As I gazed upon my October
calendar … I had a feeling I might lose a few pounds. It was an itinerary
to wake up a hungry soul
inhabiting a well-fed body accustomed to easy access to an abundant garden
and farmers´ market: first to the mountains of Honduras with 800 others to
organize for freedom and democracy against militarism, greed, intolerance
and patriarchy; onward by stiff-backed caravan through the long day and
night to Guatemala City for the III Social Forum of the Americas with
15,000 others to purify ourselves with Mayan rituals and share knowledge
and strategies with indigenous and campesino movements from across the
hemisphere; then finally traversing the Atlantic Ocean in fat-bodied
airplanes and south across the equator and deserts of Namibia and Botswana
to Mozambique for the V International Conference of the Planetary Peasant
Movement known (and whose name is feared by the World Trade Organization)
as the Via Campesina, some 700 persons strong from across the globe. In
two of these gatherings the food was going to be provided by the host
organizations, served to long hungry lines of mostly campesino delegates.
In Guatemala City who knew what one would eat, or where, or when? I might
even need to cut a new notch in my thread-bear belt by the end of these
gatherings.
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But this was fine by me, fine indeed! Going weeks on end eating a bit less
than what one is accustomed to, as part of a collective effort serving a
larger purpose, not only trims a few pounds, but also energizes and drives
one to efforts whose yields are greater than the sum of the individual
parts, like the fruits of a diversified family farm harnessing the full
integrated forces of nature. How grateful I
am to participate and contribute in a modest, low-key way, to the
efforts of courageous and tempered organizations under the leadership of
persistent and maturing thinkers and doers, people with a passion for
justice and effective action for social change, many of whom I have known
for nearly a decade now. And we were always provided just enough
nutritious food to nourish the physical needs sufficiently, leaving us
sharp-eyed and alert and, yes, hungry for justice and freedom above all
else. How a measure of physical hunger can sharpen one´s desire for
justice!!
Doing mass social change on
a shoe-string budget is a bit like being a magician and a juggler all
rolled into one: there is a lot of multi-tasking, prodigious tolerance of
ambiguity and a persistent patience and long-burning willfulness, with
some sleight of hand to smooth over the wrinkles. Miraculously,
dramatically, magically, it all worked. More bang for the buck than could
ever be had in top-down enterprises.
Iconoclastic Anti-Militarization Gathering in Honduras
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In the mountains of Honduras, I was gratified to be a part of an event as
diverse, tolerant and iconoclastic of the conventional boundaries of
mainstream Latin American culture as I have yet witnessed to date. The
central theme around which to conceptualize and organize was
militarization, its roots in patriarchy and neo-liberal capitalism, its
strategic capacity to instill fear, to cultivate conformity, complacency,
secrecy, and machismo and bearing always a single-destination, lock-step
corporate agenda to protect. The solutions, on the other hand, we were
living out in the course of the gathering itself: the elaborate sharing of
strategies and vision by sector and by region; the embracing of
difference, including in sexual orientation;
a breaking down of stereotypes
and an expanding of the horizons of organizing, mixing the arts, popular
education, capacity building and mobilization, along with actions of
solidarity and mutual support across borders and time and space. The
motley Beehive Collective of Maine, USA had fashioned their magical images
for the event held in a town called Esperanza (Hope): with giant
Esperanzas (grasshoppers) representing the people in struggle, carrying
their multi-colored banners and dashing the uniformity of fascistic
militarists with people power. Where there was a marching oppressive boot
coming, there was also a sharp stake positioned in the soil, waiting for
the soft sole. Where there were gray colored attack helicopters, there
were the rainbow colors of the peoples' banners and clothing, moving
massively to disarm a world of colorless despair and tragedy.
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We analyzed the current political moment, saw
the kinks in the
armor of the ruling class both within our midst and occupying the
board rooms of the financially over-extended transnational corporations
and the banks that back them up. We talked of the inevitable and rising
confrontations of land and resource-deprived farmers with the police
forces and paramilitaries in the pay of corporate and governmental
interests. Women and male allies analyzed how patriarchy as a worldview
and economically dogmatic framework informs and fuels militarism and
hierarchical top-down ¨final solutions.¨ Organized transvestites and gay
men and women among us challenged macho stereotypes and occupied the
psychic spaces of expanded tolerance within the ranks of rural and
community-based delegates with their sass and feisty performances among
those no doubt unfamiliar or otherwise inexperienced and unsure of such
lifestyles and ways of being, challenging stereotypes and prejudices. This
was an intentional part of the agenda: brilliant in its vision and
generous in its trust in cultural and human diversity. Pushing the
envelope in order to be truly inclusive. Living out our future culture of
radical inclusivity here and now.
Then there were the meals: the lines in the dust or mud, in the sun or
drizzle by the improvised rustic kitchen with its giant pots and laboring
Lenca women and men cooks and fire keepers.
The hundreds of recycled, scarred and scratched plastic plates
(some used twice or three times in the course of the meal), the notched
plastic cup to hold the thin sweetened black coffee, the spoonfuls of
boiled black beans lying with a handful of tortillas, maybe a potato, for
lunch, then again later for dinner, the joy at seeing some watermelon or a
morsel of chicken one day. The boots, coats and ponchos never taken off
all day even in the heat of the day, the belts randomly pulled in a notch,
the unexpected joy of acceptance and belonging to such a motley tribe as
this: a tribe of people willing to suffer in order to march forward and
take a real fight to places of power and prestige. The diverse and
beautiful people in their cultural abundance and diversity, tough,
calloused and resilient in their collective purpose, bearing guitars and
note pads, proverbs and invitations of hospitality in their home
communities.
The opening
indigenous Garifuna ritual in
the Plaza of Esperanza Intibucá, with the chanting and drumming, the
offering of the circle to spirits from other dimensions, the possession of
a woman with such divinities, bringing cosmic powers into our midst, the
falling away during these moments of timelessness of the competing rhythms
of the secular marching bands streaming out into the streets around the
plaza, one after another, falling away from our circle as so many buzzing
flies looking for nectar elsewhere. Then the Opening March of the
Encuentro, led by the powerful maracas held high overhead then shaken with
their might and precision, Garifuna men with their Rasta braids, the
shamans of rhythmic steps whose very auras and powerful physiques drew
surprised and attentive crowds´gazes on the main avenue of the town. The
presence, the power, of divinely inspired descendents of runaway slaves
and their Taino and Carib host mothers and fathers, who have since
occupied lands for 213 years on the coasts of Central America, and who are
now the occupiers, protectors and
stewards of the most pristine, ecologically conserved coastal lands and
sea, fighting for their cultural integrity and physical survival
based on fishing and cassava planting and processing, offering their
solidarity to the struggles of other peoples here in the mountains of
Honduras… shining in the midday sun and rolling to the ancestral beats of
the soul of Africa and Taino and Carib fore-mothers and fathers. Any
gathering thus inaugurated and blessed was destined for powerful harmonies
and fertile outcomes! How we marched, shouldering our way through the
congested main avenue and how the indigenous sister from Uruguay blew her
resounding bull´s horn high in the air. We were a force to contend with!
Of that there could be no doubt.
The last day of this convergence we departed from the muddied grounds
around the Molino (the Mill) after breakfast, some to their home countries
and communities, and two big buses heading for the central valley of
Comayagua, where a sprawling U.S. military base known as Palmerola stood
with its miles and miles of blank concrete walls marking its bellicose
dominion.
When after a few hours of curving mountain passes we finally arrived
there, we joined hundreds of people already contributing ¨popular
messaging¨ to those blank walls with the aid of cans of spray
paint. Having some tobacco on hand, we lit some up to cast away the evil
spirits harbored by this Wall of Shame. Also having a tambourine and drum
stick, we got a beat going to accompany these efforts. Once the march
itself congealed behind a vehicle and sound system, we took over the main
highway and marched along yet more long stretches of military wall. A
Blackhawk helicopter took off somewhere within the base and flew off to
the south, but we actually had a police escort on the highway and soon
reached a main entrance to the base where we held our rally, press
conference and boisterous actions at the gate itself, perhaps 1,000 strong
in number. A tall young Nicaraguan man said he was born fatherless due to
the military activities of the Contra across the border in Nicaragua,
activities that were supported by this military base. The insidious
alliance between U.S. forces and the Contras, as well as the
disappearances and killings that took the lives of many progressive
Honduran leaders during the 80s were raised up as part of the infamy of
the Palmerola base and U.S. interventions. I was asked to speak to the
gathered press, partly in English, and I did so, describing the peace
movement in the U.S. attempting to push for the withdrawal of U.S. troops
from unjustified U.S. military occupations and proxy occupations and
low-intensity counter insurgency wars, and to slash the military budget in
favor of investments in badly needed social services, describing U.S.
militarism as hand in glove with a desire to control, manage and prolong
the flow of wealth from the people and the land to centers of power and
privilege. (I was the only U.S.-based person present, I think, at this
protest, though there were at least one or two US nationals currently
living in Mesoamerica present!)back
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Many hours later most of us had journeyed 15 hours across the mountainous
valleys into Guatemala and up to Guatemala City, where at the Autonomous
University of San Carlos the
III Social Forum of the
Americas was up and running, and we were recovering from the
journey and gearing up for our workshops and cultural activities. There I
met a delegation I was in Guatemala to help facilitate of Salvadoran
activists organized by Marta Benavides (Vice President of the Board of
Agricultural Missions) and coordinator of Siglo XXIII. The delegates
hailed from various parts of El Salvador and a variety of social sectors,
ranging from indigenous rural, agronomy, human rights advocates,
rural-urban educational groups and student and environmental movement
organizations. Together we led several well-attended and successful
workshops as part of the Forum: on Rebuilding Local Food Economies, on
Agrofuels and Food Sovereignty, on the International Criminal Court and
Human Rights, on Holistic Rural Development, and in conjunction with the
Convergence of Movements of the Peoples of the Americas (COMPA) and Grito
de los Excluidos on Social Movements in Latin America at this Political
Juncture (a forum that drew more than 120 people), and in a COMPA assembly
with members of Southwest Workers Union and other Grassroots Global
Justice (GGJ) alliance members from the U.S., together with various
organizational representatives from across Latin America, including
Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Haiti,
Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, ¨Occupied Mexico¨ (Southwest
U.S.). In addition, I spoke on a panel organized by the Americas Policy
Program and Laura Carlsen on the Global Food Crisis and the Solutions to
that Crisis, speaking about Food Sovereignty efforts around the world and
why small-scale organic farming represents a comprehensive solution to the
multi-faceted crisis flailing humanity at present.
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The Social Forum of the Americas of 2008 held in Guatemala was notable in
particular for its daily
Mayan rituals of
purification and harmony, rituals in memory of the cherished loved
ones, martyrs of the long dirty war, rituals to make the spiritual path
clear for social movements to progress in their agendas, rituals to center
and ground the participants to the forum, 2-3 hour rituals at the entrance
to the University, upwind such that the incense, the copal and divine
prayer-filled smoke wafted all through the campus during the course of the
morning, in effect purifying the entire forum and all its participants.
Certainly not a welcome place for sinister spirits or violent thoughts,
elements which seemed quite absent in fact throughout the proceedings. An
entire small stadium was devoted to the parallel Indigenous Forum that
took place. And a large tent had non-stop activities sponsored by CLOC and
Via Campesina, peasant organizations from across Latin America. Never had
a forum been so heavily weighted toward rural justice oriented
organizations, indigenous peoples and rural social movements as in
Guatemala. I think that is due to the fact that the most progressive and
active social movements in Guatemala, among them those responsible for
organizing the forum, are deeply involved in land struggles, struggles
against free trade, against the privatization of seeds, against the
destruction of campesino economies and communities and in favor of land
reform, and restored indigenous identity and autonomy.
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Another tent held various activities sponsored by organizations from Cuba
and Venezuela, and the Cuban V,
political prisoners held in U.S. jails for working to prevent acts
of terrorism, were held up as in need of international solidarity and
their cause was raised high. (Coincidentally, just days before I set out
on this journey, my family and I had the honor of hosting a visit at our
home in Louisville, Kentucky from the wife and two daughters of one of the
Cuban V who had been transferred from a Texas jail to a Kentucky jail and
were doing weekend visits to their imprisoned hero-father-husband.)
Despite a nearly 98% media blackout in mainstream Guatemalan media
coverage of the forum, I think it was a great success. Despite the robbery
of one of our group of Salvadoran delegates while on a moving public bus
by two thieves, one armed with a gun, despite a complete lack of support
for the Forum by any governmental entity in Guatemala, despite the fact
that Bolivian president Evo Morales was announced to come but did not (he
sent a message instead), despite all these adversities, the Americas
Social Forum in Guatemala was pulled off magnificently by the nearly
thirty Guatemalan organizations on the host committee, aided by U.S.
Social Forum organizers and members of the International Social Forum
Council. It was a space of great energy, much learning and networking and
great youthful passion and creativity. A woman who approached me with a
petition between events on one of the walkways on campus, in support of
transparent investigations into the deaths of people, men, women and
youth, disappeared during the 80s, 90s and beginning of the 21st century
got to talking. It turns out one of her sisters is an immigrant worker in
Louisville, Kentucky, of all places! The Guatemala forum brought home to
me just how small and interwoven the destinies of all of us are. To deny
that inter-connectedness and our mutual responsibilities is to deny
reality itself. The
peasant and indigenous struggles of Mesoamerica are interwoven with the
immigrant rights movement in the U.S., which itself is interwoven with the
broader civil rights struggles in the U.S. and by extension,
abroad. Responses in Honduras, Guatemala and later in Mozambique asking
for solidarity with the U.S.-based immigrant rights movement was uniformly
positive and strong.
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If this was not enough excitement and fulfillment, my next stop after
catching my breath with my family for a day at home, was to board a series
of airplanes headed for the unlikely destination of Maputo, Mozambique, in
Southeast Africa. The flight itinerary including layovers took over 30
hours and I was fighting a cough and incipient flu I had caught somewhere
in Guatemala (cured with the aid of homegrown garlic and selected tree
bark powders to boost immunity), and I did arrive in Maputo, Mozambique
with an appetite enough for a meal of Kentucky Fried Chicken (the only
restaurant open at that late hour to stave off hunger for a bus load of
evening Via Campesina delegate arrivals). This is a confession: this is
the one time I have eaten KFC food in more than 20 years, despite the fact
that I actually live in Kentucky! We had to wait half an hour for this
food, as a man with a box full of food came out ahead of us and dashed off
in another vehicle, a box of food we were soon to see at the Via Campesina
gathering itself. The ironies of peasant organizing to have to eat such
food! Fast food as emergency rations for social change activists.
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The V
International Conference of the Via Campesina took place at the
FRELIMO conference center in Matola, 20 minutes outside of Maputo. FRELIMO
stands for the Frente da Liberacao Mocambicana who with their now-deceased
former leader Samora Machel brought the country into independence from
Portugal in the late 70s. Starting as a socialist political party, the
current FRELIMO party president and his predecessors had morphed into
proto-capitalism-friendly governments, and the lingering poverty of
Mozambique was palpable and visible during any walk around Matola. Invited
to the opening of the Via Campesina Congress, Mozambique President Armando
Guebuza was reported (by UNAC women peasants) to have greatly improved his
agricultural policy rhetoric, but to many of our ears it appeared that he
had not really been listening to our opening Mistica, that stressed
anti-capitalist solidarity economy solutions, the need to support
small-scale agriculture, the evil of seed privatization or the ill-advised
diversion of food crops into fuel crops. Guebuza spoke of small farmers
being ¨raised up so that they could compete in the marketplace¨ and called
for Mozambique to enter into the production of crops for fuels… he may
have nodded off during those moments of our ceremony, but he was also
speaking to the television cameras. Still, UNAC members were thrilled that
Guebuza and his Minister for Agriculture got to witness firsthand the
powerful allies from all over the globe who had come to Mozambique at
their invitation, noting that Guebuza would have to take UNAC much more
seriously in the future than he had up until then.
My job in Mozambique was with the translation team, with the four
individuals, each of us working into one language (in my case from French,
Spanish and Portuguese into English) to translate and edit the documents
of the conference itself, with priority given to the official conference
documents, followed by key internal documents and other working group
documents. There were a whole squad of simultaneous interpreters from
Europe, Africa, Latin America and North America doing the verbal
interpretations, but this year we four were devoted exclusively to
translation of written documents. We occupied our own office with internet
connections to send documents we didn´t have time for to our cyber
translator allies around the world, and room to sit at our laptops and
work through the days and nights of the conference.
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The 600 plus delegates from all over the world conferring together in
Mozambique represent a grassroots force of at least 200 million peasants
(and growing each year as new organizations come on board) at the base of
the organizations. But the size and diversity of the gathering did not
prevent Via Campesina from refining and focusing its
agenda for the next four years:
first, to defeat the transnational corporations, principal threat to the
peasant/family farmer, second to resist environmental destruction and
reverse climate change; and third, to build our food sovereignty
alternative, including passing a Convention of Peasant Rights at the
United Nations.
VC called for united work on the following campaigns: to end violence
toward women in rural communities; to strengthen the struggle of the youth
of Via Campesina; to strengthen the internal functioning of Via Campesina;
and to move from tactical to strategic alliances, and for focused
attention in the following areas: the issue of migration and migrants
rights, promoting and practicing sustainable forms of agriculture, and the
defense of biodiversity/ genetic resources/ seeds.
In an open letter from Maputo issued by the International Coordinating
Council (ICC) of the Via Campesina the basic VC analysis at this moment of
multi-faceted crisis is
clarified.
The entire world is in crisis, a crisis with multiple dimensions. There
is a food crisis, an energy crisis, a climate crisis and a financial
crisis. The solutions put forth by Power - more free trade, more GMOs,
etc... - purposefully ignore the fact that the crisis is a product of the
capitalist system and of neo-liberalism, and they will only worsen its
impacts. To find solutions we need to look toward Food Sovereignty as put
forth by the Via Campesina...
... we have witnessed the advance of finance capital and transnational
corporations (TNCs) across all aspects of agriculture and the global food
system.... food has gone from being a right of all people, to being just
another commodity.
Noting that the principle theses of neo-liberalism are being stripped of
their legitimacy and that it is clearer every day that the TNCs are our
real enemies... a series of solutions are proposed based on the concept of
Food Sovereignty, that is, the rebuilding of local food systems which will
cool the planet and reduce hunger. Only agro-ecological peasant and family
farming can de-link food prices from petroleum prices, recover degraded
soils and produce healthy local food for our peoples, making it possible
to end all forms of violence against women.
Seeds and water are sources of life and are the patrimony of our peoples.
We cannot permit their privatization, nor the use of GMOs or of terminator
technology.
No to the criminalization of social protest; yes to the United Nations
Declaration of Peasant Rights, as proposed by the Via Campesina.
We are the women and men who produce and defend the food of all peoples.
Food Sovereignty Now! Globalize Struggle! Globalize Hope!
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While the tone of the conference
might appear grave given this agenda, the energies of the converged
peasant movements was anything but grave or despairing. There was great
energy released as people shared their struggles, chants, song, dance,
mistica, stories and joys. The unity amidst diversity experienced in
Matola, with the much greater participation of African organizations from
Senegal, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroun, Congo Brazzaville, Congo DR,
Angola, South Africa, Tanzania, and of course all the far flung regions of
huge Mozambique itself made for a unique and soulful environment.
Caribbean delegates from the Dominican Republic, Haiti and parts of
Central America marveled at the shared Africanness of their own dance,
song and being, in the context of being on the continent of Africa amongst
Africans.
A decision was taken and agreed to by consensus from the regions to
consider
Africa as the venue for the next International Secretariat of the Via
Campesina. The African regions themselves will be asked to confer
and consult and make a recommendation by 2010 for the country and host
organization that should become the home of the next International
Secretariat, to be transferred between 2010 and 2012. The strategy behind
this is to place a Secretariat on a continent in great need of peasant
organization articulation and strength, and to place that headquarters in
the regioin in order to accelerate the integration of African agricultural
movements into an ever strengthening Via Campesina process and platform
building.
At the Assembly of the Allies of Via Campesina which came at the tail end
of the Conference, I represented Agricultural Missions as one of many
diverse allied organizations and networks who work in tactical and
strategic alliances with Via Campesina. This also was an excellent
networking space and one in which peasant representatives got to meet many
of the support organizations whose accompaniment has so strengthened the
Via Campesina movement, and helped VC to refine and strengthen its policy
understanding and positions. There were worldwide organizations present
like Friends of the Earth International, and the World March of Women, and
then there were many smaller research and educational organizations from
South Africa, Europe, Asia, Latin America and North America, including
Agricultural Missions.
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The most powerful moment for me during this gathering of the VC was the
evening we remembered Lee Kyung
Hae, the Korean peasant leader who immolated himself with a knife
in our presence at the barricades in Cancun, Mexico, as a form of
courageous sacrifice and protest of the policies of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) that had been responsible for the deaths of so many
farmers in the world since imposing agricultural import quotas in 1995.
Holding up candles in the large plenary hall under the flags and white
hanging cloths, hundreds of us heard stories of the valor and spirit of
sacrifice of Lee Kyung Hae in Cancun in September 2003. Then to the
surprise of many of us, the daughter of Lee, the youngest daughter of
three, stood up to address the assembly. Reading from a written speech,
this shy young woman summoned her fortitude to raise her voice of praise
and respect for the Via Campesina movement, expressing her loss that can
never be made right, but also of her feeling of embrace in the midst of
this social movement of small farmers. She asked us all to continue in the
struggle her father had given his life for, saying his spirit was so pure,
like that of a child, that he had not been able to defend himself from all
the pain engendered by the losses of family farmers in Korea, of all the
widows he had had to console when their husbands took their lives in
despair at losing their ancestral lands to debt and bankruptsy. She held
up the hope that Via Campesina would prevail and succeed ultimately in
defending the lives and livelihoods of family farmers everywhere, but
stated that even in the uncertainty of the struggle, that the struggle
itself was honorable and good.
There was not a dry eye in the house, nor an indifferent soul hovering
around our hearts and minds that evening. Gusts of wind strummed against
the roof of the plenary building as the vigil ended, reminding me of the
tremendous downpours and lightning that accompanied some of the outdoor
evening vigils at Kilometer 0 following Lee´s act in Cancun. The mixed
pain and joy of life that never ends, that is reborn in the next
generation, that carries on against all odds, was so clearly evoked by
Lee´s daughter, that we all knew with a profound certainty that this was a
fire that had to be carried forward, for the good of our children and
grandchildren and all those we envision living in harmony on the beautiful
lands provided to us by the true powers of the universe. Mozambique with
the Via Campesina was summed up for me at that moment of remembrance and
timelessness.
Long live Lee! Long Live the Via Campesina!
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And long live my new belt purchased at a market in Guatemala, which I
bought to accomodate my reduced girth and to replace an older version
dubbed a ´relic´ by the Guatemala City market vendor, and left there on
the rung I took the new belt from. Being a social activist in the employ
of Agricultural Missions has its fringe benefits (so to speak), and one of
them is the health spa diet regime periodically enjoyed at these
grassroots peoples´ gatherings, where one can lose, say, ten pounds, and
not even really mind feeling a bit physically hungry. The main side effect
of these excursions is a much
sharpened hunger for justice! And that is one side effect I
not only can live with, but prefer to live with. Personally the degree of
hope inspired by the maturing convergences of October 2008 may be more
than enough to spur me on to renewed passions for justice over the course
of the next months and years!! Knowing full well that this wave of
positive energies will not end with our own lives, but will be carried
forth by the generations coming up, and the generations following them.
Truly the joy is in the struggle for truth and in the efforts to spread
love to and respect for all. When do we want justice? Ya! (which can be
interpreted to mean ´already´ or ´it´s there´, a hint at timelessness).
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