socialistfuture
17th September 2004, 02:26
This is an interview with Tariq Ali titled: Venezuela:Changing the World by Taking Power http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1223
'Tariq Ali is a veteran political activist, filmmaker, and author of numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction. He was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and now lives and works London, England where he is an editor of the British journal New Left Review. His most recent political texts include The Clash of Fundamentalisms (Verso, 2002) and Bush in Babylon: Recolonizing Iraq (Verso, 2003). Claudia Jardim and Jonah Gindin talked with him during a recent trip of his to Caracas, where he participated in the presentation of a statement of solidarity from numerous Brazilian intellectuals (see: Brazilian Intellectuals and Artists Declare Support for Venezuela's Chavez)....
How do you explain the explosion in social movements against neoliberalism in Latin America?
I think the reason for this is that Latin America was used as a laboratory by the United States for a long, long time. Everything the US wanted was experimented in Latin America first. When they wanted military—on the political level—when they wanted to crush popular movements by unleashing military dictatorships they did it in Latin America first: Brazil, Argentina, Chile; three of the most brutal dictatorships we have seen. Then, after the collapse of the communist enemy, they relaxed on the political front but they got Latin America in a grip economically, and they said ‘this is the only way forward.’ We can summarize it like this: the laboratory of the American Empire is the first to rebel against the Empire. So many many different and interesting processes are happening in Latin America and I think where the left is weak is in its inability to bring these together and to refound the Latin American left.
...
Before the elections in Brazil, I was in Ribeirao Preto at a festival, and they asked me ‘if you were a Brazilian, who would you vote for?’ And I said I would vote for Lula with the majority of the poor of Brazil. But I said my big worry was that Lula will forget who has voted him into power and he will cater to the policies of those who did not vote for him—the IMF and the World Bank and the international financial institutions. They did not vote for Lula, but they’re the people who’s policies are being carried out. And I said that would be a tragedy, and people gasped but that’s exactly what’s happened. And for me the relation between Lula and Cardoso is the relation between Thatcher and Blair. Blair followed Thatcher, Lula is following Cardoso. It’s intertwined, and this is the tragedy of Brazil and in four or five years time there will massive disillusionment; the right will probably win again and we will have to start the fight from the beginning....
For Tariq Ali Lula is "a weak leader who is so excited at being in power, that he forgets why he is." Lula has come under fire by the MST lately for having shunned his commitment to reducing landlessness....
In Colombia, for example, there has been a huge militarization that is very similar to cold war U.S strategy in Latin America. Where does this fit in with a new strategy that, as you have pointed out, is largely economic?
Colombia is exceptional at the moment, and of course Venezuela where they tried to push through a new coup d’état which failed. They will do that if nothing else succeeds. Where they feel democracy doesn’t serve their interests they will return to the military—that’s obvious. But at the moment the problem is: how to devise a society in which you can push through projects, social-democratic projects for the poor. That’s the key in my opinion, that’s why Venezuela is very important. Before Lula was elected a possibility emerged, an image emerged of the following: Argentina had collapsed, in Venezuela there was Chávez that if you had a Bolivarian federation, of Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba, together you could produce a completely different way of looking at the world and a different form of society, which would not be repressive, which would not be vicious, which would transform the everyday lives of the poor. That has not happened because…Kirchner, in my opinion, is better than Lula; he’s trying to resist on some levels. The big disappointment has been the Brazilian PT, big disappointment. But that doesn’t mean we stop thinking like that because in a small way it’s what I said at the press conference today: 10,000 Cuban doctors, thousands of poor Venezuelan kids going to Cuba to learn to be doctors. Here you take advantage of each other’s strengths, not each other’s weaknesses. So it’s very good that Venezuela and Chávez are taking advantage of the strengths of Cuba, rather than their weaknesses. The social structure they have created, health, education that’s something that Brazil could do as well, but they don’t do it....'
dont know how many of you have heard of him before or read any of his works - do!
this is his website: http://www.tariqali.org/
'Tariq Ali is a veteran political activist, filmmaker, and author of numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction. He was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and now lives and works London, England where he is an editor of the British journal New Left Review. His most recent political texts include The Clash of Fundamentalisms (Verso, 2002) and Bush in Babylon: Recolonizing Iraq (Verso, 2003). Claudia Jardim and Jonah Gindin talked with him during a recent trip of his to Caracas, where he participated in the presentation of a statement of solidarity from numerous Brazilian intellectuals (see: Brazilian Intellectuals and Artists Declare Support for Venezuela's Chavez)....
How do you explain the explosion in social movements against neoliberalism in Latin America?
I think the reason for this is that Latin America was used as a laboratory by the United States for a long, long time. Everything the US wanted was experimented in Latin America first. When they wanted military—on the political level—when they wanted to crush popular movements by unleashing military dictatorships they did it in Latin America first: Brazil, Argentina, Chile; three of the most brutal dictatorships we have seen. Then, after the collapse of the communist enemy, they relaxed on the political front but they got Latin America in a grip economically, and they said ‘this is the only way forward.’ We can summarize it like this: the laboratory of the American Empire is the first to rebel against the Empire. So many many different and interesting processes are happening in Latin America and I think where the left is weak is in its inability to bring these together and to refound the Latin American left.
...
Before the elections in Brazil, I was in Ribeirao Preto at a festival, and they asked me ‘if you were a Brazilian, who would you vote for?’ And I said I would vote for Lula with the majority of the poor of Brazil. But I said my big worry was that Lula will forget who has voted him into power and he will cater to the policies of those who did not vote for him—the IMF and the World Bank and the international financial institutions. They did not vote for Lula, but they’re the people who’s policies are being carried out. And I said that would be a tragedy, and people gasped but that’s exactly what’s happened. And for me the relation between Lula and Cardoso is the relation between Thatcher and Blair. Blair followed Thatcher, Lula is following Cardoso. It’s intertwined, and this is the tragedy of Brazil and in four or five years time there will massive disillusionment; the right will probably win again and we will have to start the fight from the beginning....
For Tariq Ali Lula is "a weak leader who is so excited at being in power, that he forgets why he is." Lula has come under fire by the MST lately for having shunned his commitment to reducing landlessness....
In Colombia, for example, there has been a huge militarization that is very similar to cold war U.S strategy in Latin America. Where does this fit in with a new strategy that, as you have pointed out, is largely economic?
Colombia is exceptional at the moment, and of course Venezuela where they tried to push through a new coup d’état which failed. They will do that if nothing else succeeds. Where they feel democracy doesn’t serve their interests they will return to the military—that’s obvious. But at the moment the problem is: how to devise a society in which you can push through projects, social-democratic projects for the poor. That’s the key in my opinion, that’s why Venezuela is very important. Before Lula was elected a possibility emerged, an image emerged of the following: Argentina had collapsed, in Venezuela there was Chávez that if you had a Bolivarian federation, of Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba, together you could produce a completely different way of looking at the world and a different form of society, which would not be repressive, which would not be vicious, which would transform the everyday lives of the poor. That has not happened because…Kirchner, in my opinion, is better than Lula; he’s trying to resist on some levels. The big disappointment has been the Brazilian PT, big disappointment. But that doesn’t mean we stop thinking like that because in a small way it’s what I said at the press conference today: 10,000 Cuban doctors, thousands of poor Venezuelan kids going to Cuba to learn to be doctors. Here you take advantage of each other’s strengths, not each other’s weaknesses. So it’s very good that Venezuela and Chávez are taking advantage of the strengths of Cuba, rather than their weaknesses. The social structure they have created, health, education that’s something that Brazil could do as well, but they don’t do it....'
dont know how many of you have heard of him before or read any of his works - do!
this is his website: http://www.tariqali.org/