By endorsing the government Aff supports extractivism – laundry list of impacts; climate change, deforestation, inequality.

From the defeat of the coup government in Bolivia, the election of Xiomara Castro in Honduras, and the rise of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, to the historic election of Gustavo Petro in Colombia and the return of Lula in Brazil, left-leaning governments are changing the political landscape of Latin America. However, even more progressive parties and ruling coalitions have failed to rein in the violence of the resource extraction economy and the domineering power of international capital flowing through mining, drilling, and deforestation operations across the hemisphere. Indigenous and environmental activists from Ecuador to Bolivia say that today’s extractivist economy perpetuates the violence of colonial domination, and warn that things are only going to get worse over the course of the 21st century.

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Now, despite the victories of the left, South America remains deeply divided, and the new governments of the left must address serious economic challenges that a legacy of imperialism and the intervention of the US over these last 120-plus years. And today it continues. The exploitation of natural resources created a dependence on what we now call “extractive economies.” Whether it’s mining for minerals, drilling for oil or gas, or destroying forests – Like the Amazon being turned into pastures for cattle, and fuels for soy that bring with it a total social environmental destruction, devastating many people in these countries and the environment around them – It threatens the entire planet.

These resources extracted from the earth are usually exported without any processing. So when global prices are high, things can look pretty good, but if the price of commodities drop, economies can go into a tailspin like what happened in Venezuela when the price of oil plummeted. So the effect of extractionism and extraction is really far-reaching. Mines produce toxic waste, contaminating water supplies. Oil and gas do the exact same thing, and they don’t even create any widespread employment. Deforestation exacerbates climate change, creates inequality that pushes small farmers off their land. On top of that, extractive industries create social conflicts that are often experienced most severely by women, who are marginalized from their labor opportunities that do exist, and also at the moment, as always, have to confront sexual violence.

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Patricia Gualinga: [Translated from Kichwa] Well, for Indigenous peoples, the issue of extractivism has been terrible, fatal. It has violated the people’s rights, it has destroyed our nature. And really, in some ways, the states and the companies have not followed the law, the constitution, or even the court rulings that we have been able to achieve in response to these violations. For us, extractivism is lethal. It implies the disappearance of the peoples, and it implies the violation of all our human rights.

Marc Steiner: Pablo, if you want to leap in on this as well, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Pablo Poveda: [Translated from Spanish] Extractivism is a historical consequence in Bolivia. First, capitalism was not born from the internal contradictions of the Bolivian economy, but rather came from the outside. Therefore, there was no development of a strong internal economy, and there was no mass expropriation of land for campesinos, which led to the rise of capital. And now these forms of backward production, which the ruling mass party refers to as the “plural economy,” are functional to both capitalism, exploitation of labor, and exploitation of nature. That’s why, from this perspective, we define Bolivia as a backward country with a mixed economy that lives largely off the rents, or the revenues, generated from the exploitation of natural resources.

This history sets the foundation for present-day extractivism and the cycle of gas extraction from 2000 to 2022. And this is under the complete hegemony of transnational capital. There’s no local bourgeois involved. Nonetheless, the economy entered into an accelerated downturn beginning in 2015. At its highest point, exports were over $6 billion per year, and now the income from gas is only around $2 billion per year.

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Patricia Gualinga: [Translated from Kichwa] The Indigenous people and the Indigenous Movement have not had any government that really listens to their proposals. There has always been confrontation over the topic of extractivism. In this part of the Amazon, it’s the extraction of oil. In the south of the Amazon, it’s mining and the issue of water. This government is no different from the previous government or the one before that. This government is also extractivist, and it is right-wing. There have been strong Indigenous mobilizations where people have lost their lives.

The tactics are always the same. They try to divide the local people with promises that are never upheld. The government stigmatizes the leaders who protest, persecutes, and criminalizes them. This has intensified in recent years. There has always been repression, but with the previous government of Correa this became much more visible, and the new government has followed the same recipe. So for us, whether governments of the left or the right come into power, we have not seen great changes, because the model is always built the same way. Some of them let us speak, some of them prohibit us from speaking, but they always violate our rights.

Bret Gustafson: Well, that’s a wake-up call to many people on the progressive side of things. You sometimes celebrate the election of left governments. Might we say that the arrival of the left changed anything at all in relation to this longer history of extractivism, whether in Ecuador or Bolivia?

Patricia Gualinga: [Translated from Kichwa] I don’t doubt that the governments receive funds, but this entire extractivist practice has generated corruption at all levels. We cannot say that we are living in a country where these returns are reaching the most needy. There is an overwhelming level of corruption that has led to Ecuador being in a profound crisis – A total crisis – And things have become very polarized. In recent years, there has been terrible polarization. Either they want to put us on the right or they want to put us on the left, and they have forgotten that we Indigenous people are not one or the other. I don’t consider myself of the left or of the right. We are people who demand social justice, respect for the rights of nature, and the real implementation of a plurinational state.

Everybody knows that corruption in these governments has also penetrated the justice system. So if we try to work through the justice system, we don’t know if we are going to achieve justice. As we have seen over time, those who have power, regardless of what political line they come from, also control the justice system. So we are in a situation in which extractivism has led us to a state of corruption of the government and the multinational corporations know this. They are interested in that because this facilitates their extraction of resources from the Indigenous territories and from the peoples in resistance. It is very sad to have to say these things about our country, but we have to tell the truth.

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The issue of healthcare, for example, is in a total state of crisis in the country. Many people complain that they go to the hospitals and there is no medicine, there are no supplies to provide care. It’s a huge crisis. This is the basic level. In Ecuador, we don’t have universal social security. Only people who put in years of formal work have social security. Therefore, it’s a country that has been in an economic downturn, and it’s not doing well.