Confessions of An Economic Hit Man
Jan 31st, 2006 at 1:21 pm by Susie
I have the book and haven’t read it yet, so I’m getting motivated by this Guardian article:
On November 24 2002, Lucio Gutierrez swept to power in Ecuador’s presidential election. It was a momentous victory for the populist, leftwing leader who had pledged support for the poor indigenous Indians in a country where 60% live in poverty.
The way John Perkins tells it, within a week Gutierrez had a visitor. “An economic hit man walked into his office and said, ‘Congratulations, Mr President, I just want you to know that over here I’ve got a couple of hundred million dollars for you and your family if you cooperate with your Uncle Sam and our oil companies. And over here I have a man with a gun in his hand and a bullet with your name on it.’”
Within two months of his election, Gutierrez had apparently made his choice. Implementing a swingeing austerity programme that attacked the very livelihoods of the people who elected him, he raised fuel prices by more than 35% and froze public sector workers’ salaries for a year.
“It’s a particularly tough position to be in,” admits Perkins. “If you’re really conscientious, you’re probably going to compromise. You’re going to say, ‘I’ve got to stay in office. I can do better than anyone else, but somehow I’ve got to appease these people.’ And the whole time that economic hit man is in your office he’s saying, ‘Remember Noriega, remember Allende, remember Lumumba. Remember, remember, remember.’ There’s a long list of guys who did not go along and were either overthrown or assassinated … They may say it more subtly, but the message is very clear.”
Bought this one last Fall in a batch buy from Barnees and Noble, it’s still down in the pile but someday … my only annoyance with Perkins is that after he learned at the devil’s knee and apprenticed in South America he came back here to the motherland and started an energy company founded on the intention of being ecologically friendly. Money talks - he sold it to one of the big energy companies - and now doing his own thing spending a lot of the last 15 years or so with native Amazonians and it could be argued, exploiting them - though he would likely be offended by my characterization of it but I don’t know how else to describe it if you, as an Economic Hit Man, find these friendly, indigenous peoples who have practices that are peaceful and communal and all embracing and within their relationship with nature practice holistic medicine that cure some western stressed related diseases and you then start taking field trips of friends, and interested groups to make the trek to “Lourdes” and witness cures then aren’t you disturbing the whole relationship these “primatives” have had with nature for thousands of years?
So I’m a skeptic and his book, interested in it as I am, comes after some other stuff I want to read.