¡Adelante! The New Rural Activism in the Americas

...Is it simply the reaction of a dying class, the "last gasp" of a peasantry doomed to disappear...

...Aside from the difficulties of mobilizing and sustaining activism-which should not be underestimated-small-scale agriculture remains underdeveloped, largely sidestepped by productive investment and appropriate technology, and enmeshed, in many countries, in neofeudal types of social relations...

...Or, as Mark Edelman suggests in this issue of NACLA Report, is it proof positive that despite the predictions of modernization theorists and orthodox Marxists alike that the peasantry would cease to exist, peasants-and their movements-"are very much still with us...

...Similar relations are still common in countries as disparate as Brazil and El Salvador...

...But let us not fall into the trap Edelman warns us against of romanticizing rural struggles...

...In Brazil, the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) has-after 15 years of organizing and struggle-put the issue of agrarian reform squarely on the political agenda of the most unequal nation in the region...

...Even as Latin America is becoming increasingly urban, in many countries the total number of people living in rural areas has actually increased in the last decade...

...The EZLN, for example, has ingeniously used the Internet to mobilize supporters around the world and keep attention focused on their struggle...

...The MST, the Zapatistas and the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, for example, have all built crucial networks of international support linking human rights groups, environmentalists, and other progressive sectors on behalf of issues that matter to Latin America's rural poor-land, autonomy and human rights...

...Rural social movements face daunting conditions...

...This issue of NACLA Report hopes to provide readers with the tools to answer these vital questions by examining the ins and outs of campesino and indigenous organizing in several Latin American countries...

...As Edelman suggests, the facile idea that an individual cannot be a peasant and modem at the same time is belied by the sophisticated adaptation of modem technology by rural activists...

...s George Collier suggests, market-driven globalization is at least partially responsible for the revival of rural social movements in Latin America over the past decade...

...And as internationalized elites globalize their methods of domination, control and extraction via organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), so have Latin America's rural movements sought to globalize their methods of resistance...

...In Colombia, for example, it is the traditional agrarian elite and the emerging narco-bourgeoisie, which has bought up increasing chunks of the Colombian countryside, that stands to lose most from the agrarian reform that is an essential step to building peace in that war-tom country...

...In Mexico, the 1994 Zapatista uprising forced the national government-and the international community-to realize that while globalization may be improving the lives of the country's hyper-intemrnationalized elites, it was drowning the indigenous campesinos who eked out a living in the countryside...

...In Ecuador, recent developments have been indelibly shaped by the region's most powerful indigenous movement, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), which has successfully united indigenous, peasant and tribal organizations from the Andean highlands to the Amazonian Oriente...

...The "peasant wars of the twentieth century" examined by anthropologist Eric Wolf-including Vietnam, Mexico, Russia, Cuba and Algeria-were characterized by peasant-based movements that struggled against and won state power...

...The challenge remains of how to build movements that address their needs and that can successfully influence the policies of governments increasingly enthralled to the interests of the transnational elite networks that govern our world in favor of broad structural change...

...As we embark on a new century, how are we to understand the "new" rural activism throughout Latin America today...

...The maldistribution of money and capital, exacerbated by the forces of globalization, have forced the poorest sectors of Latin America to organize to defend their interests and press their cause...

...The movements examined in this NACLA Report are powerful examples of how Latin America's rural and indigenous poor are trying to meet this crucial challenge...

...These movements have been impressively creative in adapting their struggles to the times...