Turning The Hour-Glass - The Empire Against The Clock
by Toni Solo
The objectives of empire change very little from one century to another. Control of and access to energy and mining
resources are only one strong motive driving imperial policy in Latin America. Control over food and water security is
also a vital factor in imperial executive calculations. To veil the obvious injustice of the imperial system, co-option
of local media is vital so as to manage the very terms in which political, economic and social issues are discussed.
Earlier empires eradicated whole languages and cultures from subject countries' public life. Racism has always been an
essential imperial tool and continues in both subtle and overt forms across Latin America. The Venezuelan opposition's
racist characterization of President Hugo Chavez is a contemporary glaring example. The Mexican ruling elite's attitudes
to the indigenous Zapatistas are another. Racist repression of indigenous peoples continues throughout Latin America
from Chile to Mexico, but seldom makes the international media.
Co-opting "Civil society"
Over the last twenty years, co-option of so-called "civil society" has become an equally important element of cultural
and intellectual control. "Civil society" sometimes seems to refer principally to "non-governmental" organizations many
of whom finance themselves acting as agents, consultants or sub-contractors to foreign governments or to international
institutions, like the World Bank, controlled by imperial appointees. These organizations do not have to be as
outrageously politicised as the anti-government Sumate NGO in Venezuela to serve imperial designs well.
The US government and its corporate allies have long worked to convince people in Latin America that organizing their
own countries' agriculture to satisfy domestic consumption is uneconomic, Consumers are supposed to be best served by
cheap food imports from the US. Urbanization is assumed to constitute inevitable progress. In this way, the US and its
agri-business corporate allies increase their control of the agricultural economies of entire countries. For example,
Mexico, once largely self-sufficient in rice, now imports over 80% of its yearly consumption from the US.[1] Other sectors of Mexican agriculture will follow suit over the next few years as the North American Free Trade
Agreement comes into full effect.
So the imperial managers will be able to maintain huge pools of cheap labour in almost total dependency on low-wage
maquila-style operations or insecure work in the informal sector. The damaging national costs of rural depopulation,
urban squalor and social deprivation are not counted. This system not only means soaring profits for the global
agri-business corporations. It will also mean the political subjugation of targetted countries since the US government
and its corporate allies will control those countries' food security. The role of "civil society" in rendering that
political subjugation "normal" is key.
The Honduran case
One comes across examples of this process constantly in the relevant literature. The specialists who write it all up
have a decisive influence in shaping political opinion in the countries where they work. They are the experts, after
all. Here is one of the more conscientious examples available, from the conclusion of a study of rural poverty in
Honduras: "... given the facts of the last decade it seems an inescapable conclusion that the process of urbanization
will probably play an important part in the reduction of rural poverty in Honduras. Until the rural population density
corresponds to the productive potential of the land there will be a tendency for population to shift from the more
densely populated sectors where soils are most degraded. Successful interventions through programs and projects may
improve this process but it is improbable that they can halt it altogether.
The alternative to the urban absorption of this flow would be a continuation of rural-rural migration from the west and
south of Honduras to the agricultural frontier in the north and east with hardly acceptable environmental consequences.
This situation indicates the importance of considering alternatives in this regard that might avoid new concentrations
of poverty in the marginal areas of the main cities and offer the possibility of a duly regulated expansion of the
country's medium-sized towns."[2]
Appropriate, timely intervention might have changed that "inescapable conclusion". But the US government and
international financial institutions themselves intervened to impose "free market" solutions tailor-made to meet US
government regional policy priorities. Now, at the end of nearly twenty years of those "free market" policies, Honduras
is a country unable to guarantee food security for its people from domestic agricultural production, just the way the
imperial managers like it.
Even liberal analysts like the authors of that study note that to mitigate the resulting rural poverty, rural
populations should move to slightly less impoverished lives in urban centres. That observation simply confirms trends
that have been clear since at least the late 1980s. NGOs and "civil society" have made a tidy living out of the whole
process. Everything is normal. What else might the outcomes have been?
"Free trade" by the Brothers Grimm
The very question is made to seem irrelevant by established opinion. But the examples of Venezuela and Cuba demonstrate
that such processes are not inevitable. Things do not have to be like that. Governments can intervene decisively to
prevent the worst outcomes, as the above study itself notes. Clearly, it is a matter of political will, not economic
inevitability. .
The imperial "free market" norm can be seen foisted repeatedly on peoples throughout Latin America. Right now in Brazil,
Paraguay and Argentina mono-cultivation of genetically manipulated soya is set fair to destroy sustainable agriculture
in vast swathes of those countries' rural areas. Even so, experience in Honduras and Nicaragua indicates that rural
communities determined to stay put will do so.
They will make ends meet with subsistence food production, odd jobs in nearby urban centres and occasional family
remittances from abroad. Those who give up on rural life will simply migrate to urban centres and beyond national
frontiers. At a national level, food sovereignty in smaller countries has already become largely a thing of the past.
CAFTA and the Andean trade-in-your-sovereignty deals
Now that the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) has been bullied and bribed through the US Congress, Central
America's agricultural production for domestic consumption will be decimated beyond recovery within a few years. Water
resources are the next item on the imperial menu. CAFTA treaty commitments considerably weaken national governments'
ability to resist water privatization. Still, in Nicaragua legislators are trying to lock in place laws that may afford
some protection to vulnerable sectors. In Costa Rica legislative approval for CAFTA is still uncertain.
Determined defence of their sovereignty by the peoples of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador has so far checked imperial
trade-in-your-sovereignty deals in the Andes. Many people in the Andean countries are anxious to resist the crude
bullying and trickery that characterised US negotiation of CAFTA and its subsequent ratification. Venezuela's proposed
model of regional integration makes imperial "free trade" treaty propaganda look as ridiculously self-serving as it in
fact is.
Right now in Ecuador, workers and municipal authorities are in open conflict with the country's government. The recent
resignation of Economy Minister Rafael Correa signalled a drift to the right by the Ecuadoran government in favour of a
"free trade" deal with the US and a free ride for breaches of contract by foreign energy companies. Outraged workers and
under-resourced muncipalities are using strikes and occupations to insist the government addresses their needs. They
also want the government to ensure foreign energy companies like Occidental Petroleum comply with contractual
obligations.[3]
Margins get slimmer as the sands run out...
People in all the trade-in-your-sovereignty-threatened Andean countries - Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru - are
asking legitimate basic questions. Why should their resources be sold off cheap to foreigners? Why should vastly wealthy
foreign corporations get the same treatment as relatively vulnerable national businesses at this stage of their
countries' economic development? Why should their agriculture be geared to cash crops for export to the detriment of
production for domestic consumption?
Why should small and medium agricultural producers not get preferential treatment, like they do in the US and Europe?
How will government make good revenue lost from abolishing tariffs and other import taxes at the same time as taking out
loans to implement the necessary institutional and administrative adjustments? How plausible are claims of massive job
creation from fake "foreign investment" maquila-style operations like textiles when the reverse is happening in Mexico?
The Bush regime is desperate to push through these trade-in-your-sovereignty deals. That is an indication of how fine
the margins for imperial manoeuvre are getting. Elections are coming up soon in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru and several
Central American countries. Multinational corporate managers, US diplomats, the CIA, the IMF and the World Bank, the US
military's Southern Command - the multiple tentacles of the imperial Thing are hard at work.
Programs of US electoral intervention specialists like the National Endowment for Democracy and the International
Republican Institute will inflate like balloons with huge injections of anti-democratic, interventionist funding. All
the tentacles will be working frenetically to choke any signs of sovereign dignity and self-determination in the
countries concerned. With surging oil prices, dodgy US deficits and a wobbly dollar, time is not on their side.
Sam Beckett imperialism - the sun never sets on the US nothing new
Venezuela is decisively promoting integration alternatives with its Andean and Caribbean neighbours and with the
Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay). Following the failed US-supported coup in April 2002,
futile US State Department attempts to isolate Venezuela have fallen flat. At a similar moment, after failing to destroy
the Cuban revolution in the early 1960s, President Kennedy and his team came up with the Alliance for Progress
initiative. Shortly afterwards, the US government invaded the Dominican Republic and encouraged a military coup in
Honduras.
Parallel to the economic strands of the Alliance for Progress, the US government instigated death squads in Guatemala,
promoted a military coup in Brazil and organized the military coup in Chile. That ruthless policy to stifle democratic
change heralded nearly two decades of fierce US government-backed State terror throughout Latin America. Over thirty
years after the coup in Chile and the end of the Alliance for Progress, the empire continues to offer vivid reminders of
its ruthless intentions in Latin America.
The United States authorities are already planning how to cope without Venezuelan oil imports.[4] That might just be sensible contingency planning. Equally, it might signal sinister preparations for some kind of
military action against Venezuela once sufficient troops have been withdrawn from Iraq. In 2001 the US supplied detailed
information for NATO forces war gaming a military intervention called Plan Balboa - the hypothetical target was a
country identical to Venezuela.
The defeated 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela and Haiti's continuing agony show the US and its allies are as ready as ever
to use covert dirty tricks and outright aggression to get what they want in Latin America. For the moment, the Bush
regime seems content to co-opt countries benighted and foolish enough to fall for trade-in-your-sovereignty deals. But
if that process stalls or collapses, the viability of the Latin American peoples' inspirational drive towards
integration and autonomy may well depend on stubborn anti-imperial resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan.
NOTES
1. "A 10 años del Tratado de Libre Comercio perdió la autosuficiencia arrocera" INFODEMEX www.argenpress.info 01/08/2005
2. "Desarrollo Rural y Pobreza en Honduras y Nicaragua: ¿Qué sigue? Políticas, Estrategias y Acciones en Desarrollo
Rural y Reducción de Pobreza en Honduras" Ian Walker & Hugo Noe Pino, 2004 paper for the following UK development organizations, Regional Unit for Technical Assistance, UK
Government's Department for International Development, Overseas Development Institute.
3. "Gobierno ecuatoriano decreta en emergencia provincias en paro" Prensa Latina August 17th 2005
4. "Merco Press: US contingency plan for a Venezuela oil cut off" www.vheadline.com August 9th 2005
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toni solo is an activist based in Central America - contact via www.tonisolo.net