Comparaison Révoltes Birmanie Et Gwangju

Socialism and Democracy
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A New Stage of Insurgencies: Latin American

Popular Movements, the Gwangju Uprising, and
the Occupy Movement
George Katsiaficas & Gerardo Rénique
To cite this article: George Katsiaficas & Gerardo Rénique (2012) A New Stage of Insurgencies:
Latin American Popular Movements, the Gwangju Uprising, and the Occupy Movement, Socialism
and Democracy, 26:3, 14-34, DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2012.722370
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A New Stage of Insurgencies:
Latin American Popular Movements,
the Gwangju Uprising, and
the Occupy Movement
∗
George Katsiaficas and Gerardo Rénique
Grassroots insurgencies are today multiplying across the planet.

Not organized by any one party or organization, the current wave of
uprisings appears to be derived in opposition to local injustices, yet
in significant ways, these various struggle share essential character-
istics and prefigure a global revolution with pluralist and decentralized
forms. In the 1980s, Asian uprisings were directed against corrupt,
“crony” regimes and succeeded in sweeping several dictatorships
into the dustbin of history.1 In the same decade, Africans rose
against IMF-imposed austerity programs, as did Latin Americans
who also opposed US imperialism. Today, on all continents, grassroots
insurgencies target global capitalism, and the struggles increasingly
resemble each other in their internal organization despite national, lin-
guistic, cultural, political, and economic differences. In this article, we
seek to portray these similarities to help provide unity to the now frag-
mented global movement.
At first glance, the armed citizens’ uprising that erupted in
response to severe military brutality in Gwangju, South Korea begin-
ning on May 18, 1980 may appear to be worlds apart from Latin Amer-
ican social movements and the relatively peaceful protests against the
corrupt system benefiting the global financial elite (the 1%) that
resulted in occupations of hundreds of public places in the United
States last year. The political and cultural contexts of these social
∗
We wish to acknowledge the help of the S&D collective in helping to better craft our
discussion.
1. See George Katsiaficas, Asia’s Unknown Uprisings, Vol. 2: People Power in the Philip-
pines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand and Indonesia
(Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012).
Socialism and Democracy, Vol.26, No.3, November 2012, pp.14–34

ISSN 0885-4300 print/ISSN 1745-2635 online
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2012.722370 # 2012 The Research Group on Socialism and Democracy
George Katsiaficas and Gerardo Rénique 15
movements differ strikingly, and their short-term outcomes have little

in common: the US-mandated onslaught of the South Korean military
on May 27, 1980 involved tanks, helicopters and guns, resulting in
scores of people being killed, wounded, and arrested, while the
occupy movement was cleared out of the parks and squares relatively
peacefully as winter approached. In Latin America, the February 1989
popular uprising in Caracas (Venezuela) against the IMF/WB spon-
sored program of economy austerity marked the beginning of an
extraordinary wave of anti-systemic mobilizations across the region.
The spotlight on the progressive presidents – the majority in a
region not so long ago considered the US backyard – has eclipsed
the fact that their way to power was paved by a myriad of subaltern
mobilizations.
Mass actions, general strikes, and indigenous and popular rebel-
lions have fostered the downfall of some of the regimes most com-
mitted to the “Washington Consensus” in Peru (2000), Argentina
(2001), Ecuador (1997, 2000, 2005) and Bolivia (2003, 2005). Popular
mobilizations across the region have also defeated attempts to priva-
tize public services and natural resources, kept agricultural lands
from being taken by multinational mining corporations, and over-
turned counterrevolutionary attempts in Venezuela (2002) and
Bolivia (2008). Student insurgencies most notably in Chile and
Mexico are waging massive campaigns against the commoditization/
privatization of knowledge and for democratization. Many of these
movements have expanded their reach beyond Latin America to
inspire the global anti-capitalist struggle. These include the Juntas de
Buen Gobierno (Good Government Councils) in the autonomous Zapa-
tista territories in Mexico; the encampments of the Landless Peasant
Movement (MST) in Brazil; worker-controlled factories in Argentina;
the global campaigns of Via Campesina against genetically modified
seeds and food and in defense of peasant economies against free
trade, corporate monoculture, and bio-fuels; and the networks
woven by Peruvian and Ecuadoran indigenous peoples with ecologists
across the world in defense of water and natural resources threatened
by privatization. Furthermore the emergence of popular and indigen-
ous organizations as alternative territorial forms of local and regional
autonomous power constitutes a powerful challenge to neoliberal
ideology and ethnocentric Western liberalism.2
2. Gerardo Rénique, ed. Latin America: The New Neoliberalism and Popular Mobilization,
special issue of S&D (#51, November 2009).
16 Socialism and Democracy
Despite apparent divergences, these movements are strikingly

similar to each other insofar as they are based upon principles of:
1. Autonomy: They arose outside the realm of political parties and
traditional labor unions and remain distinct from them.
2. Direct democracy: Their participants practice direct democratic
discourse and deliberation, with a diversity of coexisting viewpoints.
3. International solidarity: They naturally embrace people from
around the world. During the Gwangju Uprising, foreigners circulated
freely. Baptist missionary Arnold Peterson reported that his car, flying
an American flag and with a large sign reading “Foreigners’ Car,” was
cheered by people in the streets. Alongside the Gwangju people’s con-
scious rejection of regionalism was international solidarity. In the
midst of the struggle, the Choson University Committee for Demo-
cratic Struggle compared Gwangju to Vietnam: “In the city of
Gwangju, just being young is a crime, and the young are condemned
to be crippled for life or killed. . . . Alas, the genocide of unarmed
people in Vietnam is being repeated upon our own people.”
4. Eros Effect:3 Love, not hatred, has been at the core of these move-
ments, as participants develop strong feelings of identification with
each other. Crime rates dropped in the cities where these events tran-
spired (including in Oakland, California in 2011, where the police chief
secretly informed the mayor that the crime statistics were much lower
during the Occupy Oakland events). In the city of Oaxaca (population
600,000) between June and October 2006, without police present even
to direct traffic, there were fewer deaths and injuries than in any
similar period in the previous decade. Fidelia Vásquez, a 55-year-old
schoolteacher who became a member of the security detail protecting
the state radio and television station occupied by women during the
Oaxaca rebellion, declared in the name of her compañeras that all we
3. The concept of the eros effect was developed to explain the rapid spread of revolu-
tionary aspirations and actions during the strikes of May 1968 in France and May
1970 in the US as well as the proliferation of the global movement in this same
period. In the global context of movements in 1968, we can observe the spontaneous
spread of revolutionary aspirations in a chain reaction of uprisings and the massive
occupation of public space. The sudden entry into history of millions of ordinary
people who acted in a unified fashion is predicated upon an intuitive understanding
that they could change the direction of their society. In moments of the eros effect,
universal interests become generalized while the dominant values of society (such
as national chauvinism, hierarchy, and individualism) are negated. See Katsiaficas,
The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (Boston, MA: South End
Press, 1987).
want is “love, tranquility, and peace for the entire world, no more
teargas bombs, no more shooting.”4
In relation to the Gwangju Uprising, Rev. Park Hyung-kyu
observed that, “. . .warm bonding among citizens and self-controlled
order demonstrated the beauty of human love that blossomed in the
midst of fierce resistance.” Sociologist Choi Jungwoon developed the
notion of the “absolute community” to describe the collective energy
and love which arose among Gwangju people as they battled the para-
troopers and drove the military out of the city.5 In this context, Che
Guevara’s insight that “The true revolutionary is guided by great
feelings of love” takes on a more universal meaning.
5. Occupation of public space and decommodification of everyday
life: During such moments, thousands of citizens change the routines
of daily life. Instead of going to work or school, they congregate at
the epicenter of the revolt and devote themselves entirely to the move-
ment’s needs. The Gwangju Uprising found its natural home around
the fountain in front of Province Hall. Similar occupations of public
spaces for the movement to formulate itself and prepare for actions
took place, for example, in:
. The Sorbonne (University of Paris) in May 1968
. Yale University in May 1970
. Thammasat University and around the Bo tree in Bangkok in 1973
. Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) in Manila in February 1986
. Shwe Dagon pagoda in Rangoon in 1988
. Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989
. The jungles of Chiapas after 1994
. Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2011
. Plaza del Sol encampment in Madrid in 2011
Uprisings and occupations in Latin America

Occupations are central to Latin American subaltern traditions of
resistance, mobilization and rebellion. Since colonial times, the “recov-
ery” of lands from landlord or state control has been a common
4. Gustavo Esteva, “Oaxaca: The Path to Radical Democracy,” S&D #44 (July 2007);
Lynn Stephen, “Women Leaders in the Oaxaca Rebellion,” S&D #44 (July 2007).
5. Choi Jungwoon, The Gwangju Uprising: The Pivotal Democratic Movement that Changed
the History of Modern Korea (Paramus: Homa and Sekey Books: 2006). In a 2003
meeting, Professor Choi expressed his surprise at the ways in which the concept of
the eros effect matched the results of his own empirical investigation into the
Gwangju Uprising.
strategy of both indigenous communities and peasant villages against

encroachment and proletarianization. Popular neighborhoods across
the region have their origins in mid-twentieth century occupations of
urban empty lots. The occupation of main city squares – the symbolic
center of state power – serves as the main scenario of protest. From
below, people appropriated public spaces and transformed land
taken from landlords, took over factories, and barricaded marginal
neighborhoods into self-managed, autonomous and sovereign spaces
– territories of collective decision-making. Set against an expanding
systemic crisis and long traditions of resistance and rebellion, these ter-
ritorialized struggles represent – paraphrasing Gramsci – the new that
is not yet born while the old hasn’t finished dying.6 In a similar fashion
to the late eighteenth century seismic wave of rebellions and uprisings
that heralded the consolidation of Enlightenment thought and the first
global wave of anticolonial struggles, the twentieth century in Latin
America also ended amidst an unprecedented wave of anti-systemic
mobilizations:
. The land occupations, encampments and cooperatives of the MST in
Brazil from 1983 to the present
. The 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico
. Argentina’s 1996 – 97 “piquetero” or Unemployed Workers’ Move-
ment (MTD) and the Neighborhood Assemblies that coalesced in
the 2000 – 1 uprising
. The 2000 Cochabamba “Water War” and the 2005 “Hydrocarbon
War” in Bolivia
. The 2002 mobilizations against the privatization of energy in Are-
quipa, Peru
. The 2006 Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) upris-
ing in Mexico
. The 2008 indigenous-popular Minga in Colombia
. The 2009 Amazonian indigenous-popular uprising in Peru
. The 2011 General Strike in Cajamarca (Peru) against open pit mining
These Latin American mobilizations also embody the dramatic
transformation of the region’s political landscapes during the last
decades. These movements have displaced the labor movement and
the traditional left from their role as the main defenders of demo-
cratic rights and national sovereignty, and as the central force for
social transformation. Devastated by neoliberal deindustrialization,
6. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Quintin Hoare (New York:
International Publishers, 1968), 276.
unemployment, and the elimination of workers’ rights in most

countries across Latin America, the labor movement lost its political
clout. In response to the demoralizing effects of the neoliberal ideo-
logical offensive and the fall of “really existing socialism,” many
left-wing intellectuals, parties and organizations retreated from revo-
lutionary aspirations. On the other hand, confronted by the retrench-
ment of the state from its most basic social duties, many popular
organizations mobilize to address such aspects of everyday life
such as housing, nutrition, childcare, education, healthcare, and
productive work. Driven by principles of solidarity, self-respect,
collective participation, and communal interest, these organizations
constitute a powerful challenge to the individualism, self-interest,
and exclusion that constitute the core values of neoliberalism. They
also represent a frontal assault on post-Cold War triumphalism and
the neoliberal celebration of unrestricted markets, free trade and elec-
toral regimes as the only path to a modern, democratic and civilized
existence.
Unlike the traditional working class, whose political subjectivity was
determined by its struggles against subordination to capital, the anti-
systemic militancy of today’s indigenous and popular movements is
informed by the relative degree of control they exercise over the pro-
duction and reproduction of their living conditions. By the late 1960s
migrant workers with peasant/indigenous background took over lands
where they built self-managed settlements that after a few decades
evolved into semi-autonomous cities, such as El Alto (Bolivia), Villa El
Salvador (Peru) and others in Caracas, Asunción, São Paulo, Montevi-
deo, and Buenos Aires that in many cases include also occupied factories
under worker control. In April 2002 grassroots organizations in the
popular barrios surrounding Caracas spearheaded the massive demon-
strations that in less than 48 hours reversed the US-supported coup
against President Hugo Chávez. Autonomous popular organizations
also played a crucial role in defeating the 2002–3 “oil strike” led by man-
agers and technocrats of the Venezuelan state-controlled oil company. In
Bolivia, popular mobilization broke the political paralysis of the Evo
Morales administration in the face of the September 2008 counterrevolu-
tionary attempt. Following the same pattern as the 2000 “water war” and
the 2003 and 2005 “gas wars” and acting on their own independent
initiative, popular sectors rallied against the violent right-wing separatist
insurrection in the country’s Eastern provinces. More recently in
Honduras and Paraguay, grassroots movements are at the center of the
resistance against the “parliamentary coups” that forced their progress-
ive presidents out of office.
Global dimensions
During uprisings, liberating spaces can be decisive in determining
whether the movement will continue or whether the forces of order
will restore the status quo ante. Such spaces become key to formulating
and implementing the popular will, through forms of direct democ-
racy. As the Egyptian movement’s return to Tahrir Square months
after overthrowing Mubarak illustrated, continuing occupation of
public space can rejuvenate subaltern groups’ counterpublic discourse
and challenge the system’s cooptative forces. In cases such as those of
Gwangju and Oaxaca, these liberated spaces give birth to the
Commune – the form of freedom that breaks through the illusion of
contemporary “democracy” offered by ritualized elections between
candidates of the ruling elite.
In all the cases listed above, the movement spread beyond the
boundaries of the city – and nation – in which it first emerged.
The Gwangju Uprising resulted in more than a dozen cities and
towns in Jeolla province having citizens’ uprisings, and if not for
the military’s cordon around the city, might have resulted in a
nationwide uprising against Chun Doo-hwan. It became an inspi-
ration for democratization movements throughout Asia. Instances
of the spread of movements across borders, involving a process of
mutual amplification and synergy, are significant precursors for
future mobilizations. In the period after 1968, as the global move-
ment’s capacity for decentralized international coordination devel-
oped, besides the Occupy movement, several other episodes of the
international eros effect can be discerned:7
. The disarmament movement of the early 1980s
. East Asian uprisings in the 1980s and 1990s8
. The alterglobalization wave and anti-war mobilizations on February
15, 2003
7. The case of the 1989–91 movements against the Soviet and East European regimes
might be cited in this context. However, whatever eros-effect manifestations they dis-
played were in a context of major maneuverings for the restoration of capitalism,
including manipulation of the type discussed below in connection with the more
recent “color revolutions” in the same region. Authentic popular aspirations,
although expressed for years before and after the regime changes, were eventually
overwhelmed by varying doses of shock therapy. They were not powerful enough
to predominate. (Generally speaking, there may in practice be complex juxtapositions
of such antagonistic forces. However, one of them may decisively upstage the other
in importance in any given case.)
8. See Katsiaficas, Asia’s Unknown Uprisings, 2 vols. (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012).
. The current wave, embracing the Greek struggle, the Arab Spring of
2011, Spain’s 2011 – 12 Indignados movement actions and occupations
from Madison to Wall Street and Quebec.
No single organization has been responsible for these recent waves of
“conscious spontaneity”; multiple organizations were involved in
every case. The only instance of explicit international coordination
was for the February 2003 actions (which were called for by the
October 2002 European Social Forum in Florence).
Anti-systemic movements: eros effect and the question of

organization
The period since 1968 has witnessed sudden and simultaneous
contestations of power by hundreds of thousands of people. Taken
together these occupations comprise a significant new development
in the revolutionary process. The threads connecting what might
seem like very different grassroots movements around the world are
woven together often intuitively, independently of any organizational
means of communication. The movements themselves may have
existed for some time, but their amplification and multiplication
through such intuitive channels is unprecedented. The notion of the
eros effect brings this intuitive dimension into focus as a positive revo-
lutionary resource. As Herbert Marcuse understood, Nature – includ-
ing internal, human nature – is an ally in the revolutionary process,
grounded in the fact that humans have an instinctual need for
freedom.9 Rejecting overly rationalistic models such as that of Haber-
mas, who considered the unconscious “inner foreign territory,”
Marcuse saw the erotic and unconscious dimensions of human
nature as central to the project of liberation.
The instinctual basis for action was also gleaned by social scientist
Choi Jungwoon in reference to the Gwangju Uprising. As an estab-
lished scholar unfamiliar with what had transpired in 1980, Choi was
subsequently approached by his professional academic association to
investigate the uprising. After extensive research, he concluded that
Gwangju citizens had crystallized an “absolute community” in which
all were equal and united by bonds of love. For Choi:
. . .it was not “mobs” of cowardly people hoping to rely on the power of
numbers. The absolute community provided encounters among dignified
9. See “A Biological Foundation for Socialism?” in Marcuse, Essay on Liberation (Boston

Beacon Press, 1969), 6– 22.
warriors. The absolute community was formed only from love. . . . In Western
Philosophy, reason is derived from solitary individuals. However the Gwangju
uprising demonstrates that reason was achieved by human beings who were
conscious of being members of a community. Reason was the capability of
the community, not that of individuals. . .10
So impressed was Choi with this solidarity that he added,
The most basic human values travel beyond history and culture; they began
with the birth of humankind and will continue into the unknown future. . . .
The term to refer to this primeval instinct has not been found in South
Korea’s narrow arena for political discourse and ideology.
The empirical history of crowd behavior in the late twentieth century –

most clearly in Gwangju – demands a reevaluation of the frozen
categories of crowds, through which they are viewed as emotionally
degraded, when Gwangju’s people were passionately intelligent and
loving.
Tahrir Square was the site of one of the most important occu-
pations of public space in recent times. It served as the nerve center
and organizing focus for a massive and militant insurgency that suc-
cessfully overthrew Mubarak and that continues to battle his US-
supported successors. Of all organizations and venues for Egyptian
movement activity, it alone symbolizes and encapsulates the popular
impetus. It alone is the refuge where the insurgency regroups and pre-
pares for each new stage thrown before it.
Soviet Marxism denigrated such popular thrusts as “spontaneous”
and called upon the “masses” to obey the dictates of the Party. In the
mechanistic Soviet view, based on an oversimplified base-superstructure
paradigm, conditions precede consciousness, economy takes precedence
over actions. The corollary denunciation of “spirit” – in favor of “primacy
of the material base” – was a philosophical underpinning to the unsus-
tainability of twentieth century Marxism. This kind of thinking was man-
ifested on a number of specific occasions when Left organizations failed
to support – or even sought to undermine – popular insurgencies:
. France in 1968, when the French Communist Party opposed the
student revolt and attempted to negotiate a reformist end to the
workers’ wildcat strike wave;
. Thailand in 1976, when thousands of students taking refuge from
savage urban repression found rural communists highly suspicious
and repressive;
10. Choi Jungwoon, The Gwangju Uprising, 134.

. Italy in 1977, when the Italian Communist Party sided with police
against students and autonomous protests;
. Philippines in 1986, when the Communist Party, seeking to recover
from its “Khmer Rouge” phase, sat out the People Power Uprising.
Today’s movements have a momentum driven by people’s
emotional ties to each other. They are guided by conscious appropria-
tion of the tactic of occupations, more often than not leaving parties and
unions tailing behind. A different tactic can be found in the armed
insurrections organized by Communist Parties in the first part of the
twentieth century. In advance, they built proletarian hundreds
(Germany), red guards (Russia), combat squads (China), and then
launched synchronized coordinated attacks on the centers of power
in attempts to seize control of the country. Following victories in Petro-
grad and Moscow, similar insurrections were launched in Germany,
Bulgaria, and Cracow in 1923, in Reval, in Canton, Shanghai, and
others places – all with more or less disastrous results. In Hamburg,
the uprising was scheduled precisely for 5 a.m. on 23 October 1923.
Centrally commanded, the insurrection faltered when a high-ranking
Party leader returning from a conference decided unilaterally to end
it. Communist revolutionaries summed up the wave of party-
organized insurrections in the 1920s and 1930s by declaring that
“The proletarian revolution does not follow a straight line. It proceeds
by way of partial advances and victories, temporary declines and
defeats. . . . Thanks to this experience, it succeeds in creating policies
and tactics of its own.”11
The eros effect occupation is one such tactic created from the grass-
roots, from the legacy of past struggles’ successes and failures.
Moments of the eros effect reveal the aspirations and visions of the
movement in actions of millions of people, a far more significant
dimension than statements of leaders, organizations, or parties.
People’s actions are not merely responses to historical moments; they
constitute history themselves, and change conditions in a mutually
amplifying fashion. Clearly, instinctual and structural levels of activity
are both vital, and we need to better understand each in relation to the
other. Levels of building organizations, community organizing, and
enhancing the consciousness of grassroots uprisings (and their out-
comes) are all significant. These two dimensions – structural and
emotional – encompass the total context within which “moments” of
11. A. Neuberg, Armed Insurrection (London: New Left Books, 1970), 56 (emphasis
added).
the eros effect arise. The Zapatistas’ actions beginning on January 1,

1994 provide a significant example of the role organizations can play.
Leading up to 1994, decades of organizing left a legacy of struggle,
and capitalism’s brutality spurred people to rise up.
Humanity’s unending need for freedom, posited by Marcuse, con-
stitutes the planet’s most powerful natural resource. In the struggle to
create free human beings, political movements play paramount roles.
Uprisings accelerate social transformation, change governments, and
revolutionize individual consciousness and social relationships. Most
popular insurgencies result in expanded liberties for millions of
people. If a regime represses them, its days are numbered. If it sur-
vives, it can do so only as a hollow shell, lacking legitimacy in the
eyes of the majority. Uprisings’ enormous energies transform
people’s everyday existence and continue to energize long past their
apogee. The post-uprising surges that occurred in the Philippines,
Taiwan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Thailand reveal the same phenomenal
activation of civil society and mobilization of subaltern groups,
whether working class, students, minorities, or women. After upris-
ings, autonomous media and grassroots organizations mushroom,
feminism becomes stronger, and workers are more disposed to
strike. Even among non-participants, bonds are created through the
intense experience of those exhilarating moments. Such instances of
what Marcuse called “political eros” are profoundly important in
rekindling imaginations and nurturing hope.
Recent militant uprisings in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru shed light
on the creative and transformative power unleashed by insurgent
mobilization.
Triggered by an unusually brutal repression against defenseless
striking teachers encamped in Oaxaca’s main square on the early
morning of June 24, 2006, labor unions, youth and women’s organiz-
ations, artist collectives, religious groups, poor neighborhood associ-
ations and indigenous organizations coalesced in the creation of the
Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) – a movement
of movements rooted in longstanding Oaxacan indigenous and
popular traditions of social struggle. A massive campaign of civil dis-
obedience brought the authoritarian and corrupt government of the
state of Oaxaca to a virtual standstill for almost six months. Rejecting
centralist and statist modes of social organization and political
action, the Oaxaca insurgency owed its strength to a broad-based,
non-hierarchical and communitarian approach to organizing. Not
only did the insurrection weather for several months one of the most
brutal repressions in recent Mexican history, but more importantly, it
managed to expand the reach of APPO as an effective subaltern oppo-

sitional bloc.12
In Colombia between September and November of 2009, what
started as an indigenous mobilization in defense of Indian territories
and autonomy, expanded into a massive indigenous-popular march
to the capital city of Bogotá. Support to the marchers generated a
national multifaceted web of non-violent action and civic engagement
in solidarity with indigenous demands. As a result of the dialogue and
assemblies between indigenous populations along the march to the
capital, a consensus emerged that embraced an agenda opposing the
country’s free trade agreements and the privatization of indigenous
territories for the benefit of mining and lumber corporations; demand-
ing an end to the militarization of the country and to expansion of the
“drug war”; and calling for a national inclusive dialogue to jointly con-
struct a “new society.” In a country ravaged by internal war, paramili-
tary and narco-traffickers’ violence, the indigenous-popular march
created an opening for the emergence and rearticulation of opposi-
tional voices silenced by almost five decades of militarization.13
In response to new legislation furthering the privatization of
natural resources and curtailing their territorial autonomy particularly
in Peru’s Amazonia, indigenous organizations in the region responded
by occupying oil wells and energy plants, and by closing rivers to navi-
gation. Although the poorest and most marginalized sector of the coun-
try’s population, Amazonian indigenous peoples are perhaps the best
and most extensively organized, drawing upon traditional communi-
tarian relationships. The new legislation – enacted by special legisla-
tive powers granted to the President by Congress to implement the
free trade agreement with the United States – represented a severe
blow to the survival of the indigenous peoples and to an already
endangered environment considered to be the richest repository of bio-
diversity in the region and one of the most important sources of oxygen
and water for the entire planet. Under these circumstances and with
the support of local non-indigenous populations through marches
and regional strikes, Amazonian indigenous peoples managed to
forge the broadest coalition against neoliberalism in over a decade.
As a result of massive actions and demonstrations, Congress was
forced to reject the most damaging provisions of the legislation. The
alliance established by Amazonian peoples with indigenous peoples
12. Esteva, “Oaxaca: The Path to Radical Democracy” (note 4).

13. Mario Murillo, “The 2008 Indigenous and Popular Minga in Colombia: Civil Resist-
ance and Alternative Communications Practices,” S&D #51 (November 2009).
elsewhere in the country and with other subaltern peoples will be

pivotal for the consolidation of a counter-hegemonic bloc of forces,
for the re-foundation of Peru’s nation state, and for the re-imagining
of a strategy of development respectful of nature and aimed at the
well-being of the majority.14
While anti-systemic and anti-capitalist impulses are a constant
among these different movements, the more immediate source of
their radicalism can be found in the rich traditions of resistance, mobil-
ization and rebellion of each Latin American country. In order to deci-
pher the “genetic code” shaping subaltern rebelliousness, one must
look at the ways in which popular classes remember and register
their history, which in turn feeds their cultures and their traditions
of struggle. Plunder and violence have stood at the center of Latin
American history from the seventeenth century European colonization
to the current neoliberal age. The widely accepted and commonly used
description of the neoliberal onslaught in Latin America as a “third
conquest” had its origins among indigenous organizations in the
mid-1980s.
In a similar fashion to what Marx called original or primitive
accumulation, plunder stands also at the core of the process character-
ized by David Harvey as “appropriation by dispossession” – the defin-
ing characteristic of neoliberal modernity. As Marx put it, the
“discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement
and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that conti-
nent,” together with the colonization of Africa and India, were
“pivotal to the primitive accumulation sustaining the creation of a
world capitalist market.” In Europe primitive accumulation led to the
almost total privatization of the “common goods” (land, forest, water
and pastures) and the obliteration of the peasantry as an independent
class. In contrast, the process in what today is Latin America was
rather incomplete. Even though the original inhabitants of the region
lost important resources to mines, plantations and rural estates, the
loss was not total. Latin America – together with Africa – has again
become a battleground for the control of strategic resources. Following
multinational capitalist pillaging of public services in the 1980s to the
1990s, the recent frantic race for control of Latin American bio-resources
underlines neoliberalism’s second stage. With the most coveted
resources – water, minerals, fossil fuels, forests, bio-diversity, and
land for bio-fuels – located in indigenous and public-domain
14. Gerardo Rénique, “Indigenous Amazonian Uprising Against Neoliberalism: Law of

the Jungle in Peru,” S&D #51 (November 2009).
territories, capitalism continually reasserts its inherently colonialist

character. The defense of basic resources against such appropriation
has become the rallying point of popular democratic resistance. With
almost 120 major conflicts affecting 150 communities, dam construc-
tion, mining, and oil projects currently constitute the major source of
social discontent in Latin America.
In the present historical conjuncture overdetermined by a looming
capitalist crisis, Latin American movements from below have opened
new horizons of hope. Their embracing of cultural diversity; their
amalgamation of collective interest and democracy; and their adoption
of indigenous communitarian ethical values and principles, constitute
a radical departure from both parliamentary and traditional “revolu-
tionary” approaches premised on the special entitlement of leaders
to speak for their constituents. These principles and practices offer
an innovative and creative model of political community premised
on people’s ability to speak to each other – a radical form of democracy
that requires direct grassroots participation in decision-making. Privi-
leging unity of action over political homogeneity, and diversity over
uniformity, these movements not only have emerged as a pole of
attraction for anti-systemic forces but also constitute a challenge to
the practices of the “old left,” the “old labor movement,” and “new
social movements” theories. Collective participation, understanding
of leadership as service, and decision by consensus challenge the
top-down organization and “democratic centralism” of traditional
left-wing parties and show as obsolete labor organizations and forms
of struggles suited to increasing the bargaining power of unions
whose structure mirrored the unitary and centralizing logic of the
state they were struggling against. In this changing scenario, subaltern
insurgency and its simultaneous deployment of direct action, reform,
and rebellion have also proved pivotal for the articulation of networks
of resistance, of broader oppositional alliances, and counterhegemonic
organizational and programmatic alternatives.15
Elite use of uprisings, and popular response

Ordinary people’s capacity to govern themselves during uprisings
consistently produced democratic forms of deliberation that made
intelligent and reasonable decisions. The wisdom of ordinary people
may surpass that of any elite, but the rich and powerful are often
15. Raul Zibechi, “Subterranean Echoes: Resistance and Politics ‘Desde el Sótano,’”
S&D #39 (November 2005); Rénique, Latin America: The New Neoliberalism.
able to use uprisings to consolidate their hold on people’s lives and

resources. In the name of individual liberty and “neoliberalism,” billio-
naires appropriate as their private property the vast social wealth pro-
duced by generations of laborers. In the name of democracy, politicians
make militarized nation-states into provinces of power that stand
above ordinary citizens – and sometimes destroy human lives by the
thousands. As political leaders pontificate “solutions” like cutbacks
of funds for education and pensions, they squander precious resources
by waging “just” wars and “saving” giant corporations. The corporate
mass media’s constant messages of fear serve to discipline us to accept
wars as necessary (even “humanitarian”), while billions of dollars of
advertising seek to channel our life-forces into consumer choices.
Uprisings may be powerful vehicles for overthrowing entrenched
dictatorships, but they are also useful to global transnational elites. The
world capitalist system has long been adept at riding waves of upris-
ings to stabilize its operations by using “new” regimes as its public
face. The wave of Asian People Power uprisings from the Philippines
in 1986 to Indonesia in 1998 helped to incorporate more of the world
into the orbit of Japanese and US banks. The South Korean working
class’s heroic struggles for union rights became useful to neoliberal
economic penetration of the country.16 In democratic South Korea
and Taiwan, as in the Philippines after Marcos and elsewhere, newly
elected administrations accelerated neoliberal programs that permitted
foreign investors to penetrate previously closed markets and to disci-
pline workforces of millions of people in order to extract greater
profits.
The advent of progressive and left-wing regimes in Latin America,
while substantially transforming relations with US imperialism, also
brought new challenges to subaltern movements. Not only did these
movements lose to the state their central role as agents of change, but
more importantly, they saw their political autonomy severely under-
mined. Incorporation of popular movements into state structures,
social programs, and ruling party clientelistic networks led to fractures
and splits among subaltern movements, frustrating some who initially
supported progressive regimes.
Intelligence services of the US government have in some ways
proven more skillful in interpreting and harnessing the energy of
popular uprisings for their own purposes than have revolutionary
parties and organizations. Working behind the scenes, US agencies
16. See Loren Goldner, http://libcom.org/history/korean-working-class-mass-strike-

casualization-retreat-1987-2007.
have mobilized NGOs with great effect. In the 1986 Philippines upris-
ing, the CIA maintained 24-hour direct contact with Reform the Armed
Forces leaders and provided them real-time intelligence on the move-
ments of Marcos’s troops. The relationship of the US to recent waves of
democratic insurgencies is a topic scarcely revealed in existing studies.
The insidious and furtive interventions of the CIA and the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), to say nothing of the promulgation
of corporate interests by George Soros, are relatively untouched areas
of research.17 Beginning in the late 1990s, “color revolutions” (some-
times called “velvet revolutions”)18 broke out in a number of countries,
including Slovakia (1998), Serbia (2000), Belarus (2001 and 2006),
Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), Kyrgyzstan (2005), Uzbekistan (2005),
Azerbaijan (2005), and Kazakhstan (2005). Coming as they did in stra-
tegic areas surrounding Russia, and involving remarkably similar
tactics, many questions about Western involvement have been raised.
Are these Color Revolutions NATO’s Fifth Column?
CIA involvement in Eastern European struggles against communism
has a long history. Among the many agencies which acted against
regimes unfriendly to US corporate interests during the war on commun-
ism were Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Europe. In
1973, the CIA engineered protests by housewives banging pot and
pans in the streets of Santiago and encouraged a strike by truck drivers
to destabilize Allende’s socialist government. Unrecognized US
intervention sometimes obscures its bloody imposition of neoliberalism
in Chile in 1973, in Thailand in 1976, and in Korea and Turkey in 1980.
Today, direct CIA involvement in regime change is often unnecessary,
since other government agencies have taken up its projects.
Since the end of the Cold War, US entities like NED, Heritage
House, AFL-CIO, and Freedom House, have stepped up their activities
in countries near Russia. They helped create a web of “NGOs” that are
increasingly dependent upon government funds for the bulk of their
incomes. In Central and Eastern Europe from 1990 to 1999, “democracy
assistance” grants, many from the US Agency for International
Development, totaled almost $1.5 billion.19 After the appearance of
democratic movements throughout the world, global capital sought
17. An important exception to such neglect is William Blum’s online “Anti-Empire

Report.”
18. See Timothy Garton Ash, “Velvet Revolution: The Prospects,” The New York Review
of Books, vol. 56, no. 19, December 3, 2009.
19. Sarah E. Mendelson and John Glenn, eds., The Power and Limits of NGOs: A Critical
Look at Building Democracy in Eastern Europe and Eurasia (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 2002), 5, 191–2.
to use them for their own purposes. Massive protests complete with
color-coded shirts and banners were orchestrated and financed from
outside the country in question. Such manipulated demonstrations,
based as they are upon hatred, have nothing in common with eros
effect uprisings, which are inspired by people’s self-determined needs.
The more recent form of US intervention has been to foster dissent
through NGOs and civil society as well as to bombard target countries
with propaganda broadcast by US/UK media. In Iran after the 2009
presidential election, opposition forces went into the streets to
contest election results, but long before that occurred, they had a
series of meetings with Western foundations. The Iranian Mehr
News agency reported:
Half a year before the Iranian presidential elections, the CIA was preparing an
orange revolution scenario. CIA agents met Iranian oppositionists and gave
them instructions in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kuwait, and the UAE [United Arab
Emirates]. The Woodrow Wilson Center and Soros Foundation are accused
of setting up an Iranian revolution plan and providing $32 million funding
to fulfill the strategy.20
A decade after its successful appearance in the global political scenario,

early progressive defiance of the “Washington Consensus” has given
way to what Walden Bello characterizes as neostructuralism, a techno-
cratic project involving higher spending on social programs and edu-
cation as a means to increase the productivity of the poor and, more
importantly, as an instrument of subaltern political control. Although
social programs help alleviate poverty, they do not transform the
dominant patterns of inequality and concentration of wealth. Adopting
the language of social movements and through the implementation of
“participatory” local policies, reforms are patterned to undermine the
networks of solidarity, reciprocity, and mutual assistance created by
the subaltern to survive and resist neoliberalism.21
With the Cold War structure of global domination now in disarray,
Latin America – together with Africa – has again become a
20. PanArmenian.net, June 29, 2009 as quoted in Rick Rozoff, “West’s Afghan War and
Drive into Caspian Sea Basin” (July 10, 2009), http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
stopnato/message/40624.
21. Walden Bello, “The Post-Washington Dissenssus,” Foreign Policy in Focus, Septem-
ber 24, 2007, and “The Coming Capitalist Consensus,” Foreign Policy in Focus,
December 27, 2008; Marisela Svampa, “The End of Kirchnerism,” New Left Review,
53, September – October 2008; Francisco de Olivera, “The Duckbilled Platypus,”
New Left Review 24, November– December 2003; Raul Zibechi, “Governments and
Movements: Autonomy or new Forms of Domination?” S&D #53, July 2010;
Rénique, Latin America: The New Neoliberalism and Popular Mobilization.
battleground for the control of strategic resources. Following multina-

tional capitalist pillaging of public services in the 1980s to the 1990s, the
recent frantic race for control of Latin American bio-resources under-
lines neoliberalism’s second stage. With the most coveted resources
(water, minerals, fossil fuels, forests, bio-diversity, and land for bio-
fuels) located in indigenous and public-domain territories, capitalism
continually reasserts its inherently colonialist character. Under the
control of transnational capital, extractive industries act as a siphon
of profits and destroyer of natural resources – including the lives of
workers and the existence of nearby communities. Concessions to
foreign corporations of resources resting on public lands, national
reserves, and indigenous territories not only undermine national
sovereignty and biodiversity but also threaten the very existence of
indigenous peoples.
The indigenous peoples, however, are rising to the challenge. From
the Amazonian lowlands to the highlands of Peru, Guatemala, Colom-
bia, Brazil, northern Argentina and southern Chile, they are at the fore-
front of resistance. They have taken over the role of the left as the most
important voice in defense of public resources and national sover-
eignty. Their struggles have also brought to the surface Latin American
nation-states’ legacy of colonial oppression and racism. By calling into
question the role of capital at a moment when the overlapping environ-
mental, cultural, food, and social exclusion crises threaten the survival
of the planet, Latin American socio-environmental mobilizations stand
at the forefront of the global antisystemic struggle.
The emergence of a global struggle

Although most theorists delineate social movements on the basis of
nation and region, we understand insurgencies today as rooted in a
global conflict that will only grow more acutely polarized in the
decades ahead. Long divided by capitalism’s uneven development as
well as by national and cultural divisions, the subjective forces of
world revolution increasingly resemble each other and focus on the
same enemy: global capitalism. A long historical upsurge has created
the current global confrontation. The roots of the Occupy Movement
in the US can be found in the food riots against IMF-imposed austerity
programs in Africa and Latin America in the 1970s. In Berlin in 1988,
tens of thousands of people militantly confronted a gathering of the
global financial elite and compelled the world’s bankers to adjourn a
day earlier than planned. Huge protests against corporate-imposed
measures erupted in Caracas (1989) and Seoul (1997). All over the
world, grassroots movements for global economic justice and peace

confronted elite summits in the 1990s, making such demands as
ending structural adjustment programs, canceling the national debt
of poor countries, and abolishing the WTO, IMF, and World Bank.
Beginning with “global carnivals” in 1998 and 1999, activists in
dozens of countries synchronized actions to protest elite meetings. In
1999, Seattle’s exhilarating victory in halting WTO meetings broke
new ground when Teamsters and Turtles, workers and ecologists,
Lesbian Avengers and Zapatista partisans converged for unified
action. The worldwide coordination of protests that day involved
actions in many other cities around the world.22 After Seattle, ordinary
people in places such as Cochabamba, Bolivia (2000) and Arequipa,
Peru (2002) fought back against attempted privatization of communal
natural resources and won significant victories. All over the world,
whenever elite summits took place, tens of thousands of protesters
showed up, including at meetings of the:
. World Bank in Washington DC (April 2000)
. Asian Development Bank in Chiang Mai, Thailand (May 2000)
. World Economic Forum in Melbourne, Australia (September 2000)
. World Bank and IMF in Prague (September 2000)
. World Economic Forum in Davos (January 2001)23
. Summit of the Americas in Quebec City (April 2001)24
. European Union summit in Gothenburg (June 2001)
. G8 meetings in Genoa (July 2001)
The cumulative effect of this wave of summit confrontations was to
pose the question of the system’s irrationality and raise the need for an
alternative, thereby stimulating the many Social Forums and other
types of organizing. As a result of popular opposition to their rule,
world elites were compelled to schedule meetings in remote places,
far from people’s capacity to travel, such as the Qatar WTO ministerial
in November 2001, or the G8 summit in 2002 in the high Rockies.
Although the Occupy movement did not emerge until almost a
decade later, its aspirations and form of organization grew organically
from the movement’s earlier incarnations. Such moments of global
22. See Mark Laskey, “The Globalization of Resistance,” in Confronting Capitalism: Dis-
patches from a Global Movement, eds. Eddie Yuen, Daniel Burton-Rose and George
Katsiaficas (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2004).
23. Some 20,000 people simultaneously gathered in Porto Alegre, Brazil for the first
World Social Forum.
24. See McDonald Stainsby, “Quebec City: Before and after the Storming of the Wall,”
S&D #30 (Fall 2001).
confrontation arise rarely.25 By becoming conscious of their history and

significance, we can prepare to broaden their future impact. Revolu-
tionary organizations that disregard such moments do so at the risk
of assuring their own irrelevance.
The twentieth century will be remembered for its horrific wars and
mass starvation amid great prosperity. It will also be known as a time
when human beings began a struggle to transform the entire world
system. In the past three decades, millions around the world have
waged a protracted uprising against capitalism and war, confronting
elite meetings of the institutions of the world economic system – practical
targets whose universal meaning is profoundly indicative of people’s
yearnings for a new world economic system. Similarly, without tightly
disciplined organizations, as many as thirty million people around the
world took to the streets on February 15, 2003 to protest the second US
war on Iraq. As the global movement becomes increasingly aware of its
own power, its strategy and impact are certain to become more focused.
By creatively synthesizing direct-democratic forms of decision-making
and militant popular resistance, people’s movements will continue to
develop along the historical lines revealed in 1968 and subsequent
Asian uprisings.
Looking into the future, it appears that both objective and subjective
global forces are becoming favorable to a global movement that can
effect systemic change. The objective factor is evident in the financial
crisis that nearly toppled the US banking and automobile industries in
2008 and threatens European economic stability today. The subjective
factors have developed along parallel lines. In the 1970s and 1980s,
African and Latin American movements arose against neoliberalism,
with anti-IMF/World Bank actions forming the most significant epi-
sodes of protest. In East and South Asia during the 1980s and early
1990s, popular uprisings erupted against entrenched local dictatorships
– against what the global corporate media called “crony capitalism.”
These uprisings successfully dislodged dictators in the Philippines,
South Korea, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand and Indonesia. As global
banks (mainly Japanese and US-based) subsequently took over larger
shares of these countries’ finances and industry, Asian movements
increasingly focused their opposition on global neoliberalism rather
than on local “crony” regimes. At the same time that movements
25. Globally focused waves of protests are quite rare; less focused rebellions against
specific policies, such as wars or global austerity, are more common. Fort a recent
wave of strikes against austerity, see Steve Colatrella, “In Our Hands is Placed a
Power: Austerity, Worldwide Strike Wave, and the Crisis of Governance,” S&D
#57 (November 2011), 82–106.
around the world have a common focus, so too do they exhibit similar
subjective orientations to autonomy, direct democracy, international
solidarity, the eros effect, and occupation of public space.
As we move into the twenty-first century, the Arab Spring pro-
vides empirical evidence of the growing consciousness of ordinary
people who go into the streets to change history. In 1968, “the whole
world was watching.” Today, it is increasingly the case that the
whole world is awakening. Visible in Asia’s uprisings, Latin American
insurgencies, and the alterglobalization movement, ordinary citizens’
aspirations for people power and more democracy have emerged
everywhere. Although seemingly marginalized, the international
movement today involves more activists than ever before. While the
airwaves broadcast a version of history that emphasizes the need for
central authorities and social conformity, beneath the radar, people’s
understanding and self-guided actions constitute a powerful under-
current. As we become increasingly aware of our own power and
strategic capacities, our future impact can become more focused and
synchronized. One tendency we can project into the future is the
continuing activation of a global eros effect, in which synchronous
actions unify people across the world.
The real axis of evil – the IMF, WB, and WTO – will not willingly
relinquish its grip on humanity’s vast wealth. Globally synchronized
struggles by hundreds of millions of people are needed to create
lives worthy of being called “free.” Recent Asian and Latin American
insurgencies, especially the Gwangju Uprising, the Zapatista Juntas
de Buen Gobierno, the APPO Uprising, Peru’s Amazonian Insurgency
among others, will help inform future uprisings – which, however
reluctantly undertaken, are necessitated by the systemic crisis ten-
dencies of the existing world system. Sad and joyous, full of suffering
while bringing forth tears of happiness, uprisings are moments of
extreme desperation, during which human hearts act according to
people’s fondest dreams. By understanding these dreams and remain-
ing true to them, we become capable of a future of freedom.

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Socialism and Democracy

ISSN: 0885-4300 (Print) 1745-2635 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csad20

A New Stage of Insurgencies: Latin American

George Katsiaficas & Gerardo Rénique

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2012.722370

Published online: 22 Nov 2012.

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Grassroots insurgencies are today multiplying across the planet.

Socialism and Democracy, Vol.26, No.3, November 2012, pp.14–34

movements differ strikingly, and their short-term outcomes have little

Despite apparent divergences, these movements are strikingly

Uprisings and occupations in Latin America

strategy of both indigenous communities and peasant villages against

unemployment, and the elimination of workers’ rights in most

Anti-systemic movements: eros effect and the question of

9. See “A Biological Foundation for Socialism?” in Marcuse, Essay on Liberation (Boston

So impressed was Choi with this solidarity that he added,

The empirical history of crowd behavior in the late twentieth century –

10. Choi Jungwoon, The Gwangju Uprising, 134.

the eros effect arise. The Zapatistas’ actions beginning on January 1,

managed to expand the reach of APPO as an effective subaltern oppo-

12. Esteva, “Oaxaca: The Path to Radical Democracy” (note 4).

elsewhere in the country and with other subaltern peoples will be

14. Gerardo Rénique, “Indigenous Amazonian Uprising Against Neoliberalism: Law of

territories, capitalism continually reasserts its inherently colonialist

Elite use of uprisings, and popular response

able to use uprisings to consolidate their hold on people’s lives and

16. See Loren Goldner, http://libcom.org/history/korean-working-class-mass-strike-

17. An important exception to such neglect is William Blum’s online “Anti-Empire

A decade after its successful appearance in the global political scenario,

battleground for the control of strategic resources. Following multina-

The emergence of a global struggle

world, grassroots movements for global economic justice and peace

confrontation arise rarely.25 By becoming conscious of their history and

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