Galeano 156-65
Galeano calls petroleum “black gold” and a “magnet for foreign capital”. He says “no jewel in the diadem of capitalism is so monopolized”. He mentions that “with petroleum, as with coffee or meat, rich countries profit more from the work of consuming it than do poor countries from the work of producing it”.
The petroleum in the US “well enjoys high prices” and the wages are “comparatively generous” but the prices of petroleum in Venezuela and the middle east have been falling since the 1950s. The US is still the “biggest producer and the biggest importer of petroleum”.
Oil companies make people that live in the areas they taking petroleum from pay much more for their own resource than they were getting from sales in Europe and the US. For example, “the state buys Colombian petroleum from foreign countries at a price 37 percent higher than the world price, and has to pay in dollars”.
“Uruguay has to buy 40 percent of its crude petroleum from whomever Standard Oil, Shell, Atlantic, or Texaco might indicate” and “has to pay all the corporations’ costs”. The large companies that distribute materials “manage effortlessly by telephone and so profitably that it attracts more US investment than anything in Brazil”.
Standard Oil was accused of “provoking the conflict and of financing the Bolivian army so that it would appropriate the Paraguayan Chaco on its behalf. It needed the Chaco—which was also thought to be rich in petroleum—for a pipeline from Bolivia to the river”. The fight was between large petroleum corporations “but it was not they who shed their blood.” “In the end Paraguay won the war but not the peace.”
“The US government always makes common cause with private oil corporations”. They make it impossible for these countries to succeed without their help. They cut off lifelines if they do not get what they want. “Standard Oil and Shell…defied Mexican Supreme Court rulings on the application of Mexican labor laws”.
When Two Worlds Collide
Garcia says that “to grow Peru needs to expand its markets”, that’s why he wants the US to invest in the country. He said it would guarantee their future and open new possibilities for their country.
To me the suckling pigs represent the large corporations that are coming and sucking everything out of Peru and Latin America.
Alberto says that the “savage development” kills the rainforest, the culture, and the people.
Garcia enacted laws to facilitate trade with the US and some of them were laws that affected the native people in the Amazonian rainforest. The laws gave permission to companies to exploit resources in the rainforest without consent from the indigenous people.
The indigenous feel that their land is not negotiable. They are never going to sell it or give it away. They have a right to live in peace without invasion. The people were not consulted before these laws were made and that is a part of the Peruvian constitution. These people want it to be known that they are also Peruvians. The indigenous know that the private companies and the government want to get rich at their expense. The government says the natural resources will benefit the entire country of Peru. After the clash between protesters and police, the government says that the natives are not the victims because they brutally murdered the police.
When the laws were debated in congress, the government pressured its own party saying that if they changed a single comma or a period in the laws then it would cause the Free Trade Agreement to fall apart, which was a lie. The native communities had nothing to do with the FTA. This is the great fraud of Garcia’s government.
Garcia says that the natives are not fist class citizens and a small group of people can’t tell the whole country that they are not allowed to be there. He says that they want to take them back to primitive times. “The government must act with strength and order”.
After the clash, 82 natives sustained gunshot wounds, 11 police officers are killed and one goes missing, 9 indigenous men are killed. Both sides lost valuable lives. Pizango was put in jail in Nicaragua and is still there a year after the conflict. But he decides to go back and continue to fight for what he believes in even if it’s from jail. The native leaders are charged with murder for the policemen and there is still not a verdict. No government officials were charged.
"Standard Oil Co."
The poem mentions the plants and water that becomes permanently poisoned from oil. Standard Oil creates prisoners (Latin American countries). It mentions the Chaco War that is explained in Galeano. In which country was a president assassinated?
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