Sequera, Vivian

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Response to Addo

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Macalester InternationalVolume 1 The International Community and theEmerging World (Dis)Order Article 18Spring 1995Response to AddoVivian SequeraMacalester CollegeFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/macintlThis Response is brought to you for free and open access by the Institute for Global Citizenship at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Macalester International by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information,please contact scholarpub@macalester.edu.Recommended CitationSequera, Vivian (1995) "Response to Addo," Macalester International: Vol. 1, Article 18.Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/macintl/vol1/iss1/18ResponseVivian SequeraI. IntroductionThe world is a mess. Look around and you will find not one butdozens of reasons to be pessimistic—if not very cynical—aboutthe future of this planet and its people. According to ProfessorHerb Addo, what we have to be in this world of mess are “cre-ative pessimists.” The “creative pessimist” is the idea that “Well,I lost my house in an earthquake (or because I bet it on a black-jack table in Las Vegas), and now I need another one; so I betterstart moving to get it.” Tears, anger, and regret provide emo-tional relief but not a solution.As I always say to my colleagues and about myself, journal-ists, with few exceptions, are pretty light. A former WPI fellowand university professor of mine in Venezuela used to say thatreporters were people with an ocean of knowledge that is onlyone foot deep. For that reason, I am afraid that what ProfessorAddo says in his paper may sometimes be translated by me inmy exposition into something that is one foot deep. I am sayingthis because, in the face of the changes that we are watching,reporters and common people tend to be very simple-minded.For reporters, perhaps those changes mean only another day ofwork, while for people, the concern is dinner and the seveno’clock news. But sometimes we come across someone like Pro-fessor Addo who lifts the scales from our eyes and explains to ushow daily events might mean something more profound thanthey seem.We might or might not agree with all he articulates, but thepoint is that at least there are still thoughtful people around whotake some time to try to give meaning to what is going on in thismessy world. Sometimes, I forget the existence of thinkersbecause daily reality is so immediate. Nevertheless, humanbeings need an answer to the “why,” an explanation that canequip us to comprehend complexities. We need to know what isgoing on around us in order to make intelligent decisions and,consequently, make our lives better.15504/19/95  10:08 AM      1833seq.qxd04/19/95  10:08 AM      1833seq.qxdAccording to Professor Addo, what is currently happening inthe world is a “movement of accommodation” of the very well-known capitalist system. He tells us that this movement doesnot mean much change in the system. In fact, he says, the capi-talist system will come out of this stronger.This historical moment, Professor Addo continues, can beseen as a “band of transition” between the end of the Cold WarOrder and something called a New World Order, the rules andplayers of which are not yet perfectly clear except for the factthat the so-called countries of the Third World will remain asspectators.He says that the “North” will also continue sucking resourcesfrom the “South” in order to accumulate more capital, some-thing that has been happening for many centuries.II. A ModificationBut, I believe that by the end of the Cold War Order, somethingabout this “North-South” relation changed — and changed agreat deal. Some countries from the South have been penetrat-ing the U.S. and European markets with very high quality prod-ucts. American unions and bussinesmen, with whom I spokeduring the last four months of traveling around this country, areworried and complain that they cannot compete with these newproducers, mainly from Asia.Some of these businessmen and union leaders were terrifiedby the onset of the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada. So, in what Professor Addodescribes as a “band of transition” of times, a “movement ofaccommodation” of the capitalist system, new actors are appear-ing who see themselves neither as spectators nor as a traditionalsource of raw materials for the industralized world. They existas formidable new Southern forces that should be taken intoaccount in the making of the New World Order. I do not remem-ber if people were mentioning the Pacific Rim as an actor fifteenor twenty years ago, but the fact is that many of those countrieslearned the capitalistic lesson and, in some ways, they havebecome teachers.In those years of learning, Asian countries (Japan, SouthKorea, Taiwan, etc.) were engaged in something different fromMacalester International Vol. 115604/19/95  10:08 AM      1833seq.qxdwhat we in Latin America were doing, and now the two zoneshave very different situations. Professor Addo says that whatwe see in Japan and others is an “authentic cultural hybridform.” These authentic cultures emerged stronger from thestruggle with the core because they knew how to maintain theirown values.In this new era of “free trade,” some countries like Mexico,Colombia, and Venezuela are coming together to do business.Yes, indeed, we are again copying a “Northern” or “Western”fashion of common and free markets; but I believe that, for thefirst time, we are doing so in our own way: very deliberatelyand slowly. After years of dreaming of a free market area in theAndean countries and the rest of the continent, in Venezuela wealready have opened our market without restrictions for theproducts coming from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.Perhaps in a few years, the union of the Andean market(Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia) with MER-COSUR (the trade agreement among Argentina, Bolivia,Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil) will become a reality. Outsideof the entrepreneurs, many people are skeptical of the advan-tages of those agreements. For example, the very same day thatVenezuela broke diplomatic relations with Peru in May of 1992,businessmen from both countries meeting in Caracas were dis-cussing the opening up of the textile and automobile sectors ofboth nations. It is interesting to note that before diplomatic rela-tions were restored at the end of last year, the exchange of auto-motive parts and textile products between Venezuela and Peruhad doubled. From 1988 to 1993, trade between Colombia andVenezuela tripled, from $300 million to more than $1 billion.Still, people in both countries do not believe in the advantages oftrade agreements mainly because those who talk about it arepoliticians, an animal species not very well appreciated downthere.III. Venezuela and the Beginning of the “New World Order”In the 1980s, hemispheric political leaders blamed the interna-tional banks for the miseries of the Latin American people. Dur-ing the 1970s, however, it was these same people who borrowedVivian Sequera15704/19/95  10:08 AM      1833seq.qxdbillions of dollars from the private and multinational banks inthe United States and Europe.In Venezuela, the money was unwisely spent, not invested.For instance, the government created a special fellowship bywhich any university student could go to any country in theworld to finish his or her baccalaureate degree or to complete amaster’s or a Ph.D. With those fellowships, one could study any-thing from photography to medicine, from nuclear research toagriculture. The government did not ask for any special require-ments and it was willing to pay for all the expenses.During the 1980s, most of those students returned toVenezuela. When they sought employment, they were disap-pointed. Many spent — and continue to spend — time in unem-ployment lines. Neither the state nor the private sector madeprovisions for this trained and returning manpower. Today, theVenezuelan education system is one of the worst in the world,according to the United Nations. While some of the money wasspent on infrastructure such as highways, hospitals, telephonesystems, and skyscrapers, a large part of it found its way intothe pockets of our political and business leaders.By December 1988, an overwhelming majority in Venezuelavoted for a new five-year-term president, a man who is amongthe wealthiest in the world: Carlos Andrés Pérez, a social demo-crat with a long political career. He took over the presidency forthe second time in the thirty-five years of Venezuelan democ-racy. During his first term in the 1970s, Perez nationalized theoil and iron industries. At that time, oil prices reached almost$40 a barrel. Those were the times of the Great Venezuela, theland of dreams — wealthy, peaceful, and free times. They weretimes of fellowships, no taxes, no saving money for the future.Those were also times for borrowing money, big amounts ofmoney.Let me say here that oil exportation represents 80 percent ofour annual national income. By the beginning of Pérez’s secondterm, which began in February 1989, oil prices were down to $18a barrel and have been shrinking ever since. So, for Pérez andthe country, it was not possible to continue with an economicmodel based on one product. In the 1970s, a $40 barrel of oilmeant more than a $14 billion annual budget. In 1994,Macalester International Vol. 115804/19/95  10:08 AM      1833seq.qxdVenezuela’s annual budget was around $12 billion. In that sameperiod, the population of Venezuela doubled.With calamitous market conditions, a heavy internationaldebt of $38 billion, and almost no international reserves at theVenezuelan Central Bank, Pérez inaugurated his second termwith macroeconomic reforms. People did not like it and threwPérez out of power just when he was about to finish his term.This is a very brief version of the four years that we inVenezuela call “The Pérez Struggle,” during which he resistedtwo military rebellions and the bloodiest civil riots in democra-tic times. In the midst of all of this violence, Pérez ended histenure and was subsequently accused of embezzlement and sentto prison.For Venezuela, the result is a remaking of an economy highlydependent upon one commodity—oil—and the onset of violentpolitical culture. Together, these conditions have wounded thelegitimacy of the state and political class as well as the sense ofnational dignity and purpose.For me, the main point is that we were and are a model of a“corrupt cultural hybrid form,” that kind of culture that, accord-ing to Professor Addo, emerges weaker from the strugglebetween two different models. We are not Japan; we do not haveits centuries of values and tradition.We did want to follow a model of capitalism, we did want tobe among “The Big Seven” countries of the zone but withoutpaying the price of hard work and careful sacrifice. In the heat ofthe test, we faltered and lost our way. I still remember thoseheadlines in Venezuelan newspapers: “Jean-Bertrand Aristide,the most expensive guest of Venezuela,” “Hundreds ofVenezuelans are hungry but Pérez wastes (yes, wastes) moneyon Aristide.” The deposed president of Haiti arrived in Caracasthe very same night of the military rebellion after Pérez had senta military plane to his rescue. Such headlines (which you canalso read now but in reference to Cubans or Colombians) couldnot have appeared ten or twelve years ago. Back then, Venezue-lans were hospitable and humane.The new president, Rafael Caldera, has to deal with some-thing even more difficult than inflation or devaluation. He hasto deal with 20 million people who are “pessimistic,” with noVivian Sequera15904/19/95  10:08 AM      1833seq.qxdhope, and, most of all, angry because they believe that someonehas robbed them of their wealth, peace, and freedom.Caldera, a seventy-seven-year-old veteran politician, tookoffice in February 1994 for a five-year term. Since the beginning,the bets have been open: “Can he do it?” In his inauguralspeech, he promised that foreign money control and devalua-tion of the local currency would not be part of his economic pro-gram. It took him only five months to reverse that promise andembrace both measures. Meanwhile, the oil market remainsunstable. We are working hard to develop the biggest oilreserves in the hemisphere and to obtain the international capi-tal to help us in that mission.IV. ConclusionIn all this, can we find any positive meaning in the end of theCold War Order? Can we say that we are approaching a NewWorld Order? From my perspective, we were and still are spec-tators. But, unlike the pessimist, I do not think that the conditionof a spectator is something to be totally ashamed of. I am naïveenough to believe that we in Venezuela and Latin America arecapable of organizing our societies. I look to the future with a“creative pessimism” and say, “OK. That is what we did andthat is what we were; what are we going to do now and how?”Whatever the decisions are, none will be easy and fast. We mustavoid taking victory for granted. We have already done thatonce.Macalester International Vol. 1160

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