by Richard Fidler, Life on the Left
Introduction
December 21, the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, was unusual in
2012 in that many indigenous peoples there and around the world marked the end
of an era and the dawn of a new one, based on a Mayan calendar. According to
legend the old era, a dark period known as the Macha or “No Time,” began when
Columbus set foot in what later became known as America. The next era, the
Pachakuti,[1] will slowly eliminate
hunger, disease and wars, and bring about harmony between humankind and nature.
The Bolivian government marked the occasion by organizing a grand celebration
on the Isla del Sol, an island in beautiful Lake Titikaka. The largest
fresh-water body of water within South America, the lake straddles the border
between Bolivia and Peru at an altitude of about 4,000 metres (more than 12,000
feet). According to Inca legend, this was where the sun was born.
The Bolivian foreign ministry, headed by Minister David Choquehuanca, an
Aymara poet and long-time activist in the indigenous and campesino (peasant)
movement, established a
web
site to publicize the event. It featured articles on indigenous history and
legends, as well as tourist information. In the days preceding December 21, the
government organized 13 different public forums on such topics as climate
change, the food crisis and capitalism, both at the Isla del Sol and online.
The event attracted some 40 indigenous groups from five continents, most from
South America, as well as (of course!) a large number of “gringo” (non-native)
tourists. Also attending were government leaders, including a few from other
countries, as well as ambassadors and other officials. It was, by all accounts,
quite a show.
A highlight of the festivities was the presence of Bolivian
President Evo Morales. He arrived at the December 21 event on a huge balsa raft,
a large replica of the boats designed and built by indigenous artisans that for
centuries plied the waters of Lake Titikaka. After lighting the sacred flame,
Morales addressed the crowd for almost an hour, presenting a Manifesto that set
out his government’s professed philosophy in the form of ten commandments. The
speech is remarkable for its identification of global crisis as
multi-dimensional — economic, ecological, institutional, cultural, ethical and
spiritual, a crisis of civilization itself — its denunciation of capital’s
world-wide offensive and the capitalist system’s commoditization of property and
nature, and its explanation of his government’s objective of building a
“communitarian socialism of Living Well.”
Although Morales’ message was largely ignored by the foreign media, it has
attracted considerable commentary — and controversy — in Bolivia and to a lesser
degree in South America. Following my translation of his speech, below, I will
allude to some of those comments while offering a few critical observations of
my own. But first, here is the speech by Evo Morales. Although there are several
versions of the speech now circulating, I have translated from the full Spanish
text available
here,
which appears to be the text from which Morales was reading. The notes are
mine.
* * *
Ten Commandments to confront capitalism and construct the culture of life
Sisters and brothers, I want to express my surprise at the size of this huge
gathering that today brings together, on this Isla del Sol, sisters and brothers
from Abya Yala,[2] America, Europe,
Africa and Asia.
Greetings to our Vice-President of Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera; to the
Vice-President of Nicaragua, Moisés Omar Halleslevens Acevedo; to the Minister
of Communications and Information of Venezuela, Ernesto Villegas, and to the
deputy ministers of Venezuela for Latin America and the Caribbean, Verónica
Guerrero, and for North America, Claudia Salerno; to the Minister of Culture of
Cuba, Rafael Bernal Alemany; to the ministers and ambassadors of Bolivia, of all
of America, of Asia and of Europe.
Greetings, as well, to our leaders, men and women who are leading the social
movements and organizations of the various sectors that were debating around
this 21
st of December and expressing some profound thoughts on
political, economic, social issues and on the environment and Mother Earth. They
are engaged in an ongoing debate about equality and social justice.
Today we are all reunited here, in the time of Pachakuti, in the time of
change.
The Isla del Sol, the birth of a new time
From the Isla del Sol, from the Sacred Lake Titikaka that we share between
Peru and Bolivia, we want to tell you that we are reunited today, the
21
st of December 2012, not in the expectation that the world is to
end, as some were saying. The world will never come to an end. We are here to
provide hope in this new dawn for the peoples of the world.
In this Isla del Sol, where a thousand years ago the time of the sun began,
Manco Kapac and Mama Ocllo, who were to found Tahuantinsuyo, were born.[3] That is why this island is the
founding island of the time and the history of the children of the sun. But
later, darkness arrived with the foreign invaders. Emboldened by greed, they
came to our continent, Abya Yala, to subject the indigenous nations. It was the
time of darkness, of pain and sadness, a time that for the children of the
Willka[4] was a time of no
time.
Today, from this same island that gave birth to Tahuantinsuyo, we are closing
the epoch of darkness and of no time, and we are opening a new time of light:
the Pachakuti.
Again, the peoples of the world, the social movements, the marginalized
people, discriminated, humiliated, are organizing, mobilizing, gaining
consciousness and arising again as in those times of the Pacha, the times of
Pachakuti.
That is why, sisters and brothers, this great unprecedented historical event
is a great surprise, as it is, too, for our brothers in Guatemala, Mexico,
Ecuador and in other countries of the world that today are mobilizing to receive
the Pacha.
This morning, with the brother Vice-President Álvaro García and with the
brother Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Choquehuanca, we were informed that
the peoples of North America, both in Canada and in the United States, are
mobilizing to express their hope in this summer solstice.[5]
Sisters, brothers:
The world is being hit by a world-wide multiple crisis
that is manifested in a climate, financial, food, institutional, cultural,
ethical and spiritual crisis. This crisis indicates to us that we are living
in the final days of capitalism and unbridled consumerism; that is, of a model
of society in which human beings claim to be superior to Mother Earth,
converting nature into an object of their merciless predatory domination.
The ideologues of capitalism argue that the following are the solutions to
the crisis of the capitalist system:
On the one hand, more capitalism, more privatization, more commoditization,
more consumerism, more irrational and predatory exploitation of natural
resources and more protection for companies and private profit.
On the other hand, fewer social rights, less public health, less public and
free education, and less protection for human rights.
Today the societies and peoples of the developed countries are tragically
experiencing the capitalist crisis created by its own market. Capitalist
governments think that it is more important to save the banks than to save human
beings, and it is more important to save the companies than to save people. In
the capitalist system the banks have priority economic rights and enjoy
first-class citizenship, which is why we can say that the banks are worth more
than life. In this unfettered capitalism, individuals and peoples are not
brothers and sisters, they are not citizens, they are not human beings;
individuals and peoples are debt defaulters, borrowers, tenants and clients; in
short, if people do not have money, they are nothing.
We are living in the kingdom of the colour green. Green like dollars are the
monetary policies, green like dollars are the development policies, green like
dollars are the housing policies, green like dollars are the human development
policies and environmental policies. That is why, faced with the new wave of
crisis of the capitalist system, its ideologues have come out in favour of
privatizing nature through the so-called green economy or green capitalism.
However, the recipes of the market, of liberalism, of privatization simply
generate poverty and exclusion, hunger and marginalization.
The images that unfettered capitalism leaves to the world are
sinister:
(a) More than 850 million hungry people in the world, almost 200 million more
than those who existed 30 years ago;
(b) Life expectancy of the poorest in the world continues to be the same as
it was in 1977, that is 44 years of age;
(c) Approximately 1.3 billion people live in conditions of poverty;
(d) There are close to 230 million unemployed in the world, 40 million more
than there were 30 years ago;
(e) Finally, the developed countries annually waste 700 million tons of food,
that is, three times more than what Sub-Saharan Africa produces in a year.
Among the structural causes of the global crisis of capitalism are the
following:
(a) The accumulation and concentration of wealth in a few countries and in
small privileged social groups,
(b) The concentration of capital in production and marketing of resources and
goods that produce the quickest and greatest profit,
(c) Promotion of massive and excessive social consumption of products in the
belief that to have more is to live better,
(d) Massive production of disposable products to enrich capital and increase
the ecological footprint,
(e) Excessive and unsustainable extractivist productivist use of renewable
and non-renewable natural resources at high environmental costs,
(f) Concentration of capital in processes of financial speculation for the
purpose of generating quick and generous profits,
(g) Concentration of knowledge and technology in the rich countries and in
the richest and most powerful social groups,
(h) Promotion of financial practices and extractive and commercial productive
schemes that undermine the economy and sovereignty of states, particularly in
the developing countries, monopolizing the control of natural resources and
their earnings,
(i) Reduction of the role of states to that of weak regulators, converting
large investors into managers of the property of others, and states and peoples
into weak servants or partners with the myth that foreign investment can solve
everything.
Sisters and brothers of the world: Capitalism has created a civilization
that is wasteful, consumerist, exclusive, clientelist, a generator of opulence
and misery. That is the pattern of life, production and consumption that we
urgently need to transform.
The planet and humanity are in serious danger of extinction. The forests are
in danger, biodiversity is in danger, the rivers and oceans are in danger and
the earth is in danger. This beautiful human community that inhabits our Mother
Earth is in danger owing to the climate crisis.
The causes of this climate crisis are directly related to the accumulation
and concentration of wealth in a few countries and in small social groups; to
massive, excessive and expensive consumption resulting from the belief that to
have more is to live better; to pollutant production of disposable goods to
enrich capital, increasing the ecological footprint; as well as the excessive
and unsustainable extractive use for production of renewable and non-renewable
natural resources at high environmental costs.
Sisters and brothers: The Plurinational State of Bolivia, echoing the voice
of the world’s peoples, accepts an ethical obligation to the planet and
advocates the need for human beings to recover a sense of unity and relevancy
with Mother Earth.
We are in a crucial moment for the definition of the future of our planet. In
our hands and in our consciousness lies the responsibility to agree on the road
we are going to follow to guarantee the eradication of poverty, the distribution
and redistribution of wealth, and the creation and strengthening of our social,
material and spiritual conditions in order to live in harmony and equilibrium
with nature.
The rich and industrialized countries must contribute to promoting the
socialization of wealth and welfare in harmony with nature while the poor and
developing countries must distribute the little wealth that they have. There is
no future for humanity if egoism and greed prevail, with the accumulation and
ostentation that are part of a system in which he who has more rules over those
without. We must share and complement each other in knowledge, wealth, humanity
and respect for nature.
This 21
st of December is the day of the initiation of the
Pachakuti, which translates into the awakening of the world to the culture of
life. It is the beginning of the end of unfettered capitalism as well as the
transition from the time of violence between human beings and violence to nature
to a new time in which human beings will constitute a unity with Mother Earth
and all will live in harmony and equilibrium with the cosmos as a whole.
This day is for the age-old societies the moment when major telluric-cosmic
changes will occur in the planet and it is the omen that the culture of death,
hunger and injustice will have reached its end. It means the end of a state of
things and the beginning of profound changes in the world.
Likewise, this new time must be the beginning of the end of the monarchies,
the hierarchies, the oligarchies and the anarchies of the market and of
capital.
The Pachakuti has arrived, and you who now join with us in the sacred Isla
del Sol, in Lake Titikaka, we are the Rainbow Warriors, we are the warriors of
Vivir Bien [Living Well], we are the insurgents of the world.
In this context, let us suggest ten commandments to confront capitalism and
construct the culture of life:
1. In politics
Refound democracy and politics, empowering the poor and serving the
peoples
The world is experiencing a crisis of political systems because they no
longer represent the peoples, they are elitist, exclusive, governed by
oligarchical leaderships with the vision of filling the pockets of a few and not
serving the people. The so-called democracies are the pretext for handing over
the natural resources to transnational capital. In those false democracies,
politics has been converted into an instrument for profit and not a vocation of
service. Anachronistic forms of governments still survive that no longer respond
to the demands of the world’s peoples. We must refound democracy. We do not want
a colonial democracy in which the politicians are an aristocratic class and not
militants in the cause of the poor and of service to the poor.
Democracy is not viable if it does not empower the poor, the marginalized,
and does not respond first and foremost to the urgent needs of the neediest. A
democracy in which a few become rich and the majority become poor is not a
democracy.
Refounding democracy, refounding states, refounding republics and refounding
politics requires the following actions, among others:
1. Refound the political systems, burying all forms of hierarchy, monarchy,
oligarchy and the anarchy of the market and of capital. Democracy is the
government of the peoples and not of the market.
2. Go beyond representative democracy, in which power is at the service of
the interests of the elites and minorities, to communal democracy in which there
are neither majorities nor minorities, but instead decisions are taken by
consensus, and it is reason that prevails, not votes.
3. Promote the idea that political action means full and ongoing service to
life, that is, in turn, an ethical, human and moral commitment to our peoples,
recovering the codes of our ancestors: do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy
and do not be obsequious.
4. Service to the fatherland cannot be understood as using the fatherland as
if it were a business; politicians cannot employ the administrative, legal and
economic instruments of the state for their private and personal interests.
5. The people, through their social and community organizations, must take
political power, building new forms of plurinational states, so that we shall
govern ourselves within the framework of
mandar obedeciendo (leading by
obeying).
2. In social life:
Greater social and human rights, vs. the commoditization of human
needs
An insulting and outrageous reality that persists in today’s world is the gap
between rich and poor, the result of unequal distribution of income and unequal
and discriminatory access to basic services. Capital and the market are no
solution to inequality and poverty; they only privatize services and profit from
needs. We have had a tragic experience with the privatization of basic services,
especially water.
To overcome the serious social inequalities, it is necessary to undertake the
following actions, among others:
1. It is imperative that we recognize, in international legislation and in
national standards in all countries, that basic services such as water,
electricity, communications and basic sanitation are a fundamental human right
of the people in all corners of the planet.
2. In particular, water must be an essential human right because it bears
directly on the development of life of all beings on the planet and is a
fundamental component in the mobilization of all productive processes.
3. In addition to the recognition of basic services as a human right, we must
proceed with the nationalization of those services, since private owners exclude
the majority of the population from access to services that are fundamental to
life, giving them an economic value that is unattainable for many.
4. There is a need to concentrate more economic resources in the hands of the
state and to create mechanisms for distribution of this wealth between the
regions and among the people who are the neediest and most vulnerable, in order
to eliminate in the next few years all forms of social, material and spiritual
poverty in the world through the democratization of economic wealth.
5. It is necessary to develop the formation of a new, full human being who is
neither materialist nor a consumer, but focused consistently on the search for
Living Well, with a profound revolutionary ethics based on harmony and
solidarity, recognizing that all the peoples of the world make up a great
family.
6. We must end the transnational monopoly of the pharmaceutical industry and
recover and strengthen our ancestral and natural medicinal knowledges and
practices.
3. In cultural and spiritual life:
Decolonize our peoples and our cultures, to build a communitarian
socialism of living well
Sisters and brothers: We are living in a society in which everything is
globalized and homogenized, in which cultural identities seem to smack of the
past that everyone wants to ignore. The ancient and ancestral cultures are
marginalized in economic and political processes and their cultural and
spiritual force and energy are discounted. This has led to a profound
dehumanization in the world and discrimination in the spiritual and cultural
resources that can give us the necessary strengths to stop the brutality of
capitalism. We must:
1. Decolonize ourselves of racism, fascism and all types of
discrimination.
2. Decolonize ourselves of commoditization and consumerism, luxury, egoism
and greed, and promote Living Well.
3. Recover the knowledges and codes of the ancient cultures of the world, to
strengthen the awareness of individuals and societies of Mother Earth,
understanding what it means to be a living and sacred being, that we are her
daughters and sons and we are nourished by her, respecting the cycles of nature
and understanding that all existing things are part of the balance and harmony
of life. We are born from the womb of Mother Earth and we shall return to her
womb.
4. Where there are multiple cultures in countries it is imperative to promote
the construction of plurinational states that respect social, economic, legal
and cultural pluralism.
4. In respect to the environment:
For the rights of Mother Earth, to live well and in opposition to the
environmental colonialism of the green economy
In recent years the ideologists of the capitalist system have promoted the
“green economy” as the salvation of this model of society. This simply means the
commoditization of nature in the context of a green capitalism. The green
economy is the economy of death, because in the context of protectionism of
nature it is a death sentence for the world’s peoples. That is why we condemn
the green economy as the new environmental colonialism and green capitalism.
Similarly, the climate crisis of the planet is a matter of concern to us because
the human community that inhabits our Mother Earth is in imminent danger owing
to the catastrophic consequences of natural disasters.
To transform this situation the peoples of the world must promote the
following actions:
1. Demand that the countries that have caused the climate crisis fulfil their
historic responsibility to pay the climate debt to the peoples of the South, and
drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions within the framework of
binding international agreements.
2. We must implement the policies and actions that are needed to prevent and
avoid the exhaustion of natural resources, accepting that life depends on
sustaining the capacity for regeneration of the life systems of Mother Earth and
the full and sustainable management of their components. We must always bear in
mind that the planet can live better without human beings but human beings
cannot live without the planet.
3. This is the century of the battle for universal recognition of the rights
of Mother Earth in all legislation, treaties and national and international
agreements, so that we human beings begin to live in harmony and equilibrium
with the cosmos.
4. The countries of the world must promote decisively and aggressively the
non-commercialization of the environmental functions and natural processes of
Mother Earth, as well as the integral and sustainable management of her
components. We cannot sell our sacred Mother Earth solely on the basis of false
illusions that markets will promote some financing for our peoples. Our peoples
and Mother Earth cannot now or ever be for sale.
5. In respect to natural resources:
Sovereignty over natural resources is a requisite for liberation from
colonial and neoliberal domination and for the full development of
peoples
In many countries the principal source of economic wealth is based on the use
of natural resources. However, in most countries this wealth has been looted and
appropriated in private hands and by transnational powers that enrich themselves
at the expense of the peoples. We call on countries to develop the following
actions in relation to natural resources:
1. Put ownership of natural resources in the state, to benefit the peoples so
they are oriented toward the enjoyment and benefit of all.
2. In all countries that have strategic natural resources, promote the
implementation of processes of nationalization, since it is only through such
nationalization that we can stop the processes of economic colonialism and
ensure the reinforcement of the state with economic resources that in turn
promote better basic services for their peoples.
3. Develop processes of industrialization of those natural resources, always
bearing in mind the need for protection and respect for the rights of Mother
Earth.
6. In relation to food sovereignty:
Know how to feed ourselves in order to live well, promoting the attainment
of food sovereignty and the human right to food
The discussion of food security has been carried on world-wide from differing
perspectives and approaches, such as food security, food sovereignty and the
human right to food. Food is central to the life of individuals and the
attainment of Living Well, and that is why states and peoples must promote a set
of actions:
1. To progress in the construction of “Knowing How to Feed Oneself in order
to Live Well,” recovering the food knowledges and productive technologies of
community nutrition, in which foods are medicine and part of our cultural
identity.
2. To try to guarantee in each country the basic foods consumed by its
population through strengthening the economic, productive, social, cultural,
political and ecological systems of rural producers, with an emphasis on
community family agriculture.
3. To protect the population from the effects of malnutrition, with an
emphasis on controlling the marketing of foods that are harmful to human
health.
4. To punish financial speculation based on the production and marketing of
food.
7. In respect to integration and international relations:
The alliance of the peoples of the South against interventionism,
neoliberalism and colonialism
Our ancestral peoples always lived integrated in cultures, integrated in
trade, integrated in solidarity and in networks of collaboration. Today we must
construct and strengthen our agreements of integration between peoples and
communities, between states and governments, in a framework of support,
collaboration and solidarity in order to strengthen life and humanity.
Faced with the diplomacy of death and war, commoditization, privatization,
the plunder of natural resources, we must ourselves build the diplomacy of the
peoples of the South in order to strengthen ourselves from the South.
The South is not and cannot be an obedient and servile pawn of the powers of
the North. We are not the dump for the industrial and nuclear waste of the
powers of the North, nor are we their inexhaustible source of raw materials. The
South is emerging with the power of the peoples and the patriotic and sovereign
governments, and is constructing projects of commercial, productive, cultural,
technological, economic, financial and social integration. This is a time in
which the peoples of the South, and together with the peoples of the North, must
share, support ourselves and strengthen ourselves socially, economically and
culturally.
Integration is conditional upon reliance on strong states and peoples,
nationalist, patriotic, socialist governments with political will and national
control, with projects and strategies for regional alliances to form a South
that is building projects for regional power and integration.
The power of the South is its sovereignty, the right to development, the
support and solidarity of peoples and states. The South is becoming stronger,
becoming harmonized. There can be no strong South without sovereignty,
patriotism, nationalism, a desire of peoples and states to break the chains of
colonial and neoliberal servitude.
To achieve South-South integration, we must promote the following
actions:
1. Form powerful coalitions and alliances to underwrite Agreements of Life
and to share knowledges, technology and provision of financial resources, and
not Free Trade Agreements, which are treaties of death for the peoples of the
South as well as for the peoples of the North.
2. Construct a mechanism for integral development and integration between the
states and peoples of the South that includes, among other things, areas of
knowledge, technology, energy, food production, financing, health and
education.
3. Move ahead in the twinning of the peoples of the South with those of the
North, to destroy imperialism and build the civilizing horizon of Living Well in
harmony and equilibrium with Mother Earth.
8. In respect to knowledge and technology:
Knowledge and Technology are fundamental tools to achieve integral
development and the eradication of poverty and hunger
Knowledge and technology are fundamental to the provision of means of
communication, education, basic services and industrial and energy projects, the
transformation of raw materials and the production of food; in short, to drive
our economies. Today the developed countries blindly protect their technologies
through patents and licences and prevent us from accessing them. If we want
technology we have to enter their technology markets. There is no solidarity, no
technological complementarity possible with the developed countries. The
monopoly of technology is an instrument of power to control the developing
countries. The transnational powers of the rich developed countries and
imperialism do not share technology because they only want to sell it in order
to dominate us and create dependency.
That is why, now more than ever, it is fundamental to promote the following
actions:
1. Build convergence between the ancestral and community knowledges, wisdom,
techniques and technologies and the practices and technologies of modern science
in order to help create conditions for Living Well and protection of Mother
Earth.
2. Develop our own knowledges and technologies that break the technological
dependency on the transnational powers of the North.
3. In opposition to the commoditized egoism of the transnational powers of
the North let us build collaboration, solidarity and complementarity of the
peoples and countries of the South together with the peoples of the North.
9. In respect to international institutionality:
We must construct a world institutionality of the peoples, of the poor, of
Mother Earth. We do not accept or permit interventionism or neoliberalism by the
United Nations or the institutionality of the empire of capital
The colonial global institutionality is designed to subject and deceive the
peoples. In the name of freedom and democracy organizations like NATO, including
the UN through the renowned Security Council, invade countries, destroy peoples,
legalize and assist in massacres. We cannot allow or admit the construction of
military bases and war industries to dominate the peoples on the pretext of
national security. The main thing is the security of the peoples, life and
Mother Earth. The arms build-up is the business of death that enriches
capitalism and destroys the planet.
The global institutional machinery of the so-called United Nations is
designed to destroy the sovereign will of the peoples. That is where a
bureaucracy works in the service of capital and imperialism. We, the peoples of
the world, do not accept that international organizations should appropriate to
themselves the right of invasion and intervention. The UN has no morality to
impose. We, the peoples of the world, do not accept this elitist
institutionality of the bureaucrats of the empire.
It was in the bowels of the UN that the privatizing green economy originated,
which we understand as the black economy of death; from those entrails originate
the recipes for privatization and interventionism. The UN seems to be the
Organization for the Rich and Powerful Countries; perhaps it should be named the
INO, Imperialist Nations Organization. That UN we do not want, we disown it.
That neoliberal bureaucracy, the bureaucracy of the green economy and
privatization, the bureaucracy that promotes structural adjustments, those
functionaries of capital and ideologists of domination and poverty, act with the
patriarchal and colonial conviction that the peoples and developing countries
are incapable and stupid and that to emerge from poverty we must faithfully
follow their development recipes.
To construct a new institutionality of the peoples of the world, aimed at
Living Well, we must develop the following actions:
1. Build the institutional and legal conditions for our peoples and countries
to live in dignity and sovereignty without interventionism and without foreign
military bases.
2. Free ourselves from the ideological and political bonds of the global
financial agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and
their satellites and intellectuals of neoliberal domination, and build our own
institutions to design and advise on policies aimed at Living Well.
3. Build a World Organization of the Poor, a World Organization of Justice, a
World Organization of Sovereignty of the Peoples, a World Organization of Mother
Earth, an Organization of the Assembly of the Peoples of the World.
10. In the economics of finance:
Economic development must not be oriented to the market, to capital and to
profit; development must be comprehensive and be oriented to human happiness,
harmony and equilibrium with Mother Earth
Capitalism only globalizes poverty, hunger, and social injustice, destroys
human rights and social, economic and cultural rights, and destroys the
environment. Unfettered capitalism creates poverty and hunger. The global
capitalist financial system is colonialist and imperialist, it is a weapon of
the powerful countries for subjection of the developing countries and peoples,
for privatization and commoditization, for subjecting us to the control of the
oligarchies and the commoditizing anarchy of capital.
That is why we must disown and dismantle the international financial system
and its satellites, the IMF and World Bank.
We call on the peoples and governments of the world to break the chains of
this slavery by financial colonialism, because only financial and economic
sovereignty can allow us to decide our future in a sovereign way.
To achieve sovereignty in economy and finance, we are challenged to take the
following actions:
1. We must configure a new international economic and financial order based
on the principles of equity, national sovereignty, common interests, harmony
with nature, cooperation and solidarity between states and peoples. This new
order must be oriented to changing unsustainable patterns of production and
consumption, substantially reducing the gap between rich and poor and between
the developed and developing countries.
2. We must build a new global, regional and national architecture and
financial system that is free of the bonds and tentacles of power of the World
Bank and IMF. A new architecture and a new financial order of the peoples and
for the peoples.
3. It is essential to build new legal and institutional frameworks at the
national and international level and to develop a system of regulation and
supervision of the financial sector. States and peoples have to control private
finance and not be subject to the colonial servility of financial governance by
private interests.
4. We must free ourselves from that colonial bond called the External Debt,
which serves only to blackmail us, to oblige us to hand over our assets and
privatize our natural resources, and to destroy the sovereignty of peoples and
states. The colonial External Debt is the mechanism of exaction and
impoverishment that afflicts the developing countries and limits their access to
development. We call for cancelling this unjust External Debt. No more
inequality. No more poverty. It is time to distribute the wealth.
5. As developing countries, we must create our own financial instruments. We
must create the World Bank of the Poor and of the Sovereign Peoples of the
World. We cannot depend on the donations and conditional loans of the capitalist
colonial financial system. We must unite and integrate, and that means building
our own financial, popular, community, state and sovereign financial
systems.
6. Build and strengthen regional markets based on solidarity and
complementarity, substituting policies of complementarity arising out of the
civilizing horizon of Living Well in place of the policies of competitiveness
promoted by capitalism.
Our vision of the Communitarian Socialism of Living Well is based on rights
and not on the market, it is based on the full realization of human happiness of
peoples and populations, through the full complementarity of the rights of
peoples, persons, states and Mother Earth in a complementary, inclusive and
interdependent way.
The new epoch is that of the power of labour, the power of the communities,
the power of solidarity of the peoples and the communion of all living beings so
that together we constitute Mother Earth and the Communitarian Socialism of
Living Well.
Sisters and brothers: I thank you for your patience in listening to this
Manifesto of the Isla del Sol, which expresses ten commandments for Life and for
Humanity. It is a Manifesto based on the experience of the Bolivian people,
which can support the liberation of all the peoples of the world.
Sisters and brothers, leaders of Abya Yala, of America and the world, as a
people and as social forces we have a huge responsibility: to save the planet,
to save life and humanity. So we thank you for your presence on this historic
day of the Summer Solstice, the beginning of the time of the Pachakuti.
Finally, I want to thank the originary indigenous communities of the Isla
del Sol for having allowed us to share our experiences. I thank the social
organizations, the Armed Forces, the ministries, our departmental and national
leaders for organizing an excellent festival of hope for the peoples of the
world.
Join with me in saying:
¡Jallalla, peoples of the world!
¡Kausachun, peoples of the world!
* * *
A critical comment
This is indeed remarkable discourse. It is hard to imagine a government
leader anywhere else today — with the notable exception of Venezuela’s Hugo
Chávez, or Cuba’s Fidel Castro in earlier times — who is so forthright in his
denunciation of capitalism and so explicit in his internationalist perspective
of solidarity with the victims of capitalism.
Indignados everywhere can
be heartened by its message.
Like so much in Bolivia today, however, one cannot help but be struck by the
apparent gap between rhetoric and reality. The harsh (and accurate) denunciation
of the United Nations Organization, for example, is hard to reconcile with
Bolivia’s participation in the UN’s military occupation of Haiti, which is
overwhelmingly rejected by the Haitians themselves. Which is not to say that
Bolivia is wrong to use its forum in the UN, as it has so effectively, to mount
a strong campaign for radical action against the approaching climate
catastrophe.
In another context, Bolivia won a major victory just days ago, on January 10,
when it got the UN to amend that body’s 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs to
allow the chewing of coca leaves under international law, thus readmitting
Bolivia to membership in the Convention. (Only 15 countries, including Canada
and the United States, voted against Bolivia’s request.) The consumption of coca
leaves is a widespread custom in Bolivia, protected in the country’s new
constitution; I myself have found it the most effective antidote to altitude
sickness when in the Altiplano. The UN decision undermines Washington’s
allegation that Bolivia is a “narco-trafficker,” a major pretext for U.S.
interference in Bolivia’s affairs.
As to the rest of the Manifesto, journalist Pablo Stefanoni made some telling
criticisms in a
trenchant commentary:
“... if the aim was to increase understanding of the Bolivian process of change
— and continue advancing it — the manifesto appears to follow the line that
anticapitalism is directly proportional to the number of times that we pronounce
that term.” For Stefanoni, such statements as “we are living in the final days
of capitalism” were reminiscent of the Stalinized Communist International’s
language during its ultraleft Third Period. A harsh analogy, and refuted in real
life by Bolivia’s readiness to block in solidarity with workers and peasants
around the world in anticapitalist and anti-imperialist struggles.
As well, there are some notable oversights as in the manifesto’s charge that
it is the wealthiest and most powerful countries that are withholding advanced
technology and knowledge from the poorer countries. Does that include China?,
ask Stefanoni, noting that “post-Communist” China heads the World Intellectual
Property Organization’s global list of patent applicants. And how does the
manifesto’s embrace of traditional knowledges and practices square with the
institutionalized homophobia of some “African traditions,” for example, he
asks.
More fundamentally, as a number of critics have pointed out, the radical
anticapitalist rhetoric contrasts with the relatively modest proposals for
greater regulation of the banks and nationalization of natural resources. In
places, the manifesto seems more concerned with targeting neoliberalism —
“savage” or unfettered capitalism — than with mounting a campaign for general
expropriation of capitalist property. But indeed, what more can a small country
like Bolivia concretely propose at this point?
More insight into the thinking behind the Isla del Sol manifesto can be
gained from a working paper of Bolivia’s ruling party, the MAS-IPSP (Movement
Toward Socialism–Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples),
available in a
collection of
essays recently published by the Ministry of Cultures.[6] Bolivia, it states, is now going through a
“democratic and popular revolution,” in which the pre-eminent tasks can be
defined, in historical terms, as “bourgeois-democratic,” that is, “they have not
been realized by the bourgeoisie.” It cites, as an example, the adoption in 2009
of the new Constitution, which established the plurinational character of the
Bolivian state:
“Between the great democratic, indigenous and popular uprising against
neoliberalism, starting in April 2000, and the second political and electoral
victory of 2009, Bolivia experienced the richest process in its entire history,
because this was the first time we had the possibility to build a society in
which one’s skin colour or the nature of one’s name had no effect on whether
everyone had substantive rights.”
Although these democratic tasks are pre-eminent “in a capitalist country, in
particular a dependent country like ours,” the document explains, they are in no
way inconsistent with socialism as a longer-range goal.
“The entire experience of the international revolutionary movement, above all
in Latin America, has demonstrated that the socialist revolution cannot be
achieved except by deploying the democratic and anti-imperialist banners, but
neither can this be done, or the democratic and anti-imperialist tasks
ultimately carried out, short of the socialist revolution. [...]
“However, the transition from a capitalist society to another that is
socialist, communitarian and plurinational, will take many years, especially
when its construction depends not only on what is going on in this country but
on the degree of progress at a continental level. The future of our revolution
depends not only on the conquests that we are going to achieve within the
country, but on what we will conquer as peoples and governments in the
continent. Our struggle is accordingly continental and then
world-wide.”
Readers of my recent translation of Bolivian vice-president Álvaro García
Linera’s essay,
Geopolitics of the Amazon,[7] will recognize the parallels here with his
explanation of the issues behind some recent social conflicts in Bolivia. I hope
to write more on the relation between democratic and socialist revolution, in
the Bolivian context, in some future posts.
–
Richard Fidler
[1] For an interesting
discussion of this concept, see Bob Thomson, “
Pachakuti:
Indigenous perspectives, degrowth and ecosocialism.”
[2] Indigenous name for the
Western Hemisphere.
[3] Manco Kapac (or Cápac) was
the legendary first Sapa Inca of the Kingdom of Cusco, often described as a son
of the sun god Inti. Mama Ocllo, variously described as the sister and wife of
Manco Kapac, was deified in Inca mythology as a mother and fertility
goddess.
[4] Willka is an Aymara word
meaning “greatness” or “eminence” that was traditionally used by indigenous
protest leaders. Pablo Zárate Willka was the leader of the 1899 indigenous
uprising.
[5] The Idle No More movement in
Canada demonstrated in Ottawa on December 21 (the winter solstice), in
opposition to the Harper government and support of Attawapiskat chief Theresa
Spence’s hunger strike. For photos, click
here.
[6] Katu Arkonada (coord.),
Transiciones Hacia el Vivir Bien o la construcción de un nuevo proyecto
político en el Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia (Ministerio de Culturas, La
Paz, no date but apparently published in December 2012). The document in
question, entitled “Our emancipatory project: Communitarian Socialism moving
toward Vivir Bien,” was presented to the VIIIth Congress of the MAS-IPSP, held
in Cochabamba in March 2012. Quotations here are from the chapter “The Strategic
Perspective: A socialist, communitarian and plurinational Bolivia moving toward
Vivir Bien.”
[7] See
Life on the Left, December
2012 posts.
