| . Latin America: Racial Revolt in the Making . |
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STRATFOR WEEKLY Summary Racially based popular revolts among poor indigenous and peasant groups are spreading throughout Latin America. Four South American presidents have been toppled in the past four years, and more forced regime changes are likely in the coming months, endangering U.S. economic and security interests in several countries. Analysis Slightly more than a decade after Latin American reformist governments enthusiastically embraced free-market economic policies advocated by the United States, popular revolts against those policies are erupting across the region. In the past four years, popular uprisings have ousted four democratically elected presidents in Ecuador, Peru, Argentina and Bolivia -- where former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resigned and fled the country on Oct. 17 after month-long riots in which 60 to 80 people were killed and more than 400 injured. In recent weeks, violent popular demonstrations against free-market policies also have rocked Central American and Caribbean countries such as Honduras and the Dominican Republic. The most recent violence broke out Nov. 11 in the Dominican Republic, where at least six people were killed and more than 100 injured in clashes between poor protesters and government security forces. If the violent protests continue in Santo Domingo and other Dominican Republic cities, they could destabilize the government of President Hipolito Mejia and possibly force his resignation. Moreover, it's possible that over the next six months new popular revolts could force the ouster of Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez and interim Bolivian President Carlos Mesa. All of these popular uprisings share a common theme: Poor indigenous,
black and "mestizo" or mixed-race Latin Americans are revolting against
elected governments that seek to implement the free-market economic
and trade policies included in the so-called "Washington Consensus."
The popular uprisings against these policies, which are called "neo-liberalism"
across the region, also coincide with a rapid increase in anti-U.S.
sentiment that appears to cut across all classes, from poor to rich. These gloomy numbers -- and the popular revolts gaining momentum across the region -- suggest that many Latin American democracies are at risk of imploding and being replaced by authoritarian or populist governments with an anti-U.S. agenda. The polls also indicate that the region's leaders do not trust the Bush administration's policy prescriptions for Latin America. In fact, many increasingly view some U.S. foreign policy priorities in the region -- such as the drug war and unfettered free-market policies -- as major contributing factors to the growing turmoil. However, the Bush administration appears oblivious or indifferent to these trends, perhaps because Washington does not perceive any immediate and direct threats to U.S. homeland security coming out of Latin America. In effect, at several recent meetings between senior U.S. and Latin American officials in Miami and Trinidad and Tobago, the official U.S. message has been that Latin America's troubles are not economic, but rather political and institutional. Senior U.S. officials -- like Roger Noriega, the assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere -- have urged Latin American leaders to accelerate pending economic and trade reforms. However, most poor Latin Americans are convinced that the economic and free-trade policies that the United States has promoted aggressively since the end of the Cold War are responsible for growing regional poverty and unemployment. The region's poor also have linked the implementation of U.S.- promoted economic policies with the huge surge in corruption the region has experienced since the end of the 1980s. From Mexico to Argentina, the poor perceive that the greatest beneficiaries of privatized state enterprises have been corrupt bankers, business cronies and relatives of whoever is in power. Though this isn't historically unique in Latin America, where government corruption has been a fact of life since the Spanish Conquest 400 years ago, populist political leaders and radical groups with an anti-U.S. agenda have persuaded the poor that the free-market policies advocated by Washington also fueled a new era in corruption that benefited the dominant rich elites and foreign companies at the expense of the poor. However, as an adviser to the U.S. administration's core Latin America policymaking team told Stratfor recently, "There isn't any viable alternative model to free-market economic and trade policies." In effect, with the exception of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, all of the supposedly left-leaning presidents elected over the past year in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay have run for election on anti-market platforms, but have steered orthodox economic courses once in power. Even Bolivia's Mesa is trying to stay on course with free-market policies -- despite threats from indigenous and peasant leaders that he will be overthrown in a new popular revolt if he doesn't abandon these policies quickly in favor of big-government socialist schemes. The Racial Politics of Popular Revolt The biggest popular revolts in Latin America have erupted in recent years in countries with large indigenous and poor populations, such as Ecuador and Bolivia. This has fostered the perception among some observers that these revolts are mainly a clash of cultures between traditionalist indigenous peoples and modernist dominant ethnic groups descended from European immigrants. These perceptions are not entirely accurate, however. It's true that there are major cultural differences between indigenous peoples and long-ruling white elites in many Andes region countries. As a result, there are elements in these revolts that could be described as a clash between civilizations. However, the main reason there have been popular revolts in recent years in countries such as Bolivia and Ecuador is that the poorest citizens -- who happen also to be indigenous -- are rebelling against governments that implement policies which the poor believe have made poverty worse. Moreover, while indigenous people may be among the poorest in the region, the majority of the black and "mestizo" or mixed race populations in Latin American countries are also poor. Increasingly, indigenous leaders, populists like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and radical groups seeking to oust capitalist democracy in favor of centrally-planned authoritarian governments also are linking poverty to race. This linkage is particularly effective in Latin America, where indigenous people, blacks and mestizos have occupied the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder for centuries. Since the 18th century, race has been a causal factor in popular revolts against governments in countries such as Haiti, Bolivia and Mexico. However, the twin forces of globalization and regional leftist groups seeking to reinvent themselves since the end of the Cold War have turned race and ethnicity into a core factor in the popular revolts the region has experienced in the past four years. From southern Mexico to Bolivia, indigenous groups have been taught how to organize politically, using their race or ethnicity to differentiate themselves -- and their political agendas -- from central governments ruled by white elites. In some cases -- such as the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas in 1994 -- they have taken up arms to press their cause. With the aid of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have legitimate humanitarian or environmental agendas, many indigenous groups also have developed extensive regional and international networks to promote their political agendas, which basically include demands for political autonomy and titled land ownership.Indigenous groups in areas rich in natural mineral or energy resources also are demanding a substantial share of the profits derived from extracting and exporting those resources so that they can fund their own economic and social development independently from the control of central governments dominated by white and mestizo elites. This is the case in countries such as Ecuador and Peru, for example, where indigenous groups oppose the environmental destruction they claim is caused by foreign oil mining companies, yet at the same time they also demand deals guaranteeing them royalties and other income derived from whatever resources are taken out of areas the indigenous groups consider their ancestral or tribal homelands. Coca, Neo-Marxism and Identity-Based Politics Before Sanchez de Lozada resigned as Bolivia's president on Oct. 17 and left the country for the United States, he condemned his opponents as "narco-terrorists" seeking to establish an authoritarian leftist regime based upon the international narcotics trade. Senior U.S. State Department officials have since dismissed Sanchez de Lozada's accusations. Stratfor also believes that his allegations of a narco-terrorist plot against his government were greatly exaggerated. Nevertheless, Bolivia's former president did make a valid point. The Aymara and Quechua indigenous groups that make up 70 percent of Bolivia's population -- and were at the core of the popular revolt that toppled Sanchez de Lozada -- have legitimate grievances in terms of their centuries-old exclusion from mainstream Bolivan society. However, there is also substantial evidence that organizational input and funding for some of the groups that participated in the revolt that ousted Sanchez de Lozada came from international drug traffickers and radical leftist groups that are seeking to end Bolivia's 18-year-old free-market democratic government. For example, Bolivian indigenous leaders like Evo Morales and Felipe Quispe became nationally prominent over the past 20 years by embracing indigenous identity-based politics and symbolism. They wear the traditional clothing of Aymara Indians, and have established local and regional political organizations based upon centuries-old indigenous traditions. They also advocate core indigenous spiritual and social values rooted in tradition. Quispe calls himself the Mallku, which is Aymara language for high-flying Condor. The Condor is the largest predator bird in the Americas,and is also a centuries-old symbol of Aymara leadership and ethnic pride. While this symbolism means little or nothing to nonindigenous white Bolivians or U.S. policymakers, it is a vital component of Bolivia's identity-based indigenous politics.
Both Morales and Quispe receive substantial political support from Havana. Morales recently took part in a forum held in Havana, during which he called on Latin America's poor to unite in a regional popular revolt against "neo-liberalism," which is the word all Latin Americans use to describe U.S.-centric free-market economic and trade policies. Morales also vowed, during a recent speech in Havana at a forum hosted by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, to turn Latin America into a new Vietnam for Washington. Radical Leftist Groups and Legitimate NGOs: Same Bed, Different Causes In addition to his leftist, would-be revolutionary credentials, Morales also is the elected leader of an organization called the Andean Council of Coca Leaf Producers (CAPHC). The group claims to represent the legitimate interests of Bolivian coca growers who have cultivated coca for thousands of years. CAPHC argues that coca is a central element of Andean indigenous culture and religion. However, the CAPHC appears to be a front organization for coca growers that supply drug traffickers with the raw material from which cocaine is made. The CAPHC is officially headquartered in the Bolivian capital city of La Paz and the coca-growing Chapere valley region, but its affiliated member groups extend geographically from the Chapare as far north as southern Colombia. It has affiliated members in Peru's Apurimac and Ene coca-growing regions where the insurgent group Shining Path still roams freely. Its members also include groups in Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia, mainly located in regions where coca is cultivated or where major drug-trafficking routes cut geographically through the interior of South America. In all, the CAPHC claims to represent more than 1 million people who derive their income in some way from the cultivation of coca, most of which is sold to drug traffickers for export as refined cocaine to the United States and Europe. The Peruvian component of the CAPHC also claims it can tap the support of up to 240,000 armed local peasant self-defense fighters that were set up in the late 1980s by Peru's government to combat Shining Path. Morales says the CAPHC is concentrated in the Chapare valley region and is controlled by Bolivians. However, the organization appears to be funded and controlled by a regional and international network of NGOs -- including some with legitimate environmental or humanitarian agendas -- and extreme-left political groups. The unifying feature of these member- or support groups is active resistance to the U.S.-funded drive to eradicate coca. Groups allied with the CAPHC include the Peruvian Peasant Federation (CCP), which is linked to ultra-left Mariategui Unified Party (PUM). Another member group is the United Left (IU), a Peruvian political party that is a founding member of the Sao Paulo Forum. The forum is an umbrella organization of Latin American leftist political parties and insurgent groups like Colombia's rebel organizations, that was established in 1990 jointly by Cuban leader Castro and current Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva. Legitimate NGOs with institutional ties to the CAPHC reportedly include the Society for Endangered Peoples, the South American Indian Council, Cultural Survival-USA, the U.S.-based Drug Policy Foundation, the New York-based anthropological Wenner Gren Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In effect, the composition of the CAPHC's members and known supporters illustrates the manner in which radical leftist groups with links to drug-trafficking organizations in the Andes region have misappropriated the environmental or humanitarian agendas of NGOs like the WWF for political purposes. This theft of legitimate NGO agendas by radical groups seeks ultimately to replace the region's 15-year experiment in capitalist democracy with centrally planned regimes that likely would be authoritarian. Bolivian Ripple Effects Bolivia appears to be ground zero for a sustained popular revolt by self-described revolutionary groups seeking to install socialist democracies or authoritarian regimes with Marxist tendencies. However, the process is being replicated to different degrees in other countries such as Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Mexico. For example, Peru's Toledo faces a nascent revolt by coca growers, and Ecuador's Gutierrez faces imminent national demonstrations by indigenous groups that don't grow coca but are determined to evict capitalist democracy from their country. In southern Mexico, the Zapatista leadership has started to create autonomous local indigenous governments. Moreover, in all of these cases, indigenous groups appear to be seeking autonomous self-government and titled land ownership that eventually could escalate into secessionist drives that could balkanize some countries. In Bolivia for example, lowland areas like Santa Cruz and natural gas-rich Tarija already are demanding autonomy from the highland regions, where La Paz is located. The Bolivian lowlanders, who are mainly of European descent but also include indigenous groups, want to disassociate themselves from radical highland indigenous leaders who would establish an indigenous form of communistic government that existed in before the Spanish conquest. In southern Colombia, the FARC has demanded complete political control over the coca-growing departments of Caqueta and Putumayo as a condition for even considering peace talks with the government of President Alvaro Uribe Velez. In southern Mexico, Zapatista leaders are openly discussing the eventual secession of Chiapas in favor of creating a new indigenous nation that would include northern Guatemala, which also has a large indigenous population with a 40-year history of armed violence against the central government in Guatemala City.U.S. policymakers in Washington say that the only way to end these popular revolts is to incorporate marginalized indigenous and other ethnic groups into mainstream society while deepening free-market reforms and joining a U.S.-centric FTAA. Ultimately, however, the solution to the region's spreading popular revolts might not be found in Washington, but rather in Brazil. Da Silva's government is trying to stay the course with orthodox free-market policies while finding ways to close the huge socioeconomic gap between millions of poor Brazilians and the wealthy minorities that have controlled Brazil's wealth and political institutions for centuries. If Washington and Brasilia don't find common ground in upcoming venues like the FTAA meeting in Miami on Nov. 20 and 21, da Silva's chances of closing the gap between the rich and poor likely will shrink significantly. More important, if Brazil's poor blacks lose faith in da Silva, who has experienced near-starvation first-hand, the rural indigenous and peasant uprisings that have destabilized several Andean countries in recent years could merge into urban revolts by poor blacks and mestizos in countries like Brazil. This could bring more authoritarian figures to power in several countries, or it could lead to civil conflicts like the one Colombia has suffered for nearly four decades |
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