File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 621


Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 12:42:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Siddharth Chatterjee <siddhart-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Genocide against the Yanomami




On Thu, 30 Oct 1997, Louis Proyect wrote:

> LIVING MARXISM:
> 
> I think Fiona Watson, Survival's Brazil campaign officer, has got one hell
> of a cheek to write disapprovingly that 'sadly not all Yanomami groups have
> been able to resist encroaching white society'. Why exactly is she so
> horrified that in one area 'some of the Yanomami have slung their hammocks
> around the stilts supporting the abandoned [government agency] post'?
> Perhaps it makes it harder for her to get picturesque photos. Fiona
> believes we should protect the Yanomami from the advances of civilisation
> by declaring their lands a national park where their culture could be
> preserved. It sounds like a human zoo to me.
> 
> 
> CHRONOLOGY OF THE YANOMAMI GENOCIDE:
> 
<snip>

> looking for tin ore. The governor of the State of Roraima, Ramos Pereira,
> supports the invasion and says that "a rich area cannot permit itself the
> luxury of preserving half a dozen Indian tribes hindering the development."
> 

Thanks to Louis Proyect for posting the pieces on Rigoberta Menchu
and the Yanomami Indians. Note the similarity in views of Living
Marxism and Ramos Pereira (governor of Roraima). In this (as in
the environmental issue presumably), James Heartfield and LM are in
complete agreement with the Brazilian ruling class. That the erudite James
Heartfield can pass this off as "Marxism" is really sad. "Marxists" 
siding with the oligarchy that killed Chico Mendes and Rigoberta's
brother, mother, father, and countless others. 

One fails to understand all the elegant debates taking place in this
space when the above point is not grasped but ignored. What is the
purpose of all these polite talks among well-read people when they have
failed to grasp the class standpoint in their exchanges? It is a mystery.

What LM and James H have not understood is that the model of capitalism
which prevails in the third-world is not that which exists in the West.
It is a peculiar kind of capitalism - bureaucratic capitalism. This
type of capitalism is a gigantic burden on the forces on production.
This parasitic system also leads to the vast immiserization of the
people that is noticeable once one leaves the first world and enters
the third. It's primary feature is distortion and destruction and
not creation. The "free-market" system has largely failed in much of
the third world inspite of what its ideologues say - failed
catastrophically

Sid



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