The State of Resistance: Popular Struggles in the Global South
224
The State of Resistance: Popular Struggles in the Global South
224eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Edited by Francois Polet of the Centre Tricontinental, it includes contributions from key activists and scholars such as Vinod Raina, Michel Warschawski, Maristella Svampa and Mahaman Tidjani.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781848137837 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 07/18/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 537 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The State of Resistance
Popular Struggles in the Global South
By François Polet, Victoria Bawtree
Zed Books Ltd
Copyright © 2007 Centre Tricontinental-CETRIAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84813-083-8
CHAPTER 1
Raúl Zibechi
From Cancún to Mar del Plata: A continent in effervescence
The struggle against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has been the main motive of convergence for the social movements of the continent. From the Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancún (Mexico) in September 2003 to the Fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata (Argentina) in November 2005, the movements grew in unity of action, succeeding in creating an important space for themselves in society and the media, even getting on the agenda of the powerful.
As happened at Cancún, when a wide network of social movements caused the collapse of the conference, at Mar del Plata they succeeded in halting progress on the FTAA. On both occasions the grassroots movements, but also many NGOs, together with the progressive governments in the region, empowered the social protest — but this also imposed limits.
A list of the most important meetings and forums held in 2004 alone (see the box on p. 20) gives an idea of the vigour and range of the convergences on the Latin American continent. These international get-togethers were evolving over a decade but the frequency of the meetings has continued to increase over the last few years. The whole movement culminated at Mar del Plata, where the struggle against the FTAA, which was the objective of a large number of the campaigns and coordinated actions, ended in a resounding victory.
The role played by the indigenous and peasant movements was fundamental. The former started to organize themselves at a continental level at the time of the Continental Campaign for 500 Years of Resistance, which preceded and prepared the counter-demonstrations of 1992 against the celebrations of the anniversary of the 'discovery' of the Americas. The peasant movements have large regional coordinations, like the CLOC (Latin American coordination of organizations in the field) and Via Campesina. While the epicentre of the former is the Andean region, the latter look to Brazil and the Landless Rural Workers' Movement. These two types of movement form the collective subjects who are most conscious of the destruction caused by free trade and it is they who succeeded in putting forward the most credible alternative to the neoliberal model.
The Peoples' Summit at Mar del Plata revealed the gains of the social movements, as well as the new problems they were confronting. It showed that there was a growing awareness of the problems created by the free trade agreements, particularly for agricultural production and the small and medium rural producers. The most recent gain, though one that has been in preparation since the 1990s, is the capacity to organize international and continental campaigns, in which the social forums have played a decisive role, alongside the coordination between peasants, indigenous people and trade unions.
However, at Mar del Plata there were evident signs of new challenges for the movements at a time when there are progressive and left-wing governments in the main Latin American countries. It was indeed the social movement that launched the challenge to halt the FTAA. In 1997, when not a single government in Latin America was hostile to the Washington Consensus, a forum of peasant, trade-union, indigenous and ecologist organizations met in Belo Horizonte and proposed the creation of a broad and diverse social alliance against the integration being dictated by the United States. The first Peoples' Summit took place in Santiago in 1998 and the second in Quebec in 2001. It was this continental campaign against the FTAA that created the conditions for defeating the project for US integration. However, at Mar del Plata it seemed that the activism (protagonismo) was produced by the governments while it was actually a result of actions by the social movements.
As at the World Social Forum in Caracas in January 2006, there tends to be some confusion between governments and movements. It was the latter that, through their struggles, managed to isolate and delegitimize the plans of the imperialists, but now it is the governments who are taking the initiative and attributing successes to themselves. There is no easy solution to the contradiction. It is up to the movements to work out how to operate under governments that very often take over the banners brandished by the social movements but which then act 'from above', reproducing the models of the traditional political culture. There is an urgent need to have a strategic debate, not to reject the viewpoints that are genuinely shared with such governments, but to affirm the necessary autonomy of the movements. As recent history has shown, only the social movements can guarantee the depth and sustainability of the changes to be made.
CHAPTER 2Marcelo Kunrath Silva and Antonio J.F. de Lima
Dilemmas for social actors in Brazil
Understanding the dilemmas and prospects of Brazilian social and political actors engaged in struggles against neoliberalism and the subordination of social life to the interests of capital requires an understanding of these actors and struggles in the context of the historical development of Brazilian society.
Up until almost the end of the nineteenth century (1888), Brazil was still officially a society based on slavery, with a high concentration of land ownership and no clear distinction between the public and the private. Thus the country's structures and political culture were marked by hierarchical principles that excluded the vast majority of its population: poor workers from the rural and urban areas of the country (where almost all the black population were to be found). It was only in the 1930s that this situation began to change, at least partly, through a process of subordinate and selective integration of the dominated classes into the world of citizenship (which has been defined as 'adjusted' or 'permitted' citizenship).
The years from the second half of the 1970s and through the 1980s saw significant changes in these deeply hierarchical and authoritarian patterns. Rooted for the most part in the progressive Catholic discourse of liberation theology, social movements and organizations introduced — unprecedented in the country's history — a new 'subject' into the political scene: the so-called 'popular classes' (poor workers, those living in the urban peripheries, peasants expelled from their land, among others). Breaking with the 'subordinated integration' of the populist periods (1945–64) and the military dictatorship (1964–85), for the first time there were discussions and organizational forms that succeeded in obtaining the support and mobilizing part of the poorest and least educated people in Brazilian society, who had always resisted the efforts of the traditional left-wing political parties to mobilize them. Through this process, 'politics' (which had historically been understood as reserved for the elites and from which little was to be expected) made changes possible that were desired by the poorest people.
Thus, this period saw a strong 'cycle of protests', starting with a growing mobilization outside the institutional channels permitted by the military dictatorship but which gradually, to the extent that they were making democratic conquests, began contesting inside institutional politics. This movement can clearly be seen in the evolution of the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores — PT) which, besides being a result of the process, is also one of its main agents.
Brazilian politics were distinguished in the 1980s and 1990s by the intensity of this cycle of protests and the vitality of its actors. While many of the leading countries were undergoing the dismantling of the welfare state based on neoliberal ideas, in Brazil a broad array of social and political forces were trying, for the first time in history, to build an effective State that recognized, universalized and guaranteed rights. This process brought about the formulation of a new national constitution, called the Citizens' Constitution, in 1988.
These efforts were, however, taking place in a somewhat unfavourable international context, when capitalism was being systematically restructured (creating serious social costs) and when public finances were in a critical situation through external and internal indebtedness.
Thus the situation was ambiguous, which affected the political disputes and social struggles in the country from 1990 to the beginning of the new century. Many of the social and political actors that emerged during the cycle of protests gambled on the possibility that they might be able to influence the orientation of the democracy being created in Brazil — that is, making changes for a more egalitarian and democratic society — through institutional spaces, either the traditional mechanisms of representative democracy (elections, parliaments, executives, political parties) or the new channels of social participation and representation (councils for social policies, management committees on governmental programmes, participatory budgets, etcetera) set up in the 1990s. For them, the victory of Lula in 2002 was the culmination of a process that had been going on for nearly thirty years. During this period new actors entered the political scene and there was a relative democratization in the relationship between State and civil society, as well as governmental policies and programmes to meet the demands of the poorest. In sum, there was a relative halt to the neoliberal strategies for the dismantling of the State and of peoples' rights.
However this gamble (aposta) on the institutional channels and more particularly on the election of Lula had, by 2006, become relatively dicey. The reasons for this frustration can be attributed to three different types of diagnosis. One was identification of the burdensome structural constraints confronted by national governments, especially in peripheral countries. Another was recognition of the dominating structures and their enormous resistance and capacity to act, typical of Brazilian society: combined they represent a considerable force against progressive social and political actors, as well as being an important source for their co-optation and corruption. Finally, there was a vagueness in the new government's programme and a lack of will or ability to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the election victory by taking more radical initiatives vis-à-vis the dominating elites and their interests (particularly as concerns economic policies, which continue to follow the same 'stabilization model' adopted by the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso).
Without entering into the merits of each of these diagnoses, an evident frustration has resulted, which has had a significant impact on the progressive forces of Brazilian society. Lack of a clear political line orienting the actions of the Lula government, which is formed by a coalition of parties with little in common in terms of programmes (with supporters, in some cases, who are clearly opportunistic and 'physiological'), corresponded, in its ambiguity, to the positions of the social organizations and movements who contributed to Lula's victory. During the first two years of his presidency, the social movements did not exert excessive pressure on the government, giving it time to create the conditions necessary for the expected social changes. However, already by 2005, the movements were concluding that the Lula government, because of its complex composition, was unable to make progress at the rate that they demanded. So public pressures became increasingly forceful, as illustrated by the so-called Red April convened by Via Campesina, in 2005 and the National March of the Movimento sem Terra (the Landless Rural Workers' Movement), in which thousands of militants marched over 200 kilometres to Brasilia and made daily criticisms in the media of the federal government.
The ambiguous relationships between the movements, even those most critical, and the Lula government was once again evident when there were accusations of corruption against members of the government. Here the movements took up a dubious position: condemning the corrupt, but supporting the government against what was interpreted as an attack by the right wing to bring down (or at least to weaken) Lula before the 2006 elections.
The present period can, to some extent, be seen as the peak and also the end of that cycle of protests that started in the redemocratization process, of which the PT was the main expression and agent. As a result, there is increasing discussion about the possibilities and limits of bringing about change through the institutional political actors and spaces. In other words, there is now a debate, which was quite common at the beginning of the 1980s (and partially sidelined by the 'gamble' on institutional participation), on the need to complement or, according to a more radical perspective, replace institutional action for more combative and extra-institutional forms of political intervention.
So, while there is a broad front of social actors concentrating their efforts mainly to intervene in the institutional spaces, there is a growing presence and visibility of actors, such as the Movimento sem Terra, the Via Campesina, the Movement of Unemployed Workers, the Movement of the Struggle for Housing and the National Coordination of Struggles, among others, who are oriented towards direct action or confrontation, either with the State or with other social and economic actors. There are also efforts to increase the linkages between actors, such as expressed in the Consulta Popular, with the aim of overcoming isolated struggles, as well as attempts to propose the construction of a new political project that would succeed in unifying the Brazilian popular movements.
Another development arising from this frustration is less visible, but has a strong political impact: the discrediting of and scepticism towards the political institutions, actors and projects that historically marked the attitudes of the population, especially the poorest, are again increasing. As we stressed earlier, 'politics' was, for these people, a term that was always negative, as its institutions were rejected, considered unsuitable for participation. At a particular moment, between the 1970s and 1980s, some of the structures of domination were broken and a small proportion of the population entered the political scene with relative autonomy. Then there was the long march of two decades of intense social and institutional struggle, but with meagre results in terms of effective change in the life of millions of poor Brazilians. It ended with many of these 'new subjects' leaving the scene, having to concentrate on the tough battle for daily survival.
Thus today political frustration, together with the negative effects of an excluding market and growing criminality, has caused significant sectors of society to find themselves in an almost Hobbesian situation of 'war of everyone against everyone'. Because of the lack of organized forms for the construction and expression of social and political conflicts that recognize and legitimize the vast majority of the population, interpersonal violence is increasingly spreading in everyday life.
What will the social organizations and movements and the political parties that still favour an anti-systemic orientation do? This largely depends on their capacity to become effective instruments of the expression — in the framework of political institutions and social struggles — of that part of society that has traditionally been condemned to silence and, as a consequence, reacts with the 'noise' of an increasingly intense violence. It will be a tremendous task to channel this conflict, to give it a political expression, to confront the structures of inbuilt domination and inequality and, especially, to build alternatives that can be perceived as viable. It is, however, very difficult for the social and political actors whose discourses and practices have little meaning for those to whom they are addressed. Their material and financial resources are limited and they are subjected to physical and symbolic violence. Above all there is a generalized disbelief in the power of collective action to bring about change. For all these reasons the social and political actors are not very capable of reaching and mobilizing the great majority of the poorest Brazilians.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The State of Resistance by François Polet, Victoria Bawtree. Copyright © 2007 Centre Tricontinental-CETRI. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
ContentsIntroduction - François Polet
Latin America - Raul Zibechi
Argentina - Maristella Svampa
Bolivia - Pablo Stefanoni
Brazil - Marcelo Kunrath da Silva
Colombia - Mauricio Archila Neira
Mexico - Guillermo Almeyra
Nicaragua - Jose Luis Rocha
Peru - Ramón Pajuelo
Uruguai - Raoul Zibechi
Venezuela - Héctor Lucena
Subsaharan Africa - Demba Moussa Dembele
Botswana - Ian Taylor
Cameroon - Yves Alexandre Chouala -
Congo - Sylvestre Kambaza
Kenya - Frank Matanga
Mozambique - Tereza Cruz e Silva
Nigeria - Femi Aborisade
Niger - Mahaman Tidjani
Senegal - Demba Moussa Dembele
South Africa - Fiona White
North Africa/Middle East - S. Ben Néfissa
Algeria - A. Nasser
Egypt - Azza Khalil
Turkey - Gülçin Erdi Lelandais
Israël and Palestine - M. Warchawski
Morocco - Kamal Lahbib
United Arab Emirates - F. Dazi-Héni
Asia - Teresa Tadem
China - Dan Jinhua
India - V. Raina
Indonesia - Hilmar Farid
Malaysia - Francis Loh
Pacific Islands - Jean-Marc Regnault
Nepal - Arjun Karki
Philippines - Teresa Tadem
Sri Lanka - Jayadeva Uyangoda
Thaïlande - Chantana Banpasirichote Wun'Gaeo