WITH THE COLLAPSE OF SOVIET-STYLE socialism, the fall of dictatorial regimes and the
discredit of armed struggle, a cycle of political tensions
has ended in Latin America and the world. This has
opened the way for new approaches to social change.
Civil society, shaking off its passivity toward populist
governments and confronting the oppression of totalitar-
ian regimes, has emerged as a multi-faceted and decen-
tralizing force, demanding democracy via citizen partici-
pation in matters that concern individual freedoms, living
conditions, and their destiny as peoples.
These new avenues of protest, often quiet, symbolic
or nearly invisible, can lead to explosions of anger. Such
was the case in Caracas in February 1989 and then again
in March of this year. The governor of the state of Zulia
described it well when he said that desperation had led
Mexican environmentalistEnrique Leffworks at the United
Nations Environment Program. His most recent book,
Cultura y Manejo Sustentable de los Recursos Naturales
(Mexico: UNAM/Porrda, 1992), was written with J.
Carabias.
to “a spirit of civil disobedience that goes beyond the
limits of rebellion, and a profound scorn for authority,
for institutions and for the customary channels” of
protest.
The economic crisis and the seeming incapacity of
current neoliberal policies to surmount it are not the only
causes. Also responsible are the state’s failure to develop
ways for people to participate directly in the improvement
of the quality of their lives, and its incapacity to repress
new forms of collective identity and solidarity that ques-
tion its power.
Although growing popular protest often does not ex-
plicitly refer to the environmental crisis, environmental
consciousness underlies much of it. Protest grows out of
deteriorating living conditions which people associate
with failed development policies, the inadequate use of
resources, and environmental degradation. By positing a
new paradigm for achieving the ideals of liberty, equality
and social justice–one based on a new relationship to
nature- environmental consciousness may well be the
vehicle that will renew socialism’s potential to transform
civilization.
Nearly 25 years ago the student movements of 1968 announced the emergence of a populace more aware of its rights and desirous of participating in the decisions that affect it. This coincided with a new awareness of the limits of growth, the degradation of the environment and the deterioration of the quality of life. In Latin America these movements marked the beginning of society’s break with the authoritarian state. They offered new perspectives on social change and generated a new political culture out- side established channels of power. Illusions of economic miracle-oil wealth in Mexico and Venezuela, the opening up of the Amazon, the colo- nization of tropical jungles in many countries, extensive cattle ranching, the Green Revolution, migration to urban and industrial centers-all left a legacy of deforestation, soil salinization and erosion, and air and water pollution. Meanwhile, Latin America’s great megalopololi-Mexico City, Santiago, Slo Paulo and Cubatio (Brazil)-became the world’s most polluted and poverty-stricken cities. This all contributed to a growing clamor for a new concept of development to replace the predatory models of eco- nomic growth, exponential use of natural resources and unsustainable patterns of consumption that have devas- tated the region’s environment and left 183 million people in misery.
IN THE 1970S PEOPLE AFFECTED BY DE-
teriorating environmental conditions in the work- place and at home, particularly the poor who suffer disproportionately, began to voice explicitly environ- mental concerns. Their efforts dovetailed with new middle-class demands for a better quality of life, for rights to expression and participation, and for the recu- peration of community values. The “environmental
Deforestation along Brazil’s southern Atlantic coast. As en drives down the quality of life, environmental consciousne tional banners of the Left.
movement” which emerged fused old struggles and new values. It combined the struggle for survival with the quest for a better quality of life. In Mexico environmentalism has given new meaning to the struggles of peasants, workers and the urban poor. Since 1976, peasants in the state of Tabasco in Mexico’s Southeast, for example, have protested oil spills and pollution of the rivers. In 1983 the “Plan de Ayala” National Coordinating Council, made up of 523 peasant organizations at the time, incorporated the defense of natural resources into their ancestral struggles for land. And the Mixtec Indian communities of the Sierra de Juirez in Oaxaca state have fought to regain control over their forests, which the government had ceded to a foreign company. Other peasant groups campaign against pesti- cide abuse, intensive farming and the control of residual waters. Peasants have protested arsenic poisoning due to the overuse of the aquifer in Comarca Lagunera and irrigation with sewer water in the Mezquital Valley. 2
Workers, too, began to protest the use of toxic chemi-
cals in the workplace and the contamination of surround-
ing neighborhoods. They also organized in response to
“industrial accidents” caused by negligence and non-
enforcement of statutes on workplace hygiene and secu-
rity, and by chaotic urban and industrial growth. 3 Unregu-
lated municipal dumps are another issue that gives rise to
local environmental organizing. These community-based
efforts seek not only to move the dumps out of town,
systematize land ownership and find more healthy and
efficient ways of disposing of waste, but also to transform
the dumps from the fiefdoms of garbage barons into
community-controlled productive resources. 4
In Brazil, despite the existence of over 900 environ-
mental groups with 35,000 members, the movement has
viromenal dgraatio IlaUe Iew iInlVLIU 111IV U1e environmental degradationpopular movement and re- ss is renewing the tradi-p uar e ment ade- mains essentially made up of urban middle-class pro- fessionals. More effective
have been the efforts of
“eco-politicians”-people
from the movement who
have gone on to win public
office. Fibio Feldmann, for
example, a founder of Sgo
Paulo’s OIKOS ecology
group, became in 1986 the
first congressman elected on
an environmentalist plat-
form. Largely as a result of
his efforts, the 1988 consti-
tution includes an article for
environmental protection
that is among the most pro-
gressive in the world.
Feldmann was also instru-
mental in gaining elite sup-
report for two key environmental organizations: S.O.S.
Mata Atlantica, to preserve the remaining 5% of the
tropical forest that once covered the southern Atlantic
Coast; and Pr6-Jureia, to preserve the estuary-lagoon
complex in the south of Sdo Paulo state.
In Venezuela, the most visible part of the environmen-
tal movement is also made up of middle-class-based ecol-
ogy groups who pursue local, restricted demands. One of
their greatest successes was the cancellation of the Trans-
Amazon Ralley in 1987, aproposed car-race from Venezu-
ela to Brazil, which would have been disastrous for the
fragile ecosystems of the Gran Sabana region. A small
group of professionals, called the Association of Friends in
Defense of the Gran Sabana, managed to unite all the
country’s ecology groups in opposition to the project.
In 1984 the first national meeting of environmental
non-governmental organizations was held in C6rdoba,
Argentina.s In Colombia, a series of national forums on
ecology took place in the mid-1980s, although only the
central western portion of the country has formed a
regional ecological council, known as CERCO. The gov-
ernmental agency responsible for managing natural re-
sources, INDERENA, generated the greatest surge in
environmental action by launching a “green campaign” in
1985-1986. This effort sought to set up Green Councils in
each municipality to organize the communities in defense
of their environmental resources, as well as to strengthen
local democracy. Hundreds of these councils were formed,
although momentum fell off with the change in govern-
ment in 1986.6
ENVIRONMENTALISM SEEMS TO BE THE
only new social movement that is really “new,” the
result of heretofore unknown phenomena: cumulative
ecological destruction and global socio-environmental
degradation.7 This multi-class, heterogeneous, and multi-
sectoral movement has yet to find a strategy capable of
consolidating the power of civil society. The tendency of
ecology groups to stand firm by the principles of diversity
and autonomy has led to atomized organizations, frac-
tured power and distrust of any form of leadership.8 At the
same time, the movement’s immaturity has favored the
rise of environmental caudillos and personality cults,
facilitating the process of co-optation as the state mines
this fertile ground forits own environmental spokespeople.
Latin America’ s emerging democratic regimes have skill-
fully manipulated the environmental cause by invoking
its symbols for other purposes. When Mexico’s President
Salinas decided to close the Azcapotzaclo oil refinery in
Mexico City last year, for example, he was not under
public pressure to do so. But his action neutralized the
efforts of the environmental movement and further con-
solidated the power of the state. Although the state can co-
opt the movement’s leadership, it has yet to find a way to
defuse its demands.
The global, transnational and long-term character of
some environmental problems (among them biodiversity,
species conservation, climatic change, trade and disposal
of dangerous and toxic waste) pose problems that are
beyond the consciousness, daily lives and direct interests
of the citizenry. As a consequence, instead of evoking
broad class actions, environmental issues get translated
into diverse, local, concrete concerns, like pollution, the
destruction of woodlands, and the degradation of the
water supply.
Yet the environmental movement offers a vision ca-
pable of renewing the traditional banners of the Left, with
respect to both the basic rights of the working class and the
growing demand of civil society for abetter quality of life.
This environmental vision aspires to undo the centralized
economic and political power of the elites and the ideol-
ogy that legitimizes unequal, oppressive and ecocidal
development. Poverty and inequality are as environmen-
tally unsustainable as the current trend toward overcon-
sumption in wealthy societies. Sustainable development
would require not only closing the gap between rich and
poor, but questioning the rationality of economic growth
as we know it, under both capitalism and socialism.
Although the environmental movement has no explicit
strategy to build links to the Left or to build a new
socialism, it has transformed people’s conception of so-
cialism. It points to a redefinition of socialist ideals
grounded in a new material basis, involving new forms of
ownership and access to productive resources, and new
participative institutions. 9 A new paradigm for sustain-
able development, based on direct community participa-
tion, would link up local economies according to the eco-
technological potential of their resources, both natural
and cultural. It would overcome poverty and marginali-
zation through self-managed production to satisfy basic
needs and to enhance the quality of life of the majorities.’ 0
In many ways, the environmental “movement” seems
little more than wishful thinking: an amalgam of groups
without defined social actors or effective strategies to
build power, paralyzed when faced with the uncertain
direction of global change. But as Galileo put it years ago,
e pure si muove, and nevertheless it moves. Environmen-
talism is taking hold in people’s consciousness, trans-
forming people’s ways of thinking. It links different
social movements that assault the social edifice. Its actors
circulate within and outside the state institutions, the
universities and the new professional entities and organi-
zations of civil society. It is heterogeneous—crossing
class lines, economic sectors and national boundaries. It
mixes with other social movements, old and new, renew-
ing worker and peasant struggles, indigenous and urban
popular movements, and the peace and conservation
movements.
A new Left that fuses red and green as it reaches for a
new utopia could launch a new cycle of social change,
capable of transcending the civilizing rationale of moder-
nity. The environmentalism being born may well prove to
be the theory and praxis that will allow humanity to
survive into the twenty-first century.
Environmentalism: Fusing Red and Green
1. See J. O’Connor, “Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Theoretical Intro-
duction, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism (1988); R. Bahro, La Alternativa
(Madrid: Alianza, 1980); and O. Ovalles, La Fuerza de la Ecologfa en
Venezuela (Caracas: Ecotopia, 1983).
2. See V.M. Toledo, “La Resistencia Ecol6gica del Campesinado
Mexicano,” Ecologia Politica, No. 1 (Barcelona).
3. The worst of these was the November 19, 1984 explosion of a PEMEX
gas depot in the heart of San Juan Ixhuatepec (known as San Juanico), a town
of 70,000 inhabitants located in the industrial zone of Tlanepantla north of
Mexico City. This “accident,” which killed over 400 and left more than 4,000
injured, gave rise to a struggle for compensation, for the relocation of the
industrial park, and for policy changes to prevent the recurrence of such a
tragedy elsewhere in the country. The recent gas explosions in Guadalajara
have already triggered significant protests.
4. A good example was the local community organization in Colonia
Hidalgo, in the city of Minatitldn, Veracruz, which managed to transform an
unregulated dump into a sanitary landfill overseen by the community and a
municipal “ecology ombudsman.” And in Ciudad Judrez in Chihuahua, the
workers who labored under wretched conditions picking reusable goods in the
municipal dump threw off the yoke of the official union and formed a
cooperative. They are now compensated directly without intermediaries, set
their own prices, and are learning how to read. The cooperative covers medical
expenses and funerals. For an overview of the social-environmental movement
in Mexico, see E. Left and J.M. Sandoval, “Primera Reuni6n Nacional de
Movimientos Sociales y Medio Ambiente” (Mexico: Programa Universitario
Justo Sierra, UNAM, 1985).
5. From that meeting two tendencies emerged: the Confederation of
Environmental NGOs (COANG) and the Ecology Action Network. P. Quiroga,
“La Dimensi6n Politica de la Problemitica Ambiental,” in Crisis Ambientaly
DesarrolloEcondmico:Aportesa la discusidn en laArgentina, (Buenos Aires:
Centro Latinoamericano de Estudios Ambientales/Fundaci6n Friedrich Ebert,
1991).
6. E. La Torre, “Estado, Ambiente y Sociedad Civil en Colombia,” in M.P.
Garcfa Guadilla (ed.), Estado, Sociedad Civil y Medio Ambiente: Crisis y
Conflictos Socio-Ambientales en America Latina y Venezuela (Caracas:
Universidad Sim6n Bolivar/Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo, 1991).
7. See A. Gunder Frank and M. Fuentes, “Nine Theses on Social Move-
ments,” IFDA Dossierr, No. 63 (1988).
8. Recent studies identified 900 ecology groups in Brazil, 700 in Argentina
and over 100 each in Mexico and Venezuela. Most of these are very small and
many are not active, but the numbers are indicative of the movement’s
atomized nature, due in great part to the environmental philosophy which
stresses decentralization and autonomy. For Brazil, see K. Goldstein, “Search-
ing for Green through Smog and Squalor: Defense of the Environment in
Brazil,” PhDdiss., Dept. ofPolitics, Princeton University, 1990;forArgentina,
see P. Quiroga, “La Dimensi6n Politica”; for Mexico, see E. Kurzinger-
Wiemman et al, PoliticaAmbiental enMdxico: El Papel de las Organizaciones
no Gubernamentales (M6xico: Instituto Alemdn de Desarrollo/Fundaci6n
Friedrich Ebert, 1991); for Venezuela, see M.P. Garcia Guadilla, Ambiente,
Estado y Sociedad.
9. F. Ovejero, “Ecologfa y Proyectos de Izquierda,”Ecologa Polftica, No.
2 (Barcelona, 1991). The socialist governments of Latin America have been
open to the environmental viewpoint, but their environmentalism has been
limited to Nicaragua’s defense of natural resources and Cuba’s policies of
decentralized economic planning. The new democracies are more inclined
toward neoliberal de-regulation than environmental management. Although
“ecology” has become a mandatory staple of political rhetoric, both socialism
and democracy in power remain divorced from the transformatury capacity of
environmentalism: democratic participation in the management of environ-
mental resources. See E. Leff, “Cultura Democritica, Gesti6n Ambiental y
Desarrollo Sustentable en Armdrica Latina,” in Conferencia Internacional
sobre Cultura Democrdticay Desarrollo: Hacia el TercerMilenio en Amdrica
Latina (Montevideo: UNESCO/PAX, 1990); J. O’Connor, “Capitalism, Na-
ture, Socialism”; R. Bahro, La Alternativa; and O. Ovalles, La Fuerza de la
Ecologia en Venezuela.
10. See E. Leff, Ecotechnological Productivity: a conceptual basis for the
integrated management of natural resources,” Social Science Information,
Vol. 25, No. 3 (1986).
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