Monday, November 25, 2019
CAS SEE: Seminar with Sabino Paparella
About “e-selfing”: from self-branding to Quantified Self
Words are built into you — in the soft typewriter of the womb you do not realize the word-armor you carry; […] I mean man it’s strictly from the soft typewriter.
William S. Burroughs, Interview with G. Corso and A. Ginsberg,
Journal For the Protection of All Beings, 1961.
"Whether is considered under the bad aegis of “surveillance capitalism’s” new-panopticism (Crary, 2013; Zuboff, 2019), or as the “organized networks” affordance (Rossiter, 2006; Lovink/Rossiter, 2011) towards social movements, the political efficiency of new digital media however depends on the transduction of a body-individual physical identity in the Netizen’s digital one.
We need a digital identity in order to log in the web. Can it be considered properly a representation of our self? Digital technology seems to imply rather a production of the self, by the sound of things. This production of self set up by the digital dispositif – henceforth “e-selfing” – comes by a search for authenticity of the self.
One of the main features of Web 2.0 is the rising need for a digital True Identity, endorsed by the claim of "absolute transparency". Unlike the geek sub-culture of Web 1.0, which was celebrating multiple identity of self by using alias, avatar, nicknames, the interactive digital turn, implemented first by the blogosphere and then by the social media, involves the definition of an unambiguous and verifiable self, which stays always the same and acts predictably, according to a strategy of “narrative hypercoherence” (Ippolita, 2016).
We would suggest here to outline e-selfing in terms of disintermediation.
Disintermediation usually means the shortening of the supply chain from a producer to a consumer. But what about a system, like the currently digital one, in which producers and consumers are the same (so-called “prosumers”)? Put another way, what if the object of disintermediation is properly Self-access, the access to one’s digital self? What kind of mediation, or resistance, is dropping out in this case?
We will investigate to what extent the output of disintermediation in some strategies of e-selfing (self-branding) could be a decreasing relational nature of the self. Maybe what is at stake in the evaluation of this relationality is the possibility to find something like a “digital subjectivity”. An individual becomes a subject insofar as is object of another one. It depends on acknowledging that the very identity is related to being addressed from someone: in other words, what we are is not the same than who we are (Cavarero, 1997).
Is the digital production of our coherent, True Self capable of this distinction? If “who we are” is performing in process, through specific and prompt acts, to what extent can it be expressed by the universal knowledge of a computable essence, by “self-knowledge through numbers”, as in “Quantified Self” (QS) digital community?
Who I am is contingent, that is to say: any time, I’m who I perform, although I may not to. That goes both ways: “who I am” means the possibility of preferring not to do “what I am” too, like the Melville’s Scrivener Bartleby. This missed overlap, the gap between who and what we are, which some e-selfing strategies maybe risk filling in the light of the transparency principle, conveys the subjectification power, which only makes political an identity."
References
Cavarero, A., Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti. Filosofia della narrazione, Feltrinelli, Milano 1997.
Crary, J., 24/7. Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, Verso, London 2013.
Ippolita, Anime elettriche. Riti e miti social, Jaca Book, Milano 2016.
Lovink, G./ Rossiter, N., «Urgent Aphorisms, Notes on Organized Networks for the Connected Multitudes», in Deuz M. (ed. by), Managing Media Work, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2011.
Rossiter N., Organized Networks, Nai, Rotterdam 2006.
Zuboff, S., The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Profile, London 2019.
Seminar with Sabino Paparella will be held at the University campus, University departments building (Ul. Radmile Matejčić 2, 51000 Rijeka) at the 8th Floor, Room 804, starting at 2:30 pm on December 5, 2019.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Weak consumption, economy could sink Trump re-election bid
Two Federal Reserve banks warn
of near-recession conditions as US presidential campaign is getting underway
DAVID P. GOLDMAN
US President Donald Trump’s
case for re-election in 2020 comes down to his economic record. New forecasts
from two Federal Reserve banks, though, warn of near-recession conditions just
as the presidential election campaign is getting underway.
Both the New York Federal
Reserve “Nowcast” model and the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s “GDPNow” model
predict that US economic growth will slow to barely above zero during 2019’s
fourth quarter. Both models translate the latest data releases from government
agencies into overall GDP growth. The NY Fed’s forecast stands at 0.4%
annualized GDP growth and the Atlanta Fed model shows just 0.3%. This degree of
convergence is rare, and the dip from an estimated 1.9% growth rate during the
third quarter to 0.3%-0.4% is alarming.
Eighteen months ago the Trump
Administration advertised the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s forecast as proof of
its success. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told
CNBC in June 2018, “The Atlanta Fed is projecting 4.7% [GDP growth]. I have
no idea whether it will be that high. But a year ago, people were laughing when
we talked about 3% GDP. We have an economy that’s here because of the president’s
tax plan and the president’s regulatory relief.”
The administration isn’t
bragging about the Atlanta Fed’s present forecast of just 0.3% annualized GDP
growth.
Since then GDP growth has
fallen below 2%, as businesses cancel capital investment plans in response to
uncertainty about global supply chains, following the Trump Administration
tariff war on China and threatened bans on technology exports to Chinese
companies. Consumer spending kept the economy growing despite shrinking CapEx
and a manufacturing recession that is now in its third quarter. At just 12% of
GDP, the manufacturing recession isn’t enough to tip the overall economy into
recession.
The new Fed forecasts
indicate that US consumers are nearing exhaustion.
If the Trump Administration
goes through with its threat to impose a new 25% tariff on an additional $160
billion of Chinese imports, including most consumer electronics, the US economy
is likely to tip over the edge into recession in 2020.
With a $1 trillion budget
deficit and an expanding Federal Reserve balance sheet, the US economy has
generated enough demand to keep GDP growth close to 2% during the past couple
of quarters. But the consumer shows signs of flagging. Retail sales were up
just 3% year-on-year as of the preliminary October release from the US Census
Bureau. With core inflation rising at a 2.3% annual rate, that puts real retail
sales growth at well under 1% – not enough to carry an economy burdened by
declining CapEx and industrial output.
Auto sales have been negative
year on year through most of 2019.
A breakdown of the
year-on-year change in dollar volume at the same stores published by the
private data firm Spendtrend shows that consumers have reduced purchases of
higher-end discretionary products.
Part of the reason for weaker
than expected retail sales growth is that consumers are saving a bigger
proportion of their income. The personal savings rate has risen from about 6%
of disposable income at the time of Trump’s inauguration to about 8.5% now.
Heightened precautionary
savings by US consumers is consistent with gloomier expectations about the
labor market, according to the Conference Board’s latest monthly survey. The
percentage of Americans who believe that jobs will be more plentiful in six
months from an early 2017 peak of 24% to only 16% today, close to the
slow-growth years of the Obama administration.
Another indicator of risk
aversion can be inferred from the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s data series for
wage growth among people who remain in their jobs vs. those who switch jobs.
Job stayers prefer security to the prospect of a raise, while job switchers are
more risk-friendly.
As the chart makes clear, the
overall level of wage growth for US workers is close to the level of job
stayers during the past few months. In early 2017, by contrast, the overall
level was closer to that of job switchers. That means, simply, that more people
are keeping their present job rather than taking the risk of switching in
return for higher pay.
Investment, meanwhile, remains
weak and fell sharply into the negative during the third quarter.
With manufacturing still
contracting and capital investment shrinking, a modest pullback by US consumers
would realize the glum forecasts of the New York and Atlanta Federal Reserve
banks.
Mexico’s murder rate up, official warns of ‘narcoterrorism’
AP. November 21, 2019
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s murder rate inched up 2% in the first 10 months of the year, but the latest violence has included much more brazen challenges to authorities.
Federal officials said late Wednesday there have been 29,414 homicides so far in 2019, compared to 28,869 in the same period of 2018.
But northern border cities like Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo have seen a constant round of drug gang blockades recently, with gunmen burning buses and trucks to block roads and bridges.
On Tuesday, one policeman was wounded and at least two blockades of burning vehicles were reported in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas. The blockades are used to prevent police and military units from pursuing suspects.
And in early November, drug gangs paid addicts in methamphetamines to burn cars, trucks and buses and kill people, in order to pressure authorities.
The governor of the border state of Tamaulipas, where Nuevo Laredo is located, said the gangs have committed acts of “narcoterrorism.”
Gov. Francisco Garcia said the gangs “have used civilians as human shields.”
“Their behavior is one of narcoterrorism. It’s a very serious issue,” said Garcia.
The recent violence has also touched areas previously considered peaceful.
For example, the popular ruin site of Monte Alban in the southern state of Oaxaca was forced to close for several hours on Tuesday because of a gunfight in a village near the archaeological site in which one man was killed and another wounded. That case apparently involved a land dispute rather than cartels.
And the victims of recent violence have also included U.S. citizens. In early November, cartel gunmen killed nine American women and children in the northern border state of Sonora.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday he would be willing to meet with relatives of the American victims, who belong to a dual-national community that has lived in Sonora and Chihuahua for decades.
But he warned the families that he preferred to meet only with them, and said he hoped they wouldn’t come with anti-crime activists.
“It would be better, much better, if this didn’t get mixed up with the opportunism that breaks out after such regrettable events,” Lopez Obrador said. The president has angrily rejected any criticism of his security policy, even after he ordered the army to back down and release a top drug suspect. He has refused to meet with prominent anti-crime activists like Javier Sicilia, claiming they are part of a “conservative” opposition to his policy.
The president argued his administration had managed to “stabilize” the rise in killings, which early in the year had been growing by double-digit percentages.
“This is the issue that most concerns us, the issue of public safety,” said Lopez Obrador, adding, “It is also the issue that most concerns the public.”
But he stuck to his policy of reducing violence “without the use of force, because that is the new security policy we are putting in practice: not to fight violence with violence.”
In a book published this week, Lopez Obrador argued that his administration was doing better than his predecessors, at least in terms of saving the lives of military personnel.
In the first 11 months of his administration — which started Dec. 1, 2018 — only 14 soldiers and marines had died in confrontations, compared with an average of 51 per year between 2010 and 2012.
However, critics say that is because Lopez Obrador has largely ordered the military to avoid confrontations with drug gangs and other criminals.
Lopez Obrador argued that the armed forces were acting with greater respect for human rights, detaining more suspects uninjured, and killing and wounding fewer under his administration.
How the Leader of the OAS Became a Right-Wing Hawk—And Paved the Way for Bolivia’s Coup
How the Leader of the OAS Became a Right-Wing Hawk—And Paved the Way for Bolivia’s Coup
BRANKO MARCETIC. In These Times. November 21, 2019
The OAS has long been viewed as a tool of U.S. foreign influence, thanks in large part to the U.S. government’s outsized funding of the organization.
When former Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro took the helm of the Organization for American States (OAS) in 2015, members of the U.S. Right despaired that the intergovernmental body would be headed by yet another Latin American leftist and friend of Washington’s foes. Four years later, those same right-wing forces cheered as Almagro led the charge for the overthrow of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and the OAS contributed to a coup in Bolivia.
The OAS is a regional forum of 34 states that acts something like the United Nations of the Americas. Almagro and the OAS have come under the spotlight in recent weeks, thanks to their controversial role in Bolivia’s most recent presidential election. After winning a fourth straight term last month, longtime indigenous leftist president Evo Morales left office and fled the country in what appears to be a textbook coup: The head of the military called for his resignation, as violence against his supporters surged. The OAS has fallen under increasing criticism in recent weeks, after its contested claims of irregularities and “clear manipulations” by the Morales side were used by the opposition, both Bolivian and American, to invalidate the election results—and intensify pressure to oust Morales.
“The OAS took a political decision, not a technical or legal one,” Morales charged from Mexico, where he had been granted asylum after protesters ransacked his home and kidnapped and abused his allies. “The OAS is in the service of the North American empire.”
The OAS came under similar criticism from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a left-leaning economic think-tank based in Washington, D.C., which disputed the OAS’ claims of election fraud. “There is simply no statistical or evidentiary basis to dispute the vote count results showing that Evo Morales won in the first round,” CEPR Senior Policy Analyst Guillaume Long said on November 8, releasing a paper that showed a step-by-step breakdown disputing the conclusions of OAS.
This incident is just the latest in Almagro’s controversial position as secretary general of the OAS, elected by a majority of member states, a position he hopes to continue for another five years after his current term expires in May 2020. Almagro started his career in Uruguay’s conservative politics before suddenly morphing into a committed Pink Tider, and he once again changed his tune upon becoming OAS secretary general. This shift is particularly evident in his widely-criticized opposition to Maduro—a development successive U.S. administrations have been eager to take advantage of to pursue their interests through an organization they worry they’ve lost control of.
Persistent U.S. influence
The OAS has long been viewed as a tool of U.S. foreign influence, thanks in large part to the U.S. government’s outsized funding of the organization. Even as late as 2018, the U.S. provided 60% of the institution’s annual budget.
From the beginning, the U.S. wielded significant influence over the organization, which excluded Cuba from because its “Marxist-Leninist government” was “incompatible with the principles and objectives of the inter-American system,” as the OAS put it. The subsequent decades would see a range of autocratic—even genocidal—governments remain members of the OAS, while the U.S. mostly made a mockery of its principles, as when Ronald Reagan violated its charter’s ban on the use of armed forces against a fellow member with his administration’s 1983 invasion of Grenada.
U.S. influence over the OAS depleted during the post-Cold War era, and the vast majority of the OAS’ work in observing elections was above board. But the U.S. could still exert influence in strategic moments. During the 2009 coup in Honduras, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaned on the OAS to back new elections and keep ousted President Manuel Zelaya from returning to power—or as she put it in her memoir, “render the question of Zelaya moot.”
Despite its weakening influence, there is broad acknowledgement within the U.S. government that the OAS continues to be a vehicle for U.S. interests.
“The United States historically has sought to use the OAS to advance economic, political and security objectives in the Western Hemisphere,” a 2014 Congressional report states. “The organization’s goals and day-to-day activities are still generally consistent with U.S. policy toward the region, but the U.S. government has struggled to obtain support from other member states on some high-profile issues.”
Likewise, a 2018 GAO report found that “the strategic goals of the OAS” and other U.S.-financed organizations “are predominantly aligned with the strategic goals of State, USAID, HHS, and USDA. These goals include “a secure and democratic future for all citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean,” “expanded economic opportunity and prosperity for the hemisphere,” and a “public opinion environment that is supportive of U.S. policy initiatives,” the report states.
A rightward shift
When Luis Almagro became OAS General Secretary in March 2015, it at first appeared he would push against these historical trends. From 2010 on, Almagro had served as the foreign minister for the Uruguyan government headed by Jose “Pepe” Mujica, part of the Pink Tide of leftist governments that had swept to power in Latin America at the dawn of the 21st century. Upon being nominated to helm the OAS, Mujica’s government spent no small amount of political capital making sure Almagro won. Almagro later said Mujica had “played a decisive role.” When his sole rival dropped out of the contest due to health concerns, Almagro ascended to the position.
This was unhappy news to conservatives. Under Mujica, Almagro had pushed to revoke the 1986 amnesty law protecting Uruguay’s former military dictatorship from prosecution for crimes against humanity, reacted to Osama Bin Laden’s 2011 assassination by saying “no death should be celebrated,” and joined Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina in calling for recognition of a Palestinian state in 2010. But most worrying to the Right was his attitude toward Venezuela: On the first anniversary of former President Hugo Chavez’s death, Almagro declared Chavez had “reinvented Latin America.” And when Maduro’s government clashed with protesters and violent right-wing forces in 2014, Almagro blamed “both sides” for the ensuing violence.
Several conservative newspapers and think tanks raised alarm about his support for Chavismo. Right-leaning Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer warned that Almagro and one other candidate were “causing concern—and in some cases, alarm—in international circles for the defense of human rights.” Oppenheimer wrote that Almagro was “Venezuela’s favorite,” warning of his “close ties with Iran,” owing to the five years he had spent in the Uruguayan embassy in Tehran. Sonia Osorio, columnist with the El Nuevo Herald, a Spanish-language paper in Florida, likewise called him “a diplomat with close ties to Chavismo who also maintains worrying relations with Iran.”
Upon ascending to the head of the OAS, Almagro appeared to confirm conservatives’ fears. He continued his election-promise call for Cuba’s reintegration into the OAS. In August 2015, he announced he “deplore[d] the acts of the [OAS] that validated” the 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic, “twisting the sovereign path chosen by its people.” Pledging early on to “leave the OAS behind the Cold War,” he promised to return the OAS to “a credibility that everyone demands,” and be the “facilitator of its renewal.”
But his choice of transition team hinted at the direction he would end up going. Besides Luis Porto, a Uruguayan economist who had served in various positions under Mujica, Almagro’s transition to the new post was also headed by Dan Restrepo. Obama’s Latin America adviser, Restrepo has a long history with the corporate-funded liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), and he continued to advise Almagro for at least the next year.
As special counsel to Washington law firm Jones Walker LLP since 2014—a year before heading Almagro’s transition, and a position he still holds today—Restrepo works “on behalf of a wide range of clients, including multinational media and technology companies, independent energy producers, private equity funds, major consumer products companies, major infrastructure companies, and global law firms,” according to his bio on the firm’s site. While those clients aren’t listed, some of Jones Walker’s lobbying clients over the past five years included Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Sasol Chemicals, tobacco company Pyxus International, and oil-drilling company Hercules Offshore Inc. These are all exactly the kinds of firms that have itched to access the vast natural wealth of Latin American countries governed by leftist populists like Chavez and Morales
Provocations towards Maduro
It took many months for Almagro to become more bullish on Venezuela, following Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s repeated rejection of his offer to send OAS election observers to the country. November 2015 saw Almagro send a harshly worded letter to the president of the country’s National Electoral Council, criticizing the upcoming electoral process and warning it lacked “transparency and electoral justice.” The letter prompted public reproach from Mujica, who rebuked “the direction” Almagro was taking, and formally told him “goodbye.” The letter also garnered public praise from hawkish Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Despite Almagro’s preemptive efforts to cast the elections as illegitimate, the Venezuelan opposition won in a landslide, securing a two-thirds supermajority in the National Assembly with which they vowed to force Maduro from office.
A series of tit-for-tat escalations between the government and the opposition spiraled out of control over the next few years. The Maduro government and its loyalist-controlled Supreme Court took increasingly authoritarian steps to nullify the opposition’s existing and future electoral gains. And the opposition resorted to alarming measures and continued use of violence to foment a crisis it could use to achieve its longstanding goal of ousting Maduro and reversing Chavismo. Rather than choose a path of diplomacy to help end the crisis, Almagro chose a more provocative approach, siding with the country’s violent, right-wing opposition.
As Henry Ramos Allup, the opposition head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, called for the OAS to take a tougher position, Almagro put out a scathing 132-page report that backed the oppositions’ calls for a recall referendum. Almagro also invoked the OAS’ Democratic Charter, suggesting Venezuela could be suspended from the organization. Almagro engaged repeatedly in an inflammatory war of words with Maduro, responding to his insults by calling him a “petty dictator” and a “traitor.” Prior to a July OAS debate over the recall, Almagro met with Allup, and Almagro’s effort to pass the recall was backed by a number of right-wing former Latin American presidents, including Peru’s Alejandro Toledo, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, and Costa Rica’s Laura Chinchilla.
The governments of countries like Ecuador, Argentina and Chile, in turn, raised concerns about Almagro’s “systematic aggressions” against the country. When Almagro pushed for the recall at a meeting of the OAS permanent council, member states rejected his call for a more intense intervention in Venezuela, instead urging dialogue. According to CEPR Director of International Policy Alexander Main, member states rejected his call for a more intense intervention in Venezuela, instead urging dialogue. Main told The Real News Network that Almagro would become “an instrument of the [U.S.] state department…to intervene in the internal affairs of member states.” In June 2016, the foreign minister of Venezuela—whose backing from OAS member states had by this point taken a ding thanks to Maduro’s actions—urged the OAS General Assembly to put a break on Almagro’s actions. She received a round of applause.
But perhaps most controversial was Almagro’s relationship with Leopoldo López, the right-wing leader of the Venezuelan opposition then under house arrest. In August 2016, Almagro wrote a treacly eight-page letter to his “esteemed friend Leopoldo,” telling López he “felt immensely close to the injustice you are suffering.” López was “one of the few” examples of “public greatness,” Almagro later wrote. In July 2017, the two had a publicized phone conversation, agreeing “to continue working for the return of democracy to Venezuela and the recovery of the rights of the Venezuelan people,” according to an OAS statement.
Far from the Gandhi-like figure painted by Almagro, however, López is an elite scion with Republican ties who was described by a diplomat in Caracas as a “divisive figure within the opposition” who is “arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry.” More alarmingly, he had backed and played a role in the 2002 military coup against the democratically elected Chavez.
To read the rest of the article, follow the link above.
BRANKO MARCETIC. In These Times. November 21, 2019
The OAS has long been viewed as a tool of U.S. foreign influence, thanks in large part to the U.S. government’s outsized funding of the organization.
When former Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro took the helm of the Organization for American States (OAS) in 2015, members of the U.S. Right despaired that the intergovernmental body would be headed by yet another Latin American leftist and friend of Washington’s foes. Four years later, those same right-wing forces cheered as Almagro led the charge for the overthrow of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and the OAS contributed to a coup in Bolivia.
The OAS is a regional forum of 34 states that acts something like the United Nations of the Americas. Almagro and the OAS have come under the spotlight in recent weeks, thanks to their controversial role in Bolivia’s most recent presidential election. After winning a fourth straight term last month, longtime indigenous leftist president Evo Morales left office and fled the country in what appears to be a textbook coup: The head of the military called for his resignation, as violence against his supporters surged. The OAS has fallen under increasing criticism in recent weeks, after its contested claims of irregularities and “clear manipulations” by the Morales side were used by the opposition, both Bolivian and American, to invalidate the election results—and intensify pressure to oust Morales.
“The OAS took a political decision, not a technical or legal one,” Morales charged from Mexico, where he had been granted asylum after protesters ransacked his home and kidnapped and abused his allies. “The OAS is in the service of the North American empire.”
The OAS came under similar criticism from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a left-leaning economic think-tank based in Washington, D.C., which disputed the OAS’ claims of election fraud. “There is simply no statistical or evidentiary basis to dispute the vote count results showing that Evo Morales won in the first round,” CEPR Senior Policy Analyst Guillaume Long said on November 8, releasing a paper that showed a step-by-step breakdown disputing the conclusions of OAS.
This incident is just the latest in Almagro’s controversial position as secretary general of the OAS, elected by a majority of member states, a position he hopes to continue for another five years after his current term expires in May 2020. Almagro started his career in Uruguay’s conservative politics before suddenly morphing into a committed Pink Tider, and he once again changed his tune upon becoming OAS secretary general. This shift is particularly evident in his widely-criticized opposition to Maduro—a development successive U.S. administrations have been eager to take advantage of to pursue their interests through an organization they worry they’ve lost control of.
Persistent U.S. influence
The OAS has long been viewed as a tool of U.S. foreign influence, thanks in large part to the U.S. government’s outsized funding of the organization. Even as late as 2018, the U.S. provided 60% of the institution’s annual budget.
From the beginning, the U.S. wielded significant influence over the organization, which excluded Cuba from because its “Marxist-Leninist government” was “incompatible with the principles and objectives of the inter-American system,” as the OAS put it. The subsequent decades would see a range of autocratic—even genocidal—governments remain members of the OAS, while the U.S. mostly made a mockery of its principles, as when Ronald Reagan violated its charter’s ban on the use of armed forces against a fellow member with his administration’s 1983 invasion of Grenada.
U.S. influence over the OAS depleted during the post-Cold War era, and the vast majority of the OAS’ work in observing elections was above board. But the U.S. could still exert influence in strategic moments. During the 2009 coup in Honduras, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaned on the OAS to back new elections and keep ousted President Manuel Zelaya from returning to power—or as she put it in her memoir, “render the question of Zelaya moot.”
Despite its weakening influence, there is broad acknowledgement within the U.S. government that the OAS continues to be a vehicle for U.S. interests.
“The United States historically has sought to use the OAS to advance economic, political and security objectives in the Western Hemisphere,” a 2014 Congressional report states. “The organization’s goals and day-to-day activities are still generally consistent with U.S. policy toward the region, but the U.S. government has struggled to obtain support from other member states on some high-profile issues.”
Likewise, a 2018 GAO report found that “the strategic goals of the OAS” and other U.S.-financed organizations “are predominantly aligned with the strategic goals of State, USAID, HHS, and USDA. These goals include “a secure and democratic future for all citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean,” “expanded economic opportunity and prosperity for the hemisphere,” and a “public opinion environment that is supportive of U.S. policy initiatives,” the report states.
A rightward shift
When Luis Almagro became OAS General Secretary in March 2015, it at first appeared he would push against these historical trends. From 2010 on, Almagro had served as the foreign minister for the Uruguyan government headed by Jose “Pepe” Mujica, part of the Pink Tide of leftist governments that had swept to power in Latin America at the dawn of the 21st century. Upon being nominated to helm the OAS, Mujica’s government spent no small amount of political capital making sure Almagro won. Almagro later said Mujica had “played a decisive role.” When his sole rival dropped out of the contest due to health concerns, Almagro ascended to the position.
This was unhappy news to conservatives. Under Mujica, Almagro had pushed to revoke the 1986 amnesty law protecting Uruguay’s former military dictatorship from prosecution for crimes against humanity, reacted to Osama Bin Laden’s 2011 assassination by saying “no death should be celebrated,” and joined Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina in calling for recognition of a Palestinian state in 2010. But most worrying to the Right was his attitude toward Venezuela: On the first anniversary of former President Hugo Chavez’s death, Almagro declared Chavez had “reinvented Latin America.” And when Maduro’s government clashed with protesters and violent right-wing forces in 2014, Almagro blamed “both sides” for the ensuing violence.
Several conservative newspapers and think tanks raised alarm about his support for Chavismo. Right-leaning Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer warned that Almagro and one other candidate were “causing concern—and in some cases, alarm—in international circles for the defense of human rights.” Oppenheimer wrote that Almagro was “Venezuela’s favorite,” warning of his “close ties with Iran,” owing to the five years he had spent in the Uruguayan embassy in Tehran. Sonia Osorio, columnist with the El Nuevo Herald, a Spanish-language paper in Florida, likewise called him “a diplomat with close ties to Chavismo who also maintains worrying relations with Iran.”
Upon ascending to the head of the OAS, Almagro appeared to confirm conservatives’ fears. He continued his election-promise call for Cuba’s reintegration into the OAS. In August 2015, he announced he “deplore[d] the acts of the [OAS] that validated” the 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic, “twisting the sovereign path chosen by its people.” Pledging early on to “leave the OAS behind the Cold War,” he promised to return the OAS to “a credibility that everyone demands,” and be the “facilitator of its renewal.”
But his choice of transition team hinted at the direction he would end up going. Besides Luis Porto, a Uruguayan economist who had served in various positions under Mujica, Almagro’s transition to the new post was also headed by Dan Restrepo. Obama’s Latin America adviser, Restrepo has a long history with the corporate-funded liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), and he continued to advise Almagro for at least the next year.
As special counsel to Washington law firm Jones Walker LLP since 2014—a year before heading Almagro’s transition, and a position he still holds today—Restrepo works “on behalf of a wide range of clients, including multinational media and technology companies, independent energy producers, private equity funds, major consumer products companies, major infrastructure companies, and global law firms,” according to his bio on the firm’s site. While those clients aren’t listed, some of Jones Walker’s lobbying clients over the past five years included Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Sasol Chemicals, tobacco company Pyxus International, and oil-drilling company Hercules Offshore Inc. These are all exactly the kinds of firms that have itched to access the vast natural wealth of Latin American countries governed by leftist populists like Chavez and Morales
Provocations towards Maduro
It took many months for Almagro to become more bullish on Venezuela, following Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s repeated rejection of his offer to send OAS election observers to the country. November 2015 saw Almagro send a harshly worded letter to the president of the country’s National Electoral Council, criticizing the upcoming electoral process and warning it lacked “transparency and electoral justice.” The letter prompted public reproach from Mujica, who rebuked “the direction” Almagro was taking, and formally told him “goodbye.” The letter also garnered public praise from hawkish Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Despite Almagro’s preemptive efforts to cast the elections as illegitimate, the Venezuelan opposition won in a landslide, securing a two-thirds supermajority in the National Assembly with which they vowed to force Maduro from office.
A series of tit-for-tat escalations between the government and the opposition spiraled out of control over the next few years. The Maduro government and its loyalist-controlled Supreme Court took increasingly authoritarian steps to nullify the opposition’s existing and future electoral gains. And the opposition resorted to alarming measures and continued use of violence to foment a crisis it could use to achieve its longstanding goal of ousting Maduro and reversing Chavismo. Rather than choose a path of diplomacy to help end the crisis, Almagro chose a more provocative approach, siding with the country’s violent, right-wing opposition.
As Henry Ramos Allup, the opposition head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, called for the OAS to take a tougher position, Almagro put out a scathing 132-page report that backed the oppositions’ calls for a recall referendum. Almagro also invoked the OAS’ Democratic Charter, suggesting Venezuela could be suspended from the organization. Almagro engaged repeatedly in an inflammatory war of words with Maduro, responding to his insults by calling him a “petty dictator” and a “traitor.” Prior to a July OAS debate over the recall, Almagro met with Allup, and Almagro’s effort to pass the recall was backed by a number of right-wing former Latin American presidents, including Peru’s Alejandro Toledo, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, and Costa Rica’s Laura Chinchilla.
The governments of countries like Ecuador, Argentina and Chile, in turn, raised concerns about Almagro’s “systematic aggressions” against the country. When Almagro pushed for the recall at a meeting of the OAS permanent council, member states rejected his call for a more intense intervention in Venezuela, instead urging dialogue. According to CEPR Director of International Policy Alexander Main, member states rejected his call for a more intense intervention in Venezuela, instead urging dialogue. Main told The Real News Network that Almagro would become “an instrument of the [U.S.] state department…to intervene in the internal affairs of member states.” In June 2016, the foreign minister of Venezuela—whose backing from OAS member states had by this point taken a ding thanks to Maduro’s actions—urged the OAS General Assembly to put a break on Almagro’s actions. She received a round of applause.
But perhaps most controversial was Almagro’s relationship with Leopoldo López, the right-wing leader of the Venezuelan opposition then under house arrest. In August 2016, Almagro wrote a treacly eight-page letter to his “esteemed friend Leopoldo,” telling López he “felt immensely close to the injustice you are suffering.” López was “one of the few” examples of “public greatness,” Almagro later wrote. In July 2017, the two had a publicized phone conversation, agreeing “to continue working for the return of democracy to Venezuela and the recovery of the rights of the Venezuelan people,” according to an OAS statement.
Far from the Gandhi-like figure painted by Almagro, however, López is an elite scion with Republican ties who was described by a diplomat in Caracas as a “divisive figure within the opposition” who is “arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry.” More alarmingly, he had backed and played a role in the 2002 military coup against the democratically elected Chavez.
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Bolivia Lurches Towards Dictatorship
Olivia Arigho-Stiles. Tribune. November 20, 2019
It is just over a week since former Bolivian president Evo Morales was forced to resign in a coup which has dramatically fractured Bolivia’s institutions and left a trail of bloodshed. With eleven people shot dead by state forces and hundreds injured in a week of violence, Bolivia is fast slipping into a violent and militarised regime steered by the emboldened right.
The new interim president is an unelected religious conservative who has promised to ‘return the bible’ to government. Members of Morales’ party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) have had their homes burnt and have been forced to resign for fear of reprisals.
One of these officials in hiding is Tamara Núñez Del Prado, formerly Deputy of the Ombudsman until 2017, and a prominent MAS-supporting LGBTQ-rights advocate. Núñez del Prado was one of the promoters of the Bolivian Gender Identity Law and was one of the first people to change her name legally to reflect her gender identity.
She comes from a prominent leftist family; her grandfather was a MAS senator and her father Carlos Nunez Del Prado, was a guerrilla with the ELN (Army for National Liberation) in Bolivia. He also fought in the resistance against Augusto Pinochet in Chile, having worked for President Allende before he was ousted in a CIA-backed coup in 1973.
One day after the coup on Sunday 10 November, Tamara received a message three seconds long. “Before killing you, we will rape you, whore,” Tamara tells me from her friend’s house where she is hiding.
She was subsequently warned by an ex-colleague of her father’s that her name had been put on a list of those to be eliminated. It is impossible to verify whether this is indeed true but it speaks to the climate of fear and threats of violence engulfing Bolivia in the aftermath of the coup.
“I remember the dictatorships [of 1964-1982] in black and white, in photographs. Now in the age of technology, it is being lived in colour,” she says. But Núñez Del Prado is adamant: “We have to organise ourselves to resist the coup d’état. We have to resist through peaceful, non-violent means.”
Yet after the interim government immediately ordered the military onto the streets, coordinating this resistance has become increasingly dangerous. On Tuesday 19 November, three people were shot dead and 30 injured in El Alto when state forces dispelled a peaceful anti-government blockade of the Senkata gas plant.
On Friday 15 November, eight cocaleros (coca growers), a stalwart of MAS support, were massacred by state security forces as they protested against the new government in Sacaba, Cochabamba. Footage has emerged of bullets being fired by police from helicopters and police firing teargas into a fleeing crowd. X-rays suggest those killed were shot from behind. Some newspaper reports cite police who claim the cocaleros were armed with guns and bazukas, though they have provided no evidence.
At the same time, the government granted the military immunity from prosecution if they use force in ‘legitimate defence,’ in a decree leaked on social media by the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (CIDH). This, in effect, provides the armed forces with a carte blanche to kill.
The new government assumed power after conservative-religious opposition leader and second vice president of the Senate, Jeanine Añez, appointed herself to the Presidency in a near-empty legislative chamber. Representatives of Morales’s party boycotted the session, withholding the quorum necessary to officially accept Morales’s resignation and approve the interim president. Añez represents the Unidad Democrática party which received just 4.24% of the vote in the election.
Freedom of the press is one of the first things which has been attacked by the new government. The Communications minister declared that the government would expel foreign journalists. The new Minister for Government, Arthur Murillo, also stated that he is drawing up “lists” of legislators and journalists who spread “sedition” and has warned foreigners involved in “murky things” that they should leave.
This has had a tangible effect in stifling media coverage. There is a notable lack of national and international press present on the streets and a poignant slogan of protesters in La Paz is “where is the press, dammit!” At local level, many community radio stations have been shut down.
Morales’s resignation last Sunday was effectively forced when the head of the Bolivian armed forces ‘suggested’ that he resign following a police mutiny in cities across the country. This was the culmination of two weeks of mobilisation by anti-government protestors, largely organised by ultra-right civic leader Luis Fernando Camacho (“Macho Camacho”), who accused the government of fraud in the elections on October 20.
The popular base for the coup comes from two key sectors; the urban middle classes, including liberals and university students, and the ultra-right business oriented elites based in the lowland city of Santa Cruz.
Morales’s resignation coincided with the release of the report by the Organisation of American States (OAS) which suggested there had been ‘manipulation’ in the vote count. It should be noted that the allegations of fraud have been contested by US think tank, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). In its analysis, the CEPR argues that the OAS’s report does not provide evidence to suggest inconsistencies in the official vote count, but only in the provisional results, (the TREP) which are not legally binding.
Last week saw daily protests against the coup and in support of Morales in La Paz by regional groups of campesinos (land workers), indigenous groups and local associations from El Alto. These invariably ended with the police teargassing protestors, including children, in Plaza San Francisco something which did not routinely occur in the anti-Morales protests. A sign at a rally on Thursday in La Paz poignantly expresses this double standard: “When the rich march, the policy mutiny. When the poor march, they shoot bullets.”
Immediately after the resignation, footage circulated on social media of anti-Morales protesters burning the wiphala, the flag representing Andean indigenous peoples, while police in the city of Santa Cruz were filmed cutting off the wiphala from their uniforms. The wiphala is a resonant symbol of resistance to the centuries of exploitation, racial violence and social exclusion experienced by indigenous peoples in Bolivia. As Aymara writer Jesus Oscuri writes, the burning of the wiphala combined with the ousting of Morales made many feel as if “the Indian was being expelled from power.”
Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia and former coca-grower, was elected in 2005 with his social movement-backed party, Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). Under his tenure Bolivia has slashed poverty rates, reduced inequality, sustained economic growth while rejecting IMF debt bondage and nationalised key industries. Indigenous and other social movements were greatly empowered under the MAS, although in recent years some have accused Morales of co-opting these movements and undermining their autonomy.
These attacks on the wiphala prompted outrage and compelled a wave of marches in La Paz, El Alto and Cochabamba in which protestors demanded ‘La wiphala se respeta, carajo” (Respect the wiphala damnit), and called for the resignation of Añez.
Moreover, in a country with a long history of racial discrimination, these protests are a reaction to the dark current of racial and gendered violence which the coup has brought to the fore. Immediately after the elections, daubed outside UMSA, the public university in La Paz, were the words “Indians out of UMSA.”
A MAS mayor, Patricia Arce Guzman, was attacked by opposition protesters who forcibly cut off her hair, dragged her through the street and covered her in red paint and dirt. The director of radio for the peasants union CSUTCB – an organisation allied with Morales which represents rural, usually indigenous workers – was chained to a tree while anti-government protesters ransacked the union’s headquarters. In his press conference on Sunday, Morales said, “my sin is to be indigenous, a union leader and a coca grower.”
The defence of democracy was the rallying cry of the disgruntled urban middle classes in the anti-Morales protests. But partly though their efforts, Bolivia now finds itself in the grips of hardline political forces intent on recapturing the state to serve the old oligarchical interests. The poor and the indigenous are the first to protest because history has shown they will be first to suffer.
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