Nationalizations are very much in the news this week, with any number of larger claims as to the state of the Argentine economy and its future prospects. These two pieces, one from Paul Krugman at the New York Times, and the other from the Guardian, might surprise.
Two Fascinating Pieces on the Argentine Economy
May 6th, 2012Film Screening, This Friday
January 10th, 2012W2 Radio, Artists Legal Outreach, BC Haiti Solidarity, and Haitian-Canadian Cultural Association of BC has announced a compelling event for this coming Friday.
They will be showing The Agronomist, a documentary feature that follows the life of Jean Leopold Dominique, who ran Haiti’s first independent radio station, Radio Haiti-Inter, during multiple repressive regimes.
7:00 – Film introduction by Gage Averill, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, UBC, and Author of ‘Day for the Hunter, Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti,’ as well as editor of ‘Alan Lomax in Haiti,’ nominated for two Grammy Awards.
7:15 – The Agronomist (90 min) film screening
8:30 – Panel discussion Alejandra Bronfman, Dept of History, UBC; Roger Annis, BC Haiti Solidarity; Daniel Laurent, GEP Haiti.
$10 suggested donation (no one turned away). With proceeds benefiting LekÒl Vizyon Modèn, a free public school in Port aux Prince that works with kids who would not otherwise be able to go to school.
Location: 111 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC
http://www.facebook.com/events/162613650511327/
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The Agronomist (90 min) is about Jean Leopold Dominique who hosted Radio Haiti-Inter, Haiti’s first independent radio station. Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Jonathan Demme, puts together this documentary with historical footage and interviews. The result is a serious recount of Haiti during its numerous regimes.
Radio Haiti-Inter was Radio Haiti in 1960 and in 1969, it became Radio Haiti-Inter. It finally ended its broadcast three year…s after the assassination of Jean Dominique. His broadcasts were primarily for the struggle of democracy and he was able to capture the feelings of those who were poor and powerless.
The remarkable account of Jean Dominique and his radio hosting days is that his struggle was able to last as long as it lasted. While almost a majority of any repressive society would silence its critics, Radio Haiti-Inter wasn’t silenced for decades. Even after his assassination, his wife and fellow journalist, Michèle Montas, tried to keep the radio broadcast going until it finally collapsed 3 years after his assassination.
The documentary starts with an interview where Jean Dominique recounts a day when he was able to broadcast gunfire outside Radio Haiti-Inter.
See The Agronomist film trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlB7Y7xDB6U
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A Little Good News from Latin America
November 30th, 2011According to a recent UN study, the poverty rate in Latin America is the lowest it has been in two decades. Poverty across the region fell from 48.4% in 1990 to 31.4% in 2010, and the rated of extreme poverty fell from 22.6% to 12.3%. See the report here: 2011-819_PSI-Summary-WEB.
It is a complicated story, with significant regional variations and some data collection questions, but it is important, and should not be lost in the angry chatter that often dominates our discussions of Latin America. Could it be that those of us living north of the Rio Bravo have something to learn from the South?
David Deisley Responds to the Honduras Claims
November 28th, 2011Our Recent SFU-UBC roundtable on Canadian mining in Latin America provoked quite a heated debate, but perhaps the most contentious moments centered on a series of claims about the issues related to a former Goldcorp mine in Honduras. In order to further that conversation, David Deisley of Goldcorp has provided a series of documents that clarify the company’s position and the findings of the Honduran courts in this case. These include the following:
Carta de Libertad Definitiva (CR) 09 27 10
Carta de Libertad Definitiva (RE Chavez) 09 27 10pdf
Environmental Prosecutor Resolution (San Martin) 11 09 11
Fiscal Resolucion Investigacion de Sangre San Martin 11 09 11
San Martin Closure Paper Roldan Purvance 09 18 11
David’s presentation at the Roundtable can be found here:
Goldcorp SFU UBC Presentation 11 17 11
As for the veracity of the documents, they are without question authentic; that is not the issue here. I think instead that these documents point to the fact that in the future we must become more aware of what it means that Canadian corporations are working in societies with weak judicial and political systems, where we can never be entirely certain as to how any ruling has been reached. This uncertainty should not lead us to simply dismiss the findings of the courts, nor should it lead is to demonize Canadian corporations in a knee-jerk fashion. Either of these responses is basically juvenile. No, the problem for us going forward is that as a society we need to begin to tackle the deep ambiguities that lie at the heart of global commerce, ambiguities that confront any number of Canadian corporations in the global marketplace. We may not be in Kansas anymore, but to be frank, Kansas was not such a nice place to begin with.
Mining in Peru
November 27th, 2011Gerardo Otero brings this recent article from The Economist to our attention.
Professor Bob Russell on the Goldcorp Donation
November 18th, 2011Yesterday’s roundtable on Canadian Mining in Latin America was one of the more stimulating and contentious forums we have seen in a while (audio of the event can be found here). Following the event, I had the opportunity to chat with Professor Bob Russell of the Math department, who alerted me to a piece he had written some time ago about his views of the Goldcorp donation. The essay was written some time ago, but retains relevance as we continue to debate the identity of SFU going forward. I have included it below:
SFU's new Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
On September 23rd, the President's office at SFU announced that due
to a $10 million contribution from a Vancouver based mining giant, Goldcorp,
a new and revitalized Contemporary Arts Facility at SFU Woodwards would be
opening under the name "Goldcorp Centre for the Arts." As an SFU professor
for 39 years who has been a long-time advocate for First Nations peoples
and programs within the University, I was deeply disappointed to find out
that SFU was taking money from a corporation that, as the focus for much
recent controversy over Canadian companies' mining practices and poor
treatment of indigenous peoples, is viewed by many as representing values
antithetical to those of the university.
Whatever his own personal views about the agreement with Goldcorp
reached by his predecessor, SFU's new President Andrew Petter no doubt felt
compelled to put the best face on a situation which he had inherited and,
presumably, had been presented to him as a fait accompli when he took
office. In an October 7th article in the Georgia Straight [1], he quickly
took the offensive in the face of initial criticism of the agreement with
Goldcorp, saying that "it would be horrible, ironic, and counterproductive
if arts institutions or universities were to prevent individuals or
corporations from doing good things because some people object to some
other things they're doing," and that it "would be completely antithetical
to the value of trying to encourage responsibility on the part of
individuals and corporations."
I have several problems with this position. Despite the fact that
government cutbacks have forced universities to accept corporate funding as
an increasing part of their budget, it is both proper and necessary for SFU
to ask how wealthy philanthropic individuals and corporations who are
giving back to society have taken their money in the first place. The
University should have established policies and guidelines which ensure
that acceptance of outside funds is consistent with its core values.
Moreover, by giving a multi-billion dollar corporation wide publicity,
effusive and indiscriminate praise, and high profile naming of a building
(into perpetuity?), SFU seems to be closer to pandering to the wealthy
than encouraging responsibility.
It is ironic that the issue centres around gold. I took great
pride in being involved in a First Nations Strategic Plan [2] which was
approved by SFU's Senate in 2007 and is being implemented in part through
SFU's new Office for Aboriginal Peoples. One of the guiding principles
stated in this new vision is to "Acknowledge, respect and incorporate First
Nations values and traditions in the programs of the University." As we
know from all too vivid historical accounts, these values and traditions
were not respected 500 years ago by the first Europeans conquistadors in
North America who, motivated by a lust for gold, exterminated the
indigenous people they "discovered." As BC aboriginals can attest, their
history itself has not been immune from the outsider's greed for gold and
accompanying racism and violence. In Canada this obsession for gold
continues unabated, as our pension plans benefit handsomely from
investments in Canadian gold mining companies, by far the world's largest,
who have become the new conquistadors travelling the Americas in search of
gold.
Allegations that Goldcorp's mining practices abroad are resulting
in widespread mistreatment of indigenous peoples raise serious questions in
light of SFU's newly articulated commitment to indigenous peoples and their
values. These allegations force us to question the appropriateness of an
agreement whereby Goldcorp's name graces the location of an entire academic
unit, the School of Contemporary Arts. It has been disappointing to me
that despite SFU's reputation for open dialogue and radicalism, so little
debate about this has taken place among faculty members. Some of the
Contemporary Arts faculty members with whom I have spoken felt very
disturbed about the secrecy surrounding the process and how their School
has been in effect "branded." Others are more ambivalent, preferring to
just "take the money and keep quiet," an understandable response when one
contrasts their impressive new downtown premises, complete with funding for
support staff and equipment (part of the deal with Goldcorp), to the
dilapidated temporary trailers which housed the School at Burnaby for many
years. I have in the past had a romantic admiration for the principled
positions often taken by my colleagues in the Arts when government and
corporate funding for Business and Applied Sciences Faculties was
structured to skew University priorities. In hindsight, this was perhaps a
naive failure on my part to observe that the Arts merely had yet to be
given the opportunity to succumb to temptation and embrace corporate
sponsorship.
Perhaps a further testament to my naivete is my surprise at the
fawning spin that the University has given to this contribution. SFU's
website announcement of Goldcorp's $10 million contribution [3] includes
what amounts to a glowing advertisement for Goldcorp as a paragon of
corporate citizenship, going on to describe it as:
"North America's fastest growing senior gold producer. Its low-cost
gold production is located in safe jurisdictions in the Americas and
remains 100% unhedged. Goldcorp's growth profile is unmatched in the mining
industry with a 50% increase in gold production over the next five years."
Though its choice of words may not trigger concern at SFU, concern has been
expressed both internationally and nationally that "low-cost gold
production" by Canadian companies is often code for questionable mining
practices abroad. Liberal MP John McKay recently introduced a private
members bill, the Responsible Mining Bill C-3000, dealing with this issue.
On October 27th the bill was narrowly defeated by a vote of 140-134, but
only after the Conservatives waged a last minute, all-out campaign against
it. Regrettably, key Liberals, including Michael Ignatieff and Ujjal
Dosanjh, were absent from the vote. Debate on the issue, however, remains
very much alive in Ottawa.
The Goldcorp description of its mines as "safe jurisdictions in the
Americas" more accurately characterizes a desire to influence current and
potential shareholders rather than provide reassurance about the situation
for the nearby indigenous populations. Indeed, since I first began
receiving disturbing claims of ill-treatment of indigenous peoples and
environmental damage by Goldcorp several years ago, there have been growing
numbers of related reports in the mainstream media (e.g., [4], [5]), and
elsewhere (e.g., the fairly extensive report [6]).
This is not the place to critique Goldcorp's performance on the
global stage, but it is informative to briefly mention issues which have
arisen at one particular mine: its Marlin mine in Guatemala. There have
been claims that liquid waste from the open-pit cyanide leaching gold mine
has gotten into the local river system, that there have been elevated
levels of mercury, copper, arsenic and zinc around the mine, and that a
clash of cultures and values has resulted in an ongoing violation of the
human rights of the local Mayan population. Goldcorp has deep pockets to
counter claims of environmental harms and human rights violations.
Nevertheless, even a Human Rights Assessment Report commissioned by
Goldcorp found that it had failed to respect the rights of the indigenous
peoples [5].
On November 8th, Mayan activist Carmen Mejia was put on Amnesty
International's Individuals at Risk Program [7] after she had received
death threats and her associate Deodora Hernandez was gravely wounded when
she was shot in the eye at close range. The Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, part of the Washington-based Organization of American States,
has called for the Marlin mine to be shut down while allegations of human
rights abuses and environmental problems are investigated [4]. The results
will be interesting to follow. One thing under no dispute is the financial
profitability of the Marlin mine itself. After the skyrocketing of gold
prices, it has become a flagship for Goldcorp and its shareholders and
brings in enormous revenues while operating around the clock.
The difference between indigenous and western cultures is much more
than just symbolic. For the Sto:lo, mountains like Lhilheqey (Mt. Cheam)
are ancestors who have been transformed, whose shxweli -- spirit or life
force -- is still living, and who still requires the consideration of an
honoured relative. For modern mining engineers, entire mountains are
blasted and crushed to fine rock, which is bleached of its precious gold
with poisons that pollute the waters. A public university has the
responsibility to find a middle path which respects both cultures.
Finally, if SFU is to pay more than lip service to its commitment
to aboriginal peoples, it must develop an ethical fund raising policy which
describes in detail the sources of money that are acceptable to SFU and
formulate a naming policy related to such monies. Such policies will help
SFU instill confidence in potential donors who place value on moral
integrity and justice.
[1] http://www.straight.com/article-351513/vancouver/sfu-president-defends-donation)
[2] http://www.sfu.ca/aboriginalpeoples/strategic+plan.html
[3] http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media_releases/media_releases_archives/goldcorp-donates-10-million-to-sfu-downtown-eastside-arts-centre.html
[4] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/goldcorp-mine-in-guatemala-ordered-to-shut/article1595448/
[5] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8696647.stm
[6] http://www.rightsaction.org/Reports/research.pdf
[7] http://www.amnesty.ca/atrisk/index.php/carmen-mejia/
Bob Russell rdr@sfu.ca
Of Angels and the Heads of Pins
November 16th, 2011Sad, depressing. That is the state of the Mexican Left. One wonders why, given the resurgence of the Left in so much of Latin American in recent years. I have my own ideas, which I detail in an essay I wrote for a recently released volume on right wing politics in Latin America, but at the moment I am most drawn to the novelistic quality of these dramas. I am reminded of Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (required winter reading for all us who are tired of the toxic combinations that dogmatism, self-righteousness, and self dealing sometimes produce).
Conspiracies and Civil Society
November 15th, 2011In the wake of the death of Mexico’s Minister of the Interior last week, the second instance in which the Minister of the Interior has died in an aviation accident in the past three years, the blog Insight Crime reports on Mexico’s Top Ten Conspiracy Theories. Conspiracy theories are an extraordinarily useful check into the health of any civil society, a critical marker of the extent to which the population at large believes that the world described to them by the state, the press, and other forums for civil society is connected to material reality.
Sad here is the evidence of a complete lack of trust in the state and society. More complex is the history of this phenomena. Mexico has always been a society driven as much by rumor and innuendo as it was by claims to transparency. These phenomena have always troubled any number of people in that country. It may simply be that today, in the midst of what for all intents and purposes is a civil war, the stakes are that much higher.
Taking Back the Public
November 6th, 2011The players tried to take the field, but the marching band refused to yield
Latin Americans have always enjoyed a certain amount of public space. Even during the military dictatorships of the 1970s, while murderous regimes closed off almost all venues for civil society and public life, Latin Americans could find some freedom in the central squares that mark almost every city and town in the region. In Mexico City’s Zócalo, Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo, and Santiago’s Plaza de la Constitución, authoritarian regimes could not quite erase the unruly practices and historical legacies that made these central plazas public space, immune to any claim to ownership. This is why protests against the regimes mostly took place in those squares, as they do today. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo made it their home for a couple hours each week. Marches began or ended in these squares, and they were (and remain) focal points for politics in the region – extra-institutional spaces where the marginalized have an impact on the system, where they exercise pressure in ways that they otherwise could not.
Just as importantly, at the end of each protest the squares emptied, the protesters went home, and the public square became the site of other publics, of businessmen having lunch, of furtive lovers, even of a public that spoke more of the imperatives of the state – military parades, flag ceremonies, and the like. Each public owned that space, but only fleetingly, and it was the proliferation of publics that effectively make this a place owned by the body politic as a whole, as opposed to specific corporate or state entities.
It is ironic then, that in the very act of occupying public spaces in the manner they have, the occupy movements here and elsewhere have effectively eliminated the public quality of the spaces they control. They have done so by refusing other publics the use of this space, and they threaten to do this in an even more egregious manner with their plans to erect large, semi-permanent structures in these spaces.
But wait, you say, they are the 99 percent!
We all know that this is not true, that no one could ever speak for 99 percent of the population. More troubling, their claim is reminiscent of other experiences from the Latin American past, of Perón, Vargas, even the Somozas, who claimed at various points to speak for the entire populations of their countries. That claim was invariably framed by the assertion that the people had specific enemies (sure, bankers, why not?), that those enemies were not really a part of a legitimate body politic, and thus ought to be destroyed. This ethos has been here all along, and it is part of why the 99 have positioned themselves as the rightful owners of the square, able to be a law unto themselves, to ignore the directives of the police, fire department and other city officials, and claim this space somehow on behalf of everyone else.
Except that everyone else may want to use the square as well, and they may want to use this public space in the way publics across Latin America continued to use spaces of protest as spaces of life in the years during and after the dictatorships. Shared space meant that protest, while recurring, gave way to other uses in the give and take that makes a space public.
In their solipsistic bubble the occupiers have failed to understand this, which probably tells us as much about the trajectory of this movement than we need to know. Leaving aside the legal venues of politics in the North – the fact the occupiers do not in fact need to camp on the lawn to be heard but could form political movements, take over political parties, and actually work to change our societies without ever setting up a tent – their great accomplishment to this point seems to be that they (like the 1 percent who they accuse of appropriating public goods for private ends) have appropriated a public good and turned it to their private ends.
So much of this story is increasingly sad and bizarre. In New York yesterday the police ordered pedestrians off the sidewalk in order to make room for pedestrians. In Vancouver we have seen what seems to be two over-doses and one tragic death. The dystopians and utopians are having field days, while the other publics either turn away in grief and disgust or are left behind.
Canada’s Crime Bill, Latin America’s Prisons, and the War on Drugs
March 14th, 2012A story in today’s New York Times on Latin American Prisons indirectly highlights a crisis of hemispheric proportions. Across the Americas respectable and thoughtful public officials are increasingly signing on to the position articulated in last summer’s report by the UN’s Global Commission on Drug Policy, which calls for a radical departure from the current failed War on Drugs. Among the principle findings include recommendations for a massive shift from incarceration to treatment for addiction, and decriminalization of several categories of illicit drugs.
The reasons for this are obvious to anyone who would care to listen. the appetite for illicit drugs in many parts of the world is unquenchable, and decades of of criminalization have done nothing to change this. More importantly, the current international drug trade is taking an impossible toll on the lives of millions of people in Latin America, and continues to represent a grave threat to civil society in the region. The drug traffickers, whether in Burnaby or Bogotá, simply have a far greater power to wreak havoc than any state has to contain or eliminate that havoc. And the crisis in prison over-crowding, which under the current legal regime could only be resolved by building more prisons, is just another canary in another coal mine.
Latin Americans don’t need more prisons. They need more and better schools, better housing, health-care, and opportunities for the poor. They need states that can refocus their energies away from security to more pressing social problems. And the only way to do this is to end the war on drugs, to wake up to the reality that our neighbors, our kids, and our parents want these commodities, and stop making people in other countries pay a terrible price for our desires.
And this is why the Harper government has it all wrong. Of course, they know that they have it all wrong. I am not the first person to suggest that they are offering a 20th century solution to one of the most pressing questions of the early 21st century with the current crime bill. My guess is that they are doing it to pander to Canada’s far Right, and to cozy up to the Obama administration (or, for that matter, the coming Santorum or Romney administration). No US government in the coming years is going to come off of criminalization. Cynics would remind us that this is because of the wealthy and powerful people who profit from the War on Drugs. Realists would remind us that there are very few votes to be won by this strategy, and many to be lost.
Still, there is hope. It seems possible that a growing number of Latin American heads of state might band together and adopt a new drug strategy that reflects their own needs and realities instead of the demands of the US. There is, after all, a certain strength in numbers, a hope that the US could not punish everybody for turning away. Mexico is the least likely candidate for such a change in policy, as Mexico is more dependent on the US (80% of Mexican exports go to the US) than any other country in the region, but we can even see pressure for a new drug policy here within the ranks of the Institutional Party of the Revolution (PRI), whose candidate seems likely to win the 2012 presidential elections. Mexicans, we know, have suffered more than anyone else in the current iteration of the War on Drugs, and the demands for change are everywhere in this country.
And so, that leaves Canadians slamming the truck into reverse and backing over the corpse. Maybe Canadians simply do not care about the toll that our appetite for cocaine, heroin, marijuana, amphetamines and other drugs is taking on people in the global South. Surely it is not that we don’t know. It is everywhere in the news. Either way, shame on us.
For a more in-depth perspective on the War on Drugs, and particularly Andean Cocaine, see Paul Gootenberg’s excellent essay, “Cocaine’s Long March North”, just published in Latin American Politics and Society (Vol 54:1).
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