The Contradictions Facing a Black President of the American Empire

The tears are finally drying - the tears of the Bush years, and the tears of awe at the sight of a black President of the United States. So what now? The cliché of the day is that Barack Obama will inevitably disappoint the hopes of a watching world, but the truth is more subtle than that. If we want to see how Obama will change the world - for good or bad - we need to trace the deep structural factors that underlie US foreign policy, and tease out what he will do about them. A useful case study of these pressures is about to flicker onto our news pages for a moment - from the top of the world.

Bolivia is the poorest country in Latin America, and its lofty slums 4000 meters above sea level seem a world away from the high theatre of the inauguration. But if we look at this country closely, we can explain one of the great paradoxes of the United States - that it has incubated a triumphant civil rights movement at home, yet thwarted civil rights movements abroad. Bolivia shows us in stark detail the contradictions facing a black President of the American empire.

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has a story strikingly similar to Obama's. In 2006 he became the first indigenous President of his country - and a symbol of the potential of democracy. When the Spanish arrived in Bolivia in the sixteenth century, they enslaved the indigenous majority and worked millions to death. As recently as the 1950s, an indigenous person wasn't even allowed to walk through the centre of La Paz, where the presidential palace and city cathedral stand. They were (and are) routinely compared to monkeys and apes.

Morales was born to a poor potato-farmer in the mountains, and grew up scavenging for discarded orange peel or banana skins to eat. Of his seven siblings, four starved to death as babies. Throughout his adult life, it was taken for granted that the country would be ruled by the white mestizo minority; the "Indians" were too "child-like" to manage a country.

Given that the US is constitutionally a democracy and its Presidents say they are committed to spreading democracy across the world, you would expect them to welcome the democratic rise of Morales. But wait. Bolivia has massive reserves of natural gas - a geo-strategic asset, and one that rakes in billions for US corporations. Here is where the complications set in.

Before Morales, the white mestizo elite was happy to allow US companies to simply take the gas and leave the Bolivian people with short change: just 18 percent of the royalties. Indeed, they handed almost the entire country to US interests, while skimming a small percentage for themselves. In 1999, an American company, Bechtel, was handed the water supply - and water rates for the poor majority doubled.

Morales ran for election against this agenda. He said that Bolivia's resources should be used for the benefit of millions of bitterly poor Bolivians, not a tiny number of super-rich Americans. He kept his promise. Now Bolivia keeps 82 percent of the vast gas royalties - and he has used the money to increase health spending by 300 percent, and to build the country's first pension system. He is one of the most popular leaders in the democratic world. In slums across South America, I have seen this pink tide rising through the barrios and favelas, where millions of people are seeing doctors and schools for the first time in their lives.

I suspect that a majority of the American people - who are good and decent - would be pleased and support this process if they were told about it honestly. But how did the US government (and much of the media) react? George Bush fulminated that "democracy is being eroded in Bolivia", and a recent US ambassador to the country compared Morales to Osama Bin Laden. Why? To them, you are a democrat if you give your resources to US corporations, and you are a dictator if you give them to your own people. The will of the Bolivian people is irrelevant.

There is another layer of disagreement between Morales and US power. Bolivians have a widespread millennia-long tradition chewing coca leaves, or brewing them in tea: it's a good way of keeping your energy up when you are doing grinding work at such a high altitude. But in the 1980s, the Reagan administration announced that this was contrary to the demands of the "war on drugs". They trained and paid for elite white military units to forcibly "eliminate coca." They rampaged across the Bolivian countryside destroying the crops of desperately poor people. Evo Morales - a coca farmer himself - saw them burn a peasant farmer alive, an experience he says "changed me forever." He wants to legalize coca for private use - and he is supported by 80 percent of Bolivians.

For these reasons, the US has been moving to trash Morales. Latin America still lives in the shadow of its own 9/11: on September 11th 1973, Henry Kissinger and the CIA backed the coup that led to the violent death of the freely elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, to stop his programme of democratic socialism from proceeding

Over the past few years, the techniques have become a little less crude. By an odd quirk of fate, almost all of Bolivia's gas supplies are in the east of the country - where the richest, whitest part of the population lives. So the US government has been funding and fueling the hard-right separatist movements that want these regions to break away. Then the mestizos would happily hand the gas to US companies like in the good ol' days - and Morales would be left without resources. The interference became so severe that last September Morales had to expel the US Ambassador for "conspiring against democracy." This weekend, Morales is holding a major referendum on a new constitution for the country which will entrench the rights of the indigenous people.

Enter Obama - and his paradoxes. He is obviously a person of good will and good sense, but he is operating in a system subject to many undemocratic pressures. Bolivia illustrates the tension. The rise of Morales reminds us of the America the world loves - its yes-we-can openness and civil rights movements. Yet the presence of gas and coca reminds us of the America the world hates - the desire to establish "full spectrum dominance" over the world's resources and send troops barging into their countries, whatever the pesky natives think.

Which America will Obama embody? The answer is both - at first. Morales has welcomed him as "a brother", and Obama has made it clear he wants a dialogue, rather than the abuse of the Bush years. Yet who is Obama's Bolivia advisor? A lawyer called Greg Craig, who represents Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada - the hard-right former President of Bolivia who imposed some of the most extreme privatizations of the 1980s, and is now wanted on charges of genocide in Bolivia for the massacres of indigenous protesters. Craig's legal team says Morales is (yes) leading "an offensive against democracy."

The structural pressures within the US political system that drove hostility to a democratic civil rights leader like Morales up to now have not dissolved in the cold Washington air. The US is still dependent on foreign fossil fuels to keep its lights on, the drug war bureaucracy will continue its senseless crusade, and US corporations still buy Senators from both parties. Obama will still be swayed by those factors.

But while this is a reason to be frustrated, it isn't a reason to be cynical. Why? Because while he will be swayed by those factors, he will also subtly erode them over time. Obama has made energy independence - a massive transition away from foreign oil and gas, and towards the wind, sun and waves - the centre of his governing programme. If the US is no longer addicted to Bolivian gas, then its governments will be much less inclined to topple anybody else who wants to control it. (If they're off oil, they'll be much less invested in the Saudi tyranny and petro-wars in the Middle East too.)

Obama also says he wants to peel back the distorting effect of corporate money on the US political system. He is already less slathered in corporate cash than any President since the 1920s. The further he pushes it back, the more breathing-space democratic movements like Morales' get to control their own resources. He also seems to be a less fanatical drug warrior than his predecessors, offering praise in the past for those who believe the US should concentrate on treating addicts at home rather than trying to burn and fumigate their supply from every forest or mountain on earth.

But we will see. If you want to know if Obama is really altering the tectonic forces that drive American power, keep an eye on the rooftop of the world.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or here.

Comments

[raaf]

After so much imperialistic propaganda even from supposedly liberal outlets like the New York times, your article is like a breath of fresh air. Thank you.

[GhostwriterDoF]

The people of the world are making a distinction between us and the corporate menace. We all share a common threat. How we as a people use our democracy now to handle our domestic issues will influence how the world accepts us as a culture after all the years of abuses. Start getting organized in your communities and your States, if you haven't already. Use the Obama websites to find others in your areas...

[NoCents]

I had hope even if he was my 3rd choice, but my faith is wayning fast.

Israel move on over the U.S. is back killing others for trying to exist

[wdw505]

everyone needs a hobby

[stell]

Barack is just the "face" of change an exhausted empire ordered. Expect the same old stuff with some slight refinements in the status quo. Same stuff different salesman. He isn't running the show.

[raphaeljo]

I shouldn't write but this story made me cry (thanks Johann,lol...bitter smile)

Keep in mind, what's going on in Bolivia is just 1 example among a lot..Africa being one of the biggest victim of this type of "rape"...

[Canuck27]

Well done sir, well done.More please.

[ro1942]

thank you so much, I hope this stays posted for a while

[Skepticat]

Much US latin american foreign policy in the first half of the 20th century and later involved sending in the marines - or subverting any government that believed it should serve its own citizens first instead of US corporations. In this century the corporations have become multi-nationals loyal to no one so there is even less reason to use military or diplomatic power for their benefit.

[feuille0d0erable]

Mr Hari, please keep pounding those keys. We don't have journalists like you over here.

[SiberianRat]

Amen! I always enjoy these posts, and his well-roundedness is really impressive! It is time for us to embrace Bolivia, Cuba, and perhaps even Venezuela in a respectful way. It is NOT our place to force regimes to be what we want them to be--we have more than a century of that kind of crap and often it doesn't work anyway.

[peterg76]

And absolutely none of this has anything to do with Obama's race.

[dontomas]

It has to do with Evo Morales coming from an ancestry that like African Americans were considered as animals and not fit for society. It has to do with Bolivia like the United States putting such a persons whose race was once scorned and enslaved into the highest office of the country.
The question is, will Obama recognize the plight of Bolivians such as he would recognize the plight of African Americans or any other people who have been oppressed or encompassed by the trap of poverty. You probably understand this if you read the article and for some reason you feel the need to be negative..maybe its the race thing I dont know. I hope this can clear it up for you and that you can take the plight of the Bolivians to your heart....maybe.

[peterg76]

The President of the "American Empire" - black, white, orange - would face the same contradictions. He shouldn't have to be (sort of) black in order to sympathize with oppression. And Bolivia would be just as victimized by American corporations with or without a racial issue.

[phlashba]

In Bolivia (and most of Latin America) Evo Morales is called "BLACK"

[hulka37]

Great piece.

[JEP57]

Why can't Obama just be a president who happens to have a black African father and a white mother instead of being a "black" president. Aren't we all supposed to be colorblind now? It's going to get real tedious if we constantly have his ancestry pointed out.

[raphaeljo]

JEP,
can you at least admit, the superpowers ("mostly white men leaders") have been making it worst for those poor countries?....
So what they are trying to tell you is this, if even Obama can't help or at least leave alone those countries and their natural resources,nobody will...
But I have personally never believed Barack Obama would have such power and overwrite the decisions of the big white males leaders, so you are right we should stop pointing to his race...(bitter smile)

[Dukedraven]

I love progressive movements like the one going on in Bolivia. While I don't like Communism, I admired Castro for trying to fix an oppressive system in Cuba, which was set up to cater to an affluent, powerful Spanish ruling elite. Everyone knows these entitlements were simply based on skin color and were unfair. In America, the disparity can be just as blatant, though more insidious and difficult to eradicate.

[Deparis]

Take this article and change Bolivia to Africa or some other parts of the world and you will get the picture of how our government, yes our ol' USA, and corporations screw indigenous people and "poor" countries around the world.

Thank you Mr. Hari, hopefully the time has come to tell the American people exactly what our government has been doing around the world since the end of W.W. II and the beginning of the Cold War.

[cienpelitos]

You state: "He wants to legalize coca for private use - and he is supported by 80 percent of Bolivians." I am writing this from Cochabamba. I am chewing coca leaf which is available throughout the city. It's like having a cheek full of dried spinach. Doesn't do a thing. I also drink coca tea daily. Again, not much of a rush. Or are you confusing cocaine with coca? Coca is perfectly legal in Bolivia, cocaine is not.