Nicaragua: The Most Deadly Country for Land Rights Activists

Nicaragua: The Most Deadly Country for Land Rights Activists

Featured image: A Miskito elder stands watch in what has become a daily vigil – awaiting the promised return of armed Colonos who recently attacked her village with sophisticated weaponry, covering her home in bullet holes and terrorizing the Miskito community. Courtney Parker, 2016

     by Courtney ParkerIntercontinental Cry

Recently published statistics from watchdog group, Global Witness, have confirmed what Indigenous Nicaraguans have been trying to tell the world for years – the battle to protect Indigenous land rights in Nicaragua is not just one of the most dangerous…it is the most deadly.

Faced with such mounting evidence, however, the global human rights community continues to shrug its shoulders.

recent article lauding a new partnership between The Guardian and Global Witness – aimed at increasing surveillance and reporting on land activists’ deaths worldwide – bizarrely blacks out a single mention of Nicaragua, which emerged from recent analysis as the deadliest nation in the world for land rights struggles, per capita.

The Guardian’s omission is glaring, as the authors specifically call out conditions in countries such as Colombia, the United States, Brazil, Honduras, and Mexico. They avoided even naming Nicaragua, which has a higher death rate for land activists than any of these regions. Even more disturbing, such deaths in Nicaragua remain grossly underreported still, due to the relative isolation of high conflict zones such as the northern Caribbean coast.

Women from the community of Santa Clara gather to denounce the violence inflicted by the encroaching illegal land settlers. The woman in the center describes the unthinkable; her daughter (in the yellow shirt) was shot in the head by colonos during one such horrific attack. Photo: Courtney Parker, 2016

There are hints the authors sought to, by excluding the socialist country, frame the escalating crisis in a thematic, but ultimately myopic, critique of capitalism – which could perpetuate a popular (sometimes populist) false narrative that socialism (or Marxism) is some sort of vaccine against environmental exploitation. Regardless of intent, such implications could not be less true.

A few cases in point…

The great socialist nation of Canada – even with human rights superstar, Justin Trudeau, now at the reigns – continues its deadly, imperialist, extractivism activity in Latin America, and remains a driving force behind the controversial and potentially devastating oil pipelines to the north. An imperialist Chinese mining operative has waged violent attacks against Indigenous community defenders with direct support from the military in Ecuador – a country once famous for their groundbreaking constitution codifying the ‘Rights of Nature’. Nicaragua, meanwhile, is busy destroying the second largest tropical rainforest in the western hemisphere in attempts to sustain the oft praised ‘era of economic growth’ under Daniel Ortega.

Subhabrata ‘Bobby’ Banjeree’, a professor of the University of London’s Cass Business School, provided some insight about media inconsistencies on land rights struggles through a statement to the Thomas Reuters Foundation (concerning the Global Witness report.)

“Right now there are more than 2,000 reported hotspots around the world. The reality is that there are probably three times that number which are not reported because they are not as sexy and don’t make TV news.”

As The Guardian attempts to take the lead on resolving the disparities in coverage, it has somehow found cause to preemptively omit the deadliest case. One is left to wonder if calling out so-called capitalist nations is in fact sexy, and hard evidence which might dilute this motif is somehow…not.

The tombs of two community heroes in Santa Clara – acclaimed Miskitu warriors who sacrificed their lives attempting to shield their families and friends from encroaching violence – are displayed in reverence at a central point in the village.. Photo: Courtney Parker, 2016

In an insight especially relevant to Nicaragua, Banjeree also noted to Reuters how the role of the state is often compromised by conflicting responsibilities in encouraging economic development for a given nation and protecting the citizens who live there. The ostensibly ‘Christian-socialist’ government of President Ortega seems to be repeatedly and incomprehensively erring on the side of violence and neoliberal economics.

Global Witness itself has emerged as a truly objective watchdog group in an ideologically tainted atmosphere of human rights activism, in which various struggles are routinely ennobled or suppressed according to how well they fit into ongoing narratives supporting capitalist or anti-capitalist fervor. In their own statement about the new Guardian partnership, Global Witness conveyed:

“We’re hoping this will help break the silence that fuels this rising tide of violence. Many activists who are murdered live in remote villages deep within rainforests or mountain ranges, and their deaths pass under journalists’ radars. Without the exposure that comes from media coverage, governments and businesses have fewer incentives to protect people under threat, or to punish perpetrators. “

Their clearly defined goal gives cause to remain optimistic that commitment to truth and transparency will guide and reorient coverage generated through their partnership with The Guardian – though things are not off to an encouraging start.

To their credit, The Guardian has featured other coverage on the struggle for Indigenous land rights in Nicaragua, such as this piece from March of this year. While fairly comprehensive, the article still preserves a certain aura of credulity, a benefit of the doubt, in regard to the underlying intentions of Daniel Ortega and the ruling party of the FSLN – a credulity, that is facing regional extinction in Moskitia with the escalating murders of Indigenous Miskitos at the hands of ‘Colonos’ (armed invaders who have placed the autonomous Indigenous nation of Moskitia under a violent siege while FSLN militarized police routinely look the other way.)

It is high time to embrace, what is for many, a painful and perhaps counterintuitive truth. The differences between socialism and capitalism, regarding environmental justice and environmental exploitation, have proven slim to none. And nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in the nation of Nicaragua, currently under socialist rule by the once dogmatically Marxist Sandinista. Quasi-intellectual dogma and calcified political ideologies are not going to save the Earth or protect its most dedicated defenders. Hence, it is time we get realistic in attempting to discern what will.

Increased Militarization under Martial Law Threatens Lumad Teachers in the Philippines

Increased Militarization under Martial Law Threatens Lumad Teachers in the Philippines

Featured image: This month, hundreds of Lumad evacuated their homes out of fear of being attacked by the military. Photo: ALCADEV

     by  / Intercontinental Cry

Last May, the government of the Philippines announced the decision to subjugate the southern island of Mindanao to Martial Law. Now, the state is using its repressive apparatus to continue its attacks against Lumad (indigenous) teachers.

On the night of July 5-6, 2017, nine Lumad communities in the hinterlands of Lianga, Surigao del Sur, were forced to evacuate after an intensification of Philippine military occupations on their ancestral territories. The occupations began on July 2, 2017 when 60 soldiers in full combat uniform arrived in Lianga. With the memory of the violent 2015 Lianga Massacre still fresh, the Lumads of Lianga evacuated for the second time in less than two years when military bomber planes began circling above their communities around midnight on July 5, 2017.

Martial Law A Threat to Lumad Resistance

President Rodrigo Duterte’s declaration of martial law on the island of Mindanao on May 23, 2017 has been widely decried by Philippine national minorities and allied organizations, as it gives blanket protection and immunity for the military to perpetrate human rights violations, including the ongoing attacks on Lumad schools and communities.

Martial Law suspends habeas corpus and empowers the military to supersede civilian authorities in enforcing the law. Under the pretense of fighting terror, Duterte’s government has effectively levied its military power against some of the country’s most vulnerable populations.

Lumad communities have experienced increased militarization since the declaration of Martial Law, but state suppression of Lumad resistance and claims to self-determination through the use of force is nothing new. The Philippine military and its paramilitary counterparts have long targeted Lumads and their leaders because of their active defense against the encroachment on their lands by multinational mining corporations and other destructive industries.

Sign the petition to demand an end to martial law here: http://nafconusa.org/2017/05/notomartiallaw/

Lumad Teachers Under Attack

The Philippine military and their paramilitary forces have historically treated Lumad education as a threat. Under Martial Law, increased attacks on Lumad communities continue to threaten the operation of Lumad schools.

On July 5, 2017, the evacuation affected 633 students and 43 volunteer teachers from six Lumad schools in Lianga, including the Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV). When military forces neared Sitio Han-ayan, Diatagon in Lianga on July 5, schools and farms closed in preparation for a possible evacuation.

Photo: ALCADEV

ALCADEV was established in 2004 to fill the void left by inaccessible government schools. The center caters to the specific needs of indigenous youth and their communities. According to former ALCADEV student Glorivic Belandres, “we learned to fight for our rights when others attempt to trample on it. This has become a threat to the military. As soon as we became educated, they found it difficult to deceive us.”

The Philippine military has attempted to destroy Lumad schools through military occupation, redbaiting, and the targeting of Lumad teachers. In the Lianga Massacre of 2015, ALCADEV director and anti-mining activist Emerito Samarca was one of three community leaders murdered by Magahat-Bagani, a paramilitary group created by the Philippine military.

Now, twelve teachers and community leaders of ALCADEV and the Tribal Filipino Program of Surigao del Sur (TRIFPSS) are facing fabricated charges of human trafficking. According to human rights group Karapatan, these charges are used to harass the teachers and other key witnesses to the Lianga Massacre. Annabelle Campos, a TRIFPSS literacy coordinator facing charges, points to their resistance against mining projects as another motivation for the harassment Lumad teachers and community leaders are facing.

In another case of paramilitary harassment, on June 12, 2017 teacher and chairperson of the Association of Community Educators (ACE), Ramel Miguel, was interrogated and threatened by four members of the Alamara paramilitary group in front of 55 school children inside Salugpungan School, a Lumad school in Davao del Norte.

Lumad Students Take Action

Despite the implementation of Martial Law, Lumad students are standing up for their right to indigenous education.

From June 30 to July 10, 2017, Lumad students protested the militarization of their schools and attacks on their teachers by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and its paramilitary groups. Around 200 Lumad students and teachers held a Kampuhan (protest camp) in Davao City to demand that President Duterte end the militarization of Lumad communities in the face of martial law in Mindanao.

Photo: Save Our Schools Network

Lumad students have not been silenced by Martial Law. They will continue to demand that the government protect indigenous peoples’ right to education and self-determination.

Clouds of Uncertainty

Clouds of Uncertainty

A web of impunity, corruption and extractivism confronts indigenous leaders in Colombia’s southwest

Featured image: A cloud hangs over Rioblanco, a Yanacona reservation in the municipality of Sotará, in Cauca, Colombia. Photo: Robin Llewellyn

     by Robin Llewellyn / Intercontinental Cry

When the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in June 2016, it brought a tentative end to more than five decades of violent armed conflict. But ever since the peace accord was signed, social leaders across Colombia have been threatened and killed with alarming regularity. The province of Cauca is at the epicenter of this new wave of violence.

On March 5 of this year, a death threat was anonymously placed under the door of the Yanacona’s council hall in Rioblanco, an indigenous reservation in the municipality of Sotará, high up in the mountains of south-western Colombia. The death threat pointed squarely at the Yanacona’s Governor and Vice-governor, as well as one security guard. The message was as obscure as it was threatening; there was just one hint of who what behind it. The letter was signed, “from the assassins of Popayán.”

A year earlier, on March 2, 2016, the young governor of Rioblanco, William Alexander Oime Alarcón, was shot dead in the historic center of Cauca’s capital, the UNESCO-registered “white city” of Popayan. CCTV footage shows an attacker struggling with the governor for his bag which contained the 20 million pesos (US$6,500) that he had just withdrawn from a bank to use in social programs in the reservation, then the attacker shoots the governor in the head, back, and legs, and flees on a motorbike driven by an accomplice. Although no-one attempted to intervene the attacker did not take the bag.

The governor died that evening. He had been known to have no tolerance for corruption and had opposed the expansion of all forms of mining into the area. He had arranged an appointment with the Ombudsman for the following morning to discuss a number of death threats made against him.

The governor had been accompanied to the bank by two youths from his reservation. Immediately after the attack, one of them quietly took Oime Alarcón’s phone from his body; he would reportedly refuse to pass it over to the investigator for two weeks. During that time the slain governor would occasionally appear to be available on his Facebook account, as though his phone was being accessed by a third party.

The other youth who had been present was escorted to an office of the SIJIN (Seccional de Investigación Criminal – Colombia’s criminal investigative authority), where he saw, in an adjoining office, the attacker and his accomplice. He immediately attempted to physically attack them but was restrained and guided away to give his account of the attack. When he came out the two had left; they would not be among the eight people later arrested for the crime (and quickly released on bail). The next stage of the judicial process against them is due to begin this coming October.

The governor was to have been accompanied to the office of the Ombudsman by his cousin, Alexis Barahona, who had shared the governor’s house in Rioblanco before moving to the city of Cali to find work. It was in a visit to Cali that, in October 2015, Oime Alarcón would drink a beer with his cousin and first speak about the threats he was receiving.

“He said that they threatened him at every opportunity”, remembered Alexis. “He told me names and everything. The threats kept arriving at the house, and he simply told me these things and smiled. Two people were threatening him over some funds, some differences that existed in the council: for some money that my cousin didn’t want them to use. At the same time he told me that there were differences between himself and those who wanted to use land for mining.”

The names Oime Alarcón shared with his cousin were Mesias Chicangana and Ancizar Paz, former governors of the reservation. According to Alexis Barahona the governor didn’t take their threats seriously, believing that this “cartel de los gordos”(“cartel of the fatties”), didn’t possess the power to hurt him. The murdered governor then told his cousin that a threatening text message had referred to him as a guerrilla, and that that when coltan had been discovered above the reservation it had led to pressure from some within the community to allow exploratory mining. He also mentioned that a representative of mining interests had once arrived from outside the reservation and had asked him to sign a letter of consent to allow them to enter the territory, a request he refused. According to Alexis the two members of the “cartel de los gordos” were investigated in relation to Oime Alarcón’s killing, but were cleared of all involvement.

There had been one more thing the governor had told his cousin over a beer that evening in Cali. “I’m doing something significant, I’m trying to avoid something big happening to Rioblanco”, he had told Alexis, but he didn’t tell his cousin what it was; only the ombudsman would be told. “He didn’t want to talk to anyone else, not to the Police nor to the CRIC [Consejo Regional Indigena del Cauca / Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca].”

Immediately after Oime Alarcón’s murder, while the event was still being described as a botched robbery, indigenous leader Aida Quilcué said that investigators should consider whether recent activities that the Yanacona community had carried out in the Paramo of Barbillas had been a cause. The paramo ecosystems of the Yanacona territories are highly vulnerable to a range of environmental threats, and there the booming illegal gold mining sector has been targeted for closure by indigenous guards and indigenous authorities. “They were exercising territorial control there just eight days before” she said of the dead governor and his colleagues. “We consider that these acts could be related to the case… I don’t believe that it was a simple robbery; it’s a persecution.”

But the governor’s sister, Elizabeth Alarcón, is skeptical about automatically connecting her brother’s death with mining: she points to the death in 1995 of another leader who struggled against corruption in the reservation, Dimas Onel Majin. “The two men shared many characteristics and those responsible for both deaths have never been identified… If you look at the origin of the threats that have recently arrived, they were delivered within the community.”

In Rioblanco, she added, “there have been a number of people who have been in authority, in control of the territory, and then he [Oime Alarcón] arrived as a different type of leader, much closer to the people… He wanted to do things differently and he encountered corruption, and in Cauca there is corruption, and in his own community there is corruption.”

A mural in the square of Rioblanco remembering Alexander Oime Alarcón.

With the failure of the state investigators to reveal the authors of the killing, Elizabeth Alarcón has been left facing a host of questions related to the attack: “One could say that it’s extraordinary because they assassinated him in the very center of Popayan where one supposes that there’s a lot of security, but there was not a police response in time, there was not an ambulance response in time… people have told me that he lay there shot in the street for 15 minutes. And it’s relatively close to the hospitals. They shot him here and there is the clinic. To organize an assassination in the manner that the investigators first described, they [the authors of the attack] used many people, six or eight, and every person had their function: one to do this, one to do that. So I think that behind this there’s a lot of money and a lot of power.”

The Yanakona authorities and the CRIC responded to the threat “from the assassins of Popayan” by calling a public meeting in Rioblanco that denounced threats and attacks across Yanacona areas.

The president of the CRIC, Carlos Maca, began by decrying the presence of “new armed actors that are gathering in the [indigenous] territories, BACRIM [“bandas criminales” – ‘criminal bands’ that resemble former or current paramilitary groups such as the Gaitanistas/UrabeñosAguilas Negras, and Rastrojos] that affect the territories, they come to systematically violate human rights; they never cease to threaten our leaders, they carry out selective and extra-judicial killings of social leaders – not just against indigenous but also against Afro-Colombian and campesino leaders. But the government doesn’t want to accept this reality, nor the commissions for human rights that, in a similar manner, disregard the organization of these new armed actors.”

Outside the meeting hall, vast clouds obscured the surrounding mountainsides, only occasionally breaking to allow a view of the emerald-green slopes beyond. Across Cauca, criminal impunity rates stand at over 90%, cloaking the identities not just of those who were involved in the attack against Governor Alarcón, but also of the identities of the armed groups that have sprung up across the region. But as the number of threats and the number of killings of social leaders in Cauca have surpassed that in every other province of Colombia, analysts are pointing to several key dynamics.

In May 2017 the Pacifista! website noted that “Ten of the 35 leaders killed in Colombia since the beginning of December 2016 died in Cauca, almost all in broad daylight and in populated areas”. They found that among the principal causes of the deaths was the entrance of new criminal power structures into areas abandoned by the FARC following their demobilization. These groups included the ELN guerrillas as well as groups of what they called ‘post-demobilization paramilitaries’ – organizations that had grown out of the officially disbanded AUC(“United Self-defense Forces” – right-wing paramilitaries that had supported the state’s crackdown on guerrillas while also stealing large stretches of land). The authors drew on a report from the Ombudsman entitled, Violence and threats against social leaders and human rights defenders, that said these new armed groups have particularly “threatened community leaders and inhabitants that oppose both illegal and large-scale mining.”

The website also mentioned the prevalence in Cauca of the coca industry, the deadly continuation of the land conflict between indigenous Nasa communities and the sugar industry, and the stigmatization and subsequent attacks against activists linked to the CRIC and to the left-wing Marcha Patriotica political movement, visible in the many pamphlets produced under the claimed authorship of the Aguilas Negras.

Others support the importance of the mining sector in driving the violence. The CRIC’s human rights team was in attendance at the meeting in Rioblanco, and Maria Ovidia Palechor reiterated that the social leaders killed in the renewed wave of killings have been “men and women who have said ‘No to mining. They have said “no to mega-projects’”.

It remains difficult to confidently attribute responsibility for the deaths or to see past the clouds of uncertainty that Colombia’s extreme criminal impunity rate has created. Do the dynamics explored above alone explain how the killers of Oime Alarcón knew he was about to testify to the Ombudsman? Or that he would be withdrawing money from a specific bank at a specific time? And do they alone explain why his phone was taken from him as he lay dying in the street?

It’s possible that we may never know, but returning to the theme of general dynamics of criminality may at least be helpful in understanding the wave of violence that has claimed the lives of other social leaders. What is the illegal mining sector in Cauca that many have seen as responsible for the governor’s death, and how does it relate to other political and economic interests in the region?

At the public meeting in Rioblanco, the governors of each community sat in the front row of the assembly holding their staffs of office, surrounding a chakana, a pre-Colombian cross laid out on the floor symbolizing Yanacona philosophy and spirituality. In the other seats and around the vast doorway gathered members of the community, one of whom announced his concern with the delay in advancing the investigation of Oime Alarcón, and recommending that another state investigator should take control of the case.

Others spoke more broadly about the history of violent conflict that was affecting the region, and condemned state institutions for their lack of interest and engagement, visible again in the failure of state officials to attend the event. Almost all the attendees wore heavy woolen ruanas against the cold, including the head governor of the Yanacona People, Ferley Quintero, who presented to the audience the measures being taken to advance their security: “The Yanacona People, their authorities and the community, have been able to advance actions of peace that enable us to live harmoniously as a people in our territory and to demand that we be respected by the armed groups. We are fortifying the position of the indigenous guards in defending our territory, in preventing the consumption of alcohol in the territory, in preventing the cultivation of coca and marijuana, and in disarming members of the community. But we have seen our efforts countered by the violation of our right to free, prior and informed consent through the installation of a High Mountain Battalion in our territory which represents a social and territorial disequilibrium, and additionally we’re threatened by the mining and energy policy that the government is forcing into our territories.”

Photo: Robin Llewellyn

Outside the hall, IC asked a member of the human rights team of the CRIC how mining represented a threat to their communities:

“In the indigenous territories there’s one problem of illegal mining, and there’s another in the form of legal mining, carried out by the multinationals. The national government is facilitating these dynamics through providing mining titles. In relation to the multinationals the government doesn’t want to accept that paramilitarism is active today in Colombia, and logically these threats come from that side because the BACRIM and the paramilitaries are returning and they, like before, are protecting the wealth and property of the rich. The other illegal mining is very well-organized, and is arriving to the rivers and mountains where there is evidence of gold, and they threaten the communities, the indigenous authorities, and the indigenous guards.”

Nelson Cuspián Jiménez, Vice-Governor of the indigenous council of Frontino, La Sierra, was also in attendance, and he told IC: “In the year 2006 Anglo Gold Ashanti arrived in the community, but thanks to the CRIC y the Grand Council of the Yanacona People, actions were organized to protect the territory and its communities. AngloGold had initiated its works without exercising prior consultation as demanded by the legal norms. But then last week that they would enter again “con toda” (with everything). We are worried that as indigenous, Afro-Colombian and campesino communities we’ll be displaced from our territories, endangering the elderly, children, and women. It would equate to the termination of the indigenous community. The state should assert the relevance of prior consultation.”

In Frontino, the Vice-Governor continued, “there is illegal mining, the gold-panners have used pressure hoses that have caused environmental damage for a number of years, no such ‘artesian mining’ should be done. The legal and illegal mining is carried out by people from outside, but also some from the campesinocommunities of the region. But the threats related to mining always come from outside.”

The explosion in illegal mining has spread across Cauca only in the last decade, according to journalist Moritz Tenthoff: “The gold fever, woken in 2008 by the financial crisis in speculative capital, increased fivefold the price of the metal between 2002 and 2010. Although in Cauca there was no company exploiting gold until that date, the production of gold has increased, according to the Sistema de Información Minero Colombiano (Information System of Colombian Mining – Simco), in a vertiginous manner, passing 621.54 kilos in 2008 to 3,544.39 kilos in 2013.”

The government has, according to the Colombian writer Alfredo Molano, exacerbated the problem. He spoke out in 2012 over the impact that Resolution 0045 would have. The Act, passed by the National Agency of Mining in June 2012, created vast new ‘strategic areas’ of mining, and would undoubtedly cause, according to Molano: “thousands of large and small miners to prepare expeditions to take possession of the ‘strategic reserve areas’ located in the few regions still preserving indigenous and black cultures, forests, rivers and wetlands. Who is going to prevent that mass of miners from invading the 22 million hectares and contaminating rivers and streams with mercury and cyanide, and from buying indigenous and municipal authorities? Moreover, when they arrive they will be giving the guerrillas and paramilitary commanders tips to provide the miners with a security service.”

The threats quickly ensued, some of which correspond with the entrance of the mining sector in various communities: The Comité de Integración del Macizo Colombiano (Committee for the Integration of the Colombian Massif) announcedthat in 2013 and 2014: “Environmentalist, authorities and social leaders of the Colombian Massif denounce how in the last weeks, they have been the victims of constant followings, threats, and harassments for defending their territory and rivers from large scale and illegal mining that is being developed in Cauca.”

Oime Alarcón’s successor as governor of Rioblanco is Juan Buenaventura Yangana. He asserted that the community remained in the dark over the identity of the killers: “We can’t truly confirm which are the sources of the criminal action that took the life of our governor last year.”

IC asked his position on mining: “We don’t take part in mining projects because they destroy our Mother Earth: they fill her with pollution, with cyanide, with all the chemicals that one has to use in mining. Mining also creates violence because it generates a lot of ready money, it creates violence and prostitution. What one has to see in relation to resources of money is that they generate deaths. For the indigenous Peoples, the places where they have detected precious metals have to be respected as sacred sites as we have determined them, and they are not there to enrich but to maintain as something sacred in our Mother Earth.”

In such words, one can perceive the vital elements of a conflict, whether or not such dynamics were at play in the specific case of the former governor’s death: the wave of illegal mining meeting such perspectives with many of the threats and attacks that have taken the region to the center of the current epidemic of violence.

The wave has also crowded many of the riversides of the department with yellow earth-movers, notwithstanding the illegality of their presence, nor their proximity to the main highways along which daily pass functionaries of the institutions of state. To a member of the CRIC who asked not to be identified, this cohabitation testifies not only to the bribes and the intimidation that have deterred mayors and governors from enforcing strict legal controls on the transport of earthmovers, but also to a tacit support by the state and multinational companies for the illegal mining sector. The violence and pollution caused by illegal miners weakens the social fabric of communities, which are then less able or less inclined to resist the entrance of the multinationals. The activist claimed that people in affected areas are left desperate, and more inclined to believe the promise of reduced environmental contamination that is implicit in the slogan shared by the large-scale mining lobby and the Colombian Ministry of Mines“minería bien hecha” – “mining well done”.

Ministry of Mines slogan “mineria bien hecha” – “mining well done”.

The vast majority of Cauca’s gold is produced today in untitled mines and then sold through commercializing companies to enter the ‘legal’ markets in Cali and Medellin. Moritz Tenthoff was able to secure an interview with one of the kingpins in the illegal mining sector in Cauca, Alexander Duque Builes, who attributed the birth of the sector to the policies of ex-President Alvaro Uribe Velez: “When the ‘democratic security’ policy arrived [Uribe’s pursuit of a military crack-down against the guerrillas that relied on the involvement of paramilitary groups] we saw an opportunity to grow and strengthen. Cauca has immense mining potential, the mining zones are large, only the issue of public order has been the cause of the slow growth that Cauca has had.”

The majority of areas that today produce gold in Cauca are frequented by illegal armed groups including the ELN and BACRIM/paramilitaries, that charge protection money from the miners who sometimes have been displaced from failing sections of the rural economy. These payments then feed into other interests of criminal actors, including narco-trafficking and extortion, all of which serve to challenge the territorial control exercised by indigenous authorities.

Miller Hormiga, lawyer for the CRIC, represents those victimized by the killing of Oime Alarcón, and he attempted to explain why the impunity rate in Cauca is so high: “The Colombian justice system lacks the strong tools needed to guide its investigations. We sometimes overlook the technological aspect of investigative agencies, of the judicial police, which is still not at a good international standard. We still have many deficiencies, a great lack in personnel, the impossibility of reaching all territories, the context of risk that causes witness not to participate in an opportune way, the great accumulation of cases that one lawyer and judge will face… all of these things together generate a climate that favors impunity: that many cases don’t succeed in establishing who were the material and intellectual authors of the acts. It’s an enormous difficulty.

When asked about the impact mining has had on Cauca, Hormiga said that, “One of the things that we have always viewed with suspicion is that the activities of illegal mining precede the interests or activities of legal mining of a national or international character. This worries us. And what we do know is that there is interest from outside in pursuing mining in indigenous territories, and we have seen that mining truly represents a potent risk for the lives of indigenous Peoples.”

Threats continue to be made across indigenous Cauca. Just a few days ago, ICreturned with a voice-recorder that went unused because a victim wouldn’t talk to the media. Was mining involved? Probably, but without being able to conduct interviews the clouds of uncertainty continue to conceal vital details. In relation to justice, the impunity that Hormiga described could prove to be as potent a threat to the lives of Indigenous Peoples as the boom in illegal mining, and could it be that a synergy between these two dynamics was at play behind the actions of the “assassins of Popayan”.

Indigenous South Americans Condemn Failure to Protect Uncontacted Tribes as “Genocide”

Indigenous South Americans Condemn Failure to Protect Uncontacted Tribes as “Genocide”

Featured image: The Zo’é are a very isolated tribe, who were forcibly contacted in the 1980s. Many of them died of diseases to which they had no resistance. © Fiona Watson/Survival International

     by Survival International

29 indigenous organizations from across South America have come together in Brazil to slam governments for failing to protect the lives and lands of uncontacted tribes – a situation they say is tantamount to genocide.

Representatives from tribes in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Paraguay, and Venezuela, attended the large conference hosted by the Brazilian organization CTI in June 2017.

The conference condemned the “exponential increase” in violence against indigenous people across the continent and described failures to properly protect the territory of uncontacted tribal peoples as genocide.

Gold miners devastated the Yanomami between the 1980s and 1990s, and still present a genocidal threat to uncontacted members of the tribe.

Gold miners devastated the Yanomami between the 1980s and 1990s, and still present a genocidal threat to uncontacted members of the tribe. © Colin Jones/Survival

Brazil has recently been under fire for cuts to its indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI. These cuts, especially those affecting teams of agents who protect uncontacted tribal territories, leave uncontacted peoples dangerously exposed to violence from outsiders, and diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance.

The country is unusual in having had two genocide convictions in its courts: both for crimes against indigenous peoples. The UN genocide convention was signed 69 years ago in December 1948.

FUNAI agents on a patrol. Teams like this are vital to protecting indigenous territories, but their funding is being cut by the Brazilian government.

FUNAI agents on a patrol. Teams like this are vital to protecting indigenous territories, but their funding is being cut by the Brazilian government. © FUNAI

A Brazilan senator is proposing a new bill in Brazil’s congress which would designate all unauthorized entry into uncontacted tribes’ lands as a breach of the country’s “genocide law” – aimed at protecting uncontacted peoples. However, campaigners fear that the current government’s close ties to the corrupt agribusiness lobby could hinder efforts to create more robust protections.

The senator, Jorge Viana, is from Acre state, which is home to many uncontacted tribes, and also people like the Sapanawa, who were forced to make first contact in 2014.

All uncontacted tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected. Survival International is committed to securing their land for them, and giving them the chance to determine their own futures.

Our Obsolescent Economy

Our Obsolescent Economy

     by Local Futures

A friend of mine from India tells a story about driving an old Volkswagen beetle from California to Virginia during his first year in the United States. In a freak ice storm in Texas he skidded off the road, leaving his car with a cracked windshield and badly dented doors and fenders. When he reached Virginia he took the car to a body shop for a repair estimate. The proprietor took one look at it and said, “it’s totaled.” My Indian friend was bewildered: “How can it be totaled? I just drove it from Texas!”

My friend’s confusion was understandable. While “totaled” sounds like a mechanical term, it’s actually an economic one: if the cost of repairs is more than the car will be worth afterwards, the only economically ‘rational’ choice is to drive it to the junkyard and buy another one.

In the ‘throwaway societies’ of the industrialized world, this is an increasingly common scenario: the cost of repairing faulty stereos, appliances, power tools, and high-tech devices often exceeds the price of buying new. Among the long-term results are growing piles of e-waste, overflowing landfills, and the squandering of resources and energy. It’s one reason that the average American generates over 70% more solid waste today than in 1960.[1] And e-waste – the most toxic component of household detritus – is growing almost 7 times faster than other forms of waste. Despite recycling efforts, an estimated 140 million cell phones – containing $60 million worth of precious metals and a host of toxic materials – are dumped in US landfills annually.[2]

Along with these environmental costs, there are also economic impacts. Not so long ago, most American towns had shoe repair businesses, jewelers who fixed watches and clocks, tailors who mended and altered clothes, and ‘fixit’ businesses that refurbished toasters, TVs, radios, and dozens of other household appliances. Today, most of these businesses are gone. “It’s a dying trade,” said the owner of a New Hampshire appliance repair shop. “Lower-end appliances which you can buy for $200 to $300 are basically throwaway appliances.”[3] The story is similar for other repair trades: in the 1940s, for example, the US was home to about 60,000 shoe repair businesses, a number that has dwindled to less than one-tenth as many today.[4]

One reason for this trend is globalization. Corporations have relocated their manufacturing operations to low-wage countries, making goods artificially cheap when sold in higher-wage countries. When those goods need to be repaired, they can’t be sent back to China or Bangladesh – they have to be fixed where wages are higher, and repairs are therefore more expensive. My friend was confused about the status of his car because the opposite situation holds in India: labor is cheap and imported goods expensive, and no one would dream of junking a car that could be fixed.

It’s tempting to write off the decline of repair in the West as collateral damage – just another unintended cost of globalization – but the evidence suggests that it’s actually an intended consequence. To see why, it’s helpful to look at the particular needs of capital in the global growth economy – needs that led to the creation of the consumer culture just over a century ago.

When the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford’s assembly line in 1910, industrialists understood that the technique could be applied not just to cars, but to almost any manufactured good, making mass production possible on a previously unimaginable scale. The profit potential was almost limitless, but there was a catch: there was no point producing millions of items – no matter how cheaply – if there weren’t enough buyers for them. And in the early part of the 20th century, the majority of the population – working class, rural, and diverse – had little disposable income, a wide range of tastes, and values that stressed frugality and self-reliance. The market for manufactured goods was largely limited to the middle and upper classes, groups too small to absorb the output of full throttle mass production.

Advertising was the first means by which industry sought to scale up consumption to match the tremendous leaps in production. Although simple advertisements had been around for generations, they were hardly more sophisticated than classified ads today. Borrowing from the insights of Freud, the new advertising focused less on the product itself than on the vanity and insecurities of potential customers. As historian Stuart Ewen points out, advertising helped to replace long-standing American values stressing thrift with new norms based on conspicuous consumption. Advertising, now national in scope, also helped to erase regional and ethnic differences among America’s diverse local populations, thereby imposing mass tastes suited to mass production. Through increasingly sophisticated and effective marketing techniques, Ewen says, “excessiveness replaced thrift as a social value”, and entire populations were invested with “a psychic desire to consume.” [5]

In other words, the modern consumer culture was born – not as a response to innate human greed or customer demand, but to the needs of industrial capital.

During the Great Depression, consumption failed to keep pace with production. In a vicious circle, overproduction led to idled factories, workers lost their jobs, and demand for factory output fell further. In this crisis of capitalism, not even clever advertising could stimulate consumption sufficiently to break the cycle.

In 1932, a novel solution was advanced by a real estate broker name Bernard London. His pamphlet, “Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence” applauded the consumerist attitudes that advertising created during the 1920s, a time when “the American people did not wait until the last possible bit of use had been extracted from every commodity. They replaced old articles with new for reasons of fashion and up-to-dateness. They gave up old homes and old automobiles long before they were worn out.” [6] In order to circumvent the values of thrift and frugality that had resurfaced during the Depression, London argued that the government should “chart the obsolescence of capital and consumption goods at the time of their production… After the allotted time had expired, these things would be legally ‘dead’ and would be controlled by the duly appointed governmental agency and destroyed.”[7] The need to replace these ‘dead’ products would ensure that demand would forever remain high, and that the public – no matter how thrifty or satisfied with their material lot – would continue to consume.

London’s ideas did not catch on immediately, and the Depression eventually ended when the idle factories were converted to munitions and armaments production for World War II. But the concept of planned obsolescence did not go away. After the War its biggest champion was industrial designer Brooks Stevens, who saw it not as a government program but as an integral feature of design and marketing. “Unlike the European approach of the past where they tried to make the very best product and make it last forever,” he said, “the approach in America is one of making the American consumer unhappy with the product he has enjoyed the use of…, and [making him want to] obtain the newest product with the newest possible look.”[8]

Brooks’ strategy was embraced throughout the corporate world, and is still in force today. Coupled with advertising aimed at making consumers feel inadequate and insecure if they don’t have the latest products or currently fashionable clothes, the riddle of matching consumption to ever-increasing production was solved.

The constant replacement of otherwise serviceable goods for no other reason than “up-to-dateness” is most clear at the apex of the garment industry, tellingly known as the “fashion” industry. Thanks to a constant barrage of media and advertising messages, even young children fear being ostracized if they wear clothes that aren’t “cool” enough. Women in particular have been made to feel that they will be undervalued if their clothes aren’t sufficiently trendy. It’s not just advertising that transmits these messages. One of the storylines in an episode of the 90s sit-com “Seinfeld”, for example, involves a woman who commits the faux pas of wearing the same dress on several occasions, making her the object of much canned laughter.[9]

Obsolescence has been a particularly powerful force in the high-tech world, where the limited lifespan of digital devices is more often the result of “innovation” than malfunction. With computing power doubling every 18 months for several decades (a phenomenon so reliable it is known as Moore’s Law) digital products quickly become obsolete: as one tech writer put it, “in two years your new smartphone could be little more than a paperweight”.[10] With marketers bombarding the public with ads claiming that this generation of smartphone is the ultimate in speed and functionality, the typical cell phone user purchases a new phone every 21 months.[11] Needless to say, this is great for the bottom line of high-tech businesses, but terrible for the environment.

Innovation may be the primary means by which high-tech goods are made obsolete, but manufacturers are not above using other methods. Apple, for example, intentionally makes its products difficult to repair except by Apple itself, in part by refusing to provide repair information about its products. Since the cost of in-house repair often approaches the cost of a new product, Apple is assured of a healthy stream of revenue no matter what the customer decides to do.

Apple has gone even further. In a class-action lawsuit against the company, it was revealed that the company’s iPhone 6 devices were programmed to cease functioning – known as being “bricked” – when users have them repaired at unauthorized (and less expensive) repair shops. “They never disclosed that your phone could be bricked after basic repairs,” said a lawyer for the complainants. “Apple was going to … force all its consumers to buy new products simply because they went to a repair shop.”[12]

In response to this corporate skulduggery, a number of states have tried to pass “fair repair” laws that would help independent repair shops get the parts and diagnostic tools they need, as well as schematics of how the devices are put together. One such law has already been passed in Massachusetts to facilitate independent car repair, and farmers in Nebraska are working to pass a similar law for farm equipment. But except for the Massachusetts law, heavy lobbying from manufacturers – from Apple and IBM to farm equipment giant John Deere – has so far stymied the passage of right-to-repair laws.[13]

From the grassroots, another response has been the rise of non-profit “repair cafés”. The first was organized in Amsterdam in 2009, and today there are more than 1,300 worldwide, each with tools and materials to help people repair clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, toys, and more – along with skilled volunteers who can provide help if needed.[14] These local initiatives not only strengthen the values of thrift and self-reliance intentionally eroded by consumerism, they help connect people to their community, scale back the use of scarce resources and energy, and reduce the amount of toxic materials dumped in landfills.

At a more systemic level, there’s an urgent need to rein in corporate power by re-regulating trade and finance. Deregulatory ‘free trade’ treaties have given corporations the ability to locate their operations anywhere in the world, contributing to the skewed pricing that makes it cheaper to buy new products than to repair older ones. These treaties also make it easier for corporations to penetrate not just the economies of the global South, but the psyches of their populations – helping to turn billions of more self-reliant people into insecure consumers greedy for the standardized, mass-produced goods of corporate industry. The spread of the consumer culture may help global capital meet its need for endless growth, but it will surely destroy the biosphere: our planet cannot possibly sustain 7 billion people consuming at the insane rate we do in the ‘developed’ world – and yet that goal is implicit in the logic of the global economy.

We also need to oppose – with words and deeds – the forces of consumerism in our own communities. The global consumer culture is not only the engine of climate change, species die-off, ocean dead zones, and many other assaults on the biosphere, it ultimately fails to meet real human needs. The price of the consumer culture is not measured in the cheap commodities that fill our homes and then, all too soon, the nearest landfill.  Its real cost is measured in eating disorders, an epidemic of depression, heightened social conflict, and rising rates of addiction – not just to opioids, but to ‘shopping’, video games, and the internet.

It’s time to envision – and take steps to create – an economy that doesn’t destroy people and the planet just to satisfy the growth imperatives of global capital.

 

Photo credit:  Sascha Pohflepp / Wikimedia

Why ‘The Queerest Generation Ever’ Hasn’t Managed to Address Women’s Oppression

     by Meghan Murphy / Feminist Current

At The Establishment, Tori Truscheit asks, “How can the queerest generation ever still believe in gender roles?”

If that question seems jaw-droppingly lacking in self-awareness, congratulations: you have been paying attention. If, on the other hand, you’re scratching your head, trying to get to the bottom of why a society drowning in rainbows and glitter, with endless “genders” to choose from, remains so steadfastly misogynistic, you’ve probably spent too much time at Everyday Feminism and The Establishment

We have one problem to start: the word “queer,” which in the past (first as an insult, then reclaimed) referred more explicitly to gay and lesbian people, has recently come to mean pretty much anything. We have heterosexual women and men calling themselves “queer” because they claim to be “non-binary,” like “kinky” sex, or wear glittery makeup. In other words, today, “queer” and “gay” do not mean the same thing. And mushing together homosexuality with a variety of chosen identities or funky haircuts means that the question of why “the queerest generation” might not be progressive on the issue of women’s liberation is flawed from the start, because it’s unclear what the word “queer” even means in this context.

Either way, whether we are talking about gay men or those who identify as “queer,” there is one glaring reason why sexist gender roles have stuck around: being “queer” is not necessarily the same thing as being feminist. In fact, in many ways the queer movement has wholly rejected women’s liberation, as a political aim.

Truscheit is right on one thing: the gay marriage movement was not particularly feminist. Rather, this was a liberal effort that chose not to challenge the institution of marriage itself — which exists only because men wished to trade women as commodities, among themselves — and instead fought for inclusion in a heterosexist, patriarchal tradition. This is actually a useful demonstration of the difference between liberal feminism and radical feminism: one fights for equal access to already existing institutions, the other fights for a new system (and therefore new institutions) entirely.

Most (if not all) American liberals support gay marriage, unequivocally, but don’t necessarily have any vested interest in destroying male supremacy. (This is evidenced, for example, by liberal support for things like the porn industry and the legalization of brothels.) Liberals are capitalist, also, which means, again, they are invested in maintaining the systems already in place, but tweaking them a little, in order to offer an illusion of equality (i.e. if we all are allowed to make more money, get married, and own property, the world will be a better place.)

It is here that North American liberals tend to get lost on the question of feminism: they fail to understand that in order to achieve liberation for women and other oppressed groups, capitalism and patriarchy need more than a few tweaks.

Truscheit writes:

“More than half of high school students identify as something other than straight, 12 per cent of millennials are trans or gender nonconforming, and millennials overwhelmingly support gay marriage.

In a world where millennials are increasingly embracing marginalized groups, you’d think their accompanying views on gender would follow suit.”

But the thing is that none of the positions or identities listed here are necessarily anti-patriarchy. By and large, the male-led fight for “marriage equality” ignored the plight of women in its effort, meaning that the oppressive system behind homophobia remained intact, despite marriage rights. Gender identity discourse misunderstands how the system of gender works and that it exists to oppress women and legitimize male supremacy. And “embracing marginalized groups” doesn’t mean understanding or fighting the underlying systems that ensure certain groups are oppressed as a class. To liberals, “marginalization” doesn’t need to happen on a class basis — it can happen on an individual basis, which is why liberal societies keep digging themselves deeper into these pits of violence and vast inequality — because fighting structures of oppression can’t happen within an individualist framework.

Truscheit’s big mistake is to look towards yet another anti-feminist, liberal movement for a solution to patriarchy: queer politics.

Trans activist Mya Byrne at Pride San Fransisco, June 25, 2017.

While Truscheit blames “mainstream gays” for not “questioning gender,” she lets the trans movement off the hook — an odd blind spot considering that trans activism is largely responsible for re-popularizing the idea of gender itself. Whereas feminism has said gender, under patriarchy, is something we should reject, not embrace, today’s queer movement has positioned gender as fun and liberatory. Indeed, transgenderism itself can only exist so long as we have gender and believe gender roles are fine, so long as we choose them.

Truscheit says the “white male activists behind the marriage equality movement… sacrificed trans rights on the altar of their own desired outcome,” connecting this to what she perceives as a failure to “question gender.” But what she doesn’t realize is that an end to gender means an end to transgenderism — we can’t “identify” with gender roles if there are none to identify with. Indeed, if the gay rights movement had explicitly gone after gender, the result would not have been allyship with the transgender movement.

While I understand feeling let down by those around us who claim to want a more just, more equitable world, what feminists have learned over and over again in the past 150-odd years is that we can’t rely on male-centered movements. In order to liberate women, we need to put our energy into political activism and ideology that centers women and addresses the root of male supremacy.

Transgenderism isn’t going to save us from male dominance anymore than liberal gay men or male anarchists will. If we want real change, we need to look back, and take our cues from the women who broke ties with the men who sold them out and took matters into their own hands. From Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, after being betrayed by their abolitionist allies, formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which refused to support constitutional changes that did not enfranchise women; to the radical feminists of the late 1960s, who told the left to fuck off because “we’re starting our own movement;” to the black women involved in black militant politics who were expected to take a “traditional feminine role,” allowing men to lead the movement and hold positions of power within it — these women learned the lessons we should have memorized by now.

There is one answer to the question of patriarchy — there always has been. While queer politics may be more trendy (a result, in part, of its marketability and individualist ethos), feminism is the only political movement that can free women from the shackles of male domination.

Liberals like Truscheit and her colleagues at The Establishment will continue spinning their wheels until they decide to pick up where first and second wave radicals left off. We need to stop looking around, and asking ourselves who to turn to next: our sisters have the answer.