Over the course of history, Africa and Latin America have been more the victims rather than the perpetrators of the culture of war. Does that mean that they can lead us to the culture of peace?
This month’s CPNN bulletin is optimistic with regard to Africa where the African Union increasingly promotes a culture of peace, and where plans are advancing for economic independence for the continent. The latter is especially important because the international neo-imperialist culture of war is primarily concerned with economic exploitation.
The development of the culture of peace in Africa has been the subject of many of my previous blogs:
AFRICAN LEADERSHIP FOR THE CULTURE OF PEACE – March 1, 2016
AFRICA AS A MODEL FOR CULTURE OF PEACE – December 1, 2014
NELSON MANDELA AND AFRICA’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE CULTURE OF PEACE– January 1, 2014
AFRICA’S CONTRIBUTION TO A CULTURE OF PEACE – August 5, 2012
Here is a quote from the blog of 2012: “It is not by accident that there is so much news from Africa for a culture of peace. It reflects their cultural history. Like people on other continents, the Africans always had culture of war at a tribal level, but with the exception of the Nile River Valley, they did not use war to create empires until the arrival of the Arabs and the Europeans. And even then the division of Africa into warring nation-states was imposed by the Europeans. Instead of the authority of empires, pre-colonial Africa was ordered by effective peace-making traditions of dialogue and mediation at the community level, often called the “palabre” (word). They were based on respect for the elders (both men and women) and compromise among the many animist spiritual forces, unlike the supreme authority of monotheism imported by the Arabs and Europeans.”
As for Latin America, we recently devoted the CPNN bulletin to development of the culture of peace in Mexico.
Over the years I have devoted several blogs to culture of peace in Latin America, including the following:
IMAGINING PEACE : LATIN AMERICA – September 2, 2017
THE COLOMBIA PEACE PROCESS AND EDUCATION FOR PEACE- November 2, 2015
LATIN AMERICA: THE LEADING EDGE – February 1, 2013
Here are some excerpts from the blog of 2013:
The continent was the first to establish city culture of peace commissions . . Also the invocation of the culture of peace as the basis for the Union of South American States (UNASUR) was a pioneering development. The initial concept [of the culture of peace] came in 1986 from an initiative in Peru headed by the Jesuit scholar Felipe MacGregor. The first national project was in El Salvador in 1993, and that experience was the basis for the adoption of the culture of peace programme by the Executive Board and General Conference of UNESCO. . . It was the representatives from Latin American countries at the United Nations in New York that began in 1995 the annual resolutions which led eventually to the UN Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace. And the initial call for an International Year for the Culture of Peace came from a meeting of Latin American newspaper editors in Puebla, Mexico, in 1997. . . Latin America has taken the lead in a number of other related initiatives. The Earth Summit that took place in Brazil in 1992 was the turning point in the development of sustainable development. And the practice of participatory budgeting which is revolutionizing democratic participation began as an initiative of the Workers Party of Brazil when they were in charge of the city government of Porto Allegre.
But it has not been possible for Latin America to move smoothly towards a culture of peace. Instead, its advances have been stopped by interventions led by the American empire. This led me to write the following blog in March 2014:
CAN A CULTURE OF PEACE BE CREATED IN ONLY ONE ZONE OF THE WORLD?
Here is an excerpt from the 2014 blog: “Governments in Latin America have tried to move towards a culture of peace other times in the past, only to be attacked and prevented from doing so by intervention from the United States. The most extreme examples were Cuba in 1961 and Chile in 1973. And now, even as I write this, there is strong evidence that “state within a state” forces in the United States, perhaps without the knowledge of President Obama, are moving the destabilize Venezuela because its policies to do not fit with the American culture of war.” Since 2014, one can add the coups that removed the progressive Presidents Rousseff of Brazil in 2016. and Morales of Bolivia in 2019. The threat of war against Venezuela intensified during the presidency of Trump, leading to the following blog in June 2020
INVASION OF VENEZUELA: IS IT OPERATION JUST CAUSE, BAY OF PIGS OR WAG THE DOG?
As I wrote back about Latin America and Africa in April 2014 in the blog, LEADERSHIP OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH WILL BE DIFFICULT FOR THE NORTH TO ACCEPT, “It is not by chance that many of their best leaders were assassinated, directly or indirectly, by the colonial powers? I am thinking Samora Machel, Patrice Lumumba and Amilcar Cabral in Africa, or Salvador Allende, Che Guevara and Maurice Bishop in Latin America.”
In the case of Latin America, there are such close ties between the rich classes of its countries and the imperial power of the United States, that it will be difficult for the continent to be freed from the culture of war.
A good start towards a united Latin America with a culture of peace was made in 2004 with the Cusco Declaration by the Presidents of 12 countries : Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname and Guyana. They committed to:
- the struggle against poverty, the creation of decent employment, and access by all people to health and education
- the values of intrnational peace and security based on international law and renewed and democratic multilateralism
- the sharing of democratic systems of government and governance resting the people’s participation
- the development of a politically, socially, economically, environmentally and infrastructurally integrated South American area
The 2004 declaration was followed up by the establishment of UNASUR in 2008, but UNASUR did not last long. Under pressure from the United States and its allies in the bourgeoisie of Latin America, it was dismantled.