Secure Communities—a program created by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE)—escapes public scrutiny due to the fact that it operates at a local level, and in that it officially states that it cannot detain anyone based on appearance.

Nevertheless, official documents obtained by non-governmental organizations in the US, such as the National Day Laborer Organization Network (NDLON), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of New York University, suggest that the program “facilitates and conceals racial profiling.”

The objective of the program is to identify among immigrants those that represent a “high threat” to national security and to deport them to their countries of origin. To do this it requires that affiliated jurisdictions send the fingerprints of the detained to ICE offices, which will ratify their migrant status and, in the case that they have committed a crime, deport them. However, official documents from ICE suggest that many deported immigrants do not have criminal records and are detained solely for their racial profile.

“Although ICE presents Secure Communities as an innocuous information sharing program, it seems designed to function as a dragnet to funnel even more people into the already mismanaged ICE detention and removal system,” the organizations conclude after reviewing the obtained documents. “The numbers tell another story,” they said.

The intentions of the administration of president Barack Obama, who every month deports more immigrants than former president George Bush, is that Secure Communities be a program that covers the entire country by the year 2013.

Spokesmen for the Detention Watch Network, one of the principal civilian watch groups for the detention system in the US, confirmed to Notimex that Secure Communities functions under the premise of “racial profiling.”

It has been eight lean years for the movement of movement since its Seattle high point of 1999. Since September 11th 2001 many activists’ energies have been directed to opposing the invasion and occupation of Iraq, other conflicts in Afghanistan and Lebanon, and abuses of civil liberties and media truth. But the war on terror has also had a deadening effect on oppositional hopes and imagination. Or so it seems to me, an academic in Canada whose political energies have recently been absorbed opposing his university’s making tanks for the US Army. Comrades are engaged in labour organising, post-carbon planning, the self-organisation of the homeless, municipal elections and other projects. But the optimistic sense of another world as not only possible but probable, imminent, has given way to something more sombre. Even in this no-longer-frozen North, the upsurge of popular movements and governments in Latin America is an inspiration. Otherwise, however, horizons have contracted.

Global capitalism appears – by profit levels – robust. Cascading ecological calamities, suddenly peaking oil, another 9/11, or an uncontrolled unwinding of US-China relations could all destabilise the world system. But not only are such scenarios contingent; it is uncertain they would be to the advantage of progressive movements. Neo-fascists, fundamentalists and martial law capitalists could be the beneficiaries, unless intellectual and organisational preparation lays the ground for a better alternative.

It therefore seems important to renew the discussion of what we want: to think through not just what we are against, but what we are fighting for (and hence who ‘we’ are), and to consider what might be plausibly achieved in present circumstances. Many movement activists and intellectuals are currently addressing this task, here and in other forums. My contribution will be to propose and discuss ‘commonism’.

‘Commons’ is a word that sums up many of the aspirations of the movement of movements. It is a popular term perhaps because it provides a way of talking about collective ownership without invoking a bad history – that is, without immediately conjuring up, and then explaining (away) ‘communism’, conventionally understood as a centralised command economy plus a repressive state. Though some will disagree, I think this distinction is valid; it is important to differentiate our goals and methods from those of past catastrophes, while resuming discussions of a society beyond capitalism.

The initial reference of ‘commons’ is to the collective lands enclosed by capitalism in a process of primitive accumulation running from the middle ages to the present. Such common agrarian lands are still a flashpoint of struggle in many places. But today commons also names the possibility of collective, rather than private ownership in other domains: an ecological commons (of water, atmosphere, fisheries and forests); a social commons (of public provisions for welfare, health, education and so on); a networked commons (of access to the means of communication).

Let us extend this term ‘commons’ in a slightly unfamiliar way. Marx suggested capitalism has a cell-form, a basic building block, from which all its apparatus of commerce and command are elaborated. This cell form was the commodity, a good produced for sale between private owners.

If the cell form of capitalism is the commodity, the cellular form of a society beyond capital is the common. A commodity is a good produced for sale, a common is a good produced, or conserved, to be shared. The notion of a commodity, a good produced for sale, presupposes private owners between whom this exchange occurs. The notion of the common presupposes collectivities – associations and assemblies – within which sharing is organised. If capitalism presents itself as an immense heap of commodities, ‘commonism’ is a multiplication of commons.

The forces of the common and the commodity – of the movement and the market – are currently in collision across the three spheres we mentioned before: the ecological, the social and the networked.

In the ecological sphere, decades of green struggle have disclosed how the market’s depletion and pollution of nature destroys the common basis of human life. This destruction runs from pesticide poisoning to clear-cutting to species-extinctions. What now highlights this process is global warming. The prospect of chaotic climate change destroying agriculture, water supply and coastland around the planet (although, as usual, most devastatingly in the South) throws into sharp relief the scale of ecological crisis. It also definitively displays the inadequacy of the ‘free market’ and its price system as a social steering system. The scale of intervention now necessary is indicated by George Monbiot’s recent ten-point plan to address global warming: targets for rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, borne primarily by the developed North; individual carbon quotas; high-energy efficiency building regulation; banning and taxation of high-emission devices; diversion of public funds from ‘defence’ and road building to clean energy and public transport systems; freezes and reductions in air travel and out of town superstores. One can debate every point in this prescription. But if Monbiot is even close to correct, the remedy required exceeds anything the market, even as ‘green business’, can do. It demands regulation, rationing and major public investment. Global warming (alongside other ecological crises, from fish stocks to water tables) puts back on the table precisely what neoliberalism attempted to erase: massive social planning.

In the social sphere, the red thread of labour, socialist and communist movements traces the attempt to replace the class divisions of capitalism with various forms of common wealth. Defeating this challenge was the mission of neoliberalism. It has had great success. Precisely because of this, intensifying global inequalities are now having universal consequences. The afflictions of what Mike Davis calls the ‘planet of slums’ cannot be walled off from the planet of malls. They return as disease (HIV/AIDS and other pandemics) or insurgency (‘terror’). In this context, two movement initiatives have picked up the issue of ‘common wealth’ in innovative ways. One is the movement of ‘solidarity economics’ focused on cooperative enterprises of various sorts and associated with the success of the Latin American left. I discuss this later. The other is a set of proposals and campaigns around what is variously known as a ‘basic’ or ‘guaranteed’ income, which, by assuring a modest level of subsistence, saves human life from utter dependence on a global labour market. Such programmes also address feminist political economists’ point about the market’s systemic non-reward of reproductive work (care of children and households). Basic income was initially proposed in the global North West, and in that context can be criticised as a supplement to an already-affluent welfare state. But basic income has recently appeared as a policy initiative in Brazil and South Africa. Some groups have proposed and costed a basic global income of $1 a day. Insignificant in a North American context, this would double the monetary income of the one billion plus people officially designated as living in extreme poverty. If one thinks this utopian, consider the $532 billion 2007 US defence budget. Again, there are more than enough debates to be had about a global basic income: it might, for example, be better conceived not as a cash economy payment but as a basic ‘basket of goods’ or a guaranteed global livelihood. But the failure of trickle-down market solutions to poverty and inequality (even in the midst of a global boom), and the increasing extremity of the consequences, creates opportunities for new common-wealth activism.

In the network sphere, the failure of the market appears in a different way – as capital’s inability to make use of new technological resources. Computers and networks have created the increasing capacities for extremely fast, very cheap circulation of communication and knowledge. These innovations were made outside of the market, in a strange encounter between public funded science (the military/academic sector) and libertarian (and sometimes revolutionary) hackers. Capital’s contribution has been to try and stuff these innovations back within the commodity form, realising their powers only within the boundaries of information property and market pricing. But digital innovation has persistently over-spilled these limits. Peer-to-peer networks and free and open source software movements have taken advantage of the possibilities for the reproduction of non-rivalrous goods and collaborative production to generate networked culture whose logic contradicts commercial axioms. The movement of movements realised these potentials in its early weaving of what Harry Cleaver called an ‘electronic fabric of struggle,’ using the internet to circumvent corporate media and circulate news, analysis and solidarity. Increasingly, however, free and open source software and P2P constitute an electronic fabric of production, equipping people with a variety of digital tools for everything from radio broadcasts to micro-manufacturing. Capital is attempting to repress these developments – through incessant anti-piracy sweeps and intellectual property (IP) battles – or co-opt them. But alternatives beyond what it will allow are expressed in ‘creative commons’, ‘free cooperation’ and ‘open cultures’ movements contesting the intellectual property regime of the world market.

All three domains – ecological, social and networked – evidence major market failures. Each illustrates the failures of a commodity regime, though in distinct ways. Ecological disaster is the revenge of the market’s so-called negative externalities, that is, the harms whose price is not, and indeed cannot be, calculated in commercial transactions. Intensifying inequality, with immiseration amidst plenitude, displays the self-reinforcing feedback loops of deprivation and accumulation intrinsic to market operations. Networks show the market’s inability to accommodate its own positive externalities, that is, to allow the full benefits of innovations when they overflow market price mechanisms. Together, all three constitute a historical indictment of neoliberalism, and of the global capitalist system of which it is only the latest, cutting-edge, doctrine.

Also in all three domains, movements are proposing, as alternatives to these market failures, new forms of commons. These too vary in each domain, although, as I will argue in a moment, they also overlap and connect. In the ecological sphere, commons provisions are based primarily on conservation and regulation (but also on public funding of new technologies and transportation systems). In the social sphere, a global guaranteed livelihood entails a commons built on redistribution of wealth, while solidarity economies create experimental collectively-managed forms of production. In the case of the networked commons, what is emerging is a commons of abundance, of non-rivalrous information goods – a cornucopian commons.

Of course, these three spheres are in reality not separable; any life-activity resonates in all three, so that, for example, ecological and networked activities are always social commons – and vice-versa. Indeed, my argument is that the form of a new social order, commonism, can be seen only in the interrelation and linkage of these domains – in a circulation of the common.

Marx showed how in capitalism, commodities moved in a circuit. Money is used to purchase labour, machinery and raw materials. These are thrown into production, creating new commodities that are sold for more money, part of which is retained as profit, and part used to purchase more means of production to make more commodities… repeat ad infinitum. Different kinds of capital – mercantile, industrial and financial – played different roles in this circuit. So, for example, the transformation of commodities into money is the role of merchant capital, involved in trade; actual production is conducted by industrial capital; and the conversion of money capital into productive capital is the task of financial capital (banks, etc).

We need to think in terms of the circulation of commons, of the interconnection and reinforcements between them. The ecological commons maintains the finite conditions necessary for both social and networked commons. A social commons, with a tendency towards a equitable distribution of wealth, preserves the ecological commons, both by eliminating the extremes of environmental destructiveness linked to extremes of wealth (SUVs, incessant air travel) and poverty (charcoal burning, deforestation for land) and by reducing dependence on ‘trickle down’ from unconstrained economic growth. Social commons also create the conditions for the network commons, by providing the context of basic health, security and education within which people can access new and old media. A network commons in turn circulates information about the condition of both ecological and social commons (monitoring global environmental conditions, tracking epidemics, enabling exchanges between health workers, labour activists or disaster relief teams). Networks also provide the channels for planning ecological and social commons – organising them, resolving problems, considering alternative proposals. They act as the fabric of the association that is the sine qua non of any of the other commons.

Let’s suppose that a publicly-funded education institution (social commons) produces software and networks that are available to an open source collective (networked commons), which creates free software used by an agricultural cooperative to track its use of water and electricity (ecological commons). This is a micro model of the circulation of the common.

This is a concept of the common that is not defensive, not limited to fending off the depredations of capital on ever-diminishing collective space. Rather it is aggressive and expansive: proliferating, self-strengthening and diversifying. It is also a concept of heterogeneous collectivity, built from multiple forms of a shared logic, a commons of singularities. We can talk of common earth, a common wealth and common networks; or of commons of land (in its broadest sense, comprising the biosphere), labour (in its broadest sense, comprising reproductive and productive work) and language (in its broadest sense, comprising all means of information, communication and knowledge exchange). It is through the linkages and bootstrapped expansions of these commons that commonism emerges.

This concept has a clear affinity with the movements of solidarity economics that emerged from Latin America and are now gaining increasing attention in North America and Europe. Broadly defined, these aim to link self-managed and worker-owned collectives, cooperative financial organisations and socially-responsible consumption practices to create expanding economic networks whose surpluses are invested in social and ecological regeneration. Euclides Mance, one of the theorists of the movement, writes of such ‘socially based cooperation networks’ reinforcing their component parts until ‘progressive boosting’ enables them to move from a ‘secondary, palliative or complementary sphere of activity’ to become a ‘socially hegemonic mode of production’. This type of activity – to which, I think, basic income programmes would be complementary – seems to resemble the sort of cell-growth of commons envisaged here.

Mance says that this process is ‘not about the political control of the State by society’, but about ‘the democratic control of the economy by society’. Latin American activists will, however, be much better aware than I that the creation of grass roots alternative networks goes better with protection, support and even initiation at a state level. For that reason, one might think of the circulation of the common as involving not only a lateral circuit between ecological, social and networked domains, but also a vertical circuit between new subjectivities, autonomous assemblies (solidarity networks, cooperatives, environmental and community groupings) and governmental agencies.

The movement of movements has been tacitly split between autonomist and anarchist groups, with strong anti-statist perspectives, and socialist and social democratic movements, committed to governmental planning and welfare functions. Rather than either repressing this tension, or replaying it ad infinitum, it may be both more interesting for both sides and closer to the real practice of many activists to think about the potential interplay of these two poles.

Commons projects are projects of planning: the regulation of carbon emissions (or other ecological pollutants), the distribution of a basic income (or of public health or education) or the establishment of networked infrastructures are all extremely difficult on any large scale without the exercise of governmental power.

The nightmare of previously existing socialisms was the assumption by this governmental planning power of despotic bureaucratic forms. The antidote is a pluralistic planning processes, which involves a multiplicity of non-state organisations capable of proposing, debating and democratically determining what directions governmental planning takes. Thus a requirement of ‘commonist’ government is the cultivation of the conditions in which autonomous assemblies can emerge to countervail against bureaucracy and despotism, and provide diversity and innovation in planning ideas. Planning and anti-planning have to be built into each other: there should always be, to quote Raymond Williams, at least two plans.

As George Caffentzis has pointed out, neoliberal capital, confronting the debacle of free market policies, is now turning to a ‘Plan B’, in which limited versions of environmental planning terms (e.g. pollution trading schemes) community development and open-source and file sharing practices are introduced as subordinate aspects of a capitalist economy. But the question hanging over this encounter is which logic will envelope and subordinate the other: who will subsume who?

Commonism scales. That is, it can and must be fought for at micro and macro, molecular and molar, levels; in initiatives of individual practice, community projects and very large scale movements. If the concept is at all meaningful, it is only because millions of people are already in myriad ways working to defend and create commons of different sorts, from community gardens to peer-to-peer networks.

In my view, however, a commonist project would gain coherence and focus by agreement on a set of high level demands to be advanced in the ecological, social and network spheres at the national and international level, demands that could be supported by many movements even as they pursue other more local and specific struggles and projects. These demands might include some briefly discussed here: for example, a guaranteed global livelihood, carbon-emission rationing and adoption of free and open-source software in public institutions.

Such demands would be radical but not, in a negative sense, utopian. Success would not mean we had won: it is conceivable that capitalism could persist with these provisions, although they would represent a planetary ‘New Deal’ of major proportions. But achieving them would mean, first, that the movement of movements had won something, averting harms to, and bestowing benefits on millions; and, second, it would mean that we were winning: these altered conditions would create opportunities for new collective projects and waves of organising that could effect deeper transformations, and the institutions of new commons.

The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based  institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much  more aggressive way than white people.

Saying the US criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some  circles.  But the facts are overwhelming.  No real debate about that.  Below I  set out numerous examples of these facts.

The question is – are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or  are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as  intended?  Is the US criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control  millions of African Americans?

Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system –  from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal  representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom.   Look what these facts show.

One.   The US has seen a surge in arrests and putting people in jail over the  last four decades.  Most of the reason is the war on drugs.  Yet whites and  blacks engage in drug offenses, possession and sales, at roughly comparable  rates – according to a report on race and drug enforcement published by Human  Rights Watch in May 2008.  While African Americans comprise 13% of the US  population and 14% of monthly drug users they are 37% of the people arrested for  drug offenses – according to 2009 Congressional testimony by Marc Mauer of The  Sentencing Project.

Two.  The police stop blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than  whites.  In New York City, where people of color make up about half of the  population, 80% of the NYPD stops were of blacks and Latinos.  When whites were  stopped, only 8% were frisked.  When blacks and Latinos are stopped 85% were  frisked according to information provided by the NYPD.  The same is true most  other places as well.  In a California study, the ACLU found blacks are three  times more likely to be stopped than whites.

Three.  Since 1970, drug arrests have skyrocketed rising from 320,000 to close  to 1.6 million according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S.  Department of Justice.

African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher  than the rate for whites – according to a May 2009 report on disparity in drug  arrests by Human Rights Watch.

Four.  Once arrested, blacks are more likely to remain in prison awaiting trial  than whites.  For example, the New York state division of criminal justice did a  1995 review of disparities in processing felony arrests and found that in some  parts of New York blacks are 33% more likely to be detained awaiting felony  trials than whites facing felony trials.

Five.  Once arrested, 80% of the people in the criminal justice system get a  public defender for their lawyer.  Race plays a big role here as well.  Stop in  any urban courtroom and look a the color of the people who are waiting for  public defenders.  Despite often heroic efforts by public defenders the system  gives them much more work and much less money than the prosecution.  The  American Bar Association, not a radical bunch, reviewed the US public defender  system in 2004 and concluded “All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if  they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or what is  occurring…The fundamental right to a lawyer that America assumes applies to  everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for  countless people across the US.”

Six.  African Americans are frequently illegally excluded from criminal jury  service according to a June 2010 study released by the Equal Justice  Initiative.  For example in Houston County, Alabama, 8 out of 10 African  Americans qualified for jury service have been struck by prosecutors from  serving on death penalty cases.

Seven.  Trials are rare.  Only 3 to 5 percent of criminal cases go to trial –  the rest are plea bargained.  Most African Americans defendants never get a  trial.  Most plea bargains consist of promise of a longer sentence if a person  exercises their constitutional right to trial.  As a result, people caught up in  the system, as the American Bar Association points out, plead guilty even when  innocent.  Why?  As one young man told me recently, “Who wouldn’t rather do  three years for a crime they didn’t commit than risk twenty-five years for a  crime they didn’t do?”

Eight.  The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the  federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white  offenders for the same crimes.  Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project reports  African Americans are 21% more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentences  than white defendants and 20% more like to be sentenced to prison than white  drug defendants.

Nine.  The longer the sentence, the more likely it is that non-white people will  be the ones getting it.  A July 2009 report by the Sentencing Project found that  two-thirds of the people in the US with life sentences are non-white.  In New  York, it is 83%.

Ten.  As a result, African Americans, who are 13% of the population and 14% of  drug users, are not only 37% of the people arrested for drugs but 56% of the  people in state prisons for drug offenses.  Marc Mauer May 2009 Congressional  Testimony for The Sentencing Project.

Eleven.  The US Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the chance of a  black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32% or 1 in three.  Latino males  have a 17% chance and white males have a 6% chance.  Thus black boys are five  times and Latino boys nearly three times as likely as white boys to go to jail.

Twelve.  So, while African American juvenile youth is but 16% of the population,  they are 28% of juvenile arrests, 37% of the youth in juvenile jails and 58% of  the youth sent to adult prisons.  2009 Criminal Justice Primer, The Sentencing  Project.

Thirteen.  Remember that the US leads the world in putting our own people into  jail and prison.  The New York Times reported in 2008 that the US has five  percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prisoners, over  2.3 million people behind bars, dwarfing other nations.  The US rate of  incarceration is five to eight times higher than other highly developed  countries and black males are the largest percentage of inmates according to ABC  News.

Fourteen.  Even when released from prison, race continues to dominate.  A study  by Professor Devah Pager of the University of Wisconsin found that 17% of white  job applicants with criminal records received call backs from employers while  only 5% of black job applicants with criminal records received call backs.  Race  is so prominent in that study that whites with criminal records actually  received better treatment than blacks without criminal records!

So, what conclusions do these facts lead to?  The criminal justice system, from  start to finish, is seriously racist.

Professor Michelle Alexander concludes that it is no coincidence that the  criminal justice system ramped up its processing of African Americans just as  the Jim Crow laws enforced since the age of slavery ended.  Her book,The New  Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness sees these facts as  evidence of the new way the US has decided to control African Americans – a  racialized system of social control.   The stigma of criminality functions in  much the same way as Jim Crow – creating legal boundaries between them and us,  allowing legal discrimination against them, removing the right to vote from  millions, and essentially warehousing a disposable population of unwanted  people.  She calls it a new caste system.

Poor whites and people of other ethnicity are also subjected to this system of  social control.  Because if poor whites or others get out of line, they will be  given the worst possible treatment, they will be treated just like poor blacks.

Other critics like Professor Dylan Rodriguez see the criminal justice system as  a key part of what he calls the domestic war on the marginalized.  Because of  globalization, he argues in his book Forced Passages, there is an excess of  people in the US and elsewhere.  “These people”, whether they are in Guantanamo  or Abu Ghraib or US jails and prisons, are not productive, are not needed, are  not wanted and are not really entitled to the same human rights as the  productive ones.  They must be controlled and dominated for the safety of the  productive.  They must be intimidated into accepting their inferiority or they  must be removed from the society of the productive.

This domestic war relies on the same technology that the US uses  internationally.   More and more we see the militarization of this country’s  police.  Likewise, the goals of the US justice system are the same as the US war  on terror – domination and control by capture, immobilization, punishment and  liquidation.

What to do?

Martin Luther King Jr., said we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of  values. A radical approach to the US criminal justice system means we must go to the  root of the problem.  Not reform.  Not better beds in better prisons.  We are  not called to only trim the leaves or prune the branches, but rip up this unjust  system by its roots.

We are all entitled to safety.  That is a human right everyone has a right to  expect.  But do we really think that continuing with a deeply racist system  leading the world in incarcerating our children is making us safer?

It is time for every person interested in justice and safety to join in and  dismantle this racist system.  Should the US decriminalize drugs like  marijuana?  Should prisons be abolished?  Should we expand the use of  restorative justice?  Can we create fair educational, medical and employment  systems? All these questions and many more have to be seriously explored.  Join  a group like INCITE, Critical Resistance, the Center for Community Alternatives,  Thousand Kites, or the California Prison Moratorium and work on it.  As  Professor Alexander says “Nothing short of a major social movement can dismantle  this new caste system.”

Bill Quigley is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights
and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at
quigley77@gmail.com

It seems the presidents of both countries have neglected to realize that they are using the same arguments as their enemies when they accuse social movements of being part of the “international communist subversion” or of being financed by “Moscow gold”. They’re making two mistakes in one: believing that the indigenous can be manipulated, and believing that the manipulation comes from outside the country. It isn’t surprising that the indigenous have interpreted the statements of their presidents as insults meant to distract attention from real problems.

However, it is possible that USAID, a United States aid organization, has infiltrated some social movements and encouraged actors to protest against the government, as per statements by the Vice President of Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera. He notes that, of the 100 million dollars that USAID invests in his country, 20 million is used for technical costs and the rest “for their friends and their political clients, for sponsoring courses, publications and groups that promote conflict”[3].

The social organizations involved in the protests refused funding from USAID, though what is most striking is that this critique hasn’t come to light before, but just when people have begun to demonstrate against the government. The head minister of Hydrocarbon in Morales’ administration went even further and reminded the president that he owed everyone an explanation as to why he allowed USAID, the World Bank and European ONGs to design the current Plurinational State. In fact, “In 2004, USAID financed the Coordinating Unit for the Constitutional Assembly”, among other official activities[4].

The Indigenous March in Bolivia

On June 17, hundreds of indigenous people came together in the lowlands of Trinidad, the capital of the Province of Beni, five hours from Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Their intention was to ascend four thousand meters from the rain forest region, marching 1,500 kilometers on foot until arriving at La Paz. The Confederation of Indigenous People of Bolivia (CIDOB), which unites 34 nations from the orient which are organized in eleven regions, brought together protesters supported by the National Council of Qullasuyu Ayllus and Markos (CONAMAQ).

These are two of the main indigenous organization that formed the Pact of Unity during the Constitutional Assembly in 2006, and which have strongly supported Morales’ administration until now. The other three, the powerful Unique Confederation of Rural Laborers of Bolivia, the Confederation of Original Communities of Bolivia (CSCB) and the Bartolina Sisa National Federation of Peasant Women, continue to support the government.

Since the beginning of the year, the CIDOB has negotiated the Framework Law of Autonomy with the Minister of Autonomy, Carlos Romero. They have reached a consensus on 50 articles, though they continue to debate another thirteen[5]. Their disagreements rest on two basic points. Firstly, indigenous people have demanded that agreements be approved for uses and customs, whereas the State has asked for a referendum. The second point has to do with indigenous territories that cross departmental lines; the people have requested that their autonomy also cross these lines.

At its core, this is a matter of sovereignty. The people of the lowlands demand that the communities have the ability to veto the business ventures, particularly mining and hydrocarbon concessions, which affect their territories. They also want the number of seats in the Plurinational Assembly go from seven to eighteen. After coming into power, the government decided to negotiate separately with some of the regional branches of the CIDOB in order to divide the movement. This is why the march that left Trinidad on June 22 was held up few days afterward in Asunción de Guarayos, 400 kilometers from Santa Cruz, where an official delegation reached an eight point agreement with the CIDOB[6].

The second government strategy was to pit Indians against Indians. President Morales turned to an assembly of six coca leaf farmer unions who repudiated the CIDOB march and expressed their willingness to impede it[7]. Former government spokesperson, Alex Contreras Baspineiro, noted that “before finding a pacific and mutually agreed upon decision, the government began an expensive media campaign in an attempt to discredit the indigenous mobilization”[8]. “In five years of government, we have never seen this kind of division, not to mention the threats of violent confrontations”, he added.

The third government strategy was defamation, as the protesters were accused of being financed by USAID. The president of CIDB, Adolfo Chávez, rejected the accusation, reminding the government that the protesters have problems accessing sufficient food and medicine. He went on to present a challenge: “We dare the government to remove the USAID from the country, and then we’ll see who is affected” [9].

Contreras is a recognized Bolivian social journalist who participated in the First March for Territory and Dignity in 1990. This march is credited with being the beginning of the reconstruction of social movements at the height of the neoliberal period. He was celebrated by the national media for his commitment and special coverage of indigenous marches. In the march that began in Trinidad he met Pedro Nuni, representative of the Mojeño people and currently a Movement for Socialism (MAS) deputy, who told him that “some of the ministers of the indigenous government are turning indigenous against indigenous” [10].

One of the results of the march is that the government lost its two thirds majority in parliament (111 votes over 166), as eight indigenous representatives decided to move away from the MAS. In short, Contreras believes that if the government continues to refuse to negotiate it could endanger the country’s governability. This is why he believes that “a confrontation between indigenous organizations or the demonization of leaders” is not the answer, rather, above all, negotiation and “rescuing a pillar of this process of change: the culture of life, of peace, of dialogue and social compromise” [11].

Nevertheless, the government rejected the primary demands of the CIDOB, arguing that if they put them into affect they would be violating the constitution. Minister Romero argued that some of these demands “fail to respect the rights of all Bolivians”, because they only benefit a particular sector, and cannot give the indigenous peoples greater representation than the percent of the country’s population they comprise[12].

CONAIE versus Correa

The presidential summit of The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America was held on June 5. The eight presidents convened in Otavalo, about 60 kilometers north of Quito, a city with a Quichua majority. Despite the issue at hand, indigenous organizations were not invited to attend. This is why the CONAIE decided to install their Plurinational Parliament in the same city, with the intention of insisting that there can be no plurinationality without indigenous peoples.

Around three thousand people participated in a peaceful march through the city. They sang and danced in honor of the Inty Raymi, the Andean New Year, and they also remembered the twentieth anniversary of the first Indian uprising, which began the mobilization process which finally brought Rafael Correa to presidency. Mounted policemen stood guard over the building where the summit was held, and their horses were frightened by the arrival of the protesters when they reached the door to deliver a letter to their “brother” Evo Morales.

The indigenous are in opposition to the government over water laws and concessions to mining companies. This has caused numerous demonstrations, strikes, blockades and uprisings[13]. The conflict between the CONAIE and the government isn’t new, though it has now acquired a more serious tinge due to judicial accusations against the leaders. On the next day of the summit, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Province of Imbabura, where Otavalo is located, began an investigation against the indigenous organizations.

According to this investigation, “a group of citizens of indigenous race” broke the police barrier around the ALBA meeting “shouting slogans which disturbed public order”, and the main damage occurred when a policeman was “robbed of his handcuffs”. On these grounds, the leaders of the CONAIE and Ecuarunari (the Quechua organization of the highlands) are being accused of nothing less than “sabotage and terrorism” [14]. This is a very serious accusation which aims to intimidate the leaders.

According to lawyer and university professor Mario Melo, at the heart of the problem is that the CONAIE’s presence outside of the meeting grounds “made evident, before national and international public opinion, that the organizations which represent the many nationalities and peoples of Ecuador are being excluded from the process of defining the political policies that concern them” [15]. There has been a political response disguised as legal action in order to “intimidate and demobilize” the movements.

The indigenous leaders reacted to the challenge. Marlon Santi, president of the CONAIE, came before the public prosecutor to hear the charges and give his version of the events. On July 5, a joint communication from Ecuarunari and CONAIE indicated that the accusations of terrorism lack legal grounds and are “a political persecution of the indigenous movement and its leaders for the simple act of disagreeing with government policies” [16].

The message contains a reminder that article 98 of the new constitution recognizes the “right to resistance” when rights are endangered. And it ends with a sentence that anticipates more confrontations: “The legal charges against the leaders only serve to make evident the mean spiritedness of the rulers, as well as a serious threat to the peace and democracy of Ecuadorians”.

Pérez Guartambel, president of the Azuay Union of Community Water Systems in Cuenca, was also accused of sabotage and terrorism because of a massive protest in his town, Tarqui, on May 4. The Women’s Pachamama Defense Front has made similar complaints. Though the phenomenon that is not so wide spread in Bolivia, all signs point to the fact that the process taking place in Ecuador implies a deep rupture between social movements and the government.

There is a chasm between the two, and the dividing line is the national project and so called “development”. Correa is convinced that the greatest threat to his project, which he calls “twenty first century Socialism”, come from what he calls the “infantile” left and from environmental and indigenous groups which he claims reject modernity. He criticizes those who “say no to petroleum, to mines, to using our non renewable resources. It’s like a beggar sitting on a bag full of gold”[17].

Taking the Plurinational State to Task

The social and political processes in both countries are like two peas in a pod. Both approved a Plurinational State and new constitutions, but when it came time to apply their ideas they were faced with serious obstacles. The indigenous base groups and the urban popular sectors brought Morales and Correa to power, and those same groups are now protesting against “their” governments. In both cases, the governments opted for mineral and petroleum extractivism in order to ensure fiscal profits, instead of working toward the Buen Vivir, as per their promises.

The Federation of Neighborhood Councils of El Alto (FEJUVE), one of the most important social organizations in Bolivia, published a harsh document called the Political Manifesto of the Sixteenth Ordinary Congress[18]. It states that “in spite of having an indigenous president like Evo Morales, the State continues to be governed by a creole oligarchy” because “it continues to maintain a capitalist economic system and a neoliberal political system”. The document goes on to say that the poor people continue to be “politically dominated”, “economically exploited” and “racially and culturally marginalized”.

Even more troubling, “The MAS government, after stepping into power, has merely used the indigenous peoples and members of popular sectors for their political campaigns, but they continue to be excluded from political decisions and are only used by the government to legitimize itself and as stepladders to their seats of power”. Furthermore, it demands that the government not interfere in social organizations, that there be a change in the behavior of Vice President Álvaro García Linera and his colleagues, who are defined as “enemies of the peasant and indigenous class”, and it supports the march of the peoples of the Orient.

Both the tone and the content are intense. The FEJUVE isn’t just any organization; it was one of the protagonists of the Bolivian gas conflict, in October of 2003, which led to the fall of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and caused the collapse of neoliberalism. Right now, the group is considering asking for the resignation of Morales. In Ecuador, the CONAIE is also very important; it has been the protagonist of a dozen uprisings since 1990, and has toppled three governments. Breaking off with any of these organizations is very serious for any government, and is especially serious for those that rely on them for support.

What can be seen here are the first cracks in the Plurinational State, a building which still hasn’t been fully constructed. These cracks are appearing because there is a potent dispute for power. The original peoples have no reason to accept the framework of the Nation State, which is what the Plurinational State is based on. Two perspectives can be noted which attempt to shed light on this process.

Albert Acosta, Ecuadorian economist and former president of the Constitutional Assembly, posits that it is crucial that laws be passed in language that is rooted in everyday life. If this doesn’t happen, no matter how advanced the Constitution is it will mean nothing. The problem is that President Correa believes that laws about water and communication aren’t important, which, for Acosta, is the same as saying that “the Constitution is neither fundamental nor a priority”. He wonders: “Could it be that President Correa sees the Constitution as a straight jacket?” [19]

He believes that opposition from the right, which opposed the Constitution, is setting up road blocks for the laws in order to impede change. Oh the other hand, “Correa’s method of governing, which is, essentially, a knock down and run over leadership, leaves no room for debate”. His conclusion is that the Constitution that was meant to rediscover the government “is tied up in a political bundle that doesn’t guarantee its validity”. At the government level “there is a sort of legal counterrevolution” which is not supported by society at large.

Bolivian writer and philosopher Rafael Bautista maintains that rediscovering the Bolivian State without strengthening the participation of original nations implies no change whatsoever or can be seen as “pure cosmetology”. But if there isn’t a rediscover which is to say, decolonization, “what happens is nothing more than the reconstruction of the feudal aspects of the State” [20]. To put it briefly, the rebuilding of a colonial State founded on the belief in its superiority over the Indians. This structure is perpetuated in the Plurinational State, because it is a model which has not changed at any basic level.

Bautista says that “change no longer consists of the transformation of the content of the new State”, but has become “a subordinated adaptation of the plurinational to the functional needs of the State’s institutionality”. This is precisely what the response to the march has revealed: a sentiment of superiority over the Indians (they are manipulated, they don’t act on their own accord, says the government) and the impossibility for the State to be anywhere other than “on top” and in the center.

The essence of plurinationality is rooted in the opening up of the decision making arena, which is an opening up of power. “Plurinationality doesn’t refer to a quantitative sum of actors, but to the qualitative way in which decisions are made and enacted: we are effective at being plural when we open up the decision making arena”. And this is what isn’t happening; this is why Bautista says that the current government “governs not by obeying, but by giving orders”.

The government hasn’t restructured power to include original peoples, but has shuffled it around between local governments and mayor’s offices. That is, it reproduces the logic of privilege, because these have been the spaces of the local elite since the colonial period. The march demonstrates a refusal to transform the State in a limited way solely in order to improve its “performance”. This is what Bautista means when he talks about “the feudal paradox put into practice”. The indigenous protest is a clear indication of the transparency of the so called decolonization of the State.

The original peoples, who have created new conditions for their liberty, will not continue to tolerate political marginalization. They know that the State needs to exploit natural resources to pay its bills, but they also know that this logic leads to destruction. This is why they have decided to protest; they were strong enough to bring neoliberalism to a standstill, and now they refuse to lose their opportunity.

Raúl Zibechi is an international analyst for Brecha of Montevideo, Uruguay, lecturer and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser to several social groups. He writes a monthly column for the Americas Program (www.cipamericas.org)

Translated by Jenny Marie Forsythe

Resources

Alberto Acosta, “Rafael Correa nos invita a violar la Constitución”, diario Expreso, Guayaquil, June 26, 2010.

Alex Contreras Baspineiro, “Indígenas contra indígenas”, ALAI, June 29, 2010.

Andrés Soliz Rada, “Evo y Usaid”, Bolpress, July 3, 2010.

FEJUVE El Alto, “Manifiesto político del XVI Congreso Ordinario”, June 27, 2010.

“Lucha Indígena” No. 47, July 2010, Cuzco.

María José Rodríguez, “El iceberg tras las luchas por los recursos”, Bolpresss, July 2, 2010.

Mario Melo, “La justicia penal como arma de represión política”, Red de Comunicadores Interculturales Bilingües del Ecuador, July 1, 2010.

Patricia Molina, “Crónica d ela VII Marcha Indígena por la autonomía y ladignidad”, Bolpress, July 7, 2010.

Rafael Bautista, “Bolivia: ¿Qué manifiesta la marcha indígena?”, Bolpress, June 30, 2010.

For more information:

Indigenous Peoples in Brazil: the Challenge of Autonomy

http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/1772

One Year since the Bagua Massacre: New Actors Facing a State in Crisis

http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2572

[1] Telesur TV, source: www.telesurtv.net June 25, 2010.

[2] “La mano de EE.UU. en el conflicto indígena”, source: www.prensamercosur.com.ar July 2, 2010.

[3] La Jornada, June 26, 2010.

[4] Andrés Soliz Rada, “Evo y USAID”, Bolpress, July 3, 2010.

[5] Patricia Molina in Bolpress, July 7, 2010.

[6] “Detienen temporalmente la marcha indígena”, Bolpress, July 7, 2010.

[7] Agencia Boliviana de Información (ABI), July 5, 2010.

[8] “Indígenas contra indígenas”, ALAI, June 29, 2010.

[9] Idem and agencies.

[10] Idem.

[11] Idem.

[12] Agencia Boliviana de Información, July 8, 2010.

[13] See: “Ecuador: Se profundiza la guerra por los bienes comunes”, Americas Program, October 19, 2009.

[14] Mario Melo, “La justicia penal como arma de represión política”, July 1, 2010 source: www.redci.org

[15] Idem.

[16] “La ‘revolución ciudadana’ persigue a los dirigentes indígenas y sociales del país”, CONAIE and Ecuarunari, July 5, 2010.

[17] Reuters, July 6, 2010.

[18] FEJUVE, June 27, 2010 source: www.alminuto.com.bo

[19] Interview with Alberto Acosta in Expreso, Guayaquil, June 26, 2010.

[20] Rafael Bautista, “¿Qué manifiesta la marcha indígena?”, Bolpress, June 30, 2010.

I spoke with Alberto Acosta, ex-Minister of Energy and Mines, and ex-President of the Constituent Assembly, in his Quito office on July 8, 2010.

Jeffery R. Webber: In a few words, can you describe your political formation and political trajectory?

Alberto Acosta: I’m an economist. I’ve worked as an international consultant and as a university professor. I’ve been an advisor to social movements, to the indigenous movement. I’ve been involved in various struggles in the last few years which are trying to build a country based in equality, liberty, and justice. In the early part of the Rafael Correa government, I was the Minister of Energy and Mines and the President of the Constituent Assembly.

JW: As a former Minister of Energy and Mines, can you talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the economic model being advanced by the Correa government in the current conjuncture?

AA: We can’t talk about the economic development model of only this government. Stretching way back, Ecuador has had a model of accumulation based on the extraction of natural resources. Ecuador has been a country based in the production of bananas, flowers, shrimp, and oil, and there are people who now believe that it can be a country based in mining production.

In reality, we’ve been living off the rent of nature. In the last few decades, since the 1970s, Ecuador has had as its principal source of revenue the exploitation of oil – the extraction of crude oil and the export of oil into the international market. This is a fundamental characteristic of the Ecuadorean economy. And this has not changed substantively under the government of Correa.

It’s true that he’s sought greater participation of the state in generating the oil rent. There’s been a certain increase of state control over oil activities. There’s been an attempt to increase the efficiency and to strengthen the state oil company. And the state’s greater take of the oil rent has allowed for improvements in education, health, and social welfare.

But at the root of things, the fact that Ecuador has an economy dependent on natural resources has not been altered, and we remain highly dependent on our insertion into the world market.

JW: You were also President of the Constituent Assembly. Can you talk about this process, and the advances and setbacks related to the new Constitution.

AA: The new constitution opened the door for a series of profound changes. Its statutes guarantee the construction of a plurinational state. This means the incorporation for the first time of marginalized groups, like indigenous peoples and nationalities, and Afro-Ecuadoreans. The constitution mandates respect for their unique ways of life and community organizing, and a new way of structuring the state in general.

The Constitution also commits the country to “living well,” or sumak kawsay, in Quichua, which is an entirely distinct way of understanding development. It’s another form of development. It’s an alternative to development, an alternative not within development, but an entirely different concept to development. Along these lines, the Constitution guarantees the rights of nature. Nature is a subject with rights in the Constitution. Ecuador’s Constitution is the only one in the world with this characteristic.

The Constitution also notes that water is a fundamental human right, not just access to water, but water itself. Water is a strategic patrimony. Water is part of biodiversity. It is central to nature.

JW: How do you explain the contrast between, on the one hand, the rhetoric of the Correa government – “citizens’ revolution,” “twenty-first century socialism” – and, on the other, the tense relations, often open clashes, between this government and prominent social movements?

AA: These phrases, citizens’ revolution and twenty-first century socialism, have to be understood in their full context. Socialism of the twenty-first century has absolutely no meaning. It has no meaning. We need to rescue socialism from the errors of the last century, but we can’t do this by promoting some kind of “new age” socialism. For me, twenty-first century socialism has no meaning, it is pure rhetoric.

The phrase citizens’ revolution is what popular struggles in Ecuador proposed and struggled for beginning in 2006 and 2007. Lamentably, it would appear that the Correa government has its doubts about making a revolution in reality. The very things this government proposed initially it is failing to make a reality; it is failing to respect the integral components of the new Constitution. This is the crucial thing to take note of.

At the moment, the “citizens’ revolution” suffers from a major deficit of citizens’ involvement.

JW: And the contradictions with the social movements, the indigenous movements, government accusations of “terrorism and sabotage”?

AA: I believe that these types of accusations are tremendously shameful for the country. They have no basis in justice or a democratic judicial system. Even during the period of the neoliberal governments, when social movements and the indigenous movement were massively involved in protests – there were never accusations of terrorism. This is a question that is putting the citizens’ revolution itself at risk. It would appear that there are forces that are configuring themselves in a type of counter-revolution, without citizenship.

JW: For Canadian readers, can you describe some of the conflicts in the mining sector, and the role of Canadian companies, because they have a massive presence in this country.

AA: Without a doubt. Look, Canadian companies have been very active in this country for some years. One could say that Canadian companies were the primary beneficiaries of the new disposition of the mining laws throughout the early 2000s. These laws were meant to strengthen the presence of mining companies in Ecuador. This was a project pushed forward by the World Bank, and which received support from the governments of that epoch. We’re talking about the neoliberal epoch.

Canadian companies were the ones who took advantage of the new laws with the greatest enthusiasm, to invest in Ecuador. Canadian companies have expanded their presence in various regions of the country. In the Cordillera de Condor, in the Intag Valley, and elsewhere. They’ve managed to win a huge number of mining concessions. Ecuador gave out over 5,000 concessions in an irresponsible manner, without any controls or criteria. The great majority of these concessions were concentrated in the hands of just a few companies, Canadian companies.

We can also see how some Canadian companies, such as Ascendant Copper, have tried to impose their objectives in an authoritarian manner in the country. They have established schemes of paramilitarism, in order to divide the communities of Intag, to intimidate these communities, and to impose mining activities.

I was personally a witness to how this company mobilized people to protest against my presence as Minister of Energy and Mines at the time because my politics ran against this type of corruption. I remember receiving threats and having rocks thrown at me during a meeting in the city of Ibarra, in the province of Imbabura. We saw how they acted, and how they threatened the communities. Thanks to the struggles of these very communities, and the actions of the Ministry of Energy and Mines at the time, we managed to disarm these paramilitaries, and achieved some justice. But there are still many problems in the region. I believe it’s important to highlight these events and what they signify.

JW: Shifting themes, we’ve seen a shift to the left in Latin America – full of contradictions, but nonetheless a shift – over the last decade. What has Ecuador’s role been inside this regional turn to the Left?

AA: There has been a series of very interesting processes in Latin America – in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. However, none of these new processes have managed to overcome the economic structures of extractivism. Bolivia continues to be dependent, even more dependent than before, on natural gas. Bolivia is making concerted efforts to extend oil, gas, and mineral extraction. In Ecuador the orientation is toward ongoing exploitation of oil. Although, one has to highlight the proposals of Ecuador to leave the oil under the ground in the National Park of Yasuni, which is positive. But, in general, it’s clear that there is no coherent position against the extractive model. There is a lot of talk of transformation and revolution, but it continues to be more of the same.

As I suggested, I don’t think there’s anything to what they’re calling socialism of the twenty-first century. What we’re witnessing instead is a neo-extractivism of the twenty-first century.

JW: In the long term, what does Ecuador need to change in its development model?

AA: What we need to do in the medium- to long-term is overcome this model of accumulation. We need another way to organize the economy, which is not so dependent on the exploitation of natural resources. We need to move from an extractive economic model, to one based in the knowledge, and forces, and needs of human beings, individual and collective. We also need another way of inserting ourselves into the world market that is more intelligent than simply providing raw materials. We need to start producing other kinds of products for the international market. But more than anything, fundamentally, we need to strengthen the internal market and to strengthen regional integration in Latin America. Ecuador needs to break with the extreme concentration of assets and income, and change the pattern. We need to achieve equality if there is to be justice and freedom. This is what we need. And this requires a lot of democracy. Always more democracy, and never less.

Jeffery R. Webber teaches politics at the University of Regina. He is the author of Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (Brill, 2010), and Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation and the Politics of Evo Morales (Haymarket, 2011).

]]> http://www.elkilombo.org/alberto-acosta-on-the-new-extractivism-2/feed/ 0 http://www.elkilombo.org/alberto-acosta-on-the-new-extractivism/ http://www.elkilombo.org/alberto-acosta-on-the-new-extractivism/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:59:35 +0000 El Kilombo http://www.elkilombo.org/?p=960 Written by Jeffery R. Webber Monday, 12 July 2010 09:54 I spoke with Alberto Acosta, ex-Minister of Energy and Mines, and ex-President of the Constituent Assembly, in his Quito office on July 8, 2010.

Jeffery R. Webber: In a few words, can you describe your political formation and political trajectory?

Alberto Acosta: I’m an economist. I’ve worked as an international consultant and as a university professor. I’ve been an advisor to social movements, to the indigenous movement. I’ve been involved in various struggles in the last few years which are trying to build a country based in equality, liberty, and justice. In the early part of the Rafael Correa government, I was the Minister of Energy and Mines and the President of the Constituent Assembly.

JW: As a former Minister of Energy and Mines, can you talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the economic model being advanced by the Correa government in the current conjuncture?

AA: We can’t talk about the economic development model of only this government. Stretching way back, Ecuador has had a model of accumulation based on the extraction of natural resources. Ecuador has been a country based in the production of bananas, flowers, shrimp, and oil, and there are people who now believe that it can be a country based in mining production.

In reality, we’ve been living off the rent of nature. In the last few decades, since the 1970s, Ecuador has had as its principal source of revenue the exploitation of oil – the extraction of crude oil and the export of oil into the international market. This is a fundamental characteristic of the Ecuadorean economy. And this has not changed substantively under the government of Correa.

It’s true that he’s sought greater participation of the state in generating the oil rent. There’s been a certain increase of state control over oil activities. There’s been an attempt to increase the efficiency and to strengthen the state oil company. And the state’s greater take of the oil rent has allowed for improvements in education, health, and social welfare.

But at the root of things, the fact that Ecuador has an economy dependent on natural resources has not been altered, and we remain highly dependent on our insertion into the world market.

JW: You were also President of the Constituent Assembly. Can you talk about this process, and the advances and setbacks related to the new Constitution.

AA: The new constitution opened the door for a series of profound changes. Its statutes guarantee the construction of a plurinational state. This means the incorporation for the first time of marginalized groups, like indigenous peoples and nationalities, and Afro-Ecuadoreans. The constitution mandates respect for their unique ways of life and community organizing, and a new way of structuring the state in general.

The Constitution also commits the country to “living well,” or sumak kawsay, in Quichua, which is an entirely distinct way of understanding development. It’s another form of development. It’s an alternative to development, an alternative not within development, but an entirely different concept to development. Along these lines, the Constitution guarantees the rights of nature. Nature is a subject with rights in the Constitution. Ecuador’s Constitution is the only one in the world with this characteristic.

The Constitution also notes that water is a fundamental human right, not just access to water, but water itself. Water is a strategic patrimony. Water is part of biodiversity. It is central to nature.

JW: How do you explain the contrast between, on the one hand, the rhetoric of the Correa government – “citizens’ revolution,” “twenty-first century socialism” – and, on the other, the tense relations, often open clashes, between this government and prominent social movements?

AA: These phrases, citizens’ revolution and twenty-first century socialism, have to be understood in their full context. Socialism of the twenty-first century has absolutely no meaning. It has no meaning. We need to rescue socialism from the errors of the last century, but we can’t do this by promoting some kind of “new age” socialism. For me, twenty-first century socialism has no meaning, it is pure rhetoric.

The phrase citizens’ revolution is what popular struggles in Ecuador proposed and struggled for beginning in 2006 and 2007. Lamentably, it would appear that the Correa government has its doubts about making a revolution in reality. The very things this government proposed initially it is failing to make a reality; it is failing to respect the integral components of the new Constitution. This is the crucial thing to take note of.

At the moment, the “citizens’ revolution” suffers from a major deficit of citizens’ involvement.

JW: And the contradictions with the social movements, the indigenous movements, government accusations of “terrorism and sabotage”?

AA: I believe that these types of accusations are tremendously shameful for the country. They have no basis in justice or a democratic judicial system. Even during the period of the neoliberal governments, when social movements and the indigenous movement were massively involved in protests – there were never accusations of terrorism. This is a question that is putting the citizens’ revolution itself at risk. It would appear that there are forces that are configuring themselves in a type of counter-revolution, without citizenship.

JW: For Canadian readers, can you describe some of the conflicts in the mining sector, and the role of Canadian companies, because they have a massive presence in this country.

AA: Without a doubt. Look, Canadian companies have been very active in this country for some years. One could say that Canadian companies were the primary beneficiaries of the new disposition of the mining laws throughout the early 2000s. These laws were meant to strengthen the presence of mining companies in Ecuador. This was a project pushed forward by the World Bank, and which received support from the governments of that epoch. We’re talking about the neoliberal epoch.

Canadian companies were the ones who took advantage of the new laws with the greatest enthusiasm, to invest in Ecuador. Canadian companies have expanded their presence in various regions of the country. In the Cordillera de Condor, in the Intag Valley, and elsewhere. They’ve managed to win a huge number of mining concessions. Ecuador gave out over 5,000 concessions in an irresponsible manner, without any controls or criteria. The great majority of these concessions were concentrated in the hands of just a few companies, Canadian companies.

We can also see how some Canadian companies, such as Ascendant Copper, have tried to impose their objectives in an authoritarian manner in the country. They have established schemes of paramilitarism, in order to divide the communities of Intag, to intimidate these communities, and to impose mining activities.

I was personally a witness to how this company mobilized people to protest against my presence as Minister of Energy and Mines at the time because my politics ran against this type of corruption. I remember receiving threats and having rocks thrown at me during a meeting in the city of Ibarra, in the province of Imbabura. We saw how they acted, and how they threatened the communities. Thanks to the struggles of these very communities, and the actions of the Ministry of Energy and Mines at the time, we managed to disarm these paramilitaries, and achieved some justice. But there are still many problems in the region. I believe it’s important to highlight these events and what they signify.

JW: Shifting themes, we’ve seen a shift to the left in Latin America – full of contradictions, but nonetheless a shift – over the last decade. What has Ecuador’s role been inside this regional turn to the Left?

AA: There has been a series of very interesting processes in Latin America – in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. However, none of these new processes have managed to overcome the economic structures of extractivism. Bolivia continues to be dependent, even more dependent than before, on natural gas. Bolivia is making concerted efforts to extend oil, gas, and mineral extraction. In Ecuador the orientation is toward ongoing exploitation of oil. Although, one has to highlight the proposals of Ecuador to leave the oil under the ground in the National Park of Yasuni, which is positive. But, in general, it’s clear that there is no coherent position against the extractive model. There is a lot of talk of transformation and revolution, but it continues to be more of the same.

As I suggested, I don’t think there’s anything to what they’re calling socialism of the twenty-first century. What we’re witnessing instead is a neo-extractivism of the twenty-first century.

JW: In the long term, what does Ecuador need to change in its development model?

AA: What we need to do in the medium- to long-term is overcome this model of accumulation. We need another way to organize the economy, which is not so dependent on the exploitation of natural resources. We need to move from an extractive economic model, to one based in the knowledge, and forces, and needs of human beings, individual and collective. We also need another way of inserting ourselves into the world market that is more intelligent than simply providing raw materials. We need to start producing other kinds of products for the international market. But more than anything, fundamentally, we need to strengthen the internal market and to strengthen regional integration in Latin America. Ecuador needs to break with the extreme concentration of assets and income, and change the pattern. We need to achieve equality if there is to be justice and freedom. This is what we need. And this requires a lot of democracy. Always more democracy, and never less.

Jeffery R. Webber teaches politics at the University of Regina. He is the author of Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (Brill, 2010), and Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation and the Politics of Evo Morales (Haymarket, 2011). ]]> http://www.elkilombo.org/alberto-acosta-on-the-new-extractivism/feed/ 0 http://www.elkilombo.org/obamas-immigration-crackdown-continues/ http://www.elkilombo.org/obamas-immigration-crackdown-continues/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:51:08 +0000 El Kilombo http://www.elkilombo.org/?p=958 Why Obama’s “Secure Communities” Program May be More Dangerous Than Arizona (originally posted at Counterpunch.org)

By STEWART J. LAWRENCE

It’s one of the Obama administration’s most important and secretive immigration enforcement programs. But despite growing concerns from civil libertarians and immigration activists about the way the program’s been designed and implemented, it’s caused barely a ripple in Congress or in the establishment media. And the White House continues to stonewall those seeking release of basic details about the program.

Known euphemistically as “Secure Communities,” the program looks and sounds innocuous, and even beneficial. Why shouldn’t the nation’s jails be equipped with a federal database to help identify illegal immigrants who’ve been convicted of serious felonies like rape and murder to ensure that they’re deported — rather than released back into civilian life after they’ve completed their sentence?

Because that’s not what Secure Communities is actually being used for, in fact. Rather than weed out incarcerated felons that could menace the public order, the program’s been targeting low-level misdemeanor offenders, including people who may be guilty of little more than running a stop sign or driving with a broken taillight.

And because those targeted by the program are “screened” through a special database at the time they’re arrested, Secure Communities is actually focused on criminal suspects – those merely accused of wrongdoing – not aliens already convicted and serving time.

Even worse, according to the federal government’s own data, it turns out that many of these people, even the low-level offenders, are innocent. But they are getting rounded up and processed for deportation just the same.

Secure Communities started as a pilot program in North Carolina and Texas in October 2008, in the waning days of the Bush administration. At present, more than 450 separate jurisdictions in at least 24 states, epecially on the US-Mexico or US-Canada border, are working with the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to implement the program.

That’s more than six times the number of jurisdictions cooperating with DHS to implement Section 287(g), a separate immigration enforcement program that allows state and local police to request federal training to identify and apprehend aliens. That program’s come under fire for much the same reason Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law has: it diverts precious police resources away from serious crime fighting, and critics charge it also leads to racial profiling.

But rather than abandon Section 287(g) outright, Obama last summer agreed to scale the program back. But not so with Secure Communities.

In fact, Obama’s quietly moving to fast-track the program. Nearly two-thirds of the cooperating jurisdictions have signed on in the past six months alone. And by 2013, under the Obama plan, all 3,100 of the nation’s jails in all 50 states are slated to have the Secure Communities database in place.

And who is on the current list? Arizona, of course. Last December, Gov. Jan Brewer signed an agreement with DHS that authorized all of the jails in the state to help remove illegal aliens brought in for booking.

Which makes the Obama administration’s recent lawsuit against Arizona seem hypocritical – if not downright Orwellian, in fact.

Given widespread public support for Arizona’s new enforcement crackdown, many Americans might well support Secure Communities, too. But it would help if they knew more about the program so they could make an informed decision.

But Obama won’t release basic details about how the program operates, or what it’s accomplished to date. In late June, the Center for Constitutional Rights and other legal groups sued Obama and the DHS under the Freedom of Information Act demanding that they release those details. The Justice Department has yet to respond to the their suit.

And it’s not just illegal aliens who could suffer the effects of this program. DHS has admitted that its database has a 5% rate of “false positives,” meaning legal immigrants and even US citizens who are wrongly identified as illegal aliens but still subject to deportation.

Right now, the numbers involved are relatively small. But a 5% error rate for tens of thousands of criminal suspects who will eventually be screened annually could add up to thousands of wrongly detained persons – and millions of dollars in lawsuits.

There’s also the danger that over-zealous police departments could decide to go after illegal aliens who are congregated on street corners looking for work, charge them with “loitering,” knowing full well they’ll be identified as illegal aliens once they’re are booked at a local jail, and run through the new federal database.

Currently, many of these aliens carry false IDs and there’s no way of knowing whether they’re legal or not. Eventually, the new database, which is based on more secure identification documents, will allow such a determination to be made.

Another point at issue is that local jurisdictions appear to have no authority to opt out of the Secure Communities program. San Francisco, a leading “sanctuary” city, recently tried to pass a resolution against Secure Communities, but California’s Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown, who’s running for Governor in a tight election in which controversy over immigration figures prominently, rebuffed the city.

What should DHS do? At a minimum, it should release all operational details about Secure Communities immediately. Continued secrecy only undermines the public trust. DHS director Janet Napolitano should also appear before the relevant congressional subcommittees to answer questions about the program.

In the interim, DHS should scale back the scope of the program to accord with its stated guidelines – targeting “criminal” aliens. One option is to limit the database screening to persons already convicted and incarcerated. Another more expansive option: allow criminal suspects to be screened – but only those accused of the same major felonies.

In the final analysis, it’ a question of policy “congruence.” Obama has said that he is stepping up immigration enforcement to make it possible to convince Congress to pass a legalization program. But stepped up enforcement is supposed to target future illegal aliens, not those currently living here who should qualify for legalization.

Unless illegal aliens are convicted felons – which would deny them the right to be legalized anyway – Secure Communities shouldn’t be focused on the illegal alien population generally.

Unless Obama’s planning to drop the legalization program, and abandon comprehensive immigration reform altogether. But if he is, he should say so. And preferably before November.

Stewart J. Lawrence is a Washington, DC-based an immigration policy specialist. He can be reached at stewartlawrence81147@gmail.com

During this year’s Black History Month, like last, we will be treated to celebrations of Obama’s presidency — the ultimate symbol, we are told, of America’s triumph over its ugly history of discrimination, exclusion, and racial caste. This is a time to rejoice, it is said, though we still have a long way to go.

That is the dominant racial narrative today among those who claim to care about racial justice: Look how far we have come, but yes we still have a long way to go.

Here are a few facts that run counter to that racial narrative:

• There are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
• As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
• If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits — much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.

There is a colorblind explanation for all this: crime rates. But crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the past few decades — and currently are at historical lows — but imprisonment rates have soared. Quintupled. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth.

That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nation’s prisons and jails, which are overflowing with black and brown drug offenders.

The clock has been turned back on racial progress in America, though scarcely anyone seems to notice. All eyes are fixed on people like Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey who have defied the odds and achieved great power, wealth and fame.

But what if Obama, who has admitted to violating our nation’s drug laws, had been treated like a common criminal — what if he hadn’t been insulated by growing up in Hawaii and attending a predominately white university — where would he be now? Most likely, he would be cycling in and out of prison, trapped in the parallel social universe that exists for those labeled felons. Far from being president of the United States, he might be denied the right to vote. He would be subject to many of the same forms of discrimination, stigma, and social exclusion that we supposedly left behind. How many black men and boys are trapped in this undercaste who might have been president of the United States? We will never know.

This is not Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream. As described in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness the cyclical rebirth of caste in America is a recurring racial nightmare.