TheSyllabus

In Ecuador, we had a long period of compromise with neoliberalism, and the critical discussion has mostly been about Buen Vivir, or living well. The decade of Rafael Correa's presidency was itself understood as a post-neoliberal period, because neoliberalism was understood as the absence of the state, which is what we have lived through in the peripheral countries with failed capitalist states, where responsibility for managing the public life was completely handed over to the private sector. Then, with the Correista period – and to a certain extent in general, with the other progressive governments in Latin America – we felt there was a “return” of the state. So, there began to be talk about post-neoliberalism based on this analysis, which is a little reductive. 

But it is very difficult to draw such absolute lines between neoliberalism and post-neoliberalism. And now with the changes that have taken place in some of the Latin American countries, with new right-wing governments who are more in favor of the private sector, people have started to talk about a return to neoliberalism. There is a renewed capture of the state by the private sector and economic elites; there is once again an absence of planning, and a return of leaving the market to regulate social life. Neoliberalism is ultimately not about the absence of the state, but about the presence of a state that regulates and organizes social and political life to guarantee that the private sector gets richer. It’s not that there is no state, but that there is a state that governs for the elites above all, by issuing policies of economic deregulation, labor deregulation, environmental deregulation – so that the market can govern all. 

So, the debate is ongoing, not only to define what exactly neoliberalism is, but also to understand what it is that we are living through now. In Ecuador, after ten years of the supposed return of the state, it only took six months to dismantle everything. So, how deep were the changes, really? Not only in terms of the structure of the state–market relation but also in terms of the social imaginary, of what society understands as well-being.

I’m not familiar with all the debates in the North, so it would be difficult for me to pinpoint the differences. But I know that one topic of debate was the question of whether or not neoliberalism is dying. I remember there were a lot of these texts using the zombie metaphor: neoliberalism is like a zombie, already dead but not quite done dying. This characteristic of living death is precisely what was being experienced – a policy of death, of plundering, of halting the advances of social progress. So, if the debate is more like that in the North, here, the debates are focused on understanding what neoliberalism actually means, and from there thinking about the post.

There has clearly been a shake-up in how we’re conceiving of post-neoliberalism. There is a critique of the mandate of economic growth, where economic growth is a stand-in for development. Our countries have been classified as “developing,” peripheral countries, right? So, the mandate of economic growth we face is different from that of countries in the core, countries that are already “developed” and industrialized. For them, the goal is to maintain growth and to continue growing, in order to maintain their standard of living. But here, the mandate is to grow economically, in order to reach certain standards of living that are presented to us as ideal: the European, North American ways of life. So, with the debates about Buen Vivir in Ecuador and Bolivia, throughout the whole progressive cycle, there was much criticism of that type of development. But it was rhetoric, aimed at the formula of how to achieve development, and also attempting to articulate our own form of development. It is as part of those discourses that we identified the return of the state, planning, public spending, etc.

So, Socio Bosque, which is a national program of forest conservation, was the way the state found to advance development and, at the same time, to consolidate its territorial control, especially over indigenous territories. In Ecuador, indigenous territories are spaces of self-government and self-determination; they are recognized as spaces where the indigenous peoples reproduce their own existence, not only materially but also culturally. These were spaces that the structure and resources of the state did not reach directly, unlike the provinces, cantons, and parishes within the state structure. Socio Bosque was a way to reach these territories, and direct funds there, taking control of the territories and pushing back the private sector. So, if we understand this policy as the reassertion of a strong state, which plans and decides the future of the country, then in that sense it is totally post-neoliberal. 

But then there is mining. The huge mining projects coming to the country represent the complete opposite. This is a return to the model of allowing the entry of transnationals. We are calling it the “transnational mining project,” because it operates at a global level, hand in hand with capital that is fundamentally transnational, which means that it is highly mobile. I wouldn’t call it private capital, because many public companies are structuring the flow of capital at a global level, deciding where to make investments depending on the conditions that exist in the different countries. If there is a lot of resistance against a certain project in a certain country, mining transnationals have no problem with going to the other side of the world. These are investments that travel from one side of the world to the other. So, handing over parts of the territory to transnational mining capital is the least post-neoliberal thing there can be. It is not only handing over the territories but also governing on behalf of transnational capital – issuing laws and regulations in order to facilitate handing the territories over to them. So, once again, it’s the state regulating and deregulating on behalf of capital.

Extractive projects don’t just arrive to any sort of territory. Usually, it would be a rural territory, a territory that lives from agricultural production, a territory that is organized in and by communities. Here, these types of projects take place in the Amazon or in the Chocó, biodiverse ecosystems in which people’s lives depend on community and agriculture. When one of these projects arrives – as has been demonstrated historically throughout the continent – what happens is that there is a masculinization of the territories, as we call it.

This means, on the one hand, the arrival of large numbers of men who come to work in the extractive industry. These are precarious jobs. These men are poorly paid, exploited, and uprooted from their homes. They travel to work in the oil industry, in the mining industry, under conditions of exploitation and in very large numbers. Many of them arrive alone. The same is true of engineers. So, the masculinization happens from the bottom in these ways. 

But, on the other hand, hegemonic masculinities are also consolidated at the top. In addition to the fact that the state arrives, big capital also arrives – to extract and control and dominate the territory. So, the macro level is already set, and the level of daily relations follows. The first things that are installed are brothels to service the workers, often filled with migrant women who may be victims of trafficking. These become unsafe spaces for women in the communities.

There is a rupture of the social fabric when wage labor enters it so suddenly. The types of jobs offered in these companies are usually for men, not for women. And if women are hired for jobs, they are typically those jobs associated with the feminine – cooking, cleaning – which further deepens the gender differences. And gender-based violence increases along with all of this. That is why some of our colleagues talk about the re-patriarchalization of the territories with the arrival of these companies. 

Then, what we have also seen with oil exploitation is that the rates of uterine cancer, for example, skyrocket. Infectious diseases in women increase with water pollution, and so does their workload – because women have to take care of the sick, take care of the children, and secure the continued reproduction of life under these conditions. And many times, this is all in addition to having lost their land and having been displaced.

The criticism I make is directed towards the partial reading that has become common within the field of extractivism studies, especially in Latin America. This stems from an influential short translation of a text by Harvey on imperialism, rather than the whole book. As a short text, it lacks much of the theoretical development that was behind Harvey’s attempt to describe processes of accumulation. Everything that has been happening – what I was just relaying, what happens when an extractive project arrives in a rural, peripheral territory – has historically produced processes of dispossession: displacement of populations, violence, loss of land, loss of livelihoods, etc.

But, there was a missing piece. There wasn’t an understanding of how these processes related to a labor theory of value. The dispossession could be described, but not in terms that went beyond the specifics of a given extractive company. This obviated any account of dispossession as initiating a process of accumulation, of putting territories at the service of capital and replacing or subordinating the previous relations to capitalist relations. There wasn’t any description of dispossession in terms of the production of value, which is needed to understand the global circulation of capital.

So, my criticism was that the concept was being reduced to a way of describing the dispossession that we were seeing with extractivism, but without taking the analysis forward, without connecting local dispossessions to the bigger picture, and hence decentered the discussion about capitalism as the global system that needs to be fought. Instead, the conversation remained – thinking again in terms of post-neoliberalism – about whether a public company or a private company was better. Because both cause dispossession, the conclusion was that it makes no difference whether it is public or private, especially if we aren’t thinking about the goal that this dispossession is serving in each case.

Let’s go back to the history of environmentalism, which got its start as one of the so-called new social movements that emerged from the postwar period. These movements emerged from the crisis of the alternative, so to speak, when capitalism and the West consolidated themselves in contrast to the Soviet bloc as the only model for organizing social life. In this scenario, where there appeared to be no alternative, new political preoccupations consolidated.

Global environmentalism coalesces precisely at the same time as neoliberalism, which consolidates itself through the realization that the state is inefficient and corrupt. Environmentalism posits that the state cannot face the ecological crisis, which is so massive that it will take global urgency to mange. So, it creates this powerful idea of global citizenship: we are all in the same boat; we are all responsible for the overexploitation of resources, for massive pollution, and now for climate change. Suddenly, awareness of climate change as a global problem arises. 

There is a tendency to think that environmentalism – as well as feminism, or any sort of awareness that there is inequality in the world – is per se leftist or progressive. But this is not necessarily the case. There are environmentalisms of all stripes, just as there are people of all stripes. And here I agree with some people who point out the compartmentalization of the struggle in many arenas of social justice, specifically by forgetting the class dimension. What do I mean by that? I mean that there is a forgetfulness that the world is supremely unequal – that we do not all have access to the same information, to the same possibilities – and that this is one of the main transformations that is needed. 

So, when I speak of right-wing environmentalism or bourgeois environmentalism, I am speaking of the dominant types of environmentalism. They obviate economic differences, class differences; they position the environmental struggle as if it were the only one. In that way, they are leaving behind vulnerable people, people who have lost out in the repartition of the world. This is the dominant environmentalism, but it only focuses on climate change and does not consider that the forests they are trying to save are the living spaces of indigenous peoples. They don’t notice that decarbonization policies in the North are only going to subject the South to more pressure.

In that sense, environmentalism has a lot of colonial blindness and a lot of racial blindness. As long as they decarbonize Europe, for example, it doesn't matter if they generate more pressure on the mines of the world. How can it be a step forward if closing the coal mines in Europe just means extracting more coal from Colombia? The agenda – the environmental benchmarks that have been set – leave no room for such questions. In our countries, something similar happens: class blindness leads us to blame the poorest people for environmental degradation. Who is blamed for deforestation? The peasants who live near the forests, and need to expand the agricultural frontier in order to live. We need to identify the historical, structural issues that have generated tremendous inequality – that is what should be attacked.

Yes, absolutely. Even the climate goals that get proposed at the COP summits are a way to maintain the international division of labor. We in the South have been suppliers of raw materials, oil, and minerals to the North; now we are going to be suppliers of the key minerals for the transition and of carbon sinks. That is the plan, and it will be enforced in a very perverse way: by making the transfer of climate adaptation funds from North to South contingent on our playing ball. 

Take the negotiations around what are now being called loss and damage funds, for example, which are conditioned on our countries agreeing to be carbon sink providers. There is no longer any way to prevent the impacts of climate change, but to manage their fallout – the floods, the disappearance of island states, the displacement of climate refugees. But if we want to receive funds to confront the impacts we are already experiencing – funds we have been fighting for – we have to place our forests as collateral guarantees, as carbon credits, so that polluting companies in the Global North but also China can keep on emitting. So, there is a kind of exchange: we give you money for adaptation, but you accept this new financing scheme that is also commanded by the dynamics of the capitalist market. 

In the United States, there is still an internal dispute over the extent of its commitment to the fight against climate change, but in Europe, there is a stronger consensus. They have their climate goals related to decarbonization and electrification. But there is still zero discussion on the pressure this is going to generate on the mines – whether they be lithium, copper, or cobalt mines, all of which are mostly located in the Global South. As Farhana Sultana says, it’s a new form of climate colonialism. It does not transform unequal relations; it does not recognize the ecological and historical debt owed by the countries of the North to the countries of the South. Another element is that much of the climate finance so far has been transferred from the North to the South via debt. Our countries are indebting themselves to fight climate change, which produces even more subordination and translates into us having to accept these arrangements.

China has a double role. It moves from South to North. In climate discussions, China presents itself as a Southern country. It forms part of the Group of 77 plus China bloc, negotiating along with most of the developing world. So, they are very supportive of the South in many disputes. But China is really the energizer of the world. China has its decarbonization development plan for 2030. A lot of that decarbonization is going to come from nuclear power, but it is still the world's largest consumer of materials. So, although its massive investments are being driven by green policies, at the same time it is the country putting the most pressure on resource extraction. It is a key part of the global circuit of consumer goods production, too. So, it is always playing both sides: as a developing country, and as an industrialized country.

Right now is a moment of regrouping, after the pause introduced by the wave of right-wing governments: first Macri in Argentina, then Temer and Bolsonaro in Brazil. And what we are seeing today is the end of that pause to the progressive cycle in Latin America, in which Ecuador, unfortunately, is not currently taking part, because we now have a right-wing government headed by a banker. (Editor’s note: On August 20, Ecuador held a snap general election marred by the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio in the weeks prior. Luisa González, the candidate from Rafael Correa's party, had been leading the polls but a surprise surge from Daniel Noboa, a member of the economic elite, pushed the election to a runoff.) But it is looking like this regrouping will be organized around environmental and climate issues, and anchored by conflict with the extractive sectors. 

Both Lula and Petro, for example, hold positions very much in line with hegemonic environmentalism, only with certain Latin American characteristics. But in that global discourse of hegemonic environmentalism, the premise is that we have to accomplish an energy transition without discussing the pressures this will put on oil and mineral deposits, and at the same time remaining aware that we cannot abandon the extraction of raw materials from one day to the next. This is the core of the recent conflict we are seeing between and among progressive governments and indigenous movements, activists, and environmentalists.

What happens will also depend on the wealth of each country. Bolivia and Chile, of course, see a gigantic opportunity in lithium. Petro’s position, meanwhile, has been to remain closer to social movements, consulting and thinking with people who are working towards a more democratic, more decentralized, more communitarian energy transition – and not one which is only commanded by the state, which we have seen leaves us in this ambiguous position between neoliberalism and post-neoliberalism. In the case of Lula, he is presenting Brazil as the great leader on issues like the defense of the Amazon; this also helps him dissociate from Bolsonaro. This is why he offered to host COP 30, the global climate summit in 2025, in the Amazon. 

Rather than ecofascism, I have been talking a lot about bourgeois environmentalism here in Latin America. This is in order to add nuance. I think fascism has to be defined as a combination of bourgeois environmentalism with puritanism and nationalism. Puritanism and nationalism come together with the discourse of the land as homeland – this forms the basis for exclusionary policies around race and nationality, with climate change as the excuse. This is what we have seen in Europe, at the hands of the parties furthest to the right. Marine Le Pen is the clearest example, proposing anti-migratory policies through the discourse of the environmental crisis. 

In Latin America, what is happening has more to do with this logic of bourgeois environmentalism – which does have fascist traces, in the sense that it proposes racist policies as a solution to the environmental crisis. This is what comes with an environmentalism that blames the poor for degradation. Who are the poor? Indigenous, peasant, and Afro people. It is marginalized populations who lack the capacity to walk around with their little water bottles and make greener consumption choices. This is an environmentalism that speaks from class privilege and that, in addition, proposes individual solutions to the ecological crisis; it points the finger at those who do not change their consumption for the good of humanity. 

So, I see those two differences between the extremism being displayed by some European political actors and in Latin America. Here, what we are seeing is a still-incipient rebellion of the business elite, the banks, the companies – the arms of transnational capital. They are appropriating environmentalist discourses and trying to use green finance to turn the climate crisis into an opportunity for profit.

The environmentalism that is currently hegemonic emerges from a very clear class position. Those who have spread hegemonic environmentalist ideas in our countries, preaching compassion for the environment, come from the middle and upper-middle classes. So, besides destroying the idea of the working class as a class within climate politics, what this has done is allow environmentalists in the South to articulate alliances with environmentalists in the North, in order to confront the climate crisis. But these allies in the North are often the elites themselves, like King Charles, Jeff Bezos, or Leonardo DiCaprio. These connections with the elite actors of the North are always about securing funds and support of various kinds. 

But the fight against climate change has been articulated by indigenous, peasant, and Afro peoples. Within the Amazon, for example, the fight against deforestation has been articulated by those for whom the Amazon is their means of existence; by the oppressed, not the European elite. Trade unions and community associations elsewhere should be forging links along similar lines of class. It would be far more revolutionary if environmental activists turned to trade unions in the UK’s energy sector before King Charles, for example.

Fortunately, we are beginning to see this happening. There is a need to create solidarity and promote internationalist awareness around the energy transition in Europe. The transition is urgent, but it is equally urgent that people become aware that this transition cannot put more pressure on the indigenous peoples of the South. As for people in the South themselves, we should increase awareness that there are oppressed people in Europe. There are people dying in the winter because they have no energy for heating. 

So, how can this be accomplished? From a place of class consciousness and international solidarity, not from an alliance with the European elites, and certainly not from a colonial position of European privilege – which blocks us from seeing how the transition is producing new conflicts and dispossession in the South.