rain and the rhinoceros

There is an “atheism” that is closer at hand and more dangerous to our church. It is the atheism of capitalism, in which material possessions are set up as idols and take God’s place. Here, in a capitalism that idolizes money and “human goods”, is a danger for us as serious as the other, and perhaps more than the other, which gets the blame for all evils. Which is more serious: to deny God out of a false idea of human liberation, or to deny him out of selfishness raised to the level of idolatry? Who are the greater hypocrites, those who believe in this world to the point of denying openly what is transcendent, or those who use what is transcendent and religious as a tool and justification for their idolatry of the earth? 

(more…)

Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, especially those of you who hate me, you who have hands stained with murder, with torture, with atrocity, with injustice - be converted. I love you deeply. I am sorry for you because you go on the way to ruin.

I address those who have caused so many injustices and acts of violence, those who have brought tears to so many homes, those who have stained themselves with the blood of so many murders, those who have hands soiled with tortures, those who have calloused their consciences, who are unmoved to see under their boots a person abased, suffering, perhaps ready to die. To all them I say: no matter your crimes. They are ugly and horrible, and you have abased the highest dignity of a human person, but God calls you and forgives you. And here perhaps arises the aversion of those who feel they are laborers from the first hour. How can I be in heaven with those criminals? Brothers and sisters, in heaven there are no criminals. The greatest criminal, once he has repented of his sins, is now a child of God.

- Archbishop Oscar Romero

The attempt to relate the message of liberation theology to the middle-class church of the United States is replete with difficulties. The primary reason for this is that liberation theology is most fundamentally the cry of the poor and the oppressed, and the United States is the richest and most powerful country in the world. Indeed, the United States has been the target of much criticism from the mouths of liberation theologians, not least for its unwavering support of oppressive regimes in Latin America, the birthplace of modern day liberation theology. For this reason, the church in the United States has not been free from the criticisms launched by liberation theology either. From the perspective of liberation theologians, the middle and upper classes of the United States have been complicit in the policies of oppression that have plagued Latin America and much of the developing world. In the eyes of liberationists, the church in the United States does not have a good record of resisting such policies. This paper will explore the challenge that liberation theology poses to the church in the United States and First World Christians in general.

To be fair, there is a significant, albeit small, portion of the middle-class church in the United States that supports efforts of liberation in Latin America and other impoverished parts of the world. Although there is still much work yet to be done by way of communicating the message of liberation theology to the First World, a concerted effort has been made to relay the present plight of much of the world’s population. For instance, on a number of occasions John Paul II addressed the need for Christians living in the First World to stand in solidarity with poor. As a result of the growing recognition of the phenomenon of globalization, recent Catholic social thought has also emphasized the need for solidarity and continues to advocate “the preferential option for the poor.” Indeed, the Catholic social tradition is filled with incisive social critiques. In many ways, Rerum novarum prefigured and set the stage for liberation theology. Eighty years later with the liberationists in mind Pope Paul VI addressed the “flagrant inequalities that exist in the economic, cultural, and political development of nations” and called for all Christians to be actively involved in social reform (Brady 2).

The official teaching of the Catholic church has also been quite critical of certain elements of liberation theology, particularly its dependence on Marxism. Drawing from Marx’s critique of capitalism, many liberationists have advocated the abolition of private property, which runs against much of the tradition of Catholic social thought. The Vatican has also been critical of support for violent modes of resistance, which has not always been absent from liberation theology. As Brady points out, “A key point for critics of Liberation Theology was its ambiguity on the question of violence and revolution” (Brady 15). In my estimation, there is no doubt that the magisterium’s sharp criticism of some elements of liberation theology has had the unfortunate effect of stifling communication of the core challenge that liberation theology poses to First World Christians. Although the magisterium’s criticisms are often theologically justified, they nonetheless tend to provide First World Christians with a convenient way out of any feeling of moral culpability.

In response to the accusation that liberation theology supports violence, Dom Helder Camara argues that people living in poverty suffer from systemic violence. He writes, “It is common knowledge that poverty kills just as surely as the most bloody war. . . Look closely at the injustices in the underdeveloped countries, in the relations between the developed world and the underdeveloped world. You will find that everywhere the injustices are a form of violence. One can and must say that they are everywhere the basic violence No. 1″(Brady 16). Camara’s argument has the effect of turning the question of violence onto the First World Christians. He laments, “The young are losing confidence in the churches, which affirm beautiful principles, great texts, remarkable conclusions, but without ever deciding, at least so far, to translate them into real life” (Brady 16). Camara refers to the resistance of “violence No. 1″ as “violence No. 2.” He writes, “Let us repeat fearlessly and ceaselessly: injustices bring revolt” (Brady 16). The common response of governments, in the name of public order and national security, is to respond with violent repression, “violence No. 3.” Camara concludes, “If violence is met by violence, the world will fall into a spiral of violence; the only true answer to violence is to have the courage to face the injustices that constitute violence No. 1″ (Brady 17).

Camara’s conclusion poses a challenge to First World Christians and especially middle-class Christians living in the United States. In response to liberation theology and the teachings of the Catholic social tradition, many First World Christians seek to live in solidarity with the poor in Latin America and around the world. Indeed, when First World Christians read stories from the liberationists about the plight of the Third World, we are moved and feel a sense of compassion. When we read the accounts of Archbishop Oscar Romero taking a stand against injustice, we admire his courage and there is a real sense in which we would like to stand with him. All of this is good, however, what we sometimes forget is that we are the oppressors! We, by virtue of being First World Christians play a part in the spiral of violence. The challenge of Camara’s argument to First World Christians is that we are violence No. 1.

For Christians in the United States it is crucial to remember that the neo-liberal economic models imposed on Latin America, the torture techniques of the counterinsurgency, and many of the weapons used to commit atrocities in the region, come from the United States. It would be disingenuous for us therefore to simply state that we are in solidarity with Latin Americans, without recognizing the part we play in the grave injustices. In his letter Paul condemns the Corinthians for worshipping idols (10:14-21) and eating while others go hungry (11:21-22), for “there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (10:17). William Cavanaugh reflects on what this might mean for First World Christians. He writes, “Discerning the body must mean being able to identify truthfully where the body is not whole, where divisions exist.” When the church discerns the body the divisions that exist are made clear. Fortunately, as Cavanaugh points out, “our eucharistic communion gives us hope that this is not the final word. Besides shining a light on the divisions that exist, discerning the body includes an exercise in dissolving those divisions, blurring the lines between ‘them’ and ‘us.’” The plight of the Latin Americans of which the liberationists speak also truly becomes the plight of the First World Christians. As Cavanaugh states, “Christ invites us to experience that suffering as our suffering, suffering that takes place in our very body. What a difference that would make in the tolerance we have for the outrages done in our name.”

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fullyexpresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one-day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.Amen.

Attributed to Archbishop Romero, written by Bishop Kenneth Untener

“Thirty Years Later, I Walk the Streets of My Hometown Fearing That I May Run Into One of Them”

By TITO TRICOT

The night became darker that precise moment when the room exploded into a thousand sparks that burnt your flesh, making your bones and your fragile certainties shudder. For being there, naked and blindfolded, at their mercy, there were neither smiles nor turquoise oceans, nor carnations or pink sunsets. All of a sudden life had become only a frail instant suspended in a thick and desperate breath of air, mercilessly pierced by electricity. The world was painfully reduced to that tiny space between our eyes and that filthy blindfold, a permanent reminder that our world was shattered early one cloudy morning when the Chilean military took over power and did what the military do: kill.

And kill they did, but also arrest and torture myriads of men and women whose only crime was to think differently. Thinking became dangerous to this modern age inquisition that allowed no criticisms and declared the obsolescence of happiness. But brave and stubborn people decided to think and smile and even try to be happy amidst all the horror around them. We were convinced that life could conquer death. Besides, many of us could not really believe what we heard from friends or what was being talked about in the streets, for, how could human beings commit such atrocities? How was it possible that something like this was happening in Chile? Where did the snowcapped mountains go, the beautiful rainforests, our kindness and solidarity?

We just did not want to believe that Chileans would do that to other Chileans, to their friends, neighbors, relatives. But they did and now, standing naked and tied up in the middle of my hometown marines’ garrison, the full scope of the military coup struck me. As did the electric shocks applied to different parts of my body, making me shake and scream with such force that your veins seemed to explode amidst the pain. You can’t tame electricity, it tames you; you can’t fight electricity, it dominates you. You can’t ignore electricity, it takes over every corner of your body. It burns your flesh, your heart and your soul. Above all, it makes you scream so loud that butterflies and pelicans stop their flight to look over their shoulders raffled by the disturbing yelling. It’s like someone else shouting, a guttural sound that comes out of your mouth, but it’s not your mouth. A metallic blow that takes you by surprise every time, because no matter how prepared you think you are, the fulminating lashing reminds you that you are not in control.

And they know it, the torturers know it is them who are in control and they rejoice at their newly found power. Then the lashing comes again to make one shiver with the freezing coldness of death whilst they laugh at your suffering and bewilderment. As they probably laugh when they take their children to the local square to play or when they kiss their girlfriends after making love. It’s the horrifying reality that torturers are ordinary men and women who lead ordinary lives by day, but become monsters at night, because they have power. And they used it to kick and punch you, to shout at you, to frighten you. They had been deprived of all their humanity and tried to deprive us of all our humanity. However, in the overwhelming loneliness and darkness of our cells, we could still smile and cry, remember our loved ones and dream of freedom. We refused to be dehumanized, for no one had the right to think for us, to breath for us, to transform us into mere ghosts. This, we could not allow to happen, so, whenever we could, we would force a smile or stand up and walk even if our entire body ached. It was our own revenge in the face of the military’s brutality.

The military were waging a war against an unarmed people, but we were waging our own war: the war for survival. It wasn’t courage or heroism, but simply the basic instinct to live. For that we needed to smile, to believe that there was a future after hell. They could take away our clothes, but never our dignity; they could take away all of our belongings, but never our capacity to dream. We had to convince ourselves that one day this madness would be over, that sooner rather than later our country would recover its sanity. It was the only way to bear the permanent shouting, the constant crying, the pain and the anguishing tears of those defenseless women raped by naval officers. I could only whisper a word of support and solidarity for them, although, I knew that nothing would save them from their horrifying ordeal. I wish I could’ve done something else, but I couldn’t; I wish I hadn’t been there, but I was. I wish the military had never overthrown a democratically elected government and installed a dictatorship for seventeen years, but they did. I wish I had never been tortured, but I was. I wish torturers had been brought to trial to pay for their crimes, but they weren’t.

So, thirty years later, I walk my hometown streets fearing that one day, around any corner I may run into one of them. And this, too, is another form of torture.

Tito Tricot is a Sociologist and Director of the Center for Intercultural Studies (ILWEN) in Chile. He can be reached at: tricot@ilwen.cl

From The Nation.

Evo’s Challenge in Bolivia
by Daphne Eviatar

Cochabamba

In a town square set amid the rolling green highlands of the department
of Cochabamba, where campesinos scrape out a living growing bananas,
peppers and corn they sell for a pittance at the local market, Bolivia’s
president-elect, Evo Morales, last November offered a reason for hope.
“You, the people who grow our food, deserve more respect,” the
charismatic candidate told hundreds of Quechua farmers in the town of
Cliza, as community leaders showered Morales with confetti and draped
wreaths of locally grown produce and flowers around his neck. “And you
deserve the help of the government,” he told the rapt crowd. “We will
nationalize all of Bolivia’s natural resources,” he promised. “We will
recuperate what is ours. We cannot give away what was given to us by
Pachamama [Mother Earth].”

On its face, Morales’s stunning December triumph would seem to be a huge
victory for Bolivia’s growing leftist and indigenous movement. In a
country where more than 65 percent of the population proclaims itself
indigenous, Morales is the first indigenous president in Bolivia’s
180-year history and the first leader to win more than 50 percent of the
popular vote. That hands him a powerful mandate to join the growing
number of Latin American nations that appear to be turning away from
neoliberal economics to forge a path of their own.

The symbolic value of the election results cannot be overstated, in a
country where symbols represent the intensifying passions of people
mobilized to end what they see as 500 years of state oppression. Thus
the wiphala–the checkered rainbow flag of indigenous resistance–flew
from every Morales campaign vehicle; technocratic economic policy
proposals about how the nation should manage its natural-gas industry
became symbols of Bolivian “independence” and “self-governance”; and
politicians called for the defense of Pachamama as they pressed their
home-grown solutions for this cash-poor but resource-rich country and
urged the rejection of the North American capitalistas.

Massive support for that rejection fueled widespread protests this past
summer, when hundreds of thousands of Bolivians filled the streets of El
Alto and La Paz, blocking roads, burning tires and throwing dynamite
until then-President Carlos Mesa finally resigned–making him the second
president forced out of office in as many years. (President Gonzalo
Sanchez de Lozada was forced to flee in October 2003 after his army
killed more than sixty protesters; he’s now living comfortably just
outside Washington, DC.) So for the popular former leader of the coca
growers’ union to have won the presidency by an overwhelming and closely
monitored vote suggests the vitality of Bolivian democracy and the
evolution of a new Latin American consensus.

But the question remains: Will Evo, as Bolivians fondly call him, be
able to live up to his promises? The political, economic and legal
pressure on developing countries to satisfy the interests of
multinational investors–as well as opposition from the Bolivian
Congress–could well undermine the real value of this historic
democratic victory.

Evo’s campaign slogans pledged nationalization of oil and gas reserves,
“recuperation” of natural resources for Bolivians and a renewed respect
for campesinos and workers. Those sorts of promises went over well in
the small farming pueblos, where women in their colorful
eighteenth-century-style peasant skirts and shawls danced in the streets
and waved their broad-brimmed straw hats as Morales rode by in his
campaign caravan, the villagers eagerly reaching for the fliers he left
in his path. After all, Evo’s supporters–poor indigenous farmers and
laborers who make up the 40 percent of a country the World Bank labels
“extremely poor”–have little other faith left to hold on to.

Years of Washington Consensus-style economic policies,
first adopted in the mid-1980s under the label “shock therapy” and
expanded in the mid-1990s when the country privatized its oil, gas,
electric and other major industries, have done little to help Bolivia’s
people, more than 65 percent of whom are still stuck below the poverty
line. In fact, despite the country’s being the
testing ground for much of this policy over the past twenty years, the
average Bolivian is now poorer than his grandparents were fifty years
ago. The privatization schemes, rather than bringing prosperity as
promised, have left Bolivia the most impoverished nation in South
America. They’ve also provoked a wave of anger against international
financial institutions and the United States, a sentiment that was on
display all over Bolivia in this presidential election.

The US government, for its part, has expressed deep fears about a
Morales presidency, claiming that he is a protégé of Hugo
Chávez and Fidel Castro–as revolutionary, and as
unpredictable. But in many ways it’s the United States that
has put Morales in the position he’s in today. In Bolivia the United
States is not only a symbol of foreign capital but of the bitter “war on
drugs,” which strong-armed Bolivia into accepting a US-financed coca
eradication campaign that even the World Bank has admitted bears some
responsibility for Bolivia’s current poverty. Like everything else in
Bolivia, the coca leaf is a symbol: of a locally grown crop, of sacred
rituals, of a way of life that allowed Bolivia’s peasants, by chewing on
the bitter leaves that give energy and stave off hunger, to endure the
harsh conditions in the silver and tin mines where they worked as slaves
to the Spanish for some 300 years and where many still labor under
perilous conditions today. As indigenous culture increasingly becomes a
point of pride rather than a mark of shame in Bolivia and across South
America, the symbolism of the coca leaf has gained even more
importance–and the US war against it has stoked Morales’s popularity.

But the most potent symbol in this election for most Bolivians was
natural gas, an ever more coveted resource as the international
price of oil skyrockets. And the foreign oil companies that extract
it–the transnacionales, as they call them here, almost spitting the
word–represent to many just the latest form of foreign exploitation of
Bolivia and its people. Thus every candidate in this election had to
promise to “nationalize” the natural gas industry–a word that suggests
expropriation of private company property and sets off
alarm bells with foreign investors, but which
actually means a range of different things in this
ideologically charged political culture.

For the right-wing candidate Jorge Quiroga, it meant respecting
existing oil and gas contracts but “nationalizing the
benefits”–in other words, spending more to pacify the population. But
for Morales it has meant forcing a conversion of existing gas
contracts into ones in which the state gets 50 percent of the
profits and retains control over how, to whom and at what price Bolivian
gas is sold. Although that’s not what’s usually meant by expropriation,
his plan still has foreign energy companies panicking. That’s because
under their current contracts and the 1996 hydrocarbons law that
privatized the industry, private companies have had virtually
complete control over the production, sale and pricing of oil and gas,
and have paid only 18 percent royalties and no taxes–a deal that
even government and industry insiders who helped write the law and
negotiate the contracts now privately admit is a bad deal for Bolivia.

Still, when the last government, under Carlos Mesa, tried to change the
law to increase government revenues, almost every major oil
company–including Spain’s Repsol, the French company Total,
British Gas, ExxonMobil and Oklahoma-based Vintage Petroleum–threatened
to bring a claim against Bolivia in international arbitration. Although
so far they’ve agreed to hold off to see what the new government does,
if Morales nationalizes the industry, under the terms of the bilateral
investment treaties between Bolivia and the companies’ home countries,
those companies could sue–in private, closed-door arbitration, without
the safeguards normally provided by publicly appointed judges in an
international court–not only for the approximately $3.5 billion private
companies have already invested in the natural gas industry here but
also for the loss of expected profits, which could total tens of
billions of dollars. For a country like Bolivia, whose annual revenues
are only a little more than $2 billion, that’s no small threat.
“These processes could bring about requirements of indemnity against the
Bolivian state that it cannot pay,” says Carlos Romero,
executive director of Centro de Estudios Jurídicos e
Investigación Social (CEJIS), a prominent human rights
organization based in Santa Cruz. It’s for that reason–and a host of
other ways the United States, the World Bank, the IMF and the
Inter-American Development Bank can threaten to tighten the noose around
Bolivia’s highly indebted neck–that an Evo Morales presidency may well
remain largely a symbolic victory.

Nor can Morales do much to address the plight of coca farmers. Although
he has said he’ll campaign to decriminalize the coca leaf on an
international level, he knows that’s a long shot–and that he can do
little to change the system at home. Indeed, he admitted as much in a
recent interview. Seated at his campaign headquarters before a plate
overflowing with coca leaves, he told me that “zero coca means zero
cocaleros.” His affable manner had turned grave. Evo does not disguise
his disdain for the old US-imposed policy of “zero coca.” But that
policy, as he well knows, was already abandoned last year under Carlos
Mesa’s government, with eventual US acquiescence. Since 2004, farmers in
certain regions have been permitted to grow small amounts of coca for
local traditional use.

Most cocaleros don’t consider that nearly enough to earn a living, but
Morales knows that to completely decriminalize the coca leaf
domestically–something he has never said he will do–would be a
dramatic rejection of US policy that would likely lead not only to a
loss of US aid but would require the United States, under US law, to
vote against any Bolivian application for loans or grants from the World
Bank, IMF or Inter-American Development Bank, all critical to Bolivia’s
ability to finance its debt and fuel its economy. (Even more than the
money itself, the credibility these institutions offer the country in
the international financial markets is immeasurable.) In effect, any
attempt by the new president to do exactly what Bolivians just elected
him to do would marshal the forces of the international financial
community against the government and doom the country’s already
precarious financial stability.

“It’s OK, there are plenty of other countries, like China, that will be
willing to help us,” Morales told me on a rare break from campaigning
shortly before the election. Countries like China and Venezuela may be
exactly where he turns, and their loans and investment would surely
help. But despite having repeatedly described himself during the
campaign as “Washington’s nightmare”–a phrase quoted repeatedly in the
US press–Morales is not likely to buck the broader and wealthier US and
European business community, and may well stick with a modestly reformed
version of the status quo. That won’t satisfy the more radical Aymara
Indian activists, who are intent on breathing life into the symbols of
the increasingly powerful indigenous movement.

“The identity of people and of communities has become a very important
issue in the country,” Pablo Mamani, a sociologist who teaches at the
public universities in El Alto and La Paz, told me shortly before the
election. “The Aymara will all vote for Evo, because we want to see an
Aymara in the presidency. But if he is not really allowed to govern, the
militant social organizations can create a scenario of very
severe conflict between the people and the state.”

The nation’s right-wing movements, particularly those concentrated in
Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s wealthiest department, where the energy and
agricultural export businesses are based, may well encourage that. In
the past year they’ve been waging a fierce campaign for
autonomy–essentially, a separate local government that would shrink the
central government’s power over the region and its ability to extract
taxes. With Morales’s victory–which nonetheless failed to win his party
control of the Congress–that battle will surely intensify.

“Bolivia is facing a big problem,” Carlos Rojas, the burly president of
a leading association of agricultural producers, told me from his
spacious Santa Cruz office. “We don’t accept Mr. Morales’s policy about
land,” he said, referring to Morales’s support for redistribution of
large idle estates, most of which are concentrated in Santa Cruz. “We
will have a conflict with him…. The only way for the country to move
up and get out of poverty is by working, every day and all the time. If
the social movements go and block the roads, we cannot work. We believe
it’s important to give Mr. Morales the opportunity to work for this
country. But if he’s not effective, he’s going to be out–probably
before the end of his term.”

Some Bolivians are already planning on that. “We believe MAS [Movement
Toward Socialism, Morales's party] won’t change anything,” said Abraham
Delgado Mancilla, a soft-spoken and serious 28-year-old Aymara law
student who helped organize the massive protests that ultimately brought
down the last two Bolivian presidents. We were walking through the
packed streets of El Alto–a burgeoning, impoverished city of homemade
brick buildings in the Andean peaks rising above La Paz–where Mancilla
lives and continues to organize students and neighbors. “The state
doesn’t serve us with this system. So we must move forward. What happens
in Bolivia is twenty years of reforms, and nothing changes,” he said.
“We’re still poor. The only road to solving poverty is by
nationalization and radical redistribution of land,” he added, his tone
rising as he grew more agitated. “Evo will not be able to do what he
says. His programs will change nothing. We’re waiting for him to fail.
And if he does, the people will come out with even more force,” he said.

I asked him what that would mean. “I think what’s going to happen is
there will be a civil war.”

Our Struggle is Against US Imperialism

I Believe Only in the Power of the People

By EVO MORALES

This is the text of a speech given on December 24, 2005 at the “In Defense of Humanity” conference.

What happened these past days in Bolivia was a great revolt by those who have been oppressed for more than 500 years. The will of the people was imposed this September and October, and has begun to overcome the empire’s cannons. We have lived for so many years through the confrontation of two cultures: the culture of life represented by the indigenous people, and the culture of death represented by West. When we the indigenous people–together with the workers and even the businessmen of our country–fight for life and justice, the State responds with its “democratic rule of law.”

What does the “rule of law” mean for indigenous people? For the poor, the marginalized, the excluded, the “rule of law” means the targeted assassinations and collective massacres that we have endured. Not just this September and October, but for many years, in which they have tried to impose policies of hunger and poverty on the Bolivian people. Above all, the “rule of law” means the accusations that we, the Quechuas, Aymaras and Guaranties of Bolivia keep hearing from our governments: that we are narcos, that we are anarchists. This uprising of the Bolivian people has been not only about gas and hydrocarbons, but an intersection of many issues: discrimination, marginalization , and most importantly, the failure of neoliberalism.

The cause of all these acts of bloodshed, and for the uprising of the Bolivian people, has a name: neoliberalism. With courage and defiance, we brought down Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada–the symbol of neoliberalism in our country–on October 17, the Bolivians’ day of dignity and identity. We began to bring down the symbol of corruption and the political mafia.

And I want to tell you, companeras and companeros, how we have built the consciousness of the Bolivian people from the bottom up. How quickly the Bolivian people have reacted, have said–as Subcomandate Marcos says–ya basta!, enough policies of hunger and misery.

For us, October 17th is the beginning of a new phase of construction. Most importantly, we face the task of ending selfishness and individualism, and creating–from the rural campesino and indigenous communities to the urban slums–other forms of living, based on solidarity and mutual aid. We must think about how to redistribute the wealth that is concentrated among few hands. This is the great task we Bolivian people face after this great uprising.

It has been very important to organize and mobilize ourselves in a way based on transparency, honesty, and control over our own organizations. And it has been important not only to organize but also to unite. Here we are now, united intellectuals in defense of humanity–I think we must have not only unity among the social movements, but also that we must coordinate with the intellectual movements. Every gathering, every event of this nature for we labor leaders who come from the social struggle, is a great lesson that allows us to exchange experiences and to keep strengthening our people and our grassroots organizations.

Thus, in Bolivia, our social movements, our intellectuals, our workers–even those political parties which support the popular struggle joined together to drive out Gonzalo Sánchez Lozada. Sadly, we paid the price with many of our lives, because the empire’s arrogance and tyranny continue humiliating the Bolivian people.

It must be said, compañeras and compañeros, that we must serve the social and popular movements rather than the transnational corporations. I am new to politics; I had hated it and had been afraid of becoming a career politician. But I realized that politics had once been the science of serving the people, and that getting involved in politics is important if you want to help your people. By getting involved, I mean living for politics, rather than living off of politics. We have coordinated our struggles between the social movements and political parties, with the support of our academic institutions, in a way that has created a greater national consciousness. That is what made it possible for the people to rise up in these recent days.

When we speak of the “defense of humanity,” as we do at this event, I think that this only happens by eliminating neoliberalism and imperialism. But I think that in this we are not so alone, because we see, every day that anti-imperialist thinking is spreading, especially after Bush’s bloody “intervention” policy in Iraq. Our way of organizing and uniting against the system, against the empire’s aggression towards our people, is spreading, as are the strategies for creating and strengthening the power of the people.

I believe only in the power of the people. That was my experience in my own region, a single province–the importance of local power. And now, with all that has happened in Bolivia, I have seen the importance of the power of a whole people, of a whole nation. For those of us who believe it important to defend humanity, the best contribution we can make is to help create that popular power. This happens when we check our personal interests with those of the group. Sometimes, we commit to the social movements in order to win power. We need to be led by the people, not use or manipulate them.

We may have differences among our popular leaders–and it’s true that we have them in Bolivia. But when the people are conscious, when the people know what needs to be done, any difference among the different local leaders ends. We’ve been making progress in this for a long time, so that our people are finally able to rise up, together.

What I want to tell you, compañeras and compañeros–what I dream of and what we as leaders from Bolivia dream of is that our task at this moment should be to strengthen anti-imperialist thinking. Some leaders are now talking about how we–the intellectuals, the social and political movements–can organize a great summit of people like Fidel, Chávez. and Lula to say to everyone: “We are here, taking a stand against the aggression of the US imperialism.”

A summit at which we are joined by compañera Rigoberta Menchú, by other social and labor leaders, great personalities like Pérez Ezquivel. A great summit to say to our people that we are together, united, and defending humanity. We have no other choice, compañeros and compañeras–if we want to defend humanity we must change systems and this means overthrowing US imperialism.

Evo Morales is the newly elected president of Bolivia.

Bolivia’s Newly Elected Leader Maps His Socialist AgendaBy JUAN FOREROLA PAZ, Bolivia, Dec. 19 -After his decisive win in the election for president on Sunday, the Socialist indigenous leader, Evo Morales, vowed Monday to respect private property but repeated his pledge to increase state control over the energy industry and reverse an American-backed crusade against coca, the plant used to make cocaine.Wearing his trademark black jeans and tennis shoes, Mr. Morales arrived in La Paz to begin laying the groundwork for an economic and political transformation that he says will give voice to the poor, indigenous majority that fueled his campaign. “The voice of the people is the voice of God,” he said late Sunday.Mr. Morales, 46, a former small-town trumpeter and soccer player who turned a movement of coca farmers into the country’s most potent political force, stunned his countrymen on Sunday by burying seven challengers in the most important election since Bolivia’s transition from dictatorship to democracy a generation ago.Unofficial results showed that Mr. Morales won up to 52 percent of the vote to become the first Indian president in Bolivia’s 180-year history, a victory that solidifies a continent-wide shift of governments to the left.”For the first time a candidate wins with 50 percent plus 1, and it’s the biggest margin between the first two finishers,” said Gonzalo Chávez, an economist and political analyst at Catholic University in La Paz. “This is a democratic revolution. The voting was tremendously strong, and signifies a tremendous demand for change in Bolivia.”President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Néstor Kirchner of Argentina, two of the continent’s leading left-leaning leaders, quickly offered their congratulations, as did Chile, Spain and the European Union.The United States tried to discredit Mr. Morales in the past by alleging ties to drug trafficking, and ended up increasing his popularity. The administration offered cautious congratulations to Mr. Morales and to the Bolivian people “for carrying out a successful election.”But American officials acknowledged that they viewed his presidency with serious concern, while insisting that they would wait to see how he actually governed.A State Department official noted that Bolivia had experienced several years of chaos in government, “and now they have chosen a leader and still have a constitutional process.” adding, “We have to respect that, whatever else Morales has said.” He declined to be identified, citing department policy.Mr. Morales’s party, the Movement Toward Socialism, won nearly half the 27 seats in the Senate and up to half the 130 seats in the lower house. Unofficial figures showed the MAS, as the party is known, also won at least two of nine governorships.Podemos, the party of Jorge Quiroga, a former president, finished a distant second. Three other traditional parties practically disappeared from the national scene.The MAS is now poised to push through legislation tightening the terms on British Gas, Repsol YPF of Spain, Petrobras of Brazil and other foreign energy companies operating here. Mr. Morales has promised to “nationalize” the lucrative natural gas industry, not by expropriating it, but rather by expanding state control over operations, policy and the commercialization of gas.”The government will exercise its right to state ownership of Bolivia’s hydrocarbons,” he said Monday.Foreign oil companies have in the past said that financially onerous terms could prompt them to cut back on investments, which have fallen from $608 million in 1998 to $200 million last year. But on Monday, Ronald Fessy, spokesman for the Bolivian Hydrocarbon Chamber, said it was too soon to predict.”Governments have to be seen in action, not in times of campaigning,” he said. “We hope that this government will work to achieve scenarios that would lead to policies that are good for investments that this industry and Bolivia urgently need.”Mr. Morales has also pledged to reverse Bolivia’s longstanding alliance with the United States in the generation-long fight against drugs, which has greatly curtailed the coca planting but has set off politically volatile uprisings by coca farmers. Mr. Morales and his followers say much of Bolivia’s coca goes for traditional uses, to be chewed or used in tea, while Washington says most of it becomes cocaine.”The fight against drug trafficking is a false pretext for the United States to install military bases,” Mr. Morales told reporters on Monday.Even with the mandate from voters, Mr. Morales is not expected to have an easy time in a country rocked by years of social protests fueled by inequality and poverty.He will be under pressure to ensure that the country’s budding exports of textiles and furniture continue, while answering to indigenous leaders who seek radical change. Some social movements have vowed to apply pressure. The Bolivian Workers Central, the country’s largest labor confederation, said the government would have to expropriate private energy installations from private companies, or face the kind of protests that forced out two presidents since 2003.”He has to make changes or he falls,” Jaime Solares, the head of the confederation, said in an interview.In the main square of La Paz, where one president was lynched on a lamppost in 1946, most people seemed tired of protests and wanted to give Mr. Morales a chance .”We have to give him some time,” said Martín Bautista, 35, a truck driver. “I feel happy because here a lot of things are about to change.”Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

On Friday morning we left for Fort Benning, Georgia to protest the School of the Americas and to remember the victims of massacres carried out by graduates of the SOA. We arrived on Saturday morning for a rally. Many people came out to the rally and there were many booths with representatives from various peace organizations. We spent the morning and afternoon walking around to the booths, taking pictures, and listening to speakers. Later that evening, I went to a Catholic mass held in a big tent by the river separating Georgia and Alabama. The message was powerful and I received the eucharist (risky!). The next day we attended the major event of the weekend, the vigil, where thousands of the names of victims were sung. In response to each name song, the people sang back, “Presente,” or “I am here, I am present.” It was a time of rememberance and a time of contemplation. It was a powerful experience. Fort Benning Road was blocked off for the 20,000 protesters and we processed in one circle. Each person had an opportunity to reach the fence of the SOA (actually, there are two fences put up before the real fence). People put crosses on the fence with the names of victims killed by graduates of the SOA.

Earlier this year I was able to take part in a reenactment of the murder of six Jesuit Priests, their Housekeeper, and her daughter. I was the soldier in the reenactment. When I went to each person and put a gun to their head and as they fell, the reality hit home to me. I realized that I have took part and am taking part in the killing of innocents. I am in some ways responsible for these deaths. My complicity is a support to the SOA. I am proud to say that I am no longer complicit to this terrorist training camp. I am no longer complicit to U.S. backed death squads. Standing next to Marcia, among 20,000 others most of whom were other Christians, I sensed the power of solidarity and nonviolence. This cannot continue in my name as a U.S. citizen; and, as a Christian I will work for peace and justice.

Marcia and I are going down to Fort Benning, Georgia along with a group from St. Thomas to expose destructive U.S. Foreign policy by protesting U.S. Army of the School of the Americas. Our intentions are to shut down the school.

From SOA Watch:

The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.

Over its 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins.

The 1989 University of Central America Massacre

“Sources at the [SOA] say that when…soldiers go through the urban-combat exercise with blanks in their weapons, half the time the village priest (played by a U.S. Army chaplain) is killed or roughed up.”
–Newsweek Magazine, August 9, 1993

“Many of the critics [of the SOA] supported Marxism — Liberation Theology — ;which was defeated with the assistance of the U.S. Army.”
– United States Army School of the Americas web page, June, 1999

On the night of November 16, 1989, a Salvadoran Army patrol entered the University of Central America in San Salvador and massacred six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. Nineteen of the military officers cited for this atrocity have received training at the US Army School of the Americas.

Martyrs of the University of Central America

Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the University and an outspoken critic of the Army

Ignacio Martin Baro, who studied the effects of war on the human psyche

Segundo Montes, a strong advocate for refugees and human rights

Amano Lopez, a gifted counselor and pastoral worker

Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, director of an education program in poor communities

Juan Ramon Moreno, a gifted preacher and retreat leader

Elba Ramos, the Jesuits’ housekeeper, remembered as sensitive and intuitive

Celina Ramos, Elba’s 14-year-old daughter who had worked as a catechist

SOA Graduates that Participated in, Planned, or Covered-up the Massacre

1LT Yusshy Rene Mendoza Vallecillos, 1988, Commando Operation Course

CPL Angel Perez Vasquez, 1987, Small Unit Training and Management

1LT Jose R. Espinoza Guerra, 1982, Spanish Officer Cadet Course

1LT Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos, 1988, El Salvador Cadet Course

COL Carlos Armando Aviles Buitrago, 1968, Cadet Course

GEN Juan Rafael Bustillo, 1965, Counterinsurgency Orientation

COL Francisco Elena Fuentes, 1985-1986, Guest Instructor; 1973, Officer Supply

1LT Francisco M. Gallardo Mata, 1992, Combat Operations; 1990, Combat Arms

LTC Carlos Camillio Hernandez Barahona, 1972, Combat Arms

1LT Ramon E. Lopez Larios, 1992, Combat Arms; 1988, Infantry Officer

1LT Rene Roberto Lopez Morales, 1990, Combined Officer Advanced Course; 1988, Commando Operations Course; 1987, Combat Arms Officer Course

COL Inocente Orlando Montano, 1970, Engineer Officer Course

GEN Juan Orlando Zepeda, 1975, Urban Counterinsurgency Ops.; 1969, Unnamed

1LT Mario Arevalo Melendez, 1989, Commando Operations Course

CPT Jose Fuentes Rodas, 1986, Combat Arms Officer Course; 1980, Cadet Orientation

SGT Antonio Ramiro Avalos Vargas, 1988, Small Unit Training and Management

1LT Jose V. Hernandez Ayala, 1991, Combat Arms Officer Course

1LT Edgar Santiago Martinez Marroquin, 1991, Combat Arms Officer Course

COL Nelson Lopez y Lopez, 1968, Cadet Course

COL Manuel Antonio Rivas Mejia, 1975, Urban Counterinsurgency Ops.;1970, Cadet

GEN Gilberto Rubio, 1976, Logistics Management Course,1971, Tactical Officer Cadet