Poverty, Injustice and the Ecological Crisis

The Capitalization of Nature 1950’s: U.S government assumed a more active role in the expanding capitalist development in Central America –Rockefeller family –National Security Council 1961: The role of the U.S. became greater with the advent of the Alliance for Progress which aimed to promote to social and economic stability in Central America through modernization, diversification, and expansion of the capitalist export agriculture and industry. –gave landed oligarchs, bankers, and military officers the power to appropriate the majority of newly created wealth

The Capitalization of Nature and the Alliance of Progress El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua: oligarchies and security forces used the U.S. economic and military assistance to promote the development of large-scale agricultural estates. –Forest land, wildlife habitats, and peasant communities were cleared to make way for the large latifundios devoted to the production of export crops, primarily coffee, cotton, sugar, bananas, and cattle. Honduras and Costa Rica: foreign capital was used by small peasant farmers, the urban bourgeoisie, and landed oligarchs to modernize and expand smaller coffee farms and cattle holdings, in addition to large-scale banana plantations. –Because capitalist governments took a more mixed form of both large-scale and small-scale farms, state repression was much less significant.

The Capitalization of Nature: Cotton 1950’s -1970’s: almost all of the coastal hardwood forests were destroyed, as well and coastal savannas, evergreen forests and mangroves. Many species of animals were eliminated or reduced. Peasants were evicted from their traditional landholdings. This gave peasants the only option to earn an income through wage labor during the short cotton-picking season. –By the late 1970’s, the 10,000 farms and over 1 million acres of cotton fields carved out by the landed oligarchy and the agrarian bourgeoisie, employed one-half million workers. –By this time Central America was the third leading producer of cotton the world and only 2% of the original coastal forest remained

The Capitalization of Nature: Beef Beef: The expansion of large-scale cattle ranches and the displacement of peasant farmers was funded by grants and/or loans from U.S. government agencies, international financial institutions, and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration : 15% of the regions total forests were destroyed 400% increase in trade between 1961 and 1974 Over two thirds of Central America’s lowland and lower montane rainforests have been destroyed since 1960 (most suitable to cattle). Today, over 22% of the region’s land mass is in permanent pasture. Nicaragua and Guatemala: thousands of peasants who resisted eviction were killed in U.S. supported counterinsurgency operations during the 1960’s and 1970’s to ensure the capitalization and privatization of nature for their own personal gain.

Disarticulated Development Intensification of Central America’s dependency on the U.S. and on international capital –sectoral and social disarticulation: industries that produce commodities and industries that produce agricultural commodities into another commodity have been developed in the process –peasantry and working classes possesses little consumption capacity and are not the primary sources of aggregate consumer demand, making the economy vulnerable to world market conditions. –the production and consumption capacities of Central America’s capitalist sector are increased by minimizing costs, including expenditures relating to environmental protection. Industries that grew under the Alliance are compelled to “externalize” the social and ecological costs of capitalist production

The Ecological Costs of Disarticulated Development Since the 1960’s: peasants, workers and the environment face costs in the form of increasingly polluted and disease-ridden water supplies, and health problems. –worst offenders are beneficios, or coffee processing plants which often discharge high levels of boron, chloride, and arsenic-laden wastewater into the environment. –For example, beneficios in Costa Rica produce 66% of the country’s water contaminants. –The U.S. corporation Pennwalt Central American capital maintains its competitive edge by minimizing the cost of labor –This requires capital to resist costly procedures designed to protect worker health and safety as well as the environment. –This creates dangerous working and living conditions, especially for seasonal laborers It’s estimated that as many as 73,000 pesticide poisonings occurred during the 1970’s Today, Nicaraguans and Guatemalans have more DDT in their body fat than any other human population.

Ecological Impoverishment of the Peasantry Cotton, sugar, coffee and bananas requires the availability of hundreds of thousands of migratory low-wage laborers. Reduces labor costs by perpetuating the peasant subsistence sector –Peasant plots lowers the cost of labor-power, but is inadequate to ensure the freedom of the peasant family from the bonds of wage slavery. Maintaining the peasant subsistence sector has been the main prerequisite for continued accumulation in the capitalist export sector, a relation called functional dualism. –The overdevelopment of the export sector and the underdevelopment of the subsistence sector which forces peasants to work as migratory, semiproletarian laborers. Between 1950 and 1968 the export sector claimed 73% of all newly developed agricultural land, while peasant farms occupied 8%.

Ecological Impoverishment and the Cattle Boom The cattle boom: –mechanism for maintaining the ecological impoverishment of the subsistence sector, by continually displacing the subsistence sector –a tool for land speculation and monopolization, and requiring a much smaller labor force. Displaces peasant farmers onto unfertile lands ecologically unsuitable for slash-and-burn (traditional) agriculture that are prone to severe erosion and fertility loss. State policies and private practices deny favorable marketing, financial and technological assistance and services. The capitalist export sector receives over half of all the institutional credit allocated through national banking systems. The creation of the necessary human conditions of production for disarticulated capitalist development Therefore, the harvest of most export crops (except bananas) occurs during the dry season, while basic grains raised on peasant plots are cultivated during the rainy season. Health effects of functional dualism

Ecological Collapse of the Minifundio The peasantry response: overexploiting the limited natural resources However, disarticulated capitalist development not only produces severe ecological exploitation, but depends on it for the subsidized reproduction of semiproletarian labor generation. Overexploitation of agricultural soils Sustainable systems of slash-and-burn agriculture are evolving into semi-permanent or permanent agriculture which results in: –accelerated erosion –fertility loss –watershed degradation –Desertification –climatic changes The major causes of death in Central America are infectious diseases related to poor environmental quality and nutritional status.

Population Dynamics and the Ecological Crisis Transformation of the household division of labor by gender and through the superexploitation of familial labor. This burden falls particularly hard on women (and children) in a double sense: – Women are charged not only with doing “women’s work”, but also joining their male partners as seasonal wage laborers. Bearing children as production agents for incorporation into the household labor –By age seven, children in the subsistence sector are usually producing more income for the family than what they cost. –Older children in search of income often migrate to the cities –Increase in population has benefited the oligarchy and the agrarian bourgeoisie by providing a growing supply of workers Under functional dualism: individual economic rationality leads to quantitative and qualitative demographic contradictions and reproduce conditions on impoverishment in rural areas. However, the problems of ecological deterioration of the peasantry’s resource base are also damaging to the capitalist production and cause millions of dollars damage annually to the capitalist sector and state infrastructure.

Toward a Sustainable Future Authentic economic reform Just distribution of land and natural resources Foreign policy of alignment An end to U.S. military intervention Comprehensive agrarian reform Fertile land held idle or in pasture by large growers could go into sustainable production for basic food crops, allowing for marginal lands to be restored. Redirection of credit Training and technical assistance to small farmers Environmental and social restoration efforts Government promotion of appropriate technology International support for radical ecology. A lasting U.S. policy of peace and reconstruction for Central America