Letters from Our Readers

This Week in the Americas

Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City:
World Water Forum Not the Place to Solve Global Water Crisis
By Laura Carlsen

Water flooded Mexico City the week of March 16-22, causing major traffic jams, provoking street confrontations, and filling the pages of local and international newspapers. Yet nothing got wet.

The long-awaited Fourth World Water Forum brought over 10,000 participants and hundreds of journalists to town to discuss what organizers hoped would be the mostly technical issues of a shared human concern. The event is organized every three years by the World Water Council, which groups 300 organizations including industry representatives, government ministries, international institutions, and development banks.

Laura Carlsen directs the Americas Program of the International Relations Center, online at www.irc-online.org.

Deportation Feeds a Cycle of Violence in Central America
By Sam Logan, Ben Bain, and Kate Kairies

Since the early nineties, criminal gang networks operating across the border between the United States and Central America have exploded in power and number. The gangs take advantage of loopholes in international immigration and deportation policies to spread their influence through extreme violence. U.S. deportation policies aggressively send undocumented gang members back to their home countries in Central America. They export U.S. gang culture and hardened criminals to countries whose internal security forces are ill-equipped to deal with the new threat. The street gangs have rapidly grown beyond being just a neighborhood problem to presenting a real national security threat in these countries.

Sam Logan (www.samuellogan.com) is an investigative journalist who has covered security, energy, politics, economics, organized crime, terrorism, and black markets in Latin America since 1999. He has reported from Santiago, Sao Paulo, Brasilia, and Buenos Aires. He currently lives in Rio de Janeiro. Sam holds a masters degree in International Policy Studies, and has earned a specialization in Security and Development in South America.

Ben Bain is a freelance journalist based in Washington, DC. He reports on economics, trade, security, and cultural issues. He holds a masters degree in International Relations, and has earned a specialization in International Law and International Economics from The Johns Hopkins University of Advanced International Studies.

Kate Kairies is a freelance journalist based in Washington, DC. She reports on economics, trade, security, and cultural issues. Kate holds a masters degree in International Relations and Economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

The Paper War Between Argentina-Uruguay
By Raúl Zibechi

Roadblocks on the international bridges connecting Argentina and Uruguay, carried out by the Argentine environmental movement to protest the construction of two large cellulose factories, demonstrates the social limitations of the neoliberal model and is jeopardizing the regional alliance between two governments that possess, fundamentally, the same political and ideological orientations.

“As long as we have people to take part, we will continue blocking the bridges,” said one of the members of the Environmental Assembly of Gualeguaychú midway through January. On that day, roadblocks on the three bridges linking Argentina to Uruguay—some of them lasting up to 24 hours—had managed to cripple the flow of goods and tourists, but above all, had created a climate of “war” between the governments of Tabaré Vázquez and Néstor Kirchner.

Raúl Zibechi, a member of the editorial board of the weekly Brecha de Montevideo, is a professor and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina and adviser to several grassroots organizations. He is a monthly contributor to the IRC Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org). Translated by Nick Henry.

Recuperated Enterprises in Argentina: Reversing the Logic of Capitalism
By Marie Trigona

Argentina's worker-run factories are setting an example for workers around the world that employees can run a business even better without a boss or owner. Some 180 recuperated enterprises are up and running, providing jobs for more than 10,000 Argentine workers. The new phenomenon of employees taking over their workplace began in 2000 and heightened as Argentina faced its worst economic crisis ever in 2001. Nationwide, thousands of factories have closed and millions of jobs have been lost in recent years.

Despite challenges, Argentina's recuperated factory movements have created jobs, formed a broad network of mutual support among the worker-run workplaces, and generated community projects. Agreements between recuperated enterprises throughout Latin America have had the most concrete impact. The occupied factories and enterprises are proving that they are organizing to develop strategies in defense of Latin American workers susceptible to factory closures and poor working conditions. While these experiences are forced to co-exist within the capitalist market they are forming new visions for a new working culture. The experiences of worker self-management and organization have directly challenged the capitalist structures by questioning private property, taking back workers' knowledge, and organizing production for objectives other than profits.

Marie Trigona forms part of Grupo Alavío and writes regularly for the IRC Americas Program (online at americas.irc-online.org). She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com.

Chile's New President: Beyond Symbolism
By Daniela Ponce

When Michelle Bachelet is inaugurated as Chile's President on March 11, she will be a clear symbol of dramatic change on many levels. Bachelet will be the first democratically elected woman president in South America; a single mother and an agnostic leading a predominantly male-dominated, Roman Catholic society; and a survivor of torture under military dictatorship now in command of her country. On all these fronts, Bachelet will be a pioneer in her country but what is unclear is whether she will be able to change one of Chile's most pervasive problems, its highly unequal distribution of wealth.

Born and raised in Chile, Daniela Ponce works at the Institute for Policy Studies and is an analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus.

A Global Good Neighbor Model for U.S. Latin America Policy
By Laura Carlsen

The following is the text version of a presentation by IRC Americas Program Director Laura Carlsen to the plenary of the Latin America track of Ecumenical Advocacy Days in Washington DC, March 11, 2006.

I've been asked to speak on the Global Good Neighbor initiative and in particular on how the concept of being a good neighbor can inform U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. The idea of thinking about a new framework for foreign policy began when a group of us associated with the International Relations Center began a series of discussions about a year ago on changing U.S. foreign policy and our nation's role in the world. Hopefully this set of simple principles can help make the often complex and inaccessible field of foreign policy accessible to the average citizen.

IRC Americas Program Director Laura Carlsen gave this as a presentation to the plenary of the Latin America track of Ecumenical Advocacy Days in Washington, DC on March 11, 2006. The Americas Program can be found at www.americaspolicy.org.

Letters from our Readers

Re: What's FAIR Got To Do With It?

This article makes only a fleeting mention of the true reason we should oppose further immigration. The argument we always hear is that they do jobs that Americans won't. The truth is that they do non-union jobs below scale, and often below minimum wage, without the threat of unionization, which Americans would certainly pursue to the extent possible under an administration that fights union rights almost as hard as it fights terrorism. The availability of a large pool of illegal workers drives wages down for everyone. A case in point is the hiring of Mexicans for $2 and hour by contractors who won (?) contracts in New Orleans after Katrina. How many New Orleans residents could have had jobs if the greed-driven contractors had not imported immigrant labor for a fraction of the wages they would have had to pay local residents?

John Gibb

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