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Bolivar, Marx and the liberation of Latin America Workers World News Service [Based on a talk by Berta Joubert-Ceci at the Dec. 6-7 conference in New York.]
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 Congress'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 Movement Toward Socialism, Argentina's Piquetero Movement and the FMLN of El Salvador. The Continental Bolivarian Coordination is an attempt by the Latin American 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 Constitution 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." |
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.