“The Kurds are alive to the paradox that this experiment in “government by the people” has become possible only amid the violent rupture of war. But there is a darker irony, too.
Democracy was supposed to be the point of Western intervention in the Middle East. But in Rojava, where it is cherished and has prospered despite the most vicious of opponents, this brave experiment is being quietly starved while the supposed champions of democracy stand by.”
There’s no paradox, no irony. Understanding the cultural, religious, and geopolitical reality of “Western intervention” allows us to dispense with these obfuscating terms.
« Il est important d’être conscient-e-s du ‘point de vue situé’ c’est-à-dire avoir conscience d’où on parle. Je suis une femme blanche, française, sans problème de papiers, sociologue, de classe plutôt aisée donc. J’ai vécu au Mexique, au Salvador juste après la guerre, en Colombie, au Brésil, en République dominicaine. Les féministes lesbiennes noires, indiennes et les femmes ayant vécu des situations de guerre m’ont appris énormément de choses. ».
If you read French, I urge you to read the whole report. Carla Sandoval’s discussion of anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-colonial feminism in Latin America is especially important.
“When we talk about democracy and all these words - sometimes we don’t really see what they truly mean - But I think I witnessed that, what democracy really is and how it should work, and how we don’t have that type of democracy in our daily life. They make us think that electing someone is democracy, but it is not. What I saw during the Water Wars was real democracy, direct democracy. Where people come together and make decisions. It was like my voice mattered. I was not a leader of a union and I did not belong to an organized sector, but my voice mattered. I felt like people were listening to me and I was listing to other people, and then together we would make decisions - we were in every process of making decisions. Sometimes we did not agree with some things and there were people with different opinions about strategies, but what really mattered was how we made decisions and decided together. We found ways of doing it together. That is what real democracy is.”
El guión oficial del movimiento gay es el matrimonio, el guión oficial de los indígenas es la reivindicación de los usos y costumbres, el guión oficial de las mujeres es el acceso al poder masculino, y así sucesivamente. (70)
La fundadora del colectivo boliviano Mujeres Creando y creadora de “Ninguna mujer nace para puta” nos entrega con este libro una herramienta para la acción. Teoría hecha desde y para la práctica que analiza la historia moderna del feminismo, plantea una hipótesis sobre su fracaso y promueve acciones concretas para recuperar el poder liberador y de transformación de esta concepción de la realidad, las relaciones y el poder, que involucra tanto a mujeres como a hombres.
¡A despatriarcar! Feminismo urgente es un grito que nos convoca a salir de las trampas y casilleros para recuperar la calle y la alegría de crear, junto a otras y otros, nuevos horizontes.
What surprised me was that so many of the top countries – those with the highest proportion of women in parliament - were poor. It’s interesting to look beyond the regional breakdowns. In the top ten are Bolivia, Cuba, and Ecuador, and also Rwanda, Senegal, and South Africa. Regionally, the Nordic countries are an outlier at the top, but even with them included Europe still comes in below the Americas; with the Nordic countries excluded, Europe is pretty much on par with Sub-Saharan Africa (a difference of only one percentage point). And the percentages for the US and Canada are below the Americas average. In the full list, the US comes in at 72nd, below Pakistan and Bangladesh (Venezuela, home to teleSUR which published Kaur’s article, has nothing to be proud of here, falling even below the US at 82nd).
Overall, it’s fairly depressing, but there does seem to be real progress - which I can appreciate even as an anarchist - in many countries around the world.
* An important, and infuriating, part of the article described the speech by Ban Ki-moon at the Summit of the Americas this past weekend:
Rather bizarrely, the UN Secretary General then went on to spend a third of his intervention at the Summit of the Americas to discuss the importance of business involvement in the post 2015 development agenda, and in the agenda to address climate change. While the Secretary General recognised that the Americas have been at the vanguard of discussions on key issues regarding climate change, he also said that the ‘new global development agenda and the battle against climate change will need resources, technology and capacity’, and as such ‘private sources and partnerships’ would be crucial in the fight against climate change.
‘With business support for implementing the sustainable development goals, we can transform our world. Business is part of the solution to several major global challenges’, said the UN Secretary General. Such an analysis fails to articulate the ways in which businesses are obliged to pursue profit, even at the expense of harmful impacts to the environment, and people. There is an increasing recognition that capitalism has caused climate change, described incontrovertibly in Naomi Klein’s recent book ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate’.
The Secretary General’s intervention failed to explain how businesses might turn their minds to address the key issues of our day. Indeed, only three years previously, in Brazil at the Rio+20 sustainable development conference, Canada, and the U.S. united against reaffirming the responsibility of businesses to respect human rights, and protect our planet.
…Big business is the problem, not the solution. While technical innovation is necessary to combat climate change, much of this innovation is tailored to pursuing energy which increases profit opportunities for business, not which effectively reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
They repeat the same phrases and tropes. They present the story as “Morales accused the US government of imperialistic and antidemocratic interference; US officials vehemently denied the allegations and talked about how wonderful their motives and actions are in the country,” and leave it at that. They give little voice to Bolivians. They present little or no historical or contemporary context. They undertake no independent investigation of the actions of USAID in the region.* They imply that the expulsion was an impulsive reaction to John Kerry’s calling Latin America “our backyard”…
USAID "threatens our sovereignty and stability," the eight-nation Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas fumed in June in a resolution that accused the United States of political interference, conspiracy and "looting our natural resources."
The problem is USAID doesn't just try to boost economies, healthcare and education in poor countries. It also spends about $2.8 billion a year teaching campaign skills to political groups, encouraging independent media, organizing fair elections and funding other grass-roots activities intended to promote democracy and human rights.
Some foreign leaders view those American efforts as thinly veiled attempts to weaken the status quo or even engineer a change of governments.
"A lot of governments are nervous about this growth in civic participation they're seeing," said Thomas Carothers, vice president at the nonpartisan Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "When it's connected to foreign governments, it's even more unsettling — maybe subversive."
Their anxieties were intensified by George W. Bush's aggressive advocacy of a "freedom agenda," which called for democratic transformation in the Arab world, and President Obama's support for the 2011 "Arab Spring" revolts that toppled or challenged leaders in the Middle East and North Africa.
Sure, Richter. They hate our promotion of democracy.
* And when they do, they fail to pursue even the information the agency provides them:
In a 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, The Associated Press asked USAID for descriptions of the Bolivian recipients of grant money. The response did not go into detail but did include such items as $10.5 million for "democracy-building" awarded to Chemonics International in 2006 "to support improved governance in a changing political environment."
A related USAID brochure said components of the three-year "Strengthening Democratic Institutions" program included "teaching basic citizenship principles and skills" in all of Bolivia's nine states, including the lowlands opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz.
This book deals with the dances between today’s nominally left-leaning South American governments and the dynamic movements that helped pave their way to power in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, and Paraguay. The discussion surrounding the question of changing the world through taking state power or remaining autonomous has been going on for centuries. The vitality of South America’s new social movements, and the recent shift to the left in the halls of government power, make the region a timely subject of study within this ongoing debate. Though often overlooked in contemporary reporting and analysis on the region, this dance is a central force crafting many countries’ collective destiny. (KL 153-158)
offers an accessible overview of political struggles in seven Latin American countries as they’ve developed over the past few decades. It’s more a journalistic than a scholarly work, written for a general audience of activists and others on the Left and seeking primarily to respond to immediate practical and political rather than more abstract scholarly or theoretical debates. I recommend it for anyone looking to familiarize themselves with recent history and contemporary dynamics in this part of the world and to better understand what’s at stake within these nations and globally.
In a refreshing and much needed twist, the book’s protagonists are the (coalitions of) social justice movements in these countries as they negotiate a political landscape in which, following decades of rightwing rule, leftist or relatively more sympathetic populist governments have been successful.* I do wish he’d paid more attention to the role of the US in the internal politics of these countries - not only in support for the politicians, parties, movements, media, and repressive policies and actions of the Right, but also within the antistatist/antiauthoritarian Left itself (a situation which of course makes the choices for these movements even more complicated and perilous). It’s always a delicate balance for those who want to turn the focus away from the traditional subjects – Great Men (and occasionally Women), North and South – and show neglected local movements as real and effective political forces; on one side is the danger of underemphasizing the powerful influence of the US (and Canada) on domestic politics in these countries, on the other of implying that political actors in Latin America are mere puppets or capable only of reacting to powerful corporations and governments rather than independently shaping their history. Since there are a number of people writing about the role of the US, Canadian, and other foreign governments and corporations in Latin American politics, it’s probably best for Dangl to lean toward the former. (And I really like that he closes the book with a discussion of the relationship between these bold movements and activists in the US inspired by their aims and tactics.** More recently he’s written about connections with the Occupy movement.)
In any case, as an anarchist who’s made similar arguments over the years, I’m, unsurprisingly, right on board with his perspective and his thesis:
Many South American movements make revolution a part of everyday life, not something to be postponed for an electoral victory or the seizure of state power. While they may not define themselves as such, a number of these movements are anarchist in action and belief…. For movements in South America that engage the state, the relationship involves a tightrope walk between cooptation and genuine collaboration. Many times, however, cooperation with the state leads to the demobilization of social movements…. When facing such challenges, according to Uruguayan analyst Raúl Zibechi, it is important for movements to remain true to their own agenda, and not water down their demands to align with the state. Movements must expand their power, potential, spaces, and capacities.13 However, expanding power doesn’t need to mean becoming a part of the state’s political or electoral process; rather, it can mean working to become a sustainable movement that can weather changing political climates. (KL 172-186)
(It’s important to note that he immediately makes clear that anti-poverty and other such government programs are valuable and important, and that he’s by no means endorsing a libertarian model: “This book is based on the belief that public-run services are by definition more accountable than commercial, for-profit businesses or corporate run services, and in many cases, vital for survival. The process of negotiating with current left-leaning governments has posed challenges to social movements; but the region’s history demonstrates that multinational corporations and right-wing governments pushing through neoliberal policies have typically been even more devastating” (KL 194-197).)
No, I’m not taking some ultra-left position that elections are totally insignificant, and that we should refuse to vote to preserve our moral purity. Yes, there are candidates who are somewhat better than others, and at certain times of national crisis (the Thirties, for instance, or right now) where even a slight difference between the two parties may be a matter of life and death.
I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.
But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.
Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.
**I should note that these aims and tactics aren’t as new as many books suggest. The global history of radical activism spans centuries, over which tactics have been shared, modified, and adapted across movements and continents. I would love for this history to be better known.
In Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care,
Steve Brouwer talks about the misrepresentation of the ALBA countries in the corporate media, noting that “they have an even more effective way to hurt the images of Cuba, Venezuela, and the ALBA nations: when it comes to Cuban/Venezuelan cooperation and medical internationalism in the region, they do not report the news at all. That is, they can generally be relied upon never to publish or broadcast favorable stories that feature the extraordinary accomplishments in health care and education” (KL 3193-3198). He illustrates this with the paucity of positive coverage of Cuban and Venezuelan medical efforts in Haiti surrounding the 2010 earthquake, acknowledging that a few reports managed to slip through. I had seen a couple of these, but even before that I had read in a little in alternative sources about these accomplishments and was very interested in both Cuban medicine and in how the new Latin American constitutions that put the right to health care front and center were playing out. Until I read Brouwer’s book, I wasn’t aware of the extent of the transformations, the reach of the programs, or the breadth of cooperation amongst countries.
Almost every chapter of Brouwer’s book begins with a quotation from Che Guevara, most from his 1960 “On Revolutionary Medicine.” He gives an account of the development of Cuban medicine from the revolution to the present, particularly the cooperation between the Cuban and Venezuelan governments in building the latter’s health care system since Hugo Chávez was first elected and their work in other poor countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and around the world. These systems and projects are radically transforming the way medicine is taught and practiced in a large part of the planet, and form part of larger visions of social change.
Health care in Cuba was dramatically transformed from immediately after the revolution. From the ‘60s, medical school graduates became part of a free public system. The Cuban approach was further developed as a result of the 1978 international Alma-Ata conference, which put together guidelines for “new health delivery systems built around the primacy of primary care, with family practitioners trained to integrate medical treatment with public health initiatives and preventive education.” While these goals were SAPped by the IMF in many countries, they remained the basis for the Cuban system, which emphasized the provision of health care to poor communities.
The Cubans also revolutionized medical education. Since the 1990s, medical students have done a 3-year residency in family medicine prior to specializing. Instead of the Flexnerian model used in the US and elsewhere, the program of study that continues to include classroom instruction is combined with an extensive program of experiential learning in which students apprentice to experienced doctor/teachers attending to patients in family medicine settings right from the start. The content of the curriculum (which makes use of DVDs and other technology) remains the same as elsewhere, but is combined in novel interdisciplinary courses. Throughout, the curriculum includes a Community Health and Medicine component, which involves such subjects as the history of health, epidemiology and hygiene, community intervention and health analysis, Latin American political thought, medical ethics, community rehabilitation, administration, disaster medicine, and the principles of medical research. Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina, or ELAM), opened in 1999 and now trains students from over 20 countries, most from poor families, who are expected to return to work in their communities. Nurses and other medical professionals receive similar community-based instruction.
Doctors often do residencies in community medicine in poor countries. Cuba sends large numbers of doctors, nurses, and other medical specialists to work in countries around the world – 185,000 worked in 103 countries through 2008. These professionals go abroad for shorter-term disaster relief efforts (the highly experienced Henry Reeve Medical Brigade) and longer-term (usually two years at a time) efforts aiding in the development of the primary health care systems of other countries. Cuban medical specialists, who’ve been working in Haiti for years and, as noted above, were among the most important responders after the 2010 earthquake are now helping Haiti (re)build its health care system.
Cuban medical personnel have been central to Venezuela’s efforts in this direction. Articles 82-86 of Venezuela’s popular 1999 constitution guarantee the right to proper medical care. From the beginning of the century, and financed with oil revenues after 2003, the government began building a network of social missions to improve conditions and avenues for participation for poor and working people, urban and rural. The massive social spending on these projects operated in the context of substantial reductions in inequality:
Among the many non-cash sources of income supplied through the social missions and not accounted for in assessing income redistribution are free health care, free education programs, free food for millions of children at school and the most impoverished adults, heavily subsidized food available at more than 15,000 Mercal food stores, tens of thousands of free neighborhood recreation and sports programs, free housing grants or interest-free loans, and free work-training programs. In addition there are a great many public works that often benefit poor and working-class people more than the rich, such as the new subway and bus lines added to the Caracas public transportation system. (KL 1142-1146).
Central in the social missions has been Barrio Adentro, which began delivering primary care in poor areas throughout the country in 2003. Through this system doctors (as well as dentists, nurses, sports specialists, and other medical professionals) go to live and work in poor communities – the name means “inside the neighborhood.” Barrio Adentro has consisted of four phases: the creation of a network of clinics for primary care, the formation of a network of secondary clinics, improvements to the existing hospitals, and the building of a set of hospitals specializing in research into and treatment of special problems.
The community health program got off to a slow start in Venezuela, but received a shot in the arm with the arrival of thousands of Cuban medical professionals. Hosted – and often guarded – by local health committees, the doctors lived in sparse and difficult conditions among the communities they served, working long hours and continuously available to serve people’s medical needs. According to Brouwer, “Their services are available to all Venezuelans for free at almost 7,000 walk-in offices and over 500 larger diagnostic clinics, and they have been very effective in meeting the needs of 80 percent of the population that had been ill-served or not served at all by the old health care system” (KL 158-162).
But the Cuban doctors have done more than provide primary care. They've helped Venezuela to construct its own system of health care through teaching, training, and mentoring thousands of Venezuelan medical students. Through the Comprehensive Community Medicine program (Medicina Integral Comunitaria, or MIC), medical students are taught and trained in their home communities by experienced doctors. The Venezuelans, who study for six years in the methods developed in Cuba, followed by a two-year residency in community medicine, will replace the Cuban workers.
Medical education is part of a broader effort at enhancing access to education at all levels. Through Mission Sucre, for example, people have been able to study a range of fields at the university level. As medical students are instructed in the “socio-medical sciences,” so social science students study community issues, including public health problems:
[E]very student who is matriculating in social science has to work as part of a team that identifies a problem or concern of a local community. Aside from their conventional course work, the student’s team has to build their final thesis around a problem identified in meetings with this community, then researches the social science literature for analysis of this particular problem, and concludes with written and audiovisual material that suggests possible solutions for the community (KL 2207-2210).
Through ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of the Americas, which includes Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua), the Cuban/Venezuelan model continues to spread in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Asia and Africa. Brouwer reports that
Fidel Castro, speaking at the first graduation of doctors from ELAM in 2005, announced the solution: Cuba and Venezuela were going to join forces to educate 100,000 more doctors over the next ten years: 30,000 Venezuelans, 60,000 coming from other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and another 10,000 from nations in Africa and Asia.
The community medicine and experiential-tutorial methods developed in Cuba and Venezuela are spreading to other countries, notably Bolivia. Connected to this, Miracle Mission (Misión Milagro), funded by Venezuela, has provided free eye surgeries to more than a million and a half people throughout the region.
Brouwer offers statistical evidence of the effectiveness of these programs, at home and abroad. As noted above, though generally invisible in the corporate media, the Cubans’ key role in disaster relief efforts like the humanitarian responses to Hurricanes George and Mitch in 1998 and the Haitian earthquake in 2010 is recognized by many.
Despite brief declines during the “Special Period” of the mid-1990s, and despite a lack of resources, Cuba’s domestic health statistics have continued to improve:
Cuba’s egalitarian medical system is the envy of most developing countries, and many developed nations as well. Its medical performance, as measured by global statistical standards such as infant and child mortality rates and adult longevity, bears this out, as does an educational system that has been able to produce more physicians per capita than any other nation on earth. By 2009, Cuba had 74,880 physicians, or one doctor for every 150 citizens, compared to one for every 330 in Western Europe, and one for every 417 in the United States. (KL 752-756).
Cuba has twice as many doctors per capita as the US, and “[a]s of 2008, there were twenty-five medical schools in Cuba, and 29,000 Cuban students of medicine, who were just a small fraction of the 202,000 students enrolled in all medical fields, among them dentistry, nursing, medical technology, and rehabilitation.”
The old system still exists for the 20% of Venezuela's population that can afford it, but When Chávez was elected in 1998, more than two thirds of the population - 17 million people - lacked access to regular medical care. Half of the population was living in poverty (the lower fifth in extreme poverty), childhood malnutrition was a major problem, and higher education was out of reach for large numbers of people. According to Brouwer:
The increased medical attention paid off quickly in human terms during the first ten years of the revolution, as infant mortality fell from 19 to 13.9 deaths per 1000 live births between 1999 and 2008 and the mortality of all children under five fell from 26.5 to 16.7. Postneonatal mortality was cut by more than half, falling from 9.0 to 4.2 deaths per 1000 live births. The life span of the average Venezuelan increased by 1.5 years between 2000 and 2009.
The number of students in higher education has tripled since 1998 (“[S]ome of the most popular [fields of study] are social science, computer science, agro-ecology, law, nursing, sports training, scientific technology, and education”). There have been similar advances in Nicaragua and Bolivia in health, literacy, and education.
Brouwer says that the major participants and many leaders in the local health committees along with other neighborhood organizations are women, and that this participation has been enabling and encouraging women to be politically active and involved. Almost three quarters of the students in MIC are women (many with extensive family obligations), and Brouwer suggests that the Cuban doctors (since 1999 more than half of Cuban doctors have been women) have served as role models.
These systems have promoted, amongst medical workers, students, and communities, an appreciation of the environmental and social character of health and illness, and made them more able to address these problems and to participate in public health campaigns (as students have done with vaccinations, removing breeding areas for disease-carrying mosquitoes, and sex education). Brouwer also talks about a “general rejuvenation of the internationalist and revolutionary spirit in Cuba” stemming from these efforts (KL 1886-1887).
He suggests that “both nations have gained considerable respect from many other countries and international organizations, not only for the very real accomplishments of their programs, but also for the generosity, dedication, and competence demonstrated by individual doctors, nurses, teachers, and technicians” (KL 2974-2976). Other countries have been inspired to start similar programs, and to cooperate with their efforts (e.g., last year the Australian government announced that it would join with Cuba to work in Haiti and East Timor).
The success and public support gained by these efforts have enabled them to withstand organized opposition. Efforts in Honduras and Guatemala were initially threatened, then earned the praise of even some in the upper classes following public protest to keep them going, and have been promoted under more welcoming leadership. They came under attack again, however, after the coup in Honduras:
In the aftermath, soldiers harassed medical staff and threatened to close down the Garifuna hospital. The founder of the hospital, Dr. Luther Castillo, who had been the first Garifuna to graduate from ELAM, had to go into hiding to escape persecution and was forced to abandon the country. In 2010, he served as the coordinator of the first large contingent of ELAM graduates in the Henry Reeve Brigade when they rushed to Haiti to serve as medical volunteers after the earthquake. In Guatemala, the Cuban presence also provoked controversy and considerable opposition from right-wing elements (KL 718-722).
The rightwing opposition has been equally active in Venzuela and Bolivia:
In 2008, ORVEX, the Organization of Venezuelans in Exile, which was funded by rich expatriates in Miami, managed to issue the most outrageous reaction when it released a short film titled La Universidad del Terrorismo Patrocinada por del Gobierno de Venezuela. According to this piece of disinformation that appeared on YouTube, “a university of terrorism” had been created at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana, where terrorist doctors were being prepared to attack the entire Western Hemisphere under the patronage of Hugo Chávez and the Venezuelan government. These verbal assaults on Barrio Adentro and Cuban medical training were accompanied by the refusal of some cities and states, still under the control of the political opposition, to allow the deployment of Barrio Adentro physicians (KL 2415-2421).
When Cuban doctors started treating the impoverished Bolivian majority, there were negative responses from local elites and protests from the Bolivian medical association that were similar to defamatory campaigns mounted in Venezuela and other parts of the Americas. They either disparaged Cuban doctors as inept, unqualified practitioners who could only disrupt health care delivery or portrayed them as immensely clever political/military agents who would brainwash the public with communist propaganda. Within a few months, as word of the quality of care circulated among grassroots communities, this kind of criticism dissipated. It was followed in some areas, such as the wealthy department of Santa Cruz, by direct actions by right-wing political forces that were assisted in their anti-government and separatist activities by officials and contractors of the U.S. State Department. Some with violent tendencies, emboldened by this support, decided to mount physical attacks on Cuban medical personnel.
As the above suggests, “local” opposition has been supported and encouraged by the US government. I’ve written about US interference in the region and its “war on ideas” propaganda many times before, but little could be more revealing of the callousness and cynicism of those in power in this country than the government’s actions in the context of these effective humanitarian efforts.
After refusing entry to the 1500+ of the highly trained Henry Reeve Brigade ready to fly to the Gulf Coast to aid in disaster relief after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (a month later the Brigade flew to Pakistan following the earthquake there), in 2006 they tried to disrupt Cuban efforts abroad through the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, “a law specifically designed to lure Cuban doctors, nurses, and technicians away from their foreign assignments by offering them special immigration status and speedy entry into the United States” (KL 192-195). (Brouwer suggests that this has proved largely futile, that the percentage of people not returning to Cuba has been consistently very low, and that this small number is overwhelmed by the numbers willing to replace them or to serve on subsequent postings.) In 2008, the US embassy in Bolivia attempted to recruit Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright scholars to spy on Cuban and Venezuelan doctors and other humanitarian workers.
Unlike in Honduras, the US-supported coup attempts in Venezuela and Bolivia have not been successful. In Haiti, though, after the kidnapping of Aristide, “The U.S. Marines overran the new Aristide medical school, chased out the doctors and students, and used the facility as their military headquarters. The medical school would remain closed until the spring of 2010, when, with aid and personnel supplied by ALBA, classes began once again” (KL 2930-2932).
Brower describes the shadowy government and corporate entities involved in US propaganda and other destabilization efforts. It would be one thing to suggest that these medical and humanitarian projects are themselves used as propaganda by the governments involved (which wouldn’t, of course, preclude real humanitarian commitments). But to try to discredit, sabotage, and shut down programs that are bringing desperately needed medical care to millions of poor people and training hundreds of thousands of medical professionals is despicable.
Brouwer offers a well-written and informational account - some sources better than others - including firsthand observations and perspectives from those involved (though perhaps too few and a bit superficial). I have some criticisms, though. First, the distinction he makes between the Cuban and capitalist (which he sometimes calls "European" models is rather strange. It holds for the US, but many European countries have health care systems that resemble the Cuban model in important ways. Second, to say that Brouwer is sympathetic to these governments would be an understatement. He does make a few criticisms, but the problems he notes explicitly – bureaucracy and low-level corruption – minimize the larger problems with the Cuban system especially, to which he barely alludes. He quotes Cintio Vitier - “a trench is not a parliament” – in suggesting that the embattled governments, due to hostility from without, haven't previously been able to realize a socialism characterized by the level of openness they would otherwise wish. While it is true that these movements and governments have been embattled, this by no means accounts entirely for the authoritarianism of the Castro regime (and would by no means justify it if it did), supposedly now able to begin to return to a more “authentic” socialism. The problems with Marxism as a political program were there from the start, and Brouwer’s own quoting of Chávez quoting one of Kropotkin’s letters to Lenin from 1920* shows that the best of what is now happening is a new flourishing of anarchist practices that had been marginalized, violently or otherwise, during the twentieth century (indeed, Kropotkin’s “Appeal to the Young” is likely as relevant as Guevara’s work). It is unnecessary and probably counterproductive (even in a continuing trench situation) to idealize things in this way. These programs are humanistic and effective. They are saving lives and changing societies for the better.
*He describes Chávez “explaining that socialism had to be a liberating process that allowed poor and working people to be the protagonists in building a new society and pursuing their own self-development. In one nationally broadcast talk in 2009, he quoted from a letter that the famous Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, wrote to Lenin: ‘Without the participation of local forces, without organization from below by the workers and peasants themselves, it is impossible to build a new life’”(KL 3307-3311).
The Right’s relationship with academics, and social scientists in particular, has two sides: trying to make use of them (the Human Terrain System, encouraging psychologists’ participation in torture, “security” centers, efforts to use scholarly credibility to burnish propaganda efforts, and corporate influence on the functioning of universities in general) and attacking them (seeking to withdraw funding to Middle Eastern Studies programs or social science funding by the NSF, generally rejecting social scientific research other than that viewed as useful). This week’s news has highlighted both prongs, neither of them good, of course, for the social sciences, and both of which continue to be resisted. Unfortunately, it’s also brought to light some confused social scientists who seem to be playing into this strategy while apparently believing they’re doing the opposite.
The concept of "culture" is being used to justify the violent actions of the U.S. military throughout the hemisphere. Culture is also used to justify U.S. training of and funding for Latin American military forces that engage in torture, targeted assassinations of dissidents, and carry out coups d'etats. But the abuse of the culture concept in the service of empire is neither new, nor unique to the militarized university. In the case of Honduras, groups like the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) have promoted the idea that Honduras suffers from a culture of violence—rather than a neoliberal policy of state violence in which poverty is criminalized and the victims of structural violence are blamed. This difference is crucial; if violence is cultural, then "security"—in the form of increased U.S. military aid and training—is a logical solution for disciplining an unruly, uncivilized population. However, if violence is the explicit policy of a militarized client state protecting corporate profits from falling into the hands of the Honduran people, then democracy—however the Honduran people should choose to approach it—is the solution.
I’ve read quickly through the Bolivia report, and it’s astonishing. It would be hilarious if I didn’t fear its potential effectiveness. In this attack on the Bolivian Left, the entire history (and present) of exploitation, oppression, terror, greed, and destruction is purported to be – I said it was astonishing – essentially a set of notions concocted by an authoritarian “culture of victimization.” It’s pure propaganda. There is, in fact, no science here. The author, making several patently ridiculous suggestions, offers a handful of citations, of a quality people can judge for themselves. This isn’t scholarship.
The other side of the blade is the outright attack, represented most recently by the efforts of Eric Cantor. As PZ describes:
He wants people to search NSF and report back to him with grant numbers that they don't like.
...And then he gives hints on searching the database, listing words that might yield boondoggles: "success, culture, media, games, social norm, lawyers, museum, leisure, stimulus, etc."
What’s important to recognize is that this has nothing to do with spending or waste. These attacks are, in some cases, mere posturing, and in many based on a genuine fear of the production and dissemination of real scholarly work contrary to their interests.
In this ongoing context of active efforts by those on the Right to derail the social sciences by co-opting or eliminating them, I found the reports of the past few days concerning intended changes to the American Anthropological Association’s mission statement troubling. This appears to be an effort to distance anthropology from science. (I’m unimpressed by Hugh Gusterson’s suggestions (in the comments here) that the changes aren’t significant and that the process has been democratic because, well, “The Executive Board is elected by the membership to make these kinds of decisions” and the document was sent to the section heads.
Sadly, science has for many people come to be conflated with imperialism and oppression, state and corporate power. It’s one thing to say that anthropology as a discipline has been used for statist, imperialist, and corporate ends (and this includes not only the content of anthropological works but, as Foucault made clear long ago, the practice of anthropology itself). It’s quite another to suggest, as these changes would, that this is somehow inherent in science.
I’m most distressed that the terms central to the discussion are not being defined, leading to unintentional misrepresentations. Science is a means of building knowledge about the world through reasoned and systematic empirical investigation and analysis. It’s the only valid or reliable means we have to assess fact claims. I’d like to think – realizing this would be naïve – that anthropologists wouldn’t seriously reject this as a description of their discipline, but I fear I might be wrong. I was recently watching an interview with Derrick Jensen (not an anthropologist, it should be noted) on Democracy Now!*, which contained this exchange:
AMY GOODMAN: Derrick, what is the influence of Native Americans in your writing, in your work, in your activism?
DERRICK JENSEN: It’s another great question. And I have tried not to romanticize them, which is another form of objectification. And what I do know is I know that the Tolowa Indians, on whose land I now live up in way northern California, they lived there for at least 12,500 years, if you believe the myths of science. And if you believe the myths of the Tolowa, they lived there since the beginning of time, using a myth as stories that we tell ourselves that make the world fit together. So, in any case, the Tolowa lived there for at least 12,500 years....
No. Science is not simply a “story we tell ourselves to make the world fit together.” It’s a method of discovering reality. The Tolowa have been there for an amount of time, and that is a fact. If you want to say that whenever “they” arrived there was, for them, the beginning of time, OK, but you’re merely poeticizing that fact. And seriously, you’re first sentences offered empirical claims about environmental changes (which I haven’t confirmed) that are the products of science.
On the other side, what are the “ways of knowing” these anthropologists wish to place alongside science? Concretely, as a method – what are they? Personal revelation? The interpretation of ancient texts? As much as “science” needs to be defined in this discussion, so does “ancient wisdom.” Is this term being used to refer to sets of ideas or to the “method” of referring to elders or texts? I think that in contexts in which practices that have allowed people to live sustainably in the world for tens, hundreds, or thousands of years, ecological ideas or practices should be taken and investigated very seriously. There’s a great deal that’s unknown about ecosystems and our role in them, and practical knowledge that’s been developed in essence scientifically over generations is potentially highly valuable. That does not mean that we should accept any fact claims wearing the mantle of “ancient wisdom.”
Nor do I understand the line some people seem to want to draw between advocacy and science (in which I include history). The idea that advocacy is in essence un- or anti-scientific is simply wrong. Advocacy, to be effective and to be ethical, needs to be based on an accurate assessment of reality, and for this we need science. I understand (and frequently make) the argument that scientific practice is generally organized to serve corporations and governments; I understand that corporations and governments have effectively worked to claim “science” for themselves. But we need to distinguish between the current, transitory, situation and the meaning of science. We should criticize scientific work on its questions, methods, data, and analysis, and promote good science. It’s sad that those who are buying the “culture/activism = anti-science” line don’t seem to grasp that the conception of science on which this is based is fundamentally flawed, and that accepting it contributes – intentionally or not - to a right-wing political project.
I think – and I’m in the good company of Sokal, Chomsky, and Mills here – that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that science, as the means of establishing knowledge about reality (including social reality), is a tool of liberation, and ignorance and anti-science means of oppression. It’s a catastrophic error to allow others to define science in such a way that people are led to reject it, and it plays Right into the hands of the (corporate, political, religious) oppressors.
*(Which I otherwise found quite interesting, particularly his challenge to the “Gandhi shield,” though I have problems with some of his arguments.)
I won’t be able to post here or at Pharyngula for a couple of days (and don’t really have time to be writing right now), but this had to be addressed: The Associated Press lies. They simply cannot be trusted to provide accurate information. The coupmongers in Honduras have shredded the country’s constitution while claiming to defend it. They have shut down media outlets and harassed journalists. And yet the AP persists in spreading their propaganda and manufacturing consent for the overthrow of democracy in Honduras.
A quick update before I get to the rant: The pro-democracy movements are planning a series of nationwide protests to begin tomorrow, which of course sends the gasping, grasping golpistas into paroxysms of fear. As Al Giordano of Narco News reports from Honduras:
The coup regime is frightened enough by the growing wave of peaceful protests across the country that it placed advertisements in pro-coup daily newspapers announcing new penalties against the redress of grievances nationwide:
“Anybody who calls for leads any meeting or demonstration illicitly will be punished by a sentence of two to four years in prison and a fine of 30,000 to 60,000 Lempiras (about $1,500 to $3,000 US dollars)."
In other words, one doesn’t even have to present at a protest to be imprisoned for it: Simply calling on others to attend now earns any citizen or broadcaster that honor.
Referendums on term limits have been held worldwide in recent years. While they have failed in a handful of cases — including Honduras,...
they spread misinformation. When they get to discussing Honduras specifically, the problems continue:
HONDURAS: Before his ouster in a June 28 coup, President Manuel Zelaya had been trying to organize a referendum to gauge popular support for a constitutional overhaul, defying court orders declaring the vote illegal. Opponents say he was trying to extend his presidential term and used this as the rationale for the coup. Zelaya denies such intentions and is in exile in neighboring Nicaragua.
These statements are completely misleading. What Zelaya was conducting was a public consultation, a nonbinding opinion poll (allowed by the constitution), asking whether people would like to be able to vote in the November elections on whether to convene a constitutional convention to draw up a new constitution to be put to a later vote. The poll said nothing about presidential term limits. The vote on convening a constitutional convention, were it to take place, would be during the November elections in which a new president would be voted in. What Zelaya's "opponents say" neither holds water nor even makes sense. Stop repeating it as if it had any basis in reality, AP! Be journalists and investigate whether it’s true before saying it is in your second sentence!
They’re no better on Bolivia:
BOLIVIA: Voters approved a new constitution in January that gives President Evo Morales a shot at remaining in office through 2014 if he wins elections scheduled for December.
They spread lies, and they do so in moments when the fate of democracy hangs in the balance, in a manner that strengthens the hand of antidemocratic forces.
(Oh, and PS: Thank you to everyone who has said nice things about the blog and encouraged me in my efforts. I'm touched and flattered, and couldn't appreciate it more. I have to turn off comments for a couple of days, but will be back soon.)
