Well of Contention Oil in the Americas
"Oil, more than any other commodity," comments Fernando Coronil in his masterful study of Venezuela, The Magical State, "illustrates both the importance and mystification of natural resources in...
...And there is resistance within the resis- tance, as aggrieved communities face off against unresponsive governments...
...Who pays the global costs...
...Pemex's depredations in Tabasco rival those of the transnational Texaco, described poignantly by Chris Jochnick and Paulina Garz6n, in Ecuador...
...For whom does the oil flow...
...Oil isn't for the nation," a Tabasco farmer tells Town and Hanson, "it is only for a chosen few...
...It may be, as Jochnick and Garz6n suggest, that , grassroots vigilance and activism are necessary for even so modest a goal as a "sustainable compromise...
...ut the pressures to privatize are intense, as is the push for Pemex and for Venezuela's state company, PDVSA, to act "naturally" like profit-driven businesses, with no direct concerns for national development...
...There is no doubting oil's importance: "Post-industrial" as the U.S...
...Oil, more than any other commodity," comments Fernando Coronil in his masterful study of Venezuela, The Magical State, "illustrates both the importance and mystification of natural resources in the modem world...
...To whom does the subsoil-and the land and oceans themselves-belong...
...Who decides where, when and how to explore, drill, pump and selland what should be done about communities that resist exploration...
...In the oil-producing countries of Latin America, struggles over oil raise a host of fundamental questions: Who profits...
...That same belief applies- even more so-to the region's largest oil exporter, Venezuela, a nation whose very identity, for nearly a century, has been that of an "oil nation...
...There is also no doubting oil's mystification: Economists-whose dismal language has become "natural" in this neoliberal age-treat oil as simply another produced-to-besold commodity, disembodied from its natural, national and cultural origins, and from all those who have the bad fortune to be in the way of its discovery...
...boom has rested on cheap costs of production, low clean-up costs and easy, low-rent access to a plentiful supply of raw materials-all in an economy in which oil fuels production, transportation and comfortable consumption...
...While Hugo Chfivez's populist regime "is clearly determined to take oil policy in a more nationalist direction," his options, writes Luis Lander, are limited given the country's diminished sources of investment capital and its need for friendly relations with its largest export market, the United States...
...Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil company, says energy analyst David Shields, is not only vital to the Mexican economy, but is "a source of national pride and a key to Mexico's identity, embodying the widespread belief of Mexicans that it enables them to have sovereign control over their destiny...
...In response to these depredations, as nationalists and socialists struggle for sovereign control over the oil, there is an equally powerful grassroots struggle for democratic control within the oilproducing countries...
...Environmental degradation is one way the government passes oil development costs onto Gulf Coast communities," write Town and Hanson...
...The long U.S...
...Resistance to big oil, as Michael Tanzer makes clear with his provocative proposal for Third World solidarity, is resistance to the enrichment of the North at the expense of the South...
...It is also resistance to global despoliation and to the growing commodification of all social relations...
...economy has become, it is perched atop an oil-driven global economy...
...Who bears the costs...
...Who determines to what uses the profits are put...
...So the questions remain: Who reaps the global profits...
...In both major oil-producing countries, such pressures have led to "Openings" to foreign capital in the national oil industry over the past decade...
...As Sarah Town and Heather Hanson show, however, in their brief portrait of the Mexican oil state of Tabas- co, nationalization, by itself, has not brought democratic control...
Vol. 34 • January 2001 • No. 4
