Sunday, March 19, 2006
The Importance of Being Ecuador, 7
1. Love and Chocolate
Divided by their particular attachments to specific forms of private property, the ruling classes of Ecuador were, and remain, united in, by, and around private property itself. Church, state, faux aristocrats, haciendistas, all swoon, indulge, and shared with the liberal planters, manufacturers, exporters of Guayaquil in the richness brought by the cacao trade. And where chocolate leads, love is sure to follow. And follow it did.
The commercial and industrial bourgeoisie of the costa intermingled and interbred with the latifundistas of the Quito region.
Money can't always buy love, but it can always buy land. The purchase of land by the traders and manufacturers of Guayaquil was an essential step in attaching status to the accumulation of capital. The newly enriched bought land and stature, turning economic success into position by marrying into the older, and debt-strapped, established families. Kinship and marriage made the bourgeoisie again what they always had been, servants and financiers of backwardness. The pre-nuptial agreement, and the marriage bed, were the consummation of illegitimacy-- the marriage of the bastard offspring from the conquistadors' original destruction of the indigenous communities.
2. What a Difference a Year Or Two Make
In May 1944 Jose Maria Velasco assumed the presidency for a second time. He promised a government of "national resurrection," saving the "national honor." Conservative opponents of Velasco's Democratic Alliance were jailed, silenced, or otherwise removed from government. A constituent assembly, dominated by left-wing elements, was convened.
One year later, Velasco dismissed the assembly and called for new elections. These elections produced a right-wing constituent assembly, reflecting the rightward movement of the Democratic Alliance. And the constitution produced by this assembly was far more palatable to Velasco and the elites of Quito and Guayaquil.
For the next two years this poor imitation of that apotheosis of poor imitations, Louis Bonaparte, ruled by the bayonet and the concrete pour. Military parade and public works, the imitations of wealth and empire, were the closest capital could come to "national resurrection." Salvation was found, but only in the bank accounts of the elites. By 1947, the national treasury had been emptied of the revenues brought by the increased demand and higher prices paid for commodities during WW2 and Velasco was on his way out.
Overthrown by his own minister of defense in 1947, Velasco resumed the presidency for a third time in 1952.
He, Velasco, proclaimed himself "the national personification." And in his inabilities, Velasco personified the congenital incapability of capital, of the Ecuadorean bourgeoisie to resolve the conflicts between city and countryside; landed property and free, detached, labor; private property and social need.
Some things had changed in the Ecuadorean economy. Bananas had replaced cacao as the country's primary export. As diseases ravaged the banana plantations of Central America, Ecuador's banana exports to the US accelerated. Whatever the source of revenues, the contradictions remained.
Again, export earnings supported government financed infrastructure construction and military armaments.
Again Velasco moved against his own left-wing, mobilizing conservatives, social Christians, and the thugs of the nationalist, anti-communist ARNE (Accion Revolucionaria Nacionalista Ecuatoriana) against students and workers.
Again, Velasco left office, suceeded by a conservative ally and cabinet member, Camilo Ponce Enriquez, and again Velasco reappeared as the "national personification" of opposition to his follower.
Again export earnings fell, and the end of the banana boom created enough social conflict to restore Velasco's national personification. In 1960, Velasco was elected yet again to the presidency.
Again Velasco lurched left, abrogating the hated 1942 Rio protocol under which Ecuador had been compelled to cede 200,000 square kilometers to Peru. And again, the social forces behind Velasco's "national personification" split left and right, and a military junta took power.
History is not supposed to be simply a repetition compulsion, but capital in its very origin the product of the unresolved conflicts, the legacy of the conquest, rather than the resolution of those conflicts, the overthrow of that conquest, acts as an historical neurosis. Velasco's periodic overthrows and restorations become a social tic, a clock resetting itself backwards...
S. Artesian
April 09, 2006
address all comments to: sartesian@earthlink.net
Sunday, March 05, 2006
The Importance of Being Ecuador, 6
1. Politics
When Clausewitz asserted that war is the continuation of politics by other means, he left something out. War is the continuation of political economy by the meanest of means. War is the compressed expropriation and destruction of labor so essential to political economy. And the officer corps of the military is the condensed expression of the weakness, the brutal incompetence of the bourgeois class by just those same meanest means.
In 1926, the junta of the League of Young Officers ruling Ecuador appointed Isidro Ayora to the presidency. Possessed of great wealth by marriage, and a social conscience by temperament, Ayora imagined himself establishing a dictatorship of reform bourgeoisie. But once and forever incapable of establishing a independent class program, the bourgeoisie could not create their own reforms. Instead, Ayora imported a reform commission from Princeton University of New Jersey.
The Princeton commission created the Banco Central, expropriating and transferring to the government the private banks' currency issuing power. The commission also transferred the customs and revenue collection functions from la argolla of Guayanquil to the government in Quito.
The golden era that followed this redirection of revenues was short-lived and quickly dead, strangled in its crib by the great capitalist depression of the 1930s. Export revenues declined by two-thirds in the period 1928-1931. Ayora was overthrown by the military in 1932, and near civil war erupted when the candidate of the populist, nationalist Compactation Obrera Nacional (Consolidation of National Workers) Neptali Bonifaz Ascazubi was elected to the presidency. The Liberal paramilitary forces defeated the CON in the streets as the military, giving full expression to the ferocious paralysis of capital, the furious inability of the bourgeoisie to actually govern, stayed in their barracks.
But the Liberal president, Juan de Dios Martinez lasted only 2 years in office. The Chamber of Deputies encouraged the CON to return to the streets to protest, and in 1934, the then president of the chamber, the man who would appear and reappear, or not so much reappear as recur, like a delusion or an infection, throughout the next four decades of Ecuadorean politics, Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, won the presidency by a huge margin.
But not for long. "Not for long" were the words inscribed on the presidential seal of Ecuador. Not for long Ayora. Not at all Bonifaz. Not for long Dios. Not for long, this time, Velasco.
Velasco was overthrown by the military in 1935 after he had dissolved the Congress. Federico Paez was awarded the presidency. But not for long. In 1937, Paez was overthrown by the minister of national defense, General Alberto Enriquez Gallo. But not for long. In his brief tenure, Enriquez appears as the pre-Peron Peron of Ecuador, instituting and enforcing the Labor Code of 1938 giving legal status to labor protections. Enriquez also confronted the United States over the US owned mining corporation, the South American Development Company. The company, backed by the US government, refused to raise wage rates for Ecuadorean workers, and increase the portion of profits retained in Ecuador.
Enriquez died in 1939 and was followed in office by another representative of the Guayaquil liberals and friend of the US, Carlos Alberto Arroyo del Rio. As WW 2 approached, the US rethought its position on mining profits, ending its support for the South American Development Country, in exchange for agreement allowing the US to build a naval base and an air base in Ecuador.
In 1941, Peru invaded and occupied portions of Ecuador's eastern and southern provinces. The war ended with the Rio Protocol. Arroyo del Rio ceded 200,00 square kilometers of territory to Peru. In 1944, supporters of Velasco, civilian and military, attacked Arroyo's police. Arroyo resigned, and Velasco returned from exile in, where else?, Colombia naturally, to take the presidency one more time. But not for long.
s.artesian March 5, 2006
address all comments to:
sartesian@earthlink.net
When Clausewitz asserted that war is the continuation of politics by other means, he left something out. War is the continuation of political economy by the meanest of means. War is the compressed expropriation and destruction of labor so essential to political economy. And the officer corps of the military is the condensed expression of the weakness, the brutal incompetence of the bourgeois class by just those same meanest means.
In 1926, the junta of the League of Young Officers ruling Ecuador appointed Isidro Ayora to the presidency. Possessed of great wealth by marriage, and a social conscience by temperament, Ayora imagined himself establishing a dictatorship of reform bourgeoisie. But once and forever incapable of establishing a independent class program, the bourgeoisie could not create their own reforms. Instead, Ayora imported a reform commission from Princeton University of New Jersey.
The Princeton commission created the Banco Central, expropriating and transferring to the government the private banks' currency issuing power. The commission also transferred the customs and revenue collection functions from la argolla of Guayanquil to the government in Quito.
The golden era that followed this redirection of revenues was short-lived and quickly dead, strangled in its crib by the great capitalist depression of the 1930s. Export revenues declined by two-thirds in the period 1928-1931. Ayora was overthrown by the military in 1932, and near civil war erupted when the candidate of the populist, nationalist Compactation Obrera Nacional (Consolidation of National Workers) Neptali Bonifaz Ascazubi was elected to the presidency. The Liberal paramilitary forces defeated the CON in the streets as the military, giving full expression to the ferocious paralysis of capital, the furious inability of the bourgeoisie to actually govern, stayed in their barracks.
But the Liberal president, Juan de Dios Martinez lasted only 2 years in office. The Chamber of Deputies encouraged the CON to return to the streets to protest, and in 1934, the then president of the chamber, the man who would appear and reappear, or not so much reappear as recur, like a delusion or an infection, throughout the next four decades of Ecuadorean politics, Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, won the presidency by a huge margin.
But not for long. "Not for long" were the words inscribed on the presidential seal of Ecuador. Not for long Ayora. Not at all Bonifaz. Not for long Dios. Not for long, this time, Velasco.
Velasco was overthrown by the military in 1935 after he had dissolved the Congress. Federico Paez was awarded the presidency. But not for long. In 1937, Paez was overthrown by the minister of national defense, General Alberto Enriquez Gallo. But not for long. In his brief tenure, Enriquez appears as the pre-Peron Peron of Ecuador, instituting and enforcing the Labor Code of 1938 giving legal status to labor protections. Enriquez also confronted the United States over the US owned mining corporation, the South American Development Company. The company, backed by the US government, refused to raise wage rates for Ecuadorean workers, and increase the portion of profits retained in Ecuador.
Enriquez died in 1939 and was followed in office by another representative of the Guayaquil liberals and friend of the US, Carlos Alberto Arroyo del Rio. As WW 2 approached, the US rethought its position on mining profits, ending its support for the South American Development Country, in exchange for agreement allowing the US to build a naval base and an air base in Ecuador.
In 1941, Peru invaded and occupied portions of Ecuador's eastern and southern provinces. The war ended with the Rio Protocol. Arroyo del Rio ceded 200,00 square kilometers of territory to Peru. In 1944, supporters of Velasco, civilian and military, attacked Arroyo's police. Arroyo resigned, and Velasco returned from exile in, where else?, Colombia naturally, to take the presidency one more time. But not for long.
s.artesian March 5, 2006
address all comments to:
sartesian@earthlink.net
Sunday, February 26, 2006
The Importance of Being Ecuador, 5
The Replicant Bourgeoisie
1. Capitalism in Ecuador doesn't actually emerge from the struggle against the vice-royalty, but oozes and seeps out of the pores of the successful and failing vice-royalty. Capitalism in Ecuador withers as it grows, expands here faster there more slowly that its rates of decay, but never without decay. At every moment between origin and demise, capitalist development in Ecuador is the product of accelerated decrepitude.
At origin, capitalism in Ecuador is the offspring, the idiot offspring of conquest and conquerors, survives on a stipend, a "trust fund" established in the impressment, the forced servitude, the degradation of the labor of the indigenous peoples.
With no economic life of its own, the bourgeoisie of Ecuador exist as caretakers of poverty; as agents and the agency of anti-development, and anti-history. Where there has never been a nation, and only a suppressed domestic market, the bourgeoisie propagate a myth of a nation; a pseudo-history of imagined development. The failure of the struggle to overturn the social legacy of the vice-royalty is refurbished and recirculated as the future of liberation. Nostalgia for the construction of an obsolete historical project, "democratic," "national" "independent" capitalism, brands the programs of "progressive" democrats and radicals. The bourgeoisie pursue memories of emancipation, but as with the actual fundamentals of the economy, the memories are not their own, the memories belong to others.
2. Loathed and adored, condemned and honored, tyrant and savior, Garcia Moreno is the perfect picture of the triumphant and failed Ecuadorian bourgeoisie; in his very existence the compressed composite of the baptism of Ecuadorian capitalism in the church of counterrevolution. Born of the proverbial "modest circumstances" in Guayaquil, Garcia Moreno studied in Quito where he married into the local aristocracy. Journeying to Europe after the failed revolutions of 1848, Garcia Moreno studied the importance of counterrevolution to Christianity under the learned theologians of the Catholic Church.
Upon those rocks of Catholicism and counterrevolution, Garcia Moreno built his church and state. Catholicism was not just the official religion, it was the only religion, named as such in two constitutions of Ecuador. The "republic" itself was dedicated to the "Sacred Heart of Jesus."
The anti-clerical, trading liberals of Guayaquil were incensed by the restrictions on exchange, on access to property inherent in the conservative church-state. Garcia Moreno, however, fought off coup and invasion, and even overthrew his own successor in 1869 when it appeared that scheduled elections favored the Liberals.
Finally, or not, in 1875 Garcia Moreno was hacked to death on the steps of the presidential palace by a Colombian man wielding a machete, avenging perhaps his own sense of aggrieved "national honor," that Ecuador had left the Confederacion Gran Colombia in the first place.
Garcia Moreno's rule had overseen significant structural change in the economy. Economic growth was restored as a product of export and production for export. Roads and railroad were constructed linking Quito, Guayaquil, Riobamba, Babahoyo, Esmeraldas.
Exports grew tenfold between 1850 and 1890, and cacao became the number one export crop. Production tripled in this same period. With this growth in exports, the economic power of the Guayaquil liberals grew, but their social cohesion did not.
It took the Liberals 20 years to consolidate themselves enough to take power in Ecuador. That opportunity was seized not when the Conservatives were in power, but when the Progressives, who pretended at a compromise between Liberals and Conservatives, assumed leadership.
In 1895, the Progressive president, Cordero, resigned amid charges of bribery and betrayal in allowing Chile to used the Ecuadorian flag as cover for selling a warship to Japan. In June 1895, the Liberals in Guayaquil seized power in the name of a caudillo, General Jose Eloy Alfaro Delgado. In September, Alfaro returned from his exile and marched into Quito.
3. In the first years of Liberal rule significant political and structural changes of occurred. The Catholic Church was divested of its official status and of its control of the educational system. Civil marriage and divorce were institutionalized. More than that, the church's rural properties were seized by the government. The Church in turn incited a civil war. The church in Ecuador, led by its foreign-born bishops of Portoviejo and Riobamba, preached and fought agains the "atheistic alfaristas."
The arbitrary debt-peonage that had survived from the conquest was not abolished. It was regulated. Imprisonment for debt was finally abolished in 1918. Still, these structural changes were overwhelmed by the real economic decline that pressed upon the indigenous and workers. The liberal government suppressed by force of arms the struggles of both groups for economic power.
The economy remained what it always had been. In decline, ruinous to the living standards of the indigenous and the poor. In expansion, opposed to improvements in those standards. In expansion, the Ecuadorian economy remained deformed, suppressed, stunted; its deformation being the greatest achievement of bourgeois power.
Exports and export earnings financed the spending plans of the governments, with such plan inevitably requiring the assumption of greater debts. The power of the Liberals was centered in Guayaquil; the center of power in Guayaquil was the group of bankers, landowners, merchants known as la argolla-- the ring. At the center of the ring was the Commercial and Agricultural Bank of Guayaquil, making large loans to the government. What the Catholic Church was to the Conservatives, the bank was to the Liberals.
And then, again as before, the influence of Britain in the world markets pushed the export economy of Ecuador to collapse. This time however, in the 20th century, it wasn't the domestic industry of British capitalism that overwhelmed export Ecuador. This time, in the 20th century, it was the cacao production from Britain's African colonies that undermined Ecuador's position.
Inflation coupled with declining export earnings forced the the economy into depression. A general strike in Guayaquil in 1922, and a rebellion by indigenous rural workers and peasants in 1923 were subdued only after massacres of the strikers.
Finally, or not, in 1925 a group of reformist military officers, the League of Young Officers, overthrew the Liberal president Cordova.
S. Artesian
address all comments to: sartesian@earthlink.net
1. Capitalism in Ecuador doesn't actually emerge from the struggle against the vice-royalty, but oozes and seeps out of the pores of the successful and failing vice-royalty. Capitalism in Ecuador withers as it grows, expands here faster there more slowly that its rates of decay, but never without decay. At every moment between origin and demise, capitalist development in Ecuador is the product of accelerated decrepitude.
At origin, capitalism in Ecuador is the offspring, the idiot offspring of conquest and conquerors, survives on a stipend, a "trust fund" established in the impressment, the forced servitude, the degradation of the labor of the indigenous peoples.
With no economic life of its own, the bourgeoisie of Ecuador exist as caretakers of poverty; as agents and the agency of anti-development, and anti-history. Where there has never been a nation, and only a suppressed domestic market, the bourgeoisie propagate a myth of a nation; a pseudo-history of imagined development. The failure of the struggle to overturn the social legacy of the vice-royalty is refurbished and recirculated as the future of liberation. Nostalgia for the construction of an obsolete historical project, "democratic," "national" "independent" capitalism, brands the programs of "progressive" democrats and radicals. The bourgeoisie pursue memories of emancipation, but as with the actual fundamentals of the economy, the memories are not their own, the memories belong to others.
2. Loathed and adored, condemned and honored, tyrant and savior, Garcia Moreno is the perfect picture of the triumphant and failed Ecuadorian bourgeoisie; in his very existence the compressed composite of the baptism of Ecuadorian capitalism in the church of counterrevolution. Born of the proverbial "modest circumstances" in Guayaquil, Garcia Moreno studied in Quito where he married into the local aristocracy. Journeying to Europe after the failed revolutions of 1848, Garcia Moreno studied the importance of counterrevolution to Christianity under the learned theologians of the Catholic Church.
Upon those rocks of Catholicism and counterrevolution, Garcia Moreno built his church and state. Catholicism was not just the official religion, it was the only religion, named as such in two constitutions of Ecuador. The "republic" itself was dedicated to the "Sacred Heart of Jesus."
The anti-clerical, trading liberals of Guayaquil were incensed by the restrictions on exchange, on access to property inherent in the conservative church-state. Garcia Moreno, however, fought off coup and invasion, and even overthrew his own successor in 1869 when it appeared that scheduled elections favored the Liberals.
Finally, or not, in 1875 Garcia Moreno was hacked to death on the steps of the presidential palace by a Colombian man wielding a machete, avenging perhaps his own sense of aggrieved "national honor," that Ecuador had left the Confederacion Gran Colombia in the first place.
Garcia Moreno's rule had overseen significant structural change in the economy. Economic growth was restored as a product of export and production for export. Roads and railroad were constructed linking Quito, Guayaquil, Riobamba, Babahoyo, Esmeraldas.
Exports grew tenfold between 1850 and 1890, and cacao became the number one export crop. Production tripled in this same period. With this growth in exports, the economic power of the Guayaquil liberals grew, but their social cohesion did not.
It took the Liberals 20 years to consolidate themselves enough to take power in Ecuador. That opportunity was seized not when the Conservatives were in power, but when the Progressives, who pretended at a compromise between Liberals and Conservatives, assumed leadership.
In 1895, the Progressive president, Cordero, resigned amid charges of bribery and betrayal in allowing Chile to used the Ecuadorian flag as cover for selling a warship to Japan. In June 1895, the Liberals in Guayaquil seized power in the name of a caudillo, General Jose Eloy Alfaro Delgado. In September, Alfaro returned from his exile and marched into Quito.
3. In the first years of Liberal rule significant political and structural changes of occurred. The Catholic Church was divested of its official status and of its control of the educational system. Civil marriage and divorce were institutionalized. More than that, the church's rural properties were seized by the government. The Church in turn incited a civil war. The church in Ecuador, led by its foreign-born bishops of Portoviejo and Riobamba, preached and fought agains the "atheistic alfaristas."
The arbitrary debt-peonage that had survived from the conquest was not abolished. It was regulated. Imprisonment for debt was finally abolished in 1918. Still, these structural changes were overwhelmed by the real economic decline that pressed upon the indigenous and workers. The liberal government suppressed by force of arms the struggles of both groups for economic power.
The economy remained what it always had been. In decline, ruinous to the living standards of the indigenous and the poor. In expansion, opposed to improvements in those standards. In expansion, the Ecuadorian economy remained deformed, suppressed, stunted; its deformation being the greatest achievement of bourgeois power.
Exports and export earnings financed the spending plans of the governments, with such plan inevitably requiring the assumption of greater debts. The power of the Liberals was centered in Guayaquil; the center of power in Guayaquil was the group of bankers, landowners, merchants known as la argolla-- the ring. At the center of the ring was the Commercial and Agricultural Bank of Guayaquil, making large loans to the government. What the Catholic Church was to the Conservatives, the bank was to the Liberals.
And then, again as before, the influence of Britain in the world markets pushed the export economy of Ecuador to collapse. This time however, in the 20th century, it wasn't the domestic industry of British capitalism that overwhelmed export Ecuador. This time, in the 20th century, it was the cacao production from Britain's African colonies that undermined Ecuador's position.
Inflation coupled with declining export earnings forced the the economy into depression. A general strike in Guayaquil in 1922, and a rebellion by indigenous rural workers and peasants in 1923 were subdued only after massacres of the strikers.
Finally, or not, in 1925 a group of reformist military officers, the League of Young Officers, overthrew the Liberal president Cordova.
S. Artesian
address all comments to: sartesian@earthlink.net
Sunday, January 29, 2006
The Importance of Being Ecuador, 4
1.Independence brought neither emancipation nor peace to the territory that would become Ecuador. Bolivar, the would be Bonaparte searching for a wished for bourgeoisie, entered Quito to hero's welcome. San Martin, meanwhile, traveled to Guayaquil, home of the almost-bourgeoisie. There he and Bolivar met and discussed the division and integration of the conquered territories. Bolivar convinced San Martin that the former Quito Audiencia was better off as part of Gran Colombia, and so what had been an audiencia became District of the South of the Confederation of Gran Colombia.
The confederation, however, was neither nation nor continent. It was a structure built on the weakness, the absence of a single class with a singular property that could absorb, overturn, subjugate, and speak for all in its terms of production, commerce, and exchange. It was this weakness, this absence, that made Bolivar, Sucre, and those who would follow, these men on horseback, heroes. And failures.
The Confederation went to war first against the Spanish vice-royalty in Peru and then against the criollos and peninsulares of Peru itself. Finally, in 1830 the Confederation disintegrated with the withdrawal of Venezuela.
In August 1830, a constituent assembly dominated by the "notables" of Quito met and chartered a constitution for a state to be called Ecuador. The Quitenos, in an act simultaneously of maximum self-criticism, self-awareness, historical recognition , and self-parody, handed power to the Venezuelan General Juan Jose Flores, who had been appointed governor by Bolivar of Ecuador during its "integration" into the Confederation of Gran Colombia.
Would-be capitalism wishes for national development, that is to say establishment of a domestic market not just in and for the exchange of commodities, but first and foremost a domestic market for the appropriation of "free," unlanded, labor. But wishes aren't horses, and men on horseback are in riding breeches and not sans culottes.
The potential for the creation of such free, unlanded labor power existed only in the emancipation of the indigenous peoples from the encomienda, the mita, the hacienda; in short emancipation from the very organization of private property that created peninsulare, criollo, and indigeno. No such potential existed in the saddlebags of Bolivar, in the armies of a gran confederation.
2. Economically sterile, the would be bourgeoisie of Ecuador endured, tolerated, supported, criticized, and plotted against Flores for 15 years until March 1845, when an insurrection in Guayaquil forced the general to vacate at a high rate of speed. The insurrectionists, marcistas, from Guayaquil were no more capable of governing Ecuador, of organizing the economy than the general or the notables of Quito.
In 1851, General Jose Maria Urbina took power in a coup and accomplished what the bourgeoisie and notables had never dared-- the abolition of slavery. In 1857, Urbina's successor, General Franciso Robles abolished again something the bourgeoisie and notables never dared, the annual payments of tribute required from the indigenos. Both actions places the Guayaquil generals in direct opposition to the hacendados and the Catholic Church.
The linkage of Guayaquil's economic and commercial liberalism with anti-clericalism, with better treatment of the indigenos, only strengthened the regional, isolated, enclave, nature of would-be capitalism.
By 1859, the centrifugal forces overwhelmed the Liberal regime. Local caudillos declared their autonomy from the central government. In response to the occupation of the southern regions by a Peruvian army, Flores made his last long march, returning to Ecuador, forcing out the Peruvians and subjugating the caudillos. But the real power, the power of centralization would not belong to Flores. It was in the hands of Garcia Moreno, the man from Guayaquil who was more Quitoeno than the Quitoenos; more conservative than the notables; more clerical than the clerics; and more a man of international capital in his nationalism than all the traders, merchants, factory owners, exporters of Ecuador.
3. Where class, parliament, even army had failed, Garcia Moreno achieved success in wielding the vicious legacy of the original conquest, the Catholic Church. What plunder, landed property, and god's enforcers had achieved hand in hand, destruction of a superior indigenous society, devastation of rural productivity, liquidation of the indigenous peoples, could and would be utilized again to build atop those ruins the form of a unified state, and to permit the penetration of capital.
Education and infrastructure, the supposed "social" benefits of the liberal capitalism, would be and were harnessed to the clerical state. The "ease" of this accommodation of capital to the national clerical state was, again, in the suppression of the indigenous population, the very source of landed property itself.
With the land itself held not as a value to be realized in commodities, in exchange, in its very alienability, but rather as monument, as title to the past; economic "development" was always and forever a product of export, of the paucity of the domestic market, of the connection to the world market through weak urban areas. Capitalism, internally, and capitalist penetration internationally, converge in the establishment of the enclave, the concession. The port, the plantation, the hacienda, the railroad, the factory exist, and grow, as grafts upon the trunk of impressed, indigenous labor. And so we have advanced world capitalism and its national agents as the true heirs to the conquistador, the cleric, Spanish mercantilism, the hacienda, the vice-royalty. And also as heirs and victors in the failed struggles of Bolivar and Sucre, the failed Gran Confederation. Dis-integration is the once and future history of Ecuador in the world market.
S. Artesian
February 5, 2006
address all comments to: sartesian@earthlink.net
The confederation, however, was neither nation nor continent. It was a structure built on the weakness, the absence of a single class with a singular property that could absorb, overturn, subjugate, and speak for all in its terms of production, commerce, and exchange. It was this weakness, this absence, that made Bolivar, Sucre, and those who would follow, these men on horseback, heroes. And failures.
The Confederation went to war first against the Spanish vice-royalty in Peru and then against the criollos and peninsulares of Peru itself. Finally, in 1830 the Confederation disintegrated with the withdrawal of Venezuela.
In August 1830, a constituent assembly dominated by the "notables" of Quito met and chartered a constitution for a state to be called Ecuador. The Quitenos, in an act simultaneously of maximum self-criticism, self-awareness, historical recognition , and self-parody, handed power to the Venezuelan General Juan Jose Flores, who had been appointed governor by Bolivar of Ecuador during its "integration" into the Confederation of Gran Colombia.
Would-be capitalism wishes for national development, that is to say establishment of a domestic market not just in and for the exchange of commodities, but first and foremost a domestic market for the appropriation of "free," unlanded, labor. But wishes aren't horses, and men on horseback are in riding breeches and not sans culottes.
The potential for the creation of such free, unlanded labor power existed only in the emancipation of the indigenous peoples from the encomienda, the mita, the hacienda; in short emancipation from the very organization of private property that created peninsulare, criollo, and indigeno. No such potential existed in the saddlebags of Bolivar, in the armies of a gran confederation.
2. Economically sterile, the would be bourgeoisie of Ecuador endured, tolerated, supported, criticized, and plotted against Flores for 15 years until March 1845, when an insurrection in Guayaquil forced the general to vacate at a high rate of speed. The insurrectionists, marcistas, from Guayaquil were no more capable of governing Ecuador, of organizing the economy than the general or the notables of Quito.
In 1851, General Jose Maria Urbina took power in a coup and accomplished what the bourgeoisie and notables had never dared-- the abolition of slavery. In 1857, Urbina's successor, General Franciso Robles abolished again something the bourgeoisie and notables never dared, the annual payments of tribute required from the indigenos. Both actions places the Guayaquil generals in direct opposition to the hacendados and the Catholic Church.
The linkage of Guayaquil's economic and commercial liberalism with anti-clericalism, with better treatment of the indigenos, only strengthened the regional, isolated, enclave, nature of would-be capitalism.
By 1859, the centrifugal forces overwhelmed the Liberal regime. Local caudillos declared their autonomy from the central government. In response to the occupation of the southern regions by a Peruvian army, Flores made his last long march, returning to Ecuador, forcing out the Peruvians and subjugating the caudillos. But the real power, the power of centralization would not belong to Flores. It was in the hands of Garcia Moreno, the man from Guayaquil who was more Quitoeno than the Quitoenos; more conservative than the notables; more clerical than the clerics; and more a man of international capital in his nationalism than all the traders, merchants, factory owners, exporters of Ecuador.
3. Where class, parliament, even army had failed, Garcia Moreno achieved success in wielding the vicious legacy of the original conquest, the Catholic Church. What plunder, landed property, and god's enforcers had achieved hand in hand, destruction of a superior indigenous society, devastation of rural productivity, liquidation of the indigenous peoples, could and would be utilized again to build atop those ruins the form of a unified state, and to permit the penetration of capital.
Education and infrastructure, the supposed "social" benefits of the liberal capitalism, would be and were harnessed to the clerical state. The "ease" of this accommodation of capital to the national clerical state was, again, in the suppression of the indigenous population, the very source of landed property itself.
With the land itself held not as a value to be realized in commodities, in exchange, in its very alienability, but rather as monument, as title to the past; economic "development" was always and forever a product of export, of the paucity of the domestic market, of the connection to the world market through weak urban areas. Capitalism, internally, and capitalist penetration internationally, converge in the establishment of the enclave, the concession. The port, the plantation, the hacienda, the railroad, the factory exist, and grow, as grafts upon the trunk of impressed, indigenous labor. And so we have advanced world capitalism and its national agents as the true heirs to the conquistador, the cleric, Spanish mercantilism, the hacienda, the vice-royalty. And also as heirs and victors in the failed struggles of Bolivar and Sucre, the failed Gran Confederation. Dis-integration is the once and future history of Ecuador in the world market.
S. Artesian
February 5, 2006
address all comments to: sartesian@earthlink.net
Sunday, December 04, 2005
The Importance of Being Ecuador, 3
1. Ecuador's "national revolution" began as a reaction against Bonaparte's extension of French capitalism to Spain, cannonading the tricolor and imperial crown onto the Bourbon throne. In this, its origins in reaction, the Ecuadorean "revolution" is not so far removed from the beginnings of the French Revolution itself-- brought forward first by the reaction of the aristocracy against the "progressive," national measures of the crown.
But that's where the parallel ends. While the peninsulares pretended to be an aristocracy, the criollos couldn't quite make it as the bourgeoisie.
In a rebellion against usurped colonial rule and for the restoration of the Bourbon king, Quito's criollos ousted Bonaparte's agents....but not for long. As soon as "loyalist" troops approached, the criollos abdicated power, hoping to avoid reprisal and retribution. They had no such luck.
The criollos had initiated a revolt against colonial rule in loyalty to colonial rule. Tripping over their own feet, the criollos make their entrance onto the stage of history with their pratfall nationalism, providing overture and coda to the development of bourgeois rule in developing Ecuador. Confusion, misstep, cowardice in everything save exploitation and oppression of the indigenous people was the singular contribution of the criollos to liberation from Spain.
2. The criollos of Quito emerge as attendants to an economy of forced labor, of compulsory exports, of the repressed and depressed domestic market. As such they inherit servility; they exhibit equivocation. They are, by the terms of historical origin, inadequate to the tasks of emancipation. They are detached from the organization of property and labor that could transform them from agents into owners; that would propel them into leadership. Only the merchant, trading bourgeoisie of Guayaquil have the attachment to bourgeois property that permits them to proclaim the indentity of patriotism, freedom, and commerce.
In October 1820, independence is proclaimed in Guayaquil by a junta under the leadership of the poet, Jose Joaquin Olmedo. But the criollos of Quito are silent. They lack a voice, even the voice of the second-rate bourgeoisie of Guayaquil which is strong enough, at least, to appeal to foreign allies, in Venezuela, in Argentina for the armies they themselves are to weak to raise, organize, lead.
Bolivar dispatches Antonio Jose de Sucre Alcala at the head of a detachment from his army of continental liberation. Sucre achieves a number of successes only to be defeated at Ambato at which point, he appeals to a foreign ally, Jose de San Martin of Argentina with his southern army of liberation. San Martin sends Andres de Santa Cruz Calahumana and 1400 troops to aid the "patriotic" army of foreigners, the international army of national liberation. And finally, on May 24, 1822, after the Battle of Pichincha, on the slopes of a volcano outside Quito, the Audencia of Quito is overturned. Ecuador is freed from the formality of Spanish rule; from Spanish administration. But the legacy of Spain, of conquistadore, of encomienda, of mita, of obrajes, of hacienda, and of course of peninsulares, criollos, and indigenas, remains and informs the future.
But that's where the parallel ends. While the peninsulares pretended to be an aristocracy, the criollos couldn't quite make it as the bourgeoisie.
In a rebellion against usurped colonial rule and for the restoration of the Bourbon king, Quito's criollos ousted Bonaparte's agents....but not for long. As soon as "loyalist" troops approached, the criollos abdicated power, hoping to avoid reprisal and retribution. They had no such luck.
The criollos had initiated a revolt against colonial rule in loyalty to colonial rule. Tripping over their own feet, the criollos make their entrance onto the stage of history with their pratfall nationalism, providing overture and coda to the development of bourgeois rule in developing Ecuador. Confusion, misstep, cowardice in everything save exploitation and oppression of the indigenous people was the singular contribution of the criollos to liberation from Spain.
2. The criollos of Quito emerge as attendants to an economy of forced labor, of compulsory exports, of the repressed and depressed domestic market. As such they inherit servility; they exhibit equivocation. They are, by the terms of historical origin, inadequate to the tasks of emancipation. They are detached from the organization of property and labor that could transform them from agents into owners; that would propel them into leadership. Only the merchant, trading bourgeoisie of Guayaquil have the attachment to bourgeois property that permits them to proclaim the indentity of patriotism, freedom, and commerce.
In October 1820, independence is proclaimed in Guayaquil by a junta under the leadership of the poet, Jose Joaquin Olmedo. But the criollos of Quito are silent. They lack a voice, even the voice of the second-rate bourgeoisie of Guayaquil which is strong enough, at least, to appeal to foreign allies, in Venezuela, in Argentina for the armies they themselves are to weak to raise, organize, lead.
Bolivar dispatches Antonio Jose de Sucre Alcala at the head of a detachment from his army of continental liberation. Sucre achieves a number of successes only to be defeated at Ambato at which point, he appeals to a foreign ally, Jose de San Martin of Argentina with his southern army of liberation. San Martin sends Andres de Santa Cruz Calahumana and 1400 troops to aid the "patriotic" army of foreigners, the international army of national liberation. And finally, on May 24, 1822, after the Battle of Pichincha, on the slopes of a volcano outside Quito, the Audencia of Quito is overturned. Ecuador is freed from the formality of Spanish rule; from Spanish administration. But the legacy of Spain, of conquistadore, of encomienda, of mita, of obrajes, of hacienda, and of course of peninsulares, criollos, and indigenas, remains and informs the future.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
The Importance of Being Ecuador, 2
1. Division
The territory that was to become Ecuador was divided economically and ethnographically by coast, the Costa; by mountain, the Sierra, and to the east, the jungle, known as Oriente . The coast was inhabited by four major indigenous groups, the Esmeralda, the Manta, the Huancavilca, and the Puna. Hunters, fishers, traders, these groups traveled by sea along the coast of South America and also maintained an exchange of fish for salt with the inland, mountain groups.
The valleys and mountainsides inland were populated by the Pasto, the Caro, the Panzaleo, the Puruha, the Canari, and the Palta groups. Cultivation of maize, beans, potatoes, quinoa and fruits was widespread, with extensive systems of irrigation supporting agricultural production.
In the 15th century, northward expansion of the Inca empire from Cuzco was strongly contested in both the coast and the highlands. The resistance of the Canari and Cara peoples and all the groups on the coast around the Gulf of Guayaquil lasted for forty years, outlasting the 9th Inca, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui; his son, the 10th Inca, Topa who conquered Quito but not the coast; succumbing about 1500 to Topa's son, Huayna Capac.
The Inca introduced new crops to both mountain and coastal agriculture-- sweet potatoes, yucca, coca, peanuts. Land was proclaimed the property of the emperor; land was worked collectively by groups of families called allyu. Each family in the allyu also held small plots of land for their own consumption.
2. Dis-integration
The Spanish conquest was the destruction of the Inca empire's unique integration and autonomy of the region. Spanish rule was the economics of extraction and wages of extraction are economic dis-integration.
Lacking the apparent and accessible mineral wealth of other territories of the Inca, the indigenous people of Ecuador were spared the deadly mita exacted in servicing the silver, mercury, and tin mines of Peru and Bolivia. Instead the people of the Sierra labored in the workshops, obraje, chained to looms and producing the clothing of wool and cotton exported to Spain.
On the coast, Guayaquil was the center for shipping and trade, and although intra-American trade was prohibited by the Spanish mercantilist monarchy, Guayaquil served just such an extensive trade in hardwoods, textiles, and coca.
In the 18th century, the rise of British capitalism, the expansion of English textile manufacturing protected by its very own mercantilism, increased economic pressure on Spanish monarchy. Mother country and its mercantile satellite fell into extended and severe depression. It is estimated that textile production in Ecuador declined 75 percent between beginning and end of the century. The cities decayed, and the ruling elites were compelled to sell their jewelry an their haciendas to survive. In this the peninsulares and criollos of Spanish rule in Ecuador brought to themselves a taste of the life they had imposed on the indigenous peoples: production for export based, at best, on subsistence; production for export requiring always, and sooner or later, sub-subsistence.
3. Gran Plan Colombia
The Spanish royalty confronted its economics of dis-integration with re-formation of its agency of political authority, the Viceroyalty. In 1720, the Quito audiencia (sub-viceroyalty, or court) was transferred for the Viceroyalty of Peru to that of the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada, headquartered in Bogota, Colombia.
In this re-formation the Quito based elite was awarded jurisdictional autonomy over local political and military matters, basically the exploitation of the indigenous people.
The award carried a cost and the cost was the redistricting of the audiencia. The southern and eastern borders of the audiencia were reduced with territory transferred to other viceroyalties. This shrinkage by decree and degree continued into the 19th century. In 1802, Quijos and Mainas provinces in the Oriente were transferred out of the Quito audiencia. Well before Bolivar's attempt at liberation and integration through the plan of Gran Colombia; before the US even dreamed of replacing Spain as the royal family of Latin America; the Spanish had attempted a post pre-Columbian pre-Plan Colombia Plan Colombia.
The territory that was to become Ecuador was divided economically and ethnographically by coast, the Costa; by mountain, the Sierra, and to the east, the jungle, known as Oriente . The coast was inhabited by four major indigenous groups, the Esmeralda, the Manta, the Huancavilca, and the Puna. Hunters, fishers, traders, these groups traveled by sea along the coast of South America and also maintained an exchange of fish for salt with the inland, mountain groups.
The valleys and mountainsides inland were populated by the Pasto, the Caro, the Panzaleo, the Puruha, the Canari, and the Palta groups. Cultivation of maize, beans, potatoes, quinoa and fruits was widespread, with extensive systems of irrigation supporting agricultural production.
In the 15th century, northward expansion of the Inca empire from Cuzco was strongly contested in both the coast and the highlands. The resistance of the Canari and Cara peoples and all the groups on the coast around the Gulf of Guayaquil lasted for forty years, outlasting the 9th Inca, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui; his son, the 10th Inca, Topa who conquered Quito but not the coast; succumbing about 1500 to Topa's son, Huayna Capac.
The Inca introduced new crops to both mountain and coastal agriculture-- sweet potatoes, yucca, coca, peanuts. Land was proclaimed the property of the emperor; land was worked collectively by groups of families called allyu. Each family in the allyu also held small plots of land for their own consumption.
2. Dis-integration
The Spanish conquest was the destruction of the Inca empire's unique integration and autonomy of the region. Spanish rule was the economics of extraction and wages of extraction are economic dis-integration.
Lacking the apparent and accessible mineral wealth of other territories of the Inca, the indigenous people of Ecuador were spared the deadly mita exacted in servicing the silver, mercury, and tin mines of Peru and Bolivia. Instead the people of the Sierra labored in the workshops, obraje, chained to looms and producing the clothing of wool and cotton exported to Spain.
On the coast, Guayaquil was the center for shipping and trade, and although intra-American trade was prohibited by the Spanish mercantilist monarchy, Guayaquil served just such an extensive trade in hardwoods, textiles, and coca.
In the 18th century, the rise of British capitalism, the expansion of English textile manufacturing protected by its very own mercantilism, increased economic pressure on Spanish monarchy. Mother country and its mercantile satellite fell into extended and severe depression. It is estimated that textile production in Ecuador declined 75 percent between beginning and end of the century. The cities decayed, and the ruling elites were compelled to sell their jewelry an their haciendas to survive. In this the peninsulares and criollos of Spanish rule in Ecuador brought to themselves a taste of the life they had imposed on the indigenous peoples: production for export based, at best, on subsistence; production for export requiring always, and sooner or later, sub-subsistence.
3. Gran Plan Colombia
The Spanish royalty confronted its economics of dis-integration with re-formation of its agency of political authority, the Viceroyalty. In 1720, the Quito audiencia (sub-viceroyalty, or court) was transferred for the Viceroyalty of Peru to that of the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada, headquartered in Bogota, Colombia.
In this re-formation the Quito based elite was awarded jurisdictional autonomy over local political and military matters, basically the exploitation of the indigenous people.
The award carried a cost and the cost was the redistricting of the audiencia. The southern and eastern borders of the audiencia were reduced with territory transferred to other viceroyalties. This shrinkage by decree and degree continued into the 19th century. In 1802, Quijos and Mainas provinces in the Oriente were transferred out of the Quito audiencia. Well before Bolivar's attempt at liberation and integration through the plan of Gran Colombia; before the US even dreamed of replacing Spain as the royal family of Latin America; the Spanish had attempted a post pre-Columbian pre-Plan Colombia Plan Colombia.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
The Importance of Being Ecuador, 1
1. Cartels
Hard on the heels of OPEC's 1999 "3rd time's the charm" price increase, the US provided a spike of its own with its 2000 "Plan Colombia." No surprise there; what Saudi Arabia is to oil reserves, home to the largest and most profitable, the US is to guns and death squads. The US Congress authorized $1.3 billion to kit out the Colombian military with latest in counter-drug, counter- insurgency armaments. The size of the appropriation made it clear that there would be enough materiel to go around. There would be enough for the military and political officials to sell to the drug cartels thus offsetting any drop in their own income in the unlikely event the military actually interrupted the drug commerce; and enough to resupply the FARC and ELN militias who would tax the drug producers, accepting payment in weapons and ammunition. Who says the market is not the most perfect of mechanisms for the distribution of resources?
Of course the elements of the "plan" had existed prior to its designation as Colombian, prior to 2000, prior to 1999. More packaging than plan (everything under capital is more packaging than plan), more regional than Colombian, the United States ruling class had begun assembling the components after ceding control of the Panama Canal and Canal Zone to Panama. That, in conjunction with and under the cover of "drug interdiction," led the US to negotiate for and obtain "forward operating locations" (FOLs) from governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The FOLs were/are military bases from which the US military can conduct, and sub-contract, surveillance, interdiction, and insertion operations against.... against everything and anything. FOLs have been used to base air surveillance of the Andean countries; to intercept, and interrogate those attempting "unauthorized" immigration into the United States; for insertion of military advisors into conflict zones.
And since repackaging failed policies-- like reincorporating and renaming bankrupt companies, is essential to capitalism, indispensable for maintaining cash-flow-- each year of big bucks and little bangs brings forth pre-Plan Colombia and Plan Colombia repackaged as expanded regional initiatives, involving Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil (in 1999 Chavez began limiting and withdrawing Venezuela's participation US anti-drug schemes).
In1999, Ecuador agreed to a 10 year lease by the United States for the Eloy Alfaro airbase at Manta on the Pacific Coast. While the advertised function of the US at Manta is "aerial detection, monitoring, tracking, and control of illegal narcotics activity," US actions have included naval intercepts of ships suspected of carrying "illegal immigrants," and accumulating intelligence regarding guerrilla fighters and movements of indigenous people on the shared border of Colombia and Ecuador.
Under Plan Colombian, the Colombia military was to take the war to the FARC and ELN guerrillas, covering anti-left warfare as anti-drug intervention; securing the benefits of pipeline capitalism for... for the pipeline capitalists, of course. But the Colombian military, armed and transported by the US has failed to isolate, encircle, and destroy the guerrillas of the FARC.
The FARC military and political command has been able to secure and protect rear areas, establishing bases in the Colombian region of Putumayo.
Unable to penetrate and control the Putumayo, Colombian military actions have created waves of refugees, with estimates of up to 75,000 Colombians forced into and through the Putamayo to seek safety in Ecuador. The FARC itself has reportedly set up areas for medical treatment of its fighters on Ecuador's side of the border with Putamayo.
Putamayo, surprisingly enough, is the area in Colombia considered the most promising for future exploration, discovery, and development of oil reserves. Or maybe not so surpisingly, since Putumayo borders the Ecuadorian areas of Sucumbios and Orellana, the two regions responsible for Ecuador's daily 500,000 barrels oil production; the two areas explored, exploited, and fouled by Petroecuador and the international oil majors, ChevronTexaco, Occidental Petroleum, Encana: two areas that, prior to 1967, were inhabited by indigenous tribes that recognized neither Ecuador nor Colombia, much less a border between Ecuador and Colombia; two areas where the indigenous peoples have been brought "forward" from their "archaic" past of isolation to the thoroughly modern conditions of advanced extraction capitalism-- the conditions of immiseration, oppression, and abandonment.
Since 2001, the US has added yet added another component to the identity of the enemy to be targeted by Plan Pipeline-- that of the indigenous peoples. And in a burst of serendipity, or radical simplification, or co-branding, the US found the one word, that ultimate in packaging, to describe them-- the Marxist guerrillas, the cocaine growers and manufacturers, the indigenous peoples-- all, and all of them: Testifying before a US House of Representatives subcommittee, US undersecretary of state, Richard Armitage announced that Al Qaeda cells were operating near Ecuador's borders with Colombia and Peru. There was the word, the package that was the best and the worst of times, the apex and nadir of capital, the fear and greed and trembling all in one: terrorists.
Hard on the heels of OPEC's 1999 "3rd time's the charm" price increase, the US provided a spike of its own with its 2000 "Plan Colombia." No surprise there; what Saudi Arabia is to oil reserves, home to the largest and most profitable, the US is to guns and death squads. The US Congress authorized $1.3 billion to kit out the Colombian military with latest in counter-drug, counter- insurgency armaments. The size of the appropriation made it clear that there would be enough materiel to go around. There would be enough for the military and political officials to sell to the drug cartels thus offsetting any drop in their own income in the unlikely event the military actually interrupted the drug commerce; and enough to resupply the FARC and ELN militias who would tax the drug producers, accepting payment in weapons and ammunition. Who says the market is not the most perfect of mechanisms for the distribution of resources?
Of course the elements of the "plan" had existed prior to its designation as Colombian, prior to 2000, prior to 1999. More packaging than plan (everything under capital is more packaging than plan), more regional than Colombian, the United States ruling class had begun assembling the components after ceding control of the Panama Canal and Canal Zone to Panama. That, in conjunction with and under the cover of "drug interdiction," led the US to negotiate for and obtain "forward operating locations" (FOLs) from governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The FOLs were/are military bases from which the US military can conduct, and sub-contract, surveillance, interdiction, and insertion operations against.... against everything and anything. FOLs have been used to base air surveillance of the Andean countries; to intercept, and interrogate those attempting "unauthorized" immigration into the United States; for insertion of military advisors into conflict zones.
And since repackaging failed policies-- like reincorporating and renaming bankrupt companies, is essential to capitalism, indispensable for maintaining cash-flow-- each year of big bucks and little bangs brings forth pre-Plan Colombia and Plan Colombia repackaged as expanded regional initiatives, involving Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil (in 1999 Chavez began limiting and withdrawing Venezuela's participation US anti-drug schemes).
In1999, Ecuador agreed to a 10 year lease by the United States for the Eloy Alfaro airbase at Manta on the Pacific Coast. While the advertised function of the US at Manta is "aerial detection, monitoring, tracking, and control of illegal narcotics activity," US actions have included naval intercepts of ships suspected of carrying "illegal immigrants," and accumulating intelligence regarding guerrilla fighters and movements of indigenous people on the shared border of Colombia and Ecuador.
Under Plan Colombian, the Colombia military was to take the war to the FARC and ELN guerrillas, covering anti-left warfare as anti-drug intervention; securing the benefits of pipeline capitalism for... for the pipeline capitalists, of course. But the Colombian military, armed and transported by the US has failed to isolate, encircle, and destroy the guerrillas of the FARC.
The FARC military and political command has been able to secure and protect rear areas, establishing bases in the Colombian region of Putumayo.
Unable to penetrate and control the Putumayo, Colombian military actions have created waves of refugees, with estimates of up to 75,000 Colombians forced into and through the Putamayo to seek safety in Ecuador. The FARC itself has reportedly set up areas for medical treatment of its fighters on Ecuador's side of the border with Putamayo.
Putamayo, surprisingly enough, is the area in Colombia considered the most promising for future exploration, discovery, and development of oil reserves. Or maybe not so surpisingly, since Putumayo borders the Ecuadorian areas of Sucumbios and Orellana, the two regions responsible for Ecuador's daily 500,000 barrels oil production; the two areas explored, exploited, and fouled by Petroecuador and the international oil majors, ChevronTexaco, Occidental Petroleum, Encana: two areas that, prior to 1967, were inhabited by indigenous tribes that recognized neither Ecuador nor Colombia, much less a border between Ecuador and Colombia; two areas where the indigenous peoples have been brought "forward" from their "archaic" past of isolation to the thoroughly modern conditions of advanced extraction capitalism-- the conditions of immiseration, oppression, and abandonment.
Since 2001, the US has added yet added another component to the identity of the enemy to be targeted by Plan Pipeline-- that of the indigenous peoples. And in a burst of serendipity, or radical simplification, or co-branding, the US found the one word, that ultimate in packaging, to describe them-- the Marxist guerrillas, the cocaine growers and manufacturers, the indigenous peoples-- all, and all of them: Testifying before a US House of Representatives subcommittee, US undersecretary of state, Richard Armitage announced that Al Qaeda cells were operating near Ecuador's borders with Colombia and Peru. There was the word, the package that was the best and the worst of times, the apex and nadir of capital, the fear and greed and trembling all in one: terrorists.
2. Nation(s)
If historically the nation is the product, the symbol, and the package of the bourgeoisie's triumph over its predecessors; over the pre-conditions of its own existence; over feudal and near-feudal conditions of land and labor; of its unification of city and countryside into a home market-- if all that, then Ecuador was formed in the defeat, the strangulation of that revolutionary impulse of capital. Ecuador preserved in its very creation the power of those predecessors, those pre-conditions, that feudal and near-feudal relations of land and labor, that divergence between city and countryside, that insignificance of the home market.
And all these, these indexes of backwardness, these bundled incapacities, were/are but facets of capital's thoroughly modern incapability: the inability to emancipate the labor of the indigenous people. Capital's gleaming failure is the dirty secret to it tarnished success. And that success is the preservation of private property. In its preservation of the legacy of indentured labor, in its maintenance of the miserable, impoverished terms of labor, capital maintains its miserable, impoverished self.
From the 16th century, when half the indigenous population were confined to the slavery of the encomienda system through the late 20th century when 2/3 of the rural indigenous population served the hacienda economy, the huasipungo, by laboring 4 days of every week for the hacienda owners, through the 21st century where the national and international oil companies have destroyed the environment, the culture of the indigenous peoples, the oppression of the indigenous peoples has been the bedrock upon which church and state have rested.
In February 2004, the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights of the OAS ordered the government of Ecuador to protect Leonide Iza, leader of the Congress of Indigenous Natives of Ecuador, from threats of assault and assassination. Responded Ecuador's then Minister of Energy and Mines, "The OAS doesn't give orders here." So does capital preserve the haciendaist in its modern terms of expropriation.
S. Artesian, October 22, 2005.
address all comments to: sartesian@earthlink.net
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