Dubbed ‘The School of Dictators’ by human rights activists, the US Army School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, has produced some of the world’s most notorious torturers, drug traffickers and war criminals. The spectre of their crimes still haunts much of Latin America—from Argentina to El Salvador.

In El Salvador, the human rights abuses were beyond the pale–from the public assassination of bishop Óscar Romero to the raping and killing of four American nuns. 

Some of the school’s well known graduates include Jorge Videla, military dictator of Argentina from 1976 to 1981, who caused the deaths of at least 9,000 people and disappearances of an estimated 30,000 others. Another star pupil of the school was CIA agent, Vladimiro Montesinos, who went on to become Peru’s counterintelligence head. Montesino directed an anti-communist death squad called the Colina Group which committed numerous horrifying massacres of peasant farmers, trade unionists and alleged leftists.

The brutal crimes being committed in our names and with our tax dollars led a man named Father Roy Bourgeois to form The School of the Americas Watch, an organization dedicated to closing down the school.

Join Abby Martin in this edition of The Empire Files as she uncovers how the US funded right wing death squads and intentionally uprooted democracy across Latin America.

The US School That Trains Dictators & Death Squads

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FOLLOW // @EmpireFiles and @AbbyMartin

WATCH // YouTube.com/EmpireFiles

  NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC– Officials from Brazil’s Indian affairs agency, FUNAI, say they have confirmed the existence of a previously unknown indigenous group in the rugged folds of the western Amazon. The tribe, believed to number as many as 200 people, was initially discovered through the examination of satellite images of rain forest clearings and confirmed by aerial reconnaissance flights earlier this year.

The overflights revealed three separate clearings and four large communal dwellings, known as malocas, clustered in the dense jungles of the Javari Valley Indigenous Reserve in far western Brazil. Specialists in matters pertaining to isolated Indians estimate the population of uncontacted tribes by examining the size and number of dwellings, as well as any gardens the inhabitants might have under cultivation. The recently discovered tribe is reported to have planted tracts of corn, banana, and low-to-the-ground bushes that might be peanuts or cassava.

Into the Jungle

The Javari — a sprawling rain forest reserve half the size of Florida — is home to the largest concentration of uncontacted tribes in the entire world. There are at least eight uncontacted indigenous communities, and perhaps as many as fourteen, inhabiting the upland forests in the headwaters of the rivers that drain the Vale do Javari Indigenous Land. It’s an area with which I have more than a passing familiarity. In 2002, I accompanied a team from FUNAI’s elite unit, the Department of Isolated Indians, on a three-month expedition through the reserve’s primeval forest to track a mysterious indigenous tribe known as the flecheiros — the Arrow People.

Read full article about Uncontacted Tribe Discovered in Brazilian Amazon.

© 2011 National Geographic

New footage of one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes living in the Brazilian rainforest.

Jose Carlos Meirelles works for FUNAI, a government agency that protects Brazil’s indigenous people. Because of the threat posed by illegal logging and mining, he believes that the fight to protect these people depends on proving and publicising their existence. This aerial footage was shot from 1km away using a stabilised zoom lens.

Brazil is thought to be home to around 70 isolated tribes.

© 2011 BBC

Photo by Flickr user The Journey 1972

YES!– “To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of acitizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.” -CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL

In writing Diet for a Small Planet, I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy. But that realization was only the beginning, for then I had to ask: What does a democracy look like that enables citizens to have a real voice in securing life’s essentials? Does it exist anywhere? Is it possible or a pipe dream? With hunger on the rise here in the United States—one in 10 of us is now turning to food stamps—these questions take on new urgency.

To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens making democracy work for them, real-life stories help—not models to adopt wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of Brazil’s fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a rich trove of such lessons. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.

The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000.

The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

When my daughter Anna and I visited Belo Horizonte to write Hope’s Edge we approached one of these stands. A farmer in a cheerful green smock, emblazoned with “Direct from the Countryside,” grinned as she told us, “I am able to support three children from my five acres now. Since I got this contract with the city, I’ve even been able to buy a truck.”

The improved prospects of these Belo farmers were remarkable considering that, as these programs were getting underway, farmers in the country as a whole saw their incomes drop by almost half.

In addition to the farmer-run stands, the city makes good food available by offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets, from the Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices.” Today there are 34 such markets where the city determines a set price—about two-thirds of the market price—of about twenty healthy items, mostly from in-state farmers and chosen by store-owners. Everything else they can sell at the market price.

“For ABC sellers with the best spots, there’s another obligation attached to being able to use the city land,” a former manager within this city agency, Adriana Aranha, explained. “Every weekend they have to drive produce-laden trucks to the poor neighborhoods outside of the city center, so everyone can get good produce.”

Another product of food-as-a-right thinking is three large, airy “People’s Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal. When Anna and I ate in one, we saw hundreds of diners—grandparents and newborns, young couples, clusters of men, mothers with toddlers. Some were in well-worn street clothes, others in uniform, still others in business suits.

“I’ve been coming here every day for five years and have gained six kilos,” beamed one elderly, energetic man in faded khakis.

“It’s silly to pay more somewhere else for lower quality food,” an athletic-looking young man in a military police uniform told us. “I’ve been eating here every day for two years. It’s a good way to save money to buy a house so I can get married,” he said with a smile.

No one has to prove they’re poor to eat in a People’s Restaurant, although about 85 percent of the diners are. The mixed clientele erases stigma and allows “food with dignity,” say those involved.

Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers.

“We’re fighting the concept that the state is a terrible, incompetent administrator,” Adriana explained. “We’re showing that the state doesn’t have to provide everything, it can facilitate. It can create channels for people to find solutions themselves.”

For instance, the city, in partnership with a local university, is working to “keep the market honest in part simply by providing information,” Adriana told us. They survey the price of 45 basic foods and household items at dozens of supermarkets, then post the results at bus stops, online, on television and radio, and in newspapers so people know where the cheapest prices are.

The shift in frame to food as a right also led the Belo hunger-fighters to look for novel solutions. In one successful experiment, egg shells, manioc leaves, and other material normally thrown away were ground and mixed into flour for school kids’ daily bread. This enriched food also goes to nursery school children, who receive three meals a day courtesy of the city.
The result of these and other related innovations?

In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

The cost of these efforts?

Around $10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget. That’s about a penny a day per Belo resident.

Behind this dramatic, life-saving change is what Adriana calls a “new social mentality”—the realization that “everyone in our city benefits if all of us have access to good food, so—like health care or education—quality food for all is a public good.”

The Belo experience shows that a right to food does not necessarily mean more public handouts (although in emergencies, of course, it does.) It can mean redefining the “free” in “free market” as the freedom of all to participate. It can mean, as in Belo, building citizen-government partnerships driven by values of inclusion and mutual respect.

And when imagining food as a right of citizenship, please note: No change in human nature is required! Through most of human evolution—except for the last few thousand of roughly 200,000 years—Homo sapiens lived in societies where pervasive sharing of food was the norm. As food sharers, “especially among unrelated individuals,” humans are unique, writes Michael Gurven, an authority on hunter-gatherer food transfers. Except in times of extreme privation, when some eat, all eat.

Before leaving Belo, Anna and I had time to reflect a bit with Adriana. We wondered whether she realized that her city may be one of the few in the world taking this approach—food as a right of membership in the human family. So I asked, “When you began, did you realize how important what you are doing was? How much difference it might make? How rare it is in the entire world?”

Listening to her long response in Portuguese without understanding, I tried to be patient. But when her eyes moistened, I nudged our interpreter. I wanted to know what had touched her emotions.

“I knew we had so much hunger in the world,” Adriana said. “But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”

Adriana’s words have stayed with me. They will forever. They hold perhaps Belo’s greatest lesson: that it is easy to end hunger if we are willing to break free of limiting frames and to see with new eyes—if we trust our hard-wired fellow feeling and act, no longer as mere voters or protesters, for or against government, but as problem-solving partners with government accountable to us.

Frances Moore Lappé wrote this article as part of Food for Everyone, the Spring 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Frances is the author of many books including Diet for a Small Planet and Get a Grip, co-founder of Food First and the Small Planet Institute, and a YES! contributing editor.

The author thanks Dr. M. Jahi Chappell for his contribution to the article.

(photo by alicia roldan)

BBC– Argentina has become the first country in Latin America to legalise gay marriage after the Senate voted in favour. The country’s Chamber of Deputies had already approved the legislation.

The vote in the Senate, which backed the bill by just six votes, came after 14 hours of at times heated debate.

The law, which also allows same-sex couples to adopt, had met with fierce opposition from the Catholic Church and other religious groups. The legislation, backed by President Cristina Fernandez’s centre-left government, passed by 33 votes to 27 with three abstentions.

There were demonstrations for and against the bill outside Congress as senators debated. Outside Congress, as the debate continued into the early hours of Thursday, supporters and opponents of the bill held rival demonstrations.

“Nearly every political and social figure has spoken out in favour of marriage equality,” said Maria Rachid, president of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals. “And we hope that the Senate reflects this and that Argentina, from today forward, is a more just country for all families,” she told the Associated Press.

Ines Frank, from a group called Argentine Families Argentina, said opposition was not discrimination “because the essence of a family is between two people of opposite sexes.”

There have been several gay marriages recently in Argentina, some of which were annulled by the Supreme Court, creating a legal controversy. Civil unions between people of the same sex are legal in Buenos Aires and in some other provinces but there was no law to regulate it on a country-wide level.

Argentina’s capital is widely considered to be among the most gay-friendly cities in Latin America. It was the first Latin American city to legalise same-sex unions. Same-sex civil unions are also legal in Uruguay and some states in Brazil and Mexico, while gay marriage is legal in Mexico City.

© COPYRIGHT BBC, 2010

Photo by flickr user Mariano Pernicone

DEMOCRACY NOW–  AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Bolivia in the town of Tiquipaya, just outside Cochabamba. On Thursday, the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth concluded with a major rally at the Félix Capriles Stadium in Cochabamba featuring Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Over the past three days of the summit, known here simply as “La Cumbre,” seventeen working groups met to discuss various climate-related issues, from climate debt to the dangers of carbon trading. Last night, summit organizers released an Agreement of the Peoples based on the working group meetings.

Key proposals include the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute polluters, passage of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, protection for climate migrants, and the full recognition of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The peoples’ summit also condemned a proposed forest program known as REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation.

At Thursday’s rally, Bolivian President Evo Morales called on world leaders to adopt these proposals from the peoples’ summit.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] If we apply and implement all of the conclusions of this World Conference on the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba will be a hope to the world. What the governments of developed countries suggest is allowing the earth to warm two degrees or more. Clearly, the proposals coming from some working groups are not solutions, but ways to cook all of humanity.

AMY GOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales, speaking before over 15,000 people in Cochabamba’s largest soccer stadium.

In the hours before the rally, supporters of Morales filled the sidewalks of the city. Morales is the first indigenous president of Bolivia, and much of his support comes from the majority indigenous population.

Signs of Bolivia’s vibrant indigenous culture were on full display outside and inside the stadium. Many indigenous women wore bowler hats and flared skirts. The sound of pan flutes and the Andean string instrument, the charango, could be heard throughout the stadium as several musical acts gave impromptu performances on the field. Bolivian women and children sold empanadas and fresh juices.

At the rally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez warned that capitalism could lead to the destruction of the planet.

PRESIDENT HUGO CHÁVEZ: [translated] We will not submit to the hegemony of the imperial Yankees. You can even write it down. If the hegemony of capitalism continues on this planet, human life will one day come to an end. For those of you who believe that’s an exaggeration, one must remember this: the planet lived for millions of years without the human species.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. We’re broadcasting from Cochabamba. Again, you were listening to the closing ceremony and the closing speeches at Cochabamba’s largest soccer stadium. It took place on Earth Day. You just heard the President Evo Morales. You also heard, as well, President Chávez. In just a moment, we are going to be joined by President Morales. He has just arrived by van. He’s coming up the stairs. So we’ll go to a break, some of the remarkable indigenous music that has been playing throughout the area, and then we’ll be joined by the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: As the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth concludes, we are joined now by Bolivian President Evo Morales. Following the failed Copenhagen climate talks in December, Morales issued a call to hold the peoples’ summit to give the poor and the Global South an opportunity to strategize on fighting climate change. President Morales joins us now for the hour. We’re here at the Universidad del Valle—Uni. del Valle, it’s called here—in Tiquipaya.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, President Morales.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: You have joined us in New York several times on Democracy Now! We are very honored to be here in your country, in Bolivia.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] And thank you very much for the invitation to converse, as we’ve always done.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we are speaking on the day after the World Peoples’ Conference has concluded, the day after Earth Day. What do you feel you have accomplished?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, we have been surprised by the participation of all the peoples of the world. We didn’t imagine so many people, more than 30,000 participants in sixteen—or seventeen working groups, and a declaration that provides so much direction for life and for nature, the participation of scientists and people responsible for different sectors and regions of the world.

There are two particularly important things. In Copenhagen, there was interest in having a document approved that would cause harm to Mother Earth. And the debate was only about the effects of the climate crisis, not the causes. And the peoples here have debated the causes, which is capitalism—I could elaborate on that—genetically modified crops, which cause harm to Mother Earth and human life.

And in addition, I am so pleased to see that there’s been such deep interest in engaging in a dialogue with the United Nations, so that these conclusions of the peoples of the world can be heard and respected. Not just by the peoples who participated, they should also be heard and respected by humankind as a whole, all of those who live on the planet.

AMY GOODMAN: The proposals that have come out of this conference, this summit, can you name them and explain them, beginning with the climate justice tribunal?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] For example, the developed countries should respect the Kyoto Protocol, and that means put it into practice, the 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; and that the global temperature increase should be a maximum one-degree Centigrade; that a climate justice tribunal should be established, based in Cochabamba—and I say thank you very much to the social movements who approved this proposal that it be based here; that there should continue to be a debate or there still is a debate on having a world referendum on climate change; that the economic resources spent on defense and wars should be for life and for nature.

According to information we have, we find that the developed countries spend $1.7 trillion, supposedly for defense and international security, but that actually means in military intervention in other countries. Imagine, with $1.7 trillion for life and for nature, that would be so important. And that is the right of Mother Earth, the right to regenerate Mother Earth’s caring capacity. It’s very important.

And I can tell you, I know and I have lived in my family, in my community, in my aillu, traditional community, where we said this year, we’ll grow chili peppers the next year, and we evaluate this among five different or eight communities. And over that time, it is regenerated in another place. Some time goes by, and we replant it in different place. And so, if we rotate the crops, then there’s not a detrimental impact on the environment. These seem like small things, but they translate into large things internationally in terms of the world environment.

In Bolivia, after this event, we are going to begin with reforestation. And the plan that we have in Bolivia, as of the first anniversary of the Declaration of International Mother Earth Day, because last year that was approved—before, it was Earth Day, and now it’s International Mother Earth Day. So one year after that, which is now, we’re going to begin planting. And next year, as of April 22nd, we will plant ten million trees. What does that mean? That a Bolivian, whether it’s a child or an older person, has to plant a plant or a tree. And we’re ten million, and there will be ten million, without any international contribution. This would be just an effort by Bolivians to begin to reforest our country.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what is happening to the glaciers here in Bolivia?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] It’s a very bitter experience. Chacaltaya, near the city of La Paz, when I was a child, I always heard that people would ski there. And now that I am president and living in La Paz, there is no skiing there. And there’s just a spot of snow left. Also, in the department of Potosí, we have another mountain, and the miners would say [inaudible], that they would say that it was dressed in white. It was all snow-covered. And what I’ve been told is that fifty years from now, there will no longer be snow on Illimani, the major mountain overlooking La Paz. This is what the experts say. These have to do with water problems, and that is the great concern, not only of the peasant and indigenous communities who love their Mother Earth and who take care of it, but also of the whole population.

AMY GOODMAN: President Morales, who would be brought before a climate justice tribunal?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First, the developed countries that are not respecting the Kyoto Protocol. It’s a basic document, the Kyoto Protocol. The developed countries should responsibly implement the provisions. We would begin with the countries that have not ratified or adopted the Kyoto Protocol, such as the government of the United States. And to that effect, you also have the International Court of Justice. So this is a new organization that would grow out of this event, this world movement for the rights of Mother Earth. This world movement for the rights of Mother Earth should already bring an action, as I say, against the countries that have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. And second, those that have ratified it, but are not implementing the Kyoto Protocol.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to President Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. Yesterday at the Earth Day rally, the foreign minister of Ecuador said that the US had cut two-and-a-half million dollars to Ecuador because they didn’t sign onto the Copenhagen Accord. He said he would give two-and-a-half million dollars to the United States if they signed onto the Kyoto Protocol. Bolivia, the US cut two-and-a-half million dollars, or $3 million, because you didn’t sign onto the Copenhagen Accord. Can you explain what happened?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] The thing is that there’s permanent sabotage and blackmail from the US government. I cannot believe that a black president can have so much vengeance with an Indian president, because our grandparents and our populations, black and indigenous, have been excluded, marginalized, humiliated. That’s where Obama is coming from, from that experience and that suffering. And me, too. And so, it’s one who’s been discriminated against discriminating against another who’s been discriminated against, one oppressed who is oppressing another oppressed. So much blackmail, and the so much blackmail we had experienced before, and now I’m being subject to $3 million blackmail.

But it’s with great pride and humility that we’re now better off without the United States. We’re better off economically. And in terms of macroeconomic policy, we’re better off without the International Monetary Fund.

AMY GOODMAN: What was the $3 million supposed to be for, before it was cut?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Of course, for social programs, as well as environmental programs, but that’s just $3 million. In terms of fighting drug trafficking, they have the responsibility to make an investment, and that it’s not just a question of cooperation, it’s a matter of an obligation on their part. Nonetheless, they have pulled out, and we are facing drug trafficking alone—some crumb to make it seem like something, certainly. And so, for example, I had information that they were going to invest in the Millennium Development Account, like $600 million, and they withdrew all of it. And so, we worked this out with other countries. We’re talking about investment. One is not going to raise that claim about this. We are a country of dignity.

But what they do is take vengeance, intimidate. And that is why my doubt is, one who has been subjugated, one’s family has been subjugated to discrimination, is now president; how is it possible that he can discriminate against another movement that has been discriminated against? It is the peoples who will hear.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a change between President Bush and President Obama?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] If something is changed, it’s just the color of the president that’s changed.

AMY GOODMAN: President Morales, you have often talked about the difference between coca and cocaine. You say coca is not cocaine. For a US audience, that is hard to understand. Please explain.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Cocaine is like the white hair of our interpreter, and the coca leaf is green like the leaves that you see on the tree outside. The coca leaf, in its natural state, is food, it’s medicine. It is used quite a lot in rituals, as you will have seen in the ceremonies that have taken place at this World Conference on the Rights of Mother Earth.

To turn coca into cocaine, many chemical agents are required, chemical precursors, and therefore a mix of sulfuric acid and other chemicals will turn it into a drug. But we have no culture of cocaine, but we do have a profound culture of coca leaf. I’m very sorry that the US State Department considers that people who consume coca leaf are drug addicts. That’s absurd. It’s totally false. And that those of us who produce coca leaf are drug traffickers and that they say that coca is cocaine, well, that is a lie. And so, we’re engaged in a permanent battle to continue to inform the whole world about this. But people like you, for example, know now that coca is not cocaine.

But in addition to that, when Bolivian tin was in its boom, it was used by US industry. And at that time, the United States was encouraging coca production, so that the miners, the workers, would consume coca leaf to help them extract tin to be sent to the United States. The best producers of coca leaf at that time were given awards. This is documented.

And I continue to be convinced that cocaine and drug trafficking is an invention of the United States. And with that invention, they’ve been able to create this war against drug trafficking. Capitalism lives from war. Capitalism needs wars in order to sell its weaponry. So this is not an isolated drug issue. It goes to the very interests of capitalism. And on the pretext of fighting drugs, they establish military bases. It’s political control and domination that they want. It’s the new colonialism.

AMY GOODMAN: President Morales, let me ask you, though—I have been speaking, not with your opponents, but your supporters, who are concerned that there is a growing narcotrafficking problem here. And I’m wondering if you feel that is the case. And you, more than anyone, understand that anything like this could be a trigger for massive intervention. So what will you do about this?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] It is a problem, and we acknowledge it. I don’t know if it’s growing, but the drug cartels and the cocaine cartels have become so powerful, the Plurinational State of Bolivia does not have certain instruments and technology for struggling against the drug cartels. It is a weakness on our part.

And the most important thing is that the peasant movement is voluntarily reducing coca crops. Before, it was forced eradication, which violated human rights. The disadvantage is that we don’t have radars, satellites, and a drug trafficker is not the one who steps on—who processes the coca leaf. They go around all around the world, and their money is in the banks. We need to end bank secrecy, for example. Why not? So, imagine, there’s not any real effective contribution to the anti-drug trafficking effort.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there a role the US can play in combating drug trafficking here that you think would be constructive?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] We just need equipment and technology.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who rose to the presidency—was a cocalero, the head of the coca growers’ union. And now I want to go back ten years. I want to go back to the Water Wars, where you really rose in popularity and ultimately to the presidency. Right outside this window here at the University del Valle, we can see the mountain Tunari. That was the name used for this mysterious company, Aguas del Tunari, that was actually the US company Bechtel, who came to privatize the water supply. You joined with the farmers, with the factory workers, led by Oscar Olivera, and you led a mass movement against the privatization and pushed out Bechtel. Talk about those moments.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I was born in Oruro, Orinoco, in another department in the Altiplano, and—before doing my obligatory military service in 1978. In 1979, I went to the Chapare region, which is here in the department of Cochabamba. And in 1979 and 1980, when I was going back and forth, I would come by Tunari, and it was always covered with snow. Most of the year it was snow-covered. Now, when there’s snowfall, it may be covered with snow just for half a day at most. I have experienced that.

Now, apart from that, the first companions who rose up against the drilling of wells was right over here in a place called La Vinto, Vinto Chico. I remember perfectly well that the communities had mobilized and put up roadblocks. And they said, “Evo, you have contacts with the press. Bring the press.” And they said, “The privatization of water is harming us.” I had some friends in the press. We brought them there. They talked with them, and they denounced it. I was very struck by the situation. And now I’m talking about the 1990s. I learned a great deal.

And then this contract came with the company called Aguas del Tunari. For the people in the city, the rate that they were going to be charged for water was going to increase threefold, fourfold, sevenfold. That provoked a response from the population. And the privatization of the springs, the melting, for irrigating, for the peasant movement, all of this was a problem. And Oscar Olivera and others came together. We all came together in order to wage debates. There was a colleague named Fernandez, who was among the irrigators. There was Oscar Olivera from the workers’ sector.

And what had most struck was that in the legislature—and at the time, I was a legislator, in 1999, 2000—I was told in the Congress that we need to approve a $50 million loan for the—and from the Andean Development Corporation, but that was going to be for Aguas del Tunari. So I figured that if there’s a company that is going to be awarded a project or a contract for privatizing water, they need to invest the money. Why is it that the government needs to lend money to the company Aguas del Tunari? Am I making my—you get my point? In the indigenous and peasant world, in the world of the poor, the businessperson is one who has a lot of money. Transnational corporations are great millionaires. And a transnational, Aguas del Tunari, was given a contract for privatizing the water. Well, then the legislature has to approve a law to give a loan to that company? What kind of privatization is that? Now I can make some more comments, with all the more reason, about other transnationals. That really struck me. There’s no investment by the company at all here. Then we found out who were the partners of this transnational: a politician by the name of Medina, another politician. And they put the papers together to create a company. But there wasn’t any money, and so the Bolivian government was supposed to lend it money.

This and many things brought us together—the peasant movement, the irrigators, the people in the city. I would say that the factory workers of Oscar Olivera participated in this struggle very little. It was essentially the peasants, the irrigators and the coca growers. We joined the struggle. We didn’t have water problems in Chapare. There’s flooding in Chapare. The issue was that it had to do with a policy of privatization. And drinking water included the trade unions. So we said, “This policy is going to come to Chapare, and before that happens, let’s fight it in Cochabamba.”

I remember that one day I felt defeated in our mobilizations here. About a thousand of us went out, said, “Let’s go out and march.” And we went out to march, and they began to shoot teargas at us. And the press said they’re shooting teargas at the coca growers, who are defending water. And then the population rose up, and there was a state of siege. It was the last state of siege that we defeated. And since then, there’s been no state of siege.

AMY GOODMAN: So how does it feel, from—going from that victory, pushing Bechtel out of the country, being a stone-throwing protester, to becoming the president of your nation, representing the police and the military that you were opposing at that time?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Well, as president, we continue getting the companies out of the country. Before, as a social movement leader, now as president. We also have removed the company Aguas del Illimani from La Paza, as president. As president, we have removed Transredes, an oil company. So that’s not changing. These are policies that have been defined by social movements in Bolivia, and we’ll continue to pursue them.

But I do want you to know, we said no more will we have companies being the owners of our natural resources. We do need partners. For example, some agreements that we’ve signed with some companies, the company invests, but under the control of the owner is the Plurinational State of Bolivia. We are owners of 60 percent of the shares, and the investor holds 40 percent. It is legally guaranteed and constitutionally guaranteed that they will recover their investment, but they also—we also guarantee the right to share in the profits.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break for sixty seconds, but then we’re coming back to our exclusive hour with the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, as we broadcast live from Cochabamba, Bolivia. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve just been watching and listening to the celebratory music, the major celebrations that took place at the close of the summit yesterday in the main soccer stadium here in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. And we have been broadcasting all week from the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth. We’re here now in the Bolivian town of Tiquipaya, just outside of Cochabamba, with President Evo Morales.

You are talking about industry and the role of corporations. I’d like to address how you deal with indigenous rights, environmental rights, and reconcile that with corporations. Let’s go to San Cristóbal, the mine, the protests of the last week. Please tell us what is happening there. The miners have shut down the area. They’re calling on Sumitomo, the Japanese company, to give them reparations, stop polluting the water. I think 6,000 liters of water a second are used. What is the government doing? What are you doing, President Morales?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First, that is a concession that is legally guaranteed and armored by the previous governments. It’s the legacy of the neoliberal governments. But in addition, the people in the area know that the company has negotiated with them. They’ve created a foundation to give money to community members and the experience that is that such kinds of agreements, blackmail or prebends, are not a solution. Those are not eternal. And that those who are culpable are the leaders of the communities who agreed to enter into agreements with the company. There’s also a political component. When the right lost in the municipal elections, the next day, they began to wage conflicts. So there’s an internal issue there.

If we want to resolve the issue of San Cristóbal, we need to change a law, a law on mining. And certainly, that is going to be subject to an in-depth review, the concession contract itself. But yesterday, the day before yesterday, the conflict has ended. They lifted that, and we explained the truths. But sometimes these kinds of conflicts are used politically at the local level.

AMY GOODMAN: The State Department has issued a warning that people shouldn’t travel in that area, the US State Department.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] You always hear campaigns of that sort from the US State Department. It’s just one part of the highway that’s been blocked. But, as I say, that was lifted two days ago. And then I was informed that some tourists were kept from going through, but the community members, in a responsible way, had the tourists come through. You can see that this is a satanization by the United States State Department. And we say, in a humanitarian sense, they have a right to be there, even though they’ve politicized it.

But they don’t realize that those responsible for those agreements are not only the previous governments, but also the leaders of—the previous leaders of those communities. So there was this agreement between the state and the leaders of the community. I know about it. I was there talking with them. They accepted that there be a foundation that would invest, I’m not sure how many millions in the community.

That also doesn‘t mean that we’re trying to deflect responsibility. It is our responsibility to seek solutions. And I was saying a moment ago that we need to—that there are contracts that are armored, and we need to figure out how to change them.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to the bigger issue. Bolivian economy is based on 20 percent, 30 percent on extractive industries like silver, zinc. You are really getting into lithium now. Bolivia has the world’s majority reserves in lithium, an incredible alternative energy source for batteries, for electric cars. How do you reconcile the extractive industries with the environment, Pachamama, the indigenous word for Mother Earth, with indigenous rights?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] We need in-depth studies on this. If we want to defend Mother Earth and the rights of Mother Earth, any project for industrializing natural resources has to respect the regeneration of bio-capabilities. Like with some minerals, for example, non-renewable minerals, it will be difficult. So the internal debate is what to do about this, because Bolivia, before, lived from tin, as a colonial state. Now we live off of gas and oil. Our economic resources come fundamentally from oil and gas, and mining is in second place. To what extent can the industrialization of these resources allow for respect for Mother Earth?

As of this conference, and going forward, everything has to change. But when they tell us that lithium could be an alternative energy source, I was asking, what about the brine, and in what time can it be regenerated? Some tell me fifty years, some tell me 100 years. I would be happy if it were fifty years, because we have there these salt flats of 10,000 square kilometers. And if you take a broader look, it’s 16,000 square kilometers. It’s immense. So we’re going forward. And if that happens, then we’ll be satisfied, in terms of having a replacement for the energy sources that cause so much harm to Mother Earth.

AMY GOODMAN: These are the issues that have been raised by mesa 18, the group that was not included in the summit, the issues of—even someone on the stage in your opening ceremony, Faith Gemmill from North Alaska, said, “Keep the coal in the hole, keep the oil in the ground.” What is your response to that, to stop the extractions?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] You want me to tell you the truth about working group 18? That’s a business of the NGOs and the foundations. The indigenous brothers and sisters had never before had an indigenous working group within the seventeen. But since it’s a question of justifying investments by the NGOs, then they set up working group 18.

Now, the internal debate. Those foundations, NGOs, said, “Amazon, no oil.” So they’re telling me that I should shut down oil wells and gas wells. So what is Bolivia going to live off of? So let’s be realistic. But since these foundations and NGOs justify using some of the indigenous brothers and sisters—I don’t blame my indigenous brothers and sisters. They use the leaders to justify their good salaries and their own way of life.

I heard yesterday—last night I was with the people from Via Campesina up until 2:00 a.m. You know Via Campesina. I’m one of the founders. And they tell me, “Don’t build roads.” And another one says, “Don’t build dams.” The day before yesterday, when I was just back here, I announced that we’re going to build a road from Oruro to a place near here. That is the most widely applauded project by the grassroots people, because the people who need to be able to have access. If we look just out here, in Alto, every day they’re asking for small-scale dams. So NGOs and some leaders say, no, when they’re not interpreting the needs of their grassroots. That is the truth. And for this reason, it was like a confrontation Via Campesina—

AMY GOODMAN: We just have thirty seconds. Your hope for this summit?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I wanted to explain—I don’t want to feel that there’s not freedom of expression, in terms of addressing your concern. But I do want you to know, that is the truth, and that last night, with Via Campesina, we had those confrontations. So they ended up—they stopped talking about the dams, about the roads. Now I’m an enemy of thermoelectric plants, for example, but not hydroelectric plants.

AMY GOODMAN: Five Seconds.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Well, then, thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you very much. We’ve been speaking with Bolivian President Evo Morales. And that concludes our exclusive week here in Cochabamba, Bolivia at the Worlds Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth.