The Morales Government: Neoliberalism in Disguise?

International Socialism

27 March 12

Federico Fuentes

For more than a decade Bolivia has been rocked by mass upsurges and mobilisations that have posed the necessity and possibility of fundamental political and social transformation.¹ In 2005 the social movements that led the country’s water and gas wars managed to elect a government that since then has presided over a process of change that has brought major advances.

Among these are: the adoption of a plurinational state structure that for the first time recognises the country’s indigenous majority; regaining sovereign control over vital natural resources and initial steps towards endogenous industrialisation; an ongoing agrarian reform; and the development of social programmes that have substantially improved the lives of ordinary Bolivians. Democratic rights have been reinforced; forms of self-government by indigenous communities established; and electoral processes expanded to include popular election even of the judiciary. Not least in importance, Bolivia has also become a prime participant in the movement for Latin American anti-imperialist unification and sovereignty and emerged as a major leader in the international fight against capitalist-induced climate change.

In his recent article in this journal, “Revolution against ‘Progress’”,² Jeffery Webber offers a harsh critique of the MAS government, illustrating it by reference to recent conflicts between the government and some indigenous groups involving environmental and development issues. His conclusion: the government remains committed to a neoliberal programme based on “fiscal austerity”, “low inflationary growth”, “inconsequential agrarian reform”, “low social spending” and “alliances with transnational capital”, among other policies. As such, it shares “more continuity than change with the inherited neoliberal model”.

These are sweeping assertions, and many are questionable. Webber criticises the government’s supposed “fiscal austerity”, yet omits the fact that budget spending has increased almost fourfold between 2004 and 2012. He attacks the government for seeking “low inflation” and “macroeconomic stability”, but what is his alternative: high inflation and macroeconomic instability? These were certainly traits of previous neoliberal governments. Furthermore, is it “inconsequential” that in its first five years the Morales government presided over the redistribution or titling of 41 million hectares of land to over 900,000 members of indigenous peasant communities?³ And if the government’s policy can be simply defined as one of forming alliances to benefit foreign transnationals, why is the Bolivian state currently facing 12 legal challenges in international courts initiated by these same companies?

Profile of neoliberalism

Simply put, Webber ignores the real progress made by the Morales government in rolling back the neoliberal project in Bolivia. Neoliberalism is best understood as a class project that sought to reassert capital’s dominance internationally in the wake of the 1970s economic crisis. Neoliberalism, as Webber himself previously noted, was “set in motion on an international scale largely under the tutelage of the US imperial state” and had as its fundamental strategy not only the “privatisation of formerly state or public resources but their acquisition by transnational capital in the US and other core economies”.⁴

Furthermore, current Bolivian vice-president Álvaro García Linera has noted that neoliberalism rested on three additional “pillars”: “the fragmentation of the labouring sectors and worker organisations…the diminished state, and impediments to people’s decision making”.⁵

The impact of neoliberalism in Bolivia includes:⁶

l The sell-off or dismantling of Bolivia’s largest state-owned companies. In the hydrocarbon sector, which accounted for 50 percent of government revenue, privatisation was accompanied by a drop in royalties companies had to pay from 50 percent to 18 percent. The workforce of YPBF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos) was reduced from more than 9,000 in 1985 to 600 by 2002.

l The state’s dependency on foreign imperialist governments, transnational corporations and their institutions was deepened. International loans and aid covered “roughly half of Bolivia’s public investment”, with each budget deficit bringing further IMF-imposed structural adjustment programmes.

l The removal of state subsidies sent Bolivia’s small industrial sector into crisis. Some 35,000 jobs disappeared in the manufacturing sector alone.

l By 1988 the informal sector had ballooned to 70 percent of Bolivia’s urban workforce, and the few jobs created in the formal sector were subject to labour flexibilisation practices.

l The establishment of power-sharing pacts among traditional parties and restrictions on electoral registration for alternative parties consolidated the grip that neoliberal politicians had on political decision making.

Compare this disastrous record with that of the Morales government. While Bolivia’s state continues to be capitalist, “and the government functions within the framework of deeply entrenched capitalist culture and social relations”, it is equally true that through a combination of successful electoral and insurrectional battles, indigenous-popular forces today are in control of important positions of power within the state.⁷ From these positions, they have used the increased state revenue, generated through nationalisations undertaken across various strategic sectors, to begin breaking its dependency on foreign governments. This strong economic position has allowed those running the Bolivian state to dictate their own domestic and foreign policy, free from any impositions placed by imperialist governments and international financial institutions in return for loans. Ties of the US military to the Bolivian army have been cut.

A constituent assembly wrote a new constitution that for the first time recognises the previously excluded indigenous majority and has recuperated
state control over natural resources. Since the referendum ratifying the new constitution the process of “decolonising” the state has continued, most recently in October 2010, with the holding of Bolivia’s first popular elections to elect judicial authorities. The result was a record number of women and indigenous people flooding into the judicial branch of the state.

The Morales government also initiated a significant shift in Bolivia’s foreign policy, leaving behind the traditional subservient stance towards the US. Instead Bolivia has spearheaded initiatives in the direction of seeking unity with anti-imperialist forces—both at the level of governments and social movements—within the context of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (Alba), and increasing regional collaboration, through institutions such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). Another key focus has been the construction of an international alliance to fight for real solutions to the climate crisis, as evidenced by the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change held in Cochabamba in April 2010.

An alternative model

Webber ignores most of these achievements and instead focuses on the MAS industrial strategy and the social tensions that have been expressed around this. But he misrepresents the strategy. Let us look first, then, at what this strategy comprises, as it is a central component in the government’s economic vision. A succinct presentation may be found in a recent article on Bolivia’s economic model by Luis Alberto Arce Catacora, the minister of economy and public finance.

For Arce, “the New Economic, Social, Communitarian and Productive Model” that the government is implementing “does not pretend to immediately change the capitalist mode of production, but instead to lay the foundations for the transition towards a new socialist mode of production”.⁸

Unlike neoliberalism, in which surplus value and rents are appropriated by transnational capital, this new model, as the introduction to his article notes, has taken steps towards:

stimulating the internal market and reducing dependency on the external markets. Similarly, it has given the state a watching brief, endowing it with functions such as planning the economy, administering public enterprises, investing in the productive sector, taking on the role of a banker and regulator and, among other things, redistributing the surplus, with preference to those sectors that were not beneficiaries under previous governments.

The priority, Arce says, is promoting communitarian, cooperative and family-based enterprises (together with increasing social spending). Such a strategy is vital to rebuilding the strength of the working class and communitarian forces, pulverised by two decades of neoliberalism.

In summary: reassert state sovereignty in the economy and over natural resources; break out of Bolivia’s traditional position of primary materials exporter through industrialisation and promoting other productive sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture; redistribute the nation’s wealth in order to tackle poverty; and strengthen the organisational capacity of proletarian and communitarian forces as the two vital pillars of any possible transition to socialism in Bolivia today. Such a perspective, which seeks to advance the interest of Bolivia’s labouring classes at the expense of transnational capital, may be decried by some as mere reforms, but it is certainly not neoliberalism. →

SPEAKING TRUTH: A Profound Message to Avaaz from Poet Gabriel Impaglione of Argentina

As always, the voices of reason, compassion and decency resonate from those descendants of the Latin American  countries …

“I wish you a refreshing bath of conscience, I wish that you may be able to try out looking at others eye to eye, I wish that the Spring of truth makes life more humane for you.”

The original version, as written in Spanish, follows.

 Image: Argentinian Poet, Gabriel Impaglione

Gentlemen of Avaaz,

I firmly request that my email address be removed from your message-distribution lists, a request that I reiterate once again.

You circulate information that is slanted, manipulated by spurious interests; you convoke cunning and one-sided initiatives that represent the interests of the colonialist claw; you speak of peace, and when you speak of peace you speak of submitting to unipolar greed; when you speak of peace you speak of occupation and dependency; when you speak of peace you speak with the language of terrorism that is a scourge of the peoples and you pretend to impose “democratic” models that are nothing more than strategic-management schemes for subjection and for the avid desires of the imperial alliances.

The violence in Syria will cease when the forces that act to destabilize that country are shipped back to their imperial bases. The horror that the Syrian people are living is the horror of the imperial intervention, of the select world of capital.

The self-determination of the peoples is the first concept that you violate with your campaigns cosmetically disguised with do-good pacifism.

Information in the service of the causes of greed is as aberrant as the seditious groups infiltrated into the societies that come under the stare of perversity.

The Syrian Spring burgeons in the work, education, culture, sovereignty, dignity, self-determination of the Syrian people, there is no Spring on the imperial geopolitical chessboards, it is impossible to design Springs in the halls of capital and the arms industry. That which you call the Syrian Spring is the Syrian Hell, and the interests that move those savage circles of sulfur and lucre color your communiqués and evidence the display of perversion and lies.

Will other peoples in the world remain on the list of your peace campaigns?

Will you, in your domesticating efforts, call for action on behalf of the peoples of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, North Vietnam, North Korea, China…?

Will all of South America be added? Will you be told to do the same for Central America?

Will you ever allude in the slightest to the fifty-year-old blockade of Cuba that is maintained by your bosses from the North?

Do the Israeli, British, US bombs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, that tear life apart and yield excellent economic results for your bosses not enter into your campaigns for peace for the peoples?

The hypocrisy, the perversion, the media manipulation, at times bring directly to mind a last name that belongs to the worst of the human species: Goebbels. You follow that road of “lie, lie, for something will stick.”

The peoples of the world awaken, begin to understand the macabre game of the bosses. Peace is built on truth.

Maybe you would never understand that.

I wish you a refreshing bath of conscience, I wish that you may be able to try out looking at others eye to eye, I wish that the Spring of truth makes life more humane for you.

 

Sincerely,

Gabriel Impaglione

Poet, Argentina

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Gabriel Impaglione is a poet and journalist born in Moron, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1958. He is now based in  based in Sardinia, Italy, where he lives with his wife, the Italian writer Giovanna Mulas. For his full bio and to source his work please visit: http://www.artepoetica.net/Gabriel_Impaglione.htm

Gabriel Impaglione (Morón, Bs As, 1958), Argentine writer and journalist. He published: Echarle Pájaros the mundo (Panorama, Bs As, 1994); Breviary of cartography Magica (El Taller del Poeta, Galicia, 2002); Poemas Quietos (front Mizares Editorial, Barcelona, ??2002) Bagdad y otros Poemas (El Taller the Poet, Galicia, 2003); Letrario de Utopolis (Linajes, Mexico, 2004); Callejera Prensa (The Moon Que, Bs As, 2004), Song to a Prisionero (Editorial Poetas Antimperialistas, Ottawa, 2005); Alala-edition Spanish-(El Taller del Poeta, Galicia, 2005). Founder and Editor of Poetry & Literature Isla Negra.

http://www.vialetrastevere.org/newpage39.html

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Señores de Avaaz,

solicito con firmeza que mi mail sea retirado de vuestras listas de distribución de mensajes, solicitud que reitero una vez mas.

Ustedes hacen circular información parcializada, manoseada por intereses espúreos, convocan por iniciativas amañadas y tendenciosas que representan los intereses de la garra colonialista, hablan de paz y cuando hablan de paz hablan de sometimiento a la codicia unipolar, cuando hablan de paz hablan de ocupación y dependencia, cuando ustedes hablan de paz hablan con el idioma del terrorismo que azota a los pueblos y pretende imponer modelos “democráticos” que no son otra cosa que gerenciamientos estratégicos para el sometimiento y la avidez de las alianzas imperiales.

La violencia en Siria cesará cuando las fuerzas que actúan para la desestabilización de ese país se embarquen de regreso a sus bases imperiales. El horror que vive el pueblo sirio es el horror de la intervención imperial, del selecto mundo del capital.

La autodeterminación de los pueblos es el primer concepto que ustedes violentan con sus campañas maquilladas de buenismo pacifista.

La información al servicio de las causas de la codicia es tan aberrante como los grupos sediciosos infiltrados en las sociedades que caen bajo la mira de la perversidad.

La primavera Siria brota en el trabajo, en la educación, en la cultura, en la soberanía, en la dignidad, en la autodeterminación del pueblo sirio, no existe primavera en los tableros geopolíticos imperiales, es imposible diseñar primaveras en los salones del capital y la industria armamentista. Aquello que ustedes llaman primavera siria es infierno sirio y los intereses que mueven esos salvajes círculos del azufre y el lucro tiñen vuestros comunicados y evidencian el despliegue de la perversión y la mentira.

Otros pueblos del mundo seguirán en el listado de sus campañas de paz?

Convocarán en vuestra gesta domesticadora a la acción por los pueblos de Irán, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Vietnam del Norte, Corea del Norte, China….?

Se sumará Sudamérica entera? Les dictarán hacer lo propio por Centroamérica?

Jamás harán la mínima alusión al cincuentenario bloqueo a Cuba que mantienen sus patrones del norte?

Las bombas israelíes, inglesas, norteamericanas en Irak, Afganistán, Libia, que desgarran la vida y dejan excelentes resultados económicos a vuestros patrones no entran en sus campañas por la paz de los pueblos?

La hipocrecía, la perversión del manoseo informativo, a veces remiten directamente a un apellido que pertenece a lo peor de la especie humana: Goebbels. Ustedes van por ese camino de “miente, miente que algo queda”.

Los pueblos del mundo despiertan, comienzan a entender el macabro juego de los mandones. La paz se construye sobre la verdad.

Tal vez ustedes jamás lo entenderían.

Les deseo un reparador baño de conciencia, les deseo que puedan estrenar el ojo de frente al prójimo, les deseo que la primavera de la verdad les haga la vida más humana

 

atte

gabriel impaglione

poeta, Argentina

+++

Gabriel Impaglione (Morón, Bs As, 1958), Argentine writer and journalist. He published: Echarle Pájaros the mundo (Panorama, Bs As, 1994); Breviary of cartography Magica (El Taller del Poeta, Galicia, 2002); Poemas Quietos (front Mizares Editorial, Barcelona, ??2002) Bagdad y otros Poemas (El Taller the Poet, Galicia, 2003); Letrario de Utopolis (Linajes, Mexico, 2004); Callejera Prensa (The Moon Que, Bs As, 2004), Song to a Prisionero (Editorial Poetas Antimperialistas, Ottawa, 2005); Alala-edition Spanish-(El Taller del Poeta, Galicia, 2005). Founder and Editor of Poetry & Literature Isla Negra.

http://www.vialetrastevere.org/newpage39.html

Laws vs. Color Revolutions in Latin America | ALBA

March 10, 2012: Thousands of Chávez supporters held demonstrations on to show support for their ailing leader while he recovers from cancer surgery. Photograph: Fernando Llano/AP

Strategic Culture Foundation

Nil NIKANDROV | 11.03.2012

The US intelligence is making systematic efforts to energize the political opposition in Latin American countries deemed unfriendly in Washington. The strategy encompasses the radicalization of the existing political parties and groups plus the creation of new ones pursuing ever more aggressive agendas, and the formation of a network of seemingly harmless NGOs ready to launch massive attacks against the regimes in their respective countries whenever their sponsors and curators chose to unleash them. It is a reality that newspapers and electronic media in Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela shower their audiences with allegations that the ruling populists are completely unable to tackle the problems of corruption and drug-related crime or to modernize the economies of the countries where they are at the helm.

Estimates show that at least 80% of the media in ALBA countries are slamming the nations’ leaders in a permanent information warfare campaign and providing a propaganda backing for pro-US and pro-Israel NGOs. In fact, the standoff between the ALBA governments and their opponents – the Washington-controlled fifth column and the NGOs – is in many regards a unique phenomenon. While Latin American populist leaders Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, and Hugo Chavez strictly abide by their countries’ constitutions, the camp challenging them does not recognize legal constraints in principle, especially when the situation holds the promises of a color revolution. For most of them, the escalation of a revolt into a full-blown civil war appears to be the optimal scenario since a bloody conflict would provide a pretext for a US military intervention. →

Sostenere il governo USA senza saperlo: il grave esempio di “Avaaz”

Sinistra.ch | Blog di informazione e critica sociale della Svizzera Italiana

18 febbraio 2012

L’associazione non governativa “Avaaz” sta spopolando su internet e nei circoli della sinistra liberaloccidentale in nome della difesa dei diritti umani. Pochi conoscono però chi si cela dietro questa organizzazione che di umanitario ha solo l’apparenza e che è stata creata per “coprire a sinistra” gli interessi geopolitici ed economici dei poteri forti occidentali, soprattutto americani. La tattica è molto semplice: si promuovono decina se non centinaia di petizioni su temi umanitari, democratici, anti-corruzione che trovano immediato consenso fra il pubblico di sentimenti progressisti (ad esempio la lotta contro la censura su internet oppure il riconoscimento della Palestina). Fra di essi vi sono anche attacchi ai governi occidentali e contro lo strapotere delle banche,  così da convincere questo pubblico particolare della bontà della ONG. Fra tutti questi temi – che poi non sortiranno in gran parte comunque nessun risultato – si inseriscono invece questioni strategiche per i padroni nascosti di “Avaaz” (governi, multinazionali, eserciti) che così potranno più facilmente superare la diffidenza da parte della popolazione genericamente di “sinistra”, che non sospetterà mai che dietro a questi presunti critici degli USA è nascosto proprio il Partito Democratico del presidente Obama e dell’ex-presidente Cliton, attraverso l’organizzazione “MoveOn” che sta alla base di “Avaaz”, e che ha ricevuto un finanziamento di 1,46 millioni di dollari da George Soros per utilizzarla nella battaglia elettorale contro il Partito Repubblicano. →

The Ambiguous Avaaz

Originally published in Italian by il manifesto

TERRA TERRA – Marinella Correggia

2012.03.06

In 2011 the organization Avaaz, which calls itself the “global civic organization” and promotes activism on the Internet, has stood for two highly successful initiatives: the demand for international intervention “to protect civilians” in Libya and the ‘ support for the struggle of some indigenous groups in Bolivia against government plans to build a road in Tipnis (National Park Isidore Secure Indigenous Territory).

In the Libyan case, Avaaz has acted very quickly, good for taking the media lies about the “massacre of thousands of civilians by Gaddafi.” We have not seen subsequently make appeals to stop the war or NATO to protect civilians and Tawergha of Sirte. (It is now very active – even how to request funds – the demonization of the Syrian regime). →

US Subverting Latin America: Bolivia and Venezuela Top Targets of Financially Backed Myriad of NGOs

Map Source: http://combatingglobalization.com/

November 6, 2011
Nil NIKANDROV
Strategic-Culture.org

US President John Kennedy Established USAID – the United States Agency for International Development – in November, 1962as an organization charged with an essentially humanitarian mission of providing economic and other support to struggling countries around the world. The agency’s stated goals therefore include conflict prevention, the expansion of democracy, humanitarian assistance, and human resources training, but the truth which is not deeply hidden is that the USAID activities tend to be tightly interwoven with those of the US Department of State, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

In Latin America, any illusions concerning the agenda behind USAID interventions proved to be short-living. A string of unmaskings of FBI and CIA agents who operated under the USAID cover were so fabulous that the actual character of the agency became impossible to conceal.Nevertheless, the USAID activity clearly got a boost over the first decade of the XXI century… In Haiti, for example, CIA operatives hosted by USAID coordinated and backed financially myriads of NGOs that in 2003-2004 were instrumental in toppling president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. For several days protesters in Haiti vandalized city streets, attacked government institutions, and showered Aristide with allegations of corruption and complicity in the drug business. A curious brand of rebels dressed in US military uniforms entered the stage shortly thereafter and occupied most of the country, eventually laying siege to its capital and the presidential palace. Aristide was arrested by US marines, taken to the airport, and – with no formalities like a court procedure – flown to South Africa. The warning issued to the displaced country leader in the process was that attempts to escape would earn him yet bigger trouble.

USAID also played the key role in organizing the June, 2009 coup in Honduras, where CIA agents under the USAID guise similarly guided and sponsored puppet NGO escapades, spread the myth of Honduran president M. Zelaya’s and Venezuelan leader H. Chavez’s joint communist conspiracy, and commanded the country’s army officers. The coup culminated in the arrest of Zelaya who, like Aristide, was forcibly taken to another country – Costa Rica in this case – and threatened that re-entering his home country would be lethal. As a result, Washington was happy about the resulting termination of Honduras’ drift towards the Latin American populist camp, the media pretended to stay unaware of the terrorist war on Zelaya’s supporters unleashed by the butchers marshaled by Honduran “de facto” new president R. Micheletti, and the USAID/CIA operatives who engineered the coup got their bonuses and promotions.

There is ample evidence that USAID is used extensively as a tool for inciting color revolutions and revolts in defiant countries across the Western hemisphere, especially in Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua…As for Cuba, USAID has been pulling off secret operations there for decades, but most of the agencies efforts aimed at planting in the country “independent” media and “alternative” political organizations in the form of trade unions or protest groups were remarkably unsuccessful. Cuba’s counter-espionage agency must be credited with enviable efficiency, while infighting occasionally erupts in the ranks of the opponents of the Cuban regime over the money poured in by the US. The permanent impression is that a considerable portion of the US funding supposed to help bring “democracy” to Cuba simply ends up in the pockets of CIA operatives and their local protégées. When leader of the Cuban opposition movement known as Ladies in White Laura Pollan died of natural causes recently, her co-workers initiated an inquiry into the group’s finances and discovered the disappearance of tens of thousands of dollars. USAID promptly hushed up the scandal, which was just one in a series of likewise incidents. The tendency for millions of dollars contributed by Washington to the anti-regime cause in Cuba to evaporate is widely attributed to the Cuban counter-espionage agency’s ability to cunningly divert USAID funds to its own needs. →

Egypt Leads Fight Against NGO Agitators | A real revolution may be about to follow

Feb 20, 2012

by Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer Report

Neo-Conservative Max Boot is a certified warmonger, an elitist policy wonk sitting on the Fortune 500-funded Council on Foreign Relations, has signed his name to letters that called for sidestepping both national and international law to militarily intervene further in Libya, as well as call for troops on the ground even after Tripoli fell last year. He is a man you would least expect to champion NGOs and their liberal-progressive agendas.

However NGOs are not “liberal-progressive.” They are the system administrators of modern empire, an empire being forged by the wars and covert operations Boot is a chief proponent of. The absence of NGOs in any given nation, means a nation free from the influence of Wall Street & London’s networks and meddling. That is why Boot feverishly penned, “Obama’s Egyptian Hostage Crisis,” in an attempt to spur a more vigorous response to what would seem like a very minor event in the context of greater global conflicts. Egypt’s arrest and trying of 19 Americans, all of whom are directly involved in Wall Street’s network of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded NGOs, including the head of the International Republican Institute (IRI) office in Egypt, signifies a potential turning point not just in Egypt, but around the world. →

Empire’s Double-Edged Sword: Global Military + NGOs

Feb 19, 2012

Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer Activist Post 

Tearing down sovereign nations and replacing them with global system administrators

Colonial Southeast Asia circa 1850s. Thailand/Siam was never colonized but made many concessions.

Part 1: Imperialism is Alive and Well

The International Campaign Against Evo Morales

Published Feb 15, 2012 by Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

An extended version was originally published in English on Jan 23, 2012 by Political Context and Canadians for Action on Climate Change.

http://www.cambio.bo/opinion/20120215/la_campana_internacional_contra_evo_morales_64561.htm

Bolivia: The US Is Spying on Latin America Under the Cover of USAID and other NGOs

 “I am convinced that some NGOs, especially those funded by the USAID, are the fifth column of espionage in Bolivia, not only in Bolivia, but also in all of Latin America,” Morales said during a press conference in Oruro, a southwestern Bolivian city.

Feb 10, 2012

China Daily

LA PAZ – Bolivian President Evo Morales on Thursday accused the United States of spying on his and other Latin American countries.

The Bolivian president said the spying is done under the cover of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

“I am convinced that some NGOs, especially those funded by the USAID, are the fifth column of espionage in Bolivia, not only in Bolivia, but also in all of Latin America,” Morales said during a press conference in Oruro, a southwestern Bolivian city.

Morales said the United States, through the cover of development aid operations of those organizations, knows “all the details of the activities of the social sectors and union leaders” in those Latin American countries.

The president regretted that some union leaders were allegedly used by these NGOs to stir disputes such as the one over a highway project in an indigenous territory in his country. →