1962, con ocasión de la denominada “Crisis de los Mísiles”, que pudo haber concluido con el ataque atómico o invasión a Cuba, y “Mensaje a la Tricontinental” mas conocido como “Crear dos, tres,... muchos Viet-Nam es la consigna”, escrito en 1966, con ocasión de su viaje con destino a Bolivia, donde posteriormente caería en combate; y vamos a referirnos solo a algunos temas mariateguianos tratados en éstos, como : la contradicción principal de la época, el papel de burguesía nacional en la Revolución, el carácter continental de la lucha revolucionaria, la estrategia imperialista, el carácter socialista de la Revolución y el internacionalismo proletario.
CONTRADICCIÓN PRINCIPAL DE LA ÉPOCA
Fue precisamente en 1962, en un texto escrito en el curso de la famosa “Crisis de los mísiles”, que el “Ché” regresó a las tesis antaño leídas, y diferenciándose de los documentos de las Conferencias o Congresos de las organizaciones partidarias latinoamericanas, que copiaron mal y mecánicamente la experiencia de la Revolución China, considerando que la contradicción principal actual, es la existente entre el imperialismo y los pueblos y naciones oprimidas, el Che, precisó que el contenido fundamental de la época “lo constituye el paso del capitalismo al socialismo, iniciado por la Gran Revolución Socialista de Octubre, es la época de la lucha de dos sistemas sociales diametralmente opuestos;”…añadiendo “aún cuando es muy importante la lucha por la liberación de los pueblos, lo que caracteriza el momento actual es el tránsito del capitalismo al socialismo” (“Táctica y estrategia de la Revolución Latinoamericana”)
En esto encontramos enorme similitud a lo planteado por J.C. Mariátegui, que sus sucesores políticos olvidaron o renegaron, tras su deceso : “Capitalismo o Socialismo. Este es el problema de nuestra época” (Aniversario y Balance, Editorial de Amauta Nº 17, Septiembre de 1928, en Ideología y Política, Pág.249) y “somos anti-imperialistas porque somos marxistas, porque somos revolucionarios, porque oponemos al capitalismo el socialismo, como sistema antagónico llamado a sucederlo,”…(“Punto de vista anti-imperialista”, Mayo de 1929, Tesis presentada a la I Conferencia Comunista Latinoamericana, en Ideología y Política, Pág.95).
PAPEL DE LA BURGUESÍA NACIONAL EN LA REVOLUCIÓN
Asimismo, contra la herencia de las tesis equívocas de la Internacional Comunista, que basadas en el proceso de la Revolución China, incurrían en una sobrestimación del papel de la burguesía nacional en el proceso revolucionario latinoamericano (lo que se vio reflejado en el apoyo de los Partidos Comunistas a Gobiernos de burguesía nacional), el “Ché” plantea claramente que, a diferencia de otros continentes, en América las burguesías nacionales “relativamente mucho mas débiles que en otras regiones , claudican y pactan con el imperialismo”, “Frente al drama terrible para los burgueses timoratos : sumisión al capital extranjero o destrucción frente a las fuerzas populares internas”, “no queda otra solución que la entrega. Al realizarse ésta,”…”se alían las fuerzas de la reacción interna con la reacción internacional más poderosa y se impide el desarrollo pacífico de las revoluciones sociales”. En cuanto a los imperialistas yanquis “Ellos también quieren “tránsito pacífico”. Están de acuerdo en liquidar las viejas estructuras feudales que todavía subsisten en América, y en aliarse a la parte mas avanzada de las burguesías nacionales, realizando algunas reformas fiscales, algún tipo de reforma en el régimen de tenencia de la tierra, una moderada industrialización, referida preferentemente a artículos de consumo, con tecnología y materias primas importadas de los Estados Unidos”, y concluye “En las actuales condiciones históricas de América Latina, la burguesía nacional no puede encabezar la lucha antifeudal y antiimperialista. La experiencia demuestra que en nuestras naciones esa clase, aún cuando sus intereses son contradictorios con los del imperialismo yanqui, ha sido incapaz de enfrentarse a éste, paralizada por el miedo a la revolución social y asustada por el clamor de las masas explotadas” (“Táctica y estrategia de la Revolución Latinoamericana”).
Así tras décadas volvían a alzarse las tesis de J.C. Mariátegui respecto a la burguesía nacional “La colaboración con la burguesía, y aún de muchos elementos feudales, en la lucha anti-imperialista china, se explica por razones de raza, de civilización nacional que entre nosotros no existen. El chino noble o burgués se siente entrañablemente chino”. “El anti-imperialismo en la China puede, por tanto, descansar en el sentimiento y en el factor nacionalista. En Indo-América las circunstancias no son las mismas. La aristocracia y la burguesía criollas no se sienten solidarizadas con el pueblo por el lazo de una historia y de una cultura comunes. En el Perú, el aristócrata y el burgués blancos, desprecian lo popular, lo nacional”.”El factor nacionalista, por estas razones objetivas que a ninguno de ustedes escapa seguramente, no es decisivo ni fundamental en la lucha anti-imperialista en nuestro medio”. “Un conocimiento capitalista, y no por razones de justicia social y doctrinaria, demostró cuan poco se podía confiar, aún en países como la china, en el sentimiento nacionalista revolucionario de la burguesía”, y añade “Mientras la política imperialista logre “manéger” los sentimientos y formalidades de la soberanía nacional de estos Estados, mientras no se vea obligada a recurrir a la intervención armada y a la ocupación militar, contará absolutamente con la colaboración de las burguesías” (“Punto de vista anti-imperialista”, Mayo de 1929, Tesis presentada a la I Conferencia Comunista Latinoamericana, en Ideología y Política)
Coindentemente con el Ché, acerca de la alianza del imperialismo y la burguesía nacional, J.C. Mariátegui señalaba que “Ciertamente, el capitalismo imperialista utiliza el poder de la clase feudal, en tanto la considera la clase políticamente dominante. Pero, sus intereses económicos no son los mismos. La pequeña burguesía, sin exceptuar a la mas demagógica, si atenúa en la práctica sus impulsos más marcadamente nacionalistas, puede llegar a la misma estrecha alianza con el capitalismo imperialista. El capital financiero se sentirá más seguro, si el poder está en manos de una clase social más numerosa, que, satisfaciendo ciertas reivindicaciones apremiosas y estorbando la orientación clasista de las masas, está en mejores condiciones que la vieja y odiada clase feudal de defender los intereses del capitalismo, de ser su custodio y su ujier. La creación de la pequeña propiedad, la expropiación de los latifundios, la liquidación de los privilegios feudales, no son contrarios a los intereses del imperialismo de un modo inmediato. Por el contrario, en la medida en que los rezagos de la feudalidad entraban el desenvolvimiento de una economía capitalista, promovido por las inversiones y los técnicos del imperialismo; que desaparezcan los grandes latifundios, que en su lugar se constituya una economía agraria basada en lo que la demagogia burguesa llama la “democratización” de la propiedad del suelo, que las viejas aristocracias se vean desplazadas por una burguesía y una pequeña burguesía más poderosa e influyente –y por lo mismo más apta para fanatizar la paz social-, nada de esto es contrario a los intereses del imperialismo” (“Punto de Vista anti-imperialista”, en “Ideología y política”, Págs. 88,89 y 93).
CARÁCTER CONTINENTAL DE LA LUCHA REVOLUCIONARIA INDOAMERICANA
Partiendo de la hipótesis que los yanquis intervendrían en América Latina en caso de una insurrección popular, por solidaridad de intereses con la burguesía nacional, el “Ché” consideraba “difícil que la victoria se logre en un país aislado. A la unión de las fuerzas represivas debe contestarse con la unión de las fuerzas populares. En todos los países en que la opresión llega a niveles insostenibles, debe alzarse la bandera de la rebelión y esta bandera tendrá, por necesidad histórica, caracteres continentales. La Cordillera de los Andes está llamada a ser la Sierra Maestra de América, como dijera Fidel, y todos los inmensos territorios que abarca este continente están llamados a ser escenarios de la lucha a muerte contra el poder imperialista” y añadía “No podemos decir cuando alcanzara estas características continentales, ni cuanto durará la lucha, pero podemos predecir su advenimiento porque es hija de circunstancias históricas, económicas, políticas, y su rumbo no se puede torcer” (“Táctica y estrategia de la Revolución Latinoamericana”). Recordemos al efecto, la unidad de lucha de los pueblos de Indochina contra los japoneses, franceses y americanos o la de los pueblos de los Balcanes contra los invasores nazis en la II Guerra Mundial.
Tesis que también encuentra su respaldo en J.C. Mariátegui, quien señalaba que “La revolución de la independencia hace mas de un siglo fue un movimiento solidario de todos los pueblos subyugados por España; la revolución socialista es un movimiento mancomunado de todos los pueblos oprimidos por el capitalismo. Si la revolución liberal, nacionalista por sus principios, no pudo ser actuada sin una estrecha unión entre los países sudamericanos, fácil es comprender la ley histórica que, en una época de mas acentuada interdependencia y vinculación de las naciones, impone que la revolución social, internacionalista, en sus principios, se opere con una coordinación mucho más disciplinada e intensa de los partidos proletarios” (“Principios Programáticos del Partido Socialista”, en “ideología y Política”, Pág.159).
LA ESTRATEGIA IMPERIALISTA
El famoso Mensaje a la Tricontinental, del “Ché”, mas conocido como “Crear, dos, tres...muchos Viet-Nam es la consigna”, publicado en Abril de 1967, fue escrito en 1966, antes de que éste partiese para Bolivia, y tiene por ello el sabor de un Mensaje o “encargo” de despedida. Imaginemos al “Ché” la noche en que escribió este texto, que era parte de su despedida (temporal o definitiva), con el peso moral que ello tiene. Es posible que esa noche recordara su viaje latinoamericano de juventud, en su Rocinante-motocicleta, y las lecturas de Mariátegui inculcadas por Hugo Pesce y recordadas por Hilda Gadea :
"Mientras la política imperialista logre "manéger" los sentimientos y formalidades de la soberanía nacional de estos Estados, mientras no se vea obligada a recurrir a la intervención armada y a la ocupación militar, contará absolutamente con la colaboración de las burguesías. Aunque enfeudados a la economía imperialista, estos países o más bien sus burguesías, se considerarán tan dueños de sus destinos".....(J.C. Mariátegui "Punto de vista antiimperialista"),
y escribió ;
..."las burguesías autóctonas han perdido toda su capacidad de oposición al imperialismo -si alguna vez la tuvieron- y solo forman su furgón de cola".(“Mensaje a la Tricontinental”).
CARÁCTER SOCIALISTA DE LA REVOLUCIÓN LATINOAMERICANA
Volvió a recordar : :
"No queremos, ciertamente, que el socialismo sea en América calco y copia. Debe ser creación heroica" y "La revolución latino-americana, será nada más y nada menos que una etapa, una fase de la revolución mundial. Será simple y puramente, la revolución socialista" (J.C. Mariátegui "Aniversario y Balance").
y escribió :
"No hay mas cambios que hacer, o revolución socialista o caricatura de revolución" (“Mensaje a la Tricontinental”).
EL INTERNACIONALISMO PROLETARIO
Finalmente, a punto de tomar la decisión práctica de solidaridad activa y real con el pueblo vietnamita y el cubano, iniciando otro “foco” de lucha que obligase al Imperialismo y sus secuaces a distribuir sus fuerzas, extendiese sus líneas, y aliviase la presión sobre éstas para atender el estallido de un nuevo conflicto, recordó una vez mas a Mariátegui :
"Todo obrero que cae, en este momento en las calles de Berlín o en las barricadas de Hamburgo no solo cae por la causa del proletariado alemán. También cae por su causa, compañeros del Perú" (JCM "Internacionalismo y marxismo"), y
escribió :
"Y que se desarrolle un verdadero internacionalismo proletario; con ejércitos proletarios internacionales, donde la bandera bajo la que se luche sea la causa sagrada de la redención de la humanidad, de tal modo que morir bajo las enseñas de Vietnam, de Venezuela, de Guatemala, de Laos, de Guinea, de Colombia, de Bolivia, de Brasil, para citar solo los escenarios actuales de la lucha armada, sea igualmente gloriosa y apetecible para un americano, un asiático, un africano y, aún, un europeo.
Cada gota de sangre derramada en un territorio bajo cuya bandera no se ha nacido, es experiencia que recoge quien sobrevive para aplicarla luego en la lucha por la liberación de su lugar de origen, y cada pueblo que se libere, es una fase de la batalla por la liberación del propio pueblo que se ha ganado" (“Mensaje a la Tricontinental”).
¡Con Mariátegui y el “Ché” por el camino de la Revolución Socialista!
Rebelión
Hace muchos años atrás, un joven argentino, estudiante de Medicina, llamado Ernesto Guevara de La Serna, que realizaba uno de sus ahora famosos viajes en Motocicleta por Suramérica, pasaría por el Perú, y conocería con motivo de su interés en la Lepra, a un médico peruano llamado Hugo Pesce (quien precisamente fue uno de los que viajara junto con Julio C. Portocarrero, en representación del Partido Socialista del Perú a la Primera Conferencia Comunista Latinoamericana, realizada en Argentina, en junio de 1929, y defendiese los puntos de vista de J.C. Mariátegui frente a Victorio Codovilla, representante del Congreso del Buró Sudamericano de la Internacional Comunista), quien le haría conocer la obra de José Carlos Mariátegui.
La influencia de esta obra en este joven, sería tan fundamental, que escribiría en su diario, sobre este viaje : "El personaje que escribió estas notas murió al pisar de nuevo tierra argentina, el que las ordena y pule, yo, no soy yo; por lo menos no soy el mismo yo interior. Ese vagar sin rumbo por nuestra mayúscula América me ha cambiado más de lo que creí.", tal y como retrata, fielmente, el final de una reciente película sobre esta historia (me refiero a “Viajes en motocicleta”). Años después, el Dr. Pesce recibiría un ejemplar del libro "La guerra de guerrillas" del “Ché”, con una dedicatoria del propio autor :"Al Doctor Hugo Pesce, que provocara, sin saberlo quizás, un gran cambio en mi actitud frente a la vida y la sociedad, con el entusiasmo aventurero de siempre pero encaminado a fines mas armoniosos con la necesidades de América".
Mas tarde, en Guatemala, en Diciembre de 1953, Ernesto Guevara de La Serna conocería a una peruana, quien sería mas tarde su primera esposa, Hilda Gadea. Ella en sus memorias recuerda que conoció a Ernesto y viendo que le interesaba visitar Europa, le recomendó “que leyera a José Carlos Mariátegui para aprender cómo hay que estudiar a Europa. Entonces comentamos “El alma matinal” y los “Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana”” (“Mi vida con el Ché”. Hilda Gadea). Así el “Ché” volvería a reencontrarse con Mariátegui.
Es posible que la obra completa del “Ché” esté llena de frases, ideas y tesis de Mariátegui, pero aquí solamente vamos a referirnos a dos artículos suyos, escritos en momentos muy peculiares y especiales : “Táctica y estrategia de la revolución latinoamericana”, escrito en 1962, con ocasión de la denominada “Crisis de los Mísiles”, que pudo haber concluido con el ataque atómico o invasión a Cuba, y “Mensaje a la Tricontinental” mas conocido como “Crear dos, tres,... muchos Viet-Nam es la consigna”, escrito en 1966, con ocasión de su viaje con destino a Bolivia, donde posteriormente caería en combate; y vamos a referirnos solo a algunos temas mariateguianos tratados en éstos, como : la contradicción principal de la época, el papel de burguesía nacional en la Revolución, el carácter continental de la lucha revolucionaria, la estrategia imperialista, el carácter socialista de la Revolución y el internacionalismo proletario.
CONTRADICCIÓN PRINCIPAL DE LA ÉPOCA
Fue precisamente en 1962, en un texto escrito en el curso de la famosa “Crisis de los mísiles”, que el “Ché” regresó a las tesis antaño leídas, y diferenciándose de los documentos de las Conferencias o Congresos de las organizaciones partidarias latinoamericanas, que copiaron mal y mecánicamente la experiencia de la Revolución China, considerando que la contradicción principal actual, es la existente entre el imperialismo y los pueblos y naciones oprimidas, el Che, precisó que el contenido fundamental de la época “lo constituye el paso del capitalismo al socialismo, iniciado por la Gran Revolución Socialista de Octubre, es la época de la lucha de dos sistemas sociales diametralmente opuestos;”…añadiendo “aún cuando es muy importante la lucha por la liberación de los pueblos, lo que caracteriza el momento actual es el tránsito del capitalismo al socialismo” (“Táctica y estrategia de la Revolución Latinoamericana”)
En esto encontramos enorme similitud a lo planteado por J.C. Mariátegui, que sus sucesores políticos olvidaron o renegaron, tras su deceso : “Capitalismo o Socialismo. Este es el problema de nuestra época” (Aniversario y Balance, Editorial de Amauta Nº 17, Septiembre de 1928, en Ideología y Política, Pág.249) y “somos anti-imperialistas porque somos marxistas, porque somos revolucionarios, porque oponemos al capitalismo el socialismo, como sistema antagónico llamado a sucederlo,”…(“Punto de vista anti-imperialista”, Mayo de 1929, Tesis presentada a la I Conferencia Comunista Latinoamericana, en Ideología y Política, Pág.95).
PAPEL DE LA BURGUESÍA NACIONAL EN LA REVOLUCIÓN
Asimismo, contra la herencia de las tesis equívocas de la Internacional Comunista, que basadas en el proceso de la Revolución China, incurrían en una sobrestimación del papel de la burguesía nacional en el proceso revolucionario latinoamericano (lo que se vio reflejado en el apoyo de los Partidos Comunistas a Gobiernos de burguesía nacional), el “Ché” plantea claramente que, a diferencia de otros continentes, en América las burguesías nacionales “relativamente mucho mas débiles que en otras regiones , claudican y pactan con el imperialismo”, “Frente al drama terrible para los burgueses timoratos : sumisión al capital extranjero o destrucción frente a las fuerzas populares internas”, “no queda otra solución que la entrega. Al realizarse ésta,”…”se alían las fuerzas de la reacción interna con la reacción internacional más poderosa y se impide el desarrollo pacífico de las revoluciones sociales”. En cuanto a los imperialistas yanquis “Ellos también quieren “tránsito pacífico”. Están de acuerdo en liquidar las viejas estructuras feudales que todavía subsisten en América, y en aliarse a la parte mas avanzada de las burguesías nacionales, realizando algunas reformas fiscales, algún tipo de reforma en el régimen de tenencia de la tierra, una moderada industrialización, referida preferentemente a artículos de consumo, con tecnología y materias primas importadas de los Estados Unidos”, y concluye “En las actuales condiciones históricas de América Latina, la burguesía nacional no puede encabezar la lucha antifeudal y antiimperialista. La experiencia demuestra que en nuestras naciones esa clase, aún cuando sus intereses son contradictorios con los del imperialismo yanqui, ha sido incapaz de enfrentarse a éste, paralizada por el miedo a la revolución social y asustada por el clamor de las masas explotadas” (“Táctica y estrategia de la Revolución Latinoamericana”).
Así tras décadas volvían a alzarse las tesis de J.C. Mariátegui respecto a la burguesía nacional “La colaboración con la burguesía, y aún de muchos elementos feudales, en la lucha anti-imperialista china, se explica por razones de raza, de civilización nacional que entre nosotros no existen. El chino noble o burgués se siente entrañablemente chino”. “El anti-imperialismo en la China puede, por tanto, descansar en el sentimiento y en el factor nacionalista. En Indo-América las circunstancias no son las mismas. La aristocracia y la burguesía criollas no se sienten solidarizadas con el pueblo por el lazo de una historia y de una cultura comunes. En el Perú, el aristócrata y el burgués blancos, desprecian lo popular, lo nacional”.”El factor nacionalista, por estas razones objetivas que a ninguno de ustedes escapa seguramente, no es decisivo ni fundamental en la lucha anti-imperialista en nuestro medio”. “Un conocimiento capitalista, y no por razones de justicia social y doctrinaria, demostró cuan poco se podía confiar, aún en países como la china, en el sentimiento nacionalista revolucionario de la burguesía”, y añade “Mientras la política imperialista logre “manéger” los sentimientos y formalidades de la soberanía nacional de estos Estados, mientras no se vea obligada a recurrir a la intervención armada y a la ocupación militar, contará absolutamente con la colaboración de las burguesías” (“Punto de vista anti-imperialista”, Mayo de 1929, Tesis presentada a la I Conferencia Comunista Latinoamericana, en Ideología y Política)
Coindentemente con el Ché, acerca de la alianza del imperialismo y la burguesía nacional, J.C. Mariátegui señalaba que “Ciertamente, el capitalismo imperialista utiliza el poder de la clase feudal, en tanto la considera la clase políticamente dominante. Pero, sus intereses económicos no son los mismos. La pequeña burguesía, sin exceptuar a la mas demagógica, si atenúa en la práctica sus impulsos más marcadamente nacionalistas, puede llegar a la misma estrecha alianza con el capitalismo imperialista. El capital financiero se sentirá más seguro, si el poder está en manos de una clase social más numerosa, que, satisfaciendo ciertas reivindicaciones apremiosas y estorbando la orientación clasista de las masas, está en mejores condiciones que la vieja y odiada clase feudal de defender los intereses del capitalismo, de ser su custodio y su ujier. La creación de la pequeña propiedad, la expropiación de los latifundios, la liquidación de los privilegios feudales, no son contrarios a los intereses del imperialismo de un modo inmediato. Por el contrario, en la medida en que los rezagos de la feudalidad entraban el desenvolvimiento de una economía capitalista, promovido por las inversiones y los técnicos del imperialismo; que desaparezcan los grandes latifundios, que en su lugar se constituya una economía agraria basada en lo que la demagogia burguesa llama la “democratización” de la propiedad del suelo, que las viejas aristocracias se vean desplazadas por una burguesía y una pequeña burguesía más poderosa e influyente –y por lo mismo más apta para fanatizar la paz social-, nada de esto es contrario a los intereses del imperialismo” (“Punto de Vista anti-imperialista”, en “Ideología y política”, Págs. 88,89 y 93).
CARÁCTER CONTINENTAL DE LA LUCHA REVOLUCIONARIA INDOAMERICANA
Partiendo de la hipótesis que los yanquis intervendrían en América Latina en caso de una insurrección popular, por solidaridad de intereses con la burguesía nacional, el “Ché” consideraba “difícil que la victoria se logre en un país aislado. A la unión de las fuerzas represivas debe contestarse con la unión de las fuerzas populares. En todos los países en que la opresión llega a niveles insostenibles, debe alzarse la bandera de la rebelión y esta bandera tendrá, por necesidad histórica, caracteres continentales. La Cordillera de los Andes está llamada a ser la Sierra Maestra de América, como dijera Fidel, y todos los inmensos territorios que abarca este continente están llamados a ser escenarios de la lucha a muerte contra el poder imperialista” y añadía “No podemos decir cuando alcanzara estas características continentales, ni cuanto durará la lucha, pero podemos predecir su advenimiento porque es hija de circunstancias históricas, económicas, políticas, y su rumbo no se puede torcer” (“Táctica y estrategia de la Revolución Latinoamericana”). Recordemos al efecto, la unidad de lucha de los pueblos de Indochina contra los japoneses, franceses y americanos o la de los pueblos de los Balcanes contra los invasores nazis en la II Guerra Mundial.
Tesis que también encuentra su respaldo en J.C. Mariátegui, quien señalaba que “La revolución de la independencia hace mas de un siglo fue un movimiento solidario de todos los pueblos subyugados por España; la revolución socialista es un movimiento mancomunado de todos los pueblos oprimidos por el capitalismo. Si la revolución liberal, nacionalista por sus principios, no pudo ser actuada sin una estrecha unión entre los países sudamericanos, fácil es comprender la ley histórica que, en una época de mas acentuada interdependencia y vinculación de las naciones, impone que la revolución social, internacionalista, en sus principios, se opere con una coordinación mucho más disciplinada e intensa de los partidos proletarios” (“Principios Programáticos del Partido Socialista”, en “ideología y Política”, Pág.159).
LA ESTRATEGIA IMPERIALISTA
El famoso Mensaje a la Tricontinental, del “Ché”, mas conocido como “Crear, dos, tres...muchos Viet-Nam es la consigna”, publicado en Abril de 1967, fue escrito en 1966, antes de que éste partiese para Bolivia, y tiene por ello el sabor de un Mensaje o “encargo” de despedida. Imaginemos al “Ché” la noche en que escribió este texto, que era parte de su despedida (temporal o definitiva), con el peso moral que ello tiene. Es posible que esa noche recordara su viaje latinoamericano de juventud, en su Rocinante-motocicleta, y las lecturas de Mariátegui inculcadas por Hugo Pesce y recordadas por Hilda Gadea :
"Mientras la política imperialista logre "manéger" los sentimientos y formalidades de la soberanía nacional de estos Estados, mientras no se vea obligada a recurrir a la intervención armada y a la ocupación militar, contará absolutamente con la colaboración de las burguesías. Aunque enfeudados a la economía imperialista, estos países o más bien sus burguesías, se considerarán tan dueños de sus destinos".....(J.C. Mariátegui "Punto de vista antiimperialista"),
y escribió ;
..."las burguesías autóctonas han perdido toda su capacidad de oposición al imperialismo -si alguna vez la tuvieron- y solo forman su furgón de cola".(“Mensaje a la Tricontinental”).
CARÁCTER SOCIALISTA DE LA REVOLUCIÓN LATINOAMERICANA
Volvió a recordar : :
"No queremos, ciertamente, que el socialismo sea en América calco y copia. Debe ser creación heroica" y "La revolución latino-americana, será nada más y nada menos que una etapa, una fase de la revolución mundial. Será simple y puramente, la revolución socialista" (J.C. Mariátegui "Aniversario y Balance").
y escribió :
"No hay mas cambios que hacer, o revolución socialista o caricatura de revolución" (“Mensaje a la Tricontinental”).
EL INTERNACIONALISMO PROLETARIO
Finalmente, a punto de tomar la decisión práctica de solidaridad activa y real con el pueblo vietnamita y el cubano, iniciando otro “foco” de lucha que obligase al Imperialismo y sus secuaces a distribuir sus fuerzas, extendiese sus líneas, y aliviase la presión sobre éstas para atender el estallido de un nuevo conflicto, recordó una vez mas a Mariátegui :
"Todo obrero que cae, en este momento en las calles de Berlín o en las barricadas de Hamburgo no solo cae por la causa del proletariado alemán. También cae por su causa, compañeros del Perú" (JCM "Internacionalismo y marxismo"), y
escribió :
"Y que se desarrolle un verdadero internacionalismo proletario; con ejércitos proletarios internacionales, donde la bandera bajo la que se luche sea la causa sagrada de la redención de la humanidad, de tal modo que morir bajo las enseñas de Vietnam, de Venezuela, de Guatemala, de Laos, de Guinea, de Colombia, de Bolivia, de Brasil, para citar solo los escenarios actuales de la lucha armada, sea igualmente gloriosa y apetecible para un americano, un asiático, un africano y, aún, un europeo.
Cada gota de sangre derramada en un territorio bajo cuya bandera no se ha nacido, es experiencia que recoge quien sobrevive para aplicarla luego en la lucha por la liberación de su lugar de origen, y cada pueblo que se libere, es una fase de la batalla por la liberación del propio pueblo que se ha ganado" (“Mensaje a la Tricontinental”).
¡Con Mariátegui y el “Ché” por el camino de la Revolución Socialista!
2/18/09
Arizona Sheriff Faces Civil Rights Probe, Allegations of Undermining Law Enforcement with Controversial Focus on Immigration
Democracy Now!
Guests:
AMY GOODMAN: The man who calls himself “America’s toughest sheriff” could be facing a federal investigation for possible civil rights abuses and a trial on charges of racially profiling Latinos. The chairpersons of four House committees called on Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last Friday to investigate allegations of misconduct against Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona.
Earlier this month, in a move the New York Times called a “degrading spectacle,” Sheriff Arpaio forced 200 shackled prisoners to march through the streets of Phoenix from a local jail to his infamous tent city that’s surrounded by an electric fence. Many accused the sheriff of pulling a publicity stunt to promote his new reality television show on Fox, Smile, You’re Under Arrest!
At a news conference after the march, this is how Arpaio responded to questions about why he was humiliating prisoners.
SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: Well, if you remember, if you’ve been around, about two years ago we marched about a thousand people in just their pink underwear from one jail to the other. So why should I keep this secret, because it will never be kept secret, if I open this tent city? In about two minutes, the whole world will know about it anyway. So I have nothing to hide. I have an open-door policy. I’m facing you right now. I’m telling you our policy. I have nothing to hide. I don’t sneak people in. The media constantly comes through these tents, from all over the world. We’ve had presidential candidates, four of them, running for president, that visited the tents.
AMY GOODMAN: That clip courtesy of A.J. Alexander.
In their strongly worded letter, Congress members John Conyers, Zoe Lofgren, Jerrold Nadler and Bobby Scott accuse the sheriff of “blatant disregard for the rights of Hispanic residents.” They say Latinos in Phoenix, citizens and non-citizens alike, “feel under siege” because of the sheriff’s raids.
In an interview with the East Valley Tribune newspaper last April, Sheriff Arpaio defended himself against mounting criticism of his actions.
SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: We do know there’s many illegals in this county that have already been designated criminals. Just by coming here, they are criminals. Everybody forgets that. Illegal means that you’ve done something wrong, you’re illegal. But that goes by the wayside. See, nobody talks about that. They call me Nazi, and they have KKK. They have my picture next to Hitler, all these demonstrators. That’s alright. I can take it. But, you know, that is a little racist, too, against me. But they want to do it, let them do it.
AMY GOODMAN: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The sheriff’s tactics of public humiliation have come under greater fire since Maricopa County entered into what is known as a Section 287(g) agreement with the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement allows local law enforcement agencies to perform immigration enforcement functions. Last year, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon criticized Sheriff Arpaio for focusing on immigration enforcement at the expense of 40,000 outstanding felony arrest warrants. The letter from Congressman Conyers and others urges Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano to review and possibly terminate Maricopa County’s 287(g) agreements.
I’m joined right now by two guests in Phoenix, Arizona. Ryan Gabrielson is a reporter with the East Valley Tribune. He’s just won the 2008 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting, along with Paul Giblin, for their five-part series on Sheriff Arpaio called “Reasonable Doubt.” Salvador Reza is with us, as well, a member of the Puente movement in Phoenix that grew out of the spate of arrests and deportations under Sheriff Arpaio in 2007. He’s part of a large group of organizations calling for the national demonstration in Phoenix next Saturday against 287(g) agreements.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
President Obama is there, as well, today. He is going to be signing legislation there. And he will be accompanied by the Homeland Security director, Janet Napolitano, who is the former governor of Arizona, who has worked very closely with the sheriff.
Ryan Gabrielson, first of all, congratulations on your George Polk Award for this series. Can you talk about the latest controversy that involves the sheriff?
RYAN GABRIELSON: Well, the latest controversy is simply sort of stemming from the two years worth of controversy since the sheriff’s office began doing its real crackdown on illegal immigration. And the new investigations that are being called for seem to be sort of a fresh approach to what the FBI apparently—there’s a lot of evidence—was doing last year in response to the Phoenix mayor’s request for a federal investigation. Lots of people that we’ve talked to have said that federal agents, FBI agents, have been doing interviews for quite some time, potentially building a case concerning civil rights infractions. This simply would be a new approach from different agencies, from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and from the Attorney General’s office itself.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering if you can talk about the latest news, Salvador Reza, the latest controversy, and how your organizations came together.
SALVADOR REZA: Yes. In 2007, Sheriff Arpaio said for ICE-trained sheriffs to basically patrol an area under control of a Roger Sensing, which is a private individual. So this private individual was utilizing them to actually scour the neighborhoods. He would call in the license plates of people that were picked up for day labor. And basically the sheriffs would go and stop them and then start interrogating everybody. He deported over a hundred people like that. So, out of that, we started a series of demonstrations against Pruitt. But now, since then, he has done a series of sweeps every so often, like every two months or so, where he goes into the Latino neighborhoods and basically intimidates, terrorizes and basically destroys business in the area while he’s there.
Well, the latest stunt, media stunt, by Sheriff Arpaio was parading 240 or so prisoners from one facility to the other, which is now the tent city. It’s not that far, but he called all the media to make a spectacle of the situation, and basically segregating by alienation, by national origin, and by color, a whole set of inmates, which is actually a violation of the Constitution. But on top of that, he said it was to facilitate visit by the lawyers and by the Mexican consulate or the consulate of other country. But what happened, in essence, he actually took away days. Now they only can visit them three days.
So, you know, he’s constantly lying and basically putting himself on the public eye and basically dividing the whole community into pro- and anti-Arpaio forces. And he’s utilizing the 287(g) agreements so that he can basically go after gardeners, after corn vendors, after, you know, maids, and basically intimidating. Now he’s interrogating the whole board of supervisors, county board of supervisors, and accusing them of violating employer sanctions. So he’s out of control. And I think investigation is due. Not only investigation, they should freeze the 287(g) agreements with Sheriff Arpaio until, you know, this gets resolved. Janet Napolitano doesn’t seem to want to do that so far. I hope she changes her mind.
RYAN GABRIELSON: It’s true, the 287(g) agreement—
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gabrielson—
RYAN GABRIELSON: Oh, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —the reporter with the East Valley Tribune.
RYAN GABRIELSON: —just distinctly changed the nature of the sheriff’s operations. Throughout 2006, when they first began this, they were scouring the rural roadways where human smugglers would use to get in and out of Maricopa County. Once they got the federal pact, they all of a sudden had 160 federal agents, or their deputies that were cross-designated with all the powers of Immigration agents. They started launching large-scale crackdowns in Hispanic neighborhoods with zero evidence of actual criminal activity, sending out the SWAT team, the K9 teams, you know, hundreds of members of their volunteer posse, to just target day laborers. So—and that’s something that’s continued ever since they got the federal agreement.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about this issue of whether Janet Napolitano, the Arizona governor, can deal with Sheriff Arpaio in the way that the Congress members and community groups are demanding, given her history?
I’m looking at a piece, in addition to your pieces, Ryan Gabrielson, by Tom Zoellner, who formerly wrote for the Arizona Republic. And he—the piece is called “Maricopa County includes Phoenix)]. That inmates have a way of getting killed in Sheriff Joe’s jails, costing Maricopa County millions of dollars in lawsuits, has not dimmed his star. Nor has a federal judge’s order that he provide a constitutionally mandated minimum level of food and health care, an order that said Arpaio had inflicted ‘needless suffering and deterioration’ on the mentally ill.”
He goes on to say, “More than a decade ago, Napolitano was in a position to help curb Arpaio’s excesses. As a U.S. attorney in 1995, she was put in charge of [a] Justice Department investigation into atrocious conditions in Arpaio’s ‘tent city.’ Napolitano carried out her task with what can best be described as reluctance, going out of her way to protect Arpaio from flak almost before the probe had started.” She told the Associated Press, "We’re doing this with the complete cooperation of the sheriff.” She said, “We run a strict jail but a safe jail, and I haven’t heard from anyone who thinks that this is a bad thing.”
He writes, “‘Anyone’? Maybe Napolitano needed to get out of her office a little more.
“The Justice Department’s final report, issued about two years later, confirmed a list of disgraces, including excessive use of force, gratuitous use of pepper spray and ‘restraint chairs’ (since blamed for at least three inmate deaths), and hog-tying and beating of inmates. It also said Arpaio’s staffing was ‘below levels needed for safety and humane operations.’”
Ryan Gabrielson, this is a good chance to go into the history of the sheriff, something that you’ve done comprehensively in this five-part series. We’re going to break and come back. We’re speaking with Ryan Gabrielson, a reporter with the East Valley Tribune who has won the 2008 George Polk Award, just announced yesterday, and Salvador Reza, who is a member of the Puente movement in Phoenix, Arizona, where President Obama is today. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are Salvador Reza, member of the Puente movement in Phoenix, Arizona; Ryan Gabrielson, the George Polk Award-winning reporter of the East Valley Tribune, who has done a five-part series on the controversial Sheriff Arpaio. Now Congress members are calling for a federal investigation into his tactics. Among the things he has done, parading prisoners through the streets of Phoenix in their prison stripes, making them wear only pink underwear. He’s been charged with not giving them enough food.
But, Ryan Gabrielson, why don’t you go through the history, what you found?
RYAN GABRIELSON: Well, it’s been a long sixteen years. Joe Arpaio served four terms now, and he’s just elected to a fifth, so he’s going to be around for a while long. He jokes that they’ll have to carry him out in a box.
He’s a master showman. And so, it’s always—you know, from the pink underwear that you mentioned to tent city, putting a big no vacancy sign that’s always lit up over tent city that’s letting them—while a lot of jails are overflowing and people and criminals are being let go early, he will always make more room, regardless of what constraints he might theoretically have. And that’s always played very well with the public, regardless of what else is actually going on within the sheriff’s office. His popularity has been, you know, traditionally in the 70s and 80 percentiles. It’s much lower these days. He’s in the solid 50 to 60 percent, but, you know, which would be bad only by Arpaio standards.
Our investigation wanted to really take a look behind the front that everybody covers constantly, you know, what’s what—we’re all being called out to bring out cameras to watch inmates being paraded around. We wanted to find out how is he going about conducting his immigration operations, who is he arresting, what are they being charged with, what was the probable cause, and what impact is it having on everything else that they’re supposed to be doing. They’re the police department for all of unincorporated Maricopa County and all these small towns, 300,000 people in all, in which they are, you know, the first and last line of defense on all kinds of violent crimes. So we wanted to find out, are they actually responding to those needs, as they ramp up and evolve into an immigration agency, which started in 2006?
And what we found was the problems in the jails have been well documented over the years, but no one had really focused on the main—one of the main core jobs of police work. And we found that starting in 2006, after the immigration enforcement began, response times just got dramatically slower on the most serious emergency calls. Arrest rates plummeted from ten percent, which is fairly standard nationally, to around three percent. And in some cases, violent crimes, particularly sexual assaults, we found dozens of them had not been investigated at all and had, in fact, been ignored in the areas where the heaviest immigration enforcement work was being done.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the issue, for example, of deaths and lack of food.
RYAN GABRIELSON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gabrielson, can you talk about that? Charged with not giving prisoners enough food.
RYAN GABRIELSON: Oh, in his jails. Well, I mean, there’s been multiple, multiple deaths, painstakingly reported by us, The Republic and in other papers, particularly Phoenix New Times, detailing just the level of abuse and negligence in supervising prisoners. There was just recently, last year, another beating death that was captured on camera. And the food situation is simply—is one that Arpaio has actually used as a point of his—part of his publicity machine, serving them green bologna, just the bare minimum, which in a state like Arizona, traditionally, has played very well with the idea tough on crime. Joe Arpaio creates visual ways to show that he’s being tough on crime, like green bologna, pink underwear and no vacancy signs.
AMY GOODMAN: And the pink underwear, where were they forced to wear this?
RYAN GABRIELSON: That’s in jail. The storyline that he told is that prisoners were stealing the regular white underwear. And so, in order to curb that, he made it all pink, so it would be less desirable. And it created a sensation, and he started selling his pink underwear, and all that sort has become part of his trademark.
AMY GOODMAN: And raiding the offices of the Phoenix New Times, Ryan Gabrielson?
RYAN GABRIELSON: Well, actually, there was a—they didn’t even actually go to their offices. They went to the homes of the two publishers for Phoenix New Times, which—there was an investigation being conducted into a case where New Times published Joe Arpaio’s home address in its paper and online. And Arizona has a kind of interesting law where you’re not allowed to publish online the address of law enforcement. And so, the sheriff had been pushing our county attorney to do an investigation and prosecute the case.
Over the course of that, it sort of snowballed to the point where they—New Times received these hugely broad subpoenas for basically every bit of information about readers, reporter notes, etc., just breathtaking subpoenas, grand jury subpoenas. And they were supposed to remain sort of—you know, they weren’t supposed to publish anything about it, and they felt that they had a need, that people needed to know what was going on with this investigation, so they published all the details about these subpoenas. And then, that night, after the newspaper came out, sheriff’s deputies in plain clothes showed up at the homes of these two publishers and arrested them.
SALVADOR REZA: With cars with Mexican license plates.
RYAN GABRIELSON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Salvador Reza, repeat that.
SALVADOR REZA: With cars that had Mexican license plates, sheriff cars with Mexican license plates.
RYAN GABRIELSON: The sheriff’s offices has a division called the Selective Enforcement Unit that handles those types of things, not regular police work, but more internal control of that sort.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gabrielson, you’ve been writing in your part five of your Tribune piece that won the George Polk, “Why No One Is Willing to Hold Arpaio Accountable.” And I’d like you to talk, for example, about Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, the highest elected official to publicly go against Arpaio’s sweeps, what happened to him, what he said, and then right on up to, well, the governor, who has now become the Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano, who’s back in Arizona today with President Obama in Phoenix.
RYAN GABRIELSON: Traditionally, Joe Arpaio has been one of the most popular and, therefore, most powerful politicians in the state of Arizona. And to go up against Joe was—brought significant risks. When the mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon, spoke out against him last year, it didn’t go without a response. Not only was, of course, Arpaio blasting Gordon in various media outlets, he launched an investigation of—Gordon had detailed a complaint, a racial profiling allegation, against sheriff’s deputies from somebody in his staff. And so, the sheriff’s office launched an internal affairs investigation of some sort to determine if there was any veracity to that complaint and, in the process, requested—I think it was tens of thousands of pages of internal correspondence, email, the mayor’s email, for, I think, the past year or so, theoretically to ascertain the source of this complaint and all the details about it. But it was looked at as a fishing expedition to try to find dirt on the mayor.
AMY GOODMAN: Salvador Reza, Janet Napolitano, who is a close adviser now, of course, to President Obama as the head of Homeland Security?
SALVADOR REZA: Sheriff Arpaio is actually the biggest black eye for Janet Napolitano. Janet Napolitano is basically a prosecutor. She is pro-law enforcement, and which is fine. But the problem with it is that now they have criminal [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Salvador Reza and Ryan Gabrielson. We seem to have lost the satellite connection at this moment. Ryan Gabrielson just won the George Polk Award for his five-part series on Sheriff Arpaio. Salvador Reza, a longtime activist in Phoenix, he’s a member of the Puente movement. Continue, Salvador.
SALVADOR REZA: Yes. Well, Janet Napolitano is actually—Sheriff Arpaio is the biggest black eye for Janet Napolitano. Janet Napolitano is a prosecutor. But the problem with it is that they have criminalized our work now. To be here to seek work or to be here in the United States undocumented is actually just a civil penalty. Yet, you know, they keep on stressing the criminality of it.
The 287(g) agreements were brought in by Janet Napolitano, and she was the one that actually went and interceded for Sheriff Arpaio and vouched for him to get the 287(g) agreements. Now she wants to expand the 287(g) agreement nationally, but if they do that, then the same thing that happened to Arizona is going to happen nationally, because you’re going to have access to doing immigration work for a lot of like little county sheriffs that don’t necessarily understand the complexity of modern migrations.
And on top of that, what is happening, Arizona has basically become like a ghost town, because no business comes here anymore, because they’re afraid that Sheriff Arpaio might come and raid them. A lot of companies have left Arizona to Mexico, to Canada, or to other states, basically because nobody is willing to risk it, nobody’s willing to come and invest in Arizona. And if this goes nationally, this is going to affect not only Arizona, but nationally it’s going to affect the entire United States. And under the climate that we’re—economic climate we’re in right now, we don’t need that right now. I hope Obama actually looks at what happened to Arizona before they unleash the plans that Janet Napolitano has for the entire country.
RYAN GABRIELSON: And 287(g) actually is already, to a certain—
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gabrielson.
RYAN GABRIELSON: —to a certain extent, nationwide. Florida and Alabama were two of the first places where these type of pacts were set up. But no one does it quite like Joe Arpaio. He’s got the largest contingent of these officers in the country. It’s 160. Nobody else has anywhere near that many. And what’s sort of happening right now is there’s dozens of other state and local police departments that are waiting, have applied, to get 287(g) agreements to do this type of work on their own.
And it is complicated work. It is difficult. And it requires—you know, they get five weeks of training, but sometimes that training doesn’t necessarily either sink in, or it doesn’t actually work its way into the field. One of the things we found in our series with the sheriff is in their agreement with—their contract with the federal government, there is very clear rules to protect against violating civil rights and to protect against any type of racial profiling. And one of them is that if you’re going to go into a heavily, you know, minority community, you have to—or any community, period, any type of large-scale operation, you have to have empirical evidence, data, calls for service, some evidence that there’s a crime problem there. And that has just blatantly been ignored by the sheriff’s office, and they fully acknowledge that they’ve ignored that.
SALVADOR REZA: One of the things that we haven’t been mentioning is that Sheriff Arpaio has been utilized by United for a Sovereign America and other groups that are nativist groups that actually go and—go, for example, to four or five businesses in an area, and then those four or five businesses ask Joe to come in, while seventy or eighty of the other businesses in the area don’t even want him, because they know what’s going to happen to them.
So with that as a pretext, he comes in to—so-called, to defend the business community. And by going in there, he doesn’t go in just, you know, with officer; he brings his whole SWAT team, like he said before, his headquarters, mobile operations. Sometimes he brings helicopters. Sometimes he brings horses. And it’s basically an intimidation type of tactics and all under the pretext of protecting business.
When we talk to the business community, they say, “We don’t even want him around here,” because they lose 60 to 70 percent of their sales whenever Sheriff Joe is in the area. So it’s very negative to the community. And like you say, Napolitano is very aware of this. And at the same time, we believe that if they really do want to protect homeland security, they have to concentrate on the dangerous people, not on the gardeners and all of that. The other part can be done through immigration reform, which we hope that they actually do that.
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times recently had an editorial talking about Napolitano reviewing the enforcement efforts, including looking at ways to expand 287(g). “Sheriff Arpaio,” the New York Times says, “is a powerful argument for doing just the opposite. Now that she has left Arizona politics behind, Ms. Napolitano is free to prove this is not Arpaio’s America, where the mob rules and immigrants are subject to ritual humiliation. The country should expect no less.”
Ryan Gabrielson, do you think Napolitano will be able to rise to the task and challenge and change her own relationship with Arpaio?
RYAN GABRIELSON: Well, to a great extent, the relationship had already changed before she left. Last year, there was, it was mentioned, the unserved warrants. A lot of Arpaio’s operations, immigration operations, or at least a share of them, were funded through state grants. I think it was last March or so, or last May, she actually took $600,000 that had been set aside for him to do more of that enforcement and redirected it to create a new task force on—to serve these warrants. That was seen as not really something about the warrants, that it was about a rebuff to the sheriff and sort of a breaking of whatever ties were there. He’s, since then, been blasting her constantly. I don’t think there’s a lot of love lost between the two anymore. The question is whether she’s willing to undertake a politically challenging investigation that could result in the sheriff’s office losing its—
SALVADOR REZA: 287.
RYAN GABRIELSON: —partnership, its 287(g) agreement, and the backlash—whether there will be backlash over that and whether she has to worry about that anymore now that she’s in D.C. instead of Arizona.
SALVADOR REZA: And I think the New York Times is—
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Salvador Reza—go ahead.
SALVADOR REZA: And I think the New York Times is right on target, you know, because if you’re here—and we’ve been filming a lot of those sweeps, in which, you know, we’ve seen little kids, four, six years old, being separated from their moms, where there’s no need to separate them, you know. The mom just did like, you know, a minor traffic ticket, and because of that, you know, they’re separated. The kids are US citizens. And on top of that, the way that those little kids were treated, they were basically terrorized by masked sheriffs, which told me that I couldn’t film, even though there’s no law against filming.
And the thing—it has become almost like a third world country here in Arizona. Maybe Sheriff Arpaio picked a lot of that while he was over there in Mexico under the DA. But the thing is, he is actually creating Maricopa County like if it was almost like Honduras or some other country where civil rights and human rights are basically being destroyed. And actually, the separation of the community is very stark and very marked, and to the point that his only friends are now his—his only friend left—and even his friend criticized him—was a prosecutor, Andrew Thomas, now his best friends, which are the board of supervisors, he has him under investigation, too. This is getting out of hand.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, joining us from Phoenix, where President Obama and the Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will be today to sign legislation around bank foreclosures of homes. Salvador Reza, member of the Puente movement in Phoenix, and Ryan Gabrielson, the George Polk Award-winning reporter with the East Valley Tribune, did a series on Sheriff Arpaio.
This is Democracy Now! And on this issue of home foreclosures, when we come back from break, we go to Minneapolis, where one poor people’s organization is saying “No more.” They’re going into houses that are not occupied, and they’re occupying them. Stay with us.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County has forced prisoners to march through the streets of Phoenix dressed in just pink underwear, housed prisoners in tents in the searing heat, and appears on a Fox reality-TV show. Now he could be facing a federal investigation for civil rights abuses and a trial on charges of racially profiling Latinos. He’s also been accused of focusing on immigration enforcement at the expense of other law enforcement duties. [includes rush transcript]
Guests:
Ryan Gabrielson, reporter with the East Valley Tribune. He’s just won the 2008 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting along with Paul Giblin for their five-part series on Sheriff Arpaio called “Reasonable Doubt.”
Salvador Reza, member of the Puente movement in Phoenix that grew out the spate of arrests and deportations under Sheriff Arpaio in 2007. He is part of a large group of organizations calling for a national demonstration in Phoenix next Saturday against 287(g) agreements.
AMY GOODMAN: The man who calls himself “America’s toughest sheriff” could be facing a federal investigation for possible civil rights abuses and a trial on charges of racially profiling Latinos. The chairpersons of four House committees called on Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last Friday to investigate allegations of misconduct against Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona.
Earlier this month, in a move the New York Times called a “degrading spectacle,” Sheriff Arpaio forced 200 shackled prisoners to march through the streets of Phoenix from a local jail to his infamous tent city that’s surrounded by an electric fence. Many accused the sheriff of pulling a publicity stunt to promote his new reality television show on Fox, Smile, You’re Under Arrest!
At a news conference after the march, this is how Arpaio responded to questions about why he was humiliating prisoners.
SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: Well, if you remember, if you’ve been around, about two years ago we marched about a thousand people in just their pink underwear from one jail to the other. So why should I keep this secret, because it will never be kept secret, if I open this tent city? In about two minutes, the whole world will know about it anyway. So I have nothing to hide. I have an open-door policy. I’m facing you right now. I’m telling you our policy. I have nothing to hide. I don’t sneak people in. The media constantly comes through these tents, from all over the world. We’ve had presidential candidates, four of them, running for president, that visited the tents.
AMY GOODMAN: That clip courtesy of A.J. Alexander.
In their strongly worded letter, Congress members John Conyers, Zoe Lofgren, Jerrold Nadler and Bobby Scott accuse the sheriff of “blatant disregard for the rights of Hispanic residents.” They say Latinos in Phoenix, citizens and non-citizens alike, “feel under siege” because of the sheriff’s raids.
In an interview with the East Valley Tribune newspaper last April, Sheriff Arpaio defended himself against mounting criticism of his actions.
SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: We do know there’s many illegals in this county that have already been designated criminals. Just by coming here, they are criminals. Everybody forgets that. Illegal means that you’ve done something wrong, you’re illegal. But that goes by the wayside. See, nobody talks about that. They call me Nazi, and they have KKK. They have my picture next to Hitler, all these demonstrators. That’s alright. I can take it. But, you know, that is a little racist, too, against me. But they want to do it, let them do it.
AMY GOODMAN: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The sheriff’s tactics of public humiliation have come under greater fire since Maricopa County entered into what is known as a Section 287(g) agreement with the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement allows local law enforcement agencies to perform immigration enforcement functions. Last year, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon criticized Sheriff Arpaio for focusing on immigration enforcement at the expense of 40,000 outstanding felony arrest warrants. The letter from Congressman Conyers and others urges Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano to review and possibly terminate Maricopa County’s 287(g) agreements.
I’m joined right now by two guests in Phoenix, Arizona. Ryan Gabrielson is a reporter with the East Valley Tribune. He’s just won the 2008 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting, along with Paul Giblin, for their five-part series on Sheriff Arpaio called “Reasonable Doubt.” Salvador Reza is with us, as well, a member of the Puente movement in Phoenix that grew out of the spate of arrests and deportations under Sheriff Arpaio in 2007. He’s part of a large group of organizations calling for the national demonstration in Phoenix next Saturday against 287(g) agreements.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
President Obama is there, as well, today. He is going to be signing legislation there. And he will be accompanied by the Homeland Security director, Janet Napolitano, who is the former governor of Arizona, who has worked very closely with the sheriff.
Ryan Gabrielson, first of all, congratulations on your George Polk Award for this series. Can you talk about the latest controversy that involves the sheriff?
RYAN GABRIELSON: Well, the latest controversy is simply sort of stemming from the two years worth of controversy since the sheriff’s office began doing its real crackdown on illegal immigration. And the new investigations that are being called for seem to be sort of a fresh approach to what the FBI apparently—there’s a lot of evidence—was doing last year in response to the Phoenix mayor’s request for a federal investigation. Lots of people that we’ve talked to have said that federal agents, FBI agents, have been doing interviews for quite some time, potentially building a case concerning civil rights infractions. This simply would be a new approach from different agencies, from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and from the Attorney General’s office itself.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering if you can talk about the latest news, Salvador Reza, the latest controversy, and how your organizations came together.
SALVADOR REZA: Yes. In 2007, Sheriff Arpaio said for ICE-trained sheriffs to basically patrol an area under control of a Roger Sensing, which is a private individual. So this private individual was utilizing them to actually scour the neighborhoods. He would call in the license plates of people that were picked up for day labor. And basically the sheriffs would go and stop them and then start interrogating everybody. He deported over a hundred people like that. So, out of that, we started a series of demonstrations against Pruitt. But now, since then, he has done a series of sweeps every so often, like every two months or so, where he goes into the Latino neighborhoods and basically intimidates, terrorizes and basically destroys business in the area while he’s there.
Well, the latest stunt, media stunt, by Sheriff Arpaio was parading 240 or so prisoners from one facility to the other, which is now the tent city. It’s not that far, but he called all the media to make a spectacle of the situation, and basically segregating by alienation, by national origin, and by color, a whole set of inmates, which is actually a violation of the Constitution. But on top of that, he said it was to facilitate visit by the lawyers and by the Mexican consulate or the consulate of other country. But what happened, in essence, he actually took away days. Now they only can visit them three days.
So, you know, he’s constantly lying and basically putting himself on the public eye and basically dividing the whole community into pro- and anti-Arpaio forces. And he’s utilizing the 287(g) agreements so that he can basically go after gardeners, after corn vendors, after, you know, maids, and basically intimidating. Now he’s interrogating the whole board of supervisors, county board of supervisors, and accusing them of violating employer sanctions. So he’s out of control. And I think investigation is due. Not only investigation, they should freeze the 287(g) agreements with Sheriff Arpaio until, you know, this gets resolved. Janet Napolitano doesn’t seem to want to do that so far. I hope she changes her mind.
RYAN GABRIELSON: It’s true, the 287(g) agreement—
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gabrielson—
RYAN GABRIELSON: Oh, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —the reporter with the East Valley Tribune.
RYAN GABRIELSON: —just distinctly changed the nature of the sheriff’s operations. Throughout 2006, when they first began this, they were scouring the rural roadways where human smugglers would use to get in and out of Maricopa County. Once they got the federal pact, they all of a sudden had 160 federal agents, or their deputies that were cross-designated with all the powers of Immigration agents. They started launching large-scale crackdowns in Hispanic neighborhoods with zero evidence of actual criminal activity, sending out the SWAT team, the K9 teams, you know, hundreds of members of their volunteer posse, to just target day laborers. So—and that’s something that’s continued ever since they got the federal agreement.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about this issue of whether Janet Napolitano, the Arizona governor, can deal with Sheriff Arpaio in the way that the Congress members and community groups are demanding, given her history?
I’m looking at a piece, in addition to your pieces, Ryan Gabrielson, by Tom Zoellner, who formerly wrote for the Arizona Republic. And he—the piece is called “Maricopa County includes Phoenix)]. That inmates have a way of getting killed in Sheriff Joe’s jails, costing Maricopa County millions of dollars in lawsuits, has not dimmed his star. Nor has a federal judge’s order that he provide a constitutionally mandated minimum level of food and health care, an order that said Arpaio had inflicted ‘needless suffering and deterioration’ on the mentally ill.”
He goes on to say, “More than a decade ago, Napolitano was in a position to help curb Arpaio’s excesses. As a U.S. attorney in 1995, she was put in charge of [a] Justice Department investigation into atrocious conditions in Arpaio’s ‘tent city.’ Napolitano carried out her task with what can best be described as reluctance, going out of her way to protect Arpaio from flak almost before the probe had started.” She told the Associated Press, "We’re doing this with the complete cooperation of the sheriff.” She said, “We run a strict jail but a safe jail, and I haven’t heard from anyone who thinks that this is a bad thing.”
He writes, “‘Anyone’? Maybe Napolitano needed to get out of her office a little more.
“The Justice Department’s final report, issued about two years later, confirmed a list of disgraces, including excessive use of force, gratuitous use of pepper spray and ‘restraint chairs’ (since blamed for at least three inmate deaths), and hog-tying and beating of inmates. It also said Arpaio’s staffing was ‘below levels needed for safety and humane operations.’”
Ryan Gabrielson, this is a good chance to go into the history of the sheriff, something that you’ve done comprehensively in this five-part series. We’re going to break and come back. We’re speaking with Ryan Gabrielson, a reporter with the East Valley Tribune who has won the 2008 George Polk Award, just announced yesterday, and Salvador Reza, who is a member of the Puente movement in Phoenix, Arizona, where President Obama is today. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are Salvador Reza, member of the Puente movement in Phoenix, Arizona; Ryan Gabrielson, the George Polk Award-winning reporter of the East Valley Tribune, who has done a five-part series on the controversial Sheriff Arpaio. Now Congress members are calling for a federal investigation into his tactics. Among the things he has done, parading prisoners through the streets of Phoenix in their prison stripes, making them wear only pink underwear. He’s been charged with not giving them enough food.
But, Ryan Gabrielson, why don’t you go through the history, what you found?
RYAN GABRIELSON: Well, it’s been a long sixteen years. Joe Arpaio served four terms now, and he’s just elected to a fifth, so he’s going to be around for a while long. He jokes that they’ll have to carry him out in a box.
He’s a master showman. And so, it’s always—you know, from the pink underwear that you mentioned to tent city, putting a big no vacancy sign that’s always lit up over tent city that’s letting them—while a lot of jails are overflowing and people and criminals are being let go early, he will always make more room, regardless of what constraints he might theoretically have. And that’s always played very well with the public, regardless of what else is actually going on within the sheriff’s office. His popularity has been, you know, traditionally in the 70s and 80 percentiles. It’s much lower these days. He’s in the solid 50 to 60 percent, but, you know, which would be bad only by Arpaio standards.
Our investigation wanted to really take a look behind the front that everybody covers constantly, you know, what’s what—we’re all being called out to bring out cameras to watch inmates being paraded around. We wanted to find out how is he going about conducting his immigration operations, who is he arresting, what are they being charged with, what was the probable cause, and what impact is it having on everything else that they’re supposed to be doing. They’re the police department for all of unincorporated Maricopa County and all these small towns, 300,000 people in all, in which they are, you know, the first and last line of defense on all kinds of violent crimes. So we wanted to find out, are they actually responding to those needs, as they ramp up and evolve into an immigration agency, which started in 2006?
And what we found was the problems in the jails have been well documented over the years, but no one had really focused on the main—one of the main core jobs of police work. And we found that starting in 2006, after the immigration enforcement began, response times just got dramatically slower on the most serious emergency calls. Arrest rates plummeted from ten percent, which is fairly standard nationally, to around three percent. And in some cases, violent crimes, particularly sexual assaults, we found dozens of them had not been investigated at all and had, in fact, been ignored in the areas where the heaviest immigration enforcement work was being done.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the issue, for example, of deaths and lack of food.
RYAN GABRIELSON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gabrielson, can you talk about that? Charged with not giving prisoners enough food.
RYAN GABRIELSON: Oh, in his jails. Well, I mean, there’s been multiple, multiple deaths, painstakingly reported by us, The Republic and in other papers, particularly Phoenix New Times, detailing just the level of abuse and negligence in supervising prisoners. There was just recently, last year, another beating death that was captured on camera. And the food situation is simply—is one that Arpaio has actually used as a point of his—part of his publicity machine, serving them green bologna, just the bare minimum, which in a state like Arizona, traditionally, has played very well with the idea tough on crime. Joe Arpaio creates visual ways to show that he’s being tough on crime, like green bologna, pink underwear and no vacancy signs.
AMY GOODMAN: And the pink underwear, where were they forced to wear this?
RYAN GABRIELSON: That’s in jail. The storyline that he told is that prisoners were stealing the regular white underwear. And so, in order to curb that, he made it all pink, so it would be less desirable. And it created a sensation, and he started selling his pink underwear, and all that sort has become part of his trademark.
AMY GOODMAN: And raiding the offices of the Phoenix New Times, Ryan Gabrielson?
RYAN GABRIELSON: Well, actually, there was a—they didn’t even actually go to their offices. They went to the homes of the two publishers for Phoenix New Times, which—there was an investigation being conducted into a case where New Times published Joe Arpaio’s home address in its paper and online. And Arizona has a kind of interesting law where you’re not allowed to publish online the address of law enforcement. And so, the sheriff had been pushing our county attorney to do an investigation and prosecute the case.
Over the course of that, it sort of snowballed to the point where they—New Times received these hugely broad subpoenas for basically every bit of information about readers, reporter notes, etc., just breathtaking subpoenas, grand jury subpoenas. And they were supposed to remain sort of—you know, they weren’t supposed to publish anything about it, and they felt that they had a need, that people needed to know what was going on with this investigation, so they published all the details about these subpoenas. And then, that night, after the newspaper came out, sheriff’s deputies in plain clothes showed up at the homes of these two publishers and arrested them.
SALVADOR REZA: With cars with Mexican license plates.
RYAN GABRIELSON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Salvador Reza, repeat that.
SALVADOR REZA: With cars that had Mexican license plates, sheriff cars with Mexican license plates.
RYAN GABRIELSON: The sheriff’s offices has a division called the Selective Enforcement Unit that handles those types of things, not regular police work, but more internal control of that sort.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gabrielson, you’ve been writing in your part five of your Tribune piece that won the George Polk, “Why No One Is Willing to Hold Arpaio Accountable.” And I’d like you to talk, for example, about Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, the highest elected official to publicly go against Arpaio’s sweeps, what happened to him, what he said, and then right on up to, well, the governor, who has now become the Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano, who’s back in Arizona today with President Obama in Phoenix.
RYAN GABRIELSON: Traditionally, Joe Arpaio has been one of the most popular and, therefore, most powerful politicians in the state of Arizona. And to go up against Joe was—brought significant risks. When the mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon, spoke out against him last year, it didn’t go without a response. Not only was, of course, Arpaio blasting Gordon in various media outlets, he launched an investigation of—Gordon had detailed a complaint, a racial profiling allegation, against sheriff’s deputies from somebody in his staff. And so, the sheriff’s office launched an internal affairs investigation of some sort to determine if there was any veracity to that complaint and, in the process, requested—I think it was tens of thousands of pages of internal correspondence, email, the mayor’s email, for, I think, the past year or so, theoretically to ascertain the source of this complaint and all the details about it. But it was looked at as a fishing expedition to try to find dirt on the mayor.
AMY GOODMAN: Salvador Reza, Janet Napolitano, who is a close adviser now, of course, to President Obama as the head of Homeland Security?
SALVADOR REZA: Sheriff Arpaio is actually the biggest black eye for Janet Napolitano. Janet Napolitano is basically a prosecutor. She is pro-law enforcement, and which is fine. But the problem with it is that now they have criminal [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Salvador Reza and Ryan Gabrielson. We seem to have lost the satellite connection at this moment. Ryan Gabrielson just won the George Polk Award for his five-part series on Sheriff Arpaio. Salvador Reza, a longtime activist in Phoenix, he’s a member of the Puente movement. Continue, Salvador.
SALVADOR REZA: Yes. Well, Janet Napolitano is actually—Sheriff Arpaio is the biggest black eye for Janet Napolitano. Janet Napolitano is a prosecutor. But the problem with it is that they have criminalized our work now. To be here to seek work or to be here in the United States undocumented is actually just a civil penalty. Yet, you know, they keep on stressing the criminality of it.
The 287(g) agreements were brought in by Janet Napolitano, and she was the one that actually went and interceded for Sheriff Arpaio and vouched for him to get the 287(g) agreements. Now she wants to expand the 287(g) agreement nationally, but if they do that, then the same thing that happened to Arizona is going to happen nationally, because you’re going to have access to doing immigration work for a lot of like little county sheriffs that don’t necessarily understand the complexity of modern migrations.
And on top of that, what is happening, Arizona has basically become like a ghost town, because no business comes here anymore, because they’re afraid that Sheriff Arpaio might come and raid them. A lot of companies have left Arizona to Mexico, to Canada, or to other states, basically because nobody is willing to risk it, nobody’s willing to come and invest in Arizona. And if this goes nationally, this is going to affect not only Arizona, but nationally it’s going to affect the entire United States. And under the climate that we’re—economic climate we’re in right now, we don’t need that right now. I hope Obama actually looks at what happened to Arizona before they unleash the plans that Janet Napolitano has for the entire country.
RYAN GABRIELSON: And 287(g) actually is already, to a certain—
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gabrielson.
RYAN GABRIELSON: —to a certain extent, nationwide. Florida and Alabama were two of the first places where these type of pacts were set up. But no one does it quite like Joe Arpaio. He’s got the largest contingent of these officers in the country. It’s 160. Nobody else has anywhere near that many. And what’s sort of happening right now is there’s dozens of other state and local police departments that are waiting, have applied, to get 287(g) agreements to do this type of work on their own.
And it is complicated work. It is difficult. And it requires—you know, they get five weeks of training, but sometimes that training doesn’t necessarily either sink in, or it doesn’t actually work its way into the field. One of the things we found in our series with the sheriff is in their agreement with—their contract with the federal government, there is very clear rules to protect against violating civil rights and to protect against any type of racial profiling. And one of them is that if you’re going to go into a heavily, you know, minority community, you have to—or any community, period, any type of large-scale operation, you have to have empirical evidence, data, calls for service, some evidence that there’s a crime problem there. And that has just blatantly been ignored by the sheriff’s office, and they fully acknowledge that they’ve ignored that.
SALVADOR REZA: One of the things that we haven’t been mentioning is that Sheriff Arpaio has been utilized by United for a Sovereign America and other groups that are nativist groups that actually go and—go, for example, to four or five businesses in an area, and then those four or five businesses ask Joe to come in, while seventy or eighty of the other businesses in the area don’t even want him, because they know what’s going to happen to them.
So with that as a pretext, he comes in to—so-called, to defend the business community. And by going in there, he doesn’t go in just, you know, with officer; he brings his whole SWAT team, like he said before, his headquarters, mobile operations. Sometimes he brings helicopters. Sometimes he brings horses. And it’s basically an intimidation type of tactics and all under the pretext of protecting business.
When we talk to the business community, they say, “We don’t even want him around here,” because they lose 60 to 70 percent of their sales whenever Sheriff Joe is in the area. So it’s very negative to the community. And like you say, Napolitano is very aware of this. And at the same time, we believe that if they really do want to protect homeland security, they have to concentrate on the dangerous people, not on the gardeners and all of that. The other part can be done through immigration reform, which we hope that they actually do that.
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times recently had an editorial talking about Napolitano reviewing the enforcement efforts, including looking at ways to expand 287(g). “Sheriff Arpaio,” the New York Times says, “is a powerful argument for doing just the opposite. Now that she has left Arizona politics behind, Ms. Napolitano is free to prove this is not Arpaio’s America, where the mob rules and immigrants are subject to ritual humiliation. The country should expect no less.”
Ryan Gabrielson, do you think Napolitano will be able to rise to the task and challenge and change her own relationship with Arpaio?
RYAN GABRIELSON: Well, to a great extent, the relationship had already changed before she left. Last year, there was, it was mentioned, the unserved warrants. A lot of Arpaio’s operations, immigration operations, or at least a share of them, were funded through state grants. I think it was last March or so, or last May, she actually took $600,000 that had been set aside for him to do more of that enforcement and redirected it to create a new task force on—to serve these warrants. That was seen as not really something about the warrants, that it was about a rebuff to the sheriff and sort of a breaking of whatever ties were there. He’s, since then, been blasting her constantly. I don’t think there’s a lot of love lost between the two anymore. The question is whether she’s willing to undertake a politically challenging investigation that could result in the sheriff’s office losing its—
SALVADOR REZA: 287.
RYAN GABRIELSON: —partnership, its 287(g) agreement, and the backlash—whether there will be backlash over that and whether she has to worry about that anymore now that she’s in D.C. instead of Arizona.
SALVADOR REZA: And I think the New York Times is—
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Salvador Reza—go ahead.
SALVADOR REZA: And I think the New York Times is right on target, you know, because if you’re here—and we’ve been filming a lot of those sweeps, in which, you know, we’ve seen little kids, four, six years old, being separated from their moms, where there’s no need to separate them, you know. The mom just did like, you know, a minor traffic ticket, and because of that, you know, they’re separated. The kids are US citizens. And on top of that, the way that those little kids were treated, they were basically terrorized by masked sheriffs, which told me that I couldn’t film, even though there’s no law against filming.
And the thing—it has become almost like a third world country here in Arizona. Maybe Sheriff Arpaio picked a lot of that while he was over there in Mexico under the DA. But the thing is, he is actually creating Maricopa County like if it was almost like Honduras or some other country where civil rights and human rights are basically being destroyed. And actually, the separation of the community is very stark and very marked, and to the point that his only friends are now his—his only friend left—and even his friend criticized him—was a prosecutor, Andrew Thomas, now his best friends, which are the board of supervisors, he has him under investigation, too. This is getting out of hand.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, joining us from Phoenix, where President Obama and the Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will be today to sign legislation around bank foreclosures of homes. Salvador Reza, member of the Puente movement in Phoenix, and Ryan Gabrielson, the George Polk Award-winning reporter with the East Valley Tribune, did a series on Sheriff Arpaio.
This is Democracy Now! And on this issue of home foreclosures, when we come back from break, we go to Minneapolis, where one poor people’s organization is saying “No more.” They’re going into houses that are not occupied, and they’re occupying them. Stay with us.
La Suprema Corte de México emite el fallo sobre el "Caso Atenco"
El Máximo Tribunal Mexicano, Declara que sí Existieron Violaciones Graves a los Derechos Humano
Alejandro Montaño
Púlsar
Con ocho votos a favor y tres en contra la Suprema Corte de Justicia de México determinó que sí existieron violaciones graves a los Derechos Humanos, durante la insurrección popular en San Salvador Atenco, México, el 3 y 4 de Mayo del 2006.
Sin embargo esta sentencia exculpa al Gobernador del Estado de México, Enrique Peña Nieto, así como al actual procurador General de la República, Eduardo Medina Mora y a los altos mandos policíacos federales y estatales de responsabilidad alguna por las violaciones a las garantías individuales de los afectados.
Toda vez que el Alto Tribunal de México dictaminó que "no puede atribuirse participación a las autoridades y funcionarios que se reunieron el 3 de mayo de 2006 y que autorizaron el uso de la fuerza pública, así como aquéllos que participaron en la reunión en la que diseñaron la estrategia para implementar el operativo policial".
El presidente de la Suprema Corte de México, Guillermo Ortiz Mayagoitia, estableció que "todo el trabajo institucional sobre las investigaciones en San Salvador Atenco(...) no tiene por objeto desalentar el uso de la fuerza pública, so pretexto de temores de quienes deban tomar esas decisiones".
Agregó además que la resolución sobre estos hechos: "debe llevar a mejorar las condiciones de seguridad y de convivencia, como corresponde en un Estado de derecho".
Más información:
Organización campesina de México lamenta fallo sobre "Caso Atenco"
Alejandro Montaño
Púlsar
Con ocho votos a favor y tres en contra la Suprema Corte de Justicia de México determinó que sí existieron violaciones graves a los Derechos Humanos, durante la insurrección popular en San Salvador Atenco, México, el 3 y 4 de Mayo del 2006.
Sin embargo esta sentencia exculpa al Gobernador del Estado de México, Enrique Peña Nieto, así como al actual procurador General de la República, Eduardo Medina Mora y a los altos mandos policíacos federales y estatales de responsabilidad alguna por las violaciones a las garantías individuales de los afectados.
Toda vez que el Alto Tribunal de México dictaminó que "no puede atribuirse participación a las autoridades y funcionarios que se reunieron el 3 de mayo de 2006 y que autorizaron el uso de la fuerza pública, así como aquéllos que participaron en la reunión en la que diseñaron la estrategia para implementar el operativo policial".
El presidente de la Suprema Corte de México, Guillermo Ortiz Mayagoitia, estableció que "todo el trabajo institucional sobre las investigaciones en San Salvador Atenco(...) no tiene por objeto desalentar el uso de la fuerza pública, so pretexto de temores de quienes deban tomar esas decisiones".
Agregó además que la resolución sobre estos hechos: "debe llevar a mejorar las condiciones de seguridad y de convivencia, como corresponde en un Estado de derecho".
Más información:
Organización campesina de México lamenta fallo sobre "Caso Atenco"
Death's Laboratory
Dropping DIMES on Gaza
By CONN HALLINAN
CounterPunch
“It was as if they had stepped on a mine, but there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before”
—Dr. Erik Fosse, Norwegian cardiologist who worked in Gaza hospitals during the recent war.
What Dr. Fosse was describing was the effects of a U.S. “focused lethality” weapon that minimalizes explosive damage to structures while inflicting catastrophic wounds on its victims. While the weapon has been used in Iraq, Gaza was the first test of the bomb in a densely populated environment.
The specific weapon—the GBU-39— is a Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and was developed by the U.S. Air Force, Boeing Corporation, and University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2000. The weapon wraps the high explosives HMX or RDX with a tungsten alloy and other metals like cobalt, nickel or iron, in a carbon fiber/epoxy container. When the bomb explodes, the container evaporates and the tungsten turns into micro-shrapnel that is extremely lethal up to about 60 feet.
Tungsten is inert, so it does not react chemically with the explosive. While a non-inert metal like aluminum would increase the blast, tungsten actually limits the explosion.
Within the weapon’s range, however, it is inordinately lethal. According to Norwegian doctor Mad Gilbert, the blast results in multiple amputations and “very severe fractures. The muscles are sort of split from the bones, hanging loose, and you also have quite severe burns.”
Those who survive the initial blast quickly succumb to septicemia and organ collapse. “Initially, everything seems in order…but it turns out on operation that dozens of miniature particles can be found in all their organs,” says Dr. Jam Brommundt, a German doctor working in Kham Younis, a city in southern Gaza. “It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles…that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically.” According to Brommundt, the particles cause multiple organ failures.
If, by some miracle, victims do survive, they are almost to certain develop rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a particularly deadly cancer that deeply embeds itself into tissue and is almost impossible to treat. A 2005 U.S. Department of health study found that tungsten stimulated RMS cancers even in very low doses. Out of 92 rats tested, 92 developed the cancer.
While DIMEs were originally designed to avoid “collateral” damage generated by standard high explosive bombs, the weapon’s lethality and profound long-term toxicity hardly seems like an improvement. And in Gaza, the ordinance was widely used. Al-Shifta alone has seen 100 to 150 such patients.
Was Gaza a test of DIME in urban conditions?
Dr. Gilbert told the Oslo Gardermoen,“There is a strong suspicion I think that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons.”
The characteristics of the GBU-39 are likely to make it a go-to weapon in the future. The bomb is small and light—less than six feet long and only 285 pounds—that means an aircraft can carry four times as many weapons. It can also be dropped 60 miles from its target. Internal wings allow the bomb to navigate to its target. It can penetrate three feet of reinforced concrete. It can also be mounted on drones, like the Predator and the Reaper, and compared to other weapons systems, is a bargain.”
Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch’s senior military advisor, says “It remains to be seen how Israel has acquired the technology, whether they purchased weapons from the United States under some agreement, or if they in fact licensed or developed their own type of munitions.”
In fact, Congress approved the $77 million sale of 1.000 GBU-39s to Israel in September, 2008, and the weapons were delivered in December. Israel was the first foreign sales of the DIMES.
DIME weapons are not banned under the Geneva Conventions because they have never been officially tested. However, any weapon capable of inflicting such horrendous damage is normally barred from use, particularly in one of the most densely populated regions in the world
For one thing, no one is sure about how long the tungsten remains in the environment or how it could affect people who return to homes attacked by a DIME. University of Arizona cancer researcher Dr. Mark Witten, who investigates links between tungsten and leukemia, says that in his opinion “there needs to be much more research on the health effects of tungsten before the military increases its usage.”
DIMEs were not the only controversial weapons used in Gaza. The Israeli Self-Defense Forces (IDF) also made generous use of white phosphorus, a chemical that burns with intense heat and inflicts terrible burns on victims. In its vapor form it also damages breathing passages
International law prohibits the weapon’s use near population areas and requires that “all reasonable precautions” be taken to avoid civilians.
Israel initially denied it was using the chemical. “The IDF acts only in accordance with what is permitted by international law and does not use white phosphorus,” said Israel’s Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on Jan. 13.
But eyewitness accounts in Gaza and Israel soon forced the IDF to admit that they were, indeed, using the substance. On Jan 20, the IDF confessed to using phosphorus artillery shells as smoke screens, as well as 200 U.S.-made M825A1 phosphorus mortar shells on “Hamas fighters and rocket launching crews in northern Gaza.”
Three of those shells hit the UN Works and Relief Agency compound Jan, .15, igniting a fire that destroyed hundreds of tons of humanitarian supplies. Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City was also hit by a phosphorus shell. The Israelis say there were Hamas fighters near the two targets, a charge that witnesses adamantly deny.
Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International said, “Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza’s densely-populated residential neighborhoods…and its toll on civilians, is a war crime.”
Israel is also accused of using depleted uranium ammunition (DUA), which in a UN sub-commission in 2002 found in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture, the Conventional Weapons Convention, and the Hague Conventions against the use of poison weapons.
DUA is not highly radioactive, but after exploding some of it turns into a gas that can easily be inhaled. The dense shrapnel that survives also tends to bury itself deeply, leaching low-level radioactivity into water tables.
Other human rights groups, including B’Tselem, Gisha, and Physicians for Human Rights, charge that the IDF intentionally targeted medical personal, killing over a dozen, including paramedics and ambulance drivers.
The International Federation for Human Rights called upon the UN Security Council to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court for possible war crimes.
While the Israelis dismiss the war crimes charges, the fact that the Israeli cabinet held a special meeting on Jan 25 to discuss the issue suggests they are concerned they could be charged with “disproportionate” use of force. The Geneva Conventions require belligerents to at “all times” distinguish between combatants and civilians and to avoid “disproportionate force” in seeking military gains.
Hamas’ use of unguided missiles fired at Israel would also be a war crime under the Conventions.
“The one-sidedness of casualty figures is one measure of disproportion,” says Richard Falk, the UN’s human rights envoy for the occupied territories. A total of 14 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, three of them civilians killed by rockets, 11 of them soldiers, four of the latter by “friendly fire.” Some 50 IDF soldiers were also wounded.
In contrast, 1330 Palestinians have died and 5450 were injured, the overwhelming bulk of them civilians.
“This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare, which we ask to be investigated by the Commission of War Crimes,” a coalition of Israeli human rights groups and Amnesty International said in a joint statement. “The responsibility of the state of Israel is beyond doubt.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann would coordinate the defense of any soldier or commander charged with a war crime. In any case, the U.S. would veto any effort by the UN Security Council to refer Israelis to the International Court at The Hague.
But, as the Financial Times points out, “all countries have an obligation to search out those accused of ‘grave’ breaches of the rules of war and to put them on trial or extradite them to a country that will.”
That was the basis under which Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in Britain in 1998.
“We’re in a seismic shift in international law,” Amnesty International legal advisor Christopher Hall told the Financial Times, who says that Israel’s foreign ministry is already examining the risk to Israelis who travel abroad.
“It’s like walking across the street against a red light,” he says. “The risk may be low, but you’re going to think twice before committing a crime or traveling if you have committed one."
Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net
By CONN HALLINAN
CounterPunch
“It was as if they had stepped on a mine, but there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before”
—Dr. Erik Fosse, Norwegian cardiologist who worked in Gaza hospitals during the recent war.
What Dr. Fosse was describing was the effects of a U.S. “focused lethality” weapon that minimalizes explosive damage to structures while inflicting catastrophic wounds on its victims. While the weapon has been used in Iraq, Gaza was the first test of the bomb in a densely populated environment.
The specific weapon—the GBU-39— is a Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and was developed by the U.S. Air Force, Boeing Corporation, and University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2000. The weapon wraps the high explosives HMX or RDX with a tungsten alloy and other metals like cobalt, nickel or iron, in a carbon fiber/epoxy container. When the bomb explodes, the container evaporates and the tungsten turns into micro-shrapnel that is extremely lethal up to about 60 feet.
Tungsten is inert, so it does not react chemically with the explosive. While a non-inert metal like aluminum would increase the blast, tungsten actually limits the explosion.
Within the weapon’s range, however, it is inordinately lethal. According to Norwegian doctor Mad Gilbert, the blast results in multiple amputations and “very severe fractures. The muscles are sort of split from the bones, hanging loose, and you also have quite severe burns.”
Those who survive the initial blast quickly succumb to septicemia and organ collapse. “Initially, everything seems in order…but it turns out on operation that dozens of miniature particles can be found in all their organs,” says Dr. Jam Brommundt, a German doctor working in Kham Younis, a city in southern Gaza. “It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles…that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically.” According to Brommundt, the particles cause multiple organ failures.
If, by some miracle, victims do survive, they are almost to certain develop rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a particularly deadly cancer that deeply embeds itself into tissue and is almost impossible to treat. A 2005 U.S. Department of health study found that tungsten stimulated RMS cancers even in very low doses. Out of 92 rats tested, 92 developed the cancer.
While DIMEs were originally designed to avoid “collateral” damage generated by standard high explosive bombs, the weapon’s lethality and profound long-term toxicity hardly seems like an improvement. And in Gaza, the ordinance was widely used. Al-Shifta alone has seen 100 to 150 such patients.
Was Gaza a test of DIME in urban conditions?
Dr. Gilbert told the Oslo Gardermoen,“There is a strong suspicion I think that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons.”
The characteristics of the GBU-39 are likely to make it a go-to weapon in the future. The bomb is small and light—less than six feet long and only 285 pounds—that means an aircraft can carry four times as many weapons. It can also be dropped 60 miles from its target. Internal wings allow the bomb to navigate to its target. It can penetrate three feet of reinforced concrete. It can also be mounted on drones, like the Predator and the Reaper, and compared to other weapons systems, is a bargain.”
Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch’s senior military advisor, says “It remains to be seen how Israel has acquired the technology, whether they purchased weapons from the United States under some agreement, or if they in fact licensed or developed their own type of munitions.”
In fact, Congress approved the $77 million sale of 1.000 GBU-39s to Israel in September, 2008, and the weapons were delivered in December. Israel was the first foreign sales of the DIMES.
DIME weapons are not banned under the Geneva Conventions because they have never been officially tested. However, any weapon capable of inflicting such horrendous damage is normally barred from use, particularly in one of the most densely populated regions in the world
For one thing, no one is sure about how long the tungsten remains in the environment or how it could affect people who return to homes attacked by a DIME. University of Arizona cancer researcher Dr. Mark Witten, who investigates links between tungsten and leukemia, says that in his opinion “there needs to be much more research on the health effects of tungsten before the military increases its usage.”
DIMEs were not the only controversial weapons used in Gaza. The Israeli Self-Defense Forces (IDF) also made generous use of white phosphorus, a chemical that burns with intense heat and inflicts terrible burns on victims. In its vapor form it also damages breathing passages
International law prohibits the weapon’s use near population areas and requires that “all reasonable precautions” be taken to avoid civilians.
Israel initially denied it was using the chemical. “The IDF acts only in accordance with what is permitted by international law and does not use white phosphorus,” said Israel’s Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on Jan. 13.
But eyewitness accounts in Gaza and Israel soon forced the IDF to admit that they were, indeed, using the substance. On Jan 20, the IDF confessed to using phosphorus artillery shells as smoke screens, as well as 200 U.S.-made M825A1 phosphorus mortar shells on “Hamas fighters and rocket launching crews in northern Gaza.”
Three of those shells hit the UN Works and Relief Agency compound Jan, .15, igniting a fire that destroyed hundreds of tons of humanitarian supplies. Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City was also hit by a phosphorus shell. The Israelis say there were Hamas fighters near the two targets, a charge that witnesses adamantly deny.
Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International said, “Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza’s densely-populated residential neighborhoods…and its toll on civilians, is a war crime.”
Israel is also accused of using depleted uranium ammunition (DUA), which in a UN sub-commission in 2002 found in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture, the Conventional Weapons Convention, and the Hague Conventions against the use of poison weapons.
DUA is not highly radioactive, but after exploding some of it turns into a gas that can easily be inhaled. The dense shrapnel that survives also tends to bury itself deeply, leaching low-level radioactivity into water tables.
Other human rights groups, including B’Tselem, Gisha, and Physicians for Human Rights, charge that the IDF intentionally targeted medical personal, killing over a dozen, including paramedics and ambulance drivers.
The International Federation for Human Rights called upon the UN Security Council to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court for possible war crimes.
While the Israelis dismiss the war crimes charges, the fact that the Israeli cabinet held a special meeting on Jan 25 to discuss the issue suggests they are concerned they could be charged with “disproportionate” use of force. The Geneva Conventions require belligerents to at “all times” distinguish between combatants and civilians and to avoid “disproportionate force” in seeking military gains.
Hamas’ use of unguided missiles fired at Israel would also be a war crime under the Conventions.
“The one-sidedness of casualty figures is one measure of disproportion,” says Richard Falk, the UN’s human rights envoy for the occupied territories. A total of 14 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, three of them civilians killed by rockets, 11 of them soldiers, four of the latter by “friendly fire.” Some 50 IDF soldiers were also wounded.
In contrast, 1330 Palestinians have died and 5450 were injured, the overwhelming bulk of them civilians.
“This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare, which we ask to be investigated by the Commission of War Crimes,” a coalition of Israeli human rights groups and Amnesty International said in a joint statement. “The responsibility of the state of Israel is beyond doubt.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann would coordinate the defense of any soldier or commander charged with a war crime. In any case, the U.S. would veto any effort by the UN Security Council to refer Israelis to the International Court at The Hague.
But, as the Financial Times points out, “all countries have an obligation to search out those accused of ‘grave’ breaches of the rules of war and to put them on trial or extradite them to a country that will.”
That was the basis under which Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in Britain in 1998.
“We’re in a seismic shift in international law,” Amnesty International legal advisor Christopher Hall told the Financial Times, who says that Israel’s foreign ministry is already examining the risk to Israelis who travel abroad.
“It’s like walking across the street against a red light,” he says. “The risk may be low, but you’re going to think twice before committing a crime or traveling if you have committed one."
Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net
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