Equador : the "Forajidos" & the Prisoners : Coca & Cashcrops

international | worker & community struggles and protests | news report

Saturday June 25, 2005 16:20

by © Iosaf Mac Diarmada - the ipsiphi

another component in the pre-G8 compare & contrast series.

The image is dramatic, one of two prisoners in García Moreno prison Quito, who yesterday allowed themselves to be crucified by fellow inmates to demand the return of "reduced sentances" (a normal first world penology benefit aimed at succesful reinsertion), rights which were stripped from the inmates of Equador's 36 prisons by the congress in 2001. The prison was built for 700 prisoners and presently houses 1200 without remission and adecquate nutrition.

Statewide protests began by prisoners on Monday and extended to hungerstrikes in the prisons of Quito and Guayaquil on wednesday.

It has been a little over 2 months since the collapse of the Guiterrez regime on April 20th.
Yet little progress has been felt to have been made. This is felt by support movements and analysts to be due to excessive internal middle class interest in rattling rusty sabres whilst the poorest and specifically those of the Social Assemblies are further marginalised and neglected.

2 prisoners allowed themselves to be crucified yesterday in a demand for rights.

I'll take it you through it with a perenial example "the border disputes"

Rather than treat on the gravity of the situation in the nation's prisons, the current government of President Alfredo Palacio has found itself rattling a rusty sabre at neighbouring Peru, with its defense minster several days ago, saying Equador was threatened by new military provisioning by its niehgbour Peru, and then today an about face from the president himself who apologised to the Peruvians.

Equador and Peru signed peace accords since 1998, and there is a different style of doing things.
As we know 1998 was a significant year and the table was laid globally, in that year the chattering classes of Latin America now maintian that Chile was preapring a "preventative war" against Peru.

And so the rusty sabre is now being rattled at Uribe's Colombia instead, with the same defence minister accusing Colombia of breaching sovreignty on the border. The Colombians whose border with Equador lies in the FARC zone are insistent that they have done nothing to deserve these reproaches which seem to be concocted for an internal jingoist audience.

Equador belongs with Peru and Colombia in the group of countries being pressured by the USA to accept a Free Trade Treaty (its spanish acronym is TLC).

Peru has "legalised" coca production in part of its Andean highland areas, the region of Cusco, arguing that the campesinos there, indiginous for the most part use the plant naturally. The UN body for control of narco-traffic disagrees. UNODC says that coca will end up in the supply chain of narco-traffickers, and point out that as colombia's share of Coca and its synthetic derivitave the drug Cocaine drop, the % of Peru has gone up.

There was a time, when De Valera was in Aras an Uachtaran, and Haughey was as young and virile as his contemporary manuel Fraga, when Irish people would joke with each other on receiving a migrants letter using the phrase "banana republic". Curious for Ireland has yet cultivated succesfully the banana.

The Banana or plantain fruit ( "Musa acuminata Colla"), originated in the Indo-Malaysian region of Asia reaching to northern Australia. They are now cultivated throughout the tropical humid zones of the planet.

They need ten to fifteen months to flower in frost free conditions (ideally over 12º Centigrade or 53º Farenheit). Which is why they don't grow on the blaskets. The banana grows best in acidic soil with Ph between 5.5 and 6.5, the plant becomes very "top heavy" at the eight month, and can be blown over very easily and therefore requires wind shielding outlying crops. Bananas are generally harvested in march or April before the tropical windy season. Bananas are very like other cashcrops in many regards. You can't grow them on the blaskets, you can't grow them in Skerries, but Irish people and all their first world chums like buying them and give little thought to the peculiarities of their cultivation, or indeed how a careful gardener would surround them with trees, hemp plants and so on.

Yes Irish people and their chums like to eat them.
as cheaply as possible.

in 1998 (important year that) Houricane Mitch destroyed the banana crops of Central South America, this almost led to the creation of a standard global banana price, but as bananas are also cultivated further north (in California) and in Asia (from Malaysia and Philippines to Australia)
{let's have a jargon-esque economist qoute}
"Demand from banana consumers would depend on income growth and economic evolution in the different countries, population growth, consumer preferences, banana import regimes, etc. Although the banana market presents an oligopolistic structure, this does not actually mean that transnational marketing companies have a great power to set selling prices for bananas, particularly during the nineties with increasing competition exiting among them. Their position as price makers is not so clear."
http://r0.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/banana/prices.htm

Quite.
They just grow them.
& in this year's round of Banana pricing with the €U and NAFTA through the World Trade Organsation the main banana producing nations of Equador, Colombia, Philippines, Jamaica and Costa Rica offered to pay a tariff of 33.06€ (=39$) for every ton of bananas they export.

Yes quite, & the €U of the soon to be third way of post anglo-saxon imperialism and Tony Blair,
and peoples and societies, doesn't think thats enough, or "basta" as a equadorian would say.
For Next week on the 28th and 29th of June, the €U will take on the Banana producing nations in a round of talks for 2006 and ask for 230€ (=270$) on every ton in Geneva (where bananas wouldn't stand a chance).

At the moment they pay 75€ (= 90$) on every ton.

Think about that the next time you're at the supermarket. They paid you to sell you that nana.
in fact they paid you 43.94€ more per ton than their governments whom at home few are pleased with said they were capable of paying. And the EU (to cover enlargement costs and paperwork and interpreters perhaps) wants them to pay from 2006 the sum of 199.94€ a ton. How many nanas youget for almost 200€? Lets bring this back, how much cocaine could you get for 200€? Or let's get really really BASTA! = DINERO GRATIS! do you think 200€ could be better spent in Equador in providin re-insertion for the father of that child (a coca worker) in the second picture?

Or do just like to see people crucified?

© Iosaf Mac Diarmada - the ipsiphi
{if you reproduce this without my consent, I sue you, coz I like bananas and believe they should be much more expensive than they are, & I'm willing to sacrifice my luxuries}

€ % / $ @ + *

Background here (imc ireland) to the overthrow of the Guiterrez regime and the "Que se Vayan Todos!" campaign
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69487

Background to current Prison protests Ecuador Indymedia
http://ecuador.indymedia.org/es/2005/06/10242.shtml

Other themes of interest -
Philippines :
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=70218
EZLN Zapatista red alert :
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=70351
Bolivia :
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=70194
Zimbabwe :
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=70209
Brazil Corruption Congress & scandal :
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=70152