‘On the Rise of the South’

by Néstor Cevasco     

                              

After analyzing the text entitled ‘Empire or Independence’, anyone can become aware of an oppressive atmosphere between the British Empire and the American Colonies of the society of the 17^th Century. Naturally, the immediate reaction of these colonies towards this situation jointly with a British Crown imposition of a tax was turning out to be that of rejection and social intolerance. For this matter, the selection of a text entitled ‘On the Rise of the South’, where Noam Chomsky, by far a prestigious American Linguistic and actual political analyzer widely recognized all over the world, comments on the actual situation of the developing South American countries in relation to the IMF and the World Bank, relationship which has been considered by some analysts to have some oppressive features as well.

Being asked about the importance of some South American initiatives like the Bank of the South and how such projects could weaken the mentioned financial institutions, Chomsky expresses a very positive point of view. He refers to The Bank of The South as an important initiative supported by the big Brazil which cooperates with Venezuela and the rest of the Latin countries. Chomsky goes on explaining on a situation of disintegration pictured as a confrontation among social classes, where the South Bank happens to be just the result of such confrontations. This disintegrative process can be understood in both senses. For one thing, the Latin American countries are becoming to overcome after several years their conflicts of separation among nations. In fact, there have recently been a meeting of all South American presidents to discuss on the assistance of Bolivia, country which is undergoing a period of huge social tension. For another thing, he refers to a disruption between a rich, mostly white Europeanized elite and a massive population. Particularly on this, he focuses on the Bolivian conflict where there’s an existence of a white European elite, a minority just representing themselves, who happen to be controlling the nation hydrocarbon reserves. In addition to this, Democracy seems to be a negative point, as far as the prestigious Linguist is concerned. In this sense, Bolivia has become in these years more democratic, situation despised and considered to be dangerous by the West. In better words, Chomsky explains that when the indigenous majorities took the political power in a democratic election, the reaction of the West was that of Hostility since, for instance, The Financial Times condemned Evo Morales as moving to a dictatorship just for favouring oil nationalization. However, the prestigious newspaper omitted to mention that Evo Morales had been supported by a 90 % of the Bolivian population, situation which by far is democratic rather than a dictatorship.

As a counterpart to disintegration, Chomsky refers to integration in the form of The Bank of the South, where this writer would add the Mercosur. On this matter, Chomsky argues that such initiatives could weaken financial institutions like The World Bank or The IMF. Indeed, the IMF has been mostly thrown out from South America. In fact, Argentina has openly manifested his getting rid of it, after following rigorously during many years its policies, which led the country to an economic collapse never seen before. In addition to all this, Chomsky in a very clever way explains the way the IMF works: ‘You lend money to a dictatorship and elite, the population has nothing to do with it, you get a high interest because the operation is risky, they say they can’t pay it off, you say Okay your neighbours will pay for it. This is called structural adjustment. And my neighbours will pay me off. That’s the IMF creditor’s cartel. You get higher taxes from the north.’ (Chomsky: 2008).

As regards the World Bank, it’s interesting to advertise the way this institution operates in South America. In Bolivia, for instance, Chomsky refers to uprisings of indigenous populations after the World Bank’s decision to privatize water. Obviously, this meant something to private investors, but nothing to poor people which happen to be vast majorities in Bolivia and whose access to water would turn out to be a matter of serious difficultness. For this reason, the population in Cochabamba forced the water companies to pull out, and the World Bank had also to pull out its project, even though some other private projects like this are ready, waiting to be approved…

As a conclusion, the present situation is different from that of the earliest Americans in relation to the British Empire during the 17^th Century in terms of the actual inexistence of such a thing like an empire oppressing other weaker countries to accept its impositions. However, after reading Chomsky, what it seems to exist are private world financial institutions like the IMF or he World Bank whose economical recipes adopted by economy ministers of the country debtors, might not have oppressed people, but have surely created economical collapse, as Chomsky very well has said, and have contributed to perplexity on vast majorities. Frankly speaking, reading Chomsky is highly recommended not only because of his simple style of writing, but because of the fact that he denounces what he clearly perceives as social injustices.