Shirin Vossoughi Vossoughi is a
third-year history and American literature and culture student.
Speak your mind and e-mail her at [email protected].
Having just returned from a semester abroad in Cuba, I thought
to myself ““ if people could only see the destruction and
poverty caused by U.S. policies such as the embargo they would have
no choice but to take action. But my conversations with students
and community members since my return have forced me to think
again.
Whether discussing the inequalities that exist between America
and developing countries or between West and East L.A., the
attitude I often encounter is that we who live in the United States
are “lucky.” We are so lucky to be the privileged ones
living in a land where the grocery stores have such variety and our
water is clean. Or we are so “blessed” to live in nice,
safe West L.A. where we don’t have to worry about gunshots or
dirty streets.
The problem I have with luck is that it frees us of all
responsibility. As long as we think we are somehow fortunate enough
to be on top, we disconnect ourselves from the poverty and
suffering that does directly connect to our everyday lives.
Economically, politically and socially, America rules the world and
we are the people reaping the benefits. It is not that we live well
while others “unfortunately” do not. It is that we live
well because others do not and as students and human beings, it is
time we realized it.
Everyday, we hear about neo-liberal globalization and the
effects of new economic policies on the developing world. The
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are policy-making
bodies that directly impact billions of people but are seemingly
disconnected from our daily lives. Many people realize this, but do
nothing to counter these undemocratic existence. So-called
“structural adjustment programs” designed by these U.S.
dominated entities continue to destroy both the stable and the
independently developing countries in the name of free trade.
 Illustration by HINGYI KHONG/Daily Bruin In return for
loans and “debt relief” these SAPs force governments to
move away from state-led development and toward the “free
market,” opening the doors to privatization. Countries thus
remove import barriers, reduce subsidies and privatize industries,
benefiting the wealthy while devastating the working poor.
As utilities become “deregulated” struggling farmers
and workers must pay exorbitant prices for basic necessities like
electricity and water. Such a program implemented in Egypt in the
1980s doubled poverty in rural areas ““ a pattern seen all
over the developing world. In Iran, one third of the workers are
farmers, yet the country must import most of its food supply.
The value of pet products sold annually in the United States is
four times the Gross National Product of Ethiopia. As Eduardo
Galeono comments in his book, “Upside Down,” our wealth
is not innocent of such poverty.
Just look at the effects of “free trade.” With the
adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, U.S.
companies rushed to Mexican border towns to avoid high tariffs,
exploding the Maquiladora sweat shop industry, which now operates
about 3,400 factories. Promoters of such a system argue that
Mexican laborers (not to mention their Asian and African
counterparts) are at least provided with a job, which is better
than no job.
Thus, the clothes we wear, cars we drive, TVs we watch and
stereos we listen to are manufactured by workers laboring in
deplorable conditions. Their own lives are often wrought with
scarcity and human rights violations such as forced sterilization
to avoid dealing with maternity leave.
Meanwhile, our grocery stores teem with products and Americans
suffer from obesity, while these workers confront starvation as a
daily reality. This lack of protection of human rights is just
another product of structural adjustment programs and
deregulation.
Ask yourself if there is any justice in this picture.
NAFTA’s supporters shrug off human rights abuses and
unnecessary poverty as acceptable standards for the future.
President Bush is now pushing his plan for the FTAA, the Free
Trade Area for the Americas that aims to extend NAFTA to all of
Latin America, hoping to profit by engulfing the rest of the
Western Hemisphere in this inhumane “free market.” In
many of these countries, gleaming new hotels built to serve
American and European tourists pop up everyday while schools and
hospitals are left to crumble. To empower the people of these
countries with education would spell disaster for those profiting
from the cheap labor that these nations provide.
Many ask the questions, “Well, what can we do? What power
do we really have?” And I ask, “Who buys what is made
inside those factories?” As consumers, we have all the power
in this system. As long as we continue to buy the latest winter
sweater or latest model of cell phone, we undeniably support the
policies that threaten to make such inequalities a permanent
reality. Yet we continue to clutter our lives with unnecessary
“necessities” in this drastically unbalanced situation
when we should instead refuse such a future and change it.
Think of the air you breathe and the water you drink. Think that
in order for you to enjoy plump, red tomatoes from Ralph’s,
millions of people throughout the world are becoming sick because
pesticides deemed illegal in the United States are used in their
countries to make our food. Thanks to deregulation, Guatemalan crop
dusters spray cotton with pesticides that can’t be sold in
the United States.
In 1974, the Central American Nutrition Institute found that
milk of many Guatemalan mothers contained up to 200 times the
pesticide limit considered dangerous. (Galeano, 2000). Throughout
the world, the poor stand the greatest chance of contracting
treatable diseases and dying from them while pharmaceutical
companies refuse to sell drugs in markets deemed
“unprofitable.”
To see how such plans are being implemented today, just look at
emerging U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State Colin Powell
recently described his plan as being built on the
“superiority and rightness” of the United States. A Los
Angeles Times article from Jan. 28 outlines his
“unilateral” and “exceptional” approach.
Robin Wright reports, “The U.S. can pretty much do what it
wants because its sophisticated democracy makes it politically and
morally superior to the rest of the world and sometimes even
exempts it from international norms and treaties.”
Part of Powell and Bush’s plan involves spending between
$60-120 billion on missile defense ““ half of this could
provide the entire world with adequate health care, yet we keep
quiet.
Obviously, the world system has been crafted so that a few
benefit from the exploitation of many. This is clear in the United
States itself, where a certain level of unemployment must always
exist to avoid inflation, holding many permanently below the
poverty line.
It is easy in our Westwood bubble to forget about these issues
or to completely disconnect ourselves from them. Yet, it is this
ease and comfort that are the real evils. We who live comfortably
in the system without acting against it directly allow its forces
to suck the life out of billions of people.
While I do not suggest that you stop appreciating what you have,
I do encourage you to open your eyes and push yourself to feel the
discomfort. I understand that I had the ability to travel to Cuba
and the time to write this article because of my privilege. I
simply ask that we feel our connection to other people’s
suffering and not to pity them, but to be enraged.
Instead of sitting around and letting the quest for profit
control the world, we have a responsibility to do what we can to
give everyone access to ample resources and the freedom to
determine their own fate.