Lead article
April 2000

New South American movements confront array of contradictions

Mitch Weerth

Four different series of events emanating from South America over the past few months reveal many of the challenges facing freedom movements in that region: the U.S. proposal to grant Colombia $1.3 billion in military aid; a new level of opposition to the crimes of prior dictatorships, especially in Chile and Argentina; the growing labor movement in Argentina, and the sad failure on Jan. 21 of a broadly based movement-a revolution, if you like-in Ecuador.

The approach that the U.S. has signaled in the past few months to the 40-year old civil war in Colombia is an ominous sign of what lies ahead for all of Latin America. The military aid package was announced by Clinton on Jan. 11-originally $1.6 billion, mostly for high-tech helicopters-and represents the biggest infusion of military aid since Reagan's destructive adventures in Central America in the 1980s.

Similar to then, an indigenous population has been in revolt against the so-called national interests of U.S. corporations in the region. The U'wa people are resisting the encroachment and environmental ravages by Oxydental Petroleum whose particular interests have been championed by Vice President Al Gore.

To emphasize how eagerly this administration is throwing itself into a heightened militarization of the country, Madeleine Albright appealed to Congress in early February to accept this as a "political priority." Paul Coverdell, Republican president of the Senate subcommittee on foreign relations, spoke two weeks later of the need for a "new democratic doctrine for the Americas," wherein the U.S. should be prepared to militarily intervene on its own, wherever and whenever it perceives a threat to "democracy" in the hemisphere.

U.S. HANDS STILL DIRTY

This latest version of the old Monroe Doctrine, being articulated in different ways from Clinton on down, defines U.S. politics toward Latin America today in every respect. The recent release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from his 16-month house arrest in a London suburb is one example. The Spanish judge who tested extradition laws to bring Pinochet to justice for the junta's murders of Spaniards in Chile touched a raw nerve in two generations of Chileans. They and those in solidarity around the world sensed an opportunity to make him answer for his crimes.

Clinton wanted nothing to do with the affair and only let out some high sounding phrases about the need to prosecute human rights violators when he was pressed.

More importantly, the same week Pinochet was released to howls of protest in Chile especially, Terry Ward was awarded the CIA's highest honors for his "exceptional achievements" during his career. The former head of the Latin American division of the CIA had been fired in 1995 for covering for a Guatemalan colonel implicated in several assassinations.

One day earlier, the U.S. briefly detained in Houston the retired Peruvian mayor Ricardo Anderson, former member of the Peruvian Intelligence Service who was previously found guilty of torture, freed, and again is wanted on new charges for other torture cases. After a few hours he was freed on the pretext of being on "diplomatic status" since he had come to the U.S. in order to testify in court on behalf of the Peruvian government. Like Pinochet, he quickly got on a plane and headed for home.

These cases show that the U.S. wants absolutely nothing to do with prosecuting these criminals, whether they're U.S. nationals or not. The question is, why? Why wouldn't Clinton want to pose as the guarantor of human rights, when this is the posture he has attempted to foster elsewhere, such as the stance he has taken before the World Trade Organization?

The answer, it seems, is that the U.S. correctly perceives that these cases are not just about Pinochet, Terry Ward, or Ricardo Anderson. They are about a growing revolt that is threatening to shake up what is left of the "stability" the U.S. is so intent on maintaining, at any cost, throughout the hemisphere.

REMOBILIZATION IN ARGENTINA

Argentina is the proof of this. On Feb. 24 at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the same place where the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo have been clamoring for justice for 22 years and continue to do so, 50,000 workers came out to fight the labor reform imposed by the new president Fernando de la Rua.

This program, designed to impress the IMF, lengthens probationary periods and allows companies to sidestep unions by letting them negotiate salaries directly with individual workers. After it was passed, the IMF approved a line of credit of $7.4 billion over three years with the stipulation that it be used only to avoid a serious crisis.

That crisis is brewing rapidly. The workers at the march carried banners denouncing the reform and the IMF. But their deepest anger was reserved for the leaders of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) who helped the president negotiate the reform. During the past decade these stooges approved all of former president Carlos Menem's measures to throw out many important labor victories.

Now there is a genuine opposition within the CGT. They have organized joint actions, like the February march, with the independent Argentine Workers Union (CTA), which itself has become more radical after massive demonstrations in December in the northern province of Corrientes. Those protests, which developed as a result of several thousand state workers being denied months of pay, brought down the right-wing provincial government and left two workers dead and dozens injured.

It is impossible to say where this movement will lead in the coming months and years. What is certain is that nobody has any idea how to bring these countries out of the economic crises they're in, one proof being the strings attached to Argentina's new IMF loan that show these financiers to be bracing for the worst. While Argentina presents the hope of a serious new labor movement on the rise, the events in Ecuador since the beginning of the year reveal a mass movement that has already unraveled.

THE CRISIS IN ECUADOR

The first week of January began with a series of protests demanding the resignation of President Jamil Mahuad as he announced the DOLARIZATION of Ecuador's economy. This plan, so far fetched that even the IMF wasn't thrilled with it, is supposed to stem the free fall of the sucre, which was devalued an incredible 197% in 1999, a 61% inflation rate, and turn the tide of poverty that the government says afflicts 60-80% of the population.

All of the actors in the drama made themselves heard that first week: thousands of students came out in Quito on Jan. 5 and were attacked by the police, Mahuad declared a state of emergency the next day, and 15,000 transit workers answered with a strike that brought the port city of Guayaquil to a near standstill three days later. Not to be left out was the U.S. State Department, which called to express its full support for the Harvard-trained economist Mahuad and his military.

All eyes, however, were on the indigenous movement. For ten years the Quichuas, Shiwiars, Achuars, and others who make up the indigenous population of the country (40% of the 12.5 million population) have developed their organizations, the strongest of which is the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie).

January was to mark the high point of that decade of struggle as a sizable proportion of the indigenous peoples was expected to descend upon the capital in the coming weeks, explicitly to bring down the government. Ricardo Ulcuango, vice president of Conaie, spoke in that first week of the aim of the movement: "The resignation of Mahuad is no magical medicine, for we are out to establish a government of the people, a direct participation in decision making."

At first it seemed as if the state of emergency might work: the students and workers were being gassed in the capital and Guayaquil, and 35,000 troops fanned out to the principal arteries to block the Conaie marches. Even as the oil workers union announced the beginning of an "administrative strike" that they promised would grow until production itself was halted, the government's slogan on Jan. 17 was still "the movement has not eluded our control."

The next day, however, tens of thousands of Indians began arriving in the capital. Over the next few days every province was reporting work stoppages, and the marches through Quito grew to be 50,000 strong. In the evenings a gathering of many organizations, called the People's Parliament, reviewed the day's activities and planned the next. The government's tone also began to change; the Indians, they said, could stay in Quito as long as they liked if they "respect order and understand that the president was constitutionally elected."

CONAIE HEADS, DIVERTS REVOLT

It was Conaie's finest moment as the revolution, it seemed, was at hand. As the hour of the government's fall neared, however, it became apparent that the ruling class, along with the U.S., were not theonly ones fearful of the mass movement; Conaie was, too.

Up to this point Conaie's stated aim was the dissolution of the judicial, congressional, and executive branches of government. Conspicuously absent from their vision was any mention of the military, which, not so coincidentally, enjoys popular support in Ecuador.

On Jan. 19, after a march of some 5,000 Indians that led first past the presidential palace then to the Ministry of Defense, Conaie called for the intervention of the armed forces "in order to prevent a social upheaval of unforeseen consequences." Antonio Vargas, president of Conaie, along with other Indian leaders, met that day with the head of the armed forces, Carlos Mendoza, to present him with their plan for a "junta of national salvation."

At the same time, the People's Parliament issued a written statement, also calling for a military intervention, and used the very same words: "in order to prevent a social upheaval of unforeseen consequences." What was not openly acknowledged, but what they must have known, is that two hours earlier large groups of students and workers were attacked by the police with tear gas as they attempted to march on the city center from several directions to unite with the Indians already there.

For its part, the military under Mendoza rejected Conaie's plan the next morning. Within 24 hours, however, after the Conaie leadership had demanded several more times that the military "take a position," a split emerged within the soldiers' ranks, and on Friday afternoon hundreds of Indians, led by a colonel, Lucio Gutierrez, and numerous lesser officials, took control of the presidential palace and declared their junta to be the new government.

The junta was originally composed of Gutierrez, Vargas, and a former head of the Supreme Court, Carlos Solorzano. On Friday night Vargas declared to the nation: "I want to report that the Ecuadorian people have triumphed."

U.S. CONNIVANCE IN COLLAPSE

From the U.S. came a predictably brutal announcement: "Any regime that emerges from an unconstitutional process will confront an economic and political isolation that will bring about an even greater misery to the Ecuadorian people." The insane meaning of this message, coming from the supposed "leader of the free world" to one where 80% already live in poverty, was not lost on the Ecuadorian military.

By the wee hours of Saturday morning Gutierrez had been replaced by Mendoza who, after spending several hours on the phone with unnamed officials of the U.S. State Department, dissolved the junta and named Mahuad's Vice President Gustavo Noboa to the presidency.

Vargas of course cried foul: "The military leadership has deceived us...our objective was to form a government of genuine democracy." Without having united with the students and workers who were trying to reach them, and having turned to the military to assuage their fears of the "unforeseen consequence" of the future, there was nothing to do but leave the capital.

The failure was so total that by Monday morning Quito had returned to "business as usual." Not a single concrete victory could be pointed to other than Mahuad's exit; in fact, Noboa's first words on Saturday upon being handed the presidency was to assure the nation that the DOLARIZATION scheme, which sparked the uprising, would proceed as planned. The U.S., which has expressed its criminal intent to stem any opposition, will see that it be done.

In the short term, it is doubtful that the movement will recover from this defeat; in the long term, it has no choice but to do so. For now, it is necessary to recognize that an important juncture has been reached. Any movement that turns to a military, whether at the service of a ruling class or a populist ruler, rather than embrace the "unforeseen consequences" of a future noncapitalist society will never experience that society.