Bodies, Borders, and Territory

I'm at the AAG (geographer's conference) and looking forward to the Bodies, Borders, and Territory Sessions on Sunday - I'm on the panel at the end. Here's the great description of the sessions:

Feminist geographers are engaging foundational, long-standing geopolitical debates through the lens of the body, both as a scale and a site of study, while also introducing previously neglected questions and perspectives. An attention to bodies has revealed that geopolitical conflicts are felt in a variety of ways at micro-scales, and that these conflicts are often shaped by the everyday experiences of bodies on the ground. At the same time, scholars have effectively demonstrated that bodies themselves are frequently contested in much the same ways as territory: they are treated as frontiers and interiors, they are counted and managed, and they are often invoked to represent the fate or well-being of territory and imagined communities at larger scales.

This session aims to explore the intersections of bodies and territory, with a particular focus on borders and boundaries. Some of the questions we aim to address include: Through what sorts of structures and processes is the body made into territory? How are borders enforced through bodies, and how do bodies themselves become borders? How are bodies mapped onto territory and how are territories mapped or marked onto bodies? In what ways do bodies make borders porous, and how are bodies themselves unbounded? How might bodies expand the possibilities of resistance to uneven power structures and oppressive political projects, and how do people resist being used as objects for geopolitical ends? In the spirit of feminist geopolitics, papers in this session are informed by fieldwork and that engage critically with methodologies and researcher subjectivities.

women only accompaniment team

The International Women’s Peace Service is the only all-women international accompaniment team in the world. It is run entirely by volunteers, who make a 3 year commitment to IWPS, serving a minimum of one 3 month term in the West Bank, Palestine, followed by further terms in Palestine of one to three months in their 2nd and 3rd year.The IWPS original mission statement explains that,

"Having a single-sex living space will make it easier to integrate into the local Moslem culture, but this is not the prime reason for the women-only structure. Nor is it indicative of a view that women any more than men are natural born peace makers. However, the decision does reflect an observation that women often inhabit different cultures than men, are disproportionately involved in caring work and often have greater insight into creative ways of resolving conflicts. Women are often at the receiving end of gendered violence both in peace and war. A feminist view sees masculine cultures as especially prone to violence and so feminist women tend to have a particular perspective on security, safety, violence and war. Women's different and varied voices can often be drowned out in a mixed structure but in women-only spaces their voices can be heard more clearly. Our project will therefore be an experiment in feminist peace and justice work."

A volunteer with IWPS wrote to me that,

“being a women only team actually helps us having a closer relationship with women and women's organizations in the area we work in, while I do not have the impression that it is an obstacle in terms of contact and cooperation with Palestinian institutions or organisations that are male dominated. We do all the work the other mixed international teams in Palestine also do, but we try to have a women's focus in choosing local contacts and partner organizations and in some of our report writing. IWPS has supported the founding of a Salfit area women's organization, Women for Life, that developed out of women from different villages actively taking part in the popular resistance against the Apartheid Wall.”

building connection with stories

Tony Macias over at Witness for Peace has done up a beautiful video (below) with testimony and photos of Inocencio Hernandez, a Oaxacan farmworker, talking about why he went to the US to work, and why he went back. It's well worth watching. But what struck me is that on the page where he introduces the video he starts with one of these calls to build empathy by relating it to your own experience that I've posted about before. He writes

"One of life's big truths is that most things don't matter until they happen to us. From the momentous (say, loss of a loved one) to the trifling (hair loss), we just don't focus in on realities until they become personal to us. The phenomenon of migration is global, historical, and complex, and it's inconsequential to people who aren't forced into it.

But that's not really true, is it? Maybe we're all migrants: In 2006, 50 million US Americans changed homes and 8 million of those changed states when they did. Ok, moving across town involves absolutely zero danger and loss when you compare it to what undocumented migrants struggle through each year (Read here, here, and here if you don't believe me). But what remains true is that we know something about uprooting ourselves, and we do it for similar reasons (economic motivation, for instance). This doesn't make us all the same, but it's a chance for us to relate better to one another."

Now this is a comparison I think works to build solidarity more than appropriate - because it also highlights how the experiences are different, and because of that magic last line.

welfare empathy experiment

I regularly post here about the pros and cons of stimulating empathy to inspire solidarity. Here is another take.

This article ran under the headline "Welfare experiment brings tears to Surrey MLA’s eyes"

[For those not from Canada, an MLA is a member of the Assembly of the Province, in this case of British Columbia. It's like being a Representative in the State Legislature in the US. MLA Brar represents a Vancouver suburb and has gotten a ton of media attention in the Vancouver area for spending the month of January trying to get by on what as single adult gets if they are on welfare.]

"Five days into his Welfare Challenge, Surrey Fleetwood NDP MLA Jagrup Brar is looking tired.

He admitted to being in tears earlier this week.

On Thursday, he showed off where he is living and the food he has bought as he tries to live on the $610 a month a single adult receives while on social assistance.

“Living in poverty is hard and demoralizing. Looking for food makes your body tired,” said Brar, who undertook the experiment in response to a challenge by Raise the Rates, a coalition of social groups that wants the B.C. government to raise welfare payments.

On Wednesday, he was out looking for a place to stay aided by a worker from Hyland House, a Surrey-based organization that runs a homeless shelter.

Brar had put together a list of possible rooms he could rent for the $375 government housing allowance, but was shocked at what he found.

“The first house had four little rooms and was a dirty and filthy looking old house,” said Brar.

He said the room available for rent had no laundry facilities and the landlord wanted $450 a month “for a place no one would want to stay for one day.”

The next home he visited was similar.

This landlord then showed Brar another room on the side of the house.

“That was heartbreaking, shocking for me. This was a room like a closet. It was three feet wide, seven feet long with a single bed in it occupying the whole space,” he said.

“You could barely step in and go straight to your bed. There was no window. The landlord told me the person who was going to occupy that room was a patient coming from hospital after an operation.

“It was unimaginable for me to hear that people have to chose to live in those kinds of places, tears started falling out of my eyes,” he said.

This room rented for $300 a month.

“The person who showed me that closet-like room owns 50 rooms. She is making $20,000 a month on the backs of the poor of B.C. with the help of the ministry. It’s unacceptable and immoral,” he said.

Brar settled for staying in an illegal rooming house on 136A St. that is clean and well-kept and has seven other tenants. The spacious room rents for $400 a month, but he will only pay for the part of the month he will stay there.

“This is like a seven-star hotel compared to the other places,” said Brar.

On Wednesday, he went shopping for food, spending $32.87 for a variety of packaged foods, some milk, vegetables, fruit, bread and peanut butter.

Brar said he would stay in the Surrey rooming house for 16 days and then look for a place to live in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

After other expenses, he figures he has about $67 left for food for the rest of the month.

“It’s hard for me to realize that we have 137,000 children living in poverty in this province,” he said."

- I have such mixed feelings about this. Of course he can never really "know" what it is like, and he's much more able to cope than most who are getting by on $610. For starters, he got a worker to go out and look for housing with him?! How often does that happen? And he's not recovering from illness or trauma or whatever might have pushed him on to welfare. But gripes about the dangers of appropriative empathy aside, I have been appreciating how this stunt is getting the media to pay more attention to the realities and struggles of the poor and have some real hope that it could lead to change - raising the rates for a start.

"Solidarity is a complex concept – more so in practice than in theory."

thanks to my friend Heather over at the Community Alliance for Global Justice who pointed me to the following bit in an article in Pambazuka news: Pan-African voices for Freedom and Justice. The article by Yash Tandon is about the end of the 'aid industry' - it's a fantastic in between the lines analysis of what was said at the last forum on aid effectiveness. Clinton was so blunt it didn't take much translation. The whole article is worth reading but the last paragraph in particular touches on solidarity. It reads:

"Finally, a word on those in the north who work with their ‘partners’ in the south on the basis of solidarity – based not on ‘aid’ or charity but on shared values of equity and justice. Solidarity is a complex concept – more so in practice than in theory. There are those who define it as action based on a ‘universal social protection system’, or as an essential component of the ‘common good of humanity’. However, they need to revisit these concepts, because they could easily lend themselves to manipulation by the Big Powers of the North (such as those in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to bomb innocent civilians in the name of ‘humanity’, ‘social protection’, ‘democracy’, ‘good governance’, ‘fighting corruption’ and the like."

full article here

why there should be more tv shows about people of color

I watched Treme last night and realized it had been a long time since I watched a tv show in English with a majority people of color. This matters in all sorts of ways, but here's a description of a creepy study about how brain research shows white people people lack empathy for brown people. It was research from the University of Toronto-Scarborough and it shows that white people’s mirror-neuron-system fires much less, if at all, when they watch people of colour performing motor tasks.

There is nothing about this that is hardwired. It is just a matter of what people are used to that then shapes their brain's mirror neurons. As this article about the study argues, "When we watch movies and TV shows and read books featuring white protagonists, we have to put ourselves into white people’s shoes to understand the stories and feel the emotions of sadness, laughter, and pride. But people of colour are rarely the protagonists in the media that white people watch, so they rarely or never have to imagine themselves as us."

So as banal as the show All-American Muslim seems, it may be changing not just hearts but literally minds (if you've missed this reality tv phenomena, check out the clip below. I love the nasal Michigan accent. I don't have it, but for the record, my family is from Michigan.) Yes, yes, it's highly problematic that they have to constantly prove that they really are Americans. It will be great when we have shows in the US and Canada about Muslim families where they don't have to prove anything.

The story of Ingrid, Terry and Lahe - international solidarity activists killed in Colombia

Three US citizens were killed in Colombia on March 4, 1999 while doing international solidarity work. Though they were not accompaniers, their work was related, and I was surprised that their story was unknown by most of the accompaniers I talked to in Colombia, so I want to share it here. The three were kidnapped by the FARC on February 25^th, 1999. Their bodies were found one week later, blind-folded, bound, tortured, and shot in the face. They were found just over the Venezuelan border.

The three had visited the U’Wa people to help them establish a school for their children in their own language that would support the continuation of their traditional ways. Ingrid, 41, specialized in this. She was a member of the Menominee nation and rising leader in the struggle for indigenous peoples’ rights, at the US and UN level. She was the director of the Fund for the Four Directions in New York City, founded by Anne Rockefeller, which promoted the revitalization of indigenous languages and cultures. She studied at the University of Havana, and had done work in Guatemala with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú. Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, was a member of the Kanaka Maoli Nation of Hawai`i. Lahe was the founder and director of Pacific Cultural Conservancy International, which works to preserve cultural as well biological diversity.[1] Terence Freitas was only 24 but had been working with U’Wa for several years, after serving as an official observer at a Los Angeles meeting between Occidental Petroleum and U'wa leader Roberto Cobaría in May 1997. He co-created and coordinated the U'wa Defense Working Group. Terry was close to my age at the time, as was his girlfriend, Abby Reyes, who I met at the vigil to close the School of the Americas shortly after he was killed. His story has continued to grip me because he was so like me. I can so easily imagine me being him – which is precisely what helps accompaniers build networks of solidarity.

Terry had been to the U’Wa territory several times in the two years before they were killed. The U’Wa territory extends into Arauca, near the Venezuelan border, where Occidental petroleum owns the large Caño-Limon oilfield, which is said to have huge reserves.[2] They also co-own the pipeline that takes the oil out to sea for shipping. That pipeline has been repeatedly bombed by the ELN guerillas, so Oxy spent nearly $4 million lobbying the US Congress to expand military funding.[3] In return they got hundreds of millions of dollars worth of pipeline protection, since much of the US military aid and training was earmarked for the region around the pipeline, despite the 18th brigade in the region being notorious for attacking civilians.

Both Occidental and Shell were carrying out aggressive exploration for more oil in the area, in traditional U’Wa territory. The U’Wa consider this a sacrilege, for they see oil as the life blood of mother earth. During the Spanish conquest a great number of U’Wa committed mass suicide by walking off a 1,400-foot cliff in the Andes mountains rather than be enslaved. The 5,000 member U’Wa Nation has threatened to do so again if the oil companies move in. They have received a good deal of international support for their struggle, in part because of Terence’s initial organizing which helped them to connect to other groups. One of their most dramatic efforts was an intense prayer and fast retreat in which they asked Mother Earth to move the oil. Exploratory drilling had initially found signs of a huge reserve, but after the prayers, they found no oil (though they did find gas). Shell and Occidental Petroleum pulled out and rights were transferred to the Colombian national oil company Ecopetrol, which has recently been partially privatized. Ecopetrol continued exploratory drilling in U’Wa territory, and found oil in other sacred sites. The U’Wa continue their nonviolent resistance with actions like occupying drilling platforms, speaking tours, and actions at shareholder meetings.[4] They held a 6-month roadblock with 10 to 20 thousand people, including U’was, campesinos, and unionists, to block the oil machinery from going in to drill, which was broken up by the military in 2001.[5]

The U’Wa did and do not collaborate with any of the armed actors. As such they did and do not have an easy relationship with the FARC. The FARC had publicly said that internationals were not welcome in the area, but Terry had actually met with them prior to bringing down Ingrid and Lahe, explained the reason for their trip, and had gotten word from the commander that they would not be harmed.[6] Ingrid and Lahe were not working on the U’Wa campaign to stop oil exploration, but it certainly shaped what happened to them. The FARC in that area were allegedly on friendly terms with Occidental,[7] who had repeatedly threatened U’Wa leaders.

The FARC claimed both the kidnapping and killings were a mistake made by a commander acting without approval and issued an apology.[8] Those who stopped the car at a roadblock and kidnapped the three did not fit the profile of the local FARC at all.[9] They were much younger, not dressed in fatigues, and had their faces covered - which has led some to wonder if they were a rogue group that was perhaps put up to it by a faction opposed to the peace accords, either within or outside of the FARC.

When the killings happened the first major peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government had just been suspended, but were scheduled to start up again in April. They never did get taken up again, and there have been no further peace negotiations since. The New York Times argued at the time that the FARC had nothing to gain from killing US citizens, since they had been seeking the support of foreign governments for the negotiation process itself.[10]

The Menominee Nation and various other US indigenous rights groups accused the US State Department of destabilizing their own negotiations with the FARC for the release of the three, which they had believed was imminent.[11] During those negotiations the State Department released $230 million dollars in military support for the Colombian army, which then killed 70 members of the FARC in an attack. The three were killed immediately after, perhaps in retaliation.[12]

All of the indigenous peoples of Colombia (which has 84 First Nations) have suffered greatly in the war, from both sides. They insist on neutrality and control of their own territory – and all of the armed actors challenge them on it. They often live in remote areas that the different armed groups want to use as drug trafficking routes. The department (province) of Arauca, where the U’Wa territory is, has long been one of the hottest areas of the war – because of the oil, the flood of guns, and its border with Venezuela. It has been hotly disputed – even the two guerilla groups (FARC and ELN) have fought each other there. It also has a heavy paramilitary presence. It is local organizers for peace and justice that suffer the most violence, from all of the armed actors.

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[1] Mathew Yeomans, “Chaos in Colombia,” Salon.com Newsreal, March 1999, http://www.salon.com/news/1999/03/19newsb.html.

[2] At the time the three were killed Al Gore was vice-president (he served from ’93 to ‘2001, under Clinton). U’Wa supporters targeted Gore because of his close ties and large stake in Occidental, where his father was on the board for three decades. Terry was present at a meeting between Al Gore and U’Wa leader Roberto Cobaria. Gore did not, however, publicly pressure Occidental. Only long after his own 2000 presidential campaign did he take a stand on Colombia and refuse to take the stage with President Uribe because of his war crimes.

[3] “Witness for Peace : Colombia”, n.d., http://www.witnessforpeace.org/section.php?id=95.

[4] The U’Wa Defense Working Group is now part of Amazon Watch. For more on the current U’Wa struggle see http://amazonwatch.org/work/defend-uwa-life-and-territory

[5] Sandra Alvarez, personal communication.

[6] Ana Arana, “Murder in Colombia,” Salon.com, December 14, 1999, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/12/14/colombia.

[7] Abby Reyes, “Letter to Al Gore from Abby Reyes, Terence Freitas’ girlfriend,” Colombia Support Network, n.d., http://www.colombiasupport.net/200003/areyes-letter-0310.html.

[8] Arana, “Murder in Colombia.”

[9] Andrew Jacobs, “3 Kidnapped Americans Killed; Colombian Rebels Are Suspected,” New York Times, March 6, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/06/world/3-kidnapped-americans-killed-colombian-rebels-are-suspected.html?pagewanted=1.

[10] Ibid.

[11] They had received an email saying that they would be released. Not long before this incident three US birdwatchers were released after being held by the FARC for a month.

[12] “A Tribute to Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa”, n.d., http://www.aics.org/aimva/ingrid.html.

what is 'peace culture'?

Peace Studies scholars debate not only the meaning of, but what causes, peace. One increasingly important argument is that changing public and elite attitudes, which increasingly see war as an illegitimate, have much to do with it[1]. Along these lines, the UN has worked to promote a ‘culture of peace’ – declaring 2000 the international year of it – and then going on to name the entire first decade of the millennium as the decade of peace [2]. This idea of 'peace culture' was first discussed at the 1989 UNESCO congress, which inspired Boulding to write a book on it that has been influential in these discussions[3]. Several definitions for a ‘culture of peace’ have been used in various UN resolutions, but these were simplified into key points in the manifesto for a culture of peace which was signed by over 75 million people during 2000. The key points are: respect life, reject violence, share with others, listen to understand, preserve the planet, and rediscover solidarity[4]. UNESCO has taken the lead in promoting this work, though thousands of grassroots groups around the world have also used this framework in their work. The idea of a culture of peace is that having these values makes it difficult to start or maintain a war. The eight points are described in table form, and contrasted to their opposites, by David Adams[5], one of the original designers of the UNESCO program for a culture of peace, as:

CULTURE OF WAR AND VIOLENCE	CULTURE OF PEACE AND NON-VIOLENCE
Belief in power that is based on force	Education for a culture of peace
Having an enemy	Understanding, tolerance and solidarity
Authoritarian governance	Democratic participation
Secrecy and propaganda	Free flow of information
Armament	Disarmament
Exploitation of people	Human rights
Exploitation of nature	Sustainable development
Male domination	Equality of women and men

In one of the culture of peace promotional booklets published by UNESCO the projects described could easily be considered ‘human development’ efforts, pointing to the slippage between these terms[1][6]. As the Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace puts it, in a culture of peace people behave in ways that promote mutual caring and wellbeing[2][7]. The editor, Rivera, goes on to say that one of the most controversial aspects of this work in the UN has been the contrasting of a culture of peace to a culture of war. The most powerful nations insisted that all references to the latter be removed, which he argues is tied to their assertion that their military power is aimed at ‘preserving peace’ rather than domination. He argues that [3][8], it might make more sense to talk of building cultures of peacemaking rather than the UN’s campaign for a culture of peace. It's a bit less catchy though. The UN campaign may be a bit cheesy, but I appreciate the impulse to present peace as something we make and make again, together, and every day.

---

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[1] Human Security Report Project, Human Security Report 2009/2010 (Simon Fraser University, December 2, 2010), http://www.hsrgroup.org/human-security-reports/20092010/overview.aspx.

[2] “World Report on Culture of Peace”, n.d., http://decade-culture-of-peace.org/.

[3] Elise Boulding, Cultures of peace: the hidden side of history (Syracuse University Press, 2000).

[4] “Manifesto 2000 for a culture of peace”, n.d., http://www3.unesco.org/iycp/uk/uk_sum_monde.htm.

[5] “Definition of Culture of Peace”, n.d., http://www.culture-of-peace.info/copoj/definition.html.

[6] “Booklet - Human Security for All” (UN Human Security Unit, 2006), http://ochaonline.un.org/Reports/BookletHumanSecurityforAll/tabid/2187/language/en-US/Default.aspx.

[7] Joseph De Rivera and ebrary Inc, Handbook on building cultures of peace (New York: Springer, 2008), 1.

[8] Ibid., 4.

privilege as dehumanizing

“The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege
which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic
pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions
and no longer are; they merely have”
- Paulo Freire

but is all privilege dehumanizing?
how can privilege be used in ways that make us all more human?

what is privilege?

I recommend the article over at Left Turn entitled

Occupy Opportunities for Collective Liberation - Catalyst Project’s Anti-Racist Organizing Strategy

by Chris Crass. To give you a small taste of it:

"“White” is not a category of who I am as an individual person. Rather, white is an historically developed social position I was born into within this country.My relationship to the state and the economy shapes what I have access to, how society interacts with me, and how I understand myself in relationship to others.This is not just a relationship between myself as an individual white person and the state and economy. It is the accumulated experience of hundreds of years of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.In short, white supremacy is internalized within me and has profound impacts on how I relate to the world around me.This internalized white supremacy is based on the material reality of political, economic, and social privilege I and other white people, experience every day as a white citizen of this nation.

It is important to make a distinction here between privilege and power.Most white people in the United States experience economic, political, and/or cultural oppression based on class, gender, sexuality, and ability, as well as race-based privilege.Privilege generally refers to rights, norms, standards, and attitudes that should apply to everyone, but that many people are denied.For example, for most of the history of the U.S., people of color were denied access to most jobs, legal protections, social services, civic participation, and neighborhoods (except to work in them).Additionally, violence against people of color has been social and in many cases de facto legally sanctioned. ..."

read on here

image by Melanie Cervantes, this and many other fab posters available at dignidad rebelde

mining, displacement, and accompaniment

check out this great media work by Moira over at PBI that gets to the heart of what accompaniment does - the following article ran in colombia reports:

Colombia's mining boom overshadowed by human rights violations: NGO

Monday, 12 December 2011 14:15 Adriaan Alsema

The apparent success of Colombia's mining boom is being overshadowed by human rights violations and mass displacement from mining areas, international human right organization Peace Brigades International (PBI) said Monday.

"80% of the human rights violations that have occurred in Colombia in the last ten years were committed in mining and energy-producing regions, and 87% of Colombia’s displaced population originate from these places," a report by the organization published last week said.

According to PBI spokesperson Moira Birss, mining activities are frequently accompanied by a disregard of the constitutional rights of minorities and threats and attacks on leaders of these communities.

"Community leaders who oppose mining projects, or the organizations that accompany those leaders and communities, have at times been targeted with threats and even attacks in what would appear to be a result of their opposition, as was the case with the priest who was killed in Marmato," said Birss, referring to an area where mining company Gran Colombia Gold and the local community are at odds over who has the rights to mine for gold.

Birss also expressed concern over suspicions that "companies may take advantage of, or potentially even pariticipate in, incidents of forced displacement in order to exploit that newly-available land."

"After its most recent visit to Colombia, the mission of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues stated that indigenous peoples are often subject to forced displacement as a strategy to impose megaprojects on their lands without having to undergo the process of prior consultation," Birss told Colombia Reports.

PBI did not look at whether Colombia's judicial authorities are investigating the possible role of multinational mining companies in human rights violations, but according to Birss, "the conflict has always been about control of resources."

"The case of Curbarado and Jiguamiando is the quintessential exmple of this: communities were forcibily displaced, then palm companies came in and set up shop. And thanks to the tireless work of the communities and those who accompany them, direct links are being proven between the displacement and the economic projects; several palm company owners have recently been condemned, and others are under investigation.

"Many experts, like the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, have alerted that there is every reason to believe that the pattern is or will be repeating itself in the mining sector," said Birss.

privilege and accompaniment

I have been reviewing again the very little that is posted online by organizations about how the international accompaniment work they do uses privilege. One of my favorites is a 2008 post by Liza Smith, who works with FOR.

The full post is here and well worth reading, but here is a snippet:

… Our first day in Colombia we began a conversation about the reality of international solidarity work. A number of people in the circle had (and continue to have) serious concerns about the nature of this work — why is that so many white, upper-middle class activists turn towards the romanticized struggles of the third world to “help” when we have our own atrocious situations to deal with at home? How can we justify solidarity work in Colombia when we have a prison population of African American men that equals the number of un-free African American men at the height of slavery? How can we go to a far away place to accompany threatened human rights leaders when 120 veterans commit suicide every week in the United States? How can we think about inequality elsewhere when young people in our own country have to offer themselves as cannon fodder in Iraq in order to get money for college? These issues merit our attention, hard work and passion.
…
Theoretically, we all know that our struggles to overcome oppression are deeply interconnected and that we must learn from one another’s struggles to make each stronger. This delegation felt like bringing theory to practice. We were not approaching Colombia as the problem and arriving as gringos with the helping hand. We were exchanging experiences of problems that are fundamentally linked and which manifest differently in our different contexts. … I can hardly claim that our delegation resolved any of the questions about international solidarity and I know I’m not off the hook as a white activist doing solidarity work with Colombia. But we did attempt to explore a different kind of model of transnational community building that deconstructs a traditional set up which assumes solidarity goes in one direction. Because our solidarity work there and here is to support each other in our collective development as activists, leaders and human beings. Because our work here and there is to build a stronger global movement to end war …”

Read the whole thing here.

Liza is also a great singer songwriter, check her out singing at the vigil to close the SOA in the video below.

international solidarity activists unwittingly support USAID in Bolivia

This article was published on Green Left and is reproduced in its entirety here - I'm particularly intrigued by the argument that it was by falling into romanticized notions of indigeneity that activists fell into this.

By Federico Fuentes

Bolivia's first indigenous president celebrates winning a recall referendum in August 2008.

The recent march in Bolivia by some indigenous organisations against the government’s proposed highway through the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) has raised much debate among international solidarity activists.

Such debates have occurred since the election of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005 on the back of mass uprisings.

Overwhelmingly, solidarity activists uncritically supported the anti-highway march. Many argued that only social movements — not governments — can guarantee the success of the process of change.

However, such a viewpoint is not only simplistic; it can leave solidarity activists on the wrong side.

Kevin Young’s October 1 piece on Znet, “Bolivia Dilemmas: Turmoil, Transformation, and Solidarity”, tries to grapple with this issue by saying that “our first priority [as solidarity activists] must be to stop our governments, corporations and banks from seeking to control Bolivia’s destiny”.

Yet, as was the case with most articles written by solidarity activists, Young downplays the role of United States imperialism and argues the government was disingenuous in linking the protesters to it.

Others went further, denying any connection between the protesters and US imperialism.

The Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian East (CIDOB), the main organisation behind the march, has no such qualms. It boasted on its website that it received training programs from the US government aid agency USAID.

On the site, CIDOB president Adolfo Chavez, thanks the “information and training acquired via different programs financed by external collaborators, in this case USAID”.

Ignoring or denying clear evidence of US funding to such organisations is problematic. Attacking the Bolivian government for exposing this, as some did, disarms solidarity activists in their fight against imperialist intervention.

But biggest failure of the solidarity movement has been its silence on US and corporate responsibility for the conflict.

The TIPNIS dispute was not some romanticised, Avatar-like battle between indigenous defenders of Mother Earth and a money-hungry government intent on destroying the environment.

Underpinning the conflict was the difficult question of how Bolivia can overcome centuries of colonialism and underdevelopment to provide its people with access to basic services while trying to respect the environment. The main culprits are not Bolivian; they are imperialist governments and their corporations.

We must demand they pay their ecological debt and transfer the necessary technology for sustainable development to countries such as Bolivia (demands that almost no solidarity activists raised). Until this occurs, activists in rich nations have no right to tell Bolivians what they can and cannot do to satisfy the basic needs of their people.

Otherwise, telling Bolivian people that they have no right to a highway or to extract gas to fund social programs (as some NGOs demanded), means telling Bolivians they have no right to develop their economy or fight poverty.

Imperialism aims to keep Third World nations subordinate to the interests of rich nations. This is one reason foreign NGOs and USAID are trying to undermine the Morales government's leading international role in opposing the grossly anti-environmental policies, such as Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).

REDD uses poor nations for carbon offsets so corporations in rich countries can continue polluting. Support for REDD was one of the demands of the protest march.

Young says “our solidarity should be with grassroots revolutionaries, anti-imperialists and defenders of human rights, not with governments or parties”.

But, as the TIPNIS case shows, when governments are trying to grapple with lifting their country out of underdevelopment, the demands of social movements with competing sectoral interests may clash.

In fact, some of the most strident supporters of the highway were also the very same social movements that solidarity activists have supported in their struggles against neoliberal governments during the last decade.

In such scenarios, you can only choose between supporting some social movement demands by dismissing legitimate demands of others, as many did with the TIPNIS case.

Lasting change can only come about when social movements begin to take power into their own hands when social movements become governments.

It is this objective that Bolivia's social movements set. They forged their own political instrument through struggle ― commonly known as the Movement Towards Socialism ― and won a government they see as their own.

Having gone from a position of “struggle from below” to taking government from the traditional elites as an instrument to achieve their goal of state power, these social movements have begun winning control over natural resources and enacted a new constitution.

Converting the constitution’s ideals into a new state power remains a task for the Bolivian revolution.

But its success depends on the ability of “grassroots revolutionaries, anti-imperialists and defenders of human rights” ― operating within and without the existing state ― to struggle in a united way.

Our solidarity must be based on the existing revolutionary struggle in Bolivia, not a romanticised one we would prefer.

A permanent state of protests may be attractive for solidarity activists, but ultimately can only translate into a permanent state of demoralisation unless social movements can go beyond opposing capitalist governments and create their own state power.

Refusing to support the struggles as they exist illustrates a lack of confidence in the Bolivian masses to determine their own destiny. It also displays an arrogance on the part of those who, having failed to hold back imperialist governments at home, believe they know better than the Bolivians how to develop their process of change.

Mistakes are made in any struggle. But such mistakes should not be used to try and pit one side against another. We should have confidence that these internal conflicts can be resolved by the social movements themselves.

[Federico Fuentes edits Bolivia Rising.]

See also:
Bolivia: Rumble over jungle far from over

great video by PBI about the U'Wa's struggle for land in Colombia

An important part of accompaniment is using various sorts of privilege to magnify the voices and struggles of those less likely to be heard. Videos like this one by Peace Brigades are a great way to do that.

accompaniment in the Guardian

the Guardian ran an article last week hailing Peace Brigades as "An NGO fit for the future"

Kudos to PBI for this great coverage! Here's a taste of it:

"In his latest book, Steven Pinker argues that there are strong reasons to believe that we live in a more peaceful age than ever before. But, he warns, that clouds on the horizon to do with resource scarcity could undermine this apparent progress. I agree. The future challenge for international NGOs will be to discern the new threats to the interests of the poorest and most marginalised that emanate from an increasingly unequal, volatile and resource-scarce world.There will be a need for a strong and principled global civil society if this is indeed what the future holds, and while some engage in the perennial tension between closeness to power and co-option by it, many others will be needed simply to stand alongside the poorest. Which is exactly what PBI do."

another empathy gadget

first the empathy belly to feel what it's like to be pregnant

now AGNES (see photo), to feel what it's like to be old.

I admit to being a gadget geek. I'm both fascinated by and a bit dubious about empathy gadgets. As I've written before, there is some danger after using them that you will think that now you've actually walked in their shoes and really "know" what it's like - i.e. appropriative empathy. But of course all you have is a tiny taste of it. Does it really take all this expensive gear to have a little imaginative empathy of what it's like to live in an older body?

the term 'decolonization' as I use it in this blog is a metaphor

"In historico-geographical terms, colonization involves the conquest, inhabitation, possession and control of a territory by an external power. It is predicated on the deliberate, physical, cultural and symbolic appropriation of space. ..... Metaphors of colonization rescript this territorial incursion as an invasion and insidious habitation of the social and psychic space of oppressed groups, while decolonization becomes a metaphor for the process of recognizing and dislodging dominant ideas, assumptions and ideologies as externally imposed - literally of making a cultural and psychic place of one's own" - Katz and Smith, page 70-71

N. Smith and C. Katz, “Grounding metaphor: Towards a spatialized politics,” in Place and the Politics of Identity, ed. Michael Keith and Steve Pile, 1993, 66-83.

I would argue that those of us who are on the more privileged end of various systems of oppression also have an 'insidious habitation' of our 'social and psychic space' and that if we are truly going to work in meaningful solidarity across divides of power then decolonization is just as important on this end, inside the belly of the beast.

liberatory occupation?

There have been great articles on colonial patterns cropping up in the occupy movement and how to avoid them. Dissertation is looming so I'll just point to two:

• a good short analysis of this screwy stereotyped Indian image being used to argue against using the term 'occupy' is here. Talk about needing to decolonize our minds!
  
  
• a good overall analysis of the issues by Harsha is here.

If it were my home

Mamie and Richard, two accompaniers serving with the Presbyterian Church in Colombia, recently blogged about a fascinating tool called If it were my home which has me thinking again about how often these sorts of comparisons get made by solidarity activists.

As Richard puts it in his post, reposted here,

"So maybe it is our recent trip to the US, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the differences between living in Colombia and the United States. Of course there are lots of differences, and lots of them completely unquantifiable, but what can you quantify about living in another culture?

I came across a really interesting tool a while back which is a great help in thinking about this. It is called If It Were My Home and it uses demographic, health and economic data to compare lifestyles in different countries.

First – size. Finally, a wonderful size comparison of Colombia’s land size to the lower 48. Again, Colombia is not a small country! It is twice the size of Texas.

Second – the stats. What is fun about these is that after being here for a couple of years, I can actually check these out a bit more…

1) Have 2.7x higher risk of dying in infancy. It may be debatable, but I think I’m safe in escaping infancy unscathed.

2) Use 93% less electricity. Great! We can check this one. I looked back at our electrical use in the US and here. We averaged 470 kwh/month in the US; we average 291 khw/month here. That’s 38% lower. For reference, electricity here costs about 33% more, so that may account for some of it. But the facts shows that we end up using a lot less electricity here in Colombia, which is a good step for environmental sustainability!

3) Use 90% less oil. My guess is this one is pretty accurate. Without a car, using buses, taxis, and motorcycles as our primary transport, yeah, we probably use 90% less oil.

4) Make 80% less money. Hmm, we do make less money here in Colombia. I hesitate to put a % on it, but 80% is not out of the ballpark…

5) Spend 93% less on health care. Probably accurate… (e.g. I saw a blog post about the average hospital delivery in the US is $40,000. Ours here – about $2,500)

6) See a 30% more of a class divide. My impressions of this would be that the divide here is higher, but I think you are much more aware of class divides in cultures that are not your own.

7) Would be 29% more unemployed. Well, we did come here with a job, and have managed to keep it so far…

8) Have 28.42% more babies. Ahh! We can be concrete on this one! We have had exactly 100% more babies here in Colombia.

9) Will die 3.93 years sooner here in Colombia. We are hoping not to test this one out…"