Why Latin America?

I discuss why I have just started my third trip to Latin America and why I may never leave.

I’ve been back in Latin America for just over a month now after being away for a year. I plan to be here in Mexico for a year but beyond this year I have no plans to head back home. As some sort of an activist with revolutionary ideals living amongst like minded individuals mostly from Europe they often ask why it is that I see myself staying here in Latin America rather than heading back to Australia. It’s a question with a thousand answers but some of what I feel like telling them is the following.

Firstly I don’t feel a part of Australia. I have lived amongst indigenous people of Australia and the crimes of my forefathers are far from being undone by the governments recent apology (which while commendable and significant to many indigenous Australian’s it doesn’t go near far enough). It’s a stolen land for which a treaty has never been established to legalise the presence of the invaders, my ancestors and me. Indigenous Australians continue to be discriminated against by our version of democracy, capitalist competition for survival and social stigma. It is a beautiful land, a place where I have many friends and fond memories but I don’t feel any sense of ownership or even of belonging. In Latin America I am a foreigner but not in the same dishonest way as in Australia. You may say why not stay and fight this injustice. I believe that in the current global climate the fight has no borders and thus can be taken up in every corner of the globe to the benifit of even the most distant struggle.

Secondly Latin America has a kind of honesty which is difficult to describe. The rich world middle-class feeling of doing your bit for world poverty by sponsoring a child and for our destruction of the planet by turning the lights off when you leave the room don’t hold as much sway here. The rich know they are living off the backs of the poor because they have them cleaning their floors and slaving away on whatever property they own be it taxis, factories or whatever. They travel and flaunt their money with pride striving to obtain the lifestyle of the rich world who are trying hard to appease their consciences of their undeserved unequal wealth. There is less deception in this regard which is somehow soothing coming from a world where the reality for the vast majority of the world is so often masked by consumer culture and capitalist solutions.

Thirdly and by far most importantly is a much more positive reason. Latin America is in revolt. The massive injustices of our current economic system are being taken on again. This time it’s not Lenin, Mao or Hitler providing alternative model but a broad front of Left and centre left leaders, radical workers and indigenous social movements who are taking it upon themselves to subvert the current system and create a variety of new models based on human values. With my limited knowledge of history and short life-span it seems like the current wave of change sweeping the continent is the greatest hope with the best chance of survival in more than a century. These processes are well under way at the level of the state in Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia and are being joined by Nicaragua, Paraguay and El Salvador along with a number of less radical regimes who are supporting the revolution to varying degrees. The Bolivarian Revolution is delivering everything that the neo-liberal phase of capitalism is taking away: the right to free education from age 3- to tertiary education, free healthcare, the right to a place to live, the right to a job, the right to a liveable wage and fair working conditions along with ambitious social and cultural programs to enrich society and go beyond economic success. Best of all these changes aren’t being delivered by benevolent all powerful leaders like in the soviet eras but instead they are putting more and more power in the hands of the worker, the community organiser, the student and women whilst reinvigorating and using the electoral system as it’s mandate.

Outside the state there are also many powerful examples being set for the world like the unemployed workers in Argentina who have taken control of a number of factories abandoned by their capitalist owners as unprofitable and turned them into real democratic workplaces, providing jobs and produce under a new set of rules. In Brazil the struggle of the peasants without land continues it’s demand for land and the right to take back unused land a of massive land holders. Further north constructive rebellion is even more alive with the many indigenous and social movements of Mexico including the Zapatistas who have taken a dignified stance against the policies of the Mexican government and the neo-liberal path which allows massive border-less corporations to take control of every resource leaving destruction and poor working conditions while extracting its profits.

For me it’s not about local conflicts and political models. It’s the human face. I worked with orphans in Guatemala, (a country scared by a US coup in the 60’s and 36 years of US backed civil war) I know that the countries current path offers those children a life of misery. In Colombia I spent time with people living in the streets, the lucky ones who didn’t end up in holes, displaced from their lands by para-militaries backed by the United States massive military support of successive repressive regimes.

The topic I’m touching on here is life and death. Not just for those living under repressive US backed regimes but for humanity. Capitalism has failed humanity. 80 % of the worlds population live on less than $10 a day which buys less and less everyday, war over resources like fossil fuels and water will only continue to escalate in a competitive economic environment that favours a forever smaller percentage of the worlds population. Cultural and environmental diversity are being extinguished everyday.

Latin America is the place where these issues are being taken head on. People all across the continent are saying "enough" and devoting their lives to change.

Whether my future be in Australia, Latin America or some other part of the world I stand together with the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Bolivarian Revolution spreading across the continent and the planet, the land-less peasents of Brazil, the rebellious workers in Argentina and the millions of others who are united in their rejection of domination by the world’s financial giants, the masters of war.

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