Globalization and Peace: A View from Latin American
Summary of a Talk by Mario Galvan, PAM national board member, to Peace Action Maine, on 8/10/02
by Michele Cheung and Mario Galvan

Mario Galvan, speaking to a gathering at PAM headquarters

There needs to be a radical change in the peace movement. It isn't enough anymore to fight against nuclear weapons and guided missiles, and programs like the National Missile Defense system . We have to turn our attention to what lies behind and drives militarization. And that is an economic system that not only favors wealthy nations above poor nations, but also favors certain groups within the U.S. above others. While the standard of living for most Americans has been declining for almost 40 years, the rich are getting richer at the rate of $240,000.00 per hour.

This model of inequality is being reproduced in Latin America and around the world. Elite groups in these nations, with the support of U.S. elites, are in control of the economic resources as well as the political and military institutions. U.S. interventions in these countries, whether in economic or military form, serve the interests of the elite groups to the detriment of the vast majority of the population.

In Mexico, there are more than 15 billionaires, yet over half of the nation's 100 million people live on less than two dollars a day.

The process we call "globalization" or "free trade" is simply another mechanism that works to put the wealth of the planet at the disposal of the elite groups. Trade deals, such as NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Area), have worked to the benefit of multinational corporations, and to the detriment of small businesses and individuals. When poor countries open their markets to "free trade," they face an economic invasion that often destroys the local businesses, as they must compete with giant corporations from abroad that are often subsidized by their governments.

In Colombia, food imports have increased 800% in the last 10 years, hurting domestic producers. In Mexico, corn farmers are being ruined by imports of corn and other grains from the U.S. and Canada.

The Advent of Privatization
Most people regard natural resources or public institutions as belonging to everybody, or at least to large groups like nations or tribes, but they are being sold off to private companies, which then sell them back to the people. These include land, mineral wealth, other natural resources, as well as national industries, such as telephone companies, electrical power plants, railroads, and oil companies. Rather than providing a public service to the people, the guiding principle becomes private profit.

This unequal, anti-democratic system is held in place with violence and the cold-blooded use of force. Torture, murder and intimidation are common tools used to silence protest, keep labor from organizing, and drive people off the land so that it can be bought cheaply for speculation.

The U.S. is the primary supporter of this militarization and repression, through arms sales and military training for the forces of repression. The U.S. has also pioneered the new system of "low intensity" warfare that uses paramilitary groups and death squads to do the dirty work, so that the governments involved can pretend that they are not responsible.

This whole process of exploitation, repression, and violence is carried on in the guise of economic initiatives that supposedly bring benefits to all, but that truly benefit the few who already own the most. We have initiatives like NAFTA, the FTAA, Plan Puebla-Panama, and "development" loans from the IMF and World Bank. In the military sphere, they include such programs as the "war on drugs" and the new "war on terrorism."

The view from Latin America
Through my work with the Zapatista movement in Mexico, and a trip I was able to make to South America last year, I have learned about some of the ways people are fighting against this monstrous economic and military system. We need to start looking at our own role in this struggle for survival, and for human dignity. This is essentially a struggle of human beings against an inhuman system. Like the Zapatistas, we must begin to struggle "for humanity" and "against neoliberalism."

What I saw in Latin America is real mass movements. In Bolivia, I spoke at a rally, of 20,000 people! In Mexico, I attended a Zapatista rally of 35,000. Some of the people at the rally had walked for three days to reach the gathering. These numbers give them the power to move the political situation just as our Vietnam War protests and the Civil Rights movement did.

In Ecuador, another mass movement, called the Pachakuti movement, rejected the traditional political parties that served the elites, instituting a deliberate campaign to de-legitimize them. By asking people to quit those parties, they succeeded in weakening them seriously. Although only seven years old, the Pachakuti movement has toppled the government of Ecuador twice. They take their mass movement to the streets, and block the highways throughout the country. They refuse to permit "business as usual" to go on until the government meets their demands. Police and soldiers are outnumbered by the thousands of non-violent people involved, and the government has no alternative but to meet their demands.

The Struggle for Democracy
One of the major goals of every movement I witnessed was to restore democracy, to give a voice to the people. Latin American governments tend to be conservative, and dominated by members of the elite classes. The laws they pass benefit themselves and foreign corporate interests, generally to the detriment of the majority of the population, who have little voice in government matters. But the times are changing, and indigenous peoples are beginning to get organized and take action.

In Bolivia, the Movement Toward Socialism and its allies went from four to 40 representatives in the last election. They, too, block the highways with their bodies, bringing the economy to a halt, in order to make their voices heard. They do not think of themselves as a traditional political party. They see their movement as a "political instrument" to translate the will of the people into a force that can make changes.

In Peru, we visited a county where for about eight years, they have been working on the "Democracy Project." Neighborhood committees meet to discuss and define the needs of the community in terms of roads, schools, and health. Representatives of each committee meet at the town level, then at the county level, to create a comprehensive list of the people's needs and their priorities. When officials are elected, the people hand them the list, and that defines what their duties will be while in office.

Another outstanding example of democratic government in action comes from Colombia, where we visited autonomous indigenous communities in the state of Cauca. The Paez people have the right to govern themselves under their traditional tribal law, and are organized into regions called cabildos. They receive funding from the government and use that income to build schools and community industries designed to meet the needs of their people. Their schools teach fish farming, animal husbandry, and agricultural methods in order to prepare their youth to participate in projects that will raise the standard of living for their communities. They have created businesses (owned by the community, not by individuals) such as a dairy processing plant. They also have built a huge fish farm up in the mountains.

Sadly, these communities find themselves caught between government and rebel forces in the civil war raging there. Each side suspects them of siding with the other, and they have to defend themselves against both in a non-violent manner, sending delegations (often of one hundred people!) to negotiate with both sides. While we were there, they assigned us indigenous guards who carried no weapons.

A note on the use of violence
The civil war in Colombia has been going on for more than 40 years, and is shrouded in verbiage about a "war on drugs" and the "war on terror." These terms are rationalizations used to justify U.S. support for the governments of Colombia, which is praised as the longest-running democracy in Latin America. Like most other Latin American nations, Colombia is run by an elite class of the rich, who control most of the business and industry, own the majority of the land, and control the government as well. There is a two-party system, with the major parties being the Liberals and the Conservatives. However, in Colombia, even the Liberals are conservatives. Many felt they had no voice in the government, and created a new political party in the 1980's to give a voice to all those excluded by the ruling elites. This party was called the Patriotic Union, and was a mass movement of the type we have talked about earlier, drawn from workers, indigenous people, farm workers, educators, and small businesspeople. They wanted to work within the system to bring change peacefully, through the democratic process.

Tragically, their hopes for peaceful democratic change were drowned in a sea of blood. Thousands of Patriotic Union members were murdered and the party was destroyed. As people saw the possibility of democracy fade, armed struggle became the only option, and the rebellion grew. Most people we spoke to in Colombia were critical of the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), and admitted that they had done many things wrong, but still support the struggle against the government. Most outside observers agree that the government and its shadow army of paramilitaries, is responsible for most of the atrocities and human rights violations in Colombia.

In Mexico too the struggle against the ruling class was repressed. Non-violent demonstrations in the capital by students and other sectors demanding increased democratic participation led the government to respond with the Tlatelolco Massacre of October 2, 1968, in which troops surrounded and fired on unarmed demonstrators, killing hundreds. The message to the people was clear; democracy is not an option here. The result, as in Colombia, was that people took up arms to fight against the repression. It was from this impulse that, years later, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation ( EZLN) came into existence. It is a blending of the urban underground guerilla movement with the indigenous struggle for dignity and autonomy. Perhaps its greatest achievement is that it has been able to move the struggle away from armed confrontation, and back to the terrain of political and social struggle.

Where do we go from here?
We, the peace movement in the U.S., have to broaden our base, and create the kind of mass movement that can make a difference. We must begin to look beyond the threat of nuclear weapons and weapons systems, and to examine how, in the age of globalization, economics is also a weapon of mass destruction, and a tool for the domination of entire nations. We have to start building bridges to groups working on anti-globalization, the environment, human and civil rights, and electoral reform. We have a tremendous responsibility to the rest of the world, because it is our own government, our own elite ruling class, which is forcing this economic model on the rest of the world, and providing the military force to overcome any resistance.

How do we defeat the system?
We must educate our communities to the brutal impacts of these "globalizing" economic policies on people in other countries. We must work to prevent the implementation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (the FTAA), the Central American Free Trade Area (CAFTA), and Plan Puebla-Panama. We must stop acting out of fear and hysteria, and trying to impose military solutions like the Drug War and the War on Terror on social problems.

Perhaps more urgent than any other task is that of awakening our fellow citizens to the suffering and misery that our unthinking lifestyle makes invisible, but inevitable. While we are shopping at the mall, or going out to dinner and a movie, 36,000 people a day are dying of hunger in the world. Let's not mistake our own comfortable situation for a justification for the global status quo. We must not allow our nation to become a new high-tech Roman Empire, reducing the rest of the world to slavery, so that we can live at ease. We have fallen into a situation where money is the highest value in our society. America needs to rediscover the values on which it was founded: democracy, equality, and freedom. We must, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. suggested, strive for the "revolution of values" that will redeem us, and awaken Latin America, and the rest of the world, from the nightmare of economic globalization.

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