Extractivism at persih in South America: people struggles angainst corporations

Do not miss this article, brief radiography of the popular uprising against the impositions of governments, corporations and banks in South America. And above all the author's conclusions.

The author was forgot mention the Mapuche people's struggle against the Canadian corporation Meridian Gold. We not.

Note the importance of water as the backbone of the coordination city-countryside. In Western Europe, due to the virtual disappearance of the rural world, this is non-existent context. We can see how corporations do not find any opposition, so abundant commodities, from the countryside as water, becomes privatized and reach prices as if were electricity.

And yet the importance of small groups in building the mass movement. Making public causes and potentially harmful effects for the hole community, their speeches are eventually assimilated into the people until they are set in the common speech definitely. They are an example of how reason and truth guide the wills against the interest and the mechanisms of alienation. Sometimes it used to preach in the desert.

The awakening of consciousness begins with the end of the corporations.tctca

Translation of La Jornada: El extractivismo se tambalea via la tarkoteka

Resistance to extractivism is sweeping the Latin American, from north to south, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, involving all countries, forcing governments to pull their soldiers to the streets and declare a state of emergency to terrorize populations that refuse it, because they are suffering the consequences of the model.

Open pit Megamining, big works such as hydroelectric dams, monoculture sprayed with glyphosate and real estate speculation, are being answered as never before in intensity, extent and duration. The Peoples are getting in recent years major victories: brakes on Monsanto seed plant in Malvinas Argentinas; binational project of Barrick Gold's Pascua Lama stop; delaying the construction of dozens of dams, as happened with La Parota dam in Mexico.

The Fights for Southamerica
In recent weeks has been the people of Arequipa, southern Peru, which is forcing the Ollanta Humala government to declare a new state of emergency, after the fourth clash with police repression, in the contest of an mobilization that last already more than 60 days, against the Tia Maria copper mine project, initiated by Southern Copper Company.

Peru is likely to be the epicenter of resistance to mining, with an average of 200 environmental conflicts since 2008.

In Brazil not only resists to megamining but large hydropower projects like Belo Monte, along with the many real estate speculation projects (urban extractivismo), progressing feverishly as Rio de Janeiro ahead the 2016 Olympics.

The Argentina pampas is the center of resistance to soy monoculture model, standing out Mothers of Ituzaingó, the Malvinas Argentinas Assembly, Stop Fumiging campaign  and Committed Doctors organizations, wich from 15th to 18th June organized Teacher Training Dignified Science Week and Sicio-Environmental Health in Rosario.

Features of the people class struggle in South America

So far there is no unified or centralized resistance, or regional scale in the different countries, but the multiplicity of struggles is coordinated in the streets, without unified platforms. As the latest report of the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America (OCMAL) shows, all this effort to sustain the extractive mining is increasingly criticized and discredited by large sectors of society, and that mining system can not convince the population of its advantages (OCMAL, April 2015, p. 101).

There is some similarity between the current resistance to extractive model and worker resistance to Fordism in the 1960s. Factory workers reached to dismantle the productive systme thanks to a direct resistance in each section and in each workshop, based on direct action without relying on the union bureaucracies, until the discipline and the labor division were defeated. Seems necessary to insist that was not an institutional struggle, not even openly declared, but so effective that overcame the capital in their own fiefdoms, factories, forcing them to a complete restructuring of the productive apparatus.

Something we can learn from that wave of workers' struggles is that to defeat a model of domination the focus is what happens on the ground where the model is applied, governments and state administrations being completely irrelevant. Direct struggle and resistance are irreplaceable, as taught by the chronic collected in countless works and stories.

At this point it should be noted that there is a moment of defeat or final fight, as the verse of The International hymn says, because what matters is the long process of direct actions that achieve to lock the mechanism of domination. Since Fordism and Taylorism were implemented until they were overwhelmed and neutralized was spent over half a century; two or three generations of workers were needed to find the weak points of the Masters gears.

What have we learn
What is happening against extractivism should be source of multiple learning; with a place in the history of Resistance and one eye on the present, we can draw some conclusions.

The first is that the Resistance is carry on by indigenous people, blacks and mestizos from the areas where mining unfold, monocultures and infrastructure megaprojects. This is a large and heterogeneous network of farmers, rural workers and inhabitants of villages, which highlights the role of women and their families. It is a face to face with corporations and governments, without support of the institutions, which are present only when the most of the population is fighting in the streets.

The second is the importance of protecting the water, the main common good affected by the extractivist. In some countries, such as Uruguay, the urban population began to react against the model when the deterioration of the quality of the water consumed is evident. It boost the partnerships between rural and urban, between grassroots groups and unions, between workers and scientists.

The third is the variety of struggles that, at some point, become massive and cause the social unrest. Are not spontaneous but the result of a long outreach and organization. This happens these days in Arequipa, where most of the population of villages and towns, first, and of the great city then, turns against mining.

The fourth is the importance of small local and regional groups, composed of activists and neighbors, young people generally. Such groups are critical because they share the initial information that start discussion among broad sectors of the affected populations.

Extractivism is an idol with feet of clay still a far from collapse but we can see noe how faints.

To know more:
Extractivismo y alternativas de/al desarrollo rcci.net 2011