Now that the violence in Charlottesville has forced “white supremacy” into our political vocabulary, let’s ask an uncomfortable question: “When will the United States transcend white supremacy?”
My question isn’t, “What should we do about the overt white supremacists who, emboldened by Trumpism’s success, have pushed their way back into mainstream politics?” I want to go beyond easy targets to ask, “When will U.S. society—not just neo-Nazis and the Klan, but the whole country—reject all aspects of white supremacist ideology and take serious steps toward rectifying the material inequality justified by that ideology?”
The answer is obvious: Never.
There’s no evidence the dominant culture is interested. The wealth—in fact, the very existence—of the United States is so entwined in the two foundational racialized holocausts in our history that transcending white supremacy requires not only treating people of color differently, but understanding ourselves in new and painful ways. To transcend white supremacy, white America would have to come to terms with the barbarism of our history and our ongoing moral failures.
If that seems harsh, heartless, or hopeless, let’s start with history.
The United States is the wealthiest nation in the world. The acquisition of the land base of the country and our path to industrialization and that wealth are inextricably tied to the genocide of indigenous people and African slavery. Those processes and practices, driven by dreams of domination and the nightmare of unchecked greed, were justified by white supremacist ideology. The result: millions dead, the lives of millions more impoverished, and entire cultures ravaged and sometimes destroyed.
Yes, the story of the United States also includes the quest for freedom and perseverance in the face of adversity, hard work and ingenuity. We love to tell those stories, while the barbarism typically is treated as a footnote. But there would be no United States as we know it without the genocide of indigenous people that cleared the land of “the merciless Indian Savages,” as the Declaration of Independence described the native population standing in the way of a new nation. Slave-grown cotton provided a crucial raw material and equally crucial export earnings that aided U.S. economic expansion and spurred industrial development in the North.
White supremacy defines not just the states of the Confederacy, but the whole country. I was born and raised in North Dakota, and I’ve lived the past 25 years in Texas. Which is more virulent, the overt anti-Indian racism I grew up with or the overt anti-black racism I live around today? They’re about the same. What about the unspoken sense of superiority of polite white society? About the same in both places, whether it’s conservative Fargo, ND, or progressive Austin, TX.
Why do these attitudes persist? Because to face the reality of our barbaric history would be to admit that our wealth—our very existence—depends on our racialized holocausts, and hence our claim to that land and wealth is suspect. It doesn’t matter if any of my ancestors participated in the genocide (they were more recent immigrants) or owned slaves (they didn’t). What matters is whether we can tell the truth and remedy, to the degree possible, the consequences of that historical barbarism and the contemporary practices that flow from it. Being anti-racist means supporting anti-racist policies.
Here’s one easy example: Raise taxes, primarily on the upper middle class and wealthy, to fund public schools equally. De facto racial segregation in housing means school segregation, and racialized wealth disparities mean racialized inequality in education. So get serious about giving every school the funding needed, channeling extra resources to struggling schools until they reach parity. Assign the most experienced teachers to the schools that have been neglected; let the new teachers handle the rich kids. Raise taxes, and no whining.
School equity would be one small step toward an honest reckoning, and we don’t even do that. I can’t say with certainty that white America will never face this honestly, but in my life I’ve seen no indication of a general interest in a public discussion at this level.
Not surprisingly, when I ask, “When will the United States transcend white supremacy?” the responses vary widely. Indigenous and black people often chuckle, not because the subject is funny but because the answer—never—is so obvious. In general, people of color are understandably skeptical about the commitment of white America, recognizing the clash between the good intentions of many white people and those same white people’s reluctance to endorse the easy steps, let alone the radical social change, necessary to transform a society.
But the only people who routinely get indignant at the question are other white people. They’re the ones who accuse me of being harsh, heartless, and hopeless. Perhaps I am all three, but even if that’s the case, the question hangs uncomfortably: When will we transcend white supremacy?
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A recent study of air pollution in the western United States made a startling finding: despite a 50 percent drop over the past 25 years in US emissions of smog-producing chemicals like nitrogen oxides (NOx), smog actually increased during that period in the rural US West – even in such ‘pristine’ environments as Yellowstone National Park. Most of this increase was traced to “the influx of pollution from Asian countries, including China, North and South Korea, Japan, India, and other South Asian countries.”[1] That’s because over the same period that NOx emissions declined in the US, they tripled in Asia as a whole.[2] In media reports of the study, China and India are described as the “worst offenders” of this fugitive “Asian pollution”.[3]
Left only with these findings, a reasonable conclusion would be that the US has become more environmentally enlightened in recent decades, while Asia – particularly ‘developing’ Asia – is a veritable eco-reprobate, sacrificing not only its own but global airsheds to choking pollution. The new, anti-environmental EPA director, Scott Pruitt, recently expressed this view in explaining why the US should exit the Paris Climate Accord: “[China and India] are polluting far more than we are.”[4]
What’s missing?
A similar study of global air pollution drift in 2014, focusing on China and the US, made comparable findings, but included an important factor missing from the more recent study: production for export. Among other things, the scholars of the older study asked how much of the Chinese air pollution drifting to the Western US was occasioned specifically in the production of exports for world markets (including the top destination for Chinese manufactures, the US.)
The answer? In 2006, up to 24% of sulfate concentrations over the western United States were generated in the Chinese production of goods for export to the US.[5] Applying these findings to the more recent study, it’s likely that a significant percentage of the Asian nitrogen oxides now choking the US West were also emitted in the production of goods destined for the US.
In other words, it’s meaningless to speak of “Asian pollution” in this context. Though the pollution was emitted in Asia, it properly belongs to the country/ies on whose behalf and at whose behest it was produced. Even more accurately, the pollution finally belongs to the transnational corporations (TNCs) who are the real drivers and beneficiaries not only of offshoring, but also of insatiable consumerism through marketing and obsolescence.
Economic globalization has enabled the manic scouring of the world by TNCs for the most ‘liberal’ (read: unregulated) environments in which to locate production facilities – the places where expenses can be minimized and profits maximized. Since the biggest drags on corporate profiteering come from taxes, environmental regulations, and decent labor protections and wages, the global relocations of TNCs have largely been towards countries where those costs are lowest, or absent altogether.
By increasing their economic power, globalization has also given TNCs the ability to capture governments, which then collude in further reshaping of the world through ‘free’ trade treaties, supra-national institutions like the IMF, WTO and World Bank, and subsidies and hand-outs to attract and retain big businesses.
This entire system of globalization, production and pollution off-shoring is driven by the profit-maximization logic governing transnational corporations, greased along by an ever-growing number of bilateral and global free trade treaties. As economist Martin Hart-Landsberg writes:
“Beginning in the late 1980s large multinational corporations, including those headquartered in the US, began a concerted effort to reverse declining profits by establishing cross border production networks (or global value chains). This process knitted together highly segmented economic processes across national borders in ways that allowed these corporations to lower their labor costs as well as reduce their tax and regulatory obligations. Their globalization strategy succeeded; corporate profits soared. It is also no longer helpful to think about international trade in simple nation-state terms.”[6]
China – having colluded with global capital in turning itself into the ‘factory of the world’[7] – is bearing the lion’s share of globalization’s brunt. But at least China is getting rich as a result, right? Certainly there is an emerging wealthy (and superwealthy) class within China that is profiting from globalization, but it represents a minuscule fraction of the overall population.[8] The mass of the workers who make up China’s labor and ‘bad-labor’[9]workforce are not benefiting from the country’s conversion into a TNC workshop: labor’s share of China’s GDP has been steadily falling since the late 1990s.[10] For a high-end electronic product like the iPhone, less than 2% (about US$10) of the sales price goes to Chinese workers involved in its production.[11]
So who is driving China’s export-oriented boom? Quoting Hart-Landsberg again, “it is not Chinese state enterprises, or even Chinese private enterprises, that are driving China’s exports to the US. Rather it is foreign multinationals, many of which are headquartered in the US, including Apple, Dell, and Walmart”.[12] By 2013, foreign-owned TNCs were responsible for 47% of all Chinese exports (and over 80% of high-tech exports) compared to a mere 11% by Chinese state-owned enterprises.[13] US-based TNCs dominate this control and ownership of exports made in China.
The division of profits from Chinese manufactures is also heavily skewed in favor of foreign corporations. For telecommunications equipment, China produced 38% of world exports in 2013, but their share of the profits generated by the sale of those products was just 6%, while US firms captured 59%. Similar imbalances obtain in the case of textiles, where US firms commandeered 46% of the profit share.[14]
From the production, sale and transport of globally-traded commodities, to the shipping of the resulting waste back to China,[15] and now to the profitable ‘adaptation’ to the ghastly air pollution,[16] TNCs are the main drivers and beneficiaries of this system. In other words, Chinese production and exports are dominated by US and other foreign corporations, and – like the pollution drifting across the globe – are not really ‘Chinese’ at all.[17]
This ‘Asian pollution’ may have an even deeper connection to the American west over which it is now drifting. The world’s largest surface mines are the Black Thunder mines, in the Powder River Basin straddling the Wyoming/Montana border. The mine’s owner and operator, Arch Coal, exports sizable amounts of this government-owned coal to places like China, where it is burned to power the factories that produce American consumer goods.[18]
==
It has been widely noted that American consumers have the largest ecological footprint in the world. While not completely absolving individuals – especially those on the upper rungs of the socio-economic ladder – for perpetuating this wasteful system, it can be argued that those large ecological footprints are not entirely their own. The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence[19] mean that the American consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence and reflection of the global power of TNCs. In that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporateecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals.
Globalization has meant the distancing of cause and effect, source and sink, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transport of goods has remained invisible and opaque to consumers. As Wendell Berry says, “The global economy institutionalizes a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, and in which the histories of all products will be lost.”[20]
Until now, it seems, corporations’ pollution offshoring was easy enough for Northern policymakers to comfortably ignore – it was offshored, after all. Of course, global warming already showed that simply exporting polluting production to the global South was meaningless as far as the Earth’s atmosphere and climate were concerned. But local air quality was seen as something distinct, so that the smoggy horrors of industrializing China or India were, for places like North America, still at a ‘safe’ distance. No more. Now, in addition to the products that magically appear on Western store shelves absolutely shorn of history and provenance, much of the hitherto distant pollution emitted in their production has also arrived. It has come home to roost. Globalization’s blowback.
Republished with permission of Local Futures. For permission to repost, please contact info@localfutures.org
[1] Lin, M., Horowitz, L., Payton, R., Fiore, A., and Tonnesesn, G. (2017) ‘US surface ozone trends and extremes from 1980 to 2014: quantifying the roles of rising Asian emissions, domestic controls, wildfires, and climate’,Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 17(4).
[5] Lin, J., Pan, D., Davis, S., Zhang, Q., He, K., Wang, C., Streets, D., Wuebbles, D., and Guan, D. (2014) ‘China’s international trade and air pollution in the United States’, PNAS111(5), 4 February. http://www.pnas.org/content/111/5/1736.abstract.
[7] David Harvey, among others, tells the complicated tale of how this transformation occurred: Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ‘Neoliberalism ‘with Chinese Characteristics’’ (ch. 5).
[9] ‘Bad labor’ refers to vulnerable, health-damaging, gender unequal, child and forced labor. Simas and colleagues have looked at the relationship between globalization of production chains and ‘bad labor footprints’, and estimate that more than half of such footprints behind “wealthy lifestyles of affluent regions” occur in the production of exported goods in un-affluent regions/countries, with the majority of these being in Asia. Up to 30% of bad labor conditions in poor countries are related to the production of exports (Simas et al. 2014 ‘The “Bad Labor” Footprint: Quantifying the Social Impacts of Globalization’, Sustainability 6.).
Brazil’s Supreme Court will next week deliver a historic judgement on tribal territories which could strike the greatest blow to indigenous land rights since the country’s military dictatorship.
The judgement will be delivered on Wednesday, August 16. Large-scale indigenous protests are anticipated, as the judges decide whether to incorporate a proposal on indigenous land rights drafted by the attorney-general’s office.
The proposal states that indigenous peoples who were not occupying their ancestral lands on or before October 5, 1988, when the country’s current constitution came into force, would no longer have the right to live there.
If the judges accept it, this would set indigenous rights in the country back decades, and risk destroying hundreds of self-sufficient tribes, who depend on their land for autonomy and survival.
Brazil’s pan-indigenous organization APIB: is organizing several events and protests in the capital Brasilia and across the country in the lead up to the ruling, with the slogan: “Our history didn’t start in 1988. No to the time limit.”
Activists have speculated that the proposal is being pushed by President Temer to secure his political position. His period in office has seen single digit approval ratings, instability, and widespread protest, after the government he leads was installed in April 2016 following the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff.
If it becomes policy, this measure would be beneficial to Brazil’s ruralista agribusiness lobby, who regard land protections for indigenous peoples as an unnecessary barrier to profit.
The Guarani Kaiowá people in southwestern Brazil are just one of the many tribes who would be affected. They will never recover most of their land if this measure is approved.
Eliseu Guarani, a spokesman for the tribe, said: “This is very hard for us… there will be no more legal recognition of indigenous territories… there is violence, we all face it, attacks by paramilitaries, criminalization, racism.”
Survival International is actively campaigning against the measure, which is illegal under international law, and has urged its supporters to take action.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “Land theft is the biggest problem that tribal people face, and this proposal is little more than a land grabber’s manifesto. It’s a blatant shredding of tribal land rights, selling them out to ranchers, loggers, soy barons and other vested interests.”
Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “The Problem” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online.
Most people, or at least most people with a beating heart, have already done the math, added up the arrogance, sadism, stupidity, and denial, and reached the bottom line: a dead planet. Some of us carry that final sum like the weight of a corpse. For others, that conclusion turns the heart to a smoldering coal. But despair and rage have been declared unevolved and unclean, beneath the “spiritual warriors” who insist they will save the planet by “healing” themselves. How this activity will stop the release of carbon and the felling of forests is never actually explained. The answer lies vaguely between being the change we wish to see and a 100th monkey of hope, a monkey that is frankly more Christmas pony than actual possibility.
Given that the culture of America is founded on individualism and awash in privilege, it’s no surprise that narcissism is the end result. The social upheavals of the ’60s split along fault lines of responsibility and hedonism, of justice and selfishness, of sacrifice and entitlement. What we are left with is an alternative culture, a small, separate world of the converted, content to coexist alongside a virulent mainstream. Here, one can find workshops on “scarcity consciousness,” as if poverty were a state of mind and not a structural support of capitalism. This culture leaves us ill-prepared to face the crisis of planetary biocide that greets us daily with its own grim dawn. The facts are not conducive to an open-hearted state of wonder. To confront the truth as adults, not as faux children, requires an adult fortitude and courage, grounded in our adult responsibilities to the world. It requires those things because the situation is horrific and living with that knowledge will hurt. Meanwhile, I have been to workshops where global warming was treated as an opportunity for personal growth, and no one there but me saw a problem with that.
The word sustainable—the “Praise, Jesus!” of the eco-earnest—serves as an example of the worst tendencies of the alternative culture. It’s a word that perfectly meshes corporate marketers’ carefully calculated upswell of green sentiment with the relentless denial of the privileged. It’s a word I can barely stand to use because it has been so exsanguinated by cheerleaders for a technotopic, consumer kingdom come. To doubt the vague promise now firmly embedded in the word—that we can have our cars, our corporations, our consumption, and our planet, too—is both treason and heresy to the emotional well-being of most progressives. But here’s the question: Do we want to feel better or do we want to be effective? Are we sentimentalists or are we warriors?
For “sustainable” to mean anything, we must embrace and then defend the bare truth: the planet is primary. The life-producing work of a million species is literally the earth, air, and water that we depend on. No human activity—not the vacuous, not the sublime—is worth more than that matrix. Neither, in the end, is any human life. If we use the word “sustainable” and don’t mean that, then we are liars of the worst sort: the kind who let atrocities happen while we stand by and do nothing.
Even if it were possible to reach narcissists, we are out of time. Admitting we have to move forward without them, we step away from the cloying childishness and optimistic white-lite denial of so much of the left and embrace our adult knowledge. With all apologies to Yeats, in knowledge begins responsibilities. It’s to you grown-ups, the grieving and the raging, that we address this book.
***
The vast majority of the population will do nothing unless they are led, cajoled, or forced. If the structural determinants are in place for people to live their lives without doing damage—for example, if they’re hunter-gatherers with respected elders—then that’s what happens. If, on the other hand, the environment has been arranged for cars, industrial schooling is mandatory, resisting war taxes will land you in jail, food is only available through giant corporate enterprises selling giant corporate degradation, and misogynist pornography is only a click away 24/7—well, welcome to the nightmare. This culture is basically conducting a massive Milgram experiment on us, only the electric shocks aren’t fake—they’re killing off the planet, species by species.
But wherever there is oppression there is resistance. That is true everywhere, and has been forever. The resistance is built body by body from a tiny few, from the stalwart, the brave, the determined, who are willing to stand against both power and social censure. It is our prediction that there will be no mass movement, not in time to save this planet, our home. That tiny percent—Margaret Mead’s small group of thoughtful, committed citizens—has been able to shift both the cultural consciousness and the power structures toward justice in times past. It is valid to long for a mass movement, however, no matter how much we rationally know that we’re wishing on a star. Theoretically, the human race as a whole could face our situation and make some decisions—tough decisions, but fair ones, that include an equitable distribution of both resources and justice, that respect and embrace the limits of our planet. But none of the institutions that govern our lives, from the economic to the religious, are on the side of justice or sustainability. Theoretically, these institutions could be forced to change. The history of every human rights struggle bears witness to how courage and sacrifice can dismantle power and injustice. But again, it takes time. If we had a thousand years, even a hundred years, building a movement to transform the dominant institutions around the globe would be the task before us. But the Western black rhinoceros is out of time. So is the golden toad, the pygmy rabbit. No one is going to save this planet except us.
For the Sápara Peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon, “Sinchi”, or “sacred” is the term that best describes their ancestral language and forests. Though abundant with meaning, the Sápara never had a word for “sacred”. There was simply no need for it until they faced the threat of possible extinction. The term “sacred” became crucial in the Sápara’s battle to garner attention and support from those around them.
The Sápara ultimately succeeded in gaining the attention they needed. But now they face what is arguably an even greater threat at the hands of the oil industry and a government that eagerly backs it.
Despite having promised representation and protection of what is considered by many to be the best constitution in the world, the Sápara employ headstrong acts of resistance through international activism, conservation efforts, and partnerships. They also use a solar-powered communication system to fight the long and arduous battle against the encroaching oil industry in their ancestral homeland. Revival of their at-risk language and culture is now a critical priority for this small but strong-willed Amazonian nation.
THE MYSTICAL SÁPARA OF THE AMAZON
The Sápara Peoples are traditionally semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers in what is now the Pastaza Province of Ecuador. The heart of their territory lies “at the confluence of the Pindoyacu and Conambo Rivers and the Tigre River” but their territory has been found to cover the Pastaza River to as far as Curaray, all within the outskirts of Ecuador and Peru. At the time of contact, the Sápara were 200,000 strong. Everything about the Sápara, including their language, ceremonial practices, and cosmovision, has been influenced by the rainforest and rivers, which, according to Ulrich Oslender, author of The Geographies of Social Movements, are “central to all economic, domestic, and social activities.” It is important to understand that “nothing is or will be more valuable than pristine watersheds”, particularly in the Amazon.
Relying on a sustainable agricultural system, the Sápara have a long history of farming banana, manioc, papajibra, and chonta. Those who have studied their culture agree that it is “largely one of self-subsistence, with community members growing their own crops and hunting in the forest for monkeys, tapirs, wild pigs and fat worms.”
Like many other indigenous nations, the Sápara underwent a timeline of decimation. Four centuries of Spanish conquest, slavery, forced assimilation, epidemics, war, and deforestation have driven the Sápara and their mystical culture to near extinction. With the loss of their shamans in the late 1990s, the Sápara subsequently “lost their source of knowledge about their traditions, the healing power of plants and the secrets of the jungle.” According to Manari Ushigua, the current president of the Sápara nation, their shamans “were very powerful because they knew the medicinal secrets of more than 500 plants.”
Considered the smallest Ecuadorian Indigenous nationality, the Sápara now coexist with the indigenous Kichwa peoples and have thus adopted Kichwa as their main language. Last year, only around 559 people identified as Sápara. Other sources claim the number could be somewhere closer to 350. It is said that presently, “only five elders (all over the age of 65) still know Sápara, and only two master it sufficiently.” Manari Ushigua underlines their dire predicament by stating, “We don’t like asking for help, but since there are now only a few of us left, we’re afraid it’s the end of the road.” Taking action against the precipice of involuntary extinction, Manari (whose name means “a hefty lizard that lives in the forest”) changed his name to “Bartolo Ushigua” so that Ecuadorian officials could register him. Then, Manari Ushigua and the Sápara that remained formed Nacionalidad Zapara del Ecuador (NAZAE), an organization of activists that act as political representatives working towards the revival of their native language.
Since the creation of NAZAE, the Sápara have “worked with an Ecuadorean linguist to get its culture and language into the UNESCO World Heritage List”, which recognized their language as a “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.”
This recognition paid off in several ways. They received financial support for three years from the Project for the Development of the Indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian People of Ecuador (PRODEPINE), World Bank, Non-governmental organizations (NGO), several national institutes, and foreign foundations. They also gained a voting seat on the executive board of the Consejo de Desarrollo de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del Ecuador (CODENPE, Development Council of Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador), that manages development initiatives in Indigenous communities. UNESCO’s highly-esteemed recognition also generated awareness about the Sápara, countering the previous lack of awareness about their existence. “The recognition gave us the feeling that our elders who had been dead for long years…were all coming back to life,” reflects Manari after the finished process.
Given the newly “sacred” status, the Sápara have gained new visibility in their fight to recover their ancestral cultural expressions. Additionally, the Sápara continued using their language as a “petition for greater administrative and cultural autonomy from Ecuador’s government” which has proved to be an “invaluable platform from which leaders have been able to gain recognition and support from Ecuador’s indigenous movement, international support networks, and the state.”
The Sápara have also been able to utilize this platform to gain momentum as they struggle to push back one of their biggest foes: the “Mungia” that is the oil industry.
THE SLIMY OIL MUNGIA
The Sápara speak of the legend of the Mungia, a shadowy entity that terrorizes the rainforests. With so much land covering the Amazon, the chances are of running into the terrible Mungia were slim on the worst of days. But in more recent times, it takes little effort to cross paths with something not unlike the Mungia. It’s as if the Mungia has taken a new and insidious form – a thick, slick, and slimy substance known as oil that lurks close to home and greedily consumes all lifeforms around it.
The Sápara territory encompasses around 361,000 hectares (867,339 acres) of tropical rainforest within Pastaza Province, a region that is rich with botanical medicines, timber, and oil. The province lies in the Napo eco-region, which holds the most potential for conservation areas. Because of the Ecuadorian Amazons’ mountainous regions, microclimates have allowed “endemic species to flourish…resulting in modern-day biodiversity levels that are some of the highest on the planet.” This has since been rendered obsolete time and time again by a steady stream of oil companies setting up shop in Ecuador, an occurrence with origins dating back to the 1940s. Consequently, around five million hectares (12.3 million acres) have practically been handed over to private oil exploitation. To make matters worse, many Sápara men have left their communities to work for the British-Dutch oil company Shell, preventing further progress in rebuilding their language and culture.
The oil industry has continued to extract from Oil Blocks 74, 79, 80, 83, 84, and 86, which are superimposed over Sápara territory today. In January 2016, the Ecuadorian government jumped into a $72 million contract deal, known as the 11th Oil Round, with China National Petroleum (CNPC) and with China Petrochemical Corporation (SINOPEC), which are both a part of Andes Petroleum, a Chinese-owned oil exploration and production consortium. The deal arranged for work to be done on Blocks 79 and 83. Combined, Blocks 79 and 83 cover about 45% of Sápara ancestral lands.
Oil blocks shown cover four different Ecuadorian provinces. Source: Fundacion Pachamama (facebook)
President Rafael Correa’s promise to take back Ecuador’s oil wealth from overseas companies and put Ecuadorians at the forefront of the country has since lost credibility. “As the global price for oil falls to its lowest level since the 90s”, Ecuador’s economy is now in a wildly unpredictable state. Brenda Shaffer, an energy and foreign policy specialist, explains that “when oil prices are low…states offer foreign and private companies attractive conditions to invest in their energy resources and to take the risk on themselves.” This could explain one of the reasons why Ecuador has continued to pursue relations with China since 2009, whom has since lent Ecuador more than $11 billion.
Rafael Correa (L) and former General Secretary of China, Hu Jintao, share a toast with one another.
“If they put an oil well in our land, it would be like they are destroying our laboratory, our knowledge,” Manari Ushigua says. He adamantly warns against oil extraction of Blocks 79 and 83 because of the obvious threats it poses to the Sápara rainforests, mountains, trees, and water – all of which are unquestionably vital for Sápara survival. According to Kelly Swing, who is the founding director of Tiputini Biodiversity Station Laboratory based in the Ecuadorian Amazons, “In forests impacted by oil development, perhaps 90 percent of the species around denuded sites die.” As if that isn’t disastrous and foreboding enough, there is concern about the process igniting violent confrontations between different Indigenous nations. Adam Zuckerman, the Environmental and Human Rights Campaigner for Amazon Watch, discloses that “it is not just about the contamination and the loss of their sovereignty but also about the loss of harmony against community members.”
RESISTANCE AGAINST THE OIL MUNGIA
The lack of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) can be found at the heart of the matter. The Sápara is not the only indigenous nation that has been denied this right. Many, if not all, of the Amazonian indigenous nations in Ecuador have been repeatedly denied this consultation. It can also be argued that an FPIC is not legitimate enough to protect indigenous rights and already condemns their lands to development projects. Whatever the case, the lack of consultation rides strictly against Ecuador’s constitution. Article 57 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples clearly states that “the government is required to organize a free, prior, and informed consultation to obtain the consent of the communities before any drilling activity is contemplated.”
Instead of clashing with other tribes over the issue, the Sápara have chosen to pursue activism as a form of resistance and modeled their first attempts after actions conducted by the Ecuadorian Sarayaku nation. When the Sarayaku brought their case against the oil industry to the courts in December 2003, they succeeded in being awarded $1.4 million by the state. The Sápara took note and followed their example by planning to bring their own case against the drilling of Blocks 79 and 83 to both national and international courts.
Gloria Ushigua marching in the People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C. Photo: Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network, International.
Recent articles have reported on the active protests taken on by Manari Ushigua and Gloria Ushigua against the 11th Oil Round. They have sent letters to China asking for their oil companies to abandon drilling plans on Sápara rainforest territory, but their pleas have still gone unanswered. A determined Manari Ushigua promises that, “the oil will remain underground, that is our message. And with that intention, we are going to fight until the end, no matter what happens. We are going to resist.” Not surprisingly, the Sápara uprising has been matched with equal resistance from their enemies. In January 2014, the Ecuadorian Secretary of Hydrocarbons, Andrés Donoso Fabara, filed a formal complaint against Manari Ushigua, Gloria Ushigua, and a third Sápara leader, Cléver Ruiz. Fabara’s accusation? They were all threats to the 11th Oil Round. His recommendation? They belong behind prison bars. Rosalia Ruiz, a Sápara leader from the Torimbo community within Block 83, firmly declares, “Right now the oil company is trying to enter our territory. That is our homeland, this is where we have our chakras, where we feed our families. We are warriors, and we are not afraid. We will never negotiate.”
Manari Ushigua and Gloria Ushigua embarked on the long journey to Washington, D.C. to march in the People’s Climate March, held on April 29, 2017. Both leaders believe that marches are a “key solution to climate justice.” Headstrong activism by the Sápara nation has also been supported by prominent celebrities. To express his solidarity with the Sápara, American actor and environmental activist, Leonardo DiCaprio, marched with the Ushiguas. In another act of solidarity, Nahko Bear, a tribal and cultural musician, helped raise $150,000 in October 2016 during an Amazon Watch fundraiser. It goes without saying that influential individuals can play an important role by supporting the Indigenous rights movement.
Leonardo DiCaprio marches with Gloria Ushigua and Chief Manari Ushigua. Credit: Ayse Gürsöz/IEN
Amongst conservation efforts are the Yasuní-ITT (Ishpingo, Tambocha, and Tiputini) Initiative and the Pastaza Ecological Area of Sustainable Development. The Yasuní-ITT Initiative is an attempt to save the Amazons and the indigenous nations that call it their home, as well as a way to “find innovative alternatives to traditional extractive development based on the export of raw materials.” One particular resource that is helping push Ecuador towards a post-extractivism era is cacao production, which is currently on the rise and was listed as one of Ecuador’s primary exports back in 2011. Shade-grown cacao has been shown to improve soil moisture and fertility while suppressing ground weeds. With benefits like these, cacao production can prove to be just one of many other sustainable and profitable ventures.
Spanning over 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) is the Pastaza Ecological Area of Sustainable Development. The Sápara are just one of seven indigenous nationalities that live within the protected area, which makes up for 90% of Pastaza Province. The area stands to conserve water, acts a conservation corridor, regulates the use of natural resources, and is the “culmination of three years of collaboration by provincial and local governments in Ecuador”, indigenous communities, and Nature and Culture International, an organization that directs conservation efforts toward Latin America.
To clarify, the Sápara are not resisting development in their lands per se, but merely the reckless and exploitative tendencies of the current powers pursuing Amazonian natural resources. “We want development but we want to have it our way”, says Gloria Ushigua. Falling in line with their vision, Sápara have requested a solar-powered communications system that would allow them to share their situation with the outside world. Amazon Watch and Empowered by Light (EBL), an organization aiming to bring light and power to remote global areas, took the reins and delivered resources to the Sápara in April 2017. The two non-profits, alongside NAZAE and Terra Mater, an NGO, designed a system to accommodate Sápara needs for “inter-community organizing capacity, [the] ability to communicate with the outside world, and monitoring mechanisms.” In retaliation to the government’s eye-rolling views of the Sápara’s resistance against oil extraction, Juan Carlos Ruiz, a Sápara community leader, argues that “the government can’t call us hypocrites for opposing oil extraction [while] using dirty diesel generators. We’ve made the first big step towards being fossil fuel-free – the government should learn from us.”
Gloria Ushigua marching with letter to the Chinese Consulate demanding Andes Petroleum cancel its contract to explore and drill oil in Sápara territory. Photo by Joyce Xi
Ecuador contains some of the world’s most beautiful and biodiverse regions, with more species per hectare of trees, shrubs, insects, amphibians, and mammals than anywhere else on this planet. Alongside the legend of the Mungia, the Sápara speak of the creation-myth of Tsitsanu, a powerful Sápara man who became a hero figure to his peoples due to his strong commitment to helping those in need. Tsitsanu experienced many adversities on his journeys and was not always well-received. But even so, Tsitsanu stayed true to his nature – he would only respond with kindness. He is truly an emblem of the Sápara nation – his nature speaks volumes of the Sápara peoples themselves.
Such myths and legends color and distinguish Sápara culture. By pursuing ways to strengthen their language, they have strengthened their identity and platform for resistance against oil industries. Through international activism, conservation efforts and partnerships, and solar-powered communication systems, the Sápara offer the world “new ways to think about collectively building a post-petroleum economy.” By first having the right conversations about Amazon culture and conservation, we can begin taking steps toward solidarity with the Sápara peoples and their homeland as they continue their fight against extractive industries. Then, by understanding the mechanisms behind their social and environmental justice movements, we can gain more “respect for [Sápara] cultural, educational, educational, and territorial self-determination.” It is no easy process. Indeed, this is an “enormous undertaking requiring honest reflexivity, brave self-awareness, and respectful, ongoing dialogue.” The Sápara nation’s fight to repair and revive their language and land is legendary in itself. It stands as a reminder to the world that resistance is not, and never will be, futile. “And our message to our friends,” says Manari Ushigua in a video, showing him sitting within the Amazonian rainforest which is alive with the sounds of life, “is that the world and nature can come together, united, to defend our lives as human beings and the life of planet earth.”
When I was in grad school, I got into a heated debate with a classmate who insisted that “white feminism” was a serious problem in the women’s movement. The man (who was white and from the United States) argued that, “white feminism” meant that the women’s movement had centered the lives and experiences of only a select few — privileged white women in the US who traveled mainly in academic circles — “for most of its history.”
I told him I thought the term functioned as a tool to dismiss second wave feminists, glorify the (very problematic) third wave, and encourage infighting among feminists, creating divisions in a movement where collective struggle is crucial. His claim was at odds with the grassroots movement I’d grown up with in the Dominican Republic, which was obviously not led by women in the US (and certainly not by upper-class white women or academics). There are legitimate problems within feminism in my home country, particularly around class difference, but there is far more solidarity than animosity, and Dominican feminism has been consistent in addressing the struggles of rural, working class, and immigrant women.
Notably, during my time as an immigrant in the US, most of the people who complained to me about what they called “white feminism” were white themselves. I felt tokenized; like they wanted me, as a Dominican woman of colour, to validate them and their feminism. I became suspicious of all white people who used the term. Criticizing “white feminism” seemed to be a way for white people to present themselves as different, better white people — as cool, “intersectional” feminists who just happen to be white.
Now that I am back in the Dominican Republic doing shelter work, I believe my friend from grad school was right about one thing: white feminism is real. It is epitomized by gender identity ideology.
The current trend among third wavers, as well as among progressives, is to argue that we can ignore whether people were born male or female and instead use language like “genderfluid,” “multi-gender,” or “genderqueer.” But there’s a massive gap between this language — popularized within Gender Studies classrooms in the West — and the realities of marginalized women in countries like mine.
I’ve been thinking about what gender identity means in the context of the Global South. What does gender identity mean for women and girls who look like me? What does it mean for Dominican women and girls who are marginalized not just by sex, but by poverty, race, and xenophobia?
Recently, the Dominican Republic has been debating whether or not to outlaw child marriage. The country has the highest rate of child marriage in the Latin American and Caribbean region. According to a 2014 survey, 37 per cent of women who are between 20 and 49 years old got married (or became common law partners) before they were 18. The survey also shows that one in five girls between 15 and 19 are in a relationship with a man who is at least 10 years their senior. There is a strong correlation between child marriage and teen pregnancy, which can result in dangerous health complications for girls, like blood poisoning, obstructed labour, and high blood pressure. Indeed, teen pregnancy is the number one cause of death for teen girls worldwide. This is particularly worrisome because the Dominican Republic prohibits all abortion, even in the cases when the mother’s life is in danger.
Plan International, a children’s rights organization, published a study in March, looking at child marriage on the south side of the Caribbean island. They interviewed men who married underage girls, as well as the girls who “chose” these marriages. Almost 40 per cent of the men interviewed said they preferred younger girls because they were “more obedient and easier to control.” The study also revealed that many girls marry older men hoping to escape family violence and poverty, but then face violence from these men once they are married. One 15-year-old girl who was interviewed for the study said:
“I got married because I needed to run away from home. They were beating me. They used sticks. They wouldn’t trust me. One day I said: ‘I don’t want to live like this anymore.’ At home, there was a lot of fighting, one day in front of everybody, they beat me, in the middle of the street. So, I started working at a household. I was 11 years old. It was even worse there, the violence increased. I had to do all the chores, including washing all the clothes by hand. They wouldn’t even let me go to school and they never paid me because they said that they already gave me food. I was suffering a lot. I felt imprisoned I couldn’t even go to the park. I wanted to get married to leave all of that. I thought that if I got married I was going to be in a calm house, that I would be able to eat, sleep and go out. I didn’t know it wouldn’t be like that, like another hell.”
In the Dominican Republic, boys are not expected to clean or help raise their siblings — that is the responsibility of girls. Prior to marriage, 78 per cent of the girls who participated in the Plan International study said they were put in charge of doing household chores like cleaning and caring for their younger siblings. When girls were asked what it means to be a woman, most said that it meant being a mother and a wife.
“Half of the women in Latin America who are in their [productivity years] are unemployed and the ones who do have a job earn considerably less than their male counterparts. For women in Latin America and the Caribbean, the wage gap becomes more exacerbated during their peak fertility years.”
This is because there is an expectation that women are inherently nurturing. Being forced into the position of caretaker translates to women having less savings, being promoted less, and accumulating less money in their pensions.
But gender identity politics reduces this reality — and womanhood itself — to a trivial, malleable identity. It is baffling that in a world where women and girls face structural oppression due to their biology, gender identity politics has thrived.
Susan Cox argues that: “The non-binary declaration is a slap in the face to all women, who, if they haven’t come out as ‘genderqueer,’ presumably possess an internal essence perfectly in-line with the misogynistic parody of womanhood created by patriarchy.” There’s a twisted, neoliberal cruelty in arguing that the primary problem with gender is its impact on the chosen identities of individuals, and not the way it operates systemically, under patriarchy, to normalize and encourage male violence and female subordination.
When confronted with evidence that, historically and globally, women’s oppression is sex-based, gender identity politics simply claims that sex itself is an “invented” social construct.
“Sex and gender are much more complex and nuanced than people have long believed. Defining sex as a binary treats it like a light switch: on or off. But it’s actually more similar to a dimmer switch, with many people sitting somewhere in between male and female genetically, physiologically, and/or mentally. To reflect this, scientists now describe sex as a spectrum.
Despite the evidence, people hold on to the idea that sex is binary because it’s the easiest explanation to believe. It tracks with the messages we see in advertisements, movies, books, music — basically everywhere. People like familiar things, and the binary is familiar (especially if you’re a cisgender person who has never had to deal with sexual-identity issues).”
But feminists don’t argue that sex is real because it is “the easiest explanation to believe” or because of what the media tells us. We argue sex is real because from the moment an ultrasound reveals a baby is female, her subjugation begins. And though “gender identity” is presented as an issue feminism must contend with, it is, as Rebecca Reilly-Cooper explains, completely at odds with feminist analysis of biological sex as an axis of oppression:
“Women’s historic and continued subordination has not arisen because some members of our species choose to identify with an inferior social role (and it would be an act of egregious victim-blaming to suggest that it has). It has emerged as a means by which males can dominate that half of the species that is capable of gestating children, and exploit their sexual and reproductive labour.
We cannot make sense of the historical development of patriarchy and the continued existence of sexist discrimination and cultural misogyny, without recognizing the reality of female biology, and the existence of a class of biologically female persons.”
Far from fluid, the realities of sex-based oppression are strict and enforced through violence — this is particularly true for women of colour and women in poverty.
Presumably, the Romanian women and girls who are filling up brothels in Spain (six out of 10 prostituted women in Spain are from Romania) would like to opt-out of their gender. Evelyn Hernandez Cruz, the 19-year old girl who has just been sentenced to 30 years in jail in El Salvador for having a stillbirth, after being repeatedly raped by a gang member, surely would like to reject her status as “woman.” The 12-year-old girls in Kenya who are sold into prostitution by their families, desperate for money amidst regional droughts, probably don’t identify with being exchanged as if they’re commodities. Presumably the girls in Nepal who die from snake bites and low temperatures in menstruation huts are uncomfortable with the restrictions of their gender.
Even in the US, sex-based oppression is compounded through other forms of oppression, like race. According to a 2017 report, black women are four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications, and are “twice as likely to experience a life-threatening complication during childbirth or pregnancy.” A study conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that half of the murders of women in the US are committed by a current or former partners and that black women are most likelyto die by homicide than all other demographics. It is fair to assume that this is not a reality these women “identify” with.
To argue that sex is not real and that gender is innate or chosen, instead of socially imposed, demonstrates both ignorance to the world around you as well as a position of privilege. In this way, we see that gender identity ideology literally is“white feminism”: a (so-called) feminism that ignores the material realities of the marginalized, centers the feelings and interests of the most privileged, and presents itself as universal. It is a “feminism” invented by academics in Western countries that does little to address the struggles of those outside these circles.
“A specific set of single-issue, non-intersectional, superficial feminist practices. It is the feminism we understand as mainstream; the feminism obsessed with body hair, and high heels and makeup, and changing your married name. ‘White feminism’ is the feminism that doesn’t understand western privilege, or cultural context. It is the feminism that doesn’t consider race as a factor in the struggle for equality.
White feminism is any expression of feminist thought or action that is anti-intersectional. It is a set of beliefs that allows for the exclusion of issues that specifically affect women of colour.”
Considering this definition, what do we make of a man claiming that eyeliner defines his “womanhood,” as Gabriel Squailia did this year in an article for Bustle? He writes:
“My politics and my eyeliner became inseparable. Projecting my own sense of beauty, without shame or hesitation, scared the hell out of my opponents. My look was my armor and my weaponry. Every day, my personal power has grown. Strength and security come from drawing lines on my lids, and from the visibility that follows.My sense of myself is personal, particular, idiosyncratic. It involves massive, complex issues of identity and politics. And all of this is present when I’m leaning into the mirror, getting my eyeliner wings just right.”
The ridiculousness of Squailia’s claim that makeup makes him a woman and that power, strength and security are easily available and acquirable through superficial means, is made ever more clear when contrasted with the day-to day realities faced by most women and girls around the world. In his piece, Squailia admits womanhood is something he has been able to put on and take off, as he pleased:
“I stopped wearing anything that scanned as feminine. I didn’t even own eyeliner for 20 years. And I said nothing when people took me for a straight, cisgender man.”
But women and girls oppressed for being born female don’t have the privilege of opting out of womanhood, and appropriating the male privilege of straight men. Patriarchy doesn’t care if women don’t like or relate to their subordinate role.
Many people who consider themselves progressive believe that by swearing allegiance to gender identity ideology, they demonstrate “intersectionality.” But if they truly cared about the intersections of sex, race, and class, they would center women and girls marginalized by those axes of oppression. Instead, progressives and queer activists are centering men who believe oppression is something you can opt in and out of. Surely, most women around the world would take offense at the notion the violence and injustice they suffer is a choice… Or that it has anything to do with eyeliner.
RAQUEL ROSARIO SANCHEZ IS A WRITER FROM THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC. HER UTMOST PRIORITY IN HER WORK AND AS A FEMINIST IS TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST GIRLS AND WOMEN. HER WORK HAS APPEARED IN SEVERAL PRINT AND DIGITAL PUBLICATIONS BOTH IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH, INCLUDING: FEMINIST CURRENT, EL GRILLO, LA REPLICA, TRIBUNA FEMINISTA, EL CARIBE AND LA MAREA. YOU CAN FOLLOW HER @8ROSARIOSANCHEZ WHERE SHE RAMBLES ABOUT FEMINISM, POLITICS, AND POETRY.
