In
one sense what happens in the centres of power is
irrelevant. People will take decisions about their
lives regardless of what imperial front men like
George Bush or any of the other representatives
of the global plutocracy say or do. Marginalised
rural workers tend not to look over their shoulder
and whisper to each other "Golly, but what will
Mr. Bush think....?" before they occupy unused land
so as to grow food for their families.
The
same is true for any people dismissed and abandoned
in their own countries. As often as not, survival
may impose apparent inertia on the impoverished
majority. That suits the purposes of empire just
fine. However , when people do act, it is not just
for effect, but to redeem their humanity and survive
as whole as they can. People do what they think
is best for their own situation.
Cuba - Galileo to the neo-liberal Inquisition
In
most of Latin America, people at grass roots are
stuck with little chance of raising their living
standards. Government health and education services
fail to meet their needs. As a result, education
is supposed to be a priority area for World Bank
development interventions. It is obvious that World
Bank development practice fails in its stated objectives.
It
is self-evident too that the policies applied by
the World Bank and the IMF can only be intended
to fail. Nothing else explains the refusal of the
international financial institutions and their accomplices
to acknowledge what everyone else can see perfectly
well. When one looks at Latin America one has to
ask why it is that Cuba (52) sits just above Mexico
(53) in the 2003 UN Human Development Index. Similarly,
one must ask what massive development "aid" has
done for the impoverished majority in the Central
American countries that sit dozens of places below
Cuba in that index.
Cuba
has been the victim of 40 years of US sanctions.
It has received no significant development aid since
the Soviet Union fell apart over a decade ago. By
contrast, during precisely the same period, Mexico
has been the dubious beneficiary of "free trade"
with the United States and Canada. Central America
as a region has received billions of foreign "aid"
both governmental and "non-governmental".
Cuba
sets standards in education and health most of the
rest of the world views with envy. But Mexico and
Central America remain in socio-economic crisis
unable to meet the health and education needs of
their peoples. Even official government data point
to scandalous failure. In education, the deep and
probably deliberate contradictions between World
Bank/IMF practice and the accompanying rhetoric
are clear.
Here
are figures for 2002 from the Central American governments
for the percentage of school-age children who abandon
school before finishing secondary level and for
illiteracy among people over age 15:
Country
Desertion Illiteracy
El Salvador 30.00% 21.30%
Guatemala 40.00% 31.50%
Honduras 47.00% 25.00%
Nicaragua 34.00% 33.50%
The
Economic Commision for Latin America and the Caribbean
(ECLAC) in its Social Panorama for Latin America
for 2001-2002 wrote "ECLAC calls on governments
to prioritize in their social agendas programs aimed
at reducing scholastic desertion. But clarifies
that this effort will not fully yield fruit without
dynamic accompanying generation of quality employment
and adequate social protection which permits productive
absorption of the higher qualifications offered."
[1]
Somehow
ECLAC manages to parrot these worthy and fatuous
sentiments without receiving a public chorus of
well-merited scorn. Throughout Latin America, the
World Bank and the IMF act to make sure ECLAC's
wishes never come true. As ever Nicaragua provides
a good example of the futility of World Bank practice.
Vladimir and Estragon go to Nicaragua - waiting
for an education
Honestly
discharging his duty to report the facts, the Nicaraguan
Education Minister declared in October 2002, "Scholastic
desertion is enormous, this coincides with levels
of poverty."[2] . The same press
report quoted Ministry of Education statistics putting
the number of school age children not attending
class at 861,000. That's 41.8 percent of the total
school age population. Around 70% of Nicaraguans
live in poverty. In plenty of marginal barrios in
urban centres around the country unemployment is
over 60%.
This
is the context in which the World Bank prates about
its latest education project for Nicaragua as "strengthening
the stewardship of the Ministry of Education; improving
the framework of accountability for service delivery
by supporting school autonomy; and implementing
student testing, classroom observation studies and
dissemination of results." [3] These peripheral activities are designed by and for a useless
neo-colonial managerial class of "advisers".
They
do very little to deliver education to the people
in Nicaragua who need it. But they are financed
by a US$15m loan that will have to be repayed by
hapless Nicaraguan taxpayers over 10 years. Meanwhile,
teachers get paid less than two thirds what they
need to meet basic needs. The waste of money is
grotesque, absurd and typical.
Neo-liberal Central Planning - plutocrat bodge-it
and splotch-it
This
process and all the others like it around the world
are funded by taxpayers mostly in wealthy countries,
members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development. They have no say how the money
is spent. In the "beneficiary" countries too, taxpayers
are directly mugged by their own governments with
little or no public discussion. Governments are
frogmarched into the whole deal because the World
Bank and the IMF long ago imposed policies that
stripped away public sector funding, leaving social
spending programs broke.
A
parasitic managerial class lives very-nicely-thanks
off the process. The real beneficiaries are multinational
corporations and finance businesses who themselves
help devise the wide range of neo-liberal scams
and fakery the World Bank and the IMF then roam
the world imposing on their victims. It is hard
not to wonder how much longer neo-liberal charlatans
and shysters can continue touting this corrupt system
of global corporate welfare before the game is finally
up.
Over
decades, the US and European governments have perfected
an integrated two step with their IMF and World
Bank partners. The latter cripple governments' autonomy
and rip out their social spending programs. Once
other options have been deliberately and purposefully
closed down, developing countries are then faced
with a barrage of neoliberal "there's no alternative
(since we closed all choices down)" propaganda.
And smiling, brow-beating carpet-baggers like Robert
Zoellick (and now, for Europe, known double-dealer,
twice forced from public office for misleading conduct,
Peter Mandelson) step forward offering pen and ink
so governments end up signing disadvantageous "free
trade" deals to further benefit the corporate global
plutocrats who structured the whole deal from the
start.
Resistance and survival - free software cleans up
Here
one returns to the sense in which what happens in
the centres of power is irrelevant. The neoliberal-garbage
dispensing system and its ancillary "development"
NGO travelling circus are not going to change. Too
many powerful interests need them just as they are.
While the global aid bureaucrats perform their sterile
palaver, at grass roots people organize to get the
best out of available resources. Where necessary
too, people mount what resistance they can.
Making
ends meet for grass roots community development
is a daily challenge. Sustainability is at once
imperative and elusive. A powerful tool to help
with survival strategies is free software. Education
is a clear case of its advantages.
To
address Nicaragua's problem of school desertion,
a remedial answer may be low cost community-based
education programs in areas where desertion is highest
for young adults who abandoned classes for economic
reasons. It is has been possible for years to set
up small computer networks of diskless clients (impossible
to do cheaply with proprietary software, but readily
done cheaply with free software). Installing these
in accessible locations for rural students unable
to travel to urban centres to make class every weekend
is an affordable way of creating viable options
for good distance learning.
Coupled
with solar power, as experience has shown in India
in Uttar Pradesh [4] , it makes
well-resourced secondary and adult education in
remote rural areas a real possibility. There is
no need to put up with World Bank or development
agency bullshit to be able to do this. Determined
solidarity networking can make this kind of solution
work very well. Other examples abound across the
world.
At
the same time, free software skills equip people
to devise new, better independent resources for
themselves to address their education and training
problems. The free software ethos of mass voluntary
cooperation so as to optimize creativity is diametrically
opposed and demonstrably, decisively superior to
the arid, mercantile practice of the international
financial institutions. It also makes nonsense of
the standard cant about "free trade" and the intellectual
property rights shell games so dear to giant multinational
corporations.
What's
true in education is true across the range of socio-economic
policy. There are plenty of alternatives and more
than enough desire and will to make those alternatives
work. Economic and military power may be on the
side of the global elite. The creativity and solidarity
of peoples can put them straight.
Toni Solo is an activist based in Central America. Contact via
www.tonisolo.net
Notes
1. (Elevadas
tasas de deserción escolar en América
Latina)
2. La Prensa October 10th 2002
3. (For project documents see: Nicaragua
Education Project )
4. In Uttar Pradesh the state government, run by
the socialist Samajwadi party is using solar panels
to run computers from schools in rural areas unconnected
to the electricity grid. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3623864.stm
