Probably the most devastating impact of empire-building has been on the rural labor force, particularly peasants, small farmers, subsistence farmers, rural laborers and Indian communities. The massive entrée of subsidized agricultural products from the U.S. and European Union has ruined small producers and bankrupted rural cooperatives. In Mexico over two million peasant families - mostly small farmers and Indians have been forced off the land since NAFTA was implemented. In Brazil under President Cardoso’s neo-liberal regime ( 1995-2002 ) over 1.5 million peasant and family farmers have been forced off the land. In Ecuador about one-third of small farmers and peasants, the majority of whom are Indians have been forced off the land in the past decade. The neo-liberal regimes have financed agro-export sectors and starved small scale food producers of credit and technical assistance while opening the floodgates to cheap subsidized food imports. The result has been fourfold: (1) large-scale out-migration to urban slums swelling the unemployed and informal sectors and emigration overseas; (2) the growth of alternative crops, like coca which provides a livable income ( Bolivia, Colombia and Peru ); (3) the growth of a rural landless labor force. To defuse the potential for urban uprisings the World Bank has financed an army of over 10,000 NGO”s to establish “anti-poverty” and “self-help” projects, so-called “local empowerment” activities, to prevent the emergence of mass socio-political movements challenging the empire and its client state. In Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, NGO-based organizations have attached themselves to communities and in some cases to Indian movements, turning them in a more conservative direction. A few poorly funded NGO’s have been active trying to defend the human rights of social movement activists subject to torture, imprisonment and state and para-military violence. More fundamentally powerful rural movements based on economic and ethnic demands have emerged throughout Latin America. The most significant include the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, in Ecuador (CONAIE, FENOCIN and other groups), the Cocoleros of Chapare and several other peasant federations in Bolivia, the National Peasant Federation in Paraguay to name a few. These movements have had a major impact on changing land tenure: the MST has occupied land and settled 350,000 families in less than 20 years. In Ecuador the peasant-Indian movements overthrew two corrupt neo-liberal regimes. Throughout Latin America peasant-Indian movements are a major force in the anti-ALCA, anti-imperialist movement. The “ conversion “ of peasants into landless or subsistence farmers has had a radicalizing impact throughout Latin America. The displacement and appropriation of peasant lands in Colombia by narco-paramilitary forces and the military has increased the ranks of the two guerrilla movements in Colombia. The result of conversion and social organization is that the principle radical opposition to U.S. empire building in many Latin American countries is located in the countryside. In Mexico this is clearly the case with the Zapatista Movement in Mexico which launched its uprising in Chiapas on January 1, 1994 – the day NAFTA was inaugurated. In 2003 the major opposition to he full implementation of NAFTA has been a nationwide rural protest which includes blocking major highways, hunger strikes and threats to destabilize commercial traffic between the U.S. and Mexico. By the second week in January important urban trade unions pledged support to peasant-led demands for NAFTA revision. No other social force in Mexico demonstrates the same capacity as rural labor to mobilize and take direct action to confront empire-building commercial treaties. The empire has uprooted and displaced millions of peasants through unequal trade, state violence and agro-business expansion. lahaine.org/petras/b2-img/030327empire_labor.pdf
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 08:45:09 +0000
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