Capitalism Hemorrhages In the Gulf

The satellite photographs showing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico immediately bring to mind the words of the indigenous U’wa of Colombia: “Oil is the blood of the Earth.” There are no words better-suited to this situation, or more pathetic: This is the greatest hemorrhage in the planet’s history. As a result, another system is bleeding: corporate capitalism. Certain economists have called it “the spill squared,” since the image of the black stain also stands for the green stain of the millions of dollars lost by multinational corporation BP.

Take note of a few dramatic asides: 1) the lack of solidarity within the business sector in relation to this oil spill. “They’re just waiting for BP to go bankrupt,” expressed some Wall Street commentators. 2) The impotence of the supposed top-of-the-line technology on which today’s engineering depends. To summarize, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has exposed the brazen nakedness of the Western Hemisphere’s capitalist system. As the efficacy of its technology disappears, so too does any justification of its power!

To see Tony Hayward, the executive director of BP, sailing his yacht in a regatta while his business coughs up 60,000 liters of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico provokes in us a scream of desperation reminiscent of Cesar Vallejo’s verses: “It would be better if they would just take everything, and let us be done with it! It seems we were born only to live off our own death!”

Oh, even more than the creation of an emergency fund of more than $20 billion, what we in the rest of the world cry for is a fundamental change in the system, a change toward clean energy. Shake off the weak-kneed agreements of the past Copenhagen Summit and chalk it up to the irrationality of the “First World,” with its result that credited countries would be able to pay off their foreign debt. The next summit on climate change in December, in Cancun, Mexico, should modify its operational procedure: Those countries that create the least pollution should create the agenda, thus setting the guidelines for the deliberations.

While we rescue the ecosystem of the Gulf, we should also level moral sanctions, supported worldwide, against those directly responsible for this ecological disaster — BP, the governments of Britain and the U.S., businesspersons from the oil industry and speculators … among others.

Who believes it can run the world according to its royal opinion and wisdom? Is it not, perhaps, that self-named First World? This being the case, how well has it run things? Isn’t the planet in dire straits? Is it not the time, finally, to stop paying attention to its fallible recommendations? It is imperative that we view this bloodletting — of oil from stone — as the final drop that causes our cup of patience and prudence to overflow. Now is the time to stand up on the table and raise our voice, which, until now, has been unheard, despite our 200 years of “independence.”

Barack Obama was searching for overwhelming arguments so that he could kick the butts of those responsible for the oil spill; we, the Latin Americans, have sufficient reason to kick the butt of his government and all the western powers that have driven the world to the precipice with their positivistic, Judeo-Christian intelligence.

We have come to the end of 150 years of the exploitation of hydrocarbons, and it is predicted that it would take at least another 100 years to suck dry all the existing wells.

We, here, make our conscientious objection known in the face of present-day explorations being carried out in the indigenous territories of Colombia.

We demand another path to ensure the well-being of humanity, far from the “western development” — that snake charmer so admired by the gullible and the naive. We want another path, one that is more horizontal and organic, from Nature’s own bosom — like the relationship that a mother shares with her child. A post-spill system — an alternative that begins the “turn of the screw” for which we have so long hoped.