Mario Vargas Llosa 'unleashes a torrent of slander' against indigenous people!

This is an open letter criticising Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian novelist who recently won the Noble Prize, from Hugo Blanco the indigeneous and ecosocialist leader, who recently toured Britain and several other European countries.

Llosa, once a leftist, who wrote a novel based on the stories about a Trotskyist leader, (like Hugo Blanco in the 1960s), has recently attacked the indigenous people in Peru and ran as a centre-right presidential candidate.

I have enjoyed Llosa's novel's in the past but he defends those who attack the indigenous and labels indigenous as backward.


November 2010

Dear Señor Mario Vargas Llosa:

The Nobel Prize awarded to you represents a neo-liberal blow to indigenous people, yet it is not the greates blow they have faced.

There are daily blows within a global system governed by large multinational companies against these populations, namely the depletion of natural resources in their areas of life, which means death for them.

The attack is manifold, it will suffice to mention just a few examples: The introduction of open-cast mines, stealing water from agriculture and the poison, killing plants, fish, soil and human beings. The extraction of hydrocarbons with similar effects. The installation of hydropower for mining, stealing water from agriculture and causing flooding. The felling of the forest for logging, ranching or biofuel plantations, which due to heavy rains in the area causes desertification. Agribusiness that due to monoculture and intensive use of agrochemicals, kills the land. Global warming caused by the emission of greenhouse gases raging floods and landslides, mountains, the killing of streams, reduces the volume of rivers, dilutes glaciers, islands submerged, causing very hot summers and very cold winters.

These attacks are not only against indigenous peoples, but against all humanity, because we all live on what nature gives us, what happens is that indigenous people are directly affected by it and so are the first to react, giving their lives to the brutal onslaught of the system, making them the heroes of humanity.

You, on more than one occasion have defended predatory companies against the indigenous.

Just look at two examples:


Environment

On June 5, 2009, World Day of environmental protection was chosen by the government of Alan García to massacre over 200 indigenous (not 10 which is the official figure repeated by you) defending the Amazon rainforest which are the lungs of the world.

This slaughter, imprisonment and prosecution of numerous victims of the attack, were met with massive protests in the Peruvian capital and other cities, voices of protest arose in different parts of the world (of course you were not among those who protested), the brothers of the Amazons, had a powerful influence on people from the central rainforests to Lima.

Against that, the government was forced to retreat and repealed two of the most ferocious of the predatory Decrees (which were also illegal because they go against the right to consultation of indigenous peoples for anything that has to do with their land recognized by the ILO Convention 169, which is Peruvian constitutional law passed by Congress).

What was your attitude? Unlike most of the Peruvian people, you regretted the repeal, you wrote "Pyrrhic victory", saying that Peruvians future governments will not dare "go back to putting your hand in the Amazon to encourage private investment and economic development in this region," " The decrees were demonized in the background pretty well oriented. Pursuing an urgent need: to attract private investment and technology into a region that has large reserves of gas, oil and many minerals .... "" This just given up on a suicidal Amazonian communities that followed the reactionary slogans Alberto Pizango " . On the contrary, Pizango obeyed the orders given by the Amazonian population, a style of democracy that you will never understand, "Democrat" Vargas Llosa.

You use the same language as the mainstream media in the hands of predatory multinational corporations.

You launched against "the stupid lies under which those decrees were part of the Free Trade Agreement between Peru and the United States." Those "stupid lies" are in the preambles of decrees and were touted by Minister Mercedes Araoz.

It does not stop there, you consider Amazon people mentally backwards, it is inconceivable that the resistance may have been intended by them, you said it must have been instigated by Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales.

You do not waste the opportunity to praise the two governments most backward and who murderer the most indigenous in South America: Peru and Colombia.


Democratic collective organization

Seminar on Threats to Democracy in Latin America: Terrorism, Weakness of the State of Rights and populism, an event held in Bogota (Colombia had to be) for 19 and 22 November 2009

Your words:

"Development and civilization are incompatible with certain social phenomena and the main one is collectivism. No collectivist society or impregnated with that culture is an institution that develops, modernizes and reaches civilization ... Socialism, Nazism and collectivist fascism are the phenomena of the past. Today it is expressed through nationalism and religious fundamentalism. The phenomenon is springing up in Latin America in a very sinuous and magazines with some clothes that do not seem offensive but prestigious ... In Peru is bursting with two or three brothers in the name of that collective identity, indigenous identity, indigenous, genuine, true of Peru, has launched a campaign when one examines it rationally seems to be silly, almost comic, but it touches a nerve center called the spirit of the tribe that never disappears even in societies that are more advanced in the way of civilization... The Indian of the 20's that seemed to have left behind is now what is behind phenomena like Mr. Evo Morales in Bolivia. In Ecuador they have been operating and also creating a true political and social disorder. The indigenous people in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia are causing a real political and social disorder, and therefore must be fought ... I know very little of Ecuador what is happening now ... If we want to choose development and civilization and morality, we must resolutely fight these outbreaks of collectivism ... I think within the indigenous movement there is a deeply disturbing element that appeals to base instincts, to the worst instincts of the individual and distrust of the other, which is different. Then they withdraw into themselves. "


You understand clearly and correctly that the indigenous community is an essential tool for the defense of Mother Earth. So the system run by predatory multinational companies understands that the attack on nature must be accompanied by the attack on the indigenous community. Where there are indigenous people in every continent, there are indigenous, truly democratic bodies which represents the community, not the individual, as in "democratic" society today, where they represent the interests of big business.

Real democracy that is manifested in the agreement of collective protest actions in plebiscites as Tambogrande, Ayabaca, Huancabamba and Islay in Peru, Andalgalá in Argentina, where over 90% voted for democratically life itself, not mine. " It is that democracy that is terrified of the system, so Fujimori in Peru and Salinas in Mexico almost simultaneously used laws against the indigenous community, so of Decree Law Alan García some go against nature and others and the community Indian. So you speak with horror of the "tribal spirit" of "the hive", "the nest", realizing that the strength of the indigenous movement to protect nature against the depredations of big business is the indigenous community.

That "political and social disorder is the breakdown of" order "companies need to ravage predatory nature with its actions to the" progress "which is on the one hand the progress of their income millionaires and the other the path to extinction of the human species ..

You attack the collectivism in the name of defending the individual. Collectivism does not deny the individuality, which must be respected. Individuality is crushed by the market fundamentalism which implements "fashion" forcing everyone to abide by (McDonald's, Coca Cola), the least subject to this crushing are indigenous peoples, among which each town is dresses differently.

The Society that you defend crushes individuality and proclaims that selfishness is supreme. Collectivist culture is human solidarity, unlike that which you defend, which is extremely selfish. The best example of this is that large multinational companies are run by people who know that with the runaway greenhouse gas emissions are leading to the extinction of the human species, but they do not care about their grandchildren and their children, but meet the sacred neoliberal commandment, to make as much money as possible in the shortest time possible.

The sentence that you make to the Indian democracy has been sufficiently well replicated by Saramago

"Somebody has been said that the indigenous movement is a danger to democracy seems to me incredible. How smart can a head out a statement as monstrous as that. "

To answer "those who say that the indigenous movement in America is the greatest enemy of democracy" "I what I propose to you that American Indians, is that you may become harbingers of democracy. If you you lift the banner of democracy, others may learn. "

The indigenous community, without giving the name, has long been raising the flag of true democracy, is taking further the higher levels, with the community of communities in the Cauca, Colombia, in the Kuna of Panama Islands and more degree in Zapatista territory in Chiapas, where 16 years indigenous govern by the "Good Government" which are rotated, whose members may be revoked at any time and not earning a dime (as in indigenous communities) by perform this function so it's no coincidence that you wrote "The Other Side of Paradise" unleashing a torrent of slander against these Indians, understands very well the danger that large companies means their example to other peoples.

The words from you in the seminar were also refuted by indigenous leaders.

Leonidas Iza, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), "Vargas Losa is thinking of the previous century and believes that we must continue to marginalized indigenous. If there is hunger, poverty, inequality, we can not be quiet. " "If democracy means equality and equity, we just pursue a true democracy."

Luis Macas, founder of the CONAIE, "Vargas Llosa supports an exclusionary power, similar to that proposed by U.S. President George Bush, in a unipolar world. The Indians instead propose another kind of power, which is the "Ushay" in Quechua, which is to improve living conditions, the ability to develop ourselves collectively, since the contribution of the different spaces. "

Deputy Ricardo Ulcuango: "Civilization is to let three or four profit from the gas business in Bolivia, with privatization in Peru or Ecuador's oil, is polluting nature until it dries or sell water from the rivers pay better? "

Humberto Cholango ECUARUNARI, the largest organization of CONAIE comprising the Indians of the sierra: Are positions like that, "they leave no progress in the consolidation of Latin America more democratic, more tolerant, more participatory and more integrated recognizing the diversity of each country with all the actors who built this continent. "

As seen, they have a different concept of freedom and democracy that you, who says: "The fight for freedom compels us to take sides boldly, without subterfuge, for the open and democratic societies of the free world whose leadership exercised United States. "


Racism

You enjoy an intense racism.

You can tell when encouraged to overcome indigenous to abandon their culture.

Just read his novel "Death in the Andes", a book against the "mountain" (in coastal Peru is a racism against indigenous regionalism regionally identified as living in the mountains).

When the Cape coastal mountain tells the guard that "deserves to be coastal," it thank you. The culmination of the novel is the finding that the mountain is a ritual cannibalism. I am a ham and

all my life I have not seen anything like it. What I see is what I said above, that the culture that you advocate is leading to the extermination of humanity, does not eat it, is simply killing.

In my book "We the Indians" I devoted a chapter ("The Indian culture and neoliberalism" - José María Arguedas and Mario Vargas Llosa) to defend my "Papa" José María Arguedas his attacks in his book "Utopia Archaic. " I will not repeat here what is said there, I only mention the presentation made to the second edition: "This article was written in March 1999. From then to now it has developed a wave of indigenous movements in the continent and a disastrous crisis of neoliberalism. This shows that "the archaic utopia" is not that of "José María Arguedas indigenismo" but beloved neoliberalism Vargas Llosa, who remains one of their gurus. "


Uchuraqay In January 83 journalists were killed in August in the community of Uchuraqay, Ayacucho.

The repressive government that gave power to the genocidal policy of the Department General Clemente Noel (I was suspended for 120 days from the Chamber of Deputies for saying this and have refused to withdraw that description), appointed a committee chaired by you to cover up the responsibility of army in the crime. You fulfilled that role perfectly, blaming the villagers collectively for the deaths, dismissing reports of anthropologists, lawyers, linguists and psychoanalysts.

The Commission for Truth and Reconciliation and other organizations defending human rights report that you are limited to collecting the testimony and evidence given by the soldiers involved in the crime, which exonerated the military of course, eliminating the rest. Applying the racism shown in "Death in the Andes" said to have been the villagers who killed the journalists and piously said that "we were all guilty" for not "civilized."

They say that after some time a court found evidence of the military implications, and that you stated that its conclusion had done for the "sake of democracy."

I mention this because some people present you as "defender of human rights."

Relatives of the dead journalists feel disgust for you because of your work.
Conclusion

Fortunately, the world's indigenous peoples inspire increased respect from other sectors of the global population to be at the forefront of the defense of nature for all humanity and to practice true democracy for development in their organizations, showing the only way possible to ensure the survival of the species: that is the whole of society who govern themselves and determine which is the industrial facilities may continue to exist without jeopardizing the survival of the species.

I could see this from my recent European speaking tour, talking about precisely thissubject.

The top down undemocratic and selfish nature of large multinational companies so you do not know why you call "democracy" has fewer admirers.

No wonder you have received the Nobel Prize, Obama also received the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting the war in Afghanistan.

I think Alfred Nobel, who felt guilty for his role as an entrepreneur who became rich through the production of dynamite used in mining and war, would not be satisfied with two winners.

Hugo Blanco