Chapter 2: Against All Odds
1This essay is adapted from a paper delivered at the Twentieth International Conference on Alternative Futures and Popular Protest, held at Manchester Metropolitan University from March 30 to April 1, 2015, and hosted by Colin Barker.
2This interpretation, as well as the programmatic thrust of the whole paper, were shaped by internal documents of the Socialist Group, most of them authored by Jonathan Grossman. The Socialist Group is a small collective of anti-Stalinist Marxists affiliated to the Democratic Left Front and the United Front; I am a member. Grossman can be reached at jonathan.grossman@uct.ac.za. I can be reached at trevorngwane@gmail.com.
3The first phrase was used by Ronnie Kasrils, former ANC minister, when denouncing the killings in an interview for Rehad Desai’s film Miners Shot Down (2014). The second phrase was used by Dali Mpofu, legal representative for the families of the dead miners, in arguments presented to the Marikana Commission; see www.marikanacomm.org.za.
4Jobs dropped from 72,255 to 36,402 in mining (50%) and from 8,172 to 2,773 in the metal products and machinery sectors (66%). Sources: Mosiane 2011, 42; Phalatse 2000.
5According to Forrest (2014, 153): “About 15 years ago 60 per cent of South African mine labour consisted of rural foreign nationals whilst 40 per cent was South African. Today about 30 per cent of mine labour is foreign and of the 70 per cent South African labour half is rural and half urban.”
6It has been estimated that as many as one in three mineworkers was subcontracted. The platinum sector had the higher number of such workers, at 36%, while gold had 15% (Bezuidenhout and Buhlungu 2008).
7Independent researchers paint a bleaker picture, estimating that the housing backlog is 58,500 units and that the proportion of people living in shacks could be as high as 41% (Bench Marks 2012, 35).
8The Royal Bafokeng Administration is a tribal council that has benefited from successful land claims that cover some platinum mines. The wealth and power emanating from this and the state recognition of “traditional authorities” makes the Bafokeng an important player in the platinum mining belt. See Mbenga and Manson 2010.
9It is often referred to as Nkaneng-Bleskop to distinguish it from the informal settlement situated next to where the massacre occurred, Nkaneng-Wonderkop. Many informal settlements in South Africa use the name “Nkaneng,” no doubt in reference to the “forceful” spirit and politics behind the establishment of these communities.
10However, it should be noted that the definition of “migrant” covers a “huge variety” of “time-space geographies” that do not necessarily correspond with attitudes toward migrancy or people’s sense of the distinction between rural and urban (Cox, Hemson, and Todes 2004, 7).
11Cox, Hemson, and Todes (2004) provide a list of “deep rural areas” that they define in terms of poverty, geography, and rural status. Some areas mentioned in the Eastern Cape are Libode, Ngqeleni, Qumbu, Mqanduli, and Lusikisiki. It is from these areas that the members of the iinkundla of Nkaneng come (see p. 40).
12Malema was the president of the ANC Youth League and was expelled when he started pushing for a radical economic program. His new political party, surprisingly, won 6% of the vote, catapulting it into national prominence. See Shivambu and Smith 2014.
13Luke Sinwell and Siphiwe Mbatha (2016) at the University of Johannesburg Research Chair in Social Change unit have conducted extensive research into the birth and operation of strike committees in the Lonmin strike, including the committees formed during the earlier Impala strike and the later Amplats strike.
14When questioned by the Farlam Commission, the police were unable to provide satisfactory and credible reasons as to why they had delayed for an hour to provide medical assistance to the first group of strikers who were shot at the scene of the massacre. The commission noted that since the police had prearranged four mortuary vans and ordered four thousand rounds of ammunition in preparation for the operation, they should have anticipated that medical assistance would be required and had medical personnel at the scene. The commission referred this matter to the director of public prosecution for further investigation in order to establish whether there was any criminal liability on the part of the police.
15Based on Socialist Group internal documents.
16See Mayekiso 1996 for “civics” in South Africa. See also Adler and Steinberg 2000.
17Bank (2011, 61) refers to Clifton Crais’s (2002) notion of the power of the “cultural politics of the encounters.” Critical events and encounters may, “as much as longer-term processes of change,” provoke “new forms of consciousness and political imagination in South Africa, and have challenged accepted ideas of progress and development.”
18This was reported to me by Rehad Desai, who was filming the congress. The heart-rending scenes will be released in a forthcoming documentary.
19Reflecting on recent developments in the workers’ struggle internationally, Ness and Azzellini (2011, 7) ask: “Does the escalating wave of workers’ direct action from 2000 to 2010 foreshadow an impending, sustained shift towards labor insurgency and direct action rooted in working-class consciousness?”
Chapter 3: Makoko Slum Settlement
1See, for example, Babalobi 2013; Marx, Stoker, and Suri 2013; Gunther 2012; Hahn 2010; Awofeso 2011; Buttenheim 2008; Werlin 2006; Weeks, Hill, Stow, Getis, and Fugate 2007; Pokhariyal 2005; Zulu, Dodoo, and Chika-Ezer 2002; and Aina 1989.
2The Third Mainland Bridge is the longest in Nigeria (measuring over 7 miles in length) and the second-longest in Africa after the 6 October Bridge in Cairo (Atubi 2010; Tripathi 2005). It is one of three bridges linking mainland Lagos to Lagos Island. Third Mainland Bridge was commissioned in 1990 and remains one of the busiest bridges in Nigeria (Akanni 2010; Atubi 2010).
3About 85,000 people are estimated to live on the land section of Makoko (Collins 2015; Ibiwoye 2014; Agbola and Agunbiade [2007] 2009).
4The NHRC is an agency of the Nigerian government tasked with the responsibility of protecting the rights of citizens. The NHRC has not really been active in this area, however; it is perceived as one of the many inactive parastatal organizations of the federal government of Nigeria.
5The Egun (Ogu) are non-Yoruba but indigenous to Lagos state. The Egun population also extends into Benin.
6Lagoon Makoko residents pollute the lagoon by discharging waste into the lagoon waters. This is a major environmental problem, which the state has not strategically addressed.
7The “health facilities” referred to here are actually dispensaries run by quacks.
8Environmental sanitation is a periodic cleaning exercise of the immediate environment of a household or neighborhood. It usually takes place on the last Saturday of the month. The practice was introduced in 1984 by the regime of General Muhammadu Buhari to stem the tide of environmental filth in many neighborhoods in Nigeria.
Chapter 4: The Ayotzinapa Massacre
Endnote: From the short story “Tenga para que se entretenga” (Pacheco’s [1972] 1997).
1“Normalistas” are students of the normal school system, which comprises 245 institutions. These schools provide training for primary school teachers in Mexico.
2On October 2, 1968, the army and the Olympia Battalion, a special police squad, shot (in cold blood) and killed hundreds of students attending a demonstration in the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Tlatelolco, Mexico City. The clash between the Mexican student movement and the city police had gone on for months, echoing the urban political turmoil worldwide during 1968. The massacre was condemned as a crime of state. The motto “The state did it” (Fue el Estado), seen now in all the demonstrations for Ayotzinapa, is rooted here.
3“Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos!”
4They are the only institutions offering higher education to indigenous and poor students. Among them, the Ayotzinapa School has a long tradition of Marxist-Leninist-oriented and combative politics.
5In November 2015, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) publicly questioned the government’s failure to fully comply with the observations and requests made to them in regard to the investigations (José Antonio Román, “En caso de Iguala, insuficiente respuesta de la PGR a observaciones de CNDH,” La Jornada, November 9, 2015). The latest data on the clandestine graves reported 105 buried bodies found in Iguala (Sergio Ocampo Arista, “Suman 105 los cuerpos encontrados,” La Jornada, November 9, 2015).
6Actions included protests, vigils, international solidarity tours, and the use of social media to raise awareness and support the cause of justice for the forty-three missing.
7A glimpse of this cityscape can be seen in the short documentary Ayotzinapa—Ciudad de México (Imprenta de Luz 2014).
8“Fuera Peña!”
9See Julie Schwietert Collazo, “Ayotzinapa +43 ‘anti-monument’ erected without permission in Mexico City,” Latin Correspondent, April 30, 2015.
10See Gustavo Castillo García, “En nueve meses, la PGR ha detenido a 108 personas,” La Jornada, June 26, 2015.
11See Blanche Petrich and Emir Olivares, “Entrega GIEI ‘Informe Ayotzinapa’ a autoridades federales,” La Jornada, September 6, 2015. Tlachinollan, an NGO based in Tlapa, Guerrero, has accompanied the parents and supported them throughout the investigation process. The report Tlachinollan (2015) published—focusing on human rights—is one of the most complete and reliable so far.
12The remains of Alejandro Mora, one of the missing students, were found and identified by forensic experts in December 2014. Popular mobilizations continue upholding the number forty-three.
13The lead activist during the search for clandestine graves around Iguala, Jiménez, was forty-five years old. See Nash Jenkins, “The Mexican Activist Who Led the Search for Missing Students Has Been Killed,” TIME, August 10, 2015. The banners were the work of Scottish artist Jan Nimmo and were based on the ones the parents carried in the first demonstration back in 2014.
14“…presentaciôn con vida.”
15Names taken from the banners. Some of the parents were not present that day: some live in the United States, travel for international solidarity tours, or participate in demonstrations and actions in Guerrero.
16The motto “We are all Ayotzinapa” echoes the phrase “We are all Marcos,” a common refrain during the 1990s movement in support of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).
17“¡Ni perdón, ni olvido, castigo a los asesinos!”
“¡Urgente, urgente, que renuncie el presidente!”
“¡Ni con tanques, ni metrallas, Ayotzi no se calla! ¡Ni con tanques, ni metrallas, el pueblo no se calla! ¡Ni con tanques, ni metrallas, México no se calla!”
“¡Fuera Peña!”
18For decades, since it was first published in 1984, La Jornada has maintained a critical left-oriented editorial line. Though it has some limitations now, it continues to be one of the few sources of information about social movements in Mexico.
19Five months later, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights would label Mexico “the most dangerous country for journalists in Latin America”: one out of every three documented murders since 2010 was committed here. Data reported 150 journalists killed in the region—that is, one every fourteen hours. La Jornada, November 3, 2015.
20In this section I am drawing on Subcomandante Marcos’s famous description of Chiapas, the state where the EZLN started an indigenous armed insurgency and declared war on the Mexican state in 1994. The text, entitled The Southeast in Two Winds: A Storm and a Prophecy, depicts the harsh social conditions in Chiapas in the year NAFTA was enacted. At the time, and still today, Guerrero, Chiapas, and Oaxaca are the poorest states in Mexico.
21According to CNN-México, the minister of the interior released the plan in October, without specifying the number of troops to be deployed or the strategies to be used.
22According to González (2015), Cabañas was an ex-member of the Communist Youth Party, leader of the FECSM, and leader of the Party of the Poor (PDLP) in Guerrero. The PDLP was first a political organization and then became a guerrilla organization in the late 1960s. Genaro Vázquez was a communist militant and founding member of the Independent Peasant Central, also a representative organization in the history of the Mexican peasant movement.
23“Maestro Cabañas, el pueblo ya te extrañal!” This political slogan, shouted by the young normalistas during the demonstrations for Ayotzinapa in Mexico City, shows an important connection between two generations of rural political militancy: the one born in the second half of twentieth century and the latest, born in the present one.
24Rivero replaced Figueroa, who was forced to resign after Aguas Blancas. Rivero—now affiliated with the Party of the Democratic Revolution—was state governor in 2011 and up to the time of the massacre of Ayotzinapa. He stepped down in October 2014.
25Hernández follows these rounds of dispossession across three major periods: first, the 1970s, with the transformation of Guerrero into a migrant labor supplier for export-oriented agribusiness in northwestern Mexico. Then, the mid-1980s, which saw increasing drug production and the transformation of the region into a major pool for the North American transnational migrant labor market. And finally, the 1990s and the enactment of NAFTA.
26There have been eleven major structural reforms. Labor, fiscal, finance, transparency, education, energy, and telecommunications reforms are among the most important ones. In tandem they are considered to be the broadest and greatest reform package in Mexico’s contemporary history. On this topic see also Fuentes (2015).
27The book includes a map showing the current operation of drug cartels in sixty-five municipalities. The major ones are United Warriors, The Reds, The Templar Knights, New Generation Jalisco Cartel, The Michoacana Family, Independent Cartel of Acapulco, The Squirrels, The Granados, and The Viagras. According to the author, some of these criminal organizations are linked to gold mines in the state and to exports of mineral ore to China (González 2015, 57–72).
28González also provides information on some of the local responses that have emerged to counteract this violence, including at least five “revolutionary groups” active in the state: the PROCUP, EPR, ERPI, FARP, and FARP-LP. In addition, the work of Sierra (2015) documents the organization of self-defense community police in forty-six of the eighty-one municipalities.
29The percentage of the migrants of Guerrero—together with those of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Veracruz—traveling undocumented to the United States has risen from 68.5% in 1995 to 92.8% in 2005. About 13% of the population of Guerrero currently resides in the United States (González 2015, 40).
30“Al Zócalor!”
Chapter 5: The Case of the West Zone
1Rio de Janeiro is known worldwide for its mountains and hills—and the favelas that have consequently been installed above the city since the beginning of the twenty-first century. This geography has played a part in most of the city’s conflicts, since it is a source of constant challenge and poor living conditions for the favelas’ inhabitants.
2These are criminal groups in which various agents of the state (policemen, plumbers, and the military) take part—as well as drug traffickers—to economically exploit people living in certain areas of Rio de Janeiro, especially the West Zone. We will hear more on the milícias further on in this chapter.
3The Brazilian equivalent of the Slutwalk, a movement that started in Canada, in 2011, by the allegation of a police officer that “women should avoid dressing like sluts” as a precaution against sexual assault, is a transnational movement of marches that gather feminists worldwide.
4Sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle, the protests that took place in this city in 1999 became the benchmark of the antiglobalization movement, with an intense participation of young people and a never-before-seen coordination of repressive techniques by the US police.
5UPP stands for Pacifying Police Unit, a Rio de Janeiro initiative started in 2008 that has been installed in more than forty favelas. The program has been praised for lowering homicide rates and paving the way for infrastructure and social programs to enter favelas, but criticized for ongoing police violence, human rights violations, lack of accompanying social projects, and ultimately failing in its promise to deliver peace to communities.
Chapter 6: The Uruguayan Recyclers’ Union
1The number of clasificadores is hotly debated, with the UCRUS citing the figure of 9,000 and the municipal government, basing itself on a recent representative sample, citing the lower figure of 3,188.
2Padre Cacho was an Uruguayan priest inspired by liberation theology who lived in poor neighborhoods in order to “find Jesus among the poor.” He became particularly associated with the cause of clasificadores. He is regarded as important in popularizing the term clasificador to replace hurgador (rummager), which was widely regarded as derogatory.
3The power that garbage workers’ strikes hold over municipal governments has long been recognized: from the Memphis Garbage Strike of 1968 (Collins 1988) and the refuse strike of the British Winter of Discontent of 1978–1979 (Martin López 2014) to the recent strike of Rio de Janeiro garbage workers timed to coincide with the World Cup.
4Uruguay in turn is one of the few countries in the world to have every national trade union (one per sector) affiliated to a central national body. The federation had several unsuccessful predecessors, which splintered due to ideological differences (such as during the Cold War) or repression (during the 1973–1985 dictatorship). The federation in its current guise was founded after trade unions were legalized toward the end of the dictatorship. It held a victorious May Day rally in 1984 under the banner of “PIT-CNT: A Single Trade-Union Movement” (González Sierra 1989).
5In some ways this can also be seen as a dispute between conflicting rights: the right of the clasificadores to work and circulate throughout the city versus animal rights and children’s rights (some used a children’s-rights-based discourse to criticize clasificadores who worked with their children and occasionally sent them inside containers to remove recyclables).
6Uruguayan word meaning “leftovers.” It is used by clasificadores to refer to the things they take home from the waste stream for domestic consumption. It refers principally to food but can also refer to clothing, ornaments, and so on.
7El País ran a story on the developing conflict on September 17, 2014.
8See www.oxforddictionaries.com.
9Unions affiliated to the FORU went somewhat further than the UCRUS in the militancy of their actions. In the 1922 municipal waste workers’ strike, for example, strikers put bombs in bins to discourage strikebreakers from collecting them, leaving two dead as a result (Errandonea and Costabile 1968, 115).
10Profound thanks go to the militants of the UCRUS, for allowing me to accompany them, and to my colleague Giorgio Baldelli, who not only provided invaluable company as he researched the UCRUS and clasificadores at the same time but also allowed me access to some interview material used in this chapter.
Chapter 7: The Nonadanga Eviction in Kolkata
1Revised from an earlier piece, “Nonadanga Eviction: Questioning the Right to the City,” Economic and Political Weekly 47 (17): 13–15.
2A crore is ten million, so Rs 250,000 crore = Rs 2.5 trillion, or about US$75 billion in 1996.