Long before the attack in Paris that inspired the slogan “Je Suis Charlie”, a young French publisher had released a collection of stories titled je suis favela about life in Brazilian slums.

In an ironic twist of history, sales of the collection have taken off since Jan. 7, when gunmen targeted the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, leaving 12 people dead.

French publisher Paula Anacaona

Some readers apparently thought the je suis favela stories were an attempt to shed light on the situation of marginalised communities in France, but instead they learned about marginalised populations in South America, where similar forces of exclusion may push young people into crime.

“We can all learn from what is happening elsewhere in the world, because we’re all affected by similar social and economic issues,” says Paula Anacaona, the publisher of je suis favela and founder of Éditions Anacaona, whose mission is to publish Brazilian books in France.

Educated as a translator of technical texts, Paris-born Anacaona, 37, became a literary translator and publisher by chance. On holiday in Rio de Janeiro in 2003, she happened to start chatting with a woman who revealed she was a writer and who promised to send her a book.

Back in Paris, Anacaona received the book two months later and “loved it”, as she told IPS in an interview. She translated the work, written by Heloneida Studart and later called Le Cantique de Meméia, and managed to get a Canadian company to publish it.“To understand the favela, you have to understand the grandparents who came to the cities from rural areas, often with nothing and unable to read or write” – Paula Anacaona, founder of Éditions Anacaona

Studart, who died in 2007, was also an essayist, journalist and women’s rights activist, and the book caught the attention of French-speaking readers in several countries.

Other writers got in touch, and Anacaona found herself becoming a literary translator. But by sending out the works to publishing companies, she was also taking on the role of agent, a time-consuming task.

“With all that was involved, I thought why not publish the books myself?” she recalls. She set up Éditions Anacaona in 2009 and decided to focus initially on literature from and about the ghetto or favela in Brazil, because “no one else was doing it.”

The first published book under her imprint was le Manuel pratique de la haine (Practical Handbook of Hate), a very violent and dark work set in the favela and launched in 2009.

Two years later came je suis favela, published in 2011. Anacaona selected the writers for the collection, choosing authors from both the favela and the “middle class” and translating the works written in Portuguese into French.

Her motivation, she says, was to try to change perceptions of those considered to be living on the fringes of society. The cover of je suis favela features a young black woman sitting on a balcony and doing paperwork, possibly homework, with the city in the background.

“As you can see, she’s not dancing, so this isn’t about stereotypes,” Anacaona says.

Cover of ‘je suis favela’

The book has since been published in Brazil, with the title Eu sou favela, giving Anacaona a certain sense of accomplishment. “In Rio, twenty percent of the population lives in the favela, so the book is relevant to many readers,” she says.

In France, where there has been national soul-searching since the Charlie Hebdo attacks – with Prime Minister Manuel Valls calling the social exclusion of certain groups a form of “apartheid” – the book provides insights into the reasons and consequences of marginalisation, albeit from a distance of 8,620 kilometres.

“French readers have responded to the book because people really are trying to understand the space we all share and the reasons for radicalisation,” says Anacaona.

Now representing more than 15 authors, she has widened her company’s scope to include “regionalist” authors such as the late Rachel de Queiroz and José Lins do Rego, from the northeast of Brazil, who wrote about characters outside urban settings.

“To understand the favela, you have to understand the grandparents who came to the cities from rural areas, often with nothing and unable to read or write,” Anacaona says.

Her company’s contemporary writers include the award-winning Tatiana Salem Lévy, named one of Granta’s Best Young Brazilian Novelists, and the stand-out Ana Paula Maia, who began her career with “short pulp fiction” on the Internet and now has numerous fans.

Both writers were part of the contingent of 48 Brazilian authors invited to this year’s Paris Book Fair, which took place from Mar. 20 to 23.

Billed as “un pays plein de voix” (a country full of voice), Brazil was the guest of honour, and the writers discussed topics ranging from the depiction of urban violence to dealing with memory and displacement. Anacaona had a central role as a publisher of Brazilian books, with her stand attracting many readers.

Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia. Credit: Marcelo Correa

She has translated and published two titles by Maia – Du bétail et des hommes (Of Cattle and Men) and Charbon animal (Animal Coal) – which focus on characters not normally present in literature. Maia writes about a slaughterhouse employee and a worker at a crematorium, for instance, in an unsentimental manner with minimal dialogue and almost no adjectives.

“She really can’t be categorised,” says Anacaona, who adds that despite Maia’s fashion-model appearance, the writer identifies with those living on the margins because she grew up among people who did not fit into the mainstream.

Both publisher and writer bear a resemblance and even have a name in common, and Anacaona acknowledges that she is attracted to Brazil and its literature because of her own mixed background – her French mother is white and her South American father is of African descent.

“In Brazil, it’s possible to be both black and white, and that’s something that is important to me,” she says.

As for the books, she has recently published a boxed set of 14 Brazilian plays, with the translation sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, in an attempt to make Brazilian theatre more known in France.

There is also a second favela collection, titled je suis toujours favela (I am still favela), that includes literature as well as journalistic and sociological articles about the slums.

Between the first and second collections, Anacaona says she has found that the “favela has changed so much”, which she credits to the impact of policies to diminish inequality, launched by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva  – perhaps a lesson for France and other countries.

Edited by Phil Harris 

India’s decisive stand last week not to adopt the protocol of amendment of the trade facilitation agreement (TFA) unless credible rules were in place for the development issues of the South was met with  “astonishment” and “dismay” by trade diplomats from the North, who described New Delhi’s as “hostage-taking” and “suicidal”. 

It obviously came as something of a shock for representatives of Northern interests that any party should have the brass neck to place the interests of its constituents on the negotiating table.

After all, why should such banal issues as food security and poverty get in the way of a trade agenda heavily weighted in favour of the industrialised countries?New Delhi was demanding nothing more than credible global trade rules to ensure that “development,” including the challenges of poverty, in the countries of the South take precedence over the cut-throat mercantile business interests of the transnational corporations in the North

In fact, it was India’s firm stand for permanent guarantees for public stockholding programmes for food security that turned this trade agenda upside down at the World Trade Organization (WTO) last week, putting paid to the adoption of the protocol of amendment for implementation of the contested TFA for the time being.

India and the United States failed Thursday at the WTO to reach agreement on construction of a legally binding decision on a “permanent peace clause” that would further strengthen what was decided for public distribution programmes for food security in developing countries at the ninth ministerial meeting in Bali, Indonesia, last year.

The Bali decision on food security was one of the nine non-binding best endeavour outcomes agreed by trade ministers on agriculture and development.

For industrialised and leading economic tigers in the developing world, the TFA – which would harmonise customs procedures in the developing world on a par with the industrialised countries – is a major mechanism for market access into the developing and poorest countries.

The failure to reach agreement came during a closed-door meeting between India and the United States organised by WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo in an attempt to break the impasse between the world’s two largest democracies.

New Delhi was demanding nothing more than credible global trade rules to ensure that “development,” including the challenges of poverty, in the countries of the South take precedence over the cut-throat mercantile business interests of the transnational corporations in the North.

Trade diplomats from several developing and poorest countries in Africa, South America, and Asia say India’s “uncompromising” stance will force countries of the North to return to the negotiating table to address the neglected issues in the Bali package concerning agriculture and development.

These issues are at the heart of unfinished business in the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations, the current round of trade negotiations aimed at further liberalising trade.

“It is important to keep the battle alive and India has ensured that the big boys cannot simply walk away with the trade facilitation agreement (TFA) without addressing the concerns on food security and other major issues,” one African official said.

The industrialised countries and some rising economic tigers in the developing world are unhappy that they cannot now take home the TFA without addressing the problem raised by India and other developmental issues in the Doha Development Agenda negotiations.

Many developing and poor countries in Africa and elsewhere were opposed to the TFA but they were “arm-twisted” and “muzzled” by the leading super powers over the last three months. African countries, for example, were forced to change their stand after pressure from the United States, the European Union and other countries.

The TFA was sold on false promises that it would add anywhere up 1 trillion dollars to the world economy. During the Bali meeting last year, the Economist of London, for example, gave two different estimates – 64 billion dollars and 400 billion dollars – as gains from the TFA, while the International Chamber of Commerce gave an astronomical figure of 1 trillion dollars without any rational basis.

“Those predicted gains [from TFA] evaporate when one looks at the assumptions behind them, such as the assumption that all countries in the world would gain the same amount of income from a given increase in exports,” said Timothy A. Wise and Jeronim Capaldo, two academics from the Global Environment and Development Institute at the U.S. Tufts University.

At one go, the TFA will provide market access for companies such as Apple, General Electric, Caterpillar, UPS, Pfizer, Samsung, Sony, Ericsson, e-Bay, Hyundai, Huawei and Lenova to multiply their exports to the poorest countries.

It would drive away scarce resources for addressing bread-and-butter issues in the poor countries and direct them towards creating costly trade-related infrastructure for the sake of exporters in the industrialised world.

Here are ten reasons why trade diplomats from the developing and poorest countries say India’s stand will bolster their development agenda:

1.  India’s stand on food security brings agriculture, particularly unfinished business in the DDA negotiations, back to centre-stage.

2.  The Doha trade negotiations were to have been concluded by 2005 but remain stalled because a major industrialised country put too many spanners in the negotiating wheel.

3.  Major industrialised countries have been cherry-picking issues from the DDA which are of interest to them while giving short shrift to core “developmental” issues.

4.  Issues agreed in the Doha negotiations, such as the ”July package” agreed on August 1, 2004, the Hong Kong  Ministerial Declaration of December 2005 and the un-bracketed understandings of the December 2008 Fourth Revised Draft Modalities for Agriculture, have all been pushed to the back burner because one major country does not want to live up to them.

5.  The Fourth Revised Draft Modalities for Agriculture provided an explicit footnote to enable the developing countries to continue with their public stockholding programmes for food security. That footnote was the result of sustained negotiations and a compromise solution among key WTO members such as the United States, the European Union, India, Brazil, Australia and China, but the United States refused to accept the footnote because of opposition from its powerful farm lobbies.

6.  Trade-distorting practices in cotton which are harming producers in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad are supposed to be addressed “ambitiously”, “expeditiously” and “specifically” by the distorting countries in the North. But cotton is now being swept under carpet because a major industrialised country does not want to address the issue because of its farm programme.

7.  Trade facilitation was one of the Doha issues but not the main item of the agenda at all.  It was actually dropped from the Doha agenda in Cancun, Mexico, in 2003 and was brought back in 2004 due to pressure from the United States and the European Union. The core issues of the Doha agenda were agriculture, services and developmental flexibilities.

8.  A major industrialised country which pocketed several gains during the negotiations refuses to engage in “give-and-take” negotiations based on the above mandates and has turned the Doha Round upside down.

9.  Industrialised countries along with some developing countries have formed a coalition of countries willing to pursue what are called “plurilateral” negotiations, only to undermine the DDA negotiations which are multilateral and based on what is called a “single undertaking” (that is, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed). Currently, these countries are negotiating among themselves on services, expansion of information technology products and environmental goods even though these issues are being negotiated in the Doha Round.

10.  Delay in the adoption of protocol will pave way for a healthy debate to reinvigorate the multilateral trading system which is being undermined by those who created it in 1948. The developing and poor countries want credible and balanced multilateral trading rules to replace what was agreed over 25 years ago in order to continue their “developmental” programmes with a human face.

Herein lies the crux of the issue – are the major powers of the North prepared to go along with a global trading system that puts the interests of the majority of the world’s people before their own interests?

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, President of China Xi Jinping and South African President Jacob Zuma take a family photograph at the 6th BRICS Summit held at Centro de Eventos do Ceara' in Fortaleza, Brazil. Credit: GCIS

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Jul 18 2014 (IPS)

While this week’s BRICS summit might have been off the radar of Western powers, the leaders of its five member countries launched a financial system to rival Bretton Woods institutions and held an unprecedented meeting with the governments of South America.

The New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement signal the will of BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to reconcile global governance instruments with a world where the United States no longer wields the influence that it once did.“The U.S. government clearly doesn't like this, although it will not say much publicly.” -- Mark Weisbrot

More striking for Washington could be the fact that the 6th BRICS summit, held in Brazil, set the stage to display how delighted the heads of state and government of South America – long-regarded as the United States’ “backyard”— were to meet Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.

At odds with Washington and just expelled from the Group of Eight (G8) following Russia’s intervention in the Ukrainian crisis, Putin was warmly received in the region, where he also visited Cuba and Argentina.

In Buenos Aires, Putin and the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández, signed agreements on energy, judicial cooperation, communications and nuclear development.

Argentina, troubled by an impending default, is hoping Russian energy giant Gazprom will expand investments in the rich and almost unexploited shale oil and gas fields of Vaca Muerta.

Although Argentina ranks fourth among the Russia’s main trade partners in the region, Putin stressed the country is “a key strategic partner” not only in Latin America, but also within the G20 and the United Nations.

Buenos Aires and Moscow have recently reached greater understanding on a number of international issues, like the conflicts in Syria and Crimea, Argentina sovereignty claim over the Malvinas/Falkland islands and its strategy against the bond holdouts.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Washington and Buenos Aires remains cool, as it has been with Brasilia since last year’s revelations of massive surveillance carried out by the National Security Agency against Brazil.

Some leftist governments –namely Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador— frequently accuse Washington of pursuing an imperialist agenda in the region.

But it was the president of Uruguay, José Mujica –whose government has warm and close ties with the Barack Obama administration— who better explained the shifting balance experienced by Latin America in its relationships with the rest of the world.

After a dinner in Buenos Aires and a meeting in Brasilia with Putin, Mujica said the current presence of Russia and China in South America opens “new roads” and shows “that this region is important somehow, so the rest of the world perhaps begins to value us a little more.”

Furthermore, he reflected, “pitting one bloc against another… is not good for the world’s future. It is better to share [ties and relationships, in order to] keep alternatives available.”

Almost at the same time, Washington announced it was ready to transfer six Guantanamo Bay detainees to Uruguay, one of the subjects Obama and Mujica agreed on when the Uruguayan visited the U.S. president in May.

Mujica has invited companies from United States, China and now Russia to take part in an international tender to build a deepwater port on the Atlantic ocean which, Uruguay expects, could be a logistic hub for the region.

But beyond Russia, which has relevant commercial agreements with Venezuela, the real centre of gravity in the region is China, the first trade partner of Brazil, Chile and Perú, and the second one of a growing number of Latin American countries.

China’s president Xi Jiping travels on Friday to Argentina, and then to Venezuela and Cuba.

“The U.S. government clearly doesn’t like this, although it will not say much publicly,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“With a handful of rich allies, they have controlled the most important economic decision-making institutions for 70 years, including the IMF [International Monetary Fund], the World Bank, and more recently the G8 and the G20, and they wrote the rules for the WTO [World Trade Organisation],” Weisbrot told IPS.

The BRICS bank “is the first alternative where the rest of the world can have a voice.  Washington does not like competition,” he added.

However, the United States’ foreign priorities are elsewhere: Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

And with the exception of the migration crisis on its southern border and evergreen concerns about security and defence, Washington seems to have little in common with its Latin American neighbours.

“I wish they were really indifferent. But the truth is, they would like to get rid of all of the left governments in Latin America, and will take advantage of opportunities where they arise,” said Weisbrot.

Nevertheless, new actors and interests are operating in the region.

The Mercosur bloc (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and the European Union are currently negotiating a trade agreement.

Colombia, Chile, México and Perú have joined forces in the Pacific Alliance, while the last three also joined negotiations to establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

In this scenario, the BRICS and their new financial institutions pose further questions about the ability of Latin America to overcome its traditional role of commodities supplier and to achieve real development.

“I don’t think that the BRICS alliance is going to get in the way of that,” said Weisbrot.

According to María José Romero, policy and advocacy manager with the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), the need to “moderate extractive industries” could lead to “changes in the relationship with countries like China, which looks at this region largely as a grain basket.”

Romero, who attended civil society meetings held on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, is the author of “A private affair”, which analyses the growing influence of private interests in the development financial institutions and raises key warnings for the new BRICS banking system.

BRICS nations should be able “to promote a sustainable and inclusive development,” she told IPS, “one which takes into account the impacts and benefits for all within their societies and within the countries where they operate.”

To go down fighting in the Andean Community (CAN), with a combined market of 92 million consumers, or move up to the big leagues of Mercosur, with 275 million? This was the dilemma faced by Bolivia’s foreign trade strategists when it came to pursuing full membership in the bloc formed by its neighbours to the south.

The contrast is remarkable: last year, Bolivia’s exports to its partners in CAN – Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – totalled 774 million dollars, resulting in a trade surplus of 88 million dollars.

In the meantime, Bolivia purchased 2.427 billion dollars in goods from the countries of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) that same year, while its sales to the bloc – excluding the main export, natural gas – were a mere 232 million dollars, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics.

It should be kept in mind, as well, that these figures refer to trade with the founding members of Mercosur – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – and do not include Venezuela, which did not become a full member until mid-year.

This sizable trade deficit reflects an already consummated “invasion”, which many fear will be exacerbated by Bolivia’s entry as the sixth full member of the bloc.

“Before Bolivia has even entered Mercosur, the bloc has already entered Bolivia, and it is doing so to a growing extent,” through bilateral trade agreements, observed Gary Rodríguez, general manager of the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE).

When natural gas, which represents 96 percent of Bolivia’s exports to Mercosur, is added to the equation, the balance is reversed, leaving Bolivia with a 1.692-billion-dollar trade surplus.

But gas exports are based on operations and agreements between national governments and do not involve the private sector, stressed Rodríguez in an interview with IPS at the IBCE headquarters in Santa Cruz, where he shares the same concerns and the same office tower with powerful business owners in the eastern Bolivian department (province) of the same name.

His greatest concern is for the future of Bolivian private companies. Last year, for example, 30 million dollars worth of shoes were imported from Brazil. In conditions like these, “we won’t be able to continue manufacturing ourselves,” said Rodríguez, who fears that the Bolivian market will be flooded with these and other goods in the event of a devaluation of the Argentine peso and Brazilian real against the dollar.

But Mercosur membership, the path chosen by the government of leftist President Evo Morales, could open up new prospects for Bolivian business owners “especially those involved in big agribusiness in eastern Bolivia,” Tullo Vigévani, a professor at Paulista State University in Brazil, told IPS.

CAN has been showing signs of weakening for decades, and the Pacific Alliance recently established by Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru “does not offer very promising horizons for Bolivia,” since these countries are also oil and gas producers and their economies “are closely integrated with the United States,” explained Vigévani, a specialist on integration processes, and particularly on Mercosur.

Joining Mercosur will help Bolivia “avoid isolation” and open up the possibility of tapping into a large regional market. Nevertheless, concerted efforts by the governments of the countries involved to ensure balance will likely be required, based on the prior experience of Mercosur itself, he added.

This assessment is backed by Jerjes Justiniano, the Bolivian ambassador to Brazil. “If we join Mercosur, we will have significant opportunities to grow as a nation and to improve working conditions,” he said.

In any event, Vigévani stressed that the incorporation protocol signed by Morales on Dec. 7 at the bloc’s summit in Brasilia falls far short of signifying full membership in Mercosur, its customs union and its common market. This will require a lengthy period of negotiations which could stretch out for years.

The analyst pointed out that Venezuela signed the same agreement in 2006, and only became a full member six months ago. Venezuela’s full entry came after Paraguay – whose legislature was the only one in the bloc opposed to it – had its membership suspended due to the ouster of President Fernando Lugo, which the other members considered a violation of the Mercosur “democratic clause”.

There are a number of complex issues that must be dealt with in order for Bolivia to take its place in the trade bloc, such as adaptation to all of the legislation created by Mercosur in almost 22 years of existence, and the country’s current status as a full member of CAN.

According to Vigévani, it is “legally impossible” for Bolivia to be a full member of both CAN and Mercosur, as its government intends.

Rodríguez, however, hopes that the Bolivian government will keep its pledge to maintain its trade agreements with CAN while complying with its new commitments to Mercosur.

Whatever the case may be, Bolivia’s entry into South America’s biggest trade bloc fulfils a destiny that dates back almost half a century: in 1969 the La Plata Basin Treaty was signed in Brasilia by Bolivia and the four founding members of Mercosur, Vigévani recalled.

In political terms, Mercosur will be strengthened as “an axis of South American and Latin American life,” he said. However, the “solidity” of its incorporation will depend on the response of Bolivian institutions, so that the decision comes from the state and not only the current government, and reflects a national consensus, he stressed.

Vigévani also believes that Bolivia’s full membership would be advantageous for the economy of Mercosur, by fostering closer relations and helping to avoid obstacles such as those which recently affected the production and purchase of gas by Argentina and Brazil, paralysing infrastructure and industrial projects that would have been beneficial to all, he added.

With regard to the Morales administration, the Brazilian expert believes that it has renewed its priority focus on regional integration, after briefly placing its faith in the alternative of closer ties with the Asia-Pacific region, particularly China.

Although the Bolivian economy may be small, with a total gross domestic product of some 25 billion dollars (around one percent of Brazil’s GDP), its incorporation will enhance the consistency of the economy of all of the Mercosur countries, while giving the bloc greater political weight, he concluded.

* Additional reporting by Franz Chávez in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Indigenous groups in Chile celebrated a recent court ruling that represented the latest victory in the struggle for respect for their right to be previously consulted about major projects which directly affect their communities.

On Apr. 27, the Supreme Court upheld an earlier decision by an appeals court, which had cancelled the environmental permit granted to the Canadian mining giant Goldcorp for its El Morro gold and copper mine in the northern Chilean region of Atacama.

The company reported that it had brought all work at El Morro to a halt, in line with the verdict handed down by the Court, which ordered it to consult with the small Diaguita de los Huascoaltinos indigenous agricultural community before carrying out any activity in their territory.

Goldcorp owns 70 percent of the El Morro open pit mine, a 3.9-billion-dollar 14-year project that is expected to produce 2,200 tons of copper concentrate per day in the Huasco Valley.

If it goes ahead, the project will affect 2,500 hectares stretching from the Andes mountains to the Pacific coast, including large swaths of land belonging to the Diaguita native community.

The Court also ruled that the company must carry out a more thorough environmental impact assessment, which must also take into account the resettlement of local communities and effects on the traditional way of life of the Diaguita Indians.

In addition, the verdict stated that the company violated International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, Chile’s Indigenous Law, and the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“The sentence in the El Morro case reflects legal precedents in Chile guaranteeing respect for the right to prior consultation of indigenous people with regard to measures that directly affect them, according to the ILO convention,” Consuelo Labra, a lawyer with the Citizen’s Observatory, the organisation that sponsored the legal action, told IPS.

According to ILO Convention 169, which establishes the right of native peoples to be previously consulted on matters affecting their territories and way of life, such as mining, oil or infrastructure projects, the Chilean state must carry out the consultation. However, the process has not yet been adequately regulated in this South American country.

“In late 2009, when the government of Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010) was coming to an end, decree-law 124 established a temporary regulation. But it ended up standing in the way of the implementation of consultation processes,” Hernando Silva, the head of the Citizen’s Observatory legal area, told IPS.

The expert added that in this respect, Chile lags far behind other mineral-rich countries in the region like Peru and Bolivia, which have adopted their own national laws on prior consultation.

But indigenous organisations have taken their struggle to court, and won, in a number of cases.

“We need neither the mining company nor the government for our own development,” said Sergio Campusano, president of the Diaguita de los Huascoaltinos agricultural community. “As a community, we are involved in several initiatives, such as the development of a private protected natural area, which will be the largest indigenous nature reserve in northern Chile.”

Campusano said the mining project not only affects the environment, but also the native community’s own development plans.

“In this initiative, our slogan is that we are ‘guardians of nature’, because that is what we are – it is in our nature. Mining projects do not fit here,” he said.

“We aren’t people who live around a mining project; the mine came and installed itself at the very centre of our ancestral territory,” he said.

The Supreme Court ruling in the El Morro case was not unprecedented.

For the past three years, indigenous communities around the country have filed legal action demanding compliance with ILO Convention 169.

The first case was won by a Mapuche community in the southern city of Lanco, who were not consulted with respect to the construction of a garbage dump near their homes.

Another victory involved a controversial wind farm on Chiloé Island in southern Chile, which the Supreme Court halted due to the company’s failure to properly consult with local Mapuche communities.

“The El Morro case is the result of all of these processes,” said Silva.

After the ruling was handed down, Goldcorp said it would meet with the Environmental Evaluation Service to see what steps to take now.

But experts say the opposition of indigenous communities and the requirement that consultation processes be carried out make it unlikely that the El Morro mining project will continue in the short to medium term. (END)

China is looking to Latin America to experiment with the yuan, or renminbi, to replace the dollar, taking advantage of the growth in Chinese trade and investment in this region. But because the volume is still insignificant, it is not yet clear what impact the currency will have on economies in the region.

The 2008 outbreak of the financial crisis in the United States prompted China to push for the use of its currency in transactions with its leading partners, Brazilian economist Rodrigo Branco explained to IPS.

“This change was mainly due to the need to guarantee steady supplies of commodities, and also because of the instability of the industrialised economies,” which have been hit hardest by the crisis, added Branco, with the Foreign Trade Studies Centre Foundation (FUNCEX).

China, which joined the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in 2008, has seen a 16-fold increase in its trade with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean over the last decade, to a total of 188 billion dollars a year in 2011.

Trade with Brazil alone climbed to 77 billion dollars last year, 37.5 percent up from 2010.

China is now Brazil’s largest investor and trading partner.

“The Asian giant is financing infrastructure in the region to expand its production and thus guarantee its sources of raw materials, while trying to cut the prices of imports,” the director of Brazil’s Foreign Trade Association (AEB), José Augusto de Castro, told IPS.

This influence is seen, for example, in loans to countries like Venezuela, with which it has a strategic relationship, in the words of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, China’s policy banks are seeking to expand their loans to Latin American countries that are suppliers of key food and mineral commodities using the yuan instead of the dollar, as part of a strategy to promote use of the Chinese currency in international trade.

The Export-Import Bank of China (China Exim Bank) is in negotiations with the IADB to set up a fund that would provide one billion dollars worth of yuan to finance infrastructure projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The two institutions signed an agreement in September under which the China Exim Bank committed itself to offer up to 200 million dollars to finance trade between China and Latin America. Part of that funding will be in yuan.

China’s decision to strengthen the IADB also shows its priority interest in beefing up infrastructure in Latin America, de Castro said.

Branco said “the most important aspect of this is the change in stance on the part of the Chinese government, which previously did not want to internationalise the yuan because its possible volatility would leave the country hostage to the external economic situation.”

Unknown effects

“The effect on Latin America’s economies of an internationalised yuan is not yet clear. We will have no way to gauge the impact until there is a market in place in which the currency is being freely traded,” the economist added.

Branco pointed out that China has shown interest in this region in three ways: through the direct purchase of minerals and crops from countries with comparative advantages, like Brazil, Argentina and Chile; through mergers or the creation of binational companies; and by means of loans and capital, with credit lines in yuan, to finance imports and infrastructure.

“The increase in trade in yuan has the aim of diversifying risk with respect to the dollar and the euro, given the volatility of the latter two,” Branco said.

“Furthermore, the increased international use of the Chinese currency is designed to complement the implementation of a new currency, which is already being traded in important markets like Hong Kong,” he added.

But de Castro does not believe the new loans in yuan will have an effect on the region’s trade or monetary policies in the short term, because political conditions would have to be different in China in order for the yuan to become an international currency.

“China has a closed system,” he said. “We all know the government adjusts the exchange rate according to its interests. It would have to build up international credibility in order for its currency to become convertible in practice and not just theory.”

Mauricio Claverí, an economist with the Argentine consultancy Abeceb, said that in order to analyse the eventual effects of the introduction of the yuan in regional trade, it is necessary to look at what happened in the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

“With respect to trade in local currencies between Argentina and Brazil, only a very small portion, between two and 2.5 percent of trade, is done in local currencies,” he said. “But large firms continue using the dollar.”

Argentina and Brazil were even considering bringing Uruguay and Chile – an associate member – into the initiative, but they refrained from doing so, and “the system never took off, because companies are very attached to the dollar,” the expert told IPS.

But the possible expansion of the yuan in Latin America raises other doubts. For example, what would the Chinese currency be used for?

Branco said the yuan would initially be used in future trade deals with China itself. “The currency could be used as a guarantee for contracts when the euro or the dollar are more volatile, as in recent times,” he said.

But the accumulation of reserves in yuan, he said, would only occur later, after the consolidation of a global financial market in that currency.

De Castro warned that “because the yuan is not a convertible currency, it would have difficulties being traded in the domestic market.”

In the case of Brazil, the Central Bank would have to absorb the yuan and later try to place them on the international market, which implies a financial risk, he said.

A report published this month by Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based centre for policy analysis, exchange, and communication on Western Hemisphere affairs, says China extended 37 billion dollars in credit to Latin America in 2010 – more than the loans from the World Bank, IDB, and United States Export-Import Bank combined.

More than 90 percent of that total went to Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador, especially to finance the purchase of commodities and towards Chinese companies that have investments in those countries.

Countries like Venezuela and Ecuador, which have a harder time obtaining multilateral loans, have particularly benefited from this assistance.

In the context of a 20-year strategic plan, China has loaned Venezuela more than 40 billion dollars since 2007, when a China-Venezuela fund was established, for four billion dollars. The fund, which has been renewed several times, finances investment in infrastructure and social programmes, for which precise figures are unavailable.

And in 2010, a 20 billion dollar credit line was negotiated, half of which is in dollars and half in yuan, mainly to buy goods and services from China.

The Chinese oil companies CNPC and CNOOC also made several billion dollars available to Venezuela’s state-run oil giant, PDVSA, for oil industry projects.

China’s investments in Venezuela have ranged from oil production to railways, infrastructure works, construction of housing, and car, motorcycle and mobile phone assembly plants.

* With reporting by Marcela Valente in Buenos Aires and Humberto Márquez in Caracas. (END)

“Perhaps it’s the curse of Rondônia,” joked Ari Ott, referring to teething troubles with the first turbine of the Santo Antônio hydroelectric plant which was intended to kick off a new cycle of huge power projects in Brazil’s Amazon jungle region.

Santo Antônio hydropower station under construction, October 2010. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The enormous turbine, designed to generate 71.6 megawatts of electricity, overheated during initial tests in December and the necessary repairs delayed its coming onstream, now announced for late March, by at least three months.

Professor Ott, of the Federal University of Rondônia, said the problems “do not bode well” for the 44 turbines to be installed over a period of four years at the complex located on the Madeira river and run by the Santo Antônio Energia consortium, which is made up of Brazilian companies Odebrecht and Andrade Gutiérrez and other investors.

The use of high power “bulb” turbines is an innovation in Amazon jungle rivers that is suited to the low gradient and high flow rate of the Madeira river. Placed horizontally, unlike traditional vertical turbines, they require much less of a fall of water: in Santo Antônio, the drop will be only 13.9 metres.

Ott is not sure whether the turbines will be able to cope with the large amount of sediment carried by the river, which is still “a ‘young’ river, changing its shape and bed” with the seasons and carrying large numbers of trees along with its waters.

“When I used to bathe near the Santo Antônio waterfall, it would take days to get rid of the fine sediment that penetrated my pores,” said Ott, a medical doctor and anthropologist of German descent, who has witnessed the transformations that have taken place in Rondônia over the past three decades.

It would seem to be unimaginable that those responsible for a project requiring an investment of nearly nine billion dollars should not only make such a technical blunder, but also repeat it in a similar project, the Jirau hydroelectric plant, which is under construction upstream on the Madeira, some 110 km southwest of the Santo Antônio dam.

Both designs were based on sediment studies, although these were questioned by environmentalists.

The “curse of Rondônia” that may yet frustrate these large local projects is said to have arisen in the early history of this northwestern Brazilian state which is largely covered with Amazon rainforest, Ott explained.

Porto Velho, the state capital, was originally a labourers’ camp for the workers who built the Madeira-Mamoré railway in the early 20th century to transport latex, the raw material of natural rubber, extracted from the native rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) that grows dispersed in the rainforest. Latex exports were a source of great wealth in the Amazon regions of Brazil and Bolivia.

The natural route for exports was the extensive Madeira river, the largest tributary of the mighty Amazon river which flows into the Atlantic.

The upper basin of the Madeira covers central and northern Bolivia, southeastern Peru and western Brazil. But there is an unnavigable stretch, upriver from Porto Velho to Guajará-mirim, which the 366-km railway was built to circumvent, through forests and swamps.

The completion of the railway was one of the terms of a 1903 treaty to compensate Bolivia for territory previously taken by Brazil, comprising the present-day Brazilian state of Acre.

But the railway, a gigantic undertaking in its time, cost the lives of thousands of workers who arrived from every continent, but especially from the British West Indies. Tropical diseases like malaria and beriberi decimated the workforce, killing or disabling most of the labourers within a few months of arrival and creating a constant need for replacements.

In a tragic irony of history, the railway was inaugurated at the very moment that the Amazonian rubber business went into decline, due to the low prices of the more competitive and rapidly expanding rubber tree plantations established from seedlings taken by the British from Brazil to Malaya (now Malaysia).

Now uneconomic, the early railway service was repeatedly interrupted, there were conflicts with the latex exporters, and in 1931 the Madeira-Mamoré railway concession owned by U.S. and European capital threw in the towel. The railway limped on intermittently until 1972, thanks to efforts by the Brazilian government.

The laying of 1,786 km of telegraph lines to Porto Velho was a similar epic exploit, led by military commander Cândido Rondon, a national hero later promoted to army field marshal, after whom the state of Rondônia was named.

In addition to suffering from malaria and other diseases, his expeditions were attacked repeatedly by native groups. His reaction was never to counter-attack, but to seek out peaceful contact, and his attitude inspired the policy of protection of indigenous peoples in Brazil.

But by the time Rondon finally got the telegraph cables to Porto Velho in 1914, radio telegraphy had just been invented, said Ott. The workers who laid the lines and the telegraph operators “were abandoned to their fate for decades, and survived in native fashion, by hunting and fishing,” he added.

Nevertheless, laying the cables was not a complete waste of time, because the wireless telegraph system proved ineffective in the Amazonian climate, said Carlos Muller, a journalist who wrote his doctoral thesis on the history of telecommunications in Brazil.

Muller pointed out that Rondon also blazed the trail for the road route that, five decades later, would connect Rondônia with central Brazil.

That very road, the BR-364, became an axis of the expansion of the agricultural frontier from the 1970s on, associated with rising deforestation, conflicts over land-grabbing, disorderly migration, massacres of indigenous people and invasion of their ancestral lands, especially in Rondônia.

And the situation took a turn for the worse in the 1980s when the road was paved, a glaring example of the disastrous projects financed by the World Bank. Efforts were made to correct the mistakes in later decades, with the environmentally oriented Rondônia Agricultural and Forestry Plan (PLANAFLORO).

The Samuel hydroelectric plant, built between 1982 and 1989 on the Jamari river, a tributary of the Madeira, is another ecological disaster that is also apparently under a curse. The reservoir flooded 540 square km and the output is barely 216 megawatts. In comparison, the Santo Antônio reservoir will flood an area 35 percent smaller and have a 14.5-fold greater capacity.

Intensive activity by wildcat miners extracting gold and cassiterite have also brought more social and environmental problems than benefits to many places in the state.

Professor Ott carries out and directs university research into the impacts on the health of indigenous people of the “invasions” of Rondônia by outsiders, of which there is now a third wave.

After infectious diseases like measles and chickenpox came a wave of “modern” ailments like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and AIDS, and now “social pathologies” such as a rise in the murder rate, alcoholism and domestic violence, which “would once have been inconceivable in indigenous communities,” Ott said.

Rape, which has become common, formerly did not exist in a culture where men “were gentlemen” in sexual relations, following the woman’s lead, according to Ott.

The anthropologist derives satisfaction from the backpedalling forced on the Santo Antônio Energia company in negotiations with indigenous people who are indirectly affected by the hydroelectric plant.

The Karitiana people, who “live well” on their reservation 90 km from Porto Velho, realised that the consortium building the power station was paying compensation on a village by village basis. They promptly tripled the number of their villages, and received more reparations, including pick-up trucks, than originally envisaged.