Noam Chomsky's Visit to Chile
U.S. philosopher and out-spoken critic of conservative politics Noam Chomsky visited the south of Chile this week (specifically the city of Temuco), speaking on topics as diverse as indigenous rights, grass-roots land movements, and the ability of individuals to resist the capitalist machine. I went into Valdivia today to help the El Ciudadano staff translate an informal transcript of Mr. Chomsky’s recent talk for publication in their periodical (edition 37), amazing even myself at my fledgling ability to read text written in English out-loud in Spanish. Granted, Mr. Chomsky spoke in a vernacular, simple prose with circular and repetitious points, and I’m far from Christine’s academic ability to translate complex literature theory text out-loud at a fluent pace, but still, a nice surprise.
Some of the interesting points that Mr. Chomsky highlighted in his talk included praise for the International Peasant Movement coming out of Brazil: La Via Campesina. The group is not only gaining momentum and inspiring similar movements in India, Africa, and other areas, but is now seen as a respectable section of Brazilian society with their own, hard-fought for, land holdings. The movement holds regular meetings all over the world where seeds and techniques are exchanged to help spread the knowledge of subsistence farming and the defending of land rights. As the gap between the rich and the poor widens here in Chile and as the same financial pitfalls that befell small farmers in the U.S. in the early half of the 20th century begin to increase pressures on the agricultural majority of today’s Chilean countryside, such lessons in land rights and sustainable farming will become all the more essential.
The diverse Mapuche tribes of the Chilean south have spent centuries defending their rights to self-government with limited support from even their farming and fishermen neighbors, as equally endangered by the pollution suffered at the hands of giant forestry companies who replace native forests with plantations of foreign trees lacking eco-diversity and contaminate area rivers and the coastline with toxic waste water. Hopefully the south will awaken to the fact that the struggle for independence from the centralized and capital-hungry policies coming out of Santiago is not just an indigenous-rights issue, but a Chilean issue to create a more just and citizen-oriented society; not a society that only caters to the dollars wielded by powerful, trans-national corporations.
Mr. Chomsky further encouraged the simple mental resistance of refusing to accept the definitions for such concepts as “globalization” as handed to us by those in power, which he defined loosely as the “rulers”: bank executives, corrupt politicians, and heads of trans-national corporations. Instead of viewing globalization from the capitalist perspective as a series of financial transactions leading to the inevitable homogenizing of cultures into markets for exploitation, Mr. Chomsky encouraged the view of globalization as a coming-together or voluntary opportunity to spread cultures and ideas among diverse, international groups. Instead of defining concepts like globalization from the perspective of those in power, he chooses to define such concepts from the perspective of the marginal fringes of power, to explore the positive opportunities presented by a more global and conscious society.
In many sectors of Chilean society at the moment, reflecting the trauma experienced at the hands of colonization and successive dictatorships, the idea of valuing individual perspectives and local definitions over the definitions mandated by those in power borders on revolutionary and is stained with the low-self-esteem common for those countries like Chile, branded as “third-world” by the mysterious “first-world” that continues to enforce its status daily through international cable television and foreign name-brands sprouting up in identical shopping malls. But it is in these spaces more than anywhere else where the messages of critics like Noam Chomsky and other revolutionaries are necessary, pertinent, essential to building citizen movements and resistance to the McDonalization of the world community. In whatever language these messages may present themselves, I believe that they are more than lessons worth listening to, they are lessons worth acting on and soon.
Some of the interesting points that Mr. Chomsky highlighted in his talk included praise for the International Peasant Movement coming out of Brazil: La Via Campesina. The group is not only gaining momentum and inspiring similar movements in India, Africa, and other areas, but is now seen as a respectable section of Brazilian society with their own, hard-fought for, land holdings. The movement holds regular meetings all over the world where seeds and techniques are exchanged to help spread the knowledge of subsistence farming and the defending of land rights. As the gap between the rich and the poor widens here in Chile and as the same financial pitfalls that befell small farmers in the U.S. in the early half of the 20th century begin to increase pressures on the agricultural majority of today’s Chilean countryside, such lessons in land rights and sustainable farming will become all the more essential.
The diverse Mapuche tribes of the Chilean south have spent centuries defending their rights to self-government with limited support from even their farming and fishermen neighbors, as equally endangered by the pollution suffered at the hands of giant forestry companies who replace native forests with plantations of foreign trees lacking eco-diversity and contaminate area rivers and the coastline with toxic waste water. Hopefully the south will awaken to the fact that the struggle for independence from the centralized and capital-hungry policies coming out of Santiago is not just an indigenous-rights issue, but a Chilean issue to create a more just and citizen-oriented society; not a society that only caters to the dollars wielded by powerful, trans-national corporations.
Mr. Chomsky further encouraged the simple mental resistance of refusing to accept the definitions for such concepts as “globalization” as handed to us by those in power, which he defined loosely as the “rulers”: bank executives, corrupt politicians, and heads of trans-national corporations. Instead of viewing globalization from the capitalist perspective as a series of financial transactions leading to the inevitable homogenizing of cultures into markets for exploitation, Mr. Chomsky encouraged the view of globalization as a coming-together or voluntary opportunity to spread cultures and ideas among diverse, international groups. Instead of defining concepts like globalization from the perspective of those in power, he chooses to define such concepts from the perspective of the marginal fringes of power, to explore the positive opportunities presented by a more global and conscious society.
In many sectors of Chilean society at the moment, reflecting the trauma experienced at the hands of colonization and successive dictatorships, the idea of valuing individual perspectives and local definitions over the definitions mandated by those in power borders on revolutionary and is stained with the low-self-esteem common for those countries like Chile, branded as “third-world” by the mysterious “first-world” that continues to enforce its status daily through international cable television and foreign name-brands sprouting up in identical shopping malls. But it is in these spaces more than anywhere else where the messages of critics like Noam Chomsky and other revolutionaries are necessary, pertinent, essential to building citizen movements and resistance to the McDonalization of the world community. In whatever language these messages may present themselves, I believe that they are more than lessons worth listening to, they are lessons worth acting on and soon.
posted by Carol Bushar at 8:11 PM
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