The Wellesley Globalist: Volume VIII, Issue 1 "Catalyst"

CATALYST

the Wellesley Globalist

Volume VIII, Issue 1

Letter from the Editors Dear Globalist Readers, When choosing our theme, we looked to the current myriad of conflicts and improvements happening around the world and how they came to be. We landed on sources of change, and challenged our writers to explore how these catalysts fit into the global scene, how foreign intervention affects them and their many different results and externalities.

We are very excited for you to read the diverse collection of topics they have put forward. If you would like to participate in this process next semester, please reach out to us through our Facebook page, WEngage Page, or email us at thewellesleyglobalist_wcso@wellesley.edu.

Best regards, Your Editors-in-Chief

Martina Silva

Claudia Lamprecht

Economics & International Relations - Political Science Class of 2021

Biological Sciences & Economics Class of 2020

Editorial Staff Managing Director Ishita Krishan Production Director Dominique Mickiewicz Treasurer Lillie Miller Publicity Chair Devyani Arora Event Coordinator Louise Conaty

Associate Editors Louise Conaty Molly McCaul Makiko Miyazaki Betty Qian Melina Rowin Radhika Seshadri

Layout Editors Grace Chang Mari Kramer Mai Ogiuchi Ishita Krishan

Copy Editors Devyani Arora Sanjana Kothary Jax Rousselot Ruby Shealy Clarice Tan

Web Content Editors Toshali Goel Laryssa Horodysky Hailey Hyun-Min Cho Yae-won Michelle Jung Elle Song

Podcast Editors Xafsa Aden Renee Remsberg Zeynep Yalcin

Tableof Contents Wellesley & Beyond

4 Greener Living in France and Chile: An International Perspective on Reducing our Carbon Footprint

by Katherine Schauer ‘18

History and Politics

8 25 Years Later: Revisiting the Rwandan Genocide

by Jules Spector ‘23

12 Lasting Effects of Apartheid and Present-Day Education Disparities in South Africa

by Betty Qian ‘23

15 Deforestation in the Amazon and the Rainforest’s Indigenous Communities

by Martina Silva ‘21

Culture

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The Hills Are Alive in Podhale, Poland

by Dominique Mickiewicz ‘22

Economic Trends

23 The Rise of the Knowledge Economy and Implications of Post-Capitalism

by Otua Sobukwe ‘21

26 ¿Qué Significan los Cambios Recientes en el Mercado de Café Guatemalteco?

by Julianna Wright ‘22

Greener Living in France and Chile: An International Perspective on Reducing our Carbon Footprint Katherine Schauer ‘18 Since the publication of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark climate report in last October, 2019 has been a year of increasing climate awareness and action. Protests inspired by Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunburg drew approximately four million youths in thousands of cities worldwide to the streets on Sept. 20, constituting what is likely the

“...our current emission projections will warm the world 1.5 degrees Celsius... by 2040” largest global climate protest in history according to Vox. Younger generations are especially anxious about climate change’s impact on their future. The UN report warns our current emission projections will warm the world 1.5 degrees Celsius, causing severe droughts, food shortages and potentially displacing millions by 2040 (Davenport, “Major Climate Report”). This leaves the world with only 20 years to aggressively lower carbon emissions, radically changing the global economy and our daily lives. My experience living in France and Chile has shown me firsthand how every American needs to begin decreasing some of the largest sectors of our carbon emissions by modifying our transportation habits, electricity use and consumer choices.

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My adventure in greener living began unexpectedly upon my arrival last September in Le Puy-en-Velay, a medieval town in central France along the famous Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route. I worked as a local English teaching assistant in three elementary schools for nine months, slowly integrating into the community by getting to know my colleagues and joining a local choir. Four women in the town graciously took me under their wing, introducing me to their families, inviting me to weekly dinners and giving me a glimpse into the daily lives of rural French citizens. For the first time in my life, issues on climate change felt front and center as I began to adjust my daily habits to the local culture and become aware of my own carbon footprint in the process.

A walk in the countryside, Le Puy

The first thing I had to adapt were my methods of transportation. Like most Americans, I rely on my car to get around. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2017 “Inventory of U.S.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks,” the largest portion of U.S. carbon emissions (30 percent) comes from burning fossil fuels for transportation. In France, I relied instead on the local bus system and walking for travel within the town and on train travel for longer distances. I was privileged in the sense that Le Puy is a regional capital and I had access to timely, well-funded public transportation methods.

Having access to and the choice of using public transportation is not the reality for many people in France or the U.S., as some citizens do not live close enough to public transportation (rents get higher

Saturday Market at Le puy

if you live near a metro line), while others may take public transportation out of necessity (i.e. they cannot afford a car.)

For people living in the countryside around Le Puy, driving a car is the only transportation option and farmers rely on gasoline to power farm equipment.

That is why French President Emmanuelle Macron’s proposal to raise taxes on gas in order to curb carbon emissions sparked enormous outrage in rural regions like central France. Le Puy found itself itself at the center of international attention when protesters set fire to the town’s prefecture, culminating in an unexpected visit by President Macron and the announcement of a nation-wide “listening campaign” to address protesters’ concerns. While wellintentioned, Macron’s gas tax faux pas shows how reliant most citizens of France remain on fossil fuels.

Moreover, we need to remember how fossil fuel consumption is also driven by the transportation of consumer goods in international trade. A lot of consumer choices, from your avocados from Mexico to your Amazon purchase from China, are adding to the increase in carbon emissions from transportation.

We need to not only drive less and in more fuel-

efficient cars, but also to focus on buying more local products when we can. My ability (or lack thereof) to buy local products came to my attention when I moved to Victoria, Chile this August. Victoria is located in the south of Chile in the rural region of Araucanía, one of the country’s poorest regions in GDP per capita according to an OECD 2018 regional report. One thing that quickly stood out to me was Chile’s reliance on international trade for secondary products like cars, clothing and footwear, machines such as refrigerators and other domestic wares and chemical products like medications and beauty goods (Simoes and Hidalgo, Observatory of Economic Complexity). For the first time, I saw Chinese car brands and entire stores called simply chinas filled from floor to ceiling with products from the manufacturing behemoth.

On the other hand, Chile primarily exports raw goods, specifically copper metals and mineral products, followed by fruits and fish (Simoes and Hidalgo). This means my host family has a

“Maximizing food production efficiency and minimizing waste is becoming a growing concern...” continuous selection of local food products on the dinner table. With the world population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050, maximizing food production efficiency and minimizing waste is becoming a growing concern for organizations like the Food and Agriculture Organization. The convenience of modern supermarkets and international trade have given us access to a seemingly endless supply of food regardless of seasons and leads to a lot of unnecessary emissions and waste. I used to buy tomatoes in winter, snacks in individual, single-use wrappers and vegetables wrapped in plastic without a second thought. In Le Puy and Victoria, people take great pride in patroning the weekly farmers’ market, building relationships with vendors and supporting local agriculture sans plastic bags or wrapping.

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In one of my more adventurous culinary moments in France, I had the chance to make sausages from scratch. One of the families I knew had bought the pig with another family, butchered it and then we came together for a frenzied day of sausage making in the countryside.

Some were cooked and eaten fresh, but most were hung up to dry through the rest of winter. By March, I was able to taste my hard work: a delectable, garlicky home-made saucisson. It was a good reminder of the time and effort food preparation requires and made me rethink how much meat I A sustainability group in Victoria consume daily. While the health effects of consuming less meat may be undergoing review, we know for certain the negative environmental effects of industrial farming. Emissions from the global livestock industry make up almost 15 percent of all human carbon emissions, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s recent “Livestock Solutions for Climate Change” report.

Here in Chile, my host mother limits our intake of red meat from cattle and instead serves locally sourced chicken, pork, eggs, lentils and beans as alternative sources of protein. American citizens need to start shifting from meat to plant-based sources of protein

“American households could save $165 annually if they used smart power strips or unplugged devices” 6

and when we do eat meat, it should be locally sourced and organic.

Finally, there is the issue of generating power.

The U.S.’s secondlargest portion of carbon emissions is related to the use of fossil fuels to make electricity (“Inventory”).

While I have been diligent about turning off the lights when leaving a room, I had not paid much attention to the other ways in which I waste energy until I moved to Victoria.

Here, my host family expected me to also unplug my chargers and other appliances such as the microwave and oven when not in use. Classrooms at my school often have the lights off and instead use sunlight as the room’s main light source. The reason for this is mostly because of the cost of electricity.

American households could save $165 annually if they used smart power strips or unplugged devices, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

If all US households did this, national residential electricity output would be reduced by 4.6 percent, a decrease of 44 million tons of carbon dioxide. (Root and Friedman, “One Thing You Can Do: Slay the Energy Vampires”). This is a win for the environment and your wallet.

While recent protests have gone a long way to raising awareness about the issues of climate change and securing landmark agreements like the Paris Climate Accord, we still need to hold international organizations and national governments accountable to their promises. On March 14th, four French NGOs filed a lawsuit against the French government claiming it is failing to uphold its environmental commitments (Dodman, “French state faces landmark lawsuit”). I had the pleasure of meeting French environmental lawyer Eduoard Raffin who is a member of one of these nonprofits, Notre affaire à tous. They are an

association of lawyers volunteering their time to advance environmental legal projects in France. Even though the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, U.S. citizens need to pressure local and state governments to enact policies in line with the agreement’s goals. We must call and email our federal representatives to let them know that we support bold, forwardthinking environmental legislation like the Green New Deal.

Of course, these suggestions for individual action are non-exhaustive.

Climate change requires that we think critically about all the consumer choices and daily actions we take for granted. Such a shift will have profound economic implications for the retail, agricultural, transportation and energy industries, as well as the people they employ. It also requires a mental shift in how Americans view their personal responsibility for climate change. In both France and Chile, I have noticed a greater feeling of individual agency for

tackling environmental issues. In the U.S., many feel that changing daily habits is futile when large-scale industrial pollution continues unabated; however, industrial carbon emission accounts for only 22 percent of U.S. carbon emissions according to the EPA. We cannot put the blame solely on industries, lobbyists and politicians. It is our collective consumer demand and desire for cheaper goods that drives these industries to cut costs and produce these products in the first place. Regardless of whether we are prepared to adapt, our daily lives will change drastically because of climate change. Americans need to take a hard look at how our individual actions contribute to the problem and begin to adapt our transportation, eating and energy habits to reduce our carbon footprint.

“We cannot put the blame solely on industries, lobbyists and politicians. It is our collective consumer demand and desire for cheaper goods that drives these industries to cut costs and produce these products in the first place.�

Park Conguillo, Chile

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25 Years Later: Revisiting the Rwandan Genocide Jules Spector ‘23 Rwanda is a small country – about the size of Vermont – in East Africa. Prior to Belgian colonization of Rwanda in 1916, three distinct ethnic groups were present in the country: Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas.

These ethnic groups stemmed from ancient economic classes and, in reality, did not pertain to ethnicity.

Originally, Hutus were lower-class farmers and Tutsis were upper-class pastoralists who controlled the monarchy. If a Hutu acquired enough cattle, they could become a member of the Tutsi class. However, when the Belgians colonized the country during World War One, Belgian colonial administration gave political positions to Tutsis and eliminated Hutu chieftain power.

In 1959, poverty-stricken Hutus staged a coup d’état against the Tutsi regime and installed a Hutu government. For the rest of the 20th century, the Tutsi were persecuted and oppressed by Hutu elites and extremists. In October 1990, a newly-formed Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), went on the attack in Rwanda. This began a civil war between the two ethnic groups, waged until 1993 when the Arusha Accords were implemented; however, the agreement merely exacerbated existing cleavages in the country, causing the Hutu nationalists to combine with President Habyarimana’s MRND and extremist anti-Tutsi CDR parties and form a coalition called “Hutu Power.” This extremist proHutu coalition carried out the Rwandan Genocide, cited by the United Nations as beginning on April 6th 1994, when President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down. Members of the presidential guard and the military moved quickly around Kigali, carrying lists of Tutsi and RPF sympathizers. The next day, Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a moderate Hutu, was assassinated by the presidential guard.

The genocide lasted one hundred days, during which over 75 percent – 800,000 people – of the Tutsi population was methodically slaughtered at the hands 8

of the military, the government and the Interahamwe (mass killing squads trained specifically to carry out the genocide). During these killing sprees, often carried out face-to-face with machetes, the RPF rebels advanced further into Rwanda. Ultimately, the RPF rebels forced the genocidal regime to flee to thenZaire, thus ending the genocide three months after it began. The international community, with input from the United States, took no action to either prevent or stop the genocide from occurring. This paper explores the reasons why the international community and the United States remained separate from the conflict.

Failure of the Somali Humanitarian Mission

Richard Dowden, the Executive Director of the Royal African Society and author of “Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles,” argues in his 2004 paper in African Affairs that the American reluctance to send aid in the form of troops to Rwanda stemmed from the failure of the Somali aid mission the previous year. He believes, “As far as Washington was concerned, Rwanda was Africa and Africa was Somalia.” Historian Alison Des Forges, senior advisor to the Africa division of Human Rights Watch and one of the foremost experts on the African Great

Lakes region, corroborated this argument in her 1999 Human Rights Watch report, citing the Somali aid mission as one of the reasons for the lack of U.S. intervention. In her opinion, “[Washington officials] saw Rwanda through the prism of Somalia. In this light, Rwanda was another ‘failed state,’ just one more of a series of political disasters on the continent.”

What Dowden and Des Forges are referring to is the American-led United Nations response to the power struggle between two warring forces in the African country of Somalia. Expert opinion suggests that guerilla warfare between the two opposing forces, led by the Somali president Siad Barre and the Ethiopia-funded Somali National Movement (SNM) respectively, eventually resulted in a power vacuum that caused open warfare between rival clans. In response, the United States and the United Nations sent peacekeeping troops through the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM), where soldiers distributed food and supplies to the Somalis; however, the relief was used by militias to fund their civil war.

During a United States-led ambush of the Olympia Hotel, where one of the guerilla armies was conducting its warfare, the Somali National Alliance (SNA) launched a counterattack against U.S. troops, slaughtering many Somali and American citizens. The lasting image of the American humanitarian aid mission in Somalia was a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu while crowds stood around and cheered.

Ultimately, the United States was scarred from the failure in Somalia, which led to an unwillingness to intervene in the crisis in Rwanda. The Rwandan Genocide, initially believed to be an extreme element of the Rwandan civil war, felt too similar to the crisis in Somalia; Washington was concerned that a repeat of the Somali failure would occur, and thus, did not intervene to stop the genocide. The resulting mindset has been pervasive throughout following United States foreign policy, resulting in a strategic and selective approach regarding when to intervene.

This has caused an international lack of muchneeded humanitarian effort, due to the United States engaging in areas based solely on either economic or strategic interests.

Lack of Information About Rwanda and the Genocide

Another perspective on US non-intervention is represented by Alan J. Kuperman, author of “The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda,” who argues in his 2000 Foreign Affairs paper that the United States failed to intervene in Rwanda because they did not know a genocide was occurring. He claims that “President Clinton could not have known that a nationwide genocide was under way in Rwanda.” He supports this assertion with his five-point reasoning: (1) the United States initially perceived the genocide as a result of a two-sided civil war, “rather than a one-sided genocide against the Tutsis;” (2) international media reported the violence to be “waning” when it was actually increasing; (3) most early death counts did not suggest genocidal proportions; (4) the focus of this international media was Kigali, a small city, which failed to provide an accurate “scope of violence;” (5) no “credible and knowledgeable observers” suggested that genocide was occurring until much later.

Because of Rwanda’s small economy and minor international influence prior to the genocide, few American policymakers were knowledgeable about the country and instead lacked an understanding of Rwandan culture and identity, contributing to U.S. inaction. Policymakers were easily confused by the “two tracks of events in Rwanda - simultaneous war and genocide,” argues Samantha Power, then journalist and human rights activist, in her 2001 The Atlantic exposé. Kuperman’s second point regarding the international media can be supported by an April 14 article in Le Monde, stating that “un calme étrange régnait au centre-ville [a strange calm reigns in the capital],” when in reality, the violence, 9

“...it was extremely difficult for international leaders to justify intervention in a conflict they believed to be waning – one they also did not fully understand.”

especially in Kigali, was escalating at that time.

According to Kuperman, it was extremely difficult for international leaders to justify intervention in a conflict they believed to be waning – one that they also did not fully understand.

Kuperman also argues that, since credible international observers did not report on the genocide using the word ‘genocide’ to describe it, they contributed to an international lack of recognition and intervention. Many historians and experts on the Rwandan Genocide believe Kuperman’s argument is merely an excuse for American negligence that American policymakers have used to justify their inaction at the time of an international crisis.

Madeleine Albright, working for the United Nations at the time of the genocide, stated that “In retrospect, it all looks very clear, but at the time, what was happening in Rwanda, the situation was unclear.” She goes on to say, “[T] he world just did not have the sense that [the genocide] was happening in the proportions that it was, and by the time that it happened, we couldn’t do anything about it.”

However, declassified government documents from the National Security Archive state otherwise: Human Rights Watch reported genocidal proportions to the National Security Council and the Defense Department issued intelligence reports addressing the rate of killing in Rwanda. In a May 1994 Defense Intelligence Report, the Department of Defense states that there was “an organized… effort of genocide being implemented by the army to destroy… the Tutsi community.” Regardless of excuses made by historians and the U.S. government, there was plenty of evidence stating that the United States knew that genocide was occurring and yet did nothing to stop it. In this sense, Kuperman’s argument about lack of knowledge – while valid in the sense that many Americans were unfamiliar with Rwandan history – can be seen as not a primary reason for inaction, but rather an excuse for gross negligence in the face of a crisis.

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The Role of United States Strategic and Constituent Interest in Rwanda

The prominent historian on Rwanda and the genocide, Alison Des Forges, contends that the United States did not intervene in the genocide because it was outside of strategic national interest. “Rwanda was small, poor, remote, and African,” she claims. “[In] their eyes, irrelevant to the ‘national interest’ of the U.S.” She continues her argument by speaking about the international community as a whole, “[Major international leaders] focused on issues of immediate importance for their own countries.” In particular, the United States focused on “avoiding committing resources to a crisis remote from [its] concerns.”

It is evident why Rwanda was not on the American radar regarding national interest.

Prior to the genocide, the country’s economy was centered around one crop: coffee. In the 1980s, 75 percent of Rwanda’s export income was generated by coffee sales; however, the United States imports a negligible amount of coffee from Rwanda – the country is not even mentioned in the U.S. government’s chart of coffee imports to the United States – and thus, does not feel any obligation to the country in terms of strategic economic interests. Resulting from the outbreak of the genocide in Rwanda, the Clinton administration issued Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD 25) in May 1994, which focused on reforming American involvement in multilateral peace operations.

As dictated by this directive, American interests abroad would take precedence over all else in decisions about intervening in foreign humanitarian crises. PDD 25 directed American nonintervention in the Rwandan Genocide. Rwanda did not pertain to American strategic interest, and thus, intervention was not justified. In the words of President Clinton in a speech to the American people in the midst of the Rwandan Genocide, “What we do involving any of the world’s ethnic conflicts must, in the end, depend on the cumulative weight of the American interests at stake.” Because of the United States’ lack of strategic

interests in certain regions, current-day conflicts in Myanmar and China have not received American aid or intervention.

The Legacy of Rwanda in the United States

In Rwanda in 1998, President Clinton gave a speech that is now called the “Clinton Apology,” in which he admitted, “We in the United States… did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred in Rwanda in 1994.” He visited survivors of the genocide and the families of those killed. During those visits, he pledged to ensure that, in the future, the United States will not make the same mistake it made during the Rwandan Genocide – however, this promise has not been kept. During the 2003 genocide in Darfur, the United States named the crisis as what it was: genocide; however, economic sanctions on Sudan are the extent of U.S. involvement in ending the genocide and, as of 2017, have since been revoked. While this was a small step toward progress, the real difference lies in the response of American civilians.

In the early 2000s, many students banded together to help “Save Darfur!” by talking to politicians. When officials at the Capitol were ignoring the students’ phone calls, the students gave every politician on Capitol Hill a report card ranking their knowledge of genocide, prompting action on their part to raise their grade. Many young adults in the United States worked hard to ensure that action was taken by American politicians to end the crisis in Darfur and that Clinton’s promise to the Rwandan

“What the United States did – or did not do – in response to the Rwandan Genocide was an example of negligence on the part of the American government and public and should never be repeated.”

people would be upheld; however, the United States has not upheld their promise.

Beginning in 2016, there has been a systemic persecution of the Muslim Rohingya people in Myanmar. Over one thousand Rohingya Muslims have been killed as a result, and yet the United States has yet to intervene. In China, the Uyghur people are continually persecuted by the Chinese government because of their ethnicity. Similarly to the “Save Darfur!” movement, students across the United States have created movements advocating for American involvement and peacekeeping in these conflicts. However, analogous to movement around preventing the Rwandan Genocide, these movements make up a very small constituency of the population, creating a lack of incentive for this involvement.

Today, the Rwandan Genocide remains in the United States’ consciousness as a permanent reminder of what not to do when faced with international crimes against humanity. One must work to ensure that steps are taken to prevent and stop genocides around the world. What the United States did – or did not do – in response to the Rwandan Genocide was an example of negligence on the part of the American government and public and should never be repeated. In the future, the United States must follow in the footsteps of those who remained in Rwanda during the genocide: to have a presence even in the face of danger and to defend human rights. Yet, recent American nonintervention in conflicts in Myanmar and China do not seem to suggest that will be the case – at least not in the immediate future.

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The Lasting Effects of Apartheid and Present-Day Educational Disparities in South Africa Betty Qian ‘23

Apartheid began as a system of segregation on the grounds of race in South Africa when the National Party came into power in 1948. Through it, the majoritarily White government implemented laws to ensure that Black Africans remained subordinate to and deliberately abused by Whites, with their services constantly underfunded and neglected. Owing to the sacrifice of many lives and the devotion of influential activists such as Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko and many others, the inhumane system was finally abolished in 1994. Despite the end of apartheid in South Africa, the lasting racial disparities persist in many facets of life such as: education, employment and living conditions.

“Despite the end of apartheid in South Africa, the lasting racial disparities persist in many facets of life such as: education, employment and living conditions.”

As a consequence of Black oppression during Apartheid, the quality of education received by People of Color in South Africa today is drastically lower than that of White people. During times of racial 12

discrimination, Black children were educated under the Bantu System. This system was designed to prepare Blacks for a life substandard to that of Whites, leaving many Black workers unskilled. Since education is fundamental to building human capital and enhancing earning potential, the quality of education received is directly and positively correlated with quality of life. Hence, the abominable intergenerational cycle that began by forcefully keeping people of color from accessing high-quality education, thereby, preventing them from obtaining skills and qualifications, ended by leaving them in inadequate economic conditions.

Wealth has given some people the privilege of a better education. As for the rest - mostly poor Black students - they have been forced into lives of “perpetual servitude,” as described by antiApartheid activist and founder of the country’s Black Consciousness Movement, Steve Biko. For instance, the standard deviation of average matriculation pass rates shows that the “Black schools [are worse] off in terms of mean matriculation passes [with a rate of 43.3 percent]” compared to any other races’ rates,

which are all above 75.5 percent. Results from the 2015 Trends In International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) also show that only 48 percent of Black Grade 3 learners pass Mathematics, while 85 percent of White learners succeed in passing.

Evidently, segregated schools provide insufficient education for their students to acquire the knowledge and skills needed for success. Nonetheless, it is only fair to acknowledge the government’s efforts to improve the opportunities available to people of color by introducing policies such as Affirmative Action, Black Economic Empowerment and Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment. In spite of these attempts, the wounds that Apartheid cut into South Africa’s veins run much deeper than what is recognized. People of Color are still suffering from previous policies that deprived them of their rights and drove many of them into poverty.

Because of Apartheid’s lasting effects, including the inequity in education we see today, employment is biased against Black South Africans. Although the racial composition of employment increased in all 3 categories - low-skilled, semi-skilled and skilled -

“...the wounds that Apartheid cut into South Africa’s veins run much deeper than what is recognized.” since the end of Apartheid in 1994, the percentage of growth in the skilled workforce for both Whites and Asians/Indians has increased by at least 15 percent, while the Black African skilled workforce only increased by 3 percent. Since occupations that require skills pay the highest, and since Blacks occupy the smallest share of these jobs, it is apparent that Black Africans continue to be systematically oppressed.

Because employment and income are positively related to quality of life, they can have a substantial intergenerational impact. Thus, it is very hard for the Black Africans to break out of this cycle of poverty and substandard quality of life when most Black Africans have difficulty acquiring highpaying jobs because of their lack of higher education.

According to the National Research Foundation Chair in Social Policy, Servaas Van der Berg, this phenomenon is explained by the fact that education available to Blacks was, and still is, of a lower quality than that received by other races. As a result, it is almost impossible for one to get an adequate-paying job that requires skills in competition with people of other races who faced fewer barriers to quality education. Employment bias in favor of other races is a significant setback for people of color.

Moreover, statistics by the investment foundation Grancraft show that while the average income of Black households has “increased by 169 percent in the last 10 years, the average White household still earns six times more than its Black equivalent.” Through analyzing this statistic, it becomes apparent that the income gap between nonWhite people and White people is monumental.

Even though discriminatory laws have largely been abolished, people are still suffering because of the lasting effects of previous laws. The majority of 13

Black Africans, who occupy the rural areas of South Africa, are continually subjugated by structural oppression. These regions are usually farthest from the cities and lack access to resources, education and employment opportunities.

Although education has cascading effects across all walks of life, its effects are felt most harshly in issues such as disparities in living conditions, which originate from the low incomes often imposed on Black Africans due to their lack of access to education.

According to statistics by Borgen Magazine, in postapartheid South Africa, “94 percent of White children have access to piped water in their home, whereas only 27 percent of Black children do.” These issues not only are directly related to the systemic prejudices that initially caused Apartheid, but also reveal how Apartheid has deepened poverty in present-day South Africa to the extent where the likelihood of equality is questionable.

The end of Apartheid in 1948 did not mean the end of racial discrimination, as effects of Apartheid are still felt strongly by Blacks.

The vast disparity in the quality of education for non-White and White people continues to drive a wedge between the two groups in an already dichotomized country. Quality education is fundamental to building human capital to pave paths for equal chance in the workforce. If Black students are continually segregated and shut out from good

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“The vast disparity in the quality of education for nonWhite and White people continues to drive a wedge between the two groups in an already dichotomized country.” education, inequality will likely not just continue to exist in schools, but will continue to spread into larger structural differences in jobs, wealth and quality of life. The longer these systematic inequalities are in place, the harder it becomes to reform and address them.

Deforestation in the Amazon and the Rainforest’s Indigenous Communities Martina Silva ‘21

Since Spanish and Portuguese colonization, the history of the Amazon Rainforest has reflected the Brazilian political climate of the time, as well as the national treatment of Indigenous peoples. This began as the Portuguese and Spanish saw a source of natural resources and Native slave labor in the rainforest.

They killed thousands by bringing diseases, and their painful legacy continues to this day in the form of man-made fires started by an angry latifundiário class who wish to farm in land often belonging to Native reservations. Throughout all of these years, the threat to the Native populations in the region has always been front and center.

Although Brazil only covers around two-thirds of the rainforest; however, it is by far the country that most profits from it and the one most responsible for the 18 to 20 percent of forest land that has already been destroyed. Still, it is important to point out that trends, from the rubber boom to the fires we see today, are also present in the other South-American countries that have forest land within their borders. Comparatively, before European arrival in Brazil, approximately 3 million Natives lived in the Brazilian area of the rainforest.

Now that number is down to almost 430 thousand.

The intersection of indigenous rights and deforestation has recently been brought to light because of a vast number of emotionally moving videos circulating across social media depicting Native reactions to the fires — which were often inside Native protected territories — ranging from distraught to powerful. These images become all the

more real once placed next to the historical damage done to these communities and the bitter realization that, due to the particular biological structures of the rainforest, once deforestation grows by a number estimated to be around 8 percent, the rainforest’s selfregulating system will begin to collapse from within through flooding, droughts and naturally occurring forest fires.

Post-Colonial Historical Background

Although the data regarding early deforestation is varied, it is widely regarded that the rainforest went through two major periods of deforestation. The first was known as ciclo da borracha, or the “Amazon Rubber Boom,” when newly arrived immigrants from Brazil and Europe took notice of the practices of seringueiros (Natives who made latex from dead forest woods) and decided to profit from it, often by enslaving the former seringueiros. This took place amid a global wave of widescale modernization, and the rest of the world saw many uses in latex, with extremely high demand from 1879-1912, leading them to abandon the old environmentally friendly Native style of production and opt for chopping swaths of land for live trees.

After quieting down around 1912 due to the introduction of cheaper latex production competitors in Southeast Asia, the boom was briefly revived during the Second World War when Brazil, profiting from the supply shock caused by Japanese invasions, sold rubber to the Allied powers. However, by that time, the Amazonian economy was already showing

“...their painful legacy continues to this day in the form of man-made fires started by an angry latifundiário class who wish to farm on land often belonging to Native reservations.”

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signs of a growing complexity and producing a wider variety of goods. During this time there was a mix of subsistence agriculture practiced by the nonWhite populations, and the birth of the modern-day phenomenon of burning swaths of forest land to raise cattle. This was initially started by a White class struggling to recuperate its Rubber-Boom levels of wealth, and aided by the new European immigrants and Brazilian migrants brought in by the Vargas Administration’s Marcha para o Oeste — a nod to the American process of Westward Expansion. Although this collective period generated wealth to the new White majority, it also caused a cultural and economic shift in regional indigenous communities that led to the extermination of almost 90 percent of them in certain major regions.

In the 1950s, the Rainforest saw attempts to introduce more investment and economic activity into the region through sets of incentives surrounding the newly defined “Amazônia Legal,” which initially failed as there was still very little contact to other regions. However, the Military Regime (19641985) implemented policies to remove that barrier, building roads and connecting the region to the rest of the country, and forcing contact and integration between Native communities and what they viewed as “modern Brazilian life.” It is during this process that the second period of deforestation, which has lasted until today, started. The shift from a subsistence economy and low-impact extraction of products into mining, resource extraction and hydropower began and was harshly intensified by a right-wing military dictatorship interested in ‘big projects’ that lasted until 1984.

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“Militarized” Deforestation

The military regime that lasted from 19641985 oversaw a rapid increase in deforestation with its new policies with no initial obvious economic gains, largely because of native peoples in the regions fighting for their land, forest and culture in several small local insurgencies. This is thought to have, to an extent, stifled investment and migration to the region, bringing the regime to grant subsidies and cheap credit to increase migration. As the Native insurgencies began to lose magnitude due to aggressive military efforts to quiet them, these policies began to have a massive effect in the 1970s.

According to the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), from 1500-1970, only around 2 percent of the rainforest had been destroyed; however, the same organization reports that between 1970 and 2000, an estimate of 10 percent of the rainforest was lost.

This began with the regime’s ‘big projects,’ which focused on increasing cattle and soybean farming, to profit from a rise in global demand for beef and its nourishment and mining in the region by removing large areas of forested land considered more fertile, as well as the establishment of hydroelectric power structures — which are still a main energy source for Brazil — through building roads like the Transamazônica, the BelémBrasília, the BR-364 and the Perimetral Norte. These policies were the foundation of two of the main industries and exports in Brazil today — cattle and soy — which helped develop the country’s economy and give it a commercial edge the developing world so rarely experiences. Still, when combined with the effort to bring in investment, it was the most encouraging of deforestation, with most of the “arc of deforestation” being around the regions affected by these policies.

According to a paper published by Egon Heck, Francisco Loebens and Priscilla Carvalho, tribes like Waimiri-Atroari, Yanomami, Arara, Parakanã, Cinta Larga and Nabikwara were nearly wiped out because of a mixture of unofficially governmentsanctioned extermination missions, contamination with diseases present in the rest of the country for which they lacked immunization and involuntary efforts to “pacify” the populations near the new major roads. The Indigenous people fleeing from these efforts were called indígenas livres, and are still active in the movement.

However, it would be remiss to pretend Indigenous peoples did not fight back. Beginning in the 60s, several small movements across the nation developed, receiving funding from NGOs like the OPAN (Operation Native Amazon), the ISA (Socioenvironmental Institute) and the ANAI (National Indigenista Association). In spite of a serious efforts to quiet these movements, the groups managed to sustain these movements in smaller scales until the very late 1970s. Then, as the regime was weakened, progressive and leftist movements had begun to rise, these movements saw an opportunity to expand, growing significantly in only a couple of years. Soon, they had rallied around strategic goals to protect the rainforest and establish their own territories, finally seeing a path to reclaiming some of the lands taken from them.

Still, the Military Regime is largely considered to be peak of intentional government disregard for the forest land and short-term strategies looking to increase localized growth and reduce the population of native communities, with the damage done in the 70s setting up an industry and an elite class that holds power to this day. As the Brazilian meat industry grew and policy incentives to increase investment

in the rainforest kept pouring in, so did the desire to farm and raise cattle over a profitable burned forest soil. Although the growth of the environmental movement stalled the growth of the rate a bit in the 80s, much of the damage had already been done, and from then on, deforestation continued, albeit growing at a smaller rate.

In other words, these policies have permanently changed the political and environmental landscape of Brazil. In 2014, the National Commission of Truth, installed to investigate the crimes committed by the military, found the regime directly responsible for the murders of 8300 indigenous persons, and recently acknowledged that the real number is likely much larger. The aforementioned cattle-rancher elite helped fuel anger against these Native movements for stifling their production, which culminated in an event that marked the decade — the 1988 murder of Chico Mendes, a former seringueiro and leading environmental activist, by a cattle rancher. This ignited a new phase of the environmental movement and brought a new wave of global attention to the rainforest.

Post-1985

With the growth of all these Native movements after the fall of the military regime in 1985, the mounting international and Native pressure over Mendes’s murder. and the surge of different progressive and leftist movements emerging from the former communist and socialist groups repressed under the dictatorship, there was finally momentum to demand government representation for these tribes and to guarantee their lands. Finally, after years of organizing, the Native tribes of Brazil enshrined Native lands into the 1988 constitution, aware that it would be a victory for not only their cultures, but also the environmental movement. As of 2000, the IBGE finds that around 60 percent of Native people living in denominated territory are located in the Amazon, with even more being within the remaining 20 percent of the Mata Atlântica.

“...60 percent of Native people living in denominated territory are located in the Amazon, with even more being within the remaining 20 percent of the Mata Atlântica.”

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According to research conducted by the Plano de Ação para Prevenção e Controle do Desmatamento na Amazônia (PPCDAm), the creation of new protected lands for Native peoples and decreases in deforestation are positively related, and the Lula presidential administration even included new demarcations of Native lands in the rainforest as part of their policies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. This is because, in comparison to protected lands (the other denomination of forest lands that does not allow for deforestation), Native territory has residents able and willing to report, monitor and protect the forest in their territory, whereas the costs of monitoring protected lands are very high, and the government often remains unaware of private efforts of deforestation until they happen.

The new governments also saw a massive expansion of federal and state agencies to advocate for both Indigenous rights as well as environmental protection in the rainforest. Notably, the Fundação Nacional do Índio (Funai) is widely regarded by activists to have, from its inception in 1967 to the end of the military years, served more as a distraction to counter the narratives of government attacks against the Native population and culture (i.e. attempts to integrate them into cities, extermination missions, etc.); however, following the fall of the regime, it lost its monopoly over Native affairs in the government and organizations regarding native affairs were vastly expanded. According to OGlobo, since 1985, over 347 recognized organizations fighting for Native rights — both in the government and in the private sector — have been created only inside the Amazon rainforest.

Although the efforts of the Funai and Native movements across Brazil were very successful in many ways, the legacy of the military regime lives on as

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having wiped out cultures and forced many into cities and lifestyles outside of their Native tribes. Because of a lack of opportunity within communities that continue to decrease in size and social pressures, many Natives have left their traditional tribe environments for cities. In the 2000 census, the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) registered that approximately 23 percent of Indigenous people were living outside their constitutionally rightful lands. (It is also important to note that, due to some difficulty in contacting those in native territory, the census tends to underestimate the numbers of residents.)

Luckily, the stabilization of the new government with the 1988 constitution coincided with a peak in the global environmental movement, so the State began to monitor the Amazon, allowing for better data as well as the estimates previously presented. It is because of this that we now know deforestation grew at a smaller rate until 1995, when it reached its peak as almost 30,000km of forest land were destroyed: around 0.7 percent of the entire Legal Amazon. This led Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the president at the time to increase the amount of protected land. It was in 2004 during the Lula administration that we saw the second largest year of deforestation at around 28,000km, leading him to increase the number of protected lands as well as Native territories again.

By the end of his administration, almost half of the Amazon was placed under protected status, with several additional guidelines and monitoring being placed upon developers and farmers.

This lasted for some time, leading to the smallest amount of deforestation in 2012, in the middle of the Dilma (Lula’s handpicked successor) administration; however, there are several issues other than protected and Native land that influence deforestation, like prosecution of unauthorized deforestation, number of permits from the government allowing it, as well as guarding against foreign enterprises looking to deforest. This meant that, despite these increases in Native and protected territory, the Dilma and Temer administrations saw new increases in deforestation, partly because of the economic recession that hit in 2015 and led the government to focus its limited resources on other issues. Overall, there is still a lot of room for deforestation.

The Bolsonaro Administration

Bolsonaro, the current president of Brazil, regarded by many to be the biggest force of the global far-right trend in Latin America, has a uniquely Brazilian twist to his far-right ideology: his praise of the military regime. Bolsonaro is himself a former captain from the days of the dictatorship who sings its praises regarding torture, human rights violations and political persecution (He has stated in local public access news that the biggest mistake the regime commited was “that they tortured, but did not kill.”). He not only espouses many of the regime’s views towards Native Brazilian peoples, but has exceeded their level racist comments. For instance, CampoNews quotes him saying, “The Indians don’t speak our language, don’t have money, don’t have culture. (...) How do they manage to have 13 percent of national territory?” but there are many more examples out there. Based on these statements, it is not surprising that his first act in office on the day of his inauguration was to decrease Native territory and allow resource extraction within it.

Much like the Vargas Administration’s policies of trying to make the Amazon whiter and more ‘modern,’ the Bolsonaro administration is pursuing policies that will clearly pose a danger to the well-being of Native culture and safety as well as to the rainforest’s existence, without a clear economic advantage. The new administration has also refused to punish or investigate any violations of existing environmental regulations, spoken out in favor of mining and resource extraction, weakened environmental legislation, left the Paris Accord and done nothing against those illegally entering Indigenous land in their queimadas.

This, along with Bolsonaro’s statements and antienvironmental messaging, appears to scare some in the expert community, mostly over fear of international repercussions and the possibility of boycotts to some important exports in Brazil. Boycotts did not seem to be much of a problem; however, Brazil’s international standing seems to have decreased, especially since the rainforest and interests in its preservation always seemed a good motivating factor for world leaders to improve relations with Brazil. This was clearly exemplified in the international outcry over the fires, calls for action and donations for the Amazon Fund — all of which Bolsonaro rejected.

Similarly, Bolsonaro’s view that deforestation is key to economic development has been debunked. The cattle soybean industry develop the fastest during the

Lula years of increased environmental protection, and these laws were largely believed to have stimulated technological innovation to increase productivity per acre of land. These queimadas (man-made fires), although good for individual farmers and landowners, are unlikely to provide a significant change in GDP and might remove a powerful incentive towards productivity.

Bolsonaro’s flawed view is exemplified in his 2015 quote, “there is no indigenous land without minerals. Gold, magnesium and tin are all in these lands, especially in the Amazon, the wealthiest land in the world.” Not only is this largely incorrect, but also reflects the same type of short-term, narrowminded thinking that is reminiscent of the days of military environmental policy. For many years now, the most profitable aspect of the rainforest has been its biodiversity as a source of pharmaceutical research, making Bolsonaro’s true reasoning behind wanting to remove native lands at the very least questionable.

According to INPE, as of less than a year since Bolsonaro’s presidency began, deforestation has risen by 268 percent, meaning deforestation is estimated to reach around 25,600km by the end of the year.

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The Hills Are Alive in Podhale, Poland

Dominique Mickiewicz ‘22

Music and dance serve as important mediums for self expression, often transcending language and evoking universal emotions. Commonly depicting cultural values, these artforms have developed to reflect tradition and society in even the smallest and most remote villages. Located in Southern Poland, the region of Podhale is characterized by the pastoral farming practices of the Gorales, an ethnographic group from the Tatra Mountains. This isolated and traditional community upholds constructed gender norms, specifically locating the home as the woman’s sphere. The Tatra Mountains dominate the landscape, presenting the setting for local mythology and serving as a safe space in the public sphere for village women to partake in traditional singing.

The prominence of Soviet rule in Poland, beginning in the 1940s, has shaped the village’s understanding of music to this day. Despite the imposition of strict restrictions, such as curfews, Communist authorities helped advance women’s autonomy in the community by providing statefunded patronage for the arts. This made funds available to pay musicians, greatly encouraging the participation of women in musical groups as they could earn extra income to aid their families.

Applying ethnomusicology to the traditional song and dance of Podhale, Poland through the analysis of a reoccuring couplet provides a window into the

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gendered roles of men and women in a distant yet significant community.

“... a bachelor of straw will marry, but a girl of gold will not...”

Prominent Gorale Mythology, Song and Dance

Gorale mythology is centered around the revered warrior Janoski, who rose from the Tatra Mountains and led a band of virtuous and heroic men across the mountain range to perform courageous deeds. His strength, bravery and heroism became the desirable qualities of an ideal man and narratives of his valor inspired a body of strophic songs characterized by the same melody across all lyrical stanzas, called Janosikowe. These songs reinforce traditional masculinity derived from Janoski legend and rarely reference women, often placing them in supporting roles with little power, action, or dialogue. As an embodiment of the heroism and stamina of Janoski, a traditional male group dance called Zbojnicki was developed and is characterized by soaring leaps and jumps. The dance is initiated by men while the women stand along the sides of the dance floor, waiting to be invited to dance by a male partner. Once chosen, the couple dances without physical contact while the woman mirrors the movements of her male partner.

As the dance ends, the woman is returned to the sidelines and waits to be invited again. While Gorale women are desired as good dancers and singers for their cultural rites, their artistic skills are often cast aside as they are expected to fulfill traditional roles in married and religious life. A traditional Gorale couplet emphasizes that “a bachelor of straw will marry, but

a girl of gold will not” demonstrating that a common man does not have to be exceptional to succeed in society and is presented with every opportunity to marry and find success. Women, on the other hand, are told that even if they are as pure and precious as gold, they will still have to compete for their hand in marriage. Immense patriarchal pressures are placed on young Gorale women, preaching that they must constantly uphold themselves as ideal women or risk failing to fulfill their duties as wives and mothers. It is only through singing among the Tatra Mountains that they find personal value and freedom of expression.

Within a society that places incredible pressure on subordinating to a man and filling traditional duties, it is critical for Gorale women to establish their own empowering spaces and turn to the hills where their voices can be projected beyond their natural scope.

Gendered Spheres of Music and Place

The Zbojnicki dance is gendered and solidifies male dominance in Gorale society. Reflecting the supporting female roles in Janoski mythology, Gorale women act as foils and are stripped of their power and individuality not only in dance, but also in traditional domestic life. While Zbojnicki and Gorale society leans in favor of the man, the outside landscape is firmly the domain of the woman. Women have a gendered attachment to the Tatra Mountains as it is the sight of their singing, collaboration and friendship, serving as a symbol of their freedom.

Women’s songs titled Werichowe, meaning “mountain peaks,” and Pasterskie, meaning “pastoral,” signify both the location and topics of their traditional songs.

Consisting of just a few melodic phrases such as “a bachelor of straw will marry, but a girl of gold will

not,” these tunes address themes from a woman’s perspective including, love, friendship and family.

Meant to be sung outdoors among the mountains, the free-flowing rhythm and loud resonant vocal quality provides women with the liberty to add ornamentation based on their setting, comfort level and singers present. Ethnomusicologist Louise Wrazen writes how “...singing allowed women to exercise some musical authority and define a performative space” and in adopting an outdoor persona, women can express their individuality and escape from the stresses of the domestic and childrearing sphere. Singing outside gives women access to unrestricted and natural spaces for their voices and establishes an intimate connection with the land. In performances occurring outside of Podhale, Gorale singers will return to their personal experiences from their days within the Tatra Mountains to illustrate a particular emotion to a foreign audience.

“...it is critical for Gorale women to establish their own empowering spaces and turn to the hills where their voices can be projected beyond their natural scope.”

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Escaping with the Ensemble

While some brave women choose to interject their voices into Zbojnicki by singing their own melodies (often in dissonance with the traditional music), most turn to the established inter-regional ensemble groups for independence and selfsufficiency within Gorale society. Uniting musicians from surrounding towns, ensembles provide a break from daily life and have the potential to serve as an escape from the confines of the village. They offer the opportunity for regional exchange and travel as the groups often sing in festivals across Eastern Europe, effectively mobilizing women and developing their self-confidence as they grow independent from the village model and traditional standards. No longer are they bound to the idea that “a bachelor of straw will marry, but a girl of gold will not.” Singing in ensembles forges entry into broader social circles and emphasizes that talented women should embrace their extraordinary skills and strive to succeed independent of a man. Escaping the confines of tradition allows a Gorale woman to return home with a new global perspective. Participation in these musical groups paves a path forward and serves as an inspiration for new generations of Gorale women who wish to pursue careers instead of marrying a bachelor of straw.

Gorale society solidifies male dominance through popular Janoski Legend and the Zbojnicki dance, limiting the expression of female identities to the outer world of the Tatra Mountains. Yet by

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“Participation in these musical groups paves a path forward and serves as an inspiration for new generations of Gorale women who wish to pursue careers instead of marrying a bachelor of straw.” joining regional ensembles and expanding their horizons beyond the lofty mountain peaks, Gorale women have begun to reshape their traditional identity from one of subordination and domesticity to empowerment and mobility. By recognizing the gendered attachment to the mountainous landscape as a perfect vessel for sound, new generations of Gorale women can learn to utilize their singing voices as a gateway to independence for generations to come.

The hills are alive and vibrating with the voices of women who refuse to be silenced.

The Rise of the Knowledge Economy and Implications of Postcapitalism

Otua Sobukwe ‘21

Mainstream scholarship has acknowledged, to varying degrees, the emergence of an ‘info-society,’ ‘knowledge economy,’ or what is less popularly referred to as ‘a cognitive capitalist society.’ While such theories stem from our increasingly digitized world, in which intellectual property has become a form of capital, the fabrics of this argument simultaneously draw inspiration from previous scholarship by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Marx, who both predicted the

competition between privately owned businesses) work in tandem, wherein one produces and reinforces the other.

We Saw It Coming: Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Marx and the Rise of the Knowledge Economy

The collapse of capitalism has occupied leftist thought for centuries. Socialist ideological stratification has mainly diverged as the result of one core disagreement: not that capitalism must collapse, or that it will collapse, but rather how and by what means such collapse will materialize. In 1913, Rosa Luxemburg published Accumulation of Capital, in which she offered her own theorization on the matter of ‘crisis’. In it, she claims that the system is in a “permanent state of overproduction” and is “the first mode of economy unable to exist by itself.” While her theory is indeed applicable in the cases of colonialism limits of commodification within a capitalist system. and imperialism (which were, in fact, the main tenets In an Internet-era, popular groupthink has been of her argument), her conclusions, retrospectively, that info-capitalism (the idea that a post-industrial raise further questions: what happens when capitalism capitalist system will be replaced with a knowledge- runs out of ways to interact with an outside world? based economy) and the free-market (an economic What happens if it can’t create new markets within an system in which prices are determined by unrestricted existing economy?

“What happens when capitalism runs out of ways to interact with an outside world?”

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In the first chapter of Das Kapital, Marx dissects the fabrics of ‘commodities’ and discusses its representational value and exchange value as a function of labour. He predicts that “what appears to happen is not that a particular commodity becomes money because all other commodities express their values in it, but, on the contrary, that all other commodities universally express their values in a particular commodity because it is money.” Luxemburg and Marx had thus predicted, in tangential perspectives, that the crisis of capitalism is rooted in its very design: its ceaseless churn via the commodification of new markets. Hence, its fate when new markets cannot be commodified is, according to Marx, its adoption/ redesign of what constitutes as money. This repeated pattern has given rise to what scholars now recognize as the emergence of the ‘Knowledge Economy’.

The Anti-Capitalist Design

In his book, Postcapitalism, Paul Mason claims that Information technology has “reduced the need for work, blurred the edges of work and leisure and loosed the relationship between work and wages.”

The author also explains the opposing relationship between markets and information; the former is based on scarcity, while the latter is based on abundance. In this dichotomy, information goods directly corrode the market’s ability to form prices correctly, making the existence (and further emergence) of monopolies inherently less sustainable.

“The crisis of capitalism is rooted in its very design...”

Mason points to the biggest information product in the world - Wikipedia - “which is made by 27,000 volunteers, for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3 billion a year in revenue.” The author additionally points to the inherent anti-hierarchical nature of Open Source Software such as Linux or Firefox and argues that their success is surprising and “demonstrates that new forms of property ownership 24

and management become not just possible but imperative in an information-rich economy. It shows there are things about information goods that even monopolies can’t monopolize.”

Thus, Mason’s argument for a postcapitalist society as a result of an emerging knowledge economy is simply that if a free-market economy with intellectual property leads to the underutilization of information (think for instance, how the HIV vaccination has been purposefully limited in its distribution for the sole purpose of profitization, or similarly, how pharmaceutical patents are created in order to privatize certain goods as opposed to actualizing their primary intent, that is, curing illnesses) then, an economy based on the full utilization of information (which will eventually materialize at the mutational rate of infotech development) cannot have a free market or have absolute intellectual property rights in its inherently democratic system. In other words, if everyone has access to information, which Mason predicts will happen, then information itself can no longer be commodified or monopolized - and this is the crux of the capitalist crisis.

Postcapitalism and Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction: Socialism Redefined?

is destroying itself; however, if, as leftists, our visualizations of a socialist uprising are not limited In 1942, Austrian economist Peter Schumpeter by our hesitance or inability to embrace capitalism’s introduced the theory of Creative Destruction as paradoxical product, the info-tech society, but instead an essential fact about capitalism. This theory, also adapt and mutate alongside with it, then perhaps our termed ‘industrial mutation,’ suggests that capitalism operates by constantly revolutionizing the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one while creating a new one. Schumpeter calls this ‘the paradox of progress,’ making it so that the cess of creating new industries does not go forward without sweeping away the pre-existing order. In a postcapitalist society, Mason envisions that capitalism collapses because it cannot exist alongside shared knowledge. With the abundance of information, part of the product remains with the worker in a way it did socialist utopia has a chance of being achieved. Thus, not use to during the Industrial era.

As socially produced information becomes adoption of alternative (perhaps even reversal) minds embodied in machines, AI, Machine Learning etc, the of thought could be our true liberators. In the revised class struggle is no longer a ‘rage against the machine’ words of Marx, “workers of the world unite, you have but has morphed into the struggle to be human and nothing to lose but your data.” educated during one’s free time. The truth is that Socialism isn’t destroying Capitalism, Capitalism

“The truth is that Socialism isn’t destroying Capitalism; Capitalism is destorying itself...”

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¿Qué Significan los Cambios Recientes en el Mercado de Café Guatemalteco?

Julianna Wright ‘22 La industria de café en Guatemala es un caso económico único. En los últimos veinte años ha habido un cambio dramático en la estructura del mercado de café, pero la causa directa no es clara. Por muchos años, Guatemala produjo granos de café robustos de baja calidad, que luego fueron vendidos a un sector del mercado específico, como las corporaciones Nestlé y Kraft. Pero recientemente, las preferencias del consumidor en cuanto a la calidad del grano de café en Norteamérica y Europa cambió a los granos de café provenientes de las altas altitudes arábicas. Otro factor significativo fue el flujo masivo de los productores indígenas en la industria del café guatemalteco.

Estos dos factores están contribuyendo al cambio de la estructura del mercado de café Guatemalteco de oligopolio a uno donde existe competencia.

Para comprender la magnitud del cambio en la estructura del mercado, desde el oligopolio hasta la existencia de competencia, es importante comprender primero la estructura política del mercado de café de Guatemala.

Edward F. Fischer, destacado profesor de antropología en la Universidad de Vanderbilt, especializado en temas de desarrollo económico y cultura maya en Guatemala, en un ensayo llamado “Café de alta gama y pequeños productores en Guatemala,” que se fue publicado en el Latin American Research Review, argumenta que la historia guatemalteca está profundamente entrelazada con el 26

café. También dice que la explotación colonial estaba en su peor momento en América Latina, así como los volátiles ciclos de auge y desplome de las economías.

Dado que la industria del café en Guatemala es una porción tan sustancial de la producción del país – según la OEC, la exportación de café representa 7.2% del producto interno bruto de Guatemala, que es de unos 723 millones de dólares – la estructura política de Guatemala también está centralizada en la industria de café, razón por la cual los oligarcas de café tuvieron tanta influencia sobre la política del país entero. Sin embargo, el peligro de tener un esfuerzo económico entrelazado con una estructura política es que las personas que no poseen el poder político serán explotadas para el beneficio económico de los que están en el poder.

En su artículo, Fisher también expresa que la oligarquía del café guatemalteco ejerció sus poderes sobre los asuntos de Estado. Pero, el riesgo de esta estructura política económica es que las pólizas aprobadas por el gobierno tienen una tendencia a beneficiar a los oligarcas. Esto empeora cuando se tiene en cuenta que el mercado de café de Guatemala es centralizado en la oferta, lo que significa que los oligarcas están concentrados en producir el máximo de café posible. No obstante, debido a la influencia política de los oligarcas y la falta de leyes laborales, estas políticas no benefician a los trabajadores que están manteniendo el trabajo

“Sin embargo, el peligro de tener un esfuerzo económico entrelazado con una estructura política es que las personas que no poseen el poder político serán explotadas para el beneficio económico de los que están en el poder.”

agobiador con el fin de satisfacer la cantidad deseada de café para que pueda ser exportado a Norteamérica y Europa.

Porque el mercado de café es centralizado en la oferta, las diferentes fluctuaciones de los precios de café en países importadores como los Estados Unidos o países en Europa también son importantes para la estabilidad de la economía nacional guatemalteca. En los últimos 50 años, las fluctuaciones de precios demuestran que un cambio en la estructura del mercado de café de oligopolio a una competencia estaba destinado a suceder en algún momento. Cuando los precios mundiales del café eran bajos, Guatemala pudo exportar más porque la demanda de los importadores era mayor. También es cierto que cuando los precios mundiales del café eran altos, había menos demanda de importadores de granos de café porque del hecho de que hay un cierto precio que los importadores están dispuestos a pagar, pero una vez que el precio de los granos de café supera ese precio entonces la demanda de granos de café disminuye en Guatemala, lo que perjudica a los productores de granos de café en Guatemala. Tales fluctuaciones del mercado de café sólo afecta negativamente a los cultivadores, pero no a los productores que poseen las fincas. La población indígena es la que primero sufre el impacto económico en la jerarquía que existe en la industria de café guatemalteco. Mientras todo esto estaba teniendo

“Cuando el precio comienza a elevarse astronómicamente como lo ha hecho en el pasado, los productores no son capaces de mantenerse al día con los costos de producción y por lo tanto tienen que despedir a los trabajadores.” lugar, había trabajadores inocentes experimentando el desempleo y la falta de la seguridad financiera que vemos hoy son el resultado de las fluctuaciones de precio de los granos de café.

Esto también sugiere que algunas de las perturbaciones fueron las perturbaciones de suministro, causadas por desastres naturales o las enfermedades agrícolas que arrasaron los cultivos. El suministro disminuye cuando hay un desastre natural o una enfermedad agrícola y ambas cosas son muy

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comunes en la región. Dado que la producción de café es una parte tan importante de la economía, cualquier choque de la oferta tendría un efecto importante en la economía. En 2014, cuando hubo un brote de “óxido de café,” esto condujo a la destrucción de los cultivos y posteriormente a la producción. Esto afectó negativamente a las exportaciones guatemaltecas, que, por lo tanto, tuvo un efecto negativo en la economía. Según Knoema, las exportaciones de café de Guatemala disminuyeron un 25% en 2013 y luego otro 6,7% en 2014. A pesar de que el Banco Mundial informa que no hubo una caída del PIB, su crecimiento del PIB disminuyó de 2011 en adelante.

Cuando la industria de café es gravemente afectada por una enfermedad agrícola, existe el riesgo de que la economía pierda su equilibrio a largo plazo empujando la economía a una recesión, en parte debido al alto costo para los productores. Cuando el precio

comienza a elevarse astronómicamente como lo ha hecho en el pasado, los productores no son capaces de mantenerse al día con los costos de producción y por lo tanto tienen que despedir a los trabajadores. Debo señalar que el aumento de los precios es el resultado de un aumento de la inflación. Cuando las empresas reconocen que la inflación está empujando los precios hacia arriba deben evaluar sus costos de producción.

También significa que los extranjeros que suelen importar café de Guatemala no comprarán tantas unidades de café como resultado de la fluctuación de precios. Cuando los países extranjeros dejan de importar la cantidad usual de producto de café, las exportaciones y la producción total de la economía guatemalteca disminuirán.

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El Papel de las Fluctuaciones de Precios

La Organización Internacional del Café ratificó un acuerdo internacional en el 1962 que intentó controlar las fluctuaciones de los precios de los granos de café en el mercado mundial. En 1962, los países de la región centroamericana que son conocidos productores de café se unieron para producir el Acuerdo Internacional del Café. El objetivo principal del acuerdo era ayudar a establecer los precios. La forma en que plazó los precios fue estableciendo un sistema de cuotas que ayuda a limitar la oferta global.

El sistema de cuotas mundial ayudó a disminuir las probabilidades de que se produzca un excedente de granos de café. Si hay menos posibilidades de un excedente de café, entonces el precio de una unidad de café tiende a permanecer más cerca del equilibrio.

Este acuerdo finalmente no fue suficiente para aliviar todas las fluctuaciones de precios.

Como los precios eran muy volátiles, los obreros huyeron de la industria para buscar fuentes de ingresos más estables y lograr más seguridad financiera, lo que dañó la estructura oligopolista. La combinación de la pérdida de mano de obra barata de

“Como los precios eran muy volátiles, los obreros huyeron de la industria para buscar fuentes de ingresos más estables y lograr más seguridad financiera, lo que dañó la estructura oligopolista.” los oligarcas. Comenzó a haber una alta demanda de granos de café arábigos, que viene del hecho de que más y más personas en los Estados Unidos y Europa no están comprando Maxwell House o Folgers. En este dia lugar a una disminución de la demanda de granos regulares porque los granos regulares no cumplían con las preferencias de los importadores en el extranjero. El cambio internacional en las

“La población indígena es la que primero sufre el impacto económico en la jerarquía que existe en la industria de café guatemalteco.” preferencias impactó negativamente en el mercado del café guatemalteco y lastimó a quienes estaban asando granos en sus propias granjas familiares. El cambio en las preferencias a los granos de gama alta puede beneficiar a aquellos que importan los granos en términos de nivel de felicidad, pero no ayuda a los pequeños productores que no pueden vender su oferta.

Según Fischer, un gran número de agricultores de subsistencia eran antiguos trabajadores del café que ahora están cultivando y vendiendo su propio café y al menos 50.000 pequeños productores de café que han aparecido en los últimos 20 años. Este rápido crecimiento en la cantidad de productores de café está cambiando la forma en que se ve la industria de café en Guatemala. Esto demuestra que, cuando los obreros de café se dieron cuenta de este cambio en las preferencias del consumidor, inmediatamente empezaron a cultivar su propio café para crear un grano de café arábica de gran altitud con su propio acento y variación. Esto también demuestra el cambio lento y gradual en la estructura del mercado de oligopolio (pocos productores y no hay nuevos participantes en el mercado) a un mercado con más competencia (muchos productores y participantes que entran y salen libremente). Las fluctuaciones de precios y el

cambio en las preferencias en los Estados Unidos y Europa para los granos de café de mejor calidad es lo que ha llevado a la estructura del mercado de Guatemala a cambiar sustancialmente.

Tales fluctuaciones del mercado sólo afectan negativamente a los cultivadores, pero no a los productores que poseen las fincas. La población indígena es la que primero sufre el impacto económico en la jerarquía que existe en la industria de café guatemalteco. En el fondo, los obreros estaban experimentando desempleo y la falta de la seguridad financiera que vemos hoy son el resultado de las fluctuaciones de precio de los granos de café.

¿Qué Significa Esto para el Futuro del Mercado de Café de Guatemala?

En las últimas dos a tres décadas se ha producido un cambio sustancial en la estructura del mercado para el café guatemalteco. La estructura del mercado ha pasado de oligopolio a una estructura con más competencia. La evidencia sugiere que la economía guatemalteca se beneficiará enormemente de este cambio en la estructura del mercado y, con optimismo, probarán más lucrativas para los trabajadores y no dominadas por la corrupción política. Si estos cambios en la estructura del mercado se mantienen, es posible que veamos nuevas mejoras en las condiciones de trabajo de los trabajadores caficultores, pero estas también requerirán cambios en el gobierno y la legislación para evitar que los más débiles sean afectos en situaciones difíciles y de cambios externos en el mercado.

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Photo Contest Winner: Clare Maleeny ‘23

My name is Clare Maleeny and I’m member of the Class of 2023. I grew up in San Francisco, California, but have lived in New York for the past few years. On campus, I row with the crew team (go blue!) and just recently became a WZLY DJ.

This photo was taken during a hike across a particularly tumultuous section of The Great Wall of China dubbed “The Broken Wall” (as most of the original structure is in ruins). Though a difficult hike, with each peak came a brief glimpse of this vast and immersive landscape. This hike the first of many during my first time ever backpacking. This image represents the catalyst for a, as sappy as it sounds, a wholly life-changing experience.

Photo Credits Page 1: Photo Provided by Clare Maleeny Page 3: Lucava, B. (22 December 2018). “Shibuya Crossing”. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/132839688@N08/32548186568 Pages 4-7: Photos provided by author Page 8: UN Geneva. “International Day of reflection on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda [digital image]. Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/ photos/7adb89e0-9cc7-4c1f-9806-b885028a37d9 Page 10: Gunn, Scott. “Rwandan Countryside [digital image]. Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/9419cbad-5d97-445d-8d688305026edb62 Page 11: Kigali Genocide Memorial. ““Remembrance & Learning Tour - Western Province” [digital image]. Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/ photos/49e0c8d5-c896-4a24-81b8-028ea099ea12 Page 12: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Empty_Classroom.JPG Page 13:Vassal, Hugues. (1969). L’Apartheid en Afrique du Sud [digital image].

Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:L%27Apartheid_en_Afrique_du_Sud.jpg Page 14: SkyPixels. (11 May 2015). “Cape Town Skyline of CBD at Dusk”. [digital image]. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cape_Town_ Skyline_of_CBD_at_Dusk.jpg Page 16: NASA Earth Observatory (17 September 2011). “Fires along the Rio Xingu, Brazil” [digital image]. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Fires_along_the_Rio_Xingu,_Brazil.JPG Page 17: Reis MMF, Luis Fernando. “Chico Mendes cor 03” [digital image].

Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/986bd50f-a523-4e8b99a9-60ba5a7c92b3 Page 18: Apib Comunicação. (27 April 2017). DIA 4 | 14º Acampamento Terra Livre | 27-04-2017 | Brasilia DF” [digital image]. Retrieved from https://www. flickr.com/photos/apiboficial/34493394605 Page 19: Dias, Alessandro. ““_MG_0141” [digital image]. Retrieved from https:// search.creativecommons.org/photos/878b2724-d25c-4714-b999-dc98c0a64ee9 Page 20: Kingary. “Tatra Mountains” [digital image]. Retrieved from https:// search.creativecommons.org/photos/002f6e7a-d1ea-4cbd-bcd5-732b838b4718

Page 21: Synestheticstrings. ““Polonez - Polish Canadian Folk Dance Ensemble” [digital image]. Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/00fd7e95-e156-4c23-bc4c-4a6ff2178b8f AND Synestheticstrings.”Ludowa Nuta Choir at Polish Festival” [digital image].

Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/0e129791-70e1-496eae61-70d1f8a6fb33 Page 22: Leonbarnard. “Zdiar, Slovakia” [digital image]. Retrieved from https:// search.creativecommons.org/photos/4df84687-f92a-4ac0-9860-2b365eeb4d90 Page 23: Hostetler, Rodger. “Technology” [digital image]. Retrieved from https:// www.behance.net/gallery/3905209/Technology Page 24: Ana_Rey. ““Foto tuenti, pero con estilo” [digital image]. Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/86110645-66b9-490c-84a900485e56a340 Page 25: Whitecotton, Ethan. “The World Behind Phones” [digital image].

Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/f4f8dcc3-3f16-4a93a914-de37f74e93fe Page 27: Dustjelly. “Cafe” [digital image]. Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/83eaf4da-08df-4be5-a29c-0d62f4073385 Page 28: Coffeehistorian. “Coffee Warehouse” [digital image]. Retrieved from https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/a7fe8c4d-3530-4ac592e9-107212438932 Page 29: Shstern. “Drying Coffee beans” [digital image]. Retrieved from https:// search.creativecommons.org/photos/09b7c44a-d0d0-4a6a-9217-a8ab4ff901ff Xeni. “Guatemala: Fernando’s Kaffee” [digital image]. Retrieved from https:// search.creativecommons.org/photos/cbc568f0-65c7-4b42-a6cf-53440b22201c Page 30: Photo provided by Clare Maleeny Page 31: Instagram. (14 March 2019). “Instagram Icon” [digital image]. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Instagram-Icon.png PNGIMG. “Twitter Logo PNG” [digital image]. Retrieved from http://pngimg. com/download/26950 AND Pixabay. (4 August 2014). “Twitter logo.”

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