20 Jul 2014

Hugo Blanco on NETWORKING AUTONOMY AND RESISTANCE



Editorial
                                NETWORKING AUTONOMY AND RESISTANCE

The big transnational corporations that rule the world are assaulting humanity and the environment with ever greater ferocity.  Just as the assault is global, so must our resistance be global.  Lucha Indígena is devoted to promoting linkages among militants in various regions of our country, as well with those in other parts of the continent and beyond.
          Last month the University of the Cauca in Colombia hosted a meeting on "Networks and Mingas for Living Well".  Uruguayan writer Raúl Zibechi had this to day in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada:
          "Networks and Mingas is the name of the meeting that native people, peasants and Afro-Americans held this week in the Cauca, southern Colombia.  It is all about forming alliances around the reality of minga.  This term [mink'a in Quechua] refers to native practices of egalitarian collective labor on the basis of cooperation and mutual aid.  Misak, Nasa and Coconuco natives from the Cauca, Quechuas from Peru and Bolivia, peasants from several countries, Afro-Colombians from the Pacific coast, professors and students all shared information about the problems that afflict us and lessons on how we can overcome them.  ...  Networks and Mingas was organized around the four themes of a) Life and Resistance, b) Collective Economies, c) Autonomy and Power, and d) Education and Communication.  ...  In order to give form to the emerging world's multi-colored tapestry, a network of resistance and mingas must partake of all resistances, no matter how small.  What is important is not the magnitude but how they arise and the spirit in which they are carried out."
          Olver Quijano Valencia, a professor at the host institution, said that "We are learning that some things are not in chains, that we have the possibility to choose among options, without states, governments or ruling structures.  We have the right to say NO.  There is no such thing as superfluous people or areas."  He referred to "cooperation among organizations and social movements ... dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the explanatory, analytical and interpretive potential of social practices and their practitioners to confront the intimidation exercised by Euro/USA-centric disciplinary and professional attitudes.  These bring tension into our places of production, our forms of circulation, and projects of representation."  And he mentioned "the need for and value of a school to uphold and preserve our collective memory."
          This was not a meeting of academics but of working people.  Among the many participants from Colombia were founders of the Cauca Regional Native Coordinating Council, representatives of self-governing communities, former employees of agroindustrial enterprises who had quit in order to work as independent, eco-friendly farmers, and young people who practice the same form of agriculture.  There were also militants from Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil.
          Our representative was invited to address the meeting on Lucha Indígena's role in reporting on and promoting struggles against the system in Peru and other countries.
          We will continue to foster ties with militants here and abroad.  We expect to see ever-increasing efforts by all those struggling against the oppression of the big transnationals (through their servile governments, parliaments, judicial power, police, armies and mass communication media) in Peru and other countries to better know, understand and support our diverse forms of resistance.
          We must unite our forces in the struggle, making it more and more collective.  That is the pathway to victory.

Lucha Indigena editorial July 2014 http://www.luchaindigena.com/2014/07/tejido-de-autonomias-y-de-resistencias/

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