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Crisis
in rural Mexico: Campesinos demand a renegotiation of the NAFTA and a new
agricultural policy
AThe
demand to renegotiate the NAFTA is plainly and simply their final effort to have
a future as campesinos rather than as unemployed city-dwellers or emigrants
without passports or visas.@ Luis Hernández Navarro By
Karen Rothschild The
end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003 have been marked by a dramatic protest
against the crisis in rural Mexico. Protesters
are demanding a renegotiation of the agricultural chapter of the NAFTA as well
as a moratorium on its most recent provisions. This campaign involves small
producers from socially owned ejidos and indigenous communities in the south and
also private owners of medium-sized farms in the northern states. It was given
its immediate impulse by the removal of protective tariffs on all Mexican
agricultural products, except corn, beans and powdered milk, on January 1, 2003.
(Existing tariffs on corn have become virtually meaningless. The Mexican
government, allegedly in response to corporate pressure, has allowed the import
quotas on duty-free corn that were agreed upon during the NAFTA negotiations to
be greatly exceeded. Mexico is now importing approximately 25% of corn, its
staple food. Moreover, many Mexicans consider this corn, some of which is
genetically modified, to be of inferior quality.) The
protest campaign began in mid-November when twelve independent campesino
organizations came together to lobby the Mexican government under the banner of
“El Campo no aguanta más” – “the country-side can=t take it any
more.” In mid-December, the El Barzón organization launched a more radical
protest. A hundred or so mainly northern farmers, five of whom were on horseback
and six of whom were driving their tractors, attempted to storm the Mexican
Congress B even going so far as to set fire to their sombreros and hurl them
against the barred doors. (El Barzón was formed during the financial crisis of
the mid nineteen nineties, by middle class debtors who came together in a
combined effort to resist the loss of their farms, businesses, and family homes) Although
the organizations forming El Campo no aguanta más publicly deplored El Barzon=s
tactics, the two groups have since been working together. They have been joined,
in a somewhat uneasy alliance, by the Congreso Agrario Permanente (the Permanent
Agrarian Congress B CAP) a coalition of campesino organizations that has
historically been more ready to work with government. The National Campesino
Congress (CNC) - for more than sixty years linked to successive Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) governments - has not joined the campaign, stating
that it prefers to work to build consensus rather than Awasting time in
mobilizations@. The CNC has, however, been strongly critical both of the present
Minister of Agriculture and of government policy Since
the beginning of January, leaders of several of the organizations forming El
Campo no aguanta más have been holding a public demonstration and fast at the
monument of the Angel de la Independencia in Mexico City. These actions are
supported particularly by the National Union of Autonomous Regional Campesino
Organizations (UNORCA) and the National Association of Trading Entreprises of
Rural Producers (ANEC). UNORCA is a member organization of Via Campesina, to
which the Canadian National Farmers Union and the Union paysanne of Québec also
belong. The campaign has continued with protests at government offices in ten or
more states on January 20th. A major demonstration is to take place
in Mexico City on January 31st. The
Mexican government has responded to the campaign by agreeing to hold discussions
with campesino and agricultural organizations on a number of crucial topics
including international trade and the NAFTA, the role of the agriculture sector
within Mexican society as a whole, and social development in rural areas. The
business-oriented National Agricultural Council, which is in favour of the NAFTA,
has been invited to take part in the talks; it will, not however, be part of the
planning process leading up to the discussions. It is planned that this dialogue
will be followed by a National Convention on Agriculture, to be held in the
first days of February, and it is hoped that this Convention will culminate in a
major national agreement, to be signed on February 5th. The
principal demands of the campesino organizations that are involved in the
campaign include: Ø
a moratorium on the agricultural chapter of the NAFTA and the renegotiation of
the agricultural chapter; Ø
an emergency programme for the year 2003 and a long-term programme for the years
2004- 2020; Ø
reform of the government=s rural financing institution; Ø
fair distribution of the government funds that are allotted to agriculture and a
simplification of the relevant administrative regulations; Ø
access for all Mexican to good quality food products that are not injurious to
health; Ø
full recognition of indigenous rights and culture on the basis of the San Andres
Accords. These
specific demands are situated within a more general call for a reformed
agricultural policy that will be based on national food sovereignty. The
campesino organizations are also insisting upon a halt to the legal persecution
of the protesting campesinos and farmers. A number of those who have been
involved in acts of civil disobedience, which included the symbolic closing of
the Mexico-United States border on January 1st 2003, face criminal
charges. There are also campesino activists who are in prison for having taken
part in earlier protests. Despite
the fact that President Fox has indicated his willingness to hold discussions,
he has so far been adamantly opposed to a revision of the NAFTA. His repeated
references to improving the competitiveness of Mexican farmers and to
encouraging their entrepreneurial spirit appear to ignore not only the major
social role of peasant agriculture but also the fact that, since the early
1980s, federal agricultural policy has been concentrated on promoting the
agro-industry and the export sector. Designers of that policy have at times been
quite explicit about their goal of moving the majority of farming families out
of farming. To some extent this goal has been attained. Although approximately
one quarter of the population (around 25 million people) still live in rural
areas, it has been estimated that an average of six hundred people per day are
migrating from rural areas. The migrants usually move to impoverished
neighbourhoods in Mexican cities or literally risk their lives in an effort to
cross the border in order to seek work in the United States. Update
on protests in Mexico The
January 31st demonstration was the largest gathering of campesinos in Mexico
City since the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas in the mid-1930s. Approximately
100,000 men and women marched silently through the streets of Mexico City As of
February 3rd, it is still unclear if and when the formal meetings with the
government (originally scheduled to conclude with a convention and a national
agreement on February 4th and 5th) will take place. The meetings were to have
been jointly organized and hosted by the government on one side and El Campo no
aguanta más, El Consejo Agrario Permanente, and El Barzón on the other side.
Campesino organizations regard as a serious breach of faith the government=s
having issued unilateral invitations that failed to include the three
above-named campesino organizations as co-hosts of the meeting. SJC
supporters will be interested to learn that SJC partner UCIZONI is about to
become a formal member of the coalition El Campo no aguanta más.
Dialogue
and Incongruity: Meeting with the World Bank and IMF
By
Derek MacCuish It
was snowing in Washington. I
was there - a Canadian in the capitol of the United States - to talk with people
in the IMF and World Bank about the condition of life in Africa. It was
Christmas season, and the newspapers were speculating about the low level of
seasonal shopping and loss of consumer confidence. At the IMF and World Bank, we
were talking about efforts to survive in the most impoverished nations on earth.
It was a time of incongruity. For a
long time now, the Social Justice Committee has tried to back up our protest
against economic and social injustice with a search for solutions. As part of
that search, we engage in dialogue with people that we identify as key to
decision making. In Canada, on economic policy, this is the Minister of Finance
and his advisors and analysts. On the international level, we have focussed on
the World Bank and IMF as the two main organizations directing economic policy
in impoverished countries. In recent years, the dialogue has been with the
Canadian representatives on the Boards of Directors and their staff in each
institution, and with the people responsible for the debt relief program. This
was changed somewhat in December, when I set up a series of meetings in
Washington with some of the people responsible for designing the economic policy
packages for some impoverished countries. The countries of interest were those
that have been stalled in their debt relief programs because they haven=t
complied with the conditions attached to that relief. They included Senegal,
Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Nicaragua and Honduras. The
situation in each of these countries is different, but in many ways the problems
they face are similar. They all have a heavy debt burden, in a context of
tremendous poverty and low quality of life for too many of their citizens. They
all are eligible for debt relief, but are having trouble getting to what is
called the ACompletion Point@ of the main relief program because the IMF and
World Bank are not satisfied with their economic restructuring programs. In
Senegal, this has to do with privatization of the peanut industry, and
electricity. In Honduras and Nicaragua, it=s government spending and
privatization of public services. In Guyana, it=s privatization of sugar and the
way government contracts are awarded. Honduras,
for example, is being told that it has to renege on a wage increase for teachers
if it wants its economic program approved and the debt relief that will follow.
From the institutions= point of view, these salaries are eating up 99% of the
education budget, leaving nothing for other schooling needs. They are the result
of powerful union action during an election year and a government that was ready
to promise too much. The counter-argument is that Honduras is benefiting from
the best education system in the region, yet its tax collection lets the rich
off the hook entirely. Guyana
has very high levels of unemployment, and the exodus of people has climbed to
50,000 a year, out of a total population of less than 800,000. The sugar
industry is a major employer, but the Bank and Fund argue that it is inefficient
and a drain on the public purse, costing millions of dollars rather than
contributing to a sound economic base and growth for the future. They say it
needs to be modernized, reformed, and made efficient. Restructuring the sugar
industry is a condition of debt relief, but it will probably cost 8,000 people
their jobs. In
these countries as in all that were the focus of discussions, the conditions
they have to meet to get debt relief (and other development assistance) are
related to real economic problems. The differences of opinion lie more in how
the problems are going to be addressed. What processes are in place to include
the people affected in the decision making? What do the conditions now imposed
have to do with debt relief? Why is severe indebtedness being used as a lever to
force rapid economic restructuring that has been criticized as harmful to the
poor? The
people I met at both institutions were mostly welcoming and generous with their
time, and willing to share their knowledge and opinions. Discussions were often
frank, but polite. The only difficulties were presented by the External
relations Department of the IMF. Of three meetings to be set up by that
department, one was refused and another cancelled. The agenda of the third
meeting was changed without consulting me, and External Relations invited other
participants but refused to tell me. The Director of External Relations
responded to a letter of complaint by providing a list of restrictions on access
to meetings and information at the IMF. We have been in touch with people at
other organizations around the world who are quite concerned about this
response, and we=ll be following up in the coming weeks to push for safeguards
to productive dialogue. Also in
the weeks ahead, we=ll be preparing in-depth looks at a couple of countries,
their problems getting debt relief and the economic conditions attached, and
share these with you. We=ll also be expanding our activities to respond and push
for debt cancellation and greater empowerment of the people affected.
The
voices of the campesino protesters
Rogelio
Alquiciras Burgos from the Montaña region of Guerrero, executive coordinator of
UNORCA in the state of Guerrero: .AWe
campesinos have no choice. We are struggling to survive on our land, and now we
have come to protest because we have no other recourse: either we succeed in
getting a change in rural and farm policy or we go north ... in order to escape
dying of hunger. We are defending our land and our way of life as campesinos.
And that is not negotiable. Campesinos
from several municipalities (in the Montaña region) had set up about ten
socially-owned enterprises involving agricultural producers and craftspeople,
including a savings association, irrigation installations, community stores.
Since the NAFTA began, we have been abandoned, left at the mercy of hoarders and
wheelers and dealers...It is not that we expect the government to solve our
problems for us, but that, faced with this unfair competition we cannot cope -
because the support that they (producers in the United States and Canada) get
from their governments allows them to undercut us. Fox has to realize the
seriousness of what we in rural Mexico are going through. We are defending our
country=s food sovereignty, and we need the support of all Mexicans...@ Alberto
Gómez Flores, UNORCA leader: ADuring
these ten years we have not just waited for help from the government. We have
tried out our own development models and campesino alternatives to free market
policies. We have created campesino entreprises and developed our own marketing
and financing strategies. But the (NAFTA) opening is bankrupting us...@ Victor
Suárez, president of the National Association of Trading Enterprises of Rural
Producers AThere
is an emergency situation in rural areas. Government agricultural policies over
the past fifteen years have caused the ruin of rural Mexico. Eight out of ten
people who live in rural areas are poor, and more than six out of ten live in
extreme poverty... There is general agreement in Mexico with regard to the
asymmetries between Mexico and the United States. Whereas more than three
million Mexican campesinos are engaged in subsistence farming, in the United
States agriculture is industrialized and there are enormous subsidies. But there
are divergent visions as to how to react to the crisis that has devastated the
rural areas that are home to 25 million Mexicans. The government is maintaining
a policy that amounts to a death sentence for rural Mexico and the disappearance
of the campesino sector. No more than 180,000 Mexican agricultural producers
have benefitted from the NAFTA.... The
government says that the campesinos do not produce at competitive prices but it
does not acknowledge that international prices are established artificially
through subsidies. Domestic producers for the Mexican market are being ruined by
imports, and producers of agro-exports are being ruined by the fall in
international prices.@ Alfonso
Ramírez Cuellar, leader of El Barzón: AThere
are opposing positions... food sovereignty in opposition to an indiscriminate
opening that leaves rural Mexico in the hands of the market. The demand for a
change in agricultural policy comes up against the government=s determination to
subordinate rural development to macro-economic policies. The government
counters the proposal for a rural Mexico that includes campesinos with the idea
of converting campesino producers into entrepreneurs or condemning them to
disappear. Convinced
of the merits of free trade, the government does not understand what is
happening with the campesinos. The government is frightened by the possibility
of a national social movement=s challenging its agricultural policy and its
development model. The campesinos have nothing to lose, and they are struggling
for their survival. There is nothing left for the small and medium producers
other than to defend at any cost the little that they have. The movement will
win if there is a national debate on agriculture and rural development and if it
succeeds in convincing the urban population to support the campesinos - in order
to force the government to address the question of revision of the NAFTA. It is
true that there is desperation in the countryside and the glimmerings of a
social explosion.@ Olegario
Carrillo from the Yaqui valley of the state of Sonora, member of UNORCA=s
executive commission: AWe
farmers want to work. We want to live well from what the countryside produces
and to grow - for ourselves and for everyone - nutritious high quality
products.. There is much concern among farmers who belong to ejidos. Do you know
the source of their pain and anger? The fact that we are being pushed into
renting our land. More than 60% of the ejdos (in his home region) are being
rented out... Out of desperation many people are selling their plots of land,
and that=s a bastard, because the countryside is falling into abandon.@ Carlos
Enrique Villeda of Tuxpan, Nayarit: AWe are
producers of beans, rice, tobacco, fruit, and vegetables, and at this time we
are bankrupt. There is no credit, no investment. There is nothing. In the 1960s,
Nayarit was even the granary of Mexico, but the government=s agricultural
policies have really hurt us ... We have been pro-active. A few years ago, we
got together to market beans. We set up an enterprise that serves approximately
10,000 campesinos from fifteen municipalities in Nayarit, and in 2002 we
processed more than 40,000 tons of beans. We are paying the producers nine pesos
per kilo, but we are selling (the beans) at one or two pesos per kilo, because
we have been hit by the NAFTA. They lower their price just when we are
harvesting. And the government takes no responsibility.@ Valeria
Vidales of the National Association of Women Organized in a Network: AThe
role of women is important, because one of the effects of the NAFTA is the
feminization of the countryside that has been caused by the departure of the men
for the north. We stay behind in the communities, and, with the help of our
children, we have to work the land that has been abandoned (by the men). We want
the government to have the heart to see what is happening... because poverty is
getting worse and worse and emigration is increasing. I have family members who
are working on United States farms, and what they are producing is sold to
Mexico. They contribute their labour and they send money home to Mexico (SJC an
estimated US $10-11 billion per year, approximately the same amount as Mexico
spends on food imports). We too contribute to the nation by working on our plots
of land. We hope that the agricultural chapter of the NAFTA will be revised and
that we, as women, will participate in the discussion because we are not removed
from the problem.@ Victor
Quintana, leader of the Democratic Campesino Front of the state of Chihuahua and
former federal congressperson: ABecause
the NAFTA itself, in its Chapter 8 referring to emergency measures, ... gives
countries the right to suspend their import duty reduction commitments for
reasons of national security. Because,
in the exercise of our rights as Mexican citizens, we cannot allow the NAFTA to
be above the Mexican Constitution, which states that national sovereignty is
rooted in the people. Furthermore, the Constitution guarantees the right to work
and authorizes the Mexican Congress and the federal executive (the President) to
restrict and prohibit imported goods at times of economic emergency, in order to
regulate foreign trade for the benefit of the economy and the stability of the
country.@ (Two of
the ten points in an article entitled ATen Reasons for a Moratorium on the NAFTA@
that appeared in the newspaper La Jornada on January 5th,
2003.) Sohelio
Jaimes of the Coalition of Ejidos of the Costa Grande of the state of Guerrero: AThe
objective of (the campesino marketing association Guerreros de Mexico, which
brings together 35 organizations of coffee producers with a combined membership
of more than 22,000) is how we producers can market the coffee. It is a step
forward that we are starting to create a domestic market, because we cannot
depend on the international market. Many people are abandoning their plots of
land, but we want to hold onto them, because (our) coffee also contributes to
the environment, since it is grown under shade trees that are the lungs of the
country. And if we let the coffee die, this process will end.@ (If, for
instance, the land is cleared for other forms of land use. -KR) Armando
Bartra of the Instituto Maya, social analyst and academician: AIf in
the planet as a whole there is a need to overturn the societal and technological
model, in the countries on the periphery ... the recovery of food sovereignty
and of labour sovereignty means the restoration of the campesino economy and,
within that economy, the nucleus that is most resistant, praiseworthy and
sophisticated - the traditional cornfield (milpa), the barnyard, the cow
pasture, the vegetable garden.@
Interview:
The Failure of World Bank and IMF Policies in Senegal
Demba
Dembele, a Senegalese activist and coordinator of the CONGAD network of NGOs,
speaks about the consequences of structural adjustment policies and the debt
burden in Senegal and the rest of Africa, and the importance of the continued
struggle for debt cancellation. From an interview with the editor of the
Upstream Journal in September 2002. After
20 years of structural adjustment in Senegal, the results have been disastrous. My
country is now listed by the United Nations as a Least Developed Country (LDC),
the poorest countries in the world. After 20 years of structural adjustment
policies, after all the good reviews, we landed as an LDC. This is just Senegal.
I can also talk about Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, and Cape Verde
- all of them are now LDCs and all of them have been subjected to Structural
Adjustment Policies. Debt
was the pretext for the IMF and World Bank to come to Africa, to resolve the
debt crisis and then allow African countries to experience growth and
development. Unfortunately, on all counts, they have failed miserably failed.
Between 1980 and the year 2000 the debt of the continent has multiplied by
three. In some countries it has multiplied by five. If you look at the debt
trend and you compare it with the economic growth trend, you see that while the
debt was growing rapidly, economic growth was going down or stagnating. The debt
ratio - the ratio of debt to Gross Domestic Production - was about 24% when the
IMF and World Bank arrived. It is now three times larger at 71%. The per capita
GDP, which was about US$510 in 1980, is now down to just $328, almost $200 less
per capita. The
level of poverty has increased of course. From 150 to 160 million people living
on less than one dollar a day in the early 1980s to about 340 million today.
Between 1998 and 2002, 50 million more poor Africans were at that level. In 1998
it was 290 million people, and according to World Bank statistics it’s now 340
million. That’s 50 million more people. Why?
Why did Africa get to this brink of disaster? I think that there are two
reasons: the burden of debt, and the policies imposed by the World Bank and the
IMF to solve the debt. In some
countries, the annual debt service accounts for between 30 and 45% of budget
allocations - almost half. Meanwhile, spending on health or education is about
12 or 15% at most. Senegal, in 1998, spent 7.5% of its GDP on debt service, and
only 6.3% on education and health combined. Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole
spends, on average, four times more on debt service than on health, and two
times more on debt service than on education. These statistics are given by
United Nations institutions, such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development, United Nations Development Program, United Nations Children Fund,
UNICEF, and the ILO. As for
employment, in Senegal urban areas almost four out of ten people aged 25 to 40
who should be working are out of work. Of those lucky enough to work, six out of
ten have temporary jobs or short-term contracts. There is no job security at
all, and they are earning only the minimum wage, not adequate to support their
families. This is the general picture in almost all of sub-Saharan Africa. The
World Bank and IMF told us that if in the past we paid it’s because we
didn’t push enough for privatization, and we didn’t push enough for
liberalization. So, right now they’re telling us to sell everything in the
hands of the government - the public sector. In
Senegal for instance, one of the last great public concerns that is still
controlled by the state is an electricity company. The privatization of that
company was one of the major conditions for Senegal to get the debt relief
available for “Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs).” The former regime
accepted the condition and privatized the company. The government jailed and
fired labour union leaders who resisted the privatization process. When private
investors arrived, they found that those leaders were very popular and that the
labour union was very strong. One year later the investors pulled out because
they couldn’t run the company as they wished. The new
regime then wanted to come back to the privatization process. Unfortunately for
them - and fortunately for us - labour unions, with the help of the population,
resisted. The privatization process failed. Now, the World Bank is blaming the
government for being too weak in the face of popular resistance. The government
is saying they didn’t find private investors who would pay the right price to
take over, but we know they backed down because of popular pressure. The World
Bank is telling the Senegalese that we have to privatize the electric company or
we will pay the consequences. That is the situation in Senegal and in all
African countries. When
the World Bank says that such and such country is getting debt relief, they
don’t tell you all the strings that are attached to that so-called relief. For
example, the World Bank told the Tanzanian government that it would have to
privatize the water delivery system to get debt relief through the HIPC
Initiative program. But before privatizing, the World Bank gave a loan to the
Tanzanian government to upgrade the system so it would be attractive to foreign
investors. They added to the debt of Tanzania to upgrade a vital public concern
to be sold to private investors. This just tells you how cynical these people
are. Linked
to the World Bank’s HIPC Initiative are “Poverty Reduction Strategy
Papers” - PRSPs. They say that by linking HIPC and these papers, they will
reduce the level of poverty. They talk about reducing the level of poverty - not
the eradication of poverty - but we know this is a joke. The conditions that
were previously attached to structural adjustment are the same that are attached
to PRSPs. It is just a change of name; the fundamental philosophy and
prescriptions are the same. It’s not poverty reduction, but poverty
enhancement. That is the overall situation in sub-Saharan Africa. We are
a part of the African Social Movement, aligned with the Jubilee South Movement.
We have all agreed that unconditional debt cancellation and an end to all IMF
and World Bank sponsored policies are our priorities. We are calling for the
pullout of these institutions from Africa, because they are obstacles to
economic and social development. This is our conviction. After twenty-two years
of their presence, after all that has happened, after all their failures, they
are still pushing for the same policies, and they are discredited world-wide. It
is about time for them to get out of Africa and look for another place. This is
the overall objective of the African Social Movement. Before
the year 2000, the Jubilee movement as a whole did a great job. Northern NGOs
and Southern NGOs did a great job in raising the issue of debt cancellation, but
after the year 2000 many Jubilee groups closed down, or changed their
resolutions vis-à-vis the debt issue. But in Jubilee South we are continuing to
struggle for unconditional debt cancellation, because we see it as a
pre-condition for economic and social development throughout the world and
particularly in Africa. There
are some northern NGOs that are trying to sell the idea that debt arbitration
would be a substitute for debt cancellation. I think this is not only wrong, but
also a dangerous idea, because now the IMF has picked up on that idea and have
come up with the International Debt Workout Framework. It is working with some
of the Northern NGOs that are favourable to that idea to try to bury the issue
of debt cancellation. We call
on our friends, our partners in the North, not to be mislead by this idea of
debt arbitration. We call on them to continue to support the Jubilee South
framework -unconditional debt cancellation and reparations for all the damage
that has been caused to our country for centuries, and for the damage caused to
our country by misguided IMF and World Bank policies over the last twenty years.
Then we are taking bigger steps for reparations and for justice for those
responsible for the unbearable debt burden and its consequences on our people.
We call on our partners in the North to support us on the issues and to work
with us closely. We think that the issue of debt arbitration is a red herring.
International planners and institutions, and even some Northern countries, are
using it just to deflect world public attention from the issue of debt
cancellation.
News from Guatemala
A personal letter of reflection by Faye Wakeling, November
2002 This is a wonderful time of year in Guatemala,
with the end of the rainy season, the beginning of the corn harvest and
celebrations with those who are graduating from the courses in pastoral studies,
health and theology, that Pierre and I have been leading in many regions of the
country. It has been a very exciting process for me to accompany the women
as they continue in their studies, become more aware of their own leadership
capacity and begin to share their learning in their own villages. Tomorrow I go
to a small village where the Kaqchikel women will share their own reflections on
the themes we have studied together this year – Human Rights, Economy and
Poverty in Guatemala, Human Relations, and Systems of Power. This has been the
first time that many of the 25 women have participated in a course and it has
been a very rich experience of sharing their life experiences, analysing the
systems and causes of the poverty and oppression they endure, and finding their
own voice and ability to speak out. Many of the women learn by oral tradition
and it will be a momentous occasion for those who do not read and write to
receive credits for their participation from the Universidad Biblico
Latinoamericana in Costa Rica, whose Pastoral Institute is very flexible in
responding to the special needs in leadership training with rural indigenous
communities. I have learned so much from these women who have lived through such
violent times and been engaged for many, many years in community struggles for
water, land and education for their children. I have seen the beginnings of a long-term plan to
prepare Mayan women to eventually carry on the organising of theological and
biblical studies I am doing with the communities of the Fraternidad. Two women
from different Mayan cultures - Micaela who is Mam and Carmelina who is K´iché
- have been engaged in a training project with me over the past 6 months. In
addition to them sharing the accompaniment of my work in different regions, we
have bi-weekly sessions with training in Popular Education methods, analysis of
the sessions they are attending and preparation together of material they can
use in their communities. Micaela is young (22 years, with a 3 year old child),
very energetic and so open to learning and looking at new ways of reflecting,
teaching, interpreting Bible, etc. Carmelina has stability and maturity ( early
forties, with large family, grandchildren, etc), with solid experience in the
church and a great thirst to learn. Since Carmelina began a course with me two
years ago, she has been taking every course or workshop available. They are a
great combination, with different gifts, different cultures and languages, and
it is really wonderful to work in a team together. The communities are delighted
to have them share leadership with me and, depending on the culture we are with,
they are often able to teach or translate in their own language. Guatemala continues to be confronted with
increasing violence, Government corruption, deepening poverty with severe
malnutrition, a coffee crisis that has left over 700,000 workers unemployed and
increasing violations of Human Rights. The United Nations Mission in Guatemala
has at least been able to document this deteriorating state and attacks on human
rights workers and organisations, but their staff has now been drastically
reduced and the mission will be withdrawn at the end of the coming year. Kofi
Annan, the General Secretary of the United Nations, visited Guatemala a couple
of weeks ago and expressed deep concern about the violation of Human Rights, the
lack of a justice system and the escalating violence in the country. One can
only hope that there are countries that will advocate his recommendation that
MINUGUA, the United Nations presence, will not be pulled out in the coming year.
In this time of increasing instability, poverty and violence, the children are
the most effected and the most vulnerable. As I left my home early in the morning last week,
I was met by two little boys who called out to me "Lustre? Lustre?".
These two little 7 or 8 year-old tykes wanted to shine my shoes and they were
just beginning a very long, hard day of work – a day not fit for little
children. They do a great job, charge very little and most of them have to hand
over the larger portion of their earnings to those who supply them with the
shoebox of materials, the tools of their trade. Children’s income is a
necessity for the survival of the majority of Guatemalan families that live in
dire poverty. The majority of the street children that we see in our small city
of Xela (the Mayan name for Quetzaltenango) have families to go home to and
their labour is not an option. A local organisation that works with these
children, offering opportunities for education and skills training for
adolescents, recognises the importance of working with these families to try to
find alternatives that allow the children to attend school and at the same time
to continue their vital contribution to the family’s survival. A third of
primary school children dropped out of school last year because they had to work
and this of course, does not take into account the majority of children, who are
working and have never gone to school. The most painful discussions I participate in
with women, are about their own childhood in poverty that has left indelible
marks and their determination that life will be different for their children.
However, when we were studying Human Rights in one community, the group that was
working on the needs and rights of children (6 to 15 years), identified on their
list, the Right of children to Work. This produced a very tough and agonising
discussion with the whole group. The women spoke of the fact that families
couldn’t survive if the children didn’t work and those children had the
Right to the basic necessities of life. We were faced with an impossible dilemma
as the women wrestled with their deep commitment to find ways to assure that
their children had an education and on the other hand, the need to survive.
These Rights are so beautifully expressed in the Constitution of Guatemala, in
the Peace Accords and in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights,
ratified by Guatemala. But how do we speak of Rights where there are no
resources to fulfil them or no will by the state to meet basic needs for
survival? I often use pictures that I have collected of
Guatemalan families, women, children and daily life in the Mayan communities, as
a focus for sharing experiences in our studies. When we reflect on childhood
experiences, the pictures include children working in the home, on the streets
and in plantations. A picture of a group of small children picking coffee -
which is very hard and demanding work - is very disturbing for me to look at.
Yet, in every community that I have shared this picture, the women have seen
this as a good memory, of times when the whole family worked together and even
more important, of the times when there was paid work and enough to eat. In the
past two years, hundreds of thousands of workers in Guatemala have lost their
jobs as coffee plantations have closed down because of the drastic drop in
coffee price. So there are no longer children picking coffee – and this is not
a victory against child labour! Children are inevitably those who suffer most
from social and economic crises. In the eastern region of the country, which
relied almost entirely on work in the coffee plantations that have now closed,
children are dying of starvation and nothing is being done to bring enough aid
or find a long-term solution. The situation that faces the family of a good
friend who is a leader in her community in the Alta Verapaz region, is a
poignant example of both the determination to find a better future for her four
children and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles she faces. Maria has lived
all her life in a small house on a plantation where her husband worked, but 6
months ago the work stopped and the plantation owner decided to sell off his
land and the worker’s houses, at outrageous prices. The family was forced to
leave, moved to another community, which has no schools, into a small house that
was inundated with the floods of 3 months ago, and the family has lost
everything. In spite of this, Maria continues to travel 14 hours to participate
in meetings of our organisation and each time is accompanied by one of her
daughters. The horizons of her daughters are expanding as they travel, listen,
observe and see their mother taking on a very new and different role outside the
home. This change is like a wave that is moving slowly
through the country, bringing with it both opportunity and new challenges. More
and more Mayan children have a school experience, even though incomplete and
this now includes little girls, whose mothers of the previous generation were
not allowed to go to school. But there are serious costs. The majority of
schools require the students to wear a uniform and this means that the
traditional dress that is such an integral part of the Mayan woman’s identity,
must be put aside to move "forward". Many parents, who remember so
painfully being ridiculed and abused as a child because they spoke only their
Mayan language, use only Spanish in their homes, to protect their children from
such shame and discrimination. They are opening doors for their children to a
very different future, but the children are now facing the tension of living in
different worlds. The challenge is theirs to find the way to continue to value
their own identity as Mayan people, in educational systems and social forces
that are moving in another direction. I hear so often the words of parents and
grandparents, who in the face of the present climate of violence, corruption,
and increasing poverty in Guatemala, speak of hope. Their hope is for the long
haul, with a patience and faith that is astounding, that change will come in the
next generation or for their grandchildren. Half of the population is under the
age of 15 years and the children are the ones that must find their way through
the conflict, dysfunction and destruction that has followed 36 years of war.
That is the hope – that is the faith. " A little child shall lead them….."
Will that child, those children, have the basic necessities to survive, to grow,
to be bearers of hope for the future? As I share these concerns with you, we are
entering the time of Advent – the time of preparing and advocating for
Peace in a world that does not know peace and – the time of seeking for Hope
in a world that has become more fearful, aggressive and despairing. In all its
struggles the people of Guatemala continue to have hope, to not be discouraged
and to look to the future, the time when their children or grand-children, will
know Peace. May it be so. Abrazos, Faye
What
is Social Justice?
We
receive many emails here at the Social Justice Committee but one sent in October
by a 14 year old from Australia really caught our attention. “My
name is Louisa Reynolds and I am a 14 year old Year 9 student in Australia. I am
writing about your website. Yes,
indeed it is very helpful but I am currently doing a religion assignment on
social justice. All I wanted was to define the term Social Justice, get a few
ideas of Social Justice and I thought I would be able to find it all on your
website. Yours
sincerely, Louisa Reynolds” Her
challenge for us to define what we mean is welcome. We need to occasionally
re-assess what we’re about. We decided to see if we could kick off an
examination of the concept of “social justice” by asking one of our bright
young volunteers to come up with an informed definition. She brought us much
more... "Social
Justice"?
By
Laura Butler Economic
growth Vs Human Development: Social
Justice can only really be defined in context. The
market capitalist system governing the world is unstable, and the very dynamic
upon which capitalism rests – competition – is the source of this
instability. By definition competition breeds winners and losers but, as
competitive capitalism globalizes, the gulf between the winners and the losers
is widening. Within states and between states inequality is rising and the
impact of our global economy is becoming obvious. Pollution of the natural
environment, financial crisis and massive social unrest are predictable results
of the current system. Market
capitalism has bought untold wealth to many and this has provided the means to
realize improvements in the quality of life. Life expectancy and levels of
literacy have increased, fertility rates and infant mortality have fallen – in
other words, human development has taken place. Those who have benefited from
Capitalism have a greater range of choices and freedoms than ever before. The
concern is whether these benefits extend more widely so that the quality of life
improves for all, not just a few. Capitalism’s answer to human development is
more economic growth, after all capitalism did provide the means to increase
choices and freedoms in the past. So why all the anti-capitalism? Why the
protests? Don’t Southerners deserve the same opportunities we in the North
had? The
answer is an unequivocal yes. But we must not confuse ‘means’ with
‘ends,’ nor ‘economic growth’ with ‘Human Development.’ Most
importantly we must not let others try to confuse us either. The
idea of Human Development is a slippery one because people have subjective ideas
about what constitutes development or improvement. I have always found Sen’s
definition of Human Development as ‘increased freedoms and choices,’ to be
both robust and flexible. Extrapolating from this definition, Social Justice
means that all members of a society have equal opportunity to access these
freedoms and choices in deciding how to live ones life. Unfortunately
today’s Market Capitalism is actually curtailing many freedoms and choices.
The confiscation of traditional lands in Mexico to make way for superhighways
and maquillas is a simple example, but one that neatly captures the rather
abstract notion of the ‘unstable internal dynamic’ that I referred to
earlier. Bear with me and I will show how the above example is actually the
inevitable outcome of today’s Capitalist system. The
Commoditization of Labor and Money Firstly
we must be clear about the role of labor and capital [that is people and money
to you and I] in Capitalism. Free
trade is the latest manifestation of the globalization of capitalism, and
governments around the world are working to facilitate this competition.
Barriers to trade are being removed to allow the magic of the competitive market
to work. Some of these barriers such as tariffs are obvious, others are less
obvious but arguably more important. In order to compete in this global
capitalism, today’s governments are transforming labor markets and
liberalizing capital [Money] markets. The
theory of Neo-liberal economics calls for the unfettered functioning of the
market, labor must be as ‘flexible’ as possible to competitively respond to
market signals, and capital [money] must be freed to lubricate these market
transactions. Yet the
State is required to reconcile the requirements of the economy with the reality
of society, for example the State must manage the supply of money in an economy
in order to evade the twin evils of inflation and deflation. Under a pure
capitalist market however, money itself must be transformed into a commodity
that can be bought and sold freely. Recent pressure for the liberalization of
international capital accounts is today’s attempt to commoditize money. The
Enclosures Acts of 18th century Europe succeeded in separating people
from their land [their ‘means of production,’] and thus transformed them
into wage laborers. These wage laborers then sell their labor in the labor
market. Bingo! Labor starts to become a commodity. A similar genre of enclosures
is currently happening across the South as governments seek to privatize
traditional or collective lands and encourage a competitive and modern labor
force. Labor
is simply the activity of humans, land is just the natural environment with
title deeds, and the money supply is necessarily controlled by the government.
Yet the economic theorizing upon which real policies with real impacts are based
assumes that land, labor and money behave as typical commodities. Land, labor
and money are not typical commodities and they certainly do not behave as such. Polanyi
and ‘The Great Transformation’ As I
noted at the outset these are not new observations, the commoditization of land,
labor and money were first noted by Polanyi and named ‘The Great
Transformation.’ Polanyi argues that the emergence of market capitalism
necessitated a fundamental change in the relationship between society and the
economy. Before the 19th century the economy was not ‘autonomous’
[as it must be in economic theory] but was subordinated to society and governed
by politics, religion and social relations. For
capitalism’s self regulating market to function properly, society must be
subordinated to the logic of the market – i.e. labor, land and money must
behave as commodities. “Ultimately
that is why the control of the economic system by the market is of overwhelming
consequence to the whole organization of society: it means no less than the running
of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of the economy being
embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic
system” -
Karl Polanyi. The
protagonists of the global economic system promote the State as the facilitator
of the market, and today’s States are actively pushing society and natural
resources towards the point of commoditization. Social upheaval, environmental
pollution and financial crisis are considered unfortunate-but-necessary
adjustments for the long-term benefit of all. For this economic nirvana to be
reached however, people, land and money would have to behave as narrowly and
unrealistically as the academic theory that underpins the current approach. It
is because of this incongruence between reality and the demands of economic
theory that Capitalism is not delivering increased freedoms and choices to the
majority in the South; people are more than just labor and land is more than
just a resource. Do
the ‘ends justify the means?’ In
fact, so destructive are these ‘necessary transitions’ that many of those
affected are protesting that their freedoms and choices are actually being
reduced. When speaking to a Mexican who is being evicted from traditional
collective lands to make way for a superhighway and is offered only the
possibility of a sweat-shop job in a future maquilla, it is hard to disagree.
The Neo-liberal economic model is actually damaging the ‘ends’ of human
development upon which the model was originally justified. Yet
people are not passively watching their freedoms and choices be subordinated to
the rapacious demands of global capitalism. As the consequences of the
unrestrained market become apparent, people are rejecting the model that would
lead to their own destruction and retreating from global capitalism. Governments
today, as before, face domestic pressure and criticism of their economic policy. “The
evil suffered patiently as inevitable [becomes] unendurable as soon as one
concieves the idea of escaping from it.” - De
Tocqueville. The
results of the increased pressure on States to protect their citizens from the
machinations of the unfettered market resolves itself in one of two ways; either
the state listens and intervenes to rein in the economy [reverting to a more
embedded position in Polanyi’s words,] or there will be social disintegration. “The
entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which
one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity
of social existence , has passed into the rank of a universally stigmatized
injustice and tyranny.” -
John Stuart Mill. Let’s
take a quick breather and review the position thus far: Neo-Liberal
Economic theory states that land, labor and capital [money] must behave as
commodities in order for competition to work. Competition will lead to economic
growth, which in turn will lead to human development. There may be some
difficult adjustments, but in the long run this is for the greater good of all. Polanyi
argues that these ‘difficult adjustments’ occur because it is against the
nature of land, labor and capital [money] to behave as typical commodities. As
the difficult adjustments become too painful and people protest, the State will
rein in the economy…until next time. A cyclical pattern then develops of the
economy dominating society and vice versa. But the
cycle has been disturbed and the goal posts have shifted; as the economy goes
global, the rules have changed. The
economy and society in globalization Polanyi,
De Tocqueville and Mill were writing before the time of globalization when the
nation state had a great deal of autonomy to respond to citizens. Today economic
policy is determined at the international rather than the national level.
Northern governments manipulate the powerful debt leverages incumbent on much of
the South in order to advance conditions favorable to globalization of
capitalism. This is clearly demonstrated by the extensive use of IMF, WB and WTO
conditions to ensure the removal of trade barriers which frustrate the
globalization of capitalism to the South. Today
popular protest against ‘painful-but-necessary adjustments’ are not felt by
those making the big decisions about the direction and pace of the economy
because these decision makers are in Washington, not Mexico City. As Nation
States have less scope to protect their citizens from the effects of the market,
the only other outlet – social upheaval – is becoming more and more common.
Concerned nation states are told to wait it out and bear the adjustments. In
return they are promised future prosperity and the economic growth which will
deliver human development to their people. Yet
this will not happen. The Northern governments are also experiencing pressure
from their own citizens concerned over the impact of global capitalism, and
these citizens are being responded to. Whilst Southern nations are coerced into
reducing trade barriers, the rich northern counterparts are retaining or even
increasing their protection. Tariffs such as the Multi-fiber agreement, the US
steel tariffs, the EU Common Agricultural Policy, serve to protect Northern
societies from the painful machinations of market capitalism and to secure the
greater portion of the benefits of economic globalization for the North. This is
an example of Polanyi’s State intervening to protect its citizens. In the
North, the state is able to make alterations, to ‘embed’ the economy in
society’s needs. In the South, powerful debt conditionality ensures that this
is not an option, Southern societies will be subjugated to the market.
Painful adjustments are exported to the South in the name of ‘development.’
Neo-liberal models promise Human Development through economic growth, yet the
impact of this prescription is curtailing the already limited freedoms and
choices. The
ultimate purpose of economic growth is to improve the choices and freedoms of
its constituency, this must not become obscured by the relentless pursuit of
growth for growth’ sake. Gindin succinctly defines Social Justice as “the
pursuit of a society that fosters and encourages the full and mutual development
of all the capacities of all members.” In a globalizing society this means
that the goal of increased freedoms and choices for one group must not come at
the expense of another.
Book
Review: Globalization
and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz
by
J.G.Foulds This
book is a important contribution to the ongoing critical reassessment of the
failure of the principal international financial institutions (International
Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organization) to deal
effectively with the most significant economic problems of the nineties, ie - in
Asia, the former Soviet Union and Latin American. It
is particularly harsh criticism of the IMF which the author portrays as the
principal architect of these ineffectual policies and as an organization which
is in need of very significant reform. The
author is a leading academic economist who for seven years in the nineties
occupied senior positions within the Clinton Administration and the World Bank.
Dr. Stiglitz left academia in 1993 to become Chairman of Bill Clinton’s
Council of Economic Advisors. He moved to the World Bank in 1997, just in time
for the financial meltdown in Southeast Asia and from both of these positions
observed the botched transition of Russia from communism to capitalism. After
serving as chief economist and senior vice president at the World Bank for
almost three years, he left in January, 2000 to return to the academic world at
Columbia University. In 2001, Dr. Stiglitz shared the Nobel Prize in Economic
Science for his work in information economics. He was concerned with what goes
wrong with markets when a few people in the know have much better information
than the rest of us and why at times government intervention is required to
lessen the negative impact of these imbalances. He is a latter day Kensyian and
as such often finds himself in disagreement with the free market followers of
Milton Friedman who have been calling most of the shots in global economic
policy during the past 20 years. According
to Dr Stiglitz, in the broadest terms the problem with the present global
economic system is that we have global economic governance without global
government and as a result the people of the developing world most severely
impacted by the various crises discussed in this book, have no voice at the
decision making table. As originally conceived after World War II with the
purpose of providing stabilizing assistance to countries with good economic
fundamentals that were experiencing temporary foreign exchange difficulties, the
IMF is dominated by financial institutions in the most powerful industrial
countries. The United States, being the largest donor country and the only
country with veto power at the IMF, plays a particularly significant roll.
Lacking any more broadly based method of governance and any transparency in its
decision making processes, the IMF became a tool to advance the ideology of free
marketers and Regan/Thatcher capitalists in all the countries of the developing
world. In the eighties, policies known as the Washington Consensus were
formulated to address various economic crises being experienced in Latin America
at that time. Central to this approach were policies of fiscal austerity,
privatization and market liberalization. While Stiglitz agrees these were sound
policies for dealing with Latin American countries which had been running large
deficits year after year, they were inappropriately applied in cookie cutter
fashion to many developing countries in the nineties which had a totally
different set of problems, making the problems that they were intended to
address much worse then otherwise would have been the case. Balanced budgets
were pushed in countries which did not have a chronic budget deficit problem,
high interest rates in countries which did not have an inflation problem,
financial market liberalization in countries lacking an appropriate regulatory
structure and privatization in countries which had no anti-competitive laws to
guard against the formation of monopolies. Individual
chapters in the book are devoted to the Asian and Russian crises, the first
because it was the most significant economic crises since the Great Depression
and the second because it was in Dr. Stiglitz’s view the most important
economic transition of all time. In Asia, in the face of recession and mounting
unemployment, the IMF advocated contractionary monetary and fiscal policies,
similar to those that were followed by the Hoover administration prior to the
Great Depression in the US and have been shunned in the western world ever
since. The resulting high unemployment in countries where there were no safety
nets to help the laid-off workers keep food on the table, led to social unrest
and foreign investment fleeing the country making problems even worse. According
to Dr Stiglitz, countries like China, South Korea and Malaysia that refused to
follow IMF guidance, came through this period in much better shape then
Indonesia and Thialand who took the IMF’s medicine. In Russia, the IMF’s
insistence on rapid capital market liberalization and privatization before legal
infrastructures were in place, led to asset striping and money leaving the
country rather then being invested in its future. This resulted in a few of
Yeltsin’s friends becoming billionaires while the population as a whole
slipped further into poverty. In 1989 only 2 % of the population were in
poverty. By late 1998 the number had soared to 23.8 % using a $ 2/day standard.
In the ten years following the fall of communism, the decline in Russian
industrial output (60 %) was far greater than it had experienced in World War II
(24 %). While Stiglitz admits that the IMF cannot be blamed for everything that
happened, he contends that it contributed mightily to the devastation. The
final chapter of the book is presents Dr. Stiglitz’s prescriptions for reform
of the international financial institutions. At the top of his reform list are
governance changes to insure that the voices of the developing countries are
accounted for in the decision making process and that the process itself is much
more transparent. He would relieve the IMF of its responsibilities for
transitional economies (like those of the former members of the Communist bloc)
and for structural adjustment in highly indebted developing countries, leaving
it to focus on its original task of loaning hard currencies to countries with
sound economies that experience temporary shortages of foreign exchange,
enabling them to maintain employment, production, and imports and avoid
transmitting negative trends to their trading partners. He states that there is
widespread demand for change in these institutions and in response the IMF and
World Bank are modifying their rhetoric to talk much more about the impact of
their policies on poverty. He believes that while reform will be extremely
difficult and time consuming, it is essential if globalization is to be made to
work not just for the well off and developed nations but for the poor in the
developing world. This book provides a wealth of information to those who are
seeking change and in time should prove very influential in the reform process. |
