El anuncio de “misión cumplida,” proclamado con sonrisa complaciente y fatal ignorancia por parte del presidente de que el Islam era algo distinto al comunismo soviético, continuó con un costo creciente de vidas iraquíes y de soldados estado unidenses, amén de periodistas, dipolomáticos y actores de organizaciones no-gubernamentales.

El período de gobierno del presidente George W. Bush se cierra con un estado de emergencia provocado por la elite financiera de Wall Street en una carrera loca por acumular sin límites y por una urgencia de control financiero basado en el principio de des-control (desregulación) de la economía. Este proyecto, iniciado en la presidencia de Ronald Reagan, apoyado la primera ministra de Inglaterra Margaret Tatcher, y las teorías del economista Milton Friedman, se basaba en la confianza irracional en la racionalidad y en la creencia de que la economía es el camino de la libertad. Por lo tanto, la desregulación económica, escapando al control del estado, cumplía una promesa semejante a la libertad del individuo que en el siglo XVIII se sacudía los controles de la iglesia.

En 1905 el periodista británico J.A. Hobson publicó su libro memorable: Imperialism. El argumento puso de relieve el anti-patriotismo y anti-nacionalismo de la elite económica de Inglaterra cuyas urgencias imperiales en la carrera por acumular ganancias, iban totalmente en contra de los intereses nacionales. La crisis de Wall Street es una repetición del escenario, un siglo después.

El desmoronamiento aparente de los dos pilares de la presidencia de Bush, nos sugiere que éste fue un gobierno profundamente anti-patriótico cuya retórica, a partir de la invasión de Iraq, se organizó en torno al patriotismo. La triquiñuela es bien conocida en los tejes y manejes de la política, y sus práticas fueron también identificadas en las maniobras de Karl Rowe (Deputy Chief of Staff de la administración Bush). La triquiñuela consiste en inventar un enemigo y atribuirle éste lo que en el fondo es mi propio proyecto. Esta táctica es ya clara en la campaña presidential de John McCain. En suma, tanto la invasión de Iraq como la crisis financiera de Wall Street, manipuladas o no en su resultado, son dos acontecimientos que, en el fondo, aseguran el control de la autoridad y el control económico, por parte del estado, a espaldas y con consecuencias serias para el futuro del pueblo y de la nación estado unidense.

Al decir esto no estoy sugiriendo que haya que defender el patriotismo o el nacionalismo. Estoy poniendo de relieve, por el contrario, que patriotismo y nacionalismo (o comunismo en Lenin y Stalin) pueden ser meras excusas en un proyecto de dominación y control cuyas consecuencias trágicas las conocemos por varias experiencias del siglo XX.

Los presagios circulan de que la elección de McCain como presidente y Sarah Palin como vice serían el paso siguiente a un tipo de control político y económico avalado que funcionaría a dos vertientes : una, sobre la población estado unidense y la otra frente al capitalismo policéntrico que corroe medio siglo de hegemonía y la creencia de que el liderazgo global unilateral estaba finalmente inscrito de aquí a la eternidad. En algunos corredores se murmura la analogía política entre Sarah Paulin e Isabel Martinez de Perón.

La urgencia con la que John McCaine suspendió la campaña presidencial para asistir a los debates, en Washington, sobre el rescate financiero de $700 billones es sintomático. En verdad, el rescate es un proyecto republicano, como lo fue la invasión de Iraq. La aprobación del rescate implica que, sea McCain elegido presidente o no, la estructura de la política exterior en el Oriente Medio y en Asia Central, está ya anclada y la política económica (nacional y global) estará anclada con la aprobación del proyecto republicano para responder al “estado de emergencia.”

Hank Paulson—todos recordamos–presentó un proyecto en tres páginas y pidió discreción absoluta en el manejo de los $700 billones. Varios comentaristas subrayaron la simetría entre el discurso de Bush para urgir y justificar la invasión de Iraq y su discurso para urgir y justificar el rescate financiero. A McCaine le urge apoyar este proyecto puesto que más allá de su elección o no a la presidencia, contribuye a dejar sentadas las bases republicanas del control político y económico, sea quien fuere elegido presidente. Por esta razón Barak Obama mantuvo una posición distanciada y crítica. El aparente desmoronamiento de los dos pilares de la administración Bush, bien podría dejar intactos sus cimientos. De ser elegido presidente, Barak Obama se encontraría con la casa sólidamente apuntalada por los dos pilares de la administración Bush, y con los muebles un tanto empolvados por desmoronamientos que si bien no fueron planeados ab initio, pudieron muy bien ser estratégicamente empleados. El proyecto neo-liberal republicano podría así continuar, más allá de su aparente final. Si asi fuera, las consecuencias podrían ser dramáticas.

Most of McCain’s formulaic attacks on Obama are extremely superficial and obviously addressed to a sector of potential Republican voters who are more concerned with the baseball championship underway in the early Fall or the beginning of the basketball and football seasons, than in who would be elected President of the United States and what may be the future consequences. Well, let’s say that the nonsensical and empty formulae accumulated by McCain and his campaign team are, yes, addressed to “Joe the Plumber.”

Besides Joe the Plumber, any Republican of consciousness would realize that the socialization of wealth implies creation of wealth. Would you believe that Obama is planning to stop creating wealth and just distribute whatever there is now? What McCain really means is not “socialization” vs. “creation” but “socialization” vs. “accumulation”, and for sure he knows that accumulation means to “privatize gains and socialize losses” as has been said already many times in general, but in particular about Wall Street’s suicidal wealth creation.

Now, if you look for the connecting lines between the social formula and the personal-racial gaff (“that one”) and if you go back and rewind what happened in the last debate between the two presidential candidates, you may see what I saw. It was obvious in that debate that Obama has been cornering McCain in each of the debates. But I only saw it in the last one. What I saw in the last debate was not only the already known and accepted brilliancy and intelligence of Obama (face to face to a supposedly “nice guy” and supposedly sharp politician), but that Obama’s strength (which also explains his calm and relax performance) is that Obama knows something that McCain doesn’t know. It is in this respect that Obama’s indictment “McCain doesn’t get it” may have a meaning that Obama did not intended. Or, perhaps he did.

The point here is that when referring to Obama as “that one”, McCain made obvious to the rest of the world that he only knows the Reason of the Master. While Obama, calm and relaxed, knows both the Reason of the Master (in front of him) and the Reason of the Enslaved (the legacies of enslaved Africans in the history of the United States).

In academic lingo I would say that Obama dwells, inhabits “double consciousness” as it was existentially described and argued by Afro-American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), from 1904 (more or less the same year that Max Weber was defining the “spirit of capitalism”) until the end of his life. “Double Consciousness” is an experience common to a large part of the US population (as well as of the world population). Chicana intellectual and activist, Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004), inhabited “new mestiza consciousness”, a parallel existential experience among Chicanas and Chicanos. In the Caribbean, the same kind of existential feeling was conceived through the dialogues between Prospero and Caliban—Prospero only knows the reason of the Master while Caliban knows both, the reason of the Master and the Reason of the Enslaved. Caliban dwells, inhabits a world, a memory, alien to Prospero. That is the reason why Prospero could refer to Caliban as “that one” and, in that same reason, to think that “creation of wealth” is Humanity’s destiny. Prospero understand only his world. He dwells (like Joe the Plumber), inhabits a “Mono-Consciousness” he assumes is Uni-versal.

While McCain invokes Joe the Plumber, promising more and more football, basketball and baseball games, Obama intends to wake up both the double consciousness of people of color as well as the consciousness of millions of white men and women who may have been unaware of people in this country inhabiting a double consciousness and being invisible, but now reaching a social status that was not supposed to be ear-marked for the white population, but only for people of color. In between the two ideal demographic groups, there is the awakening of the younger generation, those born in the 1970s and after who are aware of the radical transformation of subjectivity (that is, consciousness) that “That one” is bringing.

“Creating wealth” is a formula that attempts to maintain the cosmology associated with capitalist economy. But indeed, it is a formula for maintaining the “socialization of capitalist cosmological consciousness”—that is, the enchantment of enslaved consumers at the service of Master creating wealth. “Socializing wealth” doesn’t mean, in this context, bring Marx back. There are many working class whites supporting McCain—Ohio is the hub. It means rather “socializing double consciousness” not only among “those ones” like Obama, but mainly among “those ones” like McCain and the experts of Wall Street and “those ones” in main stream media. “Socializing double consciousness” means that a de-colonial future begins to take hold in the United States, that has been lately encouraged by the financial crisis of Wall Street and the dubious subjectivity that neo-liberal economic policy and media enthusiasm, engendered during and after the glorious Ronald Reagan years.

ADDENDUM

MY VIEWS ON BARACK OBAMA, HILLARY CLINTON AND EVO MORALES
January 3, 2008

After Barack Obama’s surprising performance in the Iowa Caucus, I made some notes. I added some observations on January 3, 2008. The more Obama gained ground, the more I couldn’t refrain from looking at what was going on in the US from the recent experience of Bolivia and the parallels between Evo Morales Ayma and Barack Obama in spite, of course, of the enormous differences between the two countries. However, the “two countries” belong to the same racial histories of “the Americas”, that is, South, North, Central Americas and the Caribbean.

When the Presidential campaign started, last year, I would have unconsciously inverted the order. I would have said, “My views of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Evo Morales.” At that point I thought, as many others, that Obama has a lot of potential but lacks experience while Clinton entered the candidacy with a lot of experience and questionable credibility. However—I told myself—no Presidency from now on could be worst than the one of George W. Bush and his team, those who are politically defunct as well as a couple of those who still remain in place in political agony. I entertained for a while the fantasy that a Clinton-Obama ticket would be a good team since there would be a mutual compensation of experiences and credibility. Furthermore, the ticket would bring together a white woman with a black man, something that has been unheard of at least in the history of the US.

Then I forgot about my fantasy and just followed the campaign, who was getting how much money and who was moving up and down in the polls.

And Iowa came.

When I heard on the car radio that Obama came out in first place I said to myself, “Bah!, que c’est bizarre.” A mixture of Argentine reaction mixed with a French expression I learned during my years of graduate student in France. Then I read an op-ed in La Nación (a good and traditional Argentine newspaper leaning to the right) by Mario Diament in which he interpreted the outcome of the Iowa Caucus as “the racial revolution in the US.” Then I read David Brooks in the New York Times who manifested his surprise describing in Iowa as “two earthquakes”: Obama coming ahead among the Democrat and Mike Huckabee among the Republicans. And I was still far from Bob Herbert’s exhilaration describing the “Barack Obama phenomenon.”

Nevertheless, and whatever the result of New Hampshire’s primary next Tuesday (January 8, 2008) will be, the Iowa’s Caucus has planted a flag in the political and social imaginary of the U.S. On a different scale, it looks very similar to the situation in Bolivia—in 2005– when it became clear that Evo Morales entered the political and social imaginary of the country as an earthquake.

Now—apparently—the time has come to think about racism-genderism and political theory or, better yet, about racism and epistemology (that is the racial foundations of the principle and construction of knowledge in the Western world, from Machiavelli to Hobbes and Leo Strauss). To have Hillary Clinton as President would be another chapter of a general tendency in Europe and the Americas: Angela Merkl in Germany; Michele Bachelet in Chile; Christina Fernández de Kirtchner in Argentina. To have Hillary Clinton as President would mean that, finally, the US citizens realized that they are already behind in trusting a woman with leading their country. In other words, to have Hillary Clinton as President of the US would mean something entirely different than having, just for the sake of the example, Angela Davis. On the other hand, if the final stretch of the race would be between Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, one can surmise that the color line will not make much of a difference. The difference will remain at the level of the political parties (Republican or Democrat’s agendas) but both imagined Presidents would remain within the realm of Western concept of nation-State in Western political theory.

Enter Barack Obama. Would a black man make a difference over a white or a black woman as president of the U.S.? Condoleezza Rice has given ample proof through her life that her main goal was to show, to herself first and to the world second, that a black woman is as capable as a white man and equal to a white woman. She succeeded and I admire that determination. However, having a capable and brilliant black woman entering in the structure of a the modern State doesn’t change the fact that the modern Western State was conceived from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, implemented and controlled by white men. This is just a statistic, not essentialism. And it doesn’t mean either that white males perversely imagined the structure and politics of the State at their own image and sameness. Honest liberals assumed that what was good for them was good for Western and Christian Europe and what was good for Europe was good for the world. If you do not believe me, just go re-read with this caveat forewarning in mind both Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws and John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government.

I believe that the enthusiasm showed by many, and among them the three columnists I mentioned above, has indeed some grounding. However, having a black man as president representing the Democratic Party or (just for the sake of the argument) having a black woman like Condoleezza Rice as could-have-been a candidate for the Republican Party it may change something but not much. What it changes is that we are at the point in which a black woman or a black man can take care of the business of the State designed, implemented and controlled for over four hundred years by white men. Tomasi di Lampedusa’s dictum remains as valid today as a century ago: “Things have to change in order to remain as they are.”

I share Shalbe Steele’s view although I am not sure about his conclusion. He may or may not win, to early to say. Steele thinks that Barack Obama cannot win the presidential elections. Why?

Steele distinguishes, among Blacks politicians, between bargainers and challengers. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are challengers. They can hardly become president of the U.S. Barack Obama is a bargainer. To his credit, he is the first bargainer in the sphere of the State. Another bargainer is Bill Cosby. But Bill Cosby, as well as Angela Davis, does not operate in the sphere of the State but in the sphere of society. The former is an entertainer in the civil society; the later, is an activist in the political society. Steele thinks that although being a black bargainer is not still enough to win. He is seen, among Blacks, as not Black enough while among Whites, he is still Black.

But let’s suppose Obama will win; that he will be nominated as the candidate of the Democratic Party and be elected as the next president of the U.S. Here is where Steele’s may be right: Obama talks about “changes” but it is not clear what changes he wants to make and toward what ends. He is note different to all other Democratic candidates who are also talking about changes. However, the difference Obama should make is related to his being the only Black candidate among Whites, men and woman. Because of that, one would expect that when Obama talks about “change” he means something different in relation to the other candidates. And here may be the problem. The problem is simply that Obama is still operating within the frame of party identity politics, that is, within the frames and expectations of the Democratic Party. Let me explain.

Evo Morales, in Bolivia, cracked the code of the liberal State and capitalist economy. As expected, he has to confront right wing politicians, wealthy landowners and transnational corporations. He is a challenger who brings to the foreground the Indian conception of social and economic organization. He is not proposing to replace the liberal tradition, which is endorsed by a considerable number of Bolivians, but to insert Indian traditions, into the reorganization of the State and of the economy. Thus the concept of a pluri-cultural State is grounded in this shift in doing politics. However, Evo Morales has to confront also the question of genderism, whom define themselves as “the exiled from neo-liberalism.” While Evo Morales cracked the code of the (neo) liberal State in the domain of racism by legitimizing Indian knowledge and postulating the need to de-colonize the state and the economy, the political society of women contest that decolonization is not possible without de-patriarcalization, as “Mujeres Creando” (a conglomerate of women across sexual and ethnic identities) would have it. In spite of the confrontations between decolonization and de-patriarcalization, something remains clear: both Evo Morales and Mujeres Creando are bringing to the foreground new ways of thinking and doing based on the memories and experiences of Indians and women, both South American white and of color. What Evo Morales has, Barack Obama hasn’t.

Let’s suppose now that Obama will be the next president of the US and that he will act as an honest liberal (as John Rawls has it). In circumstances which are extremely different (such as Bolivia and the US), Obama would confront problems similar to those Morales is confronting, from the right of course, but from Black challengers such as Sharpton and Jackson. He is already being critiqued by both. One would expect that he could be confronted also by women’s organizations in the political society, both white and of color. And here is where Steele has a strong point: Obama doesn’t have a radical proposal as Evo Morales has. If he wins, things will remain as they are. While even if Evo Morales looses his position as president, what he achieved already is a landmark. Evo Morales showed us that economy based on accumulation and states based solely on (neo) liberal principles are indeed deadly. Economies of reciprocity and political philosophies re-inscribing models of social organization that has been cast out since the European Renaissance are indeed of the essence. I am not preaching the return of a pure Indian state or a pure Islamic state. I am just saying that a pure Western liberal state is not longer sustainable.

Transformations cannot be done within the existing system of thoughts and ethics in which political economy and political theory are imbedded. Transformations cannot be achieved within a system of thoughts and ethics that is not concerned with living well (as Evo Morales will have it) with living better than my neighbor; a system of thoughts and ethics in which employment is related to consumption. If Obama wins—as Morales did in Bolivia–it would be certainly an important step. It will show that white males are not the only one capable of conducting the State. But if Obama wins, most likely he will be absorbed by the system while Morales has shown that another way of thinking and of being is necessary.

1) On Tuesday, January 26, 2008, the Human Rights Foundation (with offices in New York) sent a letter to President Evo Morales Ayma expressing their concern for the violation of Human Rights in the New Constitution. The Human Rights Foundation underscored two areas in which violations of human rights were taken place: the violation of the rights to property and the violation of the rule of law in Indigenous communities who were taking law in their own hands. The first violation—the right to property–was a violation of the landowners rights, particularly in Santa Cruz. The Human Rights Foundation was taking a step in defense of landowner rights to keep their extensive masses of land. The second violation, was the indiscriminate application of “communal law,” the violating the “liberal state law” by actors implementing indigenous law. The first violation made of landowners, indirectly landowners in Santa Cruz, victims of human rights violations. In the second case, Indians were the perpetrators of human rights violation.

Vice Minister of Coordination with Social Movement and Civil Society, Sacha Sergio Llorenti Solis responded to the Human Rights Foundation. Now this letter is difficult to find on Google. It doesn’t matter how you do the search, you get the letters from the Human Rights Foundation to President Evo Morales and Vice Minister Sacha Llorenti, but not the letter from Sacha Llorenti. Thor Halvorssen replied and summarized some of the points made by Sacha Llorenti. There are indeed several versions of it on Google, including dramatic pictures in which civil society has been attacked by Indian mobs.

I have in front of me a hard copy of the official letter from Sacha Llorenti’s letter, dated January 28, 2008 (MPR-VICCORD. MS-SC N0015/09) addressed to Thor Halvorssen. And there is a summary in Spanish published by Agencia Boliviana de Información.

I have not found yet a similar expression of concern, by the Human Rights Foundation, of the attacks perpetrated by the civil society, in Sucre, against Indians and peasants. There is not much available information in English either. Indians and peasant injured are as dramatic as the picture of white victims shown in the letter from Human Rights Foundation posted on Google (shown in the previous paragraph). Documentation of civil society violence and violation of Indian and peasant human rights abound in Spanish. Here are some examples:

Several videos can be found in YouTube; and articles in Terra Magazine, as well as in Indymedia.

Sacha Llorenti’s letter to Halvorssen defended the democratic process in the writing of the New Constitution and focused on Human Rights concerns in the “indiscriminate” application of communal justice. The case invoked in the original letter by the Human Rights Foundation to President Evo Morales was the case of Benjamin Altamirano the Mayor of Ayo-Ayo, indigenous himself. The set of events that ended in his death are very complex and controversial. The Human Rights Foundation letter simplified the case to make it fit their own argument and interest.

The basic narrative is the following. The community of Ayo-Ayo accused Benjamin Altamirano of corruption and mistreatment, and they denounced to the State department of Justice. This was in 2004; much before Evo Morales became president. The year 2004 is quoted in the original letter from the Human Rights Foundation to President Evo Morales. The Bolivian President, at that time, was Carlos Mesa. The Bolivian court of justice followed suit after the accusations by the community and initiated a legal process. In the end, Altamirano was declared innocent. When returning to his community he was captured and assassinated. Anti-Indian prejudices, among Bolivians (mainly creoles and mestizos/as of the middle class) and main stream international press, made the quick assumption that the killing of Altamirano was an act of communitarian justice by the Ayllus (Indigenous socio-economic organization similar to oykos in ancient Greece), of Ayo-Ayo.

Jumping to the conclusion that Altamirano’s assassination was an act of communal justice, and not a crime, will be like linking the rhetoric and the acts of the KKK to the United States government. Saying that the government of the United States supports the rhetoric and the acts of the KKK is equivalent to saying that the government of Evo Morales, and Evo Morales himself, as an indigenous, supports un-ruled acts of violence. Since the reader has access only to the Human Rights Foundation reply to Sacha Llorenti, but not Sacha Llorenti himself, the reader is “forced” to believe in the summary presented both in the Spanish and in English.

The main point of contention is Sacha Llorenti’s charge, to the Human Rights Foundation, of lack of information and understanding of Bolivian history and social situation. Such charges are, in fact, common among experts in Indigenous laws in South America and in Spain. See, for instance, the report written by Bolívar Beltrán Gutierrez on the indigenous penal system in which, interestingly enough, Benjamin Altamirano’s case is referred.

In personal conversation with Aymara intellectual, Marcelo Fernández Osco author of La Ley del Ayllu, he stressed the unawareness from the side of the Human Rights Foundation that the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State is an obvious case of juridical coloniality, regulating the State according to the interests of a minority of European descent, and modeled after the spirit of the French Revolution; which is the case for all the Political Constitution of all Latin American States. The community of Ayo-Ayo is an obvious case of why the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State needed to be re-written in such a way that Liberal and Ayllu conceptions of the State and Democracy can co-exist in armony. The letters from the Human Rights Foundation made evident the lack of knowledge of the other side of the equation, the law of the Ayllu. The ranchers and land owners of the low lands, as well as the elite in Sucre, in accordance with the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State are violating, with their demand of autonomy and property rights, Indigenous human rights by disavowing the rights Indians communities have to live in armony with the land; not the land as property. The letter from the Human Rights Foundation is also mute about the slavery living conditions of many Indian families working under landowners rule.

2) The events in Sucre are not “directly” related to Altamirano’s case and Indigenous violations of human rights. They are indirectly related. The special rapporteur on human rights of Indigenous individuals and communities posted a strong sign of alert. In this case, it is the civil society of Sucre who is violating indigenous and peasant human rights. The international press is denouncing the outrageous barbarism perpetrated under the leadership of the “Band of Four” in the very civilized city of Sucre.

The events in Sucre are indeed signs of radical global changes. And the Human Rights Foundation’s misinterpretations are also evidence that the changes taking place are making obsolescence of entrenched ways of thinking and revealing how feelings and group interests taint our views of what constitute legal violation of human rights; who is violating property rights; and who is denouncing the violation of both as a superior, objective, and transcendent observer who is not tainted itself by its own subjective view of justice, law and property. Property rights violations, one of the concerns expressed in the letter from the Human Rights Foundation to Evo Morales, were not addressed in the letter by Sacha Llorenti. The issue should be brought into the picture because it is not unrelated to Altamirano’s case and to racist violence against Indian and peasants, in Sucre. The very day in which Santa Cruz province was voting on the referendum for its autonomy, the New York Times published a revealing article about a US citizen, named Larsen, a native of Montana, who bought land in Santa Cruz in 1969, and now he seats on an extension of about 350,000 acres.

The article is titled: “American rancher resists land reform plans in Bolivia”. Think of it. Imagine a science fiction world in which an article is published saying “Indigenous Bolivian resists tax reduction in the United States.” Now it so happens, according to the Human Rights Foundation’s interpretation, that the New Bolivian Constitution is violating property rights. That is, is violating Mr. Larsen’s rights to his property, which was acquired through “legal” procedures between the Bolivian government in 1969. These were turbulent years. Military controlled the state and although promised to maintain land reforms implemented by the revolution of 1952, there were obviously some loop-holes. Most likely Mr. Larsen benefited from them and was able to acquire the land.

At stake here is for Mr. Larsen and the Human Rights Foundation that land is a commodity and that it can be economically possessed. For Indigenous people that is not the case: land is not a commodity, and nature is not a passive entity that shall be dominated and exploited, as Sir Frances Bacon stated at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in his Novum Organum. The idea that land is property and that is that was imprinted in the literature of the conquest in the sixteenth century. Dominican legal-theological Francisco de Vitoria, a balanced mind comparable to today’s honest liberals, struggled to find a legal and moral way justifying Spaniards taking possession of Indian lands. He went through complicated but very compelling arguments, stating that just because Indians were unbelievers, unbelief was not a good reason to deny that Indians have rights to property. Vitoria finally found reasons to legitimize Spanish expropriation of land: Indians were not mature enough. A racist decision, enveloped in ethical language, stamped for even both that the idea that land property is a universal of the human species and that Indians are an inferior race of the human species.

The unprecedented situation in Santa Cruz and in Sucre, is that land owners and Mestizo State officers and members of the Civil Society, rebels against the government. The ethno-class that came to power, in all South America, gaining independence from Spain and Portugal, are resisting the coming into being of ethno-classes (peasants and indigenous), who have been dominated and exploited since the glorious days of Spanish independence. And Sucre was the city that witnessed the beginning of struggles for emancipation.

But there is still an issue that Vitoria took for granted and has been accepted since: that Vitoria’s Indians (indeed, people from Tawantinsuyu and Anáhuac), would have to accept their relation to land as that of property, as a commodity. It did not occur to Vitoria (and none of the Spanish missionaries from different religious order), to ask that question. If they would have asked and listened to the answer, they would have understood that property was not the way Vitoria’s Indians related to land and nature.

3) Sacha Llorenti is right in pointing out that members of the Human Rights Foundation who wrote the letter misunderstand (it would be more exact to say “ignored”) the other side of the coin: that there is an Indian rationality which is not compatible with the rationality manifested in the Human Rights Foundation’s letter. Sacha Llorenti did not address the question of property rights, but the same charge could be made, on this matter, to the short-sided and partial view of the Human Rights Foundation.

Indeed, one cannot but be surprised to an statement appearing in the Human Rights response to (paragraph #3 of the letter dated 31 de enero de 2008), to Sacha Llorenti. Thor Helvorssen (President) and Armando Valladares (Secretario General), who signed the letter, accused President Evo Morales of making public a false accusation against the Human Rights Foundation. Helvorssen and Valladares’ letter transcribe the following allegedly Morales’s statement, pronounced in Chanel 7 (a state managed TV channel):

“Esta ONG tiene una clara filiación derechista y entre sus miembros aprece el hijo de Vargas Llosa”

The counterargument is interesting to say the least. The first counterargument is to dispel the accusation that Vargas Llosa’s son (both, father and son are well known for their neo-liberal positions and harsh criticism to leftists as well as Indigenous movements in Latin America), is to say Nobel Prize Elie Wiesel is one of the member of the committee whom, the letter clarifies “was prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.” With all due respect to Mr. Elie Wiesel, who has nothing to do with the situation, one wonders to what extent having been prisoner in a concentration camp is a warranty for the statements and accusations made by the Human Rights Foundation (or by the signers Helvorssen and Valladares).

The second counterargument is more philosophical but equally questionable. The signers of the letter address the accusation that the Foundation is a right wing institution: “For the Human Rights Foundation, human rights are neither from left nor from right; as human rights they are just human rights and as such they shall be respected, protected and guaranteed by all and every democratic state in the world, with independence of the political ideology of their government” (translation into English mine, WM).

Who speaks indeed for “human” in human rights? The signers of the letter are apparently assuming that “human rights” are a transcendent entity, some kind of dive or natural law, and that the Foundation has direct access to them. As such, the Foundation arrogates to itself the transcendental power of the observer who observed without being observed. The Foundation really knows what “human rights” are and the “human rights” they know (such as the right to private property), shall be respected. The Foundation operates under the assumption of an epistemology without parenthesis: and objectivity of “human rights” that cannot be contested; that can only be obeyed.

The point I am trying to make is not to advocate in favor of President Evo Morales and Sacha Llorenti’s arguments. My point is that Evo Morales and Sacha Llorenti have a point and that the Human Rights Foundation is reluctant to hear. The Human Rights Foundation is not the proprietor of “human rights”, and since they are not, their role will be enhanced and more helpful if they step down from their role of observer from above and be more aware of what interests they are defending and representing. The fight for human rights is a noble cause in which we all should be involved.

And it is in such spirit that I am here writing.

An institution such as the Human Rights Foundation shall not assume that because it is a Foundation it has the right of property to human rights; and that it is an institution from where you can observe but cannot be observed–what Chilean scientist and intellectual Humberto Maturana calls “objectivity without parenthesis.”

Huntington’s first line may be in time as memorable as the first line of Don Quixote or that of One Hundred Years of Solitude: “The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants,” stated Huntington, “threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures and two languages.” The second sentence may also be remembered; but it is longer and more complex. “Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.”

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En la conferencia dictada en la Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar Josepth Stiglitz expuso brevemente su teoría de la información imperfecta y sus implicaciones para el trabajo hacia una sociedad democrática y justa. Afirmaba que, en el proceso, las universidades tienen un papel importante que cumplir (y esto lo decía en la ocasión en que se abría la carrera en Ciencias Económicas en la UASB):

“Las universidades tiene un papel central en este sentido. Creo firmemente que, además de perseguir el conocimiento por el conocimiento en sí mismo, las universidades tiene una función significativa en el desarrollo de la democracia. Mejorar nuestro entendimiento del mundo y de todo cuanto nos rodea es la misión central de la universidad; sin embargo, una función particularmente importante de las universidades es promover el desarrollo de la democracia (2002, 225).” (1)

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