By Michael Fox
From Truthout
May 8, 2011
Review of Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America by Ben Dangl (AK Press, 2010)
The
planet is on fire. It comes from above, as bombs come crashing toward
Libya in Obama’s new military exploit. And it comes from below, as
people from Cairo to Madison stand up to for their rights against
dictators and hard-line politicians. Not for decades have we seen such a
global uprising from below. Not for decades, except for perhaps in
Latin America, where, over the last thirteen years, social movements
have lifted leftist presidents to power across the region. These leaders
have heralded in unprecedented change, and they have been a beacon of
hope during one of the darkest periods in U.S. history, with its growing
military-industrial complex, an endless war on terror and a
conservative crackdown at home.
Then came the financial meltdown
and the “change” we could believe in. And we, too, believed that we were
following down the road of our Latin American brothers and sisters,
that Obama would lead us to a more just society, by and for the people
and not Wall Street.
Then something happened. As the signs read in Wisconsin, the “sleeping giant has awoken.”
We
realized that Obama can’t do it for us. We awoke to the fact that even
with a “leftist” in power, we must stay in the streets and continue to
organize. We awoke to the essential thing that movements across Latin
America learned years ago when faced with progressive governments who
were supposed to represent their interests and didn’t always follow
through. We awoke to “the dance.”
The what?
“The
dance between social movements and states,” writes Benjamin Dangl,
longtime journalist covering Latin America and the editor of “Upside
Down World” and “Toward Freedom.” This relationship is the focus of his
new book, Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America.
The book is a breath of fresh air in these challenging times. Dangl
lays before us the complicated relationships between social movements
and states in Latin America’s most progressive countries and gives us
plenty to learn from. He takes us deep into the heart of Bolivia,
Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil and Paraguay, heralding
the historic struggles of the social movements that in nearly every case
helped to carry a leftist president to power. But Dangl’s book is as
much about the present as the past. He dissects the complicated dance
before us, and he’s not going to sugarcoat it. In his introduction,
Dangl writes:
In some cases,
governments in these countries brought to power by movements and social
demands have completely turned their backs on movements, ignoring their
proposals and demands. Others unleashed outright wars on movements,
leading to harsh crackdowns on rights to assemble and protest. Some
governments have worked closely with movements to develop and implement
political and economic policies together, while others have sought to
demobilize or co-opt movements by subsuming them into the government
bureaucracy through coveted jobs and threats of exclusion….
Ecuador
On
September 30, 2010, roughly 1,000 Ecuadoran police officers rebelled,
taking to the streets, blocking intersections, occupying Congress and
holding President Rafael Correa hostage for more than ten hours. “It is a
coup attempt led by the opposition and certain sections of the armed
forces and the police,” said Correa. He was soon rescued and the
rebellion was put down, but many questions remained.
Solidarity
activists in the United States went searching for answers. After the
fact, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE)
had denied the existence of the coup, and the political alliance of
indigenous movements, Pachakutik, had actually called for Correa to step
down. Had the indigenous movements turned to the right? Why were they
turning against their progressive president?
It’s a shame Dangl’s book wasn’t out yet.
One
of the more difficult relationships between the government and the
social movements is found in Ecuador. There, CONAIE helped carry Correa
to victory in late 2006. As Dangl highlights, Correa has enacted some
“progressive” policies, like the closure of the US military base in
Manta, the announcement that Ecuador would refuse to pay nearly $10
billion in international debt and the convoking of a constitutional
assembly. But indigenous movements were largely sidelined during the
constituent process. Correa has continued oil extraction on indigenous
land. In response to indigenous protests, he has responded with brutal
repression.
“By pushing CONAIE out of the political debate and
calling on police repression to crack down on their dissent, Correa has
worked to undermine the indigenous movement,” writes Dangl. In response,
CONAIE broke ties with the government in May 2008.
“Correa has assumed the traditional neoliberal posture of the rightist oligarchy,” CONAIE said in a statement.
Dancing
Ecuador
is one of the extreme cases. Elsewhere, movements and governments have
danced almost symbiotically. In Bolivia, the country’s “dynamic” social
movements have helped President Evo Morales’ party, Movement Toward
Socialism (MAS) push through the new constitution and several
progressive reforms that would have been impossible otherwise.
Nevertheless, as Dangl points out, this has had a “domesticating” effect
on the movements and their activists.
In Venezuela, under
President Hugo Chavez, the opportunity for alternatives and grassroots
organizing has been opened like never before. Movements understand they
must both support the government and push for their demands, but there
has also been a complicated blurring of the lines between the movements
and the state, “particularly … during electoral campaigns and
referendums,” writes Dangl.
In Argentina, the late President
Nestor Kirchner helped to stabilize the economic crisis and opened the
way to hold torturers responsible for their crimes under the
dictatorship. But he also either isolated or co-opted social movements,
pulling the rug out from under the radical organizing which had taken
the country by storm immediately following the December 2001 crisis.
In
Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil, formerly radical left-wing parties and
candidates embraced coalitions or shifted to the center in order to
appeal to a larger electoral base. The result has been moderate social
policies once in office, and, in the case of Paraguay and Brazil, a
complete reversal of the promise of agrarian reform – an issue that
Dangl underscores with the relationship between presidents Fernando Lugo
of Paraguay and Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva of Brazil and each
country’s landless movement.
“Agrarian reform doesn’t happen in
the government ministries. It happens in the streets, in the plazas; it
happens with land occupations,” says Paraguayan land activist Pedro
Caballero in the opening section of the book. Whether he is taking us
along to an emblematic community in Paraguay fighting for its survival
against the Brazilian soy farmers next door, or to a march 100,000
people strong in Bolivia in support of the passage of the new
constitution, Dangl is a storyteller, masterfully describing the
necessary reality that wherever you have an even a pseudo-leftist
government, grassroots movements must decide how to support it and
demand their rights while also defending their autonomy.
Pushing the Government
“With
a mobilized public, it matters less what president is in office, as the
president will have to answer to the power of the movements,” writes
Dangl.
Perhaps above all else, this is what “Dancing with
Dynamite” is all about: grassroots pressure from below – something more
important than ever now in the United States, as right-wing politicians
push for legislation that will slash public spending and rip away our
most fundamental rights.
Now, just as in Wisconsin, people across
the United States are starting to respond, and Dangl makes the
connection in the book’s final chapter, “South America and the United
States: Finding Common Ground in Crisis.” Dangl asks: “What can US
activists facing economic crisis learn from South America’s social
movements?”
Plenty. Carrying us from Chicago to Detroit and
Florida, Dangl highlights several recent experiences in the United
States that have gained inspiration from southern movements such as
“worker occupations and cooperatives in Argentina, the fight for access
to water in Bolivia, and the landless struggle in Brazil.”
Especially
in these difficult times of crisis, after two years of a lukewarm Obama
presidency, as conservatives are cracking down and the people are
waking up, it’s time to listen, learn, organize and act.
“Obama
energized a great many people,” Noam Chomsky explains in a quote in
“Dancing with Dynamite.” “If they fade away, or simply take
instructions, we can expect little from his administration. If they
become organized and active, and undertake to be independent voices in
policy formation and implementation, a great deal can be achieved – as
in the past, and elsewhere today, notably South America.”
“Dancing
with Dynamite” is a roadmap, a call to action to break the simplistic
dualities imposed by society and place our destinies into our own hands.
As Dangl writes prophetically, “How movements dance with political
parties, aspiring and incumbent presidents, and the government itself
will decide the future of the planet.”
It’s time to get moving.
