Bolivar, Marx and the liberation of Latin America
Based on a talk by Berta Joubert-Ceci at the Dec.
6-7 conference in New York.
When El Libertador--Simon Bolivar--died at age 47 in 1830,
Karl Marx was barely 12 years old. Bolivar had liberated five
countries from the Spanish Empire under the banner of his
ideals of abolition of slavery, equal distribution of wealth,
end of oppression and discrimination for the Indigenous people,
and the unity of all South American countries against what he
then saw would be a future threat to the region, the U.S.
ruling class. He was far ahead of his time.
The response from the masses then was not sufficient to
carry on Bolivarian ideals. However, more than one-and-a-half
centuries after his death, Bolivar's ideas are now spreading
like fire. And this time, there is the added benefit of
Marxism.
The prevalent slogan--"Beware imperialists, Bolivar's sword
is going throughout Latin America"--is not an empty threat. The
people are moving.
It is not a homogenous movement, but it does share this:
It's massive, popular, anti-capitalist and mostly
pro-socialist.
Another important feature of this movement is
solidarity--not only within Latin America and the Caribbean,
but with people all over the world who are victims of
oppression and occupation, like Iraq and Palestine. It can
bring tears to your eyes when you hear people chant at
demonstrations, "Irak, aguanta, que el mundo se levanta" (Iraq,
hold on, the world is rising). It's like saying, give us some
time, we'll help you.
From awareness of the oppression stemming from the United
States and its corporations, the people have moved to denounce
it. And now they are organizing to change that reality. The
actors are those who have been voiceless for too long--the
Indigenous communities, the landless, women.
Since the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has considered
this region its backyard. U.S. capitalists have stolen labor
and raw materials. Washington has invaded militarily multiple
times, intervened politically and economically, deposed
democratically elected heads of state in Chile and Guatemala,
and imposed violent and criminal dictators like Pinochet,
Somoza and Trujillo, to name just a few.
Neoliberalism is nothing but the intensification of
imperialist exploitation with these added impositions:
privatization of natural resources, key national enterprises,
public and social services; reduction of the government
apparatus, taxes on the private sector, and social safety nets;
and removal of any trade regulation. This is necessary for the
imposition of the Free Trade Area of the Americas and other
so-called free trade agreements.
These economic measures go hand in hand with state
repression and military preparations, mandated and assisted by
the United States. Plan Colombia is the most widely known
measure. It is aimed at the FARC and ELN insurgencies in
Colombia--but also at other countries in the region, to the
point that it is now known as the Andean Region Initiative.
'Everything is being debated'
There is no place in Latin America or the Caribbean without
some progressive development--whether it's the election of
popular, left-leaning presidents in Brazil, Ecuador and
Argentina; the ouster of the U.S. Navy from Vieques; the
tremendous mobilizations that brought down President Sanchez de
Lozada in Bolivia; or the latest general strike in the
Dominican Republic. Where newly elected officials have failed
the people, as in Ecuador, the struggle of the masses has
continued.
Everything is being debated. There are regional Social
Forums, forums about the FTAA, Plan Colombia, issues concerning
the Indigenous, Afro descendants, women, youths and so forth.
It's no accident that the most well attended international
forums--the World Social Forum and the Sao Paolo
Forum--originated in South America, in Brazil.
Because of the lack of uniformity in the movement, many
leaders and Marxist intellectuals of the region are also
conducting debates. Their most pressing issues at the moment
can be summed up as insurrection, anarchy and spontaneous
social explosions vs. revolution and the defeat of the
established power with the constitution of a new social
order.
To put it another way, they are grappling with the
divergence between the masses in motion on one hand, and having
an organization that can bring cohesion to that movement in
order to seize the moment, change the balance of forces and
take power.
Many of the traditional left parties have failed to immerse
themselves in the struggle of the masses. So one of the
discussions is the role of a vanguard organization, how it
cannot be a self-proclaimed vanguard, how it has to influence
the masses through immersion in their struggle, bringing
cohesion and unity. Only then will it be recognized by the
masses as the vanguard.
One of these efforts was the first Bolivarian Congress of
the Peoples held in November in Caracas, Venezuela. With
national chapters in 20 countries, the Bolivarian Congress is
an attempt to unite the region's popular political and social
forces to act in coordination and cooperation in fighting for
liberation. To challenge the Free Trade Area of the Americas,
known in Spanish as ALCA, there is a Bolivarian Alternative for
the Americas, or ALBA, first put forward by Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez.
The groups represented on the Con gress's Provisional
Secretariat look like a Who's Who of the Latin American
struggle today: Venezuela's Bolivarian Circles, Brazil's
Landless Movement, the Cuban Communist Party, Ecuador's
Indigenous Pachakutik Movement, Bolivia's Move ment Toward
Socialism, Argentina's Piquetero Movement and the FMLN of El
Salvador.
The Continental Bolivarian Coordi nation is an attempt by
the Latin Amer ican left to re-establish republics on the basis
of true democracy and the sharing of wealth. This Coordinadora
directly calls for rebellion against U.S. imperialism.
Venezuela and Cuba are key in providing venues and political
space for many of these meetings. In fact, it is written in the
new Venezuelan Bolivarian Con stitution that "the Republic will
promote and favor Latin American and Caribbean integration, to
advance toward the creation of a Community of Nations,
defending the economic, social, political and environmental
interests of the region."
Reprinted from the Dec. 18, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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