El Capitalismo Narco
Gracias a los editores y voluntarios asociados al proyecto Upside Down World, mi articulo “Drug War Capitalism” ya esta disponible en castellano. Aquí esta la version publicada en Upside Down World en Español, aquí la version publicada por Agencia SubVersiones en México DF, y aquí la version publicada por ALAI desde Quito, Ecuador.
El Capitalismo Narco
Dawn Paley sondea por debajo de la superficie de la guerra contra las drogas en Colombia y México. Explora los mecanismos empleados, cuantifica la devastación humana y económica, analiza las posibles razones por las que la guerra continúa además de sugerir otras áreas de investigación.
Tanto en los Estados Unidos como en Canadá ha habido esfuerzos sostenidos de grupos de base para destacar las injustas encarcelaciones en masa y la criminalización de la gente pobre, sobretodo la gente pobre de color, en cuanto a detenciones relacionadas con drogas. Pero se ha encontrado muy poco análisis sobre las razones detrás de los mecanismos de esta guerra y el impacto económico que tiene sobre México y más allá.
Incluso antes de que la retirada de Irak o Afganistán se hubiera alcanzado, los Estados Unidos ya estaban involucrados en una serie de conflictos desde la frontera norte de México hasta Perú. Tanto los gobiernos como los medios de comunicación la han catalogada como la “Guerra contra las drogas.” Es importante examinar como la creciente “Guerra contra las drogas” se conecta con la expansión de empresas transnacionales que toman control de mercados, obreros y recursos naturales.
En Honduras cuatro indígenas fueron asesinados a balazos en mayo, cuando la policía hondureña abrió fuego desde un helicóptero del Departamento de Estado estadounidense, todo bajo la supervisión de agentes uniformados de Estados Unidos. En México con la orientación de Estados Unidos, Canadá, Israel y Colombia, la policía y el ejército han sido transformados.
En Colombia la guerra ha durado ya cuatro décadas y se han gastado billones de dólares estadounidenses, pero ahora se está calificando como lucha contra el crimen. Durante la década de los 1980s el Estado colombiano se convirtió en un estado paramilitarizado, en un proceso que según el historiador German Alfonso Palacio Castañeda”se manifiesta con amenazas, atentados y asesinatos selectivos y masacres colectivas de funcionarios gubernamentales (principalmente pero no exclusivamente de la izquierda), y de líderes políticos populares, obreros, campesinos, profesores, activistas de derechos humanos y miembros de organizaciones no gubernamentales.”
En la forma de financiación para programas antinarcóticos, la asistencia de EE.UU. en Colombia resultó en el fortalecimiento de grupos paramilitares y de policías no oficiales, los cuales según informes patrullaban junto al ejército de Colombia y se vieron involucrados en la gran mayoría de masacres y desplazamientos forzados en el país.
“Decir que la guerra contra las drogas ha fracasado es no entender algo,” comentó Noam Chomsky, en un discurso en el mes de mayo. “Uno tiene que preguntarse qué está en la mente de los planeadores ante tanta evidencia de que no funciona lo que dicen que están intentando lograr. ¿Cuáles son las intenciones probables?”(1)
Los comentarios de Chomsky apuntan hacia un área urgente de investigación para los y las activistas y periodistas que desean entender las guerras actuales contra las drogas. Cada vez es más claro que hay mucho trabajo por hacer para reconstruir juntos los motivos de la militarización liderada por Estados Unidos en las Américas.
Una reconsideración de la llamada guerra contra las drogas requiere entre otras cosas una evaluación de la forma en que ha favorecido la expansión de la inversión extranjera directa y de las industrias extractivas en Colombia, México y Centroamérica.
La guerra, cuando los golpes no bastan
“Así es como se sentía el inicio del neoliberalismo,” dijo Raquel Gutiérrez, reflexionando sobre lo que es tratar de entender la guerra en curso en México. Ahora catedrática de la Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Raquel era militante clandestina en Bolivia a mediados los años 80, cuando las primeras políticas neoliberales tuvieron efecto en aquel país, creando una pauperización de la clase obrera. Han pasado 10 años desde que regresó a México.
Raquel se detiene y da una pitada a su cigarrillo, como si tratara de recordar un idioma que ha olvidado. No viene. Luego me pregunta si he leído el libro de Naomi Klein La doctrina del shock. Asiento con la cabeza. Silencio. “La cosa es que en México, los choques no funcionaron,” dice ella. (more…)
Drug War Capitalism
Folks,
Drug War Capitalism is the main research piece I have been working on over the past few months. Click here to read the PDF version.
Dawn Paley probes beneath the surface of the drug war in Colombia and Mexico. She explores the mechanisms employed, reports on the economic and human devastation, analyzes the possible reasons for continuing the war and suggests further areas of inquiry. PDF of an extended edition for the web.
In both the United States and Canada there have been sustained grassroots efforts to spotlight the unjust mass incarceration and criminalization of poor people, and especially poor people of color, for drug-related arrests. But there has been too little analysis about the reasons behind and mechanisms of this war, and its economic impact on Mexico and beyond.
Even before a withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan has been achieved, the United States has become involved in a series of intensifying conflicts taking place from Mexico’s north border through Peru. Governments and mainstream media label it a “war on drugs.” It is important to examine how the expanding “war on drugs” connects to the expansion of transnational corporate control over markets, labor and natural resources.
In Honduras, four Indigenous people were shot and killed in May, when Honduran forces opened fire from a U.S. State Department helicopter, all under the supervision of uniformed U.S. agents. In Mexico — under the guidance of the United States, Canada, Israel and Colombia — the police and army are being transformed.
In Colombia, the war has gone on for decades and involved billions of U.S. dollars, but is being rebranded as a fight against crime. Through the 1980s, the Colombian state became increasingly paramilitarized, a process which “manifested itself as threats, bombings, and selective assassinations or collective massacres of government officials (principally but not exclusively from the left), and of popular political leaders, workers, peasants, professors, human rights activists, and members of nongovernmental organziations.”
U.S. assistance to Colombia in the form of anti-narcotics program funding resulted in the strengthening of paramilitary and unofficial police groups, reported to have patrolled alongside the Colombian Army and involved in the vast majority of massacres and forced displacements in the country.
“Saying that the drug war has failed is to not understand something,” remarked Noam Chomsky in a speech this May. “One must ask oneself what is it that the planners have in mind given the amount of evidence that what they are trying to achieve doesn’t work. What are the probable intentions?”(1)
Chomsky’s comments point to an urgent area of research for activists and journalists wishing to understand today’s drug wars. It is increasingly clear that there is more work to be done in order to properly piece together the reasons for U.S.-led militarization in the Americas. (more…)
Security Conference Vows to Push Drug War into Central America
Here’s a piece I did today for Upside Down World on what I consider to be a crucial event in Central America.
Published on Upside Down World, June 23, 2011.
This past week was a busy one for the masters of war in Central America.
Presidents and bankers gathered at a high profile meeting on the drug war in Antigua Guatemala from June 21-23, producing a familiar sounding series of commitments to fight organized crime in Central America. The event was rounded out with pledges of almost two billion dollars in foreign aid and loans, much of which will go towards intelligence gathering and training of police forces.
The International Conference in Support of the Central America Security Strategy brought together Central American heads of state, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, Mexico’s Felipe Calderon, and representatives from more than fifty countries, including Israel, Spain, Canada, and South Korea. Also present was Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), as well as representatives from the World Bank, the Organization of American States, the United Nations, and the European Union.
During Wednesday’s proceedings, Clinton clarified the kind of strategy that will be pursued in Central America. “We know from the work that the United States has supported in Colombia and now in Mexico that good leadership, proactive investments, and committed partnerships can turn the tide,” she said.1 (more…)
Towards Responsible Global Journalism
Hey folks,
Long time no updates… Been a whirlwind of activity over the past month or so. Anyways, to make up for it, I thought I would post a PDF of my thesis, which I completed as a requirement as part of the Master of Journalism program at UBC. I’ve been getting multiple requests for it, and I thought I might as well put it out there before too much water goes under the bridge. So, here it is.
Comments and feedback would be much appreciated, find my email in the “about” section of this website.
Interview on CBC’s Dispatches about Canadian Snowbirds in Honduras
Dear readers,
I write from San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, where I’m finishing up a few loose ends and preparing a new project. A couple of days before I left Vancouver, I got an unexpected call from a producer at CBC Radio’s Dispatches. In what he said was possibly “record time” for the CBC, we organized an in-studio interview between myself and Rick MacInnes -Rae for the next morning. Last week Thursday, this story went on air.
At this link, you can listen to an extended web version of my interview with Rick, who I’ve got to say may be the best interviewer I’ve ever had the chance to speak with.
I’ll be updating a whole lot more from down here once I get settled in!
Snowbirds Gone Wild! Canadian retirees and locals clash in Honduras
This is the last piece (other than my thesis, which I have yet to publish) from my trip to Honduras in December 2009. I’m really happy with it… Enjoy! Quick update, this story got picked up by CBC radio’s Dispatches program, more information here.
I’m sitting with the cab driver who has brought me to the end of a long gravel road, near the edge of Trujillo, a small town on the north coast of Honduras. He’s flipping through a newspaper, telling me in halting English that he’s saving up to buy an excavator. Anyone with an excavator has work, he says. I hear the sound of four-wheeled all-terrain-vehicles in the distance, humming as they near. In a cloud of dust, Cathy Bernier appears at the top of the hill, followed on another ATV by her two daughters. All of them are here for a vacation from a freezing Alberta December. Bernier, who works as a client-relations manager with the development, has agreed to take me on a tour of Campa Vista, a housing project for retired Canadians perched above the Caribbean Sea.
With a wave from a security guard tuning his radio in a tiny booth, we pass under the front gate, a cement arch built over a dusty gravel road. From the back of Bernier’s speeding ATV, her blonde hair blowing in my face, I can see that the route we’re on is cut through what was quite recently a thick jungle. Along one side, a high wall of earth shades the road, and on the other, a steep ditch drops away toward the ocean. Peeling around a corner, the road forks. We hang right, and Bernier slows to a stop in front of an imposing house with a pool set in the front patio. Within a few months, this house will be occupied by a 70-year-old rugby player from Edmonton—one of this gated village’s first residents. Below us, dense jungle sprawls down the mountain toward the water, interrupted only by the newly built roads, faint outlines of staked-out lots, and high power lines.
Once completed, as promised in the promotional materials, Campa Vista (“Country View” in English) will afford a sunny, secure perch for Canadian snowbirds. The development’s website boasts of a “Euro-Mediterranean-style private gated community, with each property possessing its own unique and outstanding view.” (more…)
U.S. ‘Democracy Promotion’ in Honduras
Here’s my latest, for the North American Congress on Latin America.
September 30, 2010
A new round of democracy promotion projects funded by the United States in Honduras could prove to be a crucial reinforcement of the political project proposed by Honduran coup backers and the country’s business elite.
USAID, based its latest $2 million disbursement to Honduras, announced in July 2010, on the policy goals set out in a document called the Country Plan (Plan de País), a set of policies adopted in January, 2010 during the de facto presidency of Roberto Micheletti Bain.
“The Plan was developed by the Ministry of Planning, being closely supervised by the bankers, the National Association of Industrialists (ANDI), federations and chambers of commerce and NGOs, excluding labor and peasant organizations,” wrote Honduran researcher David Antonio Vivar Reyes in an email to NACLA. The Country Plan makes policy proposals that stretch over the next seven periods of government in Honduras, or until 2038. (more…)
The Canada-Colombia Oil and Gas Connection, Canada and Plan Mexico, and the Toronto Declaration
Hey folks,
I figured I might as well share a couple of pieces I’ve worked on over the past little while.
First, my testimony before the Standing Committee on International Trade on the Canada Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The deal has passed now, and many witnesses including Indigenous Colombians and Afro-Colombians were never given the opportunity to speak. I spoke mostly about Calgary based oil and gas companies and their connection to the politicos pushing the deal. After I gave the testimony, riot police broke up a strike in the south of Colombia, and I adapted it to write this piece. It is an absolute shame that the Canadian government has signed a deal with the Uribe/Santos regime that will likely enable the U.S. government to pass a similar agreement, which will mean more Colombians murdered, disappeared, tortured and displaced for profit.
Second, a talk I gave yesterday evening about Canada’s evolving relationship to Mexico. It touches on Canada’s hypocrisy regarding visas for Mexicans, Felipe Calderón’s recent meetings with Stephen Harper, mining, biofuels, and climate change policy, as well as resistance and our hopes for survival.
Finally, I wrote a quick analysis piece on the Toronto Declaration, the final document of the G-20. If you second guessed why folks were in the streets to resist the G-20, have a look.
The Honduran Business Elite One Year After the Coup
Here’s a piece I just completed for the North American Congress on Latin America.
The first anniversary of the June 28, 2009 military coup in Honduras might just slide under the international radar, timed as it is right after the Honduran national team kicks off at the World Cup.
The Honduran business community could hardly have planned it better themselves.
Take Rafael Ferrari, for example. He is one of the owners of the country’s best professional soccer team, Club Olimpia Deportiva, a team that has contributed more players than any other to the national soccer team, Selección de Honduras, and thus closely identified with the players competing for Honduras’s honor in the World Cup competition. Ferrari also owns nine television stations and 11 radio stations, as well as various U.S. fast food chains, like Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins. These days, he’s on center stage as the president of the Honduran Football Federation. (more…)
Unfinished business: Sweatshops, oligarchs and the fear of a new constitution in Honduras
My latest, in Briarpatch’s May/June 2010 edition.
By Dawn Paley
Briarpatch Magazine
May/June 2010
For the last 10 years, Juana López Nuñez (not her real name) has spent most of her waking hours making T-shirts for the Canadian company Gildan Activewear at the company’s San Miguel factory in Honduras.
Today, at age 44, she has little use of her arms and experiences constant pain in her shoulders, neck and hands. She takes painkillers throughout the day, and has had one surgery, which didn’t ease the chronic tendonitis that keeps her up at night.
“I thought that when I started to work for a company, it would make life better. I didn’t realize that I was going to get injured,” she says, holding back tears. López is a single mother of five children, including a 10-year-old daughter who helps her with housework. She makes the equivalent of $47.50 a week.
López isn’t the only Gildan employee who is facing troubles at the workplace. “The others don’t want to talk. They are scared and they don’t say anything,” said López. “They are scared to talk to the management because they think they will get fired or get a lower grade of pay,” she said.
Maquila (sweatshop) workers are one segment of the Honduran population whose already difficult lives have gotten more so since the military coup last year. (more…)
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