Perkins John. The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

to serve the corporatocracy and gratify my own appetites. My

personal prostitution infuriated me, as did the suspicion that any

efforts on my part now to change a company such as COBEE

would likely be thwarted. Nevertheless, I made a commitment to

try.

When we returned to the United States, I called the Leucadia

executive in charge of recruiting me. I informed him that I would

consider accepting the job only if they allowed me to turn

COBEE into a model for social and environmental responsibility.

I explained that I was deeply impressed by the Zongo River

hydroelectric project and that the company was uniquely

positioned to be an agent of change, given that it had the

opportunity to provide electricity to some of the poorest

populations in the hemisphere.

There was a long pause. He informed me that he would check

with Ian Cumming. "However," he said, "don't expect much. Our

execu-t ives answer to our stockholders; a president of COBEE

will be expected io maximize profits." Another pause. "Do you

want to reconsider?"

His words strengthened my resolve. "Absolutely not."

I never heard from them again.

103

Changing the Dream

The longer I thought about the exploitation of Bolivia by

foreign organizations and the role I had played in it as an EHM,

the angrier and more depressed I grew. I considered flying back to

La Paz or to Colombia or to one of the other Spanish-speaking

countries and joining a resistance movement. It struck me that it

was what Tom Paine would have done. Then I realized that rather

than use a gun he would have taken up a pen. I asked myself how

I could be most effective.

The answer began to materialize during one of my trips with

the nonprofit organization that worked in Guatemala. Talking

with a Mayan elder, I decided that I needed to return to Ecuador's

Shuar territory, where I had lived as a Peace Corps volunteer

more than two decades earlier. I was, I see now, extremely

confused, torn between old loyalties to my EHM colleagues, a

guilty conscience, a desire to expose the wrong I had done, and an

addiction to that vice that so pervades our society, materialism.

Someplace in my subconscious lurked the idea that the Shuar

could help straighten me out.

A friend and the publisher of my books on indigenous

cultures, Ehud Sperling, and I took an American Airlines flight to

Quito, Ecuador, and a smaller plane down the Andes to Cuenca.

We spent a couple of nights in that colonial city high in the

mountains where I had lived following my tour in the rainforest.

Then we rented a jeep and driver, left very early in the morning,

and wound our way along treacherous mountain roads toward the

jungle town of Macas.

The trip was spectacular; descending from the top of the

Andes through an endless series of switchbacks, it was the old

potholed road I remembered from two decades earlier, sheer cliffs

rising on

104CHANGING THE DREAM

one side and a deep gorge of cascading water on the other. A

few rickety trucks coming up out of the jungle forced us to pull

over precariously close either to the rock wall or the drop-off.

Otherwise, we had the place to ourselves. It was truly another

world, far removed from our lives in the States. I wondered how I

had ever managed to make the transition from this to EHM. The

simple answer was that back then, a very young and frustrated

man who had grown up in rural New Hampshire, I had craved the

excitement and money that the profession offered. Like a fish

seduced by a shiny lure flashing through the water, I had snatched

it.

Around noon our jeep drove into a small community where

the road had previously ended; now it continued on, rougher and

muddier, soaked by rains that swept up from the Amazon basin,

toward the town of Macas. I began to tell Ehud how I had felt

when I first visited Macas in 1969. It got us to talking about the

role our country has played in world history.

The United States exemplified democracy and justice for

about two hundred years. Our Declaration of Independence and

Constitution inspired freedom movements on every continent. We

led efforts to create global institutions that reflected our ideals.

During the twentieth century, our leadership in movements

promoting democracy and justice increased; we were instrumental

in establishing the Permanent Court of International Justice in the

Hague, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Charter of the

United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and

many U.N. conventions.

Since the end of World War II, however, our position as leader

has eroded, the model we presented to the world undermined by a

t orporatocracy hell-bent on empire building. While a Peace

Corps volunteer, I was aware that Ecuadorian citizens, as well as

those in neighboring nations, were outraged by our brutality and

baffled by our overt contradictions in policy. We claimed to

defend democracy in places like Vietnam; at the same time, we

ousted and assassinated democratically elected presidents. High

school students

105THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN

EMPIRE

throughout Latin America understood that the United States

had overthrown Chile's Allende, Iran's Mossadegh, Guatemala's

Ar-benz, Brazil's Goulart, and Iraq's Qasim—even if our own

students were unaware of such things. Washington's policies

transmitted a confusing message to the world. Our actions

undercut our most hallowed ideals.

One way the corporatocracy exerted control was by

empowering autocratic governments in Latin America during the

1970s. These governments experimented with economic policies

that benefited U.S. investors and international corporations, and

generally ended in failure for local economies—recessions,

inflation, unemployment, and negative economic growth. Despite

mounting opposition, Washington praised the corrupt leaders who

were bankrupting their nations while amassing personal fortunes.

To make matters worse, the United States supported right-wing

dictators and their death squads in Guatemala, El Salvador, and

Nicaragua.

A wave of democratic reforms swept the continent in the

1980s. Newly elected governments turned to the "experts" at the

IMF and the World Bank for solutions to their problems.

Persuaded to adopt SAPs, they implemented unpopular measures

ranging from privatization of their utilities to cuts in social

services. They accepted outrageously large loans that were used

to develop infrastructure projects that all too often served only the

upper classes while leaving the country burdened with debt.

The results were disastrous. Economic indicators tumbled to

new depths. Millions of people once hailed as members of the

middle class lost their jobs and joined the ranks of the impover-

ished. As citizens watched their pensions, health care, and

educational institutions decline, they also noticed that their

politicians were buying up Florida real estate rather than investing

in local businesses. The communist movements of the 1950s and

1960s never took hold, except in Castro's Cuba; however, a new

wave of resentment against the corporatocracy and its corrupt

Latin collaborators swept the continent.

106CHANGING THE DREAM

Then, less than a year before Ehud and I headed to Ecuador,

the first Bush administration made a decision that had a lasting

negative impact on United States-Latin American relations. The

president ordered the armed forces to invade Panama. It was an

unprovoked, unilateral attack to unseat a government, ostensibly

because it refused to renege on the Panama Canal Treaty. The

invasion killed more than two thousand innocent civilians and

sent waves of fear across every country south of the Rio Grande.

The fear soon turned to anger.

I mulled these things over and discussed them with Ehud on

that drive to Macas. I asked him if he thought there could be any

alternative to the corruption that plagued the continent.

"Of course there is," he assured me. "Critical mass. That's all

you need." He asked how I had journeyed to Macas in those days,

given that the road had not gone that far.

"You could slosh through the jungle for weeks. Or you could

take a 'stopwatch flight' on an old World War II Army-surplus

DC-3. That flight seemed almost suicidal, but it's what I did."

"Stopwatch flight?"

"Those planes couldn't make it over the top of the Andes; they

had to follow the river valleys. No radar. The pilot never knew

when clouds would sock him in, so as soon as he left the ground,

he clicked on a stopwatch. After thirty seconds he took a ten-

degree turn to the right, after another forty-five seconds a fifteen-

degree bank to the left. .. Pretty scary. Lost a lot of planes in those

days. But it was better—and safer—than trekking through the

jungle."

"So they built the road." He paused. "Why?" His arched

eyebrows gave me the clue.

"Critical mass?"

"Exactly."

People had demanded change. When the clamoring reached a

certain level, it happened. In this case, that change had been on

the side of commercial development opening up the Amazon ba-

sin. I knew that the critical mass had been heavily influenced by

107THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN

EMPIRE

oil companies. Entering Macas, I saw that the road had trans-

formed a sleepy jungle outpost into a bustling boomtown. Yet I

could speculate that as more and more of us become aware of the

threats to our future, the critical mass may shift to projects that

emphasize peace and sustainability.

We checked into a hotel that had a couple of items I had never

seen before in this part of the world: a flush toilet and shower.

The latter greatly amused Ehud because of the electrical outlet

next to the faucet.

"For electric shavers," I assured him.

"To execute yourself," he replied.

The next morning we boarded a small plane. Ehud asked the

pilot about the stopwatch. "My uncle used one." The pilot

grinned. "But I got radar."

The plane deposited us on a mud runway deep in the forest. A

cluster of Shuar men were assembled at the edge of the clearing.

They looked pretty much as I remembered them—muscular, buff,

laughing, happy people, except now they wore old T-shirts and

Da-cron shorts the missionaries insisted they use to combat the

sin of nudity.

As they unloaded supplies that had arrived with us, an old man

approached me. When I announced my interest in helping his peo-

ple save their jungle from destruction he reminded me that my

culture, not his, was causing the problems.

"The world is as you dream it," he told me. "Your people

dreamed of huge factories, tall buildings, as many cars as there

are raindrops in this river. Now you begin to see that your dream

is a nightmare."

I asked what I could do to help.

"That's simple," he replied. "All you have to do is change the

dream .. . You need only plant a different seed, teach your

children to dream new dreams."

Over the next few days, we heard similar messages from other

members of the community. Both Ehud and I were impressed

with

108CHANGING THE DREAM

the wisdom of these people and their determination to protect

their environment and culture. After I returned to the United

States, I set in motion procedures for creating an organization

dedicated to altering the way we in industrialized countries see

the earth and our relationship to it. I did not realize it at the time,

but I was endeavoring to reverse the process I had promoted as an

EHM.

Eventually we named the nonprofit corporation Dream

Change, in recognition of the message delivered to me that day in

Shuar territory. Through it, we organized trips and workshops.

We took people to live with indigenous teachers and we brought

those teachers to the United States. We produced books, tapes,

CDs, and films aimed at bridging the gaps between these two

worlds. The Pa-chamama Alliance, another nonprofit, was formed

as a result of one of our trips. It has raised millions of dollars to

help indigenous communities, much of it used to finance legal

battles against oil companies.

Thanks to my experience with COBEE, I had launched myself

on a new career. Throughout the 1990s and into the early years of

the new millennium, I traveled frequently to Latin America. I

spent most of the time there with indigenous people in the

Amazon and the Andes. I was deeply impressed by their

commitment to environmental stewardship and a spirituality that

surpassed anything I witnessed among the world's major

religions. These people appeared determined to make the world a

better place.

As a Pachamama Alliance board member I also met with law-

yers, politicians, and oil company employees. It was over dinner

with such a group one night in Quito that I first learned about

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. The oil company representatives

despised this fiery military officer who founded the

anticorporatocracy Fifth Republic Movement, but the politicians

had to admire his charisma. My indigenous friends were

encouraged that his ancestors were Indian and African as well as

Spanish, that he continually lambasted the wealthy, and promised

to help the poor to better lives.

109

Venezuela's Chavez

Chavez's rise to fame began in February 1992, when, as a

lieutenant colonel in the Venezuelan army, he led a coup against

Carlos Andres Perez. The president, whose name had become

synonymous with corruption, angered Chavez and his followers

because of his willingness to sell his country to the World Bank,

the IMF, and foreign corporations. Largely as a result of Caracas's

collaboration with the corporatocracy, Venezuelan per capita

income had plummeted by more than 40 percent and what had

previously been the largest middle class in Latin America sank

into the ranks of the impoverished.

Chavez's coup failed, but it set the stage for his future political

career. After he was captured, he was allowed to appear on

national television to persuade his troops to cease hostilities. He

defiantly declared to his nation that he had failed "por ahora"—

for now. His courage catapulted him to national fame. He served

two years in Yare prison; during that time, Perez was impeached.

Chavez emerged with a reputation for boldness, integrity, a

commitment to helping the poor, and a determination to smash the

shackles of foreign exploitation that had enslaved his country and

his continent for so many centuries.

In 1998 Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela with

an impressive 56 percent of the vote. Once in office, he did not

bow to corruption like so many before him. Instead he honored

men like Guatemala's Arbenz, Chile's Allende, Panama's Torrijos,

and Ecuador's Roldos. They had all been assassinated or

overthrown by the CIA. Now, he said, he would follow in their

footsteps, but with his own vision and charismatic personality,

and the staying power

110VENEZUELA'S CHAVEZ

endowed on the leader of a country overflowing with oil. His

victory and his continued defiance of Washington and the oil

companies inspired millions of Latin Americans.

Chavez kept his commitments to the poor—urban and rural.

Instead of re-injecting profits into the oil industry, he invested

them in projects aimed at combating illiteracy, malnutrition,

diseases, and other social ills. Rather than declaring huge

dividends for investors, he helped Argentina's embattled President

Kirchner buy down that nation's IMF debts of more than $10

billion and he sold discounted oil to those who could not afford to

pay the going price— including communities in the United States.

He earmarked a portion of his oil revenues for Cuba so it could

send medical doctors to impoverished areas around the continent.

He forged laws that consolidated the rights of indigenous

people—including language and land ownership rights—and

fought for the establishment of Afro-Venezuelan curricula in

public schools.

The corporatocracy saw Chavez as a grave threat. Not only did

he defy oil and other international companies, but also he was

turning into a leader others might try to emulate. From the Bush

administration's perspective, two intransigent heads of state,

Chavez and Hussein, had evolved into nightmares that needed to

end. In Iraq, subtle efforts—both the EHMs' and the jackals'—had

failed, and now preparations were underway for the ultimate

solution: invasion. In Venezuela, the EHMs had been replaced by