9 Central America Neoliberalism Jlr

7/30/2019 9 Central America Neoliberalism Jlr

1/11

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CENTRAL AMERICA

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Neoliberalism has unleashed four horsemen across Central America:

drug trafficking, NGOs, youth gangs and fundamentalist evangelizing churches.

They gallop across a devastated land of unemployment, underemployment

and a range of uncertain and ephemeral forms of self-employment

They are free to trod the land thanks to the decline of waged work

in Central America and the rest of the world.

R emember the 1970s and 80s? The military inHonduras, the death squads in El Salvador, thebloody death rattles of the Somoza dictatorship inNicaragua and thekaibilesspecial operations forcewithfixed bayonets whose scorched earth policies erasedindigenous communities from Guatemalas spring-like face.Gustavo lvarez Martnez, Roberto DAubuisson, AnastasioSomoza and Efran Ros Montt are just around the historicalcorner, yet they already seem so distant.

Wed like to think of them as horrendous dinosaurs ofthe kind that Dirk Kruijt and other archeologists of Central

American miseries extract from their Jurassic Park everyonce in a while to illustrate stories of terror that theirbeardless readersborn and raised at the cusp of twomillenniacan barely imagine. Our lands are no longer landsof volcanoes and Balkans, yet there are many consequences

The four horsemen of neoliberalismin the vacuum left by waged work

JOS LUIS ROCHA

of that half-passed past, both buried and out in the open,bragging and ashamed.

Other times, other struggles

One reason those figures seem so far off is that the struggleswaged against the oligarchic interests they embodied havelost their justifications. The solid rural nature of the worldof waged work has declined. The strategies of big capital aresuccessfully dismantling the world of waged work and thehindrances it brought. If there are no workers, they have no

rights and nobody to raise them as the standards of theirstruggle. The problem is more acute now, but the veryproblem generates conditions that make any cure impossible:the absence and precariousness of employment has adevastating effect. Migration is a safety valve for civil unrest

36envo


2/11

ICENTRAL AMERICA

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37june 2011

In the 1990s, the introduction of

bundles of used clothing from the USA

and of transnational maquilas sewing

together imported cloth and leather for

re-export as garments and shoes to

our northern neighbor, a combination

that dealt the coup de grace to local

tailors, dressmakers and cobblers

that would otherwise lead to more forceful explosions thanwe are currently experiencing.

Liberalismwith or without the prefix neois thedominant ideology. Its creed classifies as indisputable thepreeminence of the rights of private ownership. Thedemands for landsave in still very rural Hondurasand forimproved working conditionsabove all, wage increases

dont consume the energies of discontent, which emerge inthe search for religious comfort, identity, a sense of belonging,basic services, the right to abortion, punishment for sexualattackers, access to water, an uncontaminated environment,food security

Even in Honduras, the current search for land is rootedin the agrarian counter-reform, a process in which thegeophagy of Facuss and other landlords linked up with thedistancing from the world of rural work of cooperativizedpeasants who were willing to sell their farms off cheaply andbecome self-employed merchants, transport workers,moneylenders, etc. Between 1992 and 1997, no fewer than73 cooperative groups from the Agun Valley sold over250,000 hectares, 34% of which passed directly into the handsof one Miguel Facuss.

The struggles of the 20th centuryfor land and workingconditionswere headed by professional guilds, unions andsocialist parties. Roque Daltons memoirs of Miguel Mrmol,Onofre Guevaras history of the workers movement inNicaragua, and the four novels about the US bananacompanies in our regionEl Papa verde by Miguel ngelAsturias,Prisin verde by Ramn Amaya Amador,Bananosby Emilio Quintana and Mamita Yunai by Carlos LuisFallasgive us a glimpse of the enormous dimensions ofthose struggles, focused on the world of waged work or the

demand for land.

Other leaders, other struggles

Fallas was one of the leaders of the banana strike in CostaRica in 1934 that brought together over 10,000 bananaworkers. Miguel Mrmol led the strikes of Salvadorancobblers, tailors and railroad workers over a daily wage andthe right not to be swept away in the hurricane activated bythe onrush of machinery. It was another story in the 1990s,with the introduction of bundles of used clothing from theUSA and of transnationalmaquilacompanies sewing togetherimported cloth and leather for re-export as garments and

shoes to our northern neighbor, a combination that dealtthe coup de grace to local tailors, dressmakers and cobblers.They were executed in summary proceedings without theright to appeal, accused of crimes against competitiveness.There were no protests. The accusations, if they merit such

a name, were confined to the elitist catacombs of forums andcongresses where the unconvincing preach to the convinced

and the packaged friar-to-friar style sermons neither convert,divert nor subvert.The agitators of the first half of the 20th century,

committed to their causes with fire and blood, were martyred:Juan Pablo Wainwright was executed and Manuel ClixHerrera died at 30 from tuberculosis contracted during hismany imprisonments. These founders of the CommunistParty and the Union Federation of Honduras displayedunbribable tenacity during the strikes that rocked the bananacompanies in 1931, the year of their unappealableannouncement of a 20% wage cut for workers and a 25% cutin the price paid to the small-scale banana growers known aspoquiteros.

Their fights had broad resonance. The strike in La Ceibain 1920 involved almost the entire population. The bananastrike in 1954, which turned Puerto Corts, San Pedro Sula,La Lima, El Progreso, Tela and La Ceiba into a powder kegand extended to Tegucigalpa is a milestone in Honduranhistory. Although it had a prolonged gestation, one of theinitial detonating factors was a demand that is unthinkablenow: payment for days worked during Holy Week. Thosewere times of almost full employment and union effer-vescence.

Eduardo Galeano tells us in his third volume ofMemoryof Fire of the excesses of the insubordinate President rbenzin Guatemala: Jacobo Arbenz, accused of communist

conspiracy, isnt inspired by Lenin but by Abraham Lincoln.His agrarian reform, which proposed modernizing capitalismin Guatemala, is more moderate then US rural laws of acentury ago. Arbenz committed the terrible crime ofexpropriating the United Fruit Companys lands, taking the


3/11

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

banana companys accounting books at their word and payingthem compensation at the value the company itself hadattributed to them in order to dodge taxes. Those were anti-imperialist times.

In Nicaragua in February 1952, a strike blew up overthe demand for wage increases by almost a hundred workersfrom Calzado Serrano in Managua, the importance of which

lay in the fact that the workers struck even though theirshoemakers union had recently been declared illegal andwas being strangled through the freezing of its contributionfund by order of the Ministry of Labor.

The crushing effect of the guerilla movementsathousand times more media-oriented than the workersmovementsdisplaced the guilds and unions from theleftwing popular imagination, from the prototypes ofstruggles and paladins. Grassroots and elite artisticproductionliterature, songs, oil paintings, muralsglorifying guerrilla groups, which were not constantly present

in the 20th century, produced a mirage that attributedgreater representation, duration and support to them thanthey actually had.

The fact that two guerrilla groupsthe FSLN and theFMLNhave become important political forces in theCentral American region since the 1990s informs a readingof the past that magnifies guerrilla groups leading role,turning them into the driving force behind the socialmovements, overshadowing the trajectory of unions,associations and socialist parties. A contributing factor inthis overshadowing was the dependence of the unions, guildsand parties on the Soviet policy of light interventionism andits imposition of a strategy of taking power via the ballotbox.

Immanuel Wallerstein interprets this as a territorialdistribution that provided stability to capitalism and frenzyto US imperial expansionism. In the waning of the Cold Warthis tepidness made it possible for the guilds and unions tobe subjugated by the guerrilla movements, insurgentcoalitions that involved very diverse groups, not all of theminterested in radical transformations. Communist DagobertoGutirrez insists that the FMLN was a conglomerate notonly of communist and non-communist forces but even anti-communist ones.

Farewell to the world of waged work

Perhaps this turnaround of the leading actors would have tobe identified as a symptom of the decline of the world ofwaged work, a key element of the transformation of politicsand its possibilities in Central America. Many changesoccurred from Miguel Mrmols times to Roque Daltons.Many more unfurled from the ascetic Carlos Fonseca Amadorto the curious Christian, socialist and solidarity-based projectof today in which Daniel Ortega hands out $35 bonuses butdoesnt alter the national tax systems regressive structure.All these changes have affected the world of work and thecoordinates of politics. It has been a silent transformation

that took many by surprise.In the first half of the 20th century, the main Central

American cities werent the chaotic ant nests into whichthey were transformed by an urgent and hasty rural-urbanmigration. The contrasts in this field are brutal. Costa Rica

Many changes occurred from Miguel

Mrmols times to Roque Daltons.

Many more unfurled from the ascetic

Carlos Fonseca Amador to the curious

Christian, socialist and solidarity-

based project of today in which Daniel

Ortega hands out $35 bonuses but

doesnt alter the national tax systems

regressive structure

The guerrillas diverted attention

from the professional guilds and unions

All of these groups were more or less intensely connected to

proletarian internationalism. What were they demanding?Fair salaries, nationalization of monopolies (banks, railroads,banana companies, etc.), improved working conditions,payment for holidays and extra hours, etc. Authorship rightsover their decline have been better adjudicated than themerits of their best moment. Their guilty submission to thedictates of the International Red Aid, their fragmentationand their sectarianism are often remembered, but little ornothing is said about the actual lives of the people involved:about a Juan Pablo Wainwright who left the comforts he wasborn into to try his luck with the workers; or a Manuel ClixHerrera who became a carpenter, banana worker, cobbler, orwhatever it took to generate class awareness and recruit

shoulder to shoulder, man to man. Elena Poniatowskaswonderful historical novel Tinsima perhaps most providesa flavor of that era of heroism and self-immolation that areincomprehensible according to the moral parameters ofpostmodernity.


4/11

ICENTRAL AMERICA

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39june 2011

saw its urban population grow from 38.7% to 62.6% between1970 and 2005, and the other countries followed behind:from 39% to 57.8% in El Salvador all the way down to onlyfrom 29% to 47.8% in the still very rural Honduras.

While the urbanization in Costa Rica was supported bythe growth of the industrial and tertiary sectors, the migrationin the other countries fed informal work in its diverse forms(underemployment or casual work, where there are nocomplete days or weeks), self-employment, piece work, etc.Self-employment (a single-person or family business)accounts for 41% of regional employment and almost 50% inGuatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. In 2006, it respectivelyaccounted for 62% and 41% of new jobs in Honduras andNicaragua.

Other times, other jobs

Micro-businesses provide over two-thirds of the jobs in

Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Micro-businesses andself-employment are synonymous with job insecurity:exposure to abuse, lack of a contract, low or nonexistent socialsecurity coverage and, above all, minimal stability.

The changes in labor legislation during the ninetiespaved the way for labor flexibility, including abolition oftime periods for contracts. And that led to the boom in theindirect point-of-sale tax on consumption known as valueadded tax. Income tax cant be the great pillar of tax collectionwith fewer wage earners and an unwillingness to prejudicebig capital. In the Nicaragua of the nineties, 70% of taxescame from indirect taxes and 30% from direct ones. In thoseyears the inequitable ratio was maintained at a constant

85:15. As can be seen in the table above, wage earnersaccounted for 50% or less of the total people working in2006 in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

According to estimates from the International LaborOrganization, the percentage of wage earners has dropped

represented almost 40% of the working population, a rise of2-3% in 2000-2009.

Underemployed, insecure,

freelance, unretirable...

A reduction in waged work has seriously eroded workersrights. This is undoubtedly directly related to informali-zation, underemployment and self-employment: only 40.2%of independent workers had social security in Costa Rica,while the figure didnt even pass the 4% mark in the othercountries, with Guatemala and Honduras achieving only 0.8%and 0.7%.

The growth of informality and instability has producedan ominous rotation among social security contributors, withpeople entering and leaving the system and workers who payin funds but never accumulate enough to retire and drawtheir old-age, disability or death benefits.

While the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS)lacks statistics on the rotation of its contributors, its possibleto form an idea of that rotation by comparing the number ofactive contributors with the number of new ones. In 1994-2009 INSS had 892,811 new contributors, although thedifference between this figure and the number of activecontributors was just 311,867 for this period. This meansthat an undetermined number of workers made 580,944entries into and exits from the social security system in thatsame period, leaving occasional contributions. The figure oftemporary contributors (516,376) must undoubtedly be asignificant percentage of the number of permanentcontributors.

One result of this trend is a lack of social securitycoverage. With the exception of Costa Rica it fails to covereven 20% of the population, covering only 7.7% in Nicaragua.Another result is that the solidarity principle of social securityhas been distorted. Where informality alternates with

Salaried

Self-employed

Employer

Unpaid family

Costa Rica

70.7

19.47.7

2.2

Percentage of People Employed by Type of Insertion(2006)

El Salvador

60.2

26.54.4

8.9

Guatemala

49.9

29.23.6

17.3

Honduras

47.6

38.82.7

10.9

Nicaragua

50.7

34.24.3

10.8

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Source: Programa Estado de la Nacin-Regin 2008

during the first decade ofthe 21st century in all Cen-tral American countriesexcept Costa Rica, where ithas remained at 70%. In2009, the percentage was56%, 55% and 54.5% in El

Salvador, Honduras andNicaragua, respectively. Inthese three countries, inde-pendent non-professionalworkers, people workingout of their own houses andauxiliary family workers


5/11

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

40envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

formality and sporadic contributions tend to become thenorm, it creates a system in which a small segmentthosewho will reach the target number of contributions andtherefore the right to a pensionlives off those whocontribute 3 months, 2 years, 10 years, 15 years, etc., withoutever reaching the desired category of pensioner. The formal/informal amphibians will never be able survive either in

water or on earth. The common pot of social security is analibi that allows only a small group to eat even though manycontributed the food that will be munched up by other jaws.Those watching the meager or sumptuous banquet from thewindow are the unretirables.

The erosion of workers rights affects both independentand waged workers. Just over 5% of waged workers in CostaRica belong to unions, and the figure doesnt even break3.5% in the rest of the region. Employment stability is lessthan 30% in Guatemala; only half of waged workers in theisthmuss three most populated countries have the right toa thirteenth month Christmas bonus; and only 38% and 28%of waged workers in Nicaragua and Guatemala, respectively,have access to permanent jobs. Being a waged worker thusdoesnt even guarantee the right to a thirteenth month, awritten contract, social security or stability. The region isfilling up with insecure, self-employed and invisible workers,employees besieged by uncertainty and people who cantretire with a pension.

State employment:

The Nicaraguan case

The public sector is an ever less important generator ofemployment in Central America. Diverse factors are reducing

the State-as-boss throughout the region in both absolute

and relative terms: privatizations, the States reduced ornon-existent participation in production, the reduction ofthe social apparatus and population growth. In Costa Rica,the public sector accounts for 10% of jobs, but in the othercountries it doesnt even contribute half of that percentage.

Whats the story in Nicaragua? During the last years ofthe Somoza regime, the central government provided

employment to 5.4% of the economically active population(EAP). This state paternalism peaked at 7.4% in 1984, duringthe revolutionary government, descended during the acutecrisis at the end of the eighties and recovered to 8.8% in1990, after the elections, when the 14 parties that made upthe winning National Opposition Union (UNO) alliance paidback their many electoral debts by distributing ministries,directorates, other major posts and thousands of lesser ones.

Urged on by the IMF and its structural adjustmentprograms, the governments salary and human masses hadto be pared down. By 1995 the government only employed5.4% of the EAP, a figure that shrank to just 2.9% by 2000.The nepotism of the Bolaos years, based on cousins andother relatives, inflated the payroll back up to 3.2% of theEAP by 2005 and Sandinista clientelism pushed it back upto 4% by 2009. With an EAP 209% greater than in 1980 anda job supply of around half of what it was in the eighties,state employment has become diluted and lost significance,its lightened weight rounded off by high levels of rotation.

Were currently witnessing the consequences of thesetransformations. Im going to mention just two of the hottest.First, the political parties offer to provide employment topeople close to them must be more modest and can only beachieved by sweeping out those employed by the previousadministration, preventing the consolidation of a professional

civil service. This broom makes it impossible to create a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Percentage of Workers by Their Characteristics(2008)

Right to Christmas bonus

Written contract

Permanent employment

Membership in a union

Public-sector workers with social security

With jobs in the public sectorIndependent workers with social security

Total population covered by social security

Costa Rica

77.8

68.3

8.6

5.1

97.9

10.040.2

8.7

El Salvador

43.9

38.6

61.4

n.d.

93.1

3.53.8

15.8

Guatemala

41.6

35.4

28.1

3.3

81l.1

2.60.8

18.3

Honduras

49.0

46.1

65.4

3.4

60.9

2.30.7

18.0

Nicaragua

52.3

42.2

38.2

2.2

89.2

4.33.1

7.7

Source: Programa Estado de la Nacin-Regin 2008


6/11

ICENTRAL AMERICA

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41june 2011

corporative identity, loyalty and identification with a project,cause or institution. Second, the reduced state supply ofemployment is happening in a State that is ceasing to be anaxis of social cohesion and identity or has to share this rolewith other actors better endowed to perform it. This hasrepercussions in terms of involvement in politics as a meansfor cultivating an identity, generating a sense of belonging

and accessing a job.

In the countryside and the cities

The rural world has also been touched by the magic wand ofindependent work and insecurity. Silent transformations inthe agricultural sector transformed the world of waged workduring the eighties and nineties.

Self-employment increased in Honduras countryside,to the point of absorbing 63% of employment. There wasalso an increase in non-agricultural rural jobs, associatedwith insecurity, low income and vulnerability. Of the totalnumber of women working in rural areas in 1998, 88.3%(Costa Rica), 81.4% (El Salvador) and 83.7% (Honduras) weredoing so in non-agricultural activities, which was also true of57.3%, 32.7% and 21.5% of men who had some kind of work.It is assumed that the pluri-activity that leads to non-agricultural income in rural areas is characteristic of poorcountries. But that path of self-employment is becomingwell worn by those expelled from waged work.

Orphaned from the boss

with no protest banner

The mix of unemployment, underemployment, self-

employment, informalization, flexibilization, outsourcing,piecemeal subcontracting creates the material basis fordisplacing the world of waged work as an axis for demands.Big capitals strategy has provided an antidote to the kindsof afflictions caused by the Miguel Mrmols and ManuelClixes of the world. Wage demands topped the agendas ofthe professional associations and unions they led and of theteachers and rural workers associations.

The socioeconomic premises of these demands werecertain contractual, political and even cultural links betweenemployee and employer. The father-boss could be anexploiter, but he was a persistent figure with whom theworkers established links of a recognized solidity. Unem-

ployment was a temporary illness, even during epidemics.Subsequently, the ephemeral abandonment of unemploy-

ment started to be accompanied by permanent irresponsiblebossdom in the form of subcontracting with its outsourcingof costs. Sub-contracting diluted the employer/employee

links and did away with the world of salaried work. Theabsence of a world of work dismantled the world of protests,which big capital knows, multiplies and rewards. We shouldremember Chase Manhattan Bank CEO and chairmanThomas Labrecque, who awarded himself a US$9 million ayear bonus in recognition of his role in eliminating 10,000jobs.

The end of the work ethicIn Work, Consumerism and the New Poor, Polish sociologistZygmunt Bauman argues that we have passed from a societyof producers to a society of consumers, from a work ethic to aconsumerism aesthetic. The work ethic was characterizedas doing something that other people consider valuable in

order to achieve what is necessary to live and be happy, andnot being content with what has been achieved and satisfiedwith less rather than seeking more.

In a society of producers, where this ethic predominates,Work was the main factor of ones social placement as wellas of self-assessment: for all people except those who thanksto hereditary or acquired wealth could combine a life ofleisure with self-sufficiency, the question who are you wasanswered by pointing to the company that employed theman questioned and the capacity in which it employed himThe work career marked the itinerary of life and retro-spectively provided the prime record of ones life achieve-ment or ones failure; that career was the principal source of

self-confidence or uncertainty, self-satisfaction or self-reprobation, pride or shame.

The type of work was the independent variable thatallowed a person to shape and forecast all other aspects ofexistence, with little error. Once the type of work had been

The ephemeral abandonment of

unemployment started to be

accompanied by permanent

irresponsible bossdom in the form of

subcontracting with its outsourcing of

costs. Sub-contracting diluted the

employer/employee links and did away

with the world of salaried work


7/11

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

42envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

decided and the career scheme ascribed, all the rest fell intoplace and one could be pretty certain what was to be done invirtually every field of life. To sum up: work was the mainorientation point, in reference to which all other life pursuitscould be planned and ordered.

This doesnt happen anymore because permanent,secure and guaranteed jobs are now a rarity. The jobs of old,

for life, sometimes even hereditary, are confined to a fewold industries and professions and are rapidly shrinking innumber. New vacancies tend to be short-term contracts,until further notice or part-time. People often combinethem with other occupations, deprived of any safeguards ofcontinuity, let alone permanence.

employer, to appreciate her philological abilities or literaryerudition, well take a look at the CV of a sociologist in themiddle of her working cycle.

It would read something like this: two weeks applying aNational Development Information Institute survey onadolescent pregnancy, a year directing microfinanceworkshops in the Nitlapn research institute, three months

as evaluator of Common Fund projects, two months trainingempirical judges on community conflict resolution for anOrganization of American States program, two four-monthperiods as social politics professor at the AutonomousNational University of Nicaragua, one year as promoter ofan organic agriculture project in a small NGO, three monthswithout maternity benefits, five years with only sporadictext editing work and an indefinite chain of etceteras.

What this sociologist does in her work doesnt definethe essence of her life. Her life is elsewhere. Her dreams arebeing played out on other battle fronts: if shell be able toforge a life in a lesbian couple safe from neighborhood gossip;whether shell be able to abort her unwanted pregnancy,whether or not her house has a regular water supply, whetherher kids will be able to study at a bilingual school, whethershell be able to develop her fondness for photography

She has no possibility of developing a sense of workidentity; no possibility of unionization. She cant developemployee/employer, worker/company, worker/workers links.Her struggles are waged in the world of consumption, as thechanges in the labor world generate a new attitude in theminds and actions of the modern producers, as Baumandescribes it, firmly and irreversibly displacing truly humanmotivationssuch as a desire for freedomtowards theworld of consumption where they can be managed and

satisfied.

Capitalism stopped being

a waged work system

How did we reach this point? According to Marxist tradition,in the world of waged work the worker sells his labor powerto the capitalist.

This labor power the capitalist buys for a day, a week, amonth, etc wrote Marx. Labor power, then, is acommodity, no more, no less so than is the sugar. The first ismeasured by the clock, the other by the scales. Theircommodity, labor power, the workers exchange for the

commodity of the capitalist, for money.Waged work was apart of the capitalist system, but the current system cansurvivebetter evenwithout waged work. With the declineof the world of waged work, the boss no longer consumes theemployees labor power during an agreed period, but rather

Our sociologist has no possibility of

developing a sense of work identity; no

possibility of unionization. She cant

develop employee/employer, worker/

company, worker/workers links. Her

struggles are waged in the world of

consumption, as the changes in the

labor world generate a new attitude in

the minds and actions of the modern

producers

The CV of a carpenterand a sociologist

To glimpse the dimension of the leap from the world of workto the world of consumption, its helpful to think of thecontents of the standard curriculum vitae of a worker beforethat leap was made: 9 years in the El Halcn sawmill, 30years as a carpenter in the installations ofLa Prensanewspaper and 15 years as advisor to a company specializingin furniture using pine from certified forests. The CV of acurrent carpenter would be impossible to check and compress:two months here, three months there, five days over there,etc., etc., etc.

The CV of an expert in Hispano-American literature

about to retire could be summarized in a single line: 40years of teaching and administrative posts in the CentralAmerican University of Managua or San Salvador. But as aliterature expert would have very few opportunities in thecurrent hard times for any university, let alone any other


8/11

ICENTRAL AMERICA

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43june 2011

consumes products: documents, workshops, cell phonecontracts, credit cards, classes, etc.

It isnt the labor power that is priced, but rather theproducts that power produces or places: goods and servicesthat demand labor, electricity, fuel, a vehicle and many othermeans of production that the contracted person selects, buys,maintains and replaces to make his/her typically one-person

or family-based micro-business competitive enough to stayin the market.

Labor power was previously a piece of merchandisemeasured by the clock. Nowadays the capitalist buysproducts in which the labor force is just one of the components,submerged in a conglomerate of other productive means.Work is subsumed and remains outside of the discussion, thedebate, the conflict. The massive conversion of workers intoindependent or subcontracted micro-businesspeoplepositions any conflicts far away from work, in a new arenawhere big capital is no longer the bad guy in the film.

What does the worker sell

in Capitalism-Plus?

The capitalist system is no longer one in which business-people own the means of production and workers only possessoffspring and labor power. It is no longer a waged worksystem. In capitalisms post-industrial paradisecapitalism-plus or capitalism XPworkers own their ownmeans of production and must bear the cost of amortizing it,updating the machinery and reproducing their own laborpower. It amounts to a qualitative leap in the level offreedom.

In the slave system, the master owned the slaves, who in

turn had absolutely no possessions. In feudalism, the serfsof the demesne owned their own bodies, but were obliged topay tribute to the feudal lords.

Industrial capitalism freed workers from this shackle sothey could sell their labor power to whomever seemed thebest option. According to Marx, The worker leaves thecapitalist, to whom he has sold himself, as often as he chooses,and the capitalist discharges him as often as he sees fit, assoon as he no longer gets any use, or not the required use, outof him. Today, in capitalism-plus, workers keep possessionof their labor power and only have to transfer the productsthey generate.

Are you a worker or a

one-person micro business?

The freedom is never complete. In industrial capitalismworkers could escape from the claws of certain individual

capitalists, but couldnt avoid belonging to the capitalistclass as a whole because that was where they found a buyerfor their labor.

In post-industrial capitalism, workers, who perhaps cantappropriate that name anymore, have no escape from thesystem that now claims to be increasing their dignity. Hourly-paid lecturers arent wage-earners. They dont sell hours of

classes, although thats the legal form their employertheuniversity, where books that contest other aspects of thesystem are debated and presenteduses to dress up thetransaction. The hourly lecturer sells a packet of teaching,transport, marking examinations and attendance at meetingsand training sessions of the university bureaucracy. Theuniversity buys the whole package without acquiringemployer commitments with those people, who are one-person teaching micro-businesses.

To ensure their survival, lecturers must set themselvesup as the representatives, promoters and executers of theirmicro-business services, which they have to offer to variousuniversities, NGOs and institutes. If such lecturers were tofind themselves in the dubious position of offering theirclasses to the National Autonomous University of Honduras(UNAH) in San Pedro Sula, their little business would beruined: many lecturers at that university are owed two andeven three years pay. The big university business expectsthe assets of these personal teaching micro-businesses to beenough to bear a three-year debt and the micro-businessescant expect the university business to match them inadministrative agility.

The massive conversion of workers

into independent or subcontracted

micro-businesspeople positions any

conflicts far away from work, in a new

arena where big capital is no longer the

bad guy in the film

From Matsushita in Japan

to FarmEx in Nicaragua

The essence of the labor transition can be expressed as follows:weve gone from the contracting model of Matsushita to theFarmEx model. Matsushita Electric, along with other giantsin its sector (General Electric, Siemens, ITT, Philips andHitachi), was one of the biggest companies in the world. Its


9/11

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

products have been sold under the National, Panasonic,Quasar and Technics brand names. Good management gurusraised Matsushita to the rank of business management model.They highlighted the stability of personnel who graduallyclimbed up from basic posts, soaking up the companys styleand spiritual values. Young people who started theirworking cycle in that company could aspire to retiring from

it. Seniority was a key element in the ascending career. Itwas hard to distinguish the individual from the organization,according to Richard T. Pascale and Anthony G. Athos in TheArt of Japanese Management, expressing a similar ideal tothe one aspired to by religious institutions.

Times have changed. They were already starting tochange then, although not as much in Japan as in the UnitedStates. In 1981, the average 60-year-old Japanese employeehad been at 2.6 companies, while his US contemporary hadhad 7.5 different employers.

Nicaraguas FarmEx model is in the opposite corner.FarmEx is a chain of pharmacies that provide homedeliveries. Four shop assistants attend to customers in thecentral headquarters in Managua. Most sales depend on afleet of 40 people who deliver medicines across Managuausing their own motorbikes filled with gas they have to buythemselvesand for their trouble get a commission of 13crdobas (just under $0.50) for each delivery. FarmExentrusts them with a maximum of four orders per trip. Oncethey complete their deliveries for that trip, they return toFarmEx and join the waiting list for a new four-order deliveryof medicines. A few years ago, they would have been on thecompanys payroll, with fixed pay, social security, a thirteenthmonth bonus, seniority and other benefits associated withthe wage slavery system. All of this onerous fat has been cut

away by capitalism-plus in its quest for efficiency and costreduction. Now they are free, and elevated to the conditionof micro-businesspeople; they sell their distribution servicesfree from any ties and from the master-slave dialectic.

The Dole combination shot

The Dole banana companybetter known as StandardFruitalso restructured its way of operating. In the 20thcentury subcontracting producers was just a temporary andmarginal strategy, but by the 21st century it has become adefinitive strategy because the most devastating risksnatural disasters and suits over environmental damages

lie in the production field. With a skillful combination shot,Dole eliminated the work/capital confrontation that hadcaused it so many headaches when unions and otherspecimens from the Pleistocene age got up to their old tricks.The latest suits against the banana companies have arouseda much fainter echo of the noises produced in the last century.The fights over the havoc wreaked by the use of Nemagona pesticide sprayed on Central American banana fields afterits use had been prohibited by many national legislationsattracted little interest from either politicians or NGOs,even ecological ones. The struggles only aim is compensationfor the sick and dying workers, a goal closely linked to theworld of waged work that has become strange and malleable.

Drug-traffickers, youth gangs,

NGOs and evangelicals

In a world of economic growth with low job growth, in whichlabor power is merchandise with limited visibility and evenless esteem, politics isnt set out in the same terms. If theemployee/employer relationship loses importance on theeconomic level, its role collapses and stops being sodetermining on the socioeconomic level. A world filling upwith unemployable young people and unretirable old peopleisnt just eliminating waged work and social security, but is

also providing a hammer blow to work as a generator ofincome, identity and social links.Labor thats born, grows and reproduces as superfluous

cant have the same insertion in politics as indispensablelabor, which can be replaced or, in the worst of cases, turnedinto an army of reserve labor. Where the labor itinerarydoesnt allow knowledge of whos who, other generators ofidentity are sought. In what Jeremy Rifkin calls the end oflabor, theres a need to redefine human beings role in theprocesses and in the social surroundings. As a result, thedemands of the world of labor have disappeared from partyagendas.

Its not only the abusive interference of the international

finance institutions that make state control an impossibletask for the great majority. States that arent a source ofemployment, dont regulate the world of work and dontlead national destinies degrade their nature as an axis ofpower. Their vacuum and the transformations in the world

A world filling up with unemployable

young people and unretirable old

people isnt just eliminating waged

work and social security, but is also

providing a hammer blow to work as a

generator of income, identity and social

links


10/11

ICENTRAL AMERICA

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45june 2011

of work lead to the emergence of other political actors whoseassault exceeds the ambitions of political parties, the actionsof the now almost nonexistent unions and the hegemonicexercise of the elites.

Ive selected four actors that shape both micro-politicsand sub-politics, which Ulrich Beck defines as a set ofopportunities for supplementary action and power beyond

the political system. Although Beck presents sub-politics asa set of opportunities reserved for companies that operate inthe sphere of global society, manage to dodge governmentand parliament and shift power to the self-management ofeconomic activities, I propose recognizing those abilities infour entities I call the four horsemen of neoliberalism. Inthe field of paths toward Central Americas development,two of the horsemen, the ones that exercise that power, areNGOs and drug trafficking. In the field of the production ofidentity, the other two horsemen are youth gangs andfundamentalist evangelical churches.

The flourishing of these four actors is linked to thedecline in the world of waged work and shows how this declineaffects politics. The micro-politics of marginal neighborhoodsand rural communitieswith their street peddling, youthgangs, evangelical sects and NGOsreveals a degree ofcoverage, penetration and configuration of the populationsidentities, economic opportunities and destinies to whichthe other political actors, of course including conventionalones, can no longer aspire.

These groups affect or absorb broad sectors of the CentralAmerican population into their militancy, but barely appearin structural and situational analyses because they dontform part of what political thinking regards as politicallycorrect. The social anomalies become theoretical anomalies.

Phenomena that apparently have an abnormal and marginalparticipation in political life receive tangential treatmentin the studies of reality, inserted like Fellinis grotesques tospice up the story or round off a string of ridiculous elements.

From the world of work

to the world of consumption

The purpose of putting them in the same pot is to neutralizethe almost inevitable moralizing tones that mark thetreatment of openly criminal groups such as youth and gangsand drug traffickers. Such tones produce optical distortionsbecause they paint as anomalies certain phenomena many

aspects of which form part of the dominant trend of a largeportion of the citizenry and, far from being exceptional, havecorrelates in all Central American societies. I will analyzethem together, not to insinuate that theres anything illicitwithin the NGOs or fundamentalist evangelical groups

although there undoubtedly is in some casesbut rather tohighlight how presumably anomalous actors fit into the samesystem, co-exist and are connected by communicating vessels.

To a large extent, these actors owe their increased roleas protagonists to a great change in the current socioeconomicand cultural conditions: the leap from the world of wagedwork to the world of consumption. The new social struggles

are inspired by, imagined and built on other axes: aconsumption that implies political positions and generatesidentity, and these actors have a proven capacity forgenerating clientelism, adhesion and identity. Theyve beentaken as supporting actors in a drama in which they havesucceeded in imposing more lifestyles, sense of belonging,consumption and identity, and have done so more persistentlyand penetratingly, than the State, political parties, socialmovements and communication media.

NGOs, drug traffickers, youth gangs and churches areplatforms of identity-forming and material consumption.They represent four sub-cultures, four ways of conceivingdevelopment and the generation of identity: NGOs(administrative and liberal culture), drug traffickers (secretsociety culture), youth gangs (lumpen proletariat culture)and fundamentalist evangelicals (sect culture).

The micro-politics of marginal

neighborhoods and rural

communitieswith their street

peddling, youth gangs, evangelical

sects and NGOsreveals a degree of

coverage, penetration and

configuration of the populations

identities, economic opportunities and

destinies to which the other political

actors, of course including conven-

tional ones, can no longer aspir

Have the politicians noticed?Forced to formulate parallelisms, I would describe the NGOsas a kind of decentralized welfare state; youth gangs as theequivalent of the insurgent movements; drug trafficking asrepresenting the emerging but sufficiently industrialized


11/11

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

46envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

agro-export sector; and the evangelicals as liberation theoryturned upside down, a kind of conflict-evasion theology whoseshantytown version cultivates providentialism and whoseupper class version establishes a religious appropriation ofmarketing and self-help manuals, turning their churches intoan imitation of the Harvard Business School.

Have the politicians noticed these changes? NicaraguasFSLN undoubtedly has. In its chess game the piecesrepresenting AMNLAE, ANDES (the teachers union) andthe federations of rural cooperatives (all of which haveSandinista origins) are less deserving of attention than thesenew forces, with which it maintains relationships of alliance(evangelicals), manipulation (youth gangs), economic benefit(drug trafficking) and confrontation (NGOs).

Equally or perhaps more than others, these fourhorsemen reveal certain tendencies of the Central American

societies, although we wouldnt claim that this is irreversible.The decline in the world of waged work is a consequence ofthe overwhelming power of capital. But maybe that powerisnt the only cause. Are there other more lacerating andpenetrating ones? Until we can make out the causal chainand its consequences, we wont know to what extent and inwhich aspects were facing an irreversible situation. What isnot in doubt, however, is that were facing one of capitalscruelest onslaughts.

The universities that monopolize the delivery ofprofessional titles have reacted languidly to the weakness ofwaged work, without warning their Central Americanclientele that once out in the streets they face only a 60%

probability of obtaining a wage, a 30% probability offormalizing it through a written contract, a 25% probabilityof labor stability and a 2% probability of condemningandin no way reversingthis situation through a union beforeending up as part of the 8% unemployed, the 10% unpaidemployed and/or the 90% left in a state of social insecurity.

Politicians arent afflicted by the syncope of waged work.

Ignoring the reality principle, they travel from neighborhoodto neighborhood unconcernedly promising the manna fromheaven that many desire: thousands, even tens of thousandsof jobs. Waged work is in a coma. We pessimists lament it;the gullible celebrate it. Some anticipate it passing awaywith a call to entrepreneurship: Waged work is dead! Longlive micro businesspeople and the entrepreneurial spirit!While the big regional capitalists swap their companies forshares in Cargill, Claro, General Electric and Citibank, itoccurs to the big prophets of developmentthe IDB, WorldBank and NGOsthat entrepreneurship has descended astongues of fire on each Central American and that we onlyneed a little capital to develop our enterprising bent.

The charlatans get rich

Another cohort of optimists swears that the comatose stateof waged work can be reversed. One such exponent is RobertoDebayle, a charlatan who has made his fortune as a laboradviser and sold thousands of copies of his latest bookFinding Work in Difficult Times. According to the back cover,the author presents an integral analysis of that market andshows the reader all the tools needed to successfully sellhim/ herself. With his colossal swindle, Debayle fill hispockets and the world goes on filling up with people who

dont know how or arent able to sell ourselves, even if wewanted to, because nobodys buying. They just want to hireus, exploit us and dispose of us in an era in which thedisposable cardboard worker has replaced the stainless steelone.

Jos Luis Rocha is a researcherfor the Jesuit Service forMigrants of Central America (SJM) and a member of the

envo editorial council. His four horsemen will ride againin the next two issues ofenvo.

Until we can make out the causal chain

and its consequences, we wont know

to what extent and in which aspects

were facing an irreversible situation.

What is not in doubt, however, is that

were facing one of capitals cruelest

onslaughts

9 Central America Neoliberalism Jlr

Documents

Transcript of 9 Central America Neoliberalism Jlr