Guerrilla History - Tricontinental's Early (1967-71) Socio-Ecological Dimensions w/ Alejandro Pedregal

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

In this wonderfully esoteric yet very important episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Alejandro Pedregal to discuss his marvelous co-authored historical article The Early Socio-ecological Dimensions of Tricontinental (1967–1971) : A Sovereign Social Metabolism for the Third World.  This piece was published in one of our favorite journals, a resource that you really should all be utilizing, Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy.  In this discussion, we talk about OSPAAAL, the Cuban Third World solidarity institution and in particular its magazine Tricontinental, the way it framed sovereignty and the implicit ecological messaging within.  A fascinating conversation, and one which we think you will find a lot of use in! Alejandro Pedregal is a Research Council of Finland Fellow, and is based at Aalto University.  You can keep up to date with Alejandro's work by checking out his institutional page from Aalto University, and by following him on twitter @AlejoPedregal Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to Girl. Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckamacki, joined as usual by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, Henry. It's great to be with you. Yeah, it's nice to see you. And, of course, you should be doing well since you're joining us from the really far south of Canada as we were talking about off recording just a moment ago because our guest and I are both really, really far north of you.

But before I introduce the guest and the terrific article and topic that we're going to be talking about today, I would like to remind the listeners that they can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-I-L-A history. and you can keep up to date with everything that Adnan and I are doing individually as well as what the show is doing collectively by following us on social media.

You can follow us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. And on Instagram at Gorilla underscore History, again, Gorilla with 2-Rs underscore history. So, without further ado, we are joined by somebody who I've been familiar with for several years, but finally have the pleasure of actually meeting

Alejandro Pedrigal. who is a research fellow at Alto University in Finland and the Research Council of Finland. Am I getting that right, Alejandro? Yeah, I'm a fellow Research Council of Finland at Alta University. So, I mean, I run a project which is funded by the Research Council of Finland

and I'm affiliated to Alto University. All right. So it's nice to have you on the show, Alejandro. It's been a bit overdue. There's a couple of things that I've wanted to talk with you about over the years, but it's great that we can finally have you on to talk about your really terrific article that you co-authored in Agrarian South Journal of Political Economy, which listeners will be familiar with is one of our favorite journals.

The article title is the early socio-ecological dimensions of Tri-Continental, 1967 and 1971, a sovereign social metabolism for the third world, which of course we will have linked in the show notes below. To get into this conversation, I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about the Tri-Continental. I know we've talked about it in the show on the past, but to make sure that everybody's on the same level here, can you talk about what was the Tri-Continental, who made the Tri-Continental, what were the goals of the Tri-Continental, as well as in this period that you're examining, what was the geopolitical situation like and kind of what was that historical

moment at which you're looking at these issues of the Tri-Continental for? Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me in your show. I mean, I'm really happy to be here. I really admire the work you do. So it's really a pleasure to be with you. The Tri-Continental is, first of all, was a conference that took place in Cuba in 1966. And it was considered by the U.S. government, the most powerful gathering of pro-communist, anti-American forces in the history of the Western Hemisphere. So that gives you kind of a, you know, some sense of how it was received by the Western powers. Tri-Continental was a conference that had been built for several years with the idea of putting together the anti-imperialist movements

and revolutionary movements that were taking place in the Third Wall during the 60s and kind of link the Latin American struggles to those anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggles that had taken place in Asia and Africa before, right? So as such, it was a conference that was linked historically to other conferences that had been taking place. throughout many decades of anti-imperialist struggle. Perhaps one of the best known would be the Bandung Conference, but also the non-aligned movement meeting in Belgrade in 1961. Bandun was in 1955. And then the, well, the Baku Congress in 1920,

in the USSR and the anti-imperialist League of the Americas in 1925 and the League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression in Brussels in 1927. So each of them kind of had or represented different phases of the anti-imperialist struggle, but there was a common history that kind of united them. And each of them kind of responded to different geopolitical contexts and situations, particularly the Bandun Conference was kind of the

peak of the Asian and African anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle, and the non-aligned movement meeting in Belgrade was a kind of president of this of the expansive revolutionary dimension of this approach. So the Tri-Continental Conference was bringing Latin America to this common history, right? And out of the Tri-Continental Conference, an organization was established, which was the Ospal, which was the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. So that was established in

1966. And a year after that, a magazine started to be printed. The magazine was called Tri-Continental, and it was published, translated into, it was published in Spanish and translated

into several other languages, English, French, Italian, if I remember correctly, and at point, I think some issues were translated into Arabic, or at least some of the materials. But the Tri-Continental magazine was just one of the many organs that Ospal used to promote their activities.

There was the Bulletin, and there were several other collaborations also in the, for instance, in the film field, with the Cuban Film Institute and with other organizations. So this is a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a fascinating history. We've been interested in the history of some of those anti-imperial meetings, and we do have an episode, listeners, if you're interested, on the Bandung Conference of 1955,

where we discussed it as, you know, a kind of first meeting of the so-called third world, new post-colonial states. But what's interesting, and just before we start getting into the substance of the issues of the tri-continental that you're studying through this lens of their ecological, you know, orientation in anti-imperialist thought, just this history is so fascinating. I did want to dwell on it for a moment because I think one of the points of the article is also to talk about the change and shift in the political purpose.

program between Bandung and some of these later iterations that take place in the Tri-Continental since Bandung was a kind of ideologically not very coherent anti-imperial. Of course, they were against being subjected to, you know, they were against being subjected to colonialism and racism. But there wasn't a clear ideological frame in favor, for example, of socialism. And also, it was a gathering of heads of states. And also, it was a gathering of states. of, you know, you know, new, newly post-colon, newly freed states from, from colonialism. And so they had a statist kind of orientation. And one thing, you know, one conference that always gets forgotten here is the 1957 Apso conference, the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization that took place in Cairo and there's continuing, just as there is the Tri-Continental. In Opsal, there was a continuing organization that was established. You know, it never really prospered in quite the same way as Opsal, but it was based in Cairo. And in 1957, one can understand why there might be a turn towards not just statist,

but also more popular and transnational solidarity of peoples, which wasn't what Bandung talked about, people's solidarity, because in 1956, of course, there was the tripartite. aggression, Israel, France, and Britain invaded, tried to, you know, take control of the Suez after Nasser's nationalization of it. And at that time, Nasser was really, you know, very popular throughout the Middle East Islamic world. And so they were kind of trying to emphasize the possibility of people's solidarity, even if sometimes governments and states were not. And that's a turn that to Tri-Continental really took even further by, as you're saying, adding Latin America, you know, South America, Latin America into, in the Caribbean, you know, into this.

So I just think it's a very fascinating. Unfortunately, there's no, so, you know, not a very big legacy. They did hold, and I attended actually, the 50th anniversary of the Bandun conference. They held a 50th anniversary conference in Cairo and Samir Amin came to it. but I recently mentioned and tweeted about it, and it was a fascinating event. But I think the point is that it took a shift and a turn to people solidarity and a more explicitly socialist

and anti-imperialist orientation that you're looking at with the Tri-Continental and Opsal's activity. So I just, you know, that was just a comment and even more further context to your wonderful account. But I did want to ask,

you know, there were a lot of programs of national liberation that were, you know, taking place, and they were very explicit and increasingly so in the 1960s about anti-imperialist orientations. Why was the issue of ecology something that you're saying you have to look in the earliest years of the Tri-Continental as implicit? So in what ways did the Tri-Continental implicitly address these ecological concerns from an anti-imperialist standpoint? And, you know, why was it maybe a little bit secondary in terms of explicit articulation

in the Tri-Continental during that period? What was the main focus? Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on what was happening in this anti-imperial thinking during that period? Yes. Of the late 60s and early 70s? Yes, sure.

I mean, well, the late 60s, early 70s was a time that was marked by a lot of, a lot of guerrilla activity and a lot of independent movements and sovereign movements and so on. This of course was also the case before Bandung because the 40s was the decade in which many countries in Asia got their formal independence, but then in the, of course, in the case of tri-continental, or in the case of Oswald, the situation was

so that the Cuban Revolution was very, you know, took place the triumph of the Cuban Revolution took place in 1959, and then you have the whole independence were in Algeria and all the independent movements in

Africa, well, Africa and then of course the imperialist aggression against Vietnam, which I think was really so this also the way the importance of

the guerrilla movement in Cuba was so big in the way they you know, they overthrow the dictatorship and the way they established the revolutionary

government and so on that it was something that was very much in the foreground of the political imaginary of the time. And then the primary focus of all these movements

was of course they kind of the immediate addressing the immediate political and economic inequalities that were inherited by the colonial oppression and so on. So we tried to be really careful in our paper, in our article, in the way we used or we approached the ecological or social ecological issue. We didn't want to be misleading about the importance or, you know, over-emphasize the importance of the social-ecological dimension in the magazine or in the – and we understand, we understood that by, you know, you needed to go more to questions of land reform and resources. management and autonomy and sovereign development and those were the elements

that were actually that contained an implicit ecological orientation, right? So our understanding was that the magazine tri-continental in this case, the materials that we look at. I mean, we have to keep in mind that the most, the focus of the magazine is very much dominated by the guerrilla warfare,

the revolutionary movements, and urgent matters of that kind, right? So the way the magazine addressed these questions, the ecological questions or the social ecological dimensions whereby integrating them within the anti-imperilist discourse. So it wasn't so that the environmental issues were that explicit, but they were quite relevant in terms of how in regard to, for instance, the exploitative practices of transnational corporations, the way the global capitalism or it was a global capital undermined local economies and their possibilities of developing and the way they devastated their environment and the way they degraded the soil, for instance, and perpetuated the neo-colonial exploitation.

And for that matter, we noticed that the agrarian question was kind of central for that, because the focus on land and agrarian reform, the access and distribution of land. And that was something that actually spoke of the ecological sustainability and how that was intertwined. with social justice and national sovereignty. And in that sense, if you look at the framework, I mean, actually at the case of Cuba itself and how it relate to other countries, then you could see that, for instance, the issue of monoculture was central to all of them

because monoculture was something that had been imposed by colonial domination. It caused what it's been called the metabolic rift in the sense that it didn't allow for diversification in the uses of the of the land and it kind of blocked the possibility of using traditional harvesting techniques of rotation.

So this emphasis on diversification and on a different approach, on a different way of distributing and accessing to land and the importance of the agrarian reform was something that was going against the commodification of land itself. And was also something that reinforced the link between the agrarian question and the social reproduction. I mean, the way a new revolutionary movement would think or would imagine how to cover the needs of the population. So it was a way to, I mean, in press perhaps not explicitly, but it was a way to talk about, a different path towards metabolic restoration.

So that was something that we understood that was present in the magazine. I'm going to go on two quick tangents. Well, quick. I always say quick and then I'm never quick. But I'm going to go on two tangents and then try to tie them together. First tangent is regarding this concept of sovereignty that you bring up and how it is remarkably important. Now, one of the things that we've seen recently,

just to bring in a recent event, we recently got past COP 29, the summit in Baku. And one of the things that came out from COP 29 was this idea of enabling a just energy transition within the global south by providing loans, some grants, but primarily loans from the global. North to move away from fossil fuels in the global South. And at face value, and particularly

to liberals who don't think about the vestiges of colonialism and imperialism, that sounds all fine and well. But if you examine the fact that in most of the global South, the periphery, development was not allowed to happen upon their own terms. The conditions were imposed upon them by the imperialist North. And in many cases, and in most cases, this underdevelopment is a direct result of colonial and imperial legacies within these countries. And a result of that is the fact that these countries are developing, utilizing any resources that they have available to them, including fossil fuels. Now, the Global North for centuries, has utilized fossil fuels in order to enable their own development, but now that development has occurred, and in some

cases, like Germany, are experiencing de-development as a result of not having access to as cheap of fossil fuels as they previously did. They're essentially slamming the door behind them and saying, now is the time to move away from fossil fuels, we have to transition to ecologically sustainable methods of generating fuel and electricity for production and whatnot. And what countries in the global south have been saying after this conferences, this just transition is not truly a just transition. What it is is providing loans. Yes, most of them are loans, listeners.

They are not grants, even though they have been couched in that way. You know, there have been some grants that have been written into the proceedings of COP29, but the majority of what came out were loans for this transition. essentially what they're saying is, you know, you may be developmentally behind us, but you still need to find ways, and we will help you find ways of moving away from fossil fuel dependence. It does not matter what happens to your economy in this context. It does not matter whether or not you're able to catch up.

We know that you're not going to catch up with us developmentally, but we are going to ensure that. What this is is this is an expression of the continued imposition of dominance. by the imperial core, the global north, upon the periphery, the global south, and impeding true sovereignty from taking place, impeding them from actually developing in the ways that they have available to them. This is a centuries-old story. And so when you're looking at these issues of the tri-continental that are examining issues of sovereignty, of course, they're not only talking about national sovereignty and resource sovereignty, but also ecological

sovereignty. Because again, if we analyze the effects of environmental degradation, not only climate related, but environmental more generally, where are the greatest impacts felt and where are the greatest gains to be found? The greatest gains are in the global north and the greatest ecological and environmental destruction takes place in the global south. In some cases, due to climate changes. We can talk about the floods that take place in Mozambique, causing thousands and thousands of climate refugees. We can talk about the mass of droughts in Madagascar, where in some places there hasn't been rained for years devastating the crops there. I can talk about typhoons in various parts of the world that are unprecedented in scope and

scale and as well as frequency. These are taking place in underdeveloped nations. Again, intentionally underdeveloped nations, that underdeveloped nations was imposed upon them. But if you also look at where direct impacts of extraction is taking place, again, we can look at environmental destruction as a result of strip mining. One only has to look at places like Chile under Pinochet, Bolivia, prior to the rise of Moss, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is always a pressing example with regards to mining. And we can see direct impacts of imperialist mining companies in this case.

and particularly from Canada in most of these cases, just to name a specific country, but they're not alone, that are absolutely devastating the land, devastating the soil, contaminating the soil with various chemicals that they use for extracting metals from the ground. Again, all of these things are impositions of dominance by the global north upon the global south

and impeding sovereignty of the global south from ever taking place on a national basis, on a resource basis or on an ecological basis. And this issue of sovereignty, as you mentioned, is brought up in these issues of the Tri-Continental. They've thought about in ecological terms much more explicitly later, but even in these early issues that you talk about, there is this undercurrent of ecological sovereignty as well.

That's tangent one, as I said, I wasn't actually going to be quick. Tangent two. The second tangent is regarding Cuba specifically. I could talk much more about Cuba than I will. Cuba is also the focus of this paper that you wrote Alejandro, so I'm going to be brief here because you also can talk quite extensively about this. But Cuba is one of the two main case studies in a forthcoming book that I've worked on alongside my comrade Salvatore Engel de Mauro, a translation project that we have coming

out through Iskra books in the late winter, early spring, titled Communism, the Highest stage of ecology, which is basically an agro-ecological history of the Soviet Union in Cuba. You mentioned this monoculture system that was imposed, and again, imposed upon Cuba. The tangent that I wanted to go on was that if we're looking at how monoculture and monocrops are used, this is not a historic thing that was done. This is something that is imposed by imperialist countries upon other countries as well as practiced within the global north itself because, you know, these countries care more about profit than just about anything else. But it's interesting because if you look at these agro-ecological principles that Cuba had taken primarily in the 90s during the special period, which is something you mentioned in your article as well, this agro-ecological transformation in many ways is a return to. historic ways of doing agriculture, which you mentioned in your previous answer, Alejandro.

And in many cases, we can see the exact same practices done by indigenous communities around the world. Agroecology is not some ridiculous, newfangled, scientific management of land. No, this is returning to more indigenous and historic principles of land management, land usage, and agriculture. And it turns out that they're much more environmentally friendly. Now, why would we move away from that in places like Cuba to a usage of monocropping and monoculture? It's because these historic, more agro-ecologically-minded approaches to agriculture don't reap the greatest amount of profits for places that are able to take those crops out of them. We're not talking about being able to provide for the people on Cuba. We're talking about being able to provide sugarcane for the global market.

at risk of the land, at risk of the soil, and at risk of having a sustainable food crop in Cuba, which, you know, the food, the stability of the food supply that was being able to be grown on Cuba took a huge hit when they focus on sugar cane began. As I mentioned, I could go on quite a bit more about this imposition of monocropping and how they got out of it, but I'll save that conversation for when the book comes out and we'll talk about it then. But to tie these two things together, or at least try to tie these two things together, is that underlying notion of sovereignty. And the Tri-Continental's focus on sovereignty is a big, big issue. So I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit more specifically about this conception of sovereignty

and the various ways that you saw take place, including in this environmental ecological realm, which, again, was a little bit more implicit in these early days, but still was certainly there. Sure. I mean, this actually an issue in what you brought up that you don't mind I'll first try to answer to

or to make a comment on that because I think it's a really important issue when it comes to monoculture and the case of Cuba because as you said in the article we expose at the very end

how Cuba kind of embraced some of those ideas that were kind of sketched, drafted in the first in that early period of

tri-continental and how they kind of engaged with those ideas after the special period or in the special period and how they develop this instead of of moving towards, you know, a liberalization or a privatization of the, I mean, pretty much what all the

post-Soviet bloc did, which was to open its market to the global capital, they instead took a different direction and that direction we had to do somehow in that different direction And they took, it resonated those ideas that were short of sketched in those early years of Tri-Continental. And in that sense, the case of Cuba is interesting. I mean, we didn't treat so closely the case of Cuba in the article, at least during those years, because we focused on the materials in the magazine. But right now, we are right now finishing kind of a different, this is going to be a chapter

for a book, but it kind of complements this other article that we have written, which is about the collaborations and synergies between the, between Tri-Continental and the concerns, the socio-ecological concerns in Tri-Continental, and the collaboration of. tricontinental with the Cuban Film Institute through the Noticero Latino-American, which is the newsreo that was run by

Santiago Alvarez, kind of the father of the revolutionary Cuban revolutionary documentary documentary. And what's interesting about this is that actually when you look

at the you know at the specific case of Cuba, the things were quite complex. And in this sense, perhaps I didn't give enough background to the geopolitical situations. So would you look at this? I mean, you have a series of events that were, you know, national and that were related to the national, to the internal affairs. and the foreign affairs of Cuba at the time. And, you know, you have the agrarian debate, which took place in 61, 62.

Then the Pigs Bay invasion in 61. Then the, you know, the blockade that was hardened in 62. Then the missile crisis in 63. Then you have the economic debate from 63 to 65, which is quite a big debate about how to organize the whole Cuban economy and so on. And then in 65, there is this trip of Che Guevara. He goes to Algeria, and in Algiers he gave this discourse criticizing the... the second wall for their treatment of trade with the third world for their treatment they have given to the third world in terms of trade, which was quite controversial. After that, he went to China.

And that's at the time when the, you know, the relationship between China and Cuba was getting really bad. And then they had a, you know, there was a, ended up, they ended up cutting their relations. And it was right before the Tri-Continental Conference, China ended up going to the Tri-Continental Conference, but the situation was already quite bad. And then after that, China started a rise embargo to Cuba. And so on, all these elements. I mean, then in 67, Che Guevara was killed. And then in, well, 68, it's Fidel Castro supported the USSR in the, in the, when the U.S.S.S. when Moscow entered track

and then there was the plan to make these 10 million tons of sugar harvest in seminy, which failed and but and then after that well kind of that all that led Cuba to be integrated in the

kind of Soviet sphere, you know. So, but what's interesting is that throughout all this time, even if there were like, there were a lot of tensions, electrical tensions between different approaches to how to make the revolution and what was the role of the state and what was how to plan the revolution, how to, you know, develop certain type of incentive, to workers, what was the role of the Cuban worker and so on. Throughout all this time, all the revolutionary leaders understood Che Guevara included

that Suar was central for the development of the country because they didn't have any other option. So, I mean, the thing is that they have inherited this colonial dominance, but But, I mean, they couldn't change from one day to another to a different model of production that could allow Cuba to just develop differently from one day to another. You know, they had all this infrastructure and they had all this knowledge about a certain product, a certain agrarian product, which was sugar. And it was, there was no other option, but to try to develop the, you know, all the, all the, all the forces to, to allow Cuba to have enough resources to, to have enough resources to put the revolution in a direction, you know, put the country in a different direction for a proper revolution. And for that matter, Cuba understood that they could engage in a different type of trade

relationship due to their links to the socialist powers, in this case both China and the USSR. And they got pretty good agreements with both countries, you know, before the crisis with China, and actually in 63, and they were announced in 64, and they had, you know, it was the only alternative for a third world country under siege of the biggest imperial power. And they understood that, you know, there was room for developing a certain market differently, and that this could help to actually establish a different type of trading relationship, and that would help to eventually change the production model and industrialize the country. Then there was what the – there is a historian, a Brazilian historian called Joanna Selen Basconcellos.

she has written a book called Agrarian History of the Cuban Revolution and she talks in that book about the Sugar paradox because there was this thing this dilemma within the revolution about the role of sugar you know they understood that that

you know that was the what they have inherited and that it was kind of something that was, you know, a curse, you know, a colonial curse. But at the same time, it was like, you know, there was this year political conditions that helped, that made them think about it in a different way, you know, so that actually it could to help to establish a different mode, form of different approach to production. But at the same time, there was this understanding that this was kind of perpetuating the

colonial dependency that the revolution was called to, you know, the revolution was done to escape from that, right? So, and at the same time, there was this problem of, you know, of the effects that it had in the soil and so on. So there is, there's an interesting contradiction between the hopes, the hopes that, you know, that these tri-continental vision embraced, and at the same time, the kind of the reality, that a country like Cuba was facing, but that was common, was shared by many of the third world countries

and that is still the case, for instance, for two countries that are under imperialist attacks like Venezuela, for instance. So this is something that is hard to change when you are a third world country, and you're under siege and you're under imperialist attack, you know. The thing about sovereignty is that this was something that we wanted to emphasize in the title, you know, this connection between sovereignty and social metabolism, we thought that it was really important and that we needed to emphasize that because we understood that that was the, this idea of sovereignty was kind of the, in the core of the socio-ecological understanding of the whole anti-imperialist discourse, right? And the thing is

that sovereignty was something in that sense, as it appeared in the magazine, was something, you know, very concrete, very specific. It's not something so abstract as in a just nationalist these terms. Or probably Bandun was somehow more abstract in that sense. And of course, it also has to do with the people that were behind each case. As you Adnan mentioned, you know, Bandun was actually kind of a conference of head of governments and so on. And Tri-Continental, Well, they were like head of governments and government representatives and so on, but there were also revolutionary movements and guerrilla movements. And those were the ones that took a big part of the space in the magazine.

And I think for that reason, their approach to sovereignty was probably more concrete and was more attached to aspects of control over national resources, which was something really important. So when it came to nationalization, it wasn't just an aspect related to just some abstract idea. It was like, for instance, as we mentioned in the article, there is the case of how the nationalization of oil in Algeria was so directly connected to the Palestinian cause, for instance. and to the Arab cause in general. And so the control of national resources, a kind of a self-reliant economy

that was based on local development, the connection between the agrarian sector and the industrial developments, so how both sectors were, connected was something very much linked to the idea of sovereignty, and also the emphasis on the collective good, on the common, the importance of how this was beneficial for a majority of people that have been wretched by history. Right. So all these were aspects that I understand were in an implicit way connected to ecology or to social ecology, if you like.

And of course, when it comes to this issue of, you were mentioning, Henry, you were mentioning the case of the COP and the case of the, you know, this connection. to the credits of the Western powers or the Global North and so on, this short of financialization of aid and so on, which, anyway, we have many episodes in history that we pretty much know how that ends if, you know, when it comes to debt and all that, I mean, actually pretty much the Third Wall project

was crashed because of the, through the debt crisis. That was one of the instruments. There are many others, right? But then there is the, there is a, there is in all these ideas on sovereignty, a kind of a reference, implicit reference to delinking from the capitalist world system, right? So I mean that by delinking from the imperial core countries, the idea is that there will be more South-South cooperation that could serve the purpose of autonomous development and that this would mean that these countries could develop different models of

of organizing and planning their own economy, which in practice meant breaking with, of course, the commodification of resources, nature, land, and so on. So that meant in practice breaking with the governance of capital. Yeah, I wanted to, that was a wonderful discussion. It seems that maybe one conclusion that tri-continental thinkers were coming to, and certainly in your article, is an increasingly sharp realization that post-colonial sovereignty was somewhat impossible under capitalism. And unless some kind of ways of short-circuiting, the continuing imperialism of a global commodity economy, you know, that had made like all of these things like sugar in the example that you were talking about so much, you know, a commodity in the world market, which was the only way you could get, you know, hard currency to pay back, you know, debts that you may have had to take in order to be able to make. investments. You know, it was a trap. It was a trapped situation where sovereignty was

removed, even if politically you may have defeated, you know, an imperial government and defeated colonialism that you were trapped in this neocolonial. So I think those dynamics are very important in the discussions about sovereignty that you had in studying, studying this in the Tri-Continental. But I want to come back to the magazine itself because you have so many fascinating discussions of what's happening in this magazine. And I just wanted to add to your introduction to it that you talked about in here. And I was really excited to learn that, you know, it was regarded in some ways as the print voice of the peoples of the third world. This is how it was understood. And that it was banned in many places where it was seen as a very subversive

publication and had to circulate underground in many contexts, even though, interestingly enough, some of the most important contemporary and even acclaimed in some ways thinkers as well as leaders of African nations and scholars who we look back on today as guiding lights and figures of great importance and significance historically in anti-imperialist and leftist thought, were routinely writing for this. So this really was a very important. So when we're saying, okay, we're studying what was taking place in the Tri-Continental magazine during these years, we're really talking about groups that across the third world, across the global South, and with allies and intellectuals and movements from First World and solidarity with those

struggles, you know, really thinking about the big questions of their time. And so I want I wanted to, I come back to the Tri-Continental as just an amazing venue for this kind of thought. And in particular, in addition to what you were talking about sovereignty, if we think about, you know, what in Gugi, you know, the great Kenyan, Nagugi, the great Kenyan scholar, talked about decolonizing the mind, is that in some ways also the Tri-Continental seem to have been involved with confronting narratives of capitalizing. consumption and the, you know, way in which there's a sort of thoughtless kind of image of, you know, luxury and so on and of commodities that are circulating culturally and popularly through

the organs of corporate marketing campaigns. And these are, you know, could be seen in some ways as, you know, capitalist psychological warfare. you know, on post-colonial peoples who are, you know, are struggling to acquire the essentials of life and development. And it seems like the Tri-Continental, you study in a very interesting way here, some of the counter at propaganda, you might say, and the critiques of those narratives, even in visual form. And so I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about these anti-advertisements, you know, that these visual placards, you know, that these visual placards, the visual materials that are associated with the Tri-Continental, that are also engaging

a kind of anti-capitalist, anti-Western imperialist struggle against the ideological and imagistic and visual dimensions of Western corporate capitalisms spread in the world. Sure. I mean, that's actually a fascinating field. itself because Tri-Continental, I don't know how familiar people are with the material, but Tri-Continental developed a lot of graphic work, which was really relevant and that is still very meaningful in the field of visual arts and in, you know, graphic design and so on. And so when you get the magazine, I mean, well, I don't have it on paper. We have scanned copies of the original magazines.

I have some materials from that, but I mean, we worked with scanned copies of that. I mean, but it's fascinating because it's visually really attractive. And for instance, one of the reasons why it was so well known and it got so, you know, one of the things that got best distributed from Tri-Continental was its posters. They made a poster per issue and, you know, and they were like, they are really beautiful. I mean, if you just Google Tri-continental posters, they are like really impressive works,

graphic works that they were doing, right? But in these anti-advertisement's materials that they were, I mean, when you got in the magazine, there were a lot of different type of graphic works. So it's not only anti-advertisement, there are all other works that are like just very interesting,

in constructions. I mean, a lot of photographic work of guerrillas and revolutionary movements and so on and also some other collage and stuff like that. But they made some of these kind of anti-apperticements, which were this kind of really powerful artistic and rhetorical strategy to expose critics of consumerism and how a Western consumerism or yeah

the imperial Western consumerism was kind of perpetuating the neo-colonial resource and labor exploitation and an equal exchange right so in that sense

these are materials that where somehow, if we think of a term that is kind of contemporary, that is this imperial mode of living, these are materials that were exposing this in a very economic sense, a visual sense, and that they were doing it by appropriating and subverting the imagery and the language and the formats of consumer culture, of capitalist consumer culture, right? So they were using these symbols of consumer culture.

They were using corporate ads and kind of reversing their message. They were using multinational corporations that were essentially portrayed as predators of commodities and of labor. and they were kind of juxtaposing wealth or they were illustrated by, you know, by the usage of collage and juxtaposing images and so on, they were illustrating how wealth in the north was extracted from the global south, right? So we saw a few of those anti-advertisements in the, we collected a few of them. There are many more. And I mean, they even, when they, you can even find also kind of anti-advertisement works also in the, in the Cuban newsreels that I just mentioned, you know.

And so, but we saw a few of them. And for instance, there is one about Ford, which is kind of, it's interesting because it's kind of exposing where every material is coming from, different countries in the global south, and it's kind of making a distinction between the origins of raw materials and the kind of the end result of that. I mean, the last stage of the consumer goods, you know. And of course, in that case, it's quite meaningful.

And if we put it in their geopolitical context because of the meaning of Ford and the Ford Foundation at the time, I mean, the role in an involvement in Cuba, and and also the kind of promotion of cultural imperialism through grants and so on. So this was used in many of the cases. We just chose a few of them. But what's interesting is that they are very, you know, they condense really well.

critique of resource neocolonialism in the global south how multinational corporations, for instance, engage in imperial devastation through extracting resources

and impoverishing local economies and how they also were really important in empowering the awareness of these through visual materials that were really powerful visually, right?

So the tools that they used, I mean, they used a lot of photo montage, collage, and they reappropriated logos and slogans. They used graphic distortions and kind of a... empirical use of copywriting, so they were using slogans and language that was really common to that field, to the field of advertising and kind of twisting the meaning of it, and they were in that sense underscoring the hidden cost of conception. So in that sense, we thought about it in the examples we thought that that they were really interesting because they kind of connected the dots between the environmental harm

and the labor exploitation and resources exploitation and the brother anti-imperialist struggle, right? So they're really powerful images, and they were, it was something that was really interesting in the sense it was used and the same goes for the posters. And in that sense, they prefigured movements that later became kind of well-known. I mean, I suppose the one that comes to mind to most of the listeners is ad busters or the movements that have, in graphic movements that have engaged in anti-globalization campaigns and so on. Yeah, that's exactly what came to my mind. So I found it so fascinating that it was a tactic that was being developed very consciously,

very effectively already late 60s, early 70s. And the image, of course, listeners, this is an audio media. but do take Alejandro's suggestion and go look up some of these tri-continental posters the one on Palestine is just absolutely a stunning one. I have to like get that one printed up

and put it in my office. It's beautiful. But this one about the Ford is just so funny because like it's a blonde woman getting out of a red Ford Mustang. It's just like the absolute image of height of consumer, you know, Americanism, you know?

And then it's like detailing, like, oh, this was taken petroleum. This is from, you know, the Middle East. Here's aluminum. This is taken from Cameroon. And it just like absolutely twists the whole glamour into the horrific extraction. But I think also your article does another into quick note to none. Just to note, listeners, again, that is linked in the show notes.

You'll be able to see some of those posters from tricontanical in the article. And also that Ford one, I think, that we'll use as are one of the social media images that we use when we put out this episode. So make sure that you're following us on social media and you'll see that image then attached with the episode. So sorry for that interjection. Oh, that's perfect. Go ahead.

We'll put the link. That's great. That's great. But I wanted to mention that your conclusion there was about, you know, that these visually helped portray and critique, you know, the environmental devastation of resource extraction and, of course, also the unequal exchange and so on. But it seems that also the Tri-Continental was very,

explicit in other ways about the environmental destructive effects of militaristic imperialism, like the more direct kind, you know, that, you know, proliferated with the U.S. in particular's advance, you know, in developing military bases, you know, after World War II around the world. And so I wondered if maybe you could talk a little bit more about the tri-continental critique of being able to share case studies of environmental degradation and its health impacts and the dangers of nuclear, you know, weapons and materials. These were also part of their developing ecological critique. And so you might say also a component implicitly of, you know, the desire to establish

true sovereignty, you know, ecological sovereignty was also to protect against the harms. not only of capitalist resource extraction in that kind of neocolonialist imperialism but the direct military interventions and devastations of course one could think of napalm and all that but there were a lot of great examples it seems being circulated here in the Tri-Continental maybe you could tell us a little bit more

about what kind of analysis and critique was there yeah well that's that's a really interesting work that you find in the magazine. I mean, it's in terms of when you think about it from the framework of human ecology is fascinating to notice

that, you know, that you know, how early the magazine was actually paying attention to the effects that these sort of military companies, and so on were having on the on on the people and I mean on on the environment and

and also on the people so so for instance there is this one piece that we studied which is from issue seven of the magazine which was actually was a piece written by by the major of the Japanese city of Naja, in which he actually spoke about the, I mean, denounced the complex of Okinawa, which was forcing Japan to become a nuclear base on a station for nuclearization. That one specifically treated the issue of nuclear power in Japan. Camigiro Senaga, who was the major, he was emphasizing how the military base was kind of disrupting the state control of the region and was directly threatening more than 80% of the natural resources, which were crucial for the life of. of the people of the region, that means rice, fields, farms, forests, plains, and so on.

So there was, for instance, in that one piece, there was something very much connected to human ecology. And then we also mentioned another one, Vietnam was something that was central to the magazine, and there is one piece that is actually talking about the chemical, biological companies, the role of the companies, the chemical and biological companies in, like Monsanto in the region, and the effects that it had in the human health, right? So there is, we actually put in there a table that was created by the author Roger Council that was actually in this table, you can see the role of these chemical, biological weapons on the health of the people, in this case, in regard to.

to Vietnam. And this was something that actually, if you, you know, in following issues, this was something that was actually very much present. We also talk about the issue 32, which is already from, you know, how is from 72. So it's a year after, I mean, our study mainly focuses from 66 to 71 for, reasons that we explained in the article. But anyway, we explained a little bit how these continued the years after. So we mentioned one that has to do also with the chemical defects of the of chemical components on the health of people in Vietnam and so on.

So it is really interesting that, you know, because these are topics that, of course, they are not framed under the label of human ecology for reasons that we also kind of exposing the article and that we've been covering here, but that are clearly and directly related to issues of human ecology, of what we today in political ecologies understand. I would add as human ecology. I mean, that is the effects of chemicals and biological weapons in this case and substances in the health of population, right? And this is exposed in terms of, I mean, this is understood in the way this is connected to imperial domination, to imperial warfare against the third war. So Alejandro, this has been a terrific conversation so far.

The last question that I have for you will be the final question, but that does not mean that you have to be brief in the answer because it's a pretty big question, nevertheless. So as we've been talking about in this episode, the period at which you're looking at Tri-Continental was 1967 and 1971. and I know that we've talked a little bit about things that have happened outside of that range as well, but we're really looking at the way that political ecology was thought about in this period of the 1970s, the way that ecology was used kind of implicitly in some of

these arguments regarding sovereignty as well as some of these other things that we've talked about, but not quite so explicitly as later. So for the final question, can we talk a little bit about how that transition took place from that more implicit look at ecology to the more explicit view of ecology, which again is outside the scope of this article. And, you know, listeners do be aware that when you check out the article, that transition won't be in here, but I do know that you can speak on it, Alejandro. How that transition from the way that ecology was being, maybe not viewed, but the way that it was being portrayed within the writings, changed, transition from the 1970s to the 1980s.

And then in the case of Cuba, particularly in the 1990s, again, getting up to that special period, not just in terms of what they were actually doing, but the way that the narratives around ecology were being structured. I think that the way that this was being discussed is also in many ways as important as what the actual changes in many cases, which were by necessity, were being carried out in that agroecological transition that really started in the 19th. 1990s and Cuba. So can you talk a little bit about what were some of those narrative and portrayal changes of ecology and how and why it became a little bit more explicit as time went on? Yes. Of course, I mean, it's a really complex question. So I'll try to do my best to give a little bit of context. I mean, of course, there are many causes. So, It's a multi-causal issue, how it shifted from the late 60s, early 70s to the late 70s and then the 80s and so on. In the article, in the first part, we kind of exposed a little bit of a background to historical background about how, you know, some encounters and some reports that were relevant to the,

to the development of the ecological consciousness or the ecological cause. And as we're exposing there, what we are trying to do is to kind of expose how some of the aspects that were important or that were central to these debates were to some extent present in and had been on the discussion from a different scope

in the pages of tricontinental, right? So we mentioned in there the Funex report which is from 19701 and the United Nations Conference on the human environment, which was held

in Stockholm in 1972. Of course, the report report, the limits to growth report, which was released that same year, in 1972. And we exposed some of the debates that were surrounding these encounters and this, you know, and the Meadows report, the limits to growth and so on and how they were received also in the, in the third world and so on. But I think that there is what often happens, and I think that unfortunately that is, because we live also in a capitalist, the production of knowledge of our system is what it is. So it kind of isolates the production of knowledge of one sphere and isolates it from.

the connections to the others. And unfortunately, even in the ecological scene and in some radical scenes, there hasn't been enough efforts to understand the interplay of anti-imperialist movements and the environmental activism and other critical analysis of capitalism's global environmental impact, right? this is something we don't cover in our article, but it's something that I think is something that needs to be rethought and needs to be approached. To some extent, we wanted our article to be a little contribution in that direction. So I think that what happens is that in the 70s, you know, it's also a time 60s and 70s,

or the long cystics, if you want to call it, it's a time that the revolutionary movements and the guerrilla movements were really active, very active, and there were still independent struggles going on, and so formal independence, of course. And then the focus, as we've been discussing, and the primary focus was not so much related to ecological or strictly ecological or purely ecological issues, right?

So it had to do more with how multinational corporations were connected to imperial powers and in the exploitation of human and natural resources in the global south. and what was the role in the deforestation and soil depletion and pollution and so on. There was, of course, also a series of important thinkers that contributed whether, again, probably not explicitly, but implicitly to this, which were like those authors that were connected. to dependency theory and an equal exchange and world systems analysis and so on. So when you think about people like Argya Emanuel or Andre Gunderfranck or Rui Mauro Marini or Samiramin, they were actually making as a critique of how the extraction

of resources and the use the cheap, the use of cheap labor and cheap energy and cheap materials, the role in perpetuating economic dependency in the global south and supporting the development of the global north, right? So this is something that actually, even if in those works, the intention or the primary orientation wasn't connected to ecology, to what we

today study as political ecology, it is certainly something that crystallized later on in the work of all the authors that actually understood the socio-ecological dimension due to

a different historical context. I mean, it's not that someone else invented something, but you know, it was development of thoughts. So when one looks at the 80s, the works of Stephen Bunker or Enrique L.F. or James O'Connor

or later John Velamy Foster or people like that, they are actually reflecting, you know, their work is the result of a historical development of a way of understanding critically the relationship between labor, nature, and imperial hierarchies, right? But then there was a series of movements also in the third world environmentalism that were somehow relevant. I mean, they were in the different scales relevant to the development of the of the, of the, of the environmental

mental consciousness, we mentioned in there the, you know, all the movements that were, feminist movements that were connected to, that were struggling against the, all the feminist anti-nuclear movements in Japan, for instance. We also mentioned the Chipko movement in India, you know, in the early 70s. Then there is the green belt movement in Kenya, which to some extent preformed certain ideas that were later rescued by Thomas Sankara, for instance, in the reforestation and so on. And then, of course, there was the oil crisis of 1973, the role that OPEC played in regard to what the control of resources and key resources meant for the understanding of the world order. There was also the new international economic order that took place in 1974.

This year, it was the 50th anniversary. There was some events celebrated in Cuba, actually. And there's been a book recently published, collecting a series of texts and of that encounter in Cuba and so on. So all these different events created, kind of laid the groundwork for integrating ecological issues into debates on sovereignty

and resource management or control, autonomy, the possibilities of development outside of the whole system, you know, so the actual possibilities of South-South cooperation, something that Samiramin was, you know, he continued searching for possibilities until the end of his days, right? And so all these created, I mean, atmosphere that meant a different approach to the question of the ecology in the 80s, right? And of course, these dialogues, these critiques that took place, these dialogues, for instance, that we mentioned in there the way that the limits to growth was received, for instance, in Latin America and how those critiques serve to development a different critical approach,

you know, not so technical approach to those issues, but a political approach to the issues that are in the Meadows report. So all these elements created, you know, provided the context for a different context, for a different approach to this. Of course, it's also like the certain ecological issues gained also more attention because they were more visible. They were more tangible, right?

So, I mean, like, at some point, I mean, there was the ozone crisis. That was, you know, so, I mean, there were certain things that, made the situation more critical, you know, in that sense. And to some extent, you know, if you think about why, how was the difference, what was the difference between, I don't know, in the 70s or in the 60s between the environmental thinkers like Rachel Carson or, I mean, why the, was it already?

the ecological question was so meaningful in their, in comparison to the materials that we analyze in tricontinental, which as we mentioned, these environmental issues or ecological issues are something that often are more implicit. Well, I think that it has to do a little bit with that, you know, with which were the urgencies of different societies in a, in a, in a, asymmetrical world order, right? So that, of course, you know, there was an urgency to nourish and keep your people healthy and alive and access to food and access to land and so on.

So those urgencies were, of course, the main thing, you know. So, I mean, when you think about what happened in the 80s, the importance that, you know, that ecology gained in the 80s, of course it was something that has to do also with the tangibility, with the visibility of these problems in the life of the people. Absolutely fascinating way to end the discussion. As we let you go, Alejandro, can you let the listeners know where they can find you? I know you have, I like your social media profile. I don't know if you want to make it, you know, let everybody know where they can find you. But I certainly enjoy following you on the site that I still call Twitter. And also let

everybody know what you are working on now. So if they enjoyed this conversation and enjoyed the article, which again, listeners, is linked in the show notes and is titled the early socio-ecological dimensions of Tri-Continental, 1967 and 1971, sovereign social metabolism for the third world, which came out through Agrarian South Journal of Political economy. I'm sure that after checking out the article and listening to this conversation, they're going to want to know more about what you have coming out soon. So Alejandro Pedrigal, again, our guest, can you tell the listeners where they can find you and what they can expect from you soon? Yeah, sure. I mean, well, I mean, the only social media I'm active on, or I mean,

yeah, I'm active on is Twitter. So it's at Alejo. Pedregal, so A-L-E-J-O-P-E-D-R-E-G-A-L. My Nick, I suppose that's like in Twitter is Isand-G-L-Wana, which I presume many listeners know what it refers to. People can follow my publications. Well, I suppose the easiest way would be

to go to my, at this moment, to go to my Alto profile, Alto University with 2A at the beginning and just put my name and you'll find

what I'm blessing and so on. At the moment, well, I'm working on several things. I'm running a project that has to do with questions related to cinema and

cultural expressions of imperialism and anti-porealism in connection to ecology, so to political ecology. That's kind of the core topic of my, or what I'm working on in a general sense, but then I'm dealing with many other issues that are not so much related to cultural studies or to arts. And at the moment we are, well, this book in Spanish coming out next year, which is called 3 Centennios, 3 fires. And then I'm working now with another two colleagues, which I believe they are friends of the show, Nemanja and Kai Heron.

we're just starting to put together a special issue on the imperialist features of eco-modernism, but I cannot tell much about it yet. Yeah, absolutely, and certainly friends of the show. Namania has been on the show before he was one of our guests when we talked to the Argyria Manuel Association. So listeners, if you listen to that episode, we had Torkel, we had Joseph Mullen, and we had Nomania talking about their work and Manny Nass. I remember he joined the call a little bit late if I recall correctly, but talking about their work,

the Argyria Manual Association. And Kai, we haven't had on the show yet, but we have discussed him coming on the show and he's all for it. It's just a matter of time. And yeah, really looking forward to that work. And I should also mention regarding Nomania. Namanya and I co-wrote a preface on an upcoming book, Torkolausson.

group that he was in, the communist working group in Denmark, which, just to remind your listeners, this is the group that would rob banks in Denmark in order to send money to national liberation movements in the third world, and in particular the PFLP in Palestine, which, of course, Torkel was jailed for for several years, but they had put together a book on Equal Exchange in the Prospects for Socialism prior to them being arrested. and Iskra Books is putting forth a republication with about 50 additional pages of forward and afterward, which Torkel has just written for us, and a much smaller, not 50 pages, but a much smaller preface by Namania and myself introducing that work. So you can keep your eyes peeled, Iskerbooks.org for that work.

It'll be coming out late winter, early spring, actually around the same time as communism, the highest stage of ecology, the project that Salvatore Engel de Morrow and I and myself worked on. So, yeah, certainly friends of the show. Adnan, can you tell the listeners where they can find you in your other podcasts? Yeah, but firstly, thank you so much, Alejandro, for coming on and giving so much of your time generously to talk about this important work. I think a very important conversation. Everyone should check out the article, so it was a pleasure. and also I just have to say about that Torkel-Lausen story.

There are so many people as being, you know, being somebody in academia, I come across so many people who characterize themselves as scholars and activists, but I don't think too many of them have the same category and caliber of commitment as that. That's an amazing story. But you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. And, of course, check out the Mudge list I just recorded. at a new episode, so hopefully it'll be up soon, called The Stigma about a book, a colleague of mine published called The Stigma Matrix

about women and labor in Pakistan. So do check us out, the M-A-J-L-I-S. I know, I for one, am looking forward to that episode. I'm sure the other listeners are as well. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at H-U-C-1-9-95. I'll just mention again, go to iskerbooks.org. I have a couple of projects that'll be coming out from Iskra in the coming months, and a reminder that everything from Iskra Books is available for free download as PDFs. So if you aren't going to spring for the hard copies, just download the PDFs. But of course, if you want to get a hard copy, they do look really cool and allow us to continue the project. We are all volunteers

at Iskra, but there are still costs associated with running a publishing company. So pick up a hardcover book or a paperback if you have the means to do. so. If not, PDF is cool as well. As for the show, you can help support us and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that Adnan and I are doing individually and collectively by following us on social media. On Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod, that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A underscore pod, and on Instagram at Gorilla-U-U-S-Sk. History. Again, Gorilla with 2Rs underscore history there. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity.

You know, I'm going to be able to be.