History 475: April 2011

Saturday, April 30, 2011

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Cocalero is a film that outlines issues surrounding the coca-growing regions of Bolivia and the indigenous mobilization against an unfair state that resulted from the attempted eradication of the coca crops. The primary concern from the indigenous perspective was that the Bolivian government was trying to eradicate the livelihood of thousands of indigenous farmers for the greater good (elimination of the cocaine producing coca plant). However what the Bolivian government did not expect was the indigenous to form up a union headed by the Aymara Indian Evo Morales.

However what was not expected was Evo Morales putting up a bid for the presidency of Bolivia. He ran under the socialist platform and portrayed himself as an every-man. This led to mass appeal and easily helped him to garner support for his platform of redistribution of wealth, renationalization of industry, and legalization of coca. Overall he won by a huge margin. This can be attributed to his genuine concern for his people, we think back to Our brand is crisis from last week and we see that putting up a false front and calling for change when the candidate does not have the resources available to enact it is ultimately a waste of time and causes nothing but problems for everyone even remotely involved. In the case of Evo, he has lived with the problem at the base level, he knows what needs to be done and he knows how to go about doing it. This is one of the key aspects to being a successful leader. Many people were concerned about the socialist nature of his party, but what we as Americans need to realize is that sometimes socialism is what is needed for a country, each place can be led differently and what works for the United States may not work for Bolivia or Ecuador.

The concept of indigenous uprisings is not a new one, according to the Les Field article, a very similar situation happened in Ecuador, there were multiple uprisings because the indigenous people wanted the government to “give back the land that once belonged, and still rightfully belongs to the indigenous communities. The Sawyer article supports this, citing that the reasons for the indigenous mobilizations were not unreasonable and included such things as the reestablishment of their national identity, reassertion of their indigenous rights, opportunities to conserve the state of their native lands, maintaining social justice, and gaining greater autonomy.

We see that this is a fight that has gone on any time a foreign entity has come in and staked its claim on an area already colonized by its own race of indigenous people. Another prime example is the United States of America and the violence of the American Indian War and the legacy of the Trail of Tears. This is one of the unsuccessful stories that contrast with the success of Evo’s triumph for the Bolivian Indigenos. However had they successfully united between their tribes and risen up against the United States, the story could have been very different, this could be a country led by the people we once slaughtered so that we could live peaceably here.

Bus 174 [makeup]

The Documentary entitled Bus 174 is centered on a Bus Hostage Situation that occurred in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2000. It focuses on the invisible street children of Latin America and provides the audience with a slight sense of moral confusion, do we empathize with Sandro’s upbringing and strong will to survive or do we detest his violent and deadly methods? What is the attitude of these people? In the introduction of the film, Luciana talks about her dreams, she says “Can I talk about my dreams? My dreams of happiness? I think I’ll never know happiness. I don’t have anybody. I don’t have a mother, a father, I don’t have shit. I only have my kids. There’s no way I’ll ever know happiness.” This is a huge sentiment of the favela area.

People live their simple lives day by day just trying to get by the best way they know how. And similarly that is the goal of the street children dubbed the invisible children by society. According to the film “there are two ways of producing social invisibility. One can be made invisible if his presence is neglected. And one can be made invisible if we cast a stigma over him, replacing his singularity with our prejudices. We only see what we project, not what we really are…invisibility is perfectly accomplished by death.” This is the reason that these kids have to try and stand out in order to be seen enough to survive. This is also evident in the drive-by victim article, a man who radiates false wealth is robbed in a taxi, he is scared, but he complies. In a later sort of Stockholm syndrome episode, he relates to his attackers, who are just trying to get by the best that they can in the situation that they are given. They do not want to be violent, but they also do not want to starve to death. So if a victim complies, then they let them go peaceably, but if they make it difficult, the attackers must subdue the victim and still try to get enough money to survive until the next robbery. It is a high risk-low reward system that they utilize, but unfortunately they do not have any better way of getting by in such a rough area.

According to I saw a city invincible “Police have given up on many barrios in Mexico City, Bogota, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, and elsewhere where their own safety is not guaranteed. It is one of the supreme ironies that urban areas with concentrations of poverty stricken folk and people of color are today effectively forbidden to public safety officer, the elites’ instruments of power and authority.” This means that the rule of law is left to the most powerful and the best armed. In this system it is the criminals who are in charge of society, those who lie, cheat, and steal to get what they can to survive. In a world such as this, if you are invisible, then so long as you do not do anything that draws too much public attention(like, say, hijack a bus or go on a murdering spree) then you can do whatever it takes to survive. So do we empathize with Sandro or detest his actions. I think it is both to a degree, we feel angered that he made the choices he had to make, but we also understand why he made them.

[this is a prearranged makeup from a doctors appointment- spoke with Tony]

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Our Brand is Crisis

The film “Our Brand is Crisis” is a documentary outlining the reelection of Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, the months following his reelection, and self-exile and the aftermath, The film focuses on the American-style campaigning and strategy for being reelected president. He hired James Carville and his associates (of President Clinton’s election committee) to help serve as his advisors during the whole process. The name of the film comes from the strategic spreading of American democracy in former authoritarian nations through these “strategists for hire”. This multinational realignment towards American neoliberal political and economic tendencies slowly grew into what would come to be known as the “Washington Consensus”. (Cypher 47) However by extending our fingers into all of these economies, we (America) were essentially spreading ourselves too thin and putting too much stock into all of these young democracies financially…needless to say, this was a bad idea. When these economies failed, it impacted the United States as there were investments made in the form of bail out and rescue funds. As was the case with Bolivia, after Goni realized he could not save Bolivia economically, he pulled out and moved to the United States, realizing that the United States was the better option of the two.

Following this trend of economic tethers between the United States and developing nations, we see the inevitable downside of relying on a foreign import entirely for the well being of the nation. OPEC is the primary supplier of oil to the United States, and as a result of this, the Middle East, as a region, has huge influence over how much Americans are paying every week to fill up their cars, trucks, and SUVs. The industry is in the business of making money too, and they will do whatever it takes. According to the Perkins literature, they were willing to kill off or otherwise remove unproductive or potentially damaging members of the oil companies. Along the same vein, if they found somewhere like the Amazonian Basin (a place rich in crude oil deposits), they were willing to buy out the government, and demolish the rain forest and tropical paradise in order to make a few million dollars.

This ties us back to the film once again. James Carville and his associates were willing to orchestrate elaborate smear campaigns and psychological tactics in order to persuade the people of Bolivia to reelect someone that already had a reputation for being an ineffective and economically harmful leader to lead their country even further down the economic spiral that they were currently experiencing. The bottom line for the whole situation is that it all ties back to making money, or at the very least not losing money. Goni would have lost money if he had not been reelected, and he wanted to maintain his standard of living in the face of economic crisis, but at the same time he thought he could help Bolivia recover and raise the standard of living for the country as a whole.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

La Virgen de los Sicaros

La Virgen de los Sicaros is a film about murders in Colombia, but focuses specifically about an older man who returned to Medellin and his newfound exposure to violence and murder as a result of drug warfare. The film is very unique in its casual representation of gay lifestyle in Latin America and the very unsettling relationship between a 50 year old man named Fernando and a young boy named Alexis who leads his life with many instances of violence theft in his wake until he himself is murdered, a year later by “The Blue Lagoon”, a young man named Wilmar who Fernando would eventually become entangled with. After this instance we see how deep these murders go, senseless killings lead to vengeance killings, which lead to even more senseless murders. This is the case with Wilmar, he killed Alexis because he(Alexis) killed Wilmar’s brother. Fernando vowed to escape this and take Wilmar with him, however Wilmar dies shortly before they leave. This is where Fernando realizes that there can be no happiness regarding Medellin at all, and finally kills himself. One curious note in the film was the minimal reference to drugs, we knew there was violence, and we knew it was in Colombia, but there were no Griselda Blanco’s or her hitmen around, it was an understanding that if you killed someone then you could get money if there was a bounty on their heads like with the police or the military.

We see today, as evidenced by National Security Archives article that even into the early 2000s drug cartel warfare is still a huge problem in Colombian Society, due largely in part to the paramilitary groups being more powerful than the state government itself. The Vargas article explains it further when it goes into the mafia style society where personal violence (or fear of it) is used to exercise control over the area. This hearkens back to situations similar to what we saw in Cidade de Deus, where the government is weak to control violence and the way that life is structured is based upon the fear of unprovoked violence or murder. As we saw in La Virgen de los Sicaros, a man could have been killed for something as simple or non threatening as whistling, being accused of stealing the songs of the birds and depriving them of their own voices. Something as irrelevant as whistling leading to a potential shootout (if we recall, both the aggressor and the accuser had firearms in this instance) is ridiculous—such hostility over things that aren’t a matter of honor or money is inexplicable if we consider it from the modern American perspective that we hold today.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Cocaine Cowboys

Cocaine Cowboys is a film that documents drug trafficking from Colombia through Cuba and into the United States. There are first-hand accounts of a heartless and cruel drug boss named Griselda Blanco killing anyone that stood in her way, to include innocent children and stories of drug runners using high tech communications equipment to monitor coast guard and ICE radio bands. The film begins with the transition with the marijuana trade in the 60’s and 70’s and transitions quickly to the cocaine trade of the 1980’s and how it effectually made Miami the city that it is today, a city of extravagance based on millions upon millions of dollars made through the sale of illicit drugs. The strategy behind the trade was quite brilliant, using Americans to transport the drugs across the border and arrange a drop to exchange drugs for money, never having either in the same place, and then the drugs went to the Colombians for sale on the streets of Miami and onward from there.

The focal point of the movie starts with the Dadeland Massacre of 1979 in Miami where Griselda Blanco ordered the hits of several men in a liquor store. This was the spark that ignited the powder keg known as the “Cocaine Wars”, basically a living hell on the streets of Miami. However the cocaine trafficking was not a new trade for the citizens of Cuba, who served as the intermediaries from Colombia. According to the Gootenberg article, “Havana was among the first post-war global sin capitals, with roots in Prohibition, where offshore gangsters rubbed shoulders with their “Latin” counterparts from Chile, Panama, Argentina, and Mexico, amid the haven of corrupted regimes of Prio, Grau, and Batista.”(150) This is the culture that permeated Miami during the Cocaine Wars and caused the bloodshed which, according to the movie, was upwards of 600 murders a year during the peak of the hellacious violence.

However, one of the most interesting points of the entire film is the socioeconomic impact that the Cocaine trafficking had on Miami, its grandiosity would never had been possible had it not been for the men and women putting their drug money towards politics and local infrastructure, while the local and federal government had to realize what was going on, they simply turned a blind eye to it, despite the incontrovertible evidence such as the Miami Federal Reserve bringing in more money than every other Federal Reserve combined. If it helps make the town a better place, I suppose that is justification for all of the lives lost. Many agree that despite the economic benefits after the cocaine wars, they still would rather it not have happened and Miami made its own name on the business of tourism instead of being a modern day “Paradise Lost” as Time magazine so succinctly put it in their exposing article in the 1980’s that defamed the city for the overt narcotics industry.