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the Constitution that established the right of Mother Nature ("Pachamama") to exist and to prosper apart from human needs and desires--the first such provision in the world. I can't remember right now what the exact vote was, in favor of this Constitution, but it was HUGE--over 70%.
Protecting the environment is a VERY BIG leftist issue in South America. It has been pivotal in a number of leftist democracy movements that overturned a century of rightwing rule--Paraguay and Bolivia being prime examples. This is in part due to the influence of the Indigenous, campesinos (peasant farmers) and farm workers, who are the most vulnerable to corporate pollution (for instance, toxic pesticide spraying) and whose livelihoods depend upon clean water, unpolluted farm land, healthy forests and wildlife, climate stability, and other environmental factors--and who have been COMPLETELY DISREGARDED and often brutally repressed by rightwing/fascist rulers in collusion with the U.S. government. The left includes these poor farmers, farm workers and Indigenous tribes all over Latin America, because the left is democratic. You really have to understand that the leftist movement in Latin America is NOT the same, in any respect whatsoever, as the communist revolution in Russia, Eastern Europe or China. It is DEMOCRATIC. Thus, the desire of MOST people for a healthy environment, and the leadership of campesinos, farm workers and the Indigenous--who favor organic agriculture and, in the case of the Indigenous, whose religion requires organic agriculture (reverence for Pachamama)--are INCLUDED, and CAN BE HEARD.
The U.S. government promotes the 'right' of its corporate puppetmasters to destroy the earth for profit, provides rightwing/fascist governments with military aid (the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs") to enforce corporate rule and actively promotes U.S. toxic agriculture as part of its corporate welfare program. The U.S. 'solution' to the drug problem by toxic pesticide spraying of small farms--where the farmer may grow a few coca leaves for local use (it's an indigenous medicine) but who mostly grows FOOD--poisoning the food crops, the land, the farm animals, and the children and adults living there--was THE issue that catapulted Evo Morales into a political career that ended up with his election as president of Bolivia. He remains, even now, the head of the coca leaf farmers union. The struggle against U.S. toxic pesticide spraying was how he got beaten up by the police early in his labor organizing career!
The environment is at the heart of the Bolivarian Revolution--even in much more industrialized Venezuela, where the Chavez government is converting Venezuelan agriculture to organic, has been responsive to Indigenous concerns about mining (shut the mining down!), and also revolted against U.S. "war on drugs" toxic pesticide spraying. Monsanto 'frankenseeds' is another such issue, as well as multinational corporations gobbling up land (dispossessing small organic campesinos from their land--as is occurring massively in Colombia), and conversion of farm land to biofuel production. Brazil's leftist movement (Lula da Silva's Workers' Party) has a much more mixed record on the environment than the Bolivarians, but it does include a component of environmentalists (which includes farm workers, campesinos and the Indigenous), and it has been far, far more protective of the Amazon than rightwing governments.
As for Central America, I know that land dispossession is a big issue in the Mexican leftist movement. (Land dispossession of peasant farmers = land acquisition by toxic corporate ag). And forest restoration is a big issue in Nicaragua's leftist government. I would guess that the environment is an important issue--and in some cases a hugely important issue-- wherever leftist democracy movements have succeeded in electing a leftist government, and in countries where a strong leftist movement has developed (as in Mexico). I don't know all the details of all of them. But in the situations that I do know quite a bit about, the environment is at the heart of most issues: who owns the land, what may be done to the land, what the land may be used for.
I think that North Americans are pretty much living in "La La Land" on environmental issues. We ONCE had a democracy here that was responsive to the 80% pro-environment American public. I don't think that that percentage has changed, but the government HAS changed. Multinational corporations now rule in the U.S., and their method of ruling here is to create the ILLUSION of democracy, and the ILLUSION of environmental protection, while they completely sabotage environmental regulation and the will of the people. I have particular expertise on forest issues, and I can tell you, without reservation, that forest regulation in California, for instance--touted as the most stringent in the world-- is WORTHLESS. It has been privatized and entirely sabotaged. Not just poor. Not just spotty. WORTHLESS!
Shocking, eh? I can give you chapter and verse on this one--if you want me to go into it. And I don't think it's unique at all. I think it is pervasive that U.S. environmental regulation, once the strongest in the world, has largely become an illusion. It looks good on paper. It ain't real. And we are in extreme peril because of this. For instance, the "food chain" that supports life itself has been severely frayed and is in peril of being BROKEN--by a combination of rape of the land with pesticides, chemical fertilizers and monoculture, and deregulation of the quality, and the genetic viability, of food. There are alarm signals all over the place--bee die-off's, frog die-off's, drying up of aquifers, our own obesity and lack of good nutrition, and on and on. The will of the people has been OVERRIDDEN.
In Latin America, the will of the people has been overridden for centuries--mostly OUR doing (or that of our corporations)--so they have a lot of problems to fix--Chevron-Texaco's vast oil pollution in Ecuador being one of them--and some countries are just now attempting to "bootstrap" their poor populations with development, and will be facing critical decisions as they do this. But I think that their rejection of U.S. corporate rule and the U.S. "war on drugs" is a good sign. They have the chance to do what we would LIKE to do--start all over again, when the U.S. was still forested, when its waters were still pristine, when its land was still fertile, when its wildlife was still abundant, when its apples still had many varieties, when its tomatoes still tasted like tomatoes and not cardboard, before its people became sick with corporatized Frankenfood.
Ecuador is still, on the whole, a paradise. And there are still regions, mostly in South America, where Mother Nature has survived, largely in tact--because of their remoteness or for other reasons. Now is the critical moment for them to be saved and for people--the people there and the people here--to find a new (old?) way of living in harmony with Nature. Many Indigenous elders have been warning us for some time that Mother Nature's condition is grave, due to the last hundred years of industrialization and now globalization. The leftist democracy movement in Latin America is the FIRST TIME they have had a voice, BECAUSE this movement is DEMOCRATIC--unlike what happened in Russia, Eastern Europe and China. Interestingly, Cuba has been the exception, as to communist governments. It has already converted to organic agriculture, and this may be something of a measure of how democratic Cuba actually is. (It's really a hard government to categorize--part monarchy, part democracy, part "salsa"--art, music, Caribbean culture very big--with remnants of Soviet-style central control, etc.). These days I think that organic agriculture is almost a definition of democracy--perhaps because it is so fundamentally opposed to corporatization and all of its ills, at the very core of human life: Nature and its "food chain."
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