Banana Republic
By Sayuri Loza. Neocolonialism in Bolivia has played a great dirty trick. We are a Banana Republic.
By Sayuri Loza
The expression “Banana Republic” was coined by the writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) to refer to the phenomenon that occurred in Central American countries (especially Honduras) at the beginning of the 20th century, where the transnationals arrived and took over land to the point that, for example, the United Fruit Company came to own 51% of the territory of Nicaragua, forming States within the State where they bought authorities and, in the end, had the luxury of installing presidents at their pleasure.
All of this to plant bananas and export them to the United States, where thanks to aggressive marketing campaigns they were consumed as the basis of the North American diet. The UFCO took hold of workers and exploited them, to the point that Honduras only had its first labor code in 1959; popular movements were always persecuted and massacred.
At that time, the transnationals seized the wealth of a country and established enclave economies. The social struggle of workers and peasants was forged because it was precisely these groups that were most affected by the territorial subjugation and the imposition of industrial exploitation on previously sovereign spaces.
It was because of the indignation over these abuses that the anti-imperialist discourse penetrated Latin America deeply in all spheres of thought. This also explains why our continent has opted for leftist political forces in this century, breaking with the right that made deals with the local or transnational oligarchy. In this century, we saw the birth of popular mobilizations such as the Water War and the Gas War, and in theory, the fall of the exploitative neoliberal regime.
So, we should be happy, right? Well, no. Unfortunately, imperialism has a thousand faces and now the colonial empire is China, but it is not inspired by any Monroe doctrine, far from it. China and the leftist governments that have made deals with them have masterfully manipulated the struggles of the last century.
The social movements, anesthetized by the discourse and the idea that they have a government that represents them, do not say anything. The image of the colonizing gringo master has been imprinted in them to the point that they are unable to identify the other local colonizer misnamed “interculturales”, who dispossess and exert violence on indigenous nations of eastern Bolivia with the same cruelty as before.
Many left-wing intellectuals, dazzled by the “suma qamaña” discourse, have ignored the presence of Chinese companies disguised as cooperative miners, once a symbol of the country’s proletarian struggle, today accomplices in poisoning the waters with lethal mercury that harms the inhabitants of the regions where gold mining takes place.
What’s more, activists have turned to exclusively speaking and writing about racism, publishing respective texts that make excuses for it as the ultimate cause for all the miseries of this country, and, oh yes, the “coup d’état”. The national workers’ union, COB, for its part, confronts the “Croats”, while elected representatives, who should defend the territory and sovereignty as they claim in their workshops and even in their drunken parties, instead go around lashing (ch’asqueandose) each other, affected by paranoia.
The peasant and Indigenous organizations, Csutcb, Conamaq, Bartolinas, etc., spend their time calculating where power is leaning, so as to lean in time and not lose power. Little or nothing matters to them that in the 21st century. We are a Banana Republic.
Neocolonialism in Bolivia has played a great dirty trick. The forces that it once faced, now live in a world of fantasy and symbols, using the moral authority inherited to them by their predecessors, but that they themselves, here and now, do not know how to honor.
There remain some defenders who have seen reality: they are young professionals, not precisely from social areas, but environmental ones. They carry out investigations, meet with those affected, publish the facts and call out events. They denounce what is happening with evidence. A deaf society does not hear them, but they continue. They are the voice of Cassandra in this sad country, lost in anachronistic discourses, fed by plunder.
Sayuri Loza is a historian, analyst and artist.
Translated and published with permission of the author.
Originally published in Pagina Siete.