Latin America: The Ecosocialist Alternative (A talk in Cardiff)

[Udo Erasmus]

LATIN AMERICA: THE ECOSOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE
with Hugo Blanco
Wednesday 13 October at 7pm, Main Building, Cardiff University, Park Place, Cardiff. More info to follow.

HUGO BLANCO is a historic leader of the Peruvian peasant movement who has been politically active since the 1950s. In the 1960s he played a central part in the `Land or Death' peasant uprising in the southern highlands of Peru. He was captured, and sentenced to 25 years. He wrote the book "Land or Death: the peasant struggle in Peru" during this time, one of his many periods in prison. In 1976 he was released and deported to Sweden. On returning to Peru in 1978, he was elected to parliament. He was a member of the Peruvian Senate until 1992, when he was forced to seek political asylum in Mexico following Alberto Fujimori's "self coup".

Hugo Blanco has been at the forefront of a huge struggle in the Peruvian Amazon, where the government has sold off the rain forests to the oil corporations and the indigenous people are resisting the devastation that brings. He is working around the newspaper "Lucha Indigena" (Indigenous Struggle). The indigenous organisation Aidesep have been intense conflict with the neo-liberal Peruvian government for several years, fighting to prevent the Amazon rainforest from being sold to oil and gas corporations: In 2009 Peruvian military police massacred indigenous activist at Bagua.

The struggle in Latin America today is an international beacon of hope for us all. The people's summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2010 showed an alternative to the total failure of the world's governments – especially those of the US and the European Union – to meet the challenge of climate change.

In a world where profit is the motor force rather than human need, it has been an inspiration that social movements in Latin America have won important victories.

Indigenous peoples have been key to the strength and success of those movements. Hugo argues that indigenous peoples across the planet are in the forefront of fighting climate change and conserving the global environment.

This is true of those struggling to preserve the lungs of the world in the Amazon, to defend the rainforests in Borneo or against the uranium mine in the Grand Canyon.

"Hugo Blanco is the head of one of the guerilla movements in Peru. He struggled stubbornly but the repression was strong. I don't know what his tactics of struggle were, but his fall does not signify the end of the movement. It is only a man that has fallen, but not the movement. One time, when we were preparing to make our landing from the Granma, and when there was great risk that all of us would be killed, Fidel said: 'What is more important than all of us is the example we set.' It's the same thing, Hugo Blanco has set an example." - Che Guevara

 

[Udo Erasmus]

I am bumping this up because it looks like a really good event

Some other Latin America related events going on this month in Wales below. Perhaps with anti-cuts movements emerging we can take inspiration from the comrades abroad. Maybe like the Morales government in Bolivia one day we will see the British government send in the army against multinational profiteers to renationalise.

Sat, Oct 9, 7.30 Galeri, Caernarfon
VENEZUELA: INSIDE THE REVOLUTION.
Screening of the film, ‘Inside the Revolution: A Journey into the Heart of Venezuela’ plus Questions and Answers with the film's director, Pablo Navarrete. Pablo is a British-Chilean journalist, researcher, and filmmaker. He is the founder and editor of www.alborada.net, a website covering Latin America related issues. He is the Latin America editor for ‘Red Pepper'. He has written on contemporary Venezuelan and Latin American politics for publications such as 'The Guardian' and 'The New Statesman' in the UK and 'Counterpunch' in the US. Host: Wales Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign and Films for a Change

Sat, Oct 16, 7pm Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea
LATIN AMERICA: AMERICA'S BACKYARD ONCE AGAIN?
Malcolm Boorer’s short films (Venezuela, El Salvador) to be shown and journalist Grace Livingstone to speak. Grace Livingstone is a journalist specialising in Latin American affairs. She was a reporter for The Guardian in Venezuela and has also worked for the BBC World Service and written for The Observer, The New Statesman and The Tablet. She is the author of Inside Democracy: Drugs Democracy and War (Latin America Bureau, 2003). Her latest book is America's Backyard: The United States and Latin > America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror(Zed Books > 2009). Host: ALAS - Asociación Latinoamericana de Swansea/Swansea > Latin American Association.>>

Wed, Oct 27, 7.30 Main Hall, International Politics Building, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth.
BOLIVIA: AN ALTERNATIVE VISION ON WORLD AFFAIRS
Speakers: Beatrice Souviron, Bolivian Ambassador; and Dr Lucy Taylor, Lecturer, Latin American Studies, Dept of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. Beatriz Souviron returns to Wales after her important contribution to the El Sueno Existe festival in 2009. Before becoming ambassador she worked in social development with an international brief, particularly on climate change climate change and natural disasters. Lucy Taylor is lecturer in Latin American Studies in the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. Lucy works on citizenship and representation in Argentina, but is also keenly interested in ways to re-imagine global politics. Host: El Sueño Existe

 

[Udo Erasmus]

This looks like a very interesting event, happening very soon in Cardiff

At first sight defenders of the environment or conservationists seem like nice, rather eccentric fellows whose main goal in life is to prevent the extinction of blue whales or pandas. The common people... have more pressing concerns, for example where their next meal will come from. However, in Peru there are a great number of people defending the environment. Of course if you told them 'You are ecologists', they would probably answer 'Ecologists my eye! And yet: Who can deny the inhabitants of the town of Ilo and surrounding villages, struggling against pollution caused by the Southern Peru Copper corporation, are defending the environment? Is not the village of Tambo Grande in Pirura environmentalist when it rises like a closed fist and is ready to die in order to prevent strip-mining in its valley? Also, the people of the Mantaro Valley who saw their little sheep die, because of the smoke and waste from La Oroya smelter. And isn't the Amazonian population totally ecologist, ready to die to defend the forests from pillage? Or the poor population of Lima, protesting tainted water?