Marina Sitrin and Dario Azzellini: People Power Post-Occupy

Published on Sep 16, 2014

The Laura Flanders show streams every Monday on Telesur English and at www.grittv.org. Marina Sitrin and Dario Azellini, authors of the book They Can’t Represent Us, discuss the roots of revolt in Latin America, Greece, and the US, and the change from a politics of representation to a politics of cooperation.

By Jeb Sprague 

The United States played a key role in the military coup in Bolivia, and in a direct way that has scarcely been acknowledged in accounts of the events that forced the country’s elected president, Evo Morales, to resign on November 10.

Commanders of Bolivia’s military and police helped plot the coup and guaranteed its success. They were previously educated for insurrection in the US government’s notorious School of the Americas and FBI training programs.

New York City: No to the U.S.-backed fascist coup in Bolivia! November 16, 2019

Photos by redguard

Thy Will Be Done: Brasil’s Holy War

To counter that threat to US interests, a recommendation was the export of a socially conservative counterpoint to left leaning Liberation Theology. At its core, the problem that liberation theology represented for the US centered on its endorsement of collective action to challenge structural inequality, something, which as Rockefeller implied, smacked of communism. The US found its antidote for liberation theology in Protestantism, exported to Latin America by North American missionaries as early as the late 19th century. However, the Protestantism that took root in Brazil was not the progressive social gospel of mainline denominations like Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or Methodists. This new variety of Protestantism was evangelical, in that it emphasized a deeply personal relationship with God and aggressive proselytization. In many cases, it was Pentecostal or, by the 1970s, Neopentecostal, meaning that it promised a transformative experience of the Holy Spirit, which would manifest itself in believers’ lives through “signs” like speaking in tongues and faith healing. Some Neopentecostals were also adherents of an emerging “prosperity theology,” promoted in the US by televangelists like Oral Roberts, which preaches that faithful Christians can expect not only spiritual salvation but material prosperity.

In contrast to liberation theology, evangelicals, Neopentecostals, and adherents of prosperity theology preach an intensely individualistic faith. Rather than challenging its adherents to fight against entrenched power structures and challenge injustice, Latin American evangelical Protestants teach that spiritual, physical, and financial salvation are accomplished individually. Liberation theology seeks to transform unjust structures; evangelical Protestantism promises to equip believers to succeed within those structures. God blesses the righteous; the poor simply haven’t believed/worked hard enough.

It isn’t difficult to see how this meritocratic theology squares with the interests of the imperialist power where it originated. What could possibly be less threatening for US hegemony in Latin America, in religious terms, than a theology that is, for all intents and purposes, a product of the American dream? Work/pray hard, be a good citizen/churchgoer, and America/God will take care of the rest. If things don’t work, well, you should have worked/prayed harder. The problem could not possibly be with the system itself. Above all, American evangelicalism is a denial of structural inequality in favor of individual responsibility – just like liberal and neoliberal economics.

Link

Bolivar Lived, Bolivar Lives, Bolivar Will Live!

Those on the Left declaring the counter-revolution in Bolivia as a fait accompli are sorely mistaken. The working-class is not weighed down by the heavy fatalism borne of decades of defeat in the West. Poor indigenous and unionised working-class Bolivians have shown determination to defend the gains won by the Pink Tide governments; even since before Morales' election in 2006, the labour unions and peasant organisations took a decisive role in ending the 'gas conflicts' in the early 2000s.

Thus, the most advanced Bolivians have already taken to the streets to oppose the coup by the Army generals. More than merely pouring out en-masse onto the streets, the workers' organisations in El Alto - the large, majority-indigenous city next door to Bolivia's governmental capital La Paz - have threatened to form "workers' and peasants' militias" if attacks by the outmatched police do not end. The CSUTCB peasants union has given the coup government an ultimatum that it disband in 48 hours or its members will mobilise to blockade the capital.

But these mass social movements are concerningly but a shadow of their former selves. With the advent of Morales' radically pro-poor government, the social organisations have been demobilised and co-opted by state institutions. Their ability to effectively determine the direction of state policy (and even selecting the government) is in doubt.

In short, the swift removal of President Morales has only opened a new phase in struggle, rather than ending the Bolivarian process at a stroke. Far from sending grave-flowers, we must activate to lend all support possible to the mass of Bolivians, as well as workers struggling in Chilé and elsewhere in the region.

There is already an Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, whose members are Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Suriname, Guyana, Peru and Venezuela, and which may well deal with the issue of the fire. Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru have already called for a meeting, but apparently remain solemnly ignored by a Brazil seeking refuge in Trump. 

There is no solution for the Amazon that does not undergo a change in the Brazilian economic matrix. If the world expects us to be a big farm, and if we kneel to the world, it is the farm that will advance – even over the forest. Either Brazil turns first of all to itself and its people, or the agricultural frontier will continue to advance. This is the theme Macron, generals, “moderates”, Bolsonaro and Trump don’t want bring up – because they are all associates in the Brazilian dependency.