From Cochabamba, a new internationale and manifesto for Mother Earth

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 56-74

  Turner, Terisa E ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONFERENCE PROCEEDING; EMISSION; FOSSIL FUEL; SOCIAL MOVEMENT;

BOLIVIA; COCHABAMBA [BOLIVIA]; UNITED STATES;

EID: 77956303732     PISSN: 10455752     EISSN: 15483290     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2010.509637     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. The conference program is available at: http://pwccc.files.wordpress.com/ 2010/01/program-cmcc-englishfinal- v-2.pdf.
2. According to Bolivia's ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, who was also a major organizer of the Mother Earth conference, 9,254 of the 35,352 people who took part in the conference came from 140 countries, and 56 countries sent official delegations. The discussions of the conference were organized into 17 working groups, which began meeting over the Internet several months before the event. The text that became the People's Agreement, and the project for the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth came from the 17 working groups. See Pablo Solon,"Bolivia in Bonn Presentation of the 'People's Agreement,"' June 1, 2010, online at: http://pwccc.wordpress.com/ 2010/06/01/bolivia-in-bonnpresent- of-peoples-agreement/?blogsub- confirming#subscribe-blog.
3. Pronouncement of the World People's Movement/Pronunciamiento del Movimiento Mundial de los Pueblos, May 28, 2010,"Bolet?́n CMPCC," online at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/movement-for-mother- earth.
4. See: http://www.un-redd.org/AboutREDD/tabid/582/language/en-US/Default. aspx.
5. The full text of the People's Agreement and the reports of the 17 official working groups are available at Working Groups, People's Agreement and Final Conclusions of the Working Groups of the People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 30, 2010, online at: http://pwccc.wordpress.com/category/working-groups/.
6. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or ALBA, is an organization intended to socially, politically, and economically integrate nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. Started by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004, ALBA now has nine member countries including Bolivia, Nicaragua, The Dominican Republic, Honduras, Ecuador, Antigua, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. See: http://www.alianzabolivariana.org/
7. The Union of South American Nations was set up on the model of the European Union and made official on May 23, 2008 with the signing of the treaty setting up UNASUR ("Tratado Constitutivo de la Unión de Naciones Suramericanas") in Brasilia by the heads of state of the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
8. The Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action, or AWG-LCA, is an official body proposed at the COP13 climate talks in Bali. Its task is"to facilitate detailed discussions on ways to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change beyond the current expiry date of the Kyoto Protocol." AWG-LCA was supposed to"resolve as many of the details of a post-2012 climate change agreement as possible in order to enable an agreed outcome to be adopted at the COP15 conference . . . in Copenhagen in late November and early December 2009." See: http://www.sourcewatch.org/ index.php?title-Ad- Hoc-Working-Group-on-Long-term-Cooperative-Action.
9. "Geoengineering" refers to"any large-scale human-made effort to intentionally adjust major planetary systems to cope with climate change. It includes proposals to pump sulphates into the stratosphere to block sunlight or blow ocean salt spray into clouds to increase their reflectivity.""United Nations Science Body Calls for Halt on Climate-hacking Experiments," ETC News Release, May 18, 2010, online at: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/ node/5140.
10. The so-called"Copenhagen Accord" is merely the wish list of the U.S., E.U., and their allies. The non-official status of the U.S.-engineered Accord was acknowledged by the UN's December 18, 2009"Decision -/CP.15." This Decision is a fifteen-word model of brevity:"The Conference of the Parties, Takes note of the Copenhagen Accord of December 18, 2009." See Terisa E. Turner,"System Change not Climate Change: Has a New Social Formation Emerged at the Kyoto II Climate Change Talks in Copenhagen?," Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 21, No. 1, March 2010, pp. 8-12.
11. Klimaforum,"System Change, not Climate Change!" Copenhagen, December 10, 2009, online at: http:// climateandcapitalism.com/?p-1395.
12. Pronouncement of the World People's Movement/Pronunciamiento del Movimiento Mundial de los Pueblos, May 28, 2010,"Bolet?́n CMPCC," http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/movement-for-mother-earth.
13. Pablo Solon,"Bolivia in Bonn presentation of the 'Peoples Agreement,"' June 1, 2010, online at: http:// pwccc.wordpress.com/2010/06/ 01/bolivia-in-bonn-present-of-peoples-agreement/?blogsub-confirming# subscribe-blog.
14. In January 2010 Morales announced his new 20-member Cabinet of whom ten are indigenous people and of these, three are women. Important background on the power of Bolivian indigenous women and the women of mining communities is available in the classic scholarship of June Nash and Domitila Chungara. See Domitila Chungara and Moema Viezzer, Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domitila, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines, trans. Victoria Ortiz (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979
15. June Nash, We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us: Dependency and Exploitation in Bolivian Tin Mines (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993
16. and June Nash,"Bolivian Resistance to Economic Conditions Imposed by the International Monetary Fund," American Ethnologist, Vol. 19, No. 2, May, 1992, pp. 275-293. There was very little attention given to women or gender in the final conference declaration. The working group reports' references to women were limited to constructing them as victims or advocating gender parity in organizations and institutions. On these limitations
17. Ana Filippini,"Women and Climate Change in Cochabamba," World Rainforest Movement Bulletin, No. 154, May 2010. A word search of the 40-page conference program (http://pwccc.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/ program-cmcc-english-final-v-2.pdf) reveals that the terms"women, ""feminist" and"gender" arise a total of twelve times within nine panels. However, the attendance of women was very high and visible. The World March of Women (http://www.worldmarchofwomen.org/index-html/en) was a co-organizer, as it was for the December 2009 people's forum in Copenhagen. The fundamental"missing link" behind this understated ecofeminism is a gendered class analysis. Such an analysis specifies the connection between profits and theft, through capitalists' exploitation, of women's production. If we understand how profits come, significantly, from the appropriation of women's creativity, we can easily move to the next step*the realization that women's resistance is class struggle. There is yet another step*the realization that without women's resistance, there is no victory or transition out of capitalist relations to a commoning, ecosocialist, fossil-fuel-free world. This analysis is very difficult to make not only because of the entrenchment of liberal feminism ("gender sensitivity" and tokenism) on the left, but also because it requires a focus on those men who assist capitalists in profiting from women's work.
18. Terisa E. Turner and Leigh Brownhill,"Ecofeminism as Gendered, Ethnicized Class Struggle: A Rejoinder to Stuart Rosewarne," Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 17, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 87-95.
19. Agi and Ben,"Report Back from the People's Climate Conference, Cochabamba, Bolivia," May 17, 2010, online at: http://climatejustice. posterous.com/.
20. Ibid,.
21. IIRSA, the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure in South America, is a massive project to build and link transportation infrastructure, energy, and communication in the twelve South American countries to ensure"the physical integration of South American countries and the achievement of a pattern of sustainable and equitable regional development." See: http://www.iirsa.org/acercadeiirsa.asp?CodIdioma- ESP.
22. "Working Group 18: Collective Rights and Rights of the Mother Earth," May 2010, online at: http:// climatejustice.posterous.com/.
23. James Petras,"Separatism and Class Politics in Latin America," The James Petras Website, September 21, 2009, http://petras.lahaine.org/ articulo.php?p-1788&more-1&c-1
24. James Petras,"Bolivia: Fascism Seizes Power," The Palestine Chronicle, September 17, 2008, PalestineChronicle.com
25. James Petras,"Latin America's New Middle Class Rulers: Stabilization, Growth and Inequality," The James Petras Website, May 21, 2010, http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p-1807&more-1&c-1
26. Revolutionary Socialist Alternative,"Morales and MAS Win Presidency and 2-3 Control of Congress in Landslide Election," Committee for a Workers' International, January 4, 2010, http://socialistworld.net/eng/2010/01/ 0401.html.
27. See: http://www.ecosocialistnetwork.org/.
28. Pablo Stefanoni and Hugo Blanco,"Do Indigenous Concepts Help or Hinder in Fighting the World's Climate Crisis? A LeftViews Debate between Pablo Stefanoni and Hugo Blanco," trans. and intro. Richard Fidler, Socialist Voice, May 24, 2010, http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p-1228.
29. Ibid. Pachamama means Mother Earth. Pachamamaistas are defenders of Mother Earth or nature or the ecological reality, although the words"pachamamaismo" and"pachamamaista" are sometimes used in a derogatory (even racist) or critical way.
30. A"department" is an administrative political subdivision of territory within a country, similar to a state. Eleven countries in Latin America have departments, as do seven in Africa, and France. Bolivia has nine departments. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department-%28country- subdivision%29.
31. Jeffery R. Webber,"Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia, Part III: Neoliberal Continuities, the Autonomous Right, and the Political Economy of Indigenous Struggle," Historical Materialism16 4 2008 67-109
32. Jeffery R. Webber,"Naked Barbarism to Barbarism with Benefits: Neoliberal Capitalism, Natural Gas Policy and the Evo Morales Government," in Laura Macdonald and Arne Ruckert, Post-neoliberalism in the Americas (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
33. Richard Gott,"This Time Things May Be Different: The Crisis in Bolivia," CounterPunch, June 14, 2005, http://www.counterpunch.org/ gott06142005.html
34. Richard Gott,"A Landmark for Bolivia," The Guardian, January 26, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/26/bolivia-evo- morales-constitution;
35. Mark Weisbrot,"Latin America's Economic Rebels: Ecuador and Bolivia are Achieving Remarkable Growth because they Reject Conventional Economic Wisdom," The Guardian, October 28, 2009.
36. Neil Burron,"No Smoking Gun*Yet: Canadian Democracy Assistance in Bolivia," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 43, Number 3, May/June 2010, pp. 35-39, 42, https://nacla.org/naclareport.
37. Eduardo Garcia,"Protest Blocks Key Access to Sumitomo Bolivia Mine," Reuters, April 14, 2010
38. "Changes to Mining Law Not Affecting Legal Stability*Expert, " April 21, 2010, online at: http://www.bnamericas.com.
39. Irenea Renuncio Mateos,"Local Protesters Disrupt Mining Operations in Bolivia," IHS Global Insight Daily Analysis, April 15, 2010.
40. Agi and Ben,"Report Back from the People's Climate Conference, Cochabamba, Bolivia," May 17, 2010.
41. ENP Newswire,"Indigenous People Take Over Mining Firm in the Wake of Climate Change Conference," April 20, 2010
42. Eduardo Garcia and Diego Ore,"UPDATE 2-Protest Against Sumitomo Bolivia Mine Worsening," Reuters, April 16, 2010, online at: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1615291820100416.
43. Garcia and Diego Ore,"UPDATE 2-Protest Against Sumitomo Bolivia Mine Worsening, April 20, 2010.
44. "Bolivia Slams Japan Mining Firm for 'Plundering' Resources," Agence France Presse, April 18, 2010, online at: http://www.google.com/ hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j8BaKqhsos3hrINPDVznAR4qE3KQ.
45. Ibid,.
46. "Effect of Protests in Bolivia on the San Cristóbal Mine," Sumitomo Corporation news release, April 23, 2010, online at: http://yutoku.com/shi/english/news/2010/20100423-042721.html.
47. Helen Popper,"UPDATE 1: Bolivian Protesters Suspend Sumitomo Mine Blockade," Reuters, April 23, 2010.
48. "New Potos?́ Governor Proposes Mining Code Reform to Industrialize Sector," Business News Americas, April 13, 2010.
49. Ibid,.
50. "Changes to Mining Law Not Affecting Legal Stability*Expert, " April 21, 2010.
51. I have suggested that climate camps are part of a new, emerging social form that confronts capitalist power, provides training for replacing it, and prefigures an ecosocialist democracy by modeling a commoner's way of life. The camps are ideally lived experiences in producing minimal emissions, recycling, composting, providing vegetarian fare, and touring interested visitors through the site. Terisa E. Turner,"System Change not Climate Change, March 2010.
52. See:"BP Fails Booming School 101," YouTube, online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v- Vx8kMXufu3w http://www.seizebp.org/
53. Sharon Begley,"What the Spill Will Kill," Newsweek, June 6, 2010, online at: *http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/06/what-the-spill-will- kill.html
54. Horace Campbell,"Drilling and Killing: From the Gulf of Guinea to the Gulf of Mexico," Pambazuka News, Issue 481, May 13, 2010, online at: *http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64408
55. Alex Free,"Multinational Oil, the U.S. and Nigeria: A Crude Contrast," Pambazuka News, Issue 481, http://pambazuka.org/en/category/ features/ 64412
56. and Amazon Defense Coalition,"Tragic BP Gulf Spill Casts Light on Chevron Disaster in Ecuador," June 3, 2010, online at: http:// upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2522-tragic-bp-gulf-spillcasts- light-on-chevron-disaster-in-ecuador.
57. According to Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, the 100-strong"naked truth" demonstration in Houston resulted from a call from Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper from the Texas Gulf and cofounder of Code Pink."Diane was inspired by the example of a group of women from Nigeria who took over a Chevron oil rig and threatened to strip naked if the company didn't hire more local workers and invest in the community. Faced with just the threat of nudity, Chevron gave in. 'If the Nigerian women could use their bodies on the Niger Delta, why can't we do it in downtown Houston?' Diane reasoned. . . . 'BP should be shaken down like a rotten fig tree,' she said. 'The government should seize their profits and use them for the clean up and then to invest in clean energy. . . . And we should demand that our government stop offshore drilling. No new permits, period. We have to seize this moment to move our country away from fossil fuels that are responsible for environmental devastation and wars.' . . . [Diane] is calling on people throughout the country to boycott BP*not just passively, but by getting out to BP gas stations to protest and educate their communities on the company and the catastrophe. . . . 'Pass out fliers to drivers. Ride your bikes around the stations. Get creative. Hey, maybe you even want to do your own nude protest,' she grins. 'Expose BP. Expose that Drill, Baby, Drill means Spill, Baby, Spill. After all, what's at stake is nothing less than our planet.' And that's the naked truth." Medea Benjamin,"Getting Naked to Expose BP," Mike and Friends Blog, May 27, 2010, online at: http://www. michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/getting-naked-expose-bp; and"National Campaigns: BP: Expose the Naked Truth!," at http://www.codepink4peace.org/section.php?id- 427.
58. Also see the following articles and one comic by Terisa E. Turner and Leigh Brownhill on ecofeminist/ ecosocialist direct action against Big Oil by women exposing their vaginas to declare a fertility/sex strike:"Climate Justice and Nigerian Women's Gift to Humanity, Women and Environments International, Special Double Issue on Women and Global Climate Change, 74/75, Spring-Summer 2007, pp. 47-48
59. "Why Women are at War with Chevron: Nigerian Subsistence Struggles Against the International Oil Industry," Journal of Asian and African Studies, Special Issue on Africa and Globalization, Vol. 39, No. 1-2, March 2004, pp. 63-93
60. and with artist Seth Tobocman,"Nakedness and Power," World War Three Illustrated, Issue 35, June 2004, pp. 55-63
61. also available at: *http://www.uoguelph.ca/-terisatu/nakedness/ nakedness-1.htm
62. "We Want Our Land Back: Gendered Class Analysis, the Second Contradiction of Capitalism, and Social Movement Theory," Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 15, No. 4, December 2004, pp. 21-40
63. and"Women and the Abuja Declaration for Energy Sovereignty," in Ariel Salleh (ed.), Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology (New York: Pluto, 2009), pp. 230-248.
64. Helen Popper,"UPDATE 1-Bolivian Protesters Suspend Sumitomo Mine Blockade," April 23, 2010.
65. Stefanoni and Blanco,"Do Indigenous Concepts Help of Hinder in Fighting the World's Climate Crisis?," May 24, 2010.
66. World People's Movement,"People's Voices Must be Heard in Climate Negotiations: Official UNFCCC Negotiating Text Ignores World People's Conference Solutions," May 27, 2010, statement: http:// pwccc.wordpress.com/ and petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/movement-for-mother-earth.
67. Working Groups, People's Agreement and Final Conclusions of the Working Groups of the People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 30, 2010, online at: http://pwccc.wordpress.com/category/working-groups/.
68. Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? (New York:Zed Books2002)
69. Horace Campbell,"Drilling and Killing: From the Gulf of Guinea to the Gulf of Mexico," May 13, 2010. With respect to ending oil exploitation and keeping fossil fuels (and uranium) in the ground, the"People's Agreement," stated that:"Governments should eliminate forest concessions and support the conservation of petroleum deposits in the ground and urgently stop the exploitation of hydrocarbons in forestlands." The report of Working Group 14 on Forests demanded universal"Support [for] initiatives like that of the Yasuni ITT, Ecuador, to leave petroleum under the earth, forgo the exploitation of hydrocarbons in native forests and jungles, and seek biodiversity preservation and respect for life." Working Groups, People's Agreement and Final Conclusions of the Working Groups of the People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 30, 2010.
70. On the Ecuador Yasuni campaign to keep the oil under the soil, see Vanessa Baird,"Endgame in the Amazon," New Internationalist, Issue 413, July 2008, online at: http://www.newint.org/features/2008/07/01/yasuni- keynote/. Among the"autonomously organized" sessions at Cochabamba was a panel entitled"Join the International Movement against the tar sands in Canada," organized by the Council of Canadians and the Indigenous Environmental Network. On April 20, 2010 at the opening ceremony of the World People's Climate Conference Summit, Nigerian activist Nnimmo Bassey, who heads Friends of the Earth International, recited his poem,"I Will Not Dance to Your Beat," that included the following lines:"I will expose your evil greed/ If you don't leave crude oil in the soil/ Coal in the hole and tar sands in the land/." The complete poem is in this issue.
71. Working Groups, People's Agreement and Final Conclusions of the Working Groups of the People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 30, 2010.