Engaging the Powers1: Meditations on
Resistance from the Andean Region in South America

Alvin Góngora2

Abstract: Power and domination are concepts that need to be taken apart in order to overcome violence. The current system of domination shows itself in the South American Andean Region (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) as one embodied in the hegemonic power of the United States that dismisses any alternative as terrorist. Movements of resistance are finding it difficult not to follow the route of the system of domination that constructs monsters in order to keep its prerogatives. Therefore, resistance faces the challenge to discern its own identity by taking alternative paths.

Introduction

The location of power at the border of encounter seems to enjoy wide acceptance in theoretical debate across the board.3 This metaphor allows for power to account for its ethical shades because it can be located in the realm of communication and interaction. Whenever power abandons the region of the "border" it is deprived of its fulfilment and reduced to the production of domination, which renders power to an end in itself, i.e. ‘distorted power’. As such, the problem of power can also be seen as one of intersubjectivity. This perspective recovers the social and political dimensions of power that usually slips by in the theoretical articulation and actual operation of so-called social movements, especially those focused on resistance. Language of resistance, following the dominant discourse, tends to treat power and domination as synonymous, thus casting a sombre shadow on power itself. However, intersubjectivity can also be a misleading concept, taking for granted the existence of subjects as its starting point and not necessarily providing clues into the construction of subjects.

These considerations govern my personal understanding and misunderstanding of the current affairs, especially as they seem to operate in my own stomping grounds. The representation of power as domination invests the dominant structure with a divinely given right that renders any interrogation subversive. After Washington and transnational capital seized power in Central America, resulting from the peace agreements of the 90's that brought to an end decades of civil war, the Andean Region seems to be their next chapter.4 Plans that contemplate military activities that spearhead economic hegemony have been drafted and put into practice through such campaigns as "Plan Colombia" and the "Andean Region Initiative." The resulting concentration of US influence in the region renders alternative discourses, social dynamics and liberating theologies useless, not to say overtly terrorist after the 9/11 events. Interrogating power in such a context demands a reconsideration of power itself and a new visit to the concept of subject. If new avenues to engaging the powers are needed, a whole task of subject construction should be central to our theological concerns.

Power and Domination: Overall Context

Following Pasewark6 and Wink7, distinction should be made between power and domination. Whereas power is part and parcel of the created order, domination is a distortion of power8 as it deletes the communicative side of power and subjects reason to its service (thus killing reason). From a theological perspective, power is part of "what is," something Tillich endeavoured to spell out by means of the term kraft, which is the very kernel of life, its creative source.9

How did this foundation get distorted so as to give way to systems of domination? This question remains as one of the theological challenges that were identified by the WCC at the very beginning of the decade to overcome violence.10 It demands fresh considerations of foundational tenets such as original sin, and a reconsideration of human behaviour. As an example, let us remember René Girard's well known thesis,11 which draws him closer to finding the roots of domination in the very essence of the human being. For him, domination and violence are part of our becoming human, as we learn to be human by copying from others what we desire. Hence, a "mimetic rivalry" arises and leads to a conflict that is resolved by way of the necessary victim or scapegoat. Whatever the answer to this dilemma, domination remains a contextualized construction that is not dictated by natural law nor rooted in any unshakeable soil. Systems of domination are transient and obedient to dynamics that can be discerned, questioned, and transformed.

This paper aims at drawing some lessons from the South American Andean Region. The questioning is directed to a particular system of domination currently at work. The general context is shaped by the current international conflict that can be termed as an assault on world wide domination.12 Unlike what winners of major European wars of the 20th century (1914-1918, and 1939-1945) did when they proceeded to distribute spoils among themselves and thus partitioned the world according to their means, after the collapse of the Soviet Union only one powerful system pretends to hold absolute control over all. It is a matter of intense discussion, at least in Latin America, whether the United States is such a system.13 If transnational corporations are the actual central figures, which force powerful countries like the US to play second fiddle, such claims cannot be understood and worked out without the role of the White House. In Latin America it makes no difference that the US economy is weakening, that other hard currencies are forcing the US dollar to lose its purchasing power and that the Federal Reserve has to deal with the biggest deficit in the world. Regardless of who actually holds the reins, a situated system of domination presents itself as the actual power.

Therefore, the overall context is shaped by Washington's neo-colonial strategy of domination, which follows different scripts according to countries and regions it deals with. When it comes to its equals, e.g. Western Europe, the US fights for free market and refrains from abandoning the purely economic front. When it focuses on the Middle East or the "Axis of Terror" George W. Bush invented to capture the imaginations of his citizens, the US sends its armies to open the road for the transnational corporations to advance. When its attention is fixed on Latin America, Washington dictates the national agendas for local governments to follow, such as the already mentioned "Plan Colombia,"14 and threatens non-collaborating governments with economic sanctions.

The problem of confusing domination with power is more relevant in places such as the South American Region. Local elite, whether in friendly terms with Washington (Colombia) or not (Venezuela), claim legitimacy not in terms of their popular support (which is high in either country) but regarding their respective responses to the US' all encompassing domination. At the end, US supremacy remains uncontested. Regarding Venezuela, the harder the position of local government in relation to the US, the clearer the conviction that without Washington nothing can be done.

Plan Colombia is a long term strategy that is hailed as a special campaign to combat drug trafficking. It was presented in 1999 by Colombian President Andres Pastrana to pool national and international resources together to end the problem of narcotics. Unknown in Colombia for more than a year, Plan Colombia is another chapter of a long standing battle Washington has fought in order to secure under its control a continent wide market as it is conceived in the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Since the war against drugs is designed in military terms in spite of the proven failure of such an approach, Plan Colombia hardly conceals its real intentions that have to do little with drugs and more with territorial control. The net results of the Plan are: escalating violence, spilling out of the Colombian problem onto neighbouring countries (especially Ecuador) as it was foreseen by the Santa Fe group in the 80's, destruction of the environment, increasing cocaine shipments to Europe, Canada and the US, massive internal displacement, and more recently the drawing up of contracts with multinational corporations that are taking control of the Colombian portion of the Amazon basin. Venezuela's strong position against Plan Colombia prevents it from becoming the full version of the IRA. The purpose of the Andean Region Initiative is to fuel social discontent in order to justify military operations that will facilitate the exploitation of the area for the benefit of large multinational corporations.

Resistance and the Manufacturing of Monsters:
Overcoming Systems of Domination without Violence

Once domination is seen as power, resistance loses ground as it finds it difficult no to fall into the logic of violence that underpins any system of domination. The Andean Region bears witness to such a phenomenon. Colombia has the oldest guerrilla movement. Peru sacrificed the civil rights of its citizens fighting the fearsome Shining Path guerrilla for two decades. Bolivia shows the strongest social movement in the region and yet has paid a high price for its rights as violence has been the means to make its voice heard. Ecuador is politically unstable and was forced to give up its sovereignty to adopt the US dollar as its local currency. Venezuela struggles as it leadership has been unable to keep the military off the realm of civil administration. Important sectors of the different societies are powerless, but as they strive after being empowered they face a system of domination that uses violence as its preferred language.

The old sentence according to which violence engenders violence is taking on a more dramatic dimension, especially after the 9/11 attacks. The system of domination is manufacturing monsters in order to bring under control a supposedly concrete monster that is on the loose. In order to overcome such a monster, the new ones must be more fearsome and powerful. If four airplanes, three buildings and a couple thousands of individuals were killed in one single terrorist attack, the counterterrorist response focuses on two entire nations and holds millions accountable. This state of affairs renders other actors powerless as it establishes domination as the only means to hold power. Following Girard, the mimetic desire according to which individual and associations articulate their identities will show them the manufacturing of monsters as the only way out. Such is actually the condition of the alternative discourses and dynamics, at least in the Andean Region.

As suggested in the introduction, power has to do with the problem of the subject. The construction of subjects is a precondition to the intersubjective interaction that is the locus of power. Girard understands such a stage to be one of imitation, but he does not provide for an understanding of the subjects involved as the rivals dissolve their differences in a scapegoat whose sacrifice brings reconciliation. At this point, it is useful to turn to Alain Touraine for whom social actors struggle for having control of their own historicity as they engage the dynamics of resistance.15 In so doing, social movements, social actors or individuals discover that such historicity has to do primarily with the construction of their own identities. To speak of identity is to speak of difference, and this in turn takes the subject to the task of discovering its own means of resistance and liberation that will set it apart from the system of domination. In other words, if violence is what lends legitimacy to a given system of domination, violence cannot legitimate its rival. Resistance must discern in its own inner dynamics the tools and weapons to overcome the dominant violence, and in so doing elaborate is own subjectivity.

A first concrete step to accomplish such a goal is to take alternative routes to speak of the enemy. If the system of domination is into manufacturing monsters, resistance to such violence cannot depict the system as a monster but, as Walter Wink put it, as a myth to be named and unmasked. The Andean Region is a case in point. The Colombian establishment, that sees itself as the official voice of Washington in the area, has violence as the cornerstone of its domestic and foreign affairs. In order to protect the values George W. Bush is protecting elsewhere, the administration of President Alvaro Uribe is mobilizing the whole country to take up arms to fight a terrorist monster that actually exists in the violence that is perpetrated by the State and perpetuated by guerrilla movements that do not represent the social movement. In this context, theology has the opportunity to provide symbols and inspire actions that enable movements of resistance to discover their own identities.16 Icons such as the cross that affirms the worth of the weak "overcomes... traditional assumptions"17 and questions the validity of the neo-Darwinian thought that supports the current system of domination.

NOTES:

1 Although the phrase is from a book title, it is not the intention of this paper to elaborate on Walter Wink’s work.
2 Alvin Gongora is training secretary of Unidad Cristiana Universitaria in Colombia.
3 A few examples come to mind: Kyle A. Pasewark, A Theology of Power: Being beyond Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993); Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love; Lucy Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference; and the whole discussion around Enrique Dussel’s concept of “subject” as it is debated in the San Jose Circle that gathers around Franz Hinkelammert and the Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones (DEI), in San Jose, Costa Rica.
4 Someone could dismiss this fear as an echo to outdated conspiracy theories. Yet a closer look at documents of think tanks such as Remington Corp. and Santa Fe sheds light into the agenda of Washington for Latin America. As an example, see Horacio A. López, “El Documento de Santa Fe IV: La Estrategia Neocolonial del Imperio en el Nuevo Milenio,” en Colección Izquierda Viva, Santa Fe IV en los Tiempos del Plan Colombia (Bogotá: Ediciones Nuestra América, 2001), p. 206.
5 IRA, acronym in Spanish, lends itself to a word play: as a noun it means “anger.” In spite of their names, such plans were conceived by the White House and thoroughly debated by the US Congress in the first two years of the 21st century.
6 Op. cit., especially the last part of chapter 5.
7 See Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), especially Part 1.
8 Pasewark, op. cit., p. 270.
9 P. Tillich, “Kairos,” in James Luther Adams (ed.), The Protestant Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
10 Margot Kässmann, Overcoming Violence: The Challenge to the Churches in All Places (1998), second edition (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2000), especially chapter 6.
11 I am quoting from two of his works, Violence and the Sacred, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1977; and The Scapegoat, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1986.
12 Language used by Franz Hinkelammert, El Asalto al Poder Mundial: La Violencia Sagrada del Imperio (Bogota: Proyecto Justicia y Vida, 2003); and Wim Dierckxseen, Del Neoliberalismo al Poscapitalismo (Bogota: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2003).
13 Toni Negri and Michael Hardt, Imperio (Bogota: Ediciones Desde Abajo, 2000).
14 Fermín González, “El Rompecabezas de la Dominación Neocolonial,” en Jairo Estrada (ed.), El Plan Colombia y la Intensificación de la Guerra (Bogota: Universidad Nacional, 2002), pp. 165ff.
15 Alain Touraine, Production de la Societé (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1973).
16 This is something that a cluster of grass root organizations in Colombia is doing around the “Weeks of Ecumenical Theology,” a movement that monitors the contributions of churches and Christian organizations that work in the areas of conflict. This movement is coordinated by Fernando Torres, a Catholic lay theologian in representation of Dimension Educativa, Mrs. Isdalia Ortega, Mennonite pastor, and Alvin Góngora.
17 M. Kässmann, op. cit., p. 43.