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SPRING 2003

A New Path forGlobalizationBy Amy Lerman

In his public talk at UC Berkeley on April 3, 2003Professor David Bonior outlined his idea for a NorthAmerican Parliamentary Union (NAPU) and

discussed why he believes such a body is needed.“The North American Parliamentary Union

should be a democratic structure which w i l lenfranchise citizens, farmers, laborers, smallbusiness people and environmentalists in the NAFTAcountries as well as Central America. It will broaden theplayers and the playing field so that our best democraticvalues will be incorporated into our social, economicand political decisions,” said Bonior.

Describing the history of U.S. relations with itsneighbors — its southern neighbors in particular — as“episodic,” Bonior asserted the need for a morepermanent, on-going dialogue. Such a dialogue wouldseek to tackle the hard issues of immigration andeconomic development that have historically gonelargely ignored in trinational debate. He went on todraw parallels between the needs of NAFTA membersand the benefits of a European Union type model,arguing that the EU model is one that should beemulated. In so doing, Bonior asserted, the fundamentalflaws of NAFTA might finally be addressed.

Bonior cited President Vicente Fox of Mexico asa strong advocate for turning NAFTA into a EuropeanUn i o n t y p e co m m o n m a r ke t m o d e l . Hu m a ndevelopment and prosperity for all would be the centraltenets of the new model, rather than the unfettered freetrade that is the foundation of the current NAFTA plan.Bonior pointed out that, in the EU, one third of the total

CENTER FOR

Latin American Studies

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U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A , B E R K E L E Y

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A New Path for Globalization

Signs of Democracy: Mexico’s New Beginning

Brazil: An Economy in Transition

The Zero Hunger Project in Brazil

Demolishing Urban Hills: Establishment of a New Identity in Rio de Janeiro

Change Will Come With Politics, Not With Policies

Lucho Garzón Takes a Critical Look at the Uribe Government

The North American Parliamentary Union

The Past, Present and Future of the Venezuelan Crisis

SPECIAL REPORT:The Politics of Petroleum

Politics, Race and Historical Memory in Colombia’s Coffee Region

This issue of the Center for Latin AmericanStudies (CLAS) Newsletter highlights anactive spring 2003 semester that ranged

from pubic events on contemporaryU.S.–Mexico relations to research on the urbanhistory of Rio de Janeiro. Here we feature thecontributions of five CLAS visiting professors:David E. Bonior, Antonio Barros de Castro,Lorenzo Meyer, Sandy Tolan and NancyAppelbaum.

David E. Bonior, University Professor ofLabor Studies at Wayne State University, was thesecond ranking Democrat in the U.S. House ofRepresentatives from 1991 to 2002. As part ofthe U.S.–Mexico Futures Forum, he unveiled anew policy proposal for a North AmericanParliamentary Union. He also taught a seminaron the role of the U.S. Congress in CentralAmerica in the 1980’s and on trade in the 1990’s.

Antonio Barros de Castro, a professorof economics at the Federal University of Rio deJaneiro and former director of the DevelopmentBank in Brazil, spoke on the economic

challenges for the new government in Brazil andtaught a seminar on “Brazil in Transition.”

Lorenzo Meyer, a professor of history atthe Colegio de México, spoke on “TheConsolidation of Mexico’s New Regime: TheBeginning” and gave a course on “The U.S. andMexico: Conflicting Agendas — A View of thePresent From a Historical Perspective.”

Sandy Tolan, an independent journalist,film maker and radio producer, taught a courseon the “Politics of Petroleum” jointly sponsoredby CLAS and the Graduate School of Journalismand featured in this newsletter.

Finally, Nancy Appelbaum, a historianat SUNY Binghamton, gave a seminar on “Race,Region and Nation: Colombia in ComparativeLatin American Context,” jointly sponsored bythe Department of History and theInternational and Area Studies program.

These talks and courses were part of avibrant spring program whose highlights wefeature in these pages.

Harley Shaiken

Letter from the ChairIn

side

CL

AS

ChairHarley Shaiken

Vice ChairTeresa Stojkov

Managing EditorJean Spencer

Design and LayoutGeof Oppenheimer

PhotographyDaffodil Altan

AP-World-Wide PhotoNancy Appelbaum

Brazilian Ministry ofFood Security

EmbraturÁngel González

Luis Carlos MonterrosaGeof Oppenheimer

Dionicia RamosOlga R. Rodríguez

Nancy Scheper-Hughes

ContributingWriters

Daffodil AltanStephanie Ballenger

David BoniorAna Campoy

Raymond ConstantinoRené Davids

Ángel GonzálezGisele Henriques

Amy LermanRaquel Moreno-

PeñarandaOlga R. Rodríquez

Sandy Tolan

The CLAS Newsletteris published three times

a year by the Centerfor Latin American

Studies at UC Berkeley.

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Front cover photos:The Mexican National

Congress, the U.S.Capitol Building and

the Canadian Houses of Parliament.

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Lorenzo Meyer, one of Mexico’s mostrespected academics, spoke at UC Berkeleyon March 5, 2003 on the consolidation of

Mexican democracy. Meyer has made it his life’swork to bring history directly to the forefront ofevery discussion. “In Mexico everything ischarged with history, everything, everydiscourse, from the left to the right, everything.It is a great political weapon because history hasbeen continually redistributed among Mexicansby the conquerors of the moment.” One of theproblems now, according to Meyer, is that “Foxis likeable, but he is extremely ignorant aboutthe history of Mexico and its complexity.”

It is obvious from the way Meyer leansin towards his audience that he loves to tell astory. His English is musical, dissonant and evenhigh pitched when he hits the irony in hisstories. They are stories that touch, after all, onthe marrow of Mexico’s history: its long andtroubled road to democracy.

According to Meyer, the consolidationof democracy, symbolized by Vicente Fox’selection in 2000, is not, like in the United States,the result of an inevitable historical trend, butrather an attempt to overcome a tradition ofauthoritarianism inherited from the Conquest.

Until 2000, “Mexican political life hasbeen the antithesis of democracy,” Meyer said.Even though democratic revolutions occurred atkey points in Mexican history — the War ofIndependence and the Mexican Revolution, forexample — they all ended in long-lastingauthoritarian regimes. Today, however, Meyerbelieves that Mexican civil society is strongenough to support democracy, even in the midstof an economic crisis.

“You can smell it in Mexico City. Thereare many, many organizations — not veryefficient ones,” he said tongue in cheek, “butthere they are; it is a civil society. There is a freepress, really, really a free press. The governmentcannot control the press. So a civil society thatisn’t alive, say, in the Soviet Union, is very much

alive in Mexico, and this is an integral part of ademocratic society,” he said.

Still, the difficulty in overcoming atradition of authoritarianism inherited from theConquest and the U.S.’s his tor ica l lyschizophrenic treatment of Mexico threatens tooverride the country’s promise for democracy.

“The year Fox came into power theMexican economy just stopped because the U.S.economy started behaving peculiarly,” saidMeyer. “We have not grown. How do we address

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Signs of Democracy:Mexico’s New BeginningBy Daffodil Altan


An indigenouswoman from Chiapascasts her vote duringthe 1999 election.

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Over the years Brazil’s economy has beenpraised for both i ts remarkableperformance and its disastrous stagnation.

According to Professor Barros de Castro, thevolatility of this economy in transition makes ita perfect candidate for collapse. In his presentationat the Center for Latin American Studies onApril 23, 2003, he surveyed Brazil’s economichistory and offered an interesting liaisonbetween the past and the present, suggesting thattipping the equilibrium between economicsuccess and disaster is one of the most importantchallenges for the Lula administration.

From the mid 1930’s to the early 1980’sBrazil followed a state-led economic approach.

The heavy hand of government in economicplanning established a sense of continuitywhich, according to Barros de Castro, remainsone of Brazil’s most persistent traits. During theyears of import substitution policies, Brazilexperienced higher growth rates than everbefore. In the 1970’s, a time known as the goldendecade, Brazilian industry tripled in size. Thisinvestment in industry, the result of years ofimport substitution industrialization, sought toprepare the Brazilian economy for growth.Nothing seemed to be holding Brazil back frombecoming an economic powerhouse.However stagnation set in, and hopes foreconomic stability and security dwindled.

In response to the stagnation ofthe 1980’s, analysts recommendedstructural reforms and the opening ofthe economy. The expectation was thatthrough reform, Brazil would find itsspecialization thereby tapping into theworld market and growing from trade.But that elusive dream did not materialize.Instead of specializing, like Chile andMexico, Brazilian industry kept up itsprevious diversified production. Inaddition, industry, although successfulin production, was falling behind inmarketing. Brazil was capable ofproducing quality goods cheaply, butunable to sell the goods internationallybecause it lacked efficient marketingcapabilities. According to Barros deCastro, if marketing had been improved,Brazil’s ability to produce could havepowered its growth. Instead, Brazil’shopes for export-led growth diminished.Without being able to export, the economysuccumbed to augmenting foreign debt,large deficits and high interest rates. Theeconomy seemed to be coming to a halt,and Brazil became the perfect candidatefor collapse.

In painting this dim picture,Barros de Castro emphasized that therewere no certainties for the economy, andas a result, Brazil was both ready to grow

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Brazil: An Economy inTransition By Gisele Henriques


People walk by a Lulacampaign poster in

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Eliminating hunger is Brazilian PresidentLuiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s top priority.Walter Belik, coordinator of Fome Zero

(the Zero Hunger Project), spoke about thepresident’s new program to reduce hunger andpoverty that was unveiled this January. The projectwas developed by Lula’s non-profit InstitutoCidadania and is the result of a year of inputfrom various stakeholders including researchtanks, universities, unions, grassrootsorganizations, public forums and specialists onfood security. Resembling a plan formerPresident Cardosa deferred in the mid 1990’sdue to high economic inflation, this programaims to reduce hunger among the 44 millionpoor Brazilians who make up approximatelyone fourth of the population. It is budgeted at$4 billion.

According to World Food Summitstatistics, poverty and hunger have notdecreased in Brazil. Unlike the rural famine thatplagues India and some African countries,Brazil’s famine is not related to food shortage.

Ironically, Brazil is a major food producer andexporter. A fourth of the population suffersfrom hunger because the poor cannot afford tobuy the food that is stocked on supermarketshelves. Contrary to popular notions, ruralhunger in Brazil is decreasing while urbanhunger is increasing. In fact, 50 percent ofBrazil’s hunger is located in small to mediumsize cities, and another 30 percent is located innortheastern Brazil, a region known fordevastating drought. Belik explained that as thepoor migrate from rural to urban areas, manyre locate to minor c i t i e s tha t a re not a seconomically vibrant as Rio de Janeiro or SãoPaulo. These smaller cities lack the jobs tosupport the poor.

Fome Zero addresses the hungerproblem through an array of policy prescriptionsat the federal, state and local level. Federalstructural changes include increasingemployment and food production, acceleratingland reform measures, providing incentives tolow-income farmers and creating scholarships

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The Zero Hunger Project inBrazilBy Raymond Constantino


Scenes fromGuaribas andAcauan, the first twovillages to benefitfrom Fome Zero.

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Until the beginning of the seventeenth cen-tury, most Portuguese settlements inBrazil were situated on top of easily

defensible hills from which access routes couldbe controlled. Rio was settled in 1567 on Morrodo Castelo (Castle Hill) situated at the edge ofthe magnificent Guanabara Bay, in an areasurrounded by hardwood forests and goodarable landf o r t h ecultivationo f s u g a rcane. Twoother hillscon t ro l l e dby religiousorders and af o u r t htopped by afortress soondemarcatedthe areaw i t h i nwhich thec o l o n i a lse t t l ementdeveloped.(fig.1)

During thelate nine-teenth cen-tury, Brazilb e c a m eincreasingly integrated into the global economythrough the export of primary commoditieslike coffee beans and latex and the import ofmanufactured goods. Mounting internal migra-tion from the countryside to the urban centers,the abolition of slavery in 1888 and foreignimmigration contributed to its rapid urbaniza-tion (Godfrey, 25).

Nestled between a sensationally beautifuloceanfront and abruptly rising green hills, Riode Janeiro today appears to merge into its

surroundings with voluptuous ease. Yet much ofwhat seems natural has been artificiallyconstructed. Only by filling in the originalswamps, expanding the shoreline, cuttingtunnels and leveling some of the hills could thecity grow in such an extraordinary setting and ata rate that, at the beginning of the twentiethcentury, was matched by few other cities in the

world.Some of the

land transfor-mations s u c ha s tunnelsor retainingwalls are part ofthe Cariocas’(the namegiven to Rio’scitizens) every-day scene.Others such asland reclamationo r t h edemolition ofurban hills havebeen obscuredby the city’ss u b s e q u e n tgrowth. Theseprojects werepart of a largerstrategy totransform thelandscape of

Rio de Janeiro into the tourist, commercial andfinancial capital of South America. City author-ities dreamed of creating a metropolis thatwould equal or surpass other South Americancapitals such as Montevideo and Buenos Airesand even European cities such as Paris andBerlin. Between 1906 and 1930, a series of urbanreform initiatives were implemented to clean upthe central business district, facilitate the circula-tion of goods by building new streets, upgradeport facilities and improve sanitation by

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Demolishing Urban Hills:Establishment of a NewIdentity in Rio de Janeiro By René Davids

Plan showing the hillsand coastline of centralRio de Janeiro in 1910;

dotted coastlineindicates the results of

landfill by 1965.

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installing new water, plumbing and gas utilities(Petti, 132).

The first hill to disappear in Rio deJaneiro was the Morro das Mangueiras (Hill ofthe Mango Trees), razed between 1779 and 1783.As were many of the hills, the Morro dasMangueiras was adjacent to a swampy lagoon,the Boqueirão da Ajuda, used for waste disposaland notorious for its unpleasant stench. A feverepidemic that gripped most of Rio’s populationin the middle of the eighteenth century wasblamed on the insalubrious state of the lagoon.Viceroy Luis de Vasconcelos ordered thedemolition of Morro das Mangueiras, and theswamp was filled with the spoils. A new publicgarden, the first in the Americas, was created onthe twenty hectares recovered from the lagoon.

By the end of the eighteenth century,increased maritime commerce had shifted thecenter of gravity from Morro do Castelo to theflat area around the port. As the hill lost itsposition of primacy within Rio’s urban land-scape, the lower strata of society gradually tookover the deteriorating buildings, and the firstcalls for demolition of the hill were heard.Morro do Castelo was located at the edge of theGuanabara Bay, and the citizens who wanted toretain the hill argued either that it acted as awindbreak or that the buildings on the hill had

historical value. Those in favor of demolitionmaintained that the hill blocked cooling seabreezes from the east or that it was an eyesore, arotten tooth that should be extracted. Otherarguments for demolition stressed commercialdevelopment of the port and the elimination ofbuildings from an unpopular period of Brazilianhistory. In the article “O Morro do Castelo eEsthetica” (O Malho no. 989, August 27, 1921)(Nonato, 219) an anonymous journalist arguingin favor of demolition disagreed with those whobelieved that Rio’s beauty lay in its exuberanttopography. He countered that Buenos Aires wasa beautiful city built on flatland, that in fact, thelush vegetation, not the landforms or thearchitecture, gave all Brazilian cities a sense ofexcitement. Rio, the article reminded its readers,would in any case retain the hills of SantaTheresa and Gloria, so there was no reason tofear that the city would become flat. The newflatlands left by the demolition of Morro doCastelo would allow for commercial expansionof the port and eliminate disagreeable vestiges ofthe colonial past.

The systematic erasure of the colonialfabric of Rio began during the prefecture ofPereira Passos, between 1903 and 1906, withlarge-scale demolition of the old city in themanner of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann.

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Night view of theInternationalExhibition celebratingthe centenary ofBrazil’s independencein 1922.

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Paulo Paiva, Vice-President of the Inter-American Development Bank and formerminister of Planning and Labor with the

Cardoso administration spoke about thechallenges facing President Luiz Inácio “Lula” daSilva and the new Workers’ Part (PT) during avisit to the Center for Latin American Studies in

January. Paiva maintained that “Changes willcome with politics and not with policies.” Lula’seconomic program, he added, is not dramaticallydifferent from Cardoso’s, so the ambitious socialprogram of the new government will only beachieved by what he referred to as “neo-corporatism.” As evidence of this new way ofdoing politics, Paiva pointed to the compositionof Lula’s Cabinet, which incorporates politiciansfrom outside the PT, as well as the creation of theEconomic and Social Development Forumfollowing the model used in European countrieslike Spain and Portugal. The real political battle-field for Lula will be the congress, where the PTdoes not have the majority, and local elites stillexert a strong influence. According to Paiva,Lula’s previous experience as a union leadermakes him the appropriate person for engagingin this tough negotiation process.

Paiva outlined four main areas in whichthe new government should concentrate itsefforts: increasing economic growth, balancingmacroeconomic stability with growing socialdemands, building a coalition with the nationalcongress and maintaining the equilibriumbetween representative democracy and what hecalled the “new corporatism.”

In order to achieve sustained economicgrowth with stability, Lula’s government hasinitiated contacts with the presidents of Chileand Argentina as well as with the Bushadministration, the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF). The timingof Lula’s state visits is symbolic of his new way ofdoing politics. Lula decided to visit Argentinaand Chile before going to the U.S., butannounced the name of the minister of financein Washington D.C. Beyond these symbolicactions, the new government has adopted thestructural reforms undertaken by the formergovernment, maintained the previous board atthe Central Bank (CB) and upheld the MonetaryResponsibility Law to increase the autonomy ofthe CB. To illustrate the extent to which the new

Change Will Come WithPolitics, Not With PoliciesBy Raquel Moreno-Peñaranda


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Aprominent Colombian labor leader andleftist politician took on theRevolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

(FARC), paramilitaries, U.S. drug policy,international lenders and his own president in awide-ranging talk at UC Berkeley’s Center forLatin American Studies on February 27.Speaking to a packed audience, Luis Garzón, aone-time presidential candidate and formerleader of the Colombian oil workers union,spared few in examining the deterioratingpolitical and economic situation in Colombia,which he described as a “savage farm” headingfor all-out war.

Garzón’s broad economic, political andmilitary critique focused most often onColombian president Alvaro Uribe, in particularUribe’s effort to negotiate with the right-wingparamilitary groups and incorporate them intothe state. The paramilitaries, linked both to drugtrafficking and human rights violations, are toodivided and decentralized, Garzón argued.Further, he said, the U.S. is demanding theextradition of some members of paramilitarygroups.

Garzón also took the U.S. to task for itsbacking of Plan Colombia, which he describedas simply a military intervention — noting thatthe social investment portion of Plan Colombiais minimal. The U.S. emphasis on sophisticatedtechnological assistance could inspire a backlashthat the FARC, which has never been able toinspire a full popular insurrection, couldcapitalize on to cast their fight as a patriotic war.The U.S. intervention would, in essence, bedoing the guerillas a favor.

Yet the leftist politician also argued thatthe FARC’s tactics increasingly approximateterrorism. Though the guerillas have a realpolitical agenda, he said, they do not understandthe implications of Sept. 11. He criticized boththe FARC and the government for not havingdemonstrated any serious intent to reach anegotiated settlement. Although he interpretedthe overwhelming vote that Uribe received as a

vote for all-out war, Garzón sees no possibilitythat such a war will succeed in forcing the FARCto surrender. He pointed out that the FARC’sstated goals, such as agrarian reform andrestructuring congress, are in agreement withUribe’s program. He contended that if thegovernment were to enact such reforms, theFARC would be neutralized.

Unfortunately the Colombian state andelectorate have vacillated between simplisticpoles of peace and total war, without muchsuccess. In spite of recent polls showing thatColombians favor U.S. intervention, Garzóndoubts that the U.S. will ever send troops to

Lucho GarzónTakes a Critical Look at theUribe Government


Lucho Garzónspeaks at UCBerkeley in Feb.2003.

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market budget is dedicated to narrowing the gapbetween more and less developed countries. Achallenge to the neoliberal approach to tradeadvocated by the “school of economic injustice”is one that must finally be mounted, said Bonior.“We have failed miserably to understand thatyou can’t do NAFTA on the cheap and expect itto succeed.”

Bonior warned against the possibilityhe foresaw in the current trend towards freemarket globalization. The future, he suggested,could be a world in which all of the humanrights that have been hard won in America in thelast century are lost. Unemployment benefits,child labor laws, minimum wage and the eighthour day are standards that are taken for grantedin the contemporary American work force, butall were fought for by those who were convincedthat the benefits of free trade did not demandforegoing the rights of workers. Today, Boniorasserted, we are faced once again with that samestruggle to balance the desires of capital with therights of labor but on a global scale.

Under NAPU, Bonior’s proposal for anew institutional governing structure, the

foundations would be in place for a productiveand on-going dialogue around these vitalquestions of justice and prosperity. ThoughBonior’s conception of NAPU is still in itsformative stages, he offered that NAPUrepresentatives would be either appointed orelected and could be organized by nationalidentity or in partisan coalitions. NAPU couldcome together for an annual meeting, as the EUgoverning body currently does or could meetmore often. Eventually, he suggested, theremight even be a call for a permanent sittingNAPU.

The problem that such a propositionwill surely face, however, will be the concern overthreats to national sovereignty that will arise inthe domestic politics of all three NAFTAcountries. Like the EU, Bonior countered, NAPUwill simply have to start small and then developinto a stronger body. Initially, NAPU might belimited to serving as an advisory board.Eventually, a trinational constitution could bedrafted and NAPU could be vested with budgetarypowers. At that point, it could truly begin to dealeffectively with such cross-national issues as

A New Path for Globalizationcontinued from the front page

Delegates from sixwest European nations

sign treaties for theEuropean Common

Market agreement inMarch 1957. Ph

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domestic trade infrastructure and developmentinequality.

Bonior closed with a call for leadershipand determination in looking towards a newtrajectory for globalization. We already haveNAFTA, he said, and “we can’t put the

toothpaste back in the tube,” but we can worktowards the establishment of a new system thatbetter serves the needs of all.

Amy Lerman is a doctoral student in theDepartment of Political Science at UC Berkeley.

Excerpts from a talk given at UC Berkeleyon April 3, 2003

The Center for Latin American Studieshas successfully found a way to bringpublic policy figures and academics

together to create relationships anddialogue which not only serve the interestsof this great institution but of our respectivecountries.

It was just a little over four yearsago, right here at Berkeley, that leaders fromthe Hemisphere met for a conference entitled“Alternatives for the Americas, A Dialogue.”

The sessions were excellent — theexchanges stimulating and provocative. Butthe significance reached far beyond what wecould have imagined at the time. Justconsider what the future held for thoseparticipants.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi isnow the Democratic Leader in the U.S.House of Representatives. Governor VicenteFox is the President of Mexico, the first non-PRI candidate to be so elected in 71 years.The dynamic duo of Jorge Castañeda andAdolfo Aguilar Zinser, both of whom Iknow have spent a good deal of time on thiscampus, have been running the foreign policyof Mexico as its Foreign Minister and itsAmbassador to the United Nations,although Castaneda has recently resigned.And, I might add, the then-DemocraticWhip in the U.S. House of Representatives

would become a visiting professor at UCBerkeley which is a high honor and ratheramazing development for a working classboy from the East side of Detroit.

Beyond pulling together these andother important leaders, what the conferencedid for me was to open my eyes to otherperspectives — especially in U.S.–Mexicorelations. Then-Senator Zinser was not onlyforceful, but eloquent and passionate inchanging my mind about the annual drugcertification process between our countries.He convinced me of how humiliating anddegrading it was to his country.

He pointed out that the UnitedStates was at least one half of the problem. Itwas and is our demand which drives thisevil market.

I left that weekend convinced thatthe United States needed to suspend ourpunitive policy. We should rather engage ina partnership of trust — openly andmaturely. I’m pleased to say that we didchange our policy. Based upon mutualrespect, the new policy shows more promiseof working. Hopefully it will serve as amodel that we will be able to build upon forother important issues.

Secondly, at this same conference, Iwas pleasantly surprised to hear Vicente Foxadvocate turning the North American FreeTrade Agreement (or NAFTA) into aEuropean-type Common Market that has asits central dynamic, in his own words,

The North AmericanParliamentary UnionBy David E. Bonior

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“human development and prosperity forall.” To my delight Fox went on to suggestthat, “market forces will never, inundeveloped countries, be the guidingpositive force we need.” This was comingfrom the presidential candidate of theconservative party, the PAN, in Mexico.

To be quite honest, I was expectingsomething along the lines of the unassailableforces of the invisible hand. You could haveknocked me over with a feather when Iheard this broader vision — a formulationwhich was, and is, sorely missing from ourpresidential leadership here at home. Foxconcluded with the observation that theEuropean Common Market countries haddedicated one third of their total Marketbudget — $35 billion in U.S. dollars a year— to narrowing the gap between the lessdeveloped and prosperous Europeancountries. As a consequence of thisremediation, the commanding force, Foxnoted, “comes from intelligence, fromhuman action, and not from the market.”

Well, it was positively uplifting tohear Fox challenge the neo-liberal approachto trade. On our side of the Atlantic, wehave largely failed to consider the broadestmeaning of “common” but have insteadpreferred to focus on the word “market.”

This myopia has blinded us to the centralityof community. We have failed miserably tounderstand that you can’t do NAFTA on thecheap and expect it to work.

Listening to Vicente Fox, I thoughtto myself that we certainly could establishrapport with someone who shares such abroad and progressive view of our linkedfutures.

In subsequent years, other meetingsI have attended sponsored by the Center forLatin American Studies have also beeninteresting and useful to me in my role as aMember of Congress. Last fall, an importantbreakthrough occurred when, for the firsttime, the Futures Forum was held outside ofthe United States, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

My topic: The North AmericanParliamentary Union: What is it? Why dowe need it? The proposed North AmericanParliamentary Union (NAPU) will be ademocratic structure to enfranchise allcitizens — farmers, laborers, smallbusinesses, environmentalists, consumeradvocates and others in the NAFTA countriesas well as Central America. It will broadenthe players and expand the playing field sothat the best democratic values will beincorporated into our social, economic andpolitical decisions. We live in a global world

North American Parliamentary Union

David and JudyBonior (right) walk

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where key decisions are made by a self-s e l e c t e d g ro u p o f e l i t e s , o f t e n i nnon-transparent circumstances. NAPU isan attempt to create a structure where thereis wider participation in the decision-makingand where those voices will actually beheard and heeded. …

Let me pose three questions. First:Is such an entity feasible or are those of usinterested in a regional parliamentary bodyjust whistling in the dark? Secondly: Howwould it work? And thirdly: What needs tobe done to shepherd this idea to reality?

So is it feasible? I believe that it is.But let me add a caveat. Sept.11, 2001, therecent debate at the U.N. about war in Iraqand the war itself, have exacerbated tensionsbetween the United States, Mexico andCanada.

The U.S. government abruptlydropped President Fox’s top priority ofimmigration reform when our attentionwas diverted after Sept. 11. I would submitthat we could have embraced Fox’s concernsand made a compelling case for theincreased need to work more cooperativelyat our borders by tracking in a morehumane, organized and economicallyefficient way who is coming and going.Instead we abandoned a key ally, exhibitingonce again our cavalier attitude towards oursouthern neighbors.

In Mexico, a remarkably highpercentage of the population has relativesliving in the United States — probably atleast one in five. President Foxacknowledged the power of the 25 millionMexicans in this country by actuallycampaigning here in the U.S. during hissuccessful run for president.

In the United States, 13 states, 80cities, 600 police departments and manybusinesses now formally accept a Mexicangovernment card in lieu of a Social Securitynumber as sufficient identification for jobapplications, drivers licenses and bankaccounts.

And, in this country, U.S. citizensregister very high approval ratings ofCanada and Mexico, 90 percent and 70percent respectively.

So yes, once we settle back into a

more normal neighborly relationship witheach other, I think the underpinnings forlaying the groundwork for a Union ofParliamentarians will be present.

Secondly: How would it work? Itcould take on a variety of forms. Its memberscould be appointed or elected. Oncegathered, members of the parliament couldorganize themselves by nations, or theycould choose to organize by ideology asthey have done in the European Parliament.They could meet infrequently, say once ayear for a short session as the binationalconfabs do between the U.S. and Mexicoand the U.S. and Canada. Or they couldchoose to sit more permanently as theEuropean Parliament or the relatively newCentral American Parliament.

The parliament’s powers could belimited to an advisory role to the respectivenational governments, or it could develop aconstitution with a budget authority totackle issues such as the infrastructureproblems along the borders.

In terms of scope, NAPU could beconfined to the NAFTA countries, or itcould include our brothers and sisters in theisthmus.

Despite Secretary Rumsfeld’s snidereferences to “Old Europe,” I see much to belearned from how the European Parliamentwas born and how it has matured over thepast 45 years.

I foresee initially an appointedmembership coming proportionately fromthe NAFTA countries. Membership wouldbe selected either from the existing nationallegislatures, from former members of thosebodies or from appointments made by theparliamentary leaders in Mexico City,Washington D.C. and Ottawa. At some nottoo distant future, invitations could then beextended to the Central American countriesand perhaps eventually to the people of theCaribbean and the rest of Latin America.

The question of sovereignty willnecessarily pose enormous hurdles.However, the same was true in Europe. Justas Europe moved from an appointed modelin 1958 to a popularly elected membershipin 1979, we must believe that the samepatterns could follow in this case.


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Ever since the coup attempt againstVenezuelan President Hugo Chávez inApril of 2002, the political and social crisis

in Venezuela has intensified. Poverty andunemployment have increased and Venezuelansare in the midst of the worst economic crisis thecountry has ever experienced. The divisionbetween those who support the Chávezadministration and those who are against it hasdeepened, and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA),the national oil company, has become the battle-ground. In December, anti-Chávez PDVSAemployees sent the country into a downwardspiral when they called for a strike of the oilcompany that lasted more than two months.Venezuela now finds itself in what seems anunsolvable predicament.

The opposition claims that the crisis isthe result of a corrupt and incapable governmentthat was democratically elected but which hasmilitarized almost every aspect of publicadministration. Chávez’ government, they say,antagonized a large portion of Venezuelan societyand has become an increasingly authoritarianregime that threatens to undermine the country’sdemocratic history. For Chávez supporters, thedeep divide is a product of persistent statedeterioration that started more than 20 yearsago. The crisis, they say, has been magnified bythe middle and upper classes’ belief that theirprivileged position is being threatened byChávez’ reorganization of PDVSA, historicallycontrolled by the elite, and his inclusion of thepoor in the political system.

On April 16th, 2003, the fierce debateoccurring in Venezuela was represented in apanel at UC Berkeley moderated by ProfessorRamón Grosfoguel. Heinz Sonntag, retiredprofessor of sociology at the UniversidadCentral de Venezuela in Caracas and EdgardoLander, professor of social sciences, also of theUniversidad Central, presented opposing viewsof Venezuela’s crisis.

After 1958 when Venezuela’s last dictator,Marcos Pérez Jiménez, was ousted, Venezuelaexperienced two decades of democratic stability,Lander said. Continuous economic growthfueled by oil income was translated intoimproved standards of living. During CarlosAndrés Pérez’ administration (1973-78), massiveindustrialization projects were undertaken andan accelerated modernization plan was put intoplace. “The nationalization of the oil industryand the iron and ore mines [in 1976] wassupposed to be a second independence and theway to La Gran Venezuela,” Lander said. “Thecultural inclusion of racial and social democracybecame part of the Venezuelan imagination.There was a general expectation about thefuture, but this began to change.”

After the 1970’s, per capita incomebegan a long-term decline. The state structurebecame more inefficient and corrupt.Traditional political parties became less likemass organizations and more like exclusivegroups for the elite. According to Lander, themost important change that occurred was theextraordinary cultural and political disconnectthat developed between the upper and middleclasses and the marginalized sectors of society.

The discontent of the popular classessurfaced in 1989, during Carlos Andres Pérez’second administration. Facing heavy debt, Pérezannounced price hikes on gasoline and publictransportation, among other things, as part of anausterity plan mandated by the InternationalMonetary Fund. People took to the streets inprotest; looting and rioting ensued. After twodays of unrest, the military was called out, and atleast 400 people were killed. The eventsawakened Venezuelan society and began thechain of events that ultimately led to the electionof Hugo Chávez in 1998.

“Hugo Rafael Chávez based hiscampaign, like those leaders preceding him, onthe promise to solve all of society’s existing

The Past, Present andFuture of the VenezuelanCrisis By Olga R. Rodríguez

problems from poverty, unemployment, the lackof adequate health care and deficient educationalservices to the shortcomings, failures andcorruption of the socio-economic order and thepolitical system,” said Sonntag. “As his overallinstrument he invoked a new constitution for a‘really participatory and protagonist democracy.’ ”

Chávez won the 1998 election in a land-slide, and his popularity quickly rose. He alsoreceived wide support when his new constitutionwas ratified in 1999. However, Chávez’ lack ofpolitical experience resulted in a confrontationalstyle which has been characteristic of hisdiscourse. Chávez’ inflammatory style hasserved to rally his supporters, but it has alsoprovided ammunition to his opponents. Themass media, dominated by the opposition, hasfrequently used Chávez’ own rhetoric againsthim. “The way in which these criticisms werereceived brought the first disappointments withthe regime. Instead of giving coherentexplanations or accepting responsibility for theirwrongdoings, Chávez and his followers attackedthe media, committing the additional error ofpersonalizing these attacks by focusing oncertain journalists and media owners,” declared

Sonntag, who was sharply critical of Chávezthroughout his talk.

Lander countered that the media hascontributed to the polarization by playing amajor role in the creation of a distorted image ofthe government as a tyrannical, authoritarian,Castro-Communist project that is menacing toproperty and liberty. According to Lander, themedia has also promoted the vision of a mobthat could at any moment assault theneighborhoods and ransack the houses of the elite.

Chávez’ confrontational style, Landerargued, is a weakness of his administration.However, the biggest roadblock his governmenthas encountered is the anti-political, anti-statediscourse of those who were connected toPDVSA. This discourse, Lander added, definedthe state as corrupt and inefficient, and itseemed logical that the oil company, seen as agreat modern efficient enterprise, should try todetach itself as much as possible from this back-ward state.

“The oil enterprise, Petróleos deVenezuela, was supposed to be a nationalenterprise, and national oil policy was supposedto be defined by the government through its


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Members of theopposition march tothe NationalCongress building inCaracas in Feb. 2002.

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The Politics of PetroleumBy Sandy Tolan

More oil comes to the U.S. from Latin

America than from any other part of the

world. That simple, startling fact helped

launch a two-semester, 12-reporter, five-country

reporting project co-sponsored by the Center for

Latin American Studies and the Graduate School of

Journalism at UC Berkeley. The reporters of the

“Politics and Petroleum” class prepared for months

by reading books on oil history, industry journals,

human rights reports, environmental assessments

and political analysis. They queried the many oil,

policy and social analysts who came weekly to brief

the class. And they divided into country teams to

prepare “petro-political” assessments of key Latin

American oil and gas producing nations. The idea

was to examine the on-the-ground effects of oil and

gas production in the region that exports more oil to

the U.S. than the entire Middle East. In March and

April, reporters traveled to Mexico, Venezuela,

Ecuador, and Peru; one reporter made an earlier trip

to Brazil.

At the heart of the work was a single

question: How is it that countries with such substantial

petroleum wealth find themselves in the throes of

such political, economic, social and environmental

troubles? In other words, why has petroleum, far

from being a panacea, more often proven to be what

the late Venezuelan oil minister and co-founder of

OPEC, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, called “the Devil’s

excrement”?

Olga Rodriguez tackles this question in her

assessment of the last three decades of oil

development in Venezuela, which with Mexico has

long been a top-four exporter to the U.S. (The other

two are Canada and Saudi Arabia.) In her companion

article, Ana Campoy describes how oil has helped

fuel the divisions between chavistas and the political

opposition in Caracas. In Mexico, oil has not yet

become quite the divisive force that it is in Venezuela.

But reporters Daffodil Altan and Angel Gonzalez

consider the country’s grand dilemma: As Mexico’s

known reserves begin to reach their peak, some say

the country needs billions in foreign investment to

find more oil, lest it become a net petroleum

importer. Yet Mexico’s very identity is tied to its

nationalization in 1938 of its oil resources — an

identity so sacred, it is enshrined in the Mexican

constitution.

Other work will focus on Julian Foley’s

sojourn following a barrel of oil from the Venezuelan

desert to a gas pump in Arizona; Yahaira Castro’s

story about indigenous resistance to oil development

in Ecuador; Claudine LoMonaco and Andres Cediel’s

pieces about environmental contamination and

health risks in the refinery town of Esmeraldas,

Ecuador; Jason Felch and Chris Raphael’s inquiry

into a new natural gas project in the heart of the

Peruvian Amazon; and Juliana Barbassa’s search for

viable alternatives to petroleum in Brazil. These

articles will also be published in the Tucson Citizen

and on the Gannett News Service Wire, as well as for

other newspapers. Other versions will be aired on

National Public Radio

Sandy Tolan, an independent documentary film maker,has done extensive reporting for National PublicRadio, the New York Times Magazine and many otherpublications. He taught at the Center for LatinAmerican Studies and the Graduate School ofJournalism during 2002-03.

SPECIAL SECTION:THE POLITICS OF PETROLEUM

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Sandy Tolan atthe Center forLatin AmericanStudies, spring2003.

17

Venezuela: Paradox of PlentyBy Olga R. Rodríguez

Perched atop El Avila, a 6,700-foot peak thatrises to the north of Caracas, the HotelHumboldt is a symbol of Venezuelan oil

wealth and of the country’s dream of grandeur thatcame with it. With its manicured gardens, an indoorswimming pool, an ice rink — a rarity in a tropicalnation in 1957 when it opened — and an ostentatiousballroom whose marble floor rose and slowly rotated,the Humboldt was the hottest spot of a countrybuilding its dreams on oil. It played host to theVenezuelan elite and Latin American leaders in thetimes of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo,Argentina’s Juan Peron and a young Fidel Castro.Today, the Humboldt is framed by gardens wiltedfrom neglect. Paint peels off its walls, and sun-wornfurniture sits neatly arranged in abandoned rooms.

If a 35 cent barrel of oil could create anopulent vision like the Humboldt, it was a speckcompared to the dreams created when prices rose to$11.65 a barrel ($23.92 in today’s prices) in 1973.Venezuelans planners were intoxicated with fantasiesof achieving instant modernity, and they passed thisvision of progress on to the people. These were thedays of illusion, when everything seemed possible.But the dream of entering the first world did notmaterialize.

“It was at that time that Venezuela wasscrewed,” said Teodoro Petkoff, publisher of the dailynewspaper Tal Cual. As Minister of Planning duringthe 1990’s, Petkoff had to contend with the effects ofthe binge.

“The way the oil windfall of those years wasadministered was irrational and the economy got sobloated that the whole country suffered indigestion.It’s common sense,” Petkoff said.“If you eat soup anda steak every day, and suddenly you’re eating threebowls of soup and three steaks, well, obviously you’llspend the next three days sitting on the toilet.”

While some saw the rapid increase in oilprices of the 70’s as a recipe for economic and politicaldisaster, in Venezuela and in other oil producingnations, the oil boom created the illusion that theirentrance to the first world was near. In Mexico, thenationalization of the oil industry in 1938 broughthopes of progress, but as oil prices fluctuated wildlythe domestic economy faltered and corruption ran

rampant. In Ecuador, oil revenue increased thegovernment ’s budget , but i t a lso broughtenvironmental devastation that spanned the entirecountry.

Since the post-war wave of nationalizationand decolonization, oil has held the promise ofdevelopment. In petrostates across the third world,the dream of joining the rich nations with the help ofthe natural wealth underground was deflated bycorruption, poor state planning and overhypedexpectations.

“The petrostate mentality creates theillusion of prosperity and dependence on petroleum,which leads to extreme centralization of politicalpower and to incoherent public bureaucracies,”writes Stanford University professor Terry Karl inher book titled The Paradox of Plenty.



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Women sit infront of aPDVSA sign inCaracas.

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Nowhere is this more the case than inVenezuela. While there have been limited successes,in this South American country, as in country aftercountry, the dream has been squandered — oftenthrough autocratic rulers who use oil wealth tocentralize power.

“Part of the problem with the Venezuelanmentality is that they confuse the existence of aresource with wealth,” said Roberto Bottome, aneconomist and editor of Veneconomy, a newsletteron the economy of Venezuela.

Venezuelans are in the midst of the worsteconomic crisis the country has ever experienced, inlarge part the result of the bloated developmentprojects of the 1970’s that came from the oil bonanza.Like a curse, oil has divided the country, andPresident Hugo Chávez, like his predecessors, istrying to consolidate his power by keeping a tightgrip on the oil industry.

But oil is not almighty. At the Humboldt,the marble floors are gone and many windowspunched out. Only the grand ballroom is open. Thisis where rich Venezuelans willing to take the 30-minute cable car ride, the only way to access thehotel, come to burn away extra calories in anaerobics class. Even though failed projects from 30years ago abound, Venezuelans still remember the70’s as a decade of dreams come true — the years thecountry moved forward in a way they thought wouldnever end.

The 1970’s: The Oil High Carlos Andrés Pérez became president at the

end of 1973, just as the Arab oil embargo sentpetroleum prices soaring. With a populist campaignthat promised to help the country overcome under-development, Pérez won in a landslide. Hisadministration suddenly found itself with a budgetfour times bigger than that of his predecessor.

Pérez and his ministers embarked on apoorly thought out, massive development project.They called it La Gran Venezuela (The GreatVenezuela), a plan that included the nationalizationand accelerated expansion of the petrochemical,aluminum and steel industries.

Oblivious to the bloated governmentdevelopment plans, ordinary Venezuelans felt theywe were finally getting their share of the country’snatural wealth. All the government spending wascreating huge amounts of consumption. It was atime of rapid growth, and people felt good.

For Olis Sanchez de Tronchoni, a 55-year-

old high school teacher, La Gran Venezuela was areality. Sanchez moved to Caracas from Táchira, anagricultural and commercial state that bordersColombia, to work and go to university. She finishedher degree in education, and when she married, sheand her husband bought an apartment and a car.

“Those were times when whoever wantedcould take an opportunity and make it work,” saidSanchez, who lives in a middle class neighborhoodwhere apartment buildings come with a swimmingpool and a recreation area. All the people who wantedto study could do it. You could buy an apartment;you could have a decent life.”

A decent life for Sanchez, her husband andthree children, meant trips to Disneyworld inFlorida, long sojourns in Spain, private school fortheir children and an apartment with marble floors,decorated with paintings of country life and elegantlyframed mirrors. The couple was also able to buy asecond home an hour away from Caracas, in the stateof Aragua, one of richest agricultural states in thecountry.

Sanchez achieved what many middle classfamilies in Latin America only dream of with herreasonably well-paid job as a high school teacher andher husband’s booming importing business.

“He would import everything,” remem-bered Sanchez, her bleach blond hair styled in a bob.“He imported Spanish ham, Portuguese olives.Italian ceramics were a hot item, too. People wouldbuy anything that came from abroad. People in themiddle class would take pride because they wouldonly drink imported whiskey and water.”

In La Vega, one of many shantytowns thathave sprang up on the hills surrounding Caracas,44-year-old Daniel Baez also hoped the oil bonanzaof the times would reach him. Baez, a lanky manlooking older than his years, began working at theage of eight. He ran errands for neighbors. He soldboiled eggs to men in bars. As a young man, heworked in construction and at a bicycle repair shop.Today, he delivers messages by motorcycle.

During the 1970’s, Baez remembers, some ofthe oil wealth began to trickle down. “You could quityour job and go across the street and find a newone,” Baez, who lives in a two-room house made ofcardboard, plywood and a few bricks, said.

“I finished elementary school at the age of18,” said Baez. “I didn’t have the economic means togo to school so I had to work, and I would go toschool at night. But making a living was easy, and lifewasn’t expensive so I thought I didn’t need to continue.”

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Baez also thought the oil wealth wouldnever end. But by the time he wanted to open hisown business in the early 1980’s, the economy wasstalling, and life became more expensive.

“At one point, I was able to work and helpmy mother out, and I would have money left to buyme a shirt or pants,” Baez said. “In the 80’s, Iunderstood my life was going to be about workingand trying to make ends meet.”

Pérez’ plans to industrialize the country hadfailed. The steel venture ran huge losses after Pérezgave orders for the industry to be expanded fourfoldwithout having the skilled people to run such a largeplant. The company was privatized in the 1990’s.Pérez’s tractor factory, which took almost $40million to build, tanked when oil prices plunged, andthe project couldn’t be completed. And all along,Pérez’ government continued to borrow to fuel ever-wilder dreams: as the 70’s closed, the country’sforeign debt had increased from $748 million in1973 to more than $12 billion by the time Pérez leftoffice in 1979.

By the end of the 1970’s the myth thatVenezuela was a wealthy nation came to a shudderinghalt. As global oil prices declined, so did the dreamsof progress held by the majority of Venezuelans.

The 1980’s: The Side Effects Are FeltPérez’ successors were confronted with a

declining, oil-dependent economy and an escalatingforeign debt. The overheated economy, which hadquadrupled in the 1970’s, suddenly was cash poor,but huge expectations had been created. The crash inoil prices forced the Venezuelan government to evenmore foreign borrowing in order to continue themyth of progress. By 1989 the country’s foreign debthad risen to $38 billion.

“The amount of money that came into thegovernment was so huge that it became absolutelycorrupt,” Bottome said. “Corrupt in the sense ofinefficient, as well as people who stole or lived off itimproperly. And from then on, instead of being acountry where we’re growing, we’ve been a countrythat’s been going downhill. How many countries inthe world have seen their standard of living go down40 percent in 25 years? It’s ghastly!”

For Ana María Hernández, once a school-teacher and now a full-time street vendor, the 1980’swas the time her dreams vanished. A single mother atthe time, Hernández had no other choice but to quituniversity and find full-time work. Now, she spends

10 hours a day at Parque Central, a massivedevelopment project that flourished in the mid-1970’s, and today is a collection of dilapidatedbuildings. Here, Hernández sells the hats she and hersister-in-law knit.

“I could no longer leave my child alone,”Hernández, a vociferous woman with a vibrantsmile, said. “I was working as a teacher in themornings, going to school at night and selling thehats on the weekend. It was too much, and I had todecide for the best life I could give to my child. Ifigured my dreams could wait.”

Yet for all the disillusionment Venezuelansbegan to feel, when Carlos Andrés Pérez resurfacedas a presidential candidate in 1989, they re-electedhim. Nostalgic for the good times of the 1970’s, theyput their hopes in a man who reminded them of thesense that once again everything was possible.

“No one succeeded in blaming him for theproblems of the 80’s,” Bottome said. “Carlos began torun, saying ‘remember the wonderful times we hadwhen I was president?’ And he got re-elected on the


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Ana MaríaHernández sellshats at ParqueCentral.

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illusion that we’re rich, and he’s going to make us allrich again.”

But Pérez inherited the mess that had result-ed from his failed development plans and the heavyborrowing of his predecessors. Venezuela, with moreoil than any other nation in the Western hemisphere,was worse than broke. The country was paid a visitby the International Monetary Fund.

While Pérez was running a populist andwelfare-state campaign that promised abundance, hewas also in negotiations with the IMF for a very strictadjustment policy.

By 1989, when Pérez’ second administrationstarted, 15 percent of the workforce wasunemployed. The standard of living had plummeted.Shortages — for bread, toilet paper, milk — wereeverywhere. The country, with billions of barrels ofoil wealth, suddenly found itself a debtor nation.

Pérez, who months earlier had promised areturn to La Gran Venezuela, announced price hikeson gasoline and public transportation, among otherthings, as part of the austerity plan mandated by theIMF. When a steep rise in bus fares went into effect atthe end of the month, just before payday, the lowerclasses were pushed to the breaking point, and thestreets of Caracas and other urban areas exploded.

People took to the street in protest, and soonstarted looting supermarkets and appliance stores.National television showed people dragging hugetelevision sets, refrigerators and anything they couldget their hands on. Hundreds of soldiers from theinterior and unfamiliar with the city were sent in.Firefights broke out; eyewitnesses reported soldiersshooting indiscriminately into the shantytowns.Hundreds of people were killed.

The riots, known as “El Caracazo,” were thefirst sign of the deep frustration of the poor who feltthey had been marginalized long enough.

“This was the wake up call that somethingwas terribly wrong with the way the country hadbeen run,” Samuel Moncada, director of the schoolof history at Universidad Central in Caracas, said.“This marked the beginning of a profound crisis ofleadership, and it brought to light the deep discontentpeople felt for the political system.”

The 1990’s: Venezuela Goes ThroughWithdrawal

By the time Hugo Chávez, an unknownlow-rank army officer, sprang into the country’spolitical scene in 1992, the oil dream had crashed.The middle class found that trips abroad were no

longer possible, and for the poor it was harder andharder to even find work.

“I always thought I would be able to buy ahouse in the flatlands, that was my dream,” said Baez,whose makeshift two-room home, which he shareswith his wife and three stepchildren, rests at thehighest point of the hill and is only accessible by acrumbling, muddy stairway. “Now all I want is tohave a house closer to the street.”

Venezuelans had awakened to a deepeconomic and political crisis. Even with an increasein oil revenue, nearly three in four Venezuelans livedin poverty.

Chávez, who took part in two failed coupsagainst the second Pérez administration, ran as acandidate in the democratic election in 1998,promising to end corruption and improve the livesof the poor. Chávez, who comes from a modest family,ran as a populist. Overwhelmingly elected president,he was seen Venezuelans’ hope for a fresh beginning.

“He is the first president to ever come to LaVega,” Baez said. “He has already been here fourtimes; no other politician has ever come close to thisplace.”

But four years after his administration tookoffice, half of the labor force makes a living in theinformal economy, selling everything from pirateCD’s to perfumes and clothes, and poverty has worsen.Most of the urban poor live in shantytowns calledbarrios, which ring the nation’s major cities, withoutrunning water, or sewage systems.

Chávez ’ confrontat ional s ty le andpro-Castro stand have also pushed away many whoonce thought of him as the solution.

For middle class people like Sanchez, wholived a life of comfort during the boom years, Chávezis a dictator in the making whose economic policieshave put her family on the brink of joining the lowerclasses. Now an ardent member of the opposition,Sanchez wants Chávez out.

“I thought Chávez would be the answer toour problems,” Sanchez said while she rearranged theVenezuelan flag that hangs from her window. “In hiscampaig n he spoke o f so lv ing pover t y,unemployment, and we believed him. We thought hewould be different.”

Like most Venezuelans, Sanchez’ dreamswere put on hold, and with her husbandunemployed, she had to come out of retirement andsupport the family. With her $125 per week job, sheis her home’s sole provider.

“Before we had presidents who squandered

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the oil wealth and stole from us. But this man is alsodividing families. He is breaking down Venezuela’ssociety, and he started by making our youth losehope,” said Sanchez, her voice sounding urgent. Twoof her three children have gone abroad in the lastfour months looking for work.

For Hernández, who sells her hats outsidegovernment offices and prefers to stay out of politics,the country’s political polarization has onlydeepened her financial problems. She still remembersthe times when she would sell up to 10 hats a day;now she is lucky if she sells that amount in a week.

“I’m not for the opposition or for thegovernment,” she said. “I have no time for politics. Iprefer to live in reality and avoid the lies of bothsides. What I see is what I believe, and I can see we’reare in a bad situation and only hard work will get usout.”

When Chávez became president he had thesupport of Venezuelans from all strands of society.But when he decided to reorganize Petróleos deVenezuela (PDVSA), the state’s oil company, hetouched a nerve.

“PDVSA was the most elitist part ofVenezuelan society,” said Edgardo Lander, professorof sociology at the Universidad Central de Venezuelain Caracas. “Culturally it was the most distant fromthe lower classes. When Chávez decided to take acloser look, those who were part of the company felttheir position of privilege was being threatened.”

The middle and upper classes, mobilized byhigh-ranking PDVSA employees, turned againstPresident Chávez. In April of last year they attempteda coup against his government. Later they wouldhelp send the country in a downward spiral whenthey called a strike of the oil company.

Ever since the coup attempt against Chávez,the political and social crisis in Venezuela hasintensified, and the division between those whosupport the Chávez administration and those againsthas deepened.

For those in the opposition, Sanchez included,Chávez is an opportunist that has taken advantage oftheir hopes for change and has used his rhetoric todivide the country. Even worse, his economic policieshave impoverished many in the middle class.

“Chávez’ government is the most corrupt wehave ever seen,” she said. “He had done nothing toimprove the country in four years. We have nomoney saved. We live day by day, yet he tells thepopular classes that we are ‘oligarchs’ that we havetaken what belongs to them.”

ConclusionFor Venezuelans, oil is still the solution.

Urged by president Chávez, the poor organizedforums to learn how to defend what they say is right-fully theirs. At a recent assembly, leaders of differentpopular organizations, many wearing the red beretsthat are representative of Chávez’ BolivarianRevolution, came to meet with PDVSA executivesand present their ideas on how to run the company.

“The typical Venezuelan will say, ‘this countryis rich, this country has got oil, this country is veryrich. This country is the richest country in theworld!’” explained Bottome. “Eighty-two percent ofall Venezuelans think that this is the richest countryin the world, and it’s the government’s job is todistribute that wealth to all of us.”

Yet for millions of others in this grandpetrostate, it is becoming increasingly clear that oil ispart of the problem: In Venezuela, the per capitaincome is lower than it was in 1960.

“Easy money distorts anybody,” Bottomesaid. “The fact that it costs $3 to produce a barrel ofoil that you can sell for $30 creates all kinds ofdistortions.”

Educating Venezuelans about the mythscreated by oil is the mission of Un Sueño ParaVenezuela (A Dream for Venezuela), a campaign thatbrings to light the evils oil has brought to the country.The campaign, which is being distributed in booksand will soon have TV and radio commercials,attempts to get Venezuelans to think of solutions fortheir country that don’t depend on oil.

“Ten years from now, 20 years from now,you will see, oil will bring us ruin,” said Juan PérezAlfonso back in 1976. “Oil,” said this Venezuelanco-founder of OPEC, “is the excrement of the devil.”

Even if there are more and more people whohave come to agree with the prophesy of PérezAlfonso, some never learn.

Now a group of entrepreneurs has invested$90 million on the reconstruction of the HotelHumboldt. The hotel “will again become the biggestattraction in the capital,” said consortium presidentLuis Delgado. “It will have all the amenities of a five-star hotel in the 21st century and the charm andoriginal design of the ’50’s.”

Olga R. Rodríguez is a student in the Graduate Schoolof Journalism at UC Berkeley.

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The Mexican Oil DilemmaBy Daffodil Altan and Angel González

“Patria, el niño Dios te escrituró un establo/y los veneros del petróleo, el Diablo.”

“Oh country, the child Jesus left you a stable/and the Devil left you springs of petroleum.”

López Velarde (1888-1921)

Guadalupe Alvarado Soto wants her chickensback. In 1938, after Mexico banished foreignoil companies and nationalized its petroleum

reserves, the young orphan did her part.“I went and I sold my chickens at the market

to help pay for the machines that we would need todrill for oil,” she said. “I was 13 at the time, but eventhen I understood the significance of our oil and ourneed to defend it.”

Standing outside the tomb of LázaroCárdenas — the president who led the bold move tonationalize Mexico’s oil — during the 65th anniversarycommemoration, Soto’s small frame hunchedinward, and her eyes grew big with tears.

“I come to his tomb, and I say to him,“Look, Lázaro, look at what they’re doing to ourcountry,” she said.

Behind her the giant Monument of theRevolution, which houses Cárdenas and otherMexican heroes, stood in the midst of Mexico City’sincessant traffic. Handfuls of retired oil workersscuttled about, unnoticed by herds of taxis andblaring horns.

“Like we say here, Mexico is an oil powerwithout any money,” said Soto.

Once upon a time, oil was the biggest pot ofgold a country could strike. With oil, countries couldrest assured of their enviable position within anemerging global energy market.

For Mexico, which has borne the weight ofU.S. influence throughout its turbulent history, thediscovery of oil and natural gas and the decision tonationalize their exploitation in 1938 fostered hopethat the country could finally assert itself as aneconomically independent nation. Its oil and gaswould provide not only a ticket to easy wealth butalso energy security for its growing industry.

Today, however, the world’s fifth largest oilproducer is at risk of becoming a net energyimporter. Its proven reserves are running out, andthe country brings in more than $12 billion inrefined products, like gasoline and natural gas, fromthe United States. Additionally, a long history ofcollusion between the state oil company, PetroleosMexicanos (PEMEX) and the government has led tocorruption and mismanagement in the industry.

For Soto and many of her compatriots, whohave witnessed the promise of Mexican oil wealthbecome nothing more than a tangled state monopoly,the Mexican government and PEMEX have failed todeliver.

Everyone, from taxi drivers to state senatorsto the CEO of PEMEX agrees that Mexico’s energyregime needs change. The dilemma facingpoliticians, PEMEX officials and citizens alike is howto reform and modernize the company withoutviolating Article 27 of the Mexican constitution,which strictly forbids foreign companies frominvesting needed capital and reaping any wealthfrom Mexican oil.

When the Cantarell oil field was discoveredin 1974 off the coast of Campeche in the Gulf ofMexico, things never looked better for Mexico. In a

La Quina, the formerleader of Mexico’s oil

union, pays his respectsto the late Lázaro

Cárdenas during theanniversary of the

expropriation ofMexican oil. C

ourt

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time of booming oil prices and dwindling reserves,PEMEX found one of the largest deposits in theworld — one that produces more than half ofMexico’s oil at more than 2 million barrels a day.

Today Cantarell is reaching its peak and isexpected to start a slow decline next year — and withthat the decline of the country’s known oil reserves.

“We have 18 years left of proven oil reserves,at most 25 or 30,” said political analyst GeorginaSanchez. “But 25 or 30 years is not much to launchalternative technologies or financial mechanisms toreplace oil.”

A long muddled history of corruption andmismanagement, many Mexicans believe, is alsoslowing down reform.

“Ask anyone in Mexico and they will tell youthat PEMEX to them means corruption,” saidrenowned Mexican author and poet Homero Aridjis,who also served as Ambassador to Mexico inHolland. “PEMEX has no face. I was extremelymorally conflicted in Holland as a diplomat, havingto watch the way PEMEX behaved. It was like havinga very powerful mafia right next to the government.And one that was always working with thegovernment.”

But PEMEX officials see the story differently.Within the thick iron gates of the 50-story

PEMEX skyscraper in Mexico City, where more than20,000 people come to work everyday under thevigilant watch of a massive bronze statue of LázaroCárdenas, it’s hard to imagine that Latin America’sbiggest corporation might lack the resources toprotect its lifeline.

Indeed, since Vicente Fox appointed RaúlMuñoz Leos, a businessman with an impressivecorporate track record, as CEO in 2000, PEMEX hasembarked on an ambitious exploration plan. Manywithin the Fox administration hope it will shiftPEMEX out of its old corrupt system and intocorporate gear.

“We’ve historically lagged behind inexploration, but we’re working to fill that gap,” saidMiguel Angel Maciel, Chief Engineer withinPEMEX’s Exploration and Production Division.

“Our exploration budget has increased five-fold since last year; the replacement rate of ourreserves reached 46 percent last year, and we expectto reach a 102 percent replacement rate by 2006,” hesaid referring to the level at which the quantity ofnewly discovered oil is added to continually

dwindling reserves.But exploring is expensive, and under the

current tax regime, PEMEX has to hand over 80percent of its revenue to the government, leavinglittle money aside for the financing of new discoveries.

“They need to increase exploration, butthere is no money,” said oil analyst David Shields,who has been following PEMEX for thirty years.

In a different country, privatizing parts ofthe state oil industry or the sale of concessions toprivate oil companies would be an alternative forraising capital, but the heavy bust of LázaroCárdenas in the corridor is a reminder that inMexico, this is not an option. The constitutionmaintains that hydrocarbon production andexploration are the exclusive responsibility of the state.

“We don’t envision the dismantling of thestate monopoly or the allowance of any oilconcessions,” said Maciel.

However, the presence of foreign oil

companies waiting for the doors to privatization to

open up is unmistakable. For their help, the Mexican

government has come up with a short-term solution,

called deferred impact projects, where private


Cou

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This woman, whoknew LázaroCárdenas as a child,comes every year to celebrate theexpropriation ofMexico’s oil.


companies finance major oil projects which thegovernment purchases after they’re finished. This

formula keeps PEMEX debt off the books for a few

years and keeps with the constitution by refusing

concessions to any company.

Although some factions within Mexico

(especially the National Action Party) would like to

modernize the industry by breaking up the PEMEX

monopoly and opening doors to foreign investment,

officials within PEMEX insist that oil will remain as

Mexican as tamales for years to come.

Yet while PEMEX insists that oil will remain

steadfastly Mexican, Ciudad del Carmen, an oil

boomtown on the edge of the Mexican Gulf has

become strikingly international.

Neatly paved sidewalks are brimming with

Burger Kings, Holiday Inns, and scores of foreign oil

contractors. Canadian, Argentine and Venezuelan

workers fill the seafood restaurants. They fly in from

the rigs offshore, checking into three star hotels to

ditch their orange Schlumberger jumpers.

Meanwhile, at the bustling airport just

outside town, José Luis Zepeda, the manager of

Pegaso Air Transport, is doing booming business

transporting foreign engineers and technicians from

Ciudad del Carmen to the platforms of Cantarell.

“Most of our oil business is with PEMEX, but we

move people from Schlumberger, Halliburton, all the

companies,” he said.

Mexico never really shook off the presence

of foreign companies. More than 40 private

companies operate on 60 percent of oil fields.

PEMEX depends on them for everything from

off-shore drilling technology to environmental

clean-up techniques.

PEMEX plans to attract direct foreign

investment in natural gas exploration, with plans for

controversial contracts known as Multiple Service

Contracts (MSC) which would allow private

companies to take over the management of whole

exploration and drilling in natural gas operations for

a single fixed fee. TotalFina ELF, Gaz de France,

British Petroleum, Exxon Mobile — all have shiny

offices in the capital, and according to Maciel, they

are ready to put their foot in the MSC door —

waiting, perhaps, for the day when they can extract

oil as well as gas.

“Of course, opening the fields up further

will bring more business,” said Zepeda, as one of his

yellow helicopters stuffed with oil workers took off

24

Empty oil barrels litter a field.

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from the sun-baked tarmac heading out to the heavy

platforms which stand like iron islands, pulling thick

crude oil from deep below.

The Mexican government expects to attract

more than $8 billion in direct investment from

Multiple Service Contracts in the next five years.

PEMEX hopes that the first contracts for natural gas

exploration will be signed in August. Although

PEMEX is very careful about saying that the

contracts are limited to natural gas development,

there is no legal reason why they cannot be extended

to oil eventually. After all, both are hydrocarbons.

But this is also why the future of the MSC’s

is still uncertain — anything that might open the

door to foreign contact with oil generates political

controversy.

“The contracts are perfectly constitutional,”

says Rafael Aguilera, PEMEX’s legal representative in

charge of MSC’s. “Private contractors are paid a fixed

fee in cash, they don’t sell the oil. Those who oppose

the MSC’s either do not really understand it or do so

because they have an electoral agenda.”

Far from the oil-stained workers of

Cantarell, the political fight over PEMEX’s dilemma

rages within the offices of the Mexican parliament, a

modern high rise in the aristocratic Paseo de la

Reforma, the heart of Mexico City.

Perhaps the single greatest obstacle to the

MSC alternative is the battle that has erupted

between the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI),

which considers itself a defender of the legacy of

Cárdenas and the interests of the Mexican people

and the National Action Party (PAN), which sees the

MSC’s as one of the few viable ways for PEMEX to

work its way out of its predicament.

The political fight over the wealth

ensconced in Mexican soil is a long and sordid one.

Although the two primary parties embroiled in the

debate agree that Mexico should have exclusive

rights to the reserves stored in Mexican soil, the

question of which direction to push PEMEX

becomes heated when talk of service contracts and

tax reform hits the floor.

Those opposed to the MSC’s believe the

answer to PEMEX’s money troubles and thus, a

solution to Mexico’s dilemma in exploring for more

oil offshore, lies in tax reform within the state and

the company. “There is no other company in the

world that is taxed as much as PEMEX. If that were

to change, then the company would have the

necessary resources to invest in itself,” said PRI leader

Rafael Segovia.

Although most agree that PEMEX’s tax

burden is excessive, without a comprehensive and

controversial tax reform, the only alternative is to

seek other alternatives. And since the Fox

government stepped into power, the taboo buzzword

that is ventured and then crushed in the

parliamentary acrimony of political debate is:

privatization.

Yet despite the vibrant nationalistic

undercurrent that informs all political talk of

Mexican oil since it was nationalized in 1938,

PEMEX has had a long relationship with foreign

companies. It is a relationship that will likely expand

as the solution to PEMEX’s financial dilemma if

current CEO, Raul Munoz Leos’ plans for reform are

successful.

“What is happening today is not new,” said

Mexican historian Lorenzo Meyer, referring to the

need for foreign investment after oil was

nationalized in 1938. Then, however, PEMEX sought

investment from small companies who would not

compete for political power with the state, he said.

“Today the fight is big and ideological,” he

said. “PEMEX could be efficient, from the

perspective of the market. We don’t need to have

physical control of the oil; we can control it through

taxes, regulations, not with this massive bureaucracy

that has become a monopoly. All we have now is a

perpetual stalemate.”

The story of Mexican oil is the story of

Mexico, said Homero Aridjis. “Oil has historically

been considered a source of wealth, but it has been

the source of conflict for Mexico.”

Daffodil Altan and Angel González are students inthe Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

25


Caracas, once a prosperous city, is now convertedinto a battleground for two opposing groups.In the poor and working class neighborhoods

on the west side of town stand the supporters ofPresident Hugo Chávez. The east, with its gatedcommunities and upscale malls, is taken by hisopponents. At the center of their fight are 78 billionbarrels of oil, the reason why this Caribbean capitalis lined with concrete and glass skyscrapers instead ofpalm trees, and why Venezuelans are under theimpression that they are rich beyond measure.

The viscous liquid has recently become theideological rallying point, and the material weapon,for two factions of society polarized by Chávez’sincendiary political speeches and a growing econom-ic crisis. In early December, upper and middle man-agement of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), thestate oil company, launched their biggest attack, atwo-month oil strike that paralyzed the economy,but failed in its objective to oust the president. It did,however, catapult civil society, both chavistas and theopposition, into the streets to fight over a resourcethat they had long taken for granted.

“Oil was always like God. He exists but noone has seen him,” says Teodoro Petkoff, formerminister of planning, ex-guerrilla and current directorof Tal Cual, an opposition newspaper in Caracas.“Oil before the strike not only didn’t mean anything,but I’d be surprised if 100,000 of the 23 millionVenezuelans had seen oil and knew what color itwas.”

It has since clearly taken two distinct huesthat underscore the differences between a white middleclass attuned to the global capitalist system and amulatto underclass that blames “the rich” for itsmisfortunes.“One part of the country thinks that thegentlemen from PDVSA are shining knights,Quixotes, in the fight against Castro- communism,”explains Petkoff. “The common Venezuelan in thebarrios thinks that these knights of PDVSA are anemanation of the oligarchy who intend to take overthe company and privatize it, because they feel thatnow oil really belongs to them.”

Leonidas Alejos takes that mantra seriously.His family’s house is perched on one of the many

hills cluttered with slums that oversee the city. “Theysaid the oil belonged to everyone, but I’ve neverreceived any benefits,” says Alejos, an unemployedsecurity guard wearing a mesh tank top and flip-flops. He has had to procure electricity and water forhis family by illegally hooking up his small concretehouse to the city’s systems and is forced to water thebare yard to keep dust from blowing into the tworooms separated by makeshift curtains.

“No one has ever come up here. In 40 yearsof democracy, these poor neighborhoods have onlygrown larger,” he says, his wiry arm pointing at thehouses clinging to the hills.

Since he became president, Chávez has builtan escape route for this pent-up frustration anddisappointment, says Edgardo Lander, a sociologyprofessor at Venezuelan Central University. “This isthe most important thing that has happened inVenezuela, a sort of cultural revolution, a voice thatis made present through a leader with which the peopleidentify and trust.”

This voice can now be heard throughBolivar ian circ les , grassroots communityorganizations named after the national hero SimónBolívar. Upon Chávez’s suggestion they sprouted allover Venezuela, including the slum La Vega, where itsmembers gather in crowded living rooms androoftops crisscrossed with clotheslines. “We are nowlooking at what can come out of PDVSA because oilis ours. They have to give out resources,” says PedroLuis Morales, a member of a Bolivarian circle. Hewants PDVSA to pay for project ideas that come outof his circle’s evening meetings, such as a plant torecycle trash and a technical school to train hisneighbors to work in PDVSA. “At last the phrase tosow the oil is going to come true,” he says referringto slogans previous governments used.

Old-line PDVSA loyalists are horrified atthe remake of their beloved corporation. The oilindustry had been run by an English-speaking,Ph.D.-holding, globe-trotting Venezuelan elite, forthe best part of last century until the strike. Thismanagement class lived through the price control eraof OPEC in the early sixties, the nationalization in1975 and the apertura, when PDVSA opened up to

26

Venezuelan Oil: For the Massesor the Meritocracy?By Ana Campoy


private investment again and control over the publiccompany slowly slid out of the hands of its mainshareholder, the state.

This independence made PDVSA prosper,say former employees and some economic analysts.“You don’t have to be a genius to know that ifgovernment is in business, it’s not going to work. Theone glorious exception was the oil itself, which wasnationalized in a way that insured that it would berun as a private corporation, supposedly forever. Butthe forever collapsed when Chávez became president,”says Robert Bottome, an economist and director ofthe business newsletter Veneconomia.

The business sector blames the president forinterfering with the management of the company.“The sensation is that people that weren’t invited totheir dance barged in dressed improperly, withouttaking a shower, pinching the ladies,” says Lander.

The meritocracy principle, as formerPDVSA employees refer to the system of ascendingpositions through merit, had insulated the companyfrom these kinds of people, or kept them in the lowerranks through an elaborate evaluating system thatinvolved more than 50 levels.

“There’s a chain that ranks you according toyour yearly performance, but also your potential, thewish you have of developing yourself, your way ofrelating with others,” says Mirian Delgado, a formerfinance executive, who wears a charm bracelet tofend off Chávez’s bad vibes. “If someone speaksincorrectly I obviously cannot take this person tomeet with the executive board; this person doesn’thave the manners that the job requires.”

Back at PDVSA, those who stayed — mainlylower rank workers and retired employees that havecome back — are settling into their new positions.Production levels have increased to 90 or 60 percentof pre-strike levels, depending on who you ask.Gasoline is flowing from the pumps and Venezuelanoil is being shipped to the U.S., its main commercialclient.

The strike allowed new management toimplement changes former top PDVSA managementhad strongly resisted for the past decade. Chiefamong these was the readjustment of the oil incomethat went to the state, which had shrunk from 65cents per dollar in 1993 to 45 cents last year. Previousgovernments, argues Bernard Mommer, an aide tothe new president of PDVSA, committed a “seriousfailure of regulating,” and the company became morepowerful than the ministry that dictated its policy.

With PDVSA now firmly under Chávez’scontrol, Venezuela’s new oil policy — respecting

OPEC quotas, selling oil to Cuba at discount pricesand “redistributing” the country’s oil wealth — haspropelled the former executives from the wood-paneled chambers of PDVSA’s penthouse, to thechaotic streets of Caracas. Chávez, who likes to callhis opponents escualidos, the squalid ones, has awak-ened an almost religious fervor among many of thelevel-headed executives who only recently strolledPDVSA’S hallways.

At a fundraiser on a Sunday afternoon theysang the newly composed PDVSA hymn together.“We’re going to raise our arms to sing with all thesebrave people that are here,” shouted an organizerfrom the podium. A recording of inspirational pianomusic started playing, and people sang thememorized words: “This is a song of love, liberty andpeace; if we fight together we will triumph.” A fatherwaved his baby girl above his head like a lighter at aconcert. Others flapped their flags enthusiastically.Then hundreds of yellow, blue and red balloons —the colors of the Venezuelan flag — were releasedinto the pale blue sky of Caracas.

Some eighty miles west, under a highwayoverpass, other patriotic Venezuelans have beenstirred out of their complacency by oil. MaebelisAreche, 18, quit her job as a receptionist at a localcompany to “defend” a gasoline filling station afterthe strike. “We have kept a vigil for three months, 24hours a day because we believe in this, and we don’twant anything to slip in.”

After the strike, President Chávez called forpeople to come out to defend their oil; they did, andnow Areche lives under the roaring traffic of a high-way, in a makeshift tent of red fabric and sticks. “Weknow that this doesn’t end here; we know that thisrevolution is permanent,” says Areche, wearing a redbandana over her head and camouflage pants.

Its impact on the oil industry will also bepermanent. Beneath all this fighting over whom theoil belongs to lies a great paradox: the fighting itselfis driving much of the oil into foreign hands. Withless people, PDVSA will rely more on outsidecompanies to do its job, says Bottome. “The greatirony in all of this is that they’re going to denationalizethe oil industry,” he adds.

This, however, does not delight Bottome,ordinarily a staunch defender of privatization.“Venezuela’s pride of owning a first worldcorporation … well, that’s gone.”

Ana Campoy is a student in the Graduate School ofJournalism at UC Berkeley.

27

28

In 1991, a revised Colombian constitution setforth a new racial and cultural agenda bydef ining the Colombian nat ion as

multicultural. The place of “difference” in definingthe boundaries and character of Colombia as anation had previously been articulated in alanguage that subsumed racial, cultural andregional difference in the unifying language ofnationalism and national identity, a languagethat was often employed to justify exclusion andoppression. This disavowal of racial difference inthe name of a unified national identity produceda society that upholds racial hierarchies whiledenying their existence. Professor NancyAppelbaum traced this configuration of race,region and nation as it took shape in Colombia’scoffee producing region throughout the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries.

On March 19, 2003, ProfessorAppelbaum, a historian at SUNY/Binghamptonand a visiting professor at CLAS, spoke about theplace of racial ideology and regional identity inshaping modern Colombian political culture.Her presentation drew from her researchexperiences in the town of Riosucio in westernColombia, which was founded during LatinAmerica’s wars of independence in the earlydecades of the nineteenth century. By exploringthe ways that the town’s inhabitants voiced theirpolitical claims in racial terms, Appelbaumshowed how different versions of the town’sfounding moment have been used to assert“contending political projects.” Each versionemployed a particular racial logic that reflectedthe historical moment in which it was articulated.

Professor Appelbaum has taken up oneof Latin American history’s most persistent andconfusing problems: the variety of ways in whichrace and racial ideologies have been an integralelement in Latin American political culture.Though focused specifically on Colombia, herresearch has implications for the region as awhole and provides a new model for thinking

about how changing racial ideologies have beenexpressed in Latin American societies and howideas about race have resonated in economic andpolitical life.

Most earlier histories of Colombia havefocused on the highly partisan nature of thecontest for state power in the nineteenth-century.As conservatives and liberals battled for controlof the newly emerging state during the periodfollowing formal independence from Spain,their inability to resolve their differences resultedin decades of civil wars whose legacy of violencestill resonates in the present. Colombia was leftwith a relatively weak centralized state which hasbeen unable to resolve tensions generated by apowerful leftist guerrilla movement, right-wingparamilitaries, narcotraficantes (drug traffickers)and a tradition of local and regional autonomy.Previous analyses of Colombia’s politicaltrajectory have not been able to fully grapplewith the role that racial and regional identitieshave played in shaping its national political cultureand its development of a unified national identity.Professor Appelbaum confronts this volatilesubject, focusing on the ways in which racial andspatial identities were worked out over time inRiosucio and revealing the centrality of race andregional identity in the project of constructingthe Colombian nation-state.

Appelbaum identified three keymoments when larger structural changes affectedthe way in which inhabitants of Riosucio definedtheir town as indigenous, white or mestizo.Indigenous communities under pressure toprivatize their landholdings in the mid-nineteenth century articulated their claims byasserting that the founding of the town reflectedits indigenous nature. Half a century later, as thecoffee economy expanded, tensions betweenRiosucio and the neighboring town ofManizares were expressed in ways that reflectedthe town’s “whiteness,” emphasizing the Spanishorigins of Riosucio’s founding families and

Politics, Race and HistoricalMemory in Colombia’sCoffee RegionBy Stephanie Ballenger

Inhabitant of theColombian coffee

region, 1913.

Town of Riosucio inthe Colombian coffee

region, 1994.

equating whiteness with thrift and industry. Inthe mid-twentieth century, local intellectualsinsisted on a mixed-race, or mestizo heritage, inwhich stories about the town’s founding reflecteda racial ideology that subsumed all racialdifferences in the category of mestizo as a way ofcreating national as well as racial unity.

Appelbaum analyzed the complexracial and spatial dynamics of each successivehistorical moment in order to reveal how racialidentity was mobilized to make political claims.Her analysis also reflected how local powerstruggles were being articulated within a broadernational and global ideological context in whichideas about race, progress and modernity wereshifting.

In response to questions from theaudience about the current situation ofindigenous people within Colombia’s nationalterritory, she was careful to point out thatnotions of ethnic authenticity or racial unity areno less complex now than they were during theforced relocations and the resultantreconfigurations of identity that occurred in thecolonial era. To be indigenous was not a biologicaldesignation, but one that denoted one’smembership in “a local landholding community... ethnic indigenous identity was rooted inspecific local spaces.” Indigenous politics todayinvolves incorporating local families andlandowners into a community as a way ofexpanding its land and power base, regardless ofphenotype. The complex calculus of culture andbiology that formerly determined one’s racialstatus is being eroded. A new way of beingindigenous is being formulated: one whichstresses communal rights and obligations in anattempt to conserve political autonomy andensure community survival through successfulintegration into the world market.

Some Latin American scholars suggestthat their colleagues in the United States projecttheir own ideas and anxieties about race into aLatin American setting where race lacks thepsycho-social dimensions it has in the U.S.However, through her deft and thoughtfulanalysis, Appelbaum exposes how struggles forpower at the local, regional and national levelwere articulated in terms that integrated racialand regional identities. An understanding ofColombia’s post-independence political trajectorywill remain elusive without a more carefulconsideration of these factors.

Stephanie Ballenger is a graduate student in theDepartment of History at UC Berkeley.

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Initially, I see the parliament’sreach as quite limited, perhaps serving solelyin an advisory role. But hopefully, as itsplace among the governments becomesinstitutionalized, both its power and budgetwould be enhanced. And, as its evolutionarygrowth continues, finally it would achievethe authority to write laws, which wouldnecessitate consideration from the membergovernments.

Here is where we reach the crux ofthe matter. Requiring the membergovernments to address both majority andminority v iewpoints would f inal lyforce the discussion of issues which arecurrently more often than not avoided,neglected or shelved. For example, NAFTAdesperately needs a budget to confront theinfrastructure problems at the borders —immigration, security, pollution, health. Infact, there is a plethora of NAFTA-relatedproblems which need to be addressed, themost fundamental of which is full rights forall parties.

I env i s ion the par l i amentrecommending strategies to work togetherin the economic arena to challenge andcompete with other regional entities. Butmost of all I ardently wish the parliament tobe a forum where a consistent effort iswaged to keep reminding ourselves that weare neighbors who can no longer afford theepisodic relationships of the past. Very simply,you just cannot have too much dialogue ina complex world.

Dialogue, the free expression andexchange of ideas, is a hallmark ofdemocracy, and just as the “Old Europeans”have discovered its value between nationsover the last half century, so too must we.

Thirdly: What needs to be done tomake this happen? We need leadership, notonly from the governmental and politicalsectors, but also from the business and labor

communities and from non-governmentalorganizations and academia.

We cannot be paralyzed by doubtor fear.

Europe not only has movedforward towards greater integration, butnow we even hear rumblings of a mergerbetween France and Germany. Their leadershave proposed offering dual citizenship toFrench citizens living in Germany and viceversa. They have already held a joint meetingof both Parliaments and are considering thecreation of a confederation with jointdiplomatic missions abroad and shareddefense and foreign policies.

It may be surprising to say of theworld’s military superpower, but in fact, ourgovernmental and political structures arestagnating.

If we are to continue to becompetitive, to be engaged in the changingworld marketplace of peoples and ideas, weneed to take a step into the future. It is hightime that we realize the true complexion ofthe United States. As President Fox lookedto the Mexican vote in the U.S., so do ourpoliticians depend increasingly on theHispanic vote. As a pattern of the past welook to the Anglo nations of WesternEurope.

To face the future, let’s pivot. To theNorth is our largest trading partner,Canada, whom we have generally ignored.To the South are the home countries of ourfastest growing populations, Mexico andLatin America, towards whom we haveoften been shameful. The future of positiveengagement North and South is promisingand exciting.

I have partnered on this projectwith Carlos Heredia, a former member ofthe Mexican Chamber of Deputies. It wasCarlos who suggested the idea when we metin Cuernavaca, Mexico last November.

North American Parliamentary Unioncontinued from page 13

31

We are presently talking with otherlegislators, economists, business and laborleaders, non-profit activists and academicsto create a leadership team to guide andshape the idea. For the most part, the initialreaction has been positive. We understandthat for our seed to germinate and eventuallybear fruit we will have to broaden theideological spectrum.

So, yes we are in the infancy (somewould even say embryonic) stage of thisconcept. But we have hope, and “hope neverdisappoints us.”

In light of our recent internationalexperiences, it seems clear to me that thereis a commanding imperative for us toestablish dialogue and to maintain it evenwith those with whom we disagree. As longas we are talking to each other, sooner orlater there will be some point of commoninterest.

Part of what is so tragicallymisbegotten with the war in Iraq and withthe years and events leading up to it, is thatIraq was not in the conversation. We cannotbe isolationists. Nor can we isolate others.

I hope I may have suggested somepropositions here that will come to fruition.

The academic community hasalready played an important role inincubating this concept. We will be countingon your further contribution in providingvenues for discussion and doing the criticalresearch as we move towards thedevelopment of a North AmericanParliamentary Union — a union where thebest of our democratic values will not justshine but will be hard at work.

Even more than our government,often it is our universities that have been theguardians of those values.

In that very regard, it is humblingand inspirational to be on this campus. It isalso a most appropriate venue in which tolook to a brighter, more glorious, decentand just future among the nations of theAmericas.

I thank you for giving me thisopportunity.

David E. Bonior represented Michigan in theHouse of Representatives for 26 years andwas the Democratic Whip from 1991-2002.Currently a University Professor of LaborStudies at Wayne State University, Prof.Bonior was a visiting scholar at the Centerfor Latin American Studies where he taught aseminar in April 2003.

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Prof. David Boniorspeaks at UCBerkeley in April2003.

32

the dilemma in Mexico that there is equality inpolitical terms, but inequality in economicterms?”

Pointing to the fact that half thepopulation is still considered poor, Meyer’s voicerises, “What is the good of a democracy if this isthe situation?” The country, he said, is toocaught up in solving its immediate problems toaddress larger social challenges. “Mexicandemocracy comes at a time when the market isin full force there. So those who do not have inMexico cannot participate in the market. How,how do you go to the Zapatistas in the countrysideand say to a little girl, ‘Here you go,enterprise.com’?”

Meyer’s obsession with history pushedhim to be one of only two students out of 13originally enrolled who completed their Ph.D.’sin International Relations at the Colegio deMéxico in the late 1960’s. Meyer then spent threeyears earning a doctorate at the University of

Chicago before returning to Mexico to teach.A professor since 1970 in the

International Studies Department at the Colegiode México in Mexico City, where he also directsthe U.S.–Mexican Studies Program, Meyer haswritten eleven books on subjects ranging frominternal Mexican politics during the 1920’s and30’s to books about contemporary Mexico andthe U.S.–Mexico relationship. He writes a weeklycolumn for a national newspaper, La Reforma,and hosts a weekly show on public televisionabout history.

Daffodil Altan is a student in the Graduate Schoolof Journalism at UC Berkeley.

Professor Meyer teaches history at the Colegio deMéxico. He recently spent a month as a visitingscholar at the Center for Latin American Studieswhere he taught a seminar entitled “The U.S. andMexico: Conflicting Agendas — A View of thePresent From a Historical Perspective.”

Signs of Democracy: Mexico’s New Beginningcontinued from page 3

Brazil: An Economy in Transitioncontinued from page 4

and ready to collapse. It was ready to growbecause it had laid the foundation by investingin industry during the years of importsubstitution industrialization. But for manyeconomists, signals of the collapse were on thehorizon as the economy was not performing upto its potential and exports were sluggish.

The economic volatility marking thelast 22 years reached its climax on the eve of therecent presidential election. The two candidates,Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva of the Worker’s Partyand his opponent José Serra, were completeopposites ideologically. Lula da Silva, a workingclass union leader, spoke of economic justice forthe poor, while Serra promised to follow thestrict economic policies of the outgoing president,Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The internationalmarkets were tense; the Brazilian economy, afterhaving lived through years of uncertainty, wassitting on the fence between growth andcollapse. For many economists, including Barrosde Castro, Serra was the candidate for growth.He, among others, feared that Lula’s governmentwould experiment too much and send the

economy into collapse. As the masses hoped, theanalysts speculated.

In order to win, Lula had to renouncesome of his party’s radical ideas. Politically, hehad room to maneuver in social, internationaland industrial policy, but not in economic policy.He chose to keep the economic policies of hispredecessor intact, surprising his critics, includingBarros de Castro.“I, myself was happily mistaken,”he said. The union leader turned president neverforgot the importance of consolidating a base ofsupport by reconciling differences among stake-holders.

Lula, the eternal mediator, has movedon to a greater challenge. The president has beentrying to build majority support in congress andis pushing forward reforms, like that of socialsecurity, which not even Serra could havepassed. In addition, he is using his base of workingclass and grass-roots leadership to legitimize hiswork in social policy. To Barros de Castro, it isprecisely social policy that needs to be reformed,and he thinks that the Worker’s Party, along withLula, is the best candidate for the job.

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Most development scholars agree thateconomic growth alone is insufficient for povertyalleviation. The distribution of wealth must beaddressed in order to ensure that the millions ofBrazilians living in poverty get access to thebenefits of a stable and growing economy. In the1970’s, 70 percent of the population was livingin poverty. By the 1980’s that number haddecreased to 33 percent and continues to declinetoday. However, Brazil still has the most unequaldistribution of income in Latin America. ForBarros de Castro, the redistribution of wealth isthe single greatest challenge for Brazil. “There isnothing more difficult than redistributingincome,” he said. “In the age of globalization,capital flies.” Therefore, instruments forredistribution must be developed that do notdisturb the markets.

In surveying the options for tacklingincome redistribution, Barros de Castrodiscussed agrarian reform, increasing thepurchasing power of the poor and developing anequitable social policy. Agrarian reform, accordingto Barros de Castro, would not have nationwidereverberations but rather regional ones because

issues of land reform are concentrated in particularstates. He also stressed that if pursued, thisoption should not disturb the flourishingagribusiness sector. By increasing the purchasingpower of the poor and reforming social policy,he claimed that the economy could supportredistribution that does not challenge the powerof the rich or perturb the interests of the market.However, as long as the tangled web of inequalityand poverty continues to be woven, Brazil willremain sitting on the fence between success andfailure. It is precisely this conflict of interest thatLula must effectively mediate.

Gisele Henriques is a graduate student in theDepartment of Public Policy and International andArea Studies at UC Berkeley.

Professor Barros de Castro teaches at theInstitute of Economics at the Federal University ofRio de Janeiro and is an expert on Brazilianindustrial and trade policy. He recently spent amonth as a visiting scholar at the Center for LatinAmerican Studies where he taught a seminarentitled “Brazil in Transition.”

Highrises in downtownSão Paulo, the industrialcenter of Brazil.

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for young people. There are also local economicpolicy measures that establish micro-creditprograms, create networks between local andregional retail stores and develop the private sectorin minor cities. Other measures also includeurban agriculture and food banks that solicitdonations from supermarket and fast foodchains.

One of the measures initiated by FomeZero is the use of electronic food cards modeledon President Roosevelt’s food stamp program inthe U.S. Qualified participants will receive anelectronic card with a monthly balance topurchase food. The objective of the program isto provide every hungry person with a decentmeal — avoiding food substitutes like cassavaand bean powder shakes which are the hallmarkof other programs in Brazil. The electronicadministration will centralize management andmake the program more ef f ic ient . Storetransactions will be recorded on an electronicaccount giving an up-to-the-minute report offood purchases. Critics of the program are afraidthat a black market for food cards will emerge,undermining the program’s goals. Belik assuredthe audience that the centralized electronic systemwas designed to prevent fraud. In addition, toensure goals are met, participating families willmeet with agency counselors monthly to havetheir children weighed and measured to makesure they are being fed properly.

Fome Zero also outlines policies to beimplemented at the national level. One of thesepolicies will re-establish the nation’s food security

by building up reserves of food.This prescription will roll-backthe previous policy in which foodstocks were sold off, forcing Brazilto rely on international foodsources during emergencies andshortages. Another attempt tomake food more affordableincludes electronically labelingconsumer goods, making it easierfor retailers to do inventory, therebyreducing consumer costs by 30percent. Additionally, manufacturerswill be required to label nutritionaland ingredient information onfood products.

Belik also spoke about thecontroversial issue of land reform.He said Lula supports land reformand the appropriation of idle land

as outlined in Brazil’s Constitution. The goal ofFome Zero is to settle one million families,although the Movimento dos TrabalhadoresRurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers’Movement) wants four million families settled.Belik says that the challenge to land reform ispresented by the judicial system which frownsupon the taking of land. In addition, largelandowners can afford good lawyers to defendtheir cases. Belik lamented that it would probablytake several decades and several administrationsbefore significant change is realized, although heoffered as a sign of hope the fact that 250,000families have settled land over the past eightyears.

The entire Fome Zero program isbudgeted at $4 bi l l ion per year. Lula’sadministration has secured $1 billion for theprogram and is trying to raise additional funds.So far, the Inter-American Development Bankhas made financial commitments of $12 million.Belik admitted that the biggest challenge isadministering this program with insufficientfunds. In spite of the difficulties, there has beenoverwhelming public support. So many callershave contacted the central office to donate fundsthat a special donation account had to beopened. One caller, excited about the socialbenefits of the program, donated $10 million.

Raymond Constantino is a graduate student in theDepartment of City and Regional Planning at UCBerkeley.

The Zero Hunger Project in Brazilcontinued from page 5

The DaSilva Family,devastated by

poverty and hunger,Timbaúba, Brazil .

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In condemning the original city center with itsnarrow, filthy streets, the Portugueseestablishment also condemned the backward,unsanitary culture that went with it. As Nedellhas pointed out, the colonial infrastructure ofthe old city was not merely inefficient but alsorepresentative of an uncivilized culture thatmany in the Europhile elite wanted to destroy.Beyond the political battles for or against thedemolition of the hills, the survival of a decayingcolonial urban architecture was not consistentwith the desire to project an image of civilizationand economic power to the world.

By 1922 the demolition of Morro doCastelo had been completed and no trace of thecolonial foundation of Rio de Janeiro remainedthere. The incentive that had persuaded theauthorities to proceed with the project, despitethe controversy, was the invitation extended toRio to host the International Exhibition of 1922celebrating one hundred years of Brazilian inde-pendence. The site opened by the demolition ofthe hill was ideally situated for a major publicevent as visitors could arrive by ship. The exhi-bition featured monumental neo-colonial pavil-ions that replaced the original Portuguese colo-nial fabric with an improved version, cleaned upand appropriately scaled for Rio’s grandiose newambitions. A night photograph from 1922shows an impressive spectacle with buildingsbathed in the glow of artificial light. (fig.2 )

The effort to eliminate a substantialpart of Rio’s colonial infrastructure wasconcluded in 1950 when the city decided todemolish Morro de Santo Antônio, another ofthe four original hills around which the city hadgrown. However, interest in the colonial past wasbeginning to revive so that even as most of theMorro de Santo Antônio was leveled amonastery and two churches located on the hillwere retained.

When Brasília was built in 1960, theburden of representing Brazil’s modernity andprogress was transferred to the new capital.When later in the same decade, São Paulo sur-passed Rio in population, industrial productionand as a financial center, Rio began to rediscoverits past. Since the 1970’s the colonial period hasbeen the object of research and the subject ofmany publications and exhibitions celebratingRio’s past (Archivo Geral da Cidade 2002).

A Rough Guide to Brazil (Cleary,Jenkins, Marshall, 59) proclaims that “nearly fivehundred years have seen Rio de Janeirotransformed from a fortified outpost on the rimof an unknown continent into one of theworld’s great cities” and that “its recorded past istied exclusively to the legacy of the colonialismon which it was founded.” The colonial past isno longer regarded as a historical stain but hasbecome an important part of a promotionalcampaign reaffirming the accomplishments ofBrazil and Rio de Janeiro. In most cities, majorcivil engineering projects are driven by socialand economic imperatives. In Rio, the demolitionof hills was also a unique attempt to rewritehistory and reconstruct an urban identity. Theattempt to achieve these objectives by eliminatingsignificant topographical features may seemextreme by contemporary standards, but thetendency for cities to merchandise themedenvironments based on selected historical periodsor to reorganize urban fabric to createsurroundings more amenable to tourism arefamiliar phenomena.

René Davids is a professor of architecture at UCBerkeley and a principal of Davids KilloryArchitects.

Bibliography

Cleary, David. Jenkins, Dilwyn and Marshall,Oliver. Brazil. London: Rough Guides, 2000.

Godfrey, J. Brian. “Modernizing the BrazilianCity.” In Geographical Review, Volume 81,Issue 1, (Jan. 1991), 18-34.

Ladeira Mota, Leonardo. “Contrução eInauguração,” Passeio Público,<http://www.passeiopublico.com.br/construcao.htm 2002> (15 April, 2003).

Nonato, José Antonio. Era uma vez Oo Morro do Castelo. Rio: IPHAN 2001.

Petti Pinheiro, Eloisa. Europa, Franca e Bahia,Difusao e Adaptacao de Modelos Urbanos. Salvador: EDUFBA, 2002.

Demolishing Urban Hillscontinued from page 7

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government is maintaining the same orientationas its predecessor, Paiva pointed out that the newcabinet has continued austerity measures,refused to renegotiate the states’ debt andmaintained price stability and floating exchangerates.

Reconciling macroeconomic stabilitywith growing social demands continues to be achallenge. With 72 percent of the 2003 budgetallocated for social development but no newplans for privatization of state enterprises, “thereis not that much room for changing the socialprogram … in a country in which increasing theminimum wage, hunger alleviation and increasingcivil servants’ wages are being strongly demandedby the population.” With the risk of increasinginflation rates and debt default, Lula’sgovernment could be unable to meet the socialdemands and expectations of Brazilian society.

In the political arena, the biggestchallenges for the new government are buildinga coalition with the national congress and main-taining the equilibrium between the representativedemocracy and the new corporatism. TheWorkers’ Party and its collaborators have only235 seats in the congress versus the 304 of itsopponents. Powerful local elites among theopposition such as José Sarney, from the state of

Maranhão, andAntonio CarlosMagalhães, from thestate of Bahia, willdefinitely not facilitatethe work of the newg o v e r n m e n t .Therefore, a coalitionwill need to be createdfor each importantproject. As a way toc o u n t e r a c t t h edisadvantage in thecongress, “Lula’s newcorporatism usespopular support topressure the congress… but spec ia lattention should bepaid to institutionalstrength.” For Paiva,if Lula’s administra-

tion lobbies civil society directly without takinginto account the objectives of the Workers’ Partythat brought him to power, political conflictswill arise. In the present cabinet, Lula hasincorporated members of the Movement ofRural Landless Workers, unionists andexporters.

In the international context, Paivapointed out several challenges for the newgovernment. One of them will be using Brazil’sposition as co-chair with the United States of theFree Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) tonegotiate a beneficial agreement. Another will bethe need to strengthen Brazilian leadership inMERCOSUR and Latin America.

Despite the economic difficulties of thecountry and the unfavorable political climate inthe congress, Lula and the Workers’ Party havebeen able to bring enthusiasm and hope toBrazilian society. As Paiva pointed out,maintaining this unprecedented favorable socialclimate and channeling it towards achievingeconomic growth and social progress is, withouta doubt, the biggest challenge of the newBrazilian government.

Raquel Moreno-Peñaranda is a graduate student inthe Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley.

Change Will Come With Politics,Not With Policiescontinued from page 8

Brazilian President-elect Lula da Silva,

right, meets with JamesWolfensohn, president

of the World Bank inNov. 2002.

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Ministry of Oil and Mines. But as time went by,the ‘state within the state’ started to defineVenezuela’s oil policies in terms of the interestsof the oil enterprise itself,” Lander said.

What has disappointed a large portionof Venezuelan society, according to Sonntag, isChávez ’ contradic tor y behav ior. Theinconsistency between Chávez’ discourse and hispolicies has caused the economy to deteriorateeven further and slowed down economicgrowth, resulting in a severe increase inunemployment and poverty. “The economic andsocial policies of his government are basicallythose of previous governments, subject tostructural adjustments and neo-liberal reforms,even as his ideological and political discoursecondemns them and capitalism in general assavage, anti-humanist and exploitative,” Sonntagsaid.

Yet the main reason behind theopposition to Chávez, Lander argued, is theinclusion of the popular classes in the politicalsystem. The inclusion of popular organizationshas been the most important achievement of thepolitical process in Venezuela over the last fouryears. The excluded sectors of the populationhave acquired a sense of belonging, a sense ofbeing part of Venezuelan society in a way thathad not been the case before, he said. “The bestimage is to think of a party hosted by verysophisticated members of society in which amob of smelly, uneducated, uninvited peoplearrive and start eating all the food, and this is thesensation that the upper-middle classes inVenezuela have about the present situation,”Lander said.

For the opposition, the solution is forChávez to resign or al low a “revocatoryreferendum” to take place in August. Chávezrejected demands for his resignation or earlyelections, saying the constitution does not allowthem. Those who support Chávez’ governmentask that his “Bolivarian Revolution” be allowedto consolidate. For his supporters, mostly peoplein the popular classes, Chávez symbolizes achange that will translate into better livingconditions.

An effort to resolve Venezuela’s politicalcrisis was initiated by the Organization ofAmerican States (OAS). Since November, thepresident of the OAS, César Gaviria, has beenmediating the dialogue between the governmentand the opposition in the hope of finding aviable solution. An end to the stalemate betweenVenezuela’s political rivals, however, seemselusive. On April 12, a few hours after internationalmediators announced a tentative pact betweenthe Venezuelan government and the opposition,a powerful explosion destroyed four stories ofthe Caracas Teleport building where thenegotiations had taken place.

Olga R. Rodríguez is a student in the GraduateSchool of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

The Past, Present and Future of theVenezuelan Crisiscontinued from page 12

A street vendor sellshis wares in Caracas.

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fight in Colombia. In the United States, he hasfound, not even the kidnapping of U.S. citizenspermeates public consciousness.

Yet on the ground, the conflict isspreading: the border area of Arauca is engulfedin civil war, and conflicts are beginning to spillinto other Andean nations. He also suggestedthat Hugo Chávez has been able to remain inpower in Venezuela partly because the UnitedStates has been distracted by the preparationsfor war in Iraq.

Garzón focused his economic critiqueon U.S. drug policy and Colombia’s relationswith international lenders. Colombia’s foreigndebt is reaching a level comparable to that ofArgentina. The only positive economic trend inColombia, he suggested, is that inflation is not aserious problem. Rather Colombia is sufferingfrom deflation. Garzón criticized Uribe’sdevaluation policies and advocated a moreassertive stance vis-à-vis the IMF. Garzón favorsrestructuring the debt and has proposedexchanging debt for guaranteeing Colombia’senvironmental biodiversity.

According to Garzón, Colombia’seconomy has become a finca salvaje, abackwards or savage farm, when it should be afinca rica civilizada, a rich, civilized farm.Colombia has been recognized for two principalexport products, oil and coffee. Coffee, heemphasized, is no longer viable because

Vietnamese producers have dramatically under-cut Latin American prices. Oil is problematicbecause it is extracted in the regions that are atthe center of the armed conflict. As an alternative,Garzón advocated exports such as African palm,rubber and maize. He described Africa as theonly world region that is worse off thanColombia in particular and Latin America moregenerally, and characterized Colombia as sufferingfrom “Africanization.”

Garzón argued for a new economicvision in Latin America, a vision he shares withBrazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” daSilva. At its heart is multilateralism, as promotedby the Brazilian government. While Lulapromotes Latin American economic integrationand trade agreements among Latin Americancountries, Garzón noted, the Colombiangovernment unfortunately seeks bilateralagreements with the U.S.

And yet it is the United States thatshares responsibility for the drug trade.According to Garzón, less than two percent ofthe profits go to Colombian growers. His politicalparty, the Polo Democrático, advocates usinginternational aid to incorporate small producersinto the lega l economy throug h cropsubstitution, treating drugs as a public healthissue and opening an international debate onthe taboo subject of decriminalization.

At home, he argued, pol i t icalcampaigns should be publicly rather thanprivately funded and the corrupt ColombianCongress should be reduced in size andrestructured into one chamber (a rareagreement here with Uribe). In addition tocleaning up Congress, he sees a need to changehow judges are appointed.

Garzón, however, was a realist whenassessing the likelihood of such internationaland domestic recommendations ever becomingpolicy. In Colombia, he said,“to be a politician isdisreputable.” Politicians in Latin America, as inthe United States, are seen as controlled bymoney. As a result, the labor leader said, war-weary Colombians have lost faith in their ownnational institutions.

Lucho GarzónTakes a Critical Look at the Uribe Governmentcontinued from page 9

A Colombian streetmarked by graffiti thatreads:“No to Uribe’s

terrorist plan.”

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Center for Latin American StudiesUniversity of California, Berkeley2334 Bowditch StreetBerkeley, CA [email protected]: 510-642-2088Fax: 510-642-3260

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On April 2, 2003 Bay Area audiences received a riveting display of the Argentine tango tradition when themusicians and dancers of Tango Buenos Aires brought “The Golden Age of Tango” to Zellerbach Hall. Theshow was part of Cal Performances’ Celebración de las Culturas de Iberamérica, a series aimed at exploring

the rich multitude of art forms and cultures of the Americas. The series continues next fall with a performanceby the legendary Mercedes Sosa, Argentina’s diva of nueva canción, on October 22, 2003.

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