You'll get a blank map and a list of items. You'll put the number from the list in the appropriate place on the map (the way we did in class on Monday January 10th). Nothing that isn't on this list will be on the test - and not everything on this list will be on your test. Remember, the December 14 post on this blog is a map (and you'll see links there to other maps if you need them).
Countries: Cities
Argentina Asuncion
Bolivia Buenos Aires
Brazil Brasilia
Chile Cartagena
Colombia La Paz
Costa Rica Lima
Cuba Managua
Dominican Republic Manaus
Ecuador Mexico City
Guatemala Esquipulas .... just added this in honor of Central
Haiti American peace treaties which
Nicaragua helped end growing crisis in
Panama Central America of 1980s
Paraguay
Peru
Puerto Rico
Uruguay
Venezuela
P.S. I'm assuming that you can identify the Amazon river on a map of South America, right?
Monday, January 10
Friday, January 7
El pulpo en el Caribe... The U.S. and Latin American Nationalism
Volunteers? Those of you who speak Spanish can help the rest of the class get a sense of the meaning of this poem and the depth of feeling of the author. The questions I've included after the poem are relevant to this poem as well as to broader themes that we've talked about.
La United Fruit Company by Pablo Neruda, Canto General, 1950.
Have you heard of Pablo Neruda, the author of this poem?
What sort of writing do you associate with him?
What was happening in Latin America in 1950, the year this poem was published?
La United Fruit Company by Pablo Neruda, Canto General, 1950.
Cuando sonó la trompeta, estuvo
todo preparado en la tierra,
y Jehova repartió el mundo
a Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, y otras entidades:
la Compañía Frutera Inc.
se reservó lo más jugoso,
la costa central de mi tierra,
la dulce cintura de América.
Bautizó de nuevo sus tierras
como "Repúblicas Bananas,"
y sobre los muertos dormidos,
sobre los héroes inquietos
que conquistaron la grandeza, Entre las moscas sanguinarias
la libertad y las banderas, la Frutera desembarca,
estableció la ópera bufa: arrasando el café y las frutas,
enajenó los albedríos en sus barcos que deslizaron
regaló coronas de César, como bandejas el tesoro
desenvainó la envidia, atrajo de nuestras tierras sumergidas.
la dictadora de las moscas,
moscas Trujillos, moscas Tachos, Mientras tanto, por los abismos
moscas Carías, moscas Martínez, azucarados de los puertos,
moscas Ubico, moscas húmedas caían indios sepultados
de sangre humilde y mermelada, en el vapor de la mañana:
moscas borrachas que zumban un cuerpo rueda, una cosa
sobre las tumbas populares, sin nombre, un número caído,
moscas de circo, sabias moscas un racimo de fruta muerta
entendidas en tiranía. derramada en el pudridero.
Have you heard of Pablo Neruda, the author of this poem?
What sort of writing do you associate with him?
What was happening in Latin America in 1950, the year this poem was published?
Nicaragua
This is Monday's reading. (Jan. 10)
______________________________________________________
"Nicaragua"
Marcia Olander
Encyclopedia of the Cold War (Routlege Taylor and Francis Group, 2008), p 632-36.
Questions:
1) Why might it have been "naive" to assume that a U.S. trained National Guard would contribute to democracy?
2) Approximately how long after 1910 did the U.S. have a military presence in Nicaragua.
3) Who was Augusto Sandino and what did he do? He won his goal when the U.S. pulled out, what do you think he did afterward? (the second question isn't answered in the article, but you can speculate).
4) Did the U.S. always support Somoza? Explain.
5) When did the FSLN emerge and what did they do... (big question)
6) What happened in 1972, and why was it a turning point in the anti-Somoza fight?
7) Describe the U.S. response to the final months of the Somoza regime (from mid-1978 September 1978 to July 1979 when Somoza fled).
8) What was the most important aspect (overall) of U.S. policy toward the Sandinistas after July 1979?
9) Would you say there was essentially continuity between the policy of U.S. presidents Carter and Reagan, or was there a notable change. Explain your answer based on the reading.
10) The article doesn't mention the Iran hostage crisis (1979-1981) in which Iranians took the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Given the state of relations between Iran and the U.S. in the early 1980s, what part of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua is most contradictory or surprising?
11) Who were Daniel and Humberto Ortega?
12) There are numerous foreign policy initiatives mentioned in this short paper that originated in Central America or Latin America to resolve this crisis. Name the ones you see. Do you see any sort of common thread or significance in this diplomacy?
13) Who was Violeta Chamorro?
14) Why does the article say that "U.S. policy had both failed miserably and succeeded"?
section 1: Background on Nicaragua and the U.S. role there
Between 1979 and 1990, Nicaragua was led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which U.S. president Ronald Reagan (1981-89) at one point characterized as "a Communist reign of terror" (Congressional Quarterly, p. 72). The Sandinistas, for their part, noted in the new Nicaraguan national anthem that the "Yankees" were the "enemy of humanity." Both sides engaged in hyperbole, but the U.S. charge, certainly untrue, led to graver consequences.
The U.S. intervention in Nicaragua spread to include pressure upon and aid to the rest of of Central America. These four small countries received one billion dollars of aid, including an unprecedented amount of military aid. The U.S., furthermore, funded an irregular army of fifteen thousand troops which operated from Honduras. Its goal: to overthrow the Sandinista government.
The FSLN overthrew the Nicaraguan dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, third ruler from the Somoza family that had led Nicaragua since 1935. The Somoza family's fortunes had been tied closely to the U.S. and the Cold War. Somoza Debayle's father, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, came into power as an unintentional, but perhaps predictable, result of U.S. diplomatic and military intervention in Nicaragua between 1910 and 1933.
The intervention in 1910 to favor of a conservative leader in a Nicaraguan power struggle, wound up leading to the long term presence of U.S. troops in the country. In an attempt to end the long presence of U.S. marines in the country, the U.S. created and trained a "depoliticized" National Guard with the naive idea that it would support a stable government. Finally, in 1927, nationalist anger over this long-term U.S. role led Augusto Sandino to take up arms rather than accept the results of any Nicaraguan election managed by the U.S. government. The U.S. was soon bogged down in an nationalist guerrilla war against Sandino's men, a war which it was clearly losing in the public relations front - within Nicaragua, and internationally.
When the marines pulled out in 1933, the U.S. left Somoza García in charge of the National Guard and he soon overthrew the elected government. In the 1940s, the dictator's hold on power was not entrenched; U.S. disapproval as well as local and regional opposition threatened the regime. As late as 1951, Nicaragua, with the dictatorial Dominican Republic, was one of only three Latin American nations with no U.S. military mission (the U.S. mission had been recalled in July 1947 in protest of Somoza's dictatorship). It was when the U.S. turned to covert intervention, as in Iran (1953) but more relevantly in the Caribbean region beginning with Guatemala in 1954, that the Somoza regime became a vital U.S. ally receiving U.S. military and economic aid even while corruption and human rights abuses characterized the regime. Somoza Garcia was shot in 1956, and when doctors in the U.S. Panama Canal Zone couldn't save his life, his sons took over (Luis Somoza Debayle became president and Anastasio Somoza Debayle served as the head of the National Guard).
Section 2: The Sandinista origins and the revolution
The FSLN, formed in 1961, was inspired by the 1959 Cuban revolution and received training and material aid from Fidel Castro. Their bid to politicize rural Nicaragua was unsuccessful in the 1960s, rather it was a devastating 1972 earthquake in the capital Managua that gave the opposition to Somoza new life. Somoza Debayle used the emergency to obviate any pretense at power sharing,and the corruption with which Somoza and the Guard dealt with rebuilding and foreign aid alienated the middle class and the elites. Growing unemployment caused by the earthquake and global economic crisis beginning in 1973 created conditions for an eventual Sandinista victory.
After a successful guerrilla attack by the FSLN in 1974, Somoza unleashed a wave of repression which the FSLN barely survived. Schisms divided the group, but the victor was the more pragmatic branch called the terceristas (third way), which promoted seeking allies from many social and economic sectors regardless of ideology. Terceristas benefited, for example, from ties to a movement emerging in the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1960s that focused attention on social justice (Liberation Theology). Daniel Ortega, who eventually consolidated leadership over the FSLN movement, emerged from the terceristas.
On January 10, 1978, prominent Conservative journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, opposed to Somoza, was assassinated, igniting the first urban uprising as well as a national strike led by the business sector. After scrambling to take advantage of the popular mobilization caused by Chamorro's death, the Sandinistas won a spectabular public relations and military victory in August of that year when, under the direction of the charismatic Eden Pastora, they took the National Palace, with two thousand hostages including the Assembly Deputies. The Sandinistas gained the release of sixty imprisoned comrades, a ransom, and safe passage out of the country; the streets were lined with supporters as the victorious guerrillas traveled to the airport.
The Sandinistas were now a mass movement, and successfully made contacts with the moderate and conservative opposition to Somoza. In September 1978 the FSLN began a new phase of fighting with coordinated attacks on National Guard stations in several cities. Although their military apparatus was still small, they were quickly gaining recruits, from only five hundred in early 1978 to well over 2,500 in 1979 (with uncounted numbers who joined them in battle).
By 1979 the Sandinista wings reunited, established a government junta in exile which included conservative members, and created umbrella organizations to lead the last phase of the war. The Sandinistas managed to organize the only effective and disciplined group to win not only the armed struggle but the diplomatic battle as well. In addition to the long-standing support of Cuba, by late 1978 the presidents of Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Panama were providing the Sandinistas with arms or other logistical aid.
Section 3: U.S. response to the FSLN victory
U.S. policy tried to reconcile contradictory aims. Congress had demanded a human rights element in foreign policy, and President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) embraced this readily. In this light, the administration helped weaken Somoza's standing in Nicaragua. However, very conscious of regional anti-Americanism, Carter strove to keep a low profile, refusing to take the final steps to push Somoza out. Furthermore, to avoid an outright Sandinista victory and takeover, was anxious to maintain the National Guard in place, loyal, it was hoped, to a new more democratic government. The Guard, however, had been too vital to the repression and corruption of the Somoza regime to play a credible role in a political solution.
Thus, it was not unpredictable that Somoza Debayle clung to power longer than was rationally justifiable. He was proud of how his father's defiant maneuvering during the period of intense U.S. disapproval in the mid 1940s; like his father, he withstood international pressure to resign. In his case, he badly miscalculated. In September 1978 when the American ambassador in Nicaragua intimated that Somoza's presence increased the likelihood of a Communist victory, Somoza dug in his heels, doubled the size of the Guard, bought weapons from Israel, and unleashed harsh military measures.
The U.S. limited itself to supporting mediation efforts which failed for several reasons: first, Somoza refused to seriously negotiate his own departure; just as importantly, the history of National Guard corruption and brutality left few Nicaraguans willing to openly endorsea plan for a stable transition which preserved the Guard. the Sandinistas, certainly, had no desire to see U.S. mediation succeed. Finally, no other nation in the region was strongly behind the U.S. position; the democratic countries tended to be more sympathetic to the Sandinistas, whereas the dictatorial regimes, facing unrest in their own countries, supported Somoza.
As the Sandinistas gained more internal and international stature, the U.S. found itself outflanked and embarrassed. The brutal assassination of ABC reporter Bill Stewart at a National Guard check point (as his cameraman filmed) turned U.S. opinion, and a week later, on June 27, 1979, Somoza finally offered to resign. The U.S. government asked him to wait as the ambassador in Managua tried desperately to arrange a post-Somoza government that would somehow weaken the now clearly victorious Sandinistas; in the meanwhile the material destruction and loss of life continued until finally, on July 17, Somoza fled and the U.S. was faced with the unconditional Sandinista victory it had feared.
Section 4: The Sandinistas in power
The Sandinista forces marched triumphantly into Managua on July 19, 1979, riding a wave optimism and support that would provide impetus for economic and social reforms. The Sandinistas' immediate social reforms in public health and literacy produced dramatic results demonstrating that popular participation and enthusiasm was high in the early phase of the revolutionary government.
From a longer-term perspective, there is much disagreement over the ideological nature of the Sandinista government. Clearly many FSLN leaders were Marxist-Leninists; however, Sandinistas were cognizant of the need to appease the conservative anti-Somoza groups with whom they had allied to oust Somoza. The Sandinistas included conservative voices in the original five-member junta which took power, although they never relinquished their majority.
The Soviet Union had made it clear that it would not take on another completely dependent state in the Caribbean and the reaction from the U.S. and global community was also a consideration. The Sandinistas quickly signaled their desire to work within the capitalist markets with the 1979 declaration that Nicaragua would pay the onerous debt left by Somoza.
The government promoted a mixed economy albeit with a much larger state role than had existed previously in Nicaragua; ownership of industry and agriculture was to be shared between the state, small producers, and the capitalist sector. With the expropriation of the vast properties of the Somoza and his closest associates, the government overnight controlled 20 percent of Nicaragua's arable land and initially the Sandinitas hoped to maintain these properties as state farms; by 1983, however, the poor performance of these farms led to greater small holder distribution. While generous government support was available to private producers, suspicion from the business sector led to capital flight.
Daniel Ortega was a charismatic thirty-three year-old in 1979 when he and his brother took leadership of the government. The Ortega family had long opposed Somoza, and Daniel joined the FSLN as a university student in 1963 soon after the organization formed. he was imprisoned by Somoza several times but was released as part of the negotiations after the successful 1974 raid on the National palace. Daniel led the political branch of the party and his brother, Humberto, the military arm. The comparison to Fidel Castro and Raul, head of the Cuban armed forces, generated unease, as did Cuban advisors in the literacy and health campaigns as well as in military capacities.
In spite of bureaucratic inefficiency and the infrastructure damage caused by the revolution, the Nicaraguan economy did fairly well by regional standards until 1984. Furthermore, human rights and social conditions were greatly improved since the Somoza regime. This, combined with the nationalist anti-U.S. stance of th revolution, gave the Sandinitas a resounding victory in the 1984 elections (the elections were endorced as free and fair by international observers). Daniel Ortega became the first democratically elected president since the 1930s. Nevertheless, warfare, not democracy, was the primary focus of life as parts of rural Nicaragua turned against the Sandinistas. Already, on the first anniversary of the Sandinista victory, peasant and rancher leaders from the mountainous northern region organized the first armed action against the Sandinista government. Resentment toward Sandinista rule in traditional rural regions, combined by 1981 with the possibility of U.S. assistance for anti-FSLN groups, led to a convergence of civil unrest and armed aggression.
Section 5: U.S. policy from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan
Although the Carter adminnistration was dismayed at the Sandinista takeover, it decided to provide financial support in order to maintain some leverage on the new government. However, during the Carter-Reagan transition, in late 1980, the Sandinistas sent arms and support to leftist rebels in El Salvador, which forced Carter to cut off aid, a policy which Reagan continued even as evidence emerged that the Sandinistas had halted the tranfer of arms. In order to ensure that the Salvadoran allies of teh FSLN did not oust another Central American government, through 1984 the Reagan administration directed $400 million dollars of military aid to tiny non-democratic El Salvador. An invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983 also manifested Reagan's fears of regional Communist expansion.
Reagan's anti-FSLN campaign included a trade and aid embargo, pressure against friendly countries to prevent arms sales to Nicaragua, constant negative propaganda, financial support for opposition in Nicaragua, military exercises in Honduras involving fifteen thousand U.S. troops near the Nicaraguan border, and naval exercises in Caribbean waters. But the cornerstone of U.S. policy was support for a rebel war against the Sandinistas carried out from Honduras (and to a much lesser extent, from Costa Rica). In 1980, a group of exiles, mainly former National Guard troops, some Nicaraguan farmers and, later, Misquito natives, were organizing in Honduras, with support from the Argentinean military government; the latter feared a connection between the FSLN and Argentine guerrillas). In March 1981, Reagan approved funds for interdicting arms, which became a cover for CIA training and arming of this group. The first major “Contra” incursion into Nicaragua occurred in March 1982. Soon Nicaragua was on full war footing with a military draft and the rapid creation of the largest armed forces in Central America.
The Contras failed at their original mission to control some part of Nicaraguan territory in order to establish a parallel government. So, they turned to economic sabotage and low-level constant harassment, murdering Sandinista officials and civilian health and social workers especially. In 1984 the CIA-directed mining of Nicaragua’s harbors created international outrage.
The resulting scandal led to a congressional prohibition in late 1984 of military funding for the Contras. Officials in the Reagan White House, the CIA, and the State and Defense Departments circumvented the restrictions first by looking for private and foreign donors for the Contras and later through an illegal scheme wherein the U.S. government secretly (through Israel) sold arms to Iran at inflated prices. Profits from these sales were diverted to the Contras. The downing of a Contra supply flight over Nicaragua and the confession of its U.S. pilot that he worked for the CIA finally sparked investigations that resulted in thirteen convictions, most against U.S. officials.
The Reagan administration continued to pressure other Central American governments to join the anti-Sandinista campaign. While regional governments were unnerved by Sandinista rhetoric and the presence of Cubans and Eastern bloc advisers in Nicaragua, the militarization of Central America was increasingly untenable. In addition to the U.S. military presence in Honduras and guerrilla wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, even democratic Costa Rica, which prided itself for having abolished its military in 1948, was being pulled into the regional military tensions; former Sandinista Eden Pastora was organizing anti-Sandinista operations with CIA funds funneled through third parties.
Section 6: Sandinistas and regional foreign policy
The Sandinistas were not weaponless in the international arena. They used their long-standing connection to church reformers to effectively promote public relations abroad, even in the United States. U.S. citizens and others traveled to Nicaragua to “witness” Contra abuses, to reduce Contra impunity. In its greatest diplomatic victory in 1984, Nicaragua turned to the World Court in The Hague to denounce the U.S. military intervention. While the U.S. pulled out of the proceedings and ignored the court ruling, the Sandinistas were successful in building international support and recognition.
The Sandinistas used international audiences to declare their absolute willingness to negotiate with the United States. The lack of reciprocity in this matter left the U.S. isolated. Finally, Nicaragua’s neighbors took diplomatic initiatives from which the U.S. was excluded. The Contadora group composed of Panama, Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia began talks in 1983 which brought Nicaragua and its Central American neighbors together to resolve regional tensions. President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, organized a Central American peace initiative that finally led to a 1987 treaty, signed by all five countries, which laid out careful steps to regional democracy, peace, and demilitarization.
Section 7: The 1990 election
In the 1990 election Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega lost to a coalition of opposition groups whose presidential candidate, Violeta Chamorro, was the widow of slain journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. Anti-Sandinista resentment brought about by political errors such as the increased use after 1986 of politically motivated property seizures, as well as economic chaos and hyper-inflation caused by the war and mismanagement, contributed to the upset. To be sure, the U.S. intervention also played an important role. The U.S. funded and guided the opposition and there was the implicit threat that war would continue if the U.S.-favored candidate did not win. Nicaragua’s revolution was over.
U.S. policy had both failed miserably and succeeded. ...
Since 1990, the Sandinistas have maintained an important opposition role, even as the party once again suffered schisms—this time over Daniel Ortega’s insistence on maintaining leadership as well as serving as the FSLN presidential candidate in every presidential election between 1984 and 2006. Finally, in November 2006, Ortega won the presidential election with approximately 38% of the vote. ...
Remember "Somoza" can actually refer to several people.
It is the first of two last names of the original dictator (Anastsio Somoza Garcia) and that of his children who followed him in power (Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle).______________________________________________________
"Nicaragua"
Marcia Olander
Encyclopedia of the Cold War (Routlege Taylor and Francis Group, 2008), p 632-36.
Questions:
1) Why might it have been "naive" to assume that a U.S. trained National Guard would contribute to democracy?
2) Approximately how long after 1910 did the U.S. have a military presence in Nicaragua.
3) Who was Augusto Sandino and what did he do? He won his goal when the U.S. pulled out, what do you think he did afterward? (the second question isn't answered in the article, but you can speculate).
4) Did the U.S. always support Somoza? Explain.
5) When did the FSLN emerge and what did they do... (big question)
6) What happened in 1972, and why was it a turning point in the anti-Somoza fight?
7) Describe the U.S. response to the final months of the Somoza regime (from mid-1978 September 1978 to July 1979 when Somoza fled).
8) What was the most important aspect (overall) of U.S. policy toward the Sandinistas after July 1979?
9) Would you say there was essentially continuity between the policy of U.S. presidents Carter and Reagan, or was there a notable change. Explain your answer based on the reading.
10) The article doesn't mention the Iran hostage crisis (1979-1981) in which Iranians took the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Given the state of relations between Iran and the U.S. in the early 1980s, what part of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua is most contradictory or surprising?
11) Who were Daniel and Humberto Ortega?
12) There are numerous foreign policy initiatives mentioned in this short paper that originated in Central America or Latin America to resolve this crisis. Name the ones you see. Do you see any sort of common thread or significance in this diplomacy?
13) Who was Violeta Chamorro?
14) Why does the article say that "U.S. policy had both failed miserably and succeeded"?
section 1: Background on Nicaragua and the U.S. role there
Between 1979 and 1990, Nicaragua was led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which U.S. president Ronald Reagan (1981-89) at one point characterized as "a Communist reign of terror" (Congressional Quarterly, p. 72). The Sandinistas, for their part, noted in the new Nicaraguan national anthem that the "Yankees" were the "enemy of humanity." Both sides engaged in hyperbole, but the U.S. charge, certainly untrue, led to graver consequences.
The U.S. intervention in Nicaragua spread to include pressure upon and aid to the rest of of Central America. These four small countries received one billion dollars of aid, including an unprecedented amount of military aid. The U.S., furthermore, funded an irregular army of fifteen thousand troops which operated from Honduras. Its goal: to overthrow the Sandinista government.
The FSLN overthrew the Nicaraguan dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, third ruler from the Somoza family that had led Nicaragua since 1935. The Somoza family's fortunes had been tied closely to the U.S. and the Cold War. Somoza Debayle's father, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, came into power as an unintentional, but perhaps predictable, result of U.S. diplomatic and military intervention in Nicaragua between 1910 and 1933.
The intervention in 1910 to favor of a conservative leader in a Nicaraguan power struggle, wound up leading to the long term presence of U.S. troops in the country. In an attempt to end the long presence of U.S. marines in the country, the U.S. created and trained a "depoliticized" National Guard with the naive idea that it would support a stable government. Finally, in 1927, nationalist anger over this long-term U.S. role led Augusto Sandino to take up arms rather than accept the results of any Nicaraguan election managed by the U.S. government. The U.S. was soon bogged down in an nationalist guerrilla war against Sandino's men, a war which it was clearly losing in the public relations front - within Nicaragua, and internationally.
When the marines pulled out in 1933, the U.S. left Somoza García in charge of the National Guard and he soon overthrew the elected government. In the 1940s, the dictator's hold on power was not entrenched; U.S. disapproval as well as local and regional opposition threatened the regime. As late as 1951, Nicaragua, with the dictatorial Dominican Republic, was one of only three Latin American nations with no U.S. military mission (the U.S. mission had been recalled in July 1947 in protest of Somoza's dictatorship). It was when the U.S. turned to covert intervention, as in Iran (1953) but more relevantly in the Caribbean region beginning with Guatemala in 1954, that the Somoza regime became a vital U.S. ally receiving U.S. military and economic aid even while corruption and human rights abuses characterized the regime. Somoza Garcia was shot in 1956, and when doctors in the U.S. Panama Canal Zone couldn't save his life, his sons took over (Luis Somoza Debayle became president and Anastasio Somoza Debayle served as the head of the National Guard).
Section 2: The Sandinista origins and the revolution
The FSLN, formed in 1961, was inspired by the 1959 Cuban revolution and received training and material aid from Fidel Castro. Their bid to politicize rural Nicaragua was unsuccessful in the 1960s, rather it was a devastating 1972 earthquake in the capital Managua that gave the opposition to Somoza new life. Somoza Debayle used the emergency to obviate any pretense at power sharing,and the corruption with which Somoza and the Guard dealt with rebuilding and foreign aid alienated the middle class and the elites. Growing unemployment caused by the earthquake and global economic crisis beginning in 1973 created conditions for an eventual Sandinista victory.
After a successful guerrilla attack by the FSLN in 1974, Somoza unleashed a wave of repression which the FSLN barely survived. Schisms divided the group, but the victor was the more pragmatic branch called the terceristas (third way), which promoted seeking allies from many social and economic sectors regardless of ideology. Terceristas benefited, for example, from ties to a movement emerging in the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1960s that focused attention on social justice (Liberation Theology). Daniel Ortega, who eventually consolidated leadership over the FSLN movement, emerged from the terceristas.
On January 10, 1978, prominent Conservative journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, opposed to Somoza, was assassinated, igniting the first urban uprising as well as a national strike led by the business sector. After scrambling to take advantage of the popular mobilization caused by Chamorro's death, the Sandinistas won a spectabular public relations and military victory in August of that year when, under the direction of the charismatic Eden Pastora, they took the National Palace, with two thousand hostages including the Assembly Deputies. The Sandinistas gained the release of sixty imprisoned comrades, a ransom, and safe passage out of the country; the streets were lined with supporters as the victorious guerrillas traveled to the airport.
The Sandinistas were now a mass movement, and successfully made contacts with the moderate and conservative opposition to Somoza. In September 1978 the FSLN began a new phase of fighting with coordinated attacks on National Guard stations in several cities. Although their military apparatus was still small, they were quickly gaining recruits, from only five hundred in early 1978 to well over 2,500 in 1979 (with uncounted numbers who joined them in battle).
By 1979 the Sandinista wings reunited, established a government junta in exile which included conservative members, and created umbrella organizations to lead the last phase of the war. The Sandinistas managed to organize the only effective and disciplined group to win not only the armed struggle but the diplomatic battle as well. In addition to the long-standing support of Cuba, by late 1978 the presidents of Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Panama were providing the Sandinistas with arms or other logistical aid.
Section 3: U.S. response to the FSLN victory
U.S. policy tried to reconcile contradictory aims. Congress had demanded a human rights element in foreign policy, and President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) embraced this readily. In this light, the administration helped weaken Somoza's standing in Nicaragua. However, very conscious of regional anti-Americanism, Carter strove to keep a low profile, refusing to take the final steps to push Somoza out. Furthermore, to avoid an outright Sandinista victory and takeover, was anxious to maintain the National Guard in place, loyal, it was hoped, to a new more democratic government. The Guard, however, had been too vital to the repression and corruption of the Somoza regime to play a credible role in a political solution.
Thus, it was not unpredictable that Somoza Debayle clung to power longer than was rationally justifiable. He was proud of how his father's defiant maneuvering during the period of intense U.S. disapproval in the mid 1940s; like his father, he withstood international pressure to resign. In his case, he badly miscalculated. In September 1978 when the American ambassador in Nicaragua intimated that Somoza's presence increased the likelihood of a Communist victory, Somoza dug in his heels, doubled the size of the Guard, bought weapons from Israel, and unleashed harsh military measures.
The U.S. limited itself to supporting mediation efforts which failed for several reasons: first, Somoza refused to seriously negotiate his own departure; just as importantly, the history of National Guard corruption and brutality left few Nicaraguans willing to openly endorsea plan for a stable transition which preserved the Guard. the Sandinistas, certainly, had no desire to see U.S. mediation succeed. Finally, no other nation in the region was strongly behind the U.S. position; the democratic countries tended to be more sympathetic to the Sandinistas, whereas the dictatorial regimes, facing unrest in their own countries, supported Somoza.
As the Sandinistas gained more internal and international stature, the U.S. found itself outflanked and embarrassed. The brutal assassination of ABC reporter Bill Stewart at a National Guard check point (as his cameraman filmed) turned U.S. opinion, and a week later, on June 27, 1979, Somoza finally offered to resign. The U.S. government asked him to wait as the ambassador in Managua tried desperately to arrange a post-Somoza government that would somehow weaken the now clearly victorious Sandinistas; in the meanwhile the material destruction and loss of life continued until finally, on July 17, Somoza fled and the U.S. was faced with the unconditional Sandinista victory it had feared.
Section 4: The Sandinistas in power
The Sandinista forces marched triumphantly into Managua on July 19, 1979, riding a wave optimism and support that would provide impetus for economic and social reforms. The Sandinistas' immediate social reforms in public health and literacy produced dramatic results demonstrating that popular participation and enthusiasm was high in the early phase of the revolutionary government.
From a longer-term perspective, there is much disagreement over the ideological nature of the Sandinista government. Clearly many FSLN leaders were Marxist-Leninists; however, Sandinistas were cognizant of the need to appease the conservative anti-Somoza groups with whom they had allied to oust Somoza. The Sandinistas included conservative voices in the original five-member junta which took power, although they never relinquished their majority.
The Soviet Union had made it clear that it would not take on another completely dependent state in the Caribbean and the reaction from the U.S. and global community was also a consideration. The Sandinistas quickly signaled their desire to work within the capitalist markets with the 1979 declaration that Nicaragua would pay the onerous debt left by Somoza.
The government promoted a mixed economy albeit with a much larger state role than had existed previously in Nicaragua; ownership of industry and agriculture was to be shared between the state, small producers, and the capitalist sector. With the expropriation of the vast properties of the Somoza and his closest associates, the government overnight controlled 20 percent of Nicaragua's arable land and initially the Sandinitas hoped to maintain these properties as state farms; by 1983, however, the poor performance of these farms led to greater small holder distribution. While generous government support was available to private producers, suspicion from the business sector led to capital flight.
Daniel Ortega was a charismatic thirty-three year-old in 1979 when he and his brother took leadership of the government. The Ortega family had long opposed Somoza, and Daniel joined the FSLN as a university student in 1963 soon after the organization formed. he was imprisoned by Somoza several times but was released as part of the negotiations after the successful 1974 raid on the National palace. Daniel led the political branch of the party and his brother, Humberto, the military arm. The comparison to Fidel Castro and Raul, head of the Cuban armed forces, generated unease, as did Cuban advisors in the literacy and health campaigns as well as in military capacities.
In spite of bureaucratic inefficiency and the infrastructure damage caused by the revolution, the Nicaraguan economy did fairly well by regional standards until 1984. Furthermore, human rights and social conditions were greatly improved since the Somoza regime. This, combined with the nationalist anti-U.S. stance of th revolution, gave the Sandinitas a resounding victory in the 1984 elections (the elections were endorced as free and fair by international observers). Daniel Ortega became the first democratically elected president since the 1930s. Nevertheless, warfare, not democracy, was the primary focus of life as parts of rural Nicaragua turned against the Sandinistas. Already, on the first anniversary of the Sandinista victory, peasant and rancher leaders from the mountainous northern region organized the first armed action against the Sandinista government. Resentment toward Sandinista rule in traditional rural regions, combined by 1981 with the possibility of U.S. assistance for anti-FSLN groups, led to a convergence of civil unrest and armed aggression.
Section 5: U.S. policy from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan
Although the Carter adminnistration was dismayed at the Sandinista takeover, it decided to provide financial support in order to maintain some leverage on the new government. However, during the Carter-Reagan transition, in late 1980, the Sandinistas sent arms and support to leftist rebels in El Salvador, which forced Carter to cut off aid, a policy which Reagan continued even as evidence emerged that the Sandinistas had halted the tranfer of arms. In order to ensure that the Salvadoran allies of teh FSLN did not oust another Central American government, through 1984 the Reagan administration directed $400 million dollars of military aid to tiny non-democratic El Salvador. An invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983 also manifested Reagan's fears of regional Communist expansion.
Reagan's anti-FSLN campaign included a trade and aid embargo, pressure against friendly countries to prevent arms sales to Nicaragua, constant negative propaganda, financial support for opposition in Nicaragua, military exercises in Honduras involving fifteen thousand U.S. troops near the Nicaraguan border, and naval exercises in Caribbean waters. But the cornerstone of U.S. policy was support for a rebel war against the Sandinistas carried out from Honduras (and to a much lesser extent, from Costa Rica). In 1980, a group of exiles, mainly former National Guard troops, some Nicaraguan farmers and, later, Misquito natives, were organizing in Honduras, with support from the Argentinean military government; the latter feared a connection between the FSLN and Argentine guerrillas). In March 1981, Reagan approved funds for interdicting arms, which became a cover for CIA training and arming of this group. The first major “Contra” incursion into Nicaragua occurred in March 1982. Soon Nicaragua was on full war footing with a military draft and the rapid creation of the largest armed forces in Central America.
The Contras failed at their original mission to control some part of Nicaraguan territory in order to establish a parallel government. So, they turned to economic sabotage and low-level constant harassment, murdering Sandinista officials and civilian health and social workers especially. In 1984 the CIA-directed mining of Nicaragua’s harbors created international outrage.
The resulting scandal led to a congressional prohibition in late 1984 of military funding for the Contras. Officials in the Reagan White House, the CIA, and the State and Defense Departments circumvented the restrictions first by looking for private and foreign donors for the Contras and later through an illegal scheme wherein the U.S. government secretly (through Israel) sold arms to Iran at inflated prices. Profits from these sales were diverted to the Contras. The downing of a Contra supply flight over Nicaragua and the confession of its U.S. pilot that he worked for the CIA finally sparked investigations that resulted in thirteen convictions, most against U.S. officials.
The Reagan administration continued to pressure other Central American governments to join the anti-Sandinista campaign. While regional governments were unnerved by Sandinista rhetoric and the presence of Cubans and Eastern bloc advisers in Nicaragua, the militarization of Central America was increasingly untenable. In addition to the U.S. military presence in Honduras and guerrilla wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, even democratic Costa Rica, which prided itself for having abolished its military in 1948, was being pulled into the regional military tensions; former Sandinista Eden Pastora was organizing anti-Sandinista operations with CIA funds funneled through third parties.
Section 6: Sandinistas and regional foreign policy
The Sandinistas were not weaponless in the international arena. They used their long-standing connection to church reformers to effectively promote public relations abroad, even in the United States. U.S. citizens and others traveled to Nicaragua to “witness” Contra abuses, to reduce Contra impunity. In its greatest diplomatic victory in 1984, Nicaragua turned to the World Court in The Hague to denounce the U.S. military intervention. While the U.S. pulled out of the proceedings and ignored the court ruling, the Sandinistas were successful in building international support and recognition.
The Sandinistas used international audiences to declare their absolute willingness to negotiate with the United States. The lack of reciprocity in this matter left the U.S. isolated. Finally, Nicaragua’s neighbors took diplomatic initiatives from which the U.S. was excluded. The Contadora group composed of Panama, Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia began talks in 1983 which brought Nicaragua and its Central American neighbors together to resolve regional tensions. President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, organized a Central American peace initiative that finally led to a 1987 treaty, signed by all five countries, which laid out careful steps to regional democracy, peace, and demilitarization.
Section 7: The 1990 election
In the 1990 election Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega lost to a coalition of opposition groups whose presidential candidate, Violeta Chamorro, was the widow of slain journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. Anti-Sandinista resentment brought about by political errors such as the increased use after 1986 of politically motivated property seizures, as well as economic chaos and hyper-inflation caused by the war and mismanagement, contributed to the upset. To be sure, the U.S. intervention also played an important role. The U.S. funded and guided the opposition and there was the implicit threat that war would continue if the U.S.-favored candidate did not win. Nicaragua’s revolution was over.
U.S. policy had both failed miserably and succeeded. ...
Since 1990, the Sandinistas have maintained an important opposition role, even as the party once again suffered schisms—this time over Daniel Ortega’s insistence on maintaining leadership as well as serving as the FSLN presidential candidate in every presidential election between 1984 and 2006. Finally, in November 2006, Ortega won the presidential election with approximately 38% of the vote. ...
Thursday, January 6
Wednesday, January 5
Bolivia Privatization ("Capitalization" - as said in Our Brand is Crisis)
The following is an excerpt (fairly complete) of this investigative report from Canada's CBC. Keep in mind that the report was written while Goni was still in the presidency (He served twice: August 1993 - August 1997 and August 2002- October 2003). The original privatization and protests began in 1999 when Goni was not in office.
There is a lot of very political debate on the internet on these events. This one seemed to work for a balanced perspective.
In South America, private companies have taken over municipal water supplies in at least half a dozen countries, but there's one city where the takeover didn't go as planned.
In 1999, a consortium, controlled by U.S. multinational Bechtel, signed a 40-year deal to increase water supplies and services to Cochabamba, Bolivia. Six months later, rioting Bolivians chased the company out of the country.
. . .
water is still a big problem in Cochabamba.
"Here, seven neighbourhoods have their own water," says Saltiera. "The rest don't have it. Twelve neighbourhoods don't."
Raoul takes me on a tour of the shantytowns that encircle Cochabamba. The ramshackle homes creep up the hills in a haphazard way. Many of them are built on land that was illegally taken by a steady stream of peasants settling there, abandoning their hard life in the country.
The poor now look down on the city nestled in the valley below.
In Valle Hermoso, the roads are bumpy, the sewer is an open ditch and electric wires come to a sudden stop outside the home just up the hill.
It's one of the oldest neighborhoods in the area. It's been there for 50 years. People pay taxes but they're still not getting basic water services from Cochabamba's water utility, known as "Semapa."
But that doesn't mean Valle Hermoso doesn't have a water system.
"Here's water right out of the faucet," shows Maximo Montanos, the president of Valle Hermosa. "In the morning, there's more pressure, in the afternoon, less. Each house has this type water."
Montanos used his own money to help organize a water system for his neighborhood. Each house has its own meter, attached to the rudimentary pipe coming from a small water tower. Montanos is proud of the system, but the water's not good.
He tries to scrub grease off his calloused hands with a big chunk of soap. The water doesn't produce suds. Instead, it develops a dirty, hard scum that sticks to the plastic basin.
The family's drinking water is delivered by a truck with a hose. Every house goes through at least a barrel a day. Each one cost about 85 cents Canadian. These are almost North American rates on Bolivian incomes of about 100 dollars a month.
At least 20 per cent of the people in Cochabamba have built their own neighborhood water systems, like this one, to get basic water. Montanos says people get less and less from the government now that it has privatized nearly everything in the country.
"One of the problems we have is that a lot of money comes here in the name of the poor people but never reaches the poor people," he says. "It always stays up in the top and we never see any of it. We have a right to have basic services. We're fighting for that."
By any standards the city's utility has been a failure. Only 60 per cent of the population is hooked up to the Semapa system, and they may only get water a few hours a week. Semapa has a long list of problems – "Clandestinos" users who re-route the water but don't pay for it, leaky pipes that lead to major water loss, leaky accounting that leads to major corruption and debt.
With such poor service and a bad reputation, Semapa became a perfect candidate for a private takeover aimed at weeding out corruption, hooking up more users and building a more efficient system. It seemed a natural solution in a country where almost every resource and service was being privatized.
Economist Roberto Fernandez Teran, who teaches at the University of San Simon in Cochabamba, says the state used to be the major employer. It owned everything – the oil company, the mines, the railroads and the factories. Whatever profits were made went into paying for social services.
By 1995, on the advice of the World Bank, the government owned nothing. But it owed the bank enormous sums of money. Fernandez says Bolivia is dependent on the World Bank now because it has no real income of its own anymore. Repaying the international debt is crippling the country.
"A lot of business people have the idea this government can save us because it's gotten all kinds of international loans. But what they forget is you have to pay the debt, you have to pay interest on loans and that gets us into more debt," says Fernandez. "So actually it's done absolutely nothing to try to resolve the economic crisis in the country."
Fernandez says the government's privatization scheme raised no cash, the private companies are paying next to no tax, and they've laid off thousands of Bolivians who used to work for the state industries.
"We haven't sold companies, we've given them away. Given them to the U.S., given them to the French, to foreigners, to other countries," he says.
With anger and frustration on the rise over this rash of privatizations, the takeover of Cochabamba's water system was next. It was nothing short of a disaster.
The government had the blessing of the World Bank early on, but the bank pulled out when the government chose a high-priced water project. There are hints that corruption played a role in the choice.
In the end, only one company made a bid. Aguas del Tunari, controlled by the multinational Bechtel, took over the water system in November 1999.
By January water bills were skyrocketing. Protest was gelling into an anti-privatization movement. Rioting Bolivians took over the streets in April.
"I was in front of the march. We were playing music. And I was crying," remembers Lenny Olivera, a computer science student at the university. "I wasn't crying just because of the gasses, I was also crying because I was so disillusioned with the police and the fact that we were acting peacefully and they were reacting with such violence."
Olivera says those eight days in April 2000 were a turning point in her young life. While the young boys threw rocks and tear gas clouded the air, she and other students played music – the Tarkeada, indigenous music of social resistance in Bolivia. It goes back to the time of the Spanish invasions.
"One thing we noticed was that if you're continually blowing on your instruments, the gas does make your eyes water but it doesn't get into your lungs. It was a way to keep us from getting very affected by the gas," says Olivera. "I noticed that if you stop then the gasses would get into your lungs and you'd start coughing. So one of the things I decided was that if we just kept playing the music we would be protected."
"It was an amazing time for us, the first time we'd seen this type of victory, a social movement that was successful," says Marcela Olivera, who was a key organizing force behind the marches, the battles and fight to keep water in the hands of the people.
"I remember singing the national hymn as we were marching through the streets, and the police not knowing what to do because they didn't know if they should stop and take their hats off and listen to the national anthem or they should fire gas at us.
"You have to realize, this wasn't just April, it was November to April. It was the building of a movement. So there were people who brought food, brought water into the streets, people who came with vinegar for people to help them with the gas. There were intellectuals and campesinos, a mix of people that knit together to form a whole around the issue of water.
"I think people sometimes forget this wasn't only about throwing Bechtel out, throwing out an international company. There was a second part going on here. A water law that was to be passed in congress, that is a law that affects all of Bolivia. For that reason, campesinos [peasants] and people outside Cochabamba got involved, called our attention to the fact that this law would make all water saleable. In fact, what people said is they would even be able to sell the rain."
Bechtel has a different version of what happened. The giant California-based corporation had the controlling share of the company that agreed to provide water services to Cochabamba in 1999.
A spokesman, who didn't want to be interviewed on tape, stated that the company didn't buy the city's water, it simply signed a 40-year contract to operate water and waste services and there was no guarantee of profits in the deal.
The company says it was the government that doubled and tripled some people's water bills, partly to pay for the huge debt the public utility had wracked up over the years. And those increases were all rolled back, two months before riots spilled onto the streets of Cochabamba.
No matter whose version of events you believe, hundreds of thousands of Bolivians filled the streets. Their protests turned into riots. One young man was killed by sniper fire.
The government suddenly announced on the eighth day of bloody conflict that the company had fled the country. The company claims the government broke the contract. Cochabambinos took it as a huge victory.
But three years later, are they any better off? ...
In the agricultural area outside of Cochabamba, water is used as it's always been. It rushes down the mountainside in a cement irrigation canal, past fields of scrawny flowers and crops of alfalfa.
"If you look up into the mountain range behind us, you'll see behind there is all of our water system, a series of lakes that gives us our water," shows Virginia Museo, who is part of the powerful irrigation farmers organization in this region.
Museo says the government tried to pass a new water law at the same time it was privatizing the Cochabamba's water system. Under that new law, the irrigation farmers' ancient water rights would have vanished. Their rights would have gone to the private water company.
"There was amazing unity between the city and the country, and I'll explain why," says Museo. "Behind us is a major lake… and that lake is the main water source for all of this area. We were so angry about the water law that was going to be passed, going to violate our traditional ways of using water, that we went up there and at two different places we cut the water source off for the cities, so that down below nobody had any water, and we said, 'Look, this is what's going to happen if the water law passes. You're not going to have the water.'"
Museo says farmers didn't win anything in the water war, they only managed to hang onto their traditional customs and uses.
"We're still able to use water the way we used to," she says. "Water is to grow food. If you don't grow food, how do you eat? That's what we protected and will continue to protect. We truly believe that no one owns the water. Life has no price, so water has no price."
Back at Maximo Montano's place in Valle Hermoso, the water war has had a lasting effect – one of empowerment.
"We have to have water from Semapa. We have a right to," he says. "There are 7,000 people living here. If you talk about the whole area, there are 22 to 30,000 living here. Within the law, we're part of the city. We pay taxes. We have a right to have water. The only way we're going to get the water is fighting for it. But we're going to fight for it and we have the right to have that water."
Semapa's service may not be any better, but as a company it's drastically changed. It's run by a board of local politicians, residents and members of the workers' union, so any controversial decisions to raise rates will be made by the whole community.
But Gonzalo Ugalde, the new head of Semapa, says the real fight is only beginning.
"The people don't see the real problem," he says. "They go to streets to recover the Semapa identity. But now the problem of the water here is very dramatic. The problem is here, in the hills. It is the privatization of the resources, and the main distributor."
Ugalde says investors who were part of the private company that sparked the water war in Cochabamba are now up in the mountains, quietly taking control of the key lakes and water sources for the city.
"Privatization is very important because the water is more important than the gold now," says Ugalde. "The gold is for a few people, but the water is for all people, all around the world. If you obtain control of the water, you can obtain control of the people."
If you'd like to read this (or hear it), here's the link. The page also includes links to other related articles:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/water/bolivia.html
There is a lot of very political debate on the internet on these events. This one seemed to work for a balanced perspective.
Sell the rain
How the privatization of water caused riots in Cochabamba, Bolivia
Connie Watson, CBC Radio | Feb. 4, 2003In South America, private companies have taken over municipal water supplies in at least half a dozen countries, but there's one city where the takeover didn't go as planned.
In 1999, a consortium, controlled by U.S. multinational Bechtel, signed a 40-year deal to increase water supplies and services to Cochabamba, Bolivia. Six months later, rioting Bolivians chased the company out of the country.
. . .
water is still a big problem in Cochabamba.
"Here, seven neighbourhoods have their own water," says Saltiera. "The rest don't have it. Twelve neighbourhoods don't."
Raoul takes me on a tour of the shantytowns that encircle Cochabamba. The ramshackle homes creep up the hills in a haphazard way. Many of them are built on land that was illegally taken by a steady stream of peasants settling there, abandoning their hard life in the country.
The poor now look down on the city nestled in the valley below.
In Valle Hermoso, the roads are bumpy, the sewer is an open ditch and electric wires come to a sudden stop outside the home just up the hill.
It's one of the oldest neighborhoods in the area. It's been there for 50 years. People pay taxes but they're still not getting basic water services from Cochabamba's water utility, known as "Semapa."
But that doesn't mean Valle Hermoso doesn't have a water system.
"Here's water right out of the faucet," shows Maximo Montanos, the president of Valle Hermosa. "In the morning, there's more pressure, in the afternoon, less. Each house has this type water."
Montanos used his own money to help organize a water system for his neighborhood. Each house has its own meter, attached to the rudimentary pipe coming from a small water tower. Montanos is proud of the system, but the water's not good.
He tries to scrub grease off his calloused hands with a big chunk of soap. The water doesn't produce suds. Instead, it develops a dirty, hard scum that sticks to the plastic basin.
The family's drinking water is delivered by a truck with a hose. Every house goes through at least a barrel a day. Each one cost about 85 cents Canadian. These are almost North American rates on Bolivian incomes of about 100 dollars a month.
At least 20 per cent of the people in Cochabamba have built their own neighborhood water systems, like this one, to get basic water. Montanos says people get less and less from the government now that it has privatized nearly everything in the country.
"One of the problems we have is that a lot of money comes here in the name of the poor people but never reaches the poor people," he says. "It always stays up in the top and we never see any of it. We have a right to have basic services. We're fighting for that."
By any standards the city's utility has been a failure. Only 60 per cent of the population is hooked up to the Semapa system, and they may only get water a few hours a week. Semapa has a long list of problems – "Clandestinos" users who re-route the water but don't pay for it, leaky pipes that lead to major water loss, leaky accounting that leads to major corruption and debt.
With such poor service and a bad reputation, Semapa became a perfect candidate for a private takeover aimed at weeding out corruption, hooking up more users and building a more efficient system. It seemed a natural solution in a country where almost every resource and service was being privatized.
Economist Roberto Fernandez Teran, who teaches at the University of San Simon in Cochabamba, says the state used to be the major employer. It owned everything – the oil company, the mines, the railroads and the factories. Whatever profits were made went into paying for social services.
By 1995, on the advice of the World Bank, the government owned nothing. But it owed the bank enormous sums of money. Fernandez says Bolivia is dependent on the World Bank now because it has no real income of its own anymore. Repaying the international debt is crippling the country.
"A lot of business people have the idea this government can save us because it's gotten all kinds of international loans. But what they forget is you have to pay the debt, you have to pay interest on loans and that gets us into more debt," says Fernandez. "So actually it's done absolutely nothing to try to resolve the economic crisis in the country."
Fernandez says the government's privatization scheme raised no cash, the private companies are paying next to no tax, and they've laid off thousands of Bolivians who used to work for the state industries.
"We haven't sold companies, we've given them away. Given them to the U.S., given them to the French, to foreigners, to other countries," he says.
With anger and frustration on the rise over this rash of privatizations, the takeover of Cochabamba's water system was next. It was nothing short of a disaster.
The government had the blessing of the World Bank early on, but the bank pulled out when the government chose a high-priced water project. There are hints that corruption played a role in the choice.
In the end, only one company made a bid. Aguas del Tunari, controlled by the multinational Bechtel, took over the water system in November 1999.
By January water bills were skyrocketing. Protest was gelling into an anti-privatization movement. Rioting Bolivians took over the streets in April.
"I was in front of the march. We were playing music. And I was crying," remembers Lenny Olivera, a computer science student at the university. "I wasn't crying just because of the gasses, I was also crying because I was so disillusioned with the police and the fact that we were acting peacefully and they were reacting with such violence."
Olivera says those eight days in April 2000 were a turning point in her young life. While the young boys threw rocks and tear gas clouded the air, she and other students played music – the Tarkeada, indigenous music of social resistance in Bolivia. It goes back to the time of the Spanish invasions.
"One thing we noticed was that if you're continually blowing on your instruments, the gas does make your eyes water but it doesn't get into your lungs. It was a way to keep us from getting very affected by the gas," says Olivera. "I noticed that if you stop then the gasses would get into your lungs and you'd start coughing. So one of the things I decided was that if we just kept playing the music we would be protected."
"It was an amazing time for us, the first time we'd seen this type of victory, a social movement that was successful," says Marcela Olivera, who was a key organizing force behind the marches, the battles and fight to keep water in the hands of the people.
"I remember singing the national hymn as we were marching through the streets, and the police not knowing what to do because they didn't know if they should stop and take their hats off and listen to the national anthem or they should fire gas at us.
"You have to realize, this wasn't just April, it was November to April. It was the building of a movement. So there were people who brought food, brought water into the streets, people who came with vinegar for people to help them with the gas. There were intellectuals and campesinos, a mix of people that knit together to form a whole around the issue of water.
"I think people sometimes forget this wasn't only about throwing Bechtel out, throwing out an international company. There was a second part going on here. A water law that was to be passed in congress, that is a law that affects all of Bolivia. For that reason, campesinos [peasants] and people outside Cochabamba got involved, called our attention to the fact that this law would make all water saleable. In fact, what people said is they would even be able to sell the rain."
Bechtel has a different version of what happened. The giant California-based corporation had the controlling share of the company that agreed to provide water services to Cochabamba in 1999.
A spokesman, who didn't want to be interviewed on tape, stated that the company didn't buy the city's water, it simply signed a 40-year contract to operate water and waste services and there was no guarantee of profits in the deal.
The company says it was the government that doubled and tripled some people's water bills, partly to pay for the huge debt the public utility had wracked up over the years. And those increases were all rolled back, two months before riots spilled onto the streets of Cochabamba.
No matter whose version of events you believe, hundreds of thousands of Bolivians filled the streets. Their protests turned into riots. One young man was killed by sniper fire.
The government suddenly announced on the eighth day of bloody conflict that the company had fled the country. The company claims the government broke the contract. Cochabambinos took it as a huge victory.
But three years later, are they any better off? ...
In the agricultural area outside of Cochabamba, water is used as it's always been. It rushes down the mountainside in a cement irrigation canal, past fields of scrawny flowers and crops of alfalfa.
"If you look up into the mountain range behind us, you'll see behind there is all of our water system, a series of lakes that gives us our water," shows Virginia Museo, who is part of the powerful irrigation farmers organization in this region.
Museo says the government tried to pass a new water law at the same time it was privatizing the Cochabamba's water system. Under that new law, the irrigation farmers' ancient water rights would have vanished. Their rights would have gone to the private water company.
"There was amazing unity between the city and the country, and I'll explain why," says Museo. "Behind us is a major lake… and that lake is the main water source for all of this area. We were so angry about the water law that was going to be passed, going to violate our traditional ways of using water, that we went up there and at two different places we cut the water source off for the cities, so that down below nobody had any water, and we said, 'Look, this is what's going to happen if the water law passes. You're not going to have the water.'"
Museo says farmers didn't win anything in the water war, they only managed to hang onto their traditional customs and uses.
"We're still able to use water the way we used to," she says. "Water is to grow food. If you don't grow food, how do you eat? That's what we protected and will continue to protect. We truly believe that no one owns the water. Life has no price, so water has no price."
Back at Maximo Montano's place in Valle Hermoso, the water war has had a lasting effect – one of empowerment.
"We have to have water from Semapa. We have a right to," he says. "There are 7,000 people living here. If you talk about the whole area, there are 22 to 30,000 living here. Within the law, we're part of the city. We pay taxes. We have a right to have water. The only way we're going to get the water is fighting for it. But we're going to fight for it and we have the right to have that water."
Semapa's service may not be any better, but as a company it's drastically changed. It's run by a board of local politicians, residents and members of the workers' union, so any controversial decisions to raise rates will be made by the whole community.
But Gonzalo Ugalde, the new head of Semapa, says the real fight is only beginning.
"The people don't see the real problem," he says. "They go to streets to recover the Semapa identity. But now the problem of the water here is very dramatic. The problem is here, in the hills. It is the privatization of the resources, and the main distributor."
Ugalde says investors who were part of the private company that sparked the water war in Cochabamba are now up in the mountains, quietly taking control of the key lakes and water sources for the city.
"Privatization is very important because the water is more important than the gold now," says Ugalde. "The gold is for a few people, but the water is for all people, all around the world. If you obtain control of the water, you can obtain control of the people."
If you'd like to read this (or hear it), here's the link. The page also includes links to other related articles:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/water/bolivia.html
Tuesday, January 4
Handouts we saw in class (Jan 4) - Xingu Reserve & Amazon
Relevant to The Lost City of Z
FYI: in answer to question in class today. Amazon Watch ( http://current.com/1lou54c ) has some recent updates on the Xingu River dam project. The government awarded a concession, and in December 2010 was said to be about to award a license. i.e. Work continues to move forward. This site also notes that the plan for the dam dates back to the days in which the military dictatorship was planning huge "pharaoh" projects that we talked about today in class.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/dec/14/guardianobituaries.brazil
Jan Rochas The Guardian (Obituary)
Orlando Villas Boas, who has died aged 88, was Brazil's most famous sertanista or Indianist, a pioneer who not only helped to hack landing strips out of the rainforest in central Brazil, but tried to defend the indigenous nations who lived there from the deadly consequences of the white man's advance.
... In 1941 he and three of his brothers, Claudio, Leonardo and Alvaro, joined a government expedition to open up and chart the little-known ... central Brazil. At the time Rio de Janeiro was Brazil's capital, and most of the population lived on or near the 4,000 km-long coastline. There were no roads into central Brazil and the dense tropical forests of the Mato Grosso area.
The Roncador-Xingu expedition lasted for 20 years, opening up 1,500 kms of trails, exploring 1,000 kms of rivers, including six previously unmapped ones, carving scores of airstrips out of the forest and founding over three dozen towns. The 14 indigenous nations who lived along the banks of the Xingu River had no previous contact with outside society and it fell to the Villas Boas brothers, by now the leaders, to negotiate with the Indians to allow the expedition to pass.
It was Villas Boas's first contact with a different world, a world that fascinated him for the rest of his life. He always remembered the faces of the Indians in the forest, firing arrows at them. From the start the brothers adopted the code of behaviour bequeathed by the general who laid the telegraph lines through the Amazon in the 1920s, Marshall Candido Rondon: "Die, if need be. Kill, never."
Non-aggression was not the norm in those days: most who ventured into the forest regarded the Indians as savages to be shot like animals. Villas Boas himself said: "On our expedition, the peao (labourer) with the least number of crimes had eight murders under his belt. I lived for 40 years among the Indians and never saw one of them slap another in the face. But we were the ones who were going to civilise [them]."
The Villas Boas brothers realised that the Indians had no protection against the society that would advance along the tracks opened up by the expedition, and from then on Orlando and Claudio, in particular, devoted themselves to creating an area where the indigenous nations of the Xingu area would be safe. They were joined by anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro and public health doctor Noel Nutels, and the result was the Xingu National Park [1961], an area of 26,000 square kms where 15 different previously warring tribes learned to live together. They belonged to the four main language groups of indigenous peoples in Brazil: Aruwak, Karib, Gê and Tupi [Guarani]. The park was the first of its kind in the world.
. . . . . Orlando Villas Boas became the first director of the park. ...To avoid the occasional devastating epidemics of influenza, he arranged with the São Paulo Medical School under Dr Roberto Baruzzi for regular visits by health teams and programmes of vaccination. Today the population of Xingu is increasing.
. . .Over the years the park took in more tribes threatened by the invasion of their lands, including the Kreen-Akarore or Panará, whom Orlando himself had contacted in 1973 when the military regime decided to build a road through their territory. Orlando became disillusioned, saying "each time we contact a tribe, we are contributing to the destruction of what is most pure in it".
The Xingu Park was an innovation for the time; there was no indigenist movement in Brazil. But Villas Boas did not escape criticism from later anthropologists, who accused him of being paternalist and turning the park into a showcase. In the 1970s Orlando and Claudio finally left the Park, and in 1984 the first indigenous director was appointed to run it.
Orlando Villas Boas survived over 250 bouts of malaria, finally succumbing to an intestinal infection which led to a multiple organ failure. . . . He is survived by his wife and two sons, Noel and Orlando Filho, and by his unique creation, the Xingu National Park, today a green oasis surrounded by extensive areas of devastated forest.
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FYI: in answer to question in class today. Amazon Watch ( http://current.com/1lou54c ) has some recent updates on the Xingu River dam project. The government awarded a concession, and in December 2010 was said to be about to award a license. i.e. Work continues to move forward. This site also notes that the plan for the dam dates back to the days in which the military dictatorship was planning huge "pharaoh" projects that we talked about today in class.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/dec/14/guardianobituaries.brazil
Jan Rochas The Guardian (Obituary)
Orlando Villas Boas, who has died aged 88, was Brazil's most famous sertanista or Indianist, a pioneer who not only helped to hack landing strips out of the rainforest in central Brazil, but tried to defend the indigenous nations who lived there from the deadly consequences of the white man's advance.
... In 1941 he and three of his brothers, Claudio, Leonardo and Alvaro, joined a government expedition to open up and chart the little-known ... central Brazil. At the time Rio de Janeiro was Brazil's capital, and most of the population lived on or near the 4,000 km-long coastline. There were no roads into central Brazil and the dense tropical forests of the Mato Grosso area.
The Roncador-Xingu expedition lasted for 20 years, opening up 1,500 kms of trails, exploring 1,000 kms of rivers, including six previously unmapped ones, carving scores of airstrips out of the forest and founding over three dozen towns. The 14 indigenous nations who lived along the banks of the Xingu River had no previous contact with outside society and it fell to the Villas Boas brothers, by now the leaders, to negotiate with the Indians to allow the expedition to pass.
It was Villas Boas's first contact with a different world, a world that fascinated him for the rest of his life. He always remembered the faces of the Indians in the forest, firing arrows at them. From the start the brothers adopted the code of behaviour bequeathed by the general who laid the telegraph lines through the Amazon in the 1920s, Marshall Candido Rondon: "Die, if need be. Kill, never."
Non-aggression was not the norm in those days: most who ventured into the forest regarded the Indians as savages to be shot like animals. Villas Boas himself said: "On our expedition, the peao (labourer) with the least number of crimes had eight murders under his belt. I lived for 40 years among the Indians and never saw one of them slap another in the face. But we were the ones who were going to civilise [them]."
The Villas Boas brothers realised that the Indians had no protection against the society that would advance along the tracks opened up by the expedition, and from then on Orlando and Claudio, in particular, devoted themselves to creating an area where the indigenous nations of the Xingu area would be safe. They were joined by anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro and public health doctor Noel Nutels, and the result was the Xingu National Park [1961], an area of 26,000 square kms where 15 different previously warring tribes learned to live together. They belonged to the four main language groups of indigenous peoples in Brazil: Aruwak, Karib, Gê and Tupi [Guarani]. The park was the first of its kind in the world.
. . . . . Orlando Villas Boas became the first director of the park. ...To avoid the occasional devastating epidemics of influenza, he arranged with the São Paulo Medical School under Dr Roberto Baruzzi for regular visits by health teams and programmes of vaccination. Today the population of Xingu is increasing.
. . .Over the years the park took in more tribes threatened by the invasion of their lands, including the Kreen-Akarore or Panará, whom Orlando himself had contacted in 1973 when the military regime decided to build a road through their territory. Orlando became disillusioned, saying "each time we contact a tribe, we are contributing to the destruction of what is most pure in it".
The Xingu Park was an innovation for the time; there was no indigenist movement in Brazil. But Villas Boas did not escape criticism from later anthropologists, who accused him of being paternalist and turning the park into a showcase. In the 1970s Orlando and Claudio finally left the Park, and in 1984 the first indigenous director was appointed to run it.
Orlando Villas Boas survived over 250 bouts of malaria, finally succumbing to an intestinal infection which led to a multiple organ failure. . . . He is survived by his wife and two sons, Noel and Orlando Filho, and by his unique creation, the Xingu National Park, today a green oasis surrounded by extensive areas of devastated forest.
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This BBC article doesn't have the original images. Just click on the link here if you want to see them.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8626675.stm (BBC April 17, 2010)
A Brazilian court has overturned a ruling that could have delayed building a massive dam on an Amazon tributary.
A judge ruled bidding can go ahead next week for contracts to build the Belo Monte dam on the River Xingu. It would be the third largest dam in the world. The dam is opposed by indigenous groups and environmentalists. They say thousands
of indigenous people will be displaced and a sensitive ecosystem damaged. The government says the dam is crucial for economic development.
In a statement, campaign group Amazon Watch said "the battleis not over. We are committed to supporting Brazilian indigenous peoples who have vowed to fight to stop the BeloMonte dam, one of the most destructive projects ever undertaken in the Amazon." The proposal to build a hydro-electric dam on the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon in the state of Para, has long been a source of controversy. The initial project was abandoned in the 1990s amid widespread protests both in Brazil and around the world. ...
Environmental groups say the Belo Monte dam will cause devastation in a large area of the rainforest and threaten the survival of indigenous groups. ...[T]he lives of up to 40,000 people could be affected as 500 sq km of land would be flooded.
However, the government says whoever is awarded the project will have to pay $800m to protect the environment. The scheme has been modified to take account of fears that it would threaten the way of life of the indigenous peoples who live in the area.
When completed, Belo Monte would be the third largest hydro-electric dam in the world, after the Three Gorges in China and Itaipu, which is jointly run by Brazil and Paraguay.
It is expected to provide electricity to 23 million Brazilian homes. With Brazil's economy continuing to grow, ministers say hydro-electric plants are a vital way to ensure power supplies over the next decade - and at least 70 dams are said to be planned for the Amazon region. Critics say Belo Monte will be hugely inefficient, generating less than 10% of its capacity during the 3-4 months of the low-water season.
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The final pages of The Lost City of Z take place within this reserve. The Xingu dam, discussed above, is to the north of the reserve, but the book ends with a reference to another dam being built just outside this reserve.
I got the above image from:
http://www.amazonteam.org/index.php/231/The_Xingu_Indigenous_Reserve
According to this source, the vibrant agricultural economy of the area, "a lack of federal resources", and the huge area included within the reserve has made it difficult to adequately protect it from encroachment.
I got the above image from:
http://www.amazonteam.org/index.php/231/The_Xingu_Indigenous_Reserve
According to this source, the vibrant agricultural economy of the area, "a lack of federal resources", and the huge area included within the reserve has made it difficult to adequately protect it from encroachment.
Saturday, January 1
Link to Allen article, "To Be Quechua" (due Thurs. Jan. 6)
Author: Catherine J. Allen
Title: "To Be Quechua: The Symbolism of Coca Chewing in Highland Peru."
Journal: American Ethnologist
Vol. 8, No. 1 (Feb., 1981), pp. 157-171
(article consists of 15 pages) Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/644493
The information above will take you to today's reading assignment. You need to log on to the Rutgers' Library and from there find and open this article (or you can go to one of the Rutgers' libraries and use one of their computers, I imagine). You may download it once you have it open, so I don't believe you need to pay to print it out.
After logging on in the RU Library home page, I downloaded this article twice, using two different methods.
1) I used something called "citation linker"
Put in some of the information on the top of this screen, and I got to an abstract of the article on "Wiley Online Library." On the right side of Wiley page, under "article tools", click on "Get PDF (944K)"
2) I also found it through the "Find Articles through Searchlight" link on the library home page (Again, put in some of the necessary info. highlighted in yellow above).
QUESTIONS for Catherine Allen, "To Be Quechua"
1) Does the author express any political motivations?
2) What are the physiological effects of chewing coca?
3) How is the Christian idea of “The Virgin” associated with the indigenous story regarding the origin of coca chewing?
4) What is the “right way to chew coca?” (And what is a k’intu?)
5) Do you think that hallpay are actually similar to a coffee break as Catherine Allen says? In what way? (yes or no)
6) How do the Indians in this region (Andean highlands) view “place”? Put another way, what is the indigenous relationship to the land they live in? What sort of evidence is brought into the article to talk about the Indian connection with the land? (The answer to this question is not really located in just one place in this article).
7) As Catherine Allen says on p. 166, when a local official who is presented with a petition, then rejects the gift of coca offered, he is indicating that he has not accepted the petition. Why? What basic principal of life among the Quechua is involved in this social interaction?
8) Among friends or acquaintances of Sonqu, what does it mean about one’s ethnicity to refuse coca?
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