John Perkins is the first speaker of the Speaking Freely series. I watched this episode last night and was reminded of a film I watched many years ago, Life and Debt, which was totally eye opening to me.
Perkins says he used to be an economic hit man. He’d go into poor nations and offer them loans with massive strings attached. These loans would create crippling debt for the nations who received the loans, and often incredible political strife. They would be touted as a beneficent deal on behalf of the U.S. government to help these nations gain autonomy, but in reality, they were nothing more than a way to enrich U.S. Corporations at the expense of troubled nations. Perkins resigned in 1981 and now works with indigenous cultures to preserve their cultures, environment, and heritage. Here’s part of the interview…
“Life and Debt”, by Stephanie Black, is specifically about the results of globalization on Jamaican farmers and workers. It’s pretty tough to watch. The partying American tourists who are having beer drinking contests and hermit crab races at fancy hotels are juxtaposed with the fate of the local impoverished Jamaicans the tourists don’t see.
Jamaica Kincaid reads from her non-fiction book, A Small Place (which is actually about Antigua), throughout the film. She begins by telling tourists what you will not see while on your wonderful, exciting trip to Jamaica. You won’t know that the food you eat comes from Miami. That the sewage is dumped into the ocean. That there have been no new hospitals built in years. That what looks like an outhouse is actually a school.
The film explains how this suffering has occurred at the hands of the IMF, the WBO and the IADB, whose policies are primarily controlled and determined by the U.S. and Western Europe. The mechanisms created by these international lending institutions help make wealthy countries more wealthy while the economic base of poorer countries are eroded. The high interests rates devalue the local currency and make it impossible to compete with wealthier countries who can sell the same products Jamaicans produce more cheaply. This has completely devastated the Jamaican industry.
For a long while, the Jamaican banana industry flourished because Britain allowed for a tax free import quota. But the U.S. protested through the WTO and forced Jamaica to compete with companies in Central and South America (Dole and Chiquita) where labor is cheaper, destroying Jamaica’s banana industry.
Sweatshop conditions are also created. Laborers work 5-6 hour weeks sewing garments for American manufacturers (Hanes) and are paid the legal minimum – $30/week. They are not permitted unions and the materials are brought in containers that never technically touch Jamaican soil so the American manufacturers are not required to pay taxes to the Jamaican government.
At the end of the film, Jamaica Kincaid read, “It was settled by Christopher Columbus in 1493. Not too long after, it was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved noble and exalted human beings from Africa…to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, to feel better about their own miserable existence, so that they could be less lonely and empty- a European disease”
IMF policies can be changed only by an 80 percent vote. The United States, Japan, Germany, England, Canada and Italy control more than 80 percent of the votes.
So, are the developing economies of the Third World being deliberately destroyed and turned into captive markets for rich nations? Jamaica was once self-sufficient and is now cheap labor for foreign industry. How did that happen? Yes, partly because mistakes made by it’s own government. But what can be expected of a nation that came to exist through slavery and colonialization? How can we expect it to compete with well-developed countries?
When I was still attending a Catholic Church, the Year 2000 was deemed the Great Jubilee 2000. One of the hopes of this Jubilee was to have Third World Debt forgiven. In the Hebrew Bible, the Jubilee is every 7th year when Jewish farmers are required to allow their land to go fallow (to give the land back to God.) Every 50th year (7×7) the Great Jubilee occurs and Jews are required to “return every man unto his possession” which means all slaves and indentured servants are to be set free.
Australia paid some attention to the Jubilee in 2000, forgiving debt for Nicaragua and Ethiopia. September, 2005, a deal was struck with the IMF to begin forgiving debt of Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Cambodia and Tajikistan. The WBO will forgive the debt of all of these countries except Cambodia and Tajikistan.
But John Perkins claims this means nothing because strings continue to be attached. All these countries really want is to be allowed to be self-sufficient. The “strings” don’t allow this to be possible.