The Politics of Poverty
by Jorge Vargas
What’s in a word? What does it mean to come from an impoverished country, if you’re rich? What is it like to come from a wealthy nation if you’re poor? Does it matter that your country has the highest literacy rates in the world, if you’re illiterate? If you’re poor in the United States, why does that make you any different than someone who is poor in Brazil? Is it simply the fact that a difference is felt because the U.S. is rich and Brazil is poor?
The rich and the poor. First World and Third World. Developed and undeveloped. Emerged economies and emerging economies. These are the terms that are used to mask the original name that was put into vogue in the early days of European imperialism - the civilized and the savage, or the white and the other. In the case of the Spanish Empire’s arrival to the Americas, it was a matter of the human and the non-human.
Of course, this is the politics of language. Whenever the lesser group begins to feel insulted or taken for granted, the language changes and becomes less severe – when the Latin republics of the 1800s began protesting the use of the word ‘savage’ to describe the lands of the global South, the division became that of rich and poor.
One of the novel creations in economics and politics in the 20th century was the talk of development. No one called the British Empire the most developed nation in the world in the 19th century, although it was, because there was no need to do so and furthermore because no one would have understood the concept. So why does the United States now berate the rest of the world for not finding the right course to development? Why does it suddenly matter?
Is it because our benevolent hegemony has suddenly taken to caring about the poor? Do U.S. voters really care so much about poor Botswanans that they pressure the government into funding development projects for that nation? Doubtful. The average U.S. citizen probably can’t even find Botswana on the map and it’s likely that a large percentage of U.S. citizens can’t tell you what continent that nation is on.
Or could it matter because development is a comparative global tool? The United Nations does purport to be able to compare across nations in its development reports, and the UN even ascribes itself the power to prescribe solutions for the Third World – a term which will be used to describe every non-Western European nation, the United States, Canada, and Japan, and which will include the four BRIC powers (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). In other words, if the U.S. can say to Nigeria that it is a far more ‘developed’ nation – a term that implies not only economic prowess, but also social and political maturity, since development goes hand in hand with democracy, and according to the people arguing for the predominance of development discourse, democracy is the best political system in the world – then the U.S. can lay claim to having a fairer and more advanced society and political system. The premises for that conclusion are built into the argument, making it inherently circular.
Yet if the world is using the argument that development enables a better economy, society, and political system, that the West is developed and thus has a better economy, society, and political system, then why doesn’t anyone simply attack the first premise by arguing that development hasn’t been proven to enable a better society and political system and its effects on the economy are always open to questioning? Why doesn’t the government of Brazil simply rise up and argue otherwise? Why doesn’t the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia shoot that argument right out of the water and tell the world that Islamism leads to a better society and political system?
Let’s attempt to find an answer to that question by using a much more limited example, albeit for the simple goal of attempting to explain why one nation hasn’t done this.
Spanish soldiers under the leadership of Francisco Pizarro, a man guilty of genocide, arrived in Peru in the 1530s and launched a mass invasion of the country that, from a military point of view, was rather impressive. 300 years of Spanish domination and oppression ensued, in which Spain demonstrated its superiority over the Andean natives’ way of life. A revolution, led by men of Spanish descent, pushed out the Spanish Empire and brought the nation of Peru under the rule of caudillos; at the time it was argued that a strong-man would be necessary to lead the masses in Peru. Also around this same period, the world was raging with talk of racial superiority and inferiority, and since most of Peru’s population was indigenous, it was argued that a nation like Peru would never rise up and be a great power because the Indian was inherently lazy, weak, and simple-minded.
Peru had a brief love affair with democracy, which always left the Peruvians with military dictatorships and a broken heart, and finally the businessmen started to hone in on the South American republic to control its economic growth and its politics – a situation that is only beginning to change now that foreign investors left the country for fear of war and dictatorship and were too slow to return in force to prevent the rise and prominence of Peru’s governmental institutions.
During this somewhat troubling history, the world started using the concept of development, a concept that Peruvian politicians never countered, despite the fact that it led to conclusions very similar to that of the earlier racist discourse. Now it was the case that Peru didn’t have the right things in place from a political and economic perspective; therefore, no matter how hard it tried, Peru would never develop, and thus Peru would never amount to anything.
The strength of this argument was adopted as readily as the previous racist one and Peruvians will go so far as to correct people when they say ‘undeveloped’ to refer to Peru, with ‘developing,’ without realizing that they are themselves buying into the dominant discourse.
Why?
Some would argue that Peruvians agree to this discourse and don’t contest it because they realize that it’s empirically true, but let’s question that argument. What proof have the people of Peru encountered to prove the power of the development argument, if the proof is being provided by the argument’s very proponents, if there is no independent source?
Instead, the argument that I would prefer to use is that this is an effect of political legitimacy. If the Peruvian state can make the people believe that they are underdeveloped and thus require strong leadership, all the better. But the political legitimacy in question is that which applies in the eyes of foreign observers - the Peruvian state has sadly proven its corruption and mismanagement too often for the people to have any trust in it.
The West donates and invests money into Peruvian development projects, some of which are administered by the state, but the project fails. The Peruvian state is asked to explain why. Isn’t the answer obvious? Peru is so far undeveloped that it’s too difficult to make a project successful. And if the Peruvian state is saying this, a state that should be interested in making Peru seem like a powerful nation, then it must be true. After all, why would Peru’s government lie on this point?
Simple answer: because by lying and perpetuating the myth of poverty’s power and of an apparent lack of a cure for that disease, the Peruvian state can not only use it as an excuse but it can also rest assured that foreign eyes are almost always expecting failure, which means that if money suddenly goes missing, the foreigners will be so unsurprised that no one aside from the initial money-holder will ever care. Why report on old news? If the whole world is expecting Peru’s government to be corrupt, why would the media ever cover specific cases?
And furthermore, if the Peruvian state can count on making the whole world believe that poverty can’t be cured in this lifetime, then most people won’t question that and will allow themselves to fall into a cycle of perennially waiting for the next lifetime. Why does this argument hold any weight? For the same reason as the previous argument; it’s in the interests of the Peruvian state that the population remains poor, because poverty equals bad education and bad education equals a lack of credible threats. Sure, the people might rise up with pitchforks, but that’s what soldiers are for. There will rarely be credible theoretical opponents to the apparatus of the state and the upper classes, and thus they will never come under fire from the West, unless the state goes too far in its abuses.
There are exceptions of course, but on the whole, this is how Peruvian governments have persistently operated, be it a conscious or unconscious act.
This is not just a problem for Peru, but a problem for the entire world, even the First World, now that we’re being told that development is a phenomenon that always leaves people out and thus will always have poverty. However, this doesn’t mean that all is lost, but rather that we must reinforce the institution whose failure can’t be explained by development - education. By giving people the tools and theories to counter the dominant discourse, they can find arguments against it and consequently take away the legitimacy of these self-serving governments that cripple our planet and our societies.
But until then, c’est la vie.
