In commemoration of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, the International Day of Nonviolence is celebrated on October 2nd. Beyond the enormous historical and moral significance of India’s anti-colonial emancipation through a massive and courageous popular struggle with a non-violent methodology, it is worth asking ourselves about the current situation of Nonviolence in social and personal terms.
Has nonviolence advanced in Latin America and the Caribbean, or is it a mirage of minorities, a bohemian dream, at best a noble aspiration?
Is it possible to register non-violent advances in the framework of a system marked by appropriation, the imposition of models, the commodification of life? Is it perhaps licit to rescue encouraging events when millions of people suffer daily the scourges of physical threat, inclement misery, discrimination, loneliness and a heartbreaking void of existential meaning? Licit? Of course, it is. Also, essential.
Violence and Nonviolence in the Political Sphere
Violence is once again on the regional political scene. In Ecuador, events such as the assassination of presidential candidate Villavicencio and the mayor of Manta, Agustín Intriago, the denunciation of a frustrated attempt on the life of Citizen’s Revolution candidate Luisa González, along with multiple criminal acts, have cast a shadow over the social panorama. Incessantly fomented by the monopoly media, panic has taken hold of the citizenry, corrupting the electoral results and shifting the axis of discussion and political discourse from socio-economic precariousness to the precariousness of physical existence.
Influenced by similar actors, behind which it is possible to glimpse the omnipresent economic power, political violence and hate speech are once again raging in Argentina. A little over a year after the failed assassination attempt against the two-time president and current vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the denial of state terrorism and the relativisation of human rights achievements reappear in the form of an extremist political faction – also here amplified by the concentrated media – which seems to be playing a pitifully relevant role in the run-up to next October’s elections.
Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, the Haitian population continues to be held hostage by armed gangs fighting to take over small local plots of land, while the country, devastated by natural disasters and structural dispossession, remains in the hands of an illegitimate government backed by the de facto occupation of foreign powers.
In El Salvador, the government has responded to gang violence with violent methods. According to Amnesty International, the number of people imprisoned is around 65,000, making it the world’s highest incarceration rate with more than 2% of its population in prison. In the context of a regime of perpetual exception, gigantic prisons have been built, community leaders have been deprived of their freedom and the critical press has been hindered. This scheme seems to be favourably echoed not only by the population, but also by other Central American governments of different political persuasions.
In Peru, a legislative coup d’état against the elected president Pedro Castillo has preceded a wave of repression of popular protest, reinstalling the power of factions at the service of a corrupt and exclusionary system.
But all this does not tarnish or dwarf, as the corporate media would have it, the efforts and advances of nonviolence as a political answer to systemic iniquity.
Mass demonstrations and new popular governments
The massive mobilisations that occurred concomitantly in 2019 in Chile, Ecuador and Colombia, all eminently non-violent, managed to win the arm wrestle with the neoliberal governments, first achieving a relative success for their demands and then achieving the triumph of progressive options in the electoral contests.
The same happened in Bolivia, Honduras, Brazil, Peru, and more recently in Guatemala, where the resistance and organisation of popular political options managed to defeat at the ballot box the oligarchic mafias and coups that had hijacked the will of the people.
Special mention should be made of the protagonist leaderships of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Gustavo Petro and Lula da Silva, who, together with the government of Alberto Fernández, the latter beset by the forced economic crisis that is ravaging the Argentine population, have been able to erect a sovereignty retaining wall against the continuous incursions of the United States into the region with pretensions of domination.
The transformative work of the presidents of Mexico and Colombia, nations lacerated by unspeakable violence, is making progress in denaturalising the destructive logics constituted in painful “country brands”, thus progressively opening up the future of their peoples.
A major achievement in the same direction has been the replacement of Colombia’s aggressive policy against Venezuela with one of collaboration and good neighbourliness, endorsed in successive meetings between their presidents.
In relation to the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, there have been many voices of repudiation of the permanent harassment to which these countries are subjected by the US regime through unilateral measures contrary to international law. In the face of objections to the lack of freedoms, repressive measures and human rights violations by these governments, raised by institutions such as the OAS, various non-governmental organisations and the media that support the US geopolitical strategy, it should be pointed out that the long-standing oppression and interference by the power of the North in the internal affairs of Latin America and the Caribbean makes it necessary to take a critical look at these statements.
Rejection of nuclear weapons and war
Undoubted successes of non-violence in the region are the firm position of rejecting the possession or installation of nuclear weapons in Latin American and Caribbean territory, embodied in the Treaty of Tlatelolco, and the opposition to war as a way of dealing with conflicts, made explicit in the Declaration of the Zone of Peace, which was endorsed at the Second Summit of CELAC in Havana in 2014.
Consistent with these positions, several governments have managed to resist recent pressure from Atlanticism by refusing to get involved in the war in Ukraine.
Of exemplary significance is the policy undertaken by the government of Gustavo Petro, whose sign is to achieve Total Peace in Colombia. This concept represents an unequivocal translation of non-violence, as it aims not only to end the armed conflict between the state and the guerrilla organisations, but above all to tackle the causes that have motivated it, the violence associated with territorial dispossession and the suffocation of the people due to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.
Indicators in historical perspective
According to a report by the Pan American Health Organization (2019) [1], in the last quarter century the American continent (including the United States and Canada) has made significant progress by increasing life expectancy from 72.3 to 76.9 years. Among the greatest success stories is that of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, whose life expectancy at birth increased by 14 years for women and 11 years for men. This is undoubtedly the result of the Democratic and Cultural Revolution led by Evo Morales and the indigenous movements since 2006.
Another indicator that shows significant progress in health care measures in the region is the reduction in deaths of children under 5 years of age. According to the same report, the average under-five mortality rate almost halved between 1995 and 2017 (from 28 to 15 per 1000 live births).
However, homicidal violence does not seem to be abating. In Central America, the murder death rate has remained high and constant over the past 25 years, while in the English-speaking Caribbean it has even increased. Until 2019, the greatest progress in the reduction of violent deaths was achieved in the Andean region and in the Southern Cone, with a significant drop in Colombia, which went from 98 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 1995 to 26 in 2022, a figure similar to that of Mexico.
The death toll is directly related to the increase and regional expansion of arms and narcotics trafficking, which are closely linked phenomena. Given the havoc they wreak, especially on young people, it is clear that capitalism, in its desire for rapid accumulation and practices of social exclusion, far from seeking answers, is the main cause of the multiplication of crime and the violence it produces.
The persistence of economic violence
In the socio-economic ambit, despite measures, plans and promises, there is no substantial relief in the region. According to ECLAC data, the three highest income deciles, which in 2000 accounted for 69 percent of total income, decreased their share by only six points, while the lowest 30 percent of the population increased their share from a meagre 6.7 percent to 9 percent, while the middle income brackets went from 25 percent to 28 percent of the total. Most of the progress was made in the first decade, based on the redistribution efforts made by different progressive governments together with the increase in the educational level of the population.
Despite the slight overall statistical improvement, inequality continues to be rampant in Latin America: the top 1 per cent of the population earns an average of 19.5 per cent of gross national income, while the bottom 50 per cent earns just 12.6 per cent.
In countries considered broadly middle class, such as Argentina or Uruguay, the richest one per cent take 14 per cent of total national income, while the poorest 50 per cent as a whole have to make do with 16 per cent. Worse still is the gap in Chile or Peru, champions of neoliberal economics, where the poorest half must live with only 7% or 6%, while the insatiable 1% of the population accumulates 23% and 29% respectively.
Violence has gender and skin colour. Nonviolence, too.
Despite women’s increased consciousness about the unacceptability of enduring abuse and humiliation and the many campaigns that are being developed, toxic relationships and patriarchy continue to produce high rates of femicide. At the top of this tragic statistic is Honduras, where 4.6 women per 100,000 are murdered annually.
According to available figures, one in five Latin American and Caribbean women marry or enter into a stable union before the age of 18. These early unions are associated with child and adolescent motherhood, school dropout rates, lower participation in the labour market, a higher risk of suffering gender-based violence and a lack of autonomy to make their own decisions about their bodies and their lives.
Sexual violence is one of the main violations of women’s human rights. This violence is not only incidental or individual, but is rooted in discriminatory attitudes, prejudices and practices, and in the legal systems of most Latin American and Caribbean countries.
Due to the strong pressures exerted by church leaders on governments and the faithful, the voluntary termination of pregnancy is only completely legal in six countries: Cuba, Argentina, Colombia, Guyana, Uruguay and recently in Mexico. In six others – El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic and Suriname – abortion is punishable by heavy penalties, including life imprisonment. Elsewhere, it is also prohibited, although it is authorised on specific grounds of rape or life-threatening circumstances.
In view of these situations, one of the main fronts of the non-violent struggle today is precisely that of improving the situation of women.
In terms of political participation, there has been some progress: at the beginning of the century, 15% of parliamentary seats were held by women, rising to 36% by 2023. Something similar is happening at the highest levels of the administration of justice: on average, one third of Supreme Court judges are now women, with Cuba, Barbados, Jamaica and Suriname leading the way with proportions close to or above 70%.
The female personalities who were present at the executive levels of leadership in the first two decades of the century in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Jamaica today have continuity with Xiomara Castro in Honduras, Mia Mottley in Barbados, Christine Kangaloo in Trinidad and Tobago and in the presidential candidacies of Luisa González in Ecuador and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico.
The election of Francia Márquez to the vice-presidency of Colombia has also been very relevant, not only because she is a leader, but also because she is of Afro-descendant origin.
In all cases, if the greater participation of women in decision-making ambits does not in itself guarantee positive policies for the elimination of gender violence, there is no doubt that it facilitates transformations. But finally, it is the massive mobilisation, denunciation and demands of the feminist movement that allows the gender perspective to be installed in a transversal manner, inducing changes in obsolete behaviours and values.
Discrimination and nonviolent struggle of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples
As a legacy of the long chain of exploitation, abuse and absolute denial of rights suffered over the last centuries, indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples continue to experience the violence of the system in the form of segregation, discrimination, exclusion and inequality.
Indigenous peoples, demanding respect for their worldviews and identities, defending their territories and demanding better living conditions, are today vibrant actors in the non-violent struggle. Through various forms such as hunger strikes, marches, pickets, statements and public advocacy in various national and international forums, indigenous nations have achieved recognition and expansion of their rights, creating greater social consciousness about the harm of discrimination and the benefits of valuing diversity.
For their part, the island nations of the Caribbean, whose populations are almost entirely descended from enslaved Africans, are vociferously demanding reparations from the colonial powers and have begun an important process of emancipation from the formal bonds that still hold them under the cruel British crown. The Afro-descendant movements in different parts of the continent are also making strong demands for equal rights, having been key in the recovery of democracy in Brazil and the election of Lula as president, and decisive in regions of Colombia where the Historic Pact triumphed by a wide margin.
In short, the advance of non-violence in the region has at its core the integral affirmation of human rights, which are not restricted to civic freedoms, but rather to a universal and egalitarian conception, far removed from the manipulation to which they are subjected by self-interested visions of power. As the humanist thinker Silo points out in his Letters to my Friends: “The struggle for the full validity of human rights necessarily leads to the questioning of current powers, orienting action towards their replacement by the powers of a new human society”.
The pending revolutions
Even without attempting an exegetical analysis of violence and the signs of the advance of nonviolence, which would require more profound and detailed studies, it is obvious that many areas have remained unaddressed. Issues such as science and technology, the current model of economic production and distribution, education, communication, geopolitics, among many others, would also reveal the urgent need for transformations to overcome the violent modalities embedded in these ambits.
If it were possible to somehow connect the shadow cones cast by these succinct descriptions of coexistence and human evolution, they could be synthesised in a brief aphorism: The system of values and social organisation is a suit that today is too tight for the species. A suit that does not admit partial patches but requires its total renovation, not only in its external appearance, but in its intimate essence.
In order to undertake this radical change, as we have repeatedly argued in these columns, it will be necessary to work on the essential subject of transformation – that is, ourselves – in order to achieve a modification of the cultural matrix that produces or accepts violence as a way of relating between human beings, in a sustained manner and simultaneously with systemic changes.
A mode of relationship that falsely affirms violence as inherent to a supposedly static and immobile human nature and starts from the misleading and fatal premise of denying the intentionality of others, which inevitably ends in suffering and destruction.
The goal of this pending revolution in interiority will be to conquer the possibility for Nonviolence to take root in our behaviour and worldview through an advanced configuration of consciousness in which all violence is repulsive.
The installation of such a structuring of non-violent consciousness in societies would be a profound cultural conquest, which would go beyond current expressions to begin to form part of the psychosomatic and psychosocial fabric of the human being, projecting itself in all his or her activities.
[1] https://opendata.paho.org/en/core-indicators/health-trends-1995-2019
