The day George Bush came face to face with Latin America's revolt

http://thenation.com/
The Guardian (UK)
November 5, 2005

The day George Bush came face to face with Latin
America's revolt

Thanks to a powerful indigenous movement from Colombia
to Bolivia, US free-trade policies are in tatters

By Naomi Klein

When Manuel Rozental got home one night last month,
friends told him two strange men had been asking
questions about him. In this close-knit indigenous
community in south-west Colombia, ringed by soldiers,
rightwing paramilitaries and leftwing guerrillas,
strangers asking questions is never a good thing.

The Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern
Cauca, which leads a political movement that is
independent from all those armed forces, decided that
Rozental, its communications coordinator, had to get
out of the country - fast. He had been instrumental in
campaigns for agrarian reform and against a free-trade
agreement with the United States, and the association
was certain that those strangers had been sent to kill
Rozental - but by whom? The US-backed national
government, which notoriously uses rightwing
paramilitaries to do its dirty work? Or the Fuerzas
Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), Latin
America's oldest Marxist guerrilla army?

Oddly, both were distinct possibilities. Despite being
on opposing sides of a 41-year civil war, the Uribe
government and the Farc agree that life would be
infinitely simpler without Cauca's indigenous movement,
which is part of an increasingly powerful political
force sweeping Latin America, challenging traditional
power structures from Bolivia to Mexico.

Prominent indigenous leaders in Northern Cauca have
been kidnapped or assassinated by the Farc, which seeks
to be the exclusive voice of Colombia's poor. And
indigenous authorities had been informed that the Farc
wanted Rozental dead. For months rumours had circulated
that he was the worst thing you can be in the books of
a leftwing guerrilla movement: a CIA agent. But there
had been other rumours too, spread through the media by
government officials. They held that Rozental was the
worst thing you can be in the books of a rightwing,
Bush-bankrolled politician: an "international
terrorist".

On October 27 the association, representing the roughly
110,000 Nasa indians in the region, issued an angry
communique: "Manuel is no terrorist. He is no
paramilitary. He is no agent of the CIA. He is a part
of our community who must not be silenced by bullets."
The Nasa leaders say they know why Rozental, now living
in exile, has come under threat. It is the same reason
that two peaceful indigenous villages in Northern Cauca
were turned into war zones in April after the Farc
attacked police posts, which the government used as an
excuse for a full-scale occupation.

All of this is happening because the indigenous
movement in Cauca, as in much of Latin America, is on a
roll. In the past year the Nasa of Northern Cauca have
held the largest anti-government protests in recent
Colombian history and organised local referendums
against free trade that had a turnout of 70%, higher
than any official election (with a near-unanimous no
result). And in September thousands took over two large
haciendas, forcing the government to make good on a
long-promised land settlement. All these actions
unfolded under the protection of the Nasa's unique
Indigenous Guard, who patrol their territory armed only
with sticks.

In a country ruled by M16s, AK47s, pipe bombs and Black
Hawk helicopters, this combination of militancy and
nonviolence is unheard of. And that is the quiet
miracle the Nasa have accomplished; they have revived
the hope that died when paramilitaries systematically
slaughtered leftwing politicians, including dozens of
elected officials and two Unión Patriótica presidential
candidates. At the end of the bloody campaign in the
early 90s, the Farc understandably concluded that
engaging in open politics was a suicide mission. The
key to the Nasa's success, Rozental says, is that they
are not trying to take over state institutions, which
"have lost all legitimacy". They are instead "building
a new legitimacy based on an indigenous and popular
mandate that has grown out of participatory congresses,
assemblies and elections. Our process and our
alternative institutions have put the official
democracy to shame. That's why the government is so
angry."

The Nasa have shattered the illusion, cherished by both
sides, that Colombia's conflict can be reduced to a
binary war. Their free-trade referendums have been
imitated by non-indigenous unions, students, farmers
and local politicians nationwide; their land takeovers
have inspired other indigenous and peasant groups to do
the same. A year ago 60,000 marched demanding peace and
autonomy; last month those demands were echoed by
simultaneous marches in 32 of Colombia's provinces.
Each action, explains Hector Mondragon, a Colombian
economist and activist, "has had a multiplier effect".

Across Latin America a similarly explosive multiplier
effect is under way, with indigenous movements
redrawing the continent's political map, demanding not
just "rights" but a reinvention of the state along
deeply democratic lines. In Bolivia and Ecuador,
indigenous groups have shown that they have the power
to topple governments. In Argentina, when mass protests
ousted five presidents in 2001 and 2002, the words of
Mexico's Zapatistas were shouted on the streets of
Buenos Aires.

Facing mass protests in Argentina yesterday during the
Summit of the Americas, George Bush saw that the spirit
of that revolt is alive and well. And although Bush
didn't take up Hugo Chávez's offer to hold an open
debate on the merits of "free trade", that debate has
already happened in the continent's streets and ballot
boxes, and Bush has lost. Consider this: the last time
these 34 heads of state got together, it was April 2001
in Quebec City; it was Bush's first summit after his
election, and he announced with great confidence that
the Free Trade Area of the Americas would be law by
2005. Now, four years later, many of the faces of his
colleagues have changed and Bush can't even get the
free-trade area on the agenda, let alone get it signed.

As in Colombia, there are attempts across the continent
to paint the indigenous-inspired movements as
terrorist. Not surprisingly, Washington is offering
both military and ideological assistance. Congress has
approved a doubling of the number of US soldiers in
Colombia and there has been a marked increase in US
troop activity in Paraguay, worryingly near to the
Bolivian border, which could move decisively to the
left in upcoming elections. A recent study by the US
national intelligence council warned that indigenous
movements, although peaceful now, could "consider more
drastic means" in the future.

Indigenous movements are indeed a threat to the free-
trade policies Bush is hawking, with ever fewer buyers,
across Latin America. Their power comes not from terror
but a terror-resistant strain of hope, so sturdy it can
take root in the midst of Colombia's seemingly hopeless
civil war. If it can grow there, it can anywhere.

A version of this article appears in the Nation
Thenation.com

(c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005


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