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The Empire Strikes Back
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Posted on Oct 2, 2016
By Chris Hedges
A boy wears a banner with a stenciled image of Ecuadors President Rafael
Correa during the Alianza PAIS convention in Quito, Ecuador, on Saturday.
Correa is the partys leader.(Dolores Ochoa / AP)
A decade ago left-wing governments, defying Washington and global
corporations, took power in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay,
Bolivia and Ecuador. It seemed as if the tide in Latin America was turning.
The interference by Washington and exploitation by international
corporations might finally be defeated. Latin American governments, headed
by charismatic leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, won
huge electoral victories. They instituted socialist reforms that benefited
the poor and the working class. They refused to be puppets of the United
States. They took control of their nations own resources and destinies.
They mounted the first successful revolt against
neoliberalism(http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376 ;) and corporate
domination. It was a revolt many in the United States hoped to emulate here.
But the movements and governments in Latin America have fallen prey to the
dark forces of U.S. imperialism and the wrath of corporate power. The tricks
long practiced by Washington and its corporate allies have returnedthe
black propaganda; the manipulation of the media; the bribery and corruption
of politicians, generals, police, labor leaders and journalists; the
legislative coups détat; the economic strangulation; the discrediting of
democratically elected leaders; the criminalization of the left; and the use
of death squads to silence and disappear those fighting on behalf of the
poor. It is an old, dirty game.
President Correa, who earned enmity from Washington for granting political
asylum to Julian
Assange(https://www.thenation.com/article/julian-assange-just-began-his-fift
h-year-inside-the-ecuadorian-embassy/) four years ago and for closing the
United States Manta military air
base(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/18/AR20090
91803407.html) in 2009, warned recently that a new version of Operation
Condor is underway in Latin America. Operation Condor, which operated in the
1970s and 80s, saw thousands of labor union organizers, community leaders,
students, activists, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, journalists
and artists tortured, assassinated and disappeared. The intelligence chiefs
from right-wing regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and,
later, Brazil had overseen the campaigns of terror. They received funds from
the United States and logistical support and training from the Central
Intelligence Agency. Press freedom, union organizing, all forms of artistic
dissent and political opposition were abolished. In a coordinated effort
these regimes brutally dismembered radical and leftist movements across
Latin America. In Argentina alone 30,000 people disappeared.
Latin America looks set to be plunged once again into a period of
dictatorial control and naked corporate exploitation. The governments of
Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, which is on the brink of collapse, have had
to fight off right-wing coup attempts and are enduring economic sabotage.
The Brazilian Senate impeached the democratically elected President Dilma
Rousseff. Argentinas new right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, bankrolled
by U.S. hedge funds, promptly repaid his benefactors by handing $4.65
billion to four hedge funds, including Elliott Management, run by
billionaire Paul Singer. The payout to hedge
funds(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/03/29/how-one-hed
ge-fund-made-2-billion-from-argentinas-economic-collapse/) that had bought
Argentine debt for pennies on the dollar meant that Singers firm made $2.4
billion, an amount that was 10 to 15 times the original investment. The
previous Argentine government, under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, had
refused to pay the debt acquired by the hedge funds and acidly referred to
them as vulture funds.
I interviewed Guillaume
Long(https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/361351-neoliberalism-latin-america-
development/ ) , Ecuadors minister of foreign affairs and human mobility,
for my show On Contact last week. Long, who earned a doctorate from the
Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, called
at the United Nations for the creation of a global tax regulatory agency. He
said such an agency should force tax-dodging corporations, which the
International Monetary Fund estimates costs developing countries more than
$200 billion a year in lost revenue, to pay the countries for the natural
resources they extract and for national losses stemming from often secret
corporate deals. He has also demanded an abolition of overseas tax havens.
Long said the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s and 90s were
profoundly destructive in Latin America. Already weak economic controls were
abandoned in the name of free trade and deregulation. International
corporations and banks were given a license to exploit. This deregulation
in an already deregulated environment resulted in anarchy, Long said. The
powerful people had even less checks and balances on their powers, he said.
Neoliberalism is bad in most contexts, Long said when we spoke in New
York. Its been bad in Europe. Its been bad in other parts of the world.
It has dismantled the welfare state. In the context where we already have a
weak state, where institutions are not consolidated, where there are strong
feudal remnants, such as in Latin America, where you dont really have a
strong social contract with institutions, with modernity, neoliberalism just
shatters any kind of social pact. It meant more poverty, more inequality,
huge waves of instability.
Countries saw basic services, many already inadequate, curtailed or
eliminated in the name of austerity. The elites amassed fortunes while
almost everyone else fell into economic misery. The political and economic
landscape became unstable. Ecuador had seven presidents between 1996 and
2006, the year in which Correa was elected. It suffered a massive banking
crisis in 1999. It switched the countrys currency to the U.S. dollar in
desperation. The chaos in Ecuador was mirrored in countries such as Bolivia
and Argentina. Argentina fell into a depression in 1998 that saw the economy
shrink by 28 percent. Over 50 percent of Argentines were thrust into
poverty.
Latin America, Long said, hit rock bottom.
It was out of this neoliberal morass that the left regrouped and took power.
People came to terms with that moment of their history, Long said. They
decided to rebuild their societies and fight foreign interventionism and Id
even say imperialism. To this day in Latin America, the main issue is
inequality. Latin America is not necessarily the poorest continent in the
world. But its certainly the most unequal continent in the world.
Ecuador is an oil producer, Long said. We produce about 530,000 barrels
of oil a day. We were getting 20 percent royalties on multinationals
extracting oil. Now its the other way around. We pay multinationals a fee
for extractions. We had to renegotiate all of our oil contracts in 2008 and
2009. Some multinationals refused to abide by the new rules of the game and
left the country. So our state oil company moved in and occupied the wells.
But most multinationals said OK, well do it, its still profitable. So now
its the other way around. We pay private companies to extract the oil, but
the oil is ours.
Long admitted that there have been serious setbacks, but he insisted that
the left is not broken.
It depends on how you measure success, he said. If youre going to
measure it in terms of longevity, and how long these governments were in
powerin our case were still in power, of course, and were going to win in
February next yearthen youre looking at, more or less in Venezuela 17
years [that leftist governments have been in power], in Ecuador now 10, and
in Argentina and Brazil its 13.
One of the critiques aimed at the left is theyre well-meaning, great
people with good ideas but dont let them govern because the country will go
bust, he said. But in Ecuador we had really healthy growth rates, 5 to 10
percent a year. We had lots of good economics. We diversified our economy.
We moved away from importing 80 percent of energy to [being] net exporters
of electricity. Weve had big reforms in education, in higher education.
Lots of things that are economically successful. Whereas neoliberal,
orthodox economics was not successful in the previous decade.
Long conceded that his government had made powerful enemies, not only by
granting political asylum to Assange in its embassy in London but by taking
Chevron Texaco to court to try to make it pay for the ecological damage its
massive oil spills caused in the Amazon, where the company drilled from the
early 1960s until it pulled out in 1992. It left behind some 1,000 toxic
waste pits. The oil spills collectively were 85 times the size of the
British Petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico and 18 times the size of the
spill from the Exxon
Valdez(http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/oil-and-chemical-spills/signific
ant-incidents/exxon-valdez-oil-spill ) . An Ecuadorean court ordered Chevron
Texaco to pay $18.2 billion in damages, an amount later reduced to $9.5
billion. The oil giant, however, has refused to pay. Ecuador has turned to
international courts in an attempt to extract the money from the company.
Long said that the different between the massive oil spills elsewhere and
the Ecuadorean spills was that the latter were not accidental. [They were
done] on purpose in order to cut costs. They were in the middle of the
Amazon. Normally what youd do is extract the oil and youd have these
membranes so that it doesnt filter through into the ground. They didnt put
in these membranes. The oil filtered into the water systems. It polluted all
of the Amazon(http://amazonwatch.org/work/chevron ;) River system. It
created a huge sanitary and public health issue. There were lots of cancers
detected.
Long said his government was acutely aware that Chevron Texaco has a lot of
lobbying power in the United States, in Wall Street, in Washington.
There are a lot of things we dont see, he said of the campaign to
destabilize his government and other left-wing governments. Benefits we
could reap, investments we dont get because weve been sovereign. In the
case of [Ecuadors closing of the U.S.] Manta air base, wed like to think
the American government understood and it was fine. But it was a bold move.
We said no more. We declared it in our constitution. We had a new
constitution in 2008. It was a very vibrant moment of our history. We
created new rules of the game. Its one of the most progressive
constitutions in the world. It actually declares the rights of nature. Its
the only constitution that declares the rights of nature, not just the
rights of man. We made Ecuadorean territory free of foreign military bases.
There was no other way. But there are consequences to your actions.
One of those consequences was an abortive coup in September 2010 by members
of the Ecuadorean National Police. It was put down by force. Long charged
that many of the Western NGOs in Ecuador and throughout the region are
conduits for money to right-wing parties. Military and police officials,
along with some politicians, have long been on the CIAs payroll in Latin
America. President Correa in 2008 dismissed his defense minister, army chief
of intelligence, commanders of the army and air force, and the military
joint chiefs, saying that Ecuadors intelligence systems were totally
infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA.
There is an international conspiracy right now, certainly against
progressive governments, he said. Theres been a few electoral setbacks in
Argentina, and Venezuela is in a difficult situation. The media frames it in
a certain way, but, yes, sure, Venezuela is facing serious trouble. Theres
an attempt to make the most of the fall of prices of certain commodities and
overthrow [governments]. We just saw a parliamentary coup in Brazil.
[President Rousseff had been] elected with 54 million votes. The Labor Party
in Brazil [had] been in power for 13 years. The only way they [the
rightists] managed to get rid of it was through a coup. They couldnt do it
through universal suffrage.
Long said that even with the political reverses suffered by the left it will
be difficult for the rightists to reinstate strict neoliberal policies.
You have a strong, disputed political ground between a traditional right
and a radical left, he said. A radical left, which has proved it can
reduce poverty, it can reduce inequality, it can run the economy, well, its
got young cadres that have been [government] ministers and so on. I reckon
that sooner or later it will be back in power.
Corporate leviathans and the imperialist agencies that work on their behalf
are once again reshaping Latin America into havens for corporate
exploitation. It is the eternal story of the struggle by the weak against
the strong, the poor against the rich, the powerless against the powerful,
and those who would be free against the forces of imperialism.
There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death, Ernesto Che
Guevara(http://www.biography.com/people/che-guevara-9322774 ;) said. We
cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory
by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any countrys defeat
is a defeat for all of us.
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