Kids are dying.

In Peru, they're dying of cancer that's probably caused by lethal amounts of oil and chemical run-off being carelessly strewn throughout the rainforest as Big Oil lays waste to the local ecosystem in search of deeper wells and higher profits.  After leasing much of Peru's portion of the Amazon out to multinational energy companies, Peru's leadership has now had to contend with a spate of protests.  While the world stays glued to Iran's uprising, the indigenous people of the Peruvian rainforest and their supporters have taken to the streets in Lima, demanding an end to the degradation of their environment and to their voicelessness.

Peru's president, Alan Garcia, has opened up the country's inner forests to exploration and exploitation on the heels of a Free Trade Agreement, still waiting to be raitified, with the United States.  Washington has been eager, in both the Bush and Obama White Houses, to push through the free trade pact.

The measure would make it easier for multinationals-- which have plenty of friends in Washington and legions of businesspeople who stand to gain financially from their successes-- to use Peru's natural resources as rapaciously as possible.  The idea is to provide as much cheap product for rich world markets as they can while keeping Wall Street happy with profits that go higher and higher.

The protestors should be commended.  They have encouraged other disaffected groups in Peru, mainly labor contigents, to band together and fight the loss of their jobs, as well.  It's a sight commonly found in France.  But the indigineous peoples' battle is not so simple as a socialist reaction against capitalist logic.

The United States has a history of supporting right-wing dictatorships in order to foster the implementation of free-market policies.  In Chile and in Argentina, thousands have paid the ultimate price for daring to support democracy and freedom in the face of brutal, secretive regimes who learned their scare tactics from the C.I.A.  Pinochet was a terrifying murderer.  But the American laissez-faire enthusiasts saw an opportunity in Chile to open up the economy and increase profits (and inequality) by setting down new economic policies after the political slate was wiped clean by Pinochet's coup.

And poor South America.  Chile may have the strongest economy in the Southern Cone, perhaps because those free-market policies were so unflinchingly put in place.  But they have brought high inequality, too.   Elsewhere on the continent, the laissez-faire devotees haven't produced the wealth they promised;  Bolivia, which also went through economic "shock therapy," remains an extremely impoverished country.

In all these cases, the economists who encourage the uncontaminated execution of free-market policies warn against the danger of embracing socialist attitudes, and the opposition to those policies and governments is always painted as some French-sounding illogical socialism, blind to economic reality.

These economists conveniently ignore the bloodshed and terror that accompanied some of these transitions.

But in Peru, it is more than a socialist myth that these protestors are clinging to.  It is their health, quite literally.  It is their way of life, in that their communities have been disrupted by the pillaging of the area they call their home.  It is a notion of autonomy that they are entitled to as residents of that region.

Making markets "freer" usually means making them freer for corporations.  This case is no different.  Except unlike previous economic upheavals in Latin America, there is little clandestine footwork here.  Everything, from the trade agreement to Chevron's insistence that's there's no way to prove the oil causing cancer is theirs (seriously-- see this BBC reporter's blog), is out in the open.

Amazingly, in the 70's and 80's, the United States (see Henry Kissinger) sought to conceal the economic efforts they were supporting in Latin America.  Conversely, in 2009, the Peru Free Trade Agreement, while inspiring little emotion either way in the general population, is a blunt piece of legislation. 

In the 70's and 80's, we tacitly approved as thousands were "disappeared" in long campaigns to suppress dissent that always seemed to be paired with economic policies that made the rich richer.

Now, we condemn violence, while praising democracy, while staying neutral on protests, while tacitly approving of... the environmental destruction at the hands of Chevron that seems to be paired with an economic policy that's making the rich richer!

Hmm.  It makes me wonder...what might Kissinger think of Obama?

If what Barack's really after is trade liberalization that favors Western conglomerates over local peasants, old Henry might just approve of the bleeding heart liberal's politics.  In fact, Henry's only criticism may be that Obama isn't secretive enough with his maneuvering.

The thing is, Kissinger never understood the fine art of media manipulation-- a skill that, for better or for worse, Obama has in spades.

Good luck to the Amazon.