The book is by John Perkins and is called,
CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN. the Preface is also available on the web
page for the book,
.johnperkins.org Prologue
Prologue
Quito, Ecuador’s capital, stretches across a
volcanic valley high in the Andes, at an altitude of nine thousand feet.
Residents of this city, which was
founded long before Columbus arrived in the
Americas, are accustomed to seeing snow on the surrounding peaks, despite the
fact that they live just a few
miles south of the Equator.
The city of Shell, a frontier outpost and military
base hacked out of Ecuador’s Amazon jungle to service the oil company whose name
it bears, is nearly
eight thousand feet lower than Quito. A steaming city, it
is inhabited mostly by soldiers, oil workers, and the indigenous people from the
Shuar and Kichwa
tribes who work for them as prostitutes and
laborers.
To journey from one city to the other, you must
travel a road that is both tortuous and breathtaking. Local people will tell you
that during the trip you
experience all four seasons in a single
day.
Although I have driven this road many times, I
never tire of the spectacular scenery. Sheer cliffs punctuated by cascading
waterfalls and brilliant bromeliads,
rise up one side. On the other side, the
earth drops abruptly into a deep abyss where the Pastaza River, a headwater of
the Amazon, snakes its way down
the Andes. The Pastaza carries water from the
glaciers of Cotopaxi, one of the world’s highest active volcanoes, and a deity
in the time of the Incas,
to the Atlantic Ocean more than three thousand
miles away.
In 2003, I left Quito in a Subaru Outback and
headed for Shell on a mission that was like no other I had ever accepted. I was
hoping to end a war I had
helped create. As is the case with so many things
we EHMs must take responsibility for, it is a war that is virtually unknown
anywhere outside the country
where it is fought. I was on my way to meet with
the Shuar, the Kichwa, and their neighbors, the Achuar, Zaparos, the
Shiwiars—tribes determined to prevent
our oil companies from destroying their
homes, families, and lands, even if it means they must die in the process. This
is a war that for them is about
the survival of their children and cultures,
while for us it is about power, money, and natural resources. It is one part of
the struggle for world domination
and the dream of a few greedy men—global
empire.
That is what we EHMs do best: we build a global
empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international
financial organizations to foment
conditions that make other nations
subservient to the corporatocracy that runs our biggest corporations, our
government, and our banks. Like our counterparts
in the Mafia, we provide
favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure—electric
generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial
parks. One
condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our
own country must build all these projects. In essence, most
of the money
never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in
Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or
San
Francisco.
Despite the fact that the money is returned almost
immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the
creditors), the recipient country
is required to pay it all back, principal
plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that
the debtor is forced to default
on its payments after a few years. When this
happens, like the Mafia, we demand our pound of flesh, which often includes one
or more of the following:
control over United Nations votes, the
installations of military bases, or access to precious resources, like oil or
the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor
still owes us the money—and another
country is added to our global empire.
Driving from Quito toward Shell on this sunny day
in 2003, I thought back thirty-five years to the first time I arrived in this
part of the world. I had
read that although Ecuador is only about the size of
Nevada, it has more than thirty active volcanoes, over 15 percent of the world’s
bird species, and
thousands of as-yet unclassified plants, and that it is a
land of diverse cultures where nearly as many people speak ancient indigenous
languages as speak
Spanish. I found it to be fascinating and certainly
exotic; yet, the words that kept coming to mind back then were pure, untouched,
and innocent.
Much has changed in thirty-five years.
At the time of my first visit in 1968, Texaco had
only just discovered petroleum in Ecuador’s Amazon region. Today, oil accounts
for nearly half the country’s
exports. A trans-Andean pipeline, built shortly
after my first visit has since leaked over a half million barrels of oil into
the fragile rain forest—more
than twice the amount spilled by the Exxon
Valdez. Today, a new $1.3 billion, 300-mile pipeline constructed by an
EHM-organized consortium promises to
make Ecuador one of the world’s top ten
suppliers of oil to the United States. Vast areas of rain forest have fallen,
macaws and jaguars have all but vanished,
three Ecuadorian indigenous
cultures have been driven to the verge of collapse, and pristine rivers have
been transformed into flaming cesspools.
During this same period, the indigenous cultures
began fighting back. As one result, on May 7, 2003, a group of American lawyers
representing more than
thirty thousand indigenous Ecuadorian people filed a
$1 billion lawsuit against Chevron Texaco Corp. The suit asserts that between
1971 and 1992 the oil
giant dumped into open holes and rivers over four
million gallons per day of toxic wastewater, contaminated with oil, heavy
metals, and carcinogens, and
that the company left behind nearly 350
uncovered waste pits that continue to kill both people and animals.
Outside the window of my Outback, great clouds of
mist rolled in from the forests and up the Pastaza’s canyons. Sweat soaked my
shirt and my stomach began
to churn, but not just from the intense tropical
heat and the serpentine twists in the road. Knowing the part I had played in
destroying this beautiful
country was once again taking its toll. Because of
me and my fellow EHMs, Ecuador is in far worse shape today than before we
introduced her to the miracles
of modern economics, banking, and engineering.
Since 1970—during this period known euphemistically as the oil Boom—the official
poverty level grew from
50 to 70 percent, under- or unemployment increased
from 15 to 70 percent, and public debt increased from $240 million to $16
billion. Meanwhile, the share
of national resources allocated to the poorest
segments of the population declined from 20 to 6 percent.
Unfortunately, Ecuador is not the exception. Nearly
every country we EHMs have brought under the global empire’s umbrella has
suffered a similar fate.
The Subaru slowed as it meandered through the
streets of the beautiful resort town of Baños, famous for the hot baths created
by underground volcanic rivers
that flow from the highly active Mount
Tungurahgua. Children ran along beside us, waving and trying to sell us gum and
cookies. Then we left Baños behind.
The spectacular scenery ended abruptly.
The Subaru sped out of paradise and into a modern vision of Dante's
Inferno.
A gigantic monster reared up from the river, a
mammoth gray wall. Its dripping concrete was totally out of place, completely
unnatural and incompatible
with the landscape. Of course, seeing it there
should not have surprised me. I knew all along that it would be waiting in
ambush. I had encountered it
many times before and in the past had praised it
as a symbol of EHM accomplishments. Even so, it made my skin crawl.
That hideous, incongruous wall is a dam that blocks
the rushing Pastaza River, diverts its waters through huge tunnels bored into
the mountain, and converts
their energy to electricity. This is the
156-megawatt Agoyan Hydroelectric Project. It fuels the industries that make a
handful of Ecuadorian families
wealthy, and it has been the source of untold
suffering for the farmers and indigenous people who live along the river. This
hydroelectric plant is just
one of many projects developed through my efforts
and those of other EHMs. Such projects are the reason Ecuador is now a member of
the global empire, and
also the reason why the Shuar, the Kichwa, and their
neighbors have declared war on our oil companies.
Because of EHM projects, Ecuador is awash in
foreign debt and must devote an inordinate share of its national budget to
paying this off, instead of using
its capital to help the millions of its
citizens officially classified as dangerously impoverished. The only way Ecuador
can buy down its foreign obligations
is by selling its rain forests to the
oil companies. Indeed, one of the reasons the EHMs set their sights on Ecuador
in the first place was because the
sea of oil beneath its Amazon region is
believed to rival the oil fields of the Middle East. The global empire demands
its pound of flesh in the form of
oil concessions.
These demands became especially urgent after
September 11, 2001, when Washington feared that Middle Eastern supplies might
cease. On top of that, Venezuela,
our third-largest oil supplier, had elected
a populist president, Hugo Chavez, who took a strong stand against what he
referred to as U.S. imperialism;
he threatened to cut off oil sales to the
United States. The EHMs had failed in Iraq and Venezuela. But we had succeeded
in Ecuador; now we would milk
it for all it is worth.
Ecuador is typical of countries around the world
that EHMs have brought into the economic-political fold. For every $100 of crude
taken out of the Ecuadorian
rain forests, the oil companies receive $75. Of
the remaining $25, three quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. Most
of the remainder covers
military and other government expenses— which leaves
about $2.50 for health, education, and programs aimed at helping the poor. Thus,
out of every $100
worth of oil torn from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the
people who need the money most, whose lives have been so adversely impacted by
the dams, the
drilling, and the pipelines, and who are dying from lack of
edible food and drinkable water.
Every one of those people—millions in Ecuador,
billions around the planet—is a potential terrorist. Not because they believe in
communism or the tenets
of anarchism, nor because they are intrinsically
evil, but simply because they are desperate. Looking at this dam, I wondered—as
I have so often in so
many places around the world—when these people would
take action, like the Americans against England in the 1770s or Latin Americans
against Spain in the
early 1800s.
The subtlety of this modern empire-building puts
the Roman centurions, the Spanish conquistadors, and the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century European colonial
powers to shame. We EHMs are crafty; we
learned from history. Today we do not carry swords. We do not wear armor or
clothes that set us apart. In countries
like Ecuador, Nigeria, and Indonesia,
we dress like local schoolteachers and shop owners. In Washington and Paris, we
look like government bureaucrats
and bankers. We appear humble, normal. We
visit project sites and stroll through impoverished villages. We profess
altruism, talk with local papers about
the wonderful humanitarian things we
are doing. We cover the conference tables of government committees with our
spreadsheets and financial projections,
and we lecture at the Harvard
Business School about the miracles of macroeconomics. We are on the record, in
the open. Or so we portray ourselves, and
so are we accepted. It is how the
system works. We seldom resort to anything illegal because the system itself is
built on subterfuge, and the system is
by definition legitimate.
However—and this is a very large caveat—if we fail,
an even more sinister breed steps in, ones we EHMs refer to as the jackals, men
who trace their heritage
directly to those earlier empires. The jackals are
always there, lurking in the shadows. When they emerge, heads of state are
overthrown or die in violent
“accidents.” And if by chance the jackals fail,
as they failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, then the old models resurface. When the
jackals fail, young Americans
are sent in to kill and die.
As I passed the monster, that hulking mammoth wall
of gray concrete rising from the river, I was very conscious of the sweat that
soaked my clothes and
the tightening of my intestines. I headed on down into
the jungle to meet with the indigenous people who are determined to fight to the
last man in order
to stop this empire I helped create, and I was overwhelmed
with feelings guilt.
How, I asked myself, did a nice kid from rural New
Hampshire ever get into such a dirty business?