[DEBATE] : Excellent Analysis of WSF

[HiroK8 at aol.com]

Thought the following would be of interest.   Send criticque to 
Sbartlett at ag-missions.org Thanks   Hiroshi Kanno
>From Venezuela with Love & Solidarity
reflections from the AMI (Agricultural Missions, Inc) Agrarian Delegation to 
the World Social Forum, Jan 19-31, 2006
by Stephen Bartlett (delegation co-coordinator)
               sbartlett at ag-missions.org
February 2, 2006

      Pragmatic idealism is being reborn today in Latin America.   A 
socialism grounded in the diverse cultures and struggles of the suffering excluded 
ones of the 2/3rds world is rising from the ground, from the grassroots.    Our 
12 person agrarian delegation to the WSF in Caracas, Venezuela, hailing from 
the U.S., El Salvador and Chile was witness   and participant to that new hope 
and idealism, and caught some of the smoldering fever and the passion from our 
brothers and sisters in struggle across the Americas.   
       How socialism is defined and envisioned today goes beyond rigid 
Marxist Leninist or even Maoist concepts, and seeks for its roots in indigenous 
cosmovision and collective governance practices, in a radically decentralized 
vision for a world in which, as the Zapatistas demand, all worlds fit.   This is 
so even as the impoverished have-nots from the underclass of the Venezuelan 
people burst from the seams with hope and transforming actions to reclaim the 
dignity of those who previously had none.    This is so as the indigenous peoples 
of Bolivia rise to power from the ashes of 520 years of exploitation and 
exclusion.   This is so as the left takes political office from Brazil to Uruguay 
to possibly Peru and Mexico.   The alternative, a continuation of neoliberal 
pillage and ultra exclusion and impoverishment, is simply intolerable and Latin 
Americans are voting with their feet and upraised fists on the barricaded 
streets, and they are voting at neighborhood committee meetings and in good works 
of all kinds, and they are voting at the polls as well.   The peoples rising 
to action are the new superpower capable of confronting and standing down the 
superpower of North America and transnational commercial imperialism and 
economic colonialism.
      It was gratifying to hear Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías, 
outspoken promoter of a socialist future, say that socialism in its broadest sense 
existed in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans.   To hear Chávez 
evoke the names of Tupac Amaru, Bartolina Sisi, and Tupac Katari, the latter who 
before being executed declared that he would return made into millions.   To 
hear Evo Morales leader of a socialist party upon his innauguration to the 
presidency of Bolivia declare that he would, in the words of Subcomandante Marcos, 
lead in obedience to the peoples, a concept that serves both as a fundamental 
principle of indigenous governance as well as of true Christianity. 
      But this new day is bringing not just a decentralized concept of 
grassroots democratic governance in obedience to the people, but also a keen sense 
of the need for international solidarity and coordinated and passionate global 
struggle and resistance.   For the adversaries of the new socialist vision are 
centralized and global in reach, mega corporations laying waste to the 
environment and human aspirations for economic justice, and their international 
financial institutions (IFIs), the many headed hydra composed of the World Bank 
and regional development banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World 
Trade Organization (WTO), and the governments that do the bidding of 
monopoly-seeking corporate ambitions to hegemony and world market domination.    In 
particular the governments of the G-8 fall within this rarified category of 
instruments of corporate domination, but the acquiescence of governments of rural 
elites within the peripheral or rising nation states of the global south also 
play to the dark vision of totalitarian commercial interests.  The unpayable 
and illegitimate foreign debt of these countries is used to make them submit to 
the agendas of the IFIs, which are the agendas of the transnational 
corporations.   And so-called free trade agreements imposed behind closed doors on 
increasingly desperately impoverished peoples stalk the continent like the grim 
reaper.   The FTAA may be, as Chávez asserts, buried in Mar de Plata, but 
CAFTA'DR is about to take force, NAFTA continues to crush Mexican farmers, and 
bilateral agreements and Andean negotiations continue.
     In the face of this dark cloud over all our heads, the new socialism of 
grassroots social movements and international networks of solidarity calls for 
radical globalization of the bottom-up variety.   This local-global strategy 
of resistance could be likened to the socialist internationalism of the last 
century, or it could be seen as the shining anti-oxidant-rich new fruit of a 
world tightly wound by instantaneous global communications and swift air 
transportation.
     It was into this positive vibration, this maelstrom of unrest and 
organizing, of tolerance and conviction, that our agrarian delegation plunged, ready 
to contribute our grain of salt but also to learn and absorb.   We were also 
riding on the cusp of an emerging focus and emphasis, gradually come to the 
forefront and brought as new wine from several years of patient fermentation:   
the need for forging alliances and solidarity between Latin American social 
movements and those that exist within the United States, within the belly of the 
beast, as they say.   Chávez had recently spoken at the United Nations on the 
need of the world to support and defend the poor within the United States, in 
the wake of the Katrina disaster, portraying the underclass within the U.S. 
as victim of an imperialistic, militaristic U.S. government bent on neglecting 
or suppressing them.   This coincided with the strategy chosen by the 
committee of the World Social Forum, to provide a tent space for the peoples of North 
America to showcase their struggles and engage with representatives of Latin 
American organized struggles.   The high-profile presence of celebrity status 
anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan at the WSF made this new solidarity connection 
even more poignant.
      To our great satisfaction, the US tent space was a billowing success, 
centrally located and adorned by banners, photographs of poor peoples in 
action, and nearly always full of people, especially at night for dancing.   The 
food sovereignty workshop presented by the AMI delegation on the first afternoon 
was also a success, despite the need for shouting in two languages since a 
sound system had not yet been installed.   Presentations were made by 
representatives of Agricultural Missions, the Missouri Rural Crisis Center/ National 
Family Farm Coalition, the Community Farm Alliance/National Family Farm Coalition, 
the Justice for Farmworker Coalition of New York State, the Farm Labor 
Organizing Committee and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.   The speaking and 
dialoguing event was distinguished by the interconnectedness in the analyses of 
both farmer and farmworker organizations, and the contextualization provided by 
Alberto Gomez of UNORCA from Mexico who represented a Latin American Vía 
Campesina perspective.   A symbolic moment was provided by a gift of maize seed 
from the Ohio valley cultivated in Louisville to the people of Mexico and Latin 
America, maize that later ritually adorned the head table at the Vía Campesina 
tent.   And the debate pro and con about Genetically Modified Seeds added 
friction and reality to the proceedings.   The surprise words of a young 
indigenous man from Wisconsin concerning the sacredness of wild rice in danger of being 
expropriated through a patent by researchers at the University of Minnesota 
brought the whole event around full circle, with a powerful critique of science 
at the beck and call of commercial interests emerging from various comments 
made by participants to the event.   A smashing event indeed in which more than 
one participant related that this had broken down stereotypes about what is 
happening within the U.S. 
       The AMI anti-water privatization workshop led by Concerned Citizens of 
Newport (CCN) in Wisconsin likewise was a big success.   Speakers included 
CCN activist Arlene Kanno who related how they stopped Nestle from building a 
bottling plant in their backyard and then contacted the communities in 
neighboring Michigan that were subsequently targeted by Nestle for the project.   
Following this were women from impoverished communities in Detroit fighting the 
same Nestle bottling plants, efforts to privatize their water and a conspiracy to 
do away with the poor through selling their water to outlying communities and 
charging exorbitant prices for public services, especially water.    Yours 
truly related these struggles to the fight against the World Bank and IMF, 
notorious for pushing for water privatization in 2/3rds world nations, and for 
being investors and financiers for those deals.   He also spoke of coordinated 
actions protesting SUEZ during its shareholders meeting in France and its U.S. 
subsidiary United Waters, including sending a Bolivian water activist to speak 
with the Vice President during that protest in New Jersey.    Finally a 
Colombian activist joined the analysis with advice for how to globalize the anti 
water-privatization struggle based on the legal framework of the recently ratified 
international treaty on tobacco.   An excellent event indeed!
      Another solidarity building event that took place at the U.S. tent 
concerned the U.S. embargo of Cuba and the imprisonment of the Cuban 5 political 
prisoners.   In short, the U.S. tent space was a tremendous success and will 
further the building of greater understanding and solidarity of Latin American 
movements with U.S. social movements, including the farmer and farmworker 
movements for economic justice.
      AMI delegates led other workshops, one on farmworkers struggles and one 
on farm policy in the U.S., and a third activity which consisted of a highly 
spiritual celebration of cultures of the land (which miraculously converted a 
curious Chávez critic passing by in a park into a sympathizer of an ecological 
vision and spiritual values for humanity).   AMI delegates attended many 
seminars and workshops including ones on community water projects in Venezuela, on 
urban agriculture, and some delegates even climbed the mountain standing tall 
and forest-covered to the north of Caracas in the company of Jaime Mariqueo, 
our Mapuche advisor on indigenous cosmovision, healing and ritual.   The fresh 
fruits we ate upon the mountain known as Ávila but revealed to us by a local 
historian as named originally Guaraira Ripano, were exquisite.   Fresh peach 
juice and powerfully sweet and sour raspberries, among others!   We harvested 
eucaliptus leaves   and cedar from the farmer's fields on the north side of the 
mountains near Galipan, using these elements in our gratitude ritual during 
our celebration.
      Another high point was the speech delivered by Hugo Chávez at the 
Poliedro, a modernistic stadium big enough for 25,000 or so.   Some of our 
delegation attended in person and others watched from our hotel room with friends from 
campesino organizations in Ecuador, while recording the proceedings on a VHS 
tape.   We have now transferred the VHS to DVD and intend to provide subtitles 
and distribute with some written materials as part of our follow up from the 
WSF.   
      The degree of solidarity and connection we experienced far surpassed 
expectations.   The warmth and hospitality of the Venezuelan people was 
palpable.   Nights dancing in the Cuba house, or following impromptu Brazilian 
drummers down the boulevards will long be remembered.
      On our last day in Venezuela we had the opportunity to visit two 
agricultural cooperatives a couple of hours from Caracas, in vehicles provided by 
the Venezuelan government.   I had made the contacts with the cooperative 
organizer Omar Guerra   during a stay in Venezuela last August, with the help of 
leaders of CANEZ (Coordinadora Agraria Nacional Ezequial Zamora).    What we saw 
that day on January 30 in a municipality called Paz Castillo, visiting Ranchón 
de la Hortaliza and Pais del Futuro '86 Agricultural Cooperatives was 
unexpected in its intensity and beauty.   We saw lands being productively worked by 
farmer cooperativists where previously the land lay idle.   We saw people 
occupying lands illegally usurped years ago by wealthy local families, determined 
to make it productive and to live from its production.   We saw 700 families 
spread across a vast field along a road, squatting in tiny huts, for the right 
to build their houses there, on land, once again, proven to have been illegally 
usurped by a   large land holder or latifundista.  We saw, felt and embraced 
people taking their struggles to the land, and hoping for a better day!   And 
they did not hesitate to ask for our help.   They asked us to make known what 
we had learned to international media outlets and to their own Channel 8 
government-run television station, to lighten the burden of bureaucratic traps and 
obstacles, to move their revolution forward, step by step!   They fed us with 
papaya and sugar cane and later beer, chicken and arepas and received us with 
joy and alert friendliness and the hospitality that makes campesinos famous 
throughout the world.   
      Or to repeat the slogans we sang in the opening march of the WSF, along 
with the highly disciplined phalanxes of farmers composing the Frente 
Ezequiel Zamora (a Venezuelan farmers confederation), Wherever we Go, People Ask Us, 
Who are You?   And so we reply; Campesinos, Si Señor, De lo Bueno, Lo Mejor! 
(Campesinos, yessir, Of the Good, we are the Best!)   This vindication of a 
farming vocation and rural pride was music to our ears!