Empire, Labor, and Environment: Coal Mining and

Anticapitalist Environmentalism in the Americas

Aviva ChomskySalem State UniversitY

Steve StrffierUniversity of New Orleans

Abstract

Latin American political movements linking traditional peasant values of subsistence with

a leftist critique of imperialism are contributing to new forms of environmentalism there.

While in the United States labor and environmental movements tend to operate within

mainstream political and economic models based on privileging high levels of

consumption and economic growth, Latin American voices are challenging both the

global economic order and traditional concepts of economic development. From

indigenous and peasant movements to leftist labor unions to political leaders, Latin

Americans are calling for economic development that privileges the rights of rural

peoples and their environments, and redistribution of resources domestically and

!f"Uuly. yet they remain imbedded in an international economy based on extractivism

and economic growth, which poses signiflcant challenges to any alternative paths

ln the summer of 2fi)9, a young Appalachian activist we'll call Sara, just hired to

work on the Sierra club's "Beyond coal" campaign, met with the president of

Colombia's largest coal mining union, Jairo Quiroz. Jairo described the workers'

struggles in one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines, stretching more than

thirty miles long near Colombia's northern coast. Labor's issues, as he concep-

tualized them, were intimately tied to empire and environment. Work-related

injuries and illnesses were caused by coal dust and other toxic materials, as

*Lll ur the extraordinarily heavy machinery involved in the operation. The

foreign corporations that owned the mine exported its profits while looting

and destroying Colombian land. Afro-Colombian and indigenous farming com-

munities were being displaced. The region was one of Colombia's poorest, and

the company's cozy relationship with the Colombian government allowed it to

pay low taxes and royalties, few of which made it back to the region'

irighr*ing paramilitaries, which also enjoyed virtual impunity from the

US'-r,rppoiteA Colombian government of President Alvaro Uribe, threatened

union organizers and were responsible for the deaths of thousands, including

three mining union officials from the next department over',.Don't you agree that coal is just inherently dirty, and we have to stop

using it?,, Sara asked him. The union leader stopped short. When he flnally

responded, he took the analysis of empire and environment to an even

deeper level. "You are asking the wrong person," he replied slowly' "We

Internatbnal Labor and Working-Class H isto ryNo. 85, Spring 201.4,PP. 19+200G) Intern;tional Labor and Working-Class History, 1nc.,2014doi:10.1017/501 47 547 913000525

Empire, Labor, and Environment 195

don't use coal here in Colombia. We export L00 percent of the coal that we mine.

We're mining it for you!"Before Sara could protest that her organization was working to stop the

burning of coal in the United States, he continued. 'And il you think that

you're going to find some kind of alternative energy that doesn't rely on

mining,lhink again. Where do you think the materials for the solar panels

come from? For the wind turbines? For the batteries, storage, and transmission

infrastructure? And do you really think that those sources can produce enough

electricity for you in the United States to keep using more than anyone else in

the world?" US consumption, he implied, is at the root of social and environ-

mental destruction both in the Colombian mining region and at the global level'

Jairo was articulating a growing Latin American analysis that challenges

the imperial and industrial order from an anticapitalist, environmental perspec-

tive. He drew on a long Latin American anti-imperialist and Marxist tradition

that decries the greedy north for siphoning off Latin America's resources. But

his analysis also resonates with local and continental rural and indigenous move-

ments that offer an environmental critique of both capitalism and imperialism'

Latin America's rural and indigenous people have a lengthy history

of resistance to incorporation into global capitalism. As James Scott and

others have noted, many rural peoples carried with them a set of cultural

attributes-sometimes called the "moral economy of the peasant" or a "subsis-

tence ethic" based on "patterns of reciprocity, forced generosity, communal

land, and work-sharing"-that were averse to capitalism itself, that formed

the basis of signiflcant revolutionary challenge to _the industrial and imperial

thrust of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.l For Joan Martinez Alier,

this was an "environmentalism of the poor" that valued collectivity and sustain-

ability. This set of ideas was central to survival in the agrarian world and, when

challenged, could prove to be a powerful political force. For much of the indus-

trial era, these collective, agrarian values have been central to countercultural,

even revolutionary, challenges to the industrial order-2

In the contemporary context of environmental crisis and neoliberalism,

rural peoples, and particularly indigenous peoples, have mobilized these tra-

ditional cultures and values in the public sphere. In Latin America, their

claims have resonated with the leftist tradition evoked by the Colombian

union leader above, opposing foreign looting of the continent's resources'

This type of analysis has become a key force in landless workers' and food secur-

ity movements, in environmental justice movements, and among twenty-first

century populist-revolutionary leaders such as Evo Morales, Rafael correa,

and Hugo Ch6u"r. Awide range of groups are now placing indigenous-inspired

calls foiprotecting the environment at the center of leftist challenges to empire

and capiialism. In so doing, they draw on aLatinAmerican leftist analysis that

argues that redistribution, rather than just increased production, is central to

constructing a more just society and planet. They propose a new vision of econ-

omic development that prioritizes the rights of the poor and the rights of nature,

rather than increasing production.

L96 ILWCH,85, Spring 2014

The idea that the redistribution of resources, nationally and globally' must

be central to a model of economic justice is a central tenet of Latin American

leftist thought. From the 1930s on, Latin Americans proposed different

models of eionomic development that were based on breaking from imperial

structures, from Import Substitution Industrialization to more revolutionary

models. Dependency theorists and other critics of dependent development in

the 1980s emphasized that economic growth alone was an inadequate

measure of wellbeing. E. Bradford Burns counterpoised growth to develop-

ment, which he defined as "the utilization of any nation's potential for the great-

est benefit of the largest number of the inhabitants" and furthermore

distinguished development from growth "by its concern with consumption

levehlrather than the traditional emphasis on production'"3

Like others in the dependency school, Burns did not address the environ-

mental aspect of production and consumption. That was left to a group of rene-

gade economists, beginning with E. F Schumacher and Herman Daly in the

1970s, and continuing with the sustainable degrowth school today.a But while

isolated voices in the global north have challenged capitalism from the perspec-

tive of critiquing the environmental costs of economic growth, the challenge has

been taken up in uottr Ecuador and Bolivia as having its roots more in indigen-

ous Latin America than among northern intellectuals and activists. In Latin

America, it is articulated in a much more pointed challenge to global inequality

and North-South relations.s

Northern colombia's coal mining region exemplifles the ways that differ-

ent sectors are articulating this challenge to the process of industrial capitalism

and empire based at least in part on their ideas of a more harmonious and reci-

procal ielationship with the natural world. Large-scale mining has long been

central to sustaining industrialization, imperial expansion, and overconsumption

in the global North. Mining has connected the global North and South in par-

ticutariy exploitative ways and has depended heavily on the conspicuous

destruction of humans and the environment. It has been a key site where antic-

apitalist environmental challenges have emerged, including alternative projects

that critique the human and environmental destruction wrought by this system'

The expansion of coal mining into colombia exemplifies several aspects of

empire and environmental destruction in the neoliberal era: increased demand

for coal worldwide, capital-friendly policies in Colombia's new "democratic

security" state, new technological capacities, and industry's mobility and search

for lower costs, especially labor costs.6 In La Guajira, Colombia, the Cerrej6n

mine began in the 1970s as a joint venture between Exxon and the colombian

governnient but was later privatized. Colombia's mines are only beginning to

exploit what they expect will offer seventy-five years of future reserves.

From the perspective of the mines, which recruit their workforce from

regional cities, the mostly indigenous and Afro-colombian rural communities

thit occupy the coal lands are primarily seen as obstacles to progress. Yet

the proteits these communities have increasingly framed since the 1990s have

incorporated elements that resonate broadly in Latin America, including with

Empire, Labor, and Environment 197

the mine,s workers. They have mobilized ethnic identities, the subsistence ethos,

anti-imperialism,andenvironmentalisminsupportoftheirclaimtobothtra-ditional lands and lif'estyles and aqnss to jobs and basic consumer necessities'

colombia,s mininjunions do not share the moral economy of the peasant

or subsistence ethic described above. They do, like activists elsewhere in Latin

America'seethewantonphysicaldestructionoftheirhomelandsbyforeignextractive corporations in nationalist and anti-imperialist terms' As Jairo

suggested,theyofferananti.imperialistcritiqueofnorthernoverconsumption.eii tt

"y consider the local peasant communities to be their natural allies'

ouringthepastdecade,.theunionattheminehastakenaradicalstanceforthesocialandenvironmentalrightsofthecommunitiesintheregion.Whentheunion called a strike in late nb.,itlisted as its priority demands that the mine

address ,,occupational health and risks, the dignity of its workers, equity for sub-

contracted workers, protection of the environment of La Guajira and respect for

thecommunitiesintheregion.',Inparticular,theuniondemandedthatthe

"ontpur,y abandon its proposal to divelt the Rancheria River in order to

u""".* "Lul

deposits underneath it, and that "its social responsibility programs

liveuptotheirname,especiallywithrespecttothecommunitiesthataredis-placed by the mine and i*t tn"it source of income and their customs'"7

Whenaskedwhatfuturetheyseekforthecoalminingregions'Colombianunionists say that they want the mines operated for the beneflt of local popu-

lations-possibly through nationalizatiot'' "W" need some kind of a balance"'

a union leader intorm.,i yet another anticoal activist in an event in Boston in

201.1. ,,|nmy country we have a 12"/o unemployment rate and a 40Y" poverty

rate. We need jobs and economic development' But we also need to take into

account the needs of the planet, and of thl future." While not explicitly challen-

gingnortherr"ooro-ptioothewayJairoQuirozdid'thiscommentalsochidesnortherners who enjoj the benefits of the industrial and consumer economy but

romanticize "traditional- life in the Third World'

Inthisstance,C.olombia'sunionsarejoiningthetwenty-firstcenturysocial-istswhosweptLatinAmericaattheendofthelastcenturyandhavetriedtoelaborateanalternativeeconomicdevelopmentmodel.A,"Ienvironmen-tallyorientedandanti-imperialistsocialism-tiedtotheriseofpowerfulindi-genousmovements_emergedfromtheLatinAmericanleft.Electedsocialistieaders-in particular, soUvia's Evo Morales, who comes from indigenous

leftistmovements,andEcuador'sRafaelCorrea_havecommittedtotheconcept of ,,buen uivir,,, understood as a direct challenge to neoliberalism and

incorporated in their new constitutions (in Ecuador in 2008, in Bolivia in 2009)'

Ecuador,s National Plan for Buen Vivir describes the concept this way:

BuenVivirisaprojectforchange,aworkinprogresstostrengthentheprojectforabroadervisionthattranscendsthenarrowquantitativeboundariesofeconomic-ism. It seeks to qeate a new economic model whose goal is not the material'

mechanistic,andinterminableaccumulationofgoods,butratheraninclusiveecon.omic model. The model incorporates the processes of accumulation and

198 ILWCH,85, Spring 2014

redistribution to those actors who have historically been excluded from the logic ofthe capitalist market. It also includes forms of production and reproduction thatare based on principles not informed by the logic of the market.

Likewise, Buen vivir is based on a reinterpretation of the relationshipbetween the natural world and humans. It seeks to shift away from the currentanthrocentrism to biopluralism. Human activity and use of natural resourcesmust be adapted to the natural generation (regeneration) of these resources.

Its proponents argue that Buen Vivir offers a radical alternative to the concept ofeconomic development.8 It seeks a postextractivist and postcapitalist economy.

It is perhaps not surprising that the Andes, for centuries a center of thelabor and environmental abuses inherent to colonial mining, has given birthto the flrst state-level challenges to the very core of industrial socieiy, the ideathat through the application of technology, endless economic growth cancreate a rising tide that will lift all ships. Now, the idea that

""oro-i" growthmust be challenged is becoming increasingly mainstream in Latin America.

what this ecologically informed anti-imperialism means in practice is lessclear. In most of South America, the new leftist governments have followed apolicy that critics have termed "neo-extractivism,', continuing to rely on andeven expand extractive industries, using the profits to fund the expansion ofsocial programs. They reverse neoliberal policies by increasing iegulation,state participation, and redistribution, but their challenge to the extractivemodel remains more at the level of rhetoric than of reality.e They have little lever_age within the global economic system and few allies in the Norih to support theirvision ofglobal redistribution based on degrowth in the overdeveloped countries.

Nationalist sentiment serves leftist purposes when used against foreignmultinationals, and to insure that Latin American governmenti rather thanforeign capital retain the right to exploit the region,s natural resources. Thatsame nationalist sentiment, though, can be turned against foreign environmen-talists, or anyone, including indigenous peoples, who advocat"r ti-rtr on econ-omic development as generally understood. Some argue that to preserve largeswaths ofnature and leave natural resources in the ground *"urrihut large por-tions of the population will remain impoverished and lack access to basic healthcare, clean water, and electricity.lo

Today's leftist governments in Latin America espouse an anti-imperialist,environmentally sustainable economic model that recognizes indigenousrights while at that same time promoting redistributive and poverty-reductionprograms that rely on the old model of exporting natural resources-especiallyfossil fuels and agro-fuels-to the global North. Despite the rhetorical commit-m:nt to challenging growth, consumption, and environmental destruction, theyprivilege the redistribution of wealth, often funded by state-controlled naturalresource extraction and export. Not surprisingly, this contradiction has pro-duced its share of conflict between the new leftist governments, whose social-political projects are partially dependent on natural resource extraction,

Empire, Labor, and Environment

and indigenous peoples, whose territories often lie on top of those valuableresources.

Still, the fact that Latin American political leaders are publicly voicing a

position that is not only anti-imperialist and redistributive in nature, buthonors the rights and values of rural-indigenous peoples while questioningunchecked growth, consumption, and environmental destruction, reflects thepower of indigenous movements and their success in fusing indigenous rightsand an environmentalism of the poor onto traditional leftist politics.

By contrast, such a position is entirely absent from mainstream politicalcircles in the United States. The labor movement and the environmental move-ment frequently clash over individual campaigns that become framed in terms ofjobs versus environment. Sometimes they manage to join forces for "green jobs."They tacitly agree, though, with the underlying capitalist logic of the need forgrowth and remain committed to some sort of oAmerican standard of living."

The idea of degrowth remains only on the fringes of the labor movementand has barely made an appearance within US environmentalism, where cam-paigns have been quicker to take on issues related to specific hazards of pro-duction and disposal than they have to address production and consumption,or global economic inequality, directly. Environmental organizations mayoppose the use of coal, but the logic of never-ending growth driven by ever-expanding consumption remains largely hegemonic. Production can be madecleaner, or it can be relocated, but it must continually expand.11 Waste can be"recycled," or disposed of elsewhere, but reducing it by decreasing consumptionis off the table. Moreover, environmental campaigns and regulation in the globalNorth have frequently resulted in a shift of toxic production and disposal to theglobal South, as advocated in Lawrence Summers'notorious World Bank memoabout the "seriously UNDER-polluted" status of Africa.l2 Even the environ-mental justice movement, while emphasizing the disproportionate impact ofproduction and disposal on poor communities and especially communities ofcolor, does not generally challenge the capitalist logic of economic growth.13

Nevertheless, in coal regions in both the US and Colombia, local residentshave often framed protests against coal in terms of indigenous cultural valuesthat rest on their historical relationship to the land. As Ronald Eller notes ina different context, while such formulations often hold a "romantic" appealfor urban outsiders, they can also contribute to a cultural appreciation and revi-talization.la Likewise, in indigenous and Afro-Colombia, outsiders'attraction tothe alternative visions of society and economy, including respect for the naturalenvironment, has meant that this offers an effective political tool, while concur-rently contributing to a real cultural reaffirmation within these communities.

In the neoliberal era and the global environmental crisis that accompaniesit, capitalism's claims that it can solve the problems of poverty and want throughever-increasing production ring ever more hollow. In both old and new miningareas, this hollowness is particularly vivid. The alternative values proposed bysome of the world's few remaining rural peoples-in Latin America, primarilyindigenous peoples-have taken on increasing resonance in this context.

t99

200 ILWCH,85, Spring 2014

NOTES

1- James c. scott, The Morar Economy of the peasant: Rebeilion and subsktence inSoutheast Asit (New Haven, A,D77),2-3.'

2' For Eric WoE 'it is.not so much the growth of an industrial proletariat as such whichproduces revolutionary activity, as the devei-opment of an industriai work force still closelygeared to life in the villages'Thus.it is the_ very attempt or trre -iJare anJ free peasant toremain traditional which makes him revolutionary." wolf, peasai wii-iin, TwentiethCenrury (New York. NfY, 1969), 292.

3' E' Bradford Burng I/re Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century(Berkeley, CA. 1980), t4l.4- E- F. schumacher, srza il is -Beautifur: Economics a: if peopre Mattered (London, 1973);H9p* Daty, ed-, Toward.a steady-stati Economy (sanFrincisio, rsi3l. A;.." Malthusian

gntique 6f firrman economiesand their impact on the earth also .e"mergJ inihe 1970s withP:* F:Tlf ra' poputation Bomb.(gutciogue, Ny, 1e68). see also;il;;;il;;;""tributions:j t!.ld $trr (Our ptundered i'tanet, r-"onaon, rs+sl una wiriiu iilit (arra ,. survivat,New York, i.fY, 1948).

5- See Research & Degrowth's "Short History.,, http://www.degrowth.org/short-history(1ry*9 December rB,20ra): Sreven Sroll, The Gieat Dirusion-A-Mad Invintor, Death inly 7'yoOiq..and_t!e Unpian. Origins of iconomic Growth, (New york, Nt 2008); JoanMartinez-Alier, Unai pascual, Frinck-dominique Vivien, ,"d ga*i"-2rccail'.,sustainableP"-qg*!, Mapping the context, criticismi and Fuiure rro*p".t.-oi-Ln Emergentfar.adism'-'_Ecological Economics 69 (2010): r74l-4i; Eduardo 'GrJy"^, lBuen vivir:Today arrd Tomorrow,,, Development 5l iZOttl: 44147._- .6. See Repriblica de Colombia, presidencia de ra Repdblica, Ministerio de DefensaNacional, "Politica de Defensa_ -y seguridad Democr6tica,,' zoo:. rrtifrTwww.oas.org/csh/spanisfo,/dscupentos/Colombia.pdfl (acc&sed December lg, 268)._ 7. Sintracarb6n, "Boletin de prensa 27," February 27, ;}ij.. wrrw.sintracarbon.com/imageVbo_letinevboletin-prensa-negociacion-2i.pdf (accessed December 1g. 2013).8- Alberto Acosta, "Fxtractivi;mo y derechos de la naturalez

^j:ii l^iiri-i"ldig"no, ptur-inacionalidad e intercultralidad en Ecuador, eds Boaventura de Sousa Santos and AgustinGrijal_ va- Jim6ne z (l_a p az, B olivia, 20lZ), 17 1.

^ 9' See Jeffrey R. webber, "Ecuador's Economy under Rafael correa: Twenty-FirstCentury Socialism or the New-Extractivism?-An Inteview with Alberto Acosta,,' (JpsideDowl lYorld, Jnly 72, 2010. httptltpsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-a9/25g6-ecuadors-economy-under-rafael-correa-twenty-first-century-s6cialism-or-the-new-Lxtractivism-an-inteview-with-alberto-acosta (accessed Detember 1g, ZOl3).

10' Outside environmentalists may be viewed with suspicion, as ecological imperialists.The term generally refers to the enviionmentar plunder oi peripherar .";?;; Today, it isalso an epithet applied to outside environmentalists who *i.ri t" 1p.".L*"';?ugit" environ-ments.and prevent much-needed economic development.11' The Sierra Club's "Beyond Coal" website resolutely promotes the notion that coaluse can be ended without any

-negative impact on consumption or lifestyre.- See http://content.sierraclu!9rg/mavab.out-the-ca6p2irn (accessed December $,;01;i: '-

- 12' David N' Pellow, Resis;izg Gtobai Tixici: Transnational MovementiyJ, EnvironmentalJustice (Cambridge, MA, 2007), S-9.

13. Emily Brownell notes that the Love canal disaster in 197g mobilized a ne% morepopulist environmentalism that became the root of today's environmental justice-movements."Yet because public attention did little to lessen actual waste g"r"iutio"]irr"rJ u.r"..-"rt,need to be complicated. Love Canal shifted the center of tle environmental movementcloser to questions of environmental injustice, but it also shifted waste airp.J .rt. transna-tional environments as the next frontier to hide it, unnoticed.,, "N"gotiutio, the NewEconomic Order of Waste,,, Environmental History 16 (2011)t ZOS_SS.

14. Ronald D. Eller, Ilneven Ground: Appalichia iince'1945 (Lexington, Ky, 2008), 195.